In the opening fiction "lack" the mission is accomplished, but all of the charecters die and have to resort to an earlier backup. how do we award rez for something that the charecters (in their newley resleeved state) didn't actually acomplish?
Do we just reward them with cred and rep?
Give them rez but restrict how they spend it?
How would you handle that? I would probably just reward them with a small amount of cred, have their org cover lost weapons/equipment, and give them a nice chunk of org: +rep
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Morph death and adventure resolution
Wed, 2009-10-21 12:58
#1
Vargone
Morph death and adventure resolution
Wed, 2009-10-21 13:52
#2
Vargone
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Re reading some of the relavent info in the rules, I am beginning to se rez as more of a "downtime resource" then a reward for experiance. All charecter improvements happen "off stage" with charecters taking classes or self impoving. Spending rez to represent having a job or other cred gathering, and so on. So I guess it doesn't matter if they all die or not, they would still have this down time the rez just helps set a limit to what they can accomplish in it.
Thu, 2009-10-22 09:00
#3
Decivre
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Rez is not awarded to characters that are restored from a backup. It's best to record both your current rez and any rez that your most recent backup has. As for credit, your accounts and even your rep are tied to your identity, not any given incarnation of you. So long as your employer is trustworthy, your backup should awaken with a few more cred in his account and potentially a rep change.
For an example, read the first part of the short fiction piece "Lack". You have a perfect example of someone who was restored from a backup for some reason, and his first instinct is to see how his funds and rep score is doing. These things change, but the person (and therefore his rez points) unfortunately does not.
—
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Fri, 2009-12-04 04:45
#4
GMJoe
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Mmn... I've give the rez out anyway. After all, that was some great roleplay, there, and even if the players didn't survive, they got killed in ways that made for a great session. I'd like to reward that.
Also, the situation was one that the characters pretty much couldn't have gotten out of. Any player who doesn't get rez for trying to play the game by the book and getting killed without having any chance to avoid it is likely to feel a little cheated.
Frankly, I don't see a big deal with awarding rez to backups based on deceased character's actions. It's not 'experience,' it's 'resolution' - a minor, yet important distinction. Functionally, it's a cap on how much power can be gained, so that a six-month journey by scum barge does't result in all-powerful multiskilled PCs.
Oh, and technically the rules don't say that rez isn't awarded to characters who die - it says that rez scores of 'ressurected' characters are what their backups had. Technically, since rez is awarded at the end of the session, and death (with possible resleeving) would happen during play, the rez points for that session would have to be awarded to the closest thing to a living character in existence, i.e. the backup or the resleeved character.
I'll admit the last two points I made were pretty thin, but I think the first couple definitely had merit.
Fri, 2009-12-04 06:19
#5
Wild_Cat
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Here's a timeline of how I'd handle it:
1. Character A (let's call him Bob) starts out of chargen, with 0 rez.
2. Bob successfully completes his first mission, which nets him 15 rez. He's at 15 RP.
3. Bob gets backed up at 15 RP.
4. Bob successfully completes his second mission for 10 extra rez. He's at 25 RP but still doesn't spend any.
5. Bob gets killed during his third mission, which the rest of the group successfully completes.
6. Bob gets restored from his backup. Resleeved, he's back at 15 RP.
7. Since the third mission was a success despite his death, Bob is awarded 15 extra rez, bringing him to 30 RP. If he'd managed to stay alive, he'd be at 40 RP instead.
What do you think?
—
Come baguette some!
Fri, 2009-12-04 17:27
#6
mercator
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Keep in mind, in the end of Lack, the protagonist farcasts herself. One of them got out and thusly, a success. A strong technicality, for sure.
I'm generally in favor of rewarding players for their time and effort. In the case of mission based games, if the whole thing is a scrub, one could consider minimal rez for showing up and interacting.
'course, on the flipside, if the whole team agress the mission is jacked, then they're also admitting to walking out without reward.
—
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Isaac Asimov
Fri, 2009-12-04 23:45
#7
GMJoe
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
BNo, no she didn't. Allow me to quote:
"Sorry, Careza. Info payload only. Leave the ego behind."
Sava voluntarily chooses to restore from backup, rather than remember a horrible mission on which everyone died.
That said, the mission was a sucess - the data on the femur was the target, and that got transmitted.
Fri, 2009-12-04 23:58
#8
GMJoe
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Yeah, that's how I'd run it.
Though, I'd say Rez isn't just for sucessful missions - it's for good roleplay and making the game fun as well, and I'd give points out even if the mission was a total party wipeout and nothing was achieved. EDIT: Probably not as many points as with a sucess, though.
I'd be worried about my skills as a GM if that ever actually happened.
Wed, 2009-12-09 13:45
#9
jackgraham
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Personally, I'd come down in favor of giving some rez points even to characters who die, because at the end of the day, rez is a reward to players. There are lots of ways to justify this in the world: have PCs read about their mission or see mnemonic aug playbacks showing where they screwed up so that they learn in the future, assume rez is actually gained on downtime between missions (as one poster already suggested), etc.
The resleeving process and associated mental stress already tends to punish characters who die somewhat, so denying them rez is a little harsh.
But then, I'm a nice GM. You might not be. :)
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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!
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Wed, 2009-12-16 20:15
#10
TheRawrnstuff
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
I personally have dubbed rez as "potential" rather than actual experience points.
What I mean is that while you can gain statpoints and skillpoints with with time, it uses up your "potential". If your "potential" is used up, you can't enhance your abilities any further, until you've encountered something that makes you think the world a bit different. I.e., doing non-downtime playing and "quests".
To the original question, assuming there is a way for them to learn from their mistakes, I'd give them rez as normal, but would give them other boosts depending how much they acchieved for the quest-npc during their failed mission.
For example, destroying some hypercorp server (mission1), retrieving Carl Marker - scientist extraordinnaire (mission2) and getting pictures of the big bad Max Anoya (mission3) -guests 1 and 3 were completed, but Carl was left captive as the players exploded with the servers, I'd give 2/3 of the ideal bounty.
Sat, 2009-12-19 14:24
#11
Bloodwork
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
It's a sticky situation because you're mixing the idea of a real(ish) thing with a meta-game reward. I think it's important to reward player participation with xp but also that character death should be penalised otherwise you encourage suicide-bomber tactics from players. I would allow them to keep the xp but they would need to justify what they spend it on.
—
That which doesn't kill you usually succeeds on the second attempt.
Sat, 2009-12-19 17:18
#12
TheRawrnstuff
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
If I know my players (and I claim that I do), the risk of them embracing the suicide-mission approach is small to none. I know that they'll do it at some point, sooner or later, like in that story in the book, "Lack", but since They will not settle on mere flats and an occasional splicer morphs, they're going to have to use their hard-earned creds to get themselves a morph they want.
If their morph gets destroyed, it means farewell to all the enhancements on their morphs, meaning that they're going to start over on "building themselves".
Not to mention the possible, albeit small, chance of resleeving-complications...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this approach works for every single player out there.
In our group, though, it works. The death has become a possible, yet not the ideal possibility.
Tue, 2010-03-09 07:53
#13
Xipe Totec
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Not that I've had much oportunity to RP the game (got the book a few weeks ago, still trying to sell the concept to my players), so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd go with something like this. Only I'd additionally (and provisionally) limit the 15 rez to rep and cash (i.e. "social stats").
Justification is that his ego starts from a "clean slate" of first 15 rez, and has had no input from the failed third mission, as well as from the successfull second mission. But that his actions may result in a reward for him from others. As for the loss of rez from mission two, well, I'd say that the player had the chance to use them, or backup, and he failed on both accounts, so it's his own loss.
As a matter of fact, I've suggested to my players that we do a hardcopy backups of their char sheets whenever their characters do a backup, just to get some of the feel, and the hassle of doing a backup. :)
[edit]
Oh, just struck me!
What would you do if a character whose cortical stack isn't destroyed in morph's death gets a hold of that stack after being raised from a backup? If the team in the example raised Bob from a backup, and then tracked back his CS... would you (as GMs) allow Bob to reinstantiate from CS and get his 10 rez from mission two back? If so, what of mission 3?
[/edit]
Tue, 2010-03-09 10:18
#14
Decivre
Re: Morph death and adventure resolution
Rez represents the development of the character through the activities he does. A backup doesn't gain rez because it's an inert copy of your mind, and does not partake in the conflict that causes your character to better himself. Imagine you dying and someone resurrecting you, but back when you were 7 years old. Would you really be better because of the exploits of the you that died? Of course not! You are once again you from when you were 7 years old... and everything that happened afterwards would have to be done all over again.
That said, there is one thing you are forgetting. Even if a character dies, their cortical stack can be retrieved, and he can be brought back from where they are. If your character has backup insurance with CS retrieval (moderate cost per month) or was on a Firewall mission at the time they died, then its very likely that someone will go to get their stack, and reinstantiate them from there. Rez would be maintained, including those gained from the mission. There might be mental issues from the trauma of death, but nothing you can't work through in therapy.
In fact, you can potentially run a mission where the character goes to retrieve his cortical stack themself. Then they could ego-merge themselves with the original mind, thus returning all the Rez that was missing to them (though potentially suffering memory loss in the process).
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
[url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]