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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8331357" data-attributes="member: 42582">Burning Wheel has extremely robust tools for this sort of thing.At their core are Circles checks - ie a check made to meet a NPC your PC hopes to meet - and Wises checks - ie a check made to establish that your PC knows something.Every character has a single Circles rating. The scope of Circles is set initially at PC-gen, as a byproduct of the lifepath system; there are other PC abilities that modify it (eg Reputations and Affiliations), and there are rules for adding these abilities, and expanding the scope of Circles, in response to actual play.Every Wise is a separate skill, so there are indefinitely many - one of the most important one that's come up in my play has been Catacombs-wise used by one PC to find his way (or not) through the catacombs under the city of Hardby. Because Wises are skills, new Wises are added to a PC sheet in the same way as any other new skill can be attempted and improved.The difficulty of a Wise check depends on the obscurity of the information. The difficulty of a Circles check depends on the improbability of that sort of character being in the desired vicinity at the desired time. This can produce oddities, in that the difficulty of the check won't always reflect its utility to the player - but there are other features of BW that mean that players have an incentive to not always be making only easy checks.If the check succeeds, the situation unfolds as the player hoped - the meeting takes place, or the posited knowledge is true. In your example that would probably be a Necromancer-wise or Mages-wise or Secret Societies-wise check to know of the secret network of Necromancers; which might then serve as a linked test (ie an augment) for a Circles check by an appropriate PC to meet someone in the network.If the check fails, then the GM states the consequence. In the case of Wises, this can be anything from the truth is the opposite of what you hoped to something more subtle, like there is a secret network of necromancers, but they make it a rule that the will only meet with someone who provides them with a cadaver freshly dug up from the graveyard. In the case of Circles, failure might mean that no meeting takes place, but more interesting are things like you meet the person, but they're hostile to you! or instead of a representative of the necromancer network, there is a posse of inquisitors waiting for you - they must have heard that you've been ferreting around for impious information! The GM is expected to establish consequences for failure that keep things moving - and this doesn't have to mean shutting down the players' world-building ideas.I think it's possible to take some of these techniques into other systems. Classic Traveller (1977) already presents its Streetwise skill as something like a version of the BW framework, for meeting shady contacts or criminals who can help solve particular problems (the examples in the book include issuing licences without asking too many questions, and supplying illegal firearms). Traveller doesn't discuss how to adjudicate failure of a Streetwise check, but I think the BW approach can be used. At least some versions of D&D have a Gather Information or Streetwise-style skill or ability, and that could be used in a similar sort of way. Personally I think that's more interesting than using these abilities to drip-feed the players GM-authored setting information (eg as per traditional CoC modules or many urban-based D&D adventures), for the same reasons you give in your post.</blockquote>

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