[Zweiblumen]

I'll leave the IC thread open until Friday, then I'll make a closing post and close the thread.

Great job everyone, I'll get started on the next chapter while I'm traveling and we should be able to start it up shortly there after.

Question for you guys, do you want another player or two?  Or do you like the size/skill-set of the group?  I'm happy to tailor the story to the skills sets provided.  Not gonna have you do a big pay-data theft job without a matrix jockey, or have a running gun fight in a zeppelin or something without a rigger (zeppelin gun fights sound AWESOME though!).  So no worries on my side.  (Though now I really want to do a zeppelin pirate themed story... steam-punk much?)

[Tecumseh]

I think I'm done in the IC unless somebody else posts something I can't resist responding to.

As for the In Debt negative quality, I hadn't even thought about paying it off point-by-point. In my head, the karma and nuyen debts were separate and could be paid off separately (e.g. nuyen first, then karma) as resources were available. The quality wouldn't be discharged until both were settled, with a karma-only debt indicating a need for favors and deference if not additional nuyen. The book also mentions the possibility that "If they only have the cash but not the Karma, they can trade for another negative quality of equal Karma," which is an interesting option since Knucks is obviously a flawed individual.

[Zweiblumen]

I don't see any reason you couldn't buy off chunks at a time.  But if you don't spend the karma (or trade NQs) there's no value to paying off the debt.  RAW doesn't have a mechanism for reducing the amount of interest you owe.  I read it as being able to buy it down in the same way you can buy that up (or Focused Concentration for instance), and HeroLab also has the mechanics for buying it down in chunks (actually that's the only way you can do it in HL mechanically).

That said, Knucks has the time/money/karma combo to easily buy down one rank of In Debt and that will reduce his next months required payments.  Food-for-thought.

Speaking of, any opinions on the size of the group?

[Tecumseh]

Knucks is paid off (lifestyle and interest) for August and September. I bought Computer 2 so I only have 1 point of karma left. I'll have to wait until we run again before buying down the quality by a step. Although I suppose I could trade his Biased prejudice against humans for Outspoken, since I've been RPing him that way already. That's a possibility.

As for the size of the group, I am leaning smaller rather than larger these days. If Z wants to GM a hacker or a rigger then I'm open to adding another player, but I'm finding it easier to manage smaller teams. The consensus-building required for larger groups just takes so long that it can rob a game of all momentum.

[badneighbor]

I'm not sure yet how Expo is going to spend his money and karma. It'll depend on how much time passes between this run and the next ,as he has rent and In Debt to pay as well. I'll post all of that once the next run starts to gear up.

As for player count, I thought it went really well with 3. Only thing we're sorely lacking is Matrix support but if we decide not to add another player I'm sure we could hire and NPC hacker if we needed.

[Tecumseh]

I went ahead and paid off a rank of In Debt, so it is now rating IV instead of V. The karma differential was paid by upgrading (downgrading?) Prejudice from Biased to Outspoken.

[rednblack]

Uffington doesn't have enough Karma to Bind the Power Focus, so I'm going to buy Counterspelling at rank 2 for 6 Karma, and I'll bank the rest for Binding the Focus.  One more run might be enough, and Zwei, it will be your call of course if you're comfortable with that.

Otherwise, looking forward to the next run.

[Zweiblumen]

For folks short 1 or 2 points of karma, remember the trade system.  I don't have the next chapter written up yet (but I've got about 20 hours of flight time coming up in the next 5 days, so I should be able to get at least some of that done), however the next run will be ~5-7 days later.  This gives you a week of "downtime" to use as you see fit.  Including Working for the Man/People.  I'm not going to be a hard ass on the time and say that you can both train *and* put in work.  Buying/trading qualities takes 0 time, everything else is RAW unless you've a reasonable explanation for why it shouldn't be.

Tec: I'm totally cool with the trade.  You've *definitely* been playing the character as Outspoken and not just Biased.  Even in your fluff.
RnB: Getting Counter Spelling == good idea   And yeah, hold off on the Focus.  It's a little unbalancing for everything else right now.  But you're a badass and have a badass focus that you'll be able to rock.  IC-wise, your Mentor Spirit is suggesting you hold off for reasons that are currently beyond your ken.  In due time you'll come to understand them.
BN: As noted above, you've a week of downtime.  If there's something you want to do that'll take longer than that, just lemme know and we can figure out how to make that work.  Either you won't get to apply the benefits until after the next run, or something else will become clear (though I don't think anything you can get for less than 20 karma or so takes more than a week).