[Major Doom]

Just wondering how is the dice pool amount determined for a Contact when PCs wish to utilize their Contact for Swag purposes (SR4A, page 2867)?  The section mentions to roll the Contact's Charisma + Negotiation, along with adding the Connection rating, but would the GM just make up the DP on the fly, or would it be based on any rule?

[Chaemera]

The contact's BP cost is equal to his or her Connection rating + Loyalty rating.

So for contacts bought at game-start, Connection is whatever the player bought it at. If it's a contact they met afterwards, it's whatever the GM decides it is to suit the story.

You can quickly jot down basic stats for them on the fly, or you can go the full mile and create each contact using the Build Point System, considering them to be Inferior or Equal NPCs.

So to answer your question, "both". Either you follow the rules and build them using BP, or you make it up as you go along, to fit the character and the story.

Me, I go for both, if I haven't bothered stating the character fully, and I need a DP for some reason, I'll pick numbers that sound appropriate to the character. A fixer will generally have high negotiation and high charisma. I do throw one wrench in the mix though, I generally ignore that bit about treating all contacts as Inferior or Equal runners.

If the Mr. Johnson or the Fixer has Connections 6, for example, odds are very, very good that they should be built with more than 400 BP. They stopped being a starting character. If it's 1 or 2 Connections, or they're some kind of street punk, yeah 400 or less sounds about right. At the end of the day, I let the story, and the character, be my guide in building them.

[Major Doom]

Well I don't see building fully-fleshed out Contacts for the PCs as feasible, since they are just used for simple things like sources of information, acquiring gear, and other NPC resource imaginable.  I was more wondering how would someone determine the DP and keep it consistent, instead of just depending on the situation, story, or character.  Either way it seems it's something the GM has to conjure up.

Thanks anyway.

[Chaemera]

I can agree that developing all Contacts as fully-built Prime Runners is, for most GM's, a non-starter.

As to determining DP and keeping it consistent, yeah, it's something the GM conjures up with when he needs it. To keep it consistent, he should write it down after he comes up with it.

Game example:

My team met a fixer who's intended as fairly influential and a lot of his connections are corporate types, I already know from his role in the game that he's got a Connections rating of 5.

So, the first time the runners wanted him to buy something for them, I thought to myself, "He knows a lot of important players and gets along with them despite them knowing that tomorrow, he might be dining with their corporate enemies, arranging a heist". From that, I knew he needed a good Charisma score, let's say 5. Negotiations is fundamental to his job, day in and day out, he's talking his way through one deal or another and keeping all his competing interests from begrudging him, sounds like a 5 or a 6, and possibly a specialty, but not in shopping.

So He's got Charisma 5, Negotiations (Corporate +2) 6, and Connections 5. That's a Dice Pool of 16 (18 if he could justifiably be trying to buy from a corporation), plus/minus social modifiers (he's well known, so he probably has a Street Cred bonus in there, too. Another minor detail decided by the GM) when he goes shopping. That DP won't change unless there is a story reason why he became more/less influential, charismatic, or well known.

[raggedhalo]

Plus between SR4A, Contacts & Adventures (from the GM Screen) and the Runner's Companion, there are loads of profiles (including stats) for contacts.