Greets,

I was thinking about when I was statting up myself on contacts. I do not know about the rest of you, but I pretty much live by my friends. They are also contacts. They each have a very different skill set and location. I mean I know people who would be in demand in the world of Shadowrun, because of their expertise and skill sets.

However, they are not really Shadowrun level of human shops. I really need to have a world shattering reason to go and talk to my computer security expert about security same way with several other... characters if I wanted false-flag documents. They will not expend their trust unless it is in their or their organization's interest.

Then there are entire conflicts of interest as well, I would need to clearly have a reason a why to use them as assets.

-Chrysalis

Sounds like low loyalty, high connectivity contacts in game terms. People who know valuable information or can get their hands on it if they don't have it handy. And no hand outs.

I guess it comes to the loyalty of the contact then. A biz only contact has loyalty of 1-2, bit more friendly 3, 4 and up would mean different levels of friendship. I would not go talk with some critical stuff with a contact, but with a friend I would. Of course if you want to pay for whatever service the contact offers, the loyalty isn't quite that necessary. So for 5bp you can get "buddies" that are close to RL buddies

Some I would equally trust with my life and if they demanded the same kind of loyalty it would be given quickly. But their knowledge and information access is high, which means that it would not be and cannot be abused.

Reciprocity.

Loyalty should go both ways. I have a contact who would put his life on the line for me (and vice versa), and is connected enough (corporate VP) that he could seriously hurt his employer just by leaking some info.

However I wouldn't even consider asking him to betray his employer unless my life was in jeopardy and there was no other way. I also have no doubt that he would if there was no other option.

In the end, ask yourself if the favour you are asking for would hurt the contact. If yes, then you should not ask, unless you have no other option, and you would be hurt even more by not asking.


In SR terms, lets say I have pissed off a great dragon, and said dragon wants me tracked down and dealt with. I can see the writing on the wall, and would not go to my contact for help because the odds that even they could save me in such a situation are really really low, and even the attempt could destroy them. But if they found out on their own I was in such trouble I could not stop them from helping. If that is also not true the other way around, then I do not deserve (and should not have) the high loyalty in the first place.

Another example is the show Burn Notice, the main character had dozens of contacts (at least), before he was burned, and only the two loyalty 6 stuck with him, and that level of loyalty has gone both ways. In one episode in particular the ex-Seal had been kidnapped, knew it was essentially hopeless, and therefore tried to get himself killed early, so that Michael would not also be killed in a futile attempt to save him. Of course Michael, knowing his friend's life was on the line, came anyway (and being fiction, did pull of the rescue).

I personally like the high connection low loyalty money launderer. I mean, Michael and Fiona have to threaten him to help all the time (hence low loyalty) but there isn't anyone he doesn't know in a given situation. But I do think that your examples of a loyalty 6 contact are 100% correct here.

Do not people here have real friends that are not taken from the media? Are movies the only baseline for personal connections?

You've hit upon a really good point; just because their contacts doesn't mean that they'll help you out. A level 1 contact is someone you barely know, so why would they stick their neck out if the rewards aren't going to make it worth their while? Why would the security guard look the other way while you're snooping around the office late at night unless you can give him some level of guarantee that he's not going to get fired over it, or in the case he is he's going to be set up with enough money to last him to his next job pops up? That's why getting contacts during character generation is expensive, and maintaining contacts during play is even more expensive.

No, but a movie gives a common cause that everyone can easily visualize. If I were to tell you about my friend Kevin who is a martial artist and a car fanatic, but one that I could depend upon in most situations, that would not tell you much, other than... martial artist, mechanic, driver, high loyalty. But not a lot of specifics. A show that everyone (or close to... I don't have tv or internet at my house, but I still know the shows) has access to gives same info with specific examples that can easily be related to.

Most of my RL friends would only have a Connection of 0. The few that have more than that would be a 1, maybe a 2 at the most. The Loyalty would be high though. 4, 5 an 6.

Do I know people with more pull (Connection) than that? Sure. I work for a Fortune 500 company and have had conversations and the occasional lunch with people who have expense accounts larger than my household income. However, I can't exactly call up the CEO and cash in a marker, nor do I have a bowling night with one of the VPs. (Loyalty 0, maybe a 1)

So, that's how I see the world.

In SR, I let my players have as many friends as they want, provided that they don't derive more than minimal in-game benefit from said friends.

Well, one "Throw-away" Contact my group had turned into a major surprise bonus.

Turns out "Krunch" the Troll actually has a triple-doctorate and is an expert in Thaumaturgy (Doctorates from MIT&T and Oxford. His other Doctorate is in Parazoology, from MIT&T.). His buddy Klub... Is a janitor working at the same place, but he knew a fair amount about engeneering and system infrastructure due to his job, and also knows Spanish which helped out the group.

People are not stereotypes or even anti-stereotypes. They're people, with a full history behind them. They have hobbies and interests beyond what you'd think.

i would just like to note that a connection 1 contact "Knows very few people and has practically no social infl uence. Many are useful only fortheir Knowledge skills. Examples: squatter, manual laborer, academic graduate assistant."

so ummm... those of you who are saying your friends are connection 0? unless your friends are imaginary, i don't think they can possibly have connection 0.

and those of you who think loyalty 0 describes the people at your job or whatever? this is the description for loyalty 1: "Just Biz. Th e character and contact have a purely mercenary relationship. Interactions are based solely on economics. Th ey may not even like each other, and will not off er any sort of preferential treatment."

translation: the cashier at a grocery store is loyalty 1. the drug dealer that you have never even actually met is loyalty 1. the fact that your boss won't do anything special for you doesn't make them loyalty 0. it's just that you'd have to pay them an awful lot (ie full price, no discounts) for them to take any risks for you. if you want them to risk their job, you'd better be paying them more money than they can make at their job in the long run, or they'll have to be really desperate or shortsighted. now, on the other hand, if you were to ask them to be a reference on your resume and you'd pay them $100 bucks for it each time they get called, and they don't even really know your work habits at all, some of them would probably do it. that's a loyalty 1 contact right there. loyalty 0 is pretty much that they won't even do business with you at all, regardless of what money you offered.

so yeah, that's what the book has to say about connection 1 and loyalty 1. and it is also why i almost never have any connection 1 contacts. heck, if you paid for all the people you know who are actually connection 1, loyalty 1, you would never have BP left for anything else... i personally interpret those tables a little differently from how they're written.

specifically, loyalty and connection only have to be payed for if it's a shadow contact. ie, you can know an accountant who will file your income tax report for you and charges you for it, and that costs you no BP even though he is definitely connection 1+ (he has knowledge skills) and loyalty 1+ (he is willing to do business with you). why doesn't it cost BP? because he's not offering shadow services to you. now, if you want an accountant who'll provide shadow services (for example, sharing info about his client's finances, income tax fraud, etc) then you're gonna have to pay BP for that.

it's the only way it makes sense at all to me.

I find contacts to be a kind of shortcut in the Sixth World. You wanna know something about someone in the corporate world? Call a corp contact. Roll well enough, and you learn the info. Never mind that the chances of a high-level corp secretary contact actually knowing something about the issue in question is slim. I mean, it would be total coincidence for a mid-level manager at corp A, to have heard about some researcher at corp B, let alone any details about her, wouldn't it? But maybe they can ask around. Or can do some research that you don't have the corporate knowledge to initiate. So it could happen. Just roll the dice.

Loyalty 1 means: This is just business. I'm just like any other guy you can find on the street, except that I recognize you, and will take your call. You'd just better make it worth my time.

I interpret the contacts in SR the somewhat the same way. Yeah you can go down the street to the local Jackson-Hewitt and get your finances taken care of under you various false identities but when that craptacular SIN you bought from Skitz the chiphead hacker raises big red flags you'd better be ready to duck and run because the wage-slave working the cubical doesn't have anything to gain by not tripping the silent alarms. Just because someone has some knowledge and connections and you bump into them either at a job or just socially doesn't exactly make them a contact. IMO it's assumed that even a low level loyalty contact is actively looking for a way to cheat the system by providing people with access to information or benefits of his profession or knowledge both legally and illegally. I actually think a couple Loyalty 1 contacts with higher than average Connections is a good thing, they are relatively cheap at character creation and not that hard to make through decent role-playing and have the potential to provide the right information or goods without having to maintain a constant personal relationship. In the end you might get cheated a good 20 to 40 percent of what you'd pay a more chummly contact but the amount of information that could be leveraged out of that loyalty one contact about who he'd given up the goose to is dependent solely on how much you've provided. It's strictly biz' between the two of you and the less either of you know about each other the better. That contact isn't going to want to know you're vitals, and you can bet that whatever you give up freely will be sold to the highest bidder. It is a trade off but lower loyalty contacts take the strain off of your good friends who are better tapped only when it's absolutely crunch time or when what you need isn't going to get someone fired or killed. Your best bud might take a bullet for you but it's better if someone else can who doesn't really matter.