Just thinking about the fact tht in my games, the players tend to stick to the same contacts and the same dens (Matchsticks) when they have a choice. Pulling them out of their routine is like pulling teeth.

Most often when they have a problem, they go to their friendly neighborhood fixer first.

is this ever a problem for you? What contacts and/or places do you and your players stend to stick to?

Such things happen, if someone knows what they are doing and the charges are fine, you'll keep going back to them. You go to the same Dentist every time (or whatever) don't you?
If their fixer is trustworthy and can get them most everything they need, why look somewhere else?
Of course, as the fixer is a middleman, stuff gotten through him should really cost more than stuff gotten 'closer to the source', but SR rules don't really reflec such things. Buying a predator from a fixer vs the buying one from the guy who made is 'fall off the truck' in the first place... they both cost the same, so why bother with the truck guy?

I'm running two games at the moment. One has a fixer that's just damn good, and can pretty much get them what they want, when they want it. They had to pay 100,000 just to get his number. But he charges them the street index and them some.

In the other game, they've got a fixer that's a real sleaze. One player literally suspects him of having her grandmother killed (she's a voudoon, it's '61). But they keep going back to him.

They just can't get away from the fixers, and I'd rather use some other NPC's. I'm not looking for "run a game where they need to do such and such."Don;t have any deckers, so a deckmeisters out. There's a very competent mage which covers the healing and then some.They were visiting their mechanic a lot until he put on all the upgrades they wanted.

Guess I'm just looking for some more ideas to vary their interaction with the world. New faces, new places.

In our games we have our favorite fixers and contacts, but every now and there our GM makes it really hare to get hole of them or we get sent somewhere where we have no contacts, this helps us develop new contacts!

when meeting a Jhonson there is always a new place to go to!

I would just send them somewhere where they can't 'get hold' of there normal contacts!

Good luck it is hard to do!


torz x

Well at least it's not just me.

Any other favorite contacts beyond the fixer?

The players in my game have a Mr. Johnson known as Kurasawa. He always takes good care of them and I swear they'd bend over backwards for him.

Another one that gets used a lot is a decker named Wasteland. They contact him for all their decker needs. One time, they needed him to break into a system and the players nearly crapped themselves when he said the system was too hot for him. Usually they contact him for fairly low-level stuff (ooc: he uses a Hyperdeck-6), so this was the first heavy system they needed him for. The funny thing was, my players just wouldn't believe that he couldn't do it, offering him more money, favors, etc... They just couldn't accept that Wasteland wasn't 'invincible'.

We don't use a lot of fixers since between the whole team there is a specialized contact for just about anything. Fixers only get used if one of them can't get ahold of what they need (In my game, fixers charge a little more since many are "middlemen").


The most used location is definately the Crime Mall. (...or Ivan's house, for barbeques)
Distant second is a tie between Club Penumbra and Dante's Inferno.

In our campaign we're using two contacts (besides the fixer...): a employee of the city government and a atlantic security cop, who's leutenant and very helpful.

We almost always use the same fixer, for most every problem/requirement, other than magic.

..Mind you, we're playing a slightly different game, in which he's our boss, so that should be expected.

Magically? Magically is a whole new ballgame. Anyone who's proven helpful in the past is kept in contact with and used -- the older ones more than the more recent, although the recent are used as well. Sometimes. I think we're up to around 10 magical contacts? 7 outside the company, another 3-5 'company mages' if memory serves. Don't usually use the company ones, our contacts tend to be pretty good -other than the Loki shaman, who, during a major power blackout, drove around a hideous jackrabbit with the most awful colour scheme you can imagine, and a bunch of bumper stickers with 'I have power and you don't'.

When the riggers vehicles get damaged he still needs a mechanic, even the best mage has difficulty with high cyber characters. (I tried to cast a healing spell with 15 dice and failed. Target 11 for this guy.) Even if the mage can put his flesh together what about cyber ware stress, regular maintenance and upgrades.

I would just start going IC as the fixer “I cant do that for you, I know somebody that can and ill set you up for a fee.”

Whatever I need my fixer is the 2nd person I try to get it from most of the time. There always more expensive, and if you ignore the others they forget you exist.

As to locations we usually use a temporary safe house or random café in the aria we are working, Js choose sites for meets.

Edward

IMO if the runner keep going back to the same 1 fixer contact, it's your fault, not theirs. If the fixer can get them anything, why go anywhere else?? It's up to you to have the fixer say "Guns? I don't dirty my hands with guns. Go see someone else" or "Aztechnology? Not really up my alley." Alternatively, you can make the fixer more restricted in his availabilities, especially if the runners are acting like schoolgirls with a crush on him and call him every damn day. "I'm sorry, Mr. Roberts is unavailable at the moment. *click*"

It's pretty simple. Limit the usefulness of a contact, and that'll force the characters to find new ones to compensate.

If all else fails, the fixer can die or disapear. Hey, they have enemies too.

Or just up the price significantly for anything outside his area of expertise, and hint to them that "they just remembered" another contact of theirs might be able to score it for less. A general-purpose Fixer can score them stuff, sure...but he might just be calling the same weapons-dealer they could call, for all they know, and adding another middleman mark-up in the process, y'know?

Start arbitrarily adding a sort of "non specialist street index", hint to them why it's happening and how they can get around it, and it'll clear up in no time. It'll get them calling their Fixer for work, still, but they'll be speed-dialling their specialized contacts -- weapons dealers, hardware/electronics gurus, what-have-you -- just to keep things from cutting too sharply into their profit margin.

Do your players even have other contacts?

Personally, I feel that contacts are a two way street and above level 1 requires something of a relationship to exist besides simply getting information or gear. Occasionally, I will have contacts call my players out of the blue asking them for information or, if its a level 2 or 3 contact, wanting to get together for normal friend stuff. After all a level 2 contact is supposed to be a buddy and a level 3 is a friend for life. Those are people you are going to do other non-work related things with. It's kind of funny when a runner gets a call in the middle of a fire fight from a friend wanting to know if their coming over to watch tomorrow's Urban Brawl game.

Also, getting stuff from a fixer should pretty much always cost more than regular street index. I could see having a few things either at or just above street index if the fixer specializes in them. But the opposite is also true, if it's something no where close to what the fixer normally deals in, the price is much higher than street index.

My understanding of going to a Fixer for gear is unless they specialize in that particular type of item, they send you to someone who does, and charge you a percentage of the usual cost of said item.

Got a fixer who deals in jobs, not guns and need a new Predator. Fine, but it'll cost you 65 Nuyen for the number and bang, you got yourself a new potential contact.

I understand that the fixer is able to get you in contact with someone able to solve your problem. That's the way we play it up in our campaigns. The fixer in our current game can't do or organize everything imagienable, but knows a lot of folk who can help in a specific task. So he gives their numbers - for a little fee.

Generally I have my fixers know people who know what they want. And the fixers do cost more for their stuff (they have the negotation skill the gunsmith doesn't). I do use specialization rules, so the gunbunny's fixer is no good at getting magical stuff. All in all, that generally helps diversify things a bit. If the PCs don't mind waiting longer and paying more, I don't mind their getting every last thing through a fixer.

My players tend to frequent electronics shops and they call up people more local to where ever they may be going (right now their best friend is a travel agent in Colorado). They aren't nearly as chummy with docwagon as they should be, but we'll fix that. And, of course, any contact who really has some inside knowledge on the run at hand (the programmer, the ex-corp man, or whoever) is their favorite for that job.

Lone Star Detectives/Corp Sec/etc... come around looking for them. The Contacts get skittish and will meet the Runners somewhere else.

The Fixer vanished and the Runners do not know anybody else?

The Fixer is killed and the Runners are blamed and must dodge the Fixers Friends and clear there names.

If the Runners always use the same places you could always blow them up or burn them down. The Antagonists could learn where the the PC's hang out and lay in ambush.

Contacts may not be available for whatever reason.

The information they provide could be wrong, misinformation or lead the Runners into a trap, but the contact doen't know that.

Just a few things I could think of on short notice. More later...

"In the Shadows Paranoia is a survival trait"


QM

As a matter of fact, I have a simmilar problem. And yes, it is due to me making the fixer too good.

You might think about the solution I'm going to use. Within the next run or two, the fixer is going to get kidnapped. After that, he'll be taking a nice long break.

I'm evil.

Well. Most players have different contacts, as all characters have been made independently.

One we all ofte use is Speedy, our little nerd for all our decker needs.

Also, we have a healer (retired player character) who often covers our mages' healing needs (and helps the cybered characters as well when they need to be healed in a hurry).

Other than that, every character has their own fixer, specific character contacts (mechanic, talismonger, shadow clinic), and our Johnsons change frequently too. We have had some nice ones we have worked with repeatedly, but most were one-shots, really.

As long as it works for them, they are comfortable. My main character's most used contacts are a Lone Star detective(police data), an entertainment reporter(gossip on the high line),a UDub professor of classics(higher ed.) and a Mob enforcer (movement in the underworld). We have some clubs or neighborshoods we favor, it lets the GM get htewm more developed, My character knows her neighbors, the kids which hang at the stuff shack and a couple of local store owners. These don't have contacts as normal but they add color to the game. Sure I can go other places. but when I have a question, it's the most used contacts i call first.