Karma: Good vs. Evil
"We need to set your apartment on fire.", NecroButcher said.
"Wha-what? Why?", Beuford asked.
"Because there are people who want you dead, because of that statue you stole."
"The statue? Wildcard's mad at me because I stole that tin foil statue of his? It was
just a prank."
"There was some important information in that statue, and we need to know if you gave
it out to anyone else."
"I don't understand ya. I don't get it. I didn't see any note in the statue, it was just
a prank...." Beuford was getting scared and confused. He had already seen Necro work his
magic on him. Being a SINless ganger in Redmond barrens didn't get him much opportunity to
meet wizards, and the thought of having one as an enemy scared him. He heard that with only
a few words they could turn you into a frog.
"Alright, here's what we need from you. We're going to fake your death. And make it seem
like you're dead. Okay? We need to burn this place down."
Necro and his friends gathered the furniture into the middle of the room, and set them on fire.
They all lost 75 karma because 15 other people didn't make it out of the fire alive.
Runners are like big lawn mowers that ploy through everything, they cut the grass and weeds,
but several other things get chopped up in their way.
The philosophy of karma is, "If you do bad stuff, bad stuff will happen to you." You do
something bad, it comes back and bites you in the ass.
Karma as Experiance
Everytime you complete a battle, or think of a problem, I reward the players by giving them
a Karma point. For every 10 karma points, they get 1 Good Karma point. After the entire run
is done, I give them 1 Good Karma point as reward for surviving. The players can use Good
Karma to upgrade their skills and attributes, and the normal karma to have 1 automatic
success in any test.
Karma as Good vs. Evil
I also use karma as someone's general reputation, and how people treat them. Therefore, if
their karma is bad, them people will treat them will disrespect an untrustworthiness. But
when the runners do a good deed, when they fight back at the powers that be, when they run
out the gangs, their karma increases. But when they slaughter an innocent bystander because
he was in the way of their automatic gunfire, the lose karma. When they steal the shotgun
from the store instead of buying it, they lose karma. I have a standard system that for every
person killed directly because of the runners, they lose 5 karma. Unless that person was trying
to jump the runners, or if he was about to do some other malicious thing. For every indirectly
killed bystander, they lose 2 karma. So if they didn't warn their contact about an amush, and
because of it, 4 people are dead, that's 8 karma off of their record. Karma is not only experiance.
It's not how many goblins or orcs or dragons you slay, it's the universal balance of good and
evil. Make sure the trigger happy runners understan this important fact of the game.
Back to the home page
Don't worry Justin, it's only another 72 karma until your back to where you were before you
lit the match....
Send E-mail to NeoMakBeth@juno.com