[Crunch]

If we laid it out on a scale where 1 was Black Trench coat and 20 was Pink Mohawk.

I'd put
Expendables at 20
Rambo at 19
Die hard at a 16
Oceans Eleven at a 13
Dr No at 11
Tailor of Panama at 5
Smiley's People at 1

That's just my opinion though.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I disagree on the cinematics, because cinematics is part of the game, whether you're a "Secret" Agent Man or a dyed-in-the-wool Man In Black.  If the Man In Black has to, he'll leap off the exploding roof to catch the helicopter skid and fight the bad guys on board.

The difference is whether or not, after the helo crashes, the hero climbs out of the river in front of five hundred people, or goes out of his way to climb out in front of nobody, or nobody anyone's going to believe.  At least, that's what I've come to believe.  The elements of 'explosion, helo, leap, crash' are all things the GM is tossing at you.  How you handle it is what makes it PM or BT ...

[Crunch]

And I think we just have fundamentally different definitions.

I don't see how you can say that profile is the only thing that matters though, that would make any character who got caught or came to the attention of the press suddenly become pink mohawk...

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I didn't call it profile, I called it audience.  The Pink Mohawk wants the audience.  The Black Trenchcoat avoids it.  The PM spends Street Cred increasing his Public Awareness.  The BT spends his Street Cred (and I've made a point of doing this - extensively - for Suki) getting his contacts and those who look favorably upon him to decrease his public awareness.  "Hey, Sammy, remember that favor you owe me?  Can you talk to your people in the trideo biz, see if they can't, you know, accentuate some other biz?  Manage to lose that little going-down at the warehouse last night?"

Pink Mohawk blows up a warehouse, he's standing in front, shooting his machine gun into it in front of the trideo cameras and hollering out his name so that the reporters will get it right.  Black Trenchcoat blows up a warehouse, he's through the first manhole or down the first alley that'll fit him, fading back into the shadows so that the reporters can only say 'unknown cause'.  In both cases, the warehouse is blown up - or to use my previous example, the rooftop is detonated, the helicopter is jumped to, the bad guys are killed, the helo is crashed into the river.

The Pink Mohawk makes a point of climbing out in front of the video cameras and the witnesses, in order to spread his brand, his Public Awareness, as much as possible.  "Hey, look, Penny Martin got the job done.  See, it's on all the news channels."  The Black Trenchcoat makes a point of ducking the cameras, going underwater (or underground), of climbing out of the river as far away from the crowd as possible - to be a ghost, which is his brand.  He wants his Public Awareness to remain in that 0-3 range, and will sacrifice Street Cred if necessary to pull it back down.  "I heard the job got done.  Who did it?  The news couldn't say."  "I had Barton Tower on that.  Got a little noisy, but at least nobody knows who or why."

The crap hitting the fan is in the GM's court.  How you handle the fallout is the essence of what makes you Black Trenchcoat or Pink Mohawk.

[Mirikon]

Well put, Wyrm.

[Crunch]

That doesn't sound like any Pink Mohawk game I've ever been a part of.

[Noble Drake]

I tend to run games in which you could say the characters are Black Trenchcoat... but their hair is only an application of hairspray from Pink Mohawk.

Meaning that the players approach the game from the Black Trenchcoat style, but don't balk at using flashy tactics when that's what will get the job done.