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.
