SW Contact Networks

Contact Ratings

Contacts have two ratings: Scope and Expertise. Scope is how wide of a net your contact network casts, while Expertise describes their level of skill and knowledge. Each contact network is also associated with a single Knowledge skill. This skill determines what fields the contacts work in.

Rating	Scope	Expertise
1	A handful of individuals, such as a street gang, or staff of a single department in a small university.	Dabblers and dilettantes with the bare minimum of knowledge to be worth consulting. The network consists of students, amateurs, or those new to the field.
2	Up to fifty individuals working closely together, or around two dozen in correspondence across a planet.	Typical professionals within their fields, such as professors, doctors, scientists, or gang leaders.
3	Fifty to one hundred individuals operating across an entire world or star system.	The members of the network are accomplished members of their field.
4	One hundred or more individuals, spread across several star systems.	Network members include noteworthy and well-known figures in their various fields, such as widely-published scholars, cartel bosses, or the discoverers of new worlds or hyperlanes.
5	A vast network stretching across an entire sector of space or more.	Leading members of the field in question are included in the network.

Contact Types

• Core Worlds: Core Worlds contacts are usually cultural or political groups aligned with the Core Worlds, Colonies, and Inner Rim regions.
• Education: Education contacts are usually universities, as well as those involved in various bureaucratic endeavors, scientific think-tanks, and medical facilities. Corporate contacts focused on research and scientific profit lines are of this type as well.
• Lore: Lore contacts are also often academics, or otherwise mystical or religious traditions (either those who study them or those who actually practice them).
• Outer Rim: Outer Rim contacts are usually various species groups, colonies, and the like.
• Underworld: Underworld contacts are criminal figures or those who interact with them: bounty hunters, peacekeepers, pirates (and privateers) and the like.
• Warfare: Warfare groups are military, paramilitary, and insurgency groups.
• Xenology: Xenology groups are either groups that specialize in the academic, political, medical, cultural or other study of individual species, or groups within a given species' culture themselves.

Using Contacts

• Contacts can provide information about their given field. In order to do so, the character must contact them, usually through a "face character" (that is, an NPC who represents the "interface" with that group).
• This is a check, using the group's Scope as its Ability, and its Expertise as its Skill. (That is, a group's dice pool is a number of equal to its Scope, and upgrading a number of those to equal to its Expertise.)
• The Difficulty of this check is based on the Information Obscurity (see table below). Information that is either dangerous to discuss, or dangerous to get ahold of upgrade this Difficulty.
• The pool may also be modified by relationships between the group and the PCs ( for a good history, for past difficulties), how well the group is doing ( for a thriving or prosperous group, for one in dire straits), and the like.
• Roll the final result. It takes an amount of time indicated by the Information Obscurity, with each success beyond the first reducing that time by the amount indicated. Other die results are spent in the Contact Network Results Table (below).

Information Obscurity

Difficulty	Information
Simple (–)	Basic information that is required to operate within the field in question. Base Time: Immediate
Easy ()	Standard information widely known within the field in question. Base Time: One hour • Success: Reduce time by 30 minutes per (min. Immediate)
Average ()	Information that requires basic research or is common only to specialists within the field in question. Base Time: Three hours • Success: Reduce time by 1 hour per (min. Immediate)
Hard ()	Moderately obscure information, requiring research or a dedicated specialist to discover. Base Time: Six hours • Success: Reduce time by 1 hour per (min. Immediate)
Daunting ()	Obscure information, requiring significant research, even from a specialist. Base Time: One day • Success: Reduce time by 4 hours per (min. Immediate)
Formidable ()	Rare information which might require special permissions to access or be kept secret by those who know it. Base Time: Three days • Success: Reduce time by 12 hours per (min. Immediate)

Contact Network Results

Cost	Result Options
or	Additional References: The group turns up more information that might be of use. If you call on them for the same or closely related topic, they gain for that check.
or	A Pleasure To Work With: The exchange and effort is considered a good one. Gain a the next time you approach the group. Useful Facts: Gain to any single roll for the rest of the session that has something to do with the topic answered.
or	A Wealth of Information: The information uncovered answers questions even as it raises new ones...and answers those, too. Select another piece of information of equal or lower Obscurity to the one checked for, even if it is not in the Expertise of the group. They happen to have an answer for that question. Making Connections: The group finds the questions or research interesting and relevant; add one to the PC's ratings in Scope or Expertise with the group as they make more of their membership and knowledge available for use.
or	We Need More Time!: The contact group can't be rushed! Negate one extra success used to reduce Base Time. Operating Capital: The group requires something (bribes, equipment) that will cost credits, costing 100cr x the Obscurity rating (0-5).
or	Ungainly Progress: This will take forever: double the Base Time of the topic's research.
or	Contact in Trouble: A part of the group is in trouble, having run afoul of someone who controls the information or doesn't want it found out. If the heroes don't do something about it, the group can serve no further function for the rest of the session...to say nothing of what might happen to the individual contact in question. Diminishing Returns: The group's requests are taken very badly, and part of the group simply wants nothing to do with helping them from here on out. Reduce either Scope or Expertise rating with the group by 1. (This affects the PC's contact ratings, not the overall ratings of the group, although it may.)