I've looked through SR4A and RC but can't find any clear discussion on how to improve contact ratings. Does such a discussion exist somewhere?

Any comments here on how one might go about increasing the Loyalty rating? I can see the use of gifts and favours, and the fun of role playing interaction is there, but have you any guidelines for the GM?

Can't give you the official answer as I am away from books, but I've always thought it should involve roleplaying.

Absolutely. I'm just looking for mechanics for the GM, like karma cost, etc. Along the lines of how gaining new Positive Qualities or eliminating Negative Qualities have a karma cost on top of the PC's behaviour justifying the change.

Pbangarth, there are some very brief rules (four paragraphs) for improving contact loyalty offered in the 3rd Edition Shadowrun Companion. They basically boil down to:

1) GM's discretion via roleplaying (which the book suggests in the preferred approach); or,
2) Karma cost of New Loyalty * 2.

About a year ago I made up house rule for this very topic and and posted it on the other forum for discussion. You can read the thread here:

http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=5151.0

I like to look at how much time the player invested in that contact during downtime, using the Negotiations rules for getting new gear as a rough guideline.
I don't let my players improve Contact ratings with Karma, but they can reduce the amount of time needed to be spent with them with nuyen.

Shadowrun Missions shows how some contacts improve their loyalty.

We use roleplaying. No Karma Allowed to improve Contact Loyalty.

Same, although we allow you to spend karma to create situations where a contacts loyalty or connections can be improved (the rate varies based on current contact loyalty and connections and other factors).

Well, personally I would prefer there to be no karma mechanics needed. The PC for whom I am working this idea is a Free Spirit, and there are way more things to spend karma on. Here's the situation:

Our home game is based in LA. My PC has a mafia consiglieri contact (a lawyer, Connection 4, Loyalty 2) through whom my FSPC just arranged a Power pact deal in which three mafia agents were given spirit powers to use in an action they planned. My PC earns karma with the rest of the team, but doesn't get to use it until it converts that karma through a Spirit Pact. So, lots of karma for my spirit and lots of armor and sneakiness for the mafia agents. I'd like to expand on the benefits of this deal, both to make stronger connections with this organization (dangerous, I know) and to improve my PCs relationship with the consiglieri.

I'm thinking a dinner at a top of the line restaurant, some good cigars and some discussion about where the city is going and how it could use more stability and order. Offer ongoing opportunities for Power pacts, and promise to work those only through the consiglieri. This way my PC's contact becomes a more valued asset in his organization, as they would only get the Power pacts through him.

Additional options:

If the consiglieri has fashion concerns, my PC can alter his clothes to any style he wants.

My PC just made contact with an arms dealer who has access to very special equipment. Maybe the consiglieri's people are interested in acquiring something special.

Seattle Mariners/Seadogs season tickets help.

Yeah they do. "Honey, we were at the Mariners game all night long. I swear. See, I have the stubs."

It would be neat to have a session where the only thing the runners do is try to charm a client like on Mad Men. Or "Jen the Fredo" from The IT Crowd.

You don't do that?

We have entire sessions where we are staging events to help us with a contact. In one instance we kidnapped the child of a contact of ours so that we could "rescue" the child after the contact informed us of what had occurred. Got a nice bump in loyalty and the Yak's all the sudden found that Lone Star's VICE cops really didn't like them

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In our games there are two general ways to improve contacts. First, solely roleplaying it. Second, you can spend karma (the cost is the contacts current loyalty+connections) to create an opportunity to increase one or the other. This is a run (or runs in some cases) that the players do that they don't get karma for. The run(s) is difficult enough that it would give each runner karma equal to the contacts current loyalty+connections.

So let's say you have a 1/1 contact. You can spend 2 Karma to have a run come along that will allow you to increase his loyalty to 2. This could be as simple as running a package across the sprawl for him or providing him with a car/weapon/item that he wants/needs. Complete the run and he is now a 1/2 contact.

Let's say that you have a 5/6 contact. You can spend 11 Karma to have a run come along that will allow you to increase his connections to 6. This would almost certainly be a Z-Zone level run (minimum) and may be multiple Z-Zone level runs, some previous examples are planting deeply hidden watcher programs into various Ares systems so that our information broker contact has access.

Only one character (the one with the contact or only one if multiple people have the contact) needs to pay the initial karma price but no one gets karma on the run it's self.

I'm the GM. I'm just there to referee.

Man, you guys had it easy.

Our gm made us pay for new contacts - when we met someone interesting who was willing to help us and/or form a business relationship, he'd offer various people as contacts. If you wanted it, you paid .... either it was a fixed price depending on the situation/circumstances(3-5), or 1 karma per connection/loyalty.

We were also using a karma->money exchange, and I think we had a houserule improve contacts on a 1-1 basis to represent similiar off-duty windfalls and activities, but I don't think anyone actually used it.