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. Grand scale covers the mass mobilization of vast organizations and features the weight of the rules. Large scale covers more regional-specific events such as battles between armies or specific civil projects. Small scale is the level of play at which most Story Debates are conducted, personal stories about characters. As these are metrics judging social spaces, Scale is always relative to the nature of the setting. What might be Grand scale in one setting might not even qualify as a marginal backwater in another.

Polities, Movements, and Legends

OOBs are the social power structures that Players choose to build and play in a Fate Noosphere game which fall into one of three categories.

Polities are the typical Story Debate bread and butter, and likely the first choice for a Player. As the name implies Polities usually cover any sort of body politic, including broad confederations with loose central power. In game terms this translates to direct rule over a number of Zones and influence in others with all the resources this implies. Polities present the broadest set of options and tools to the player and wield the most direct power.

Movements cover all your transnational non-government organizations: conspiracies, criminal syndicates, pervasive insurgencies, powerful priesthoods, megacorporations, mercenary legions, secret societies, etc etc. Unlike Polities, Movements have no ability to properly rule a zone. However, they can potentially extend influence across vast areas without restriction. More importantly, a Movement can simply pack up and move its operations to areas more relevant towards its interest. While their unorthodox nature may be daunting, under clever guidance a Movement can be just as powerful, moreso even, than some of the greatest Empires.

Legends are relatively small bands or individuals of tremendous personal power. Whereas a Movement is not necessarily any less powerful than a Polity, Legends are sharply and distinctly limited in the resources they can marshal on the Grand scale. On the other hand what they lack in raw power they gain in maneuverability and freedom of action. While they may not possess vast armies or have loyal agents in every hall, a Legend can quite easily tip the scales in a match between two greater powers should it so choose.

Like Scale, which of these three best describes a particular OOB is always relative. The Hammer's Slammers are certainly a Movement in their original stomping ground, but Alois Hammer and his tankers might better qualify as a Legend in a setting where native armies are much larger and capable.

The Narrative Economy

Aspects
An Aspect is a short phrase describing a detail of whatever subject it is attached to; anything from a situation, a zone, an army, or even a character. They are the primary means to both gain and spend Fate points, to influence the narrative by introducing new complications to a scenario, passive opposition that has to be overcome, and bonuses to various rolls. They are detrimental or beneficial, but a good aspect should be either depending on the situation. More importantly, they tell you what is important about a scenario and when to utilize mechanics.

Fate Points
“Yes, but is he lucky?”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Players have a pool of points called “Fate Points” that are the narrative currency. A well run game features an active narrative economy where Players freely manipulate circumstances to bring about victory - or even engineer their own defeats. Fate Points usually change hands in three ways: Invokes, Compels, and Declarations.

You can Invoke an Aspect for your benefit by cashing in a Fate Point. This is called an Invocation. On the inverse, when your aspects complicate your plans in some way in exchange for a Fate Point, this is called accepting a compel.

Refresh
Refresh is the pool of Fate points a player begins with at the start of every narrative milestone. The total always fills up to the Refresh rating on a player's OOB, no matter how low the pool is. The only exception is if a player has saved more Fate points in their pool than their Refresh rating, in which case their is no change.

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 Players go about accomplishing complicated actions on a Grand scale, deferring to the Dice. Every OOB 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 an attribute works for you. They indicate a special approach to situations unique to that polity, movement, or legend. Two OOBs might have the same rating in an attribute, but their traits provide drastically different benefits.

Stress and Consequences

Inevitably, over the course of a Story Debate, Players will face various forms of hardship that they can't quite fully overcome and end up on the losing end of conflicts. Two options exist to mitigate this.

Stress is the first, and generally preferable, option. It is a holistic representation of minor and superficial crises such as a mild economic recession, war exhaustion, etc. Every OOB has Stress Tracks which will soak damage and reset at the end of each turn, assuming there are no greater crises.

Consequences are another way a Player can stay on the field, but the cost is much greater. These are, essentially, new aspects that describe some lasting impact of a struggle on your OOB. Whereas Stress is cleared away each year Consequences require time to recover from, providing new avenues for complications to arise and others to take advantage of.

Basic OOB Sheet

[Name]
High Concept:
Trouble:
Destiny:
Refresh:

Attributes
Economy:
Influence:
Stability:
Territory:
Talent:

Traits

History
Book One
Book Two
Book Three

Characters

Stress

Economic

1 [ ] 2 [ ] 3 [ ]

Stability

1 [ ] 2 [ ] 3 [ ]

Consequences

Mild

2 [ ]

Moderate

4 [ ]

Severe

6 [ ]

Advanced

[[Fate Noosphere: OOBs [[Fate Noosphere: [[Fate Noosphere: [[Fate Noosphere:

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. In Desert of Stars, 100thlurker added Divergence, tracking differences in technological approaches, and specific rules such as making deals with Spirits and Way travel.

GMs can also easily remove entire levels of play from the system depending on their aims. For those wishing to abstract conflicts to directly opposed rolls, it's a simple matter to completely remove Large scale mechanics.