Rules and Stuff

Posting my rules blurbs from the game here for review/discussion.

Note that I'm open to making modifications here before we start if the group has a strong inclination and votes in majority to switch something up. (I.e. I'm envisioning a slightly lower power game but if everyone wants to throw that out and have all the PCs be deadly space ninjas we can rework the rules and the scale up the intended enemies before we begin--most important thing is to make a game where everyone has fun).

I'll be running this game using the Fate Core system along with some slight modifications from the Fate System Toolkit. No prior player knowledge is required. Both of those rules sets are available for free/'pay what you want' at DriveThu RPG and the SRD is also freely available: https://fate-srd.com/

Player Characters start with:
5 Aspects- 1 High Concept, 1 Trouble, 3 Additional)
Their High Concept should be:
1) compatible with being a colonist who ended up on the backwater of Farley's World whether you were born there or went there to hide from the authorities in the galactic core, etc.
2) something that along with your skill set (see below) would reasonably get you selected as a competent member of the first contact team

(I could easily be talked out of it if the group wouldn't find it fun but) I'd like to try starting with a collaborative 'Phase Trio' right out of p38 of the Core rulebook to kind of tie our PCs together right from the start and also enforce that Farley's World is fairly small and the folks who stand out at their jobs have probably come into contact with each other before.

10 Skills which use the standard rankings: 1 Great (+4), 2 Good (+3), 3 Fair (+2), 4 Average (+1)

But a couple of significant modifications:
1) I'm intentionally limiting stunts to make character's dominant abilities more focused overall-- characters get either: 1 Stunt/2 Refresh or 2 Stunts/1 Refresh
2) There will be a Custom Skill set (open to further editing) which will be somewhat less generalized:
Athletics
Burglary
Deceive
Empathy
Engineering/Repair (i.e. Craft in the rulebook)
Fight (Close/melee combat)
Gunner (Shoot - vehicular weapons)
Information Technology (ability to understand/use/hack computer systems)
Linguistics
Marksman (Shoot - hand weapons)
Medicine
Notice
Physique
Piloting (Ability to fly atmospheric craft and orbital craft)
Provoke
Resources
Science (per field)
Rapport
Stealth
Will
Xeno-anthropology/archaeology (study of alien cultures/structures--the former has focused on the study of certain planetary phenomenon and whether or not they are the result of an alien culture, the latter is a theoretical science).
Xenobiology

FYI--I expect the way Skills such as say, Rapport, will work in practice is that the character will be charming in general and will be able to bring their full effect to bear on other humans, but they'll receive a greater penalty to their roll depending on how poorly the alien can understand them or other factors the alien would find disconcerting. Similar with using something like Piloting on an alien craft; etc.

I've taken out the generic 'Investigate' skill because I want facts to be uncovered by the PC having some specific Skill they can narratively craft into gaining that information. So, rather than 'I search the room and try to understand what's going on here', instead 'I trying to use my engineering expertise to try and figure out what this humming block with blinking lights is doing', etc.

I'm going to use the Scaled Invocation rules from lucky Pg 13 of the Toolkit. Basically, this just limits the effects of Aspects based upon how relevant they are. If you come up with a pretty weak/tenuous connection to your Aspect you can only use a Fate point to re-roll, stronger connections let you use the standard re-roll or +2, and a perfect invocation assuming that it's something that has strong dramatic/character relevance can result in an automatic success or larger bonus.

I'm going to utilize the Conditions rules from Pg 18 of the Toolkit--these (like Consequences in the Core rulebook) are negative Aspects you can take to lessen the shifts of Stress dealt to you. Unlike Consequences, these are static/pre-defined.
Fleeting (go away when you have a moment out of conflict to rest)
1 Dizzy / 1 Scared
Sticky (stay until treated or someone succeeds in calming the character down)
2 Injured / 2 Shaken
Lasting (must undergo successful treatment and it persists until recovery is completed)
4 Severely Wounded / 4 Depressed and Demoralized

Are the conditions rules replacing consequences or an addition, giving us both?

They're a replacement; but in a sense they allow you to soak a bit more damage because there are a total of 14 shifts that can be absorbed (2x1=2, 2x2=4, and 2x4=8) that can be checked in place of the standard 12 (2+4+6).

And because I didn't call it out in my summary, but like consequences the conditions aren't limited by the type of damage you're taking (despite their descriptions); so, for example, you could get physically beaten so badly you become Depressed and Demoralized, etc. and absorb the physical stress.