I am new to the forum and to Shadowrun. I am playing the face in our campaign. It is just my personal opinion however just because someone is clever in real life, or a social log it doesn't mean that he can't be one or the other in Seattle.

I work for Honda as a Japanese translator and I have 0 Japanese skill in game. If the GM requested that everyone who is doing social-fu be a real life social juggernaut that would be as unfair as me speaking in real Japanese to NPCs. Using skills that you have in real life, is just as bad as not allowing people skills that they have spent Karma/BP on.

If you want crazy social combat rules try Exalted where you get social special attacks, its only a matter of minutes before you and your friends are having a Phoenix Wright rule lawyer battle...

We are going to do Social-Fu like we did in Exalted but with the Shadowrun rules, tweeked. Say what you would like to say: like a joke, a threat, or whatever you want. Just give a quick explanation, then roll and try to role play the results. Just because someone isn't good as others at role playing shouldn't lock them out for what they want to do with their character. They should be encouraged, most of the time its stage fright. I think the giving the bonus dice and external penalties as mentioned before is a great idea and I am gonna run that by our GM

Toturi is right - players are not supposed to earn notoriety points for things that they have already earned notoriety points for, barring the player going about it in an "innovative" way. Players can be very innovative, though...

Of course, players also have the option of sacrificing two points of street cred to remove a point of notoriety - since street cred bonuses top out at the character's Charisma rating, there is no real logical reason not to burn street cred to lower notoriety once you have hit that point. This also lowers public awareness. But that is assuming you get street cred to that sweet spot before you start earning notoriety. Otherwise, your face will be gimping his own street cred with his notoriety, cheating himself out of a significant dice pool.

When I GM for a face I generally let minor situations pass by without rolls. Even though there's no dice being thrown, I try to keep the character's general stats in mind and the NPCs I run will be more tolerant of impoliteness from a character with high charisma versus a character with low charisma. In general the role-playing in these situations is more important than the roll-playing.

When the situation is more dire, I generally have the player say a few lines of dialog to get a general idea of where he wants the conversation to go, then have them roll, and then alter the response from the NPC to match that roll. If the character continues the conversation and changes his method of attack, then he gets another roll. In general these major situations are more roll-play than role-play.

... and he gets bonus evil GM points if he bases the shedim off of Bride of Chucky.