 Reputation, Notoriety and Public Awareness, Or How the Shadows are Like High School |
 Dec 26 2007, 08:14 AM
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Running Target  Group: Members Posts: 1,326 Joined: 15-April 02 Member No.: 2,600  |
I've been thinking lately about Reputation, Notoriety and Public Awareness. This is not really what I'd consider to be a crucial part of the game, but it’s a slow day in the Mercetarium and sometimes its fun to fixate on a particular part of mechanical minutiae. (Some people build ships-in-a-bottle, I like to fiddle with rules. I'm also relatively new to SR4, but I-- like most of humanity-- like to learn by breaking.) I dug out my old VHS copy of Snatch the other day, and I suppose that's what started me down this road as much as anything. (That, and I was visited last night by three ghosts of Shadowrun Past, Present and Future. Nice folks.) That movie, like "Lock, Stock" before it, really did a great job of presenting the London underworld as its own insular society. There wasn't that many of them, and people knew people, at least by reputation. When Brick Top walks into the Pawn Shop, the pawn shop guys don't know him, but the thug they brought in to remove the body did and you could see the fear immediately on his face. Brick Top strikes me as a guy with a hefty Notoriety score that does all his "negotiating" with the Intimidation skill. (He basically gets a point every time the pigs eat, though in SR you could switch them out with organleggers and ghouls, even if pigs still seem creepier.) Another thing the movie gets across well is the feeling that each of these characters (Brick Top, Bullet Tooth Tony, Boris the Bullet Dodger, a lot of B names) fills a certain role in the ecosystem of the criminal underworld. That can be a hard thing to capture in the game, where sometimes it feels like there is an inexhaustible supply of fixers and Johnsons and runners can be located as quickly as archetypes can be pulled out of the book. When I was running my SR3 game, I tried to get out of that mindset by putting down some hard numbers which is something I'd probably do again when I start running SR4. (I used a ratio of 1:10000, runners to general population, and then increased it because Seattle is a hotbed of shadow activity and it made the percentages easier. Going by my original numbers, there were less than 50 street samurai in Seattle rated Competent-- starting Archetype-- or higher. There were a lot more Average and Inferior rated sams, but they also had a high turnover at that level. The higher you went, the less the Big Names changed and the more it was Big News when they did. I'll probably repost my figures when I update them for SR4.) So, from that perspective, I can buy Reputation (separate from Public Awareness) in the game. There aren't a lot of real runners (as opposed to wannabes) walking around, and they know a lot of the same people (fixers, arms dealers, mob bosses, street docs). And people talk, word gets around; if it didn't no one would ever get hired because no one would know who anybody was. Runners are anonymous, but its a loud sort of anonymous, at least in certain circles.
But I'm not wild about Reputation adding automatically into Public Awareness, because it tends to penalize the runners who gain karma and don't rack up a lot of Notoriety, which you would think would likely be the more discreet and generate less publicity than the guys (to use my favorite absurd example) who throw the mayor under a bus on live 3v. I think there should be a way for characters to be fairly well known in shadow circles, and relatively unknown in the real world. What I'd like for the Rep, Notoriety and Public Awareness mechanic to do is give that feeling of an insular and atavistic shadow world bubbling right beneath the surface that polite society is often (blissfully) unaware of. That being my starting point, here are a few wild stabs at some rules: Reputation and Notoriety would work pretty much the same. Rep would be bonus CHA dice to social tests, Notoriety would be a penalty except where they combine for Intimidate tests. (I'd probably let them add to CHA separately, so that a CHA 4 guy could get 4 bonus dice from Rep and 4 from Notoriety, on the theory crazy professionals are scarier than people that are just crazy or just professional. I've read that section a few times and I'm still not sure if the total bonus from Rep and Notoriety is capped by CHA or if they are capped separately, but that's my take on it.) Notoriety would be used to calculate Public Awareness, which is essentially your Negative Press. (I am assuming Lone Star isn't tracking your activities because you make a fascinating scrapbooking subject.) As such, it would be calculated off your Lifetime Total of Notoriety; even if you buy your negative press down with Rep, if Lone Star has a file on you, they're always going to have a file. (Unless you hack Lone Star or fake your own death, which is how Public Awareness would be lowered, in-play actions that lower your profile. It isn't something that happens automatically, its something the character has to figure out how to do.) A high Public Awareness doesn't automatically mean Lone Star has a warrant out for your arrest, but it is a leading indicator. They might have a big file but no real hard evidence. That's really more of a story/plot concern than a mechanical issue. (I don't think a high Public Awareness should automatically make a character unplayable, although it might make things more difficult. This might work for a High Chrome game where the PCs are rockers who go on runs and then record songs about it. Johnny Silverhand, anyone?) Reputation and Notoriety would be used to calculate Street Cred (we don't have to call it that, but it’s late and I'm not going to think of a better term tonight), which is your Shadow Awareness (and I'm not going to think of a better term for that, either). Probably something like Threshold (10-Street Cred) on an appropriate Street Knowledge check to see if you've heard of somebody, with the information increasing with more net hits. In that sense, Street Cred replaces Public Awareness. (It might work like this already, or it did something similar in SR3, but I'm too lazy to look right now.) This too would likely be based off Lifetime Totals. If people know your name, they'll remember it. If a character buys down his Notoriety with Rep, the Street Cred won't change but the bonus dice will. A character with high Street Cred and Public Awareness and low (bought down) Notoriety and Rep might not be getting bonus dice because he's considered washed up. He used to be somebody but he hasn’t done much lately. That's kind of the effect I'm going for. Reputation wouldn't be based solely on Karma either, there would also be fiat points awarded similarly to Notoriety (probably just for opposite reasons). The Threshold for real people (not runners) to know you would likewise be an appropriate Knowledge check Threshold (10-Public Awareness). It works the same as Street Cred, its just used by different people. If you don't know somebody right off, this would also be the Threshold for "asking around", with something like a base time of a day and every check you make giving the subject (or other interested parties) a roll to find out someone is looking for them. (Asking around would probably be something like Interrogation+Intuition or Charisma, with the subject's detection being a Street Knowledge+INT or something similar. I don't have my heart set on anything just yet, and I like keeping it fluid. Or if you were doing it strictly through Data Search-- who talks to people anymore?-- it'd use those rules.) How you know people (the result of the Street Knowledge check) would likely be fiat, modified by as much player and GM collusion and creativity can be whipped up on the spot. A crit success might give you a piece of information not a lot of other people know, or you might know them well enough to be on friendly terms. A crit glitch and you have a potentially disastrous misunderstanding (you think he's gay, it turns out he's a ravening homophobe). A glitch could mean you know them, but the information is more of an obstacle than a breakthrough. If a guy has no Street Cred and you manage to beat a Threshold (10), maybe you've seen him outside your street doc, with a sign that says, Will Work for Hand Razors. This is actually the second version of this post. I got about halfway through the first one and lost it through a computer error (if me hitting the back button can be blamed on the computer, which I think it can. If you give a monkey a gun, who's at fault when people start getting shot, I ask you?), and I'm aware that this redo is a bit muddled in places. But having slogged through it once I don't really have the energy to edit it further (and that "back" button is beckoning to me. I wonder what would happen if I just tapped it once?) I might clean it up a bit later, but I'll probably just post it as is and then refine it if I get any feedback. |
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Posts in this topic
Mercer Reputation, Notoriety and Public Awareness Dec 26 2007, 08:14 AM
Fortune QUOTE (Mercer) I've read that section a few ti... Dec 26 2007, 09:10 AM Jack Kain The bonus is capped by charisma. As even if you ar... Dec 26 2007, 09:29 AM Riley37 I dunno that this is a good aspect for mechanical ... Dec 26 2007, 10:02 AM Fortune QUOTE (Jack Kain) The bonus is capped by charisma.... Dec 26 2007, 10:08 AM Cardul Casinos have this whole thing where, when you get ... Dec 26 2007, 11:09 AM Mercer Glancing at the book, I see that I mixed up the te... Dec 26 2007, 11:43 AM toturi Notoriety without Rep is as detrimental as Rep wit... Dec 26 2007, 12:03 PM knasser I have nothing to add to this thread except to say... Dec 26 2007, 12:33 PM Rotbart van Dainig QUOTE (Jack Kain)The bonus is capped by charisma.
... Dec 26 2007, 12:53 PM Ryu What I did when I started our last SR4-campaign wa... Dec 26 2007, 03:11 PM Mercer QUOTE (Rotbart van Dainig)QUOTE (Jack Kain)The bon... Dec 26 2007, 06:57 PM knasser QUOTE (Mercer @ Dec 26 2007, 06:57 PM) @knass... Dec 26 2007, 08:03 PM Mercer Well, we can say the same thing about the Reputati... Dec 27 2007, 01:00 AM
Ryu There are different qualities of runners (Inferior... Dec 27 2007, 10:43 AM  |
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