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A SKILL is WHAT YOU'RE DOING. It's a word that describes a broad array of competencies - such as Move, Fight, or Understand - which your character might have gained through innate talent, training or years of trial and error.

An APPROACH is HOW YOU DO IT. It's a word that establishes or sums up your methods. Your approach is based on how you've described your action, and you can't describe an action that doesn't make any sense - you can't Boldly creep across darkened manor grounds with catlike tread; that'd be Subtly. You can't Cleverly use your raw might to shove a huge boulder out of the way of your wagon; that'd be Forcefully. Circumstances constrain what approach you can use, and sometimes you'll have to go with an approach that doesn't play to your strengths.

When you take an action, you'll use BOTH of these, pairing one skill with one approach, taking the SUM of their values, and rolling a POOL of that many d10s.

STUNTS are special character traits that change how a skill works for you or add a bonus when certain conditioms are met. This could represent special training, exceptional talents, the mark of destiny, genetic alteration, innate coolness, and myriad other reasons why some people get more out of their skills than others. Unlike skills, which are things anyone can do in the campaign, stunts are INDIVIDUAL and specific to your character. The #Skill Details section will have some example stunts for each skill, but you'll mostly be building your own - see #Building a Good Stunt below.

Taking a new stunt BEYOND YOUR STARTING AMOUNT (three for your pilot, two for their mech) reduces your character's refresh rate by 1. You cannot reduce your total refresh below 1.

Skills

There are 15 skills in this game, each of which is a verb that covers a broad range of actions your character might perform during the story. All of them can be used to overcome or create an advantage (see 1 Core Rules#The Four Actions), but only some make sense to attack or defend with. The table below is a summary; for detailed explanations of what each skill does, click through their names or scroll further to #Skill Details.

SKILL OVERCOME CREATE ADVANTAGE ATTACK DEFEND
#Acquire X X
#Fight X X X X
# Interface X X X X
#Know X X
# Lead X X
# Move X X X
# Network X X X X
# Notice X X X
# Operate X X X X
# Persevere X X X
# Shoot X X X X
# Sway X X X
# Tend X X
# Tinker X X
# Understand X X X

Untrained Action

Your character having a skill ranked on their sheet at all means they're AT LEAST ADEQUATE at it - notable competence under pressure through training, inclination, or intuition, even if it's not their focus. But there may be situations where what you're trying to do falls under a skill that you have no rank in. In these cases, roll a number of dice equal to your WEAKEST APPROACH against the opposition. For example, if someone's not in especially good shape (no Move rank), they can still at least attempt to run for their life in an emergency.

There may, however, be cases where not having a skill ranked means something is outright impossible for you (e.g. good luck performing heart surgery if you don't know what you're doing). These are context-dependent and subject to the GM's ruling in the moment. As an ambiguous example that would require a ruling, someone who doesn't have Operate ranked might be capable of routine city driving in day-to-day life without issue, but never developed the skill to drive under pressure or off-road before that's suddenly put to the test. At that point, what they're specifically trying to do and the conditions they're trying to do it in determine whether they have any chance of success or not.

Unforeseen Circumstances

The skill list in this game, by design, does not cover every conceivable thing that could happen in any conceivable story. Instead, it focuses on a broad subset of skills that could foreseeably be relevant to characters in mech-based war stories. If for whatever reason your players find themselves needing to do something that nothing on the skill list seems to cover, either use what seems like the closest skill available or treat the roll as though the player is ranked Adequate (1) in the missing skill. It's more generous than the usual rules for untrained actions because the player was never given a choice to rank a relevant skill before they realized they'd need it. If you find the circumstance repeats, you should consider formally adding a new skill to the list to cover it.

EXAMPLE: OLD MECHDONALD HAD A FARM

The skill list has nothing that explicitly covers animal handling. Should your players somehow find themselves needing to win a horse race, cross the desert on the back of a particularly ornery group of camels, or calm down a panicking cow so it can be transported to safety in an empty compartment of their mech, either choose the closest thing available (Sway could work for all of these, possibly also Operate for the horse and camel scenarios) or give them a provisional 1 in the nonexistent skill for purposes of this roll. If these events recur, it's probably worth adding Handle or Tame as its own skill.

ApproachES

There are six approaches that describe how you perform your actions.

DESCRIPTORS, Not BUTTONS

GM GUIDANCE - APPROACH SORTING

Six adverbs cannot possibly cover the full scope of human behavior in a way that definitively places all possible actions into one and only one bucket. Edge cases and areas of overlap are an expected and unremarkable part of this game. When ambiguity arises, just use your best judgement, pick what seems most appropriate in the moment, and keep the game moving.

The approaches are not a menu to choose the strongest mechanic from and then roll without elaboration. Instead, they are the game's primary way to TRANSLATE YOUR NARRATION INTO A NUMBER after you've finished describing your action in plain language. This isn't to say that you shouldn't use them to guide your character's behavior; you can and should keep your strengths and weaknesses in mind as you play your character. If your best approach is Boldly and you want to leverage that, then your character needs to be bold - describe how they act with confidence, panache, or bravery in the face of danger.

Remember that MECHANICS FOLLOW THE FICTION. How you describe your character is authoritative. The GM has final word on which approach applies, but you can negotiate or change your description before you roll to get everyone on the same page about what's actually happening.

If you're ever in doubt, confused, or struggling to figure out which approach the action you have in mind might fall under, just remember this rule: SAY WHAT YOU'RE DOING. THE GM WILL TELL YOU WHAT TO ROLL.

Order of Operations

You may notice that the above list is ordered strangely. That's because this doubles as the initiative order: whenever multiple characters act simultaneously, such as in a 4 Challenges, Conflicts, & Contests, whoever's approaching the task Quickly goes first. Then anyone approaching Boldly, then Forcefully, and so on. If multiple characters are using the same approach, whoever has the higher value goes first; if that's tied, compare the value of the skills they're using; if that's also tied, roll off.

Defend actions occur simultaneously with and as a result of someone else attacking or creating an advantage, so they exist outside of the initiative order and use whatever approach makes sense based on your narration.

EXAMPLE OF PLAY: LONG SHOTS

Two characters are engaged in a sniper duel. Let's say they both use the same tactics - in this case, each one sticks to the sturdiest and best-camouflaged cover they can find that still offers a line of fire, then waits, only occasionally poking their head up to scan the distance through their scopes. This means they're both Shooting Carefully, so they'll compare their Carefully values, then their Shoot values if those are tied, then roll off if both of those are also tied. Or, one character could try to get the drop on their opponent with a rapid potshot at where they think their enemy is (Shoot Quickly), or attempt a trick shot (Shoot Cleverly), potentially at the price of a higher opposition, using an approach they're weaker in, or a different cost if things go wrong.

Controlled Opposition

Every task has some approaches that are inherently better suited for it than others. You can try and Move that boulder Forcefully with your bare hands, but you'll have a much easier time if you Cleverly rig up a lever to make more efficient use of your strength. This means that APPROACH AFFECTS OPPOSITION - the difficulty of an action is determined by asking "how good would someone have to be to accomplish this the way you're trying to do it?" and looking to the adjective ladder for the answer.

For example, imagine you're trying to defuse an unsophisticated and amateurish bomb. If you're taking your time and triple-checking everything before you act, or working remotely through some kind of disposal robot, you're probably working Carefully - under ideal conditions, you only have to beat Adequate (1) opposition to deal with this bomb this way and, if you're working through a robot or wearing a bomb disposal suit, you probably won't be too hurt if it goes off while you're in the blast zone. If, on the other hand, the best option you have to get rid of the bomb is to find a big metal trash bin, cover the bomb with it, and hold it in place with your bodyweight, you're approaching it Forcefully, facing Great (3) opposition (since trash bins are generally not bomb proof). And, since you're getting closer to the bomb without much protection and hoping the bin holds the explosion, you're also exposed to more risk this way if there turns out to be a cost.

But what if you're not under ideal conditions? If there's intense time pressure, Carefully working one wire at a time would need you to be Masterful (4), maybe even Superhuman (5) if there's only seconds left by the time you even reach the bomb. Approaching Forcefully using the trash bin, however, would still be Great (3) opposition, since with this method of containment, it doesn't matter when the timer runs out as long as the container's in place before it does.

EXAMPLE OF PLAY: IF YOU SEE ME RUNNING....

Let's put a character in that exact situation, with a jury-rigged bomb that needs to be dealt with. Khara, with Tinker 3, Cleverly 4, and Quickly 2, is stuck in a room with a bomb. She's analytical and methodical as a rule, and she knows her procedures well, so if she had time, thoroughly inspecting the bomb to figure out how to defuse it would be easy. But she doesn't, and it isn't; the bomb's actively ticking down and it's got to be done right now or never. Since the time pressure is working against her preferred method of he'd need to be Masterful - 4 hits or better - to defuse it Carefully, which is her best approach. Khara's Quickly approach is weaker, but it also reduces the opposition to Good. So now, she has a choice to make: does she use her best approach when the situation makes that approach harder, or does she use an approach that she's weaker in but that better suits the needs of the moment?

Either way, it's a moment of high tension as she wipes the sweat off her brow and leans in, desperately hoping that she can pull this off before time runs out, searching for anything that can give her an edge. This may be where using a relevant stunt or invoking aspects comes in - leaning hard on fundamental truths about your character and the situation you're in to find the resolve or leverage you need to tip the scales.

Setting The Stakes

Your descriptions of what you're doing help shape what success or failure look like, and the types of costs that might come with a failure or tie.

Saying "I'm waiting for a clean opening and window to act, and I don't go for it if one doesn't appear" when you Tinker Subtly to plant a hidden microphone in a public place is a signal to the GM: you expect failure to mean "no opening appears," not "I get caught."

Now, the GM could still have you get caught anyway, but however that plays out would still have to be consistent with how you've described yourself specifically trying to avoid that, and the threshold for how badly the roll has to go for it to happen has increased. In this case, it would be a severe cost (since your narration has established it as the worst-case scenario you're going out of your way to avoid), so it would need a catastrophic failure to even possibly occur ("A door opens and someone you couldn't have seen while casing the place walks in, catching you red handed.").

It's also important that you communicate what you're actually trying to accomplish, not just the physical action you're performing. This defines what success actually means, and it's not always obvious or self-explanatory. For example, "I'm intentionally singing terribly at the top of my lungs" is probably Sway Boldly no matter what, but could have multiple motives behind it, like creating a distraction, entertaining a small child, emptying a room, or getting people to pay you to stop. If your GM doesn't know what you really want, they can end up miscalibrating the opposition or narrating a result that's way off the mark from what you meant.

For their part, the GM should ask you for clarification if they're unsure - their side of this is discussed in more depth in 5 Running The Game#What DO YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH later on.

Stunts

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Building a Good Stunt

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Adding Bonuses

Stunts can give skills an automatic bonus under a particular, narrow circumstance, effectively giving your character special expertise in one particular thing. The circumstance must be MORE SPECIFIC than what the normal action allows, and can only apply to one particular action or pair of actions. If your stunt effectively replaces its associated action for the skill in most or all cases, it's too broad and needs adjustment.

The usual numeric bonus is +1 hit to your total. For some stunts, it may be appropriate to add a second-tier bonus that instead gives a +2 if an even narrower condition is met. A +2 flat bonus in this dice system is extremely powerful, so a +2 stunt bonus MUST therefore be highly situational and come with a significant price

HANG ON, THE ACTUAL FATE BOOK SAYS +2 HERE!

I know, but the fudgectomy that's been performed to replace its dice system with the variable-size D10 pool has seriously compressed the numbers. A +2 flat bonus is notable but not necessarily game-breaking when opposition scales from 1 through 8; when that opposition loses almost half of its possible outcomes, the bonus has to shrink to match.

EXAMPLES

Creating a Rules Exception

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EXAMPLES

New Skill Actions

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Skill Details

The action examples and stunts listed below are SAMPLES, not limitations. You can and should come up with creative uses of these skills outside of what's listed here. As long as you respect the broad distinctions between skills, the field of possibilities is wide open to you. The GM has final word on which skill and approach an action uses based on how you've described it (e.g. it doesn't matter how wide your Network is; if you're trying to get distant contacts to give you money, you're Acquiring it - though you can certainly Network to create an advantage by identifying an easy way to Acquire what you need).

The stunts below, especially, should only be taken as a small sample of what's possible; this game works best when you tailor things to your character and write stunts that are truly yours.

Acquire

Buy, beg, borrow, scrounge, or something else - you're using your resources to Acquire more resources, or identifying the necessary extra steps to do so. Your Acquire rank can represent anything from your character's reserve of funds to knowing the right places to look in any environment to having dirt on the quartermaster to a strange phenomenon surrounding them where things just keep happening to fall off the backs of trucks.

Acquire does not cover burglary, pickpocketing, or other, more physical ways of getting your hands on things. Those will typically be different approaches to Fight, Move, and/or Tinker.

OVERCOME You want something, someone or something else has it. Overcome to get it from them. Challenges or contests might involve auctions, bidding wars, negotiated favors, lengthy searches, or embezzlement.

CREATE AN ADVANTAGE Get someone what they want, grease the wheels, and make people more friendly (e.g. bribes, buying drinks). Have something you need on hand, or know where to get it quickly. Have something a target wants and use it as leverage, or know the safest way to extort resources from them.

Sample Stunts

BATTLEFIELD SCROUNGER +1 when you Acquire objects from your surroundings while in danger, +2 if you've taken a consequence this scene.

MONEY TALKS When in a situation where displays of wealth might aid your cause, you can use Acquire in place of Sway.

SAVVY INVESTOR When you Acquire to create an advantage involving a return on an investment made in a previous session, you get an additional free invoke (In other words, you can't retroactively declare that you did this; it has to actually have been set up in play).

Fight

#TODO Fight

Interface

#TODO Hacking and electronic warfare

KNOW

An Odd Name Out

Of all the skills on this list, Know is probably the most linguistically awkward to pair with the full list of six approaches. It's possible - Know Forcefully conjures images of a frantic late night in a library, ripping heavy books off shelves until finally finding something relevant; Know Boldly might evoke forbidden knowledge; Know Subtly could mean trying to keep a poker face and not let on that you know something compromising, and so on - but it's admittedly a bit of a stretch.

The decision ultimately came down to this: within the context of the stories this game expects to tell and the rest of the skill list, separate skills for "remember a fact" and "discover a fact" would have made both of them too niche to justify taking either. "Know" seemed like the best verb left that fit everything the skill needed to cover. You may, if you like, replace "Know" on your sheet with "Recall" or "Study" if you feel it's appropriate for your character; it will still cover the fictional territory outlined here.

Know factual information, either from memory or through deliberate study. How you know what you know is up to you; your rank could represent anything from street smarts earned through brutal experience to a comprehensive ivory tower education.

OVERCOME Apply your knowledge to achieve a goal. Decipher an ancient language on a tomb wall; identify the nuances and relevant players in an ongoing gang war; solve complex physics problems. Know is the go-to skill any time you need to determine if your character can answer a difficult question, WHEN TENSION EXISTS in the possibility of not having the answer.

CREATE AN ADVANTAGE Know is extremely flexible when creating advantages, provided you have some way to learn or to have already learned about the subject in question. Research the weaknesses of a creature from folklore; recall which common cleaning supplies create poison gases when mixed, or create some other advantage based on any subject matter your character might have studied. This information may take the form of an aspect as is normal when creating an advantage, but may also simply exist as a setting, story, or lore detail - and it can be a fun way to add those details into the game.

Sample Stunts

I'VE READ ABOUT THAT! You've read hundreds, if not thousands, of books on a wide variety of topics. You can spend a fate point to Know in place of any other skill for one roll or exchange, provided you can justify having read about the action you're attempting.

SHIELD OF REASON You can Know to defend against Sway attempts by identifying factually untrue arguments or logical fallacies.

WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED When you Know to create an advantage involving compromising information about a character's or group's past, gain an additional free invoke if you succeed (and if such information actually exists).

Lead

#TODO Leading groups; individuals is Sway

Move

#TODO Athletics

Network

#TODO Contacts

Notice

#TODO Exactly what it says on the tin

Operate

Operate all kinds of vehicles and heavy machinery except a mech (your mech is an extension of you, so you Move your mech just as you Move yourself). If the vehicle has built-in ranged weaponry of any kind (e.g. fighter jet, tank, cobbled-together post-apocalyptic flamethrower truck), using it is still Shooting.

OVERCOME Successfully operate your vehicle or machine in difficult circumstances like stunt driving, a stormy sea, or construction work. Obvious contests include races, chases, and deadlines.

CREATE AN ADVANTAGE Determine the best way to get somewhere in a vehicle; drive erratically to make yourself harder to hit; spin your truck around and throw it into reverse to let your gunners face your pursuers; impress your peers by doing donuts in the school parking lot.

RAMMING SPEED?

As a default assumption, ramming something in a vehicle as an attack (as opposed to running something or someone over) inflicts the same harm on you that it does on your target. Stunts or weaponized vehicles with aspects like "spiked cowcatcher" or "is a literal tank" may be able to bypass this either situationally or completely.

ATTACK Use your vehicle as a weapon. Drive like mad to shake off and run over enemies trying to swarm over your tank; swing your rig's buzzsaw arm into another car.

DEFEND Avoiding damage to a vehicle in a conflict is one of the most common uses of Operate. Do a barrel roll to dodge an incoming missile; identify the sturdiest part of a backhoe to take cover behind; defend against advantages being created against you or someone trying to overcome and move past you.

Sample Stunts

DAMN THE TORPEDOES +1 when you Operate Boldly to direct your vehicle into oncoming fire; +2 if you have passengers.

JUST A MACHINE You take a function-first approach to your mech, treating it as a vehicle like any other. You may use Operate in place of Move while piloting your mech.

PEDAL TO THE METAL You can coax more speed out of your vehicle than seems possible. Whenever you're engaged in any contest where vehicle speed is the primary factor (e.g, a chase, a race, a deadline), and your Operate roll ties the opposition, it's considered a success.

Persevere

#TODO Physique + will merge

Shoot

#TODO Guns go pew pew

Sway

#TODO Convince, Deceive, Provoke all in one

Tend

#TODO Doctor

Tinker

#TODO Craft

Understand

#TODO Empathy

Next

3A Putting It All Together

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