Lifestyles and Startign cash question Options

[neon_samurai]

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)

???

[Nasrudith]

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.

[Lagomorph]

I'd probably just take the primary

[Omer Joel]

[Nidhogg]

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.

[Oracle]

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

[hobgoblin]

try "majority" concensus then.

[Nidhogg]

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.

[DireRadiant]

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.

[Edward]

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

[neon_samurai]

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

[Edward]

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

[ornot]

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.

[Edward]

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.

[ornot]

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.

[DireRadiant]

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)

[Teulisch]

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.

[ornot]

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.

[coolgrafix]

Previous discussion here: here

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. =)

[Shrike30]

[coolgrafix]

[ornot]

[Edward]

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.

[Eyeless Blond]

[Demon_Bob]

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.