Street Cred

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there folks. The streets are filled with all sorts of folks lookin’ to up their street cred, because let’s face it; your rep is everything omae. A shiny rep gets you the respect of your peers. Doors open, Bollywood agents wanna make you the star of your own media feeds, chicas want to have your babies, jobs are plentiful, the food is authentic, and life is good.
A piss poor rep puts you out in the cold. Contractors who once had your OOL on speed dial are suddenly unreachable. Fixers who once jumped to get the gear you needed raise their prices and take longer to do it. Freelancers and specialists you counted on to watch your back avoid you like the plague, or worse — they torpedo the precious few jobs you do manage to get. Rival bangers who once gave your set a wide berth suddenly grow a pair and move in on your territory. They tag your turf, steal your business, rough up your soldiers, and generally make life hell for you and your crew.
It sucks worse than the slop you get out of the food vats, and thanks to the Global DataNet, if you screw the pooch on a job your Street Cred will get trashed faster than a script kiddie can hack your MyFace domain. Most cities have media feeds dedicated to following the activities of freelancers, hackers, gangers, media icons, politicians and anyone else lookin’ to make a name for themselves in sprawls across the globe, so don’t be surprised to hear about the success or failure of your run on the way back to your squat. Hey, if you’re lucky, there won’t be any feeds streaming real-time footage of the event into your TAP.
Such is Life in 2090.

Starting Street Cred

A character starts with a Street Cred of 2, and this increases by 2 each new Rank the character obtains, modified by Edges and Hindrances. This is the character’s maximum Street Cred and represents the limits of his influence on the streets. Over the course of the character’s life, this value will fluctuate as he exerts his influence and his reputation grows (see below), but it may never be lower than zero or greater than his unspent value.

Using and Gaining Street Cred

Sometimes you need some help on a job, and you need it yesterday. The form of help isn’t necessarily always the same, either. One day, you might need a quick loan to bribe a security guard into looking the other way while you sneak in through the back door of a corp. Some other night, you may want to hire a hacker to grab a piece of pay data you need. Or perhaps you want some extra muscle to watch your ass on a meet with the Mexican Mafia; whatever the reason, it’s good to be able to call in a favor from time to time. Here’s how it works.
The character’s Street Cred is a pool of points that he may spend to obtain various favors from existing contacts or even new ones. The points a character has is equal to his current Street Cred value. In addition a character may earn Street Cred doing “good stuff”—or at least stuff that makes him look good or seem cool — up to his maximum. Think of Street Cred as sort of a ‘Currency of Reputation’: once a character spends it, it’s gone until he earns more.