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Old 02-01-2017, 08:10 AM   #41
sir_pudding
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

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Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
In most games I've run, CIA Analyst isn't even an option for a Contact.

Realign your assumptions.
If the equivalent isn't an option, then Contact probably isn't worth it in your game.
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Old 02-01-2017, 09:01 AM   #42
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Most games where both are an option.Or their equivalents.
This is one of those things where... while having both would be an option, one will always be inferior to the other due to genre conventions.

In the "street level" game having the Homeless Contact is better because everything you need to know is street level. Having the "multinational information access" Contact becomes invaluable when those specific moments come up where such access is useful, but it's very niche and infrequent.

In a more "globe hopping" or "broad spectrum" game, the MultiNat Info Broker is far more valuable than the Street Contact. Until you need a street corner watched in a hurry. Again, niche, infrequent, but very useful in those specific moments.
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Old 02-01-2017, 09:08 AM   #43
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

In the street level game having the head of the five families as a Contact is better than the bum, and that is still true in the globe-hopping game; which is why the bum has lower effective skill. Additionally, like I said if the bum can't be contacted remotely, that should be a limitation.

The head of the five families can have a street corner watched for you.
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Old 02-01-2017, 09:59 AM   #44
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
The head of the five families can have a street corner watched for you.
A better comparison would be "Head of the Five Families" and "Station Chief of the CIA of XXXistan". Thanks for bringing it up!

Both have strong influence in their areas, one is local, one is global. Both fit well into respective genres and are less useful outside of the genres.
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Old 02-01-2017, 10:14 AM   #45
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

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Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
A better comparison would be "Head of the Five Families" and "Station Chief of the CIA of XXXistan". Thanks for bringing it up!

Both have strong influence in their areas, one is local, one is global. Both fit well into respective genres and are less useful outside of the genres.
I still really don't see how this whole locality thing is relevant. If you are in Hong Kong, Don Gambino can still be useful if you call New York. He could still provide information about questions you have, "That Johnny Chen guy you were talking about is a major Triad executioner, he hit Vince Molari back in '97", he can use his influence, "I pulled some markers and got you invited to the Deputy Chief Executive's daughter's wedding, you can thank me later", or even his wealth "The hotel room is on me, so fugetaboutit."

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Old 02-01-2017, 10:43 AM   #46
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

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Originally Posted by evileeyore View Post
A better comparison would be "Head of the Five Families" and "Station Chief of the CIA of XXXistan". Thanks for bringing it up!

Both have strong influence in their areas, one is local, one is global. Both fit well into respective genres and are less useful outside of the genres.
A station chief is almost equiv to a mob boss. He depends on a network of local contacts and enforcers who will usually be illegal or at least looked at askance by the law. His contact at the capital is likely not to be as important as his local one's. They do come into play in some situations; if for instance the PC wants an emergency evac the station chief .
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Old 02-01-2017, 10:45 AM   #47
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
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.
Contacts can easily reach 10 or 20 points at fairly modest skill and reliability levels, and if you push all the dials to the right, can hit 48 pts, 60 pts with supernatural abilities, or 240/300 pts if we look at Contact Groups. But in the end, a Contact can only provide some information which may enable the party to continue on their quest, but never enough that it will circumvent the GM's plot; or a minor-ish favour- which also shouldn't circumvent having the PCs engage in an interesting side-adventure.

So, the feeling that Contacts are too expensive comes from comparing them to:

1) Just buying the skill
Favours make Contacts better than having the skill personally, but getting the occasional smallish favour doesn't usually justify the point-sink. And I'm afraid that houseruling the Contact's Effective Skill into a Bang skill still doesn't make up for the fact that it's only accessible once a day, rather than being 'on-tap.'

2) Access to secret files, special equipment, etc
Buying the Contact needs to be more point efficient than just buying the necessary Rank or Security Clearance personally, but this may not always be the case. As we saw in the recent "my friend lets me look in his occult library" thread, I can't see such access being worth much more than a Perk (Friend/Perk-level Claim to Hospitality) a lot of the time. Add to this other "access" abilities, that could gain the same information by other channels, such as Wealth (for bribes or permission) or Charisma.

3) Allies & Patrons
Investing the same number of points into an Ally or Patron will usually seem like a better deal, especially for the higher level Contacts. An Ally or Patron's ability will increase proportionately with their point cost, but a Contact only gets better and better at providing you with the same useful-but-not-plot-breaking insight or favour.

4) Other information abilities- such as Precog, Psychometry, Oracle, Clairvoyance, Mind Reading, etc., but not Racial Memory- that's way overpriced too. (Ignoring that these are only available in certain settings as this is a generic GURPS discussion)
Especially looking at higher point cost Contacts, I'm pretty sure I'd rather sink a spare bunch of points into one of these direct knowledge abilities than a social-based Contact that I can only call on once per day.


To sum up, I think the issue with the pricing of the Contact is essentially it's limited from the beginning about what it can give you- some information or a smallish favour- and I can't see that ever being worth dropping more than 10 or 20 points on.

ETA & BTW: I've been noodling about a Unified Knowledge Ability Mechanic that would possibly spit out fair and consistent values for all of the above ways of getting some information for the PC, and where Contacts would fit in the scheme, but this isn't the right thread for it.
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Last edited by Daigoro; 02-01-2017 at 10:50 AM.
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Old 02-01-2017, 11:29 AM   #48
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

Given that "general" is a canonical example of a Contact, I don't see how "CIA analyst" wouldn't be appropriate.

Looking over the list of Contacts, it does seem like the majority of them are probably useful outside a single region, so I guess using that as the basic pricing assumption makes sense. If that's the case, there's a couple things that I'd suggest - first, there really should be an option for a Contact who has decent skill level, but no more than regional scope. I'd propose a -50% limitation, "Limited Scope", to handle that. So you could have a fence contact who was very good within their home city, but not really effective outside it.

If you don't want the Contact to have limited scope, it's reasonable to assume that a Contact whose description wouldn't really be able to provide global favours instead represents multiple different people in different areas. So your CIA analyst Contact is one person who can provide favours and information in many places, whereas your fence Contact is actually a different fence in every city, each of whom can provide favours in their local area.
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Old 02-01-2017, 11:49 AM   #49
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

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Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen View Post
Looking over the list of Contacts, it does seem like the majority of them are probably useful outside a single region...
In some previous Contacts thread, it was determined that the "one particular town" limit only applied to the "underworld, merchants, upper class, etc" clause of that sentence in Contact Groups, meaning corporations and military units could span as large a region as necessary.
(David Johnston 2 asserts it here, but I can't find a Krommier quote.)
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Old 02-01-2017, 12:48 PM   #50
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts

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Originally Posted by Daigoro View Post
Contacts can easily reach 10 or 20 points at fairly modest skill and reliability levels, and if you push all the dials to the right, can hit 48 pts, 60 pts with supernatural abilities, or 240/300 pts if we look at Contact Groups. But in the end, a Contact can only provide some information which may enable the party to continue on their quest, but never enough that it will circumvent the GM's plot; or a minor-ish favour- which also shouldn't circumvent having the PCs engage in an interesting side-adventure.
I think the restrictions on what sort of info or favours a Contact can provide should be taken in light of the point cost. If you've shelled out 60 points for a Contact, the GM should be taking a very broad view of what constitutes a "minor favour" and a narrow one for "information that circumvents the plot". Advantages should be worth the points you pay for them. If the GM is not willing to have someone who's paid 60 points for a Contact get a lot of use out of them, they should just forbid it, not nerf it into uselessness, IMO.

So, let's look at an example of a 60-point Contact, and I'll suggest what seems reasonable. Let's make it a wizard with Skill 21 in Thaumatology, frequency of appearance Constantly, and Completely Reliable. What does that get you?

Well, first of all, they're going to basically be able to answer any question you have about magic, automatically, only failing to provide an answer on a critical failure. With that skill level, even asking a whole bunch of questions is likely to get some good answers - it takes asking something like 6 distinct questions before a critical failure on any of them is even in the 50% chance range. I'd also liberally interpret what a "question" is. It shouldn't be just a single yes-or-no answer type thing - if the player asks "What is required for the Ritual of Doom to be cast", that's a single question, and follow-ups like "you mentioned needing 'the blood of an honest soul', exactly how honest are we talking here?" would be included in the original question, and not require a second roll.
For favours, there's actually a whole list that I'd allow:
  • Entry clearance into wizard guild halls, ancient centers of learning, and so on.
  • Licenses to perform magic.
  • Bribe or hush money.
  • Cover-ups, magical or just using the wizard's organizational power.
  • False IDs, created magically.
  • Insertion/Extraction, using magic to move you.
  • Safe houses, protected with magical wards.
  • Access to documents, records, etc. relating to magic. If you want to research in the wizard's private arcane library, this is the thing.
  • Searching all records relating to magic for useful stuff.
  • Cash.
  • Funding.
  • Gear, specifically enchanted equipment.
  • Bailout, using the wizard's contacts and power to convince people to let you go.
  • Evacuation, using the wizard's magic to retrieve you.
  • Treatment, using healing magic or curse-removal.
  • Buying or selling magical items.
  • Finding magical hirelings.
  • Introductions to other wizards, organizations that deal with magic, etc.
  • Invitations to magic-related social functions, like the Wizard Guild Ball.
  • A job working for the wizard or one of their colleagues.
  • Access to magical facilities: alchemy labs, summoning circles, etc.
  • The services of various magical specialists - alchemists, enchanters, and so forth.
  • Shipping various items safely by magical means.
  • Sending the players various places they want to go with magic.
  • Magical "fire support" - dropping a Flame Strike on a target, summoning up a demon and letting it loose in a specific place, and so on.
  • Magical servants or combat-capable individuals with magical powers, ready to back up the player or come to their rescue.

And, bear in mind, all of those happen with an effective assistance roll of 21. Rank literally never gets that high, capping out at 15. Even taking the -10 penalty I suggested for a favour being none of easy, cheap, and safe for the Contact, that's still better than 50% chance of successfully getting it. And since the Frequency of Appearance is Constant, there's literally no chance that the Contact won't at least consider your request.

Personally, I'd pay 60 points for all that. It's actually quite a big help.

Another thing to consider about the differences between Contact and Rank is that Rank pretty much always comes with an assumed Duty or similar social obligation assumed. Contacts don't, generally only requiring standard "social maintenance" behaviour - you might have to take your Contact out for dinner sometimes, or do them a minor favour yourself, but they can never just say "I need you to do this. Get on it." the way a superior in a Rank hierarchy can.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daigoro View Post
In some previous Contacts thread, it was determined that the "one particular town" limit only applied to the "underworld, merchants, upper class, etc" clause of that sentence in Contact Groups, meaning corporations and military units could span as large a region as necessary.
Interesting. I can see that interpretation, now that I look at it. It would definitely help keep Contact Groups in line with regular Contacts, utility-wise.

I could also see applying a +50% Cosmic enhancement on a Contact Group that covered a whole social strata, to ignore that limitation. So you could have Contact Group, "High Society" and be the person who literally knows a noble in every place you visit, you just have to pay +50% more.
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