Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: Nomad Zophiel on <12-08-10/0616:42>
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Can Notoriety be a negative number? The rules seem to imply that having the right positive qualities can push it below zero. Presumably a negative Notoriety would subtract from Intimidation and act add (a like positive amount) to Street Cred in appropriate situations.
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I don't think so. It would be kinda stupid, as it would work as anti-Notoriety, which is already covered by Street Cred.
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I don't think so. It would be kinda stupid, as it would work as anti-Notoriety, which is already covered by Street Cred.
+1
Agreed, any thing that would reduce Notoriety below zero, I'd house-rule the negative to Street Cred and vice-versa.
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I don't think so. It would be kinda stupid, as it would work as anti-Notoriety, which is already covered by Street Cred.
+1
Agreed, any thing that would reduce Notoriety below zero, I'd house-rule the negative to Street Cred and vice-versa.
+2
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I'd go with that one too, Jack. Though i don't have that problem - two of my players have characters with Notoriety 2* and 4. The rest will probably also have some.
* The shaman-guy is called 'Lucky'. He has: Bad Luck, Addiction, Gremlins (2) and Cursed (1). The shaman-girl has: Addiction(OCD actually), SINner and Spirit Bane. There's also the mafia-hitman samurai, who's addicted to... yoghurt. It's a leftover of my ancient free-form shadowrun one-shot in which his character was saved by a spilled cup of yoghurt, which caused the NPC who almost killed him to slip and fall of the roof.
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On a related note: There's a cool rule in the Dawn of the Artifacts series that when your Notoriety + Public Awareness is 10 or more, you start showing up on national Most Wanted lists, and you get your photo posted in post offices, train stations, banks, etc.
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Public Awareness is what actually got me thinking on this. It specifically states that Public Awareness can not be a negative number. There's no need to say that explicitly unless Street Cred and/or Notoriety (which PA is derived from) can be a negative number.
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GMs can adjust Public Awareness independently, if the PCs are especially careful or reckless about sticking to the shadows. However, they can't reduce it below zero.
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Public Awareness, Street Cred and Notoriety are just weird. Let's say you're a cautious, professional runner. You do some jobs, you get some karma, your Street Cred goes up. Cool. Now, as it goes up, your Public Awareness starts going up. Pretty soon, the cops are going to have a file on you because your Public Awareness is getting too high. You need to buy down your Street Cred so you need the Notoriety, so you have to start doing crazy, irresponsible things just so the cops won't know who you are. Any system where you're throwing the mayor under a bus on live 3v just so the cops will know less about you is working on some pretty strange assumptions.
And yeah, you can Rule Zero it (and should, early and often), but that doesn't make it any less weird.
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Actually public awareness is (Street Cred+Notoriety)/3. Raising either one raises Public Awareness. And remember, if someone is aware of you because of your Public Awareness score then they most likely get the reaction modifiers for both Street Cred and Notoriety. So if you have 30 Street Cred and no notoriety you're at a +10, even with Knight Errant beat cops because they know that you may be SINless but you're helping keep the streets safe.
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Actually public awareness is (Street Cred+Notoriety)/3. Raising either one raises Public Awareness. And remember, if someone is aware of you because of your Public Awareness score then they most likely get the reaction modifiers for both Street Cred and Notoriety. So if you have 30 Street Cred and no notoriety you're at a +10, even with Knight Errant beat cops because they know that you may be SINless but you're helping keep the streets safe.
I hate to disagree with you, Nomad, but RAW, the equation is:
Public Awareness = ROUNDDWN([Street Cred + Noteriety]/3) ± GM Adjustments
And is limited to positive numbers, I forget how to represent that mathematically (more to the point, in a web-text box)
Public Awareness is the sum of a runner’s Street Cred and her Notoriety, divided by 3 and rounded down. Public Awareness can never go below 0—a nobody is still a nobody, in or out of the shadows. For example, a very successful street samurai with a Street Cred of 7 and Notoriety of 2 would have a Public Awareness score of 3 (7 + 2 = 9; 9 ÷ 3 = 3). At the gamemaster’s discretion, any exceptional efforts the character has made to keep her profile low and activities secret can be used to reduce this score. Likewise, if anything the character does is intentionally or inadvertently splashed on the news, the gamemaster should increase the score accordingly.
So, for Mercer's characters that are getting high Street Cred, if they keep themselves professional and quiet, their PA doesn't need to rise linearly with their Street Cred. It should still rise, there's no way of avoiding all attention, but it can rise slower at the GM's discretion. Or faster, if you like doing trid interviews.
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Public Awareness = ROUNDDWN([Street Cred + Noteriety]/3) ± GM Adjustments
And is limited to positive numbers, I forget how to represent that mathematically (more to the point, in a web-text box)
[Begin game show host voice] Youuuuuuu PIPE it! |ROUNDDWN([Street Cred + Noteriety]/3)| ± GM Adjustments [end game show host voice]. As |x| = absolute value of x. In excel it would be ABS(ROUNDDOWN[(Street Cred + Noteriety)/3].
:)
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You, my friend, are deviously evil. <laughs>
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Problem with your math, Fizzygoo, shown via example:
Street Cred = 0
Notoriety = 0
The character's live in a hole in the middle of no where, avoiding all contact with the outside world, so the GM decides that the public is less aware (-2 to Public Awareness)
Public Awareness = ABS(ROUNDDOWN[(Street Cred + Noteriety)/3] +/- GM adjustments)
Public Awareness = ABS(ROUNDDOWN[(0 + 0)/3] - 2)
Public Awareness = ABS(-2)
Public Awareness = 2
So, the GM deciding they are less visible causes them to be more visible when using ABS.
We're talking about limits, not absolute values, so in excel (or other spreadsheets), it'd probably be an IF...THEN system:
Public Awareness = IF(ROUNDDOWN[(Street Cred + Noteriety)/3] + GM adjustments>0,ROUNDDOWN[(Street Cred + Noteriety)/3] + GM adjustments,0)
IF format is IF(Test, Return if True, Return if False)
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Well, I tend to assume that +/- GM's Call is built in. My point was strictly that raising Notoriety does not inherently lower Public Awareness. So there's no point in going out and being bad to counter your Street Cred.
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Hehe, I nearly had a heart attack of shame, Chaemera...but notice my pipes in the original the +/- GM adjustments are outside of the absolute value call and in the excel example they are left out. (But I was also lucky as at the time of that post I hadn't reviewed the rules on Street Cred, Notoriety, and Public Awareness (SCNaPA) for a long time so all I was really doing was suggestion how to limit to a positive value, hehe)
I just spend the last hour or so working my my "Campaign Tracker Template" excel sheet and reviewing the rules on SCNaPA.
The way I have it set up is one worksheet labeled "Karma Awards" which has a row for each mission, then column groups for each player. The columns in each player's grouping are labeled "Mission Karma Awards", "Other Karma Awards," "Street Cred Awards," "Notoriety Awards," and "Public Awareness Awards" (all abbreviated of course). Each of these columns are summed up and the Mission Karma and Other Karma sums are added together for a final "Total Karma". The SCNaPA Awards are for individual "exceptional" actions taken by the individual players during those missions that act as long-term/permanent GM modifiers.
Then, on the "Players" worksheet, I have a one row entry for each player. Columns include Player name, Character name, gender, meta type, Essence, Magic, Resonance, etc. as well as Total Karma (the values of which are pulled from the totals on the "Karma Awards" worksheet. Then there is the Street Cred column which equals ( Total Karma/10 [cells set to 0 decimals so it automatically rounds normally] ) + the Street Cred value on the "Karma Awards" worksheet for that player. Notoriety simply equals the value of the Summed total Notoriety on the "Karma Awards" worksheet. The Public Awareness columns on the "Players" worksheet equals the ROUNDDOWN( [ (Street Cred + Notoriety)/3 ], 0) of the Street Cred & Notoriety values tallied on the "Players" worksheet + the sum of the Public Awareness "rewards" from the "Karma Awards" worksheet.
So the only negative numbers that could be used are those from the Public Awareness awards, which is where I'd use your IF...Then statement. However, I'd rather keep it as is (without the IF/THEN) and "manually" check to make sure I do not add a permanent/long term Public Awareness mod that would lower the final Public Awareness value below 0... because: since Public Awarenss "can never go below 0" (SR4A pg 265) if I did add a mod that lowered it below 0 and the IF/THEN statement was still in place, then it would take longer to raise Public Awareness up as the game goes on. In other words. If I'm using the IF/THEN and enter a mod that drops it below 0, the cell will display 0, but the actual value is still less than 0 and it will take the extra Karma, Street Cred, and Notoriety awards to raise it up to 0 and then go become positive.
For example, I add a Public Awareness mod that reduces the character's PA to -2. The excel sheet will display a 0 with the IF/THEN statement. But after the character gains 30 Karma their PA should increase to 1 (30 Karma /10 = 3 Street Cred, which is divided by 3 for PA for a result of 1)...but the excel sheet will add one to that -2, getting -1 and still display 0.
The IF/THEN Statement I'd rather use would be something like =IF(A<0,"Warning",A) where A = the PA formula + mods. (For those not familiar with excel and/or logic calls, that IF/THEN statement says IF A is less than zero display the word "Warning" but if A is equal to or greater than zero display the value of A). That way, I'll know right away that I've given a PA award value that is invalid.
I know there must be a more concise and clearer way to express that, but I'm not seeing how to write it yet.
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Fizzygoo, I tend to agree, a manual check is the best way for a GM to solve the problem. And, frankly, the only way to run into this problem is when we let a computer / spreadsheet do the math (though manual check can trump that problem).
I'm only even looking at it from the pure abstract of "how does it work, mathematically". It's a thought exercise, though having a good equation helps explain how it works to others. Or if you and I ever wanted to get hired to work on a Shadowrun MMO...
Nah, electrical engineers should stay out of game dev. So maybe if you want to get hired.
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I have an itch that says if I do enough thought exercises with the numbers the whole of the game will flow for me as one elegant roll of a die. I saw a doctor to get rid of it. But it keeps coming back. :)
Would love to work on a SRMMO...but I'd need a year off to work on my programming skills as right now they're pretty piss poor and I'd prefer to work on the "story" over the code. But having an electrical engineer on your team helps to keep you grounded :P
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Now, to be fair, most of the systems I work on are ungrounded. Ground is your enemy on a ship.
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Ground is your enemy on a ship.
...and under it :)
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Ground is your enemy on a ship.
...and under it :)
Now now, one of the boats I work on has ground under it, and damn am I glad of it... It'd sink in the water, and not come back up.
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My point was strictly that raising Notoriety does not inherently lower Public Awareness. So there's no point in going out and being bad to counter your Street Cred.
But if Public Awareness is determined by the totals of your Street Cred and Notoriety, and you can buy off Notoriety with Street Cred, lowering your SC+N total would lower your PA. If you burn 2 points of Street Cred for 1 point of Notoriety, you're lowering your PA by 1.
That's the weird part of the mechanic for me. Absent the GM +/- and karma being equal, the character with the lower Public Awareness will be the one who has earned more Notoriety.
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Yeah, the only effective deterrent to system cheese is a good GM who limits the ability to burn notoriety (my personal favorite is that the character has to spend time countermanding his existing reputation, or at least keep one heck of a low profile, for a while).
Then again, GM adjustment of PA is not an "option" or "house rule", it's one of the GM's responsibilities, clearly laid out in the book. Someone caps the mayor on live TV, well, that's a point of notoriety for killing an innocent (questionable) and at least 5 points of PA, independent of the notoriety and street cred questions. So the character can go ahead and use the point of notoriety to reduce his street cred (and thus, his PA goes down 1), but he's still got the 5 new points of PA to deal with...
Sure, as time passes and he keeps his nose clean, I'd start to drop his PA back down (media going on to new marvels, etc), but for at least a few weeks, if not months, he's going to have the best & brightest of the national police looking for him in connection with the assassination of Mayor What's-his-Face. And probably a sizable bounty, runner teams hired by corps who were bribing the Mayor and want to make an example of this "anarchist", etc.
All of this is part of the game, and cannot be ignored when looking at the Reputation system and the ability to burn street cred to reduce notoriety. The guy who keeps his nose clean, doesn't kill the civvies and generally doesn't make waves is going to see his PA modified down somewhat.
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That's the weird part of the mechanic for me. Absent the GM +/- and karma being equal, the character with the lower Public Awareness will be the one who has earned more Notoriety.
I look at it more like this: The character with the lower Public Awareness is the one who had to burn his good reputation, lie low, and keep his nose clean to make up for past indiscretions. The one who merely lets his Robin Hood reputation precede him will be more notable.