[ArkangelWinter]

My players have run from 2050 to 2061, intermittenly. I've given them random karma for the months and years between sessions, usually 1 or 2 a month. They've hit around 260 karma give or take, with about 5 Notoriety on average and a reputation for high body counts.

So Public Awareness is killing em'. What I'm looking for is more ideas on how to show them that awareness is bad.

1) I've already had contacts think they're more financially stable than they are, begging for handouts.

2) Employment is now rare, and only for the specific mission types they've become famous for

3) Groupies, interfering with everything

4) NPCs not believing they are who they claim. "You don't look like the AirFix from the Trid series!"

5) Law Enforcement watching everything. Thanks to contacts and investments, they can skip most air-travel security, but on the ground they're basically always under surveillance

6) the next run will feature teams looking to "off the legends"

[Zilfer]

Actually to tell you the truth, high notoriety can be both a boon and curse. Depending on how the DM wants to run it. Me and my group I think are more pink mohawkish, so me blowing up 3 city blocks with a prototype gundam like machine that I accidently “over charged” with a F12 Lightning bolt edged because I thought it was out of batteries…. Needless to say when the self-destruct activated I ran for the Puget sound quickly!
Anyways apparently someone had gotten footage of that…. So I became known by the moniker known around my table as “Black Demon” (I kinda had a ‘rinzler’ look about me at the time) and I was on the top of Seattle’s (or near it) for Seattle’s most wanted, and there were kids running around talking about how Black Demon was sticking it to the corps, and all that good stuff. I had a few run in’s where A) I used the kid’s to do a few things for me so they could help their “hero” black demon, on a “super-secret assignment”, or people not believing I was black demon. <.< that was probably a good thing. xD
I ended up having my character “Fund” a mission to “kill” black demon. My mage kept forcing someone to assume his identity and would show up to make it appear real with real casts. (He almost got killed by the party once) With a combination of Improved Invisibility, and Control Thoughts he was able to get a “confirmed kill” video of him being taken out. So most of the buzz has died down per our campaign, which is like… two to three DM’s since we are still newish to the setting.

I don’t know if that gives you ANY insight but hope it helps at least a little.

If your curious, I paid about 60,000 out of my pocket for a “confirmed kill” and then met with the team that wanted I hired to kill me, paid them in full and thanked them.

[ArkangelWinter]

I'm aware of the good sides as well; the party orc is an icon in Japanese Metahuman rights, the rigger is a loyal Federated-Boeing tester, and the others have their niche fan-bases or power centers. They're good at milking it, so I'm looking for any more obvious difficulties that care likely to come up.

[Mirikon]

I think you've hit on the biggest one already. There's the old saying that to be number one, you have to beat number one. Every hungry runner team looking to make a name for themselves ought to be picking fights with these guys. There are hackers who think because Fastjack is slow, they can dethrone him. They get beat down, naturally, but it is a hassle he has to deal with. Same deal here, just like gunslingers in the wild west.

Also, if they're that well known, and especially if they're known for property destruction, there ought to be several warrants and/or bounties out on them. Bounty hunters will be looking to cash in on that.

[Reaver]

Maybe it's time for some contacts to dry up? ("dude, there are 4 plain clothes cops, 6 drones and 2 dedicated hackers tailing you this very moment!! Stop calling me!!!")

Or maybe KE runs a sting operation on them?

At the very least, they might be finding out about the newest job from the matrix 5 minutes after they make the deal. ("Guys! The Potty Mouth Boys are taking of Renraku for a Mr. Grant, who works for NeoNet BTW, to get the latest Otomo drone plans! They are getting paid $25k and have till Friday to pull it off! What do you think their chances are?")

The problem with a high public awareness us that nothing they do us secret anymore. They ARE the Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitts of SR. Heck, 2 minutes after they buy a soykaf from a street vendor, they can expect ads to reflect the fact! ("Sweet Marie loves our cookies and creamer lattes! Get yours today!!") they can expect every facet of their lives to be found and published on the matrix and their names to be common knowledge to every wage slave in the city...

** ignore spelling & grammar issues: I'm in iPhone hell ATM

[Zilfer]

Ah to be famous.... so much to sacrifice. xD

[SunRunner]

Heh this is why my guys always watch their notoriety and public awareness and spend street cred to buy it down. Normally most of GMs abstract this process by basically saying your cashing in favors and star power to get records erased and such. Also typically spend some nuyen and do the occasional data wipe mission if  you managed to wrack up an extraordinary body count or property damage that can get traced back to me. But once you have let it get outta control its hard to put the genie back in the bottle. Only way I have ever done it is you have to set up a really elaborate confirmed kill scenario. Get a full grown clone with all scars, ware, tattos ect and gear and manage to get it killed with enough left for positive ID so everyone thinks your dead and then walk away and start over with a new ID and possibly a Genewipe and what not to cover up your past even from DNA tests and such.

High public awareness should be good and bad. They get chicks and free drinks easy, they get offered missions that fit their profile for alot of nuyen from people who want the best and are not as worried about it being tracked back to them. This can even come in the form of corporate sponsors. The down sides, punks pick fights with them to prove they are better, other up and coming runners may try and hijack their runs if they are too public, some contacts will bail on them even if they are loyalty 6 or such as hey you show up and I love ya bro but then no one else will do business with me for the next month cause now I got a permanent KE/LS stake out on my place cause I sold you some hot ware. They start having random people who think they are shadworunners get involved in all their runs. Think Conrad Verner from Mass Effect if you ever did those missions from ME 1 and then continued them into ME2 and ME3.

[JustADude]

Personally, I'd eventually offer them an in-universe choice... be a Company Man working for a group like SK-Prime or Firewatch, keep rolling the bones knowing that they're high-profile and it's almost impossible to hide, or get a Reprint mod and some plastic surgery, then retire on their savings.

I also use it as a scale of how likely someone that's not a PIC (Plot Involved Character) has heard of them during any interactions. Roll 2d6 and it the result is equal to or below their Public Awareness, then they're known to the person. Straights^* and people in areas you haven't operated in before roll +1d6, while those directly involved in the Shadow community roll -1d6. And yes, if you operate out of Seattle and you've just taken your first jaunt to LA, a local Straight would roll 4d6.

That means that, as you climb the totem pole and get more attention and you're more likely just get randomly spotted and tagged as you're walking around town. Disguises can limit the attention to the "working" identity as long as the player can keep the connection secret, and of course burning a disguise and taking a new identity qualifies for the whole Street Cred / Notoriety trade.

And yes, that also means, barring other modifiers, you don't really even start making a name for yourself until the 30 Karma mark and it's 60 karma before you get added to any "watch lists" unless you're stupid/unlucky enough to get caught.

^*Aka, wageslaves... people with no knowledge of the seedy side of the Sixth World.

[ArkangelWinter]

When Crash 2.0 happens in-game, I'm gonna auto-wipe Street Cred and Notoriety at normal rate tol one hits zero, to represent lost data and footage etc. As it is now, they've kinda become Evo and Federated Boeing assets, depending on who calls first; all their other ties are just plot hooks.

[SunRunner]

Sounds like they have started the slow slide into company man land. If Evo and Fedbow are the only people who call them for jobs any more then pretty soon they will be company men even if they dont sign contracts as it were. Then the fun can start when they take the blame for any high profile run that can be traced back to Evo or Fedbow since everyone knows they are said corps ACE runner team on call. And then some one else like Aztech or Sader decides to remove said corporate shadowrunner team.

[JustADude]

Or buy them out in SKs case.

I've always read Krupp as the type of company to try a "buyout" to turn "liabilities" like that into assets, if the "liability" is worth their time, before they drop the hammer. Sure the "recruiter" may have sniper, mage, and Heavy Weapon Troll support for if they say "no," but the offer will usually be genuine, and quite generous to boot.

After all, souls don't come cheap.

[Reaver]

Or buy them out in SKs case.

I've always read Krupp as the type of company to try a "buyout" to turn "liabilities" like that into assets, if the "liability" is worth their time, before they drop the hammer. Sure the "recruiter" may have sniper, mage, and Heavy Weapon Troll support for if they say "no," but the offer will usually be genuine, and quite generous to boot.

After all, souls don't come cheap.

Souls come cheap (there are 6+ billion of them after all!!)
But real talent is hard to find... And expensive to train!!

[JustADude]

Or buy them out in SKs case.

I've always read Krupp as the type of company to try a "buyout" to turn "liabilities" like that into assets, if the "liability" is worth their time, before they drop the hammer. Sure the "recruiter" may have sniper, mage, and Heavy Weapon Troll support for if they say "no," but the offer will usually be genuine, and quite generous to boot.

After all, souls don't come cheap.

Souls come cheap (there are 6+ billion of them after all!!)
But real talent is hard to find... And expensive to train!!

Nah, it's life that's cheap. It takes a lot more effort to buy someone's soul.

By that, I mean that you can get someone's ass in a seat banging out TPS reports for barely enough to scrape by. That's buying their life, but not their soul, because at the end of the day they don't give a (d)uck about you as anything other than a paycheck.

Buying someone's soul takes doing enough for them they honestly feel inclined to consider your best interests when making a decision, not just their own asses, and to get them to act proactively on your behalf.

Essentially, it's obedience vs genuine loyalty. For a lot of people, and companies, obedience is enough. The ones on top, though, focus on loyalty. They treat their employees excellently, which means they can get (and keep) top tier assets... often cherry picking their obedience-focused competition's top people to do it.

[GiraffeShaman]

The deniability aspect of shadowrunners is very important to the corps, much more so than any skills the runners posess. It's quite possible the runners could become a liability to the employers they work for the most. If they are responsible for mass damages to some major corps, and there is some kind of evidence, it's quite possible they could even get used against their employers in the Corporate Court, the only body the megas are beholden to. This would only happen in extreme cases, since all the corp know they are in the same game, but this sounds like it could be such a case.

They could also be the cause of and involved in a silent war between two megas, like the Insurance Wars.

They're likely to get employment offers from various syndicates and turning them down will lead to yet more heat. It becomes a thousand times harder to run from the law when the black market side of town wants you dead as well. After all, the smuggling networks of the syndicates are one of the major tools shadowrunners use to escape Johnny Law.

[The Big Peat]

In fairness, there's nothing to stop high-notoriety Runners being very, very hard to find. Look in Street legends - what's her face uses finding Kane, who's about as high-notoriety as it gets, as a way of showing off how good she is. That is up to the runners, how much work they put into their security, and how much money they're willing to put out to make it happen.

What I would say is that they're vulnerable to extortion/blackmail. I'd imagine by now everyone knows what they done and has enough evidence to prove a lot of it - and what they can't, they'll just fake. SR doesn't strike me as the sort of world where finding a bent or hardline judge/jury who'll cheerfully lock up guys for a backhander or because everyone knows would be terribly hard. So, when people do find them, it's fairly easy for them to say "Do this for me or spend fifty years playing dodge the sausage". Maybe Lone Star will agree to turn a blind eye in return for a kickback, or expect a bit of pro bono work to get rid of the cases making them look bad. Maybe the local Ares guy agrees that his guards won't have seen the highly visible criminals fleeing across his corporate land and will make difficulties for anyone following and, by the way, I'd like a look at the new Aztech missile prototypes. Or a lot of nuyen.