Look... I admit it is more plausible for contacts to have Connection ratings as stated on the Connection Table. But to know what Connection Rating actually does in terms of the game, please read through the game mechanics that use the Connection rating.

Actually here let me use another real world example.

Back when I was still going to the gun range, the guy I got my lisence from is one of the very few guys who deals in firearms in the city. He's also one of the few actual trainers. As such he knows ALOT of people who are into firearms. He also knows alot of police.

Now a guy like him would be about connection 3, MAYBE 4. But why is that? He doesnt, to my knowledge relaly know a single person who's really all that special. Or if he does he might well not realize it and so never ask some oen about something specific.

However, becuase he knows so many 'little people' he's got alot of pull and influence. So if I were to call him up and say 'Hey man, I'm wanting to buy a .45 handgun. Got any?" Chances are that either he infact does have some in stock, or knows one or two folk who are selling one. If not he at the very least knows where I can find out who locally is selling a second hand .45.

Now he doesnt do anything illegal. But that doesnt stop a situation such as one guy geting in touch with another guy through him and then the two of them working out some private illegal deal for that unregistered firearm guy A found in his attic. Say it was his grandfather's rifle. Back then they didnt have to be registered. No one really talked about it and if say.. his wife asks 'What ever happend to that old thing?' he can just say 'Oh well I sold it to a fellow at the gun range honey'. And thats the end of it usually.

Meanwhile Guy B goes and kills someone with the gun. Say he never gets caught but the weapon is found at the murder scene. Well.. the cops can tell at that point where the gun was made, and that it was sold to so and so (maybe assuming the company kept the records) but eventually they'll hit a dead end. At the best tehy get as far as the guy who sold the rifle. And.. he didnt do anything illegal himself. So.. again dead end.

Or maybe they get somewhere and the guy gets arrested. And though a long chain reaction eventually gets guy B arrested too. That might hapend that might not. What if the guys grandfather stole it from some one else? Or bought it off a guy who stole it? Since theres no way to track that kinda thing through several generations or simply voids where there's no information, nothing bad ever happens.

I wonder how Ivan will react when he come back and sees this big long confusing debate where you can't really tell who's arguing and who's agreeing. And who is on who's side.

Lets look at this perspective, you can hire a fixer to go on runs with and have instant access to his own contacts. But you still may have to pay the fixers contacts for the stuff you need. Or you can just call him if you need anything.

If the PC is really a fixer then why is he out shadowrunning.
That is why a PC should not play a fixer. IT should be a goal. They are shadowrunning so they can get the contacts and the money they need to become a big time fixer.

They'd have to get through all the rules I'd throw at them first. And best of all, drop bears aren't SR4 canon (yet).

And that is where my helmet barbed with monowire comes in.

A note on "Connection" rating ... the book mentions that it's also a measure of how many services that the contact can do for you. A Bartender (Connection 1) might give you information, but that's it. A Bartender (Connection 2) will also let you use the back room when you need it. A Bartender (Connection 3) would have something else to offer ... maybe he secretly codes up software, having always wanted to be a programmer but instead dropped out of school when his dad left him teh family business. He might have a small catering/delivery service, and you can use him as a cover for missions. He might know people who are, you know, "Family" and can get you info that a normal bartender couldn't, and so on.

This is why the same contact is at different levels, by the by. A Fixer who gets you jobs but otherwise doesn't get involved is only a connection 1, despite knowing people. If she can also fence goods and get you gear, then she'd be a connection 3.

Mix it up a lil' bit and see what kinds of cool there is.

Yeah but again Wak, it all comes down to what your contact is defined as being able to do. No one is arguing that a level 1 contact can do anything and everything. Only very specific tasks.

That mechanic? Yeah he can fix stuff for you. or get you parts etc. But he's not going to do everything under the stun for you as much as he may wish to. Even if he's say.. your twin brother (loyalty 6). He wont get you those BTLs you want no matter what you say. He'll even give you crap for it. But he wont turn you into the cops either.

Also again if you look at the SR3 material that went more in depth into contacts it shows that they arnt really ment to be forever static. They can be if you want to keep it simple. But they can go up and down the ladder as well. Hell they can even wind up in jail or die.

Got a loyalty 1 conenction? Well maybe you can work him up. Do a few favours for him, dont call anything back on it. Let em know you'll go that extra mile for em. In return he might start doing the same thing. MIGHT. Could be that he's just a total ass but chances are you start doing enough stuff for em they'll turn around and some times do you a favour.

Other times... it works abit differently. I remember one PC fixer on SR: Seattle I knew once. Used to buy stuff throug him, including the odd rounds for the Barret. But thing was I didnt use it too much, I was shopping round for a fair bit of ammo for a while so I had a decent stock becuase it was so hard to find in the first place. So he figgures he was doing me a favour when he tracks down 50 rounds without even asking me first. Then tries to sell em to me at about 3x over what even SI inflates it to cause it cost him a whooper, took alot of time and he wanted to turn some proffit on it.

Then he gets pissed when I tell him I dont want the ammo. Afterall by that point I had some 200 rounds which is more than enough to hold me for a while. I didnt need another 50 at 3x SI cost when I'd through pacience and other contacts picked up some ammo here and there for much closer to book costs.

He even gave me crap about it later when we had this big run and I needed stuff 'right now'. About oh well I ain t acharity blah blah blah so you pay what i say it costs.

Course I just shot back I didnt give a damn since this time it was ME asking for the stuff in the first place. Besides it wasnt comming out of our pay for the run but the J's budget for the op that went beyond what our fee was. SO the fact that he charged me double on several items and made a killer proffit didnt bother us at all. We got what we needed and a few other things we wanted with plenty of the budget to spare.

To a degree I allways prefered that sort of thing about a MUSH. Since.. well half your contacts were ALIVE. Cause they were other people's PCs. The MUSH even had a decent black market going where folk would post on shadowland tring to offload old/excess stuff they didnt need. COuldnt dump it on your fixers? Try dumping it on some one on SL. Worked great.

Course you cant do that really with tabletop and NPCs. But the GM with abit of work can really make any NPC come to life. In the end it's not really worth sinking your heart and soul into an NPC unless teh PCs really get attached to it for some reason. But it does happen. I've seen alot of cases where some disposable NPC I whiped up suddenly just.. grabbed the attention of the PCs and you run with it.

And that sort of thing works for NPC contacts as well. If the PCs start hanging around with Billy bob the loyalty 2 contact, inviting em to join in on stuff etc he might very well start warming up to them. Even eventualy become 'best friends'. Equally they could slot him off and he drops down to loyalty 1, or flat out loyaly 0 (IE He's gonna screw you and soon)

I was talking about connection rating, tho, not loyalty.

Still, good post!

And that's what a Face with a business plan has to do!

Very nice post; if you are a Face and plan on retirement, treat EVERYONE as a future business opportunity. Be polite, professional and show that you want to help, eventually, even the people who want to kill you might decide you are worth more alive.

For instance; I liked Jodie Foster's Mrs. White in Inside Man. To me, that was a Face who had turned into a connection 6 fixer overtime...

I never actually played or had a player in my group with that inclination, though
But I did play a high Charisma elven hitman who eventually retired as "Mr. Johnson" -that's another thread in waiting!

Cheers,

Max

I just had started building the contact network for my Face/Decker/Fighter (built with the priority system and longer played). Not that I wanted to retire my char, but it's good to have goals (she started without deck, so that was the first goal, for example).

But then came SR4 along, and I didn't think the char would translate that well into SR4.

Lots of plothooks etc. And it will be satisfying for the player when he gets a more connected contact or higher loyalty rating. I'm all for this idea. Of course, the player should talk with the GM beforehand so that there are no bad surprises in game.

Well actually I'd say a mafia consiglieri's connection would be depend on the Mafia don he works for.
A mafia don need not be connection 6. If there area of control is just one city say Denver it only be connection rating 4. The mafia consiglieri would then be about 3. After all if he's that close to the Don he has some connections.

Kesslan: A normal NPC fixer should be Connection 3.

But a PC fixer need not be Connection 3, in fact, because he is a PC. He does not have a Connection rating.

I went through the SR4 BBB again briefly. I couldn't find a mention of a group as a contact that was present in the previous edition, namely Shadowland as a contact. That is the only canon group contact that I know of. Perhaps with the new edition, the group contact is no longer balanced as pointed out.

Ultimately really who and/or what is allowable as a contact is purely up to the GM.

I mean if you really wanted to you could say.. have Magera as a contact. Or in SR3 arguably even Dues. Afterall you could well wind uip working for him. Though he's definately the type that if your working for him even as a runner and prove to be 'reliable' you shall soon belong to the ranks of his brainwashed minions.

I remember that actually from one of the scenarios around Deus. You get offered these series of jobs and if by the end you do everything and do a good job.. guess what? SUPRISE! Your gased and turned into a member of the banded. End of the line for the runners as PCs if they dont some how manage to get away.

Overall I see nothing wrong with allows things like 'shadowland' and 'Mageland' etc to be contacts. Though there still some issues in a way. It really I suppose depends on how you handle it.

If it's along the lines of 'Group of friends' who are all 4/4 contacts but only cost you 8 BP? No.. sorry. If it's instead 'Group of Strangers who -might- help' 4/4 showing perhaps how likely you are to find some one who say.. knows info you want and is less likely to screw you that might be ok. Like say..

Shadowland: 4/3

Through shadowland you'd be able to likely find what you want. And -usually- you'll get some one who while they dont much care what happens to you, wont generally screw you over either. Though anyone you ultimately meet through there would start off as a loyalty 1 contact.

I think really thats one thign alot of GMs fail to do. Give players more contacts. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Even if most of those contacts are only loyalty 1 or 2. It's still helps. Afterall say a run comes up short on expertise the players can quickly scan the contact sheets and some one pipes up "Hey.. what about Ulander? He's a demo expert. Seemed ok. Maybe we should give em a ring?"

Sure the NPC might not care for a call out of the blue much but thats all stuff you can RP out and eventually the NPC can with some work turn into a much more useful contact using the same sort of social networking example I've given previously.

So I suppose along those lines I dont have a problem with a 'group' being a contact. So long as it's not abused in teh manner that you just buy one 6/6 'group' contact and suddenly anything and eveyrthing you need and everyone in that group is also rated 6/6 towards you.