View source for Contacts

[[Category:House Rule]]{{Needs Improvement}}__TOC__
The Matrix is full of information, but the things shadowrunners need to know are not the kinds of things people put up on their personal or corporate websites. Word of available jobs, news about what street lowlifes and organized crime figures have been up to, dirt about who’s just snuck into town and who may be looking to make a quick getaway—this is stuff you’re not going to find through a quick data search.

To get this information, you need contacts. Contacts come in a lot of forms. They may be the arms dealer who
has a knack for coming up with armor-piercing bullets right when you need them. Or the underground journalist who is willing to share what she knows if you give her some inside info about upcoming juicy stories. Or the old standby, the bartender with the watchful eye and the listening ear. Shadowrunners have a roster of personal contacts that they can turn to in order to help them find jobs and provide useful information about what’s going on in the world.
==Contact Ratings==
While some contacts may be fully stat'd out characters like any other, how they interact with the shadow community at large is encapsulated in four special attributes.
===Connection===
This rating reflects the contact's level of influence &mdash; the higher the rating, the more juice that the contact has. More specifically, it's the amount of that influence the contact is willing to apply in the character's favor. Just because Joe Runner is {{srw|Damien Knight}}'s third cousin twice removed, that doesn't mean Mr. Macrotechnology will put the full weight of Ares behind him. He might let Joe borrow a megayacht for the weekend, though.

While not a requirement, a good rule of thumb is that a contact's Connection should not be more than it's Loyalty+6.
{{Table:Contact Connection}}
===Loyalty===
Loyalty is an indicator of how much the character and the contact trust each other. Mechanically, it often serves as die bonus in negotiations or as a modifier or Threshold (as appropriate) when someone else tries to put the squeeze on a contact about the runners.
{{Table:Contact Loyalty}}
===Expertise===
Expertise defines how good a contact is at whatever they do. It's the primary source of dice in any rolls the contact might make.

===Size===
Sometimes a contact represents an organization rather than a single person. These contacts have Size greater than 0. 

This comes with a few benefits and a few drawbacks.
* Every point of Size grants the contact an additional Type &mdash; for instance, a Size 1 group contact could be both a Gear contact and a Service contact or it could offer multiple Services.
* Add Size to the contact's effective Expertise; many hands makes for light work.
* Subtract Size from the contacts Loyalty; anything more than one person knows just isn't a secret.

==Contact Types==
===Fixer===
Every working member of the Seattle shadow community &mdash; a.k.a shadowrunner &mdash; has a fixer. Fixers are the people who connect 'runners with Johnsons.
===Gear===
Gear contacts have the things you need, or know where to get them. Each specializes in a particular type of gear, though well connected gear contacts may have a secondary specialization.
* Armor & Clothing
* Critters
* Drugs & Toxins
* Electronics
* Implants
* SINs & Licenses
* Talismonger
* Vehicles & Drones
* Weapons & Ammo
===Legwork===
Legwork contacts don't ''have'' things, but instead ''know'' things and can be paid to share that knowledge.
===Service===
Service contacts are the people you go to when you need something done, generally anything short of bleeding for you.