Who's yer contact?, Your favorite odd-man-out contacts? Options

[blakkie]

Street doc, Doc Carver, who was actually a vet that had had his veterinary license revoked due to gross incompetence. A real Plan B contact. :)

Two hookers that one of the team pimped for. In most situations they were far-and-away the most effective infiltrators the team had. They were to the pimp like drones to a rigger. The pimp was run by my SO, and the depravity levels that were reached...are simply shocking.

The same (mage) pimp also had a Mafia family contact, only he wasn't a contact so much as a liability. Constantly shaking down the pimp for fictious debts. He came part and parcel with the hookers. :)

An semiretired face 'runner that acted as a smalltime fixer, mostly booking Johnsons. He wasn't so much an issue, but his receptionist was a pension drawing granny with a paraniod personality, wired-reflexes, and an Uzi III holstered to the underside of her desk. She never actually pulled it on the team, but she did have a habit of putting her hand close to it every time she was a bit confused. :D

I won't even get into the Russians. :eek:

[Bandwidthoracle]

[Snow_Fox]

Lone Star Dispatcher. not on the street but gets all the gossip especailly of the corp and has better access to records.

Consession Stand worker- that person behind the scenes at all the Baseball/football games. sells beer and hotdogs and knows the ins and outs of the bnig complexes and maybe can score tickets for the big events/concerts, and can get the dish on the media and the players.

[Catsnightmare]

No shit about the Dispatcher contact. I actually had a contact like that IRL growing up.
When you're a teenager out raising a little hell it's nice (hell it was fucking sweet!) to have someone to call and warn you to get the hell off the streets so you can stay one step ahead of the police once they've been alerted to your shenanigans.

[DocMortand]

Actually having a Lone Star officer who works in Records is just as good for finding out info a decker could burn his brain out getting...

[Angelone]

SCUBA instructer is not a bad choice depending on where the campaign is set. Could teach the characters how to do it, and "lose" some equipment if they need it.

[Panzergeist]

Organleggers and chop shop owners are great for making some extra money. Also, for international runs, nothing beats an airline pilot or manager, or a smuggler. Free spirits can be good too, although they won't always be willing to work for plain old money. I just got a good idea just now, too: a foreign embassy official. Need a place to hide? Just go into his embassy and hide in another country for a while.

[Enigma]

Actually, police contacts are superb. No-one knows more about gangs and criminal enterprises than Organised Crime officers, who are also particularly excellent sources in relation to who is who in the shadows. Drug Squad (in SR, DED) officers are a superb source on anything drug related, obviously, but can also link to many other departments because the saga of the modern era is that so much crime is drug-related. Dispatch/comms officers are also excellent, as are Police Intel people (access to records, including last known addresses, criminal histories, photos and biometric data, known associates, known aliases and so on), Burglary squad officers (underfunded, undermanned, doing a job no-one appreciates with an appalling clearance rate just because that's what the job is, but also a group of officers who have forgotten more about lockpicking, security bypassing and security systems generally than any player will ever know) and finally the "police police", Internal Affairs, for obvious reasons. My face characters always have at least one of the above because they are just so fantastic as contacts.

But I digress ...

Crazy contact wise, I've had/seen a troll prostitute transvestite in an elf-heavy game - "you're not interested? WHY aren't you? have you got a problem, muthaf****r? I'm more woman than you can handle, dammit! I'll slap some taste into you! etc"

Because I'm a lawyer, I also enjoy the lawyer contacts, especially the lawyers of the fixer. Overworked, underappreciated ("what do you mean they have a warrant! fix it!!!") and with a literally life-threatening job. I say this as a prosecutor myself - it's still funny. I see these guys as having a serious drug habit to handle the stress, and being constantly red-eyed and on edge from all-nighter drugs trying to weasel the fixer out of legal liability for the latest fiasco.

It's always fun to put in former or current runners who haven't done well, to keep things in perspective. To steal someone else's idea, for example, a runner who screwed up so bad that they are paying the debt off at the rate of 1 nuyen per day for not less than 100,000 days, working as a bartender and general slave.

[Jrayjoker]

It would be nice to have an engineer or architect on file as well. If you cantt go through the door, they can get you to the right part of the wall to make a door more easily. The ability to read plans and interperet them is not something Joe Average runner has the training or experience to do.

[ElFenrir]

Contacts i've used and had as characters:

Arcade Owner. A fellow who works at a run down arcade in a seedier part of town. Just does his thing, but because he sees so many people coming in and out, he tends to always have a bit of info on him. In addition, the younger kids that come in might not have cred to play...so he'll treat them to a few games to keep their ears out and do things like 'rememeber' when the black car drives by, etc.

Club Chick. Someone who might just see her as a girl who likes booze, Novacoke, and hanging(and picking up guys) at her fav nightclub...however, with drinking, hooking up, etc, again comes 'hearing things accidently.'. Also, being at the club nearly 7 days a week lets her pick up on info that others might miss.

I can think of some more of the offbeat ones i've used given some time. I've ran an ex rocker turned samurai and had the gamut of roadies, groupies, and fans as contacts, along with slimy record execs. The latter will do about anything for money, and the former, if convinced right, will do stuff to help their old 'hero' out.

[Whiteout]

My favorite contact was the brain eater LT my character kidnapped and tortured for information, he was really helpful.

[Method]

Here's a new one I'm waiting to inflict on my players:

Chip Douglas (AKA: The Cable Guy)
Chip is an installation technician that works for Universal Telecast, a local matrix service provider, and a wannabe shadowrunner. Chip has some problems relating to people, and has very few (if any) friends. In his overactive imagination he fancies himself as an up-and-coming new shadowrunner, and will jump at any chance to make his fantasy life a reality. Chip can provide valuable serves to a decker by setting up disposable MSP accounts or boosting service for a small fee, but he will automatically assume that anyone who proposes such illegal transactions is a shadowrunner. It just so happens that in this case he’s right. He will “befriend” any such character and become an almost constant nuisance him.

Just imagine:

You show up to the meet, trying to look all tough and professional when you hear a familiar voice:

"Hey, Buddy!!! I thought I might run into you here..."

Chip looks around and then then says in a loud voice so everyone can hear:

"SINCE YOU'RE A SHADOWRUNNER!!"

:]
:] :] :]

[ElFenrir]

That last one sounds like it would be a -1 point flaw, 'Extra Contact.' :grinbig:

[hermit]

- A "psychological consultant" - a man who can get people to tell things, at any cost.
- Grandmother, a spider shaman taken from some book .... and one player's standard contact. He loves creepy information brokers
- College Student girlfriend (of a character, a mage professor at UoS who moonlights as a shadowrunner)
- Three paranoid Techies, straight from X-Files. great for our tech wiz/face character.
- The guy who hands out chemicals for experiemnts at UoS. The above mentioned tech wiz is also a chemist.
- Rich high society guy who's hot for the character (the face/tech wiz/chemist again, she's got some 20 connections) and who loves to gossip and brag about how cool and connected he is.

[mrobviousjosh]

[Shanshu Freeman]

College librarian decker.

[hermit]

- Insane immortal elf bum (one of those who had less luck than Erhan and Harley). Never used him so far, but love the idea.
- Mantis shaman former Firewatch battlemage. Fled Chicago, got to be part of that Ares breeding project mentioned in threats 2, ran for it, now lives under a cover ID in Seattle and breeds insect-attracting flowers. Matis waits for pres to come to her, after all, not the other way around.

[DrJest]

[Kayos Frawg]

My favorite contact that I’m actually fleshing out completely to be a PC is called Doc. He’s a paranoid pediatrician/street doc/humanitarian with amnesia. He can’t remember his original ident, but that doesn’t matter because he killed it off before he lost his memory (his paranoia stems from how he got his amnesia, of course cliché, a botched killing). He now has many ID’s that he uses to do everything he can. His main ID is a pediatrician, which has a free clinic in Redmond funded by his two legitimate practices that is the face for his black ware clinic. He knows everyone high and low, his big function other than being the money. He’s also involved in smuggling, money laundering, and his humanitarian pursuits.