Rent a Hacker, Rent a Sam, Rent a Goon, Things to do with contacts and NPCs Options

[Chance359]

Since I've actually sat at Lurker's tables, I can say that he does know the mods well enough to keep his players having fun and get us through the story. Almost sounds like you've got something personal to get off your chest, care to share with the class?

[LurkerOutThere]

Ok so obviously I take some issue with CH's personal attacks and assertions. In tthe in the spirit of keeping things both on topic and civil I'll ask folks table that a moment. I'll also start a seperate thread for discussion about fudamental ways missions are structured. Let's shift back to a discussion of a contact roster either in the interests of sweetening Bull's opinion on the matter or a fun community project to have some contacts in common.

[Bull]

*sigh*

[Redjack]

Our face slept with one of the heads of security (the mage) which eliminated that problem, and in the end we rigged up their own drones and stun gassed the guards right as we were leaving. Hell if the final stealth rolls ahd been better we wouldn't have had to do that. Good team, most of the run was social in nature

When my teams are short of talent, they either improvise or subcontract. There have been hackers on retainer, gangers paid off for a physical diversion and even contacts slept with to sleaze into information or access.

New contacts are obviously broken in Missions, especially when you go to the book and read Loyalty 1:

Just Biz. The character and contact have a purely mercenary relationship. Interactions are based solely on economics. They may not even like each other, and will not offer any sort of preferential treatment.

Hell, the guy you buy your coffee from every morning is a loyalty 1; His connection rating of 1 may not make him worth the effort to you. My point is 1/1 contacts abound. (Which brings me to another peeve: a 1/1 contact being treated as a 4/4 contact simply because its on the sheet.)

My point is: I agree with the initial assertion, sometimes you need a subcontractor and Missions needs a definite overhaul in the handling and management of contacts.

[KnightRunner]

I wonder about a more formalized system that gives contacts a dice pool and a list of skills/actions that they can perform for the PC.

Let me elaborate as an example. I am making a Character and want a contact. I consult the campaigns list of skills/services that can be assigned to a contact. Each skill/service (let's call the category for sake of this example.)has a list of actions related to that skill that can be performed by that contact. So I pick two of those skills. (Because that is what these theoretical rules allow) and assign them to my contact. I know pay for a connection rating. The connection rating determines the Contacts dicepool for performing tasks and the loyalty rating determines the fee.


So I wind up with a contact, let's call him Bob. For Bob I chose the First Aid category which allows him to be used for the following actions.
- Use the First Aid skill
- Supply the PC with Medication, and related equipment, as well as provide knowledge of both.
Bob also has the Dealer category. (Its a "supplemental" income!) So he has a few other uses.
- Supply illegal drugs
- Knowledge of the local drug trafficking scene
Now Bob has quite the following So I pay for a Connection Rating 3 which gives him a decent dicepool, but I pay for a Loyalty 1. After all, I barely know him.


So there it is, thrown against the wall, anything sticking?

[Wasabi]

I dont think I've ever had a SRM GM not willing to let a Street Doc contact do street doc sorts of things for me. I dont think codifying it by action is really needed. It might be nice if a Street Doc contact had a blurb like:

"Street Doc contacts are generally familiar with things related to medical organizations, people in the medical community, drugs, current events in medicine, and can usually patch up both characters and critters."

As well as this blurb in an overview of the SRM contacts system:

"When a character contacts a contact roll a d6. If the D6 is above the connection rating they are either unavailable, lack the ability to perform the task or due to some circumstance are unable to help the character. The time and cost to help the character is modified by Loyalty."

Then have a chart for Loyalty. A Loyalty 6 contact would do stuff for free while a loyalty 1 contact would charge full price but do it quickly. Inbetween would need to be fleshed out.

[Bull]

Like I said above, theres no real need for any of these to be done up as rules, beyond whats already in SR4A. Half of it's common sense. The other half is a GM doing his job.

Bull

[Wasabi]

I myself like the idea of expanded blurbs on them though... it gives new players an expectation and puts it in friendly GM-discretionary terms.

[Bull]

I don't plan to chance the contacts as they currently are handled, as I like the system. I'd like to see fewer overall contacts, and to see these contacts more involved in the stories this year, so that's tentatively the plan.

That said, I would like to see a little more detail on the areas of expertise for the contact, but... Again, at the end of the day, it's a GMs call. Just because MacCallister the Fixer is a Contact you were earned in Missions, and Mr. Greene the fixer is a contact you bought with BP as your own personal fixer, there's no reason the Missions COntact would be more (or less) limited than the one you paid BP for. They're both still Fixers.

But for some of the more esoteric contacts... Like, what exactly can Joe Martin, NewsNet Reporter do for you? And what areas can the lizardish changeling Lin Yao Chuang, Lung's eyes and ears in Seattle, get for you? These are things that need to be defined a lot of times.

Bull

[suoq]

Missions are written so that there's a path to find solutions for any character type...

Pure and simple, combat is SHadowruns default setting, like it or not. ALmost every character in SR can handle combat to some degree.

I'm sorry, I can't reconcile these two statements. The intelligence gathering characters frequently can't handle combat. That's not their job. For them combat is NOT the default setting for Shadowrun. Their setting is avoiding combat through stealth, con, back doors, and being smarter than their opposition.

Now, either these characters are not suitable for missions because missions requires combat (i.e. the first quote isn't true) or they are suitable for missions and therefore combat isn't the default setting, combat is simply another option.

There are faces not built for combat (Heck, neither the face nor the Occult Investigator in the sample characters should ever get close to combat). There are riggers who serve as getaway drivers and focus on Stormclouds and flyspys. There are hackers who do the recon and edit the appointment schedule to get people in and avoid ICE as much as possible. These are the people who work in the shadows. They're the ones who specialize in not getting caught, not leaving a trail, and not making headlines because Mr. Johnson doesn't want to attract attention.

I understand that combat is a setting for Shadowrun, but if it's the default setting for missions then missions is being written for certain character types, not any character types.

[Bull]

Lets not over-analyze everything I say. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

First off, I said "Almost every character". ALmost is an important qualifier, because it means that there are some character that this doesn't apply to.

But overall, combat skills are easy to obtain, guns are dirt cheap. YOu can make a face with zero combat skills, but it's rare. I would be confident of laying money on a bet that 99% of Shadowrun characters out there have at least a mediocre combat capability.

But, as I said, most adventures, tehre are ways around everything. I'm just pointing out that combat is always an option, and always has to be an option. Key word here is "option".

And every now and then, combat is mandatory. But one of the tactics in combat is "Run away and hide". I will never have a scenario in a Missions game where the runners are forced into a stand up, straight out fight to the death as the only viable path.

[Bull]

Hedre we go, lets tweak this to talk about something else. Same principles, different example.

Most people (at least in the US) are assumed to have a drivers license and a car. Larger cities are designed assuming that most people have cars, will drive them, and will use the roads they gave you. That's the default.

But, knowing that while most people have a car, there are those that do not, or cannot legally drive. So there are alternate routes made available. Subways, Bus lines, sideways, bike paths, etc.

Tweaking your quotes a bit gives us this...

Missions are written so that there's a path to find solutions for any character type...
Cities are designed so that there's a way to get to work for any person

Pure and simple, combat is SHadowruns default setting, like it or not. ALmost every character in SR can handle combat to some degree.
Pure and simple, driving is the cities default mode of transportation. Almost every person in the city can drive a car.

They're not irreconcilable, they're just talking about two different aspects of the same thing.

Bull

[Noah Bennett]

Oh, how I miss living in cities with a superb public transportation system...

[suoq]

One thing that worries me with Rent a Goon and Missions would be the issue of the goon being trustworthy.

Renting one in missions seems like you're getting a trustworthy goon, mainly because I wouldn't expect the module to take that ability into account when it's being written.

Renting one at a home game is a completely different thing because it gives the GM even more opportunity to complicate things.

Heck, all the runners have sold out (see Affiliations), why should the Goon be loyal. Shouldn't he be calling his affiliation(s)?

[TranKirsaKali]

Ok I am not able to quote everyone I wanted to so I just won't quote anyone.

I want to address the you must be able to do combat thing that so many people have been saying. For the most part, in every mission I have run in, combat has been minimal if not non existent. I have played in groups of extreme skill and groups so green that it almost hurt. In every scenario we have tried to go and do the job as quietly and stealthily as possible. Someone mentioned Ready Set Gough. In that one if shots were fired it wasn't until the third scene. I am actually having a hard time remembering any real gun/spell slinging combat in the missions. There are always multiple paths through the missions.

Now as to the NPC library. Bull I like this idea for several reasons. One it helps speed things along for the GM's and players at conventions. We only have four hours to run the mission. And I know I like to get it done a little early so we can buy stuff with a GM present. Also, for people that are new to running a table, it would make it easier for them to facilitate things. It would help encourage people like me to try and run a game or three. I can probably be creative with the mission it's self but having a stock of NPC's for me to help the players with would be nice. And it would be nice for the player to be able to say to the next GM " I have interacted with XYZ and she liked us, can we get help from them again?"

I would even be willing to create some of these NPC's to help out. I think there may be others here that would as well. I was thinking of this as more of a cheat sheet than a bail out. Heck RobertB and I ran Take out Service just the 2 of us. I am a wolf shaman and he is a rigger. And we did the mission with out hiring extra help. It was an interesting run. So yes, there are more than one path to doing a mission.

And that I think ends my rambling for now