I've just started GMing for my group of two players and am having a hard time making numerical decisions because I lack a sense of in-universe scale. What is the average income of a Firewall agent? How much rep should be awarded for a normal mission? The rulebook mentions example amounts of rez but little else for character advancement. I would really appreciate an idea of what a normal PC would earn.
Specifically, my players have decided that they do not want to be traditional Firewall agents. Instead one of them has opted to start life as a hyperelite entrepreneur who owns his own (level 2 entrepreneur out of 3) hypercorp/business. How many credits should he be allotted? Should he have a salary? If so, how much and how often? Is this all too unbalanced (as in having too much universe-influence at level 1?)
Finally, we are from a D&D background and have learned to be extremely materialistic. Adapting to a post scarcity world has been hard on them. They love having neat implants/morphs and dread purchasing new ones every time they must farcast. I think we can overcome this eventually but any suggestions are welcomed.
Thanks!
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Lack of Baseline
Thu, 2015-07-09 00:05
#1
bennyty
Lack of Baseline
Thu, 2015-07-09 01:52
#2
Trappedinwikipedia
Transhuman has rules for cost
Transhuman has rules for cost of living and standard incomes. (pg 104) Owning a business would probably be the source of that income, maybe bumped up 20-50% or more. By those rules they'd make 250 credits a week from a level 2 entrepreneur trait, plus whatever else they make. You might want to bump that up for a business owner, but its only a 40 rep thing, so it shouldn't be super powerful. Firewall doesn't pay Sentinels, because they've got their own lives to keep living, and a salary could compromise the secrecy of Firewall. There are probably a lot of exceptions though, such as Sentinels working for Firewall fronts, and stipends for long term or high-risk work. It's not a salary though.
There's a table for ball parking rep gains and losses near the end of the core rules, (pg 385) which should cover what you need. Rep is supposed to be fairly fluid, going up and down based on events in the game fairly often.
I'd stop thinking about "level 1" stuff, because Eclipse Phase characters start off very strong compared to low level D&D characters, and advance much slower.
Thu, 2015-07-09 03:46
#3
MrWigggles
Well, firewall agents don't
Well, firewall agents don't get paid. They tend to finance operations out of pocket, with some petty cash and equipment from Firewall. Proxies do. Proxies are the full time agents.
For rez, rez is meant to be given out extremely slowly. Maybe tooo slow for dNd players. Since dNd has a pretty constant xp drip. Rez, by the book is suppose to be given out after a mission, or campaign. So even if you have several combat encounters, and defeat several puzzles, you only get rez when you finish the movie. And the amount of rez you get, is like 4 or 5.
Rep is meant to be fluid. Its meant to be your social standing in that sub group, and your social currency. I would look at the different favor levels, and use that that as a guide. How much of a favor, are you allowing that PC to buy with this gift of rep?
As for the entrepreneur thing. That depends how fucking complicated you want to get. Cause there taxes, fees, bribes, passing inspections, dealing with customers, dealing with shrink (this is lost money from errant paperwork or theft (and most theft is from employees)). If the character isn't involved, then they get little from it. If they aren't doing anything, then have the business wither.
Thu, 2015-07-09 06:27
#4
ThatWhichNeverWas
Rail Assault Rifle of Explosions +3
One thing to keep in mind is that, for the most part, all the gear and morphs they have can be resold when they farcast, or at least put on ice by firewall – so you can rule that they get the cost of all their gear back plus/minus 10% without too much bother, which they can then use to buy new gear at their destination.
Blueprints and software are also "gear" which usually comes with the character, albeit at a higher cost.
Putting these together, I have three tips for you/your players;
1. "Your" gear is the stuff you have as blueprints, which should be the gear central to your party role. Everything else is borrowed/loaned for the duration of the adventure or an item with limited charges. You shouldn't get attached to it any more than you get attached to your Wand of Cure Light Wounds.
2. Your Credit/Rep after a mission may/can replenish itself through cash rewards and the sale of gear. Don't treat it as the amount of money you have, but rather how much you have free for bribes, paying hirelings to perform tasks, buying one-use gear for skill bonuses...
3. Don't think of credits/rep as the main rewards for the scenario. The Rez points are the main reward, and can be used either as Cash by using them to buy Cred/Rep, or as XP to buy skills, traits or blueprints. Remember when D&D used to give XP for the amount of gold collected?
If you want to use specific rewards, either give them unusual blueprints (which either provide a skill bonus or combine multiple bits of gear), or grant them free traits.
For a D&D equivalent, imagine giving a character the ability to cast a spell at will that makes one weilded weapon Flaming instead of giving them a Flaming Sword.
—
In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few.
But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?
Thu, 2015-07-09 16:21
#5
ORCACommander
further complicating things
further complicating things is that technically players have two characters, Their Non firewall identity and their firewall identity they primary roleplay as. Each would have its own rep scores and credits tally and certificates of ownership :P
Fri, 2015-07-10 21:40
#6
Urthdigger
MrWigggles wrote:For rez, rez
I don't really agree with this. Considering between investigating and actually acting upon an issue it may take several sessions to wrap up a campaign, it would take close to a YEAR to amass enough to make a meaningful change (15 or so) in a group meeting once a week.
On a related note, one should never, EVER spend rez on credits or rep. It'd be the D&D equivalent of turning in an artifact forged in the pits of hell for a stay in the inn with how disparate their value is. Alternatively, if rep, credits, and gear are rewarded anywhere near as rarely as equivalent rez, you should NEVER spend rep or credits unless ABSOLUTELY required, and bend heaven and earth if necessary to avoid losing your gear.
Sat, 2015-07-11 12:31
#7
Noble Pigeon
ORCACommander wrote:further
Am I the only one that tends to just ignore this because it does nothing but give more paperwork for the PCs?
—
"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.”
-Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address
Sat, 2015-07-11 14:04
#8
Trappedinwikipedia
Yeah, I generally don't think
Yeah, I generally don't think about that too much. I assume the firewall stuff is baked in to their being hidden, and use all the fun alternate IDs if they pretend to be other people in session.
Sat, 2015-07-11 14:45
#9
UnitOmega
Honestly, since, at least
Honestly, since, at least last I checked, the game doesn't hand out Fake Ego IDs, your "Firewall Identity" is just you, your i-rep and the codename you're supposed to have, but everybody just skips it because Sentinels can share real details with each other. If players really want additional cover identities they can pick that on their own.
—
H-Rep: An EP Homebrew Blog
http://ephrep.blogspot.com/
Sat, 2015-07-11 19:28
#10
MrWigggles
Urthdigger wrote:MrWigggles
Well, there is always rule zero. Give out Rez by the bucketful if you want.
Sat, 2015-07-11 22:07
#11
Urthdigger
MrWigggles wrote:Urthdigger
Well, I'm curious. In such a system, just what DOES one spend rez on? You can't really improve your existing skills, let alone train a new one. And you can just forget about aptitude or moxie. It's so rare and valuable as to be essentially useless. By the time you have enough to spend... Do most groups even last that long?
Sat, 2015-07-11 22:35
#12
SquireNed
I may be weird, but I
I may be weird, but I actually like how slow rez is.
I figure that the majority of the time spent by groups is pretty much all "wasted" with regards to self-improvement (restoring from backups, undergoing psychosurgery, recovering from resleeving, travel), while the actual time that they're doing stuff that we see in the game is ~2-5% of the downtime. Keeping in mind that most campaigns last weeks or months, and a transhuman lifespan lasts decades, I don't find it too unrealistic to give players only tiny improvements by rez, supplementing it heavily with credit, rep, and narrative rewards.
Sat, 2015-07-11 23:39
#13
ORCACommander
there was a reason why i said
there was a reason why i said technically :P
Sat, 2015-07-11 23:57
#14
MrWigggles
So much money does a proxy,
So much money does a proxy, in term of pay?
They would need a cover, thats align with their role with Firewall, and their pay can't exceed the market average for that position either. They have to appear normal.
Sun, 2015-07-12 00:15
#15
Pyrite
MrWigggles wrote:So much
Plenty of proxies don't have covers, but operate entirely out of firewall habitats or strongholds.
Proxies get paid whatever they can convince their cell to give them. They're supposed to be 'true believers' after all.
—
'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien
Sun, 2015-07-12 00:35
#16
Trappedinwikipedia
Proxies aren't paid in the
Proxies aren't paid in the normal sense, as they generally don't have a normal public profile. They may have false IDs, but they operate entirely within the firewall world. They live off of whatever Firewall believes they need and deserve, which can probably get pretty decent. The conventional life fork of them exists along side the Firewall fork, often as a Sentinel, so they'd work as a normal Sentinel does, or even lack knowledge of Firewall.
Sun, 2015-07-12 00:38
#17
SquireNed
Also, keep in mind that
Also, keep in mind that Firewall loses a lot of agents to OZMA not because OZMA kills them or vans them, but because OZMA actually pays.
Sun, 2015-07-12 19:12
#18
MrWigggles
SquireNed wrote:Also, keep in
I must have missed this.
Sun, 2015-07-12 19:37
#19
SquireNed
MrWigggles wrote:SquireNed
It's in Firewall, p. 115.
Sun, 2015-07-12 22:24
#20
ORCACommander
there are few proxies though
there are few proxies though that live a public life but keep their true allegiance a secret, magnus ming for example, but ya by and large proxies, crows, routers, ect are mostly off the grid. what defines off grid though is likely to be different between rimward and sunward
Mon, 2015-07-13 04:46
#21
obsidian razor
Quote:The rumors are true;
This is true, and it can be a tough sell for some groups or character types.
The way I handle it is by saying that while Firewall doesn't pay, being a Sentinel has some serious benefits too.
Think about it, you're part of a system wide (galaxy wide if you count the pandora gates) conspiracy. You literally know somewhere in every port if you take care of your i-rep.
You might not get payed, but you can get some fantastic favors from your fellow sentinels and proxies. In one of my games, one character was a extremely amoral hacker who did jobs for basically anyone who paid and hated people in general. Nine-Lives was one of it's main employeers.
The way we made it work with the rest of the group and Firewall, is that he had a deal with a Firewall proxy. The hacker had TONS of enemies and people who hated his guts enough to cause him permanent deletion, so Firewall had promised to always keep secret backups of him in case anything happened and ensure he never got offed permanently. In exchange, the hacker would always help sentinel teams with his knowledge and amazing skills, no questions asked.
It was a very functional and satisfying deal for everyone involved and no one in the party ever had an issue with it.
Tue, 2015-07-14 02:12
#22
MrWigggles
They might end up getting
They might end up getting restored in the oort cloud, but they're not gone.
Tue, 2015-07-14 08:57
#23
ThatWhichNeverWas
2-4 Rez per session is good IMO.
I'm just the opposite.
Part of it's simply personal taste – character progression is the part of RPGs I enjoy the most – but it's also because the setting provides multiple methods for accelerated development, such as dilated similpace learning, psycosurgical skill/trait implantation, using forks to learn multiple topics similtatiously, and so on.
I do mostly. Extra identities consist of a Name and Rep scores, and that's it. Everything else is sorted offstage by the Proxies.
I only do this much because Rep is too cheap otherwise, and I can't be bothered to rebalance it :P
This. If only because you get to use gear and go places way beyond the means of your average Transhuman.
Kind of like how James Bond never has to buy his own cars.
—
In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few.
But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?