The system, at its very core:
If you are using one of your Investigative skills, explain what you are doing to use that skill. If there is important information to be gained, and your skill use could plausibly get you that information, you get it automatically. If you choose to spend a point or two out of your pool for that skill, you might get some extra info on top of that.
If you are using one of your General skills, roll 1d6 and try to get equal to or higher than the target number for your task (I will usually tell you up front what the target is). You may spend as many points as you want from your pool for that skill, which will be added to your roll; you must declare spends
before rolling. To speed things up a little, you may post something like
"I will spend 2, but if the difficulty is higher than __ I will spend 4 instead" if you want to.
There may be circumstances when a General skill could be useful in an Investigative capacity, e.g. if you want to use Hand-to-Hand to figure out where your opponent learned their martial arts. In that case, you will get the info for free just like with a regular Investigative skill.
Check out
http://site.pelgranepress.com/...-out-for-players.pdf for some more details, as well as summaries of all the individual skills.
So when do we get those points back?
Investigative points refresh at the end of the mission, or at a reasonable break point for longer and more complex missions.
General points fully refresh at the end of the mission (except for Cover and Network, which never refresh - they can only be replenished by spending xp). Athletics, Driving, Hand-to-Hand, Piloting, Shooting, and Weapons also fully refresh when you have gone 24 hours (in game) without spending from these pools. Additionally, there are various special circumstances that will allow you to refresh a few points. I will let you know when these come up.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:43, Wed 19 Aug 2020.