Anyone else find that having an item more readily available for purchase through the use of the character's negotiation and charisma unusual? Wouldn't it be better to add the fixer's connection rating and say, a Fixing Skill instead? Seems like the fixer is going to do all the work, tapping all of their sources for whatever the item is. Why does the player's charisma and negotiation have anything to do with whether or not the item is available?

I had a new player who just asked me about this.

Also, any house rules out there with availability and delivery rules?

In SR4 and SR5, you can either use your own Cha+Nego, or use a contact's Cha+Nego+Connection Rating and he might ask for a finder's fee depending on loyalty/repeat business. Your own skills don't enter play if you go through contacts, as should be expected.

Your own Charisma + Negotiation doesn't represent your Fixer's ability to find things, it represents your ability to talk people into parting with things they otherwise would not part with for you, or going the extra mile on your behalf.

For instance, your crooked contact in DocWagon or CrashCart can probably get you low-level medical supplies easily, but if you want Savior Medkits or opiate painkillers or Slab or something, you're going to have to convince them, because they're going to be taking an awful big risk to try and get it. That would be going the extra mile.

Parting with things they wouldn't otherwise part with would be, for instance, your Fixer has a set of customized weapons that another client, normally trustworthy, has ordered, but has missed their due-date to pick up. He normally wouldn't sell them to Joe Shadowrunner, but if you smooze him well, he might decide that he can sell them to you. He's doing a bit of a risk on that, since the other clients might have just gone to ground and be about to surface, but you're a good client too, and they did kind of leave him in a lurch. So not everybody's nuyen would have been good for that transaction, but thanks to your ability to sweet-talk him (and his Loyalty should represent bonus dice for you on this, minus the other team's Loyalty dice,) he decides that yours is good.

It's partly an abstraction, of course.

But it's also the assumption that the items do physically exist, and the real goal is to persuade someone to jump through the hoops to get it - whether that's an annoying ordering process, or persuade him that no-one will notice when it falls off the truck, or what have you. You're not rolling to discover if it's sitting on Wal-Mart's shelf - you're rolling to convince some stock guy that it's worth his while to get it for you off the books. Remember, the Availability rules govern the black market, not legitimate purchases.

Yeah there are metagame components at work too. Dunno how well the example works, but imagine you have a contact at Barrett, they're like I dunno the operations manager or distribution manager or something. But just because they have access to the inventory doesn't mean they'll readily give you access. it depends on how good a friend you are. How much trouble they can get into. How reliable you are as to not leave a big ass trail that leads heat to his door, etc.

Be it the NPC's Negotiation and Charisma or the player's Negotiation and Charisma, I don't see what that has to do with the nature of it being available. I see how that can affect whether or not the price is what the player/fixer wants to pay, but that skill and linked attribute are actually affecting whether or not it can be found. I just find that strange. Especially when you're talking about dealing with contacts with high connection ratings, as was the case. Connection level 5 couldn't find a Force 4 magical lodge. Seems like it should be two tests. One to find it. The other sets the price. The one to find it should take into account the connection level of the fixer. Like, negative dice modifier against the availability roll perhaps.

Sure, but I've always thought of there being a substantial black market business out there of quantifiable goods exchanging hands willfully. There should be more accounting for this instead of the assumption that fixers or players have to talk people out of selling goods that they otherwise wouldn't want to let go.

Availability never really sets whether something is actually available or not (There IS a substantial Black Market thriving in Shadowrun)... it is a reflection on how long it takes for you to acquire the equipment. Sooner or later, you WILL find someone willing to sell you the item you are looking for.

Suppose you're a drug dealer. Or an Ancients gunrunner. Or a pimp.

Do you just sell your wares to any old jackass who rolls up and starts laying down requests?

Even if you do your business in the Barrens, you don't, because if it's not the cops, chances are it's the competition, a syndicate, or someone else who means you no good scoping you out. So maybe you'll admit to having a few party favors or a few BTL whores or a few purse poppers you can sell the guy, but nothing major.

That's where CHA + Negotiation comes in. Convince the guy you can be trusted, lay out the contacts you have in common (if any,) lay out the money you're prepared to spend if only what you need is made available to you.

Therein being the rub - is available to you. If you want to walk into a shoppe of crime, go to the Crime Mall, but you don't get to order what you want. You get the opportunity to buy what's on sale, and that's it. Maybe the guys selling the shit have some specials they'll only sell to someone who can schmooze them, but they're not fixers. You don't roll up to the crime mall, tell the guy selling street guns you want a fully tricked-out Ares Predator IV and you want it tomorrow, and throw down your nuyen. He can't provide that. He can get you a Predator IV, sure, everybody selling guns can - it may or may not have previously been used in homocides the police and/or other powers with access to forensics labs may have an interest in investigating.

But at the end of the day, sometimes it's just down to how good at schmoozing you are. The black market thrives, but it's not like a bazaar or an Ares Arms ordering catalog. You have to know people, or be good at getting to know people.

I'm not disagreeing with you and I understand what you're saying, but this last comment you made is where I'm coming from. "You have to know people." Exactly. That's what a connection rating is, yes? Their influence. What I'm saying is that this should play more of a role in the whole process of acquiring the item being sought after. Take the lodge for example. It isn't even illegal to own. Not restricted. Not forbidden. But they're pretty damn hard to find. Seems like it would be nice to add your contact's connection level of 5 to the roll or subtract it from what the Availability is allowed to roll.

Lodges aren't illegal, but they do say "Magician here!!!" in gigantic red neon letters.

Which is fine and dandy if you're a perfectly legal wagemage. Not so much if you're a criminal magician.

Frankly, I'd add the contacts' loyalty, not his connection - his connection should determine his extended ability to tap the item at all. His Loyalty should play a factor in whether or not he's willing to do so for you.

F'instance, say that somehow, your Shadowrunner has gained Damian Knight as a contact. I think it's safe to say that whatever the Connection scale, he caps it. There is literally nothing in the world which is not some kind of unique artifact that Damian Knight, if he has sufficient motivation, cannot acquire.

If you find yourself in need of some fine Ares Arms ™ products that can't be traced, Damian Knight is the perfect contact. He's a very busy man, of course, but if you somehow have him as a contact, that means he is reading your emails. Maybe not too frequently, but he will get to them. Arranging for some of his fine armaments to arrive at the doss of a group of Runners who have done him a major enough solid for him to appear on their contact sheets is practically no effort for Damian Knight. He'd probably charge you list price out of general principles, but you'll get some fine, factory-floor-fresh Ares Arms weapons before too long.

Asking him for something out of his purview, on the other hand, is another matter. Say you're a Voodoo Houngan who needs a high-Force Lodge. Do I doubt that Damian freaking Knight can acquire the materials for a Force 12 Voodoo lodge? Not at all, but they're not within his purview. That's something that will take effort on his part, or the burning of some of his capital, or assignation of a minion who will be busy doing that task. Now you have to roll Cha + Negotiation + Loyalty to convince Mr. Knight that you're worth the inconvenience to him to dig up the esoteric stuff you'll need to make a Force 12 Lodge. Even if you successfully roll 'dem bones and convince Mr. Knight that it's overall in his best interests to help with what's in your best interests, he's going to want a favor for this.

Now, a different example. Instead of Damian Knight, the most visible shareholder of Ares Macrotechnology, let's say your contact is, I dunno, Larry Knight, a shipping & receiving manager at Ares Transport. Is it within his capability to arrange for some of Ares Arms' fine products to arrive at your doorstep instead of, say, at the nearest Weapons World? Yes, yes it is. But he's taking a risk in doing so. Maybe a huge one, if he's not customarily engaged in criminal enterprise and simply owes you his life. Maybe a small one, if he arranges for products to fall off the back of trucks all the time. Either way, it's still within his capability to arrange for a box of Predators, a few Desert Strikes and maybe even an Ares-Stoner LMG to arrive at your doorstep. Those are shipments he handles frequently, those are things he can arrange to disappear. You don't need to roll to convince him to get those for you, you just need to adequately motivate him - cash should do. Or maybe he owes you his life, literally. If you want a Thunderstruck Gauss Rifle, on the other hand, that is going to be a stretch. Top-of-the-line military hardware is a lot harder to manipulate the shipping on than guns that Ares will cheerfully sell under-the-table to any mercenary company, street gang or criminal syndicate.

You're going to have to roll to convince Mr. Larry Knight to stick his neck out far enough to get you a Thunderstruck. It's almost out of his reach, but he might be able to pull it off. You're going to owe him a drekload of nuyen, though, or he'll tell you "I'll get it, but we're even," if his loyalty to you stems from you having saved his life or rescued his daughter from cannibal rapists or whatever. (Or maybe you want an entire transport truck to "go missing." He might be able to arrange that, too, but that's a similar level of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.)

And, of course, if you want a Force 12 Voodoo Lodge? Hahahahaah. Mr. Larry Knight can't arrange that for you. Even if he literally owes you his life, or his daughter's life, or both his and his daughter's life, you ask the impossible. It's simply out of his scope, he has no means with which to acquire it. Sorry.

Like I said in the first post. The contact does add his own connection rating to the dice roll every time. It's stated loud and clear in the rules...

As for why things work this way. I don't have a problem with that. What others have said sounds reasonable to me as well. You have to negotiate with people you know until you can get your hands on the item in question. Leave it to your contact to do it, and his network of contacts will help him out, which is represented by his connection rating, also a bonus to the dice pool, which makes sense in the rules.

As for the magic stuff. Afaik, magic casting is restricted up to force 3, and forbidden above that; I suspect the same goes for magical equipment. Notice also that in the rules a number of items have high (15+) availability yet no R or F. That's because the item is exceedingly hard to find on the black market, yet it can still be purchased legally given a SIN that fully checks out, possibly implying a full background check, and keeping full records on that piece of gear.

In closing, just remember it's a game and it's got made-up rules to try and emulate a certain reality. They are far from covering every scenario out there, just useful guidelines. It's not perfect, and you can adjust them when you feel like it.

Edit: THinking about alternatives, I can't find anything better than CHA+Nego for the test. It simulates you going from one person to the next, asking around for a piece of gear you need until you get more info, getting you to the next person who knows something about it and so on. Perhaps Etiquette is more appropriate in some scenarios. Perhaps composure sometimes as well. Perhaps also Con or whatever. But overall, you'll have to negotiate with people to convince them that whatever you need from them is worth their while. Or you, know you let your fixer or arms dealer do that.

Fixers can add their connection rating to the social limit, not to the dice. Their connection rating doesn't directly land them hits, making the whole thing seem somewhat moot when you're going for a high availability item.

And sure, this is all abstract. A GM can do whatever they want, but if that's the case, why have rules for it?

Let's do something even more mundane than a magical lodge. Diving gear has an availability of a 6. If the runners want to go buy some diving gear, they should be able to just look up where to find some and go buy it. Instead, the rules state that "black market goods" (or items with an Availability rating) are to be acquired through the negotiation/charisma angle. Unless there is something I don't understand about scuba gear in the future, it shouldn't require such silliness as that. Negotiation/Charisma has its place as a bargaining tool, yes. But as a way to find something, not usually. Especially when runners have contacts that do this very thing for them. That's their role. That's how they survive.

So let's look at that same set of scuba gear using a contact. Runners call the fixer and say, "we want a set of scuba gear. We've tried talking to everyone about where to find one and no one knows where we can just go buy one. Can you help us?" Fixer wonders why they didn't look it up on the computer and says, "Sure, I'd love to make some money. Hold on, let me talk to a bunch of different people. Hopefully, my social skills are up to par today because I'm not sure how to find something this mundane."

That's what I'm getting at. Finding something relies on social skills. I understand that in the art of bargaining for something, runners and/or fixers are going to need to talk, thus employ Negotiation and their Charismas. But to actually know where to look for something - that seems like a knowledge skill. Like a mixture of Street and Professional Knowledge skills. The descriptions of both of those types of skills almost exactly cover this ability to know where something is.

Buying SCUBA gear legally isn't hard. The problem is that it's such a fairly esoteric set of equipment that whenever <whatever> facillity gets hit by an orc woman, a troll man, two human men and a gnome woman with SCUBA gear, the very first thing they're gonna do is look into recent purchases of SCUBA gear along those lines.

The Fixer gets you the "legal" item off the books, without it being traceable easily, if at all.

Sure, this seems legit. But the lodge in question was a force 6. So 12 dice on its Opposed Availability Test. Kinda harsh considering that it isn't illegal/restricted.

I guess they could just make it restricted if they wanted to. All they have to do is add an "R" to the rating. But they didn't.

In any event, that's why I was asking about house rules to make this make more sense. If you read my other post about using Knowledge skills, I address what I think is wrong conceptually with using social skills to find gear with an availability rating.

And here's another one, why are drugs hard to find? I live in a metropolitan city and you can walk along almost any downtown street at night or into some club or bar, and be offered weed, speed, E, or whatever. IT finds you. The availability ratings are insanely out of whack in the book. Especially when they're referring to single doses. Small amounts are the easiest amounts to find in reality. Seems like the rules are referring to running drugs for profit. Like, how does one find an drug cartel willing to sell you quantity to turn for mega nuyen.

Weird.

Look, dude. Just because something is legal doesn't mean that it isn't being tracked, or that it isn't rare.

Ammonium Nitrate isn't illegal. It's practically indispensable on farms, in fact. If you think the FBI isn't monitoring every single sale, though, I encourage you to go buy a shitload of it, especially in conjunction with a few 55-gallon drums of kerosene or gasoline. The results oughta be good for a laff. For us, I mean, not you. You won't be laughing at all when the Party Van arrives.


That's what a Fixer is for. The Fixer makes sure it's stuff that vanished from a farm or something.

From the book:

Availability: The higher the Availability of an item, the more difficult and costly it is to get it (see Buying Gear, p. 416). Gear without an Availability rating can be bought at an appropriate local store or
ordered online without any trouble.

So, while I agree with you that it should be that way, the rules state that whether an item has an Availability rating or not is the governing factor in whether or not one could simply buy it at a local store or order online without trouble. Your scenario deals more with what happens after the fact. I'm specifically talking about the ability to find it or not. Whether or not this is the best idea, that is another matter. I use scuba gear since it should be easy to find in a shop.

Why are we talking about whether things are tracked? I'm just talking about how the rules are worded. See the Availability definition out of the book on pg. 417. I posted it above. And tranquilo, por favor. There is no hostility here.

Well I for one find that the comment on tracking is very relevant. Notice in your quote that it says you can buy it in a store or online without any trouble. I think that's the point here. Having your items tracked is trouble.

More importantly, the rules do not support what you claim the rules say -- quite the opposite actually. Please look at all the quotes instead of telling us to do so a bit rudely (tranquilo por favor? and you're the one who doesn't want to start a flame war..).

First, (re)read p. 216 second paragraph about standard goods. It describes in detail what we mean by the trouble you get from buying stuff legally.

p. 418, the very first 2 sentences about black market goods:
"When you get to the good stuff, the higher the Availability Rating is, the harder it is to acquire the item. To purchase an item off the books, make an Availability Test."

p. 419:
"Items are classified as legal, restricted ®, or forbidden (F). A legal item can be purchased freely, and owned, transported, and used—legally—without restriction."

Pretty obvious from these quotes that you can acquire non-restricted items though you get watched and tracked, with all the trouble which comes with it, wouldn't you say?

Okay, I think both of you guys are assuming I'm disagreeing with you.

I agree with you. Hopefully that solidifies that.

What I have an issue with isn't whether or not it's smart to use a fixer or buy scuba gear at a scuba shop, it has to do with a social skill being used as the cornerstone skill in finding gear. I feel like I've been very clear about this. Tracking isn't important in this discussion as it has nothing to do with the issue of how one finds something.. and again, regardless of whether it's smarter to buy gear from a store or through a fixer. Hopefully that really clears up what I'm trying to say.

Not trying to start a war at all. I feel like I'm being very specific in what I'm saying and quoting information directly from sources. The "Look, dude" part is what I'm referring to in my 'tranquilo' statement, which just means "peace, please". Just seems a little heated over a discussion over the analysis of the way some rules work. If citing "peace" is what you consider a "war", then you'll have to excuse me. I honestly was just looking for some conversation on the matter. Not to get you and Draco all heated up over someone talking rules.

And I'm not sure what you're referring to when you're telling me to look at all the quotes instead of telling us to do so?

Tracking important? Yes.

Focus of this thread? No.

Finding gear the focus and how the mechanics support that? Yes.

Flame war and secondary objective? No.

The use of Etiquette is an abstraction to represent knowing and navigating the process of calling the right people, handling them properly, and distributing information among a network of people that's unfriendly or suspicious toward requests. It's you distinguishing yourself as an honest criminal rather than a cop establishing a sting, or a competitor preparing a set-up.

A lot of Availabilities are very low for a reason. Getting a dose of Novacoke actually isn't hard -- it's 2R. A solid portion of the time that's going to roll 0 hits, and the most it can get is 2. A brain-dead idiot with Charisma 1 and Etiquette 1 is at odds to get a dose within the day. A street cretin with Charisma 2 and Etiquette (Street) 1 (+2) is virtually guaranteed to get the hook up in a few hours. Street-level weapons tend to be very low as well -- Availability 2 to 4, or so.

The existence of drug dealers on street corners or a dude selling grenades off the back of his pickup down by the old flea market is up to the GM's discretion, because that requires a certain level of world-simulation that doesn't fit comfortably into a basic ruleset. "Is an item available for immediate purchase or not" is a terrible question to ask of basic rules. Just look at D&D, where a question might be "does the local magic shop have a scroll of fireball?" to which the answer is almost invariably "fuck, I don't know, roll a die or something."

So basically, if you want to walk down to the local street corner and see if you can score a bag of Nitro, "fuck, I don't know, roll a die or something." If you actually want it, though, abstractly navigate the underworld with Etiquette.

EDIT: Another way of looking at is is this: everything is available all the time, you just have to know how to talk to the right people the right way in order to get it. Etiquette.

I guess from a very base standpoint, one doesn't simply walk up to someone and stand silently waiting for them to hand something over. So yeah, I suppose that makes sense. And I get the abstraction of the rules aspect. I do.

Charisma is all about interacting with others so it does make sense that it would be the cornerstone attribute for navigating the backroom deals & shady crooks to find what you need. Etiquette gets you from point A of "Get the frag out of here before I put a bullet through your skull" to point B "Ok...I might have or be able to acquire what you need...for the right price". Negotiation just narrows the exact price.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. My comments were still relevant to an extent though. Your stuff about scuba gear being easy to find, why should I roll? Well that doesn't apply. It's where can I find intractable scuba gear that no one knows about that is the issue and the reason for availability rating.

But back to the main thing. I feel like we've discussed why charisma, negotiation and connection are very relevant in buying black market goods. Finding them is all about who you know, how they react to you, and how you can convince them to do what you want (part with their goods, for the right price). There are two aspects to this. Finding someone who has the item you're looking for, and getting that person to actually sell it. The first part definitely involves charisma and connections, maybe even some etiquette or negotiation -- convince them you're trustworthy, have them tell you who their own contacts are. Talk to the right people (and enough of them), make a good impression, you'll eventually find a seller. Second step is more straightforward, good old negotiation between buyer and seller.

So where's the problem? What doesn't fit? What else do you think isn't covered by Cha + Nego + Connection for finding gear?

Now in terms of why higher availability is harder to find.. well it's simple: some items are harder to find. Fewer people have them or are willing to part with them. Getting to the right person for the item is hard. And so on. The test doesn't check whether the item is available as in "is it on a shelf somewhere". It's whether it can easily be made available to someone looking for it, is the right person with the right item willing to deal with you, or even willing to be contacted by you.

Your problem seems to lie also with how hard the test can be. It's really just a design decision. Bring down all avail's by 4 and allow only up to 8 avail at char gen, or more simply give 4 free successes on avail tests and you have a black market economy with goods that are easier to find.