Lifepath

The arcos are cities-within-cities, giant buildings home to largely self-contained communities: people who live, work, and conduct all the daily business of living inside the building. While their name harkens back to their idealistic conception, the idea that they would lessen the ecological impact of humanity, their reality is far less romantic, and they usually resemble the Kowloon Walled City of antiquity. Arcos are cramped, often dark, and cut off from anything resembling nature. They contain stores and services, but the quality leaves much to be desired, and many are overrun by local gangs. But they let more people be crammed into the cities, ensuring a supply of worker-consumers. Corpos vie for contracts to supply necessities to these captive audiences—and cut costs everywhere they can.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Military School, Net Brat, School, Streetkid

Urban or suburban, these areas may once have been trendy or desirable—or not—but time has dealt poorly with them: for whatever reason, money flowed out, services, safety, and the infrastructure decayed, and the place now reeks of urban or suburban decay. Usually less overcrowded than slums, these neighborhoods can be eerily silent to outsiders who aren't aware of everything going on out of sight.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Net Brat, Rural Kid, School, Streetkid

For a multitude of reasons, people sharing an origin often concentrate in specific areas or neighborhoods of cities, forming their own enclaves. Their culture, food, language, and traditions dominate there, often offering solace from a hostile or repressive majority population or government; but these areas may also become centers of organized crime or gang activity, nests of poverty, or suffer from over-policing and systemic bigotry. Names like "Chinatown" and "Little Nairobi" are typical.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Net Brat, Rural Kid, School, Streetkid

Gangs often serve as an extended family structure in the world of tomorrow: capable of providing security, support, ideology, and underground economic opportunity, it is only natural that they would be central in many peoples' lives. When membership is often for life, it is inevitable that children are raised into these gangs. The nature of the gang determines everything about this kind of upbringing: it can range from scrappy and tenacious to brutal and inhumane.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Net Brat, Streetkid

The agricorps may own most of the farms, but in many corners of the world, people still scrape a living from the dirt at least partly on their own terms. True, most of them have to sell their produce to the corps, living as the independent contractors of agriculture, but there's pride in the rough survival they engage in. This life can be hard: between encroaching corps, government regs favoring big business, nomads who can turn from seasonal workers into raiders, and the creeping effects of ecological disaster, it may seem a miracle that anyone should survive this life for a generation. It's a life that requires hardiness, steady hands and sharp eyes, and pragmatic know-how; in many ways, it's the above-board version of growing up nomad.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Military School, Nomad/Pirate Brat, Rural Kid, School

Everything from crumbling tenements to corrugated metal shacks make up these overcrowded urban and suburban areas, and services—everything from water and electricity to healthcare and the police—are unreliable or outright unavailable. Poverty is everywhere, and gang and police violence are common.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Net Brat, Streetkid

Often overlooked in a world dominated by increasingly massive cities, small towns still survive in many places. Most are either corpo-owned, home to the employees of some factory and the services they need, or poor, dying communities where opportunities grow fewer by the year, and people seek to escape somewhere else. Yet many keep up the struggle for the sense of community, independence, and some scrap of connection to nature.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Military School, Net Brat, Rural Kid, School, Streetkid

The Street is a state of mind, a mode of existence, more than a place. It is found in the shadow of towering arcologies and corpo skyscrapers, in the neon glow of holo-ads, in the alleys between decayed apartment buildings and in cul-de-sacs surrounded by crumbled houses. Here fixers hustle, gangers bang, ronin balance on the mono-edge of honor and survival, and more crimes and sins are committed than could be counted by the best AI. You grew up in the Street, one way or another, looking out for yourself, making ends meet your way. On the Edge.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Net Brat, Streetkid

What the Underground is varies from place to place and time to time, but one thing remains true: there are few circumstances more miserable than living in it. Networks of basements, sewers, abandoned subway lines, steam tunnels, the buried ruins of the old city, and disused factories and plants, the Underground is home to the desperate and destitute, those who cannot—or do not wish to—live elsewhere. These people are seen as prey by virtually everyone, from gangers to wilding corpo brats and the police.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Net Brat, Nomad/Pirate Brat, Streetkid

UCZs are a feature of some modern cities: neighborhoods that are off-limits, unofficially or even officially, to the police and other authorities. They are ruled by gangs, and usually have enormous rates of violent crime. The buildings are old and in disrepair, there are few or no businesses, and only gang members and those trapped by poverty live there. Growing up in an UCZ is one of the roughest lives, and many children become involved in gangs and crime at an early age.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Net Brat, Streetkid

Governments and corpos the world over maintain camps for undesirable of inconvenient people. In some areas, this is a way to manage difficult populations—ethnic minorities, political dissidents, and so on—while in others, it's simply a low-cost way to turn prisoners into a productive resource. Armed guards, fences, drones, and various electronic security systems make sure that the people sent here—or, in many cases, born here—stay here. The camps range from barely-livable outrages to outright extermination camps.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Nomad/Pirate Brat, Rural Kid, Streetkid

More than 70% of the Earth's surface is covered with water—and the number grows slowly each year—and corps have long bent to the task of harnessing its power and potential with new technologies. Open ocean seaweed and fish farms, systems of tidal generators, and oceanographic research facilities are frequently staffed permanently, and some become outright floating villages, where families are formed and children are had. Growing up surrounded by the ocean is a startlingly different environment, where many things taken as a given by others are missing. These facilities are frequently well-defended, to hold off raids by pirate fleets.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Corporate Creche, Military School, Net Brat, Nomad/Pirate Brat, School

There are many reasons someone might grow up in a medical facility: from the relatively benign, like chronic illness, to the fiendish, like medical research on children. Rumors persist of corpo facilities raising children to use for experiments, supposedly ranging from cloning, organ harvesting, testing cyberware, and training netrunners from infancy all the way to fantasies about children genetically engineered as super-soldiers or spies.

Education Options: Corporate Creche, Military School, Net Brat, School

Nomads are a fact of life in regions where populations have traditionally been clustered in small urban areas separated by long stretches of sparsely-populated open countryside—North America, Russia, China, Africa, and Australia, to name some regions. These rural gangs are formed for many reasons, but they all serve as ad-hoc families, where people live their entire lives. Nomads roam the roads, travelling from place to place, serving as seasonal labor, gig workers, construction crews, mercenaries, transporters, smugglers—and, mostly in the popular consciousness fed by media seeking to demonize them, as raiding road gangs. Their lives are rough, practical, and dirty—they are survivors who depend on their vehicles.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Nomad/Pirate Brat, Rural Kid

Not every drifter travels in packs like the nomads: some people drift them alone or with their small family, moving from place to place, living in motels, trailers, campers, or just squatting—perhaps to keep ahead of something, or simply because they cannot fit in anywhere. They take jobs they can get, work them for a while, then move on—sometimes with reason never to return.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Nomad/Pirate Brat, Rural Kid, Streetkid

The repression of corps and governments may seem unassailable in its monolithic totality, but that doesn't mean there are no people willing to try. Across the world, paramilitary groups band together in their own communities, united in resistance against the powers that be. They may range from rebels in the jungles of the Global South to insurgents in rough enclaves in mountainous regions, or just doomsday preppers living "off the grid" for fear of surveillance. They are united by shared oppression, ideology, or paranoia, and keep themselves well-armed. Many have connections with external powers—other corps or governments—and while many flare out quickly, others can persist for generations in their stubborn resistance.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Military School, Nomad/Pirate Brat, Rural Kid, School

Pirates are the nomads of the seas. While their image is violent and dangerous—reflected in their popular name—most groups are far from blood-thirsty sea reavers. Rather, they are people who have banded together to live on the seas, by fishing and seaweed farming, often travelling from port to port doing small-scale trading and smuggling, or engaging in local contract work. Some will, in desperation, supplement their livelihood with actual piracy, both on the ocean and attacking coastal settlements or installations. Some are based in port towns or along coasts, while others are entirely on the sea—either always on the move, or based from an abandoned oil rig or some floating collection of pontoons and shacks, often prodigious in size.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Nomad/Pirate Brat

Climate catastrophies and other natural disasters, political upheavals, and radical economic changes sometimes see entire populations displaced, leaving their homes seeking shelter or opportunity in great movements, crossing national borders, risking death by misadventure and by state violence. Governments sometimes deal with the influx of such refugees by putting them in camps, and in some parts of the world, these camps become semi-permanent fixtures, with thousands of people living in them. Such places may even develop their own economies, sometimes served by local businesses, but more frequently by corpos; the refugees may even be offered work, either within the camp or through strictly-monitored work programs that transport them to nearby facilities. Such places are melancholy environments at best of times, but desperation, limited resources, and a negligent or hostile government may turn them into hell on earth.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Nomad/Pirate Brat, Rural Kid, School, Streetkid

What exactly constitutes a "cult" can be debated, but it's a pretty good bet that a religious community choosing to live separate from the rest of the world is one. The reasons usually have to do with avoiding the impure influences of the outside world, but the implementation and ultimate results can range from the swift and terrible fate of Jonestown to the revered status of the Shaolin Monastery. These communities may be self-sustaining, or may trade goods or labor with outsiders—very few are prestigious enough to live off of charity or tourism. Growing in a place like this is often disciplined and regimented, but always thoroughly colored by the specific religion of the community.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Rural Kid, School

There's a difference between growing up at or in at research facility. Many corpo facilities are closed off from the world—gilded cages for the geniuses working there, to protect them and the corp's interests. Some are set up to literally provide everything they should need in life, including a family. Children in such environments are usually tutored, and are likely to learn about the subjects underlying the research. The other alternative is much more grim: corps raise children for research into various topics, from the Net to cyberware and advertising. Their circumstances may range from sterile and artificial to outright torturous, but no matter what, they grow up with little idea about the real world.

Education Options: Corporate Creche, Military School, Net Brat, School

A corporate creche is a corpo version of a boarding school, where children live essentially year-round from as young as age three to around sixteen or eighteen. These highly regimented environments are rife for abuse, although corp creches tend to employ rigorous standards and batteries of psychometrics to ensure that the children of execs are brought up to the high, science-based standards their parents expect. Still, hierarchies, cliques, and bullying among the students are inevitable.

Education Options: Corporate Creche, Military School, Net Brat, School

The corporate arcologies approximate the original dream of the concept, melding efficient conapts with open-design shared spaces, readily accessible services and amenities, and a dash of well-curated nature in the form of well-manicured parks. Elsewhere, corpo enclaves provide the same standard of living in more traditional forms, with blocks of identical apartment buildings. Life is safe, boring, efficient, and soulless; keeping up appearances on a budget, while jockeying for social position and promotion, consumes most of the corpo beavers' lives.

Education Options: Corporate Creche, Military School, Net Brat, School

The agricorps dominate farming the world over, and they still need plenty of workers. Small company towns and barracks-style farm complexes are found everywhere, inhabited by the corpo farm workers. Children growing up in these environments are usually put to work early, and life can be hard—nomad packs who do not find seasonal work at the farms may turn to thieving or outright raiding to support themselves. Corp protection brings stability, but quotas and tyrannical behavioral requirements can crush the spirit out of people living in these circumstances.

Education Options: Corporate Creche, Military School, Net Brat, Rural Kid, School

Mid-level corpo execs live in these gated communities—called Beaverville on the Street—guarded by armed corpo security. Life is regimented but privileged, safe except from the vagaries of corpo intrigue. Good schools and vertigally-integrated services provide everything necessary, except for individuality.

Education Options: Corporate Creche, Military School, Net Brat, School

Corpo factories and plants still require workers despite advances in automation, sometimes in great numbers. These people need homes—the closer the better—and services. Vertical integration rules the day, keeping the money in-company. These factory towns are usually clean, orderly, and well-policed—although notable exceptions exist—but often polluted by the factory they depend on, for lack of regulation or enforcement.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Military School, Net Brat, Rural Kid, School, Streetkid

Where governments still have power, they often act like the corps. Government workers are often concentrated into enclaves, ranging from wholly self-contained towns to well-guarded compounds attached to the larger city and served by its businesses. Lacking the vertically-integrated businesses of corps, these enclaves are usually more open, with the inhabitants shopping and seeking services in the larger community nearby.

Education Options: Military School, Net Brat, School

Higher-level government employees often live in suburban gated communities much like corpo Beaverville, with lacking the tightly-integrated businesses and services—leading to more openness and interaction with the larger community. Surveillance can range from loose to totalitarian, depending on the nature of the government.

Education Options: Military School, Net Brat, School

In the popular imagination, LEO is home to the ultra-rich and powerful, but the truth is quite different: the inhabitants of the permanently-manned orbital stations are workers and scientists advancing the cause of corporate space conquest—building and repairing satellites, and working on the cause of manned flights to Mars, or extraplanetary mining projects. These plans are expensive and long-term—only CEOs and financiers who (perhaps not unjustifiedly) believe they will live for a century or more are likely to dream of seeing such plans to completion. Regardless, life in orbit is cramped and odd, in small, entirely artificial environments; but there is something extraordinary about the nearness of the stars.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Corporate Creche, Net Brat, School

Many governments still maintain sizeable professional armies, and members of the military serve for lengthy careers while having lives and families. Large military bases provide housing and services—although adjacent communities often supplement them. "Military brats" often move from base to base with their parents' assignments, and often grow to serve themselves—the environment tends to instill military values.

Education Options: Military School, Net Brat, School

Some children grow up in state institutions, such as orphanages or juvenile facilities. These are rarely better than tolerable, and are often rife with abuse. Some put the children to work, while others seek to indoctrinate them with pro-government ideology. Some come out of these environments driven to succeed, while others bear deep mental scars that may make "normal" life very difficult.

Education Options: Apprenticeship, Military School, Net Brat, Rural Kid, School, Streetkid

You learned by doing, working at a trade as an apprentice.

• Childhood Environment: Arcology, Decayed Neighborhood, Ethnic Enclave, Factory Town, Gang, Labor/Internment Camp, LEO, Marine Facility, Nomad Pack, On the Road, Paramilitary Camp, Pirate Fleet, Refugee Camp, Religious Compound, Rural Farm, Slum, Small Town, State Institutions, The Street, The Underground, Urban Combat Zone.
• Skills: System Knowledge, Computers, Electronics, Mechanics, Programming, Commerce, Profession/Craft (any).

You had the best education in the world, in a rigorously encouraging and scientifically perfected environment.

• Childhood Environment: Boarding School/Corporate Creche, Corporate Arcology/Enclave, Corporate Farm, Corporate Suburbs, LEO, Marine Facility, Medical Facility/Hospital, Research Facility. No Zeroes.
• Skills: Research, System Knowledge, Composition, Oratory, Bureaucracy, Leadership, Computers, Programming, Commerce.
• Continued Education: Once you get to Past Experience, you can choose to stay in school (instead of taking an Occupation) up to and including your 18th year, continuing to gain points in the above skills, Everyman skills, and Hobby skills, but gaining no savings.

You were sent to a military school, emphasizing discipline, tradition, and occasionally actual military skills.

• Childhood Environment: Arcology, Boarding School/Corporate Creche, Corporate Arcology/Enclave, Corporate Farm, Corporate Suburbs, Factory Town, Governmental Enclave, Governmental Suburb, Marine Facility, Medical Facility/Hospital, Military Base, Paramilitary Camp, Research Facility, Rural Farm, Small Town, State Institutions. No Zeroes.
• Skills: Research, Strategy, Tactics, Marksmanship, /Rifle, Composition, Oratory, Leadership, Computers, Fieldcraft.
• Continued Education: Once you get to Past Experience, you can choose to stay in school (instead of taking an Occupation) up to and including your 18th year, continuing to gain points in the above skills, Everyman skills, and Hobby skills, but gaining no savings.

You grew up on the Net, taking online classes and either learning on your own or wasting your time playing games.

• Childhood Environment: Arcology, Boarding School/Corporate Creche, Corporate Arcology/Enclave, Corporate Farm, Corporate Suburbs, Decayed Neighborhood, Ethnic Enclave, Factory Town, Gang, Governmental Enclave, Governmental Suburb, LEO, Marine Facility, Medical Facility/Hospital, Military Base, Research Facility, Slum, Small Town, State Institutions, The Street, The Underground, Urban Combat Zone.
• Skills: Research, System Knowledge, Computers, Electronics, Imaging, Programming.

You grew up on the move, either on the road or at sea, with your family or itinerant community. This could be nomads, pirates, gypsies, refugees, survivalists, or just a drifter family.

• Childhood Environment: Labor/Internment Camp, Marine Facility, Nomad Pack, On the Road, Paramilitary Camp, Pirate Fleet, Refugee Camp, Rural Farm, The Underground.
• Skills: Navigation, Tracking, Riding (any), Swimming, Archery, Melee, /Club, /Knife, Sleight of Hand, Mechanics, Driving, Sailing, Fieldcraft.

You grew up in the country, probably working on a farm or ranch.

• Childhood Environment: Corporate Farm, Decayed Neighborhood, Ethnic Enclave, Factory Town, Labor/Internment Camp, Nomad Pack, On the Road, Paramilitary Camp, Refugee Camp, Religious Compound, Rural Farm, Small Town, State Institutions.
• Skills: Navigation, Tracking, Riding (any), Swimming, Archery, Marksmanship, /Rifle, /Shotgun, Mechanics, Driving, Operate Heavy Machinery, Animal Handling, Fieldcraft.

You had a traditional education, either at a private or public school or through homeschooling.

• Childhood Environment: Arcology, Boarding School/Corporate Creche, Corporate Arcology/Enclave, Corporate Farm, Corporate Suburbs, Decayed Neighborhood, Ethnic Enclave, Factory Town, Governmental Enclave, Governmental Suburb, LEO, Marine Facility, Medical Facility/Hospital, Military Base, Paramilitary Camp, Refugee Camp, Religious Compound, Research Facility, Rural Farm, Slum, Small Town, State Institutions.
• Skills: Research, Composition, Oratory, Computers.
• Note: Training Points can be spent on Hobby Skills instead.
• Continued Education: Once you get to Past Experience, you can choose to stay in school (instead of taking an Occupation) up to and including your 18th year, continuing to gain points in the above skills, Everyman skills, and Hobby skills, but gaining no savings.

You grew up on the Street, where you learned to survive the hard way.

• Childhood Environment: Arcology, Decayed Neighborhood, Ethnic Enclave, Factory Town, Gang, Labor/Internment Camp, On the Road, Refugee Camp, Slum, Small Town, State Institutions, The Street, The Underground, Urban Combat Zone.
• Skills: Shadowing, Surveillance, Melee, /Club, /Knife, Acting, Sleight of Hand, Fast Talk, Streetwise, Lock Picking, Urban Survival.

• Enemy: For an Enemy, ruining or even killing you is an end unto itself. Whatever you did or didn't do, they will go out of their way to make you pay.
• Adversary: An Adversary will oppose you whenever you cross paths, but won't seek you out. How far they'll go depends on the person.
• Rival: A Rival might work with you when circumstances dictate, but they'll try to out-perform or embarrass you. When your goals conflict with theirs, they'll oppose you, at least indirectly.
• Skeptic: A Skeptic doesn't believe in you. They won't work against you, but they won't support you, either, and might be recruited by someone working against you.
• Dependent: A Dependent needs or expects something from you, and you are emotionally, socially, and/or legally obliged to support or help them. This could be a child, someone you're mentoring in your profession, or a dumbass close friend you feel responsible for.
• Contact: A Contact is the somebody in "I know somebody who can help," whether it's hooking you up with the right people or getting you the hardware, or showing up themselves. But they won't do it for free: they'll expect payment or favors in return.
• Hireling: A Hireling is bought and paid for, formally or informally—this includes paid bodyguards as well as bribed cops. They'll do what they're paid to do, unless the risk turns out to be much higher than expected, but they may not stay bought.
• Compatriot: A Compatriot supports you out of shared circumstance: a brother-in-arms, a family member, a gang member, or a co-worker. So long as you put the group first, they'll support you.
• Friend: A Friend is someone who likes you personally, and will perform favors for you—but expects them in return.
• Favor: A Favor is a single-use Ally: somebody who's got giri (obligation) towards you, and feels duty-bound—by personal honor or social obligation—to repay you. It's just the once, though, then you're through. Afterwards, a Favor may turn into a Skeptic or a Contact.
• Ally: An Ally wants what you want, and feels a personal connection to you. They'll go above and beyond for you, and expect you to, as well.
• Lover: A Lover has deep romantic feelings for you, and will do much for you—but also expects much.
• Patron: A Patron has a personal or professional interest in you, your development, and your success. They may expect something in return, but will generally support you at least indirectly and often monetarily.
• Agent: An Agent has deep faith in or devotion to you personally, because of something you did for them, or because of who you are. They expect little in return, except for your approval or acknowledgement.