Hi there,

I want my players to start making more use of virtual connections like ShadowSea or JackPoint, however as a virtual contact and not an individual, I am somewhat confused how to get the PCs to gain them as a contact.

They don't conform to the usual contact rules. They don't conform to the usual group contact rules either. Hell, they don't even conform to the variable group rules.

How do you handle virtual contacts for groups such as this and emphasize their value to the PCs?

- J.

hi hi

For starters, you could look at how current online forums (like this one) operate. Each one has sort of a personality all its own. There are good times and bad times, lively times and quiet times, flame wars and periods of harmony, much like an individual's moods.

Your contact rating could be considered your level of respect on the forum. Old hat posters with thousands of posts under their belt generally command a better response when they post then an arrogant noob who comes bursting in without at least getting a feel for the lay of the land.

In summation, you could treat the service itself as a sort of metaphysical individual.

I get that. But essentially we're talking about building a new set of contact rules for contacts such as these.

E.g. instead of Loyalty you may use 'Reputation'. Not sure what you'd use as the secondary attribute (Popularity? to indicate the size of the forum?).

- J.

hi hi

I misunderstood, my bad. The rules for virtual contacts in runners companion seemed alright to me.

If they're exclusive groups, perhaps several iterations of the networking rules are in order? Perhaps a test to gain membership? Arbitrary challenges to entry inflate the importance of membership and improve loyalty. (I.E. hazing rituals)

I realize that I'm entirely out of my element though, so I'll attempt to bow out gracefully if I can.

Don't forget, though, that the modern-day forum-analogy only goes so far, because unlike your standard web-community, Jackpoint, ShadowSea et all are supposed to be very private, tightly knit communities made up of hardened professional criminals not unlike yourself. As such, you don't just log on to one of these to find the latest hot-fix for your ailing operating-system or shoot the breeze about your favourite new AR-game, but to get real paydirt, the kind of information that somewhere, someone has probably already killed for. In fact, at least in the case of JP, unless you come by the invite of a bona-fide user, you won't log on at all; and would I think most of these communities work on a similar basis.
In that context, the standard "attributes" for contacts seem to work just fine to me.
Loyalty would reflect who brought you in, and how far people are willing to help you out based on that, while connection may reflect how far up the food-chain that invite carries you, what areas you are allowed to access, your posting privileges, that kind of thing.

I don't own the RC, though, so maybe I got your question totally a**-backwards...

I'll try this from another angle...

How have you guys handled virtual contacts?

- J.

Street cred/2 = reputation rating for us. Connection as normal.

Aren't there rules for this very thing in Runner's Companion?

Did you read my initial post in this thread?

I don't believe they are effective for these sorts of contacts.

- J.

You mentioned the group contact rules but only seem to mention virtual contacts in passing. I was talking about virtual contacts. What do you find unusable about them?

Man I wish I had the book handy -
Going from memory... the rules don't readily allow for Reputation, Connection isn't always applicable (do you apply the average? the highest?), Size is variable at best to unknown at worst. To compound it, it is often not in the GM's interest to disclose this information. Same applies for Connection. Do you want me to continue?

- J.

I believe your Loyalty rating reflects Reputation. I believe the straight-up rules abstract the usefulness of the virtual connection as a whole, although if you want your virtual contacts more unpredictable (and realistic, in my own opinion), go for the optional rule on the same page.

As far as size is concerned ... why would you need to know?

There is a sidebar rule for variable connection ratings to allow for the diversity of user on the network in question. I'm also a bit uncertain as to why a GM wouldn't want to tell the players the size of a virtual network they're making contact with. If the group is actually larger than it appears, there's probably a good reason for it, and those secret members shouldn't count towards the connection or loyalty rating of the contact.

I introduced virtual groups as contacts in my game before the rules were even in RC, simply because the mechanic of connection and loyalty seemed so easy to transfer. I simply came up with a name for the runner/criminal community at an appropriate connection (Jackpoint I considered a rating 5, given the number of big name members, and I worked down from there). Loyalty is just how well regarded by the community a given PC is. Rating 1 would be a n00b or a poster with a rep for trolling and flaming, rating 6 would be a mod or the sysop.

I had 2 players buy a loyalty 1 contact to a connection 3 community that I named n3xus (I'm running in Denver, and figured that the community was made up of some of the crash survivors of the original Dener Nexus). They can use this contact for miscellanous info about runs, to fill in gaps in their legwork, and to convert paydata into nuyen. The n3xus has provided my PCs with info about a J's rep, mob security and hierarchy, corp ties to one another among other things. I find it kinda handy to have a general contact that my players can use when they don't have a more appropriate real person. It can bite back though, and my players know this, since if they aren't careful about digging, rumours of their activities can leak out.

Gaining virtual contacts is the province of me the GM, but basically I have a few requirements; The PC must actively be seeking a group to join, they must have a decent rep with someone who might invite them to join, and they must provide some form of good faith contribution to the community, for example in the form of paydata, for which they would earn no nuyen.

That's how I run them anyway.

How you gain an online group as a contact is simple: Reputation and Shared Culture.

You need to gain acceptance and/or respect. That's Reputation. If they all hate you, then you ain't getting anything out of them. This takes time.

Equally, you need to learn how to phrase things appropriately. You need to learn their memes. That's a Shared Culture. This also takes time.



I also believe that there are more benefits to keeping the Contact rules the same for all Contacts than there are in making special snowflake rules for every kind of Contact (because we can make the argument for every kind of Contact, and then we've got the SR3 Rigger problem).

I posted sample stats for the groups in Runner's Companion and a brief explanation on how each was calculated elsewhere. (about halfway down).

Different thread (Unofficial RC errata):

I think you're missing the point of Data Havens. They aren't communities first, they should be treated as nodes primarily and communities as second. A Data Haven is a place where information that would normally be suppressed by corps and other clandestine groups can be shared and protected, so they should be subject to data search rules, rather than contact rules. The reason for gaining membership to a data haven is access to information that a standard matrix wide data search would not be able to find, such as information on Johnsons, corps, research, locations, etc. as they pertain to the target audience of the data haven, which is in most case shadowrunners.

The best part about data havens is that if you have access, you don't have to be a decker to engage in legwork. There are plenty of groups and individuals whom you can use your influence skill group on if you lack ability to data search. You can also use those skills to coerce data haven members to do your data searches for you, or even utilize the data haven's resident browse equipped agents to dig up the info you want.

If you really want the extra dice afforded to you by the loyalty rating of contacts, why not use your runners reputation score as bonus dice?

The reason why data havens don't seem to mesh with the contact rules is because you can't pigeonhole them into being as simple as contacts. You can't be friends with information.