Does this deserve a notoriety point? Options

[MrOramri]

Okay on my last run my shadowruners were in a car chase driving away a stolen car followed by two sedans with bad guys. Near the end of the chase I had a Pilot groundcraft test for both cars to avoid a pedestian crosing that was filled with pedestrians. Both cars failed the test hurdling them into a mob of girl scouts and sending the girls flying into the air then fall back to earth with a loud "THUD". Also later the fighter ran over and stole multipal boxes of girl scout cookies from the dead scouts in question.

Does that deserve a notoriety?

[ravensoracle]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) Only if it ended up on youtube and they could be identified by others from the shadows.

[Summerstorm]

They stole the cookies? FIENDS.

Ah well, if they are clearly in connection with that "incident" and can be identified... sure, why not? (Wait did they ran the scouts over, or the two following cars?)

[MrOramri]

Every car ran over the scouts. lol

[Aaron]

Short answer? Yes.

Long answer:

[ Spoiler ]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssss.

[kzt]

Short answer? Yes.

Long answer:

[ Spoiler ]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssss.

I have to agree with Aaron. It pains me to do this, but he's right.

This is actually the kind of thing that gets a task force organized. It's amazing what 40 guys with 10-12 dice of investigation and data search can do to your alibis. Not to mention the 200 agents looking for video/gridguide and 20 spirits with search.

If you are confused what the spirits do, the pieces of the car knocked off in the collision make most excellent material links. And you can use the pieces of the car to create a symbolic link to the driver.

[betterwatchit]

If they can be linked to it, yeah. Absolutely.

[Ascalaphus]

IIRC, you get Notoriety for killing innocent bystanders..

[AngelisStorm]

Yes, even if they can't be identified. If they can't be IDed (yet), then the notoriety gets attached to "Girl scout murdering John Does," and the characters get Dark Secret (or whichever is the negative quality that, if found out, gives you a notoriety point).

[ravensoracle]

This may actually be a good time to add a adversary NPC. I am seeing a TM/hacker that is appalled by the carnage of killing innocent little girls, maybe he has a little sister or something, and he decides to start looking for possible cameras that could have recorded the footage. Maybe he backtracked the car chase until he found a traffic camera that recorded the faces of those occupying a car running the light. It would take a few days but suddenly the PC's find that their faces are being posted all over the shadow community as "the ones that make us all look bad." It may be fun to have the teams hacker run into this guy while trying to clean up all the evidence.

[hahnsoo]

The "good news" is that once they get a point of Notoriety for killing an innocent, they can't get another Notoriety point for killing more innocents unless you take it to the "next level" (blowing up a mall during a holiday or something). They'll just be known as folks who slaughter innocents on occasion: "Those bozos kill innocents... it was all over the news. Are you sure you want hire them?" "It is because of their callousness to individual lives that I am hiring them... we are, after all, Horizon, and would never involve ourselves in such dirty work, right?"

[AngelisStorm]

The "good news" is that once they get a point of Notoriety for killing an innocent, they can't get another Notoriety point for killing more innocents unless you take it to the "next level" (blowing up a mall during a holiday or something). They'll just be known as folks who slaughter innocents on occasion: "Those bozos kill innocents... it was all over the news. Are you sure you want hire them?" "It is because of their callousness to individual lives that I am hiring them... we are, after all, Horizon, and would never involve ourselves in such dirty work, right?"

Is that official?

Because my take isn't -just- that Notoriety is your negative street cred (which is what it sounds like you are describing), it is also your public awareness. People don't get desensitized to someone who does something big; they go "what the hell? He hasn't been caught!?" when they do it again. (Two buildings, two planes, two schools, another group of police, whatever.)

[hahnsoo]

SR4A, p 265:
"Note that a character should never earn a Notoriety point for something he’s already earned a Notoriety point for, unless he has
somehow gone about it in an innovative way."

It's right there along with all the other Street Cred and Notoriety rules. Public Awareness is Street Cred + Notoriety divided by 3, so it IS part of your public awareness. Notoriety SUBTRACTS from your Street Cred bonus and ADDS to your Public Awareness, which means it's bad on all accounts (unless you want to be notorious and well-known).

This limit is good, in my opinion, because it prevents certain types of players of trying to game the Notoriety system for free Intimidation dice. Notoriety can actually help you in certain situations, although the negatives certainly outweigh the positives.

[Jaid]

@ angelisstorm:

if it troubles you that much, i would suggest just adding it as a direct modifier to their public awareness stat. notoriety is intended to reflect what kind of negative view people have of them. it's not so much that people don't care when it's repeated, it's simply that people already know they kill innocents. the characters are already known for killing innocents, so it shouldn't change people's views on them if they kill innocents. now, on the other hand, if they kill innocents through carelessness, and then later are spotted killing innocents just for the heck of it, then that would probably be worth another point of notoriety.

@ the OP: well, up until someone got out of the car to loot the girl scouts, i was leaning towards no (unless they had a really distinctive vehicle), because it's listed as an assumed feature of vehicles that the windows cannot be seen through from the outside somewhere (it's discussing the fact that you can't target spells at people inside vehicles normally because of this feature). however, once they got out of the vehicle and could be identified (unless the character who stole the cookies was taking extreme precautions to conceal identity; it doesn't sound like it), any hope of anonymity was basically gone, and it definitely became worth a point of notoriety.

[Saint Sithney]

@Jaid
Besides the problem of identifying them, the headline "Car Chase Turns Deadly" is way more generic than "Terrorists Flatten Girlscout Troop, Come Back for Cookies." That's a story which turns some heads.

[Tsuul]

Which corp indoctrinates .... er ah .... sponsors the Girl Scouts again? I sense a Black Ops badge is about to be earned.

[Jaid]

@Jaid
Besides the problem of identifying them, the headline "Car Chase Turns Deadly" is way more generic than "Terrorists Flatten Girlscout Troop, Come Back for Cookies." That's a story which turns some heads.

it doesn't much matter which headline it is if nobody can attach a name or face to it. but yes, running over girlscouts, and then coming back for the cookies, is indeed much more memorable than just getting into a car accident that injures innocents.

(that being said, the other cars that ran over the girlscouts are probably also in trouble)

[kzt]

It's high enough profile to get a KE, LS or FBI ritual sorcery team involved. KE has mages who can do serious magic in a -9 mana void....

If the PCs don't leave town and hide in a honking big ward they are going to have a very serious problem in the near future. If they do leave town and hide in a honking big ward they are still likely to have a serious problem in the near future.

[kzt]

double post....

[Mercer]

The weird part (and I bring this up every so often) is that if the runners were cool, professional types who had earned enough Street Cred to get their Public Awareness up and then ran over the Girl Scout's, then they could buy down their Street Cred with the point of Notoriety they gained. Their Public Awareness would drop because they ran the kids over.

That's why every runner who has made a career playing it smart and low key has to take a break and throw the mayor under a bus on live 3v, otherwise they get too well known.

[kzt]

The idea behind street cred and notoriety isn't bad, but the mechanics suck.

[Jaid]

The weird part (and I bring this up every so often) is that if the runners were cool, professional types who had earned enough Street Cred to get their Public Awareness up and then ran over the Girl Scout's, then they could buy down their Street Cred with the point of Notoriety they gained. Their Public Awareness would drop because they ran the kids over.

That's why every runner who has made a career playing it smart and low key has to take a break and throw the mayor under a bus on live 3v, otherwise they get too well known.

there is no rule preventing you from having negative notoriety. the runner who burns street cred to go into the negatives for notoriety will therefore have a lower public awareness rating than a runner who threw the mayor under a bus and then burned street cred to remove the added notoriety. indeed, if the runner goes far enough into the negatives, eventually he will have a negative public awareness...

[tagz]

SR4A, p 265:
"Note that a character should never earn a Notoriety point for something he’s already earned a Notoriety point for, unless he has
somehow gone about it in an innovative way."

That leaves a whole lot of interpretation wiggle room if you ask me. The word "something" is very general so depending on what the GM considers that something to be it could vary greatly.

Could see that as only 1 point for killing innocents ever unless they afterwards do something insane like dress the bodies as clowns and line them up on Main Street

1 for each MANNER of killing innocents (ie the something is "Killing innocents BY _____": running over, shooting, caught in an explosion, etc) so only 1 for blowing up innocents no matter how many times you blow up innocents, but shoot some and you get another point since it's not the same something

1 for each level of intent (ie the something is "Killing innocents due to _____": manslaughter, heat of the moment, premeditated, etc).

And these are just examples off the top of my head... I wish they gave an example.

I just try to go by what makes sense for the situation.

[Cardul]

That's why every runner who has made a career playing it smart and low key has to take a break and throw the mayor under a bus on live 3v, otherwise they get too well known.

Amusingly, I could see throwing the current in-game governor of Seattle under a Bus on live 3V, shooting him with an assault cannon, and then stuffing a grenade in his mouth, arming, and walking away could give one Street Cred *AND*
Notoriety! Too bad there is no "Street Cred among certain groups" type thing...

[Nows7]

Amusingly, I could see throwing the current in-game governor of Seattle under a Bus on live 3V, shooting him with an assault cannon, and then stuffing a grenade in his mouth, arming, and walking away could give one Street Cred *AND*
Notoriety! Too bad there is no "Street Cred among certain groups" type thing...

My team just got framed for blowing up Josephine D. and Brockhaven at their inauguration.... I think we'll be getting ALOT of notoriety for that...

Seriously, no one on their security staff assensed the doves? Fucking exploding dove bullshit...