[Herr Brackhaus]

It seems to me that the reputation rules in SR5 are somewhat vague, and it might well be that they've been left so intentionally. Nonetheless, I figured I'd ask how others are treating these attributes, and propose some guidelines of my own devising that I feel adds to the game and lets players get a more direct feel for how much heat is on them vs how professional they are.

Essentially, I'd like to hear how you play these attributes at your table, and any thoughts you might have on my proposed mechanical effects for my game.

Earning reputation
First of all, I've been using the various Missions that have been released so far for guidelines on what kind of actions gets the players Street Cred, Notoriety, and Public Awareness, and this is my rough guideline. I'd appreciate your feedback on other qualifiers for these categories as well.

Street Cred: (accomplishments, noteworthy acts, "good"/compassionate and/or noble)
Pulling off a job in a professional manner; going above and beyond on a job (or just completing the job to the letter, depending on the GM); not killing too many innocents; not betraying your original employers (unless it turns out your employer is a genocidal maniac, in which case the opposite is true); performing a difficult task (keeping the principal alive, defeating the antagonist, defusing the bomb, saving the innocents, etc); getting caught in a lie to a Johnson;

Notoriety: (character flaws, untrustworthiness, "evil"/ruthless and/or coldblooded)
Killing civilians; refusing to finish a job after accepting it; betraying your Johnson (unless he's a genocidal maniac); performing acts of villany (sinking a cruiseship, burning down a childrens hospital, causing collateral damage and/or engaging in excessive violence, etc); failure to carry out a job (principle gets killed, etc); getting caught in a lie to a Johnson;

Public Awareness: (media exposure)
Making a scene/causing a disturbance in public; getting caught on video surveillance while performing illegal activities; getting arrested;


Effects
I'm sure there are many more specific ways runners can earn reputation, but I tried to keep it somewhat generalized. On to what this means; the book is very limited in terms of actual mechanics where reputation is concerned, so I figured I'd take a stab at cooking up some of my own. I'd also like to hear how you use these categories in your game.

EDIT:
Changes based on feedback received are in italics.

Street Cred:
Book: Every 10 Karma earned gets you +1 Street Cred. Street Cred adds a positive modifier to one's Social Limit when reputation is a known factor. Street Cred may be used to reduce Notoriety in a 2:1 ratio.

Houserule proposal 1: Every 5 2 Street Cred (instead of every 1) adds a +1 modifier to Social Limit and Social skills Dice Pools when reputation is a known factor.
Reasoning: this prevents 100+ Karma characters from having ridiculous limit increases, but also adds a tangible "wow" factor to such a characters dice pool

Houserule proposal 2: Street Cred may be burned (like Edge) in social situations to buy favours; really need those floor plans, access to a semiballistic flight to Tokyo, or a get-out-of-jail card, but failed your negotiation roll, don't have the nuyen, or your contacts won't help? Take a hit to your street cred and anything might be possible. Amount of Street Cred burned must be equal to the person's/Contact's Connection rating; your rep is going to take a heck of a hit to get a favour out of a corporate CEO, and the community will think less of you for working with the man...
Reasoning: sometimes there's a situation where no matter how skilled you are you're going to be facing an insurmountable obstacle, and all of your resources can't help. More options are good, to my mind, and sacrificing some credibility for something that they can't otherwise get a hold of seems like a fair trade.

Notoriety:
Book: No real mechanical effect; "contacts and others become less willing to help them"

Houserule proposal 3: Notoriety factors into threat response, with Public Awareness as a threshold for recognition (see houserule 3.a below); if recognized and Notoriety exceeds 5, Security will always try back off and wait for HTR. If it exceeds 10, HTR always shoots to kill instead of using non-lethal. If it ever exceeds 20, they bring in everything they've got and will level a city block just to get you (OK, maybe not quite that bad, but this is when mil-spec becomes the norm rather than the exception).
Reasoning: I really think the way security responds to you should be influenced by your reputation; if you're known to go around chopping off the heads of everyone you defeat in combat, chances are the opposition will shoot first and ask questions later.

Houserule proposal 4: Every point of  Notoriety adds a -1 Dice Pool modifier to Social skills when reputation is a known factor.
Reasoning: for the kind of game I'm interested in playing it makes sense that negotiations become more difficult the more you're known for being prone to failure, stubborn, and untrustworthy.
NOTE: This one might be quite unbalancing if a team thrives on Notoriety, but this should be offset by the fact that Street Cred is easier to earn if a team works towards keeping their Street Cred high and their Notoriety low, which is in part at least the objective behind these houserules.

Public Awareness:
Book: Table with how well-known a character is based on their Public Awareness

I've got very few thoughts on how this part of a character's reputation should affect the game. The table in the book doesn't scale very well to my mind, as at only 10 Public Awareness everyone would essentially know who you are, which seems like a pretty significant detriment to a runner's career. I'd appreciate some input here.

Houserule proposal 3.a: Public Awareness is used as an inverse threshold for how easily opposing forces will recognize you for houserule proposal 3. When contact is made between runners and opposition forces, opposition makes a Memory test (Logic + Willpower), with the below thresholds used to determine if the opposition knows the reputation of the runners
Public Awareness:
0-3: Threshold 4
4-6: Threshold 3
7-9: Threshold 2
10+: Threshold 1

General Reputation:
Houserule proposal 5: Groups average Reputation is used in determining total payment, with a 1% to 5% markup on job payment per total reputation.
In a mirrorshade game, the calculation could be Street Cred - (Notoriety + Public Awareness), because Johnsons want professionals carrying out their jobs
In a  pink mohawk game, perhaps the calculation is (Street Cred + Public Awareness) - Notoriety, because in these cases Johnsons want people who actively seek out attention and thrive on it
In a heartless bastards kind of game, maybe (Street Cred + Notoriety) - Public Awareness is more appropriate, because Johnsons want runners who not only aren't afraid of wetwork but actively seek it out

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts; if you don't play with any specific mechanical effects, how does Reputation influence your game (if at all)?

[incrdbil]

I'm thinking Street Cred is fairly meaningless as it is. Limit increases are not that important to characters that specialize in the Charisma skills, they'll have a high limit anyway. Characters with the lower Charisma scores need more dice, not a limit increase.

I'd go with your rule, but  the requirement for 5 street cred to get a modifier is a bit much. a 2 dice modifier to a 100 karma character isn't a wow factor, its pretty meaningless. I'd make it so every 2 street crred give the limit and die change. Maybe make it even more specific, street cred with odd numbers (1, 3, 5) add the limit increase, the even street cred numbers add the dice increase.

A 5 dice/limit increase seems more appropriate for a 100 karma character,

[Namikaze]

Earning reputation
First of all, I've been using the various Missions that have been released so far for guidelines on what kind of actions gets the players Street Cred, Notoriety, and Public Awareness, and this is my rough guideline. I'd appreciate your feedback on other qualifiers for these categories as well.

Street Cred: (accomplishments, noteworthy acts, "good"/compassionate and/or noble)
Pulling off a job in a professional manner; going above and beyond on a job (or just completing the job to the letter, depending on the GM); not killing too many innocents; not betraying your original employers (unless it turns out your employer is a genocidal maniac, in which case the opposite is true); performing a difficult task (keeping the principal alive, defeating the antagonist, defusing the bomb, saving the innocents, etc); getting caught in a lie to a Johnson;

Notoriety: (character flaws, untrustworthiness, "evil"/ruthless and/or coldblooded)
Killing civilians; refusing to finish a job after accepting it; betraying your Johnson (unless he's a genocidal maniac); performing acts of villany (sinking a cruiseship, burning down a childrens hospital, causing collateral damage and/or engaging in excessive violence, etc); failure to carry out a job (principle gets killed, etc); getting caught in a lie to a Johnson;

Public Awareness: (media exposure)
Making a scene/causing a disturbance in public; getting caught on video surveillance while performing illegal activities; getting arrested;

This is exactly how I've been doing it too.  I actually need to be keeping up with it more.

Houserule proposal 1: Every 5 Street Cred (instead of every 1) adds a +1 modifier to Social Limit and Social skills Dice Pools when reputation is a known factor.
Reasoning: this prevents 100+ Karma characters from having ridiculous limit increases, but also adds a tangible "wow" factor to such a characters dice pool

This would be a good house rule for those games that have high Karma characters.  My games tend toward the low-Karma characters though, so the default rule works better at my table.

Houserule proposal 2: Street Cred may be burned (like Edge) in social situations to buy favours; really need those floor plans, access to a semiballistic flight to Tokyo, or a get-out-of-jail card, but failed your negotiation roll, don't have the nuyen, or your contacts won't help? Take a hit to your street cred and anything might be possible. Amount of Street Cred burned must be equal to the person's/Contact's Connection rating; your rep is going to take a heck of a hit to get a favour out of a corporate CEO, and the community will think less of you for working with the man...
Reasoning: sometimes there's a situation where no matter how skilled you are you're going to be facing an insurmountable obstacle, and all of your resources can't help. More options are good, to my mind, and sacrificing some credibility for something that they can't otherwise get a hold of seems like a fair trade.

I like this house rule a lot.  In my games, I have an additional rating for Contacts: Favors.  This would synergize really well with my system.  Honestly, I can't believe I hadn't thought of it and I'm glad that you shared this with us. 

An additional suggested house rule might be to allow Street Cred to act as a negative dice pool modifier for street folks and shadow people to "recall" your character.  What it would represent is a sense of loyalty to the runner, even if the person in question has never met the person.  I'm not a huge fan of my suggested house rule, I feel like it would need a lot of tweaking to really work.

Houserule proposal 3: Notoriety factors into threat response; if Notoriety exceeds 5, Security will always try back off and wait for HTR. If it exceeds 10, HTR always shoots to kill instead of using non-lethal. If it ever exceeds 20, they bring in everything they've got and will level a city block just to get you (OK, maybe not quite that bad, but this is when mil-spec becomes the norm rather than the exception).
Reasoning: I really think the way security responds to you should be influenced by your reputation; if you're known to go around chopping off the heads of everyone you defeat in combat, chances are the opposition will shoot first and ask questions later.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

Houserule proposal 4: Every point of  Notoriety adds a -1 Dice Pool modifier to Social skills when reputation is a known factor.
Reasoning: for the kind of game I'm interested in playing it makes sense that negotiations become more difficult the more you're known for being prone to failure, stubborn, and untrustworthy.
NOTE: This one might be quite unbalancing if a team thrives on Notoriety, but this should be offset by the fact that Street Cred is easier to earn if a team works towards keeping their Street Cred high and their Notoriety low, which is in part at least the objective behind these houserules.

I think any team that "thrives on Notoriety" is probably asking for trouble in the shadows.  This rule does a good job of explaining why having high Notoriety is a bad thing.  The rule I might add would be that Notoriety can be used as a positive dice pool modifier for corporate or security folks to recall your character.  Or perhaps as a bonus to intimidation tests by the character.  Or both.

General Reputation:
Houserule proposal 5: Groups average Reputation is used in determining total payment, with a 1% to 5%) markup on job payment per total reputation.
In a mirrorshade game, the calculation could be Street Cred - (Notoriety + Public Awareness), because Johnsons want professionals carrying out their jobs
In a  pink mohawk game, perhaps the calculation is (Street Cred + Public Awareness) - Notoriety, because in these cases Johnsons want people who actively seek out attention and thrive on it
In a heartless bastards kind of game, maybe (Street Cred + Notoriety) - Public Awareness is more appropriate, because Johnsons want runners who not only aren't afraid of wetwork but actively seek it out

Hmm, this seems a little too much work for my tastes.  It would be awesome for the right table though.  I think Public Awareness could factor into how effectively a normal person would recognize the character.  As characters develop Public Awareness, people who aren't affiliated with the shadows start to get a positive dice pool modifier equal to the Public Awareness in order to remember and recall the runners.

[Herr Brackhaus]

I'd go with your rule, but  the requirement for 5 street cred to get a modifier is a bit much. a 2 dice modifier to a 100 karma character isn't a wow factor, its pretty meaningless. I'd make it so every 2 street crred give the limit and die change. Maybe make it even more specific, street cred with odd numbers (1, 3, 5) add the limit increase, the even street cred numbers add the dice increase.

A 5 dice/limit increase seems more appropriate for a 100 karma character,

The reasoning for my higher ratio is because Street Cred is the only reputation factor that can be gained in two ways; the usual ways earned through actions, and the Karma / 10 route. In other words, a higher ratio would also mean plenty of opportunities to earn Street Cred.

Example: a team stands a reasonable chance of earning the specified 5 Street cred from the first three Season 5 Missions alone. In the same missions, the karma rewards are at a maximum of 21 Karma. So, three sessions in a team could be a 7 Street Cred. After three sessions, I feel a maximum of +1 dice pool and +1 Limit is appropriate. Also note that those same missions have a maximum Notoriety and Public Awareness gain of 4 and 3, respectively.

Houserule proposal 1: Every 5 Street Cred (instead of every 1) adds a +1 modifier to Social Limit and Social skills Dice Pools when reputation is a known factor.
Reasoning: this prevents 100+ Karma characters from having ridiculous limit increases, but also adds a tangible "wow" factor to such a characters dice pool

This would be a good house rule for those games that have high Karma characters.  My games tend toward the low-Karma characters though, so the default rule works better at my table.

See my comments above; Street Cred is to my mind something that can be easily doled out if there's an incentive for it from a GM perspective.

Houserule proposal 2: Street Cred may be burned (like Edge) in social situations to buy favours; really need those floor plans, access to a semiballistic flight to Tokyo, or a get-out-of-jail card, but failed your negotiation roll, don't have the nuyen, or your contacts won't help? Take a hit to your street cred and anything might be possible. Amount of Street Cred burned must be equal to the person's/Contact's Connection rating; your rep is going to take a heck of a hit to get a favour out of a corporate CEO, and the community will think less of you for working with the man...
Reasoning: sometimes there's a situation where no matter how skilled you are you're going to be facing an insurmountable obstacle, and all of your resources can't help. More options are good, to my mind, and sacrificing some credibility for something that they can't otherwise get a hold of seems like a fair trade.

I like this house rule a lot.  In my games, I have an additional rating for Contacts: Favors.  This would synergize really well with my system.  Honestly, I can't believe I hadn't thought of it and I'm glad that you shared this with us. 

An additional suggested house rule might be to allow Street Cred to act as a negative dice pool modifier for street folks and shadow people to "recall" your character.  What it would represent is a sense of loyalty to the runner, even if the person in question has never met the person.  I'm not a huge fan of my suggested house rule, I feel like it would need a lot of tweaking to really work.

Sure thing. As for your suggestion, I think it has merit; the more street cred a runner has, the more "in" he is with the crowd. I think I would lump this in with a more general rule, because I think Notoriety and Public Awareness should play in too. I also think this might be something I would rarely roll for, but if it did come up I'd feel justified for taking things like this into consideration.

Houserule proposal 4: Every point of  Notoriety adds a -1 Dice Pool modifier to Social skills when reputation is a known factor.
Reasoning: for the kind of game I'm interested in playing it makes sense that negotiations become more difficult the more you're known for being prone to failure, stubborn, and untrustworthy.
NOTE: This one might be quite unbalancing if a team thrives on Notoriety, but this should be offset by the fact that Street Cred is easier to earn if a team works towards keeping their Street Cred high and their Notoriety low, which is in part at least the objective behind these houserules.

I think any team that "thrives on Notoriety" is probably asking for trouble in the shadows.  This rule does a good job of explaining why having high Notoriety is a bad thing.  The rule I might add would be that Notoriety can be used as a positive dice pool modifier for corporate or security folks to recall your character.  Or perhaps as a bonus to intimidation tests by the character.  Or both.

Agreed; lumping Street Cred and Notoriety together for the purposes of modifying Loyalty seems like a good approach here. If a team has high Street Cred and low Notoriety, their colleagues would be less likely to rat them out. Switch those two and the community as a whole might not want anything to do with them and would rat them out for a penny.

General Reputation:
Houserule proposal 5: Groups average Reputation is used in determining total payment, with a 1% to 5%) markup on job payment per total reputation.
In a mirrorshade game, the calculation could be Street Cred - (Notoriety + Public Awareness), because Johnsons want professionals carrying out their jobs
In a  pink mohawk game, perhaps the calculation is (Street Cred + Public Awareness) - Notoriety, because in these cases Johnsons want people who actively seek out attention and thrive on it
In a heartless bastards kind of game, maybe (Street Cred + Notoriety) - Public Awareness is more appropriate, because Johnsons want runners who not only aren't afraid of wetwork but actively seek it out

Hmm, this seems a little too much work for my tastes.  It would be awesome for the right table though.  I think Public Awareness could factor into how effectively a normal person would recognize the character.  As characters develop Public Awareness, people who aren't affiliated with the shadows start to get a positive dice pool modifier equal to the Public Awareness in order to remember and recall the runners.

Hehehe, makes sense. I think the 5% per positive street cred would be good for my game; essentially, it'd be a cash incentive for teams pulling off a job in the way the Johnson prefers.

I like the Public Awareness suggestion; gain enough Public Awareness and suddenly even the character with the Blandness starts looking more familiar (doesn't mean he's the one whodunnit, just that the public thinks he looks like the guy whodunnit).

Thanks!

EDIT:
With the various discussions going on about corporate SINs and fake SINs recently, I wonder if Public Awareness wouldn't be a good indicator of when a SIN might be close to being compromised. This would require tracking which SIN is used near/during criminal activities, but would mean players were further incentivized to keep their illicit activities in the Shadows.

Amass enough Public Awareness, and you might want to start thinking about changing your fake SIN. This way, the mechanics of the game would match the fluff descriptions of runners going through fake SINs like old socks, and it would make a fake SIN offered as part of a job look like a real gift vs just fluff.

Maybe something like fake SIN rating * 2 in Public Awareness, and the fake is burned. A Rating 1 SIN could stand up to the occasional public display, whereas a Rating 6 fake SIN will stand up to people idolizing you, essentially buying you a whole new life.

There's also the issue of reducing Public Awareness; I'd say that I think it's fair that any Notoriety bought off would also similarly reduce Public Awareness. This makes spending street cred into a very useful commodity, but at a cost, obviously.

[Namikaze]

Maybe something like fake SIN rating * 2 in Public Awareness, and the fake is burned. A Rating 1 SIN could stand up to the occasional public display, whereas a Rating 6 fake SIN will stand up to people idolizing you, essentially buying you a whole new life.

There's also the issue of reducing Public Awareness; I'd say that I think it's fair that any Notoriety bought off would also similarly reduce Public Awareness. This makes spending street cred into a very useful commodity, but at a cost, obviously.

Since there's no way outside of GM fiat to lower Public Awareness, I think that adopting a rule like what you described will be tricky.  I like the idea, but it might need some guidelines on how Public Awareness is acquired and reduced.  Which isn't such a bad thing, it's just more work to be done to tweaking your Public Awareness section.

[ZeConster]

• Houserule 1 seems far too slow.
• Houserule 3 doesn't mesh well with the fact that Notoriety can differ between runners in the same team - plus you're not supposed to get recognized when fighting: otherwise, it's far too easy for your targets to seek revenge on you (even if they don't know where you live, they can just have someone pretend to offer you a job, then spring their trap). It's talking to the Johnson, hitting up contacts for information, and encountering locals while doing legwork, where Notoriety is supposed to kick in.
• Houserule 4 is basically what 4th Edition had, only worse (in 4th you got [Street Cred - Notoriety, minimum 0, maximum Charisma] bonus on Social Skill Tests, but [Street Cred + Notoriety, no Charisma limit] bonus when intimidating. This results in my Charisma 3, Intimidation 1 character getting 14 dice when using Intimidation when using her very notorious legal SIN on semi-legit jobs. (She has adept powers that allow her to change her look when on 'proper' shadowruns.)
  Anyway, this proposal would make Notoriety strictly worse than in 4th, especially due to the disconnect from Street Cred and if houserule 1 is used to weaken Street Cred.
• Public Awareness: getting to 10 Public Awareness shouldn't be something that happens easily, as 5th doesn't have the automatic bump based on Street Cred and Notoriety. If you look at the Missions, you need to really go out of your way to gain Public Awareness, even moreso than Notoriety.
• Houserule 5 seems like a very bad idea, since you're basically blackmailing your players into playing nice, and all but banning the Negative Qualities that give you starting Notoriety. "You get paid less" is way more punitive than "it gets harder to get people to do stuff for you".
  Plus if you do gain Notoriety, this houserule discourages you from burning it, since you lose 2 Street Cred in order to lose 1 Notoriety, which means that in all three proposed systems, you lose Reputation if you burn Notoriety.
• Connecting your Public Awareness to the ratings of your fake SINs is a terrible, terrible idea, especially since it's your runner identity that has Public Awareness, not the fake passport you flash at the cops so they don't arrest you.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I have Street Cred's 'automatic earning' being somewhat different than standard - at least at the higher echelons, which winds up changing how it can get used.

• For up to 100 karma, 1 SC earned per 10 karma.
• For up to 250 karma, 1 SC per 15 karma.
• For up to 500 karma, 1 SC per 20 karma.
• Above 500 karma, 1 SC per 25 karma.

I like the Cred-for-Favor idea; I'll probably use that (or something similar) in my game.

I honestly like HR3, with the caveat that they need to recognize you first; IMO, though ZeConster has a point about being recognized, sometimes it's as easy as hearing the runners call out each other's shadow identity.

In regards to lowering Notoriety and Public Awareness, I play that if the character spends Street Cred (at a 2:1 ratio) within a set number of runs or time, they can individually buy off Notoriety and PA - or increase them at any time at a 1:1 ratio.  This represents asking people to either go to the effort of talking to others, downplaying the bad part of the run, whether it wasn't your fault, someone got in the way, it's rare that it happens, whatever, or else talking UP the idea that you're a stone-cold badass.  The lowest they can be, of course, would be your starting values - but then, I allow for negative starting values for Notoriety and PA.

And I have your combined Street Cred, Notoriety, and Public Awareness impacting your standard payment schedule by a certain percentage - 5%, I think, but I'd have to go back in and dissect it to make sure. 

[Herr Brackhaus]

The Wyrm Ouroboros
Thank you for your comments, much appreciated.

I'm assuming your game must have been going on for quite some time with rules defined for the 500+ Karma level; are you finding it challenging to GM/play at this level, what with what must be a relatively powerful group of player characters?

With the additional uses for Street Cred I think my original plan to limit progression might have been a little too harsh; allowing the normal earning of 1 Street Cred per 10 Karma might be a good approach if Street Cred can be used to buy favours, reduce Public Awareness, and increase payments for jobs in addition to the book rule about reducing Notoriety.

Good call on Houserule 3; I think I might allow something like a memory test on behalf of the opposition with an inverse threshold based on the Public Awareness table (this ties Public Awareness into Notoriety in a neat way to my mind);
0-3: Logic + Willpower (4)
4-6: Logic + Willpower (3)
7-9: Logic + Willpower (2)
10+: Logic + Willpower (1)

In essence, your average PR2 corpsec would be highly unlikely to know about a clandestine team of runners (5 dice on a Threshold 4 test, 8 dice for a PR2 lieutenant), while those same guards would be almost guaranteed to know what kind of team they're dealing with if the team's Public Awareness is 10 or more (single hit needed).

Even your Elite Corpsec and Special Forces operatives would only have a total of 10 dice to recognize any given runner, and I'd say chances are if anyone would know about a team of runners these guys are definitely the ones that fit the bill. I'll add this one to the list of porposed houserules.


Can you clarify your rule on Notoriety and Public Awareness, please? I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean.

Say my runner team (I'm using team, but individual would work as well) had a Street Cred score of 10, a Notoriety of 4, and a Public Awareness of 4. If they spent 4 Street Cred over during a week of downtime, how would they be able to reduce Notoriety and/or Public Awareness by your rule?

Am I right in thinking that they could reduce (or increase) both Notoriety and Public Awareness by 2 points, for a total of Street Cred 6, Notoriety 2 (or 6), and Public Awareness 2 (or 6)? If so, I quite like this approach.


On your standard payment, how do you calculate the total reputation? Is Street Cred a positive value, with Notoriety and Public Awareness reducing the total? Does it vary from Johnson to Johnson (some want pro's, others want stone cold killers)?

[Namikaze]

I think getting this deeply into options that are heavily dependent upon team and Mr. Johnson configuration is probably the reason that the rules are as vague as they are.

[Whiskeyjack]

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that mid-run you get into a firefight and somehow the opposition knows who you are sufficient to hold position and call in HRTs. Now if the McGuffin or paydata or extraction target is so valuable to justify HRT being on standby sure. But the notion that Notoriety would somehow be broadcast to the corpsec you're running against without being tipped off...that's too much. And what would the IC basis of this test be? If you're a high Notoriety elf, how would they know to watch out for you specifically unless you have a really standard MO (and that would probably rate Distinctive Style at least)...

[Herr Brackhaus]

Namikaze
Oh absolutely, these are house rules I plan on using for myself only. I wanted to share my thoughts to get feedback, not to imply that this is something for everyone.

Whiskeyjack
Understandable. Note that opposition response would be based on having both a recognizable team (Public Awareness) that's know for their brutality (high Notoriety).

Under my proposed rules security teams would first have to succeed in a Memory Test as per the tables before they'd know about your Notoriety, and only if Notoriety was high enough would they call in HTR.

Also note that the team would know exactly how notorious their rep is, and how public their reputation is. It's not like this would be any kind of surprise, and the team would do well to research HTR response times before attempting to breach anything (i.e. is HTR on premises, or are they 15 minutes away, or are they even available at all).

These rules are meant to add meaning to Reputation in-game through a mechanical system that the players can work with. It's not at all intended to be a "screw you function for me as a GM. I just like the idea of actions having measurable consequences, and this is my attempt at enforcing that.

If the player characters shoot up a school on live television, I think it's only fair that the players have the option of having their characters spend some time laying low and calling in a few favors (i.e. spending some Street Cred) to make sure that not every goon in the city remembers their face. If they choose not to do so, then they should be prepared to deal with the consequences.

[Namikaze]

I think it makes perfect sense for Notoriety and Public Awareness to influence the security team's decision to hole up or assault.  If you see a criminal that you can recognize, and has a reputation for beheading people for funsies - you're not going to even try to fight that guy.  You're going to say, "oh shit!  That's Bob the Beheader!  Hell no I'm not going out there - bring in the big guns!"

I definitely appreciate the efforts being made here by Herr Brackhaus - he's taking an aspect of the game that is vague and underutilized (at least in my experience) and trying to find a way to add value to this aspect of the game.  And really, for a mirrorshades game these numbers are critical.  Street Cred and Notoriety should at the least have a major impact on the character's contacts.  Public Awareness can result in jobs drying up altogether - most Mr. Johnsons don't want to bring someone in that will be recognized on the 6 o'clock news.  Unfortunately, I think a lot of us GMs forget that these numbers are there and the players forget that their actions can have consequences.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Well, let me see.  The multiplier I use is equal to:

                                 1 + [ ( Karma-Earned Street Cred + Bonus Street Cred - Notoriety - Public Awareness ) / 10 ]

This gets revised after each and every run, and is NOT affected by burning street cred, getting rid of notoriety and/or public awareness, and the like; you can fake the rubes all you like, but the People Who Matter quietly pass around the real facts, which impacts your bottom line.  Note that in this case, Notoriety is a penalty; if your campaign is one which rewards a certain amount of cruel, callous, antisocial behavior - and please note, a 'stone-cold killer' can be perfectly professional - then Notoriety may actually gain you a bonus, at least up to a certain level.

In regards to difficulty, no - I find the lower the level, the more difficult it really is to run; you run a higher risk of accidental player-killing.  More evolved characters have more options available to them - and when you get into the higher end of skills, it takes a lot of karma to eke out that next die.  There's a lot of broadening of skill bases, overlap and being able to back your teammates up, but when it takes 24 karma to boost a skill - or 45 to push an attribute up - then you have long bouts of only incremental gains to your top things.

As for the recognition factor, I'm with Namikaze.  If the opposition get a chance, in whatever way, to recognize you, and your reputation is such to make them take a step back, they'll take that step.  I don't recall off the top of my head if there's a skill for recognition; certainly a knowledge skill in 'Local Shadowrunners' should do it, as might 'Criminal Society' or something similar.  A memory check might do it, but I think I'd give a 2-4 die penalty.

And yes, you are correct in regards to my reduction rules.  To be honest, it might be appropriate for Public Awareness to cost a bit more - there are more people to lean on, things to have disappeared, that sort of thing ...

[Herr Brackhaus]

Namikaze
Thanks! I appreciate the kind words, and the feedback.

The Wyrm Ouroboros
Thank you for sharing; very interesting indeed.

The notion of the people in the know considering your total reputation is one I'm not sure I would personally use, simply because I like the idea of the players being able to influence their reputation, but I can definitely see your reasoning behind the rule. It's something to think on, for sure.

Thanks again.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

It's not entirely a matter of a Johnson being able to say "I know the real truth, and all of it;" it's more along the lines of "I know / have been told of your recent exploits."  Add to that the idea that you aren't ever going to suddenly see an increase of 80%; instead, it's going to vary by ten or twenty percent from job to job.

Going by the equation, though, you WANT it to work the way it does - simply because of the 2:1 reduction ratio.  If you get a Notoriety hit (-1), but spend two Street Cred (+2) to balance it out (0), you're actually down by one - 0 instead of +1.  The Johnson Network (so to speak) takes into account the fact that you do good work (Street Cred 2) but may have been caught in a bad situation (Notoriety 1), and is willing to pay you what you're worth (+1) instead of what the street is saying because you spread oil on troubled waters (0).

Granted, if you keep screwing up, or keep getting caught in bad situations, your Notoriety is going to go beyond your Street Cred's capacity - even including any bonuses you may be getting - to balance out, and then you're looking at getting less than the going rate.  If the GM is paying attention, though, he might start making your runs more 'rat bastard' ones that have Notoriety as a likely result - and the turning down of which might actually boost your street cred, even if your character DOES have to eat ramen for a few weeks while you look for more illegal-yet-moral work.