Skill for laying low in an urban area

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Andreas

In the scenario I mentioned, the character had a day to prepare. That is not a very harsh time preasure.

If the time gets much shorter, then that can become harder. On the other hand you might just have thought through the scenario sometime in the past. Either like I have done just now, or by hearing about how some criminal using their credit card got caught like that. I don't think that is at all unusual.

My point is that speculating about this, reading about real crime stories and consuming fiction all count as developing a default level of skill and, for those who do actual research on it, can absolutely justify Dabbler that raises the default. This is how Streetwise is learned, along with putting this in practice.

A Criminology or Streetwise default of skill 5 or below is someone like a sweet old lady who has her default from the occasional episode of Mrs. Marple, Mattlock or Derrick. Defaults of skill 6-8 are fairly typical for people who have ever bought drugs, hung around with people who live outside the mainstream or even just spent a lot of time watching more realistic crime fiction, reading true crime or researching RPG campaigns.

A lot of real people who aren't active criminals have Streetwise at skill 9-10, because they interact with a lot of people who use it daily and because they've thought about what they'd do in a variety of situations. Note that this also applies if your interaction is over the Internet. The basement-dwelling nerd who has online friends who sell drugs, stolen passports and all sorts of other things over the Internet might well have decent Streetwise, even if he'll lack some familiarities that he might need for active use in face-to-face meetings.

When your clientele tend to use Streetwise as their main social skill, it would be unrealistic not to improve your default over time, which means that a lot of social workers, lawyers, cops and other people who deal with 'street people' for a living will have decent Streetwise. Anyone who has to interact with homeless people a lot will often have a point or two in Streetwise, or least least some Dabbler.

Originally Posted by Andreas

Sure, that is not needed to be able to prepare for running away though. Having a small amount of cash and being able to withdraw some on short notice is not at all implausible.

Even much less than that can make it much easier than having nothing. If I had to run away right now, I would strongly prefer having $50 over $0.

It's not implausible, but having made realistic preparations toward going on the run would usually correlate with being the kind of person who has Streetwise.