Lifestyle measures the quality of a character’s daily life and her living expenses, including shelter, food, entertainment, clothing and so on. It does not cover technical resources, weapons, magical equipment, professional hirelings, or other major but not personal items. The player and the gamemaster can also decide on other interesting details of the character’s lifestyle, with almost infinite variations. For example, a character might live in an abandoned building, but install enough conveniences in it to qualify as having a Luxury lifestyle. Keeping all those gadgets running, buying security, maintaining water supplies, and keeping a low profile will cost her as much as a mansion in a ritzy neighborhood.
Players can choose from one of six lifestyles: Luxury, High, Middle, Low, Squatter, or Streets. They may also temporarily find themselves saddled with the Hospitalized lifestyle (see below).
A character living a Middle or higher lifestyle can support guests at a rate of 10 percent above her own cost of living per guest. A host can also keep a guest at a lower lifestyle than her own by paying 10 percent of the cost of the guest’s lifestyle.
Characters may only buy one lifestyle. This lifestyle truly reflects the runner’s standard living circumstances. Additional living amenities such as hotel stays, workshops, safehouses, and so on are handled as separate costs.
Likewise, while lifestyle accounts for the costs of maintaining a vehicle (or paying for other methods of transportation), it does not account for the cost of a vehicle itself—that must be purchased separately.
Luxury
This lifestyle offers the best of everything: ritzy digs, lots of high-tech toys, the best food and drink, you name it. The character has a household staff, maid service, or sophisticated drones to do the chores. She gets by in her massive mansion, snazzy condo, or penthouse suite in a top hotel. Home security is top-of-the-line, with well-trained guards, astral security, and quick response times. Her home entertainment system is better than that in public theaters and accessible from anywhere in the home. She’s on the VIP list at several exclusive restaurants and clubs, both real and virtual. This is the life for the high-stakes winners in the world of Shadowrun: high-level executives, government big shots, Yakuza bigwigs, and the few shadowrunners who pull off the big scores (and live to spend their pay).
Cost: 10000 cr a month and up!
High
A High lifestyle offers a roomy house or condo, good food, and the technology that makes life easy. The character may not have the same perks as the really big boys, but neither does she have as many people gunning for her. Her home is in a secure zone or protected by good, solid bribes to the local police contractor and gang boss. She has a housekeeping service or enough tech to take care of most chores. This is the life for the well-to-do on either side of the law: mid-level managers, senior Mob bosses, and the like.
Cost: 5000 a month
Middle
The Middle lifestyle offers a nice house or condo with lots of comforts. Characters with this lifestyle sometimes eat nutrisoy as well as higher-priced natural food, but at least the autocook has a full suite of flavor faucets. This is the lifestyle of ordinary successful wage-earners or criminals.
Cost: 1,000 a month
Low
With this lifestyle, the character has an apartment, and nobody is likely to bother her much if she keeps the door bolted. She can count on regular meals; the nutrisoy may not taste great, but at least it’s hot. Power and water are available during assigned rationing periods. Security depends on how regular the payments to the local street gang are. Factory workers, petty crooks, and other folks stuck in a rut, just starting out, or down on their luck tend to have Low lifestyles.
Cost: 500¥ a month
Squatter
Life stinks for the squatter, and most of the time so does the character. She eats low-grade nutrisoy and yeast, adding flavors with an eyedropper. Her home is a squatted building, perhaps fixed up a bit, possibly even converted into barracks or divided into closet-sized rooms and shared with other squatters. Or maybe she just rents a coffin-sized sleep tank by the night. The only thing worse than the Squatter lifestyle is living on the streets.
Cost: 100¥ a month
Streets
The character lives on the streets—or in the sewers, steam tunnels, condemned buildings, or whatever temporary flop she can get. Food is wherever the character finds it, bathing is a thing of the past, and the character’s only security is what she creates for herself. This lifestyle is the bottom of the ladder, inhabited by down-and-outers of all stripes.
Cost: Hey pal, life ain’t all bad. It’s free.
Hospitalized
This special lifestyle applies only when a character is sick or injured. The character is confined to a hospital: a real one, a clinic equipped as a hospital, or a private location with the necessary equipment. Characters cannot own this lifestyle. They only pay for it until they get well or go broke, whichever comes first.
Cost: 500¥ a day for basic care, 1,000¥ a day for intensive care
Keeping Up the Payments
Characters must shell out credits each month to keep up a lifestyle. If they miss a payment, they may end up in debt and live a lower lifestyle. Each month that a character misses a payment, roll 1 die. If the result is greater than the number of consecutive months of payments missed, no sweat. The character’s credit (which is part of the cost of the lifestyle) absorbs the missed payment. If she makes the next payment, everything is fine. If the die roll result is less than or equal to the number of missed payments, the character is in trouble. Her lifestyle gets downgraded one level, which means being evicted from her former home, having some of her tech repossessed, having to hock some clothes, and so on. The character is also in debt, and owes somebody one month’s cost of her former lifestyle. If the character is mostly legit, he’s in debt to a credit company. If the character is a criminal or is living a lifestyle lower than Middle, being in debt may mean that she has defaulted on less formal financial obligations. This situation can lead to earnest discussions with large persons on the subject of debt management. After the character gets out of the hospital, she can pay back the loan. If not, there’s always a good market for fresh body parts and used cyberware. “Taking it out of your hide” has a whole new meaning.
Buying a Lifestyle
A character can permanently buy a given lifestyle by making a payment equal to 1000 months’ upkeep. This sum represents investments, trust funds, and so on that take care of payments. Nothing in life is certain, however. A character can lose a permanent lifestyle through an enemy’s action or through sheer bad luck. A hacker can rip investments to shreds, or enemies can blow real estate holdings into scrap. These things depend on how the character’s story unfolds, not on how much is her bank account at the time.
If a player wishes, her character can sell a permanent lifestyle of Middle or better. If the character has a couple of months to broker a legitimate deal, roll 2D6. Multiply the result by 10 percent to determine how much of the purchase price the character gets paid for her “property.” If the character doesn’t have the SINner quality (see p. 95), roll only 1D6.
Also roll 1D6 if the character must dump her home and possessions fast or through an agent because she is on the run. Team Lifestyles If a team is particularly tight-knit and lives together (or if a few members of a team want to shack up), they can buy a joint team lifestyle. The cost is an extra 10% per extra person. If the team is purchasing a Low Lifestyle or higher, one member of the team will have to be the tenant of record. This is the one stuck with the debt if the team doesn’t keep up payments.
