Contacts

Contacts is the skill of knowing people and making connections with people. It presumes proficiency with all means of networking available in the setting.

You use Contacts to overcome any obstacle related to finding someone you need to find. Whether that’s old-fashioned “man on the street” type of work, polling your information network, or searching archives and computer databases, you’re able to hunt down people or somehow get access to them.

Contacts allows you to know who the perfect person to talk to is for anything you might need, or to decide that you know the perfect person already. It's likely that you’ll create story details instead with this skill, represented by aspects. (“Hey, guys, my contacts tell me that Joe Steel is the Best Mechanic For A Thousand Miles—we should talk to him.”)

You can also create an advantage that represents what the word on the street is about a particular individual, object, or location, based on what your contacts tell you. These aspects almost always deal with reputation more than fact, such as Known as a Mean Guy or Notorious Swindler. Whether that person lives up to their reputation is anybody’s guess, though that doesn’t invalidate the aspect—people often have misleading reputations about themselves that complicate their lives.

Contacts could also be used to create aspects representing use of your information network to plant information or get you information to help in the conflict.

Contacts isn’t used for attacks; it’s hard to harm someone simply by knowing people.

Contacts can be used to defend against people creating social advantages against you, provided your information network can be brought to bear in the situation. You might also use it to keep someone from using Deceit or Contacts to go “off the grid”, or to interfere with Investigation attempts to find you.

Whenever someone initiates a conflict against you in an area where you’ve built a network of contacts, you can roll Contacts against a Fair (+2) difficulty. If you succeed, you automatically go first in the conflict because you got a tip-off that it was coming.

+2 to create an advantage when you plant vicious (and likely untrue) rumors about someone else.

You can use Contacts instead of Intimidation to create advantages based on the fear generated by the sinister reputation you’ve cultivated for yourself and all the shady associates you have. You should have an appropriate aspect to pair with this stunt.