I'm just curious to see if any groups use the Sreet Cred and Notoriety mechanisms. I was reading the rule just now. Sreet Cred in particular, you divide your Karma earned by 10 and add that as a bonus to any Social pool (with poeple aware of your street rep). That's insanely powerful. However, the text also hints this can be used by NPCs as well (why not!). That's an interesting asset in the GM's bag of trick for Social dominance...

I have my group's PC's track it, though I don't often allow the bonus to be applied. I do use it as a gauge for how much they advanced in their Shadowrunning "career" and what kind of jobs they should be getting as a result.

I haven't used them. My personal gripe isn't with them so much as it is with Public Awareness. You can literally go from unknown to on every beat-cop's list in a few runs, even if you keep your nose clean.

That said, I have used them w/o Public Awareness as a gauge for what type of work the team gets.

I really like the concept (numerically defining renown and publicity), but the rules aren't all that usable, sadly.
As you've already said, the RAW dice pool boni quickly overshadow everything else. You can easily get 10+ dice for social tests, which is more than an emotoy gives you and those furbies-from-hell are rightfully scorned around here.

I agree with the posters who use it as a job quality tracker. Maybe some kind of secondary "Law Enforcment Attention" statistic could be derived to track just how aware of the players all the big wigs would be.

2000 yen for some bio sculpting helps a lot with the public awareness and you just drop your credentials when necessary.

How quickly does your group get karma? RAW dice pool boni quickly overshadow everything else?

PA and other Reputation rules require the character you are interacting with to connect the rep with the person.

Keep in mind that the bonus dice from street cred can never exceed your Charisma, and that you don't apply street cred but the street cred difference to your dice pool. So if someone has more cred than you, you aren't getting any extra dice. Even if you do have more extra dice, unless you play a high-CHA character, you won't be getting too many that actually can go to your test.

I would use street cred as a general guage, but the mechanics are so messed up that it falls apart when you try to use it for more than that. Things like incompetence affecting notoriety, and notoriety affecting intimidation rolls. "That guy can't shoot a pistol to save his life - that's scary!"

Yep, we make use of Street Cred/Notoriety/Public Awareness in our games anyway. Because of the threat of becoming more publicly known if they do really obvious drek the players tend to be much more aware of the consequences of their actions.
And the key thing with street cred is that it is only applicable to people who are aware of your rep

I have not looked at the changes in SR4A, but....

Do you still need to cack someone in a crowded subway, on national television, with explosives periodically to gain loads of notoriety to reduce you public awareness?

I don't think we've really used it that much. Probably, the group's face has used his sreet cred to help buy stuff.


Overall though, I consider it an indicator of how impressive your name is when it starts getting dropped. For example...

"Oh, Lurch, how you doin' big guy? Please don't break my arms. No, sir, I didn't mean nothing my that. *eep*" (high notoriety)

"Mr. Fin! Where you been hiding, man? Let's go get some beers! Oh, you're here for business? Well, check these babies out, mil-spec, just in from my best supplier. Of course, you get friend prices." (high street cred)

"OMG! OMG! OMG! Look guys! Its Nadja Davar! Can I have your autograph? Hey Nadja, is it true what they say about your..." (high public awareness)

"Joey? Joey The Shoe? Get the fuck out of my face before I throw you down an elevator shaft onto some bullets, you worthless slag." (low everything)


-paws

We dont use it as a pool but we do use the idea but set out so that our rep is in fact a target number someone who might be in the know has to know who we are. - and of course I am playing SR3 so this might be to be adapted into success for SR4. The base varies on the person, so for example, if a Johnson was asked who our group was the base TN would be perhaps 10-14, A barman in our main running area might be 12-16. Joe bloggs from out of town would be 20+

Now to reduce this target number it is based upon total karma earnt divided by i think either 50 or 100 (my GM works it all out, Im not 100% on the figures). It is then split into individual rep and group rep. Group rep is the average of the total individual rep.

So for example, my character has 751 karma (we have been playing this campaign for a VERY long time). Thus an in-the-know Johnson would need a TN of 3 to have heard of me. My team has an average karma of about 600 and so a TN of 4 would be needed to have heard of the group.

Essentially, people in Pinehurst Everett, our stomping ground know not to mess with us. Most people have heard of our antics and know we are pretty tough. Go outside of Everett and the rep is less known. I think my GM even runs a International Rep as well.


Idea for you to incorporate if you like it

I think you've misread something. Notoriety and Public Awareness are increased for doing things like that. There is a rule where Street Cred can be "burnt" to reduce Notoriety at a rate of 2 for 1. Public Awareness is based on the sum of Street Cred and Notoriety, so increasing Notoriety will increase Public Awareness.

I think if you want to use it, the GM would basically have to apply it to every NPC as well. It would make life for players pretty hard until they got more street cred under their belt as pretty much every underworld NPCs would be throwing 2-3 extra dice consistently. The mechanism pretty much ends up as the only aspect of Shadowrun that ends up as a "level up" perk. In SR, when you build a character, the personality and background you chose can be anything - you can say he's been running for years, or not. If you use Street Cred, there is no way around the fact that he's a noob, or an out pf towner strating fresh, since you can't buy it as a stat. So in that regard it seems very disconnected with the rest of the character stats system.

That's exactly why I like it. I don't mind my players starting skilled, but when they begin in my campaign they are just beginning their careers in the shadows, at least in that location. With Street Cred I have a solid reason (as GM) to reject a player's insistence that every NPC should be fawning all over them because they wrote a cool background story.

I think it's a pretty awesome aspect of the karma rules to keep runners in check and aware of the ripples they may make in whatever pond they do business in.

As a GM, I have generally been using it to note how well respected they are with their fixer. This is done at the PC not the group level however. The other point about it is it only applies to the people who know the runners. This is where it gets difficule for the PCs.

Street cred is how much people veiw them as professionals (based on karma earned which should reflect successful runs).

Public Awareness: how much the general public knows about them (Based a little on street cred, but not much, mostly how visable they have been-not a good thing!!).

Notoriety: How well, how evel or stupid are you. Gained by fragging up a run, doing something publicly and stupid, excessive carnage, or killing for no reason.

How this affects the PCs:

Street cred is good, it may help you land a job or it may help you find that epensive piece of gear. It also helps when working with your contacts (I don't always apply the modifier though as it may not be applicable to some of the contacts, furthermore I don't usually use it in tests because I forget it is there and no one calls me on it).

Public Awareness: Does average Joe know who you are? Is also and indicator if LS may also know you too.

Notoriety: Does lone star want you (And not as a recruit)? Do your contacts trust you? Does your fixer think you are valuable to the team?

Right, so you need to get notoriety in order to reduce your street cred..so, you need to do stuff that gets you notoriety to reduce your street cred so you can keep a low public awareness rating...

Umm, no.

If you are being sarcastic, my apologies, but I can't tell.

If not, then here is how this works:

Street Cred = karma / 10, round down

Notoriety = stupid things, mostly

Public Awareness = (Street Cred + Notoriety ) / 3

If Notoriety goes up, then so does Public Awareness.

[Street Cred + (increased) Notoriety] / 3 = (increased) Public Awareness

At no point does Notoriety subtract from your Street Cred. Your Notoriety can overshadow your Street Cred in certain situations but it does not reduce it.

Well, it'll be interesting to see how things are affected when I pick up my campaing again.

One of the PCs just signed his life away to Horizon as a Rap Star in order to get a lot of help needed from a Orxploitation Gangsta Rapper Contact... On the bright side, he's got a real SIN now. Which means real rights!

The joys of Shadowrunning in L.A.

I think what Cardul is trying to say is that by gaining notoriety, you can burn street cred. So if you have 12 street cred and get 3 notoriety somehow, your public awareness would be 5. But if you burn 6 street cred to get rid of that notoriety, your street cred drops to 6, notoriety to 0, and (somehow) public awareness to 2. This doesn't make much sense. The way that my GM handles it is that only non-activity or paying someone can lower public awareness, even if street cred and notoriety go down.

OK, I see what you are saying. It flies in the face of how I would run my game but, by RAW, I can see the attractiveness from a numbers point of view.

no, we don't

This...

Sorry, Forgot to mention that we do indeed use these systems...

I'm thinking of rebuilding the Reputation system as one where Street Cred will be an expendable 'social currency' that is spent to make new contacts and to improve existing contacts. This means that, much like karma, you' spend it to add permanent things to your character. Notoriety will be altered as well, and will be blended with Public Awareness. PA will be your 'exposure' and Notoriety will measure how bad it is. Runners with high PA and low Noteriety will be popular - possibly as folk heroes or P2.0 stars - while high PA and high Notoiety will be a sign of 'most-wanted' and villainous runners.

Before I finish cranking out the mechanics, does anyone else have any houserule sets on Reputation that I could look over? I tried the Search function but it didn't really give up its secrets easily. Also, any suggestions?

Actually, I think I'll go with Public Awareness being divided among two subtraits - Renown for good reputation and Notoriety for bad reputation. This will seem similar to the RAW division (except that Street Cred now has a separate function and it's old function is replaced with Renown), but will provide slightly different benefits and the awarding of both Renown and Notoriety will be quite different from RAW (possibly something similar to the old Werewolf Renown system but reworked for the setting). There will not be a 'burn one to reduce the other' option, but both values will automatically drop over time - if you lay low, you'll eventually drop off the radar for both good and bad deeds.

The issue we came up against was that clever runners are doing things that nobody will admit happened, much less can tie to the runners. If Brand X never admits that they had a secret orbital mind control laser project - much less tell the police it was destroyed by runners - and only the Johnson (and maybe the fixer) knows that the players did it how does it impact the way the rest of the world looks at them?

From what I'm told, in general, serious people are usually seen as such by the street. They might not know who the hell those people are and they might well have never seen them before, but they can tell that messing with them will not work out well. Of course if the players act like minor league thugs people will treat them like that.

And things do go wrong. I heard a story about how a cowboy bar in Prescott made a most unfortunate wrong assessment of a group of young men with short hair as a group of Embry-Riddle students. They were actually a SEAL platoon....

I agree that covert activities won't necessarily gain any Public Awareness (Renown/Notoriety), but some actions of the runners won't be entirely covert. In some cases, it might be the runners' own talent scout or fixer that squawks to build up his boys' Renown - or it could be a case of loose lips among the runners' contacts that reveal some of the things Notoriety is based upon.

OK, I really like this as a basic idea. I want to go think about it, and if you want to drop me a PM, feel free.

Our GM uses the system for what it's worth. It's a useful tool. But he's much more interested in our actual "rep". Essentially, the mechanics mentioned here are a kind of baseline tool to gauge how "familiar" the character(s) is to the general community. How it actuallu affects peoples PERCEPTION of what they are "more familiar with" depends on the speciffic actions of the individuals. They dealt with a WizWorm... and lived. That's notariety. Dumb, by most measures, but they're breathing, right? A group that has a reputation for shafting Johnson (as opposed to the usual reverse) would affect how other Johnsons approach them. If the team goes out of their way to maintain a "honorable" reputation for not double-dealing, and acting "professionally", that will make more difference than a raw number. If your team runs almost like a little Merc unit, how will that affect relations and perceptions?

I don't use those rules, I prefer a more flexible and softer mechanic, which is easier to customize to the specific situations and results of runs.

Aka "I wing it".

I track the numbers for my group, more out of curiosity then anything else, to watch the modifier they should be getting and for background use. I'll deside how I feel after a few more months of play I think, once they are in the 60+ karma range. I also like HappyDaze idea for using the stat to "buy" contacts etc... hmm

The rules as they stand are largely infeasible. They're fine when you're a starting character but rapidly become unworkable at higher levels. My PCs have played consistently since Nov last year and they've earned around 35 karma each so far. That gives them a Street Cred of 3 base (excluding RP bonuses which they have accumulated for fantastic planning and impossible jobs). I consider my PCs to be 'decent' (but otherwise average) shadowrunners - but definitely not in the big leagues yet. That said I know they have potential and their contacts would say the same.

Street Cred also doesn't work with NPCs as they aren't always going around, doing runs, wracking up karma or deeds that would net them an increase in rep. Notoriety and Public Awareness often face similar issues - but they definitely are worthwhile measuring. Particularly if your PCs are careless or cold hearted slitches and screw over people at the first opportunity.

Don't get me wrong, I think the measure of these attributes themselves are great and serve as a GM aid if nothing else. But the mechanics associated don't work unless you are applying them (and tracking changes!) for every NPC in your game. I definitely use them but more for my own tracking and benefit. Any social modifiers they offer, I (silently) apply as modifiers to the roll.

- J.