[Kat9]

"G'night folks!" - Yakko Warner.

[Crunch]

Doesn't change the fact that the entire thing is GM discretion, which by very nature makes anything dealing with it technically a "house rule" whether it's your interpretation or not (being your interpretation does not make it the "rule as written").

The rule as written indicates that it is at the GM's discretion whether or not a negative quality can be bought off. The rule then states that if the quality can be bought off it costs two times the BP in Karma. That's RAW, from the base book, on p 271.

Allowing the quality to go away for free would be a house rule. The RAW indicating that the exercise of the rule is at the GMs discretion does not make it a house rule. What part of the RAW are you not understanding?

No. Allowing it to go away at all is a house rule by virtue of it being "GM discretion", and as such anything attached to it is by very nature a 'house rule' as well. If it were just another rule, it wouldn't say 'GM discretion'.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/house+rule?s=t

house rule
noun
a rule that is used in a game only in a specific place, as a particular casino, or only among a certain group of players.

A base rule that activates at the GMs discretion is not a house rule. In this case it is not even presented as an optional rule. It is in fact the base RAW. If your table wants to change it then THAT would be a house rule. By the rules as written the way that a character can get rid of a negative quality is to get the GMs permission for roleplay justification and then pay twice the BP in Karma.

[The_Gun_Nut]

I'm going to put my 2 nuyen in here.  I am of the opinion the quality is very overpriced for the amount of cash the character receives.  The idea of buying it off with karma seems a bit silly, as after paying off the total debt, there is no more interest to accrue.  It is a lot of points for very little difficulty.

Role playing wise, ya I get the "in debt" bit.  It's a great plot hook.  But with so little cash on the line, even the biggest debt is worth only a session or two.

As to the GM adding new negative qualities after the debt is paid off but not bought off with Karma, exactly what new negatives could a GM justify, story-wise?  What would fit in place of the moneys paid back?  At 30 BP, that is a lot of new disadvantages to call in.  A cruel GM could slap physical negative qualities onto the character.  A sadistic one could slap a 30BP enemy on him (if that didn't make you taste bile, you weren't thinking about it hard enough).

While it would depend upon what happened at the table, the In Debt quality is not equivalent to any other quality in the book.  (See above regarding the 30BP enemy.)  I had originally thought it gave you points equal to what BPs normally bought.  This is not the case, obviously.  However, if the quality did grant that amount of cash, then it would provide a serious advantage to the player in the short term, and be a recurring nightmare for the long term.

What would you, as a GM, replace the quality with, if the PC had paid off the monetary value of the debt but not the Karmic value?

[All4BigGuns]

Some qualities make sense to be able to be rid of them through cash or whatever other means, while some wouldn't make sense through anything other than a karma expenditure. Personally, I think the means to get rid of one should be on a quality-by-quality basis (and I do believe I will start ruling accordingly when I run). The quality in question for this thread, I can see being removed just from paying off the debt and with Sensitive Neural Structure, Scorched and the like, I can see having neural surgery removing it. For ones that I can see requiring karma, there's the Incompetent qualities which someone mentioned before along with Codeblock and some others.

If someone wants to hold to the 'karma for all of them', fine, but saying that someone is running/playing "Happy Pony Adventure" because they don't want to do it that way is unnecessarily hostile and antagonistic.

Note: Due to this silliness creating controversy on the quality, I don't take In Debt personally.

[Devil]

The thing is, it's all optional, and a GM can choose to let the players get rid of the Negatives in any way he sees fit whether it be just paying karma, putting in IC effort and paying karma or just putting in the IC effort. None of the three are wrong. My problem with your argument is that it seems like you're throwing a tantrum like a little kid. "No! No! No! This is right because this is what I think! Everything else is BadWrongFun!" Sorry, but that's how it's starting to sound.

You're trolling at this point. Plain and simple.

[All4BigGuns]

The thing is, it's all optional, and a GM can choose to let the players get rid of the Negatives in any way he sees fit whether it be just paying karma, putting in IC effort and paying karma or just putting in the IC effort. None of the three are wrong. My problem with your argument is that it seems like you're throwing a tantrum like a little kid. "No! No! No! This is right because this is what I think! Everything else is BadWrongFun!" Sorry, but that's how it's starting to sound.

You're trolling at this point. Plain and simple.

Not so much, but Crunch is seriously starting to piss me off.

Edit: Not to mention Kat9's comments which add nothing to either side. Such as the one at the top of this page.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Let's let that part go for a minute.

While I don't agree with paying karma to get rid of the quality, I understand that some GM's want to do it that way.  So I'm asking:

What would be a good replacement?  While specifics depend upon the table, one should be able to state some broad guidelines.  Give me some ideas here, please.

[Crunch]

If someone wants to hold to the 'karma for all of them', fine, but saying that someone is running/playing "Happy Pony Adventure" because they don't want to do it that way is unnecessarily hostile and antagonistic.

And at this point you need to reread the thread because you're confusing your temper tantrums.

I mentioned Happy Pony Adventures

A) In the Waving byebye to karma thread, in response to the now deleted post in which you asserted that firing on the riggers van was out of control GM power tripping because the rigger paid BP for it.

And

B) In the Drakes and Marital Arts thread when you asserted that designing challenging encounters was a form of GM abuse of players.

That phrase has never been used in this thread except by you. In fact I've said several times that allowing players to pay off in debt with cash, while not something I do at my table, is a reasonable house rule. The RAW however is otherwise as I've quoted here.

Slipped

I'm sorry if my quoting of the rules and not allowing you to bully me into silence is annoying you Guns.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Crunch, Guns, let it go, please.  It's not contributing at this point.  I want to discuss the quality, and what ideas other have about it.  I do not wish to see a bunch of posts with a bunch of insults.  If you want to hash it out amongst yourselves, I am asking that it be done in private messages, please.

[Devil]

Crunch, Guns, let it go, please.  It's not contributing at this point.  I want to discuss the quality, and what ideas other have about it.  I do not wish to see a bunch of posts with a bunch of insults.  If you want to hash it out amongst yourselves, I am asking that it be done in private messages, please.

Seconded.

[Hellion]

Thirded.... and would like to remind both ppl that it gets as simple as this... if you have different understandings or opinions on something, its ok to voice them and if you dont agree well thats fine, respect your own and the other persons opinion and simply leave it at that

[PresentPresence]

I think that In Debt would be better served as just a chargen option, separate from karma entirely. If your character concept requires you to spend more money than is available to you at chargen, then you should be able to take a loan pre-game. Higher amounts earn higher interest rates. If you fail to pay, you will face consequences. No "free money and free BP". Seriously, this is how In Debt seems to me as-is: http://www.youtu.be/m4BKvNlnPQM#t=00m41s

[Shadowjack]

What if the player doesn't pay Karma to remove the negative quality over a 10 year period? How would you explain that? It simply does not make sense to me.

[Glyph]

My opinion is that In Debt needs to be treated the same as any other negative quality, for the sake of fairness, however the GM normally does this in a particular campain.  In other words, if roleplaying and taking appropriate actions can get rid of other flaw, then players should be able to do the same with In Debt.  If you need to spend karma to get rid of other flaws, then In Debt should not be an exception - you get the money and build points for taking the flaw.

I say this because, quite frankly, there are a lot of negative qualities that would be simple to ditch if they did not have to be bought off.  Day job?  Hey, I quit - I was going to get a new fake SIN after the old one got compromised, anyways.  Dependent?  Hey, I needed some beer money, so I sold gramps to Tamanous.  Extravagant eyes?  I got rid of my freaky purple natural eyes and got some normal-looking cybereyes.

[Kat9]

What would you, as a GM, replace the quality with, if the PC had paid off the monetary value of the debt but not the Karmic value?

OK, serious and mature question, so here comes my serious answer.

Let's assume they didn't go the full monty and get 30 points, lets just go with say 10 points.

-5 Dependent and a level 5 enemy: Because now you are debt free a slacker brother comes by occasion to mooch off your good fortune. The enemy, someone who liked the idea of keeping you under the thumb of X outfit. You were supposed to be their ace in the hole when they needed it, planning to use your debt as leverage. You cashed out and they're pissed. They got other things to work on, but you're in the back of their mind. The reasoning at a level 10 the flaws you get shouldn't be crippling and because you made an effort, ideally, to roleplay your way out of a roleplay generator I feel that those would generate potential plots same as In debt would have.

-10 point addiction: Like the upset enemy before, only in this case they took a more active role in getting you back in their pocket. Paid a bartender to slip you a Mickey, some custom drug that you need to come to them for, or find a way to reverse engineer.

-5 Bad reputation, -5 point dependent: You paid off your debt when they were planning to milk you for cash over time. That sort of put a kink in their plans so they started to smear your reputation subtle. Congratulations because of your new "badboy' image you got a few girls that just want to be around you and they show up at awkward times.


Now to end the post I add to this: This is just my personal opinion on how I would trade out In Debt where the person clearly took it with the intent to just pay cash and have free BPs in chargen. This is not a statement telling other people how to run their campaign, nor my attempting to be "the man trying to keep a playa down". They might not even make especially logical sense, the idea is basically to give the player other roleplaying situations while not giving them a free lunch for having taken In Debt. So there we go.