Asking Around: Montages
20 minutes later...
Montages are used for situations where the relevant action takes place over a time period that is longer than is interesting. They are therefore a concern primarily of pacing. If the action would take more time at the table to resolve than it is worth for how important or interesting it is, use a montage. If the it is interesting, important, or just plain short enough skip the montage and roleplay out the activities and dialogue.
The difficulty Threshold of a Montage is based on how difficult it is to get a piece of information or item by the route you are attempting in the montage. So for example, the Threshold to find out what gang wears purple bandanas is going to be pretty low (1 or 2) if you're asking a bunch of hooligans at SK8R |, and it's going to be pretty high (3 or 4) if you are asking around the country club. In most cases, a montage will take place with a brief description of the endeavor by the player with possibly some interjection by the MC, followed by rolling dice and subsequently the MC divulging what is learned and/or gained. Roleplaying the consequences should usually begin from that point, having at least a small scene played out in full before jumping into another montage.
Formal Request Montage
"Be sure to attach your TPS form to the front of that."
When a character wants to get something out of an organization it can seriously take a long time. A lot of forms may need to be filled out, appointments made, plans explicated, needs justified, and who knows what all else. This can be done as a montage, the potentially vast stretches of time between one form submission and the next appointment can be wiped away with literal screen wipes, possibly cutting to the exasperated faces of the characters or a time/date subtitle. But for all the time involved, the legal systems of mortal government or supernatural Syndicates both are incredibly useful sources of information, resources, and action. In the case that the story is about navigating through bureaucracy (perhaps you are redoing The Castle or some other story set in Czech Republic), it is probably better to handle these situations as a series of interviews that are tied together with Bureaucracy checks.
Dicepools of these kinds of requests are usually Logic + Bureaucracy. Organizations are usually limited in what they are capable of delivering through these methods. It's also very useful at times to use a Formal Request as an entrance requirement to a scene that will be roleplayed in more detail. For example, the military won't just give you old school flame throwers, but you can get yourself a closed door meeting with an inventory officer who you could attempt to persuade or coerce into arranging for the goods to be delivered. A formal request is likely to be poorly received if the character delivering it is not familiar with the topic or organization. If someone lacks an appropriate background, raise the threshold by a point or two.
Burglary Montage
"I would like to triangle button a car."
Civilization in general, and big cities especially, are full of stuff that people "own". And we use quotation marks around that concept because there's generally no magical markings on objects that tie them to their recognized owner. The recognition of ownership is only really acknowledged by society and the social contract. People are only able to put things down with the expectation that those objects will still be there waiting for them in the future because promises of retribution have been made on each person's behalf by the nation. And you know what? All that really doesn't even apply when the city is being invaded by alien plants or you happen to be a monster who doesn't give a rat's ass anyway. Very often a player will be in the situation of wanting to use some property that is defined as belonging to someone else. In this case it's often useful to just have the character come from offscreen with the appropriate object that has been taken from a home, car, or storefront.
Dicepools of these kinds of requests are usually Agility + Larceny. You can't actually steal stuff that isn't nearby. And if it isn't just sort of "around" but available only in specific limited quantity possessed by people who matter to the story, then you should probably play it out as an action scene. So while a character can go "hotwire a car" offscreen, it's usually inappropriate for a character to steal "Fangorz's Bentley" without devoting genuine story scenes to the action of finding it, breaking in, and hotwiring it up. It is also worth noting that going off and stealing shit is almost by definition "illegal" and that may matter depending upon where you are.
It is important to note that the difficulty of stealing crap is based on how difficult it is to get to the stuff, not on how valuable that stuff is. For example, stealing blankets is really difficult because they are inside locked houses with people actually sleeping on them, while stealing cars is comparatively easy (at least if you aren't after the expensive cars that people keep in guarded locked facilities) because people park their cars outside in plain view. It's also important to note that just because you stole something fair and square doesn't mean that the universe now recognizes your ownership of it.
Social Interaction Montages
"Honestly, I just want the rifle. I don't really care who it comes from."
Sometimes the character is going to be doing some combination of skulduggery and schmoozing, but the direction of the story really doesn't call for a scene to be extensively roleplayed. This is often the case in a situation where many NPCs are going to need to be talked to, the actual effects of the scene are relatively minor, and/or negotiations involved will simply take a long time. Players and MCs alike can be inclined to "get on with it" rather than haggling through the location and procurement of an unlicensed firearm or finding a gang member who has seen the Red Ghost. In these cases it is often best to just skip to the montage and roll dice.
Dicepools of these kinds of requests are usually Charisma + Background. Even propelled by narrative imperative as they are, the player characters are not going to be able to get information or objects that literally do not exist. None of the ruffians at the pool hall have a magic sword or know the true name of the Mask of Envy. They just... don't.
Research Montage
"Is the world ending? I have to research a paper on Bosnia for tomorrow, but if the world's ending, I'm not gonna bother."
It is often important for a character to go look something up. This may simply be something that is sufficiently arcane, convoluted, or obscure that even experts have to look it up, or it may be something that the character simply does not happen to know. A montage of this sort will generally appear as just a few frames of a computer screen reflected in the character's glasses or even skip to the character walking out with a relevant book open to the correct page.
Dicepools of this type of request are usually Logic + Research. A character's Background skills are absolutely vital in these types of requests, and their relevant Background is subtracted directly from the threshold. Someone with a strong background in physics is never going to fail to look up the mass gravitational constant even though they probably have to look it up in the first place. Remember also that just because you have the background knowledge and the research chops needed to hone in on the information you want, it doesn't follow that the information you want is actually available. A local library may well have the genealogical data needed to show that Old Man Withers is actually an immortal, but it probably doesn't have any book anywhere in it that will tell you how to get to the Oaken Abyss or the Eye of Despair.