Contacts
Every character has a Contacts rating — a number from 0 to 5 that measures their stable access to information, social channels, and the people who tell them things. It is not a phonebook. It is not a list of named informants. It is the standing a character carries when they need to find out who, where, what, or why, and they already know where to start asking.
A League Intelligence analyst with Contacts 1 does not run a stable of agents. She has three colleagues she trusts with a quiet question, a desk, and a comms terminal that gets answered. A Confederate freelancer with Contacts 1 does not have a directory. He has a bartender on Pell Station, a hauler captain who runs the inner rim, and the patience to wait two days. Same number. Same reach. Different fiction.
That is the whole point. Contacts tells you how far a character's questions travel. The character's life tells you who answers when they do.
Contacts is one of three Social Power pillars, alongside Resources and Allies. All three use the same engine.
Only player characters and named Adversaries carry a Contacts rating. Grunts and minor NPCs do not need one.
The Tiers
A character's Contacts rating is picked at character creation and sits on the sheet alongside their other Social Power ratings. There is no XP cost. It is not bought up like a skill. It moves through play.
| Rating | Tier | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Civilian | You only have what's available to the public — anything you could find with a few minutes on a public terminal. |
| 1 | Minor Player | You know your way around the lower layers — gig workers, dock hands, underpaid staff. They'll talk if approached right. Cheap, narrow, highly situational. |
| 2 | Major Player | You have a reliable network of contacts. If they can't get you what you need, they can tell you who can. |
| 3 | Connected | You have standing with intelligence brokers and can reach them when your own network falls short. You don't know any state secrets — but you can pay for them. |
| 4 | Well Connected | You have brokers on retainer and buy information on credit. Your own network is wide enough that you rarely need them. |
| 5 | Broker | You are the person others come to for information. If you don't know it, it's not worth knowing. |
The tiers describe reach and reliability, not raw headcount. A spook with three deep-cover sources sits at the same tier as a journalist with thirty surface acquaintances. They work differently. They are reaching into the same shelf of the world.
Spending Contacts
Anything at or below a character's Contacts rating is routine. No roll, no fuss, no on-screen accounting. A Contacts 2 character finds out who runs the docks on a midrim station, gets an introduction to a local fixer, learns which Naval officer is unhappy with their last posting. It happens between scenes if it needs to happen at all.
Basic situational awareness is included at every tier — even a Contacts 0 character can read a room, watch the news, and listen to what their crew picks up in port. Being a civilian is being a civilian; it is not being deaf. Contacts only constrains reaching beyond what a character's own eyes and ears would catch.
Anything above the rating is possible — but it costs more than time. The GM names a Cost, and the answer arrives.
This is the Costly Success principle applied to inquiry rather than to a roll.
When a character wants to know something above their Contacts rating, the GM names a Cost. The character pays it; the answer is theirs. Costs can include:
- Source Burned — a useful channel goes cold, gets caught, or stops returning calls.
- Stale or Partial — the answer is real, but old, secondhand, or missing the piece that mattered most.
- Cover Blown — the asking gets noticed. Someone now knows you wanted to know.
- Owe a Favor — the source will be calling, and you can't say no.
- Reduced Contacts — the rating drops by 1 until earned back through play. Not available at Contacts 0; pick a different Cost, or call the ask too far.
- Cross-Pillar — reduce Resources or Allies by 1 instead. A source wants paying, an ally vouches you in.
The Cost should scale with how far above the rating the ask is. One step up is a single Cost. Two steps is heavier — two Costs stacked, or a Cost the player will feel.
The GM also has the option of saying no. Not as a punishment — as a story prompt. A Contacts 0 character does not learn the identity of the League's deep-cover team in Confederate space by stacking Costs until the math works. They have to go find it. The inquiry becomes the next mission, and the rule is working as designed.
Routine information-gathering still runs narratively, as described in Between Sessions. Contacts is what tells the GM and the player which inquiries are routine and which need a Cost or a story.
Suggested Ranges
Contacts at character creation should fit the fiction the player wants to play. The table below offers ranges, not fixed values — a freelancer can be plugged in, a noble can be sheltered from the world. The range describes what the role usually means in terms of reach.
| Occupation Type | Examples | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Drifters and freelancers | Freelancer, Mercenary, Entertainer, Scout | 0–2 |
| Criminal life | Pirate, Smuggler, Thief, Bounty Hunter, Fixer | 1–4 |
| Trained professionals | Marine, Security, Medic, Engineer, Mechanic, Pilot | 0–2 |
| Position and access | Officer, Diplomat, Merchant, Scholar, Operative | 2–4 |
| Privileged | Noble | 1–4 |
A character's background can shift their placement. An Operative from a Refugee background may have far better street-level reach than her file would suggest. A Diplomat who served in a war zone has a different list than one who served in a capital. The occupation row is the starting point, not the verdict.
A Fixer is built on Contacts, which is why their range matches the criminal row's ceiling. A trained engineer has skill. Unless her trade put her in front of people who talk, her rating is modest. The same is true for a noble: wealth and rank do not automatically translate to useful information networks.
Hanako wants to know which member of the Confederate envoy's staff is feeding intelligence to Terran Naval Command. Her Contacts is 2. The answer sits at a 4 — it is held by people whose job is to never be asked.
The ask is two steps above Hanako's rating, so the GM names two Costs: Cover Blown and Owe a Favor. Hanako reaches out to a former League Intelligence colleague who left under a cloud and now consults for two governments at once. He gives her a name — a junior protocol officer with a sister on Terra. The favor he wants in return is information of his own, owed in the same coin, payable on request. The Cover that gets Blown is the colleague's: League Counter-Intel now knows he is talking to active personnel, and that he chose Hanako to talk to.
Two missions later the protocol officer is in a cell. The colleague is paying down what the conversation cost him. Both of those threads are alive.
Angus wants the real names and current whereabouts of every member of the League's deep-cover team operating in Confederate space. His Contacts is 2. The answer sits at a 5 — it is the tightest secret the League's counter-espionage division holds.
The GM does not offer a Cost. The GM says: you cannot ask this question and get an answer. You can steal a file, you can flip an officer, you can plant a source inside Internal Affairs over the course of a year. Pick a lane.
That is not a refusal. It is the next campaign.
Mission-End Adjustment
Contacts is not bought up with XP. It drifts as the fiction drifts.
At the end of every mission, the GM and the table consider whether the character's reach has actually shifted. Did they cultivate a real new source? Did they burn one they depended on? Did they get inside a faction they were locked out of, or did they get themselves locked out of one they used to belong to? If the fiction moved the needle, the rating moves with it.
- Most missions move Contacts 0 or 1 step in either direction. The default is no change.
- Bigger swings are allowed when the fiction earns them — a defection cultivated over a season, a whole network lost to a counter-intelligence sweep, a marriage into a new social circle. The table can move the rating two or more steps when the story supports it.
- There is no hard cap on a single shift. A Contacts 1 freelancer who genuinely turns the right Naval officer is not Contacts 2 next mission. He is whatever that relationship makes him.
Movement down works the same way. A Contacts 4 fixer whose three best sources get rolled up in a single bad week does not lose one tier per mission until the math is clean. She lost what she lost.
Players can pursue Contacts actively as a personal project during Downtime — working a source, cementing a faction, cultivating an informant. A Standard scope (target 3–5) fits most Contacts work. The payoff lands at mission's end, not mid-mission — the Successes build the position; the rating moves when the fiction closes.
XP buys capability. Contacts is not capability — it is position, the same as Resources. A character with high Contacts is not a better investigator; they are better-placed to be told the answer.
Letting Contacts drift with the fiction keeps the rule honest. A character who built a network because the story let them build one feels connected. A character who lost a network because the story took it away feels the silence. If Contacts cost XP, players would pay the points and treat the rating as inviolable. That is the opposite of what this mechanic is for.
GM Guidance
Contacts is the table's volume knob for how findable the truth is in your campaign. Some games want every revelation to be earned — a paranoid setting where information is a currency and every leak has consequences. Some games want competent operators with phones that ring when they call. Same mechanic, different volume.
The rest of this section is for the GM specifically.
A Low Contacts Rating Is Not a Penalty
A character with Contacts 0 is not a problem the GM is supposed to solve. They are a story engine. The drifter who needs to find an estranged sister has to go look. The deckhand who heard a name once has to go ask. The dispossessed officer who used to have a list has to rebuild it.
This is the gameplay. The rule is not asking the GM to slip information to a low-Contacts character until their sheet matches a high-Contacts character's. The rule is asking everyone to lean into the fact that a Contacts 0 character lives a different life, the things they need to know are harder to learn, and that is interesting.
Asking Is Always Free
Players are always allowed to ask. Contacts is not a gag rule. A Contacts 0 character can interrogate suspects, read the news, talk to their crew, walk a market, and listen. The GM should reward all of it with whatever information the fiction earns.
Contacts is for the asks that exceed what a character could plausibly hear on their own — reaching beyond the immediate scene into networks they do not personally occupy. Asking the bartender in the bar you are currently sitting in is just asking. Calling someone in a sector you have never visited, because you have a person there, is Contacts.
"No, but Here's How You'd Find Out" Beats Stacked Costs
The Cost rule is for asks that sit a few steps above the rating. A Contacts 2 character chasing a Contacts 3 answer: name a Cost, move on. A Contacts 1 character chasing the keys-to-the-kingdom: stop, and turn the inquiry into a mission. A Cost is a small wound the character carries. A mission is a story the table tells together. The second is almost always better gameplay.
A good shape for the conversation:
"You cannot ask that question and get an answer. Here are three ways you could find it out. Which one are we playing through?"
Sources Have Their Own Agendas
This is the thing that distinguishes Contacts from Resources. Resources doesn't care what you spend it on. Contacts always does. The person on the other end of a Contacts spend has reasons of their own to talk, to stay quiet, to talk to someone else, or to use the character the way the character is using them. The Cost examples above are mechanical handles on that fact, but the fiction is the engine. When an answer arrives, narrate who delivered it, and why. That is part of the answer.
Tips and Overheard Bits Are Flavor
A bartender slipping a regular a rumor in exchange for good tips does not change anyone's Contacts. A stranger telling them something useful in a bar does not bump a rating. Treat one-off information transfers as fiction — Contacts tracks a character's standing in the network, not the volume of information they happen to overhear on a given day. If a relationship is large enough to actually shift standing — a recurring source, an ongoing exchange — handle it as a Mission-End Adjustment rather than a one-time transfer.