Hello all,

I'm working on my personal character creation spreadsheet, and I got a bit confused here.

Starting characters get a notoriety score based on their Positive and Negative Qualities. Things like Blandness reduce it, and things like Incompetent increase it.

What I'm not sure about is if it can be a negative number, particularly at game start?

Yep

You start with a 0 modified by the associated qualities listed on pg 372,


Edit:

Sorry... my bad.. I forgot .. neg qualities ADD 1, Positive reduce by 1

I would not think that Notoriety could be a Negative Number. How can you be less Notorious than not being notorious?

Having a glowing reputation?
Also, that'd be really bad if you were trying to intimidate someone:
"Oh yeah? What you gonna do, Gandhi?"

"I will go on Hunger Strike."

Well if you had no negative qualities and were Lucky, that technically would take you to -1, so maybe you get just a tiny bit of slack and can screw up in a small way and end up back at zero, where as normal joe with 0 would go to 1 notoriety for doing the same thing.

*Goes white* "No! Not that! Anything but that!"

Except that provides you with a Mechanical Effect - You would actually LOSE dice for Intimidation (-1 Notoriety) due to you being Lucky. How odd is that?

well.. good luck charms DO tend to be the less aggressive appearing ones in the group, so who would you be more afraid of?

Marco, the former Sons of Saurian (left because he thought they were getting 'soft') Troll looming over you

OR

Daisy, grrlscout 'mascot' for the team in pigtails that the team adopted after a run that went south collapsed the abandoned building she had been crashing in.

Plus the original question was not whether you SHOULD take a neg to start, but rather could it happen?

Daisy, of course - She don't belong in that neighborhood, or in that company, so she is obviously about to start something Crazy.
Or do I owe her an Apology?

Yeah, and those books are way outside her reading level, she's obviously up to something... *Strolls away whistling MIB theme*

Where exactly in SR5 does it say that Notoriety alters Intimidation?

I mean, if you can get Notoriety from Weak Immune System and failing missions, how does that make you more intimidating?

You're desperate enough to do something really really stupid?

In all seriousness, I don't see Notoriety as a modifier for Intimidation in the section on Notoriety, the Intimidation Skill, or the Social Interaction table.
EDIT: Still talking about SR5 specifically.

It isn't in SR5, it was the case in SR4. Currently, I am pretty Notoriety doesn't actually do anything mechanically, just means people aren't really going to trust you.

Ahh... no add into Intimidation in SR5? Good to know.
I was indeed referring to SR4A originally.

"...and we were all laughing at the little girl with the pigtails in a strip joint when she suddenly hauled that damn room broom out from her cookie cart and chopped down three homies with a long burst. We're all tripping over each other trying to find cover and haul our bangs out, and that little cunt just kept that gat of hers humming with this sadistic grin on her face..." - except from a recent Knight Errant interrogation while investigating the multiple homicide at the 'Nice Rack!' Billiards and Gentleman's Club

I think I have my next character idea...

If you can, watch the Gunslinger Girl anime first. Tons of great stuff in there.

And don't forget to order a box of cookies to support your local Grrl Scout's.

Just don't try to stiff them by not paying like those slobs at 'Nice Rack' did.

I'm already dreaming up when I can run a game again in the near future (the kiddie is still a bit young and needy at this point to have the time and effort to play a game let alone GM currently), ad was planning on stealing the Grrl scouts from the conspiracy thread. And Aglets. And possibly evil discordian sprite infected teddy bears.

I'm already dreaming up when I can run a game again in the near future (the kiddie is still a bit young and needy at this point to have the time and effort to play a game let alone GM currently), ad was planning on stealing the Grrl scouts from the conspiracy thread. And Aglets. And possibly evil discordian sprite infected teddy bears.

There is a conspiracy thread with the Grrl Scouts?

I just refer to my own version we sort of cobbled together over the years, would be interesting to see other players take on their own versions so if you have a link to it please...

Here you actually brought them up a little while back.

Ah.. FD's conspiracy thread... thought you meant there was another thread that someone else had their own version of the Grrl Scouts for.

By all means, feel free to lift the concept and adapt to your own taste.

Course now Canray has infected us with the idea of Jinx and may have to adopt her into the Grrl Scouts.

May just do that, thanks.

And a toxic/twisted Gun adept as a former Grrl scout who takes the emotionally damaged members under wing to train as scout enforcers, nicknamed Grrl Pwr. Yet another idea I'm stealing

double post

I was actually going to go a bit further with it than psychotic June (meat) Cleaver is a souped-up minivan.

Take a pack of "How the fuck did you survive?!?" third-world orphans through a megacorp adoption program, give them hormone treatments to keep them from aging physically, and cyber them them war. Custom hands that expand to hold normal weapons, eyes are easy because they change the least as a child ages, reaction enhancers, some good ol' fashioned mindfucking conditioning combined with a brutal training regime to dehumanize them even more than those child soldiers you see the haunting photos of in Nat Geo, and set them loose with some spec ops handlers. Want to really get twisted with it, you could have them trained and "selectively enhanced" to be used to blackmail pedophiles or the washouts as suicide bombers like the Viet Cong used to.

My first thought was 'Why? full sized people are stronger, ect.' Then I twigged. no-one suspects a child. They're perfect infiltrators. People hesitate to fire on children. Children are normally thought of as non-combatants.
You are sick for coming up with this idea, and I applaud you for it.

Don't thank me, I'm just stealing it from Gunslinger Girl. The manga writer Yu Aida was the twisted fuck that come up with this great, but soooo daaaamn eeeeviiiil, idea.

Ok, fine. The "extra evil sauce" stuff at the end was all me.