Styles of GMing the Redux, NOT about Collaborative vs Benevolent Dictatorship :) Options

[Cantankerous]

What this is about is something I like to refer to as the "reasonability curve".

IMO, and all of this that follows does not purport to be "right" but simply IMO, none of us wants realism in a game where there are trolls and orcs and dragons and elves and ghouls who used to be shape shifting aniforms but now are almost wannabe Otaku. Realism is an anathema to a good RPG, but what isn't, what makes an RPG like Shadowrun so much more enjoyable for me than one like D&Dis, is that in it's relationship to more modern times and it's ideology of trying to keep to a recognizable social structure and using our world, seen through a dark, smokey, shadowy glass true, but OUR world as a basis, is that it stresses reasonability.

So, in terms of SR*, what is a good place to take reasonability too? Where do YOU draw the line between the flight of fantasy that is a dragon and the reasonable world of corporations and political intrigue and social dynamics between power groups that drives OUR world?

As an example that was brought up on another thread, how about money laundering? Do you as a GM make it necessary for a PC to take care of that, to keep track of what they have and how openly they move it and why?

In our own game it is usually part of the structure. The PCs tend to get paid in someone else's corporate script; as when they do a Run that is ultimately for the benefit of MCT they find themselves paid in, say, Ares script. Or they get pissy with the Johnson (or whoever hires them) and demand broad market portfolios in the same relative amount, or equipment, or on occasion simply certified cred sticks (which aren't always secure in all ways... people be careful of your Johnsons if they are slick... and they are slick) or, wonder of wonders,actually folding money from the UCAS or CAS or the Carri bean league or wherever.

All of this doesn't require the PCs to have, as one person on that other thread put it, an "accountant bent"m but it can add a level of FEELING of reasonability to the game that makes it that much easier to get in to character, both as GMs and Players.

Speaking of equipment, that is VERY OFTEN the "payoff" my PCs like to demand and/or request of their employers. The stuff that is just highly illegal I don't have to worry about them going through Fixers for if they are working for a corporate Johnson from a major corp. Often, maybe even usually, I have Mr. Johnson payoff the upfront money in equipment that might be useful for such a gig, or simply nearly impossible to get otherwise, some times even offering it as the main incentive. Not so very long ago we had a Johnson give the Runners a pair of monofilament whips that their characters had been trying to get through the Fixer who introduced them to the Johnson, in lieu of the upfront cash they would have gotten otherwise: and the PCs absolutely LOVED it. Yes, having a Johnson present you with something on your WANT IT list is a bit disconcerting, but this was a situation where they had worked for the Johnson twice before amiably and with that Fixer on both of those occasions and many other times as well, and they just ramped up their distrust and paranoia for a bit and still chortled over their newest toys.

Which brings me to another question. How hard DO you make it for the Runners to get their hands on grotesquely illegal and/or hard to get items? How many times have you made almost a mini-adventure out of getting the newest SOTA toy?


Isshia

[nezumi]

Define "reasonable". Is reasonable the same as realistic?

I think the important clarification between this game and say D&D is it is science fiction. Science fiction says "imagine this is so, and it is reasonable and realistic, how would the world change?" Assuming those additions (orks, dragons, etc.) are reasonable, what else would we consider reasonable? Certainly, having to launder money would be. D&D I don't think tries to stick with what is reasonable because, from the getgo, it creates ecosystems which are 90% super-predator, with the remaining 10% being inanimate objects which now walk around and attack people. Something being realistic isn't even a consideration with them. I hope SR doesn't fall in that same boat.

Also, I'm confused by the thread title. Where do I go to tell Cain his play style is wrong?

[Cantankerous]

Define "reasonable". Is reasonable the same as realistic?

I think the important clarification between this game and say D&D is it is science fiction. Science fiction says "imagine this is so, and it is reasonable and realistic, how would the world change?" Assuming those additions (orks, dragons, etc.) are reasonable, what else would we consider reasonable? Certainly, having to launder money would be. D&D I don't think tries to stick with what is reasonable because, from the getgo, it creates ecosystems which are 90% super-predator, with the remaining 10% being inanimate objects which now walk around and attack people. Something being realistic isn't even a consideration with them. I hope SR doesn't fall in that same boat.

For me "reasonability" isn't even in shouting distance or realism. Realism recreates that which IS, and while reasonability can certainly contain realism as a component of of itself, it doesn't need it, so long as we don't get so far afield that your first reaction on hearing about it/reading it is: "oh please!". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Cyberware is reasonable. It is something that we might one day create something like or analogous to, or already exists in a far more primitive form. We may never get to actual cybernetic replacement limbs, as an example, but there are things that already exist that use similar ideals and are either in production or pre-production now, so we MAY get to a similiar degree of sophistication (or exceed it) IRL.

But that isn't all that "reasonability" includes. It also includes super fantastical creatures, like dragons that weigh multiple tons and still fly (undoubtedly with the aid of magic) and for that matter, magic itself. These things will very likely never become reality, or anything even closely analogous to them may never become reality, but they aren't self exclusionary in their existence within the game (like the 90% super predator eco-system you referenced) or just downright silly assed, straining even the outermost boundaries of credulity (like swimming up waterfalls).

I don't think that even with orcs and dragons that Shadowrun is even in the same ocean as D&D as far as reasonability goes, let alone in the same boat.

Also, I'm confused by the thread title. Where do I go to tell Cain his play style is wrong?

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Him went that way Kimosabee! --->


(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


Isshia

[Pendaric]

Tam'to, tomato.
Realistic in my experencse is generally used to mean "realistic within the metaphor of the game world."

It appears to me that you prefer the term resonable to mean the same concept.

You raise a good idea in making the aquiring of stuff interesting, the level of complexity of the actions in the game world can lead to more sophisticated storying lines and opportunity for roleplay interactions.

Every group will base that complexity on the needs and demands or time and style and length of game. If you have the time and inclination so very evokative experences can come from exploring these concepts.

[nezumi]

I generally try to keep stuff pretty... reasonable? Players actually have to do their homework and so on, although sometimes I'll handwave stuff that's boring (so such as laundering money, I won't make them stress about that, but I'll say "I assume you use this contact to do that" and move along with things).

[Ravor]

I keep things as dark and gritty as posible with a strong "Pink Mohawk" spin and as little "Movie Logic" as I possible.

Society is literally rotten to the point where nothing is worth saving, even if it were possible to be saved, the only thing keeping everything from completely collasping is a thin coating of corp lies. Wageslaves literally fear for their own lives even as they sell their children into the same life they have no hope of escaping. Even in the Shadows freedom is only an illuision, a Runner is just a corporate whore who doesn't realize it. Your Fixer will sell you to the corps at the first whiff of profit, and in fact probably already has. The cops are merely another streetgang with badges instead of colors, and are just as brutal.

There is no hope, only the lies that you tell yourself to keep from sucking your pistol.

[Cantankerous]

I keep things as dark and gritty as posible with a strong "Pink Mohawk" spin and as little "Movie Logic" as I possible.

Society is literally rotten to the point where nothing is worth saving, even if it were possible to be saved, the only thing keeping everything from completely collasping is a thin coating of corp lies. Wageslaves literally fear for their own lives even as they sell their children into the same life they have no hope of escaping. Even in the Shadows freedom is only an illuision, a Runner is just a corporate whore who doesn't realize it. Your Fixer will sell you to the corps at the first whiff of profit, and in fact probably already has. The cops are merely another streetgang with badges instead of colors, and are just as brutal.

There is no hope, only the lies that you tell yourself to keep from sucking your pistol.

We're not quite that dark, but dark enough, closer to "real" in this sense than to just reasonable. It is a dark world where really anyone can become the victim very quickly and where far more than half of the world lives in a continual state of victimization, even inside of the first world nations and inside of the great metroplexes.

For instance, with us, if you live in Low Lifestyle or lower you have almost the set up you describe...and even in Seattle, a fairly prosperous and moderately egalitarian city (for Shadowrun cities anyway) more than 80% of the population lives in that condition. The middle class comprises about 18% of the populace, most of those corporate middle management and specialists, and the High Lifestyle set makes up almost the entire other 2%, with only a very few corporate or other elites living completely free of life's travails... most of the time.

Even there it is neither safe nor secure...it's just that the main dangers wear different faces.

In one of our games we had someone stumble across a government study that showed that among people living in relative poverty (Y600-Y1250 mnth) that the life expectancy for human beings (who were used as the base line for historical purposes) was actually only 63.4 years old, almost a decade LESS than it had been for people of the same rough socio-economic class a century earlier. And at the opposite end of the spectrum (for those making between Y10,000 and Y25,000 mnthly) the average life expectancy had eclipsed 90 years of age, while for the truly wealthy (Y1,000,000+ yrly income) it was well past 100. At the same time the study showed that "life expectancy projections" were far less reliable sign posts than in past times as the violent crime and accidental death rates had risen so high that there were no socio-economic groups where a large enough majority of the people survived to the given age categories to make them statistically valid in comparison to earlier studies. In other words death by intrigue or violence or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time skewed the results too much for reliability in the projections.

What all of the above means in short is that Mr. Johnson in his Y5000 suit with his bevy of bodyguards has a looooong life expectancy, if he survives to take advantage of it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) The problem is that such a sizable minority people in his situation DON'T that there can't be really reliable statistics for his ACTUAL life expectancy. NO ONE gets a free ride.

We play up the differences though, the squalor of the masses compared to the shinning light on the hill of the few, nad use THAT to make things even darker...the dicotomy that makes you FEEL your own poverty more fully.

Added to this is that really no Shadowrunner in our campaign can afford to really live up to his wealth. Period. Not for longer than a short vacation, which will probably be cut shorter when his rise in life style brings him ever more into the world the corporations truly control. He might have a fairly large doss, with pretty tech toys in it, but it's in a building that looks like Cabrini Green in the 80's and he's stepping over the refuse of humanity in his own hallway to go out.

Cheryl sat back in one of the auto-conform recliners and waited for it to "snuggle her" into a completely relaxed potion that still made her feel energetically awake, as the advertisements said it would and found herself amazed at how well it did just that. She glanced about at the decor Waco had set up in the "living room" of his doss, nodding to herself in appreciation of how good the place looked. There was obviously reactive paint programs in place, as his walls were a light blue, like a calm fall sky in Snohomish, and yesterday they had been eggshell white...a setting change not a repainting. A wall was taken up by a limited position trideo unit that promised to have incredible resolution and all of the other types of things one usually saw in the apartments of the rich corporator were in place.

It was certainly a break from the trip here to Hollywood, in the fringes of the Redmond Barrens, dodging areas where the Red Hot Nukes were probably still slaughtering every Duke & Duchess they could get their clawed hands on, or the trip up the elevator that stank of old blood and rotted meat, or the hallway just outside the fifth floor apartment that took up three of the "family apartments" on this side of the building, where she had to step over a three quarters naked young girl, no more than fourteen, who was covered in her own vomit, her eyes glazed as she twitched and suffered through withdrawls from an obvious BTL addiction. Someone had carved the word "skank" into the flesh of her sunken belly and it looked as if she had been rat gnawed a bit as well. Normal life in this neighborhood.

Still, it was nice in here, she had to admit it.

Waco came sauntering in from the shower, the gleaming chrome of his cybernetic left leg glimmering in the subdued lighting as he dried the "RealFeathers" tm cockscomb that stuck up there eighteen inches from the top of his bronzed scalp with a wand sized dry heat gun that would leave their glistening shimmer fully pronounced. His grin was broad as he looked her over. "Any trouble with the wolves following ya all in that get up?" He drawled in his slow Texan accent.

Cheryl returned his grin as she eyed his scared, athletic body. "I didn't have to shoot any of your neighbors, and only had to pull the Pred once all day. Piece of cake. Get some clothes on, I'm getting hungry and these damned symbiotes want meat again." Her grin broadened further. "We comin' back here afterwards? Or going to my place?"

His grin faded a bit as he looked around the handsomely fitted room. "Nah darlin', it ain't really safe here anymore. Not past tonight anyway. Tommy Tong is supposed to be looking for me again and sooner or later he'll find me if I stay here, so I'm going to be using the trailer out in Ponderosa Estates for a few weeks. I hope he doesn't trash this place though when he finds me gone. I was just gettin' it like I wanted it."

Isshia

[Crusher Bob]

What this is about is something I like to refer to as the "reasonability curve".

The high falutin' word for what you are talking about is Verisimilitude. Note that this specifically includes not only 'realism' but adherence to genre conventions as well.

So note that you are not seeking some sort of Platonic truth, but rather, the truths which your gaming group will all agree believe in. So Ravor's quote about how the world of SR works is only true if the gaming groups all agrees for it to be true. A lot of games can run into trouble when these beliefs are not explicitly discussed, so everyone at the table has a different idea of how the imaginary world works.

[Ravor]

Of course, but the same is true of the "Carebears and Rainbow Brite" style of Shadowrun that seems to be prefered by most Dumpshockers.

[Wesley Street]

I'm rubbing my tummy and sending you a ray of fuzzy heart-shaped love, Ravor!

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

Okay, seriously, I find the key to plausibility, reality and all that jazz has little to do with how close we can make our games mimic how we view the world. It's consistency, knowing what is and is not acceptable in the game world (not in the moral sense), and logical progression. James Bond defeats the bad guys through wit and techno-trickery, not because he uses his signal watch to summon Superman who bursts through the wall and bends Auric Goldfinger's machine gun in half.

Unless you're playing Rifts...

[Cain]

Try using this term: Suspension of Disbelief.

Basically, anything that breaks you ability to believe in your gameworld is a problem. So, jetpacks and giant mecha break the suspension of disbelief in Shadowrun (although they fit perfectly in Rifts). On a more usable level, there's certain parameters that your game will operate in. Go outside those limits, and you make it difficult for people to immerse themselves in your world.

These parameters will differ from person to person. For example, in Ravor's game, a Loyalty 6 Contact who won't betray you at the drop of a hat is apparently unbelievable. For the rest of us, building a solid working relationship means if your contacts betray you, it will be based on Loyalty and roleplay.

What is reasonable is what is believable.

[Ravor]

No it means that ( Loyalty 6 ) contacts are rarer than hen's teeth or the chance to custom design your own deltaware cyberware suit.

[Cain]

No it means that ( Loyalty 6 ) contacts are rarer than hen's teeth or the chance to custom design your own deltaware cyberware suit.

I don't want to derail this topic, but how on earth do you keep players from buying a bundle of Loyalty 6 Contacts at chargen? Do you slap a limit on them? Ask them nicely?

IME, experienced players almost always buy one Loyalty 6 Contact right out of the gate.

[overchord]

I think the degree of reasonability/verisimilitude and degree of detail is highly specific to individuals. In my experience as GM, i've had players who wanted to detail everything to the nth degree for their character, and others who wanted to show up, have fun, roll some dice, and leave it at that until next week.
Accommodating both styles (and more likely, the degrees within) is one of the difficult jobs for a GM. Should you force every player at the table towrds the lowest common denominator of detail or the highest?
I think you have to strike a balance in game in order to be able to progress a game at a rate that everyone can enjoy, while in the time in between you can let players go as crazy on the detail os they want (or don't want).
Having said that, broader concepts that must the either included or excluded in order to make any sense is a lot trickier (hence my question in thread about money laundering). For those decisions i've found a discussion about "House rules" useful. To me, house rules are modifications, extras, and agreeing the level of detail inclusion. As such they become an efficient way to approach a democratic decision on some of these aspects. You can't run a campaign with extensive stock trading if none of the players are the slightest bit interested in anything other than demolitions. Likewise, you don not want to run a superhero, save-the-world campaign for people looking for the gritty, down-trodden street environment.

[Cantankerous]

And he's back...sorry for starting a topic and pulling a fade. I got caught up in writing an article then working on the great American novel (that is being written entirely out of said country (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ) and being Super Daddy...my favorite role of all.

One quick aside first: I liked the earlier editions looser manner for defining loyalties than that of fourth. This is one of the places where they added a further layer of rules to the game which I think ONLY made things more mechanical, not also more understandable or more playable.

Now, to pick it all back up: Verisimilitude...the word I brought to the D&D forums a few years back...and was never forgiven for; certainly does cover the ground, but it adds something further, the depiction of realism, which is something I'm certainly NOT talking about.

As the Bard said: "the story's the thing". There's the main point and the reason that even more than believability, even in context, it is acceptance of the world that makes or breaks the story...and thus more what is reasonable than what is believable; even in context.

But this has wandered afield.

The original question was more one of: "So, in terms of SR*, what is a good place to take reasonability to?" And as a subset of that question, how much has that changed in fourth edition compared tho third, or even first for matter?


Isshia

[DocTaotsu]

I think that you have a deceptive header for this topic then. That's highly dependent on the table and unless you're a balls out "I AM THE RAW!" GM it uh... all sort of depends.

In general I'd have to admit that SR4 leans towards the so called "Carebears and Rainbow Brite" end of the reasonable curve. I'm fine with that because virtually everyone I game with does so to escape the drudgery of daily life to a fantasy world where they can "Win" and solve problems with trickery, finesse, or plain old crude rocketry. That doesn't mean I have players who play white hat "Robin Hood" characters who steal from the poor and feed the starving babies. They simply don't want to be bludgeoned over the head with how tragic the world, their lives, the plight of the common chummer, is. Hello escapism!

We have played around with darker settings and we messed with the rules accordingly. Raised the damage codes on all weapons by 1, executed Mr. Lucky, lowered starting BP to 300, etc etc. We got a much darker game, people died, NPC's fucked the players, the whole nine. As they sailed away from an island of orphans, targets of an impending corpsec airstrike, they were just shaking their heads and muttering. They really wanted it to be over, both as PC's and as players.

In contrast we played a pink MOTHERFUCKING mohawk game the next week (using the P2.0 LA setting), it featured highspeed car chases, ninjas on motorcycles, and other action movie schlock. We had a fucking blast and I refuse to say we we're doing it wrong.

On the griping hand, I ran another game for some old time gaming buddies that featured so dark themes. They brought some incredibly fucked up characters to the table and we had a damn good time running from terrible things in the sewers beneath Seattle.


So I contend it's a matter of who you are gaming with. If you want to play "Doom and Despair: Gibson's Promise" than you better be gaming with people who want to dwell long and hard on how fucked up a dystopian future can be. If you want to run action movies where time slows down so you can make pithy comments before offing your opponents than you better be gaming with people who liked "300".

Oh and I make my players crawl on their bellies for the good shit. "Sterilized" .50 cal custom sniper rifles don't just appear in their fixers gun locker on a roll of the dice. If they want really nice gear they better make nice with the right people, steal from the right people, or help their fixer help them. I try not to make it stupidly hard to get gear but I do like to make players work for it because it makes for a better story. Doing a mini run for a rifle fleshes the character out more than transferring funds to your fixer. I'm also a big fan of character plunking a fat wad of blood stained scrip on the table and pointing at things they want (do be done concurrently with grinning players flipping to well worn pages from Arsenal or Augmentation).

[Warlordtheft]

The thing I have issues with is game time. Getting the gaming group together once a month is sometimes difficult (suxs when 6 peoples schedules don't mesh for one reason or another). So to spend time so one player can get his uber gun/cyber. I think the connection/loyalty rating system helps in this regard, allowing stuff that while could be roleplayed would be uninteresting for the rest of the group. In essence it could take 6 months to go through all that. Besides it also depends on how restrictive you as a GM want to be with the gear.

If it was a weekly game, I would probably not mind that too much.

As to the question regarding money, I assume the fixer launders the money (again to preserve time for the real adventure). If nothing else, the fixer having the Johnsons payment in an escrow account until the job is done works pretty good.

I often debate how strict I should be in middle class and above regardin the PAN's and so forth (you can in theory make it impossible). Also, I have alot of Sinners in my group, so I end up punishing those not taking steps to conceal their Identities. I am strongly advising my players to pick up the runners companion, as it has a survival guide on how to not leave a data trail.

The other issue is regarding high loyalty contacts. For me anything above a 2 is pretty loyal, and will probably not sell you out barring other circumstance. That being said, I would want to know why the contact has such a strong loyalty to the PC.

[Blade]

Verisimilitude is king in my game. Fluff and rules bow to it, and so do I as a GM and also as a player.

As a GM, I will create locations, NPCs, organizations and various plots and situations. Once everything is set in motion, I'm no longer be in control of what's happening, it all depends on how the PCs and setting react. Even if I decide how the setting will react, my decision will be based on what I think is the more logical way things will go. My decision will probably be affected by personal bias, but I'll try to be impartial and "realistic".

And it's the same for big events (How will the population react to the blocade?) and for the details (How will that guy's head react to a gel round shot at point blank range?). And if the rules disagree with verisimilitude (according to the rules, the gel round will just deal stun damage), verisimilitude wins (let's roll a constitution test to check if the guy is still alive). As I'm not an asshole, I'll let players tell me if they disagree with me ("If you shoot someone in the head at point blank range with a flashball he'll just be knocked out.") but I'll have the final say ("Wikipedia says that at close range and in the head, it can be lethal. So I'll be rolling a constitution test.").

There are still some cases when there's no single true answer ("Are there rhinoceros near that place?"). In those cases, I'll sometimes resolve it through a dice roll, or an Edge test if the outcome can be helpful/detrimental to the players. Sometimes I'll choose the way that I think will be the best ("The 'fighters' are getting a little bored, let's have the local gang come their way.")

All in all it's working quite well, but it's a lot of work for the GM since you have to keep track of everything and do the thinking of every important NPCs (including NPCs who are far more clever than you).

[Cantankerous]

It's not a question of right and wrong styles. This isn't an attempt to "score points", but simply a discussion of the whys and why nots involved with choices as GM. The title of the thread is "Styles of GMing, the Redux", and the header was "NOT about Collaborative vs Benevolent Dictatorship". Notice the NOT? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I can see why a once a month games all but needs to be "quick and dirty" in regards to background and subplots and also, largely, less concerned with what's reasonable in favor of what's expedient. That makes complete sense. I still don't get why the newer system for determining loyalty is any better, even mechanically, in such a situation, but hey, if you'ld like to explain I really AM interested in hearing why. I'm not arguing this, just not seeing the rationale.

Isshia

[DocTaotsu]

It's the same reason that re-zeroing the basic stats from 1-6 was good. I can glance at a PC's character sheet and say "Ah... okay so this guy will die for him, this guy barely knows his name, and this guy has probably had a few drinks with him." then I can look at the connection and go "This guy can get SOTA rail guns next week, this guy can get him the same guns with laser etched pictographs tomorrow, and this guy works a the Stuffer Shack down from his apartment." 3's indicate a midpowered NPC, 6's a story maker, and 1's are generally fluff or specialists. They're easy go bys especially if a contact hasn't been used before or has been sitting on the shelf for awhile. I have only a vague recollection of how SR3 handled it but I seem to recall that it, much like the priority system, had three settings "Nobody, powerful, great dragon". I'm probably very wrong so if anyone knows I'd love to hear a summary of the SR3 way of handling contacts.

Granted I have a stated policy that contacts bought in chargen are living breathing people and their fortunes will rise and fall independently of the PC's... unless the PC's choose to intervene one way or the other. Those numbers are just a starting point for PC interaction and not some chiseled in ferrocrete stat like that base damage for a heavy pistol.

Plus, worse case scenario you can put it to the dice and roll to see if the contact is around, is able to get those goods, etc etc. I'll admit that I've rarely used the mechanic but the few times I have it's worked fairly well and the players seemed reasonably happy with the results. So I see it as a concise summary as well as a reasonable hard and cast "Can I get it or not?" mechanic.

[psychophipps]

I don't want to derail this topic, but how on earth do you keep players from buying a bundle of Loyalty 6 Contacts at chargen? Do you slap a limit on them? Ask them nicely?

IME, experienced players almost always buy one Loyalty 6 Contact right out of the gate.

Been 'running off an on since 1st ed along with my homies. Not even one Loyalty 6 in the crew amongst the 10 or so PCs so far.

[Wesley Street]

Been 'running off an on since 1st ed along with my homies. Not even one Loyalty 6 in the crew amongst the 10 or so PCs so far.

Ditto. But my players are stuck on the idea of using Contacts as sources of gear and information. One of the concepts I'd like to toy with as a PC is having a small handful of Loyalty 6 Contacts serve as perpetual bodyguards or goons. Perhaps I could build my own little mini-gang inside a runner team.

[Drogos]

Contacts are king, but when you could no longer throw your remaining nuyen into contacts (raise your hand if you made a Resources priority A face...that fragger knew EVERYONE!!!) and it started costing valuable build points, I started forgetting to improve them. They tend to occupy the last step in my creation process and thus the importance has waned a bit.

As for reasonability/verisimilitude/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it, the game world has to make some damn sense. Even SR has rules that govern the way the world works and operates. It is definately not an enlightened society as you clearly have the equivalent of the KKK running a viable political entity in a major democratic state. And then there's the magocracy of the IOND. Neither of these when viewed through our perspective make a whole lot of sense. But you look at it in the context of the Sixth World and you can start to see why this might make sense. Looking at other factors in the world and the fact the Aztechnology makes blood sacrifices during corporate events seems to pale in comparison to the giant fragging Dragon that just destroyed your city block. They still make some damn fine krill paste or whatever.

[Warlordtheft]

It's the same reason that re-zeroing the basic stats from 1-6 was good. I can glance at a PC's character sheet and say "Ah... okay so this guy will die for him, this guy barely knows his name, and this guy has probably had a few drinks with him." then I can look at the connection and go "This guy can get SOTA rail guns next week, this guy can get him the same guns with laser etched pictographs tomorrow, and this guy works a the Stuffer Shack down from his apartment." 3's indicate a midpowered NPC, 6's a story maker, and 1's are generally fluff or specialists. They're easy go bys especially if a contact hasn't been used before or has been sitting on the shelf for awhile. I have only a vague recollection of how SR3 handled it but I seem to recall that it, much like the priority system, had three settings "Nobody, powerful, great dragon". I'm probably very wrong so if anyone knows I'd love to hear a summary of the SR3 way of handling contacts.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts. Not as familiar with 3rd ed as I am with 2nd and 4th (though I still have my 1st ed books). In 2nd edition, contacts were just that (no loyalty rating or anything), so roleplaying and background with the contact were really important. While it helped with the versimillitude (sp?), it does slow down the game when I would take players out of earshot of the the other players to discuss their interactions with the contact.

[Ravor]

To answer your question Cain when I start a campaign with someone who isn't aware of my DMing style I sit them down and explain exactly how fucked up my campaigns tend to be, including the fact that PvP rape and murder are considered perfectly acceptable provided everything stays IC (At the first hint of OOC bullshit I pull the plug.), this talk includes things such as limited Dicepools, houserules, ect.

Also I love creating characters for Fourth Edition so I tend to have several examples to show my players what does and does not fit, and oftentimes I'll end up doing the bookwork for them based off what they want to play. (And for the most part it works, one of my regular players refuses to play a character that he hasn't personally created from stratch, but as DM I have veto rights on what is and is not allowed in my campaigns.)

SO I suppose you could say I ask them nicely first and follow up with throwing heavy objects at their heads if necessary. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)