I want to give my characters a mister johnson contact since none of them had one to start with. should I make them pay some of their karma to get this contact or just give it to them so they have a in for runs? any advice? I didn't see anything in the character advancement table about getting new contacts, so I assume they just get one.....

Willis

Contacts are made through roleplaying. It's like in the real world, you know? You meet somebody, talk to him, he leaves his business card, you call him later...voilà: A new contact. I know, some fellow roleplayers aren't used to outgame social interaction...

But possibly the contact you are looking for is more a fixer than a Mr. Johnson...

In the past, I gave out new contacts based on the pc´s interaction of these npcs whithout any cost. Recently I started to chrge karma for new contacts. This was mainly, because I built an all-Karma-chargen system, where I needed KP-cost for contacts instead of bp cost. After I put together this system (well I haven´t really finished), I found, that it would be nice to charge Karma ingame as well, but give out extra Karma for good pc-npc interaction. This way, a player with less talent or interest in pc-npc interaction could compensate with regular good karma, to get decent new contacts to, or improve old ones. Another plus IMO is, that by charging (and giving out extra) karma for contacts, the number and ratings of contacts are represented in the pc´s street cred (you are who you know).

I charged 1 Karma per Rating point, so i.e. a C2/L3 contact would be worth 5 Karma, upgrading L to 4 later would cost 1 Karma.

what about the time you spend doing things not related to SR

Players rarely have mister Johnson contacts. They have fixer contacts that set up meetings with different Johnsons, the Johnson will do no favours at all for you. The relationship is even more business like than a loyalty one contact. Think about the relationship you have with a used car salesman when you walk onto his lot for the first time

You can’t buy contacts during play. You must role play to get them. A house rule allowing you to get them with karma would be acceptable but I would still allow good role playing.

Say I talk nicely and make friends with the Aries arms salesperson we just saved, convince him to come to my weakly poker game, latter to sell us anything he can sell (any Aries weapon, accessory, armour or combat drone) for the base sticker price, and likely in the next few poker games get him comfortable talking about work to us. I just gained a rating 2/4 contact, soon to become 3/4. That is 7 points of karma, probably more than I earned on the run (even if I did get one point for drama doing it) and I have no choice but to spend it. I have seen characters that pulled a stunt like every second session. You’re not leaving any karma to actually advance the character.

Edward

Yeah, sleep! I do that sometimes. It's that time when I dream about Shadowrun.