Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
The base cost should be for a Contact that answers the phone, receives and answers mail, can be found by the king's messengers, isn't immune to communication spells, whatever. People already complain that Contacts are overpriced!
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Yes, as I've already said before,
I agree that Contacts should be reasonably contacted. However, being contacted isn't the issue here. What is the issue is that some Contacts can
provide assistance over a wider area than others, and that it's not really fair for those that cover more area to be equally priced to those that can't.
I feel that the feeling that Contacts are too expensive stems much more from people simply treating them as skill-replacements, and discounting their value for doing favours. Consider this example: a low-level CIA analyst, one who
can't reliably do things across the world, but is limited to acting more or less in Washington DC. Let's make them Skill 15 in Intelligence Analysis, frequency of appearance 9, and Somewhat Reliable (keeps the math simple). That has a base cost of 2 points. Besides rolling Intelligence Analysis on behalf of the player, I'd also allow this person to do the following favours:
- Provide entry to CIA facilities in the city, that they had clearance to access themselves.
- Give access to certain CIA tools like drones, supercomputers, etc. physically located in Washington.
- Grant access to CIA files physically stored in Washington offices.
- Provide introductions to other CIA members in Washington.
- Arrange invitations to CIA-related social or media functions in the city.
Now admittedly, several of these will fail at least one of the "Easy, Cheap, Safe" list for the Contact, so would be more difficult to get. But they'd still be possible. I think that's well-worth 2 points, even if the campaign only visits Washington every 5 sessions or something. I don't feel that someone should be able to get the same level of favors anywhere in the world for the same two points, just because they've defined their Contact as a higher-level CIA analyst.