Yeah, but AR isn't for the dregs of society anyways... It is for the tax paying citizens.
And it is really only 26%, The SINless don't count...

How often do you make purchases which cost you around twice your monthly income?
Besides, SR citizens have a bunch of better things to spend cash on - like, you know, guns or bodyarmor.

Oh, right, so when calculating "the majority", you don't count the low social circles? That's a very... capitalist approach.
26% below poverty level among the SINners. Also, 30% SINless - who are, most likely, below poverty, too. Around 56%, all in all.

Since they mention AR programs under the Squatter Entertainment Lifestyle Category, apparently squatters can and do use AR. You don't need AR gloves or glasses since commlinks come with a touch screen and holo projector. For AR, you likely have some sort of google goggleseque wave your commlink in front of the objects to see AR default program. That reduces the cost to 300Y. That's still not trivially cheap, but at least it's less than a month of living squatter. It's at least possible after a good month or two a squatter can afford a stolen commlink or something.

I'm not sure if you need a SIN to use a commlink or if you can just roll SINless or just have a string of numbers be your rating 0 Fake SIN. Some of the sample characters have commlinks no fake or real SIN. However I'll loathe to use the sample characters as an example of anything and any more information would be useful.

It's SR. Were you expecting a hippy love fest? If you don't spend you don't count.

Ditto...

Fatum, I thought I made that clear: once. And, as someone mentioned, you only need the one commlink (100¥), certainly not that whole list of crap. Does *anybody* use gloves? Trodes are hella cheap, as well.

Gloves are nice for touchy characters.

I prefer Hardliner or Stun Gloves. Keeps the fingerprints off things, and have combat uses.

Yeah, you're right, you don't actually need all those (it's just that Sabs mentioned it), although working with the device's screen covering but a small part of your field of vision instead of glasses with a full field of vision coverage may be crippling.

I don't believe you need a valid SIN to use Matrix (it's mesh and all, after all), or even to procure black MSP services.


Actually, I was expecting cyberpunk. Not


I never said anything about buying the same thing repeatedly. There's a bunch of relatively expensive things for a squatter to spend money on, as I said above, starting right with at least a light pistol, a license for it, and some armoured clothing for living in the Barrens. I imagine a commlink would be low on their priority list.
The 100¥ commlink is only showing you AROs in your immediate vicinity; and trodes are for simsense (and thus require a simsense module), not AR control.

I assume that Renraku or NeoNet have subsidized purchase of commlinks just like modern cellphone companies do. 100 nuyen for commlink might be pricey but if it's factored into a 2 year contract for 10 nuyen a month of something like that it's much more reasonable.

Sinless of course don't have credit so would have to go with a cheap pre-paid commlink or a boosted knock off. A couple of -20% modifiers and that Metalink commlink becomes much cheaper and more affordable. Sure it's buggy and sometimes glitches out but if you a squatter you get what you can.

Just because a shadowrunner wouldn't be caught dead with the equivalent of a piece of junk trackphone burner doesn't mean that there isn't a booming market for them down in the gutters.

Trodes are AR. Simsense is AR.

And, Image Link Contacts, and Commlinks, I wasn't counting Squatters and SiNLess . It's not like they buy stuff at the stores downtown.

A Commlink and contact lenses are cheap for the average low and medium lifestyles. And they're necessary. You can't even pay your rent without one.

Exactly. It's like saying today, 'no, poor people wouldn't have cell phones'.

You have two things to consider to take the burden off of the poor masses, who while individually have little nuyen, but all together have a mass of nuyen. (And what corp doesn't want a mass of nuyen?)

1. Subsidized AR interface gear. 125 nuyen over a lifetime of revolving debt payments is worth giving away a commlink and image link.

2. Projected Holographic and trid projections on every street corner, store front and available surface is cheap for the corp to market things to bring in the SINless masses nuyen. Best of all, they can't turn it off.

There are all kinds of social effects and tropes to explore. A "green" community where there are no projectors, so if you turn your Matrix connection off, and are out of AR, it looks like you are in a wooded glade, but as soon as you add AR, then signs are revealed leading you to doors, windows, homes, vendors, and all sorts of assorted goodies. On the flip side, the "barrens" might be full of projected trid artifacts that conceal the squalid conditions in splendiforous glamour based on the upcoming summer blockbuster Die Hard 22:Malaysian Meltdown!

Good point: give away the commlinks so that you can target ads at them.

I'm not sure about that. The biggest thing a commlink would do is let you beg/panhandle. Otherwise, how does the odd wageslave give you a spare nuyen? Physical cash isn't used much anymore. I guess they could throw a certified credstick at you, but those are 25Y. I do think squatters plant a "Will Work for Food" or "Please give" ARO over their heads. Or just run their commlink in active mode when they try to wash your car. You could make the argument that wageslaves will never be close enough to the homeless for them to see such a sign much less give money, but that seems a tad much. If you can make 10Y a day doing this (the price of a low-end meal) that you couldn't have, you can pay back your commlink in about a month.

Dare I also ask why you need a license for your pistol if you don't even have a SIN or a commlink, either?

You can't get a license without a commlink, so.. what's the point.

When Horizon forces their employees todo good deeds, that's usually what they do. There's also the state/corp government giveaway VolksKOMM links from the Berlin book (which you do not have, of course).

*pets his limited edition Berlin book*

But why would a SINless, living in the barrens care about a license?

If only it came in English... *sigh*

I'm not the one who said he'd buy a license for his gun

Learn to german *snickers* ^^

Yeah, Well... The Only German I know could be written on a Single page of Paper. And I still would likely pronounce most of it incorrectly.

My personal interpretation/houserule is that the prices given in the books are what Shadowrunners pay, i.e. the price may include a certain makeup for your shadowy dealings. On the upside, the buyer is registered as Ivan Ivanovich from Farawayestan, and you miss "features" like the equivalent of SIM locks.

So of course Joe Wageslave can get his commlink (+ sim module and trodes) for cheap. But just like a cellphone, it will be bound to a contract and all purchase data ends in dozens of databases.

Commlinks are listed as a purchase item in the books because it is something that we expect Shadowrunners to purchase outside of "lifestyle". For Joe Wageslave, a commlink comes as part of lifestyle. It's not 125 nuyen, Joe Wageslave just has one.

Don't apply the price list and items given for Shadowrunners and apply it to the world at large as if everyone is just a wannabe shadowrunner who just happens to live a different life. The price list isn't a model for the world, it's the view of the world of shadowrunners.

Given the number of megacorps in SR, one would assume that special rates and packages of affiliated matrix service providers would enable the customer base to participate in all the online shopping. Providing the "free" Search program you do most of your online shopping with is well worth providing a commlink to anyone with a minimal credit rating.

The way i read data searches in SR is that using the browse program with the data search skill borders on running your own web crawler. Most others will be dialing up their MSP or similar and use their browse equipped agent. This while the MSP is looking at the search terms and adding those to the targeted ad profile for the goods and services suggestions the user will be presented with soon.

You mean like in the real world?

Pretty much.

Shadowrun doesn't work well if you allow real-world high quality free information services. Like Google. Shadowrun is a more paranoid world, where satellite maps and things are guarded on corporate servers, and only really accessible to powerful data searches. The average Joe Wageslave uses his Browse to look up soy recipies and movie times. Info that's literally freely available, and should be an automatic success.

Anything you actually have to roll for should be in some way masked or hidden. Sensitive corp info that's been leaked, the latest aerial shots of the new Ares project site, the contact info for a high-dollar smuggler, etc.

I agree.. SR took a different turn somewhere in the nineties. Internet didn't make important information more accessible to the general public, and computer systems weren't made "for the people". Older editions focus much more on mainframes and large matrix/grid infrastructures; a very different development from the real world (and yet intensely "retro chic"!)

With that in mind, you could actually have a campaign about that: how Matrix 2.0 is more open, lets common people get to information that Matrix 1.0 kept hidden from them - and not all the corporations are prepared for that. Sure, in the past, shadowrunners had clues about what was really going on, because they used the shadow matrix. But ordinary people didn't have access to it, and now they do. Maybe now Aztechnology will have a much harder time keeping its secrets hidden? Maybe Horizon is so effective because they're the only corporation who really understands how liberating the new Matrix is?

Gosh, that could actually be an optimistic campaign!

*itch* Suddenly I want to start writing up that campaign...

Thing is, you suddenly have the opposite problem that occurs from freedom of information: Information Overload.

Yeah, the Governments and Megas are opening up their datafiles a little bit, but remember that those items were,
One: Corrupted by Crash 2.0, and incomplete.
Two: Written from a bias of the originator in the first place.

Johnny Q. Wageslave, Junior learns about The Chicago Containment Zone Event (A public event) in school, and does a research project about it. He takes the school-provided Commlink (With NEW IMPROVED FIREWALL TO PROTECT TECHNOMANCER BRAIN MELT! MCT Security Suite, for all your matrix security needs! "We think about the Children."), and finds out that there are many different takes to the events that lead up to, and happened during, Bug City. And with the public records and news reports incomplete and missing referring documentation in the items that did survive Crash 2.0, only can go off of what was heavily censored out of the secure databanks, and gets a very skewed version of what happened. He does his best with his news report, citing his sources, but gives a report that sounds like it came from someone with various psychological disorders, not the least of which Dissociative Identity Disorder (Previously called "Multiple Personality Disorder").

He doesn't even get to the Denver Data Haven posts which are intact to get the story from people who were in Bug City and reported things at the time at all. All he gets is what is released after the censor has redacted "dangerous information" with his/her digital marker.

Unless, of course, he is /dev/grrl, who regularily researches her school papers in heavily ice-protected data havens apparently ("I wrote this paper on Deus and only got an A- D: D: D: D: D: D: D:").

I seriously doubt that /dev/grrl is named "Johnny".

Which would make it the perfect alias.

Now her(?) discussion about skateboarding in a sundress disturbs me even more.

Actually, a more open matrix would certainly mean lowering the quality of shadowboard posts. Compare what the books have to the comments of today. I imagine any actually relevant data would only be found in more or less closed runner-only boards or VPNs...

ShadowSEA (The descendant of Shadowland) might have gone just this way... IIRC, that's why Bull made the Dumpshock Data Haven, right Bull?

SR from 1 to 3 was stuck in a futuristic version of the BBSs of the US 80s (they became partially popular because US local calls where free, iirc).

Hell, SR deckers are part phreakers as they hack into LTG and RTG systems to get a route from them to their target.

This similar to how real life phreakers would set up world wide conference calls by finding the unlisted number to the local telco switch (security thru obscurity ftw), or play the right kinds of control tones into the phone.

SR4 brings SR tech in line with real life. And i think SR4 corps hide their dirty underwear in the fog of data overload rather then by running unlisted mainframes. That is, spread so many rumors that by the end of the day the casual observer do not know whats what. We can see this IRL as the Chinese politburo have a section that specialize in posting disinformation on various forums. And at least one admin of a big name blog have mentioned tracing several usernames to a marketing firm in the past. User names that only gets activity when specific topics show up on the blog.

I suspect this is the kind of marketing/disinformation blitz that Horizon specializes in. Being able to seed so many counterclaims that unless you dedicate time to map the web of references and such you will never be aware that there is a single source for what looks like a majority argument.