So, while making a character a while back, it had occured to me that the SINner quality might be fun to go with. While, in the end, I didn't.... I am curious to see what the good people of Dumpshock thought of the idea.

The idea was in essence, someone who just used his ordinary SIN for anything a SIN was needed for, but was so deep into black market, off the grid economies that by and large he doesn't use it at all.

Make sense?

So you're not taking points for the quality, gotcha.

It's a 5-point negative quality, not a 20-point quality. If it shows up as a downside once or twice in the run of the game, that's about right. The cops run your ID, and find out you have more than one, you get an on-site fine and burn your fake, then you're off.

Well the main way I saw it coming up was as... Y'know, actual ID. Since the character in question was an Aztlaner turned Pirate, the idea that someone could run his ID and notice that he's a *long* way from home... With little to no explanation for what he's been up to in that time.

A flaw like that can be used as a role playing hook / background information if it can affect your character. Bannockburn is also kind of right though, a flaw has to be a flaw, otherwise it's just free points.

Well the reason why I didn't end up going with it was because I thought it would be actually too much of a flaw. After all, if you're broadcasting a SIN all over the place and the authorities know you're a pirate. Well.... I mean imagine you're a cop today and you pull over some guy and he hands you a drivers license from an entirely different country and doesn't have a passport or... really any kind of paper trail for how the hell they got here.

It'd basically turn *any* encounter with the authorities into an immediate shootout or arrest. Which is partly why I was curious. How often does the SIN-as-ID come up vs the SIN-as-Bank-Account in most peoples games?

I don't know because I haven't gotten in a Shadowrun campaign for a while. My character does have the SINner quality, but since he has Erased, I took it as a zero point flaw. Maybe it will come up, but most likely it won't do jack.

You are not 'broadcasting' a SIN until 4e, and even then, you can turn off one SIN and turn on a fake one instead. Besides, the whole point of a fake SIN is that it holds up to a casual scrutiny. Why would a cop ever realise you even have a genuine ID, if you show your fake ID and it holds up? Every time to make a legitimate purchase, like that cup of soycaf with extra krill protein you call breakfast down at the Stuffer Shack, the register in the store runs a check against the credstick, which, at least in my Shadowrun, is tagged with an ID (unless it's certified). The legitimacy of that ID, and the level of scrutiny it can withstand, is a matter for you and your GM to figure out, possibly through dice rolls, but for the vast majority of transactions, the mere fact that the credit is good is enough that they don't look any closer - they want their money, after all.

Now, if the credstick is flagged as belonging to one 'Sam Smith', and that same 'Sam Smith' is the registered owner of a gun that was used last week to kill the head of a major bank during a botched kidnapping, a little red lamp might start to blink under the Stuffer Shack counter, and the doors to the place may suddenly become difficult to open...Good thing the Star is en route to help you out, and, if you are lucky, they may even offer you a ride to the nearest detention centre

I think it would more be them handing over a passport than a driver's license. And if it's not a criminal SIN, it isn't a big deal (unless you got caught breaking the law, and and now that's on your record).




I think it works like your bank card and ID combined. Also, can be used to look up your permanent record, with approval from whatever the issuing agency was (which means you need to be official to look).

There's a lot of factors; style of plan, year the game is taking place/edition as already mentioned. Our style of play differs a little because we have the majority of our group is military with a few law enforcement, so we tend to focus on different things.

With your SIN as your ID, like today, your phone goes everywhere with you. We like to assume that people in SR are more cognizant and secure (i.e. using firewall, sometimes not broadcasting, etc). Already been mentioned about choosing which ID to broadcast. But if you have an ID, some database somewhere has your face. Facial recognition becomes more common in more secure areas as well. They might not care today who you are but if you end up in a shooting in a AA zone, they're likely to pull the records of all the SINs in the area as part of an investigation.

You can add in a question of who can access which records depending on if it's a corp or country ID and who's doing the looking, what systems they can access, and how well they cooperate with others.

If you're doing a "standard" shadowrun it may not be the best idea to break into an Ares Lab in Seattle, since they are likely to have access to all relevant local databases, especially since they have K-E. Wear a mask and don't have your ID active at a very basic level. Depending on your style of play it may not matter. You may not want to include that, or maybe you're playing a Doc Wagon game or a P.I. Playing a pirate in the Carib League exclusively, it probably won't matter much. Just don't visit Europe.

We also include things like vaguely keeping track of how long you've had your fake SIN. If you keep the same one for long enough, don't change it out or use other aliases, eventually the fake one starts to look like the real you. It has your purchases attached, probably a social media trail. What life style are you paying for? The higher it is the more the SIN is going to have tied to it. That level of intrusiveness and potentially record keeping can get annoying, but it's easy enough to change out ID's semiregularly if you have the right contacts or cash.

In response to OP (a month later ) I'd say it would be good and interesting, and seems to actually make sense for the character background. I say "actually" because of lot of qualities (biocompatability for example) often don't and are taken for rules reasons. Nothing wrong with that, I just like seeing the flavor.