ever have a PC want to do something that was only for the coolness? did he/she have a tn to do this? example:

i wanted to pull a table cloth off the table without disturbing the glasses, candles etc. quickness TN 21. result? well i made a big mess, i only needed the table cloth, but i wanted to go the extra mile!

so, ever try anything like that?

TN for a task like that should have not exceeded 10, probably 8 would have been better. Anything 10+ as a TN is nearly impossible to do (page 92 of SR3). For ading in a cool factor to the attempt, as a GM I would have reduced the TN by at least 2 just for the story. In general, the TN for a 'cool factor' would be, at worse, 6 in my games. After all, being cool is half of what Gaming is about.

Sphynx

The -TN for stuntwork and other acts of "cool" is directly proportional to the amount of free pizza the GM (me) consumes that night.

I always tell my players this,

Play the game like your in a John Woo movie.

I definatly encourage things for the coolness. Like riding your BMW Blitzen down the wrong lane of traffic on I-5 at 180KPH while bending over backwards and firing dual pistols at the car following you.

This kind of behavior is rewarded. Plus I find it involves the player enough that combat doesn't end up being:

"I shoot him with my pistol".

I hate that.

I agree with Shadow, nothing ruins a game faster than a GM trying to give you "Realistic" TN's for being cool. Although I couldn't imagine doing the 180KPH backwards thingy... I've often tried to do cool things in games that failed so miserably I ended up in a hospital so the GM could teach me a lesson or something. Those games end up with me doing just like Shadow said... Ok, I shoot him with my pistol.

Sphynx

Doing something for the cool factor is waaaayyyy better than trying every trick in the book to lower your target numbers. (Are my players reading this?)
And you get bonus karma for cool.

No... But I sense a story there.

Less question, more story!

One of the things that make the game fun (especially for GMs!) is when the players do something solely for the 'coolness factor'. I don't think they should be overly penalized for this, either with impossible TNs or with harsh consequenses.

In the Other Big RPG (starts with a D&D), I had this problem a lot. "I attack." blah blah roll dice...no fun at all. Except one player who played a monk. It was like Jackie Chan and Jet Li had a clone made with a full wirework team. I loved it. He'd jump on stuff, over stuff, describe his attacks, all kinds of stuff. I'd give him free feats and NPC contacts and stuff for just playing so cool. Hell, I have him a Ring of Regeneration at 3rd level he was being so cool (there was a catch to it though..)

My favorite was when they were invading the lab of an evil mad wizard...He had an atrium full of these flying troll thingies. Everyone else was pulling out the ranged weapons...but not the monk. He jumped on the back of one of them and started punching it in the back of the head!

If you want to encourage this behavior, talk to one of your more imaginative players and tell him/her that you're wanting to encourage a more cinematic style. Reward that character in-game with increased rep, nuyen, favors, and other stuff. Maybe have the ork street gang run away when they realize they're trying to roll the dude who jumped off the roof of the Archology onto the helicopter to avoid the explosion of the cyberzombie who he stuck the C12 on the back of and detonated in mid-air. If you use the reputation system to its fullest, you can really encourage that kind of game from your players.

The Abstruse One

This does have a dark side though. Every player doing ridiculously over-the-top theatrics for every action.

GM: The Johnson gives you a certified credstick.
Player: I use magic fingers to flip it into my pocket without touching it!
GM: <Sigh> OK, fine.
Player: Then I backflip off the table and out the door of the bar!
GM: ...

As a player who really likes to describe and imagine the fights, I find that the hardest part is sometimes getting a description out of the GM about what the room is like.

Sometimes I've just made stuff up ("I grab books off the desk and throw them"). I've run into two types of GM's

1) "Huh, books? Okay, cool. You throw them."
2) "Huh, books? There's nothing on the desk"

This discussion reminds me somewhat of the game I'm currently GMing, where a player invented a spell specifically for the purpose of, and I quote, "looking badass." I've houseruled that he gets a number of extra dice in his Badass pool (usable only for looking badass) equal to his casting successes while sustaining it. Now, don't go asking what benefits looking badass actually confers, mechanicswise... because there really aren't any.

This reminds me a lot of the "Coolest Thing Your Character has Ever Done" thread of days of yore. I wanted to post then, but was reminded that my charatcer didn't actually do "the coolest thing ever." It was all about balancing the "coolness" factor with staying alive.

Imagine the white-collar Sam in the top of a large corporate tower. Down the hallway from him (eh, 100 m or so) is a mad, heavily armored, tricked out (insane?) security goon aiming what is, for all intents and purposes a Ballista rocket system at said Sam. The sec goon sits there, aiming ("He was calculating how best to geek you, without taking down the building with him" according to the GM in a post-game debriefing). And then it its me. Said Sam is a fairly good shot. He's got a sleek, long-barreled revolver, SL2, rangefinder--the works. All it's going to take is one APDS shot, right down the barrel of the Ballista, some combat pool, and maybe a little karma, and then, no more sec guard menacing the team.... (Think: "That shot was one in a million, kid!").

Except then it strikes me that cool as this is, I'm going to miss and get my hoop blown to bits. So my character runs like hell.

In my mind, coolness should be rewarded with rep (and a cool nickname-- the sam in this case would have probably picked up something sleek like, "William Tell," neh?)

Failures on these tests give the gm lots of opportunity for the funny factor.

Player cool factors combined with gm funny factors = a very entertaining play session.

"And the flowers are still standing!"