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As a player in a Shadowrun game, your primary objective
is to make things happen. Many of those things
should be awesome. The gamemaster will set up a story
for you, then your character will decide how to respond
to the initial setup and all the events that happen once
the story gets rolling. Sooner or later—hopefully sooner—
you’ll face a challenge, something that requires you
to test your abilities. The rules are here so that you and
the gamemaster can determine the outcome of your actions.
Did the shot from your Ares Predator V hit the ork
ganger right between the tusks? Are you able to sneak
past the sleepy dwarf guard without waking him up? Did
you counter the stunball the troll mage threw at you and
dissolve it into millions of pieces of glittery mana?
The rules are here to help you move the story forward,
to give you outcomes for the decisions you’re
making. They are not a perfect mirror of reality—at times,
the rules provide abstract ways to determine the results
of concrete actions, because it speeds up the game and
prevents players from having to roll dice over and over
again to complete certain tasks. This chapter describes
the basic rules concepts you need to understand to play
Shadowrun, complete your missions, and get the nuyen
you’ve got coming to you.
Shadowrun games are led by a gamemaster, who guides
a group of players through the adventures awaiting them.
At the gaming table, the gamemaster sets up and advances
the story, governs the actions of the non-player
characters, and determine the results of tests and other
rules-related matters. This gives them a certain amount
of power in the game. When the game is working well,
the gamemaster will be able to move the story along and
work with the players to make an exciting, involving experience.
Role-playing is a cooperative endeavor, and
every member of the gaming group should be working
together to help each member of the group have fun
(even the gamemasters, since they should occasionally
be allowed some enjoyment). Players should feel like
their characters can play an important role in shaping and
advancing the story, and the gamemaster should feel that
they can keep the story moving ahead without having to
engage in prolonged and distracting discussions about
the rules. The more members of the group work together,
the better their chances of shooting people in the face for
money in spectacular and amazing fashions will be.
For more advice on running a Shadowrun game and
working with players, see Gamemaster Advice, p. 332.
The main rules for Shadowrun, Fifth Edition have been
designed to provide characters who are skilled and capable
from the moment they are created but have room to grow into
true legends of the shadowrunning world. Different groups may
prefer, however, to play at different levels. Some may want to
start with a more street-level campaign, making their players
figure out how to survive with relatively low skills until they
can earn enough Karma to truly grow into their abilities. Other
groups might prefer a more cinematic, high-powered game,
with characters who are among the world’s elite right off the
bat and only grow fiercer as they further hone their abilities.
At different junctures in the book, including at character
creation, rules are provided for normal, street-level, and prime
runner campaigns to help players and gamemasters play the
game in a way that suits your preferences.
While the rules of Shadowrun, Fifth Edition were designed
to provide a fun, balanced gaming experience, no one set of
rules can take into account every individual’s preferences. To
that end, optional rules are provided in the book that you might
choose to use in your game. Some make the game move faster;
others provide a more detailed, simulationist approach to
Shadowrun. Gamemasters should feel free to use the rules that
suit them, and tweak existing rules as they see fit.
Your Shadowrun character does all the things a normal
person does, along with the occasional grand theft,
espionage mission, or hit job. Most of these things—
common tasks like eating, sleeping, and crossing an
empty street—are done automatically and are kept in
the background of the game. When you need to do
something difficult or extraordinary, or when you need
to avoid someone who has got you in their crosshairs,
you have to roll the dice to determine a result.
Shadowrun uses six-sided dice, and usually you need a
good quantity of them. The amount of dice you roll is
referred to as a dice pool. Additions to the dice pool are
often noted by a number in front of the term”D6,” so that
3D6 refers to three six-sided dice. When you roll, you
want to see fives and sixes. Each one of these numbers
that comes up is called a hit. The more hits you roll, the
better chance you have to pull off whatever you are attempting
to do.
Each time you roll the dice, you’ll be looking to get
enough hits to meet or beat a threshold, which is the
number of hits you need to do the thing you’re trying to
do. That threshold changes depending on what it is you
want to accomplish; sometimes it will be a set number
of hits, other times you’ll just be trying to get more hits
than the other guy. There will also be occasions when
you see how many hits you can rack up over an extended
period. All of this will be covered more in the section
dealing with tests.
Descriptions of skills often have examples of thresholds
that should be used, but gamemasters can fall back
on the simple guidelines shown in the Success Test
Thresholds table.
In most tests, the number of hits you get can do more
than just determine whether you succeed; it can add to
your success. The number of hits you have that is more
than what you needed is referred to as your net hits. Net
hits can increase the damage you do in combat or have
other positive effects. At the gamemaster’s discretion,
she can reward extraordinary rolls that result in a high
number of net hits (four or more) with a little extra accomplishment
for the runner, something that may make
their next test easier.
Sometimes it can save time to skip a test and allow a
player simply to buy hits, especially if they are rolling
so many dice they are fairly certain they’ll succeed. To
buy hits, simply count one hit for every four dice in your
pool, rounded down. Note that this can’t be a halfway
measure—you can’t buy a couple of hits and then roll
for the rest. Either you buy hits with all your dice, or you
roll with all of them.
Buying hits often should not be done if there is a
chance of a glitch or critical glitch that might significantly
change the course of the game’s actions. You need
your gamemaster’s approval to buy hits. If he doesn’t
want you to buy hits for the test, then you’re not buying
hits—get ready to roll.
Along with fives and sixes, you need to pay attention
to how many ones show up when you roll the dice. If
more than half the dice you rolled show a one, then
you’ve got problems. This is called a glitch. When you
glitch, something bad happens. Maybe you drop your
gun. Maybe you trip over a broken piece of pavement
you hadn’t noticed. Whatever the case, something happens
that makes your life more difficult. Just what it is
that happens is left to the discretion of the gamemaster.
The guideline for a glitch is that whatever happens
should make life more difficult for the particular shadowrunner
while not disastrously interfering with their
work. For example, a runner who rolls a glitch while
working to defuse an explosive may drop his wire cutters,
or may call up the wrong augmented reality window
of information about the nature of the device. The
gamemaster should not, however, decree that the player
abruptly cut the wrong wire so that the explosive blows
up in their face. As an additional factor, the gamemaster
may decide to make the glitch more severe if the player
only had one or two hits along with it.
Note that it is possible to roll a glitch on a test that
has enough hits to be successful. In these cases, the
glitch does not cancel out the success; instead, the
glitch occurs in addition to the success. For example,
a troll could take a mighty swing at a dwarf, rolling
enough hits to make contact but also glitching. The
dwarf takes damage from the troll’s beefy fist slamming
into his face, but the force of the swing and the need to
aim downward takes the troll off balance, sending him
to the ground after the punch lands. In the next couple
of rounds, the troll has to get up on his feet and get
back into a fighting stance.
There may be circumstances where a player rolls
a glitch and also does not achieve a single hit. This is
called a critical glitch, and this is where the drek hits
the fan. These are the dice rolls that could put characters’
lives at risk, where they’re going to have to think
fast and move faster in order to get out with their hoops
intact. Again, exactly what happens is up to the gamemaster,
but a critical glitch should throw a serious monkey
wrench into shadowrunners’ plans, making them
scramble to recover. While an abrupt, ignominious death
is possible when a critical glitch is rolled, gamemasters
and players will likely have more fun if the roll keeps the
players alive but forces them to improvise, test the limits
of their skills, and develop desperate plans to help them
stay alive.
Clearly, a critical glitch is something players want to
avoid, and if they really feel the need to do it, they can
use a point of Edge to do so (see Edge Effects, p. 56). By
using the Close Call function of Edge, players can downgrade
a critical glitch to a mere glitch, or entirely negate a
glitch (note that they cannot spend two points to negate a
critical glitch). This does not, however, do anything about
their total lack of hits. They’ll just have to suck that up.
When you roll dice in Shadowrun, you are generally making
one form of test or another. There are four things
you need to know when you’re making a test. They are:
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1. What kind of test it is.
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2. How many dice you should roll (usually this is
a rating of a skill added to the rating of a linked
attribute).
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3. The limit on the test, which tells you the maximum
amount of hits you can apply to the test.
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4. The threshold for the test.
The notation for a test gives you all the information
you need to know. Test notations look slightly different
based on the kind of test it is—either a Success test, an
Opposed test, an Extended test, or a Teamwork test.
Each type is discussed below.
There are two different types of limits: inherent limits
and limits from gear. Your character has three inherent
limits—Physical, Mental, and Social—that are derived
from their attributes (p. 51). These limits represent just
how far you can push your body, your mind, and your
charm (elven characters may be dismayed to discover
that their charm is not, in fact, boundless). In game
terms, limits tell you how many of the hits from your initial
roll you can actually use to determine the result of
the test. If you roll more hits than your limit allows, then
you can only count the hits equal to the limit. Occasionally
runners might find ways to extend or even blow by
their limits, but they should be aware of these limits so
they know how it might affect any upcoming tests. One
method to get around a limit is Edge—by using a point
of Edge, you may choose to ignore your limit for a single
test (see Edge Effects, p. 56).
Note that limits generally only apply to tests involving
a dice pool derived from a skill and an attribute.
Tests using a single attribute, or two attributes, do not
use limits.
Often, rather than using their inherent limits, runners
will be limited by the piece of gear they are using. Each
weapon, for example, has an Accuracy rating that serves
as its limit for attacks made with that weapon, while cyberdecks
have attributes that serve as limits on a variety
of Matrix actions. For more info, check out the write-ups
on different pieces of gear in Street Gear, p. 416.
When a limit is imposed by a piece of gear, it overrides
the inherent limit, whether it is higher or lower than
that limit. For example, the Accuracy of a firearm acts as
the limit for tests that involve shooting that gun (see p.
416 for more discussion of gear and its attributes), so no
inherent limits are used in that test. The limit is a game
statistic for the piece of gear that reflects both its general
nature and the quality of its workmanship.
Success tests generally occur when a shadowrunner
has to use her abilities to accomplish something in a
single moment of time. This could involve weaving a
car through traffic at high speed, looking for a needle
in a haystack, or lifting a heavy object. A Success test
(also known as a Simple test) is a matter of rolling up
enough hits to meet the threshold for the test, then
moving on.
Opposed tests happen whenever a shadowrunner has
to pit her skills against another individual, living thing,
or (occasionally) technological force. Maybe she’s trying
to sneak by a security guard in a factory complex,
knock out a belligerent ganger with her stungun, or talk
Mr. Johnson into offering a higher payday.
Note that Opposed tests do not list a threshold.
That’s because in an Opposed test, you are trying to
generate more hits than an opponent. Sometimes the
opponent is rolling the same skill + attribute combination,
sometimes a different one; see Using Skills, p. 128,
for information on what skills and attributes are used in
specific Opposed tests.
Rather than taking place in a single moment, some tests
take place over time. Maybe you’re taking a few days
to learn a new spell or you’re repairing your beat-up
Americar and you need to determine how long the job
takes.
Instead of obtaining all of the needed hits in a single
roll, Extended tests allow you to make repeated rolls and
then accumulate the hits you made in each roll until you
either reach the threshold, you run out of time because
there’s something else you need to do or because people
start shooting at you, or you run out of rolls. Note that on
each roll of the Extended test, you can only count the hits
equal to or under the applicable limit (unless you decide
to use Edge to get around the limit; see p. 56). The interval
for an Extended test describes how much time passes
between each roll. Intervals can be as short as a Combat
Turn or as long as a month. The Task Difficulty Threshold
table provides some suggestions on thresholds for Extended
tests, while the Extended Test Difficulties can help
gamemasters choose the proper interval.
Extended tests cannot last forever; at some point,
characters reach the limit of their abilities, and further
efforts will do them no good. To simulate this, with each
successive roll on an Extended test, players should remove
one die from their dice pool. Eventually they’ll
have no dice left, and the test will be over.
Generally, all of the rolls for an Extended test do not
need to be made concurrently. Shadowrunners can set
the task aside for a bit, do something else, then pick up
where they left off with the amount of hits they had remaining
in place.
A glitch does not necessarily cause the Extended test
to fail. Instead, it causes difficulties or delays in the effort.
The gamemaster may choose to reduce the hits
accumulated to this point by 1D6. If this reduces the
total hits to zero or less, the test fails.
On a critical glitch, the test fails—no dice roll needed.
Whatever work you put into the test is lost.
Shadowrunners learn quickly that no one survives for
long on the streets by themselves. You have to function
as a group, and there are times when all members of a
team pitch in to help out on a job. Teamwork tests simulate
the effect of group members working together.
To start a Teamwork test, your group needs to choose
someone to act as the leader. All of the others serve as
assistants, and they should roll the appropriate skill + attribute.
For each assistant that scores at least one hit, the
relevant limit for the leader’s test increases by one. Additionally,
each hit the assistants make adds one die to
the leader’s dice pool. The most dice that can be added
to the test is equal to the leader’s rating in the applicable
skill, or the highest attribute rating if the test involves
two attributes. The leader then rolls their adjusted dice
pool and tries to beat the threshold for the test.
If any assistant rolls a critical glitch, then the leader
receives no adjustments to the relevant limit, in addition
to the regular effects of a critical glitch. A glitch prevents
that assistant from adding an adjustment to the limit.
A shadowrunner who gives up after a quick failure is a
shadowrunner who will never know the satisfaction of
getting a maglock to finally open after repeated tries
and then slipping into an office just before the security
sweep passes by. Re-trying on a failed test is allowed,
but players must take a cumulative –2 penalty on each
retry. If the character takes a sufficient break from
trying (it’s up to gamemaster discretion how long a
break is needed), they can begin the task again with
no penalty.
Note that taking a shot or another swing of the sword
after missing does not count as trying again. Each attempted shot, sword swing, or punch counts as its own
action, rather than being a re-try of a previous failure.
Sometimes you’re going to have to divide some number
or another, and sometimes that will require rounding. The
general rule of thumb is to round up, unless a specific rule
tells you to do otherwise.
Time passes in Shadowrun just like it does anywhere else.
Most of the time you won’t have to track every minute
or second, though we won’t stop you from doing so if
that somehow increases your enjoyment. Sometimes
time will be of the essence as runners try to get to a
meeting, or attempt to intercept a convoy that follows a
very tight schedule, but even in those situations it’s best
to keep track of time in an abstract fashion rather than
measuring it down to the second. When the bullets start
flying, however, a little closer attention to the passage of
time should be paid.
When fighting breaks out, action takes place in a series
of Combat Turns, where each participant gets the
chance to select and take actions. Each Combat Turn
lasts approximately three seconds, representing the
amount of time it takes individuals to stage an attack.
There are three different kinds of actions in Shadowrun:
Free Actions, Simple Actions, and Complex Actions. On
their turn, characters take a specific action or combination
of actions. They then make tests to generate a result.
The way they spend actions, as well as the specific
actions in each category, are discussed on p. 163.
At the heart of your experience in Shadowrun is your
character. This is who you are in the Sixth World, the person
whose story you will follow and develop throughout
the missions and campaigns you undertake. The
back of the book contains a character sheet that holds
all the data you’ll need to quickly reference for your
character. The character sheet may
contain a bunch of numbers and
other stats, but your character
is more than that. The character
is the combination of
skills, inborn abilities, street
smarts, and bleeding-edge
gear that makes them dangerous—
sometimes to others,
sometimes to themselves, often
to both. The numbers are there to
give you a summary of your character’s
skills and abilities, and to
provide the information you
need to resolve the various
tests that arise. As a player,
though, you can work within
the numbers and every other
part of the character to create
a vivid personality who is part of
the ongoing drama of the Sixth
World.
The building blocks below
are the critical elements that
help make your character
who they are.
The first crucial element of a
character is their metatype. People
in the Sixth World belong to different strains of
metahumanity, which means the hands attempting
to strangle the life out of you come in a variety of
shapes and sizes. During the Awakening, when magic
returned to the world, humans started turning into
the creatures out of fantasy and fairy tales, and these
kinds of people are now common sights in many parts
of the Sixth World. Your Shadowrun character will
be one of five different types of being (called metatypes):
human, elf, dwarf, ork, or troll. The game rules
for each of these metatypes are described in Creating
a Shadowrunner, p. 62.
Attributes are the inherent characteristics of your
shadowrunner, the basic abilities they bring to the table.
Shadowrunners have a numerical rating for each
attribute, which is used to help determine the amount
of dice rolled for tests in the game. Attributes fall into
three different groups: Physical, Mental, and Special.
Every character has a rating in each of the Physical and
Mental attributes, though they may not have ratings in
the Special attributes.
For humans, all attributes are between 1 and 6,
though certain modifications and qualities can change
this. Metatypes have different ranges in these attributes,
as seen on the table on p. 65.
The other part of the dice pool equation, along with
attributes, is a character’s skills. Skills represent the
knowledge and abilities the character has picked up
throughout his life. Skills cover a wide variety of topics,
such as the ability to shoot a gun, a proficiency with
disguises, and a knack for repairing vehicles and machines.
Skills come in two main categories: Active skills
and Knowledge skills. Active skills cover the things
characters do, while Knowledge skills cover the facts
and information the character has acquired over their
career, including speaking languages other than their
native tongue.
Skills are linked to a specific attribute, and the ratings
of the skill and linked attribute, added together,
form the dice pool for most tests. A list of skills ordered
by their linked attributes can be found on p. 151.
Characters may attempt some skill-based tests even
if they don’t have any ranks in the skill. This is known as
defaulting. For example, even if you’re not trained in
the art of running, you can still attempt a sprint to see
just how much ground you can cover. In these instances,
your dice pool for the test equals your ranking in the
linked attribute – 1. So if Sorsha doesn’t have the Running
skill but wants to give a sprint a try, she’ll check
her Strength, which is 6. That means she rolls 6 – 1 dice,
or 5, and hopes for the best.
There are some skills, though, for which tests cannot
default if you don’t have the appropriate skill—guts
and a willingness to pitch in sometimes just aren’t a
substitute for actual abilities. All the can-do spirit in the
world won’t help you speak Russian if you don’t have
any knowledge of the language, or repair a car if you’re
not familiar with the basic workings of the machinery
involved. It’s nice to be able to do everything, but
sometimes you have to wait for an expert. Skills where
defaulting is not an option are indicated in italics on the
table on p. 151.
Along with attributes and skills, characters also have
Qualities that can provide modifications to their character.
Positive Qualities provide bonuses and require
the expenditure of Karma at character creation; Negative
Qualities inflict penalties but provide additional
Karma the character can use to enhance her skills and
attributes. Qualities have a range of effects, and they
are described in detail on p. 71.
The return of magic to the world is one of the pivotal
moments in Shadowrun history, and in the decades
since its arrival, millions of people have looked for new
ways to take advantage of the power it offers. Spellcasters
are still a significant minority of the population,
but magic has had a profound effect on the shape of
the world. From the existence of magic divisions in
the word’s largest corps to hunts across the globe for
rare magical reagents, from spells being slung in urban
brawl to research being conducted in the highest halls
of learning, magic has a place in all parts of Sixth World
society.
As described in Special Attributes (p. 52), in order
to have the ability to use magic, characters must have
the Magic attribute so that they can become an adept,
magician, aspected magician, or mystic adept. Adepts
channel mana into improved physical and mental
abilities, while magicians use it to power spells that
can affect the world in a wide variety of ways. Mystic
adepts are a hybrid of the two, dividing the mana
they can access between spell power and physical and
mental boosts.
More information about the uses of magic, including
the spells and adept powers characters may use, can be
found in the Magic chapter on p. 276.
A good runner can survive on nothing but her wits—but
she’d rather not. The equipment a shadowrunner uses
can be critical to the success of her mission, and knowing
the right goods to bring along (and how to keep
the less-legal ones from being detected) is an important
skill. The gear shadowrunners may carry includes
a full range of firearms, melee weapons like saps and
swords, armor, eye and ear enhancements, surveillance
and counter-surveillance gear, commlinks, cyberdecks,
grenades, and more. The gear may cost a pile of nuyen
and may not be legally available in all jurisdictions,
but a good shadowrunner knows how to find what they
need, no matter what.
Along with the standard gear shadowrunners carry,
there are augmentations they can build into themselves,
making these pieces of gear fully part of their body.
There are two primary types of augmentations: cyberware
and bioware.
Cyberware is the fusion of man and machine, the combination
of metahumanity and technology that helps
people break through the boundaries of what used to be
impossible. Cyberware may take the form of eye or ear
implants that provide better sensory reception while also
offering recording capabilities; wires built into someone’s
muscle and nervous system that allow them to act with
inhuman speed; armor built into skin; and more.
The performance improvements cyberware offers
come with a cost (besides the nuyen you have to lay
out to purchase and install the gear). Every piece of
cyberware takes away a bit of your humanity, which is
represented by a loss of a character’s Essence (see p.
52). Since Essence is important to spellcasters, adepts,
and technomancers (every point of Essence they lose
comes with a corresponding loss of Magic or Resonance),
it is rare to see Awakened or Emergeed individuals
with extensive implants. Additionally, runners
who serve as the face of the team may want to keep
away from radical cyberware, as some Mr. Johnsons
and everyday citizens don’t respond well to the inhuman
look it can generate. On top of all that, an abundance
of cyberware can impede magical healing.
The Essence loss cyberware inflicts can be controlled,
to a degree, by using the different grades of cyberware.
There are three grades of custom cyberware that offer the
same benefits as standard cyberware, but with reduced
Essence loss (though significantly increased prices).
These grades are alphaware, betaware, and deltaware.
Betaware and deltaware are not available to starting characters.
For more information on these grades, see p. 451.
People with cyberware know a simple truth—what
they have generally makes them better, stronger, and
faster than other people, and other people don’t like
that. Security types are especially suspicious since the
purpose and capabilities of cyberware aren’t always apparent.
All of which means there are all sorts of laws and
restrictions concerning the installation and use of cyberware
augmentations. Most airlines, for example, require
travelers to deactivate their cyberware before they
board a plane, and to leave it off for the duration of the
flight. Runners who install cyberware should be aware
of the regulations controlling its use and be prepared to
comply with them—or plan to break the rules in ways
that draw as little unwanted attention as possible.
While cyberware improves metahumans by building machinery
into them, bioware uses flesh, muscle, and other
organic materials to bring similar benefits. Since it is biological
in nature, bioware has less impact on Essence
than cyberware, but it is also more expensive and harder
to find. It still introduces foreign elements and the impression
of inhumanity to individuals, though, so the Social
limit tied to Essence loss remains.
If a player wants to further reduce Essence loss, she can
opt for cultured bioware, which uses her own cells as the
source material for the augmentation. As might be imagined,
this makes cultured bioware very compatible with the
individual, but it also makes it heinously expensive. Runners
will have to dive into a lot of shadows to be able to
afford it, but a lot of them believe it’s absolutely worth it.
The Matrix is full of information, but the things shadowrunners
need to know are not the kinds of things people
put up on their personal or corporate websites. Word of
available jobs, news about what street lowlifes and organized
crime figures have been up to, dirt about who’s
just snuck into town and who may be looking to make
a quick getaway—this is stuff you’re not going to find
through a quick data search.
To get this information, you need contacts. Contacts
come in a lot of forms. They may be the arms dealer who
has a knack for coming up with armor-piercing bullets right
when you need them. Or the underground journalist who is
willing to share what she knows if you give her some inside
info about upcoming juicy stories. Or the old standby, the
bartender with the watchful eye and the listening ear.
Shadowrunners have a roster of personal contacts that
they can turn to in order to help them find jobs and provide
useful information about what’s going on in the world.
Contacts have the same types of statistics that other characters
would have, but they also have two special statistics
that describe their relationship to player characters. Their
Loyalty rating measures the closeness of their relationship
to a character, while their Connection rating illustrates how
well connected they are to the world around them. The
Loyalty rating ranges from 1 to 6 while the Connection rating
ranges from 1 to 12.
Player characters are allowed to purchase a certain
amount of contacts during character creation (see
Contacts, p. 98). After that, future contacts cannot be
bought—they have to be earned. Through their actions,
characters can build a relationship with a contact that results
in a productive exchange of information. Note that
contacts do not have to be friends with the player character,
or even like them. They just have to understand
that there may be a benefit to sharing information with
the character.
For more information on contacts as well as some
sample contact characters, see p. 386.
Some shadowrunners are in the business to right wrongs
or to get revenge. There are a few in the business because
they are utter psychopaths. For the rest, though, shadowrunning
is mainly a matter of survival. They’re not willing
to sell their souls to the corps, and they know that begging
will get them nowhere. So they scrape up money any way
they can so that they can pay for the basics of life—food,
shelter, and maybe a little fun from time to time.
A character’s lifestyle represents the money they
have to spend to live in the way they have selected. This
can range from the homeless life of someone scraping
up whatever food and temporary shelter they can
get their hands on to those who live like the lords of
the sprawl, dwelling in walled-off palaces or airy condominiums
that flaunt the extravagance the owner has
earned. Most shadowrunners, of course, are far closer to the former than the latter.
More information about lifestyles, including their
costs, can be found on p. 373.
Some of us choose the shadows, and some of us have the
shadows thrust upon them. One of the dividing lines between
the world of shadows and the world of light is a SIN—a
System Identification Number—the identification you need to
be accepted in security systems and government databases
and pretty much any computer anywhere that authenticates
people’s identities. If you have one, you’re a SINner, one of the
good, normal people of the world. If you don’t have one, you’re an
outsider. You’re pushed into the shadows of the world by default.
So who is born without a SIN—who are the SINless
people of the world? Well, if your parents didn’t have one, you
probably don’t. So children of criminals, along with kids of a
high percentage of orks or trolls (who often get denied SINs as
a matter of course), often start off in the dark. Then there are
criminals—the professional kind, the amateur ones, and the
accidental ones. Whatever they did, however they got caught,
they ended up with a criminal SIN, which is about as useful as a
fingerless cyberhand. Most of the time, rather than staying with
the norms and being treated like a radioactive leper, folks with a
criminal SIN drop out of society, either running in the shadows or
opting for the full-on criminal lifestyle (the mobs and street gangs
of the Sixth World are always hiring).