[FloobyBadoop]

The connection rating covers a lot of ground, but it can't factor for everything.

Next run, the runners are meeting with a Johnson. He runs a chain of very trendy boutique clothing stores in Europe, and has recently been bought out by a holding company owned by Saeder-Krupp. He's been sent to North America to set up the chain in Seattle and Manhattan to test the waters.

The players have a chance to earn him as a contact, if they play their cards right. He'd start as at loyalty 1, but what would his connection rating be? 6? 7? 8? 11? He could fit the criteria of any of these categories, since all the connection descriptions are vague enough that he could be a "mid-level executive in an AAA megacorp" or "head of a national corporation."

Another issue I'm having is appropriate connection ratings for street-level contacts. I've had players react completely differently to the same street-level contact: from balking at earning said pawn-shop-fence that was "only" connection rating 3, and others who were surprised they'd met such a "well-connected street fence."

Again, the problem seems to be the damn connection rating table. Catalyst seems to have realized that 6 was not enough ratings last game, but they didn't fix the problem of vague descriptions.

What do, GMs?

[Noble Drake]

Oddly enough, the way that I do it is simply that I don't find the connection rating table to be very vague at all.

Your example contact will help me illustrate how I pick out the connect rating - I start at the highest rating and see if it fits, and then step down the table until I either hit a match, or think "No, that's obviously too low," and set connection to what I read before having that thought.

For your boutique owner
Connection 11 - The guy doesn't sound like he has world-wide connections or any serious amount of social influence... I mean, he might sell clothes to a few important people from different countries, but that doesn't mean he has particularly close relationships with them. Also, he's not even a direct employee of a AAA corp, so that doesn't apply.

Connection 8 - just the littlest bit too high for this fellow because he wouldn't have the same influence as a state government official

Connection 7 - he knows a lot of people throughout Europe, might have made a few notable friends in the area - so this is where I would set his connection... though I would only have that rating apply if what he was attempting to use it for was within his "domain" of Europe... in Seattle, for example, I would drop his connection rating to 3 because he's got nothing going for him locally beyond having "friends" at Saeder-Krupp.

[Crunch]

I'd agree, I don't find the chart to be very vague. I usually just think about the NPC and figure out where they stand. The only exception to this is Fixers who can be almost anywhere on the chart depending on how good they are.

[FloobyBadoop]

Hmm, I'll try that method from now on. Thank you, both.