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

Aspects In Brief
An aspect is a word, phrase, or sentence that describes something of central importance to the world, your power, or a character. They allow Players to change the story in ways relevant to any of the above by providing access to the Narrative Economy - spending and earning Fate Points - and in and of themselves themselves provide passive opposition.

Refresh
The Refresh Rating is the number of Fate Points a Player begins with at the start of every year. The pool resets to this number, even if every single point had been spent in the prior year. The only exception is if a Player has accrued more Fate Points in his pool than he has Refresh, in which case he keeps the extra Fate Points.

Attributes
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 Power 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.

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 mean the same thing. 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.