So, I was sitting thinkin about a new character the other night, and thought, what if i spent, say, oh, 100 character points on contacts? Heck, what if I spent 200?!

Imagine knowing top ranking officials in every aspect of society, plus a good solid chunk of people all over, and many of those being extremely loyal to you. It would be plain fun just cooking up the background story for such a character, but I'm wondering how it would play out. You'd effectively be a completely useless shadowrunner and would spend all your time calling in people to do things for you. But hey, a couple 6/6 deckers and all your decking needs are taken care of. A 6/6 fixer and you'll always get any equipment you need.

Anyway, anyone ever done this? How did it work out if you did? Was it a fun idea that got boring quickly or did it keep it's charm?

Anymore ideas for some of the contacts that would make this type of character really effective and still keep them fun to play?

I can't bring myself to do it in SR4, but in SR3 priority A for faces was always Resources with 250-500k of bought contacts. What you ended up with is a page and a half of contacts and the skills to work 'em. This all started when a buddy of mine played his face named Fletch, who did just this. He has since become a running gag with our group that every player picks Fletch as a contact (he's become a lawyer in last recollection) and the original player of FLetch has taken to making each of Fletch's contacts into his characters. Ahh...good times. If you can squeeze it out, the heavy contact characters acan be a blast to play

such a character is called a fixer.

I think that would be an awesome character, provided the GM capped appropriately (Limiting the number of loyalty 6 contacts, never letting you have a 6/6).

I'd get really weird contacts like an official at the Department of Transportation, a contact who works with city sanitation, a contact that refree's Urban Brawl games.

I'd also note that this sort of character would only be really fun with a GM who loves player driven content. Otherwise you're just a guy with a cellphone. If they like player driven games you could really exploit the fun with a fantastic hook heavy background. After all, all those 6/6 contacts expect you to do the same right?

I had a similar character in SR 3who was a face/mage.
In SR4 I had a character Cheri, who was a face/mage with a bunch of contacts, the "strangest" of which was a 4/5 business manager, Hal, who ran her strip club for her (bought as a shop.) The club wasn't really used for anything in game terms, didn't provide more contacts, income, and I obviously wasn't stupid enough to meet any of my johnsons there or anything, but it was a fun thing to have. All of her other contacts were 1/2 or 2/2 people who used to be dancers at the strip club and made it into real world jobs. I spent about 20- 30 bp's on contacts with her, but that includes the char x 2 in free contact BP's. If you're going to do something like this I highly recommend making them a mage so that they have a better chance of kicking ass out of the gate, and easier advancement in terms of beingable to bulk up more quickly.

Only issue is that contact upkeep is a bitch!

I also have to agree with Jaid that this character is more a fixer than a runner. I usually spend about 40BP on contacts, and that is with 14BP free (Cha * 2). Contacts are not cheap. I'm totally for Frank's system of 1BP for 3 Contact points, and contacts must be paid for Loyalty * Connection, so a 6/6 still cost 12, but a 3/3 only costs 3. A much better way for faces to have the contacts they need.

when i don't know what to do with the rest of the money(so i'm a sucker for 1 Million Nuyen Samurai), i just spend the remaining money on 10 level 1 and 10 level 2 Connections or something like that *g*
granted, i don't even know enough names for that many connections, but i just write in what they are supposed to be <.< . .
one decker, one rigger, one doc, one shaman, one hermetic, one adept, and so on and so on *g*

Want to have the CEO of a megacorp and his head of security as contacts? Play First Run, an SR3 module.

then there's the one where you get hestaby as a contact or something like that . . the official stuff is waayy overpowered in more than one regard . .

Nah, Richard Villers ((I think)) Head of novatech if I remember rightly. Save his darn life don't you know.

edit: Yeah I misread stahlseele response. Should read fully before I post.

Nathanross: Free contacts? Did I miss something?

The contact rules as written, I know I've said this before, are off the chain. Who wouldn't immediately take a 6/6 contact? For the price of a level 3 skill, you can have a high ranking executive, syndicate man, or military officer who would do anything for you. It's the best deal in character creation. Can I borrow that armed and armored Nightsky? I've got a date. Thanks.

I house rule it so that PCs can spend a maximum of 8 points on any one contact.

This came up in our group once. They said this would be the SR4 equivelent of "The Dude" from the Big Liboski. Lets face it it might be a blast to be the guy that everyone knows. Make him a face/shaman and give him 30 1/1 and 1/2 contacts and it might be something that will really be intresting.

Shrug. I have never taken a 6/6 Contact in SR4, and have never had any restrictions preventing me from doing so.

Personal taste - I've never opted to...um...fully explore all the possibilities by contacts. I had to be able to reasonably justify the contact and the level of familiarity - yeah, it's possible that I went to college with the head of Ares for a summer and I managed to save him from drowning just before his security guards dove in...all 2,000 in plainclothes...but c'mon now...

-Siege

I've been reading about classic cons and scams, and one thing that struck me was how certain people were able to pretend they were influential, wealthy nobles and the like -- even to the point of conning bank owners, media people and politicians in their false identities. It might be interesting to have contacts who only know you as one of your fake SINs, with the possibility always there that they could find out that it's a fake.

I like this muchly for certain contacts in certain situations.
Other contacts know the player by deed and don't care about SIN, name or anything else.
Actually, only 2 of my players have any contacts who would even care about SINs (Boxing promoter, Music promoter)

Also, maybe another name is needed. Something that calls them a dupe but politely.

i just found one of my characters, where i went too far for my GM's taste . . i basically took the 1 Million Nuyen Starting option as a human and put 900k into contacts . . level 1 and level 2 at 5k and 10k the contact . . that's one frigging huge pile of contacts . . basically, i started out knowing half the barrens, because of course those connections had their very own connections and could get ME more connections by introducing ME to other people AGAIN ^^

I figure if you interact with them like Contacts, they're Contacts. It's just that they're more likely to "turn" if your fake ID gets made (and with max rating of 4 for starting characters, it probably will soon enough).

The separation is desired for mechanical reasons. Anyone whose relation to you is based on something fickle, a fake SIN, should come at a discount. Using different namespace is easier on me.

Sorry, this is a houserule in our group (should have said so).


I also have yet to take a 6/6 Contact purely due to the fact that it doesn't feel right, and I have yet to come up with a good enough background reason. I do have contacts with Loyalty 6 though, and others with Connection 6, just never on the same character.

I do kind of miss the old days of Level 1, 2, and 3, contacts purchased with . I have thought of ways to bring this back, but have not come up with a houserule that satisfied me yet. The other issue is how you use Contacts in your games. Gear? Safehouses? Information? Just someone to watch your back? They can be as simple or complex as you want them to be, and when you have 50 of them, it really comes down on the GM to make your BP count, something he may not want to do.

I don't know about 100 or 200 bp but I spent 33 points on contacts for my face >.>

Every point I spent on contacts fleshed my character out more then any points I spent elsewhere on my sheet except maybe the three points I dumped into a bartender contact. His arms dealer and smuggler contact are childhood friends, his vory soldier is his ex-cell mate, his vory data broker he met through his old cell mate and serves as my character's nsa fuck buddy, his fixer has vory ties and again was introduced to my character through his cell mate. Everyone of these contacts, save the bartender (who just works at my characters favorite pub), has a history with my character or plays an important role in my characters life outside of 'hey, got any blah?'

I can't really see spending more then fifty points on contacts because of this. Sure the idea sounds good in theory but who are these people outside of being your contacts and just as importantly how are they connected to your character?

I've stated that I have restriction but I don't think anyone has asked for a 6/6 contact and I don't think I'd really want one unless they were the focus of the campaign, like a fixer or black ops team leader or a sibling or parent. I just couldn't imagine playing in a game where I could get on my commlink and call down orbital strikes or a yak helo to come pick me up.

but heck, that would be one hell of coolness right there,to just call down an orbital strike O.o

So...Anyone up for a game of 'Corporate Black Ops?' I mean, how sweet would it be to run a game thats actually all company with the ability to call down an orbital strike?

I've run the black ops campaign. When I did it, the PCs were operatives for Special Profitability Inquiries at Ares. Any problem Ares had, they solved it. A hacker in the ruins of Tripoli tries to get Ares to mail him a nuclear weapon, the PCs go to Tripoli and resolve the issue. A mysterious illness is making a simsense star unable to perform in South Carolina, the PCs go investigate.

It's fun, because the global reach of a megacorporation gives you reasons to send the PCs anywhere in the Sixth World. Also, gear availability becomes not a matter of saving nuyen and hunting around, but a matter of what your superiors supply you with for the assignment. So, yes, on one job the PCs were in California during the Imperial Japanese pullout, and their assignment was to target designate the headquarters of a pro-Japanese militia for the cruise missiles. The trick was holding the lock while they were under attack by those flying venomous manta rays from YotC.

Character restrictions I imposed were that all the PCs were 100% loyal Ares men and had limited negative qualities, because in order to be in their job they would have been scanned, psychoanalyzed, assensed and polygraphed very thoroughly.

To keep things more balance (and because our group loves to make characters) our GM has a house rule that gets around some of these issues. Every contact starts with 100BP and we can add another 50BP for every level of the contact. That means if you want to have a lvl 1 contact you have can build a NPC with 150BP or a lvl 6 with 450BP (slightly better than a starting character in our games). It tends to make everyone happy as no contact is overwhelming and we get exactly what we want (stats and skill wise) for a contact. It also helps to make them more real and functional as they are completely stated out and the GM even knows what equipment they have available.

No orbital strikes or helos picking me up last night but we were running about half our group short (the hacker, street sam, and mage all couldn't make it). I asked my data broker contact if she wanted to earn a couple thousand to help us out from VR. The run set up didn't require a lot of hacking, our objective was to recover a server that had managed to survive the crash.

Being curious what was on the server I'd made arrangements to have Alex (my Vory Soldier contact) meet us up at my place with a storage device that we could offload the info on the server to (I know storage memory is a thing of the past but these where data servers, figure a commlink does have some sort of limit, even if for most game play purposes it doesn't need one, this seemed like an exception). We actually found two working servers, one seemed to be locked up and we decided not to mess with it, just haul it out. The other we were in the process of transferring to my apartment when we ran out of play time.

Note that Alex is a loyalty four contact and Anna (the data broker) is loyalty three. Assuming the information on the second server is worth anything both these contacts will get a slice of the pie for their help. If not, Anna already got paid for her time and I'd probably buy Alex a beer.

Just an example of what can be pulled off with connection rating two and three contacts, hell Alex could have been a connection rating zero schmuck and things still would have rolled the same way.

...yeah, had an interesting RL situation at my college (Evergreen State) about 20 years ago. After our former president Dan Evens was elected to the Senate he was replaced with a fellow named Joe Ollander. Now Dan was cool If he didn't have an appointment or wasn't busy, you could walk into his office & sit down & talk with him. Dan was also a former Washington State Governor. (hence we affectionately referred to him as "Governor Dan". Joe on the other hand was rarely around (usually off in Europe, Japan, or some other far flung place. When he was "home" cooling off his passport it was like you needed to arrange a royal audience to see him. Well here is where it gets interesting. Now Joe had been the president for something like 3 years when it was discovered that he fabricated credentials to get the job. Needless to say the State of Washington didn't take too kindly to being flim flammed and he got the royal boot. Yet it took three years for someone to figure this out as he put on such a good act.

This isn't like some guy getting a uniform and checking out a city bus or postal truck & driving a route like you occasionally hear about in the news. Joe O was the head administrator at a college that at the time had a fairly high public profile due to it's non traditional approach to curriculum and student evaluation.

Now back on topic....

The one character I had with outrageous contacts was my ex Seraphim agent Night Angel. All were level 2 and one was level 3. Her list included a CIA operative, an MI-6 opertive, A UGB operative, a UCASAF General, A milspec "Procurement Officer", an International Arms dealer, a Senator, and a high ranking Ares executive.

I think some people have a skewed idea of what Contacts will do. I know that a 6/6 guy will reasonably have access to a secure site and will be willing to share that access with you, but there's got to be some trust and reciprocity.

Our mage has GWs voice as a contact. The loyalty level is pretty low but the contact himself is connection rating 5 or 6. Now when our mage gets a hold of him he better damn well not ask for foci, illegal spell formula, or anything along those lines. Even if the loyalty rating was six he shouldn't be asking for such things.

People with high connection ratings tend to be someone with a non-criminal lifestyle. Not all of them are but the majority are. Asking the head of R & D at Ares who you've known since you were five if you can borrow the new high tech gadget he's working on is abusive... and I don't mean abusive to the system, I'm talking abusive to the contact. Getting a high loyalty contact to put his ass in a sling for you is possible with in the rules but it's really not something you should do, unless of course you want said contact to lose his connection rating or possibly even his life.

As far as the reciprocity, I agree with that as well. If Mr. R & D bends over backwards for you you better do the same for him, if not then you can probably expect loyalty to degrade.

Two words for you maties... Pirate Captain.

Pirate Captains need a good number of contacts in order to succeed in life. They ain't got no fixers to run around finding the Johnson's for you. All we've got to live by is our skills and our friends to tell us when an Ares shipment is leaving and how much security it has.

...agreed, you still have to maintain your contacts, even if it is something as simple as taking them out for dinner & drinks, or getting them something they really like. The main point is stay in touch with them with them between missions. Just don't call them only when you need something or forget they exist until the next job comes along. The higher the loyalty, the more important this is.

Yeah, I did have to impress on a player once that the rating 6 "Friend for life" loyalty level meant that they're the loyalest of friends, not codependent pushovers. A Loyalty 6 contact can be counted on to watch your back and to front you whatever money and gear he can offer when things get down to the wire. If the Mafia wants to break your legs and you need someone to arrange for you to get out of town while you lay low, the Loyalty 6 contact is the guy to go to. If you and your Loyalty 6 contact are in the Yakuza together, he'd be the guy willing to chop off a finger and assume responsibility for your failures until you can get a chance to redeem yourself rather than remain silent. However, neither of these contacts are going to risk their asses over silly, stupid shit. They're willing to risk their lives for you when you are in seriously deep drek, not when you're mildly inconvenienced.

A great example of this would be Sir Francis Drake, particularly with his most excellent contact Queen Elizabeth. Actually I guess he was a privateer, but the difference between a privateer and a pirate is that one has well-placed friends.

Also he was a douchebag, but hey.

Yeah, my understanding is that a loyalty 6 contact is someone who would be willing (probably because he expects you to do the same) to die or be serious harmed to protect you. This is the guy you fought Imperial Japanese soldiers with when you ran with the Huk, you're loving wife of 20 years whom you saved from a life as a puppet at a Bunraku parlor, etc. Literally people who owe you their lives. A level 6 connections means that the person has access to things they worked their whole lives to attain. I think the book example is a Mafia consilerge who has the ear of the Don him/herself. A 6/6 Mafia contact would be able and willing to personally argue the case for your life before the Don.

But I also agree with the idea of reciprocity. Your 6/6 contacts will certainly expect you to show them that same sort of respect and selflessness you expect from them. Burning a 6/6 contact is the sort of epic cock up that Hong Kong revenge action flicks are made of. Burning or being burned by a loyalty 1 contact is... well business as usual really. That's why I mentioned that I wouldn't take a 6/6 contact unless they were central in some way to the campaign, the sort of favors that a 6/6 contact would ask of you aren't going to be simple things like "Loan me 20k" they're going to be things like "I... I just ran over someone on the street... I need you to get rid of the body and get me the hell out of the city in the next 12 hours."

At least that's my take on the matter.

My face's contacts include one loyalty six and a couple loyalty fours, none of the three have exceptional connection ratings but there is a character reason for such high loyalty. He grew up with two of them and the other one was his cell mate for a number of years.

Really any loyalty level over 2 is probably someone you've known for awhile or have some sort of out of the ordinary relationship with. People need a reason to bond, time will do that along with a number of other things.

I like FrankTrollman's house rule for Contacts. Among other changes, he also allows level '0' in either loyalty or connections, to reflect either friends and family who are pretty much useless for most shadowrunner needs (0 connections), or business associates that don't really give a shit about you (0 loyalty).

One of my players made an undefined fixer with a 6/5, but it worked out since I basically said "Yeah your mom is calling with a job for you, and talk to your brother sometimes."

I always thought that an experienced merc might have a lot of low loyalty contacts, but scatter them all over the world. Good way to represent all the random people you might in that life, and useful to a runner who does a lot of traveling. You might not know a fixer in every town, but you know someone who could point you in the right direction and maybe make an introduction. Even for a non-face character, that would be a big contribution to a team.

That is great. Shadowrunning is the family business! I must say I do somewhat miss the costs of SR3.

Level 1 = 5,000
Level 2 = 10,000
Friend for Life = 200,000

Quite a step up if you ask me.

That said, kind of off topic, but does anyone else have a problem with the linear cost progression in SR4? Why on earth would I buy something rating 1 for 1,000 when I can get something six times better for the same price/die. It is just stupid. There is absolutely no incentive to buy something lower than rating 6. Contacts are the same. There is only a 10BP difference between Damien Knight as your father and some janitor who only wants your money. I mean common!


Yeah, I had an ex Vory face with contacts all over the Baltic. Man he was one connected cat. Too bad the campaign took him somewhere where he had absolutely no contacts (aka, into the Balkans with nationwide jamming, T.T). Still, I loved the Friends Abroad edge.

Been there, and that's exactly how I handled it. It was the shiznit. Look for the "Bird of Prey" description in one of the rigger threads. I really miss that game

I once made a character with over a hundred contacts - he was my take on the Wolf from Pulp Fiction - a guy who could get things done, and wanted to try and take a shot at becoming a big fish. Never got to play him though

The only loyalty 6 contact I've ever had is for my throw adapt. His twin brother (who is an ork, he is a human so most people knew they were brothers but not twins. Actually the adapt was the only person in his whole family not to gobinize 5 brothers/4 sisters) was a lieutenant in the SoS.
Once when I got pinned down and hurt I called and he and 8 SoS showed up in Glow City to get me and my team out of there. He caught a lot of flack for having a "breeder" for a brother, but he came anyway.

Later on when he got busted by Lone Star me and my team had to go and break him and a few of his gangers out of a transport. The others were telling me that they wanted to get paid for it, but I told them that 1) He was my brother and 2) That he and his Friends saved our bacon in Glow City and it was time to return the favor.

We all got a decent amount of karma for that run and the other ork on my team get honorary SoS colors. Still it ended up costing us close to 5K to get the information and ammo and repairs. 3 of us got shot while doing it.

My character Claymore, from The Ancients game in the Welcome to the Shadows forum, paid for 38 BP worth of contacts under Frank's system (with only one with connections 6 and none at loyalty 6), which in his case translates to 99 BP under the canon rules. He also has a fair number of freebie contacts on top of that.

Really? Shit. I don't have diddly or squat worth of 'em, compared to that -- but mostly because Tain's are back home in the Tir, so I purposefully didn't stat 'em up (and then, of course, Fisty talks about us going back south) since he'd been politely asked to leave.

I should be a Contacts guy. I really should. The way I play most of my characters, they're very social. I should have a bunch. A bunch. But it's never really occurred to me to go out of my way to take very many of them, and I think it's just because -- it being a role playing game, and all -- I'd rather my character do stuff themselves. I'd rather sink the points into what I can do, not just increase my ability to ask other people for favors. In real life, I've got to deal with people all day long and ask them to do things for me. In a game, I tend to like characters who can stand on their own two feet. What contacts I take might as well be dependents, for the most part. I always toss on one or two dealers (for foci/fetishes, weapons, whatever), but it's certainly never occurred to me to want to take a bunch of muscle for contacts, or anything.

Each character is different. With Claymore, I figured he's a long-serving member of the Ancients, with a touch of an independent streak. Having survived for so long in the one location among the denizens of the street, he really should know all kinds of people from all kinds of walks of life, from lawyers and doctors and cops to members of other gangs, those both friendly and not-so-much (but no Spikes!), and everything in between. On top of the blanket 2/2 to other gang members, I even paid for a higher-level contact within the Ancients themselves (Flick, a sub-lieutenant ).

Incidentally, every single contact that Claymore knows (there are 19, not counting freebies) is an elf!

I don't normally take the 'muscle' or 'backup' type contacts though, like knowing and having a couple of razorboys on tap (and didn't this time either ... but then who needs to with a gang at your back? ).

All of Tain's are mentioned by name (or, in fact, introduced) in his little intro fiction piece I did, except the smuggler that got him out of the Tir and into Seattle in the first place.

It would be a fucking nightmare and a half to write a single short story that contained even a reference to every one of Claymore's contacts!

Bah, that's easy. Just make it a surprise birthday party.

Oh Godz! It'd be a bloodbath!