[brasso]

Interesting thread!

Been GMing since March, and we've had one party death - the decker got involved in a nasty gunfight with someone dishing out 6 round bursts, while the sammy was a few blocks away. He chose not to burn edge, but to create a new character he'd been thinking about for a while.

I've not seen character death affect the story overly, the adventure tends to drive the plot along. I guess it depends on how crucial to the plot a particular character is. I do try to write adventures around character backgrounds, especially their contacts and friendships, so I could see this causing issues, but it hasn't so far.

I think an issue where character death can be a problem is if a new player is transitioning from a system such as D&D, with a very different combat system. Overconfidence can kill real quick. Also if a player doesn't understand the situation they are in, eg. we had a new player rip off a flamethrower spell in the middle of yakuza owned nightclub, which went south fast, but didn't actually kill any runners. In either of these situations, the player may see their resulting bludgeoning, or death, as "unfair" and a more yielding GM might be tempted to let them slip away, due to their lack of understanding. However, my view is that if the world responds realistically (and robustly) they will very quickly see the error of their ways, and amend their behaviour.

[ScytheKnight]

Another thing is to be up front about it as a GM... I'm GMing two games and I've talked to my players about pushing the challenge of combat as they get a better handle on the game(one of the game is using pre-gen runs and planning to throw a lot of the "Pushing the Envelope" combat challenges at them). I have said that character death might be more likely, but on the flip side I've also said that if a character does get killed, the player will get most(~75%) of their accumulated Karma/Nuyen carried over to their new character.

As a few have said before, talk to your players. What do they expect? What do they want? Are they comfortable with character loss? Do they want to challenge themselves at a greater risk to their character? If you have this kind of talk, then at least everyone is on the same page, this can do a lot to mitigate potentual future issues.

[SmilinIrish]

I like to think that a GM would fudge a senseless death, or give a result that is less than death.

However, the possibility of death has to be real, to keep choices real.  If you believe the GM won't let you die, having a ganger come up behind you in a diner, and put a gun to your head would have no effect.  That is one of the nice things of Shadowrun vs D&D.  In D&D, in a commoner has a sword at your back, you know that you can soak the damage.  In Shadowrun, even mooks can kill quickly, as you don't have hit points that scale with level. 

If death were not a possibility, you would never back down from a fight when in reality you really should.

[Shadowjack]

I think my group would still respect the possibility of death in terms of immersion and realism. We wouldn't be looking to use this knowledge in an unfair manner. We too have been considering the tracking of nuyen and karma and allowing it to carry over to new characters if one dies. I think it's a great solution, given the exorbitant price tags of some items.

[ProfessorCirno]

Losing a character is bad enough, but being at half the post-generation karma and cash totals as the rest of the team is just insult to injury. The same person is even more likely to die again putting them at 25% and again putting them at 12.5% so forth and so on.

Edit- In the vast majority of cases ALL new characters should get the exact same amount of karma and cash as the party has accrued up to that point to keep them from being behind the curve.

Now, however, I can see a case being made for the new character(s) starting with an amount less of cash equal to what the average lifestyle cost among the characters is if the game has been running long enough that those costs have been paid out since that cost doesn't directly correlate to character capability improvement.

This is an important point: You want to avoid the neverending death spiral.  Player A gets unlucky and dies, so they submit their new character who is now dramatically weaker then the rest of the party.  That character dies again for obvious reasons.  The rest of the team gets stronger, and they make another new character,  That character dies again for obvious reasons, etc, etc.

[Fabe]

Losing a character is bad enough, but being at half the post-generation karma and cash totals as the rest of the team is just insult to injury. The same person is even more likely to die again putting them at 25% and again putting them at 12.5% so forth and so on.

Edit- In the vast majority of cases ALL new characters should get the exact same amount of karma and cash as the party has accrued up to that point to keep them from being behind the curve.

Now, however, I can see a case being made for the new character(s) starting with an amount less of cash equal to what the average lifestyle cost among the characters is if the game has been running long enough that those costs have been paid out since that cost doesn't directly correlate to character capability improvement.

This is an important point: You want to avoid the neverending death spiral.  Player A gets unlucky and dies, so they submit their new character who is now dramatically weaker then the rest of the party.  That character dies again for obvious reasons.  The rest of the team gets stronger, and they make another new character,  That character dies again for obvious reasons, etc, etc.

 A problem easily solved by giving a replacement character extra karma equal to what the rest of the party has earned during the campaign.

[MijRai]

Yeah, a part of my game is that I've tallied every monetary and experience-based award (including the number of contacts/peers and knowledges I occasionally hand out due to people having time to study).  It doesn't include what the group has looted on their own, but nothing is perfect.  Besides that, a new character is just as advanced as their old one, whether they're built for combat or something else. 

[All4BigGuns]

Which is exactly what I was suggesting with the addition of the new character getting the same amount in extra cash as well since that is as tied to advancement as karma.

Again, deducting what had, on average, been spent on lifestyle from the extra cash would work, but the Street Sam especially needs the extra cash as much as if not more than the karma.