/srg/ Shadowrun General

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>Welcome back to /srg/, chummer
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>Shoot straight
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Crossover-Editions
What pop media that you have crossed into the Shadowrun Universe?

Other urls found in this thread:

pastebin.com/75YgGJaJ
denver.wikidot.com/info:urbanbrawl
ufile.io/hgcoa
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Would you believe pic related is an Elf, or are his ears too short?

I once played a mysad who followed the mentor spirit of Conan after finding a shrine with idols and stories of him in a deserted building. The spirits he summoned were the falles foes of the great barbarian.

7c921200-76a8-465f-8207-01a7c1785c67
Ruhrmetall Wolfspinne 8V2 (Large)
71
SAG
1
14
16F
8
Drones: Large
110000
5
4
4
1

Sensor Array
[Weapon] Targeting Autosoft
Smartsoft


Gecko Grips (Drone)
Large Weapon Mount (Drone)
Large Weapon Mount (Drone)

0
0


GE Vindicator Mini-Gun


GE Vindicator Mini-Gun

Face would need to be more pointy and angular, but him always wearing the hat could be an interesting little thing as to why you never see the ears

What are the things that make a military vehicle illegal? Would you allow turning it down from F to R if I stripped it of its weapon mounts?

Could he just be a chubby faced Elf?

Weapons are the most obvious thing, but armor, weight, tracks damaging the roads, ... are all reasons a government could go: "No, you're not taking that MBT to grocery shopping!"

What about ships? I was thinking about taking a riverine and changing its interior to be a faster, better armored houseboat with awesome sensors and pilot. The kinda thing where I can sit at the bar in the back without having to worry about things like driving and being attacked by pirates or critters.

Yeah could be good, that sounds fun

Call him "Mr Cookie," founder and owner of "Magic Dust Cookies."

"Good ol' fashion, hand-made cookies, my good sir. Why my cookies are delicious, I need me a gang of armed guards to baby sit me 24 hours a day, less I fall a victim to some sour face assassin. Hence the little posse following my b'hind. Now don't let 'em trouble you none, this old gang of toughs are as sweet as one my cookies."

"Now, I'd really like to crew the fat with you boys all day long, but I got me some business with big boss up stairs."

"Appointment, dang oh, I knew I forgot something. I swear got me more sugar in between my ears than brains. Real sugar too, none of that soy stuff. Tell you what, you let me slip this one ol' time and I will see to personally that you Lone Star boys get a year supply of my Magic Dust Cookies. Just my little ol' way of saying thanks for looking out for the good folks on this world."

For a ship I'd say that removing the weapons should be fine.

In order to clean up some of the bullshit we sometimes see on "what cyberpunk is", I made a writeup to divide it into the subgenres I usually see (narrative moreso than defined by technology, so no biopunk/nanopunk/dieselpunk divides).
At one point I'm hoping to put some GM and player tips on each section - sample character concepts, locations, twists, expectations and the like - but that seems like something I should let more people in on than just myself, and anyway I'm guaranteed to set off a few people with my writeup.
If anyone's interested, tear into this as much as you want - add to it, edit it or whatever you want. In the end, it would be nice to have a be-all end-all document we could hand over to newbies, explaining what kinds of narrative expectations you should have from a cyberpunk game, how to nail the mood and how to make it not feel like D&D.
I'll probably just start a flamewar, but at least I want to give it a start.

pastebin.com/75YgGJaJ

I need your help, guys.
I'm suffering a bit of 'writers block' right now as i am trying to come up with a back-up character.
I am somewhat limited in the role he (or she) should fill, the character definitely won't be the main mage, rigger or decker/technomancer, but aside from that i just don't know what i should make him.
Right now i play a Sniper/Infiltrator Elf, so i won't remake that combination, but this leaves so much still open.
I had ideas of a melee Trolls, gun-expert Orc, skill monkey Dwarf, demolition man explosives expert or spy face all floating around my head, but as soon as i open Chummer i just begin to second guess myself...

Edgelord?

No, just a very sporadic lurker. Did i miss something?
(Or is this an insult and you accidentally added a question mark?)

>melee Troll
Throwing Troll. Grenades, knives, improvised weapons, metahumans ...

No, that's a build archetype. Most people i know call it Edgemonkey. It entails having a lot of edge and all the qualities that give you edge back.

It's quite fun, actually. One of the few ways to play a nonaug nonmagic character.

Oh, that makes sense! Have any advice for it or know of a good guide?

>Human
>Lucky
>8 Edge
>Daredevil
>Revels in Murder

But most importantly, check with your GM how generous he is with giving Edge points back.

Favorite flavor of NERPS?

He's generous with it outside of runs.
And looking at it i'd need Priority B for Metatype to make full use of Lucky and get 8 Edge but that leaves me with 1 Special attribute wasted. Or i could bump Magic to D and have him be an Adept or Aspected Magician (a pretty bad one, but still)

You can also forgo "Lucky" and stay at 7 Edge, but that's the general idea of the build: you're rather bad at everything baseline but you edge as much rolls as is humanly possible to pull crazy stunts.

Just get an Ares roadmaster
Basically a civilian armored vehicle

Note that Daredevil+Revels in Murder + Lucky breaks the 25 karma limit on qualities
Now what I do is take Metatype C and start building regular street sam.
Here is the diference that you can go cheap on Initiative Enchancers. Boosted Reflexes work well on this but my favorite is Synaptic Acceleration. Basically enough to get you 2d6 INI that you would top with Jazz. Used Reaction Enhancers 3 are also a must.
Now you take Reflex Recorder for your weapon skill of choice and specialize in it. Follow this with some muscle tonner. Sprinkle Aluminium Bone Lacing, Reakt, Sync and some skin augs to taste.
Now you have pretty good INI, awesome shooting skills and enough armor to survive.
In combat start with Edge for max INI, take some Jazz and open pre-edged full auto at a guy. 22+ exploding dice should just about kill any mook in one shot regaining your 2 edge.
Outside combat play like the most badass motherfuckr, pulling crazy stuns like its nothing and kicking ass. You gotta be baller with edge builds

You cant stack boosted reflexes and synaptic acceleration with reaction enhancers

>What are the things that make a military vehicle illegal?
The fact that it's a military vehicle. Getting a stripped-down version isn't going to make the government shrug and legalize it.

Just get an Ares Roadmaster.

Or ifv like an apc

>He's generous with it outside of runs.
I don't think you understand how much Edge you're supposed to be getting back during runs. If he's not following this chart, don't play an Edge-based character:
>• Good roleplaying.
>• Heroic acts of self-sacrifce.
>• Achievement of important personal goals.
>• Enduring a critical glitch without using a Close Call (you get a point of Edge back to balance the scales a bit; this should be used judiciously, though, so as not to always let the players off the hook when they roll a critical glitch).
>• Succeeding in an important objective.
>• Being particularly brave or smart.
>• Pushing the storyline forward.
>• Having the right skills in the right place at the right time.
>• Impressing the group with humor or drama.

Daredevil, in particular, only triggers when you're getting an edge restored with one of those above methods.

What's more, you get 1 point of Edge back every time you have a good meal and a good night's sleep, so you're supposed to be back at 100% Edge after any real amount of downtime anyway.

I could be wrong, but based solely on:
>He's generous with it outside of runs.
I'm guessing that your GM is, in actuality, extremely stingy with Edge.

Yes you can
Reaction Enhancers are reaction increasing augmentation while Initiative Increasing augmentations are Reaction Enchancers Optimization and the other initiative boosters
If you actually read the books you will see how the language in the initiative booster is consistent and specific, refering to Reaction, Initiative, Augmentations, Chemicals and Others in specific.

>I'm guessing that your GM is, in actuality, extremely stingy with Edge.
So far it's rather the opposite, i'd say. Our characters are all very low edge (1 or 2) so we don't spend it till it's absolutely necessary.

But yeah, i guess i should talk about it with him before o actually go to much into it

>But yeah, i guess i should talk about it with him before o actually go to much into it
You really should. In my experience, most GMs don't follow that chart literally at all, only refreshing edge on sleeping or between runs.

You have experience with bad GMs.

In my experience, most GMs are bad.

Hey Veeky Forums, I was thinking. I've been reading the 5th edition books and I've found vision enhancements for thermographic vision and low-light vision, but not antcual darkvision. I mean, we have infrared cameras and goggles now, why don't they have them in the future?

Because vision requires light. Night vision processes a spectrum of light we can't see very well naturally.

"Darkivision" as you state is the state where there's no light at all, 0, nothing on the spectrum.

If light = 0, you can multiply it all you want, it'll still be 0.

Low-Light in SR is essentially Night Vision as we have it today.

Have you read the books?
Low-Light visions turns dim light into full light
You know walking during the night with only the moon and the stars? Thats as bright as day.
You know being caught in a box with no windows and doors or source of light? You can see in there thanks to your thermographic vision.
The hell more you want ?

Yeah but thermographic only let's you see heat signatures. Walls, furniture and such don't usually let out heat, so wouldn't you be stumbling around in the darkness even with that?

You expect me to read all that shit?

>
No drones for players. The whole point is that it's metahuman on metahuman violence. You might have been a linesman, though; lots of experience using a swarm of camera drones to keep track of everything, and a couple heavy drones to neutralize players when they go cyberpsycho.

>Here is the diference that you can go cheap on Initiative Enchancers. Boosted Reflexes work well on this but my favorite is Synaptic Acceleration. Basically enough to get you 2d6 INI that you would top with Jazz. Used Reaction Enhancers 3 are also a must.
Initiative boosters don't stack with drugs that boost initiative

Isn't that literally a dwarf from Cutting Aces? He's got that dorf broadness to his body and features.

Motherfuckers read the fucking books
There are at least 2 times the Chemicals were mentioned separately from Reaction and Initiative augs
So while Synaptic Booster says it does not Stack with Chemicals, Initiative or Reaction augmentation Wired Reflexes mentions Initiative and Reaction with the exception of Wireless Reaction Enhancers

unless they have been in constant darkness with the same heat? Different objects retain heat differently. So if at any time in the recent past it was a different temperature you should be able to distinguish the objects based on their current temperature

No
Read the books
Thermographic vision shifts light category one step down or Total Darkness becomes Dim Light as far as your ability to see is concerned
And no Thermo and Low Light does not stack

What are some good ideas for lighthearted runs to mix in with the darker shit? I have a shitty idea for a run, where the players need to sneak an aspiring pop-star into a Horizon studio so she can record her big break, but I wanna hear any other ideas

I liked user's idea last thread about pizza hijacking.

Because you have experience with bad GM's.

I made this last /srg/, but for another example, I recall from previous banter with other folks the idea of stealing the literally one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang secret album, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, since it took The Crash 2.0 to finally break the 88-year copyright.

>Runners have to babysit Fixer's 6 year old niece
>Runners have to make a milk run for Halloween. Ensue shenanigans
>Runners have to find little Johnson's Fenrir Wolf
>Runners have to defend a candy truck from Halloweeners
>Runners have to assist Fixer's niece to build the best horror house. Hint: Horror decorations aren't horror decorations
>Runners have to catch a Para-turkey
>Runners have to harvest Para-pumpkins.
>Runners discover Ichabod Crane
>Runners discover Headless Horseman
>Runners discover Ichabod Crane & Headless Horseman together
>Runners have to retrieve Sasquatch's thanksgiving food stores
>Runners have to assist KE contact with KE Halloween outreach program
>Runners have to assist Lonestar pranking KE

>Would you like to know more?

Could anyone post that Russian Corp that some guy made? I like the layout he had on the PDF, would like to use for reference.

Heh, reminds me of pic related.

Also, I remember another person's idea just now:

>Runners have to play tard wranglers for a Johnson's troll son, take them for a walk, get them ice cream, etc for a few days.

What 4e gear makes you sneakier, harder to detect, that isn't super expensive or high-tech like the that one suit I forget the name of?

...

>enhanced articulation gives you a +1 to all physical and technical tests linked to a physical attribute, which Infiltration is one of
>Suprathyroid gland increases all of your physical attributes by 1, but costs 45k has avail 20F and increases lifestyle costs by 10%
>Reflex recorder increases your skill by 1 out your skill group by 1

*or your skill group

Get Ultrasound and Radar.

No.

Maybe not 'lighthearted' per se, but something a little different:

>The Runners are hired for a break-in
>There are however three conditions: Nobody can get harmed (not even a little), no property can take substantial damage and the Johnson wants video from at least two perspectives IRL plus the protocol of any Matrix activities
>The Johnson also is insufferable smug and condescending and offers at consolation prize for the leg work information and videos should the break in fail

The Run however turns out way more difficult then expected. The security is on point in every aspect, theres no obvious points of attack for this run.
If the players haven't figured out the twist yet you should ramp up the paranoia inducing red flags.
Maybe high ranking generals are walking through the lobby or maybe the Rigger recognizes a cutting edge drone that's worth more then his whole stable combined patrolling the area.

And of course the twist is that the Johnson never expected them to succeed because he's (working for) the Chief Security Officer of this building and the run is a stress test for the new security systems.

That's the kind of run that would get the Johnson blacklisted by any future Fixers. He should be straight up about it being a stress test. The runners get informed - it's that guards who aren't supposed to know it's coming.

Like any other auditors, their goal is to take the security by surprise, collect their data, and see if they were actually prepared.

As long as the Johnson's straight up about the intended goal, though, that's a fucking swell run.

>little princess Johnson didn't get an invite to a rival loli's birthday party, wants runners to crash and ruin it
>rival loli is the daughter of a powerful mob boss

With human-looking quality? Sure. Or metatype modification

What the dick is Urban Brawl and how is it played?

I've run a similar scenario before, only the Johnson was up front about it being a white hat pentest. The group got paid extra for finding additional exploitable weaknesses. Security was not aware of the pentest to ensure highest degree of realism.

I find it a good way to introduce new players to the system.

Why should he be up front about it? He has nothing to gain by it and as long as there isn't lethal force used against the runners, and he pays this shouldn't be anything to blacklist someone about.
Sure, it might be kind of a dick move, but as far as Johnsons one of the less bad ones.

He has a lot to lose though. The runners could just find out what's going on and tell him to fuck off. Then he finds that he can't hire runners, because fixers have blacklisted him.

It's the sport of CHAMPIONS and it's played to the MAX!

Support your local corporate team, or be prepared to explain yourself at your next performance review.

When I said gear I meant non-ware

Because Johnsons who do dick moves for no reason can not only find themselves unable to hire runners, but can find that those runners will stab them in the back, or get another set of runners to ruin his life.

The best comparison is, imagine Blood Bowl but with guns and motorcycles. They're sanctioned gang fights, effectively, between corporate-owned teams, that take place in a section of a city. Using special equipment and specific roles, a team tries to do the equivalent of score a touchdown by taking their ball and dunking it into the opponent's goal area. It's specifically non-lethal though, and the refs are very strict about kicking people out for intentional maiming or assaulting the designated team medics. At one point I was working on a contact who was an Urban Brawl coach who took their team to the championships, and thus was a pro teacher at the Athletics group and Leadership, as well as being capable of loaning out Urban Brawl equipment and giving personalized motivational speeches at a high premium.

>tfw the personalized speech counts as a one-time-use 16-die Leadership roll to assist your roll, which even with bought successes is +4 dice and +1 Limit.

Because there is no reason to lie. Runners have a clear expectation of what the Johnson actually wants, and kind of measures are acceptable. Also, limits damage to personnel and facilities. Imagine what happens if the runners start losing and face risk of getting taken captive, I guarantee that almost everyone goes lethal at that point. But there's no reason to do that if they were legitimately hired by the security, since they have a get outta jail free -card.

Can you explain to me why he would be blacklisted by fixers for this?
It's not like Johnsons have a habit of telling Fixers or Runners their plans, and 'Non-violent break-in with a fall-back option in case of failure' sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for.

Because by not being up front about it he, at best, stands to get blacklisted from ever hiring shadowrunners again because nobody is willing to work with/for sometime untrustworthy. Real life criminals and Shadowrun shadow communities run entirely on word of mouth and reputation. Deceiving the people you're hiring is a serious black mark for your rep.

At worst, the runners hold a grudge and decide to get some payback.

Johnsons who lie about what the real goal of a run is don't get anyone willing to work for them ever again because nobody wants to work for a liar on what can easily be life or death jobs. It's not a joke, and it's not a game. Not for the Fixers, not for the runners - not for anyone. Don't have your Johnsons fuck with runners unless the entire point is that they're idiots.

in that case you're shit out of luck
what the fuck did you even expect?

French street gang fights turned into a sport. The ostensible goal is to take a ball into the opponent's scoring area, but everyone is well armed (mostly heavy pistols and short-barrel shotguns with whatever ammo you want, and any kind of melee weapon or melee implant so long as it's not monofilament or electric) and armoured, and they can and will maim and kill each other to get to the endzone. Magic is not allowed except for healing (which carries a penalty with it, so most teams avoid it if at all possible).

The League takes over an area of the barrens or regional equivalent, 4 blocks by 3, and rigs it with camera equipment (moving the SINless out, with payouts and property insurance if you go quietly, and nastiness if you don't). Teams of 13 (4 light armoured, 4 medium armoured, 2 heavies with assault rifles/SMGs, 1 blaster with light armour and an LMG [all these guys are allowed to touch the ball], 1 outrider on an armed motorcycle who can give a lift to anyone who doesn't have the ball, and a medic who is technically off-limit for combat).

You play 30 minute quarters, with each play lasting a max of 5 minutes (ending early if someone scores, the ball is declared dead, or an entire team is wiped out). Substitutions only allowed between plays. Players are down when they are dead or can no longer continue, or when they flip on their surrender lights on their armour to get people to stop shooting them. As you can imagine, Brawl teams have deep benches. Currently the Boston Massacre, the UB team stuck in Boston during the Lockdown, is riding high as the best gang in the Zone.

denver.wikidot.com/info:urbanbrawl
be a big boy and fucking do a basic google search
Also Combat Biking is the superior sport and don't listen to what the drekheads tell you

anons are blowing it out of proportions
In the shadows screwing with the runners is on equal grounds as screwing with the Johnson
You get a black mark for it and people who know their way around(fixers) would tend to avoid you.
Can still find someone to do the job but with each betrayal the notoriety goes up until no one would ever work for you.

Sneaking gear that would increase the threshold to be noticed, mostly. Seems pretty logical to me, user.

you have the Chameleon Suit

>It's specifically non-lethal though, and the refs are very strict about kicking people out for intentional maiming or assaulting the designated team medics

It's non-lethal in the same way that the NFL cares about brain damage. Attacking medics is bad, but you can literally carve someone up with a chainsaw and then blast his buddy with an Ex-Ex slug from your Roomsweeper and it's all kosher, so long as they were not already marked as disabled/surrended. They literally had to make an official ruling about whether or not a point counted if the person carrying the ball was dead or in multiple pieces when he entered the scoring zone, because it happened so often.

Yeah, in general it's better to be up-front about what you want to the fixer and runners. The less info the runners have to gather themselves, the less info they can misinterpret (or interpret in a way that you don't like). Unless you literally cannot tell them the details, you're only hurting yourself by leaving things vague and full of surprises.

Stupid ESL question, but isn't usage of 'Antipathy' for the negative quality in Chrome Flesh is a misnomer, right?
>Your parents always told you to think about how others feel, but whether you want to or not, you don’t know how.
It's used like its the antithesis of empathy (as in to empathize / emotionally understand s.o.) while to my understanding its the opposite of sympathy (as in sympathetic / liking st.)

Does anyone have the PDF for burning bright? I'm doing some research for bug city and already checked mega.

ufile.io/hgcoa

Dowd at his finest

Wiz thanks chummers!

What is that gun supposed to be?

Actually it's neither. Generally speaking antipathy is just a fancier way of saying intense or inherent dislike of something.

Good work, omae

Hi, I'm a relatively new player.
Why are offensive spells so worthlessly weak? Normal bolts barely peel the paint of shittiest grunts' armour, no crits or other increments, and when I up Force it paradoxically harms me (and much more lethally so) instead of them. Advanced spells though dealing slightly more damage are worse on setbacks.

Thus am mostly useless outside of what little support I am able to offer and countering enemy mages - which I fail at anyway, since they both more powerful and better equipped than I am.

So far I've picked a pair of SMG off those grunts after Sammie put them down (in one bloody round, though I'm rather glad than jealous), and am providing cover fire/suppression like decker does, though in much less competent fashion. As in, rise guns above cover and burst in enemy general direction, making an impression of two somewhat more competent gunners. With no points in firearms I won't be able to hit anything, but racket alone would keep anyone pinned.
I kinda can dual into Adept, but from what I can see the situation there is even worse, compared to the chromed-up CQC Sammie.

In hindsight, should've gone a Shaman - at least that way I could've make Sammy kill things even faster than he already does, buff/heal everyone better and call on vindictive bullet sponges. Boy, am I ever glad Sammy we got is deadlier than anything else we so far encountered, combined.

>armor
Direct spells kill a target from the inside.

>no crits
Play smarter, not harder. Mages are meant for combined arms, but if you really want a tactical nuke in 5e you can chug reagents to soak that drain.

>counter enemy mages
Counterspelling is good for passive protection but not active dispelling. What you want to do to remove an enemy mage is have a spirit go fuck him up, or you take him out of the fight using illusion/manipulation so he can't sustain, target or concentrate on spells.

>dual into Adept
Unless you're already a Mystic Adept, that won't happen without the GM being either incompetent or generous.

>Direct spells kill a target from the inside.
...and don't miss. Yes, I know. Figure of speech, though rather poorly chosen. Point is, it doesn't kill them. Not nearly fast enough for me to survive one on one exchange.
>reagents
And foci and other necessary stuff don't grow on trees, and we've yet to encounter a talismonger that wasn't a fraud, unwilling to sell us anything good or some other kind of scumbag. And I'm not good enough to cook up anything, much more a dozen reagents a night.
>GM being generous
Of course he's generous, with all of us being rather new. Otherwise my SMG shtick wouldn't fly, no mater our explanation that you don't need to know inner workings of a gun to hold it and press the trigger.

Sustain improved reflexes 6 and enjoy life being the fastest fucker on the field and out-sam the sams.

Seriously though, mages shine in manipulation and control, not straight damage. Although manabolts are likely the only way to bring down a serious troll meatshield.

>We've yet to encounter a talismonger that wasn't a fraud, unwilling to sell us anything good or some other kind of scumbag
Well, that's on you for not taking one as a contact from the start

>Of course he's generous, with all of us being rather new. Otherwise my SMG shtick wouldn't fly, no mater our explanation that you don't need to know inner workings of a gun to hold it and press the trigger.
What do you mean by that?

thinking about cooking up some custom drugs to help my Decker hack better
1)How exactly do custom drugs work/what book are they from? (I want to say chrome flesh)

2) What are some custom drugs you guys have made?

But would I be fast enough to more or less reliably put down an standard, say, Ares-geared merc before he fills me with bullets? Dedicated cromeleers with claws, spurs and whips I'd rather leave to Sam. Or explosives.

On meatshields - Sammie puts them down rather reliably. Even I can do much to render one more or less immobile, if not entirely harmless. It's lots of enemies that are too sparse for a grenade that are a problem, thus, the need for me to pick one in one-two rounds at least.

>Well, that's on you for not taking one as a contact from the start
Yes, I was rather open-mindedly naive, thinking that we can make one on the way. And now It had became a fixture of the story.
>What do you mean by that?
Much like as it was with the previous problem I had neglected to invest in any weapon skill, thinking that my magic will do its job. Moreso, I've put the leftovers in unarmed since GM did his best to encourage the flavour playing, and it had fit with drafted background.

IRL quality Meth always helps with mental jobs in a pinch. Don't overindulge tough.

>contacts that do stuff
Tell me more

is Synaptic Acceleration not compatable with the reaction booster and cerebellum booster?

>if the character has an augmentation that increases initiative or grants initiative dice then Synaptic Acceleration has no effect.

>you can literally carve someone up with a chainsaw and then blast his buddy with an Ex-Ex slug from your Roomsweeper and it's all kosher
Funnily enough, it's not kosher in the Arena Brawl leagues - Stun & Gel rounds are the ammo choices there, and melee weapons are non-lethal mockups. "Injuries still happen, but fatalities are rare."

>And now It had became a fixture of the story.
Well, that's kind of a dick move on the DMs part, to behonest. It's worse then denying access to non-standard bullets to the weapons guy

> I had neglected to invest in any weapon skill
You'd still get use it untrained, so at AGI-1 , so unless you are really clumsy you should be able to shoot RAW

reagents actually can grow on trees, or you can find them in dumpsters, whatever depending on your tradition

One of the few good ideas from the large groups was the idea of specific canon Contacts that had things they could do within their realm of specialty to potentially assist with a run. One of the examples was a cab driver who always wipes his memory of you after every drive and thus can never rat you out, but because of that means his Loyalty can never go above 2.

That said, if you want a greater focus on Contacts in your game, it seems pretty reasonable for your contacts to provide services relevant to their rather narrow field of interests. An info broker who can be paid with paydata, someone with a milspec background being able to sell you some milsurp stuff, etc.

Here's another example of a Contact I made: Boss, owner of the Parabellum bar & grill. A classic-style bar, with several old-model pre-electronics-era guns on their walls, trid displays for sports games, and a drink menu with names based on weapons manufacturers or discontinued models. It's right at the edge of Fort Lewis in Seattle, so it gets a lot of gun collectors, Army, Navy and old-fashioned patriots (so anyone who is super pro-Ares).

One of the secret services for regulars is the option to rent out a vintage gun. Useful if you need a gun that is completely invisible to security spiders. Just remember to pick up the casings and account for the fact that you can't benefit from anything that'd require wireless to be on, such as a smartlink.