Questions:
I'm assuming where it says "Loyalty" on contacts like Dana, that should read "Max Starting Loyalty". Is that correct?
I'm assuming the max loyalty between purchasing and earning loyalty is 6. i.e if you do start MacCallister with a "4" and get +1 twice, you end up with a 6 loyalty. Is that correct?

From Season 4 contacts posted here by Bull. PDF should be around here some were I will update the post with the link if I find it

Contact link

I have the PDF. The quotes are cut ands paste from it. None of the characters have a "maximum Loyalty rating". They have a "Loyalty" and a "Max Starting Loyalty". It may well be that the max starting loyalty, max loyalty, and loyalty are all the same thing but I'd hate to find out I've been screwing myself out of loyalty points. It's bad enough I wasted BPs getting these contacts in the first place.

Missions rule: Always take disadvantages that help trace you because they never trace you. They just fiat find you. Never take contacts, even if there's a list of suggested contacts. You don't call the contacts, the contacts call you and become loyal very easily.

The Max loyalty listed is generally going to be the max you can attain in the missions as well from what I've seen so far. You can lose loyalty, too

Suoq, that's some min/max hackery. The most fun I've had at Missions have been with people who RP'ed well and had lots of ways to interact and contribute (like contacts for example). Similarly, the most fun I've had at Missions has most often been spoiled by min/maxxers.

Mesh

The good news is that I don't have any plans for attending conventions outside of Nebraska/Iowa within the next year, but if you do see a large man with long hair and a badge that says "bons" feel free to ask me to sit at another table. I won't mind.

Sadly, with the location hopping of Missions, the more people flesh out their contacts, the less useful they become. The guy who writes "bartender L2/C4" has a more useful (mechanically and to the GM as a storytelling device) then someone who knows Felice, the ork cocktail waitress who works weeknights at the bar in the lobby of the Plaza in Times Square.

I'd love for my Missions face to have a mountain of useful contacts, but since he was made for Manhattan back when it was expected to be a 24 round season, they'd all have been people he'd left behind when he fled to Seattle. If I had the option to buy contacts for karma, it'd be the only thing I'd spend it on, but that's not the case. Missions made the contacts taken at character creation useless as soon as the truncated season ended.

Also, as a diehard powergamer who loves roleplaying, please leave your condescension and sweeping generalizations at the door.

How do I get trashed for condescension by calling out someone who advocates not "wasting" points on contacts? That's a pretty sweeping generalization you have applied, sir.

Relax, internet denizens.

Mesh

Its quite possible to have both a big dicepool and a big personality.

Speaking of generalization, do you even care to understand WHY spending points on contacts in Missions is a waste?

Any character should have more loyal friends than it's possible to buy as contacts with starting points. This is normal. We end up with things like 4 points in Military knowledge but there isn't nearly the BPavailable at chargen that would represent the contacts made by 4 years of service. The way we deal with that is they're still part of the backstory, they're just not contacts.

The thing is, Missions doesn't reward you for having contacts, and appears to be under the assumption that the characters don't buy any because they get given to you rather easily. This applied in Season 3 and has carried over to Season 4. With very little effort, season 4 contacts will become loyal to you in a way the members of your platoon can't possibly be at chargen. I dare anyone at the end of this season to look at their season 4 contacts and add up how many BPs they're worth. I had hoped that buying them would have value and they would be hard to get in play. In actual practice it appears buying them doesn't have value and if you do spend the BPs you're actually penalized by not getting loyalty while everyone else is.

As an example in Missions, even you you grew up being mentored by MacCallister, it's not a good idea to make him a contact. It's far better to simply say that he has no reason to know you under this identity and until the run is over, he doesn't really know it's you, or he doesn't trust you because he's not sure what's goin on. When you get him as a contact, there's a trust there that has to be rebuilt.

That's just as playable and fun of a backstory as having grown up being mentored by MacCallister and having him as a contact on your BP. However, buying him at full loyalty means that your relationship with him doesn't grow during the season while NOT buying him gives you an effort to play up that distrust, reconciliation, and the recovery of trust over the season.

Likewise, taking disadvantages that help traces ends up helping you, helping the GM, and helping the story. The NPCs are going to fiat trace someone in your team. We don't care how well you cover your tracks, they find you because the story says they do. So take the trace disadvantages because they help the storyline make sense, especially from an RP standpoint.

Building these disadvantages to help the story and creating reasons to explain the rapid increase of trust from someone who wasn't a contact isn't for everyone. For players like Mesh, it's min/max hackery and spoils their fun. So if you do go into that level of role playing and backstory and someone like Mesh asks you to sit at another table, please be respectful and do so.

I'm one of the Missions writers, Suoq. I'm not sure why you're poking me for an argument other than "it's the internet and this is how people act when they're not face to face." I get that.

I don't write auto-traces. I don't require players to have a 20 dice pool in anything. And some of my most memorable moments running Missions have been when people with some of the seemingly most worthless contacts like a lawn mowing contractor, a valet, and a SCUBA instructor all drop into the adventure in brilliant displays of serendipity to complete the puzzle of the Mission in unexpected ways.

I haven't criticized your play styles. I will, however, defend anyone who wants to buy contacts for Missions, and I will encourage them to continue to do so. So lay off the "Mesh wants to ask you to leave his table cause he's this all-uppity-roleplayer who hates anybody who doesn't play his style." It's uncalled for.

I've never turned people away: Not the street sam with 20+ perception and 20+ SMG, not his pornomancer buddy with 20+ negotiation, nor the mage with quickening who perma-buffed every one of his human stats to 9, could summon F6 spirits with 0 drain, and who turned the game into a round of Angel Summoner and the BMX Bandit.

If you want to find someone to turn into your whipping boy for an RP vs. Powergamer argument, which has already been done ad nauseum in threads made just for that, how about picking on someone else please? I write things to do in Missions for everyone: the RPer, the Powergamer, the guy with 4 initiative passes, and even the troll with the rebar firing bow, and I hope everyone with any play style enjoys them.

Mesh

Read what you said and maybe you'll realize why people are defending themselves from your unprovoked attacks on their gaming styles based on your assumptions.

There are more and better ways to interact in Missions than contacts (such as advantages). Once everyone starts getting contacts out their ears, those other tools still remain useful while contacts fall by the wayside.

You are taking offense to people talking to you in the same way you talk to others. You've attacked me personally for the things I've said. I've explained my meaning. You get offended. There's very little I can do to help this situation since I've explained and you're still offended.

---------------

For season 5 Missions co-ordinators: Please keep the list of contacts to buy, but instead of giving out contacts and additional loyalty in individual missions, limit yourself to additional loyalty for contacts purchased at chargen with a cap of one loyalty point per mission. Explain this up front so that people can buy contacts knowing how the contacts are expected to change in loyalty over the course of the season.

As I said, find someone else to argue with.

Mesh out

PS Go contacts!

The max loyalty for the Mission specific contacts is 4, so no worries there. Having said that over the course of a season your loyalties could go up could go down, but unfortunatly you can never go above a 4. Now you can still purchase loyalty 5 and 6 at character creation, just not with the mission specific contacts. Having just GMed at Origins all weekend I say GO CONTACTS! The missions I ran had many opportunities for contacts to shine, not just the Mission specific ones. Legwork is a large part of missions, so yes the Faces out there will shine, but I had plenty of players with a wide range of different contacts use then effectivly. So smoke'em if ya got'em, just remember no Missions specific contact will increase to over 4. Which is ok, I never saw it hurt someone not to have a loyalty over 4. Lastly, I personally gained several contacts through good ole' fashion roleplaying, that weren't really fleshed out contacts. So remember have fun at the table and don't forget to tip your contact, I'll be all week so try the veal. .

P.S. See everyone at GenCon

So i knew this thread had to be a winner when i heard people discussing it at Origins, and I groaned a little inside when someone asked me if Robin was Suoq because of it.

So i read it and it matches pretty closely to my expectations.

Mesh:I cannot recall for the life of me if we have directly met at the cons, but all my online intercations with you have been positive. But let me say this: If you don't want people to accuse you of being condescending don't post things like this.



As far as I see Suoq could have phrased his suggestion better, but the suggestion at least as far as contacts go is no less valid for it's poor wording. It also isn't any more cheesy then a thousand of little ways people suggest ways to improve builds on here multiple times per day. I don't necessarily advocate Suoq's plan but the truth is he's got a point. If you are Joe the well heeled gentleman and you've sunk points into having a variety of contacts, pre-provided and not, and you play the first missions with Superdupermindcontrolmage#136 and you play SRM04-00 chances are the mage is going to get some of the points you spent on those contacts for free. Points that he spent into buying his fifth flavor of I WIN button spell. Under those circumstances it doesn't make a lot of sense to sink points into contacts, especially not pregenerated ones. Sure you can do it for backstory, but no matter your backstory if current trends hold you and the mind mage will end up with the same loyalty level after three missions involving those contacts.

In short, you started the internet argument, you were the one that chose to attack a play style or piece of advice, and for what it's worth Suoq isn't acting all that different on here from what he does in real life. However the text medium does rob up of a lot of tone, that's why so many people think i'm an asshole until they meet me. At which point they likely still think i'm an asshole, but maybe they come around the fact that I'm a fairly polite and respectful guy who really likes an earnest discussion and doesn't beat around the brush much. To quote my mother I've never found a fight I didn't like.



Again for what it's worth, it's a bit of a double standard to call someone's action min max hackery and then accuse them of poking you for an argument on the internet.

Now you may not write autotraces but the fact is they have been written A LOT. How many times has the opposition some how some way gotten a hold of the runners comm to offer them a counter offer in missions. I've wrote that scene in Deconstructing Patriots (although I used the concept of the opposition just getting the word out via the contact networks rather then dialing directly). It can think of at least four or five times it happened in season three and a at least once in season 4. It's honestly a hook the writers (I'm hesitant to use the term we here, because I've written so little thus far) really should get away from, it's been overused. The direct analogy that springs to mind is in denver how often the tell it to to them straight text told the runners exactly how they were feeling. It was overused, and frankly a little ridiculous. Similarly most runners when embarking on a job or just having completed it after getting called on their link by the opposition for said job, or even a third party should likely turn that link off until they can scramble the access ID, never connect to that comcode again and immediately change location.

Now a lot of the above calls are to set up a scene or clue the team in on other options. The simple truth is missions try and build towards a certain scene outcome A LOT, especially in season three. I've always felt that some of the best missions are those that are a lot more open rather then closed or at least provide for multiple points of entry. Now I had an epiphany while talking to Bull Saturday night, i'm not longer going to sweat these scenes, their great if they line up and I'm certainly going to cannibalize them for parts but if my team is doing the good opsec they should be they miss the call, simple as that, the opposition that wants to reach them will have to try other channels are that part of the mod gets skipped no problemo. I'm not going to not credit karma for skipping these scenes, because well it doesn't make a lot of sense to peanlize the runners for being properly technically savvy or operationally paranoid.

So now under of my credo on not commenting on problems without a solution in mind I will address all issues:


This isn't exactly true and going forward at least at my tables there will be no fiat finding. The counterpoint to that is everyone in the group needs to practice good opsec and invest in stealth programs. We as both module writers and missions GM's cannot change what happened in the past but I know for a fact that SRM04-03 has issues built in for those who are electronically indiscreet, just because you didn't have issue with them doesn't mean they are not there. So of all your problems this is the one I can most directly fix, any issues you have going forward on this score are my fault or something the NPC's earned.

My counter suggestion would be take all the contacts you want, but yes avoid the pre-done contacts, pick your own, flesh them out just like you want them and go to town. Contacts are only as useful or as useless as you choose them to be. To the writers or campaign admin my suggestion would be that contacts granting needs to take more then just completing a run successfully, especially for higher value contacts. Likewise when assigning loyalty gains the cap on maximum loyalty after start should be based on the contacts initial loyalty value for the character. So i i start with loyalty 4 and there are loyalty bumps for everyone else those shouldn't be eaten just because I actually bought him during character generation.


For the sam:Character audit and push him out of comfort zone, Pornomancer:Recognize that he's not going to contribute much else. Mage: Background count, character audit and have some lonestar sec mages (or other interest groups) show up to check out this person lighting up the astral like a Christmas tree and see what they are about. I managed to get rid of one of my biggest problem players this weekend just by suggesting I was going to do a character audit at the end of the session.

Good post, Lurker, and your issues are valid. And yes, double standards are my Internet MO I know I'm a bad person, but do you have to make me feel bad about it?

Yes, I could have stated it less offensively. Shadowrun's rule system is so hackable, there are a thousand ways to press I-WIN buttons and make yourself "better" than the other characters at the table. That doesn't impress me, and it's not particularly fun for me to GM for or play alongside. I'm not the high-and-mighty RPer, and when I play, I make my characters competent. Do I min/max? Certainly! But I don't bring a hollow shell of numbers to the table (not saying anyone here does either), and I always have contacts.

You can make as many number-crunching examples as you want for why buying season contacts or regular contacts is a "waste of BP," but to me it is not good for roleplaying, and it doesn't contribute as much to everyone else's fun. I want to encourage anyone playing Missions to buy contacts! Especially this season, the best legwork information is only going to come from someone you know, not the Matrix or data searches. Creative use of contacts is a blast, and honestly, you don't need 400 BP spent purely on stats, spells, skills, tech, and gear to be a good Shadowrunner. One of the hardest and time-adding things to writing a Mission is accounting for the inevitable player with ungodly abilities who can complete all the physical challenges (or even all the challenges) of the adventure by herself.

So, I encourage Missions players to worry less about perfecting and crunching their builds and to think more about contributing to overall fun at the table. I'm not accusing anyone here of being a table spoiler. I am advocating the purchase of contacts as a means to contribute to everyone's fun and RP at the table.

That better?

Mesh

2 notes:
1) So are "Loyalty" and "Maximum Starting Loyalty" the same thing and are they the cap on loyalty or are they meant to be different things.

2) I don't have a problem with buying contacts. You'll note I bought this one. It seemed to me that if Missions was encouraging people to buy Missions contacts, there was a reason for it. My problem is that as long as Missions is going to give away contacts, then I should spend my BPs on other things I can rollplay with instead of contacts I'm going to get for free anyway. Mesh seems convinced that anything not spent on contacts is spent on making a player with ungodly abilities when, in reality, it's spendable on anything. It's great to have contacts, buy once everyone has picked up their collection of Missions contacts, those initial contacts fade into obscurity. So, in my opinion, buy something else that's fun and lasts the whole season.

Am not!

I'm convinced that any character without a single contact makes me sad.

Mesh

An aside, but that's not always true.

It's certainly possible to have a Pornomancer (Social skills in the 20+ die range) that is plenty effective at other things.






-k

may be guilty of having a Missions character with both massive Social AND Combat dice pools, with a side of spellcasting and summoning...
she does have chargen-purchased contacts, though!

I believe max starting loyalty is what is presented on the chart with the Missions Contacts ex: Dana Oaks is loyalty 2, that's her max starting loyailty you can buy her at, but Macallister is loyality 4, so you can start with him at 4. Now, during Season 4 play, max loyalty on contacts ends at 4, so if you had bought Macallister at loyalty 4 he's already caped. Having said that though there are places where you could loose a point of loyalty from a contact and then later regain it so its a fluid number as the season progresses.

They're all supposed to be "Max Starting Loyalty" for all the Contacts.

And guys, lets not argue, Everyone has different play styles.

Bull

Max starting loyalty is force 12... when loyalty is the result of Mob Mind.

And that is why mind control spells getting banned today made my day, now just to get folks killed and retired.

I dont mind control and mind reading I just wish NPC's used it too.
Of course I'm biased because my 'main' character specializes in counterspelling...