I've started a new program, where during game play I am rewarding the PC's for their hard work at times with new contacts-people they've spent time and effort getting to know for the operation, and have invested what I see as an appropriate amount of money, attention and operational flavor (Be it blackmail, intimidation or accolades). So what about you? How do you approach this?

I've occasionally allowed NPC's that player have interacted with a lot to become contacts, though for my next campaign I'm toying with the idea of not having characters buy any contacts at all and have contacts come and go purely as a GM plot device.

In our groups, we gain contacts if we do well on our mission and interact a lot with them. Also, all (useful) NPCs we rescued from danger we received as a contact, and retired PCs also became contacts.

When I run Shadowrun, I play it by ear. If the PCs make an effort to roleplay with an NPC and things go well between them in the interaction, I'll sometimes give them the NPC as a contact.

I have a pretty low threshold for making NPCs contacts, but their Loyalty rating is highly dependent on the nature and extent of the role playing interactions. I've been trying to come up with something more systematic (possibly like contact up-keep rules from prior editions) but haven't hit on anything I really like yet.

Still in SR3 so do use contact upkeep rules to show the PCs are keeping in touch but also to drain cash off them. Mostly they gain a contact if and when equilivent to the story reasons for their interactions.

May be a purely buisness contact to a die hard fought through the life and death event together friend as applicable. Social rolls and roleplay make the big difference here.

Last game had a FED agent set up to be a possible contact but the players were such dicks IC in interogation and session he ended up not getting on with them for some reason.

Generally, if you can get an NPC to give you their number, you can write them down as a Loyalty 1 contact. If they have a Connection higher than "1" you probably have to do them a solid to get them as a contact. If you really help someone out, you might get them at a slightly higher Loyalty rating. That's basically how my group handles it. (But we also houseruled Connection to be tracked by the GM instead of the player.)

I always view the connection, in part, as a measure of how willing they'd be to use their network to assist you.

Who needs the NPC to give the players a number? Unless the person is out in the barrens, or doesn't want to be found again, it's probably not that difficult to look the person up.

In my campaigns, who the players write down as a Contact doesn't matter a whole lot, and they don't get them as "rewards". They're just people that the players know.

If my players decide that the organlegger they sold some second-hand cyberware to last mission might help them track someone down in the Ork Underworld, who am I to stop them from looking him up and calling him? Sure, the organlegger might answer with "And just WHO the frag are you again?" and I might decide that the organlegger will or won't help them based on how much the players decide to grease his palms and what his prior experience with them were.

It's not like they're not ALLOWED to contact that organlegger simply because I didn't say "Okay you can write down Dr. Feel-Good as a Loyalty 1 Connection 2 Contact".

However, when the players meet an important NPC, or put special work into getting to know someone, or do a favor for someone, I will SUGGEST "Okay, you should write down Dr. Feel-Good as a contact".

I don't think anyone is suggesting that, but as I read your post it sounds a lot like just dialing a random number out of a phone book. Seems to defeat the whole idea of having contacts, and what purpose they seem to serve to me. Or am I just reading your post incorrectly?

Exactly how we play it. A loyalty 1 may only remember your face or you may have to remind them who you are, 2 will remember you but have a pretty straight business relationship, etc. Some players at my table have accumulated dozens of contacts.

In our game you get to add anyone you meet and want to remember as a Loyalty 0 contact - in effect treating contacts as an address book. Future interaction, be it RP or sending stuff their way might have the GM increase the loyalty to 1, at which point a connections score will be generated.

If you do solid RP in game you might get told to add a contact at appropriate loyalty and connection rating.

Connection rating is an attribute of the contact.

I agree, however I don't see it as a god given right to automatically have access to this. I know that's a total house rule-but it works in our games.

I guess the crux of what I was saying is that the Players end up deciding who their "Contacts" are. It's essentially anyone they want. As a GM, I just have to cook up Loyalty and Connection ratings for all of them as the players use them.

In my players' first adventure, they needed to do some hacking. They don't have a dedicated hacker in the group, so they had to contract it out. Their method for doing this was to locate a Comlink repair store. They went in, and I just came up with the Dwarf who ran the place and did most of the repairs. They threw a bunch of Nuyen at him to do the hack for him. Over the course of the adventure they've kept going back to him, and they pay him very well, both to do the job and to keep quiet about it afterwards. He's gradually climbed up to a Loyalty 2 contact from all that.

I never GAVE the players this contact, they did it all on their own.

Later on in another adventure, they sort of did the same thing when they needed a contact familiar with the Wuxing corp. None of their contacts really was "in" with Wuxing, and they decided they really needed that. So they did some research, figured out a few local watering holes where Wuxing wage slaves hang out, and kept their eyes open for someone who might be receptive to helping them. So they ended up getting a Loyalty 1 Connection 2 contact out of all that.

I use a similar house rule, contacts in my game have a current connection rating, representing what they will do for a PC today, and a maximum connection rating (which can change due to game events) which represents the most they can do ever.