I just thought of this and am having a hard time figuring it out...

being the kind of lifestyle that runners tend to lead, it's not like they can easily just park all their vehicles and drones in the parking garage of their building... the doberman drones and lynx's might stand out a bit

so how do riggers in your games handle this problem? or do most people overlook the fact that after a few months of running the group rigger has accumulated 2 cars, 1 motorcycle, a steel lynx, a delivery van, a couple dobermans, and an assortment of crawler and aerial drones...

my first instinct is to have a high loyalty mechanic contact that would let you store some of the more suspicious stuff in his garage... and this may work for a small amount, but once you're getting into the severly illegal gear, or just a lot of vehicles, that mechanic no matter how good a contact, can't shut down his business to accomadate your need for storage space...

then I thought maybe trying to take over some low sec building - basically gang style, and using it as your own personal garage... maybe even lending out your services to the biggest local gang for protection... then I thought this only opens yourself up to having all of your gear stolen or destroyed by rival gangs or angry customers... not to mention the fact that it's incredibly unsecure for trying to keep anything that's extremely illegal, and therefore very valuable...

I suppose buying / leasing a warehouse of some sort (tagging the extra cost as added lifestyle) could be an option, but I know if it were me I'd be exceptionally picky about who my landlords were, what neighborhood it was in, what forms of security it came with and what kind of security upgrades I'd be allowed to do, etc... this seems the most logical and sensible option to me, but I'm curious how other riggers have handled it... especially any long term riggers that have managed to accumulate the more rare vehicles like a roadmaster, a helicopter or even better, a VTOL... how did you handle to storage and maintenance of it?

My rigger handled it by moving to the country. He lived out in the middle of nowhere in Snohomish, and relied on no one knowing he was out there. With a decent sized workshop in the old farmhouse's barn, he kept a few rotodrones, a Dalmation, his pickup, a car, a motorcycle, and I forget what else in relative safety.

For someone who doesn't have that option, like an NYC Missions character, a well paid gang in the ruins of Newark or Jersey City would work just as well.

Lifestyle.

I used the advanced lifestyle rules + the price for an automotive facility to build an auto shop of my own. It's a handy base of operations, and gives me some character depth.

Our group handles it through lifestyle. Our face and rigger share a good sized condo in the ACHE's public levels. With the workshop option from advanced lifestyles, and the condo being high lifestyle already, there's more than enough space for the extra rigs.

ok that's awesome, I haven't read runners companion in over a year, and I must have only skimmed this section cause these rules are very much what I was looking for.

how about any players out there who have attempted to actually run a business or do semi-legit work on top of running... like running a mechanic shop... or being a for-hire hacker... or anything of the sort... is there anything to give guidelines for that stuff or is it pretty well all roleplaying?

i take it you've modified the ACHE for your campaign then?

This topic is right in my wheelhouse, as my character is a rigger who also owns a security business. I used the advanced lifestyle rules just like the other posters have mentioned with the "Workspace" quality to give him a place at home to store and work on vehicles, and we have a vehicle shop at the office that can be used as well.

As for running the business - there are no rules for it in the game of course. We treat the business basically like a second lifestyle. We treat it just like character backgrounds more than anything. Most of the 'runners in our group work for the company and run at night. Sometimes we like to do runs in our company polo shirts to add a bit of risk and put a personal stamp on the run but for the most part we try to keep everything we do in the shadows separate from the business.

Not overly. Given the size of the ACHE's construction footprint and having 5 public levels run by various interests, the GM allowed that some of that space was given over to housing. The extra space from the workspace lifestyle quality comes from an unused chunk of pre-Shutdown auxiliary parking garage. Most of the space is unused at our current spot in the campaign, allowing for some nebulous future upgrades the PCs have in mind.

Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Blade (1-3)

Standard way I run/deal with riggers.

to clarify: in the official version, the ACHE is essentially a place where poor people go to live and never leave. i'm not talking about having space for the vehicles, i'm talking about the fact that presumably, at some point, your shadowrunning team does in fact have contact with the outside world, which is very much not the case in the official version of the ACHE

We just presume the rigger stores his drones in the vehicle when there's not too many of them, and in the safehouse garage otherwise - after all, who cares given the type of neighborhoods runners choose for hideouts.
For serious stuff like copters, yeah, a warehouse or that is required, and that calls for much more attention than a typical runner team wants - both from gangers and cops, actually.

Lots of rundown\uninhabited areas that you can hide stuff in, just can't guarantee its still there when your rigger needs it

Bah, just stick around to make sure it's there.
Or leave a couple of surprises for the ones to try to grab it.

The vehicles have pilot. Just give them the command "kill anyone who enters, unless they yell 'olly olly oxen free!'"

Or a pair of Crimson Samurai with miniguns.

Or just place a Smart Firing platform on the roof of the building, with an autocannon.

Don't forget to have them automatically dial you in case of intruder.

I wound up going through a couple iterations of the rules before I found a justification for my shop. Runner's Companion has an a la carte selection of lifestyle options, which include things like 'do you have good food', 'how is security', 'are you in a warzone', 'square footage' etc. I mixed and matched and determined that the wrecked bowling alley in Tukwilla I wanted to convert to a shop was worth about 7,000 monthly - that even included the raildrone system I mentioned in my backstory.

I got a few other feats out of Runner's Companion to explain my connection to the place: I had already taken SINner (military background means I'm on the books), so I was able to take the 10BP Day Job negative quality, to indicate that if I wasn't managing the place at least 20 hours a week, customers would get pissed and my staff wouldn't get paid. Of course, being the owner means I don't need to put in a full 40 hours a week, leaving me time for Shadowrunning. The extra 2500 monthly income I get neatly offsets the extra Lifestyle costs, bringing me back down to slightly below Middle lifestyle cost.

To reflect the fact that my character is deeply invested in this location, I also bought the Home Ground advantage for 10BP which means within a small area, in this case my shop, he gets +2 to active and +4 to relevant knowledge tests. That's an easy +2 for tests to repair or modify my drones and vehicles, and I think it's got some style, too.

As far as the business side of the shop? That's all roleplaying. I decided early on to make my Shadowrunning career an entirely seperate set of accounts, and have made an effort not to bring in my employees or customers as npcs in the game - it would be too easy to make this a bigger resource then I actually paid for. As long as it's just fluff, though, the GM has no problem with it. Also, I own a pool table and a fridge of beer, which makes finding a spot for mission planning a no-brainer.

To clarify further: In the official version, the underground levels and reactors are under UCAS military control. The first 5 ground levels (which contained the public mall, park space, etc. when it was the SCIRE) are still open to the public and contain the mall, park space, etc (this is also the area where the light rail and bus routes once again pass through the structure, as well as the access ramps to the I-5). The upper levels are also under UCAS military control. It is the rest of it (roughly floor 7 to floor 250) that contains the welfare housing portion. The place where our characters live is in the public section.

When I played last I found an old abanded apt complex with a below ground parking garage for my goodies; made good with the locals and was saving up to convert the top three stories into a landing/hanger area for a heli I was working on. Heavy auto defense as well as gang backup