House Rules

Skills

The majority of the skills in the game are from the Default Fate Skill List. There are a couple of variations in names (Know and Mechanics) that are essentially the same as skills in that list (Lore and Crafts, respectively).

• Athletics — [Standard Fate Skill] Represents a character’s general level of physical fitness, whether through training, natural gifts, or genre-specific means. It’s how good you are at moving your body.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Burglary — [Standard Fate Skill] Covers a character’s aptitude for stealing things and getting into places that are off-limits. Also includes a proficiency in the related tech, allowing the character to hack security systems, disable alarm systems, and whatnot.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Computer — See Below
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Contacts — [Standard Fate Skill] The skill of knowing and making connections with people. It presumes proficiency with all means of networking available in the setting.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Deceive — [Standard Fate Skill] The skill about lying to and misdirecting people.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Drive — [Standard Fate Skill] A character’s ability to operate ground and near-ground vehicles.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Empathy — [Standard Fate Skill] Involves knowing and being able to spot changes in a person’s mood or bearing. Basically the emotional Notice skill.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Fight — [Standard Fate Skill] Covers all forms of close-quarters combat (in other words, within the same zone), both unarmed and using weapons. For the ranged weapons counterpart, see Shoot.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Investigate — [Standard Fate Skill] The skill used to find things out; A counterpart to Notice — revolves around concentrated effort and in-depth scrutiny.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Know — (Lore, but with a more modern name) A character’s competencies derived from knowledge and/or education.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Make — See below.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Mechanics — (Crafts, but with a sci-fi name) The skill of working with machinery, for good or ill.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Notice — [Standard Fate Skill] Represents a character’s overall perception, ability to pick out details at a glance, and other powers of observation.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Physique — [Standard Fate Skill] Represents a character’s natural physical aptitudes, such as raw strength and endurance.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Pilot — (Drive, but for air and space vehicles) A character’s ability to operate air- and space-vehicles.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Provoke — [Standard Fate Skill] The skill about getting someone’s dander up and eliciting negative emotional response from them—fear, anger, shame, etc. It’s the “being a jerk” skill.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Rapport — [Standard Fate Skill] All about making positive connections to people and eliciting positive emotion. It’s the skill of being liked and trusted.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Resources — [Standard Fate Skill] Describes a character’s general level of material wealth in the game world and ability to apply it.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Shoot — [Standard Fate Skill] The skill of using ranged weaponry, either in a conflict or on targets that don’t actively resist your attempts to shoot them.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Stealth — [Standard Fate Skill] Allows a character to avoid detection, both when hiding in place and trying to move about unseen.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

• Will — [Standard Fate Skill] Represents a character’s general level of mental fortitude, the same way that Physique represents their physical fortitude.
  Overcome | Create Advantage | Attack | Defend

Computer

The skill of working with computers, writing programs, and hacking. Can be used as an Attack and Defend skill against computers.

Make

The skill of creating physical things, whether from scratch (artists), or by assembling pieces and parts (technicians, inventors).

Milestones

Milestones are how characters change and advance in the context of the game. Characters accumulate milestones when their players are actively participating in a game-session, a story-arc, etc. Milestones can be expended to make changes to characters between game-sessions, categorically, and may also be used during a session provided that the players are willing to break from game-play to do so (especially if the expenditure involves any significant time to flesh out).

These are available in a single Google Doc — Milestones Cheat Sheet — for players.

Minor Milestones

Generally, the GM will award a Minor Milestone to all characters where the player was participating at the end of each game-session, especially if the character moved the story along in some fashion. Minor milestones can be spent to:

• Switch the rank values of any two skills, or replace one Average (+1) skill with one that isn’t on your sheet.

• Change any single stunt for another stunt.

• Purchase a new stunt, provided you have the refresh to do so. (Remember, you can’t go below 1 refresh.)

• Rename one character aspect that isn’t your high concept.

Significant Milestones

Significant Milestones will generally be awarded at the end of any short story-line (one or two sessions). If a story is a single session, this award will replace the Minor Milestone award.

A Significant Milestone can be spent to do anything a Minor Milestone could be spent on (above), or:

• You can buy a new skill at Average (+1) or increase an existing skill by one rank, provided that doing so does not end up with more skills at a higher level than at the level immediately below it (see the Skill Columns Fate Core Rules)

Major Milestones

A Major Milestone will generally be awarded at the end of a major story-arc that makes a significant change in the campaign setting, or if there is a character-specific justification for making a major change. For example, when the characters recovered the Diligent — which meant that they were capable of getting around independently, and had a different set of priorities — that was a Major Milestone for all the characters.

A character-specific justification will often (but not always) play into one or more of the character’s Aspects, especially their High Concept.

A Major Milestone can be spent to do anything a Significant Milestone (above) could be spent on, or:

• Take an additional point of refresh, which allows you to immediately buy a new stunt or keep it in order to give yourself more fate points at the beginning of a session.

• Advance a skill beyond the campaign’s current skill cap, if you’re able to, thus increasing the skill cap.

• Rename your character’s high concept if you desire.

Consequences

Mostly, the rules around Milestones (see Advancement & Change in the Fate Core rules) are the same. The main exception is that recovering from Consequences will not require the expenditure of a milestone (though I'll allow the expenditure of one, at least for the time being). The thought behind this is that because the characters are spending days or weeks at a time in transit from one place to another, thee's time available that can be used to recuperate.

In general, moving a given consequence up a level will happen automatically after a number of weeks equal to the level of the consequence. That means that characters can recover from the worst of consequences in about 12 weeks at most (6 weeks to move from Severe to Moderate, 4 more to move from Moderate to Mild, and 2 more to clear any Mild consequence).

These recoveries happen at the same time — So a character with a 4- and 6-point consequence will recover as follows:

• At 4 weeks, the 4-point consequence moves up to a 2-point value;

• At 6 weeks, the 6-point consequence moves up to a 4-point value, and the 2-point consequence goes away;

• At 10 weeks, the 4-point consequence moves up to a 2-point value; and

• At 12 weeks, the 2-point consequence goes away.