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[6e] Contact Loyalty Ratings

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ammulder:
One of our players didn't want to look at contacts as transactional (what item can they acquire for you) but based more on the relationship.  We came up with this scale for what the various Loyalty Ratings translate to.  We took into consideration the starting Charisma range (the limit of starting Contact loyalty), which on paper means you could start with contacts with Loyalty up to 9.  There didn't seem to be any other stated range for contact ratings, though if there's gear up to Availability 10 then in theory at least the Connection rating should go up to 11.  Anyway, any thoughts or comments appreciated!


* You've done business before.  They trust you to hold up your end of the bargain.
* They like or value you and may do you a minor favor
* They are either your friend, or value you similarly.  They will usually help you out.
* They are a good friend, or truly value the relationship with you.  They will do you a significant favor but not risk their livelihood.
* They are a best friend, or depend on the relationship with you.  They will drop everything to help.
* Like a brother/sister.  Will risk their own livelihood to help you.
* Not only that, but they truly expect nothing in return.
* Owes you a life debt.  Will risk anything to help you, including their own life.
* A soul mate, parent, lifelong mentor, or the like.  Would never even consider betraying you, and would risk their life to protect you, even behind the scenes/from threats you're unaware of.
On a side note, we also have a PC with a "group as a contact" -- this is a case where there's always someone who will take a call or give the PC a couch to crash on, but it's a different person each time, there's no lasting relationship, and they won't do any specialized favors -- so they're all pretty interchangeable (think a commune, gang, fan club, groupies, whatever).  Rather than have a bundle of 1/1 contacts eating up a bunch of the starting contact budget for minimal actual benefit, we went with this group idea.  The mechanics seem similar enough to a single connection 1 / loyalty 3 contact.

Michael Chandra:
So Connection and Loyalty can go up to 12 (p51). Now in SR5, Loyalty went from 1 to 6, and we have a table for that. So I'd just double it myself and add some finer details for the individual levels.  (Of course back then you could actually start with maxed Loyalty, but it meant only Connection 1, because C+L were capped at 7.)

The six grades in SR5 were "Just Biz", "Regular", "Acquaintance", "Buddy", "Got Your Back", "Friend for Life". The detailed descriptions translated to your scale would be roughly 'worse than your 1', '1', '2', '3~4', '5~6', '7~9'.

--- Quote ---RATING DESCRIPTION
1 Just Biz. The relationship is purely mercenary, based solely on economics. The people involved may not even like each other, and they won’t offer any sort of preferential treatment.

2 Regular. The relationship is still all business, but the parties treat each other with a modicum of mutual respect.

3 Acquaintance. The people in the relationship are friendly, but calling them actual friends might be stretching it. The contact is willing to be inconvenienced in small ways for the character but won’t take a fall for him.

4 Buddy. There’s actual friendship here, or at least solid mutual respect. The contact will go out of his way for the character if needed.

5 Got Your Back. The parties know and trust each other, and have for some time. The contact will back the character even in risky situations.

6 Friend for Life. The contact and character will go to the wall for each other, if that’s what it takes
--- End quote ---
So with that said, I'd say you're a bit optimistic at the low scale, and your upper ranges are a bit 'eh?' to me, because they go crazy far.

As for group-contacts, the extended books in SR5 actually had those. Normally those were limited to Loyalty 1 so I'd cap them at 2 in SR6 (1 on your scale), and such group contacts come with obligations from the player. Only Made Man gave you Loyalty 3 (roughly a 4 on your scale), due to actually being part of the mob.

So with a group as contact, I agree with SR5's 'a large group cannot go past Loyalty 1 normally' myself: To them, you're just a faceless customer, like you said, no lasting relationship. Instead I'd raise their Connection rating, to indicate that the network has more reach than an individual. And of course there's responsibilities: If you can often couch-surf, sooner or later you also have to host someone yourself. Could even be a nice way to get pulled into a run, your guest gets chased and you get caught in the middle!

ammulder:
Cripes, you can tell I completely missed the section on pp. 50-51.  I only saw the bit in character creation, and it was super-limited!  So thank you for that.  Also, I pretty much skipped 5th edition.  :)  So this is good, we will rejigger a bit.

The only thing that's a bit weird to me is that most PCs outside of Face/Shaman seem to start with a Charisma of 2... meaning if we double these rankings they're unable to start with contacts beyond "purely mercenary".  On the one hand, maybe them's the breaks for having a dump stat?  On the other hand, that also means average humans aren't even allowed backstory relationships involving mutual respect?  Huh.  I might keep 1 and 2, double the rest, and add a couple on top?

Stainless Steel Devil Rat:
Of course, in 6e an attribute of 2 isn't supposed to be considered a dump stat.  So if you DO dump Charisma, it's necessarily a 1 because you can't have a 0!

Partly for this reason (but not entirely, I still did this in 5e) I like to alter the understanding of what Loyalty represents slightly.  Rather than being a measure of how much the NPC likes/loves/will defend you, it's a measure of "How Illegal" will the NPC be willing to get with you.

If you're Charisma 1 or 2, are barred from coming out of chargen with a spouse or other very loyal friend?  Of course that's not what the Loyalty ceiling means.  But then again, spouses (and other relatives, college roomates, playground playmates, etc) aren't typically the kinds of contacts a shadowrunner has, now are they?  Presumably, if you're happily married at any rate, your spouse should be a "Friend for Life".  But does that mean your spouse will help you dispose of a corpse?  And then keep quiet about it rather than calling the cops first chance they get? That may be a realistic activity for a career criminal, but it's not a realistic activity for your typical married couples :D

I've never actually put words to a chart before, so here's a crack at translating it to how *I* personally grok Loyalty ratings as "willingness to indulge in criminal or risky behavior for your benefit:

"Just Biz" = "I won't tell on you, if what I find out about you isn't TOO bad"
"Regular" = "I'll bend the rules for you if I'm reasonably sure I won't get caught"
"Acquantaince" = "I'll do it, if you make it worth my while."
"Buddy" = "I'll help you bury that body, but you owe me one!"
"Got your Back" = "You had me at 'Get in, no time to explain'!"
"Friend for Life" = "The duo that slays together, stays together!"

Beta:

--- Quote from: Stainless Steel Devil Rat on ---
Partly for this reason (but not entirely, I still did this in 5e) I like to alter the understanding of what Loyalty represents slightly.  Rather than being a measure of how much the NPC likes/loves/will defend you, it's a measure of "How Illegal" will the NPC be willing to get with you.


--- End quote ---

Thank you!  I'd been feeling a need for a different interpretation of loyalty, especially in 6e, and this does the job :)    You could have someone who will always be your friend, but will (almost) never dip a toe on the shadowy side of things, which makes for some great story.

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