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Posted by: neon_samurai Jun 6 2006, 01:41 AM

So the way I understand, your lifestyle at creation dictates starting Nuyen...

So what if my character has purchased the following

High (Primary lifestyle)
Medium (Nice Safe house)
Low (Cheap Safe House)

???

Posted by: Nasrudith Jun 6 2006, 01:48 AM

The rules technically don't allow for more then one lifestyle.
If your GM allows it then it's probably going to be the highest one.

Posted by: Lagomorph Jun 6 2006, 01:48 AM

I'd probably just take the primary

Posted by: Omer Joel Jun 6 2006, 07:51 AM

Posted by: Nidhogg Jun 6 2006, 08:11 AM

I'm fairly certain that the last time this was discussed, the conclusion was reached that while the rules seem to dissallow multiple lifestyles, that particular rule is stupid and should be ignored.

Posted by: Oracle Jun 6 2006, 08:37 AM

We are at Dumpshock.com. Discussions are never followed by conclusions.

Posted by: hobgoblin Jun 6 2006, 09:02 AM

try "majority" concensus then.

Posted by: Nidhogg Jun 6 2006, 09:04 AM

No, the conclusion came before the disscussion. The point of the coversation was purely a way for all involved to gratify thier egos. Kind of the message board equivelant of a circle jerk.

Posted by: DireRadiant Jun 6 2006, 12:39 PM

Safehouses are listed as a 500 nuyen a "Common Cost" in one of the sidebar tables in the book. P 304.

Also on P 84 "Characters can only purchase one lifestyle at a time, though
they may pre-purchase it for months in advance"

Thus the old way of buying extra lifestyles to represent safehouses is subject to debate.

Of course it's your game, so feel free to play as you will.

Posted by: Edward Jun 6 2006, 12:56 PM

A agree. Everybody thought that rule was stupid the moment they herd about it.

There was however one opinion that could make the rule work.

Lifestyle represents all the properties your own and use. Thus you can buy a high lifestyle and describe it as a corner apartment in the good part of town. A warehouse in an A rated commercial aria where you store and maintain your drones and 2 coffin hotel rooms where you store emergency equipment.

This of cause is just as bloody annoying

Edward

Posted by: neon_samurai Jun 6 2006, 01:28 PM

Cool, thanks, didn't see the Safehouse entry.

Posted by: Edward Jun 6 2006, 01:48 PM

Their are several problems with eth 500 nuyen a day safhouse.

First it would be cheaper to rent an additional residence in the low lifestyle range if your going to use it for more than 2 days a month (on average).

Next is emergency storage. If you set up your own safe house you can store a few personal belongings there, clothes, your favorite food, a gun you set up in your personal fashion

Speed of availability. When you get in the shit how long will it take to call a contact and arrange a safe house. If your contact is available at that time. You could be waiting 12hours before you have a temporary dos. If you have one permanently on standby it is available to you immediately.

Finally we come to the biggest problem. Trust. When you need a safe house you are usually trying to hide. Your just coming of a run that went seriously charley foxtrot, you have reason to suspect you where sold out and you know people are offering money for your location (if not carcass) even if you have a contact you trust not to sell you out, he will probably have to go to somebody else to arrange a location for you and being a known associate of you there is every chance he will be questioned (passably painfully).

If you set up your own bolt hole in advance the only person that would know the association between you and it would be the landlord. Some portly fellow that thinks you will pay rent regularly ant not trash the place. Ignores the fact that your name is Elvis Presley because you don’t complain when the water eater breaks down. Has no underworld connections and will never find out he could sell your location for 50k. him you can trust.

Edward

Posted by: ornot Jun 6 2006, 02:31 PM

I had this problem with one of my players. He wanted a bolthole someplace, but we couldn't find any rules for it. In the end he went without.

So far I think the best option I've seen here seems to be allowing safehouses as part of a higher living standard. Maybe one extra dos for every category above medium?

I think the 500 nuyen a day safehouse is so expensive as you're effectively buying secrecy. I'd also consider it to have specialised anti-snooping tech and magic.

Posted by: Edward Jun 6 2006, 03:48 PM

You want to gamble that for only 500 nuyen you get somebody that wont sell you out to a higher offer, or torcher, or a mind reading spell, or a personofix BTL “squealer”.

A mage can set his own wards or you can hire commercial provider under a fake ID while a random lets them in and you only interacted with the random while wearing a nanopast disguise.

There is no getting around that you can make a safe house safer if you set it up yourself.

This game includes such quotes as
“Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean there not out to get me”
and “If your not paranoid your not paying attention”

And in this edition the rules as written forbid you from setting up your own safe house. I think it should be a priority for rules for owned safe houses to be in the next edition.

Posted by: ornot Jun 6 2006, 04:14 PM

500 yen a day is a lot of money. Over the course of a month you're paying 15,000 yen, and who knows how long you're going to have to stay hidden. It's not in the safehouse providers interests to sell you out. He doesn't get your "rent" and he gets a bad rep. (I had envisaged the safehouse providing guy as a sort of specialty fixer, and fixers tend to be well enough guarded to be proof to all but the most potent coercion. If you've pissed people off enough to get that sort of heat on you I'd doubt even your own safehouse would protect you).

Of course setting up your own safehouse is likely to be less traceable, and there's nothing to stop you from employing a mage to set up a ward and investing in SOTA counter-intrusion measures, but you still have to maintain said wards and equipment.

Your point about the cost of maintaining a safehouse or houses increasing significantly over the original dos is fair enough, but finding a place to live ain't cheap. Especially not many places to live.

I think at present safehouses will have to be determined by agreement with the GM. I was actually suggesting that the runner with a medium lifestyle could have a safe dos to lie low for a while, possibly with some emergency supplies such as firearms and ammo (nothing too specialised though). For more safehouses I think increasing the lifestyle cost to the next level is reasonable, perhaps even granting more than 1 more, or making the safehouse "safer" and better equipped.

I like my players to describe where they live, what their houses are like, the kinds of stuff they keep there and so on. They'd need to describe any safehouses in the same way and exactly specify where they keep their one-of-a-kind items like sniper rifles. The location of safehouses is especially important as you need to determine, as a GM, whether they can actually get there or not (I'm running my game in Denver, so border-crossings are a common nightmare).

I'd imagine the reason for removing multiple lifestyles was because the lifestyle costs include things like food, bills, comlink connection costs etc. and it hardly seems fair to charge those things twice.

Posted by: DireRadiant Jun 6 2006, 04:50 PM

How do you define a Safehouse? What does Lifestyle give you?

Definition of Common Costs
p 304 "The following are common services the
characters may wish to enjoy. Most such costs
are subsumed by a character’s Lifestyle, but
these costs are provided for gamemaster reference.
Prices listed are average and will vary
depending on locale and circumstances."

Lifestyle
p 84 - 85 "Characters can only purchase one lifestyle at a time, though
they may pre-purchase it for months in advance if they like.
Lifestyles only account for the character’s regular daily living
expenses and accommodations additional investments
such as safehouses, private storage,
garages, workshops, etc. must be bought and
paid for separately."

There are two basic situations that arise.

1. PC has a lifestyle, and pays additional for common cost items.
- Lifestyle and common costs items are not interdependent. Blowing your identity won't lose your safehouse or cache of stored wespons.
- Using a safehouse paid as a common cost is very safe, it's sepeseparatem your other parts of your life, making you hard to track down.

2. PC has a lifestyle and includes some common cost items in the lifestyle.
- Lifestyle and common costs are interdependent.
- Living level is lowered appropriately. Subtract the cost of common items to get the appropriate level.
- Anything putting lifestyle at risk also risks your safehouse and weapons caches etc as appropriate.
- At a mechanical level, if you actually use a safehouse, this may consume your lifestyle cost for the rest of the month. Low lifestyle, 2,000 nuyen, and you use your safehouse for 4 days means not having a place to live for the rest of the month, for whatever reason (It's being watched, raided, trashed, bombed out etc)

Posted by: Teulisch Jun 6 2006, 06:05 PM

the advanced lifestyle rules from SR3 handled everything perfectly. theres no reason you cant still use them. The 'one lifestyle' rule now, simply over-complicates what used to be a simple process. which is ironic, as im sure they wanted to simplyfy things.

I would put the limit as one lifestyle PER SIN. You can then get a second fake sin, and put a different lifestyle on that. So if SIN A gets busted by the star, B and C are still okay. if you have one SIN, then losing it means losing all your houses on it.

the 'safe house' listing probably includes the HIGHEST secuirity, with everything else at the absolute minimum. a 'per day' cost is going to be usefull for some people. But then, lets remeber that the shorter a period you pay for living space, the more you pay. the safehouse is like a hotel, rather than an apartment.

starting cash by highest lifestyle paid for. no reason to do anything else.

Posted by: ornot Jun 6 2006, 06:39 PM

I like the one lifestyle per SIN idea. There is a slight problem with some characters not wanting to buy a fake SIN though. Plus it doesn't seem as though you'd really need a SIN to live a squatter lifestyle.

Posted by: coolgrafix Jun 6 2006, 07:13 PM

Previous discussion here: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?act=ST&f=26&t=12251

It includes Rob's Boyles response to the issue, which I consider the final word for those wishing to adhere to RAW. As always, individual GMs have complete autonomy in their games so do what you will. =)

Posted by: Shrike30 Jun 6 2006, 09:15 PM

Posted by: coolgrafix Jun 6 2006, 10:24 PM

Posted by: ornot Jun 6 2006, 11:44 PM

Posted by: Edward Jun 7 2006, 02:23 AM

In the previous edition you didn’t need a sin for luxury lifestyle. The owner or record was a yakusa lutenent with a sin and you paid them to provide your security. Net cost was the same, penalty for non payment of bills a bit more severe.

Bolt holes especially can be secured with cash in hand payments

I would say every lifestyle should describe how it is maintained. If more than one are on the same sin then having that sin blown (including buy blowing one of the safe houses) means that all lifestyles on that sin are blown.

Posted by: Eyeless Blond Jun 7 2006, 02:35 AM

Posted by: Demon_Bob Jun 7 2006, 04:06 AM

The Lifestyle purchased is a combination of all the places you rent, the stuff you have in them, and food costs.

Someone with High will eat better and go out more than someone with Low.

If Character "Midnight" bought a Middle Lifestyle, it could be defined as 2 apartments matching the standard Low lifestyle, and a Coffin Motel.
Her stuff could be devided up between all 3 places. Not everything she owns might be as nice as if she had one Middle place. One place might be set up mainly for enjoyment; another for work; and the third for hiding, or sleeping after a hard nights work.

Posted by: ornot Jun 7 2006, 09:16 AM

I still don't think paying lifestyle costs twice for a dos you hardly live in is a good idea. You don't eat twice as much after all, or wear twice as many clothes, or catch twice as many buses.

Sure if your safehouse is a nice condo in a good neighbourhood, your neighbours might notice that the house is mostly always empty although I don't think they'd actually poke into it much. It'd be impolite, and they'd probably be grateful the tenant wasn't some loud orc or troll, bringing down the houseprices and having loud parties.

I also get the impression that there are multiple utility providers, and things are charged on an as used basis, so you could have an account with a provider and only get charged the base rate. The company itself is going to have far too many customers to really bother about a frugal consumer. Think about it, when was the last time your gas provider called you up to say "Hi, we notice you haven't been heating your house as much lately. Is everything alright?"

The whole "there's something fishy about that place" effect would be mostly negated by having a safehouse in a nasty place like the Barrens where there are far more suspicious/interesting things going on than a dos that's not in heavy use. Or the dos might be in a warehouse or similar place where people do not, as a rule, live.

Posted by: Aaron Jun 7 2006, 12:38 PM

Posted by: Edward Jun 7 2006, 02:58 PM

Posted by: Eryk the Red Jun 7 2006, 05:55 PM

I made the rule work by keeping it as simple as it was written. You buy one lifestyle. That sets this vague limit on the quality of your lifestyle. Want a low-equivalent safehouse with your Middle apartment? Fine. That's cool by me. But your buddy's Middle apartment might have nicer stuff.

I probably run a different kind of game than many, but this stuff just isn't important enough for us to worry too much about. It's enough to know roughly what kind of lifestyle you have and if you have an apartment, a warehouse space, etc. If they ask for too much, I tell them it counts as a higher lifestyle.

No muss, no fuss.

Posted by: Cang Jun 7 2006, 06:34 PM

I just use the 3rd edition lifesytle builder in one of the sourcebooks.. sprawl survival i think. If you want a safe house.. add points for low lifestyle, if you want some chairs in that apartment, then add some more points for low lifestyle furnishing. Makes it easy and you can give a personal lifestyle cost. Ofcourse, i know how somepeople feel about solving SR4 problems with SR3.

Posted by: Eryk the Red Jun 7 2006, 07:43 PM

You're damn right I'm opposed to solving SR4 problems with SR3!

That'd require me going and buying old books.

Posted by: fool Jun 7 2006, 09:53 PM

THe way that seems to work best in my mind is to have a lifestyle.. medium say, then rent your safe houses (most likely not at the 500/d cost listed in the book,) buy extra sins to rent them under. You have to negotiate this cost with the player/gm, usually it's a percentage of the lifestyle that you want the digs at.
In sr3 the guide survival guide had good guidelines for making up lifestyles. I'm pretty sure its available on pdf through trading.

Posted by: Aaron Jun 8 2006, 02:15 PM

Posted by: Nim Jun 8 2006, 03:54 PM

Posted by: Edward Jun 8 2006, 07:36 PM

I like the fact that you can get a short term safe house but sometimes you just don’t want to trust somebody.

Its not a matter of pony over 500 nuyen and you get it. you paid that money to somebody, and somebody probably put you in contact with that person, and the person that last used this safe house knows that it is used as a safe house.

And the paperwork out of character for having a second lifestyle was farley minor. You have one more monthly bill.

Posted by: Eyeless Blond Jun 9 2006, 03:13 AM

Lifestyle paperwork is peanuts compared to character gear anyway, SR4 or SR3. Even with the SSG's extra-complicated rules I typically spend more time on my character's clothing than his house, at least the mechanical aspects of each.

But it's the lifestyle rules that get cut. Lifestyle rules which for me make up part of the charm of Shadowrun: no matter what kind of character you make he's always got to have one (or more than one) home, that means he is a part of society, even if he is rebelling against it. In this way lifestyle is, or at least can be, the essential difference between adolescence and adulthood.

The nature of adolescence is that the adolescent is disconnected from society. The adolescent hero changes the world around him while remaining essentially seperate from it. D&D, in this way, is a game of adolescence, with itinerant adventurers wandering the globe, battling monsters and doing heroic deeds, and living out of inns with your group of buddies because you're young, upwardly-mobile, and have nothing better to do.

And all for the price of a couple calculations and a simple monthly bill.

Posted by: Aaron Jun 9 2006, 05:26 AM

I'm not sure if someone made this point already, but isn't having a "permanent safe house" an exercise in irony? Doesn't the permanent safe house have the exact same traits that makes your permanent regular house susceptible to being tracked down and discovered (e.g. utility bills, neighbors, traffic camera/drone footage of you entering and/or exiting on multiple occasions, etc.)? Isn't the ability to discard a place inherent in a good safe house?

Consider also: how many runs do you do in a month? I've heard one or two, but let's say four, just so we can say one a week. If you get a safe house after each one (usually you'll only need it afterward, since in theory nobody knows you're going to do something illegal until after you've done it, but your proverbial mileage may vary). So once a week, 500¥ a pop, that's 2000¥ per month, the same as a Low lifestyle. And probably with better amenities (like security and obscurity; it's a safe house, after all).

Just my 2¥.

Posted by: Edward Jun 9 2006, 06:10 AM

My usual safe house was a low lifestyle in a bad part of town. So no cameras, hacked utility accounts and no sin on the property, so long as once a month the money shows up in the landlords account he doesn’t care that I am not there. I probably told him I wanted somewhere I could take my joyboys to my own pad with the things I want without upsetting the wife or regular girl friend (nothing like giving somebody a little conspiracy to stop them asking questions). All payments made in cash, and no questions asked. None of my regular contacts no this person, I found the place in the newspaper (or similar). Once I have the barest inkling the place has been blown (including taking somebody I don’t trust implicitly to use it) I abandon it stop paying its littlie cost and start a new one with similar set up.

The locks wont be as good as a dedicated safe house, and there wont be CCTV on the entry points unless I set it up myself but if I want a dedicated safe house on a daily basis and short notice I have to go to somebody and tell them I want a place to hide, and then they know that a runner is hiding there, what he looks like and probably my street name. somebody puts the word out they want me and they have all the information they need to sell me out. If I was being hunted I would feel better checking into a cheep motel, affecting drunk with a similar state partner on my arm (sex immaterial) ands slip the attendant an extra 50 nuyen cash

“I seem to have /misplased/ my ID” jacket falls away to expose gun as I turn to partner, giggle “was there anything else we needed”
partner “have candles, need a box of matches” lean in close, whisper to you
you turn to attendant, do you have any ice cubes, and an electrical cord.
With gun visible slap down another 50, “we will expect privacy.” In a mildly threatening tone of voice.

Posted by: Edward Jun 9 2006, 06:15 AM

If your getting your safe house in a more up market naberhood you will need a sin but you can claim to be a businessman with a lot of meetings in this town, you want a small place in town that will always be ready for you and just how you left it.

The landlord won’t be in the least suspicious when you almost never use it and will be very happy to have a tenant that won’t wear out the furnishings.

This would need to be associated with a fake sin however

Edward

Posted by: Crusher Bob Jun 9 2006, 06:36 AM

Checking into a hotel.motel is probably only a third best option:

The cops (or whoever is looking for you) will probably go over the hotels/motels. You still have to go out to get food, medical supplies, or whatever. If your face is on the TV, going out to buy food and stuff can get you caught.

A safehouse should have all the stuff you need alrady (preserved food, medical supplies, etc) so that you don't have to leave for a least a week, if not two, so that you will have time to heal, have the heat die down, or whatever.

Posted by: Edward Jun 9 2006, 07:13 AM

True, a hotel/motel only works for short term, when you don’t need things like medical supplies. Food can be arranged with disguises and such. But being wounded would make people suspicious.

Edward

Posted by: Cain Jun 9 2006, 07:47 AM

Safe houses can represent a lot of different things, only limited by your imagination. Disallowing multiple lifestyles to represent these safehouses is just a bad idea. It worked out very smoothly in practice, and was flexible enough to accomodate virtually everything.

A safehouse, by definition, is more private and secure than your normal residence. It's going to cost somewhat more to maintain than a normal doss. I found it much easier to simply abstract the additional costs into the lifestyle rules; the savings from food and transportation were approximately equal to the extra costs.

The problem with using one higher lifestyle to represent several lower ones is this: what happens when a character can't meet the payments? Would he lose them all? Or only the highest one? Or just the one he was using? What happens if the amount he can come up with doesn't manage to properly fit the price categories?

Posted by: knasser Jun 9 2006, 08:33 AM

How about a very simple rule. If a lifestyle is active (primary lifestyle, currently used) then you pay the normal lifestyle cost. If a lifestyle is dormant (secondary lifestyle, primary lifestyle but away on extended business), then it comes at a reduced 20% cost.

Let the players indulge in as many homes as they like. If it keeps that Northrup Wasp out of their hands, then so much the better for me.

The game's called Shadowrun not Accountingrun.

Posted by: Cain Jun 9 2006, 09:18 AM

Why bother with the discount? In all the years I've used the extra-lifestyles-as-safehouse rules, I've never had a single player complain about paying full price. There's no need for even that extra bit of math; I can just see the character with digestive expansion trying to fight this.

Posted by: knasser Jun 9 2006, 11:13 AM

Posted by: Thorn Black Jun 9 2006, 01:24 PM

And I love that idea.

Posted by: Nim Jun 9 2006, 02:22 PM

Posted by: Demon_Bob Jun 13 2006, 06:17 PM

Ya Edward I had problems with that bit in the logic also.

Aside from buying a hotel/Motel Room for every day of the month I didn't really see any way of getting around that "one Lifestyle" rule.

Yes there are people who due to really bad credit and other reasons are forsed to live day to day in a hotel room.

There is still the option of going to the GM and asking "how Much a month to have a second place, tack it onto monthly costs and not call it a lifestlye.
Realizng that you may come back some day and find that some hoodlums have broken in and used it for thier parties.

Posted by: Teulisch Jun 13 2006, 06:28 PM

well, if your back-up is nice enough, you could have a live-in maid, someone who keeps the place nice and tidy until you need it. Im sure theres lots of folk who would love the idea of house-sitting for a decent wage. I can see it working for middle lifestyle and above. you just have to pay 10% extra for the house-sitter, plus whatever wage you agreed on (probably that 10%).

generaly, you have 3 types of lifestyles. You have the regular living, the prepared safehouse, and then the long term storage or shop. for the storage, you just buy a permanent squatter lifestyle for a small shed with good security, and put a ton of illegal goods in it, as well as a medkit, change of clothes, and fake ID with some certified credits. bonus points if you hide it in a dead or static zone.