I'm curious as to where and how your runners live, and what they do outside of work.

My first runner was somewhat famous for being always on the job, having such an extensive defense plan for his house that assaulting it would be nigh-on suicidal, and considering a night running around a z-zone gathering intel to be more enjoyable than a night clubbing. Yes, he was a bit of a wierdo... but he did regularly save the group from a lot of trouble, so they put up with him.

My current runner has only been on a few missions, and has been living with her family in a duplex on the edge of the barrens. Unfortunately, with the group's decided lack of stealth she's decided that the risk of work following her home is too great, and she's pooling with the rigger for a nice place in downtown Seattle (as that's where all the best clubs are, and both characters are party girls). It looks like we've found a nice, close-knit neighborhood to live in (High lifestyle, Quiet neighborhood, Friendly neighbors, Privacy screen 1 from neighborhood watch making spying difficult), but the catch is that it cuts both ways, and we're likely to be the first port of call if anyone on the street needs anything mechanical done (both characters have at least one mechanic skill, and the house includes a large garage. or if you prefer: crash pad and workspace). also, the house was designed to be... well, a house, not a fortress, and the street isn't exactly defensible (Ambusher's delight). I'm thinking of joining the local Neighborhood watch and generally being a pillar of the local community... as much for the irony value as anything. Shadowrunner/Neighborhood watch captain/local miss fix-it for the win! Naturally, I'll still be paying for my old lifestyle as i continue to support my family.

We had one game where we bought or otherwise obtained title to an old unfinished geothermal plant out on the lava flow. Some of the PCs lived there. some elsewhere.

Does that count as a volcanic lair? If so, all they need to do to get into the world domination trade is to contact the local Evil inc. (minion division) and get themselves some expendable mooks
of course, they'll be swarmed with gnomes and cursed rings... price of a good location, i suppose.

My group typically has apartments.

But I think someone wrote a book about how to stay unnoticed when the heat is on... Safehouses or something like that?

one of the best supplements out there, to be sure, but this isn't about safehouses. This is about homes.

They all live in apartments, CanRay? Really?
Can't say I envy them.

Typically, my characters simply live in apartments. The details can vary, converted hotel rooms, non-standard buildings (like illegal additions/alley buildings), lofts, basic garden apartments.

Some of my players have done all sorts of different things, but often when they do have a shared space, one or more still maintain an off-site residence. An old university observatory, a dilapidated firehouse, and a junkyard are the ones that come to mind.

I've tried to get them to give some actual descriptions of their places, but so far only one has done any work at all.

And I'm usually trying to get him to shut up.

My players live in a shared house in a quiet suburb of Seattle to save on living costs as well as bookkeeping. In fact, it's how they met at the start of the campaign: they all answered the same ShadowSea ad for a new roommate. Problem is, that guy had skipped town, so they all ended up looking around town trying to find a place together. It served as a wonderful introduction to Seattle's various locals, as well as life in 2072 in general.

My PC in my Skype game lives in a High Rise loft in Downtown Seattle with her childhood friend (Perfect Rommate). I'll post a write up on it a bit later, when I have more time.

Home bases usually reflect the play style of my players.
The consummate professional has a condo downtown Seattle, the hacker or Mage shut in has a loft or apt in the burbs.
The hard boiled paranoids crash on the street, a cube or live in pemenant safe house mode.
I had one player who lived in a cargo blimp.
We had a Troll Physad who lived part time at his moms house in Boston and commuted to Seattle for work.

Snow, an elven adept, has a permanent medium lifestyle (courtesy of SR3 payment levels, he's been converted ), with work place and security conscious in a bad part of Renton (Christopher).
He does metal artwork in his free time and works as a PI sometimes as well as being a hobby cook.
It has a big garage, for his workshop and this is also where he parks his vintage Dodge Viper.
The flat itself isn't very big, just a spacious living room with kitchen, nice bathroom, and a bedroom with a hidden compartment for the more illegal stuff.
From the bathroom you can get on the roof of the hall, and down from there, if necessary. The security consists of cameras, high rating maglocks, reinforced doors and a simple 'airlock' system, meaning, while the outer door is open, the inner door is locked out mechanically. Also, wards (rating 9), as he can perceive astrally.
Recently, he's moved in with his fiance and her son though, in a nice, but secluded area of Fort Lewis (Parkland).
Privacy Screen (physical) 1, not much more. Big, overgrown garden, good security service and a good place to live at with a family. Very low-key, 6k per month.

White Queen, another elf, is a spy / B&E artist / ex-Assassin. Her final run in SR3 was ... very lucrative. A case of weird convention GM, so she went away with just over 15 million nuyen. Instead of ignoring it or settling her down, I decided to upgrade a bit of her bioware and buy her a luxury lifestyle in Downtown Seattle.
Basically, she lives the good life of high society and does shadowy things for personal favors and the thrill of it.
She lives in a two floors penthouse with a live-in butler and some perks: Privacy Screen (physical) 2 , Escape Tunnel. Security is top notch, with Rating 6 wards included, a matrix spider, doorman and internal cameras in the building, pressure sensors on the top floor, alarm systems and what have you.
Instead of more description: I once had to draw it up for my GM. Nothing has happened yet, but I've got a baaaad feeling after this request
http://pl.an/6cw47c#details (please tell me if you can't see it)
It's not completely detailed or totally up to date, as some rooms have been repurposed in the meantime, but you get the idea. The panorama windows are, of course, bullet resistant and usually reflective, though this is adjustable.
She also has several safehouses, not only in Seattle, but also one in the Kingdom of Hawai'i (and a backup plan to liquify most of her assets and skip town for Maui if things should ever go south). Probably my most 'pro' character.

Jazz is a human SURGEd courier, her story and stats can be found via the link in my signature.
Her free time is occupied by sports, Miracle Shooter™ and clubbing.
She lives above a bar in Tacoma (Edgewood) in a changeling dominated neighbourhood, with her human roommate Diane, who owns the bar and is also a small time drug dealer. The apartment is not very safe, but there's a neighbourhood watch, rating 4 maglocks and you need to go through the bar to enter it. It's just big enough for two, but it's well made, and she has a perfect roommate. The downside of both of them being rather sociable is that there's almost always someone sleeping on the couch (crash pad).

For your PC's sake, I hope it isn't too close to the place where our high-powered, and very dark/evil, group keeps a penthouse

I've often wondered what a DS specific map of Seattle would look like with different groups...

If you have Deadly Waves, a houseboat is great for a seaside city, such as Seattle.

Or LA....

Although we haven't picked up the campaign in a while, I had a character who was saving up for that Houseboat for exactly that reason. Its just hard to figure with the advanced lifestyle rules. I mean, basically, the lifestyle has to be designed as the docks where the boat is moored, which makes things a little funny.

I dealt with just that very issue in Safehouses (Link above).

Bitesized

The hacker inherited her family business (an up and coming mob) after her final run, and now lives in a nice apartment in downtown Seattle. She's beefed up her own matrix security, and regularly plays in the local nodes just people watching. When the family compound is more settled, she may end up moving in. But, that's unlikely, since it would make the place too juicy of a target. She does spend a fair amount of time in AA parts of Seattle with her boyfriend (A high-level SK 'trouble shooter') in his penthouse.

JD

She slums it in Redmond with a Troll roommate and their pet raccoon. So far they've managed to train it to do a few tricks, including the all important 'no bite'. JD needs to get a better place that she can medically seal, to keep up her excuse of 'pollution allergies'. That way she won't have to take her helmet off. It's better than living in the vat she used to, as a Senator's emergency back-up organs.

Dahlia Bekhit

She shares a house with another runner and her younger brother in a quite burb of Seattle. The house is in a nice neighborhood with a good school system and a public community center. The neighbors are nosy. But, she cares more about her younger brother than she does her own life.

Speed Wraith, I agree, but only because I'd hate your group to lose high-powered characters to a bunch of noobs. ^_~ I also second the idea of a map of the homes of the characters/groups on DS.

Okay, so Mercury's Downtown Seattle loft (which I couldn't do without Safehouses, much thanks CanRay!):

Lifestyle Break Down:
She splits her multilevel loft with her childhood friend, but he's always inviting friends over to stay the night (Perfect Roommate, Crash Pad). It's in a nice, new Horizon-owned skyscraper in downtown, which means living by Horizon Rules (Corporate Owned, Living by Committee). The tower itself was designed by Horizon and sometimes seems like it is meant to showcase the talent, rather than protect it, but is solid overall (No Privacy [Physical], Well Made). The manager is pretty chill, but it shows in the quality of security at the tower. Even though there are plenty of guards, most are on the payroll of various paparazzi which makes illicit comings-and-goings harder than normal. (Easy Going Landlord, Donut Shop, Witless Protection). Overall, though, it's a pretty relaxed place to live, since you quickly get used to the occasional photographer or observation drone (Quiet Neighborhood). Mercury makes sure her posh pad is stocked with only the finest food, booze, and gadgets (Stocked Up, Fully Stocked Bar, Ultramodern). She had a Wuxing Geomancer do her interior decorating, which has worked wonders for her creative juices and left her with a loft uniquely her own (Feng Shui, Rad Pad). Her place takes up a good chunk of two whole floors, so it's relatively sparse and sometimes remembering where she left something is a bit tricky (Ambusher's Delight, Black Hole). She's taken some of that space and turned it into a studio for both her art and singing, at some point, she plans on putting a magical lodge in as well (Workshop).

Which I do have a copy of but just haven't really dived into. Too much going on to do solid reading, way backed up. Any chance, oh great and powerful author, that you could direct me towards the section I should be looking for the applicable rules in your Opus?



I'll let Lord Gloom know you said that. I'm sure his response will be quiet indignation followed quickly by ordering the spy and the monkey to present a full dossier on your team, then purposefully sacrificing the moron, er, I mean the minotaur, in an effort to both kill the brute off for good and ascertain just how accurate your presented statement was.

My current group have three lifestyles between them.

Most of them live in The Junkyard most of the week. The Junkyard is an old junkyard in Redmond Barrens which a character (now NPC-ized because the player left) owned, and had a reputation for being willing to take in anyone so long as they worked hard and weren't going to frag with the others who lived there. 'Working Hard' in this instance means both helping to take care of the critters (he was an animal and paracritter trainer,) helping in the slow but ongoing process of cleaning the place up, depolluting the ground from the century plus of oil and other automotive fluids leaking in, and of course, taking part in Shadowruns.

The place is basically a fortress; they've erected backup walls of rusted cars and containers against all the original fences, reinforced the barbed wire with monowire, installed security measures including auto-turrets firing heavy pistols hidden in many of the wrecks, and so forth and so on, and the place is absolutely enormous, so they have far more than sufficient space for anyone to set up any kind of workshop they might want. They have a cavernous old garage which had been given the faraday cage treatment, and the magicians have lodges in old ISO shipping containers.


The second place is a place a Matrix Johnson asked them to sit on and maintain. It's in a nice neighborhood and he doesn't want them spooking the locals, so they get to deal with the Home Owner's Association and such. Fun times.


The third is unique to one player, Brick. He's a troll heavy. He still lives with his momma, though he's thinking of moving into the junkyard. Momma's a retired street sam.

Opus? It's 18 pages long.

But, yeah, "Living On The Road" is covered on page 12, with living in trailer parks and marinas being the last paragraph of that section.

You just seem so proud of it is all . Also, thanks!

It hit Gold on DriveThruRPG.com just before GenCon, and I'm eyeballing that Platinum level so I can say "My first product is a best seller" if I find myself trying to write some more...

And you're welcome.

Go get them to make a compilation book. PDFs are for stealing. Books are for buying.

Runner's Black Book are the Compilations, and my book just doesn't fit in it.

Damnit man, I want to support the cause. Honestly though, I bought black book. I really want to buy a non gear book too. Parabotany, safehouses, and 2 or 3 more, and id drop 35 45 bucks on that.

My group started off our campaign in a dingy, abandoned hospital, but as their rep and nuyen grew, they moved into bigger and better places.
I like to have all my players live in the same building or at least the same neighborhood. That way if some baddies come knocking at their door or I want to run a scene in their home, everyone is involved in the scene instead of one or two players playing while everyone else diddles around on their phones. It makes logistics a lot easier and it gives the group a since of cohesion & shared danger.
They're welcome to live wherever they like, of course, but I usually incentive them by making it cheaper and with added amenities.

I agree with this. I'd love to see a non-gear compilation. There are three para-science books on .pdf that no one in my group has picked up yet, they'd all be great going along with Safehouses, and how about that magical groups or whatnot book, plus SotA 2074.

Yeah, I'd buy that.