Fate System Toolkit

9: Subsystems

Fate System Toolkit

Kung Fu

There is regular, real-life kung fu, but that’s pretty much covered by the Fight skill. What we’re talking about here is cinematic kung fu, the high-leaping, acrobatic, melodramatic style of Hong Kong martial arts movies.

The overarching term in this section is “kung fu,” but that is just one of the many martial arts of the world. The rules here can apply to savate or ninjutsu just as easily, or whatever crazy martial art they practice on Mars.

This sort of kung fu is so dramatic that it doesn’t fit into a game aiming at a more realistic style, and it definitely changes the tone of even a pulpy action adventure setting. It can be bit overwhelming. If you’re going to include this crazy, over-the-top style of martial arts in your game, make it clear to your players up front that this is something characters—PCs and NPCs—can do. In a kung fu movie, practitioners of the art are on a higher level than regular schmoes. If your game is going to concentrate heavily on kung fu masters, it makes sense for most—if not all—player characters to have this ability. If only one character practices kung fu, make sure the other characters have their own area in which to shine. Also, you may want to tone down some of the crazier stuff described in this section. You don’t want just one character dominating the action scenes by jumping all over the place. If everyone has the ability, then there is less danger of this spotlight hogging. Movie kung fu is a pretty powerful thing. If you introduce it, it threatens to dominate your setting. Kung fu masters can run along walls, leap incredible distances, catch missile weapons in midair or deflect them with a weapon, fight on the most precarious of footing, and sometimes even walk on the surface of water. Pretty much anyone who has trained in the martial arts can do this. If a character has kung fu training, then these actions are treated just like regular running and jumping. A player can describe their character performing these actions without any special difficulty. The GM can still call for rolls, but these kinds of action are not exceptionally difficult or even unusual. Just adding these details to your game will create a lot of the feel of a kung fu movie. There are two ways to approach kung fu in Fate. One method is to use existing skills to cover kung fu abilities and fighting. The second is to create a dedicated Kung Fu skill. Which method to take depends on the nature of your game. If there is only one kung fu master in your game, the Kung Fu skill may be appropriate. If everyone is practicing kung fu, it probably makes more sense to have everyone use the existing skills to perform kung fu stunts. If you go this route, a kung fu practitioner must have an aspect related to their training in order to unlock the kung fu abilities within their existing skills—something like Trained at the Wudang Monastery or Master of the Mantis Style.

Using Existing Skills

If you are using the existing skill method, then Fight obviously takes on a lot of the duties. Any attacks, bare-handed or with weapons, depend on the Fight skill, and Fight can also be used for defense. Since a kung fu master can also deflect arrows and other missile weapons, Fight is the appropriate skill for performing this feat. If you have a modern-day game, or just have guns in your setting, you need to make a ruling regarding how to handle a kung fu defense against them. It is not out of genre to say that a kung fu practitioner can deflect or even catch bullets, especially if they use a sword or other metal weapon. Wall-walking and leaping are covered by Athletics. Any sort of physical stunt outside of fighting falls under Athletics or possibly Physique. Kung fu practitioners traditionally have training to resist damage or survive falls, which would be Physique actions. Lore can be used to identify rival schools or opponents’ techniques. A Lore roll can create an advantage, if you correctly guess the opponent’s teacher or school of fighting.

The Kung Fu Skill

If you add a specialized Kung Fu skill to your game, any abilities that fall outside the norm of Fight or Athletics, like leaping and wall walking, require a Kung Fu roll instead. This can be useful if you really want to differentiate Kung Fu actions from regular activity. Kung fu practitioners often have specialty moves or secrets known only to them and their masters. In a game with a lot of martial artists, these special moves are a good way to make characters unique and create a sense that there are many different styles. Special moves can be modeled using stunts and aspects. While most kung fu moves probably have names, a kung fu master has one or two signature moves that exemplify their personal style. These can be represented by aspects, like Dim Mak Touch or Hidden Blade Style. When invoked, a player can describe in detail the mystical or amazing nature of the action. These aspects should make the character look especially cool, and you can use them to show that NPCs know the character and their style, like “Don’t get too close, she’s a master of the Hidden Blade Style!” They can be compelled if an opponent knows an opposing move, just as a player can use his own character’s kung fu knowledge to analyze an opponent’s style and come up with counters of his own. For a more mechanically robust version, use the stunt system to create moves. You can create a whole school of kung fu using stunts, with earlier, easier stunts required to unlock more advanced ones. Use the description of your stunts to create an evocative kung fu fighting style, with the names and effects of the moves driving home the theme of your fighting style.

Drunken Fist

Here’s an example of a kung fu stunt tree, for the Drunken Fist Style of kung fu. The Drunkard’s Stagger: You sway and stagger on your feet, evading enemy blows seemingly by chance. When you succeed in a defensive Athletics roll using this technique, you gain +1 on your next attack against the opponent who tried to hit you. If you succeed with style, gain +2. The Drunken Shove: Your rude and artless push contains a greater power than seems possible. You gain +2 to use Physique to create an advantage on an opponent by knocking them off balance. Drinking from the Jug: You pause to take a swig of wine from your jug, fortifying yourself for the battle. When you have a drink during a fight, clear your lowest stress box. This requires you to take an entire action drinking. The Falling Drunkard: (Requires Drunkard’s Stagger) When an enemy attacks, you lose your balance and fall to the ground, rolling back to your feet quickly, but your enemy now finds himself dangerously overextended. Roll Athletics to dodge. On a success, place a boost on your opponent such as Overextended or Off-Balance that anyone may use against him. On a success with style, place a second boost on your opponent. The Drunkard Swings Wide: (Requires Drunken Shove) Your blows are crude and telegraphed, but in dodging, your opponent seems to be struck by an elbow or a knee by accident. Make your Fight roll as normal. If you strike your opponent, you do stress as normal. If you miss or tie, your opponent takes one physical stress anyway. Pouring Wine: (Requires Drinking from the Jug) You take out a cup and pour a drink from your jug. This elaborate and difficult task causes a pause in the battle. No one may attack you while you pour, and you remove your lowest stress mark. This technique requires an entire action, and you may not perform the technique more than once in a row. The Drunkard Stumbles: (Requires Falling Drunkard) You stagger and stumble without control, but your enemy always seems to miss you and strike a nearby obstacle, causing damage to themselves. When you dodge a blow with Athletics, your opponent takes one stress, or two stress if you succeed with style. Steady the Drunkard: (Requires Drunkard Swings Wide) You stagger and seem about to fall, so you reach out and grab your opponent’s arm to steady yourself. This seemingly unintentional grip blocks chi and paralyzes your opponent. You may place a Chi Blocked situation aspect with a free invocation on your opponent. Your opponent may not use any kung fu stunts until they remove this aspect.

Cyberware

The easiest way to handle cyberware in a Fate game is with the existing tools. Want to be a cyborg? Tie an aspect or two to the fact that you’ve got some augmentations. Do your cyber-arms make you superhumanly strong? Make Physique or Fight your peak skill. Do your eyes grant you thermal imaging? A stunt can do that for you. If you want a system for cyberware that stands on its own rather than reskinning existing systems or a justification for things you were going to take anyway, that’s what this section is for.

Prostheses vs. Augs

Cyberware takes a toll on a person, it has a cost. Plenty of people out there have the odd cyber-prosthesis, a simple limb meant to mimic the functionality of its human counterpart, attached to compensate for a loss or injury. All these new pieces will cost you is some money and time spent in a rehab facility, and you’ll be right as rain, back to your old self—mostly. If all you want is a prosthesis or two, you don’t need to pay any refresh and you don’t need to tie any aspects to your cyber-prostheses unless you want to. Augmentations, or augs, are quite another matter. Where a prosthesis is designed to integrate into the body, mimicking natural function as best it can, an aug is meant to improve the human body, making a person stronger, faster, more durable, bristling with natural weaponry, or capable of things that humans just can’t do on their own. Where a person usually gets a prosthesis to replace a lost piece and become whole again, many people get body parts cut off to have augs installed. These augs need a power source, something beyond the normal bio-electric energy that the human body produces. To that end, people who get augs first get a cyber-heart. A cyber-heart isn’t a literal heart. It doesn’t replace your human heart unless you need it to, though it does work as a decent backup, if you’ve already got a functioning ticker. What a cyber-heart is, first and foremost, is a power source. It’s a capacitor that charges from your own bio-electric currents, can be supplemented by plugging into a wall outlet, and allows you to power one or more augs. This means two things in-game. First, it means that you must tie at least one of your aspects to the fact that you’re a cyborg. You’ve willingly transcended your human limitations—that’s a defining feature of any person who chooses this path. The second mechanical cost is that you must reduce your refresh by 1, in exchange for the following aug. Cyber-Heart: You can install and use other cyber-augs. The heart also acts as a backup for your natural heart and filters impurities and toxins from your blood. If you’re subject to a poison or toxin, spend a fate point to ignore it. If you’re ever killed by something the cyber-heart could conceivably save you from, spend a fate point to concede instead of being taken out.

Types of Augs

There are two types of augs: minor augs and major augs. Getting either installed costs you both money and time, and might cost you refresh as well. Minor augs are small changes, things that don’t tax the body overmuch or require huge changes to your underlying biological systems. A new eye, a hand, a skin implant, or an upgrade to an existing aug—these kinds of things are all minor augs. If you buy and install a minor aug in-game, it requires a Resources roll at Average (+1), +1 for each additional minor aug you’re having installed. You’ll also need to recover from surgery. Doing so puts a moderate consequence on you, from which you recover normally. Whether you pick up your minor augs at character creation or during play, every three minor augs you take cost you 1 point of refresh. Once you take your first minor aug, drop your refresh. When you hit four, drop it again, and so on. Getting a prosthesis installed carries the same Resources and consequence costs, but doesn’t carry the refresh cost. A major aug requires major surgery and replacing a large part of your body. Limbs are always major augs, as are organs and anything that jacks into your brain. When you get a major aug during play, it requires a Resources roll at Good (+3) for each major aug you get. In addition, having a major aug surgically installed also puts a severe consequence on you, from which you recover normally. Whether at character generation or during play, each major aug costs you a point of refresh.

Example Augs

Cyber-Eye (minor): You get a +1 bonus to sight-based Notice rolls. In addition, choose one of the following aspects. Adding an additional aspect is another minor aug. Image Filtering • Low-Light Vision • Sonar Imaging • Targeting Interface Thermal Imaging • Visual Net Interface • Zoom Magnification Cyber-Legs (major): Both of your legs have been replaced by much more powerful cybernetic legs. You can move two zones as a free action, and you get a +2 to Athletics rolls made to run or jump. In addition, pick one of the following add-ons. Additional add-ons are each a minor aug.

Hidden Compartment: You’ve got a compartment where you can hide things, like a hand gun or a brick of cocaine.
Magnetic Grip: If you’re standing on a metallic surface, you can’t be knocked down. You can also walk up steep or even vertical metallic surfaces, albeit clumsily.
Pneumatic Kick: If you kick someone, your kick is Weapon:2.

Neural Interface (major): You can access the Net from anywhere, with a thought. You can hack low-security systems automatically—they just do what you want them to do. Even high-security systems are easy—you get a +2 to Computers rolls to get through them. Razor Nails (minor): You’ve got one-inch, razor-sharp blades that pop out of your finger tips; you can retract them at will. These blades are Weapon:1. Subdermal Plating (major): You can oppose most physical attacks using Physique—fists, blades, truncheons, and small arms fire have trouble getting through the plating beneath your skin. In addition, once per scene you may ignore any one mild or moderate physical consequence from such an attack. Thermoptic Camouflage (minor): You can spend a fate point to become invisible to the visual and thermal spectrums, for as long as you don’t move.

The Downside of Augs

Though not explicitly stated above, every aug has drawbacks. A neural interface can be hacked, giving a hacker access to your brain. Thermoptic camouflage might short out when you’re doused in water, delivering a nasty electric shock. That’s why you have an aspect tied to the fact that you’re a cyborg. GMs, feel free to enforce the downside of an aug—whatever your group determines that might be. Doing so is a compel on the cyborg’s aspect, which means that a player you put in such a situation can refuse your compel or take a fate point for the trouble you put her in.

Gadgets and Gear

Equipment in Fate Core can be as simple as an aspect, like Magnetic Grapnel Gun, or a stunt, like “Magnetic Grapnel Gun: +2 to overcome with Athletics by climbing or swinging when there’s a metal anchor around.” But for a little more depth, you can combine those into a single extra as a gadget.

Functions and Flaws

Gadgets come with two aspects for free—a function aspect and a flaw aspect. The function tells you the gadget’s purpose, and the flaw tells you what’s wrong with it. You can think of its function as its high concept and its flaw as its trouble or a consequence that never goes away. These do not take up any of your character’s personal aspects.

Magnetic Grapnel Gun
Function: High-Powered Electromagnetic Swingline
Flaw: Still Working Out the Bugs

Stunts

Give the gadget one or more stunts to reflect the reliable mechanical advantages it confers on its user. These stunts cost one refresh apiece.

Magnetic Grapnel Gun Aspects
Function: High-Powered Electromagnetic Swingline
Flaw: Still Working Out the Bugs Stunts
CLANG!: Spend a fate point to secure the magnetic grapnel to a metallic object in a dramatic way, grabbing a swiftly moving vehicle, a falling pulse rifle, or the wall on the other side of a yawning chasm in an oddly built space station.
Trick Shots: +2 to create an advantage with Shoot when you use the grapnel gun to swing around, disarm an opponent, or create a barrier.
Cost: 2 refresh

Gadgets don’t have to be literal “gadgets,” either. For example, you can just as easily use these rules to create magic items in a fantasy setting.

The Ring of Truth Aspects
Function: Magical Lie Detector
Flaw: Wearer Is Cursed to Tell the Truth Stunts
Pierce the Veil of Lies: Spend a fate point. Three times during the scene, you can ask the GM if someone is lying, and she must answer you truthfully. Cost: 1 refresh

Additional Flaws

You can take additional flaws to reduce a gadget’s refresh cost, at a rate of one refresh per additional flaw. The minimum cost for a gadget with any stunts is 1 refresh, regardless of how many flaws it has. GMs, it can’t be some weaksauce flaw, either, like Kinda Glitchy on the Ocean Floor. And if you do let something like that slip by, make sure the player knows they can expect to spend a surprising amount of time underwater. Deep, deep underwater.

An additional flaw for the Magnetic Grapnel Gun might be Heavy and Unwieldy.

The Ring of Truth could have an additional flaw of Hunted by the Servants of Ssask, God of Lies.

Monsters

The rules for NPCs in the Fate Core book are great for creating people—other humans whose goals put them into conflict with the PCs—but as the GM, you might also want to include a few monsters in your game. With these tools, you can create monsters that are inhuman and tricky, challenging players to find clever approaches when dealing with monstrous antagonists.

Instinct Aspects

To create interesting monsters, start by laying out some of the core drives that spur the monsters to action. What makes them take risks and chances? What do they care enough about to get in fights with the players about? It’s likely they have inhuman drives—desires that ordinary humans would probably never have. Take your initial thoughts and condense them down into an instinct aspect. Monster characters can use their instinct aspect as normal, but they may add +3 to their roll instead of +2 when they invoke it. Monsters are often singularly driven to obtain their goals, and the players will have to work to overcome these foes.

Rey is running a game of urban horror. When he writes up a set of zombies, he gives them the instinct aspect Hungry for Brains. Anytime that he invokes their aspect, they get a +3 to their roll.

Monster Abilities

Monsters are distinct from other NPCs because their abilities tend to challenge the rules and disrupt the normal flow of conflicts. Many monsters are entire fight scenes waiting to happen, as the players have to figure out how to defeat an enemy that is changing up the rules on them. Some examples of interesting monster abilities:

Hard to Kill: Monsters can survive much more damage than other characters, either because of longer stress tracks—like Frankenstein’s monster—or because they can regenerate quickly—like the Hydra.
Immune to Damage: Monsters are often immune to all damage save one type—such as vulnerability to silver—or until a specific condition has been met—such as destroying a specific magic item.
Prone to Change: Monsters tend to transform themselves—like vampires who turn into bats to flee—or the environment—such as summoning additional minions in the middle of a fight.

While it’s easy to see how these traits could be turned into stunts, they are often too powerful to be activated without spending a fate point. However, if you add such a cost, the players can grind down an enemy like the Hydra, waiting for you to run out of fate points. In addition to making your monsters weak, such costs make conflicts a drag. Who wants to play until the GM runs out of fate points? Rather than add a cost, you can instead add a weakness to a monster in order to be able to activate a stunt without paying the fate point cost. If you add a lesser weakness, you must still pay a fate point at the start of the scene in which the monster uses the power, but if you add a greater weakness, you don’t have to pay any fate points at all to use the stunt. When the PCs discover and use a lesser weakness, the monster can still use the stunt, but must now pay each time that it uses the stunt. If the PCs discover and use a greater weakness, however, the monster loses the stunt completely.

Rey decides to create a demon named Masabra. He gives Masabra a stunt that makes the demon immune to physical stress at the cost of a fate point. Rey wants Masabra to be extremely dangerous, so he gives him a greater weakness of blessed weapons, allowing Masabra to use the stunt without paying a fate point cost. If the PCs ever acquire blessed weapons, Masabra would lose access to this stunt when he faced them.

Multiple Zone Monsters

For very large monsters (VLM), you can go even further by treating the monster itself as a map with several zones. In order to defeat such a monster, the characters need to defeat each zone independently, while navigating the obstacles between the zones. By statting up the monster in pieces, you can split up the PCs and give the monster a number of extra actions—one per zone—to convey the size of the foe and keep the conflict interesting.

The Elder Dragon of Ormulto is a VLM in Rey’s game. He’s so large that he has four separate zones: his two claws, his head, and his tail. When the players try to keep him from destroying an apartment building, they will need to deal enough stress to his head to bring him down. However, if they don’t do anything about his claws or tail, he will quickly rain destruction down upon the people the heroes are trying to protect. They will have to split up among the zones to keep him in check.

In addition to the size of VLMs, you can also create stunts that help to convey the theme and style of the monster. Many of these involve transformations, stunts that fundamentally alter the monster or change the nature of the fight, changes that are familiar to players who have previously fought video game boss monsters. As with smaller monsters, you can tie these stunts to weaknesses if you’d like to be able to activate them for free. In order to mark the importance of the intermediary steps needed to defeat a gigantic monster—such as destroying a part of it or closing a portal from which it draws strength—VLMs gain an additional transformation stunt tied to their partial defeat.

Since his claws and tail are much weaker than his head, the Elder Dragon of Ormulto has a transformation stunt tied to the destruction of those zones on the map called Breath of Fire. If the PCs destroy one of his appendages, the Dragon activates the stunt to deal two stress to each character on the map, regardless of zone, and adds the situational aspect (Name) Is On Fire! where (Name) is an important building or person near the fight.

Many of the rules here can also be used to add interesting features to nonhuman characters that aren’t antagonists in the story. You could give the player’s familiar a stunt with a weakness that human NPCs could attempt to discover, or map out a spirit guardian the players summon across multiple zones.

Squad-Based Action

What if you want to play a squad of characters who are conscripted to storm the beaches at Normandy on D-Day? Can you use Fate to play a squad of space marines? Yes, sir. Yes, you can.

These rules, like everything in Fate, are flexible enough to work with a variety of skins, accommodating modern military units, World War II squads, high fantasy armies, and futuristic bug-hunting mechs.

Creating Squads

First, create characters normally (see Fate Core, page 30). While you’re writing up your characters, name your squad and describe the role it plays in the greater force. Is it a ragtag bunch of ex-felon soldiers? Or a highly trained force of well-equipped professionals? Whatever you decide, turn the description into two aspects, a squad concept for your squad, and a squad trouble that always seems to plague your unit. Any player in the unit can invoke these aspects and be compelled by them.

Lara, Antonio, and Michelle decide that their squad is a bootstrapped group of survivors who are fighting back after alien forces nearly destroyed New Orleans. After creating individual characters, they name their squad the Ninth Ward Defenders, giving it the squad concept Dogs of War to represent their scrappy resilience and the squad trouble In Over Our Head to show that the aliens are dominant.

Squad Skills

Unlike individual skills, squad skills can be used to reshape the whole battlefield. For example, your soldier might lead a charge against the enemy’s line or call in reinforcements to soften hardened defenses. After creating the unit aspects, give your unit:

One Fair (+2) squad skill
Two Average (+1) squad skills
One Squad Stunt
If you want to emphasize the squad over the individual characters, reduce your characters’ starting stunts and refreshes from three to two, and cap your skills at Good (+3) instead of Great (+4).

Operations

The Operations skill measures your unit’s ability to work together on the battlefield, eliminating enemy units and securing key strategic positions. Overcome: Operations allows you to overcome obstacles as a unit, such as when you lay down cover fire to reach a wounded soldier safely or work together to climb over a wall. Create an Advantage: When you create an advantage with Operations, your unit is setting traps (Ambush!) or charging directly at the barricades (Panicked Grunts). Attack: Operations allows your squad to launch coordinated attacks against targets and should be rolled instead of an individual character’s Fight or Shoot whenever the squad acts as a unit. Defend: Operations is rolled for defense when your unit attempts to retreat from the larger combat zone or otherwise avoid an enemy attack as a group.

Operations Sample Stunts

Hard to Pin Down: Take a +2 on any Overcome roll made to retreat from a combat zone. Blitzkrieg: Your squad is fast, light, and deadly. Take +2 on all Operation rolls in which your attack focuses on catching the enemy off-guard.

Equipment

The Equipment skill represents the resources your squad has available to pursue its objectives. Overcome: Like the Resources skill, Equipment can be used to get the squad through a situation that requires some additional gear. The squad might call in some trucks to carry them over rough terrain or even call in a bombing run. Create an Advantage: Your squad might use Equipment to get some high-powered weaponry for a particular mission (Flamethrowers!) or to procure resources that are crucial for navigation (Topographical Maps). [Defend]Attack / Defend: Equipment isn’t used to attack or defend.

Equipment Sample Stunts

Hi-Tech Gear: You can use Equipment instead of Operations in any situation where raw technological superiority would win the day. Well-Stocked: You gain a +2 on all Equipment rolls made to create an advantage when you are accessing your preexisting supplies.

Recon

Overcome: Recon isn’t used often to overcome obstacles, but it can be used, like Notice, to give the squad a chance to head off ambushes or traps. Create Advantage: Your squad can use Recon during a battle to pierce the fog of war, gathering information beyond your immediate location. Attack / Defend: Recon isn’t used to attack or defend.

Recon Sample Stunts

Codebreakers: On a successful Recon roll to create an advantage while monitoring enemy communications, you can discover or create one additional aspect (though this doesn’t give you an extra free invocation). Counterprogramming: You can use Recon instead of Operations to set a trap when you use the enemy’s communications system against them.

Rolling Squad Skills

In order to make a squad skill roll or use a squad stunt, one player must decide to give up his personal action to rally the group. The nature of rallying will depend on the situation—military units typically follow orders—but generally the player will need the support of most of the other player characters. If he’s successful in directing the squad, the difficulty of the task drops by 1 for each additional squadmate who sacrifices their next action to the new goal, as the group turns all its attention to accomplishing the goal. In addition to reducing the difficulty, the success or failure of the roll is carried across the whole unit, as the squad’s skills have the potential to reshape the battlefield and win the day—or cause the squad to suffer together. As such, stress inflicted on the squad as a whole is inflicted on each squadmate equally.

Rather than make a roll to try to breach an alien barrier by herself, Lara decides to rally the Ninth Ward Defenders to knock it down together. The difficulty of accomplishing the task falls from Fantastic (+6) to Great (+4). If she succeeds, the whole unit will get the benefit of breaching the enemy barrier without having to roll a second time. If she fails, the whole unit will suffer stress from the alien counterattack.

Squad-Based Combat

To run a great squad combat, use Operations rolls to move directly to the heart of the action. Rather than start at the beginning of the fight—when the conflicts are boring—get the squad to develop a plan of attack and roll Operations as an Overcome with a difficulty appropriate to the target to see how things turn out. If they are successful, the players should narrate one good outcome for every shift above the target. If they fail, the GM will narrate one negative outcome for every shift below the target. Either way, jump straight to the exciting action. Repeat when things start to drag in the middle of the fight.

After breaching the alien barrier, Lara is pretty sure that her PC can get close enough to the alien queen to kill her before the rest of the aliens regroup. She rallies the Ninth Ward Defenders to charge the enemy line, rolling their Fair (+2) Operations against a difficulty of Great (+4) set by her GM. She gets a +2 on her roll, but invokes the Dogs of War to get another +2 for a total of Fantastic (+6). For her first shift, she narrates that they charge the line successfully, and for her second, she states that her character gets close enough to kill the queen.

THIS MEANS WAR: MASS COMBAT

Suitable for inserting into any Fate Core game or for playing on its own as a minigame while waiting for the pizza guy to show up, this hack gives you simple tools to play out conflicts on a grand scale. These rules are not compatible with the squad-based rules presented above, as they encompass the actions of groups larger than a handful of people.

YOU WILL NEED:

Index cards, for use as unit sheets and keeping track of zones.
Tokens or miniatures to represent units and leaders.
Friends, Fate dice, and all the usual stuff you need to play Fate Core.

Basic Training

Combatants are units on a battlefield made up of zones. All three of these are fairly abstract concepts, mutable enough to suit your particular game and conflict. Units are built like characters, with skills, aspects, and consequences, but no stress boxes or stunts. A unit might consist of a few battleships, a dozen biplanes, or a thousand shrieking orcs, but they all act as one in battle. Represent each zone of the battlefield with an index card, or zone card. Represent every unit with an identifying token or miniature of some kind, and place it on a zone card to indicate its current location on the battlefield. A unit can have a leader attached to it, in the form of a PC or a supporting or main NPC. Leaders make their units more efficient, and can engage each other one-on-one in the midst of battle.

Unit Actions

When activated, a unit can move one zone for free, as long as there isn’t an obstacle in the destination zone, such as an enemy unit or obstructing terrain. It can also take one action—overcome, attack, or create an advantage, detailed below. If the unit has a leader attached to it, the leader may give up their action to give the unit a second action. A player can also spend a fate point to give one of their units without a leader a second action. Regardless, no unit can take the same action twice in a turn, and attacking always ends a player’s turn.

If you have a unit with a leader attached, it can move one zone and attack, create an advantage and attack, and so on, but it can’t attack twice, create an advantage twice, or attack and then create an advantage or move.

Create an Advantage

This can take the form of scouting the terrain, intimidating another unit, using the environment, or anything else that makes sense in context. Here are some specific ways to use this action to make your battles more dynamic. Ambushing: A unit can use Stealth to put a situation aspect like It’s a Trap! into play. This can’t be attempted if the unit has an enemy in its zone. Intimidating: A unit can use Provoke to put a situation aspect into play, such as Frenzied Berserkers, The Might of the Imperial Fleet, or Hesitant. Pinned Down: Use Shoot to put a Pinned Down situation aspect on one enemy unit. A unit with this aspect can’t move into another zone unless it succeeds on an overcome action opposed by the attacker’s Shoot skill. The aspect goes away if the defender successfully moves or if the attacker doesn’t use an action to maintain it from turn to turn. Scouting: A unit can use Notice to put a new zone aspect in play in an adjacent zone that doesn’t already have a unit in it. The difficulty is Fair (+2), +2 for each aspect the zone already has. For example, if a zone has the aspect Tangled Woods, the difficulty to give it a second aspect would be Great (+4). Surrounded: A unit can put a Surrounded into play if it has more allies than enemies in its zone. Each allied unit in the zone gets a +1 to its attacks as long as this aspect remains in play.

Overcome

Use a skill to move into a zone with an obstacle or enemy unit: If the zone has an aspect that would hinder movement, such as Dense Forest or Asteroid Field, the difficulty equals twice the number of hindering aspects. For example, the difficulty to enter a zone with Rocky Terrain and a Raging River would be Great (+4). If the zone contains one or more enemy units, one of them can actively oppose the attempt with a defend action, usually using Athletics, Drive, or Pilot. Each additional unit in the zone allied with the defender gives the defender a +1 to their roll. Either way, use the usual outcomes for overcome to resolve the action. Use a skill to move one or two additional obstacle-free zones: On a tie or success, move one zone (with a minor cost, in the case of a tie). On a success with style, the unit can forgo the boost to move a second zone instead.

Attack

If your battle uses both Fight and Shoot, attacks against enemies in the same zone use Fight, and attacks against enemies in an adjacent zone use Shoot. If your battle only uses Shoot—as is typical in a dogfight—then all attacks are made with Shoot, regardless of range. Attacking an enemy two zones away gives the defender a +2 to their defense roll. Provoke can’t be used to attack, only to create an advantage. See Intimidating, on the prior page. Depending on the venue of the battle, you may want to tweak the way defenses work. For example, in medieval warfare, maybe the only defense against Shoot is Will—you don’t dodge arrows, you stand your ground and keep your wits about you. This takes some functionality away from Athletics, but applies to all units equally, so no one’s especially disadvantaged.

Unit Quality

A unit’s quality—Average, Fair, or Good—determines how many skills, aspects, and consequences it has.

Average: Conscripts. One Average (+1) skill. One aspect. No consequences—a single hit takes out an Average unit.
Fair: Grunts. One Fair (+2) skill, two Average (+1) skills. Two aspects. One mild consequence.
Good: Elites. One Good (+3) skill, two Fair (+2) skills, three Average (+1) skills. Three aspects. One mild consequence, one moderate consequence.

UNIT SKILLS Here’s a sample list of skills taken from Fate Core that units might have.

Athletics
Drive/Pilot
Fight
Notice
Provoke
Shoot
Stealth
Will

Not all of these skills will be appropriate for every unit in every conflict, of course. If it’s a spaceship battle, you’re not going to have much use for Fight or Drive, and a subterranean battle between dwarves and undead probably won’t involve Pilot. Use common sense.

Unit Aspects

A unit’s first aspect is its name, which doubles as its high concept: Rebel Starfighters, Dwarven Grenadiers, 27th Heavy Infantry, etc. If the unit is Fair or Good, define those extra aspects however you want.

Building Units

Each player gets a “battle chest” of build points for the battle—the higher the number, the more units and the bigger the battle. Spend build points to create units or to buy additional fate points to spend during the battle. Five build points would make for a small battle with relatively low-quality units, while 20 would be fairly epic. 10-12 is a good middle ground. Leftover build points can be spent during the battle, but any remaining go away afterward, as do any fate points purchased with build points.

Average unit: 1 build point Fair unit: 2 build points Good unit: 3 build points Fate point: 3 build points

Write each unit’s particulars on its own index card. If it’s defeated, turn it over—but hang onto it, so you can use it again in a future battle.

Zones

A zone might be a single hill, a hundred yards of open meadow, or a sector of space. The specifics depend on your game and the scale of the conflict.

Number of Zones

As a rule of thumb, give the battlefield a number of zones equal to one more than the number of players you have. That includes the GM, so a game with a GM and three players would have five zones. If that feels claustrophobic for the number of units you have in play, throw in a couple more index cards.

Adding Zone Aspects

For a fate point, a player can write an aspect on an empty zone card after it’s been placed on the battlefield but before the battle begins. Put the zone card back on the battlefield face down. When a unit moves into the zone, or scouts it, turn it face-up to reveal the aspect. If a player puts a new aspect on a zone by creating an advantage during play, write it on the zone card for everyone to see.

Creating the Battlefield

Players take turns placing zone cards, starting with whoever has the most fate points left in their battle chest. Each zone card must be adjacent to an existing zone card. Try to avoid an overly linear battlefield—multiple ways in and out of most zones will make for a more interesting battle.

Leaders

Any PC or a supporting or main NPC can be a leader. Use a miniature or some other marker to represent each leader—something that can be attached to a unit card as well as placed directly on the battlefield, if their unit is defeated or when they are otherwise acting independently. Defeating a unit doesn’t defeat its leader—only a leader can directly attack and defeat another leader. Attaching a leader to a unit, or detaching one from a unit, doesn’t require an action, but a leader can’t do both in the same turn. An attached leader can take their action whenever their unit does. They can give this action to their unit, to let it take two actions, or they can do something else, like engage another leader in combat or remove a consequence from the unit. An attached leader provides several other benefits to their unit.

All of a unit’s skills with a rating below the leader’s Will get a +1 bonus as long as the leader’s attached. If your game has another, more suitable skill for this, use that instead.
The leader can invoke their aspects on behalf of their unit.
The leader can use Will to remove a consequence, at the usual difficulties outlined in Fate Core. This counts as the leader’s action for the turn.
The leader can use their action to put a boost on their unit, such as Charge!. This doesn’t require a roll unless the unit’s taken a consequence, in which case the leader uses Will with a difficulty equal to twice the number of consequences the unit has.

An independent leader has to be activated to do anything, just like a unit.

Sequence of Play

Pick one of your leaders and roll their Will. Highest roll goes first, and so on, down the line. In the case of a tie, highest Will wins. If that’s a tie, too, then the player with the most units wins.
When it’s your turn, choose and activate one of your units or independent leaders. If you choose a unit with a leader attached, the leader gets to take their action as well. If you choose an independent leader, they can’t affect units, but they can interact with other leaders (violently, in all likelihood). Every unit and leader on a side must act before any unit or leader on a side may act again.
When all non-allied players lose all their units or concede, the battle’s over.

Winning

Everyone on the winning side gets a fate point. Every player who defeated an enemy leader—whether in battle, by persuading them to surrender or switch sides, or whatever—gets a fate point for each leader they defeated.

SWASHBUCKLING DUELS

The kind of cinematic, heroic action that typifies swashbuckling stories is near and dear to Fate Core’s heart—that’s just the nature of the game. But those climactic one-on-one fights between our hero and a dastardly villain almost always involve a lot of back-and-forth before one of them lands a blow. In the meantime, they might trade witty repartee or provocative insults, swing from chandeliers, leap off balconies, baffle their opponent with their cloak, or a thousand other things. Look at D’Artagnan and Jussac in The Three Musketeers, Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone in the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood, Cyrano’s poetry-laden duel with Valvert in Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, or Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader’s duel in The Empire Strikes Back. The create an advantage action in Fate Core makes it easy to model these sorts of conflicts, but most players will still gravitate toward the most efficient means of dispatching the opposition, especially if there aren’t other PCs around to give them an excuse to create situation aspects. That’s what this hack does—require players to rely on skills other than Fight in a conflict, with colorful results. These one-on-one dueling rules introduce something called the upper hand. Only the duelist with the upper hand can actually use a skill with the attack action to inflict harm. The other duelist can take any otheraction, but cannot attack—until they get the upper hand, of course. How does one get the upper hand? By succeeding with style with a skill other than one that deals harm in physical conflicts (Fight or Shoot, or whatever the equivalent is in your game). As soon as one combatant succeeds with style with one of these other skills, they get the upper hand. This replaces the action’s usual reward for succeeding with style, such as getting a boost or an extra free invocation. You get either the upper hand or the usual reward, but not both. Use a token of some kind to represent the upper hand. Whatever it is, it should be something that can easily be handed back and forth, like a coin, a little plastic cocktail sword, an index card with a hand drawn on it, a fencing glove—whatever works for your group. At the beginning of a physical conflict between two (and only two) participants, determine the turn order, as usual. If this involves a skill roll, and one of the two succeeds with style, they start the conflict with the upper hand—they got the jump on the other guy. After that, the combatants can do any of the following every turn:

Attack, if they have the upper hand
Try to get the upper hand, if they don’t
Do something else—put down situation aspects, try to escape the conflict, etc.

It’s highly recommended that you use the Stress-Free variant with these rules. Otherwise, there’s a real risk of combats dragging out, instead of knocking down and dragging out.

Dekka, an Imperial Lawkeeper of Porthos V, is facing off against her arch-nemesis Xoren, the scheming cyborg and would-be usurper of the Celestial Throne, in the midst of the coronation ceremony. Each is a master of the photon blade, as they’ve demonstrated to one another multiple times in the past. Their high-tech weapons flicker brilliantly with a copyrighted hum. It’s on.

Dekka wins initiative with a +5 to Xoren’s +3—a success, but not one with style. She starts things off with a little patter, hoping to discover one of his aspects using Empathy. “What’s your damage, Xoren? Is there an algorithm for evil somewhere in your neuro-matrix? Or do you actually think this ploy is going to work?” She gets a +6, while Xoren gets a +2. Success with style!

“Evil?” he spits back. “Spend one day as a cyborg in this wretched wreck of an empire and you’ll gain a new appreciation for true evil!”

She discovers the aspect All Shall Suffer for My Pain!, and chooses to gain the upper hand instead of taking the extra free invocation.

Now it’s Xoren’s turn. Being an evil cyborg, he grabs a bystander and flings him at Dekka, hoping to create an advantage with Physique. He beats Dekka by 4 shifts—enough to gain the upper hand—but she uses that free invocation on All Shall Suffer for My Pain! to reduce that to 2 shifts. Her player explains that Xoren, in his righteous rage, accidentally telegraphed his move. The GM buys it. Xoren puts a situation aspect of Civilians in Danger in play, with one free invocation.

Dekka still has the upper hand, and she means to use it. Shoving the poor onlooker to one side and springing forward at Xoren with her photon blade, she attacks with Fight at +4, beating his Fight defense of +3. He capitalizes on the fact that she’s distracted by those Civilians in Danger, using his free invocation to bump his total up to +5. After trading a couple more fate points, Dekka comes out ahead by a single shift. Since they’re using the Stress-Free variant, that means a mild consequence for Xoren—Faltering Confidence.

VEHICLES

In a game that largely revolves around personal activity, vehicles occupy a strange space. They extend the character’s capabilities like tools or weapons, but they’re external to the character, in the manner of allies and resources. It’s a space that is easily overlooked, but which can be utterly essential, depending on the priorities of the player or campaign. In describing vehicles, this section generally assumes cars and trucks, but many of these ideas are easily extrapolated to horses, chariots, spaceships and beyond.

Incidental Vehicles

In many games, vehicles are merely incidental to play. That is, they come up when the situation demands, but otherwise aren’t given a lot of thought. In this case, vehicles are frequently just an enabler for using the Drive skill. When the bad guys are getting away in a car, and you hop in a car to pursue, it’s all about the skills from there. If there’s ever a need to differentiate vehicles in this context, it should most often take the form of aspects. A vehicle will usually have between one and three aspects, the specifics of which depend very much on your table’s interest in cars. Aspects like Big, Fast, Off-Road, or Clunker are totally valid, as are Hemi, Canted Wheels or Five-Speed, Fuel-Injected. For most games this is enough, but in a game where driving is critical, there’s a good chance that vehicles may end up being more or less disposable.

Personal Vehicles

A personal vehicle is most likely to be represented by an aspect, but details beyond that depend a lot on your game. A more down-to-earth game may simply have a signature vehicle, like a detective’s sports car, but some games might be better suited to gadget-festooned supercars. The basic rules for vehicles need be no more complicated than the incidental vehicles rules, and for more complicated vehicles, extras start becoming appropriate.

Repair

An item represented by an aspect cannot usually be destroyed, yet despite this, it can stretch credulity to have a vehicle prove entirely immune to damage. As a rule of thumb, allow a personal vehicle to be damaged normally, but say that the damage was repaired without difficulty between sessions. Unless, of course, the player wants to work with the damage. Having a car in need of repair is a great scene frame and occasional motivator—perhaps it requires a particular part. If a player opts to treat the car as damaged, then the first time in a session they expressly touch on the necessary repairs—such as having a conversation while working on the engine—that is effectively a compel, and grants the player a FP.

Group Vehicles

An idea that sees frequent use in fiction and gaming is that of a common vehicle, usually some sort of ship, van, car, or the like that serves as group transportation and often as a mobile base of operations. An easy way to do this is to make the vehicle in question an aspect for everyone in the group—or at least everyone tied to the vehicle. Doing so makes a strong statement about the centrality of the vehicle to the game. It’s also possible to take a more nuanced approach, and have each character take an aspect that reflects their relationship with the vehicle—a spaceship’s captain and her engineer may have very different perspectives on the nature of their ship. Whatever the case, a group vehicle can have aspects like an incidental vehicle, but there’s a lot more leeway in terms of what exactly those aspects should be. Each player aspect related to the vehicle allows that player to assign an aspect to the vehicle. This allows for differing levels of investment built organically from player interest.

Quick and Dirty Vehicle Rules

Vehicle Mismatches

The quick and dirty hierarchy of speed goes as follows:

Foot
Bike/Horse
Car/Motorcycle
Helicopter
Airplane

When a chase involves a speed mismatch, the faster driver gets a number of free invocations of vehicle aspects equal to the difference between the tiers. This can be mitigated by circumstances—feet and bikes can outpace a car in a traffic jam, and a car might help you catch up with a plane before it’s airborne—but it should be enough to cover edge cases.

Stealing a Car

Attempting to steal or otherwise acquire a car should be treated as an overcome action, with the appropriate skill—usually either Burglary or Resources—against a difficulty based on the situation, taking into account both security level and range of options. Upon success, the aspects created are the aspects of the stolen vehicle. This assumes the character is just taking what they can get—trying to steal a specific car will be an overcome roll against the specifics of that situation.

Custom Cars

Car customization is an application of the Crafts skill that requires a shop and appropriate tools. Baseline difficulty of the overcome roll is 0, +2 for each aspect on the vehicle. With a success, an aspect can be added to the vehicle, or if it’s feasible, removed. The maximum number of aspects a vehicle may have is 5.

Vehicle Damage

Vehicles don’t have stress, but can take consequences—usually to turn a failed Drive roll into a success using the Extra Effort optional rule. An average vehicle—3 or fewer aspects—can take one mild consequence. An exceptional vehicle—4 or 5 aspects—can take one mild and one moderate consequence. A vehicle with an aspect like Rugged or Military Grade may be able to take one severe consequence.

Vehicle Stunts

Car Thief: When stealing a car, use Drive in lieu of Burglary.

SUPERS

Fate characters are already incredibly competent and accomplished folks, but sometimes your group might want to push the system even further, telling a story of actual superheroes who fight crime and supervillains who want to conquer the world. This section will give you a few tools to make superheroes work for your group!

Origin Stories

Fate superheroes are a lot like regular Fate characters, but they can replace the trouble phase of character creation with an origin story, an aspect that quickly summarizes how the character acquired superpowers and/or why those powers cause the hero problems. Remember that aspects should always be double-edged, noting the character’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, a hero might take the high concept Genetically Engineered Supersoldier to represent his superhuman strength and agility and the origin story Dimensional Traveler to simultaneously note that he’s a fish out of water in our world.

Super Skills

One way of creating superpowers in Fate is to allow players to designate skills as superpowers, instead of taking stunts. A hero born on an advanced alien world might take Super Lore. A teen touched by the powers of an ancient, primordial god might take Super Athletics. Heroes that use technology or magical items can invest the skills into the item itself as skill extras, carrying Spears of Destiny (Physique) or building fantastic clockwork robots (Shooting). Heroes can use the skill as normal, but can also opt to make use of the power by spending a fate point. When activated, the superskill allows the hero to attempt fantastic feats, doubling his current skill bonus. After rolling, the characters must step back the skill by one. As long as the skill is not reduced to zero, the power refreshes next scene. If the power is exhausted, however, the hero will have to find some way to rest or recharge before using it again.

Maxine, a Valkyrie with Superb Physique (+5), can spend a fate point to throw a car at a supervillain—adding 5 extra shifts to her roll—but after the roll the skill steps back to Great (+4). If she continues to use her superstrength to the point that her Physique is exhausted, she will need to journey to Valhalla to drink from the Horn of Might to regain her strength.

This system lends itself to Golden Age-style heroes who achieve amazing feats with few downsides beyond getting tired or running out of power. It also gives the GM a chance to set up interesting refresh scenes (see Refresh), when the heroes have to recharge their powers, reconnect with their human lives, or rest for long enough to face the villain at full strength. For example, a teenage hero might need to head back home to connect with her dad, while a shapechanging nightstalker might retire to his lair to sleep through the day before resuming his hunt.

Creating Super-Powered Stunts

If your group prefers more defined superpowers, you can allow players to purchase superpowers as stunts, perhaps even giving them an extra stunt or two for free. For a low-powered superhero game, emulating gritty 1980s antiheroes, the existing stunts in Fate Core are probably fine—the heroes aren’t empowered paragons, just extraordinary people who put on costumes. If you want to tell more epic superhero stories, you can also write stunts that allow for stronger powers but require the player to bid fate points. Static obstacles may be defeated by spending a single fate point, but other superpowered characters can accept, cancel, or raise the action by bidding a fate point back and narrating opposition. This goes back and forth until one character is unwilling to spend any more points. If the action ends in a tie, the points are given to the GM, but if one character clearly wins, the loser gets all the fate points bid. Note that this might result in dramatic swings in the fate point economy, as one player is going to catch a windfall of fate points at the end of a conflict.

Sergio is a hero with Bend Bars, Lift Gates, a stunt that allows him to destroy physical impediments by bidding a fate point. If no superpowered characters oppose him, the action is successful without a roll. However, if Maxine uses her Norse powers to shock him through the metal bars he’s trying to bend, she can spend a fate point to cancel his action or spend two fate points to try to apply her power (Lighting Storm) in addition to canceling his stunt. If she spent two fate points, Sergio would get a chance to bid back to cancel or raise, or he could accept her action and claim the two fate points she bid.

The Fate Worlds setting Wild Blue has some awesome ideas for creating powers as stunts with narrative costs, such as time travel that a hero can’t quite control, or telepathy that always uncovers unwanted information. Check it out for another way of creating powers in Fate! Similarly, superpowers by any other name might be called magic. Have a look at the previous chapter to get an idea of how you could do something more involved and intricate with your superpowers by way of building them as a “magic” system.

Villains and Sidekicks

Fate already has great rules for generating NPCs (starting on page 213 of Fate Core). For superhero stories, the GM can designate these as minions, villains, and supervillains to better signal to the heroes the level of danger each group poses. Pay particular attention to the suggestions in Fate Core for grouping up minions and treating them as obstacles. Sometimes the best way to portray a hero beating up on a group of low-level thugs is a single roll or expenditure of a superpower. Villains should look a little more like the heroes themselves, probably picking up a superpower or two. Ideally you want a group of villains to be able to take on your heroes toe-to-toe for long enough to make a contest interesting, but they probably aren’t the real threat your heroes face. Supervillains, however, can be full-fledged characters, complete with high concepts, origin stories, superpowers, and extras of their own. Don’t skimp on origin stories for your supervillains; they are a great place to get the flavor of the character across to the players. An evil cultist might have the origin story I’ve Lost the Only Man I Could Ever Love while a demonic supersoldier might have the origin story Doomed to Wander the Earth by Forces Infernal. Heroes can also pick up sidekicks (see Sidekicks vs. Allies) and minions of their own as your story goes on, purchasing them as extras when they achieve milestones.

THE HORROR PARADOX

At face value, Fate is a bad fit for the horror genre. It’s right there in the opener of Fate Core: “…works best with any premise where the characters are proactive, capable people leading dramatic lives.” Horror does its dark work by placing characters in deadly, inescapable circumstances beyond their control. In horror, characters are often forced to react, rather than act. Despite their capabilities, characters face threats that outclass them; their competence isn’t enough to win. Defeat seems inevitable, and success comes at a high cost. Rather than charge in and win the day, characters focus more on surviving the next few minutes and making good on an escape. How do we reconcile these two realities? How do we take a system built for proactive, capable characters and make it serve the needs of the horror genre? That’s the Fate-plus-horror paradox. This is how we solve it.

The Elements of Horror

Horror is really all about the visceral, emotional response the players have to the game. System is absolutely able to drive this, with your help. For our toolkit purposes, horror is a combination of oppressive atmosphere, impossible circumstances, and stark desperation.

Oppressive Atmosphere

Compels Aplenty: While compels aren’t tools for forcing outcomes, they are tools for making things go wrong. So make them abundant. Place aspects on the scene, the story, the campaign—and compel them to make things go wrong for everyone. Simply dropping Death Comes for Everyone onto the story and compelling it at the exact worst time (for the players) to make things that much worse will get lots of traction. Yeah, the players affected will walk away with some fate points—which they’ll need in order to survive—but they’ll also feel the emotional gut-punch of the moment—and will wonder when the next compel is going to land. Make them hurt. Make them worry. Every Path a Dark One: Aspects aren’t the only way to evoke atmosphere. You can deliver, too, with obstacles and zones. It’s never easy to run away from horror, so clutter the path to salvation with obstacles. (Read more on obstacles, below.) And when you’re drawing your zone maps, make it all more claustrophobic than usual: more zones covering less space. While the physical distances aren’t any different, it’s just plain harder to get away from the dangerous places in horror—in a regular house, the front door might just be a zone away. In a haunted house? Try more like five or ten… and never let them sprint the full length.

Impossible Circumstances

Just because the characters are empowered protagonists doesn’t mean things have to be easy for them. Any obstacle’s difficulty set at two higher than the skill to overcome it is likely to need an invoke. With players’ best skills topping out at Good or Great, that means your starting level for difficulties should be in the same range, and go up from there. Don’t skimp on this. Really turn the screws! With high difficulties come higher chances of failure. Rather than turn this into player paralysis and apathy, make heavy use of “succeed, but at a cost” as an alternative—and give the potential costs some real teeth. Make the price uncomfortable. When paying you your due, the players will feel horror’s bite. Every step forward spills just a little more blood. It’s death by degrees. In fights against impossibly tough foes, the players will be inclined to concede, to try to wrest some control of the situation. There’s no reason not to accept these concessions, but you should always advocate, hard, for concessions that truly hurt. Here, too, is where they will pay a price, and feel the teeth bite down. All of this drives towards a feeling of desperation. And so…

Stark Desperation

Desperation arises from threatened, sparse resources and hard choices made under pressure. A player character’s finite resources include fate points, stress, and consequences. Limit these without making them absent. Consider:

Low refresh: If the players only have a few fate points, those fate points will feel precious. They’ll need to spend them if they want to succeed cleanly—or at all. The tension in this choice heightens anxiety.
Minimal stress tracks: Don’t give them more than a box or two, if you give them any. In horror, characters shouldn’t have much of a buffer before they start to break and bleed. Additionally, if you use a mental or sanity stress track, lasting trauma, terror, and madness are just moments away.
Weaker consequences: Consider making consequences soak less damage. The default dial is -2/-4/-6 for mild, moderate, and severe, which is pretty hefty. For horror, think about halving all those numbers, or trying -1/-2/-4. It won’t take much of a hit to really hurt the characters, making any kind of conflict all the more dangerous.

Pair your system design with hard choices for the characters that they’ll have to make under pressure. This will take away clean, easy victories. After all, the PCs themselves are finite resources: they can’t be in two places at once. And pressure arises from a lack of time. Time is the final finite resource that you as the GM can control. In horror, there should never be enough time. So give your players too much to do and not enough time to do it. The people and things characters care about are also finite resources—and for a GM, they’re often easier to threaten than the character himself. Save your husband or your child: but never both—there’s only one of you, and two bombs at opposite ends of the house. Your players will hate you for it. And if they came to all this to really revel in the horror—they’ll love you for it, too, screaming all the way.

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