[HaikenEdge]

In my on-going quest to better understand the way the game's rules interact with how characters would lead their in-game lives, I've kind of hit a wall regarding how normal (read: non-shadowrunning) people earn Karma. People willl learn new things (increasing skills or spells, adding specializations, etc) and improve themselves (increasing attributes) as they go through life, so some Karma or equivalent has to be flowing for these non-shadowrunners. However, I'm having a hard time figuring out how much or often it would be, and through what means they would be doing so.

Basically, I'd like to be able to track how non-shadowrunner NPCs develop over time, so when the player meet the same character a few months or years down the line, the NPC's progression will have some sort of logic to it, and that starts at Karma and Nuyen progression. At least with Nuyen, you can kind of just look at the Day Job NQ and expand it from there, but, as far as I can tell, there's pretty much no discussion on how these NPCs get better at doing things without resorting to hand-wavery.

[Sendaz]

You have to remember Karma is just an abstract way of expressing the amount of "experience" you or others have gained while doing their thing in the world.

So Bob down in accounting earns Karma by balancing the books.  It's not a lot because it is not usually very exciting, so it accrues at a slow pace.

A rule of thumb we have used at the table is 1 Karma per Month for NPCs to represent their general life experiences unless they are more active types, whether it's a driven research scientist on the cusp of a breakthrough to a KE SWAT guy who is often risking life and limb on a daily basis to a college student desperately cramming for his upcoming finals that will determine whether his future involves a nice job in accounting or flipping soy burgers down at the Mac.

So this means Runners should typically be advancing in their roles a lot faster than your office drone, but then they are typically pushing themselves further for it.

Edit: Of course a lot also depends on how in depth you want to be.  You can of course track every single NPC but honestly people tend toward inertia unless there is a strong reason to change/improve/move on so most will be advancing at little more than a snail's pace compared to the runners.

[HaikenEdge]

Let's say I have severe OCD, and I plan to track every NPC's development from the moment they turn professional to the moment they're geeked (or die a natural death).

[Sphinx]

Off the top of my head, say 1 karma per month for NPCs that are stuck in a boring grind (do the same repetitive job every day, then go home and veg out on simsense programs or Matrix games); 2 karma per month for NPCs who take chances and try new things; and 1 karma per week for NPCs who encounter new situations on a daily basis, apply themselves to learn new skills, and/or risk life and limb to pursue their passions or responsibilities.

That adds up to 12 karma per year for regular people, 24 per year for interesting people, and 52 per year for real go-getters.

[firebug]

So like, in order:  Wageslaves, academics, and other complete civilians or the bourgeois get 12 a year.  Cops, talismongers, most security deckers/riggers, Awakened academics, street docs, etc.  The guys who brush shoulders with the shadows now and then but don't live in it get 24 a year.  Fixers, assassins, mob-bosses, NPC runners, gang-leaders, and anyone else who could be a PC in their own right or an "ex-PC" (like retired runners becoming fixers) gains 52 a year.

Sounds about right, since players who do one run a month (generally enough to make ends meet for your beginner runner) would also get approximately 1 karma a week, with a little extra here and there.  I like that rule of thumb, Sphinx!

[Tecumseh]

What timing. I actually spent a good amount of last night contemplating this very question as I tried to fall asleep. I was approaching it from a slightly different angle - how much karma would an elf or other immortal (vampire, etc.) accumulate over 50 years, 100 years, etc. - but the premise is the same.

Approach 1
The life modules imply that you usually start your career between ages 21-25. The average starting point of a career is between 750 (life modules) and 800 karma (point buy), which suggests that the average proto-runner is earning 2.5 karma per month over the first couple decades of their life.
Pros: Simple, straightforward.
Cons: The steep growth curve of early life, especially physical maturity, eventually flattens out. In other words, this rate of progress might not be sustainable.

Approach 2
Let's break down a component of the life modules with known durations. State College (65 karma), Ivy League University (85 karma), and Military Academy (115 karma) all take four years theoretically. Some of the differences in karma cost can be attributed to intensity and rigor, similar to Sphinx's rule of thumb. These values imply a range of 1.4 to 2.4 karma per month, presuming 48 months total (and ignoring the Tommy Boy approach to post-secondary education).
Pros: More scalable than Approach 1, and more granular as well (examining 4 years of growth at a time rather than 20+ years as a whole).
Cons: Not entirely consistent with other life modules. Community college, a 2-year program, costs 55 karma, which equates to 2.3 per month, making community college more rigorous than an Ivy League University. This approach also equates the karma-spending rate with the karma-earning rate, which may not be accurate since characters leave the life modules with leftover karma to spend (implying that they store/save some up along the way).

Approach 3
Let's use the training tables on p. 107 of SR5 and compare the amount of time to learn a skill versus the karma to learn said skill. It takes 780 days and 156 karma to train a skill from 0 to 12. (This ignores training bonuses/reductions from various Lifestyle improvements, like a firing range.) 780 days is 156 five-day work weeks. That suggests 1 karma per week, or 4 to 4.35 karma per month.
Pros: We have a direct comparison between karma spent and skill development time.
Cons: This values is very high, and approach produces even higher (and more nonsensical values) at lower skill ratings. Similar to approach #2, this approach also suffers from the assumption that karma is spent at the same rate it is earned, instead of assuming that some of the karma was accumulated prior to training.

For all that, I'm not sure I came up with anything better than Sphinx's rule of thumb. I finally settled on 2.5 karma per month for the character in question, figuring that it would represent a reasonable balance for a long shadow career largely composed of productive routine but occasionally punctuated by explosions and hit squads.

[Kesendeja]

http://www.amurgsval.org/shadowrun/learning.html

It's an old article called Learning Without Running. 3rd ed. I think, but it looks like a good place to start.

[HaikenEdge]

http://www.amurgsval.org/shadowrun/learning.html

It's an old article called Learning Without Running. 3rd ed. I think, but it looks like a good place to start.

I actually read through that, but found it unhelpful for the most part, since XP couldn't be spent on anything other than learning/improving skills and spells, which doesn't take into account improving attributes, gaining qualities or bonding foci, and the earning Karma without shadowrunning section is impossibly vague, since what constitutes a "major project" is never defined in a precise manner (for example, in the case of a musician, is it completing a single track, or completing an entire album?), and it doesn't provide any baseline as to how much Karma an average person actually earns, while the XP totals come out feeling a little unbalanced when it intimates that you could watch the Sixth World equivalent of Bill Nye the Science Guy eight hours a day, seven days a week and earn one point of Karma per week, which I'm all for, but really causes some cognizant dissonance in my head.

[Sendaz]

while the XP totals come out feeling a little unbalanced when it intimates that you could watch the Sixth World equivalent of Bill Nye the Science Guy eight hours a day, seven days a week and earn one point of Karma per week, which I'm all for, but really causes some cognizant dissonance in my head.

Part of the problem is we are applying a general form of 'experience' to all aspects.

I could certainly say an NPC watching the 2070sn version of Bill Nye 8 hours a day, 7 days a week probably would earn 1 point of Karma a week as it would be fairly intensive learning, HOWEVER I would also be within my rights as a GM to rule any such Karma would only be applicable toward sciences or skills related to those on the show.
Which is closer to how life works than what we as players enjoy.  Plus there would be a cap on how high you could take the skill using that level of training just like when you train skills you need a teach of an appropriate level, so Bill Nye could probably get you to a level 2-3 skill set at least covering the basics with some more advanced things thrown in.

The Players on the other hand perform much more nebulous activities and have the benefit of being able to spend said karma anyway they want, even on totally unrelated things.  Yes we still have to get a trainer and spend time, but the karma coin we spend to hammer it in might not have anything to do with that new learning. 

This is probably the biggest cause of your cognizant dissonance, but the alternate is a staggering amount of bookkeeping where you as the GM would keep track of exactly how the players perform and award karma to the related actions.  So a Sammie blazing away with his hand cannon and beating up a thug or two could apply X amount of karma toward advancing his gun skill and Y amount toward his fisticuff mastery.  If he wanted to learn a new language he would either have to interact with NPCs to pick up something or spend some out of game time in front of the trideo watching 2070s Dora the Explorer 8 hours a day, 7 days a week to earn some Karma that could be applied toward his Spanish.  Pity about what they did to Diego, he will be remembered.....

Think of it as original EQ where you advanced skills by actual usage with caps set by your level.  So a level 1 could train fishing up to skill 5 by fishing, then when he pinged to level 2 his cap bumped up to 10 and he could spend more time fishing to raise his skill to the new cap.

If you don't like the layout by Sphinx because it is too fixed, add a small variable whereby the NPC rolls against a threshold just to get his normal Karma payout, if he fails he was slacking that period and doesn't get it, but if he exceeds threshold you could award an extra point or two to reflect a more intensive period.

[HaikenEdge]

I actually really like both Sphinx's and Tecumseh's methodologies; I was responding more to Kesendeja saying I should look at the linked webpage, which I had done previously.

[Whiskeyjack]

IMO tracking Karma is a poor way of resolving NPC ability growth. Karma doesn't exist IC. Across all game systems, PC growth is aberrantly fast, and this is solely for the OOC reason that not having steady improvement of capabilities is boring. This is also the reason for experience points and being able to develop your character. It tracks to things happening in setting only peripherally.

Then there's the fact that a person could be doing a wageslave job for 20 years and not getting appreciably better or more efficient at it after their first 5 years, but being more acquainted with the process. That's not a thing really reflected in the mechanics as what I'm describing doesn't perfectly translate to knowledge skills. The point of experience is also to keep relatively standardized balance between players (even if expenditures are optimizable) and again this isn't a concern when discussing NPCs.

There's less OOC-IC connection than you think or want there to be. The system is there to facilitate a neutral and chance-driven way for people sitting at a table to resolve conflict, and the experience system is there to facilitate character improvement without one person arbitrarily saying "I increased my MAG by 12 in the past week." But the game rules are not the physics of the setting itself and I think it's erroneous for you to draw conclusions between OOC concepts and IC action or development.

[HaikenEdge]

IMO tracking Karma is a poor way of resolving NPC ability growth. Karma doesn't exist IC. Across all game systems, PC growth is aberrantly fast, and this is solely for the OOC reason that not having steady improvement of capabilities is boring. This is also the reason for experience points and being able to develop your character. It tracks to things happening in setting only peripherally.

Then there's the fact that a person could be doing a wageslave job for 20 years and not getting appreciably better or more efficient at it after their first 5 years, but being more acquainted with the process. That's not a thing really reflected in the mechanics as what I'm describing doesn't perfectly translate to knowledge skills. The point of experience is also to keep relatively standardized balance between players (even if expenditures are optimizable) and again this isn't a concern when discussing NPCs.

There's less OOC-IC connection than you think or want there to be. The system is there to facilitate a neutral and chance-driven way for people sitting at a table to resolve conflict, and the experience system is there to facilitate character improvement without one person arbitrarily saying "I increased my MAG by 12 in the past week." But the game rules are not the physics of the setting itself and I think it's erroneous for you to draw conclusions between OOC concepts and IC action or development.

What I've taken away from your replies to both this thread and the previous thread I posted about different character generation methods and the variance between them in terms of time, experience and Karma is that you seem to view the metagame and the in-game story as being discrete elements with minimal interaction, whereas I feel like they're one and the same; that's to say, you seem to believe the metagame and the story have minimal correlation, whereas I believe the maths drive the story, which in turn drives the maths, where the numbers and the story have a two-way causal relationship, which is where it feels like the difference of our perspectives is. Maybe you think I'm wrong, which you've basically said in as many words, but to me, saying "the game rules are not the physics of the setting" is basically saying, "I don't think the game's rules applies to everything the game says it applies to", at which point why are we even having this discussion? Either all characters, player and non-player alike, improve by earning Karma and spending it, or the game's character progression premise collapses on itself because NPCs can progress without Karma and PCs can't.

Also, about professionals no improving noticeably at their jobs, that's not really a good indication as to whether somebody is earning or spending Karma; in the past six weeks or so, I've gotten no better at any of my professional duties, but I've went from knowing basically nothing about the Shadowrun 5E to knowing a few tricks. In game terms, it could be said, over the past eight weeks, I've gained 8 Karma and have spent it on raising my Interest Knowledge: Shadowrun from Rating 0 to Rating 1 and a specialization in 5E. I'm still not appreciably better at doing my job in any way, shape or form, but I've definitely gotten better at something, and that in itself, in metagame terms, requires the acquisition and expenditure of Karma.

[CitizenJoe]

They grow by the dictates of the story.  They have skills that they need according to the story. 

[HaikenEdge]

That ignores who they are as individuals. Just because the story needs them to grow in specific ways, doesn't mean they don't grow in other ways too. Maybe your armorer contact got better at making ammunition, but maybe in his off hours, he also learned to cook. What i'm trying to figure out here is how much Karma NPCs earn so it's not arbitrarily handwaved, because, believe it or not, NPCs have lives when they're not in contact with PCs, and just because the only time they come into the spotlight during the course of a campaign is when the PCs interact with them, it doesn't change the fact they're the main character in the story of their life, so I'd like to be able to plot just how their life is going and how they've developed.

To me, hand-waving NPC growth is almost as bad as hand-waving PC growth. The story might need something from them, but why should an NPC's life be defined by the PCs, when the PCs are side characters in the NPC's life.

[Sendaz]

To me, hand-waving NPC growth is almost as bad as hand-waving PC growth. The story might need something from them, but why should an NPC's life be defined by the PCs, when the PCs are side characters in the NPC's life.

This comes down more to individual GM styles.  Most tables I have sat at have a few key NPCs and the rest is more background and is hand waved as function demands. 

But I have sat at other tables where the GM has an ongoing community that grew with or without the PCs, though our actions did have impact on the setting.

The latter is rarer as it is a lot of bookkeeping, whether on paper or in the GMs head as most of the players really did not need to know the life details of every NPC in the setting, nor was it critical to them if Bobby the Bartender down at the Devil's Own was doing some community college studying on the side (daylighting?) to become a mechanic.

It can certainly add flavour and if you feel comfortable juggling all that, then by all means do.  It can mean a richer environment for your players, but don't beat them over the head with it either (one GM I remember docked a player 1 degree of loyalty with one of his contacts because he couldn't remember her birthday and she got miffed- I learned to program all such details into my commlink and set it to remind me so the GM had to remember it. ) and be prepared for those moments of frustration when you extoll some tidbit of history/character/goals of an NPC and the players either ignore it or focus on other facets that more immediately concern them. 

Yeah, yeah Bobby is getting his degree in motorbike engines, that's great.  But what can you tell us about the guy in the purple tux who was hanging out at the bar last night with Donnie's ex?