Guys my player has been pestering me about his intricate plans to locate and obtain someone to get hold of semi-legal hardware stuff from.

Now, he might want to have one as a new contact, but I wondered aside from actually roleplaying the conversations how do you obtain contacts in SR after character creation? Are there any rules, or if not how should I go about it?


My player don't want to play the exchanges in detail, both to avoid boring the other players with hardware chats unrelated to the story we're playing, and to avoid risking his fake persona be exposed to the players.

So how do you guys do it? Do you just have the players use their starting contacts and then they get no more, or?







a second minor question: Are there chemical sniffers in SR able to detect explosives etc? Did we miss it in the equipment list?

Ok, last one: How about a biomonitor that works over range? Something small and discreet you could use to verify a kill etc...

Download the SR Missions. I think they have pretty good examples of how Contacts are handled in-game.

Personally I think I'd have him go through his Fixer to start with, and if things goes well (Including paying the Fixer a "finder's fee".) he gets a ( Loyality 1 ) Contact.

I think I would have him briefly play out the first interaction though, perhaps during downtime between gaming sessions if that sort of thing bores the rest of the team.

These much-needed mechanics are often ignored in the core rules of every edition, so you're either forced to cook up your own rules or try to throw a dart at a random sourcebook and hope it addresses it somewhere inside. As it stands right now, there's no way to even improve contacts you already have, let alone gain new ones except by having a GM just give you one with whatever stats they fancy.

In reality, runners should have tons of Loyalty 1 contacts based upon the description of what Loyalty 1 entails. From every Johnson they've done a run for, to every Stuffer Shack clerk you've bought a burrito from. They're all Loyalty 1; Just business, no preferential treatment. They're little more than someone who knows of you through previous dealings.

It's basically just a crap shoot without have any crap dice being throw. The GM has full control over contacts in core game, and you're either forced to wing it in all situations or cook up house rules on the fly to deal with it.

Note that I haven't seen the aforementioned SR: Missions document. It may well have some good house rules to use in a standard SR4 game. Should look into it sometime.

Well in theory a ( Loyalty 1 ) Contact is someone who doesn't hang up the phone when you call them, but yeah, a Runner should pickup scores of them over the course of their life.

Well yeah, it goes without saying that "...if they have no reason to hate or despise you" applies to the whole thing.

It's the main reason I'm considering a house rule to let characters begin play with (Charisma) Loyalty 1 contacts of their choosing for free with (Charisma x 3) Connection points to spread out amongst them, just to help round them out and make them a bit more believable.

Sounds like a good Ruling, personally I give 10 BP to be used to make at least 2-3 seperate Contacts in addition to usually giving a couple of campaign contacts as well.

But I guess what I was getting at is the idea that even if a Johnson has done biz with the Runners in the past and parted on fairly good terms I don't think it follows that said Johnson would count as a ( Loyality 1 ) Contact because he simply wouldn't be willing to take their calls unless they had something big to offer in the first few seconds.

A good campaign I ran in our GM gave us contact info every time we met someone new of importance. Fixers, Johnsons, etc. We even had a 'negative contacts' a list of people we pissed off with similar stats to contacts, only negative loyalty. Picking up a -6 loyalty/6 connection contact when you blow up some mega corp directors house is super bad not that that ever happened....

anyway, when we met a fixer we all got a printed blurb about him, usually starting at loyalty 1 and whatever his connection rating was then basic information about him. We would also often pick up each others contacts as loyalty 1 just by associating with them through each other. Someone would have a fence with a good loyalty. After a mission we go to them to handle the loot. We would all pick him up as loyalty 1. A mission or so later we are in need of a fence and no one happens to have one with a strong loyalty (the other player wasn't with us then) so we call up the same fence. Sure, he will do business with us, he did well with us before and trusts the player he is a good contact for, but since he doesn't really know us we don't get as good of a deal on things as we did before. However, we don't cheat him and he plays fair with us and after a few dealings the GM ups the loyalty rating.

The first couple ratings, I think, are pretty easy to get through. chances of attaining a new loyalty 6 contact is much harder.

Also, I'm of the opinion that it is much easier for loyalty to go DOWN than up. All it takes is one time to totally ruin a good connection

Meh, I guess I have a different take on the whole Johnson-Runner relationship then.

I think you're equating Johnsons to CEOs or something, and that might be where the view differs between us all.

In my view, most Johnsons -- especially ones hiring runners for corporate jobs -- are just another step up in the middle-man chain. Their bosses told them to get the job done, so they're out doing so. They're sort of "Shadowrunner PR Officers" if such a thing existed. So if a runner that they've done business with approaches them with a proposition they'd be interested in, why would they just hang up? No real loyalty exists between the two, and that's what Loyalty 1 represents; a pure business relationship.

No the difference is that I figure most Johnsons wish to remain as untracable as possible, if the Runners manage to contact him then even if they do have something worth his time it means that he has to set up another black commcode and figure out how they even got his current number in the first place as opposed to the one-time code he gave them.

I see Runners as being little fish in an ocean full of sharks, and it's in the interest of the Johnson not to muddy the waters, the more the Runners know about him then greater of a security risk they are, not only to him but also to his bosses, and it's his neck on the chopping block as well in that case.

Well, most Johnsons provide some kind of contact number or other means of getting in touch with them. If that contact information ends up being a short-term thing and the runner doesn't find out until he tries to get in touch (at which point the GM decided that he wasn't going to be a valid long-term contact for the runner to have), then he can all but wipe that contact off his list. Until then, though, he should be listed as one.

The main point remains, though: Loyalty 1 contacts should be a rather sizable list on a character's sheet. Not just with Johnsons, but pretty much anyone of value the runner has ever done business with. That cyberdoc your fixer hooked you up with? That simsense star you did bodyguard work for? etc.

Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with your basic point, I just have a slightly higher standard of who does and does not count as a Contact is all.

I've rarely had johnsons as contacts. You don't go to Johnsons. Johnsons go to fixers and fixers find shadowrunners and set up a meeting. Now, if the relationship progresses beyond the whole meet and greet then maybe it could progress to the point where mr. johnson is no longer mr. johnson, but an actual contact.

There is no magic fixer hat that makes Johnsons call you. If you did a good job before the Johnson might deal with you directly, this way he doesn't have to pay the fixer's fee and that's good for his bottom line.

Well I disagree, I think there is a "magic hat" that Fixers all wear (Or at least pretend to unless presented with enough cred.), and that is a level of neutrality and misdirection between both parties and the outside world.

If Ms Johnson goes to the Runners directly then in the very least she has to set up an additional level of misdirection and shell games, as well as paying to keep up-to-date intel on whatever the Runners have been doing since the last time they did biz.

*Edit*

Because it just won't do to find out at the meet that the team's nova-hot Decker has bought the farm and the Mage is suffering from brain-fry after slotting one to many BTLs.

just remember that with loyalty one contacts you get a +1 dice to social interactions. So, they are not just people you know, at least they have checked your background or something.

And I do give out contacts according to character-npc interaction. Loyalty is dynamic too. I guess getting (and losing) loyalty one contacts can be something that happens every couple of runs. Now, raising that loyalty requires a longer term relationship and some kind of investment from the character -even if it's just a phone call every once in a while-

"I don't know what's happening with my street samurai. He doesn't write to me, he doesn't call me anymore..."

Cheers,

Max

Sorry about a late reply, I just wanted to thank everyone contributing here.

What SR missions should I download? Could someone provide a link? Otherwise it seems as I must simply handle it myself, and try to base aquiring contacts through roleplaying.

Ah, it's tricky.

Links are tough right now with the Shadowrun website down, but they can usually be found here. Give it a day or two to get back online and you can access them.