Yeah, Noor just said there wasn't any training times for beta. Training times are how we handle karma on SRS, as was the example stated.


<irked>
Yeah, I can get to this, but don't hold your breath. Every time I read this thread I lose almost all motivation to actually work on the game. There isn't a 'number of awards' you get until you hit the cap, that's what diminishing values are all about. There is no 'true average' either. It's a curve. If I might be able to say something like 'after 10 awards you'll have 8 karma?, or, 'you drop below .25 karma a pop after the 50th award' then what would people say? You could get all of your karma in a single day or over a week or blahde blahde blah. Next I'm breaking out the PowerPoint. But much like the elegant explanation of what an alpha, beta, and release were above. It's not all set. Obviously the 'wrong tack' was taken on even MENTIONING for the SLIGHTEST MOMENT that we had even the VAGUEST IDEA of a number in mind.
</irked>

We're not on the how it works anymore, we're on to how much do you want now, then we can come back around.. won't that be fun.

.. I keep changing this message because maybe I haven't even said that before, maybe I'm confusing my conversations and posts after 7 pages. But, either way, tell me what you think would work.

Well I know my numbers atleast were based off of what i'd like to see after 6 months.? Overall, yes my changes add up to be substantial, but just looking at what they are they're nothign huge in and of themselves (aside from the submersion).? Thats what i'd like to see.?


No I don't think its that you mentioned the number per se, but the number itself.? No offense intended, but you guys shot really low and thats where the problem stemed from.? Hindsight being what it is, a better stratagy would (with your number in your minds mind you) be to lay out the system.? Explain it and do what you did a post back, say 'where would you like to be in 6 months'.? You'd still have your number, but it apears you're looking for our input, more than deciding things arcanely behind closed doors.? I don't think mine or lilly's examples are that out there power wise, but they do require a decent amount of karma, and for everything other than the gear character only looking to adjust 3 things, more than the number first proposed.


I still think having a straight cap on where you want people to be after 6 months isn't the way to go, because of the thoughts of Mark and such, and the idea of, 'what happens to the guy who gets to the cap?'.? Lets assume for a moment, you guys decide you want people to be at 40 karma at the end of 6 months of playing, thats the general goal, and thats what your aiming for.? So you tailor the +awards to that amount.? However, the actual cap should be a bit more than 40 karma, and really depends on how little you're looking for a award to be worth when you get near the cap.? But that would give those people who really really work at it a chance to still excell, but not so far that they leave everybody behind.? Everyone after 6 months would generaly be at about the same place (which I think you're trying to do with this system, I could be wrong) but it would allow for some to move beyond it, to a point.? You should tailor the system to the majority, where do you want most people to be, but you should allow for outliers on either end of the spectrum.? You just have to control how far of a outlier you can be on the high end...but you should allow for them.? People who work really hard shouldn't be forced to stay with the majority.

Edit:

Oh another nifty thing you could do (you could have already thought of this mind you), for those that are the outliers, along with what I said above, to offset the slower karma gain, is to reward them thematicaly.  And I'm not just talking about contacts, gear and money.  I'm talking about, maybe custom tailor a run or two for them, and maybe a few people of their choosing.  Maybe wrap them up in a political oriented plot with backstabing and double dealing all over the place, doesn't even have to be part of the main story arc.  But these outliers (on the high end) should be rewarded with this type of thing, they shouldn't hit a brick wall when they get to where you think most people should be, they should be allowed to advance still, but also challenged more (and i'm not talking about nessicarily -harder- runs, instead just more challenging things like they have to figure out 'whats really gonig on here'  'who's pulling my prick?'  'who betrayed us?'  'who's actualy behind all this?'  'who doesn't want me to do this, that bad that they'd kill the J in the middle of the meet?').  Granted most runs should have things like that in them, but not all are, and not all are going to be hard to figure out with many possible outcomes, or custom tailored for us.

Anyways think i'm rambling on there and who knows if i made any sense, what so ever or got my point across.  Hopefully I did, but...

I -still- say to leave the cap alone, lets play with it through Beta when we can actually -see- how often we're getting Karma awards in the first place. Mucking around with the cap now is pointless we don't know how it is going to work out, we don't know if anyone will even reach the cap. We don't know just what is going on on the grid because... none of us as players has been there.

I'm also seeing conflicting messages. Some people say the cap is 20 for six months, then the other thing I see is 60 for a year. These two numbers do not jive. So what people seem to be missing is that 20 for 6 months is for -BETA- where their goal is to see just how tough we are, how dangerous the new system is with their die roller, our skills in dyi... er staying alive.

In the real release version in 6 months a person could have 30-40 karma depending on how soon they hit their 2nd cap. Then you -would- be able to buy all those things, except for maybe a little fluff. So unless the Karma cap is -40- per year, then I really do not see what the presented builds are complaining about as they won't be restricted to 20 karma in six months, once Beta is done. Assuming your character even lives through Beta, or your second, or third, etc. Good thing full rollover is granted for Beta eh? That and that alone is probably why we are limited to 20 karma for those six months of testing.

Well, actually I'm not so much looking for input yet so much as trying to understand how the players are visualizing the game. As I said in the early posts on this thread, staff has already gone through most of the arguments we're seeing on the thread here, which is probably why we're having trouble responding to them all a second, third, fourth time.

Let me put it in a different way: how do you measure success when you play Shadowrun? By your sheet? By your survival? Or by your RP? How long do you plan to play the same PC? And finally, how do these rates of advancement compare to what you're used to on the SR3 system?

If we understand exactly what it is you're looking for, broken down as you and Lily have done and a little bit further, we can address the concerns more directly. So far, what we're seeing is how many karma it would take to advance the PC to the level hoped for in six months. [edit, mistake, didn't mean 'not' Not] How many hours spent RPing to get there, or how many runs you think you might need. Those contextual details would help a lot.? Melkir has been working with Erlkonig on the +awards formula, and unfortunately Erl is on the road right now.

While that may be true, we do know what will be enjoyable for us.  Should we not voice our opinions on what we think will be enjoyable.


The 20 is the original tentitive cap layed out by melkir.  The second is somethign he mentioned would be the cap for the second story arc.  IE: Your total karma gathered, would not go above 60 karma after one year of playing, but the first 6 months (the beta period) you could only ever earn 20.  And no, the beta is not just to see how tough we are, or whatnot.  Its to test the game and the system and to see what policies work and what don't.  20 karma already is getting a almost overwhelmingly negative response.  Because the way its set up is if the cap was 20 karma, thats the max karma you could ever earn period end of story for the 6 month beta period.  And even with full karma rollover which we'll be getting durring it, that karma, as the builds above show, means absolutely squat.  Virtualy no real advancement is possible under a 20 karma cap.


So after 8 months of playing we can finaly do what we should have been able to do through those first 6 months?  I don't buy that.  Having done numerouse beta tests for other online games there are always people like yourself who say 'you should just be grateful you get to play in the beta' whenever someone questions whats in the game.  The other famous phrase is 'can i have your stuff?'.  They asked us what we thought, what we would like to see advancement wise with karma in a 6 month period.  So we gave them what we would like to be able to do in 6 months time.  None of the builds being unreasonable at all.


I don't think sheet, survival, and rp are mutualy exclusive methods of measuring success.  Personaly I measure success with the character and advancement with the character by all 3.  How has my sheet changed?  What have I managed to survive?  How has the rp with the character been?  Has it been fun playing the character?  Do i -FEEL- like i'm getting anywhere with that character or running in place?

Honestly I don't know how to compare the rates.  I don't think theres even a possible way to compare the rates as I haven't played a tabletop sr3 game since a bit before sr4 was anounced, because of my severe hatred for the system.  I can give you how it differes from karma glutted space but thats not fair.  You're asking us to compare apples and oranges since karma doesn't mean the same thing anymore, and one system had noms or auto karma or both, while the other system will only have awards.  All we can do is say, this is what i'd like to see advancement wise on my seet in 6 months time, and line it up with what you're saying how we're going to be limited karma wise.


You didn't realy ask us for that.  We were asked to plot out how much karma we could realisticaly see ourselves spending in 6 months.  And 2 of us atleast have given that.  If your askign for how much rp we see ourselves doing for that.  That depends on what the cap is and how much awards are going to be.  This is not a question we can answer effectively.  How many runs we might need is entirely dependent upon how much awards are worth, and what the cap is.  if the cap is 20, no amount of runs will get us to our goal.  If the cap is 40 then it varries but we don't know how much you plan on rewarding rp.  Honestly with 27 weeks of play per arc (6 months)  I would like to go on atleast 15 individual adventures.  And those adventures could be one run long or they could be several.  But thats 15 at a minimum.  Probably more.  I'm online now and rping and such 6 days a week for several hours, thanks to work and waiting for people to get off work to do things (not to mention the advent of wireless networks and laptops!).  And considering in that same time irl i will probably run atleast 10 adventures for my irl gaming group...who only meets once a week and we play several othr games as well I dont' think 15 at a minimum is asking too much when i'm on 6 days a week for decent periods of time.  And I love to get out and RP as well so...

I'm not really sure what you're looking for though so...

Beta is not normal play. It's not. Things get changed policies change. Even chargen can change. On the game I staff on we are in a playable beta phase and we've changed even how much characters start with from bare bones chargen to a 'rising star' type of chargen to see what it does to game play because we are in Beta. I see all of these opinions being expressed over a karma cap for a Beta period and I cannot help but think that people are trying to equate the Beta period to full normal gaming.

There will be times when the server will be down as code is changed, updated refined. There will be times when certain concepts may not be available for creation as chargen gets worked on or altered. There will be times when the staff will be buisy trying to get things working and implemented and unavailable for running stuff.

In over a year of playing on SRS I was in... three runs ran by staff. Maybe my online times weren't conducive for it. Maybe my character didn't get enough karma to participate in some of those runs that were offered. Maybe my PC was to tough for some of them too. Reguardless I find it... strange to demand being in so many 'adventurers' and have some expectations for things that are definately not set in stone during a normal fully open game.

I guess it is simply a difference between opinions on what is different between Beta testing and fully open game play.

As to how I consider my character to advance in six months?

Coming onto the grid probably not as a group app I expect to take several weeks or months just getting to know people, networking, I expect to be doing a lot of social RP and getting to know my fellow players. If I am lucky I'll get on a run or two, be able to show off my characters skills and personality during a run. Assuming the character lives through the full six months (Ie. I get incredibly lucky or just am really smooth and don't make any mistakes) then I would hope that coming -into- the live portion of the game I will have a tight network of people, maybe a full running team, the gear and money I earned along the way and 20 karma in my pocket or spent on the character if need be.

The value of having a tight social network and running team of people who can be around when I can for PrP or for Admin ran plots is immeasurable to me and refining that network, knowing who to call on to make sure I continue surviving in such a gritty world as SR4 along with the RP generating such is reward in itself.

There are games that do not award XP. There are games that put an incredible amount of emphasis on how much XP you earn and the cool gear you can get. At one extreme you have pure consent MUSH's such as PernMUSH or whichever, and you have MUD's. Somewhere in the middle is NSRS. No one game is better than another, and no one game is perfect for everyone. Honestly I hope to RP with all of you in the future, everyone who posts to these boards I would hope would be as passionate about their RP and Characters and should help make the game a much more living realm, but I hope everyone can remember that yes, sometimes you RP simply for the enjoyment of RP'ing. It's not all a fight for Karma, the numbers don't mean everything, and that Karma is not the be all and end all.

I am a karma-whore, and I play the game to have a kickin' +sheet and an astronomical karma tally. Survival isn't a large concern for me, and life-threatening situations are generally a result of my own stupidity. I play the same character forever, generally speaking, and normally will only retire a character to move onto a 'better' one (i.e. mundane -> magician).

Roleplay is most important to me as a means to an end. That's not to say I don't enjoy it, but over time I've found a lot of situations repetitive, particularly "bar RP," so I find I could get roughly the same enjoyment out of roleplay as I could writing short-stories or other independent creative activities, but at least with roleplay I am getting karma and shadowruns. That's not to say that I am so bitter and jaded as to not enjoy roleplaying on a MUSH, because I run into new people and new situations often enough to retain interest, but the primary motive is as a means to improve and play shadowrun.


I have no frame of reference for Shadowrun 4, making it extremely hard to know what it is I'm looking for. When I play, I tend to play for several hours a day, trying to make a foray into a public space with people and roleplay for at least two hours for a good log that I can send in for karma. I try to make sure that I get involved with at least one shadowrun or judged scene (with some sort of monetary and/or karma reward) on a weekly basis if not more often. In my first year with my current character I earned 170 karma, which is less then then my ideal of 1 karma/day, but I frequently don't play for months at a time so that number is probably based better on 6-8 months of play. Of course, in the last two years, I've earned another whopping 8 karma, so I've fallen behind my personal curve a bit.

With all that said, I don't like what I've heard of the karma award curve at all, but I'm not opposed to the karma cap. My main concern is that distribution be equitable and not screw me personally for gaining awards at a rapid rate. The karma cap is less of a factor for me (which is strange considering the above) but mainly because (a) since I'm aware of it in the future I am the one with choice to make a character that is karma based or money based. Were I to choose to make a magician or technomancer the only person I should be mad at the inability to improve is myself ... I knew about it in advance and still chose to make it. (b) Shadowrun 4 makes karma a lot less important. Everyone can start out of the gate as being one of the best in the world (if not 'legendary', were that their choice.) So it's not like I'm going to be held in a second-tier 'cuz I can't keep up with the big boys.

I seriously can't believe this is the most active and consistent post on the forum. I mean, I've been a staff member for not even a month and have been a player for three years prior to that; not once did I fret over how much karma I was getting in fact on the current game I almost felt like I was recieving too much karma. To date before I KO'ed my PC I had around 50-70 karma just sitting unused. I guess reading this helps me udnerstand where other people are coming from for roleplaying, but for me I could have my character and never upgrade a skill or attribute again and I'd be fine. The fun of the game has been in the interaction, not once did I ever care whether or not I got karma for it, and I'm talking whole quarter of a year story arcs where my PC would almost die. Am I the only player out there that feels this way?

 Imagine if we put the same amount of effort into say, a post on GMing tips for runs.

Yes it is. ?I realize Beta is not normal play, there will be changes here and there to the system, things may be added such as new locations, private spaces ect. ?But The core of the game will remain the same. ?Chargen might change a bit, but its probably not going to change radicaly enough that we all have to go through it again. ?Policies will change and be tweaked here and there. ?That is the way beta is. ?Things are tweaked, and ballanced, and tested.

Theres several mindests you can aproach it with. ?You can aproach it with the attitude, that 'this is beta' and not weigh it against normal play at all, afterall it isn't live its just beta, its the way things are, things will surely drasticaly change once it goes live. ?That seems to be your attitude, no offense.

I perfer to come at it with the attitude, that it is indeed beta. ?Things will change, policies will be altered. ?However if we don't compare it to how it feels how we would be enjoying the game if we weren't in a beta situation, if the game was live as it is now, making allowances ofcourse for things we know are coming (for example private spaces), the game will never become what it should be. ?Things will not get changed, policies that are 'ok' for beta get transfered into live where they are much harder to change, things remain unballanced, and you get your typical extream swinging.

I do not expect the staff to run 15 adventures for me. ?I sincerly doubt, from past experiance, that I'll even see a single staff run adventure (not that I wouldn't love to be wonderfully surprised). ?However I want to go on 15 adventures within 27 weeks. ?I don't overly see where thats too much to ask. ?I dread the thought but if I have to get a few people together and run a run or two for them, so they run one or two for me, then so be it. ?Its not something I overly look forward to because I come online to play not GM, I GM enough IRL I don't need to do it here as well, but if its the way for me to get plots and to play shadowrun, then so be it.

Also I never demanded anything green elf. ?I said I wanted to play in a minimum 15 adventures (technicaly by the books that equates to on average 45 - 60 karma but I have no illusions to ever being rewarded that much by the staff here especialy when i'll be doing a fair amount of other rp as well).


Thats very true, but I'd also say that just social rp aint going to get you everywhere. ?If you don't run with people, they aren't going to know what to do. ?And if I come across a good job, and I have you who i've socialy rped with or lily who's gone on me for several runs and I know what she can do, and what she does under preasure and can do what you do...well then you're not getting the call, its just that simple. ?So just spending weeks socialy rping and trying to get a good social network...only goes so far, in a grity streelife where the next moment could be your last, and actions speak louder than words.


That I think is the one thing I completely agree with you on. ?But I'd also say that while it is not the end all be all, it is a part of the game. ?And its how our characters advance. ?We do have character sheets. ?And those charactersheets, because of the rules of the game and the way its designed, define what our characters can and can not do, what they do and do not know. ?I don't want, after 6 months of play, to look down at my sheet and go, oh well my character learned squat thats proveable. ?I could learn through rp all the different gang signs and colors and where all their teritories are, but if I don't have the karma to spend on it...well then I never really actualy learned it acording to the rules. ?If I don't have the points in the skills... ?I could have learned how to code software like a norm, but if I don't have the karma to spend on the skill point...i can't actualy do it in game, despite what the rp i've done says. ?If I spend all 6 months working with learning auto mechanics from a master...and the karma is so low as to not allow any flex in my build...guess what i can't even roll...nothing. ?So while its not the end all be all, it is a very important part in the game because it allows us to advance our characters, and is a way of proving 'hey we know this' when it comes down to it.


Well considering it started out as a way to voice our concerns and find out what this system, thats brand spanking new, never been tried here before, was all about.  Things were said and people took issue with them.  People play the game all different ways.  My first non seatle character, while built to do some running, never really did any, she ended up falling into much more of a social role.  I had after 2 years over 100 karma, but most of it was either unused or karma2cashed to represent other income.  I never once raised anything that i didn't have a reason to, and I to this day I never do.  Then I now have a character who's much more of a runner and goes on alot more runs, so is out there with reasons to raise a bunch of skills.


Yes the fun is in the interaction.  That is the draw of multiplayer online games such as this.  I play many different games.  And many different games start you off at a decently low powerlevel leaving you plenty of room to build as the story unfolds.  Most of the games I play are story based.  However that is not to say after playing for sometime I don't want to see my character advance and be able to do new things.  There are things I'd like to be able to do as a character that I can't nessicarily do to start off with.  Without karma, I can't move my character in that direction.  So yes while story is a great things and I adore story, in a game with writen rules, and writen stats, I would like to be able to move forward with my character.  In this game it happens to be through karma.


If its something as contreversial, then you'll probably get it.  I mean if you were to go and state 50% of all runs had to be guarenteed failrues from the start, you'd likely get the same type of response.  When you're playing around with a core game mechanic such as karma...you tend to draw peoples attention and get them involved.

I see the +sheet and survival as part of the same thing. Afterall, if you do not survive, you lose your +sheet.

I am so very delighted that you wrote "your RP". Does this mean that there will no longer be any lengthly GMnotes that were written for "reasons both known and unknown", that were inspired to force you into an OOC action that you might not otherwise have taken?

As for comparitive advancement rates, what is the difference between slowly earning karma in NS and the current SRS of being told I cannot spend it multiple times? I would like to see no karma cap, and rather than having to justify every raise and wait months+ for it have a simple set of rules which limit what you can purchase but not how much you spend such as for example:

No more than 1 physical, mental and special attribute raised per month.
You can learn no more than 1 new skill/specialization/spell per month.
You can raise only one current skill per linked attribute per month.

comments?

You know I thought about dragging this on further, but there is no point to it. The only thing that can be said is this:

The game isn't live, it isn't even in Beta. We (You, nor I) will know how karma will flow in game because we aren't there. The new system makes it so karma is not as big of a deal as it was. If you want 20 karma to be a lot of karma then try a character with 3's in skills and not 5's or 6's. Then you will be firmly in the professional level of skill and not at the top of your game and have definate reasons to advance. By the same point if you start with a 6 in a skill, that skill is done. It's at the cap. You can't increase it anymore (Unless you bought the trait to get it to 7).

If you've been spending weeks and months RP'ing working on a skill, or learning all the gang symbols and territories then spend your karma on -those- skills. I just... completely and utterly fail to see why this is such a big sticking point.

I think we've all pretty much put forth our belief's on the cap and that's that.

To respond to this though:

The problem with having timed raises like this is you can end up with karma sitting uselessly on your sheet, even though it would be affecting your reputation and the like. You couldn't raise two knowledge skills in the same month for example, or raise stealth and firearms for example in the same month.

I don't know if there is a good way to handle it, but generally wait times just make it a hassle even if you manage to get the karma together.

We've already had a discussion on the justification issue. We aren't requiring justifications during beta, largely because we're experimenting with the +awards system. So let's stay on topic here.

NES, Green Elf, and MrSix are all correct, as are many of the other posters here. This is a testing period. We're testing this new system. If it doesn't work, we'll dump it and try something else, either through the input (karma) end or the output (skill raise restrictions) end. But until we actually try it, we really don't know what the effect will be.

The reason I asked the questions that I did is because I wanted to see what people thought Shadowrun is. How they feel they 'win' or at least enjoy the game. And I'm seeing more and more that many people don't realize exactly what we're doing with this new game. It's not just a new gamespace to play in. It's not just a new set of rules that we're adopting. It's a paradigm shift in the way the game itself is played.

We've said in several places that roleplay is the primary focus of the new game. I'll say it again: roleplay. Every other game I've played, as well as SRS itself, was focused on building a stronger sheet, making connections, and battling things out on several fields that really had nothing to do with the world itself. It was hard for new players to carve a niche in the game, and hard for established players to continue playing after a certain karma level was achieved. We want to try to do something new. We want to give new players a chance to catch up. It strikes me as necessary in a game that promises to kill us all a lot. The point of this new game isn't to build powerful characters. It's what Rune has quoted on the Dos and Don'ts thread: keep it dirty and low-powered. Keep the story going. Keep playing together.

The purpose of the new game is to collaboratively write an interesting story based on a situation provided by others. It may be a deal breaker for some, and we'll try to accommodate as many other player goals as we can. But that's what we're designing the game for. +awards is an experiment in that spirit.

Shadowrun.

I've played Roleplaying games since the earliest times I can remember clearly.  That's age 5 and going on 26 makes me have a gaming background so long that I compete with my 50+ year old relatives who started on Car Wars way back when it wasn't just a table top strategy game of cardboard cut-outs.  I've played more games of this nature than any of my friends, or any of the people I have met in real life.  I have never gone to a gaming convention, I do not like LARP, and when I was first introduced to a MUD when I was 14 I thought it was god's gift to my screen.  Here, for the first time since the Legend of the Red Dragon BBS game, did I have a textual adventure that I could share with other people in some grouped manner.  LOTRD was amazing enough, I could invite my friends to marry me and have children with them, even though we couldn't play at the same time.  And on this MUD we could! And we could even go and slay dragons together, and build characters together and come out of it all that much more laughing and whatnot along the way.

Some time after that I stopped, I couldn't do it anymore.  I had enough of hack and slash, and I went to MUSH's, most notably an Anime MUSH that was amazing.  Here, people were 'pure', they wanted to do nothing but tell a story and interact with that story.  I grew fond of these games, I played a lot of them, tried amazing different stories here and there and eventually I had enough.  I stopped, I couldn't do it anymore.  Than I found MUXs, first was a Palladium MUX and I started playing there, it was using RIFTS and was ingenius!  It was the first time I had encountered a table-top game system online.  All of that took place in a little more than a year.  I was entering my 16th year, just starting, and I had come to MUX.  That's 10 years ago.  Since then I've played on little pop-up MUX's that don't last more than a few months, and some that use Bizarre systems like the Heavy Gear MUX, and even the short lived Fading Suns MUX.  I had gotten addicted, however, once again to TableTop.  What game, you might asked, took me away from the myriad of other game systems out there?  Shadowrun 2nd edition.  I had looked at the first edition rules a bit before than (someone had given me the book) and I promptly had tossed it at their head.  It was 2nd Ed that had managed to make the game fun again for me.  It wasn't as Pure as those MUSH's, but it wasn't hack and slash either, it had (what I thought) the perfect blend of realism and fantasy, science fiction and facts, rules and freedom.  You didn't even have CLASSES, what an amazing system, no levels and nothing else.

Now, through years and years of Detroit, Denver, Seattle, Germany, New York, New Orleans, and even the beginnings of Shadowrun: California Free State, I've come to realize that quite frankly I like SR4, and SR3 can be tossed at someone's head.  I want to play it, I want to take my character and put them in and go, "Bam, now we've done something."  This new system we are attempting to bring to the online community hasn't been around very long, we've already come into some strangely worded text and some finagled rules.  We've been caught up in the character archeytypes and karma's new use, how to make our characters great out the door, and I don't really care about any of it.  I just want to play.

I see that I'll spend all the karma I get in 6 months, in that 6 months.  How much of it will I need?  None, cause my character out the door will be not only functional but fun to play.  I love the new cinematic style of gameplay, created simply by adding an always useable defense to any roll which was sadly absent in every SR system before this.  I am hoping to experiment with the styled character's that couldn't exist in SR3 because they just didn't make the grade.  I look forward to the fact that in SR4 you can never be too powerful, too defended, or too weak.  Its hard, really really hard to make a bad character in Sr4, I haven't been able to do it and NES is spread out ALL over the place.  I'm here to bring my background into the world and than grow my character along with the story that comes my way.  This is, after all, a ROLEPLAYING game.  Dice are important, rules are important, system IS important, but why?  Not to feel good, not to relieve some pent up stress we have in our wrists and spill dice all over the floor, no, its so that we have a more confined world... something akin to our own but not our own.  That's what was missing with the MUSH's that were 'PURE' they were too far removed for me... I need a system, I want numbers, so I know the physics of this new place, so we are all on the same page (sometimes literally) when it comes to developing a scene.  I want the story, and karma be damned... to a point.

Yes, I want my character to advance, but how fast?  Who cares?  I am greatly appreciative of the new staff who want to do something NEW with the MUX world and be innovative.  The scary part of doing something NEW is how many people are you going to piss off by not doing that thing that's old.  I've played too many games, in too many mediums, to be pissed off about something fresh.  I just breathe in the new air and smile, "Thank goodness."  I think.  "Maybe this time it'll be the game I play, till I stop playing games."

The crazy thing people keep missing about my post previously was the fact that in a BETA things are CONSTANTLY changing, they develop as time goes on, but NOT BEFORE YOU TRY IT.  They don't fix a bug because people theorize it can be exploited, they try and break it.  We can't try and break anything right now, cause the game isn't OPEN.  So, sit down, be quiet, and let them say for now... "Its a tentative 20 karma cap."  Why?  Cause if one month into the game and everyone's hit that cap, or we all find it just isn't fun, or there's too many problems occuring because of it... guess what?  Like in all other BETAs, we patch it.  We update it, we change it, and we give you a nice cute lil' fluffy tutu to play with in the meantime.  Saying, "I'm okay with you guys testing 20 karma as the cap."  Is NOT SAYING, "You guys can make the game unfun for me for the entire 6 month beta, and I'll put up with it cause its just a beta."  Its saying, you are gonna trust the creators of this game enough to let them try what THEY envision as something fun, and being open to seeing whether or not it is... and guess what?  We all might be surprised, but we also might find out there's a reason why in the past 10 years no one's ever used a karma/xp/awards/character points/etc cap.  Who knows?  At least they're thinking, and that's what I like to see damnit, thinking people making a game.  I've done it while not thinking and its just confusing as all hell.

The rub comes in, when those aren't the only things you've been working on. ?They were meerly examples. ?Say I've been going on a good number of runs, enough to justify raising the skills in that regard, but also outside of runs i've been working on other skills through rp. ?Now I've already spent some karma earlier in the cap and still have several months more before the end of this arc and the begining of a new one. ?And now with this remaining bit of karma i can earn...i have to decide, raise the running skills, or the others. ?The idea, of 'just wait till the next arc and raise them then' doesn't really work either, because more things will go on between then and now that will probably either further the idea of raising certain skill, or bring up posibilities of new skills to get, and with such a low karma amount...which do you raise? ?both are completely in character, both are equaly justified. ?Do you go with the new skills which may or may not help you, or the running skills? ?Theres a reason i added some flex karma into the build. ?For things like that. ?But with say 20 karma, we don't get that luxury...



The system itself really isn't under debate. ?More of whats under debate is where do you place that cap to start off with, and how does the cap work. ?My thoughts again are this. ?We need to set the cap and work the cap so that we can have the outliers. ?We can have people still advance, but we keep them in check with the rest of the group. ?It would be like tabletop that way. ?You have a few average players, maybe a new one, and a old experianced player. ?More than likely the average players are going to get a average amount of karma, and the new one, might not get as much but you'll be helping him along making sure he keeps up with the group and doesn't fall behind. ?Now the old one, he's going to probably be a little ahead of the group...but you won't let him get too far ahead, and you don't really want to force him to play down to the average level of the group because it will frustrate him. ?So you let him get a little bit out there, but you don't let him get too far out there.

So you have a cap, and a sweet spot, where you want the vast majority to be after 6 months time. ?You're going to have the so called 'karma-whores' and the experianced players, and they're going to climb up the ladder and get out a little bit ahead of the group. ?Then you're going to have most people right there at the sweet spot. ?And then you'll have the few people you'll help along who lag behind a bit (the system does that nicely by the way).

So for example you have a cap of 35, and a sweet spot of 30. ?The idea would be to tailor the award curve so that after 6 months of play (this will have to be tweaked through the beta mind you) the vast majority of people will end up at just about 30 karma, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little less, but generaly right there. ?Then after you hit that point, you have awards be worth a good bit less, so that those outliers can slowly climb towards the cap, but still not leave the others completely behind. ?They'd still get a sense of getting somewhere but not get too far out there.


You're trying to make Shadowrun a story telling game essentialy. ?And while I admire that, and think thats a wonderful idea...forcing people into the idea through a awards system designed to keep them from advancing by keeping the karma so low they might as well not even try is most definately not the way to go about it. ?The way to do it, is so much harder than that. ?It requires staff to be running 15 adventures atleast a arc. ?Thats a minimum. ?You have to keep the players engaged in the story. ?You have to make them feel part of it. ?That is why storytelling games work much better on a small scale. ?Its alot easier to keep your 5 friends involved in a ongoing story when you only have to wory about engaging 5 people in it. ?Now we're talking say 30 people at any given time and over 100 people total. ?ALOT harder to do.

The awards system can help take the focus away from the sheet but ONLY if you can engage people in the story. ?If you can't then the only thing the awards system will do is frustrate people, as since they're not focused on telling a story anymore, they're going to focus on the other aspect of the game, their character sheet. ?If you're not prepared to be able to engage people in the story, from the word -go- on beta you won't get a proper reading on how the awards system works, because the complimenting piece, the story, is not there. ?You're going to have to do things like I suggested in the barrens thread. ?You're going to have to make them, US, feel like we're fighting for our lives in a dystopian society. ?You're going to have to show us the hard life. ?This doesn't nessicarily mean killing charachters all the time, but it means making the environment seem alive.

Thats been the major problem with SRS and Denver both. ?Neither world felt alive to me. ?Neither place engaged you. ?Both places were filled with cliques, and if you weren't in a clique that was popular, you didn't get engaged at all...if you even got to do anything.

Can you make the world feel alive? ?Can you engage us in a story where the rules are just a tool to progress the story? ?Do you have the manpower to do this from the start? ?Are you willing to lay down the rules at times to further the story instead of just tossing dice left and right to solve everything?

If you can, then the awards system, with a tweak or two on the karma level and the speed of awards, will compliment the story nicely. ?If you fail to engage people in the world, in the story, then all the awards system will do is drag and frustrate players, who will continue playing as if it was SRS or Denver...and I don't think anyone wants that.

Engage us in the story and everything else should fall into place policy wise, to support the story.

I'm only going to say this once:

Staff are not the sole people responsible for making the game feel alive and engaging. They aren't even the most responsible for making the game feel alive and engaging.

You are.

We all have to suspend disbelief to a point to play this game. If you think you need constant staff interraction and a set number of plot runs/adventures to feel a part of the game world then I highly doubt you will be satisfied. Staff run as they can for as many people as they can who fit into the synopsis of what's necessary for that plot. You cannot require them to hold your hand and give you all the interraction you demand. Well you can, but you probably won't get it, and will end up frustrated since your wish was not granted.

If you want the game world to be engaging and alive, then make it so. Help your fellow players and yourself by adding to the atmosphere of the game world by getting permission to have a little NPC scuffle. RP in a lively manner that makes your character engaging, alive, and part of the game world. The sheer amount of Karma is in no way related to perceptions of the game world. It has nothing to do with it really, all it has to do with is the little numbers on your +sheet. If you start with a firearms of 3, and then increase it to a 7, 9 out of 10 times at least the run will still be just as hard, the world just as engaging as it was when you had a 3, when you didn't have that knowledge skill, or that Magic stat of 9.

If the Karma cap is a real problem, it will be discovered while we are in the game, not out here, not on this board. Maybe their 'sweetspot' is 17 karma after the beta period is over. For all that is great about the new system, can we at least give the Staff a chance to see if their idea sinks or swim during the actual Beta period?