The Seek power has it's basic function of:

The user may spend [2 force points] to gain insight into the general location or direction of a person or object that he knows about, regardless of its current

distance from him. The user may not activate this multiple times.

I checked but I didn't see anything about how much information you need to qualify. How are people ruling on this -

Can you seek things that you've only seen a picture of?

If you're hunting something that hasn't been seen since before the Great Hyperspace War, how much hard data do you need to seek it out?

I've been thinking that personal contact with something - handling something, speaking with a person, etc. - counts as "knows about"

For things you've never seen/been in the presence of I'm thinking of using an average research check - Lore for most things, but possibly a perception or streetwise check if you are trying to find a person from pictures or interviews with people who know them.

So, opinions or how people are doing this.

"insight into the general location or direction" doesn't necessarily mean you get a sector number and a quest tracker over the object. Along with Foresee, the Seek power lets the GM be pretty vague and mystical about what the player sees, prompting the character to put the clues together. The best uses of this power answer a question with another question.

Example: The PCs are looking for a long-dead Jedi who, unbeknownst to them, was shot down over Hoth.
PC: "I use the Force to seek out the body of Master Zabul-Tharr"

GM: "You are spiraling out of control, descending toward a white mountain towering over a snowy plain."

PC: "I need more detail." <spends Force Pips>

GM: "You see a crashed Jedi Starfighter, and irregular footprints leading to a frozen cave."

and so on.

"insight into the general location or direction" doesn't necessarily mean you get a sector number and a quest tracker over the object. Along with Foresee, the Seek power lets the GM be pretty vague and mystical about what the player sees, prompting the character to put the clues together. The best uses of this power answer a question with another question.

Example: The PCs are looking for a long-dead Jedi who, unbeknownst to them, was shot down over Hoth.

PC: "I use the Force to seek out the body of Master Zabul-Tharr"

GM: "You are spiraling out of control, descending toward a white mountain towering over a snowy plain."

PC: "I need more detail." <spends Force Pips>

GM: "You see a crashed Jedi Starfighter, and irregular footprints leading to a frozen cave."

and so on.

Actually I was looking more towards how well does the Seeker need to know Zubul-Tharr to make the roll. Is a holo and his name enough, or do they need more? Can they find The One True Plotifact just by knowing it was in the possession of Poo-Stink the Hutt during the second hyperspace war and it looks like a ceramic cat with a waving paw?

There's that episode in TCW where Quinlan uses it. Psychometry. If that helps.

I have a player who has that power. I see that effect as a sight power so Usually, I allow him to seek people he already met or that he have an image of them. Hard to see someone you dont know how he looks like. But yeah it is up to the GM and the players. You wont find a clear answer.

YMMV, but for me, the less familiar they are with what they're looking for, the more vague I get to be. I guess that's what I was getting at above. So yeah a name and a holopic might be enough to try, but prepare for the Force to be infuriatingly cryptic.

Ultimately, I wouldn't get too bogged down with degrees of familiarity. If they've one extensive research on the topic, reward it. If they haven't, breadcrumb them into an adventure. Whatever's most interesting.

On knows about, what about reading about someone/something. My group doesn't have much in the line of force powers yet (new group) and we had to go to Tatooine in our game. Our artisan who is also the knowlege guy decided to do some homework on the planet before we arrived (during Jedi era). As such when we got there he was able to tell the group just about everything about Tatooine due to good dice rolls. This in turn allowed our Shadow to know where to look to find the contacts to meet with a local Hutt.

In theory this could apply to a person as well. Were one to research a specific Jedi they may gain an idea to their habits, stregnths, weaknesses, hobbies, skills, etc. Make it a dice roll for added hilarity.

In the Beta, the Seek power required the PC to have actually met the intended target, or at least have directly interacted with them in some fashion. This was noted by a fair number of folks on the FaD Beta forum that it limited the usefulness of Seek quite a bit. Thus, in the final rules you don't have to be super-familiar with the intended target of the power; having seen a holoimage of them would be sufficient.

Also, Seek isn't a GPS, or even a road map. At it's most basic level, it pretty much tells you "that which you seek is that way." If you've read the Dresden Files series, think of it as being akin to Harry's tracking spell, which tells him which direction a person is, but not their precise location.

I ran an adventure where one of the PCs that had the Seek power had to combine their efforts their with an Astrogation check to track down the location of an ancient temple, using the key to the temple's vault as the connection to get the power to work in the first place. Ostensibly, the PC could even try to combine Seek and Foresee to get a clearer picture of where the person they're looking for is; had a PC (a Gand Seeker/Hunter) that used exactly that combination of powers during the Beta book adventure to track down a specific person that had gone missing from the resort.

OK, that was the type of information I was looking for. It seems most people feel that even minimal information is enough to successfully use the skill. I'm still probably going to make them make rolls for some things - just to make sure they are know the difference between a Plotifact and a MacGuffin.

I'd honestly make it so the more information and familiarity the person has with the subject the less vague the power is even before upgrades come into play. Meaning if the players take the time to do the research and learn more about what they are looking for the more specific the power works when used.

I gone to the level of allowing info from Forsee to grant ability to Seek. I also asked for Opposed checks when using Seek without first hand experience with the subject. Also there were some instances that I allowed a sympathetic link object to act as conduit, like in Psychomatry's case (although they are not the same powers).

In our game, we knew a rodian was hiding on dagobah, but we had no idea where exactly. Seek gave me enough information to let us set down in the right 'general area', so we didnt have to search the whole planet to find him. It didnt let us set down on top of him though, so we still had a fun swamp adventure getting there.

Really, the best answer is 'it gives you as much information as you need to keep the plot moving in the direction the GM wants'. Its a great tool to help circumvent frustration in moving the plot forward, but should not be a tool to bypass the adventure entirely.