Fate Noosphere

The fundamental aim of the Story Debate is to provide a vehicle for compelling narratives. FATE NOOSPHERE is intended to emphasize these elements by actualizing them as mechanics, free the player from minutiae, and even allow those feeling burnout or burdened by sudden time constraints to continuing to generating narratives that they can pick up upon later. In many ways the system is more a model of historiography than it is a wargame-lite, as other system-heavy SDs tend to be, and owes a heavy debt to the FATE system created by Evil Hat Games. One can take a look at how the sausage was made by looking up System Reference Documents for CORE and ACCELERATED.

FATE NOOSPHERE is highly adaptable, and should support any kind of Story Debate setting, whether a D&D-esque High Fantasy, grand space opera in the spirit of Legend of Galactic Heroes, to the hardest and grittiest Sci-Fi. It is an open system well able to accept any setting specific tweaks and concepts necessary to tailor the experience.

The Basics

Scale

Scale, in FATE NOOSPHERE, refers specifically to the three different levels of play and the different mechanics involved in each: Grand, Large, and Small. Players behind Polities and Movements are likely to be operating

Polities, Movements, and Legends

Polities are the typical Story Debate bread and butter, and likely the first choice for a Player. These are powerful Empires

Movements cover all your transnational non-government organizations: conspiracies, criminal syndicates, popular insurgencies, powerful priesthoods, megacorporations, mercenary warbands, secret societies, etc etc. Unlike Polities, Movements have no ability to properly rule a zone. However, their influence is tremendous . More importantly, a Movement can simply pack up and move whenever it pleases. While their unorthodox nature may be daunting, under clever guidance a Movement can be just as powerful, moreso even, than even some of the greatest Empires.

Legends are individuals or small bands whose power is tremendous. Whereas a Movement is not necessarily any less powerful than a Polity, Legends are sharply and distinctly limited on the Grand scale. With all that said, a Legend still

Attributes and Actions

Grand scale actions with a substantial element of risk require a roll of the dice to determine success or failure. Dice always come into play when a Player is opposed by another Player or when significant obstacles stand in the way. Otherwise success is assumed as a given. Attributes are how Concepts go about accomplishing complicated actions on a Grand scale, deferring to the Dice. Every Concept has four Attributes and each is rated in steps from Mediocre (+0) to Great (+4). The higher the better. There are four basic actions: Overcome, Create Advantage, Attack, and Defend.

Actions are framed as Dispatches!, quick news headlines or other IC document, which are collated into a list referred to as a Bulletin at the end of every Turn. This is all that is required on the Grand scale to participate in a FATE NOOSPHERE Story Debate, and it's entirely possible that a Player could finish the Story Debate doing nothing but this.

FATE NOOSPHERE uses four Fate (also known as Fudge) dice as the base for every roll. Results are graded according to "The Ladder", which attaches adjectives and numbers to the results of a roll. It doesn't particularly matter whether one refers to the word or the number, they are understood to have the same meaning. Results can go below and above the provided ladder, though such results tend to be extremely rare and require appropriately unique and over-the-top descriptors.

The Ladder

+8 Legendary

+7 Epic

+6 Fantastic

+5 Superb

+4 Great

+3 Good

+2 Fair

+1 Average

+0 Mediocre

-1 Poor

-2 Terrible

The aim when rolling dice is generally to roll equal to or above your opposition, which comes in active and passive varieties. The former is when someone is rolling against you, the latter when you are merely set against a fixed difficulty. Rolling high naturally results in a successful action, and wildly successful ones come with extra benefit, but a tie less so. While some of the Player's aims are achieved it is likely nowhere near what was hoped. Failure means nothing, success at a significant cost, or a dramatic twist of the outcome.

When rolling, the difference between the Player's roll and his opposition is referred to as Shifts. A tie results in 0 Shifts. Rolling one over the difficulty is one Shift, while two would be two Shifts, etc etc

Traits
Traits are special characteristics that change the way a trait works for you. They indicate a special approach to situations unique to that polity, movement, or legend. Two Powers might have the same rating in a skill, but their traits provide drastically different benefits.

Modification

While the mechanics of FATE NOOSPHERE may require substantial explanation for a newcomer, in practice they are fairly light. The generous headspace allows all manner of new mechanics to be added without weighing down the system.

For example, in Desert of Stars, Unseen realm mechanics which dealt with spirits and instantaneous gate-based travel.