[Senko]

I've been going back over my books and just noticed the rule that lodges are the size of a room and necessary to learn spells. Now locally there's a huge housing shortage and lots of 1 bedroom apartments are being built to "counter it" (there are other issues). From what I've seen the shadowrun world has a similar housing issue (in part because of the way the corps run things) so I'm curious how people handle lodges in their games do you . . .

1) Hand wave it "You have a lodge somewhere perhaps a self storage".
2) Alter the rules "You can learn spells without a lodge the DC's are just higher and it takes longer."
3) Insist mages find a 2 bedroom or better "You need a medium or higher lifestyle to have room to place a lodge even if you purchase one."
4) Allow multipurpose rooms "The decorations of the living room allow it to also double as a lodge provided you pull the couches out of the way."
5) Have "work" provide a room for the mages lodge either officially for corp mages or require the runner base to have one.
6) Something I've not thought of?

I've seen mention in the fiction of mage's living rough by choice because of their beliefs so obviously there's some way of dealing with it.

[firebug]

I usually go with #4 and require Low.   As there's no specific rules about what the lodge has to look like specifically (no "Hermetics require a circle at least 10-feet in radius...") I assume that it's often mostly a normal room save for what's in it includes charms, talisman, and various things to turn a room into a lodge.  Basically, "is a lodge" is a modifier that may be applied to any room.

Since magicians can end up spending a very long time in those rooms, studying, binding, etc, it makes sense in my mind for them to be able to be comfortable.  A hermetic lodge very easily could have a basic writing deck and a comfy chair.  If your magician is a geomancer and cares strongly about feng shui then they would probably have that connected to what their lodge is, requiring less "its own room" and more just the fine-manipulation of an existing room.

These are just examples of justification, but basically yeah:  Lodge is a modifier applied to a normal room, is how I see it.

[Jack_Spade]

Eh, there are lifestyle options for exactly that purpose. If you live on the street you can just create a temporary or a low force one that you can assemble quite quickly.

Also, I see no reason why you can't live in your lodge - sleeping inside one is actually a good way to prevent astral intruder assassination/recon.

[farothel]

Mostly I go with 3) for my mage characters and take at least middle lifestyle, putting the lodge in the spare bedroom.  It also gives the mage something to do with his nuyen.
Or go with a low lifestyle with an extra space option (we're still using 4th edition rules with advanced lifestyles, I'm not sure if 5th has similar options already).

Also remember that lifestyles are not always the same in the world.  Look at today's housing prices across the globe.  What get's you a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Tokio for instance, can get you a couple of acres of land in some rural area in a developing country.

[Senko]

Sure, if the sale goes through I'm spending 530,000 for a two bedroom apartment if I were buying the same in a nearby city it'd be 1 million+ if I were buying further away (stupid commute problems) I could get a house for 400-500 thousand. Still most runners are in major cities as far as players are concerned which is why I was wondering.

5th Ed has some advanced lifestyle rules don't think that extra space one is in there though.

[farothel]

I've quickly looked it up, it's in the Runner's Companion of 4th edition (I assume that you can adapt the ones that don't exist in 5th easily enough if you want them, and if the GM agrees), p162:

Workplace +1
The home has an attached garage or an available large space,
secure from the elements, to work in, operate a small business, or
house a magical lodge. This could be a warehouse, large loft, or even a
storefront. This raises the space aspect of Necessities by two levels.

Magical lodge is even mentioned specifically.

[Jack_Spade]

Actually, there is something similar:

RF p. 223

PRIVATE ROOM
Point Cost: 1
Type: Asset
Monthly Nuyen Cost: 20¥
Minimum Lifestyle: Squatter
This is a simple empty, two-meter-by-two-meter space that has been built out of the view of passers by. It provides concealability (–4 dice pool penalty for Perception Tests to notice a person in the room from the outside) and full cover. A barricaded alley or abandoned cars are examples things that could serve as a private room for people who do not live in an actual building. For people in a building, this is simply a room cleverly placed to be difficult to see.

[Sphinx]

In the wake of wars, treaties, VITAS plagues, natural disasters, and worse, most major sprawls in Shadowrun are left with blighted and abandoned "barrens" -type areas, where utilities and infrastructure are not maintained, emergency services are limited or nonexistent, and security and police do not go except in force. These areas can be as small as a neighborhood (e.g., El Infierno in Los Angeles), as large as a major suburb (e.g., the Rox in Boston), or even bigger (e.g., the Puyallup Barrens south of Seattle is a third the size of Rhode Island). When you take a Squatter lifestyle, you can have pretty much any kind of space you can hold in the barrens. It may not have running water or electricity, but there's always room to set up a lodge if you're not picky. You might want to bind a spirit to long-term service to make sure no one absconds with it when you're not home, though.

[farothel]

Actually, there is something similar:

RF p. 223

PRIVATE ROOM
Point Cost: 1
Type: Asset
Monthly Nuyen Cost: 20¥
Minimum Lifestyle: Squatter
This is a simple empty, two-meter-by-two-meter space that has been built out of the view of passers by. It provides concealability (–4 dice pool penalty for Perception Tests to notice a person in the room from the outside) and full cover. A barricaded alley or abandoned cars are examples things that could serve as a private room for people who do not live in an actual building. For people in a building, this is simply a room cleverly placed to be difficult to see.

I'm not sure if this is the same (I don't have the 5th edition book) as it only speaks of a private room, but doesn't clearly state that it's an extra room.  The Workspace quality clearly states it's extra space you get when you take it, while here it's only concealed space.  Also the cost is quite different, although this can be due to the differences in lifestyle cost calculations between the two editions.

[Senko]

Of course the flip side of that is that the lifestyle options don't really specify room numbers that's more detail than it seems to want to go into.

[Reaver]

The lifestyle system in SR is pretty vague...

A "low" lifestyle can be a 4 bedroom house... It just happens to be in a area with no electricity and running water, and a massive gang problem...
Or it could be a coffin sized room in the sub-basement of a high-lifestyle condo unit in the downtown core.

The same can be Said of a High Lifestyle. That could be a penthouse 3 room apartment, or a mansion in the suburbs.


Generally, I look at the force of the lodge to determine the actual size needed. a rating 1-3 lodge will fit in a closet. 4 to 8 you need a small room (utility room/service room/coat room sized). When you start to get into the "big" lodges of 9+ then you start to get into living room sized.

But honestly? Never really been an issue as its usually the mage with the best lifestyle of the group. And I am not going to sit there an tell a player that his character needs to move out of his medium lifestyle into a high lifestyle, or buy a second lowlife style to house his lodge while the troll gun bunny lives a low lifestyle with his 501 firearms, and ammo, and explosives, and......  (or the Rigger! Please, don't get me started on the Rigger! For the love of God, NOT the rigger!!!!)


But then again, sometimes, something like that can add a new little spark to your game, if the group is invested in roleplaying. 

 

[Quatar]

I see no reason why you can't make your entire apartment or bedroom into your lodge, assuming it's not too big.

Some stuff actually says "The mage has to stay in here for the duration of the ritual/whatever, if he leaves he has to start over" and the ritual in question might take days or weeks, and they even point out that smart mages take precautions to have everything they need for that time within the lodge. Aka bed, toilet, food, water, etc. I guess "I have a roommate who can give me food" works, but "I have a roommate who sleeps in the comfy bed and goes to the toilet for me instead" doesn't work quite as well. So yes, including your bathroom into your lodge might actually not be a terrible idea

Once you have the materials, find a space to put it, like your apartment, or a cave in the wilderness, or a secret abandoned sewer tunnel—someplace you won’t mind spending some time

Apartment is even mentioned as an example. It doesn't mention anything about a min or max size there. It also doesn't say "The lodge has to be a single room".

[Senko]

I rather like the idea of scattering parts of it around a normal apartment so you have talismans up on the bedroom walls, a shrine in the living room,  some incense burning in the kitchen etc makes it a lot easier for the mage to set up one rather than needing a large room just dedicated to that.

[Tym Jalynsfein]

A Workspace is available in the Core 5th Edition Book for an additional 1000 Nuyen/Month.

[Kiirnodel]

During a prolonged out-of-town mission, our team rented a loft to use for living space. It was a big open space being used by five of us. We used dividers (like in a cubicle) for a bit of privacy. In that space we actually ended up setting up two different lodges (we had magicians of two different traditions). My magician set up her lodge as a part of her living space, she spent her personal time and slept in the same area as her lodge. That being said, the entire space was very spartan to begin with (since it wasn't permanent living space). So basically, having a cot in your lodge wasn't really an issue.