So the GM of my game was wondering (as he doesn't have an account on here) if anyone had in-house rules on 'upgrading contacts'. Like improving their connection/loyalty.

for increasing loyalty, I allow players to spend their downtime doing something to build up the loyalty with the contact, (depending on the contact this can take many forms)

For increasing Connection, this would take a run IMO, the connection of a contact is more or less their place in the world, the higher the connection, the more clout they have in their world, so a low connection contact might be only a slum bartender, or a high connection might be the daughter of the CEO of an AA corporation. (they can hear quite a bit). So doing a run to help the contact he better in their area might help.

For upgrading a contact's loyalty, there are two ways.

1: Spend Karma equal to 2x the build-point value of the difference between the ratings during downtime. This represents you going the extra mile to build the contact's trust, volunteering for low-danger jobs on the side, running errands, doing legwork contracted through the contact for free, helping out with homework (if the character happens to be a school-aged person going to school,) arranging for them to get things they find difficult to acquire (sex if they happen to be a teenager again, or guns if they're a ganger, etcetera,) going out drinking or bowling or whatever with them, etcetera. Basically, putting yourself in their sphere of influence and being a real bro, a chum, a pal. Giving them warm feels as regards you.

2: Do really crazy, OTT, heroic things on their behalf. This can be complicated and part of a run; for instance, when I was running a game, one of the group's contacts was an Ancients Lieutenant who had a relationship with an ork - that chinese ork gun-bunny from the core book, in fact - go sour, and she wanted the group to get her leverage over said ork so the girl could no longer blackmail her with trid of their relationships. Explaining that you've been doing the rumpy-pumpy with an ork can be pretty hard when you're an Ancients LT, after all. You probably won't get thrown out, but you will definitely get hazed and possibly demoted. In addition to what she arranged slid to the players in terms of goods for doing that, everyone on the team, even the trogs, got her loyalty to them set to 3, or raised by 1 if it was already 3 or more. Not only did they pull her ass out of the fire, they did so by managing to convince said ork (who got angry when someone showed her trid of the elf denigrating orks and trogs,) that the elf only said the hateful things she did so as to stay in good graces with her go-gang, and she'd probably apologize if the gun-bunny weren't blackmailing her.

For upgrading a contact's Connection, on the other hand, you're going to have to actually improve said Contact's lot in life. This can be simple if the contact has Connection 1, the kind of thing you could do in downtime with karma, like taking the contact out, introducing them to new people, maybe putting the boots to someone standing in their way of getting a bottom-rung to just-above-bottom-rung promotion, etcetera. Improving them from 2 to 3 is gonna be hard, and take at least a single Shadowrun, to put their name in the ears of more folks. Improving it from 3 to 4, on the other hand, is gonna be really hard, and would probably take a story arc. Getting it from 4 to 5 is pretty much gonna be impossible, unless you're angling to get them elected Senator or something.

Pretty much what Shadowdragon said, though for lower loyalty contacts (1-3) I generally allow my players to spend cash and time to upgrade their loyalty. Examples would be our rigger playing MMOs with his hacker contact nightly and our medic providing medical supplies to a ganger's family he's trying to get out of the barrens. That sort of stuff.

But I WOULD make them work very hard for it to raise loyalty above 3 in any circumstance regardless of how much karma they're bribing me with.

In my case I run it the way that you can only get to improve contacts by spending time and effort on it. You don't need karma, but you do need to make an effort to do it. Loyalty you can build up over time, but Connection is generally out of your ability to influence, except in very specific circumstances where the GM is specifically setting up situations that allow the player to do so. Also, exactly what you have to do, in order to improve Loyalty or Connection, depends very much on which level we are talking about.

Oh and sleeping with a Contact to improve the loyalty thing? Not recommended for more than one Contact, they tend to find out and then you sometimes end up with Enemy or Hunted.

I try to tell you, but you never listen... *shakes head*

That's an outdated, outmoded, monogamous way of looking at things, and is not universally correct. However, you should first ascertain whether the contact(s) in question subscribe to that outdated, outmoded way of thinking before engaging in horizontal loyalty building.

You REALLY do not what to be cast as a Butterfly in the Phillipines... Just saying...

I allow my players to add pretty much anyone they meet that they interact with in any meaningful way, that they don't piss off, as a Loyalty 1 contact. So if they spend a lot of time talking with a dealer, getting dirt on the area and pay him for the info, he's loyalty 1. Loyalty 1 is just Biz after all.

If the person/group shows up in three or more sessions (again in a meaningful way), the contact goes up to a loyalty 2. That's as high as it goes without some serious effort on someones part.

Those connections are karma free and just happen.

Loyalty 3 or higher requires that the something pretty beneficial or important has gone the way of that contact as a part of the actions of the player or a lot of time spent with the contact. It's the sort of thing that would be a reward for some game time (so karma isn't spent, but usually I'll give less karma after an adventure in which the loyalty of an ally was increased) spent specifically doing something centered around a contact. Using a contact for training on a regular basis or spending downtime with a contact also may improve the loyalty, but there's no formal system for this.

I'll third (or fourth) SD's comments about improving a contact's connections being the sort of thing that may require an actual run to accomplish. It's not something we do a lot, but its fairly easy to add a high connection contact in our games so it's usually easier to just try to improve a relationship with someone highly connected then to try to get your wageslave buddy promoted to executive.

I would consider someone wanting to spend karma or money to buy/improve a contact, but generally my players are more interested in roleplaying those interactions so no one's ever asked.

thorya: Thing is, I'm good with both.

I love to roleplay, I really do. So if contact's loyalty goes up through roleplaying efforts, yay. But I'm also a fan of spending Karma to get my way, especially if it's downtime and the GM doesn't want to RP through you taking your contact friend out clubbing, out bowling, out playing Miracle Shooter using your wired reflexes and smartgun link to cripple enemies so they can killsteal the points, and out having fantastic sex. I mean, I'm good with all of that if the DM wants to, but it's often just easy to say "yeah, you spend two weeks of your downtime being a real chummer to your contact, she's now Loyalty 4. Also you get laid a lot."

If it wasn't clear, the roleplaying is not because I force them to. Like I said, I would consider karma/money for improved contacts, though I'm not sure what the rates would be, but I've literally never had a player ask.

I'm not quite following the math here... Do you mean like to raise it from, let's say, 2 to 3? Because wouldn't that just mean the difference is 1 and you spend 2 karma no matter what?

You could be going straight from, say, Loyalty 1 to Loyalty 4, in which case the difference would be 6 Karma.

You should never be allowed to raise such things by more than a single point at a time... like skills.

I dunno TJ there should be some exceptions. For instance, saving a 1 Loyalty contact from an Ares hit Squad should earn more than 1, if a dude doesn;t like you at least a decent amount after pulling your ass from a fire like that...theres something wrong.

If being granted, I would agree... I being bought, I would disagree...
At our table, once play starts, All contacts are incremented in Loyalty based upon roleplay and gm decision. We do not purchase upgrades to contacts. Contacts come and go all the time. So, I may be a bit biased.

agreed, I tend not to use Karma, I will allow a player to give me a brief overview of the general things he plans to do to increase loyalty, if it meshes with the contact, I will offer an increase, if it is extended (like a month worth of downtime) I will grant 2 points if the majority of that downtime is spent working with the contact.