[iamfanboy]

So I'm making a list of contacts for players to choose from (and maybe inspire them to make their own), and trying to decide between Connection 1 and 2 for shadowrunners on the list. On the one hand, 1 makes sense, because they don't have any influence to speak of; on the other hand, they ARE runners, and if a team is in deep hiring a couple of NPC mercs might even the balance - making them a bit more than just 'useful for nothing but Knowledge skills'.

Any advice?

[Michael Chandra]

Well let's look at most runners. They got a few contacts, of which likely 1 or 2 with decent Loyalty (3~4). So I'd put them on 2 or 3. If you got an experienced social character who has done stuff after chargen, they're definitely a 4.

[Poindexter]

Depends on the runner. I'd think a skilled face or decker would have a bit higher influence than an equally skilled mage or street sam, but even then it depends on the mage or sam, y'know?

Some runners? yeah, they get 1's. But i dont see any reason why some shouldn't have 3's, 4's, and maybe even a 6 or an 8 in there somewhere.

[iamfanboy]

Well, as I'm doing a street-level campaign which will start in southern Seattle/western Auburn/northern Tacoma, I'm gearing my contact list towards that, and most of their fellow shadowrunners would be on that level. So, 2 for the most part, with maybe a couple of higher-tier runners being 3's.

It doesn't help my state of mind in planning contacts that the three PCs already made all dumpstatted Charisma - I mean, not much choice in the matter, two are magicians and one's a rigger, but still, I think once they see the contact list they'll want to redirect some of their Karma to them.

There's a fixer for each area, a list of cops/yakuza/Mafia from high-rank to street monster, and a smattering of other essential shadow contacts - many of which are from precon adventures. As I'm running my game in the 2055-era and am planning to bring it all the way to post Dunkelzahn's death (though, as they know of it already, I may have them on a run where they think they can prevent his death, buuuut...)


*looks at time* ....Iiiiii should not have stayed up this late reading System Crash and catching up on the post-Renraku Arcology stuff. Doesn't help that for some reason my archive is missing Brainscan.

[Michael Chandra]

Street Level would be 1s and 2s yes.

[Shaidar]

Don't forget your Contacts tailored for Black Market Pipelines (Auto Shop Manager, Security Corp Procurement Coordinator, UCAS Military Procurement Coordinator, Deck Meister, Talismonger).

[iamfanboy]

Well, as I'm doing an NPC decker (no one in the group wants to play one, which makes me breathe a sigh of relief, as I'm doing this in 2055), the deckmeister shouldn't be necessary.

Here, if you wanna take a look, maybe you'll spot something I missed. All it is for now is the name, speciality of the contact, and a brief description. For my money, players don't NEED to know all of their contact's stats, and I'm a GM who thinks that statting out a character who doesn't need it is a waste of time. The shadowrunners will probably get stats, as they may be hired by the PCs, but other than that, they get average dice pools in what they're good at (10-12 limit 5), and below in what they're bad at (6-8 limit 4).