Hi!

One of my players came up with the idea to have the Seattle Yaks as a group contact. He`s got a nice background story, so far I am okay with that.
What we could not figuer out was how much BP such a group contact should be worth.

Any suggestions for the modified connection rating?

Thanks.

Don't worry too much about it - connection rating don't necessarily express the whole group's influence, just the connection rating that the character would have access to.

My character currently has Boston's gambling world as a C9 L3 contact. That doesn't mean that the entirety of Boston's gamblers etc. doesn't have a higher connection rating than 9.

Depending upon how big a grip the criminal syndicates have on the sprawl in your game, you'd be looking at double figures for the entire Yakuza presence.

I'm AFB right now, but IIRC the group modifiers for membership, territory, magic and Matrix come in three levels. I reckon the first level in each would suit having a single 'family' as a contact, the second for the entire Seattle Yakuza and the third for all Yakuza everywhere.

As a side note, if this guy has got the whole Seattle Yakuza as a contact it's going to seriously colour his criminal enterprises. He'll be on at least a couple of agency watchlists already and should feel under pressure to consider the Yaks' best interests in all he does.

The contact is worth whatever they pay for it.

If they pay the +1 BP for 2-19 members, then they can call upon 2-19 members of the Yakuza organization. The Yakuza organization might have 1000+ members, but since they PC paid 1 BP, they only get to use 2-19 of that 1000.

As others have said, it all depends on how well connected you are with the Yakuza. If you're talking about the Seattle branch, you're likely looking at +4 for 100-1000 memebers, +2 for sprawl wide area of influence, +1 limited magical assets (I'm sure they have a couple of mages) and +1 Active matrix presence (I'm sure they have some skilled hackers, but that isn't their forte as far as I know).

These could be modified. Maybe with access to only one branch you drop out the magic and matrix, drop influence to a district, and you only have access to maybe 20-99 or 2-19 members.

Like they said, with a group contact, it isn't so much the group itself, as how much of the group you have access to.

Also keep in mind that a group contact is supposed to be more watered down than a one-person contact. A group contact of 6 compared to an individual contact of 6 should not be the same - the latter being highly influential within his field and the know-how to get stuff done, not to mention the discretion required for sensitive information, where the group contact would potentially hard pressed to get you highly specialized gear, and any info going either way will either not be news to everyone on the street. It's a lot harder to keep stuff secret when going through the group contact.

I've seen a lot of posters posting the modified connection rating as an absolute value. This is where I am confused:

The way I read the rules, the modified rating is merely for the purpose of establishing the BP cost of the contact and does not actually increase the actual connection rating (which would provide additional dice). I find that approach much more sensible than using the modified connection rating as the bonus dice.

You're correct. The connection rating of the group (size/influence/magic/matrix) is in addition to the regular connection rating that defines how competent a contact is. It is for example possible to have a group contact that has millions of members over a global scale with tons of matrix access, but has a low base connection rating, and so isn't any good at doing anything that isn't legal, or doesn't really have any contact outside the group, or the members themselves just aren't particularly influential.

Take like the NRA for example. They have tons of members and huge area of influence, but you aren't going to be able to easily go to them and request a rocket launcher (for duck hunting of course).