[Sacredsouless]

Alright, some good ideas and thoughts have come up, but the majority of the last two pages has been fighting. If another post involving insults or bickering comes along I'm locking the topic.

Now, as for replacing the old negative with new ones, Kat, the idea of them slipping the char a drug or messing with him because they wanted to use him is a great idea. Heck, thats even part of my characters back story (they want to use him part). As for whether to replace the old, pay off with karma, or pay with nuyen, its probably six of one, half dozen of the other. I can't say, and frankly since I'm more about actual roleplay, I doubt that my character will get messed up for any reason beyond making a good story.

[Crunch]

One example of continuing in debt is in the Seatle 2072 sourcebook. One of the restaurants down town has an owner who is continually pressured to do favors for the organized crime organization he used to owe despite having payed off the debt.

[JustADude]

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?

Except, Crunch, that the rules say the GM "may allow" the player to buy off a Negative Quality. The rule says nothing about the GM being able to FORCE a player to buy off a NQ, or declaring that one NQ is being swapped out for other NQs. Either of those options is a House Rule.

Thus, a player can pay the principle of the debt down to nothing and then keep the In Debt quality on their sheet, tell the GM "No thanks, I'm fine" when the GM makes them the pay-off offer, and keep making monthly interest payments of a whopping 0¥ for the rest of eternity.

Once again, The Negative Quality "In Debt" is still on the character sheet, and is still ticking away its mechanical effect every month like clockwork. The effect, however, has been rendered moot because 10% of 0¥ is nothing.

---   ---   ---

Mind you, I'm not saying it's not broken and in bad need of a House Rule to fix that loophole, but by strict RAW there's nothing that can be done to prevent that scenario.

[FastJack]

Okay, reading through this thread, I just want to post a warning to A) keep things on topic and B) make sure not to get personal.

[WellsIDidIt]

Except, Crunch, that the rules say the GM "may allow" the player to buy off a Negative Quality. The rule says nothing about the GM being able to FORCE a player to buy off a NQ, or declaring that one NQ is being swapped out for other NQs. Either of those options is a House Rule.

Thus, a player can pay the principle of the debt down to nothing and then keep the In Debt quality on their sheet, tell the GM "No thanks, I'm fine" when the GM makes them the pay-off offer, and keep making monthly interest payments of a whopping 0¥ for the rest of eternity.

Once again, The Negative Quality "In Debt" is still on the character sheet, and is still ticking away its mechanical effect every month like clockwork. The effect, however, has been rendered moot because 10% of 0¥ is nothing.

If it's still on the sheet, it can still have an affect. What's that, you didn't pay off that 3,000¥ interest rate this month because you paid your debt in full last month? Hmm...must be an issue with our books, guess Mickey isn't that reliable these days, which kneecap do you favor. Heck, errors happen all the time in completely legal businesses today, why wouldn't they in 2070. Likely worse if it's not a legal debt.

To be more technical, if you owe 0¥ how do you pay it? Because if you don't pay it, they may send someone looking for you. This isn't to mention the entire hassle of issues that could crop up just from being associated with whoever you had the debt with personally and the debt becoming favors for silence on the matter.

If the player doesn't want the Quality to affect him, he needs to buy it off which would remove it from his character sheet. An addict that has roleplayed recovery still has to check for addiction till he buys it off, other negative qualities wouldn't be any different. If the player wants to have his debt removed, he needs to buy it off. If he doesn't want it removed, and pays it off, the GM should be able to still make it stick.

-Debtor sold the claim, but took the last payment and bolted, character is still on the hook.
-Debtor "lost" record of last payment, character is still on the hook.
-Error causes characters debt to have been more than it originally was, character is still on the hook.

A few examples of numerous ways it can still pop up if it isn't bought off. Now, you could claim that it's a "house rule" to keep the quality in play, but I'd like to point out that it never states you can actually remove the debt or pay it completely off without getting rid of the quality.

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.

Personally I treat in debt like the Poverty hindrance from Deadlands. The character, despite his best efforts, always winds up in Poverty with that flaw. A character with In Debt, that doesn't buy of the quality, quickly finds himself back in/still in debt. Either through an error, lender sleaze, or stupid bad luck. Maybe he dives for cover in that nice restaurant during a firefight and shatters a 30,000¥ glass sculpture, maybe that traffic cam caught a spoof chipped vehicle sliding into that Westwind that matches his registered vehicle's legal registration, maybe an old Johnson has decided it's the perfect time to blackmail him, or maybe...just maybe...he's suddenly having to pay back child support.

[Devil]

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.

I like your take on the subject.

[Inconnu]

who says that they're happy that you paid the debt off? Also, there's the minor fact that they suddenly know that you have money.

[Xzylvador]

My 2 cents:

In Debt (Example using the 10BP version):
Gain:
+ 10 BP to spend.
+ 10.000 nuyen.

Loss:
- 15.000 nuyen.

Net:
You lose 5.000 nuyen and gain 10BPs.
Since normally 1 BP = 5.000 nuyen, to me it seems pretty logical there's a hidden cost somewhere else.

In Debt's supposed to be a Negative Quality.
If a GM allows it to be paid off quickly with no other consequences, losing 1BP worth of nuyen to gain 10BP's worth of <whatever you want> does not seem negative to me. Far from it.

That being said, flat out replacing the gained BPs with other negative qualities for the same amount when the debt's paid sounds pretty silly too.
Imo, whatever your game table rules, at least you should know of it ahead of time. Now let's say that you knew ahead of time that when you paid off your 10k debt (paying 15k), your GM would slap you with Bad Rep and a 5BP enemy.
Why not just make your character with Bad Rep and Enemy? It'll save you 5k (+ interest) in the end...

So a GM has to be creative and find something that's fun and fitting.
Isn't that what being a GM is all about?

[Novocrane]

Imo, whatever your game table rules, at least you should know of it ahead of time. Now let's say that you knew ahead of time that when you paid off your 10k debt (paying 15k), your GM would slap you with Bad Rep and a 5BP enemy.
Why not just make your character with Bad Rep and Enemy? It'll save you 5k (+ interest) in the end...

Maybe you want / need that 10k before the game starts? There's also the possibility that you like the story, or that the GM won't use the exact same negs for every situation.

[Xzylvador]

^ Yeah. While writing, I figured that out too.

[Shadowjack]

@Glyph That's an interesting point... from a rules perspective it is balanced. But from a role playing perspective I still dislike the idea of paying Karma to remove the debt. Perhaps a good solution would be to owe an amount of money equivalent to the build points you gained from the negative quality. On top of that, there could be weekly interest. So you would be coming out behind in most cases, thus justifying the extra build points. Also, it would make sense from a role playing perspective.

[ZombieAcePilot]

@JustADude: Have you ever told your GM, "No thanks, I don't want to do what you just told me to do"? Are you also going to argue that you shouldn't have an enemy because you didn't pick it out at character generation? So you pissed off the mob, but not to worry! You can just tell your GM to stuff it, you are fine with what you took at character gen? Not to be personal (but I'm about to be), but are you daft? Your concept is basically to tell the GM how to run his game. I don't know if this is how you play, or if you are just on here to cause problems, but that wouldn't be accepted at any table i've ever sat at.

After the game starts you can still receive negative qualities (addiction rules anyone?). You don't get jack squat for it either. The GM doesn't even have to be fair about it. He can give you an enemy bigger then your debt for paying it off too soon. And he can do it because he is this thing called the GM that runs the freaking game.

[Xzylvador]

Oh god, that's just talking right into the "GM's are player hating facists" issue he already seems to have...

Oh, darned. Was thinking about someone else.

[Kat9]

Oh god, that's just talking right into the "GM's are player hating facists" issue he already seems to have...

At first I was like "..."
But then I lol'd.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Kat9, your answer was made of gold.  Great stuff.

Any other ideas?  I may need to do something like this soon, going to start up a new Shadowrun game.