Extra Lifestyles

In addition to the standard lifestyles, there may be other services that pay out in a similar manner to lifestyles, but for some special perk.

Example: Taking out a loan gives you an up front money amount in exchange for a new monthly cost. Investments can provide you with income (like day jobs and side incomes), and addiction can provide you with a cost of living to maintain such an addiction.

Mind you, many of these are similar to the contacts system, except they relate to spreading your money around to a variety of people who wont' help you in any other sense except as described here- perhaps a "lateral" contact-building strategy.

Each of these lifestyles provides benefits after gameplay begins, never during character creation. Also keep in mind that the "Street" and "Hospitilzation" levels do not exist, Squatter is level one for these purposes.

AA Corporations and megacorps may have higher versions of these lifesytles available called "Corporate Level", so may have bonus dice all the time which may be higher than those listed below, at GM discresion.

Bribery
Bribery is a kind of lifestyle which involves regular contributions to Lone Star or other athority figures (judges, etc) which helps you get out of trouble. For each level of lifestyle, add 1 die to any test to avoid pursuit, make bail, or get out of legal trouble. Missing payments on this lifestyle may incur a similar penalty for the month missed. This may represent some on-retainer lawyers as well.

Playing with a full Decker
This lifestyle implies funds spent towards one or more deckers or security forms which help protect you from people spying on you or coming after you in the matrix. For each level of lifestyle, add 1 die to any test involving digitial stealth or protecting your files. This does not help you do anything "offensive" on the matrix, but helps prevent you from being located, and may help you notice if you are. Missing payments provides no help during this time.

Doc on Call
This lifestyle represents donations to doctors and hospitals, or mafias or other institutions that can get you ahold of a doctor (or cybersurgeon) with no questions asked. You still need to pay the doctor, but you can be assured that wherever you are there is someone on hand to provide you with emergency medical care. Each level of lifestyle represents 1 skill rank that the doctor you can find anywhere has, with +2 ranks in your home city. Missing payments may provide you penalty dice to find good doctors until paid again.

Gang Houses
This lifestyle represents maintaining a series of contacts who do nothing else but provde "safe houses" for various people. These can be crack houses, apartments full of people, or abandoned warehouses. For every level of lifestyle, you can find a location in any city rated 1 lifestyle lower, and full of other people hiding out for one reason or another. Sure, it isn't private, but it's "safe".

PR
This lifestyle represents having a PR group manage your public image. This might mean helping you gain fame, or keeping you OUT of the news, perhaps by faking "bigger" news stories, or just putting a spin on incriminating pictures, coming up with alibies, etc. Each lifestyle rank gives +1 die on tests to spin news stories about you in a direction you choose, including attempting to bury the story on the back page.

Finder
This lifestyle represents have a kind of "shadowrunner agent" who is "in the know" when it comes to people who need things done. He can help you find new johnsons, or smooth things over with johnsons if you did a bad job. Each level of lifestyle gives him +1 die to find new missions for you, or on social skills to improve the mood of a johnson you've wronged. Each level can also help to find "higher profile" johnsons.

Astral Support
This lifestyle represents some kind of astral defense- maybe someone sends an occasional watcher spirit to check up on you, or goes and cleanses your aura in your house from time to time. Each rank of lifestyle gives +1 die for checks related to preventing astral tracking, ritual sorcery, and other such magic that involves using magic on you from a distance.

Vehicles
This lifestyle represents series of rental cars, cabs, limos, or drivers on call to get you around- or away, in a chase. Each level of lifestyle represents better vehicles and/or better drivers: each level gives +1 rank in the driving skill (with a base of 3 for cars, 2 for water vehicles, and 1 for air vehicles), and a different level of vehicle (squatter might mean broken down cabs with no boat or air options, while luxury would mean a helicoptor, charter jet, or limo/suv as needed). People still take time to get to you- you don't "summon" them.

Shoppers
This lifestyle represents contacts that can provide you with illegal goods, discounts, or other such merchandise quickly and easily. For each level of lifestyle you can either add +1 to your availability, OR -0.1 from the street index for your purchases (and +.1 to your sale prices). You easily get reliant on this network, however, and missed payments result in a similar penalty for a few months or until you begin paying again. You can purchase 2 seperate lifestyles for this: one for the street index discount and one for the availability if you wish. Street index never goes below .5 and sale price never goes higher than purchase price. The ability to purchase items does not get you out of trouble if you are caught with them. This discount or sale price increase does not stack with any "connected" edges you have, though it may apply to other products or increase availability.

Deposit Boxes
This lifestyle represents safe deposit boxes, warehouses, garages, and a variety of places where you can stow vehicles, cash, or equipment. These boxes are hidden from searches and seizures by police and officials, each rank of lifestyle granting +1 die to avoid law officials finding out about your relation to the storage space (which may stack with decker support). Squatter represents small safe deposit boxes that can hold disks or cash, Low represents a storage unit which can hold equipment and a bike, but not larger vehicles, Middle represents a garage which can hold a single car + the capacity of Low, High represents the ability to stow a specialized vehicle and some gear, while Luxury represents several vehicles along with gear- perhaps a whole warehouse.

Hired Goons
This lifestyle represents some on-retainer hired goons who can go do mundane tasks for you: get groceries, deliver messages, beat up reporters, or other low-level missions that are benath your time, or that you don't want to get noticed doing. Each level provides +1 goon (with squatter giving 1) and the goons have 1 die in relevant skills per level. Goons almost never participate actively in shadowruns, but might act as getaway drivers or deckers if that's their sole purpose.

Quiet Workers
Like hired goons, this represents the ability to find cheap laborers who don't ask questions- perhaps illegal immigrants who don't speak the language, or a carpet cleaner to get the blood out of your car. Each level adds +1 die to tests to find semi-skilled workers for otherwise legal tasks that you want carried out in secret. They won't dispose of a body, but they won't report the blood stains they clean, or they may represent a butler who "doesn't see anything".

Magic Membership
This represents making regular contributions to shamanistic lodges, hermetic circles, or other large magical orginizations. In response to such regular contributions, you can more easily find mages willing to quicken spells, groups to initiate with, or power sites to summon or cast in. A squatter lifestyle gives a place where you can find an initiation group and the ability to purchase talismans normally, Low lifestyle gives you a basement to sleep in once in a while, and a power site you can occasionaly come cast in (+1 die to magic tests made there). Medium lifestyle grants access to mages with other techniques you can call for favors (they must still be paid for: cleansing, ritual sorcery, dispelling, astral tracking, etc). High lifestyles grant +1 dice on tests to make initiation ordeals, and Luxury Lifestyles will contribute 1 karma point towards any quickened spell or initiation you attempt, and to any ritual of change used to improve an ally spirit. Failure to pay loses all benefits until past contributions are caught up.

Your Neighborhood
This represents regular contributions to the right people in your neighborhood. Maybe you build schools or parks, maybe you pay law enforcement and keep thugs out of the area. In any case, people recognise your contributions and tend not to spread bad rumors about you. Anyone trying to gather information about you has -1 die/level of the lifestyle as people tended to not see anything you did, or not be willing to talk, since you're an overall positive force in the community. This bonus also applies to checks to avoid foot pursuit in the area, as people "accidentally" get in the way of cops, or open doors for you to run through their building.

At luxury level, you gain an additional 1 die bonus against digital tracing in the area as well, as people tend to go out of their way to step in front of cameras or let you buy items on credit or whatever. This only applies to the given area, multiple similar lifestyles might represent various other areas (such as redmond barrents, and downtown as 2 lifestyles).

If two people have the same area with this lifestyle and they are acting against each other, subtract the lower from the higher bonus and use the net as a bonus to the person with the higher dice, as the people have torn loyalties.

Conveniences
You know all the right people and have greased all the right palms- you can always get a ticket to an event, a seat at a table in a restaurant, a seat on a train, or other convenience item, partially due to all the money you pay buying coupons, meeting people, or investing in the restaurants themselves. Each level of lifestyle lets you get "free" transportation, restaurant service, and similar convenience item at any locale in any city that matches the lifestyle. (First class plane tickets for high, luxury restaurants and hotel rooms for luxury, etc). This doesn't represent your primary lifestyle, as there is no specific location, and it applies anywhere. You can always use a facility below your lifestyle. While these things are "free" it generally assumes you're paying for them as a part of your lifestyle costs.

This one blends with your existing lifestyle costs somewhat, but a low convenience lifestyle might be able to grab football tickets whenever he wants for free, while a luxury might be able to get superbowl tickets in the box for him and his friends every year. It represents more the convenience than the actual living and comes up as an advantage during travel and wining and dining people brought along.

Conventions
You go to a variety of conventions and network with various people. For each level of this lifestyle, you have 1 extra die for any attempt to find someone with a specific knowledge skill- an expert in the field. You may pay for this generally, or you may pay for only a specific knowledge skill, in which case each level of lifestyle also provides +1 bonus to the knowledge rolls made by such experts. If you buy this specifically, you can purchase it multiple times for multiple skills.

Example: Generally, with a medium lifestyle, you can get +3 dice to find someone with knowldge of gangs, knowlege of lone star tactics, etc, wherever you are. If you instead puchase this specifically to deal with knowledge of dragons, you get +3 dice to find such an expert, wherever you are, and that expert gets +3 to his knowledge rolls to know the answers to the questions you provide to him.