I don't recall if this rule is in SR4a, but it is definitely in SR4.

Your starting Notoriety is modified by various positive and negative qualities. Each positive quality subtracts one from your notoriety, while each negative quality adds on.

Positive Qualities
Blandness
First Impression
Lucky

Negative Qualities
Addiction
Bad Luck
Combat Paralysis
Elf Poser
Gremlins
Incompetent
Infirm
Ork Poser
Scorched
SINer (Criminal Only)
Spirit Bane
Uncouth
Uneducated

Runner's Companion doesn't indicate which new qualities add or subtract from starting notoriety. I've gone through and assembled a list of which ones I think would affect it.

For positive qualities, I noted that two of the three were social related, either the person was favorably held, or it decreased their visibility.
Common Sense - The quality itself seems fuzzy at best, and a runner that is known for common sense probably shouldn't have as high a notoriety.
Digital Doppleganger - Similar to Blandness.
Erased - Similar to Blandness.
Escaped Clone - Similar to Blandness
Fame - Similar to First Impression
Mistaken Identity - Similar to First Impression and Blandness.

For negative qualities, it appeared that most of them were really a stain on the character, a bad behavior or just something that causes constant problems. A lot of the new negative qualities I think could be added to increase starting notoriety.
Bi-Polar
Computer Illiterate - Worse than incompetent.
Enemy
Evil Twin
Hung Out to Dry
Illiterate
Liar
Mental Handicap
Paraplegic
Poor Self Control (Braggart)
Poor Self Control (Compulsive (10/15BP version only))
Prejudiced (10/15BP degree only)
Quadriplegic
Signature
Vendetta
Wanted

Looking for comments, I would like to get a good list.

Also qualities like gene-freak and distinctive style would also raise your notoriety.

Doesn't notoriety increase intimidate dice and lower other social dice?

I'd say illiterate, parapalegic, and quadrapalegic wouldn't fit with that. When's the last time someone said "Oh frag, it's Stephen Hawking coming to kick my hoop."?

Situational modifiers probably work better.

Explain how incompetent or infirm would add dice. Illiterate, paraplegic and quadraplegic are practically more severe versions of those two qualities. While it doesn't make sense from the dice pool mechanic portion of notoriety, it does make sense from the "we don't want to hire you because of baggage" category.

I would agree that Infirm, Uneducated, and incompetent probably shouldn't make intimidation any easier.

It would probably be easier to just ignore the benefits to intimidation, unless they made sense.

It's actually easiest to just ignore the whole rule, as it straight up doesn't work.
It actually supports firing a minigun into a crowded mall while smiling into the cameras as a possible way to reduce how known you are to the public (as you need notoriety to burn off street cred), just so you have a rule telling you to double all charisma-values for social skills (because that's the max and you max out on street cred extremly fast)...

Yeah, better not to bother...

There's more to Street Cred than it's dice applications. It's a quick measure of how successful a character has been in their shadow career. It's the closest equivalent to "level" that SR has. Since it's supposed to be a benefit, I would let any of my PC's voluntarily reduce their Street Cred if they really wanted. Or, you could remove the calculation for Public Awareness and just make it a stat the the GM controls when they deem that the PC's have done something that is overtly "public." Or you could tweak the "divide by 3" number to something higher, say 5 or 10, if your players are finding that they gain Public Awareness too quickly.

You can trade 2 street cred to work off one point of notoriety. That's why notoriety is a problem. If you've earned a lot of karma, thus street cred, your public awareness score could be high enough to impact your operations. That's why the poster said people would do stuff specifically to earn notoriety, just so they could burn off street cred to help them get under the radar.

But I agree, Street Cred and Notoriety should be a function more on the reliability and liability of the runners.

Considering that you gain Notoriety any time you roll a critical glitch, I don't think it is necessary to do intentional stuff to gain Notoriety. Also, I don't see much of a problem if someone wanted to burn off one point of street cred (possibly I would rule that you can only burn one point per month and would have to stay low on the shadow radar for the month).

Yes, there is more to it than dice applications. And I agree, that the idea of having something akin to a "reputation level" is a good one, but the rules are sadly almost completely unworkable. You could do all what you've suggested and it would make the rule better. Which was precisely my point. The mechanics don't work.

Wow, that rule makes almost as little sense as some of the Qualities they put in the Notoriety list... so you're off alone somewhere and you critically glitch a roll where nobody's around to see it, and yet mysteriously you get a bad rep?

Huh? Where's that rule? Are you talking about the "Exceptional bad luck" bullet point under Gaining Notoriety (SR4 p.258/SR4a p.265)? I would say that would have to be several critical glitches in a session. Incompetence is as incompetence does.

I was just discussing the Street-Cred-for-Notoriety rule last night, and we voted to ignore that rule. Otherwise, we didn't have any problem with notoriety.



There's always GM prerogative. Like when someone rolls an exceptional success of five hits, and you don't reward him with a point of Edge, because he rolled twenty-one dice at the time.

A critical glitch when you have a DP of 14+ is exceptional bad luck. You have a 0.41% chance of getting a glitch. I think the odds of getting a critical glitch are somewhere around 0.1%. I could be wrong, I'm just estimating.

Fair enough, but I think it would depend on how your teammates viewed your failure. Everyone has bad luck now and then, even with a large dice pool. How exceptional was your failure? Were people depending on you? Did you let the team down? Hurt one (or more) of them? Require an extra effort to rescue you?

"You'll note we're moving now. I could, of course, ahppily.. take control of this vehicle. You know how I drive. Would you like to negotiate now?"
*cracks knuckles*

Yes, that's the one I'm talking about. On a related case to it, my character gained one point of notoriety when trying (emphasis mine) to throw a grenade inside a bar full of gangers. I rolled a critical glitch and the GM said I threw the pin and kept the grenade on my hand... 4 runs later and I still don't think it was funny.

But yes, in order to gain notoriety and/or street cred, someone, somewhere, have to know you did said thing so it can spread through the shadow community.

I am completely baffled by these sorts of mechanics. I've just never needed to codify these sort of things, or use a die roll for them.

Actually... using these rules, the dice you get to add based upon your reputation are capped by Charisma, and are only applicable IF they know your Reputation (IE... They know that you are You, or at least you are who you are pretending to be)

Keep the Faith

The inherent mechanic is there to simulate your rising influence/reputation based upon your gross total Karma... it provides a framework to do so in a fairly straightforward (and Fair) manner... they are not horible rules by any means... they are what they are...

Yeah, I've always been baffled by needing rules like this, where good roleplaying is just fine. But you're right there's nothing wrong with them.

I've got idea for House Rule.
Let's split Notoriety on two parts - I'll call them Red and Blue.
- Red Notoriety adds bonus to Intimidation Tests. These are points earned because of killing innocents or Negative Qualities like Uncouth, etc.
- Blue Notoriety doesn't add bonus to Intimidation Tests. These are points earned because of "exeptional bad luck", failed run, or Negative Qualities like Uneducated, Scorched or Bad Luck.

On character sheet, we inscribe only total Notoriety and Red Notoriety in parentheses. Example: character with Notoriety 3(2) has -3 modifier to Social Tests, and only +1 to Intimidation Tests.

And about spending Street Cred to reduce Notoriety:
Only Blue Notoriety can be reduced by sacrificing Street Creed
or
reducing Red Notoriety does not reduce Public Awarness
or (more complicated, but more "real"):
PC's Red Notoriety cannot be reduced, if on the last run he earned new point of it. In addition, PC has to make significant effort to reduce it, including nuyen for bribes, erasing data, etc.
And/or cost of reducing Red Notoriety (in Street Cred) is equal to its level, minimum 2. So if PC's Red Notoriety is 5, he has to spend 5 points of Street Cred to reduce it to 4.

Of course, there should be the other way to reduce Public Awarness. My idea: if player declare that his PC will keep low profile for one month - no runs or no new Notoriety (at least) and higher Security cost in Lifestyle - he can reduce 1 PA by spending only Street Creed.

What do You think?

I like Street Cred because I've had more than one character who's background started with "the best (blank) in Seattle" and then they demanded that all sorts of people show them a ton of respect, right out of character creation. Now I get to point to their Street Cred and say, "No you're not" or "Yeah, but nobody knows it."

It's kind of the same situation as when SR3 introduced free Knowledge Skill points, so that people would actually have knowledge skills. Under SR2, I had a player make an ex-Lone Star character, and he seemed to have this idea that his character would know everything about anything related to crimes or investigation. He would start sentences with "From my knowledge of (whatever)..." Finally in SR3 I actually had a mechanic to use and say, "This is what you know about."

I think the only thing that needs to be tweaked is changing Public Awareness from a derived value to an awarded value, just like the others. I mean, a really good Shadowrunner (with a high Street Cred) that is really good at their job would be able to do jobs that don't publicly point back to them, right?

So, just going to add some humorous comments to these.

Blandness
First Impression
Lucky

Addiction <- I guess crackheads can be scary.
Bad Luck <- Don't mess with him man... something may fall on him.
Combat Paralysis <- Watch out, he'll totally freeze up when you throw a punch.
Elf Poser <- Because elves are so scary
Gremlins <- Careful, he'll try using your commlink and it'll never be the same.
Incompetent <- Wow... really? Incompetence breeds fear in your enemies?
Infirm <- Nothing like the 400 lb fat man to strike fear into the battle hardened
Ork Poser <- Okay, yeah, this one I can actually understand, but shouldn't Orks get a +1 intimidate -all- the time then?
Scorched <- Because people know what you've been up to on the 'trix.
SINer (Criminal Only) <- Wow, this one -actually- -really- makes sense.
Spirit Bane <- I guess maybe if you're intimidating a mage or something maybe.
Uncouth <- *Belch*
Uneducated <- Watch out, he dropped out of grade-school... to learn 1001 ways to kick your ass.

Common Sense - The quality itself seems fuzzy at best, and a runner that is known for common sense probably shouldn't have as high a notoriety.
Digital Doppleganger - Similar to Blandness.
Erased - Similar to Blandness.
Escaped Clone - Similar to Blandness
Fame - Similar to First Impression
Mistaken Identity - Similar to First Impression and Blandness.

Bi-Polar <- Yeah, in the manic phase, very scary.
Computer Illiterate - Worse than incompetent. <- watch out, he can't use his commlink!
Enemy <- Another one that makes sense.
Evil Twin <- I've heard this guy is a total badass
Hung Out to Dry <- He doesn't have any friends to help him... because he is that scary!
Illiterate <- He was too busy learning to kill people with spoons to figure out how to read.
Liar <- Umm....?
Mental Handicap <- Stupid people -are- scary.
Paraplegic <- Stephen Hawkins is on his way to kick your ass... with science!
Poor Self Control (Braggart) <- He totally told me about this time he took down 20 trolls with a single bullet!
Poor Self Control (Compulsive (10/15BP version only)) <- This guy is so freaking tidy, you don't want to mess with that man, you just don't.
Prejudiced (10/15BP degree only) <- I guess maybe if the subject is what the person is prejudice against.
Quadriplegic <- Stephen Hawkins brought friends, your ass will have tire marks on it for weeks.
Signature <- When he kills you... he'll leave a rubber ducky on your corpse.
Vendetta <- Also fairly intimidating usually.
Wanted <- Yeah, very intimidating actually.

Well, that was fun! Honestly I think the rule is best ignored because it makes you notorious for some of the weirdest things. That or modified to only include things that really would make you notorious, which are very very few things.

Meh, it's a stat that is overloaded. It is utilized as a modifier for intimidation, and it's supposed to be used to reflect willingness to hire you. Under the latter definition, a lot of those make good sense. Liar, do you really want to high or even work with someone who is a compulsive liar?

I agree, but not at all. Public Awareness means also that police, corpsec, snitches or journalists have some files about runner. They found a few samples of DNA (a hair, a drop of blood) - no SIN attached, but samples match each other. No actual face photo, but profiles are similar. So are methods used by the suspect. So even if you are ultra-careful, one day you can see a Lone Star spokeperson on a trid conference saying: "the ork who caused last incident at Downtown probably was involved in shooting two weeks ago; we offer a little bounty for every information".

Sure. But that's all the more reason why it should be a GM-controlled stat rather than a mathematically-derived one. Besides, Lone Star or Knight Errant or whatever can have you DNA on file without you necessarily being a "household name." Now, if LS were to plaster a security camera image of you all over the evening news, then you would become more of a "household name." In the latter case, your PA might jump from 2 to 10+ almost instantly. Again, all the more reason to put control of PA in the GM's hands.

Automatically giving out PA points is simply a reflection that someone always knows something.

That's actually why I give out a bit of Street Cred for high starting skills. Skill 6 gives you 2pts, Skill 5 gives you 1pt. (Active skills only; knowledge skills simply haven't come up, so haven't had to think about it). That way, if you are one of the best gunmen in the world, at least people who know about you acknowledge it. Players do have the option to pass on the Street Cred if they like though. ("Starting character" or not. Some people are ex-special forces, and some are self trained gunslingers who are avenging their older brother's death. The former have Street Cred, the latter is the Pistol skill 5-6 who walks in off the street one morning, and you've never heard of before.)

And don't forget the person who once had a bunch of street cred, and then 'vanished' for a while, only to reappear under a new identity. The new identity wouldn't have any cred attached to them.

Hearsay should never be anywhere near as effective as direct violence when intimidating someone.
Having heard that someone is supposedly desperate, wrathful, or greedy can't hold a candle to having that same person slice your eyeballs open with a razor and then work a corkscrew up your thumb.
Because, then, it's not hearsay.
You are actively demonstrating that you are desperate, wrathful and altogether monstrous, and on a level where there can be no doubt about it.

Honestly, intimidation shouldn't even be about scaring people. Any socially retarded idiot can scare someone.
Intimidation should be about making it easier to look into someone's terrified eyes, and know if what they're telling you, is true.
That's why it's a skill, not a trait.