Oops! Didn't know people were building chars yet! I like the enthusiasm though! Ok so it's probably best if I just lay down the guidelines right now:
Street Level Campaign:-300 BP
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Attributes don't have caps other than the 200BP cap .....gangers have the same innate potential as relatively new shadowrunners, just not the training....I'm just saying that a street upbringing makes you just as strong and smart as a shadowrunner.
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Active Skills caps: two at 4 (with rest at 3) or one at 5 (with the rest at 3)....this represents the difference in training. Academic knowledge skills and intricate shadowrunner type knowledge capped at 3. For example, the famous Security Procedures knowledge skill would be capped by this. This does not apply to hacker based knowledge skills though which don't have a cap (street hackers are just as good as comp. sci. majors)
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At least 10 BP must be spent on knowledge skills in addition to the (Logic + Int)x3 points you get for free. It's called street smarts. examples of good knowledge skills would be drug cutting, safe houses, night clubs, local prostitutes, etc..
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Resources capped at 10,000 nuyen....that's right...10,000 nuyen (2BP). 2nd hand cyberware is available...just might be a little glitchy.
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Minimum 10BP spent on contacts.--Just in general try to keep the urban-metroplex-concrete-jungle type feel to all the decisions in skills, contacts, etc. Try to back everything up with backstory.
--One thing that I have had problems with in past table-top campaigns that i've both GM'd and played in is that when it comes to the streets and bad neighborhoods of the sixth world, there is potential for a lot of modern day racial and ethnic stereo-types to start just flying all over the place and a few times it got to the point where offensive stuff even got thrown around. So definitely go wild with the fact that you're characters are gangers, but try and be real creative with sixth world urban culture and don't feel like it has to mirror exactly what popular media portrays as urban culture in the modern-day U.S. I'd definitely approach it almost like sixth world Seattle would feel like a foreign country to us if we were to visit. Despite the desperate situation of the SINless, I definitely believe that the Barrens and other such SINless areas are the only places left that have any heart and soul left in them.
This post from one of my PbP's which we finished from beginning to end sums up how I feel about the barrens, shadowrunners, SINless etc.
--In my campaign people only really make differences between metahumans based on their meta-type and cultural/traditional origin. Due to the Awakening and also the triviality of superficial cosmetic sculpting, features like skin color, ethnic features, hair, etc. don't have much meaning other than descriptive.
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Magic and the streets: With true magic coming back into the world, street shamans really have become a fundamental figure in street life. There is a fluid interplay between tradition and raw magical abilities ....so for example people come to street shamans for blessings and even if these blessings don't carry any concrete magical nature, people and even the shaman himself belives they nonetheless carry power. Neighborhoods tend to congregate around a certain shaman or group of shamans and these are definitely leaders in the community. In places lucky enough to have a benevolent shaman (or occasionally a hermetic mage), they tend to be some of the only organizing forces of the neighborhood (similar to modern day churches) and gangers pay them tribute. In my campaign-world, magical tradition is very important, not just flavor. Street shamans and the communities which they shepherd definitely BELIEVE the different aspects of the traditions. So if you make a magical character, please keep this in mind.
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Matrix and the streets: No difference, some of the baddest hackers in the world operate from the streets. The one aspect is that hacker gangs are very prevalent. Even non-hacker characters are very matrix savvy because commlinks are very ubiquitous and the matrix is available to people regardless of economic class.
