Doss
Doss and Lifestyle
Terminology
- Doss: the part of the lifestyle which is the place where you live. You pay for your doss directly, and the quality of the doss determines how much you pay.
- Lifestyle: This number subsumes the Comforts and Necessity parts old the old lifestyle system. It's the spending money and comfort from the old system.
- GAS: A term for the new part of the system, which is gossip, assets, and secrets.
Dosses
First things first - rent for your doss is reduced by 25%. All dosses are cheaper - since the difference where your daily spending money is now going away.
Security and Neighbourhood are set by your Doss. Entertainment options remain tied to your Doss as well. This means that the majority of your bonuses remain fixed - but at the end of the process, your Doss is a little cheaper. Fixed cost entertainment options like Garage or Yard have their cost unchanged.
Any place without the Dangerous Area modifier requires a SIN to rent, and is tied to that SIN.
Lifestyles
Lifestyles are no longer managed by money - but instead by your ability to gain day-to-day money. Lifestyle now covers Comforts and Necessities. Comforts and Necessities (now called Lifestyle) come in ratings from 1 to 10 under the new Lifestyle rules.
- Rating 1-2 - Completely unlivable, you potentially take damage every downtime (as per Run Faster). It's unlikely that you have clean enough clothes to blend during a run, and you can't easily get your hands on a snack during a stakeout.
- Rating 3-4 - This is the minimum allowable for daily living. Equivalent to a Medium lifestyle. You're eating soy and sleeping in a bed, but you're at least getting good flavours. You can probably buy a soykaf during a Run.
- Rating 5-6 - This is where you're able to eat real food regularly, you can get a cab without a problem, and definitely have an outfit for the occasion.
- Rating 7+ - Money is no object. You can easily rent a hotel room for a night, get a cab to Touristville, and get a table at the space needle.
If you need a roll to see if someone can afford something that seems extravagant, roll Lifestyle vs the Neighbourhood rating (1 for D or less, 2 for B or C, 3 for A, 4 for AA, 5 for AAA, if the place is expensive you can add 1 or 2 to the difficulty, you can get assistance from someone else on the roll using the Negotiation skill, you can accept Negotiation assistance successes up to your Lifestyle). Local Bar Patron and Patron Of the Arts and similar entertainment options will make you never need to roll Lifestyle to use the place you patronize.
GAS
Your lifestyle points are gained by using GAS, and then Launder it.
Gossip: Mingling in a crowd of people part of a society (corporation, magical society, or organized crime, as examples), can allow you to gather Gossip. Gossip is gathered via a Charisma or Intuition plus Etiquette or Con roll. It's hard to use Perception to gather Gossip, but it can be done, but you only get 1 point of Gossip per 3 hits. Use your Social Limit with modifiers for this roll.
Assets: During a run you might be able to find small things to steal. This can be done via the Palming skill in a crowd, Perception in a place where things might be crowded (for example a private residence of a richer person), or Hardware or Sneaking in a place where there's valuable items out front and centre with the caveat that there's guards. Obviously other skills could be used, and creativity is encouraged. This can gather stolen stuff, and each hit gives you a point of Assets. The security zone acts as the limit on this (see above for numbers), unless there's a good reason why it might not be the case (robbing the Knight Errant forward command in the barrens would probably count as an A zone).
Secrets: Ransack a host for Paydata. Every 3 hits you get Ransacking the host gives you a point of Secrets.
Laundering/Fencing: Once you have Gossip/Assets/Secrets you can spend them. You can use each category once per month, and can use one contact per category. You can give a contact your Gossip/Secrets/Assets, and they will pay you, and they can pay up to their Connection rating. For example: Malta has 2 points of Secrets, 4 points of Gossip, and 1 point of Assets. Knowing Jane could use the Gossip he decides to hand her 3 points (because she has a connection rating of 3, so he keeps the point of Gossip for later), then he gives Wallace the two points of Secrets due to it being about the Ancients, and sells the Assets that are a pile of cram to Krash. This leaves Malta with 6 Lifestyle.
Some examples:
The team breaks into the home of a corporate executive, and decides to do a little petty robbery, the kind of things where they can grab some valuable jewelry and items which wont be missed for a few days. Silk immediately begins chatting with the security guard, since she's working as a guest. She rolls a Charisma+Con and gets 4 successes. StaTiC starts inventorying items, rolling a Intuition+Computer to build a search of the images for things that aren't obviously visible, and gets 3 successes. Malta eats the 6 successes and rolls his Intuition+Perception and gets the +1 limit from his attention co-processor, and +2 limit from the help. Since they're in a AAA zone the limit is base 5 and the decision is that a limit bonus of +1 for a well connected VP, for a total limit of 9. Malta scores all 9 successes, and, at the end of the run, the split the gear, giving everyone 2 Assets (including Revàn in the split), and Malta keeps the +1 for the value of the Attention Coprocessor.
StATiC has been trying to get some assets in order to assist their flagging lifestyle, and decides to grab what she can in a Redmond garage while she waits for the Faces to finish their damn pokergame upstairs. She begins looking around rolling a Intuition+Stealth looking for hidden caches. She spends an Edge in order to break the limit to make it so she doesn't just find dross, and scores 6 successes. Looks like someone was keeping a cache of novacoke for sale later hidden here.
Contacts and GAS
Runs/Contacts/NPCs can give Assets/Gossip/Secrets as bribes. And they are considered their equivalent value with Favours when trading with NPCs. (This means that they can be spent as Loyalty chips, if they come in a form that the contact would care about).
If needed, you can work for a Contact. You need to work a number of days equal to 10-Loyalty, and then can make a roll of your choice (depending on work appropriate to the contact), to generate additional Lifestyle directly, the limit being the Connection rating of the Contact. For example, StATIc decides to work for Steve McGee for a few days as a hospital assistant. She works 9 days, and rolls Logic+Medicine, limit 1. If she bartended for McTavish she would work 7 days for a Charisma+Etiquette with a limit of 3. You can also choose to gain this as GAS or Chips if desired (for example you want to try to do some work to increase loyalty, or build up some savings for later.
Some examples:
Silk doesn't have a lot of people locally, and would like to not just be living on burned soy and barely potable water. She has a bunch of gossip from a recent run and so gets Malta to intro her to Doyle to do the sale. Malta can't use Doyle this month.
StATiC is working at Lifehaven, and realizing it's draining her resources. So she asks Revàn if she can do some work patching up runners for Integra. She spends 10 days working (because Integra has 0 Loyalty with staTIC), and then rolls Logic+Medicine, with help from the two Drones working in Lifehaven, and Amanda Bryerly, giving her +3 limit as the primary bonus.
Revàn and Malta decide they need to get a little more lifestyle together because they're a little broke. Revàn goes to Lyra for work, and Malta helps out. They do security for a shipment, rolling their combat skills. Malta using Agility+Longarms assisting Revàn's Magic+Sorcery, allowing them to both roll with a limit of 6 and split the resulting Lifestyle, but only needing 5 days of work.
Changes to Existing Mechanics
Changes to:
Creature of Comfort: This has been modified to care about Doss primarily. It's far more about how nice a place you are living than your spending money. But with Creature of Comfort (10 pt) you can't have Lifestyle below 3, 17 your Lifestyle can't go below 4, and 25 yours lifestyle can't go below 5. Failing to do this counts as not meeting the requirements, though the penalty from Lifestyle can be -1. For example, Revàn has Creature of Comfort 10, so if he sleeps in a Street location for an evening, he would be at -2 to Social Skills and Healing. If he was in a Low quality Doss place with 0 Lifestyle, he'd be at -2 as well.
Dayjob: Dayjob's time required remains unchanged, but gives 1, 2, or 3 points of extra lifestyle in place of money.
Dependents: This no longer raises the cost of a Doss, but it reduces your lifestyle by 1 point each month per level (so 1,2, or 3 points). Meaning that the runner needs at least 4-6 Lifestyle before ignoring Fatigue damage.
Entertainment that grants Comforts & Necessities: These no longer work.
Neoteny: -1 Lifestyle, no other changes
Troll: -1 Lifestyle, no other changes
