Vehicles

FATE SYSTEM TOOLKIT

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.

Ships as Characters

Ships have aspects, skills, and stunts, just like regular characters. If the players start the game in command of—or serving aboard—their own ship, take some time to discuss the ship’s origins and history so you can decide what statistics to assign it.

Ships come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. A ship with no stunts is considered small, which means that it carries 20 guns and 100 crew, and up to 300 tons of cargo. To increase a ship’s size, take the Medium Ship and Large Ship stunts. For every step in size difference between two ships, the larger ship receives +1 to attack and defend against the smaller ship in combat.

Ship Aspects

Every ship has a high concept and a crew aspect. The high concept is a brief description of the ship as a whole, such as Poorly Repaired Merchantman or Intimidating French Warship. The crew aspect describes the makeup and personality of the crew, such as Merciless Pirate Scum or Patriotic but Inexperienced.

A vessel controlled by the players starts with 3 additional aspects, for a total of 5. Important NPC vessels may also have additional aspects in proportion to the significance of the vessel to the story.

Ship Skills

Skills associated with a ship represent the proficiencies of its crew. Choose these skills only from the following list:

Athletics

Craft

Fight

Notice

Provoke

Sail

Shoot

Stealth

Will

For an NPC vessel, use the guidelines in Fate Core (page 214) for giving skills to nameless NPCs. Don’t use the guidelines for supporting and main NPCs; only use those guidelines when making important non-ship NPCs.

For the starting PC ship, give it the skill levels for an Average, Fair, or Good nameless NPC, depending on what makes sense for your story.

When the ship’s crew performs a task, use the crew’s skill rank. However, if a character takes direct command of the crew while they’re performing the task, use the character’s skill rank instead. In this case, the character must participate in the task alongside the crew, and the character cannot contribute to any other tasks simultaneously. Only one character can take command of a given task at once, and other characters cannot provide teamwork bonuses.

Ship Stunts

Stunts represent special equipment aboard ship or innate features of the ship itself. A ship controlled by the players gets 1 free stunt. Ships do not have fate points or refresh.

Medium Ship: This is a frigate-sized ship, carrying 40 guns, with a capacity of 250 crew members and 750 tons of cargo.

Large Ship: This is a ship of the line, carrying 80 guns, with a capacity of 600 crew members and 1800 tons of cargo. This ship is also large enough to carry two phlogiston-jet cutter boats. To purchase this stunt, the ship must already have the Medium Ship stunt.

Fine Sails: High-quality materials provide better resistance to the winds, which produces higher maximum speed. The ship’s navigator gains +2 to Sail when determining travel times or racing other vessels.

Maneuverable: The mechanisms operating the ship’s sails have been improved. The crew gains +2 to Sail rolls to gain or remove positional aspects during combat.

Long Guns: Lengthened barrels and expanded prometheum chambers extend the range of the ship’s guns. As long as the ship can maintain an At Long Range aspect between itself and its opponent, it gains an ongoing +2 to defend against attacks from that opponent. The At Long Range aspect can still be invoked as normal.

Chain Shot: Firing lengths of chain from the ship’s guns gives a better chance of inflicting serious damage to enemy sails. The ship gains +2 to Shoot when attempting to create a negative aspect on a target representing damaged sails.

False Hull: Cleverly built into the ship’s structure, this hidden space can store a small amount of cargo, less than 5% of the ship’s total cargo tonnage. Add +2 to the opposition to any attempts to find the hidden cargo.

Ramming Prow: A reinforced, sharply pointed prow allows the ship to deliver a ramming attack while minimizing harm to itself. When delivering a ramming attack, the ship receives +2 to defend itself against the damage from this attack. See Ship Combat for more information on this.

Ship Milestones

If your characters own or serve aboard a ship, the ship gets a milestone when the characters do. The ship milesone is like a character milestone, with two exceptions:

First, ships do not have refresh. At any major milestone, one player may spend a point of refresh to buy a single stunt for the ship.

Second, the skill cap for the ship’s crew is always one rank below the skill cap for the characters.

Ship Combat

Running the Conflict

Before combat begins, each ship’s navigator must roll Sail to create an aspect indicating its position relative to the other vessels. For example:

The Asteroid Is Between Us

We Have the Weather Gage

Closing to Gun Range

The navigator may be any PC or NPC crew member who is on or near the bridge of the ship at the beginning of the conflict. To determine the order that the ships create their aspects, compare the Notice ranks of the navigators, just as you would to determine turn order during a normal exchange. When declaring each aspect, state which ships it affects. Each of these ships can actively oppose this attempt by rolling Sail.

You may wish to use index cards to represent individual ships and positional aspects. For a positional aspect between two ships—such as In the Pirate’s Blind Spot—place a card between them, drawing arrows as desired to show motion or targeting. For one that affects multiple opponents—such as We’re Leaving Them Far Behind—place the card near the ship creating the aspect and note on the card which ships it affects.

Certain activities can only occur once per ship in each exchange: maneuvers, repairs, gunnery, and signaling. All four of these activities can occur simultaneously. The PCs can directly command any of these activities, one activity per PC, or the crew can execute any number of these activities on their own, as described in the “Crew Actions” section. When the crew performs an activity on their own, use their own Notice to determine their place in the turn order; when a PC takes command of an activity, use that PC’s Notice instead.

Maneuvers: To alter a position aspect, the ship’s navigator rolls overcome using Sail. Any ships affected by the altered aspect can actively oppose with Sail. Successfully changing the position aspect removes the prior aspect and grants one or two free invocations or a boost on the new aspect, as per the usual rules for creating an advantage.

You can attempt to create a position aspect between your ship and several other ships at once. In this case, each of those ships actively and independently opposes you. Assign the new aspect to each ship that fails to oppose your action.

Ramming a ship requires two exchanges. On the first exchange, your ship’s navigator rolls Sail to create a Bearing Down On the Enemy position aspect targeting an enemy ship, which can actively oppose with Sail. While this aspect exists, your ship’s navigator can attack with Sail to ram the targeted ship, which defends with Sail. If the attack is successful, determine damage as usual, and then roll Sail again to defend your own ship against your own ram attack. If you do not successfully defend, damage your own ship as normal. If your defense ties your attack, the resulting boost goes to the enemy ship you rammed; if you took out the ship you rammed, the boost goes to an enemy of the GM’s choice.

Repairs: The ship’s crew can roll Craft to attempt to remove damage-related aspects from the ship. During a conflict, the crew cannot attempt to recover damage-related consequences, but they can create aspects to represent temporary repairs, such as Held Together with Twine and Hope or We Didn’t Need That Gear Anyway. Any character on the ship can invoke a temporary repair aspect in response to an opponent invoking a consequence on the ship.

Gunnery: A ship can fire its guns at a single target per exchange. This can be represented as an attack action or create an advantage action, attempting to create an aspect on an enemy ship, such as Shredded Sails. The targeted vessel can defend or actively oppose, as appropriate, using Sail.

Signaling: Once per exchange, a ship can transmit a single message using its signaling lanterns. To judge whether a message can be sent during a single exchange, assume that signaling speed is roughly similar to that of Morse code—about forty words per minute. Normally, signaling does not require a roll, but it does use the signaling character’s action for the exchange.

Other Actions During Ship Combat

Characters who are not taking command of the four main ship activities listed in the prior section may take other actions during the conflict as desired and necessary. For instance, while a ship-to-ship battle is raging, the PCs might also need to defend themselves against a swarm of Uranian ice spiders loose on the ship, or they might need to negotiate with a saboteur who has barricaded herself in the ship’s magazine with a box of matches and the vessel’s store of prometheum.

You can divide up ship decks and compartments into zones to resolve conflicts occurring inside a ship, such as a munity or a boarding action. Zones within a ship have no bearing on ship-to-ship conflict, including taking command of the crew.

Ship Consequences and Conditions

When a ship takes shifts of damage, the defender may absorb them using ship consequences, crew conditions, or both.

Consequences represent battle damage, mechanical failures, and other persistent problems with the ship. Ships can take the usual three consequences—mild, moderate, and severe.

Conditions represent crew casualties or missing crew members. The Fate System Toolkit explains how to use conditions on page 18. The following conditions are available for a ship’s crew:

Bruised: 1 point

Battered: 1 point

Light Losses: 2 points

Light Losses: 2 points

Heavy Losses: 4 points

Heavy Losses: 4 points

The Bruised and Battered conditions are fleeting: remove them as soon as the crew has time to rest and dress their wounds. The Light Losses and Heavy Losses conditions are sticky: you can only remove them after you replace the lost crew members. Each Light Losses condition represents a loss of one-tenth the ship’s maximum crew, while each Heavy Losses condition represents a loss of one-quarter the maximum crew.

If you are deliberately sailing with less than a ship’s maximum crew—because you’ve sent some of the crew off on a raiding mission, for instance, or because you’ve captured a merchant ship and only sent a few crew members to sail it—you must take a combination of Light Losses and Heavy Losses conditions to cover the missing crew. If you can’t take enough conditions to cover the shortfall—that is, if you have less than three-tenths the ship’s full crew—you cannot mount a competent defense in battle. If you enter a combat situation, your ship is immediately taken out.

To begin recovering a consequence that represents damage to the ship, you must roll Repair against the consequence in question, as normal. This task requires several hours of in-game time, and must occur while the ship is not involved in combat.

On a successful Repair roll, rename the consequence to reflect the ongoing repairs. For example, Gaping Hole in the Hull might become Hastily Patched-Over Breach. After the appropriate amount of game time passes, remove the consequence.

GMs, you may wish to limit the number of consequences and conditions that an unimportant NPC ship can take, just as you would for a nameless or supporting NPC.