Stunts

## Equipment Stunts

In a fight it can make a big difference whether you hold a sword, a two-handed battle axe, or a potato peeler, so we use some rules for equipment, particularly weapons and armor.

A stunt can reflect specialized, high-quality, or exotic equipment that your character has access to that gives them a frequent edge over other characters.

Your character starts with one equipment stunt, which works like a normal stunt but has a few additional options. If a piece of equipment is such an important part of your character, you may even want to name it.

Basic Effects: Equipment stunts can take a form similar to regular or innate stunts.

With skills:

Because I have [describe item], I get +2 when I [pick one: attack, defend, create advantages, overcome] with [pick one: Fight, Shoot]when [describe a narrow circumstance].

or

Because I have [describe item], I can substitute my [pick one: Fight, Shoot] skill for [normally used skill] when I [pick one: attack, defend, create advantages, overcome] when [describe a narrow circumstance].

With approaches:

Because I have [describe item], I get +2 when I [pick one: Carefully, Cleverly, Flashily, Forcefully, Quickly, Sneakily] [pick one: attack, defend, create advantages, overcome] when [describe a narrow circumstance].

Weapon Combinations: What if you are specifically trained with sword and shield, or are a master of the two-sword technique? Do you need to spend two stunts on the combination, one for each hand? Not necessarily. You could attach a stunt to the combination itself, using the same formula as above.

Lethal Damage: Lethal damage does not deal stress points—it goes directly to consequences (more on this in Advanced Conflict below.) If you want to have a weapon stunt that lets you do lethal damage instead of one of the basic effects, it must have the form of:

Because I have [weapon], once per session I deal lethal damage when I make a [pick one: Fight, Shoot] attack successfully.

or

Because I have [weapon], once per session I deal lethal damage when I make a [pick one: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky] attack successfully.

See "Lethal Attacks" for more.

Zones and Ranged Weapons: An equipment stunt could also be used to affect opponents in other zones, or affect an entire zone with an attack.

Because I have [weapon with long reach or range] I can use [pick one: Fight, Shoot] to attack, create advantage, or overcome in [pick one: my zone and adjacent zones, up to three zones away but not in my zone].

or

Because I have [weapon with long reach or range] I can [pick one: Carefully, Cleverly, Flashily, Forcefully, Quickly, Sneakily] attack, create advantage, or overcome in [pick one: my zone and adjacent zones, up to three zones away but not in my zone].

or

Because I have [a weapon that affects multiple targets], once per session I can attack every opponent in [pick one: my zone, an adjacent zone].

See also "Zones and the Battlefield" for more info about zones.

Equipment Stunts and Weight: Equipment stunts can also add weight in conflicts. See "Stunts and Weight" for more detail and examples.

Repair and Replacement: Damaged or lost stunt equipment can be repaired in play, or replaced as a stunt transfer as part of normal milestone advancement.

## Stunts and Weight

Some stunts can also affect weight. They typically take the form of:

When I use my [talent, advantage, equipment, or riding beast] in [pick as appropriate: social, mental, physical, etc.] conflict, my weight counts as 2 in [narrow circumstance].

The GM and player can decide at the table if this type of stunt would go into their equipment slot or not, if applicable. Is your Big-Ass Axe considered your only weapon, or do you have that and a great spear?

Stunts

Building Stunts

Players are encouraged to create or pick stunts during play as needed, but there’s nothing wrong with deciding on some or all of them before play begins. It’s up to you.

While there’s no definitive list of stunts—the possibilities being limitless, it would be folly to try to enumerate them all—there’s absolutely a definitive list of what stunts can potentially do. When in doubt, look to these examples as guidance.

A stunt only functions when the player wants it to. If for some reason you want to sidestep the advantage a stunt gives you, by all means do so.

Each stunt confers a single benefit listed below.

Add a Bonus

Gain a bonus in a narrow circumstance

Benefit: Gain a situational +2 bonus to one application of a skill.

If you phrase this as “+2 to [action] with [skill] when [situation occurs],” you pretty much can’t go wrong.

Examples:

Friends in High Places: +2 to overcome with Rapport when socializing at a fancy gathering, such as a ritzy corporate or government function.

Alternately, for a stunt with a little more breadth, you can split up that +2 bonus to one application into +1 bonus to two applications. Those applications can both be for the same skill, or you can assign them to two separate skills strongly connected by a common theme.

Examples:

Expert Marksman: +1 to attack or create an advantage with Combat when using a firearm.

Martial Artist: +1 to create an advantage with Combat or Athletics when fighting unarmed.

Add a New Action to a Skill

Use a skill in an unusual way

Benefit: Use a skill to do something it normally can’t by adding a new game action to the skill in certain situations. This new action can be one that’s already covered by another skill—effectively letting you use one skill in place of another for the specified circumstance—or one that’s just not available to any skill.

Examples:

Backstab: Use Stealth instead of Combat to attack when the target isn’t aware of you.

Let’s Take It Outside: Use Physique to defend against intimidation.

Add a Rules Exception to a Skill

Bend the rules in your favor

Benefit: Make a single exception, in a narrow circumstance, for a single skill in a way that doesn’t precisely fit any existing action.

This is admittedly a pretty wibbly-wobbly rule of thumb, but some stunts simply can’t be classified neatly. For more dramatic effects, it’s a good idea to balance this benefit by requiring the character to spend a fate point, take a consequence, or sacrifice their next action, or limit the effect to once per session. Otherwise, you may find that instead of making the character cooler, the stunt just makes the game less fun. And that’s the opposite of what we’re going for.

Examples:

Riposte: When you use Combat to defend in melee and succeed with style, spend a fate point to immediately inflict an attack on your opponent at the shift value of your defense. For example, if you get four shifts on your defense, you’d deal a 4-shift hit to the attacker. You can’t do this again until you have another “next action” to spend (after your skipped turn goes by).

Mind Over Matter: Once per scene, you may check a mental stress box to absorb physical harm.

Have a Signature Aspect

Get a free invoke once per issue

Benefit: One of your character’s aspects is so important to your character, so integral, that, once per issue, you can invoke it for free.

The flip side of this is that when the GM compels that aspect, she must offer you two fate points instead of one. However, should you want to refuse the compel, you have to match the GM’s offer, one-for-one. That means you’d have to spend two fate points to refuse the initial compel.

Mark the aspect with an asterisk, or write “Signature” in parentheses next to it, as a reminder that it works a bit differently.

Examples:

Signature Aspect: Britain’s Most Dangerous Commando

Signature Aspect: Behold, the Power of Science!

Personal Hardware

Own an important possession

Benefit: Your character has an iconic possession of some kind.

This benefit lets you pick from two of the options in the sidebar. If that’s not enough to properly represent your personal hardware, you can take this stunt (and gain its benefit) multiple times.

In addition, your hardware includes any non-mechanical abilities that seem reasonable. For example, a two-way wristwatch radio gives you the ability to communicate over long distances, just as a jetpack gives you the ability to fly—no numbers or rolling required, unless doing so puts you at risk or in danger.

Examples:

Armored Jacket: Armor:2

Knuckledusters: +1 to Combat to attack when unarmed, Weapon:2

Personal Hardware Options

Pick two:

+1 to one situational application of one skill

Weapon:2

Armor:1

Add a new action to a skill (functions once per session)

Mega-Stunts

What Mega-Stunts Are

In most respects, mega-stunts are like stunts, in that they let you bend the rules in character-specific ways. But mega-stunts can also surpass what stunts normally offer—they can confer superhuman abilities, like extraordinary strength, enhanced sensory perception, or incredible toughness.

Moreover, unlike stunts, a single mega-stunt can provide more than one benefit.

However, you can’t take a mega-stunt unless unless you have permission.

To have permission, your character needs a weird mode and an appropriate concept aspect. Both of these must suggest the sorts of benefits that mega-stunts can provide. In turn, your character’s mega-stunts must be logical extensions of the mode and aspect.

Each mega-stunt takes up one stunt slot, regardless of how many benefits that mega-stunt provides.

The total number of benefits a PC has affects the GM’s fate point reserve. See that section for more detail on how that works.

Mega-Stunts, Stunt Slots, and Refresh

These rules presume that a PC has a certain number of “stunt slots” instead of paying refresh for them. The exact number varies depending on the power level of the individual game, but a range of one to five slots works for most settings. (Five mega-stunts is more than enough to cover the range of a typical superhero.)

In place of refresh, these rules assign a flat number of starting fate points to each PC. The specifics of this are up to your group. Possibilities include:

One per aspect the PC has. If a PC starts with one or more of their aspects left blank—say, everything apart from their concept, or their concept and trouble—they’ll start with fewer fate points, but every time the player fills one in during play, they immediately gain a fate point.

Make refresh inversely proportional to the number of stunt slots the PC has, from one to five. For example, if the PCs have five stunt slots, their effective refresh is 1. If they have two stunt slots, their effective refresh is 4.

Three. Nice round number. It’s simple and people like threes.

Weaknesses and Costs

Some of these benefits are so powerful that they require a weakness or a cost. These provide a specific circumstance under which one of the PC’s aspects can be invoked or compelled. So they’re similar in function, but flavored in different ways.

A weakness specifies an attack or effect against which you’re vulnerable—your defense is Mediocre (+0). When writing the mega-stunt on your sheet, indicate a weakness by writing “but weak against...” after the benefit.

A cost is a minor cost (see Fate Core for more on costs) the GM can introduce by compelling your concept aspect. It’s always a minor cost, but the exact form it takes depends on the PC’s concept aspect, the circumstances, and common sense, and can differ from one instance to another. When writing the mega-stunt on your sheet, indicate a cost by writing “but at a cost” after the absolute benefit.

When the GM initiates a compel that stems from a weakness or cost, the player can refuse it, as usual.

What Mega-Stunts Can Do

Each benefit provided by a mega-stunt takes one of four basic forms. It can give the character an innate Weapon or Armor rating, provide an absolute ability with one skill to exceed what normal humans can do, render them bulletproof, or duplicate a stunt benefit.

Weapon or Armor Rating

Get a 2-shift bonus to a successful attack or a 1-shift bonus to defend.

Benefit: Gain Weapon:2 or Armor:1 due to some inherent quality.

Normally, a Weapon or Armor rating is the result of special equipment, like from the Personal Hardware stunt. This benefit, however, is for characters who hit harder or are more resistant to damage simply because of their very nature.

If you choose a Weapon rating, specify the circumstances under which it applies, such as “when using strength” or “with eyebeams.” If you choose an Armor rating, specify physical or mental harm.

You can select this stunt benefit more than once for a single mega-stunt. Its effects can be cumulative, or applied to different forms of attack or defense.

Absolute Ability

Be superior to humans in one area

Benefit: Choose a skill. When using that skill for an overcome action, you can exceed what normal humans can accomplish. Under the specified conditions, that action is always considered a success, no roll required.

You can’t apply this benefit to a skill without the overcome action, such as Combat. (In other words, no fair getting absolute accuracy with an attack.)

When using your absolute in an opposed roll against an opponent who isn’t on your level—that is, one without an equivalent mega-stunt—you automatically win with a success (as opposed to a tie or a success with style).

The GM is the final arbiter of where “normal human ability” ends and “superhuman ability” begins. Your PC may be stronger than the world’s strongest human, sure, but is she stronger than the world’s ten strongest humans, working together against her? Or a giant ape? When in doubt, make a skill roll. (Borderline cases are good opportunities to let the dice decide anyway.)

When you take this benefit, it always comes with a weakness or cost. (There’s no getting around this—every absolute ability is required to have one or the other.)

Bulletproof

Ignore a type of damage

Benefit: Bullets? They bounce off of you. So do conventional weapons less-powerful than bullets, like swords and vampire teeth. You have Armor:∞ against all of them.

Roll for the attack and defense as normal. If the attack ties, succeeds, or succeeds with style, the attacker gets a boost. If the defense succeeds with style, the defender gets a boost.

Let your common sense draw the line between “conventional weapons” and “dangerously unconventional implements of destruction.” As one example—pistols, rifles, and machine guns may only annoy a bulletproof robot, but a simple steel rod becomes a real threat to his safety when wielded by a super-strong warbot, and a high-speed collision with a satellite is nearly enough to destroy him altogether.

And of course, if the attacker’s intent is to create an advantage, being Bulletproof is irrelevant and the defender has to defend as usual.

If you need to make a character even tougher, give them an Armor rating on top of Bulletproof that applies to attacks more powerful than mere bullets.

A mega-stunt with this benefit requires a weakness or cost, just as with absolute abilities.

Other -Proofs

Bulletproof is the most common type of “-proof” found in fiction, but you can easily repurpose the Bulletproof benefit to apply to other types of harm, like Fearproof (immune to threats and other fear-based mental attacks) or Fireproof (immune to fire and high temperatures). Apply the same common sense to these as you would to Bulletproof. For example, even a Fearproof character will have a hard time keeping it together when confronted by a truly extraordinary threat, such as an ancient awakened deity or a world-eating dragon. Under circumstances such as these, it’s totally fine to call for a roll despite being Fearproof (but a bonus to that roll will help the GM’s medicine go down more easily).

Stunt Benefit

Do what a stunt does

Benefit: Choose one of these stunts: Add a Bonus, Add a Game Action, Add a Rules Exception, Personal Hardware. Add that stunt’s benefit to the mega-stunt.

Note that Personal Hardware confers bigger Weapon and Armor ratings than the Weapon and Armor Rating stunt benefit above does. That’s intentional

Paying for Mega-Stunts

To recap: Each mega-stunt takes up one stunt slot. A single stunt has a single benefit, but a single mega-stunt can have two or more benefits.

So if characters in your game have five stunt slots, one with five stunts and no mega-stunts will have a maximum of five benefits. But a character with mega-stunts can easily end up with more than five benefits. For example, if a character has two stunts and three mega-stunts, and each of those mega-stunts has two benefits, that’s a total of eight benefits—three more than usual maximum of five.

When a character has more than the usual maximum of stunt benefits from stunts and mega-stunts, add one fate point to the GM’s reserve for each benefit in excess of the usual maximum.

For example, that PC with the eight benefits? When he’s in a session, the GM gets another three fate points for her reserve. The mere presence of this character means things are harder for everyone.

Option: Voluntary Weaknesses and Costs

With this option, you can tack a weakness or a cost onto a mega-stunt even if it doesn’t require one. For each of these voluntary costs, reduce the number of fate points added to the GM’s reserve by one, to a minimum of zero. You can’t have both a weakness and a cost on the same benefit, though.

FRONTIER SPIRIT

Stunts

Stunts

Your character can get two special stunts: ritual stunts and high technology stunts. Mediums always have at least one ritual, and may take a second as one of their two free stunts. If you have any non-mediums, they must have at least one high technology stunt.

Ritual

Every medium has at least one means of accessing the otherworld. You never need to roll to access the otherworld; whether or not you can is almost never an interesting question. Instead, you will use a ritual stunt.

A ritual stunt is either a channeling ritual or projection ritual. Each type grants a different means of accessing the otherworld, with different applications, so your group will want a mix. Each of your ritual stunts can be used once per session.

Channeling lets you reach out to a spirit on the other side and allow it to contact the material world. It’s less risky than projection, but it’s also much more specific. You can only reach one spirit-facet with it per ritual, and you must be within the territory of the spirit whose facet you are attempting to reach. It’s most useful for making initial contact with a spirit or following up.

Projection lets you and others who engage in the ritual with you journey through the otherworld with your minds. It’s potentially dangerous, and can result in permanent harm, but allows for longer and deeper engagement than channeling. You can spend hours immersed in the otherworld, seeking and speaking to facets of a spirit, and you can even travel short distances to the territories of neighboring spirits by descending into deeper layers of the otherworld and then traveling back up.

To use a ritual stunt, you need two things: the ritual itself and the right circumstance.

The ritual is some specific act or ceremony you undertake to invoke the otherworld. A ritual provides a standard set of steps, a succinct description, that bridges the gap between the normal everyday and the world of the spirits. The purpose of the ritual is not to be difficult, risky, or challenging, but to clearly demarcate the borderline, to call attention to the crossover into the mystical world. It’s not something you can do by accident or while doing something else. It’s something you have to do deliberately, with purpose, on its own.

The circumstance is some precondition to contacting the other otherworld. It provides a foundation for your ritual, setting the stage for the steps that follow. It should have thematic ties to the ritual it enables, and should be outside of normal experience. It should be the kind of thing you need to seek out, or to specifically set up or prepare for, rather than something that can just happen.

Once you choose your ritual and circumstance, write down your ritual stunt like this:

Once per session, you can [channel spirits from or project into] the otherworld by [description of ritual] when [description of circumstance].

Example Rituals

Deep meditation. Possibly the simplest ritual, and commonly used for both projection and channeling. It involves a long period of stillness and concentration, focusing on a single point. Incense, the recitation of mantras, or other olfactory or auditory aids may be incorporated.

Dance. Practically the opposite of meditation in every way, involving strenuous physical activity. It’s almost always accompanied by music, and might also require ceremonial costumes. Dance is more commonly used for projection than channeling, with the dancers journeying into the spirit world as they collapse at the conclusion of the dance.

Divination. A form of channeling, unique in that it communicates with a spirit indirectly. Rather than allowing the spirit to speak, the divination channels the spirit’s responses into material objects or creatures: cards, bones or straw, the behavior of a holy animal or familiar. There’s a multitude of divination methods, and all can work for the right person in the right circumstances.

Offering. Burning, dissolving, or leaving out some significant plant or animal remnant. For some mediums, the offerings they provide are always the same and substitutions don’t work for them at all, which can lead to trouble when a spirit finds that offering abhorrent. Other mediums must offer something that holds significance to the spirit they seek to contact or whose territory they’re in. Offering rituals provide the clearest indication of the power of the spirits, as the offering vanishes at the culmination of the ritual.

Example Conditions

Near deep water. Given the conceptual ties between bodies of water and the otherworld, this is a common circumstance for rituals, especially projection rituals. This is often coupled with rituals that involve bathing in, wading into, or immersion in the water.

At noon. Or dusk, or dawn, or midnight. Significant moments during the daily cycle represent moments of balance (for noon or midnight) or transition (for dusk or dawn), forming a firm foundation for ritual.

Up high. Or down low. Peaks, cliffs, caves, and pits all represent isolation from the everyday world—whether by lifting above all else or by surrounding with walls of stone—which cuts the practitioner off from the norm and opens the way to further ritual.

In a holy place. This might seem self-explanatory, but isn’t always suitable for all mediums. Not only can such a place be tricky to find, but many mediums also report feeling like they generate “interference.” Those who can use them effectively generally prefer the area around a spirit’s idol or a long-established temple, though the latter is extremely rare on a colony.

High Technology

Each character can have at most one stunt representing a piece of “space opera” technology, above and beyond the capabilities of 21st-century science. Characters can cobble together jerry-rigged high-tech devices using create advantage with Craft or Science, or borrow or lease them with Contacts or Resources. A stunt gives permanent access and ownership, and guarantees reliability.

In the interest of maintaining tone and a sense of place, there are some limits on what high technology can do:

No self-reproducing or self-repairing machines. High technology is limited because it’s beyond the colonists’ ability to construct and difficult to maintain. Devices that can copy or maintain themselves would be essentially unlimited in their availability.

No matter-energy converters or replicators. The settlement effort is driven by the need to grow food, exploit resources, and establish an industrial base. Being able to create material or food out of thin air sabotages these drives.

No modern communication. Telecommunications infrastructure is slow, unreliable, and inconvenient. Most communities are dependent on a handful of overburdened satellites. Characters cannot have portable devices that permit real-time video or voice communication or remote information access from anywhere on the planet. Telecommunications devices must be local, stationary, or asynchronous—something that lets you leave a message rather than chatting, in essence.

No teleportation. Beaming people or objects around trivializes any kind of travel or logistical obstacle. It’s a little bit too clean, and undercuts the local concerns and scale of the game. Teleporters might be a thing elsewhere, or they might not. Either way, they’re not viable on a new colony world.

Write a stunt describing how your high technology helps you exercise your skills. Often this gives you a rules exception or a new action for a skill, but it could be a bonus. Your technology isn’t a panacea, though—it can only be used in certain situations.

Your gear has an aspect as well, which can be invoked or compelled based on its normal function and limitations. You can give this aspect the same name as the stunt or embellish it a bit.

Examples of High Technology Stunts

Ray Gun: Using your ray gun, you get +2 to Shoot attacks against targets at least one zone away.

Sonic Excavator: Using your sonic excavator, you can carve a path through inanimate material with Science.

Aircar: Using your aircar, you can fly very quickly at tree-top height. You can transport up to four other people and a small amount of cargo, but can’t fly with anything really heavy.

Autodoc: When using your autodoc to treat wounds or disease with Science, once per session you can improve the outcome by one step: failure to tie, tie to success, or success to success with style. If you initially succeeded with style, you can create an aspect with one free invocation instead of gaining a boost.

Handheld Expert System: Once per session, you can use your handheld expert system to automatically succeed on creating an advantage with Science against passive opposition equal to or less than your Science rank.

Immanence

Immanence is when the otherworld draws close to the mundane world. It’s triggered in times of crisis. GMs, you can trigger an episode of immanence whenever an aspect related to the spirit world or a spirit is compelled; often, an inconvenient episode of immanence is a suitable event compel in and of itself.

The flavor of the triggered immanent episode should be relevant to the compelled aspect, whether a spirit’s portfolio aspect or an issue aspect. Immanent episodes can also be triggered by compelling a character’s appropriate aspect. In this case, the episode—or, at least, its initial circumstances—should reflect the character’s initial encounter with the otherworld.

A character’s experience during an immanent episode depends on their level of connection to the otherworld. Characters with a strong connection—including all mediums and any other character, PC or NPC, with an aspect representing their relationship to the otherworld or to a spirit—have a clear experience and memory. As the otherworld draws near, they can easily pick out its details, tell them apart from mundane reality, and have full memory of events.

Important characters without a connection—generally, main NPCs and non-medium PCs—have a clear experience during the episode. They can perceive details of the otherworld, and react to and interact with them. However, it is difficult for them to tell what is real and what is otherworldly. Doing so requires a Will roll, with failure resulting in some catastrophic misinterpretation. After the otherworld recedes, these characters’ memories become vague and fuzzy. They might question their own experiences or pass them off as a daydream or fanciful delusion.

Supporting NPCs have a muddled, confusing experience from the start. They might see features of the otherworld out of the corner of their eye, or see things blur back and forth between one state and another. Their experience feels like a waking dream. Characters who are easily upset or don’t handle the unexpected well might freak out, but even people who keep their head cannot interact effectively with the otherworld. Their impaired perceptions mean these characters are extremely vulnerable during an immanent episode, and can be injured, mentally scarred, or even killed or driven mad by spirits. Without a medium around to help resolve matters, immanence rarely ends well for these characters. The memory of the experience typically fades quickly, as dreams do, but some details might remain.

Nameless NPCs are even worse off. They’re unable to perceive the otherworld at all, and if an otherworldly element that manifests during an immanent episode winds up interacting with them, they’re likely to react with surprise and confusion. Like supporting NPCs, they’re extremely vulnerable when the otherworld becomes immanent, and they never remember any details of the experience.

Spirits

A spirit is a distant entity, dwelling in the depths of the otherworld never appearing directly. It acts through its facets: inhabitants of the upper levels of the otherworld that at first seem to exist and act independently, but which are joined to a greater whole. Each facet is invested in a part of the spirit’s portfolio, linking it to the spirit. Facets know they are part of a larger, deeper being, and the whole of the spirit shares the experiences, memories, and knowledge of each facet, though not always quickly or clearly. One facet might speak clearly of another’s existence, while another might have a distorted or partial understanding of its other-selves.

GMs, to build a spirit, first design the spirit itself, then build the facets of it your PCs will be interacting with.

Each spirit has a portfolio which sustains it or comforts it when reflected by the material world in the land it claims. The elements of a spirit’s portfolio are abstract and conceptual, and can be reflected or embodied by a wide variety of situations or things. A spirit’s portfolio is represented by a list of aspects, its portfolio aspects.

Each facet of the spirit will possess some of these portfolio aspects, which influence and direct its behavior and provide a link to its greater whole. Facets strive to encourage things that exemplify the portion of their spirit’s portfolio that they partake in. These portfolio aspects can be compelled when that element is harmed or transgressed against, provoking retaliation from the facet. A facet’s portfolio aspects can be invoked for or against the facet as well.

A facet has the portfolio aspect Though Turned Aside Your Path Cannot Be Denied—representing its area’s tendency toward gusting winds—shared with its spirit. The facet could invoke this aspect to help it get around some mediums who are trying to corral the facet for further discussion. However, if the facet ever tries to stand its ground, that aspect could be invoked or compelled against it.

Creating the Portfolio

Start with your game’s issues—the problems that dog your world and characters, and the particular location or locations where the spirit is found. These are also the problems that are agitating this spirit, motivating it to cause more trouble. The portfolio answers the question of “Why?”

Imagine the location central to the adventure and those nearby. What were they like before people came here, and what are they like now? Pick out symbols, concepts, and trends that seem significant, and consider how your game’s issues might challenge them. Is the action of a current issue changing the concrete form of a symbol, or challenging it by bringing in contrary concepts? What about the activity that aims to bring about an impending issue, or that presages or foreshadows it? If you can see how an issue and a concept are opposed, add that as an aspect to the spirit’s portfolio. Otherwise, set it aside and move on.

You don’t need to tie a portfolio aspect to every issue, but try to wind up with about one portfolio aspect per issue. Some issues might even challenge two or even three portfolio aspects. More than three is risky—at any given time, you’ll likely have two active campaign issues, between two and four location issues, and possibly one or two other issues floating around. Having multiple portfolio aspects that interact with different issues will create a situation that’s more challenging to mediate than a single portfolio aspect that’s impinged upon by a variety of issues.

Don’t throw away the portfolio aspects you set aside. Pick a few of them—about as many as those you’ve already picked—and make them part of the spirit’s portfolio too. Those with some superficial similarity to aspects linked to an issue give you opportunities to complicate your mediums’ failures with confusion and misunderstanding. Others provide additional detail, or offer hooks that your mediums can use to persuade or reign in a spirit.

Facets

A spirit’s facets are, for the most part, built as any other NPC. Choose whether they are a nameless, supporting, or main NPC, allocate their skills, and create any appropriate stunts.

Nameless facets are the least parts of a spirit’s being, those closest to the mundane world. They’re extremely likely to appear during any kind of immanent episode. As each facet is so weak, it represents a focused, specific slice of the spirit’s being. These facets are typically servants and workers for more potent facets, stamped-out copies with very little to distinguish them. They can only make small changes to the material world but can do so very easily, so they spend most of their time making tweaks throughout a spirit’s domain.

Supporting facets are comparable to ordinary people, with complex, individual personalities, quirks, and breadth of ability. It takes a more significant episode of immanence to admit them to the material world, but their impact is commensurately greater. Being more complicated, a supporting facet partakes of more of its parent’s nature, potentially creating a strong drive or internal conflict. Some appear as otherworldly versions of ordinary people or animals, while others have entirely unfamiliar forms. Fairies, imps, and other mythical mischief-makers are common forms, with personalities to match.

Main facets are the deepest form of spirit that mediums are capable of interacting with. They rarely appear during episodes of immanence—they must be deliberately sought out. They inherit a wide swath of a spirit’s being, and consequently wield a great deal of power. Their forms are fantastic—giant animals, animate landscapes, and mythological beings.

Facet Aspects

A nameless facet gets one aspect, while supporting and main facets get more, as needed. Start writing aspects for your facet by picking from its parent spirit’s portfolio. No one facet should cover the spirit’s full portfolio. If you need more aspects for a facet, expand the spirit’s portfolio. Some facets have rewritten versions of their spirit’s portfolio aspects. These facets are usually injured, drifting away from their parent somehow, or play the role of devil’s advocate or antagonist, testing the spirit’s other facets. These aspects of the facet, like the spirit’s, are called portfolio aspects.

Once you’ve got a facet’s portfolio aspects sorted out, write an additional aspect for it that distinguishes its role and nature.

Facets that share aspects of a spirit’s portfolio also share experiences with each other. This takes some time, and is unpredictable but inevitable. A facet’s power confers authority upon its experiences: Greater facets view isolated experiences of lesser ones as an ordinary person might view behavior during a night of drinking, celebration, or holiday—atypical and perhaps slightly embarrassing. Lesser facets treat the experiences and opinions of greater facets as definitive. Facets that don’t share aspects often seek each other out in the otherworld to gossip and share news, providing a “side channel” to the spirit’s main distribution of experiences.

To convince a spirit to stop causing trouble and to get the mediation to stick, mediums must often reach an accord with a few powerful facets or many, many weaker ones. The former is inevitably easier.

Facet Skills

Facets can have any skill that an ordinary person can, though they are most likely to have Deceit, Empathy, Provoke, Rapport, or Will. Physical skills can be used to affect anything in the facet’s presence. Usually these are things in the otherworld—either other spirits or a medium’s projection—but during immanent episodes a facet can use these skills to affect the mundane world. Contacts or Resources are rare, but could represent allies in the otherworld or a large reach of useful otherworldly territory under the facet’s control, or they could represent some material influence—worshippers or an established shrine.

Facet Stress and Consequences

Facets have stress tracks and sometimes consequences. However, they can’t be killed or otherwise permanently destroyed by getting taken out in a physical conflict. Instead, they become detached, distant from the material world and from their parent spirit. A facet that has been taken out in a physical conflict is bound and banished until the next major milestone. When it returns, its view of the world is shaped by other facets that share its portfolio aspects, often leading the facet to abandon prior views and plans entirely in the wake of a successful mediation.

Taking out a recalcitrant facet might seem like a potent mediation technique, and it is…but not one without risk. A supporting or main facet can take an extreme consequence just like a PC, including rewriting one of its portfolio aspects to reflect the consequence. Unlike a PC, taking this consequence doesn’t keep the facet in the fight. It’s still taken out, but it’s only detached until the end of the scene. The aspect change involved in taking an extreme consequence separates the facet from its parent spirit. These separated facets become erratic and unpredictable. Each such renegade must be met with mediation on its own terms, or it will cause no end of trouble.

Manifestation Stunts

Just as people can’t normally access the otherworld, spirits and their facets can’t normally access the material world. Some facets can only take advantage of moments of immanence to affect the material world, and must wait for these moments—or encourage other, more capable spirit-facets to create them. Other facets are able to use a manifestation stunt to work around their normal limits and affect the real world and people in it. Think of manifestation stunts like ritual stunts in reverse: given some circumstance, a spirit-facet can affect something in the material world. Here are some examples.

Dream Invasion: The facet can intrude on the dreams of anyone who’s been in the vicinity of things that represent all its portfolio aspects during the past day. While there, it can interact socially with the target, creating advantages or even engaging in social conflict. The target is not automatically aware of the invasion, though they might be able to discover it through an overcome action with Notice or Empathy, or even through a careless comment by the invader. If the subject becomes aware, they can end the invasion by winning a contest of Will opposed by Will.

Poltergeist: The facet can interact with material objects using Physique during a scene where each of the facet’s portfolio aspects is embodied by an aspect on anything in the scene. It can attack or create advantages, but cannot be attacked. This costs one fate point per exchange, and the manifestation ends if any of the requisite aspects are removed.

Chain of Coincidence: The facet can affect the material world by causing twists of fate or chance. If its portfolio aspects are well represented, the coincidences are generally positive or helpful. If representations of its portfolio aspects are missing or have been turned against its aspects, the coincidences are negative or harmful. Over the course of a few hours, these coincidences can build up to a significant effect, allowing the facet to create an advantage or effect change by overcoming an obstacle. Roll Rapport for positive changes and Provoke for negative. Actively opposing Chain of Coincidence requires several hours of work to combat a seemingly endless tide of happenstance.

A domestic spirit-facet is upset that the burrows and nests of local wildlife have been disturbed for a commercial development. The spirit goes to work, and the building’s plumbing just happens to spring leaks near areas opportune for mold colonization, the spores just happen to get picked up by the HVAC, and soon the building gains the Sick Building aspect, sending a handful of workers home, having come down with respiratory diseases. Now the facet turns its attention to the perplexed maintenance workers. Hopefully the mediums they’ve called in are able to help them sort things out…

Facets can also have normal stunts, with the added provision that they can do things that are fantastical or impossible in the otherworld. Each stunt should still convey something specific and align with one of the facet’s portfolio aspects. A facet could have stunts allowing it to fly, shape rock, fling blasts of fire, twist emotions, or perform any number of other tricks. These stunts only function while wholly in the otherworld; they are not available during immanent incidents in the mundane world.

Traveling Facets

As they’re able to move about the otherworld, a spirit’s facets will sometimes travel outside of its territory. The spirit might be seeking to add unclaimed territory to its domain, or the facets might simply be visiting another spirit—they act enough like people that conversation and even friendship are possible. These traveling facets can be exceptionally problematic for mediums, as they can cause extremely irregular trouble. They retain all of their manifestation stunts, and use them to support their portfolio as usual, but do so in places their parent spirit isn’t normally connected to. Worse, a facet visiting a friend might exercise its manifestation stunts in outrage over a transgression of that friend’s portfolio, a confusing situation for any mediums trying to determine why a spirit is upset.

Powerful spirit-facets can even travel between planets through the otherworld. When questioned, they describe the process as taxing or unpleasant, so most don’t bother. Those that do might be following someone interesting, seeking novelty, or following up on a story they heard from a priest or worshipper. These facets bring extremely strange and out-of-place portfolio aspects with them, provoking conflict with native spirits and disrupting established arrangements between people and the otherworld.

Disasters

Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides, landslides, blizzards, fires—they’re staples of both supernatural fantasy and frontier fiction. Natural disasters are one of the most significant ways the spirits express their displeasure. Although denied other avenues to affect the physical world on a large scale, it’s quite easy for a spirit’s facets to make tweaks across its territory that combine to create a larger, out-of-control calamity.

While disasters can be caused by spirits, spirits are rarely actively involved in their progress. This absence of active opposition makes a disaster a perfect excuse to break out the challenge rules. There’s a variety of things clearly at risk: damage to homes and buildings, personal injury, and endangerment of other property. Since the challenges will all be happening during the same scene, inflicting shifts of physical or mental stress equal to the margin of failure on one roll to the characters is a suitable success at a cost, one that renders the impact of the disaster in a personal context.

At the other extreme, clearing fields or destroying buildings, tools, or other infrastructure can cause great harm to a frontier settlement, as does personal injury. Replacing lost or damaged property is an arduous and lengthy endeavor, suitable for a subplot in and of itself, as is medical treatment.

When running a disaster response, remember to call for all the rolls for the challenge before narrating the outcome (Fate Core, page 148). The narration and interpretation phase is when you should consider whether an immanent episode has occurred, or if some other complication has emerged that requires more detailed resolution. Immanent episodes are likely to be common during a disaster response challenge, and this procedure means that you can resolve one question—What is the outcome of our disaster relief?—before moving on to the next: What happens when the otherworld intrudes during our work?