The Not-So-Official definition of a Street Lifestyle is..."That the character has no home or no place to go. A person with a street lifestyle finds themselves waking up in the alley's covered with newspapers or boxes. A street character has no nuyen and generally few possessions of little value. The character is at the lowest level he can be. He finds himself washing windshields and doing other menial tasks to earn tips for food. Not only is the character poor, dirty, and homeless, but he is also considered the drek of the city. Even other street dwellers don't respect you. Unlike squatters, street people are loners that have wound up living in a steam tunnel because of their own actions/inactions."

Seattle, and other major sprawls, are built around corporations. Corporations employ people that live in the sprawls. It's an association that goes hand-in-hand to create a society. This can be traced from the great metroplex of Aztechnlogy to the smallest Stuffer Shack in Cleveland. Everybody participates in the society, even a shadowrunner. Everyone seems to be a small cog in the great machine of life, that is everyone except for the Street Lifestyle person. He is the lowest, most unrespectable form of being plaguing the world. They do nothing for society, except drain funds from Governement and Corporate Agencies. Society, in 2050 has all but given up on the homeless. Street people are not welcome in any neighborhoods, often being "moved" along by local security agencies from one part of the sprawl to another. Sometimes a character will have been moved along so many times in one night that sleep is impossible. Security details, including Lone Star and Knight Erraint, will not arrest a street person for vagrancy, as too many of them want to spend a night or two in lock-up. A free meal and a warm bed. Jails would fill each night with vagrants, so it's easier to move the homeless from the good neighborhoods to the bad neighborhoods. If a street person decides to cause problems for a security detail, it's been rumored that the agents release the street people into feeding areas for ghouls, or other devious things. Afterall, a street person won't me missed.

You didn't think it was going to be easy. Afterall you didn't pay anything to get here. Where to begin? Every day is one big hardship, filled with many smaller hardships. There is no such thing as Easy Street, although some neighborhoods are more tolerant of the homeless than others. For the most part, as stated above, the homeless are herded into certain zones several times a week. For instance, you'll rarely see a homeless person laying in an alley in Bellevue. That pretty much explains the first hardship: Finding a place to stay.

Each day or evening a street character must find a place to stay. For shadowrunners that live on the streets, they can probably room with a teammate for a couple nights. That eventually costs that character nuyen, and back to the streets with you. There are not a shortage of places to sleep for your character. Alley's and abandoned buildings are top choices for the homeless. Not so favoritie choices include the sewers, steam tunnels, underneath overpass bridges, unguarded mausoliums, and occassionally the proverbial park bench As mentioned, these sites are popular among the homeless, but they are not always available. Security forces don't want homeless littering their streets on their watches, so be prepared to be moved along several times in a night. The more unsafe the neighborhood, or the more dangerous the location is, the less likely you are to be bothered by security. You may, however, be bothered by.....

Gangs and ghouls pose problems with the homeless. The gangs enjoy the thrill of rolling the homeless for the few possessions that they have. Some gangs enjoy forcing the homeless into entertaining fights, while other gangs enjoy the sport of "homeless hunting". As nobody cares about the street people, gangs feel free to abuse them. Streeters make good midnight target practice for the gangs, and better midnight snacks for the ghouls. Meat-eaters aren't the only ones out searching for the homeless. It's been proven that some Street Doc's (as well as some major medical corps - but we won't mention that) capture the homeless for body parts, or to test new treatments on. I'll bet you were wondering where the Street Doc's got all that surplus blood.

As stated in the SRII Rulebook definition. "security is what you make of it". And that tends to be not much at all. Unless you are an expert cacher, or have a secure place to put something, it's on your back or in your shopping cart. You may find a niche someplace to store something, but it's never permanent, as others like you are always searching for food and equipment to make their miserable lives better. The gangs search the homeless routinely for possessions. Other homeless people rifle through each others possessions as they sleep. The security teams always pat down or wand the homeless they are moving along. They are searching for weapons, but often take valuable things.

Hopefully you're well versed in the fine art of rat fileting, because that's a primary source of food on the streets. Some restaurants still keep unlocked dumpsters that the homeless can rummage through for food, but they are getting rarer. Primative means of survival still can be applied in the sprawl, such as fishing in a lake or hunting for something other than a rat or stray dog. Homeless often find food scraps down near the docks. Occassionally a street person can find a meal at a charity center around the holiday seasons, or Soup Kitchen that serve soups for nearly nothing, but only if they are willing to be lectured to for hours and have a registered SIN.....which brings us to, yes, another hardship.

During character creation the player decides whether or not he has a SIN number. If he decided to have a SIN number, then he perhaps didn't always live on the streets and is a victim of his own circumstances. Others choose to be SINLESS, and that puts them on the streets. Most homeless are SINLESS and chose to be that way for their own reasons. Some because they feel that the SIN is just another vehicle the government uses to control the people, and others because they never had the chance or reason to get one. Perhaps the character is an illegal immigrant. Most organizations that still attempt to aide the homeless require a SIN or they won't help. (Afterall somebody upstairs wants a talley sheet.) Once a character decides that he's SINLESS it's nearly impossible to prove your identity. Sure you can obtain a SIN number, but it's costly and time consuming. A homeless person without a SIN can not obtain legitimate employment (i.e. at a Stuffer Shack), which brings us to.....

Let's get real. You don't have the time for entertainment. You're too busy finding food, finding shelter, avoiding gangs and police, and basically surviving to do anything else. When you finally do have time to enjoy anything, it may be skipping rocks off of a wall, or maybe scaring neighborhood children.

The game is Shadowrun, so you'll be seeking employment in the shadows doing well paying runs. As a street person employment opporunities to the big nuyen rarely come, unless you're connected through others to a Mr. Johnson. Let's get real for a moment, a good fixer, or Johnson, isn't going to track down a homeless runner for a sensitive job. He may go to the homeless if he needs a scapegoat or fall-guy. As for the good paying runs, you can pretty much forget about it. You may be called in for use as muscle, under dire circumstances. Even the Yakuza and Mafia tend to use the Squatters for errand boys. Employment is hard to get.

Since the character pays nothing for lifestyle, the lifestyle pays nothing for the character. Everything the character purchases, he must pay for with his nuyen. Since nuyen is a rare concept for the street person, he usually doesn't have to worry about purchasing too much.

A street level character is again, just that a Street Person. After initial allocated monies are spent the character rolls 2d6X100. That is his incurred debts. A character does not get to keep any percentage of unspent nuyen during character generation. A Street Level character has the benefit of 1 additional contacts that must be of Street Level. For instance, a squatter, or street cop would qualify, as would a bouncer or restaurant manager. Someone that would come into contact with a street person. If a character has a substantial amount of vehicles or equipment, someone might be in the process of repossessing those items/vehicles to pay off the debt incurred.

Optional Considerations: As this is a Player Character, the GM may not permit the character to keep a Street Lifestyle. Characters generally start the campaign with more than the 100 nuyen necessary to purchase a Squatter lifestyle. If a character insists on being a Street person with high tech toys, vehicles, and credsticks full of nuyen the GM should impose the LOW Lifestyle on him. This can be explained as money necessary for upkeep of vehicles. After all, gasoline is not cheap. If the character still insists on purchasing everything, start randomly hitting them with vehicle repair bills, or equipment problems. A street lifestyle cannot maintain routine costs of anything. The lifestyles were created to stop characters and GM's from having to worry about paying each and every bill that happens along.

Another Option: Being a street person is going to be difficult, at best. Depending how well the character plays the concept of life on the street, he may receive additional Karma, or not have to pay a point of Good Karma to join a team (limited to one team per life). The team does not receive an additional point, but the street person is able to use it.

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