Shadowrun Contacts Creator, if you want some variety in your contact Options

[Aku]

So this was a little project born of the "weakness of Char gen" thread, and one was regarding contacts, so i made this. What it allows you to do is input numbers for four categories that your contacts can have, to give you and your GM an idea as to how competant they are in those areas, and then generates the cost that person should be.

I worked on the assumption, for now, that costs listed in the BBB for contact levels are the highest a contact of that level would make, therefore, you can make a level 1 contact, for less than 5K by spending few than 5 points, or a level 2 contact for less than 10K by spending 6-9 points.

Over 10 points gives you a level 3 contact, but again, at variable ratings.

The four ratings are Knowledge, Loyalty,Availability and Merchantry in all cases a higher number is "better" or more advantageous to you. Knowledge represents how well the contact collects or knows the info they're supposed to know. Loyalty is just that, the higher this rating, the less likely the contact will give up your information when the star comes knocking. Availability is a concept of how much free time that have, and thus how available they are when you come knocking. Merchantry was just the best word i could come up with for the contacts ability to come up with the goods in a timely manner, and more of before he starts catching heat for collecting and accquiring this stuff.

By clicking "final cost" you get the price of the contact as well as the total number of points spent. Finally, the archtype is there for future versions where i might be able to save and generate an HTML file from this. Some day.

And since it's working for me, i present the Shadowrun contact generator for your pleasure http://www.geocities.com/daherm3610/contact.html

[scoundrel]

1) To make the generator more meaningful, you might want to explain the significance of each category on the website itself as well as come up with rules mechanics for each point value.

2) Does having a ¥100,000 difference in cost between a 10-point contact and an 11-point contact really make sense?

Just things to consider.

[Slacker]

Despite asking for people to post in this Community Projects thread, most people have been posting in the Poll: Contacts thread.

Aku and I have been discussing possible game mechanics for the values. One idea that we have come up and he posted to the other thread is that contacts give you complimentary dice (+1 die per 3 points) to each test relating to that trait. So if you have a 3 in knowledge you would get +1 die when rolling etiquette to get information from him. A 3 in merchantry gives you +1 die when rolling to get equipment through a contact. And a 3 in Loyalty would give you +1 die for the contact to resist revealing information about you to other people.

The problem is there is currently no mechanic relating to accessability of contacts. We need to come up with something for that before we can quantify the value of that trait.

Any ideas are welcome.

As far as the jump in cost goes, a variable cost per point or within each contact level was discussed, but we wanted to keep it simple in the beginning.

[Aku]

thanks for the unput scoundrel, I've actually taken point number 1, and have already created the information on the site (although i'm trying to get the code to work to make it actually happen, nicely).

On point number two, honestly, no it doesnt, but that "canon" as much as this project can be. At some point, the transistion between a level 2 and level three contact had to occur, and really, it doesnt matter if it's going to be between 10 and 11, 14 and 15, or 19 and 20, and so, for ease of math, i choose 10. At this point, those numbers are easily changed however, but i dont want 18 points of level 1 and level 2 contacts, and 2 for a level 3 contact.

[Aku]

Defined and provided houserules for what the numbers mean and do.

put the points above 10 onto a tiered system of sorts, so there isn't a jump of 100K nuyen into the level 3 contact range.

Did some general cleaning.

Began consideration of a vehicle design program....

[Aku]

Added a new, non-purchasable value, "Familiarity" designed to give GMs an idea of how much a given contact knows about the character, ranges from 1-6, with 1 being like a friend of a friend or general accquatince, with 6 being the friend that knows pretty much everything.

Plenty of changes have been made since the first version, so please, feel free to check it out and let me know what you think of it now. I AM going to try and persue a vehicle creator, if i can get my poorly trained self around a few of the vital concepts.