01-31-2017, 10:43 AM | #21 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
I suppose it's true that only Contact Group specifies that it can only applies in one particular town. But I think that's working with the assumption that a Contact who isn't a group is always a single person, and thus will have a naturally limited reach. The problem, though, is that leaves the person who knows a person in every city paying a lot. Highly Accessible doesn't really help that much - it means you can get in touch with your Contact from pretty much anywhere, but as written, they can still only help you with stuff in their own area. And Contact Group doesn't actually help if you just want one skill provided, just spread over a larger area than a single city.
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01-31-2017, 10:56 AM | #22 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
AFAICT, there's nothing that says you can't call your buddy at Quantico from Johannesburg.
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01-31-2017, 11:01 AM | #23 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
Sure, but they probably won't be able to help you, or at least not with the full range of help. And if a Contact can provide a vastly different range of assistance than another, I think that's something that should be paid for. It's not really fair that me and another player both paid 4 points for a Contact, but because I declared that mine was an analyst with the CIA, and theirs was defined as a homeless person on the streets of Washington DC, mine can be useful any time I can get on the phone with them, and theirs is only narrowly helpful when they're specifically looking for help in DC.
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01-31-2017, 12:00 PM | #24 | ||
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
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I do think there's a lot of room for modifiers to Contacts though. |
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01-31-2017, 12:25 PM | #25 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
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But if we're still thinking of a homeless person as "useless", let's use another example. Say you've got a fence for a Contact, who also provides Streetwise. That's definitely a classic example of a Contact, I'd say. But their utility is likely sharply limited outside the city they're in. Most fences aren't internationally connected, so the fact that you can call them up from anywhere doesn't help, they're still going to tell you "I can't help you sell that illegal thing you've stolen unless you come here". I think that's clearly less useful than the CIA analyst Contact, but not so much so that it deserves to only be worth 1 point. I think that if your Contact has a bigger scope, you really should be paying more. |
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01-31-2017, 12:31 PM | #26 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
I would prefer to assume that full cost contacts aren't impossible to contact from remote locations, and give a limitation to those that can't be.
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01-31-2017, 12:43 PM | #27 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
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Only add Accessibility modifiers if the Contact has better than setting average. As written Contact group needs something like that to simply be spread out over the setting instead of just one city. As for the person who knows someone in every city, your right that is prohibitively expensive. Making it a -6 appearance roll for cost but allowing use when you visit his town for instance can help. So for a traveling group that spends little time in any city you could go for low freq but still have them available when in town. Also the other more cinematic options i wrote above can help. Its still more likely to be too expensive compared to just having high skills so other uses of the Contact need to be taken advantage of.
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01-31-2017, 01:27 PM | #28 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
I'm not saying Contacts shouldn't be impossible to call from distant locations. What I'm saying is that if you can, and they can provide useful assistance no matter where you are, then they should cost more. I can definitely see an argument that the scope multipliers that I posted earlier could be tweaked. But in a game where one person could buy a Contact that was only useful in a single city, and another could buy one that's useful across a whole interstellar empire, the first person should be paying less.
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01-31-2017, 01:31 PM | #29 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
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01-31-2017, 01:33 PM | #30 | |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#30): Contact Group, Contacts
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Contacts that must be met in person should be discounted. |
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Tags |
advantage, advantage of the week, contact group, contacts, week, [basic] |
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