Back into the breach with our weekly Dresden Files game, and because of the lapse in time between sessions/people missing as much as anything else, I had some unique situations occur.
One of the ones I didn't know exactly how to handle was the search for unrelated information; the criminal that they're currently on the trail of is to the large extent a pawn of greater powers, even though he thinks he's the one in control. The research character in the group decided to utilize his extensive library left behind by the warden to try to cross-reference the criminal with supernatural occurrences- but I didn't really have any such relationships established. He wasn't spending FATE points or anything, but he was wanting to make the research roll. He made a pretty exceptional roll, but it seemed pretty cheap to use the roll to say "You didn't find anything." He also wasn't declaring anything to find- he was basically questing for information cold, so I just flew by the seat of my pants with a difficulty and him finding something out tangential to his investigation- but also that there was no relationship to the supernatural with this particular criminal that had been documented.
My question is, in a story-based game like The Dresden Files, if a player fishes for information in a direction that goes off the story line, how do you handle it if he/she is not giving a specific indication of the information to be found/direction to take the story?
