Lifestyle Systems

[Zaranthan]

lifestyle should give bonus the same way a magic sword do.

It's been tried in several systems, always ends up seeming like a tacked on excuse to make minmaxers care about lifestyle. It has to be worked into the system at the ground level, such that nearly EVERY interaction incorporates your lifestyle bonus.

[K]

If Shadowrun had balls, they'd make Lifestyle an actual criticism of inequality.

For example, higher lifestyles should get you more Contacts, better access to medicine(cyberware), fewer penalties from illegal actions, better pay from all kinds of work, and bonuses to all social actions.

Certainly, there should be different kinds of Lifestyles and the perks. A crime lord may have a converted factory in the Barrens with private bar and stripper poles, but an assasin mage might have a corporate apartment and the cover that he's a "consultant."

[Iduno]

lifestyle should give bonus the same way a magic sword do.

It's been tried in several systems, always ends up seeming like a tacked on excuse to make minmaxers care about lifestyle. It has to be worked into the system at the ground level, such that nearly EVERY interaction incorporates your lifestyle bonus.

At least a limit on social interactions and knowledge (what you were taught in schools) and anything related to health (healing, disease resistance, endurance, etc.).

Also, 100% agree with K's comment about making Lifestyle about inequality. In one neighborhood, the cops might give you a ride home when you've been drinking, another have you walk home, and a third shoot you for "resisting arrest." You're more likely to be noticed in the first neighborhood, and unlikely to be noticed in the last one, but the results are based on how much you spend.

[Ghremdal]

What a Shadowrun needs is a way to track and generate "heat" as such from local/global authorities.

Then you could have a high lifestyle give you benefits to your social skills, access to equipment/drugs/services but increase your "heat score". A high lifestyle is not only expensive, but it gets you noticed by the shakers and movers. Sure you might get away with drunk driving, but come back to the good neibourghood with a dozen bullet wounds and people start talking.

Lower lifestyles would reduce the "heat score", but deny you access to the good stuff. In the barrens, you get sold out of 20 Y, but people keep to themselves and attracting interest from local folk requires extravagant actions. Getting shot up is just another tuesday in the Barrens.

[PrometheanVigil]

If Shadowrun had balls, they'd make Lifestyle an actual criticism of inequality.

Certainly, there should be different kinds of Lifestyles and the perks. A crime lord may have a converted factory in the Barrens with private bar and stripper poles, but an assasin mage might have a corporate apartment and the cover that he's a "consultant."

That'd require the developer tackling racism, sexism, all that good stuff. IN a Shadowrun future, you might be a Black Female Elf but you're still Black and Female (and an Elf -- though Elves actually don't suffer meta-racism in practise, they tend to occupy a number of the highest positions of power in the setting and treated better than Humans more often than not by the game's own admission).

On top of that, wealth inequality isn't cut-and-dried. Even in the Shadowrun world, social mobility is surprisingly high (in RELATIVE terms) but that's more a symptom of the dystopian world having inummerable cracks in the socioeconomiuc power structure than anything else. And just like in real-life, saying "shouldn't everyone have the chance a big house, nice car and a pool"?" is stupid because, in most cases, people aren't willing to work (legally or illegally) that hard (i.e. sacrifice your life for 10-20 years, possibly your soul in the process) to be able to get that stuff in a realistic time-frame so as to enjoy it in your 40's onwards. This is, of course, before we even include the wide-ranging and horrific effects of the aforementioned racism etc... above.

Fuck, using SR's system (seems most people on this board are familiar with it) I was born into Low (sprinkled with bits of Squatter), I lifted myself up into Middle with little financial/social support from anyone else. However, added with other aspects of my life, that has meant my outlook is... jaded. This has the side-effect of making me more likely to hit High in the next five years. because I've proven so far I'm prepared to put in the work and adapt my internal compass to meet the realities of what achieving that Lifestyle will mean. And I am a mixed-race Black/White Male, so that makes me the equiv of an Ork in SR terms (again, ignoring skin color as SR does).

That's not very fun. And it's not what the general gaming audience is going for when they think "cyberpunk rpg". See the recent trailer for Cyberpunk 2077.

On the last point about factories and warehouses and stuff, that would indeed be something I'd invest in as a GM and player. However, I'm part of a minority of people who've purchased the corebook who would actually want that in the game. It's a mini-game in and of itself and doesn't fit the "mold" of the core gameplay experience that SR aims for: heists, kidnapping, assassination.

What a Shadowrun needs is a way to track and generate "heat" as such from local/global authorities.

Then you could have a high lifestyle give you benefits to your social skills, access to equipment/drugs/services but increase your "heat score". A high lifestyle is not only expensive, but it gets you noticed by the shakers and movers. Sure you might get away with drunk driving, but come back to the good neibourghood with a dozen bullet wounds and people start talking.

Lower lifestyles would reduce the "heat score", but deny you access to the good stuff. In the barrens, you get sold out of 20 Y, but people keep to themselves and attracting interest from local folk requires extravagant actions. Getting shot up is just another tuesday in the Barrens.

Notoriety is supposed to handle this. It does so poorly -- actually, not really at all.

Also, nothing stops players from taking multiple Lifestyles. It even says so in the text for it. That, added with multiple identities and the emphasis on anonymity in the setting (particularly by the affluent and/or connected), this won't hurt a PC.

What you would have to do would be to create a sub-system wherein characters have to spend a certain amount of time each week "keeping up appearances" or, really, just live their life outside of running. I do this already in most all campaigns I run but this would need to be enforced by the core rules. It would also need to be a sliding scale of effects . This would have the potential to eat heavily into time available for runs (which can take days if not weeks, of planning, recon and resourcing before execution) which would, again, defeat the core gameplay experience.

Really, all they need to do is just do a simple "higher Karma costs for lower Lifestyles", maybe branch from there for specific categories of Skills/Attributes/Qualities associated with a Lifestyle level. Suddenly, everyone is trying to get Lifestyle as high as possible. There will, of course, be GMs who will ignore this but if adopted by the greater SR community as a "core feature", it'll be one step closer in the right direction for an authentic RP experience.

[Guts]

Blades in the Dark also has a great lifestyle system that's well integrated with it's main heists aspect. You have a downtime phase with various options to upgrade your conditions, vent off stress by engaging vices (Stress is your "Blood Pool" in the game) which may lead to complications that spill into the heists, track down and reduce Heat, put your earned money in a safe, engage new contacts, etc. And this is both for individual characters and the crew as a whole (the crew has its own character sheet with ready-made upgrade tracks, each with discrete effects).

It's simple, interactive, and feeds into/effects everything else in the game. So, a much better example than Shadowrun' s, imo.

[TheFlatline]

lifestyle should give bonus the same way a magic sword do.

It's been tried in several systems, always ends up seeming like a tacked on excuse to make minmaxers care about lifestyle. It has to be worked into the system at the ground level, such that nearly EVERY interaction incorporates your lifestyle bonus.

Even worse you get the munchkin who takes "squatter" lifestyle and says "Oh I just will live with the guy with the Luxury lifestyle so I get all the same benefits now and can spend those points elsewhere" (true story)

[Trill]

Even worse you get the munchkin who takes "squatter" lifestyle and says "Oh I just will live with the guy with the Luxury lifestyle so I get all the same benefits now and can spend those points elsewhere" (true story)

I see no problem with this per se. The only thing I'd do is ask the squatter if he pays any money, and remind the luxury guy that Multiple people sharing a lifestyle increases the cost by 10% per additional problem person. If he's willing to pay 1.1*(Lifestyle cost)-(what the squatter is paying) then no problem. Of course I'll also point out that sharing one lifestyle means that if one of you burns his lifestyle, all of you burn your lifestyle and that they should keep that in mind

[Iduno]

Of course I'll also point out that sharing one lifestyle means that if one of you burns his lifestyle, all of you burn your lifestyle and that they should keep that in mind

And the odds of needing to burn a shared lifestyle increase, as instead of everyone splitting after a run, everyone and everything involved in the run moves together (corpsec/the cops/FBI/whomever is looking for 2 elves, a dwarf, and an orc fitting these descriptions, in this van, and they look like that group living in the penthouse of your building). You'd want some sort of heat index, and sharing costs gives you the aggregate heat for everyone living there. Cheaper, but more of a hassle.

[Stahlseele]

Which is why i usually made sure that nobody ever knew where i lived.
And had alibi and secondary lifestyles available if needed immediately.

Nothing better for a bug out than having a souped up RV for simply leaving civilization as a whole for some time by living in the wilderness somewhere with the RV parked under camonetting in reach of a fresh water source and either stacks of MRE or hunting grounds.