Technomancer/Adept -- Hero classes?

[Sichr]

I remember there being optional rules in earlier editions for buying karma with nuyen. Just a thought.

I actually thought about this several times now. primetide, what's your opinion on that rule? It sounded pretty logical to me and might be a good way to balance a few things (and it's never that OP since the costs are supposed to scale with what you earn - so you won't just be able to buy yourself 200 karma when you suddenly find yourself with 500.000 ECU to spend)

IMO no game that has exp/karma/whatever based character developement ever alowed trading karma/... for money. Ive never seen such rule (well I may be mistaken and corrected by simple quote and page refference)

Instead...try to find the use for the money...if game allows character to spend some time in the gym for example, character may be awarded by some kind of improvement or karma bonus for this...the same as atending some elearning...I mean...gaining karma even in time between missions by some "non runner" tasks...when I saw Cliffhanger video presentation there was +225 EXP above the head of killed enemy...I say OMG...they are transferring Karma into Experience points?

[primetide]

no, karma is karma, as mentioned this is just our underlying Jagged Alliance System working

[Decivre]

IMO no game that has exp/karma/whatever based character developement ever alowed trading karma/... for money. Ive never seen such rule (well I may be mistaken and corrected by simple quote and page refference)

Shadowrun Companion for 3rd Edition, somewhere on pages 79-80. It was an optional rule recommended for evil games (in 3rd Edition, you lost karma for doing bad deeds).

Also, as an external example, the Council of Wyrms campaign setting for 2nd Edition AD&D allowed you to play dragons, and you actually couldn't level up until your hoard reached a specific value. Leveling was impossible without attaining so much money. In a sense, the two were one and the same.

Those are the first examples that come to mind, but I'm sure I could think of more if I really tried.

[Sangius]

Yes, those.

[Decivre]

You know, thinking back to those videos, XP would be a great system for making Karma distribution possible in the computer game. You earn so much XP, you gain 1 karma. That, or you can cut out the middle man and calculate all character advancement in XP. Either way works.

[Sangius]

I am sure this would be possible and maybe even would save time for CP but there are a few flaws to this concept:

• Charprogression in a SR-setting without Karma would just not feel that SR-ish. Sounds silly, but I guess the point itself is conceivable.
• It already has been established that Karma/XP/Charprogression should not be farmed by grinding a thousand boars ... uh ... gangers, but they should be linked to finishing missions and the way you complete them.
• Granting xp for kills would result in an advantage on the 'grind'-side: You would be compelled to farm every single enemy on a map for xp if you would want to maximize your output per mission. Now, this could of course be counteracted by granting xp for enemy units left alive at the end of the scenario, but if you'd do some sort of balance-calculations in the end, you might as well just award the whole Karma/xp at the end of the mission (characterprogression doesn't usually happen at SR during the missions anyway).

[Dimetime]

I like the idea of Karma being awarded for doing (or not doing) certain things within a mission. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want it to be something that could be directly grinded.

[Decivre]

• Charprogression in a SR-setting without Karma would just not feel that SR-ish. Sounds silly, but I guess the point itself is conceivable.

This is a bit of a tenuous point... karma and XP aren't that far off. The biggest difference is in the number size; a team makes 4-5 karma a mission max, while a party can make a few hundred XP a quest. So you could pretty much take XP/100 and have a pretty close comparative. The only real issue is the name.

• It already has been established that Karma/XP/Charprogression should not be farmed by grinding a thousand boars ... uh ... gangers, but they should be linked to finishing missions and the way you complete them.

I thought this was a great idea too, but a friend of mine (who is an avid MMO fan) brought up a very important point: not everyone is of equal skill at a game. Hardcore players who dedicate themselves to mastering a mission might be able to pull off getting those really hard objectives to max out their karma totals, but not everyone is as awesome as me (I kid!). Grinding potentially appeals to those people who prefer to sacrifice skill and mastery for time... cas-gamers especially. An achievement system for character advancement risks alienating people who aren't skilled enough at the game to pull it off. You know you'd feel bad for a guy who spends more time playing the game than you, but has only a tenth of the karma because he doesn't have your talents.

• Granting xp for kills would result in an advantage on the 'grind'-side: You would be compelled to farm every single enemy on a map for xp if you would want to maximize your output per mission. Now, this could of course be counteracted by granting xp for enemy units left alive at the end of the scenario, but if you'd do some sort of balance-calculations in the end, you might as well just award the whole Karma/xp at the end of the mission (characterprogression doesn't usually happen at SR during the missions anyway).

Depends on how they handle it. If the XP to Karma ratio is very high (perhaps 10,000 per karma point... maybe a million?), it becomes less effective than simply mastering the missions. The trick is to figure out how to balance this dichotomy; make it so that people who are only talented enough to grind still have the potential to make a great player, while still making it so that mission mastery has a far more enticing prize.

[Sangius]

This is a bit of a tenuous point... [...] The only real issue is the name.

Well, that sort off was exactly my point: Of course we could call Streetsams 'Evil combatrockzors', Shamans 'Mages that follow a weird natural faith' and AIs 'highly developed forms of software that are considered a life form' - however it wouldn't feel that great. So yes, it is only an name-issue, but that in itself already would have an influence on the atmosphere, I think.

• It already has been established that Karma/XP/Charprogression should not be farmed by grinding a thousand boars ... uh ... gangers, but they should be linked to finishing missions and the way you complete them.

I thought this was a great idea too, but a friend of mine (who is an avid MMO fan) brought up a very important point: not everyone is of equal skill at a game. Hardcore players who dedicate themselves to mastering a mission might be able to pull off getting those really hard objectives to max out their karma totals, but not everyone is as awesome as me (I kid!). Grinding potentially appeals to those people who prefer to sacrifice skill and mastery for time... cas-gamers especially. An achievement system for character advancement risks alienating people who aren't skilled enough at the game to pull it off. You know you'd feel bad for a guy who spends more time playing the game than you, but has only a tenth of the karma because he doesn't have your talents.

Well, I agree with you on that - that's why I always have been pushing the point that even repeated missions should award some basic karma (survival and completion). I do not think that in order to enable 'weaker' players to progress, you have to abandon the karma system. You just have to find a way to award karma in a way that 'newbie'-players can achieve as well. And that works perfectly fine with awarding extra karma for people who manage to do achievements.

[Decivre]

Well, that sort off was exactly my point: Of course we could call Streetsams 'Evil combatrockzors', Shamans 'Mages that follow a weird natural faith' and AIs 'highly developed forms of software that are considered a life form' - however it wouldn't feel that great. So yes, it is only an name-issue, but that in itself already would have an influence on the atmosphere, I think.

True that. I'm just saying that the name is all that really matters with regards to what it is in Shadowrun. If that demo trailer had replaced XP with karma, most people probably wouldn't have noticed much (though they might have been surprised at how much karma you earn from a kill ).

Well, I agree with you on that - that's why I always have been pushing the point that even repeated missions should award some basic karma (survival and completion). I do not think that in order to enable 'weaker' players to progress, you have to abandon the karma system. You just have to find a way to award karma in a way that 'newbie'-players can achieve as well. And that works perfectly fine with awarding extra karma for people who manage to do achievements.

No, I'm not saying that achievement karma should be abandoned, but some sort of grind mechanic might also have to exist alongside it for players that struggle with achievements. XP has the potential to work quite well for this purpose, if say I get 1 karma for every 10,000XP I earn. They could even mix together our previous idea of money for karma with this mechanic... converting XP to karma perhaps might require nuyen to make happen, and paying more money reduces the XP-to-karma ratio.

[Sangius]

No, I'm not saying that achievement karma should be abandoned, but some sort of grind mechanic might also have to exist alongside it for players that struggle with achievements.

Ah! I misread you then. Well, I still stand by my point: why not just give them two karma or so for each mission they finish? Looks more SR-ish, is consistent to the P&P and doesn't require any new XP-mechanic

[Decivre]

Ah! I misread you then. Well, I still stand by my point: why not just give them two karma or so for each mission they finish? Looks more SR-ish, is consistent to the P&P and doesn't require any new XP-mechanic

That depends. Earning 2 karma a mission rather than 1 karma every 10,000 XP while earning a couple hundred XP every kill is a big difference. In one example, you're talking 1 karma every several missions of grinding... perhaps more. In the other, you're talking quite a bit of karma in a single mission (I mean just using the standard gameplay of the tabletop game, I could gain enough karma to raise a skill from scratch in 22 missions).

To simplify things, think of XP as fractions of karma. Like cents to dollars, centavos to pesos, or something like that. XP in Shadowrun is a way for them to give rewards to players far smaller than a point of karma. Either that, or they're going to be handing out 0.0213 karma for certain things, and that would look kind of odd.

[Sangius]

Ya, I got that. I am not sure whether the less-skilled casual players will want to spend several hours per karma-point grind tho. Ah well, we shall see.

[madscientist]

Well there have to be concessions in making a table-top RPG into a workable MMORPG.  Certain conceits about how the game system works including a much larger focus on combat as well as accepting that combat is a relatively fast paced and persistent part of the game rather than an experience where 6 combat rounds can take 20 mins of dice tossing.

Lets be honest here, the game system part of Shadowrun was never its strong suit.  From the original 1st edition (you realize that difficulty 6 and 7 are completely the same right?) to the most recent edition the aspect of SR that draws people in is the setting and concept rather than the game system.  The principle error in the Xbox game wasnt so much what was done in terms of a game system, but rather that in doing so they completely abandoned the setting and principal concepts of the game.

With this in mind I think pretty much anything is possible within the overall framework of the existing Jagged Alliance Online template...even Technomancers and Adepts.  From a development point of view one could take whatever work is done to enable Magicians and apply that to Technomancers but shift them from accessing the "Astral Space" phase to the "Hacking" phase and join with their Hacker siblings.  Similarly Adepts could follow along with the melee based Street Samurai archetype but with certain twists (and of course different art)

[primetide]

I do agree, we have been talking about that with the SHE for while and I think Adepts are quite doable. I don't want technomancers to just be "magical hackers", but we may be able to think of ways to make them feel different within the game context.