Bishop/Aaron,
At one time I remember there being a ruling that a GM could add a point of loyalty or grant a new contact (outside of the written mission objects) if such action was warranted by role-playing. I remember this being noted as limited to one contact or one loyalty per mission (to a max of 4).

Does this ruling still exist in New York Missions?

Also, this begs the question how does one increase the loyalty or gain new contacts in New York if it does not?

Thanks!
-RJ

Sorry, I should have mentioned earlier. We'll be taking this up in our next Missions meeting, which are usually on Sundays. We didn't have one last Sunday (natch).

I don't see how it wouldn't. The group I'm in are toiling through the NY missions and have gained loyalty through rp'ing. If it's not for whatever reason, houserule it in.

It is currently against the rules in NY Missions. You can't change the rules on whim (ergo: You cannot use house rules in Missions games), you must use the sanctioned rules.... Hence, I am asking the coordinators for a sanctioned decision.

We had our coordinators' meeting, did some research into the question, and came up with a rather surprising result. There are no rules for increasing the Loyalty rating of contacts.

Yeah, we were kinda surprised, too.

Given the campaign's meta-rule about not making up rules for Shadowrun, the ruling is that Loyalty ratings for contacts cannot be raised except as rewards listed in the Picking Up the Pieces section of each adventure.

On a related note, we've also been asked about picking up an animal trainer contact in mid-campaign. I'm not going to give any details (I'd hate to offer spoilers), but I would point out that the Shadowun Missions campaign does like to include new material in its adventures, and Running Wild just came out ...

If you will indulge me a counter-point:





While I would agree with you that rules lack any framework for upgrading a contact, they seem to draw a clear line in gaining a contact. Given the above rule and definition, is it safe to say that it is actually fairly easy to acquire loyalty 1 contacts through the course of play from NPC's the PCs have financial interactions with?

Hm. Fair point. I'll add it to the agenda for next week.

In the meantime, do you see a nearly unending plethora of contacts that everyone has by the end of a convention because they've been introduced to everybody else's contacts? Is the nigh-inevitable five-page list of Loyalty 1 contacts a Good Thing for Shadowrun Missions?

If i might weigh in here. I personally don't see it as a bad thing, after all contacts are a big part of life in the shadows, they enable PC's to do things get information and gear but they don't just give it away. In fact I think as long as the GM is remembering to enforce the business part of the relationship I don't see a problem with PC's having tons of contacts and chance aquantances at level 1, and within reason (max +1 per session) allowing the PC's to improve their loyalty rating with contacts they cultivate is a Good Thing ™ as it also means they form attachments to those cotnacts if the mission writers want to put them in harms way.

Spoilers for Jacknifed below

I can see where you're coming from, LurkerOutThere, and I agree with you to an extent. The problem is that we can't really limit contact growth to "within reason" without either adding to the Shadowrun rules (which we're not allowed to do) or making a campaign-wide adjudication (something we are loathe to do).

I agree w/ LurkerOutThere, and as is, increasing Loyalty seems to happen too easy and too forumulated by the in scenerio rewards. I have no social skills, a Charisma of 2, and if my team does "X" for a contact I've had, his loyalty seems to go up one point regardless. One to two may make since, but three to four... well it nicely circumvents my weaknesses, so maybe I shouldn't complain

As I mull that thought over, several things come to mind.

- The rule states role-playing is required. That negates the copy my contact list problem (unlike the here's a copy of all my cracked software.)
- With Missions not making up rules for Shadowrun, we are stuck with bad rules, like possession mages and no way in the rules to improve contacts.
- In real life I (literally) know over a hundred of people where the loyalty rating would be 1. These contacts are via work, my involvement in the community & my hobbies. I could call them, they would recognize me either in face, name or via our shared point of connection. I would not expect them to, in any way go out of their way to assist me and if I strained that loyalty of 1 by inferring criminal activity I expect that loyalty to be exceeded.

The net result, to me, is that loyalty 1 is played as a loyalty 1. This then exposes to a greater degree the issue with the lack of rules regarding improvement of contacts, but that is a conversation for the line developer it appears.

Aaron it sounds like we're looking for a campaign framework for something the rules suggest is possible but don't actually codify. In my mind it's not that different from what we've got set up for factions or having something inserted into picking up the pieces "The GM may at their discretion grant a new contact at loyalty 1 or upgrade a contacts loyalty by 1 over the course of the mission." It can even be capped to a maximum loyalty of 3. It would eiminate silliness like me a person having peace man, for example fairly loyal to them but have no way whatsoever to raise the loyalty of a contact they actually want to cultivate.

I'm not sure it does, entirely. It would be relatively trivial for one PC to bring another into an AR conference call with a contact and have a quick chat: role-playing accomplished.


That's above my pay grade, I'm afraid.


Wouldn't a collection of people known through work, community, and other organizations be more of a group contact than a bunch of individual contacts?


'Fraid so.


Again, this seems to be adding rules to Shadowrun, and we don't do that.

There are rules for improving contacts: GM improves them due to story and roleplaying. Doesn't anyone remember the days were the rules were a rough guidelines, and erratas weren't needed (and exploited) each month-- the GM had the power. The problem I see w/ SRM primarly is crack headed GM's (few of them) and the fear of crack headed GM's.



Yeah-- there's no way a GM could say that's totally unrealistic. I mean, everytime I work w/ someone once, I ask them what they need and then set up a meet w/ my contacts to introduce them. Rules won't protect the comunity from cracky GM's, bad role players, and cheaters.

Seriously, as someone whose brushed w/ hacking (including being caught), Unix security, and a programmer-- I don't "give" my code to anyone I meet. However, your players are doing this. It's unrealistic. No hacker would; by nature "we" are rather competitive. Script Kiddies do, b/c they need someone to give them code b/c they can't write their own. If it's L337, you charge strangers and only give to your chummers. (I currently have a sweet `ls' trojan horse collecting backdoor access to accounts-- about a dozen so far) (as a security check, fyi).

No GM worth his salt is allowing a contact to be pimped out.




Except for Factions and Affiliations. Oh, and forced 4:1 Extended tests. And certain Qualities/Flaws are banned. Oh, and Contacts can't be given out unless written in the mod. And Fencing loot doesn't require a conact, and is 10% value instead of book written 30% (no negotiation test used either, in lieu of what the book says). But other than those things: SRM does not introduce rules.

Actually, we looked for anywhere in the rules that talks about increasing the Loyalty rating of a contact, and couldn't find it. If you can, please let us know; I'd like to be able to work that into the ruling.

As to the crack-headed GMs, one of the other things we're trying to eliminate (and stop me if I've mentioned this before) is requiring GMs to make campaign-level judgment calls. It's not so much out of fear of crack-headed GMs (although the policy does go a long way toward mitigating that problem) as it is from a desire to give all players a fair shot at an equitable Missions experience, plus it's kinda unfair to ask GMs run the whole campaign for us.


Like I said, we're trying to avoid asking GMs to make campaign-level rulings.


I'm sure your experience is different from mine, but when I was cracking programs, I'd distribute them for free to my friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers. BBS's like the Midwest Pirate's Guild and the Ivory Tower were places where people would do precisely that, not to mention our own time's Pirate Bay. I could go on, but if you want to discuss hacker culture, you've got my Skype username; I'd love to chat.


Your sarcasm is noted, but all of these things have been discussed before. I'd be happy to discuss them with you in even more detail, but the short responses are as follows. Factions and affiliations are campaign rules, not Shadowrun rules. The 4:1 tests are from the main rules. Banning qualities isn't introducing rules. Adding contacts has already been discussed. Fencing loot doesn't require a contact in Shadowrun, the standard modifiers to fenced price have already been discussed, and the Negotiation Test is used to find a buyer, not change the sale price, so if you like we could go with the Negotiation Test but it would mean that some characters would have a hard time fencing anything.

On that last bit however it would mean that character who have put points into their socials might reap some monetary benefits out of them beyond the initial negotiation test. Give a little more utility to the faces and pornomancers.

Sorry I was snippy above. Just frustrated by the very black and white, as written, trend in RPG's.


I see nothing written, which as a standard rule of RPG's means the GM must increase this to be "Realistic" (as the section is named in SR4A) and to push the story.



You are right, we shouldn't get side tracked here: but cracking Doom II and writing a hacking program are two very different things. Generally Hackers release code after it just passes SOTA. As a self promotion thing. So that Rating 6 would be rating 5 once they started sharing.

As for the last part: those are all rules being added. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't-- though in this case I disagree w/ most of them, but in theory I'm not saying you shouldn't. However, if you are going to eliminate the need for a Fence, for whatever reason (e.g.), you are introducing rules. So it seems to be a weak excuse to not introduce another. Personally... personally... I think most of these should be "guide lines" for GM's (CC rules an obvious exception).