Brian Stanfield

What I want to happen, so badly, is for Sandor to win with fire.  It would be so fitting to destroy his brother the same way his brother scarred him mentally & physically for life.
 
Even more fitting if this involved a flaming sword as Sandor became a chosen one of the Lord of Light.

I can vouch for the “too dense to swim” angle, as I have very dense bones and can virtually walk across the bottom of a pool with lots breath of air in my lungs. I can swim if I want, because I learned how as a child, but I’m horribly inefficient at it and would sell back some swimming on my character sheet. 

Yes, the 6E rules talk about that on 6E2 97-98 and 100-102. Do you think I left out some text from 5E that makes this question unclear in 6E?
 
Addendum:
After talking with LL, I think I see the source of the problem, so let me expand and clarify. 6E2 102 has a section on adding STR to Advantages HAs/HKAs, with an example. After that example should be this text:
 
"For purposes of using this rule with melee weapons, ignore the Reduced Endurance Advantage (which all melee weapons must have). STR adds to a weapon with Reduced Endurance as if the weapon were un-Advantaged (or only has whatever other Advantages are applied)."
 
That's the same text that appears in 5ER. I don't recall what was going through my head ten years ago when I wrote 6E (ten years!), but my guess is that as I was re-organizing and rewriting the text, I simply forgot it. It was certainly never my intent to require characters to have to account for Reduced Endurance (since all melee weapons must have it); it was just an oversight. Mea and/or culpa.
 
Addendum #2:
Per my ongoing discussion with LL, there still seems to be some confusion on this issue, so I want to post again in an effort to make things clear:  under the 6E rules, when a character determines how much damage he adds to an Advantaged attack with STR, Maneuvers, velocity, or any other appropriate source, he only has to consider the Advantages that directly affect how the target takes damage, as discussed on 6E2 97. He doesn’t have to account for Reduced Endurance, Indirect, Personal Immunity, or other Advantages that don’t affect how the target takes damage. To put it another way, when determining how much STR, velocity, Maneuvers, CSLs, or the like add to an Advantaged attack, a character does not have to take into account any Advantages that do not directly affect how the target takes damage.
 
As usual, this is all subject to the GM’s oversight. If he wants characters to take all Advantages into account when adding damage, that’s within his awe-inspiring powers.
 
Furthermore, I gather from LL that his question may have risen in the context of questions about how Hero Designer functions. I normally pay no attention to HD issues (for a whole variety of good reasons), but in this case I will leave my bunker for a second and say that if it’s easier for Dan Simon to program HD to account for all Advantages, that’s OK with me. Going through the entire book and trying to figure out which Advantages to consider and which to ignore sounds like a lot more work than anyone should have to take on. ::ducks back into bunker::   

The rules increase body based on increasing thickness (check under environment rules for walls).  I think rather than reducing Body to below one.  As one reduces thickness, the defense of the item should go down.  Personally, I just make an educated guess and just run with stuff pulled outta thin air using the environment values as guides.

This was sent to me by a player who then had the audacity to ask "we're not that bad, are we?" 
 

 
https://i.redd.it/35w2wbpo57v21.png
 
Didn't want to do a hot link on someone else's bandwidth, so you'll have to go check it out. 

I’m more inclined, after thinking on this a while, to agree with Archer and just accept that all Power Advantages actually affect damage in one way or another, and so should be included in the calculation of extra Damage Classes. 

An official ruling from Steve Long is coming -- just be patient a bit longer.

I don't think there are, 
 
but I am intrigued by your assumption.
 
My own assumption has always been a bit different:
 
I have taken DEF to be the point at which you begin to damage the material itself: it's an amount of damage to which the material is naturally "impervious," for lack of a better term.  Increasing the amount of the material (in this case, the thickness) does not alter the amount of energy needed to do actual damage to any given area of the material.  It does, however, alter the amount of damage that has to be poured in to destroy the item.
 
In game terms, I have always taken it that the thickness of something-- assuming no changes to the density of the thing-- does not alter the DEF, but _does_ increase (or decrease) the BODY.  Certainly there are exceptions on the extreme ends-- a .02 mil sheet of stainless tears easily, while you'd be hard pressed to dent a piece of steel 1/2" thick, but does it take considerably more energy to scratch that piece of 1/2" stock?
 
 

Hello,
 
I managed to get my games scheduled at Origins this year.  I am not a part of a group, but I will be running a few HERO games at Origins this year.   Here is my schedule:
 
A Life Less Ordinary (HERO System, Anime HERO): Some students in Japan acquire great powers and must stop a force of terrifying and insidious evil from consuming their college campus.  RPG. 4-6 Players.  Wednesday, June 12th from 2 pm - 6 pm.   Revelations 1001 (HERO System, Fantasy HERO):  The End Times of Book of Revelation are literally coming true in 1001 A.D.  Six heroes have been gathered by the forces of light, some of them far more reluctantly than others, to gather sacred artifacts that will help defeat the Anti-Christ and his forces. They must brave terrible monsters and great evil to acquire them, and then shall face the Anti-Christ and his army on the plains of Megiddo. This game is intended to be an entertaining and thought-provoking game, and every effort has been made to treat faith with the utmost respect, and no offense is intended towards anyone's individual beliefs. RPG. 4-6 Players.  Wednesday, June 12th from 7 pm - 11 pm.
 
Legacies (HERO System, Champions):  You are descended from the superheroes that won World War II. Can you uncover the mystery behind their disappearance?  Could it be the work of their old nemeses? RPG. 4-6 Players.  Thursday, June 13th from 7 pm - 11 pm.
 
The Temple of the Three Valleys (HERO System, Martial Arts HERO): Set in late-16th century China, a group of heroes from all over the world have come to a village to find a long-lost temple that contains the secrets of martial arts and great riches.  They must also use their martial arts skill and superhuman wu shu abilities to defeat a ferocious tyrant and his minions. RPG. 4-6 Players.  Friday, June 14th from 10 am - 2 pm.
  Kazei 5: Juke Joint Jezebel (HERO System, Kazei 5): Set in the anime cyberpunk world created by Susano/Michael Surbrook, a group of mercenaries find themselves in over their heads when they investigate a break-in at a corporate facility.  RPG. 4-6 Players.  Saturday, June 15th from 10 am - 2 pm.

Just to keep everyone posted, I decided to just keep everything where I had it, with the long lists of skills and perks for 175 point characters. I’ll let them shuffle their contacts, languages and area knowledges as they desire from game to game. But to make up for the point suck, I’m going to bump them up tp 200 points and let them decide where they want to tweak things. Seems like a fair solution while I figure out how they plan on using their contacts, languages, and such. 

Direct link:
 
 
That's not accurate. I mean, as the GM you could run it that way, but I wouldn't. 
 
It's not that you "know who to _get in touch with_", it's that you have a relationship with that person and they are more likely to help you or to help you above and beyond what they would do for a stranger.
 
In the abstract if you the GM know there is someone in the area that a) could be helpful and b) might be helpful in the right circumstances, any character could in theory navigate themselves through the soup of the game's narrative to find that person or you the GM could simply present them. Either way, the existence of that person and access to them and what they are willing to do for the PC(s) is gated by you the GM.
 
However the character with Contacts can assert the existence of the contact and their character's access to them and also boundaries on the GM's adjudication as to what the contact can potentially do and what the contact actually will do in a given context onto the plot. This is a form of narrative control; it asserts facts and outcome guidelines onto the GM, but still leaves interpretation to the GM. 
 
This is not just "knowing a guy"; it's "I assert that there IS a guy, and he MIGHT be available, and he MIGHT help me".
 
 
So, that's a very gamist point of view. 
 
From a simulationist and a narrativist perspective, extrinsic vs intrinsic matters quite a lot.
Extrinsic abilities attempt to model or simulate discrete items or things separate from a character in an attempt to mimic how similar things exist in the real world. Extrinsic abilities can be permanently taken away, intrinsic abilities can not (at least without damaging the character's identity). Extrinsic abilities embellish a character, intrinsic abilities define a character. Extrinsic abilities might come and go over a long enough plot line, intrinsic abilities only change in extreme circumstances (if at all)..."life changing events"  
 
An imbalance can potentially occur whenever any "balancing mechanic" is used for some comparisons and not for others. If points are being used as the balancing mechanic for a game, but some abilities are not tracked via that balancing mechanic then the opportunity for an imbalance exists. Small things within a margin of error don't create much of a problem depending on the precision of the balancing mechanism, but at a certain tipping point the impact of unaccounted for things destabilizes the balancing mechanic. Economic and game theory both go into these ideas in great detail.
 
 
Resource Pools kill many birds with one stone. They basically help prop the system up in the awkward point range between gritty reality (low points, high realism) and high fantasy / supers / space opera / unrealistic fiction. The "cinematic realism" space, which the Hero System engine itself is really good at resolving, but which the Hero System pay-for-what-you-get character build economy struggles with. Several things contribute to that awkwardness; in the real world people living in first world countries are very capable and empowered in terms of the sheer amount of commodities they have or can easily acquire and the influence of their social network. However, in heightened circumstances (such as combat, or a whirlwind misadventure) part of the tension of the story often hinges on a character in those situations not having immediate in-the-moment access to that extended capability set. 
 
Resource Pools also do other things, but I've got to get to work and don't have time to get into it. My tl;dr there is you may be approaching Resource Pools in an overly reductive way and thus are not fully appreciating the nuances of its "smoothing effect" on gaps in the Hero System for cinematic play.
 
 
They can be if you want them to be. I commonly allow very broad skill definition in some campaigns. In other's I dial in the granularity and subgroupings for EXTRA granularity. This is a tool you as the GM wield to dial in the feel for a campaign. As long as you are consistent within a given setting for a given skill. I could post links to a bunch of things I've done over the years in this area, but I don't have time to hunt them down currently. What I will recommend is that you check out Ultimate Skill. The takeaway is just like most else in the HS, there are dials and levers and knobs available to twiddle with to achieve a given feel.
 
 
I feel like what you are missing here is this:
 
The players are communicating to you WHAT KIND OF GAME THEY WANT YOU TO RUN. By taking a linguist and sinking points into it (or whatever) the player is telling you as part of the player-GM contract, they expect you to run the ensuing game in such a way as to make that important. They may not verbalize it. They may not even realize it consciously. But in their mind they have some idea of how cool it is going to be to play that character and be awesome because they speak Swahili or whatever and it will matter and the other players will go "cool, you are useful, glad you're with us".
 
When you think to yourself "those points are going to be wasted", what you are saying is "I already have an idea of how I'm going to run this campaign based upon what I want to achieve and speaking a lot of languages just isn't relevant so it is not going to matter that this character is awesome at that".
 
I suggest you invert your thinking a bit and either adjust how you run the campaign to accommodate the PC's within it and give them opportunities to apply what the players have said is important to them OR tell the player upfront "that's cool but I don't think it will ever come up in the context of the campaign".
 
This is that "Relevance and Reliability" thing I talk about at times. The character with lots of language ability is RELIABLE at dealing with linguistic stuff, but if you the GM run the game in such a way that it is rarely if ever RELEVANT then that character is going to suck in that campaign. A different GM running a campaign in the same setting might run it in such away to give the character an opportunity to apply their abilities and in that campaign, same setting, the same character would be useful and successful.
 
Having said that, if you really want to do a language pool, or whatever...go for it. Set it up, and run a campaign using it. Nothing is stopping you from doing so. Afterwards, if you feel like it worked well, keep doing it for future campaigns where it seems useful. If it didn't work so well no big deal. Experiment.
 
Just be clear with your players upfront that the custom thing you are doing is not the game as written...this is a thing I'm introducing as a house rule. Otherwise if you bungle something in your home brewed formulation, and a player who didn't know any better then goes on in later years to tell other players "yeah, I tried that Hero System thing, and it sucked...language pools and what not", then you did a disservice to the game and its community
 
 
 
One thing you might adjust your mind to, you're just talking about bags of points. A character is essentially a "resource pool" of character points. They might be a resource pool of resource pools (the Composite pattern..."is a, has many" in OOP speak), but from an external perspective they are a state bag of allocated resources. Some allocations are immutable (don't change, at least not in the context of a game session) and some might be mutable (might change during a game session). If you are internally compartmentalizing some of the resources of the character into "misc pool" and "equip pool" and so forth, presumably you are doing so to encapsulate a subset of the characters state to restrict or to apply variant behavior or to mark those abilities as being special in some way, whether for definition or behavioral reasons..."behavioral structural creational".
 
If you have a reason to do it and it accomplishes something and it doesn't create further imbalances, then go for it. Personally, I follow the rule of thumb that I need three reasons to do anything...and at least two of the reasons must be good ones.
 
 
It's part of your learning process. There is much to be said for static analysis. However, even with thorough static analysis runtime errors can be greatly reduced but can still occur. There is no substitute to actually running games in the realm of learning things. I recommend you iterate rapidly. Make mini campaigns set up with various options, run 1-5 sessions each, recur.

This is a thing I once wrote up as a tool for running play by post or online games with the GM using the HS as a backing engine for resolutions but presenting it as something much simpler to the players. However, it may actually help you as a character modeling tool to first abstract and then apply. It might be a useful exercise for you to reduce your player's concepts into the trait model I describe as one step, and then as a second step build characters to broadly satisfy the "contract" of what the players indicated is important to them.
 
http://www.killershrike.com/GeneralHero/Concepts/TraitDrivenHERO.aspx

I think this relates.  A 0 pt contact is like the friend and a 1+ pt contact is like the best friend.
 

Heh. I missed 3rd through 5th editions, and even came to 6e about 10 years late. In all honesty, I am a fan of the huge encyclopedias because I prefer to read examples about rules interpretations on my own rather than start a forum that ends out sparking a month-long debate where no answers are actually produced!  
 
Heh. I kid. Sort of . . .

Don’t forget the trailer fight in Raising Arizona! 
 
And if if you have HBO, I have got to put a pitch in for the most recent episode of Barry. It is the funniest, craziest, extended half-hour fight scene you’ll ever see. Hands down. 

Don’t forget the trailer fight in Raising Arizona! 
 
And if if you have HBO, I have got to put a pitch in for the most recent episode of Barry. It is the funniest, craziest, extended half-hour fight scene you’ll ever see. Hands down. 

Ok, so I agree with you here, which is probably why I'm obsessing over it! I learned Champions the same time you did, back in the '80s with 2e (or maybe 1e, I'm not really sure since it was all taught to me, but he first book I bought was the 2e rules). Things were simpler then, but they were also super heroic, and you payed for everything you wanted your character to do. The heroic level stuff has changed that, and the use of "free" equipment has created a problem about how to balance things that cost character points with things that don't. See the link that I just posted in my response to KillerShrike above. He breaks this down brilliantly. Anyway, my old self would have just created a more expensive Contact and called it "I know a guy for just the right problem," and then probably rolled it over from game to game to be a different guy. 
 
But the rules for the Perk have gotten more complex, and understandably so. There's a big difference between knowing a guy in Carbondale, IL who can fix my car, and randomly knowing a guy in Shanghai who can fix my plane. And there's a difference between knowing a guy who can fix my plane, and knowing the owner of Boeing, who can just lend me a different plane. So the cost varies. This means that a dozen contacts are not actually the same as one who can do it all. The dozen contacts may be two points apiece, while the owner of Boeing may be 12 points (I can't remember the actual cost, but I'll run with your example), but what they actually have access to is vastly different. So the problem I'm running into is finding a balance between specific contacts who are very useful the entire campaign, and a rogues' gallery of random contacts who fit just the right purpose maybe one or two times in a campaign. How many should I have to pay for, since there is a difference in quality and quantity. Of course your point is spot on: why am I asking anyone else since I'm the GM?! I'm just thinking in terms of fairness for the other players who may also want to play a Contact every one in a while, or use their own Language Skill and not defer to the woman who knows 12 languages. 
 
Duke, I know your position on the 6e rules compared to the 3e rules you play. Everything has been adjudicated to very specific and minute detail. I know this frustrates you, or maybe just bemuses you as we get all nitpicky about the minutiae. But I'll contend this: the rules became longer and more inclusive, and more granular, exactly because there are people like us who can debate the rules five times over and find twelve different solutions. I emphasize that not to be argumentative, but to point out that we are the reason the rules have gotten so detailed: we ask detailed questions! Also, people have found lots of increasingly more complex and unfair ways to unbalance games by manipulating the earlier, more vague, rules. In 30 years after the first edition of Champions came out, a lot of things were learned, but only because there were people like us pushing at the edges. There were also people who were hacking away at some of the assumptions of the game to the extent that the rules had to be more tightly and clearly defined. As with all debates, once the terms become more granular and more clearly defined, there is the opportunity for more edge cases to show up which require more adjudication, and on and on and on. And now we have 6e, the most complete set of rules so far to the point of near-absurdity, but nearly all the problems have been considered in those rules. Mostly because, over the years, people like us have been asking questions and pushing at the edges for answers that are fair, balanced, and practical. I look at the 6e rules as basically a collection of all the interesting and relevant forum posts over the years. In other words, the collective wisdom not just of Steve Long, but of everyone who asks challenging questions about the rules. 
 
Anyway, that's not a critique of you, Duke. I've actually considered going back to 3e just for sanity's sake. But I also have an appreciation for the elegance of the 6e rules and what they've done to try to balance all the elements throughout the game. So for now I'm just trying to master those rules before I try anything else. 
 
Thanks for reminding me that I'm creating my own problem for myself! Sometimes I need a boot to the head to sort of reset where my attention is focused.  I need to keep it simple, not just for the new players I'm trying to teach the rules, but for my own damn self! 

Ok, so I agree with you here, which is probably why I'm obsessing over it! I learned Champions the same time you did, back in the '80s with 2e (or maybe 1e, I'm not really sure since it was all taught to me, but he first book I bought was the 2e rules). Things were simpler then, but they were also super heroic, and you payed for everything you wanted your character to do. The heroic level stuff has changed that, and the use of "free" equipment has created a problem about how to balance things that cost character points with things that don't. See the link that I just posted in my response to KillerShrike above. He breaks this down brilliantly. Anyway, my old self would have just created a more expensive Contact and called it "I know a guy for just the right problem," and then probably rolled it over from game to game to be a different guy. 
 
But the rules for the Perk have gotten more complex, and understandably so. There's a big difference between knowing a guy in Carbondale, IL who can fix my car, and randomly knowing a guy in Shanghai who can fix my plane. And there's a difference between knowing a guy who can fix my plane, and knowing the owner of Boeing, who can just lend me a different plane. So the cost varies. This means that a dozen contacts are not actually the same as one who can do it all. The dozen contacts may be two points apiece, while the owner of Boeing may be 12 points (I can't remember the actual cost, but I'll run with your example), but what they actually have access to is vastly different. So the problem I'm running into is finding a balance between specific contacts who are very useful the entire campaign, and a rogues' gallery of random contacts who fit just the right purpose maybe one or two times in a campaign. How many should I have to pay for, since there is a difference in quality and quantity. Of course your point is spot on: why am I asking anyone else since I'm the GM?! I'm just thinking in terms of fairness for the other players who may also want to play a Contact every one in a while, or use their own Language Skill and not defer to the woman who knows 12 languages. 
 
Duke, I know your position on the 6e rules compared to the 3e rules you play. Everything has been adjudicated to very specific and minute detail. I know this frustrates you, or maybe just bemuses you as we get all nitpicky about the minutiae. But I'll contend this: the rules became longer and more inclusive, and more granular, exactly because there are people like us who can debate the rules five times over and find twelve different solutions. I emphasize that not to be argumentative, but to point out that we are the reason the rules have gotten so detailed: we ask detailed questions! Also, people have found lots of increasingly more complex and unfair ways to unbalance games by manipulating the earlier, more vague, rules. In 30 years after the first edition of Champions came out, a lot of things were learned, but only because there were people like us pushing at the edges. There were also people who were hacking away at some of the assumptions of the game to the extent that the rules had to be more tightly and clearly defined. As with all debates, once the terms become more granular and more clearly defined, there is the opportunity for more edge cases to show up which require more adjudication, and on and on and on. And now we have 6e, the most complete set of rules so far to the point of near-absurdity, but nearly all the problems have been considered in those rules. Mostly because, over the years, people like us have been asking questions and pushing at the edges for answers that are fair, balanced, and practical. I look at the 6e rules as basically a collection of all the interesting and relevant forum posts over the years. In other words, the collective wisdom not just of Steve Long, but of everyone who asks challenging questions about the rules. 
 
Anyway, that's not a critique of you, Duke. I've actually considered going back to 3e just for sanity's sake. But I also have an appreciation for the elegance of the 6e rules and what they've done to try to balance all the elements throughout the game. So for now I'm just trying to master those rules before I try anything else. 
 
Thanks for reminding me that I'm creating my own problem for myself! Sometimes I need a boot to the head to sort of reset where my attention is focused.  I need to keep it simple, not just for the new players I'm trying to teach the rules, but for my own damn self! 

I'm not sure what you mean. Clarify?
 
 
You could do that if you chose. The main thing w/ resource pools as they are written however is that they represent things _external_ to a character such as gear, vehicles, base, and other people.
 
I also use them for _other things_ to lock in role protection, but I do that at a 1:1 point ratio...for instance Here There Be Monsters, all mystical powers must be bought in a Mystic Resource Pool. Every 1 point in a Mystic Resource Pool costs 1 character point, so there is no point savings. Instead, it prevents people who lack a Mystic Resource Pool from taking mystical abilities. There are other pools for other types of protected role abilities. 
 
 
I think it could be interesting if it serves a purpose. However, I would recommend you consider Universal Translator as the foil to languages. Similarly, a character could take Area Knowledge: "Places I Reveal I've Been To Before When It Is Relevant To The Plot" 27- and succeed on a 17- even at a -10 penalty. And so on. The point being there is a sort of ballpark # of points for how much it should cost to be categorically covered for the various "soft skills" such as AK, KS, SS, and languages. Similarly, their utility in a given campaign depends entirely upon the GM...the more the GM makes knowing foreign languages and places and applying specific sciences and knowing specific stuff important to the game, the more useful knowing languages and things about places and science and stuff is to a character. 
 
Contacts on the other hand is basically buying an NPC with limitations on how useful they are in general and how frequently they can be useful. In an ideal scenario, they offer a modicum of the narrative control usually monopolized by the GM to a player. Some GM's, the adversarial sort mostly, balk at this and can't or won't allow contacts to be very  useful. Many narrative GM's typically love it when a player takes a more active interest in interacting with _any_ NPC, and thus tend to like contacts and make them perhaps too useful at times. Simulationist GM's will tend to prefer whatever outcome they think "makes sense" per their sensibilities about what is "realistic" to the setting and will often bend / interpret / filter contacts resolution accordingly. Gamist GM's will tend to just follow the game mechanic for when Contacts trigger, and apply whatever guidelines the game sets forth as to how helpful a contact can be. 
 
Knowing which sort of GM you are will help you decide which approach is a natural fit for you. Knowing which sort of GM you are will help your players decide if the taking of contacts at any level is likely to be worth it in your campaign.
 
 
Can you post a link to it for me? After the first thousand posts it gets harder to keep track.  
 
 

You can actually have both ways 😁
The PC is a world traveler and has contacts all over the world.  They pre-pay for three contacts.  At this point they are undefined (who and what they do). 
The PC is in Shanghai (1920s) trying to get to the bottom of a smuggling ring.  They cannot find anyone via skill rolls that will risk helping them.  The PC decides to "cash in" one of his Contacts.  He runs into Victor Chang, an old buddy he served with during the Great War whose family just happens to be a powerful family in the Shanghai underworld.  After the immediate session Victor is fully fleshed out and becomes a permanent Contact. 
 
I especially like permanent Contacts because I weave them into the story much like hunteds.  Except not as influential.
 
Now if Victor should die then the points revert to "pre-paid" status. 
 
If you pay points, then there should be a solid benefit.  To me a casual one time minor npc just doesn't need to be paid for in points.
 
Of course YMMV 😉
 

Gotta level with you, Brian--
 
The only thing limiting the effectiveness of a Contact in a global game is you.  Much like the early days of Skills: _you_ define their scope, which got slowly altered as we began breaking things down into smaller and smaller bits-- got expensive, as each "bit" broke out to cost the same as the Skill from which it was pulled---
 
You can treat contacts the same way without having to work in fancy things like resource pools or stacked Contacts or "I don't have access to this guy anymore, so give me the points back so I can buy another guy I have access to---
 
My solution, as I mentioned above, was a slightly-more-expensive version of Contact; I would like to note that I only came up with that because I wasn't starting a new Campaign, and by the time Contacts became a problem (the PCs had started to regularly move out of their Contact's areas of influence, as we had at that point, by tradition, established that Contacts have an area of influence.  But nothing really spells that out-- unless the newer editions have changed that).
 
Is there something in 6e (asking because I really don't remember and it's a bit late at night to attempt a re-read) that specifies your contact is limited in his area of influence?
 
Or look at it another way:
 
What is the difference between one guy with global influence and a dozen guys who have smaller areas of influence, but are scattered across the globe?   Or, put it the HERO way: what is the "mechanical effect" versus the "Special effect?"
 
The mechanical effect is what matters in-game, right?  Bullets and ice daggers are the same.  So I would think that one guy who can do it all is identical to twelve guys who can do 1/12 of it all, or one guy who can reach out to anywhere is the same as 360 guys who can each affect one degree of the earth's surface.
 
As someone above noted, the Contact roll isn't to see if you're contact is _available_; it's to see if your Contact can _help_.   Given that, and the above idea of looking at the mechanic, what is the in-game difference between one friend with a global network of influence and friend in every port who has regional influence?
 
Personally, after all this discussion, I say "no difference."  I say I'm going to give my players in my Brunswick game (only current game in which anyone has a Contact) the option to knock that price down to "normal Contact" and do something else with the rebated points.  If you lose a Contact, you get the points back to buy another Contact.  All things being equal, you effectively have unlimited Contacts that way anyway.  Considering everything else, I choose to interpret the Contact Roll as "can my guy help me?" as I think it's the most accurate.  That being the case, it's not a big stretch to go with "Can my guy here help me?" for every place you visit.  You'll never have to rebate those Contact points, because going this route you can't really "lose" the contact anyway: No matter where you are or how out of touch you are, "you've got a guy...."
 
Look, I'm pretty sure this is coming bout as a bunch of rambling nonsense, so I'm going to re-word and resubmit it to you when it's not pushing one-thirty in the morning (I fell asleep at my desk a couple hours ago: rough day), but I wanted to get this down both as a possible option for you and as a reminder for me to do it up better when I get the chance.
 
In poor summation:
 
pulling from everything tossed out in this conversation, I don't have a real problem with a globe-spanning game having Contacts with globe-spanning influence.  The Contact is meant to be useful, after all: you paid for that.   Given that the difference between one guy reaching across an ocean to set something in motion for you versus a local guy calling his neighbor to set something in motion for you is straight-up special effects, I don't have a problem with the idea that you've got a contact in every place you've ever been.
 
Hail Viper!
 
 

 
 

I think I'm not communicating well. 
 
In a normal city-bound game, a PC might have a contact who is an esteemed university professor with degrees in history and language.  The contact can answer a staggering variety of questions for the PC, provide important reference material, or direct the PC to somebody who'd know more than they do. 
In a globetrotting game, that same PC might have a similar contact.  Except, to handle the greater scope of the campaign the contact now won't balk at an international call or to ship a book out to Brazil.  The point cost and the things this contact can provide haven't changed, it's just that the scope in which the contact can operate has been expanded to match the scope of the game. 
 
In a normal city-bound game, a PC might have a contact who runs a shipping business out of a warehouse in the port.  He might offer free (albeit slow) travel, know things about commerce, and be able to obtain difficult-to-obtain items for the PC. 
In a globetrotting game, that same PC might have a similar contact.  Except, to handle the greater scope of the campaign the contact now operates a warehouse in every port.  The point cost and the things this contact can provide haven't changed, it's just that the scope in which the contact can operate has been expanded to match the scope of the game. 
 
In a normal city-bound game, a PC might have a contact who Is a black marketeer.  He can get just about anything the PC desires, and do so quickly and circumspectly. 
In a globetrotting game, that same PC might have a similar contact.  Except, to handle the greater scope of the campaign the PC now knows a black marketeer in every city.  The point cost and the things this contact can provide haven't changed, it's just that the scope in which the contact can operate has been expanded to match the scope of the game. 
 
When you take the map and draw a bigger circle labeled "You will be here", it's only fitting that the circle labeled "Your contact can help here" also gets bigger. 

I'll reiterate my opinion, high-travel campaign requires telecontacts, omnipresent contacts, or generic contacts. 
This businessman might be pals with a shipping mogul who operates a warehouse in every port.  This businessman might have a retired friend who's spending his remaining years traveling the globe.  This businessman might just have someone in his debt in every country. 

I thought this was going to be a discussion about contacts from a roleplaying perspective.  A contact can be an old friend, a colleague, an employer, an old lover, a rival or even a sometime enemy.  IMHO if a PC is asking a big favor of a contact, that should be roleplayed out.  Favors are another interesting concept which can tie in old storylines(since the GM can award favors based upon what the PCs did on an adventure).  

Totally agree with this. Contacts are a great opportunity to have a good role play situation. All types of situations.
 
I DON'T think that all contacts are necessarily great friends of the PC. They can be, if the player pays for "Good Relationship" (and maybe a high level of availability. Better friends make more time to help.) But it's not a necessary condition for contacts. Some contacts are only there for the money. Some feel an obligation but may not actually like the PC. Although this might be better for one-off favours it could still be a contact. Some are casual acquaintances who are happy to help in a small way, if it doesn't put them out or if there's a good reason to help. Some could be good friends who will help if they can, but be unwilling to take risks to do so. "It's more than my job's worth, buddy. But see you at the bar Friday."  The rules also allow for contacts who have been blackmailed, so they only help out because the PC will cause them trouble otherwise. As an example of this latter think of Turk from Daredevil. He could be modeled as a contact, but certainly not one who likes DD. (Yes, Turk could also be modeled as a Streetwise roll.)
 
One other thing I always do with contacts is to let the players know that the relationship is a 2 way street. Sometimes the contact will ask the PC for help. For reasons of making better drama I'd only ever use a contact that the PCs have interacted with in game. The more interaction the better. It's just better story than someone they've never met rocking up and handing out a quest.