Working The Streets

## Basic Concepts

Working The Streets is a series of actions that Your Character can begin to undertake at Cinci Slums Familiarity 7, with ample opportunity for profit.

### Street Values, Street Sense, and Supply and Demand

You can start Working the Streets by drawing the "An ordinary street corner on an ordinary day", a fairly common card from Deck/Slums. As long as you are Working the Streets and drawing from that deck, you will get various Working the Streets cards that let you buy or sell mostly illicit goods. Each card has a minimum and maximum Working the Streets value for it to appear. Generally, buying opportunities appear at Working the Streets 50 or less, and selling opportunities at higher values. Each card's range is usually very narrow, 2-3 points at most. You'll have the option of choosing a transaction from the card or skipping them all by waiting to see what happens. Either way, your Working the Streets will generally increase, though at higher values, the you will have the option to avoid a trade and Move On or Work it Back. Moving On increases Working the Street and Work it Back will reduce it. You can also quit at any time.

You generally want your Street Sense above 10 when you're buying and around 20 for most drug sales. Trading cadavers is more risky and requires higher Street Sense. Don't be afraid to lose Contact with a Gang in order to get Street Sense: you can get more Contact, but having a spike sale go bad and incurring gang Hostility can result in a loss of money and eventually Major Wounds.

You never have to buy anything while Working the Streets, and there are no additional benefits for buying overpriced drugs at low WtS values other than acquiring overpriced drugs. If you plan to deal in drugs or spikes, buying drugs or spikes or otherwise paying the gang tax is somewhat helpful just to avoid gang trouble. Also, the goods that they sell are actually have reasonable costs for what you get. Otherwise, it's safe to only buy things you want when starting the WtS cycle and only sell things that you can sell for a profit: individual transactions do not normally improve your Street Sense, and you don't lose Street Sense for not buying or selling something.

### Card Types

There are 3 main types of transactions: Buying, Opportunities, and Selling. Buying and Selling usually requires that you also trade-in Supply and Demand, while Opportunities do not. In Buying, you buy a good for generally the same cost as you could buy it anywhere else. In Opportunities, you buy a good for a substantial discount: half the normal cost or less. In Selling, you sell a good for generally a little more than you would have paid if you bought it while Working the Streets. However, you can sometimes buy a good through an Opportunity and resell it while Selling, and that earns a nice profit. Or you can sell things that you acquired for free or reduced cost someplace else. And finally, if you have enough Arbitrage, you can by things at around 80% of their normal cost and sell them for 120% of their normal price, and make a good deal that way.

### Getting Started

After you have your Working the Streets up to 6 or so, you will get the opportunity to engage in Arbitrage (see above) or Make a Big Deal.

### Drugs, Spikes, and Gangs

It is possible, but not yet confirmed, that buying drugs or spikes from your gang contact will reduce the Working the Streets value needed to see the card to sell spikes.

## Making a Big Deal

You need to continue Working the Streets to at least WtS 68, where you will get the chance to determine what kind of Big Deal you are making. You can choose to buy or sell a variety of items, with different rates of success depending on which specific thing and how much Making the Deal you have. After you have chosen the deal, you can stop Working the Streets, or continue for more buying and selling, or to earn more Making the Deal.

Costs and prices are extremely approximate, and you can often buy for 10-15% less than the quoted cost and sell for a little more than the quoted price. You can only trade in human flesh if you are already a cannibal or at least not opposed to the flesh trade.

After you have chosen your deal, there will be a new Working on your deal card in the Slums. Selecting that card will give you instructions on how to complete the deal: for a sale, that means providing a rare good and then (hopefully) getting paid.

Successfully Making a Big Deal can be extremely profitable. Prescription Drugs can be bought at the Incinerator for $3,750 for 10, and sold in a Big Deal at 10 for $7,300. It's a $3,400 profit if you do it right. If you have Diamonds, Implant Nanites, or M320 Grenade launchers cluttering up your living space and are trying to figure out how to get rid of them, selling them in a Big Deal can earn you a lot of money.

## Buying, Opportunities, Selling

Working the Street cards come in a standard order with some randomization. You'll never get the opportunity to buy Bulk Shrimp Cakes at WtS 65 or sell Crack Cocaine at WtS 22, but it's possible to jump past either transaction without seeing them. Thus, it's helpful to know the WtS values for various trades so you can decide if you want to take a trade, Move on, or Work it Back.

The actual Working the Street values to see certain cards seems to vary due to unknown influences. Buying drugs or spikes from your gang contacts may make the associated selling cards arrive sooner. Repeatedly buying or selling the same goods may move certain cards forward. Repeatedly working the streets over several days may compress the entire schedule. Take these numbers as indicative, but your character's circumstances may vary considerably.

Some key Working the Streets points:

There are a lot of other useful things to buy and sell while working the streets. Check the references below and experiment.

There are some comprehensive spreadsheets:

* Loukya's color coded sheet with all the cards
* mlangsdorf's sheet that shows profit and loss

that show all the Working the Street breakpoints for various trades. Both sheets also have other useful data.

### The Pay-off

Even with paying a $200 gang tax up front, a decent run through Working the Streets can earn $2000 or more for 30-40 action's worth of effort. The profit margin on crack cocaine is pretty good, and it's even better if you acquired your cocaine and basic groceries for free.

Making a Big Deal can be tricky, but the simplest big deal deals are still worth $7,000+ with a profit of $3,000 or more.

## Helpful Tips

### Street Sense

When you start Working the Streets, Street Sense determines whether a deal goes smoothly or you attract unwanted attention. You should try to get your Street Sense up to at least 10 as quickly as possibly, and up to 20 or so by the time you start selling stuff. The easiest and most reliable way to increase Street Sense is to use phone to Call Some Peeps and connect with your gang (either the Modes or the Jags) and trade Contact for Street Sense. Gang Contact is useful, and you should strive to increase it, but you don't get any awards for having a high Gang Contact, while you lose money and possibly get beat up for having insufficient Street Sense and having a drug sale go bad. Use the Contact.

### Supply and Demand

You probably want at least 30 Supply and Demand (S&D) before you start Working the Streets at all, and around 100 if you're planning on Dealing Big. There are a lot of ways to get S&D, but one of the fastest is to equip a Mood that gives Flexible Closure and then use Hard facts to generate S&D. 5 Hard Facts can convert to 40 S&D in 5 Actions. Of course, this assumes you have Hard Facts to spare. Starting out, you may not have many Hard Facts, but you probably don't have a lot of stuff to sell, either. Just try to accumulate S&D in the course of your normal play, and Work the Streets once a week or so when you have plenty of S&D.

### Manipulating WtS values

Moving on/Hanging Around increases your WtS value, and Taking a Break/Working it Back decreases your WtS value. You can also simply discard WtS cards if you like your current WtS value but don't like the card you got. This can be helpful for sale opportunities that share WtS values with other sales - if you get the Sens sales card when you want the Spikes sales card, just discard it without changing your WtS value and hope that the next hand will let you sell spikes.

If you have multiple WtS cards in the same draw, some of them may disappear as you play the others. If you have the Sell card for crack at WtS 65 and sell Spikes off the card (WtS 64-69), your WtS will advance and you'll lose the crack sale card. Done the other way, if you sell the crack first, you'll still have the Spikes sale card.