The idea just occured to me that the number of free contacts at character creation should be based on charisma. The more charisma you have, the more people like you, and the more people you should know. It seems a little ridiculous that a character has only two contacts at the begining of the game, being full grown adults(except otaku) and everything, and think that it should be reflective of your charisma. Maybe 1.5 contacts for every point, rounded down. I'm open to suggestion.

Well, it's only the fact that those two are free contracts. You can buy as many contacts as you can afford. Even the most charismatic guy can neglect his social life (i.e. not pay for contacts) and wind up with very few friends/contacts.
In my regard the rule makes sense. I could even go so far to say there are NO free contracts at character creation.
Just my opinion.

But, I'm onlt 24, and I have literally about one hundred people I would consider lvl1 contacts, about 30 lvl2 contacts, and 7 lvl 3 contacts. I haven't made enough money in my lifetime to pay for this. It just doesn't compute to money. Attitude means so moch more. And I think part of being a highly charismatic person involves taking the time to maintian relationships. At least all the charismatic people I know do.

well, you're looking at resources wrong. the million nuyen you get for 30pts/A-level resources doesn't mean you've earned a million nuyen in the course of your life--it just means you've got a million nuyen worth of stuff. it says nothing about how you acquired that stuff, be it contacts, cars, tools, whatever.

I just did the math, and I would have had to pay 2200000 to get my friends. Not only that, but every year, I'd have to pay 189000, just to keep my friends. I sure hope the exchange rate between and $ is good.

What I'm trying to say is: The most charismatic person won't have a single friend or contact when they sit in their alone all day and never see a living person.

BTW: you having hundreds of level one contacts is highly unusual. Most of the people I know don't have more than 20.

And again, you're looking at ressources the wrong way. It's not like you're walking up to them saying "here's some money so we stay friends". The upkeep and initial cost also (and even mainly) includes taking the time to give someone a call or go out enjoy the nightlife or something. Leave friends alone long enough and they aren't much longer interested in being your friends. It's not about the money. It's about ressources. Time and Care are major ressources. And so are favors.

Granted, my contacts can't get me a grenade launcher. So maybe they only are refering to useful contacts (not that I don't love my friends, just that they can't get me assut cannons.) But I still think everyone has at least one really close friand, or at least a sibling that would recieve the lvl3 contact) Maybe something more like the rules for friend of a friend. Start the game with 1 contact at each lvl.

I guess it depends on how you view charisma. I mean, having high charisma to me means that your character is very likeable. If that is the case, the character sould pick up friends despite him/herself. A low charisma character would be ugly or shy or just mean, and people wouldn't want to hang around him/her (or, in the case of uglyness, poeple simply wouldn't intitiate conversation with the character, thus never having the chance to be their friend). So, in this view, it would make sense to give more charismatic people more contacts.

Maybe this question should be a seperate post, but what do you all think charisma is?

Trust me, there are many many people out there without a friend good enough and close enough to be considered a Level 3 contact. Especially when you look at the people in the levels of society that 'compare' to shadowrunners - criminals, gang members, homeless people, and others down on their luck.

Personally, at 28 years of age, I doubt I can aspire to more than one level 3 contact (and that is my girlfriend of 4 years). A bunch of level twos, but in SR terms most of those would be considered my teammates, and so not be actual contact - all in all I would estimate I have one level 3 contact, a 'running team' of 5 people(can be considered level 2 contacts), 4 or 5 other level 2 contacts, and maybe around 15 people I'd call level 1 contacts. Possibly slightly more. Mind you, these are people that the relationship is two-way with. If you add people I know I could 'use' if needed, but wouldn't help in return, then you can add two or three level 2's and maybe 5 level 1's. But I wouldn't call them contacts per se.

I do agree with your idea for charisma determining starting contacts, but I'd lower the amount to Charisma x 1, or even Charisma -1. My reasoning? 1) To make a starting high charisma more attractive. I realize this penalizes the races with lower charisma (orks and espcially trolls) but considering their unfortunate place in society, they would be worse off in those areas. 2) To reflect what you are saying about nicer people having more people who want to be around them, but I keep the numbers lower to reflect that it takes more than personality and good looks to make contacts - there needs to be a possibility for mutual benefits as well, beside just knowing each other. Optionally, you can give a character 'contact points' equal to charisma, where a level 1 contact costs 1 point, a level 2 contact costs 3 points, and a level 3 character costs 5 points.

I also don't think that everyone the character knows would classify as contacts - family and acquaintances that have little or nothing to do with the character's professional life would be 'extras' as determined by background etc. Contacts, imho, are people who possess skills, knowledge, connections or other abilities that are, or can potentially be, useful to the character's career.

Orks would get the benefit of having much much larger families, which, while maybe not exactly contacts, could be helpful. This, of course, assumes that your GM doesn't require family to be contacts, and that background plays a part in the game.

But it's hard to be fair to everyone, without tons of different special rules...

Also Orks are 'picked upon' (better: discriminated against) more than other races therefore they stick together. This has nothing to do with charisma.
I think one could say that charisma helps a bit if you want to acquire a contact, so you could make contacts cheaper for persons with higher charisma, but the Ork example contradicts that again. I wouldn't say that Charisma determines how many contacts you have. It determines how likely it is that those contacts will do something for you that they normaly wouldn't.

A reasonably simple fix for Orks and Trolls: Apply a bonus equal to the penalty normally suffered when the character is dealing with other Orks or Trolls.

Example: a troll normally has a -3 Charisma penalty. When dealing with Orks and other Trolls, our happy-go-lucky Troll adds +3 to his Charisma for dealing with people of his own ilk.

-Siege

Or you could give contacts based on how many attribute points were put into charisma, rather than the resulting charisma attribute. This way trolls and elves that each put 5 points into charisma would end up with the same number of contacts, even though their charisma scores would end up being a few points apart. The only effect there would be that races that have, say, a -2 penalty to charisma are forced to put at least 3 points into charisma, and therefore have at least 3 contacts, but that fits with the whole idea of them sticking together, doesn't it?
It's an interesting idea. I like any idea that makes charisma into less of an attribute dumping-ground.

i, for one, would definitely pay millions to contact charisma.

Oooo-yeah. Although looking through those galleries I can't figure out the whole thing about cheerleaders...

Siege: You managed to typo "Hah! Bravo."? That's got to be some sort of record.

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