02-10-2019, 11:30 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
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Regarding needing to use a credit card because you have no other way to obtain money, that is a different matter from carelessly using it. You can take a calculated risk and for example withdraw a large amount of cash early on in the chase in a location you plan on leaving immediately afterwards. Such things do carry risk, and some skills might help with mitigating them, but just not doing it unless you have to doesn't really require skill. It happens that people get homeless on short notice. I have seen presumably homeless people begging for money in clothes that wouldn't look out of place on non-homeless people. I also very much doubt that all of them have died unless they had special training beforehand (also even a small amount of cash at hand could make being homeless much easier for some time). Most people have a good idea about how to travel and eat on a budget in a far wider area than the locations which they can reasonably be said to frequent. Blending into a population of strangers might be a skilled activity in a small town, but there are plenty of places where you would have to act or dress very spectacularly to stand out. Last edited by Andreas; 02-10-2019 at 11:38 AM. |
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02-10-2019, 11:43 AM | #12 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
Streetwise is perfectly adequate for most urban hiding because it tells you what places are policed and how much and where they ask for ID (and how to find a guy who can get you forged ID if it comes to that.) Hiding in an urban environment isn't difficult unless your face is plastered all over the media and as long as you remember to actually hide...meaning stop going to your habitual hangouts, don't call your girlfriend and don't use your credit card.
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02-10-2019, 11:58 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
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Before 1914 it was easier to disappear than be found again, but a hundred years later most people who try to disappear in a rich country can be found by a private investigator in a few hours' to a few days' work in a quiet office. Eleanor Saitta has a good site which talks about the kind of issues that say people helping a battered spouse flee their partner have to worry about. Edit: And here is one of the articles on the investigators and bounty hunters who had real-time location data on most cell phones in the USA https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...ion-data-years Yeah, you can live just fine without a cell phone or smartphone, but most people who are used to one will not want to give it up, especially if they are moving around frequently.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 02-10-2019 at 12:09 PM. |
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02-10-2019, 12:10 PM | #14 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
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Even with no one actively looking, most people who do not turn up for court dates sre 'found' extremely easily, because it's rare for anyone to have the skills and resources to survive without using electronic banking, IDs and help from a lot of people they know. From what I can tell, surviving without papers is somewhat easier in the US than in Northern Europe. Here, at least, the immigrants and refugees I deal with have essentially zero chance to do anything without having the basics of what everyone has in modern society, i.e, ID and bank account. There are places that pay their workers illegally in cash and I suspect that some of those could arrange for housing, but these are vanishingly rare. Most of the ones that cheat on taxes just report fewer hours and pay the difference in cash. Everybody still needs ID and bank accounts to be employed or stay anywhere, unless they actually have a fairly good Streetwise skill or Contacts in organized crime. Quote:
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From working as a conscierge for a season, in Iceland, one of the things that will get you noticed is not having a credit card or passport while trying to find a place to stay. That gets you classed as 'probably trying to rob the place and/or a drug addict'.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
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02-10-2019, 12:29 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
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02-10-2019, 12:29 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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02-10-2019, 12:38 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
Common Sense isn't that kind of trait. It basically covers not doing the things that ordinary people are prudent enough not to do in the first place. It's a metagaming advantage that can be recommended to a player who makes ill-advised decisions about what their character will try to do; it lets the GM say, "Okay, roll your IQ" and, if they succeed, warn them not to do something that could get them in real trouble. Most people don't do those things.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
02-10-2019, 12:53 PM | #18 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
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The set of people who are missing court dates like that seem especially likely to have disadvantages or a lack of Common Sense. It is also questionable how many of those are seriously attempting to stay hidden forever. If you want to stay hidden in the very long term, and have the standard of living which a somewhat decent job would give you, then yes it certainly becomes much harder. Quote:
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Last edited by Andreas; 02-10-2019 at 01:02 PM. |
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02-10-2019, 12:58 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
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02-10-2019, 01:00 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Skill for laying low in an urban area
Icelander is right that in many places, to stay in a hotel or rent an apartment you are legally required to provide some form of photo ID. Yes, there are ways around that, and places which will just stick the info you give in a file cabinet somewhere, but you only have to slip once and I would be happy to roll against Streetwise to find a place like that without making the landlord nervous.
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What if your new city has taken down the public transit maps/schedules and replaced them with a number you can call to see when the next bus will arrive because 'everyone has a cell phone' (and can use it in their gloves when the temperature is 40 below, sigh)? You can still get by just fine without a cellphone or a smartphone, but it makes many aspects of life harder, slower, and more expensive, especially when you are setting up housing, work, and social life in a new place. There are REASONS why so many refugees have a smartphone. In a world where plenty of middle-aged professionals with training in OPSEC do things like sharing nudes on their smartphone or using a shared Gmail account as a secret messaging service with their lovers ("we will each log in and edit a draft, see, that way everything stays on Google's servers ...") I don't think that stigmatizing these kinds of mistakes as "addiction" is very helpful.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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