Raising Backgrounds

All Backgrounds must be explicitly purchased with XP, even if you RPed your way into owning them with a staffer or PRP runner.

Several games do let you skip the costs of things you RPed your way into, but we don't make that exception in order to provide a more fair playing field between casuals and power-users and in order to incentivize our PRP runners to report what's going on in some detail by sending in XP allocation requests.

A player should not be eclipsed by another player for no other reason than who their RP partners happen to be (and thus whether their friends have the time and inclination to write a story about you getting that slick job or a kick-ass ghoul bodyguard). Making everybody pay the same XP for the same thing is only fair. That said, you indeed should be rewarded for plot participation, and that reward is XP, not waived expenditure thereof. In addition to the pose, +rec, ST and vote XP, PRP runners can and very well should fund your IC growth in their plots.

If you do not have the XP at the time that you acquire a background on screen, but you have more than 0 XP, you can purchase the background and simply incur a negative XP balance. If you have a negative XP balance when you acquire a background on screen, you will need to purchase the background until you have a positive XP balance and can incur a negative balance again. Staff can help you come up with whatever narrative is necessary to explain why you don't have the background yet.