Contacts

Contacts are NPCs who serve as sources of the information, way-in to other NPCs, goods, and services for the PCs. The biggest difference between contacts and most other NPCs is their ongoing relationship with the PCs.

Contacts have lives of their own, and they don’t spend their every waking moment waiting for the PCs to call them for help. Additionally, contacts sometimes pick up their comm and call the PCs, asking them for stuff.

Contact Expertise Fields and Rating

Contacts value are measured by their ratings in three fields; information, influence, and skill. Some contacts are mainly focused on one of these things, while some focus on combinations.

The rating for each of these is a number between 0 and 10 – the higher the rating, the better. 0 means that the contact has no particular value for the PCs in that field.

Information: A contact’s information rating tells how much he or she knows. They’re the ones who hear all the rumors – and they can discern which ones are true. Some just have an uncanny sense of what’s going on in their neighborhood, town or space station, such as the grumpy bartender, the talkative fruit merchant, or the law-enforcement captain who has seen it all. Other information contacts have more focused interests, such as the army sergeant who knows all about troop movements, the fence who is privy to every major theft in the city, or the secretary assigned to writing minutes during city council meetings.

Influence: A contact’s influence rating tells how well connected he is; who does he know or who he is associated with. The influential contact doesn’t have a broad store of information, and she doesn’t have any skills the PCs might need. But if he is the governor’s personal pilot he might be able to put in a good word with her, or he might at least be able to make introductions between the PCs and some of the governor’s staff.

Skill: A contact’s skill rating (not to be confused with actual skill ratings) tells how well he is at doing what he does – that could be as a doctor, a pilot, an accountant, a courtesan, an actor, a con-artist, a mathematician, an architect, a mechanic, a gambler, a herbalist, a lawyer, a linguist and so on.

Using Contact Rating

When doing a check to see if a contact can help the PCs at whatever endeavor that have been requested, the GM rolls a contact rating check (he sets a DC, and rolls 1d20 adding the contacts rating x 3 for the particular field).

In some situations, a contact with ratings in more than one field can make a combination check. If for example the PCs asks the personal assistant of the local space station magistrate to get some information from the magistrate, the contact first rolls his influence check, and for every 5 on that check he may add a bonus of 1 to his information check.

Loyalty

This shows you how much you can trust the contact and how willing he or she is to help. This is measured on a scale of 1 to 6. The higher the Loyalty Rating, the more the contact is willing to do for the PC. The Loyalty Rating Table gives details on each level and how it should be handled.

Using Loyalty

The PC may add the loyalty rating x 2 to any checks when he tries to get his contact to do something for him; sharing information, using his connections to get information, using his influence to get in touch with another person, negotiating prices, payment or terms etc.

Compensation

Contacts do things for the PC – but usually not for nothing. They’ll expect some kind of quid pro quo. This doesn’t have to be a straight-up monetary donation – the PC could take them out for a nice dinner, or buy them a new comm, put in some work at their favorite charity, get their apartment painted, or something else they’d like – but very few people are allergic to credits.

Two things influence how much compensation a contact expects from the PC:

  • The higher loyalty rating, the less compensation is expected, as a high loyalty means, that the contact is already inclined to help as much as he can.
  • The harder, more unreasonable or difficult the task is, the more compensation is expected.

The table gives some guidelines for how many credits worth of compensation is expected/needed, depending on difficulty and loyalty.

Extra Compensation

By providing a little extra compensation, the PC can usually get the contact to be a little more willing to help him/give him a good price on some equipment/etc. – mechanically the PC gets a bonus on checks involving the contact (checks, where he also adds the loyalty rating). This bonus can either be +2 if he raises the compensation by 50% or +4 if he raises it by 100%.

Additionally, the contact will also go a bit further in doing a task, if that is what is asked for – mechanically the contact gets an equivalent bonus to his contact rating check. However, if the PC is for instance negotiating a price for some equipment the PC want to buy from the contact, only the PC will get a bonus for extra compensation – the contact does not.

Contacts and New Characters

During character creation a PC may create and describe 2 contacts for his 1st level character. He may distribute 6 rating points for each of these on the three expertise fields; information, influence and skill and on the loyalty rating. None of these rating can be higher than 4.

Leave a Reply