THE REP COUNTER

Throughout my countless years of gamemastering, I've found out that players seem to prefer to bust through rather than sneak through (my players anyway). The reasoning behind this is quite simple: it is much easier and requires much less thinking to make a very strong but dumb character that just shoots anything that disagrees with him or is in his way (or even some people who don't fit in any of those two criteria) than a sneaky and intelligent chracter. Following the path of less resistance, players just make kick-ass killing human war machines and suppose that since that's the easiest way to make a strong character, then employers will like them and pay them tons of money to mkae their runs.

Wrong. Why? Quite simply, because it's eaiser to do so. Since it's easy to be powerful in Shadowrun, lots of people are powerful. The demand not being that high for slaughter fest runs, the Johnsons have leverage in determining the pay: if they don't hire you, they'll just have to ask the next in the list. What do the corps really want? Sneaky and smart runners, who can enter a corp, get whatever they want and come out unnoticed. These runners are rare, and as such can ask for much higher pay checks. It's a simple matter of supply and demand. Of course, these runners will often get into much more interesting runs, involving more complex tasks all around the UCAS or even the world. They are rare everywhere after all, on the opposite of slaughter-fest war machines...

Since the runs are more varied, with a more complex plot and overall more interesting, gms and players alike should want to have sneaky and intelligent runners in their game. Wrong again. GMs want it, but players often don't really want them. They are harder to play after all: if you run you have to think and not only do things like put 3 Kg C-4 on the front of the corp to open it, then shoot all the guards that inevitably will show up, and you can't just make pudding out of everybody who insults you. This problem is much more problematic since GMs often don't take into consideration these unprofessionnal behaviour in subsequent runs -- the advantage of being sneaky (higher pays and better reputation, remember) is therefor completely lost.

This brings me to the main subject of this text (Felt like a "Now Playing", didn't it?): the rep counter. The rep counter is an homerule I invented which I use in my new game. You don't really have, as a gm, to ask your players if they want you to use that rule, since it's only an indicator of how well they are doing professionally (of course, you might want to tell them you are using it, it might make them become more professionnal...). This system is quite simple:

Each time the players act in a non professionnal way, remove points. If they act in a professional and intelligent way, give them points.

Non professionnal behaviour include, but is not limited to, uneeded killing, useless destruction of somebody else's stuff, insulting Mr Johnson, failing a run, etc. Professional behaviour includes, but is still not restricted to, making runs without getting filmed or identified, succeeding in runs (always give a rep bonus when your players succeed in a mission, after all that's the goal of their employment), not getting stuck in double crosses (not that that kind of stuff ever happens in Shadowrun...), etc.

The more obvious and important actions are, the most rep points are added or substracted from the total (I start at 0, a negative rep means a bad reputation, over 0 is a good reputation). As such, a relatively minor problem that was filmed and shown at the news (the runners were filmed unmasked while they attacked Lone Star agents getting out of the corp) can drop the reputation more than a major problem that few hear about (the runners make a popular runner's bar explode by personnal revenge (because of a small insult) but does so unnoticed). As such, runners should talk about their big successes (so people know about them and that they're good), but of course not in too deep details, so they don't reveal what the run was about and who employed them (that would definitely lower their reputation, no corps want their black ops go public). The value of each comportment can change from place to place too. For example, a group of runners who aren't really subtle in their runs against corps will get a lower drop in their rep than the same runners running against corps in Boston. Finally, the higher or lower the rep is, the harder it is to move further in that direction (nobody expect much of truly awful runners, and you have to be incredible to improve an exceptionnal reputation).

After each play session or run, you can tell your players what their rep is, so they may act accordingly (ask higher pays or try to improve rep wise). Using this tool, your games should reflect reality a little bit better and should give an incentive to your players to play well (or at least better...).