Fate Space Toolkit PDF

SPACE TOOLKIT
BILL C.W. JOSHUA A.C. MIKKI

WHITE MARSHALL NEWMAN KENDALL
TAKE YOUR GAME INTO
THE GREAT UNKNOWN
When you’re heading into the depths of outer space
inside a tin can with a rocket strapped to one end, it’s
critical to have the right instruction manual at your side.
The Fate Space Toolkit is that manual, with advice and
toolsets for Fate Core that run the gamut from hard
science fiction to space opera and beyond.
The Fate Space Toolkit requires Fate Core to play. Inside
you'll find:
• Guidelines for creating a space-faring
game without breaking your table's
FOR USE WITH
sense of what's plausible.
• Multiple options for deciding how space- FATE CORE
travel works in your setting, from star
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• A variety of tools for making your space of the barbaria
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to drive their stories.
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• Guidance on creating aliens and

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Name your game;
trademark flexibility.
make it happen.
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rules for characte
➤ Easy-to-follow
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for
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➤ Rock-solid best
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players and GMs
• Five ready-to-go campaign-starter

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➤ Clearly-defi
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players both new
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settings showcasing all of the toolkit's

➤ New and improve …
aspects, compels
character actions,
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and more!
ROLL THE DICE.
TELL YOUR TALE.
FATE!
EMBRACE YOUR
tools in action. LEONARD

BRIAN
ENGARD
JEREMY
KELLER
RYAN
MACKLIN
MIKE
OLSON
BALSERA
Fate Toolkits.
• $25.00 US
978-1-61317-029-8
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• @EvilHatOffi
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All the tools to build your stage.

SPACE TOOLKIT
WRITING & SYSTEM DESIGN
BILL WHITE, C. W. MARSHALL,
JOSHUA A. C. NEWMAN, and MIKKI KENDALL
EDITING CREATIVE DIRECTION
JOSHUA YEARSLEY BILL WHITE
PROOFREADING PROJECT MANAGEMENT
ANNA MEADE SEAN NITTNER and
ART DIRECTION SOPHIE LAGACÉ
BRIAN PATTERSON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
ARTWORK FRED HICKS and

BRETT BARKLEY, CHRIS HANRAHAN
KURT KOMODA, MARKETING
JOYCE MAUREIRA, CARRIE HARRIS
and JUAN OCHOA BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
LAYOUT CHRIS HANRAHAN
FRED HICKS SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
LINE DEVELOPMENT MIKE OLSON
LEONARD BALSERA
PLAYTESTING
JOE ARNAUD, DON BISDORF, TOM BOEDEKER, WILLIAM COFFING, ANGELA
CRAFT, MORGAN ELLIS, JOHN HELMUTH, BRAD MURRAY, IAN PAINTING,
RUTH PAINTING, CATHERINE RAMEN, STEVE SEGEDY, JAN STANEK, AND
OTHER METATOPIA 2016 PLAYTESTERS & FOCUS GROUP PARTICIPANTS
An Evil Hat Productions Publication
www.evilhat.com • feedback@evilhat.com
@EvilHatOfficial on Twitter
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Fate Space Toolkit [Prototype Edition]

Copyright © 2019 Evil Hat Productions, LLC.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2019 by Evil Hat Productions, LLC.

10125 Colesville Rd #318, Silver Spring, MD 20901.
Evil Hat Productions and the Evil Hat and Fate logos are trademarks
owned by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior express permission of the publisher.
That said, if you’re doing it for personal use, knock yourself

out. That’s not only allowed, we encourage you to do it.
For those working at a copy shop and not at all sure if this means
the person standing at your counter can make copies of this thing, they can.
This is “express permission.” Carry on.
This is a game where people make up stories about wonderful, terrible,

impossible, glorious things. All the characters and events portrayed
in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to real people, eel people,
fake people, aliens, artificial intelligences, uplifted dolphins, bug-eyed
monsters, galaxy-spanning foundations, utopian federations, actual
physics, or infinitive-splitting mission statements is purely coincidental,
but kinda hilarious. And in space... no one can hear you laugh.
CONTENTS
The Fate Toolkit Series..................................................................... 4
Introduction....................................................................................... 5
The Plausibilometer........................ 7 How to Use This Book.................10
Creating a Fate Space Game.......................................................... 11
Brainstorming the Game ........... 12 Defining the Setting..................... 13
Character Creation.......................................................................... 23
Aspects............................................. 23 Stunts................................................ 35
Skills................................................... 25 Extras................................................. 41
Spacecraft and Space Travel.........................................................48
The Space Map..............................48 Life in Space................................... 66
Space Travel...................................50 Ship Ownership............................. 69
Modes of Travel............................. 62 Statting Spaceships..................... 70
Space Combat.................................................................................. 75
Step 1: Set the Scene....................77 Vector Diagrams............................ 81
Step 2: Determine Turn Order.78 Range Zones.................................. 84
Step 3: Establish Movement Phased Space Combat............... 85
Rules............................................... 78 Differences of Scale.....................87
Step 4: Note Weapon Battlestations................................. 88
Ranges and Attack and Example of Space Combat....... 92
Defense Skills...............................80
Aliens and Alien Worlds.................................................................96
Planetary Ecosystems................ 99 Interplanetary Trade and
Planetary Conditions.................102 Commerce.................................. 105
Planetary Culture and Creating Aliens............................ 106
Civilization.................................. 104
The Gods Know Future Things......................................................111
The Setting.......................................111 Characters.......................................114
Big Issues..........................................111 Special Rules..................................118
Faces and Places.......................... 112 Adventures......................................119
The High Frontiersmen................................................................. 120
The Setting.................................... 120 Faces and Places......................... 127
Big Issues.........................................121 Characters......................................129
Spaceships..................................... 125 Adventures......................................131
Mass Drivers................................................................................... 133
Setting.............................................133 Building Your Ship.......................141
Big Issues........................................134 Ship Modules.................................143
Faces and Places.........................135 Dealing with Heat....................... 146
A Mass Drivers Lexicon.............136 Travel on the Space Map.......... 146
Establishing Your Mass Driver.138 Ports of Call.................................. 146
Creating Characters...................139
Millennials....................................................................................... 149
Setting............................................ 149 Creating Characters...................154
Big Issues....................................... 150 Adventures.....................................156
Faces and Places..........................151 Aliens in Millennials.....................158
Pax Galactica................................................................................. 160
Setting............................................ 160 Characters......................................164
Big Issues.........................................161 Spacecraft and Space
Faces and Places..........................161 Travel in Galactic Principate.. 167
Appendix: Inspiration, Information, and Reference..................174
High Plausibility........................... 174 Low Plausibility............................ 175
Medium Plausibility..................... 175
About the Authors......................................................................... 176
THE FATE TOOLKIT SERIES
Welcome to the Fate Space Toolkit, the newest book in the Fate Toolkit series. The
Toolkits are exactly what they sound like—a collection of add-on tools to make
things happen in your Fate games. As always, we encourage you to hack the rules
to your liking, but sometimes it’s nice to have a little help (or a little inspiration),
and these Toolkits are designed to provide just that.
So how does this new series differ from the Fate System Toolkit? The Fate System
Toolkit was like a buffet, but instead of serving a variety of foods, it was full of
ideas for all different kinds of games. In this Toolkit series, though, each volume
focuses on a specific theme. Some give help with a particular game element, such
as creating effective adversaries and using them to drive the plot of your campaign,
as in the Fate Adversary Toolkit. Others are dedicated to a particular genre of game,
like the Fate Space Toolkit here. Rather than taking a cookie-cutter approach, each
volume is tailored to provide the most useful system hacks, samples, and story
starters for the topic, so you’ll find something new and different in every book.
We hope you’ll check out our list of current and upcoming Toolkits on our
website (www.evilhat.com/home/fate-toolkits).
Now, dare to open the airlock and space face your Fate!
4 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + The Fate Toolkit Series

INTRODUCTION
A space-suited ship’s marine wielding a scatter-laser scrambles out of an airlock onto

the hull of a spaceship, his magboots activated, and opens fire on the boarding-droids
trying to break into the ship…a starfighter pilot is pushed back into the contours of
her acceleration couch as her sleek attack boat zooms from the mother ship’s launch
bay, incoming bogies reading as a swarm of hot red blips laser-painted on her reti-
nas…a thick-waisted human merchant and his alien guide push through the press
of a crowded bazaar under skies far from Earth as a blue-skinned shopkeeper with
a mane of multicolored fronds seeks to entice them with the glowing green orb that
floats above the dactyls of his splayed-out hand…
Welcome to the Fate Space Toolkit! This book is for players and GM who want
to create Fate games focused on science fiction space adventure. Science fiction is a
gigantic genre, and though we’ll focus on just adventures in outer space, we’ve still
got to cover a vast expanse, so we’re going to get to the heart of things as quickly
as we can. We’ll talk about how to use the Fate system to run science fiction
campaigns set in space, and we’ll provide a range of options for including space
travel and space battles as well as alien worlds and alien cultures in your game.
We’ll tackle the question of realism from multiple angles in order to provide as
wide a variety of approaches to space adventure as we can, from gritty Apollo-era
techno-thriller to cerebral far-future space opera.
And the possibilities are endless! Think about the ways that outer space is used
in science fiction. It can be a frontier for exploration, a source of “infinite diversity
in infinite combinations,” (as in Star Trek), or a battlefield where contending forces
vie for supremacy. It can be the “negative space” between worlds, a gulf that must
be crossed in order to make safe planetfall, and within which the frail vessels of
humanity are the merest motes. Or it can be a literal abyss, a void so black and
empty that it threatens the lives and sanity of those human beings who dare to
venture across the thresholds of night.
We call this a “toolkit” because we believe that Fate games are often custom-
built—they are designed for a specific playgroup with particular preferences
and a singular vision of the game they would like to play. So we are interested
in exploring how the essential tools of Fate—the ladder, the aspect-linked fate
point economy, and the Bronze Rule—can be used for space-based science fiction
adventure. Our goal is to give you the tools you’ll need to get playing quickly,
creating just enough now and then expanding, extending, and digging deeper as
the circumstances demand.
Introduction + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 5

OTHER FATE SPACE ADVENTURE GAMES
There are lots of great science fiction games based on Fate, and we’d
be remiss if we didn’t point out some of the more notable ones. You can
mine these games for setting details and rules approaches, kitbashing
them into your own game.
• Baroque Space Opera by Mark Kowaliszyn. A galactic-scale Fate Core

game in the mold of Dune or Jupiter Ascending, with high technol-
ogy indistinguishable from magic available to the characters who are
enmeshed in the courtly intrigues of a corrupt imperium.
• Bulldogs! by Galileo Games. You’re part of the rough-and-ready multi-

species crew of a space freighter hauling cargo for long hours, all for
low pay and a chance to see this corner of the galaxy, full of interesting
alien cultures and worlds. Your aspects emerge from your relationship
with your captain and the other crew members. The latest edition is
based on Fate Core.
• Diaspora by VSCA Publishing. Making use of Fate’s third-edition rules

and inspired by an early science fiction RPG called Traveller, Diaspora
takes a hard SF perspective and offers a lot of useful “mini-game”
approaches to space combat, small-unit skirmishes, and social and
political contests.
• Mindjammer by Modiphius Entertainment. This is a detailed and care-

fully thought-out far-future transhumanist setting for Fate Core with
a hard SF perspective. It holds a wealth of material to mine for ideas
or adapt whole cloth.
• Tachyon Squadron by Clark Valentine (published by Evil Hat). This set-

ting book focuses on a space-fighter squadron, with rules for dogfights
and interception missions as well as the ebb and flow of events back
at base during an ongoing campaign in the middle of a space war.
• You’ll also find some space adventure themes and tools in some of
Evil Hat’s Fate Worlds of Adventure, including Andromeda (epic space
opera in an alien galaxy), Red Planet (communist pulp space fantasy),
Ghost Planets (Star Trek meets Forbidden Planet by way of Indiana
Jones), The Three Rocketeers (swashbucklers in space), and Sails Full
of Stars (quasi-historical fantasy in the Solar System). They are avail-
able as “pay what you want” products on drivethrurpg.com, thanks
to the generosity of our Patreon backers, who support the ongoing
production of new settings and adventures.
6 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Introduction

The Plausibilometer
Our definition of “science fiction” is pretty broad, but we want to acknowledge
that there is a continuum of different approaches to science-fictional world-
building, and that there are some works with science-fictional trappings that
some readers and critics think don’t count as science fiction at all. To sidestep all
these issues of nomenclature and subgenre taxonomy, we’ll use a device that we’re
calling the plausibilometer (PLAWS-uh-bull-OM-uh-ter) to describe how the
tropes and trappings of science fiction are deployed in any given game. In your
own game, you can use the plausibilometer to signal to each other some of the
underlying assumptions you’re making about the way things work in your fiction.
The plausibilometer setting is an indicator of the attitude toward “realism” or
“authenticity” that your group wants to enforce. It’s possible to use it in a granular
way, where some setting elements are high plausibility while you let others be
low or even zero plausibility. For example, many SF stories require cheap and
easy faster-than-light (FTL) travel, so they allow that technology while attempt-
ing to keep everything else grounded in plausible speculation. This practice is
sometimes called “blackboxing,” implying that at least some of the disruptive
effects of a particular technology are not explored in the fiction. Fun games can
be produced with any degree of plausibility; the plausibilometer will just help
your group get on the same page.
High Plausibility
High-plausibility games emphasize creating a coherent, internally consistent
game universe in line with contemporary scientific knowledge and speculation.
Part of the fun of such games is getting the math right, even if only figura-
tively—the aim is to speculate rigorously about the ramifications of scientific
developments and cultural conditions.
Set the dial to high plausibility when you want a game that is grounded as
much as possible in real-world science, both social and natural.
REALITY CHECK
In high-plausibility games, anyone who thinks that something introduced into
the fiction is sufficiently implausible may call for a reality check—you may even
wish to put a card on the table with the words “reality check” (or “Science!”)
written on it for players to point to. When someone calls for a reality check, stop
play to briefly discuss what’s the matter and try to reach some accommodation or
adjustment. Defer to the desire for greater realism, assuming that doing so will
ultimately make everyone happier.

Low Plausibility
In low-plausibility games, the players have a higher threshold for the willing
suspension of disbelief, meaning that they’re not terribly concerned about the
internal coherence of the game universe, so long as it’s dramatic or exciting. At its
core, Star Wars—with its dogfighting space fighters, psychic space samurai, and
giant space monsters—is the benchmark for low-plausibility games.
Set the dial to low plausibility when you want an over-the-top, pulp-flavored
game high on atmospherics and melodrama. Low-plausibility games are not
subject to reality checks—although some groups will be more resistant than
others to bending, blending, or otherwise mixing up the trappings of different
fictional genres in their game.

Medium Plausibility
Between these two styles falls most science fiction. In medium-plausibility games,
the emphasis frequently falls on exploring the consequences of some “What if?”
conceit. They often blend and bend genre, introducing one or two big, black-
boxed implausibilities in order to drive the questions in which the fiction is
interested.
Star Trek is a good benchmark for medium-plausibility games. There’s a lot of
technobabble double-talk, but the focus of any given episode is usually on dealing
with the consequences of a particular science-fictional MacGuffin, whether that’s
a society of quasi-Romans, godlike aliens, or a lonesome space whale.
Set the dial to medium plausibility when you want a game that’s grounded
in reality but you’re willing to take pretty big liberties with real science in the
service of the game’s central premise. Players may still call for reality checks on
implausible elements, but for the reality check to be upheld the new element must
be shown to contradict or clash unsatisfyingly with an existing aspect or issue in
the game; mere scientific implausibility is not necessarily enough to require fixing.
OPTIONAL RULE: THE COLD EQUATIONS

“The Cold Equations” is the name of a 1954 Astounding science fiction
short story by Tom Godwin in which the physics of space travel neces-
sitates that a stowaway sacrifice herself to prevent the spaceship she’s on
from crashing, because the ship will run out of fuel from her unanticipated
weight. The point of the story is that the laws of physics are inflexible
and unforgiving, with little room for fudging.
This view is somewhat antithetical to the spirit of Fate, whose relatively
low granularity means it’s always flexible. Some aspect may always be
invoked to transform a potential disaster into a triumph. In some cases,
this generous approach to modeling reality can conflict with the desire
for scientific verisimilitude.
However, one way to deal with this conflict is to rely on the players’
own sense of scientific plausibility. In a high- or medium-plausibility
game, if any player believes that something being described is a little too
scientifically optimistic, they may call for “Cold Equations.” The player
challenged by the Cold Equations may reply in one of two ways before
they roll the dice:
• “Science is a harsh mistress”: If the roll is a failure, invoking aspects

can improve the result only up to a tie; it’s not possible to succeed
or succeed with style.
• “The human spirit always prevails”: Invoking an aspect for this roll
only gives a +1 bonus, not +2, making it much more difficult—but
still possible—to succeed or even succeed with style.
You may use the Cold Equations rule in addition to or in place of real-
ity checks.

How to Use This Book
The first chapter after this introduction is called Creating a Fate Space Game,
which expands upon the basics of Fate Core for creating a setting together. The
next chapter is Character Creation, which discusses how to customize character
generation for a Fate Space setting.
Then, we go over Spaceships and Space Travel, Space Combat, and rules for Aliens
and Alien Worlds, giving you many tools for your adventures throughout space.
Finally, we lay out five sample settings for a Fate Space game, which provide
concrete examples of the rules and guidelines we talk about in the earlier chapters.
You can play each as-is or plunder its ideas for your own campaign:
• The Gods Know Future Things: Posthuman space opera at subluminal
speeds!
• The High Frontiersmen: Gritty Cold War political intrigue in orbit for
high stakes.
• Mass Drivers: Realistic space drama among the interplanetary working
class.
• Millennials: Optimistic space exploration and alien encounter in a spirit
of discovery.
• Pax Galactica: Transgalactic travelogue against a somewhat baroque
backdrop.
We intend for the Fate Space Toolkit to offer a coherent picture of how to design
a space-based science fiction adventure setting for Fate, with numerous alterna-
tives and examples. But we also invite readers to go in either of two directions
from using this book as a guide to setting design. GMs, you might want to adopt
a setting whole cloth, developing and altering it as needed to suit your play group.
Or you might want to dip into this book to steal specific ideas and approaches as
desired, regardless of whether or not you’ll incorporate them into a Fate Space
adventure game.

CREATING A FATE SPACE GAME
Creating a setting for a Fate Space game works as in Fate Core (pages 18–27).
In fact, taking time to create a Fate Space setting together is even more neces-
sary, since it lets your group get on the same page about the fictional universe
in which you’ll play, and about what issues or themes your game will focus on.
Science fiction is a big, sprawling genre, and people will come to a science fiction
game with lots of different assumptions about how things work.
Creating a Fate Space Game + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 11

Brainstorming the Game
Before actually creating the setting, then, your group will want to discuss the
game you’d like to play together. The following questions can help guide that
conversation. Typically, the GM leads and facilitates while taking notes and
recording the answers, to be used as inspiration and guidance throughout design-
ing the setting.
• Genre: Is there a science fiction subgenre that you want the game to emu-
late or invent? For example, hard-hitting near-future space techno-thriller?
Far-flung, rip-roaring space opera? Gritty military SF? A space-colony
coming-of-age story? Pangalactic planet-of-the-week picaresque? Sneering
retropunk rodomontade, a la Buck Rogers meets A Clockwork Orange?
• Inspiration: Are there particular fictional touchstones from literature or
film that you want the game to resemble? Star Wars or Star Trek? Battlestar
Galactica or Firefly? The Expanse or Ancillary Justice? Starship Troopers or
The Forever War? What elements of the game should most closely mirror
that fictional setting? How might it depart from that setting?
• Connections: Will the characters be tightly connected—for example, as
members of the same spaceship crew or military outfit—or will they be
chance-met and potentially independent operators, with the potential to
go haring off on their own on a whim? Or will they be rivals and competi-
tors in the same arena, with alliance and enmity as strategic possibilities?
Building connections during character generation can help cement the
party, giving them a reason to stick together, but allowing characters to
go off on their own gives a sense of openness and freedom of action that
may be particularly appropriate in some kinds of space adventure.
• Plausibility: What level of plausibility do you want for the game? Are
there particular science-fictional tropes that are especially desirable or
particularly unwanted—robots, cyborgs, psionics, nanotech, or aliens, for
example? As a group, set your game’s plausibilometer rating (page 7).
• Focus: Do you want to focus on one or more outer-space-related activi-
ties—for example, space piracy, alien diplomacy, interstellar trade, space
exploration, spaceship-to-spaceship combat? Or do you prefer a broader
sort of campaign that touches on some or many of these topics?
• Characters: Are there particular character archetypes or roles that you
want to be possible or even encouraged? The hotshot pilot, the grizzled
mercenary, the daring fleet officer, the stuffy space bureaucrat? Are there
character types that you think are too banal, cliché, or trite to be fun?
• Aliens: If the setting includes aliens, how alien should they be? Completely
incomprehensible and bizarre, or psychologically strange but human
enough to be playable, or is being an “alien” merely a rationale for a
character to have cool albeit implausible stunts, talents, and special skills?
What kind of “otherness” do aliens represent in the setting?
12 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Creating a Fate Space Game

Defining the Setting
The answers to the preliminary questions in the previous section essentially serve
as design specifications for your setting. The next step is for someone to actually
pin things down and create the setting. Typically this is the GM, but it is not
unheard of for one person to design a setting for someone else to run, or people
could even collaborate, creating the setting together and then playing in it.
World-building can be fun and satisfying, but it can also be a lot of work. The
most practical strategy is to create just enough material to begin playing as quickly
as possible. Minimally, a setting can be described with these elements:
• The Pitch: A short statement summarizing the where, when, and what of
the game, emphasizing what makes it awesome.
• Scope: Specifics of tone, period, and extent, expanding the pitch and
nailing down some of the setting details.
• Issues and Aspects: Key setting elements and their expression as aspects,
tying the setting into the fate point economy.
• Faces and Places: An outline of the initial situation, giving places to
go and people to meet. It also helps define the specific elements of sci-
ence fiction present, such as advanced technologies, alien artifacts, and
extraterrestrial beings.

The Pitch
The pitch lays out the essence of your Fate Space game. It is an elevator pitch for
the campaign—a few sentences demonstrating why this game is fun or unique. It
includes a sense of what the characters do, what drives them, and what role outer
space plays. The setting designer can be a GM designing the game for their home
group, a third-party designer writing up a setting for others to use, or the players
themselves working together in a “design committee” to create their own setting
as part of the first session. Most of the time, we’ll assume a fairly traditional
model—a setting designed by a GM with input from a regular group of players.
Later in this book, we’ll present the following five settings as examples of Fate
Space game designs.
• The Gods Know Future Things: Posthuman AI ship-minds in relativistic
space arks shepherd the precarious Human Diaspora as it slowly expands
from Sol, becoming stranger and wilder the further it goes (page 111).
• The High Frontiersmen: An alt-1979 Cold War political spy thriller
where the Earth is girdled by manned orbiting nuclear-armed battlestations,
as double agents pass each other messages at a jointly occupied moonbase
trying to stave off an atomic apocalypse (page 120).
• Mass Drivers: 23rd-century space freighters living hand-to-mouth
in the Asteroid Belt trying to keep body and soul and ship and crew
together, avoiding the squeeze by the big corporations as much as they
can (page 133).
• Millennials: The starship Millennium, Earth’s first interstellar vessel, with
a contingent of the planet’s best and brightest on board, makes its way
to the capital of the Galactic Civilization to prove that humanity has the
right stuff to join up (page 149).
• Pax Galactica: Privileged citizens of the far-future Galactic Principate
travel the spacelanes aboard luxurious interstellar liners as part of the
entourage of a member of the galactic elite, to see the galaxy, or in pursuit
of some vital mission (page 160).
Scope
The scope of your game comprises its tone, period and extent. In combination
with its plausibilometer setting, its scope lets you all know what sorts of fictional
resources you are able to draw upon when creating characters and adventures. In
other words, the scope establishes the range of science-fictional tropes available.
Often, it provides the rationale and justification for incorporating the preferences
expressed by the players while brainstorming the game, and drives the creation
of setting issues and aspects.

TONE
TONE? SCALE?
The tone of your setting will either be epic
Note that what we are calling
or personal.
“tone” is called “scale” in Fate
In a game with a personal tone, the char-
Core (page 21), but we want to
acters will face problems that typically matter
reserve “scale” for indicating me-
only to the people that they know personally:
chanical differences in size and
their friends and loved ones, their families,
duration.
or at most their community. The obstacles
are ones that affect the characters directly.
By contrast, with an epic tone, the problems that characters face and are trying
to fix are consequential on a much grander scale, to people they don’t know
personally and will probably never meet: their country, their homeworld, future
generations, up to and including the entire universe to the end of time.
A personal game is intensely interested in the interactions among the PCs
and a few NPCs. GMs, you can implement this by paying close attention to
character aspects and using them to drive the action of the game; by connecting
milestones to individual goals, ambitions, and achievements; and by emphasizing
interpersonal interactions and decisions as the focus of play. You can reduce the
value of invoking situation aspects, making character aspects more important, or
you can require that at least as many character aspects as situation aspects must
be invoked for any given action. You can limit your use of the Bronze Rule, so
that characters are always interacting with individuals rather than with groups,
organizations, or other large-scale entities.
An epic game, in contrast, cares more about the big-picture consequences and
ramifications of the characters’ actions and choices. GMs, you can implement
this by driving the action more with situation and setting aspects; by using mile-
stones to build and shape the setting (Fate Core, pages 263–265); and by allowing
individual PCs to interact meaningfully with larger groups, organizations, and
entities via the Bronze Rule (Fate Core, page 270). You could also reduce the value
of invoking character aspects, which would get players thinking about how to
invoke situation aspects. You could use scale rules in the Fate System Toolkit (page
67) to give large-scale actions an advantage, again getting players to work toward
gaining control of things that would let them take large-scale actions.
Each choice about tone has its own advantages and disadvantages. A personal
game lets the players shape the direction of the game and puts the narrative
spotlight on their characters, but without strong character motivations and
connections it can seem somewhat unfocused. An epic game makes the PCs
important to their universe and lends consequence to their choices, but may
wind up subordinating the PCs’ stories to a larger plot arc in a way that makes
the characters less interesting and the game more linear.
Many games will wind up being mixed in tone, but it is good to establish up
front toward which end of the tone spectrum—intimately personal at one end,
and grandiosely epic at the other—the game should lean.

PERIOD (GENRE)
The period of your game indicates its relationship in time to the world of the
present. Usually, it will be at some more or less distant point in the future, but it
may also be more complicated.
Near Future: As soon as tomorrow, as late as a few hundred years from now. The
advantage of this period is that you can use details and trends from Earth’s his-
tory and current events as background material. The disadvantage is that greater
plausibility requires stricter attention to real-world considerations. Perhaps A
Dystopian World Order exists on Earth in which Flooded Coastal
Regions Worldwide have given rise to an Enormous Spaceward Migration
underwritten by Wealthy Megacorporate Oligarchs who reap the ben-
efits. This setting seems somewhat more plausible than a future where A New
Space Race has arisen due to the Superpower Rivalry Between India and
China, which in turn seems much more plausible than one where the United
Nations Terraforming Authority Is In Charge, marshaling personnel and
equipment and directing missions to extract resources from space to preserve and
extend human-supporting ecosystems on Earth and other planets. In general, the
more dramatically convenient the political, social, technological, or other changes
needed to get to the particular future you want, the lower you’ll need to turn the
plausibilometer dial.
Far Future: More than a few hundred years from now. Numerous discontinui-
ties between the present and the far future mean that there’s no easy way to make
projections, but this can also be liberating, lowering obstacles to the suspension of
disbelief. Far-future stories might be set where Earth Is a Post-Apocalyptic
Wasteland whose survivors have One Last Shot at the Stars, or where
humanity is thriving and Scattered Across the Galaxy, so that Earth Is a
Dim Memory or Vague Legend.
Alternate History: Alt-history settings explore “counterfactuals” like What If
They Hadn’t Canceled the Apollo Program? or What If the Russians
Beat the U.S. to the Moon? They tend to be set in an altered version of the past
or predicted future that feels a little disorienting while still echoing contemporary
concerns. A description of the resulting culture may be as simple as The Nineties,
but with Commercial Space Flights to Orbital Habitats or may require
several aspects to explain, such as A Nuclear Sword of Damocles over the
U.S., The Kremlin Is the 800-Pound Bear, and Insular and Isolated.
Retrofuture: The future as imagined by the past. These are usually but not nec-
essarily low-plausibility settings, including Buck Rogers–style Raygun Gothic,
heavy on the pulp, with aeroplane-styled rocketships. Other examples include
swept-fin chrome-plated 1950s-style Rocketship Galileo sci-fi with Bug-Eyed
Monsters (BEMs), Little Green Men (LGMs), and Space Nazis, as well as
Hugo Gernsback–flavored “scientifiction” with Hail Victoria moonshot cannonades
and with most solar planets not only capable of harboring life, but boasting exten-
sive civilizations often inimical to planet Earth! Players pick this genre because they
like its “color” or fictional trappings. Steampunk, which blends a Victorian-era set-
ting with clanking steam-powered alternative technologies, belongs in this category.

EXTENT
The extent of your game is the physical space across which space travel takes
place in it. This affects the diversity of alien life and cultures that the setting may
plausibly encompass, among other things. It’s always useful to draw a map of
the extent, but even writing down an aspect to define the extent can help. Here
are some examples.
Interplanetary: The sun and its satellites, both natural and artificial. This extent
allows for games with very high plausibility, since no recourse to FTL is needed to
get our heroes to the scene of the action. Some games will range over The Entire
Solar System, while others will focus on The Inner System: everything inside
the orbit of Jupiter. Other games will be almost purely orbital, focusing on getting
to space and maybe the Moon, with Mars a distant dream.
Local Space: The stellar neighborhood immediately surrounding the Solar
System, out to maybe thirty, fifty, or even a hundred light-years. There are
Hundreds of Star Systems in that radius, but perhaps only A Handful
of Inhabited Worlds. The Solar System in general and Earth in particular
is probably the most important center of civilization. At this extent, Earth-like
worlds and even traces of sentient aliens have very low plausibility, although the
Search for Alien Life or Hunt for Habitable Planets may be a big deal.
Near Space: The stellar neighborhood Inside a Few Hundred Light-Years
of the Solar System. It may contain Dozens of Habitable Worlds.
Settlement may come from a central point—Earth and Its Colonies—or
there may be multiple centers of civilization in some degree of contention with
each other—Warring Successor States, perhaps. The presence of at least A
Few Earth-like Worlds is more plausible, and Contact with a Sentient
Alien Species or two wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.
Galactic: The Entire Milky Way or its equivalent a long time ago and far
away. Multiple Waves of Expansion, Settlement, and Contraction
may have created A Broad and Diverse Tapestry of Civilizations, both
human and alien (or posthuman) on a myriad of worlds, worldlets, and artificial
habitats. Alternately, humanity may have fallen into a Galactic Dark Age with
only A Few Beacons of Civilization Still Burning, or the entire galaxy
may be groaning Under the Heel of an All-Powerful Galactic Tyrant.

Issues and Aspects
In creating a Fate Space game, the main addition to Fate Core is considering how
space travel works and what other technologies exist. However, both of these
considerations emerge from thinking about the game’s big issues, which are usu-
ally at least implied by the pitch.
BIG ISSUES
Defining a game’s issues and aspects is fundamental. According to Fate Core
(page 22), the things that spur characters to action are a game’s “big issues.” Big
issues will imply what Fate Core calls “story questions”: implicit challenges and
plot hooks that drive the action. Here are some examples of issues and their
associated story questions.
• Alien Invasion!: Can we stop them? At what cost? What will we do if
it seems like the aliens are winning? What will we sacrifice for victory?
• Uranium Rush in the Asteroid Belt: What does it take to strike it
rich? What happens when we succeed? What happens if we fail or give up?
• Grand Tour of the Galaxy: How will we respond to the alien beings
we meet and the alien places we visit? What local entanglements and
resentments will we encounter? What problems are we carrying with us
that will bear bitter fruit as we travel?

The big issues that define the setting may be treated as aspects. This means both
that they are generally true in the setting and that they may be invoked for a narrative
or mechanical effect under appropriate circumstances. They may also be modified
or revisited at milestones. It is possible to drill down into a big issue to assign it
specific aspects, which may themselves be treated according to the Bronze Rule
(Fate Core, page 270) and fleshed out with other statistics. The Fate term for such
quasi-characters—whether extraterrestrial hiveminds, alien societies, robot armies,
natural disasters, or planetwide transportation networks—is setting element.
• Orbiting Zithari Invasion Fleet, an aspect of the alien invasion.
GM might invoke to create obstacles related to orbital bombardment or
enemy surveillance; PCs might compel to establish advantageous details
about the composition of the fleet (ill-prepared for sustained planetary
blockade!) or its routine (small blind spot in its orbital pattern provides an
opportunity for stealth!). It is probably accompanied by Zithari Ground
Occupation Forces.
• Space-Mining Megacorporations, an aspect of the uranium rush. GM
might invoke to create obstacles related to the megacorps’ deep pockets
and profit-driven decision-making; PCs might compel to establish interor-
ganizational rivalries and competition as well as bureaucratic inefficiencies.
• Pretentious Galactic Elite, an aspect of the galactic grand tour. GM
might invoke to create obstacles related to enforcing status hierarchies,
pecking orders, and cliquish insularity; PCs might compel to establish
cultural norms or ways of life that give them an advantage, such as being
“in” with the haut monde.
In other words, you can treat a big issue as if it at least potentially possessed
some combination of aspects, skills, stunts, stress, and consequences, all while
treating it as an aspect in and of itself. Usually, adding stress and consequences
is more appropriate for games with epic tone, since it allows PCs to more easily
push for significant, broad change in the setting, like “I take out the whole Alien
Invasion!” Normally, affecting a big issue requires reaching a significant or major
milestone (Fate Core, pages 264–265) by dealing with specific foes, antagonists,
or problems.
SETTING ASPECTS AS “BLACK BOXES”

We’ll use the term black box to refer to any potentially important science fic-
tion setting element. These are technologies or scientific contrivances, and in
some fiction their likely consequences are not fully thought out before their
introduction. For example, script writers don’t often consider things like how
the nonscarcity economy implied by the existence of food replicators in the Star
Trek universe affects the Federation (but see Manu Saadia’s Trekonomics for an
extended discussion of the replicator). Though a technology that can manipulate
matter at a molecular level is both really powerful and really interesting, it’s not the
point of the show, so it gets moved into the background.

So in effect, a black box is Just the Way Things Are, without further consequence
or implication to the setting. It signals that certain problems—like “How do we
get our food while we’re in space?”—are not interesting in the fiction. At least, not
most of the time. But in a Fate Space game, it is often worthwhile to keep track
of black boxes for the times when they can lead to challenges or opportunities
that might prove very interesting, indeed!
For example, any of these fictional details can be treated as a black box:
• Antigravity in the deck plates
• Hyperspace technology
• Personal teleportation belts
• Extended human lifespan
A black box is probably not going to be an aspect in the game, at least not
when it’s first identified. Not all fictional details in the setting have to be aspects,
which are simply details that are sufficiently consequential that we give them
mechanical hooks.
However, once established, a black box can become a plot point in an adventure,
even if most of the time it is ignored. Suddenly the grav plates are on the fritz;
the power crystals are slowly depleting while the ship is trapped in hyperspace
mid-jump; the calibration sensors on this TP-belt are out of alignment; or the
captain’s nanogerionic therapy regimen has caused a harmful mutation. Any of
these can be an issue that requires time and attention during play. Thus, black
boxes can imply, inspire, and collect aspects that make the setting feel more
plausible and coherent. For example, the black box “personal teleportation belts”
might inspire the following aspects:
• We Don’t Need Roads: Transportation infrastructure tends to be very
limited, since you can teleport anywhere you want to go.
• Security Mazes: Security and privacy rely on disorienting intruders
and keeping them off-balance, since preventing physical intrusion is very
difficult.

A fun and productive way to collaborate in fleshing out the setting is to have
players suggest interesting details associated with the setting elements that have
been established. Then, in play, GM, pay attention to the possibilities implicit in
the ongoing stream of talk that is your game, whether or not those possibilities
have been formally established as aspects or identified as black boxes.
During setting creation, a player suggests that their ship’s life-sup-

port system is really a sophisticated nanotechnological microecology,
complete with food chains and carbon dioxide–oxygen cycling. It’s a
background detail, offered for its coolness and strangeness, and it’s
readily accepted by the group, since it means they can safely ignore
the ins and outs of the life-support system.
Later, during play, the GM wants to complicate the characters’ lives
when they arrive in orbit around an alien world. She “opens up” the
black box of the ship’s life-support system and creates an aspect for
the ship, creating its Sophisticated Nanotechnological Microecology
as a new aspect of the ship. Having done this, the GM decides that
it would be fun if a glitch—precise cause to be determined later—has
made the ship’s photosynthetic nanolichen go haywire, and creates
a situation aspect Too Much Oxygen! that can be invoked to cause
oxygen narcosis on the bridge or an explosion on the observation
deck. She expects that characters will use their skills to diagnose and
repair the problem while dealing with the aliens, whom one Xenophobic
character suspects of sabotage.
Some GMs and groups will want to make this process more systematic. If you
wish, you can keep a list of black boxes with specific details and relevant aspects,
recording new entries as they are identified in play. Other groups will find it more
enjoyable to keep the elaboration of black boxes as a completely ad hoc process.
Take care to avoid having too many aspects in play at once. Enforce a limit of
two to four setting aspects, including both big issues and “opened up” black boxes.
In any event, one of the most important black boxes in a Fate Space game is space
travel. Implementing this technology is discussed in greater detail in Spacecraft
and Space Travel (page 48).

Faces and Places
Defining important setting elements is a key to getting the game started. People
and locations—faces and places—provide hooks for players to hang their char-
acters’ stories on. In creating a setting, the setting designer introduces some faces
and places so that players will have rivals, foils, targets, and others with whom
to interact, both as part of the backstories they create for their characters and as
part of the ongoing fiction. When designing faces and places, keep in mind that
they will be subject to a great deal of character attention and interest, and may
change as a result of character action.
THE SPACE MAP

It is also a good idea at this point to sketch out a space map to help give players
a sense of the extent of the setting. Each sample setting in this book has a space
map, and the creation of space maps is discussed in greater detail in The Space
Map (page 48).
ALIENS AND ALIEN SOCIETIES (DIFFERENT CULTURES)

The presence or absence of aliens and their role in the setting, including specific
alien species and civilizations, can be included with the faces and places to help
players create characters. This is also where the setting rules about aliens can be
introduced. In some settings, aliens will be very common and a new alien spe-
cies—even a spacefaring one—can be introduced by anyone as a setting detail;
in others, the presence of aliens on a given world will affect play significantly
and will require the GM to bring them in. This is discussed in greater detail in
Creating Aliens (page 106).
More broadly, you can identify any sorts of cultural distinction in the setting.
For example, in the sample setting The High Frontiersmen (page 120), some PCs
may be Russian cosmonauts while others will be American astronauts.
EXTRATERRESTRIAL PLANETS
Specific extraterrestrial planets can be identified in the faces and places, again to
aid character creation. Similarly, rules and procedures for coming up with new
worlds can be tailored to the setting depending on its extent. This is discussed in
greater detail in Aliens and Alien Worlds (page 96).
ALIENS AND OTHER STRANGERS

For many people, science fiction is an opportunity to explore new and
unexpected possibilities in a socially safe space. Even gonzo ideas can
often be accommodated easily without changing the mechanics: an alien
character might have exactly the same rules as everyone else, but the
fiction allows the player to have cat ears and a long tail. Fate is robust
enough that a science fiction–inflected aspect like Bionic Arm, Neural
Interface, or Uplifted Dolphin acts just like any other aspect.
However, aspects can also be invoked to declare a story detail, so while
creating the setting and characters, your group will want to discuss the
possible range of narrative effects of science fiction aspects, so everyone
is on the same page.
22
CHARACTER CREATION
One of the most powerful ways to establish the setting of a Fate Space game is
in character creation. That way the players have a reminder of what the game is
about in front of them at all times, right on their character sheet.
In this chapter, we’ll go through some ways to differentiate the characters’ core
aspects, give some new options for skills and stunts suitable for a Fate Space game,
and explore new extras that will let you add specific sci-fi flavors to your game.
Aspects
Typically, characters are defined by their high concept and trouble, as in Fate
Core. Additional aspects emerge from the phase trio (Fate Core, pages 38–44)
to help define a character’s backstory and their history with the other characters.
To help reinforce the setting, you might modify the procedures described in Fate
Core, such as by changing the phase trio or by changing the kinds of aspects that
characters have can.
High Concept
In general, GMs, you’ll want to give guidance to players that will let them focus
their high concept to serve the pitch and scope of your game—for example, “You
are all crew or otherwise permanent party aboard an interstellar tramp freighter
that makes frequent port calls on frontier planets. Your high concept should be
consistent with this situation.”
Part of a character’s high concept may refer to their background—their planet
of origin or homeworld, their species or ethnicity, and so forth. In such cases, it
may be worth it to discuss the possible invocations and compels of that aspect
prior to the beginning of the play in greater detail than usual.
Here are some examples:
• Spacer: Invoke to reflect familiarity with space-going culture and folk-
ways, including moving around in microgravity easily. Compel to suffer
weakness and the possibility of injury in normal and high gravity, and to
suffer the prejudices of planetbound people.
• Cyborg. Invoke to reflect machine-augmented physical and computer-
related capabilities. Compel to have to deal with software glitches,
mechanical failures, or electronic short-circuits as well as the effects of an
increasing psychological detachment from humanity.
• Slowtimer: Invoke to access millennia-old secrets, information, and data
from your long years of experience; compel to be blindsided by recent
developments, changes, and anomalies.
Character Creation + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 23

Trouble
A character’s trouble is a good way to reinforce the tone and themes of the setting
and connect characters to the fictional universe, so when you’re designing a set-
ting you should keep in mind what sorts of trouble you’d like to see characters get
into. Thus, you can sometimes specify that the characters’ troubles come from
a complication related to the setting itself, such as the characters’ relationships
to a military or naval hierarchy in which you expect them to be located, or the
intergalactic code of ethics that they all vowed to uphold.
Phase Trio
In addition to using the phase trio to connect the PCs, you may wish to use it to
connect them and their actions to the setting’s history and to important institu-
tions, organizations, and NPCs. For example, in a game about fleeing alien space
invaders across interstellar space, a character’s first phase could be Life Before They
Came, followed by During the Invasion, and finally At the Exodus. If you do this,
though, be sure that each phase still connects one PC to another.
24 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Character Creation

Skills
You’ll want to customize the skill list from Fate Core to highlight how characters
in your setting handle the challenges they face. You can do this by changing some
of the skills from Fate Core, creating new skills that show how characters in your
setting can take action, or both. The skill list defines what characters will do, and
new skills can help define the flavor of the setting. For example, if there is a skill
called “Astronaut,” this implies a certain right-stuff way of piloting a spacecraft,
while “Star Pilot” implies something different again.
A SKILL BY ANY OTHER NAME

Throughout the rest of the book, all references to specific skills also
refer to the equivalent, setting-specific skill variants and names. For
example, a stunt that refers to Shoot also refers to Firearms, as long
as the stunt would reasonably apply to using Firearms.
Modify the Default Skills

Adapt the skill list from Fate Core to reflect your specific SF setting. We give
some options in this section, but it’s not an exhaustive list. We also give a few
example stunts.
CRAFTS
Option One: Rename Crafts to Engineering or Technology. This skill
is used to operate, repair, design, and otherwise deal with technology of all
kinds. Its stunts typically represent expertise in specific technical areas, or heavy
machinery, robots, and high-tech toolkits.
• Bioengineering: Because you are a trained bioengineer, you may use
Engineering or Technology in place of Lore to create advantages repre-
senting biomechanical modifications or cybernetic augmentations, or to
overcome obstacles related to medical conditions or treatment.
• Life-Support Engineering: Because you are a trained life-support
engineer, you gain +2 when using Engineering or Technology to over-
come obstacles related to maintaining, repairing, or replacing life-support
technology.
• Xenotech: Because you are familiar with the principles of alien technology,
you gain +2 when using Engineering or Technology to overcome obstacles
related to understanding or adapting alien technology.

Option Two: Rename Crafts to Technoscience. This skill includes authori-
tative knowledge of natural phenomena as predicted, controlled, and explained
via technical means, and so it subsumes the relevant part of Lore, which may
be renamed “Culture” or something similar to reflect its more limited character.
• Theoretician: Because of your training and intellect, you gain +2 when
using Technoscience to create advantages that refer to interesting or useful
empirical implications of abstract scientific models. For example, a char-
acter might use a Technoscience success to note that if the artificial gravity
fields in the ship’s deck plates can be manipulated with sufficient precision,
and thus Focused Gravitational Lensing would permit Localized
Invisibility Fields. The latter advantage could then justify the use of
Technoscience to create invisibility fields aboard the ship controlled from
the life-support workstation; Focused Gravitational Lensing might
also lead to other specific innovations, like tractor beams and pressor arrays.
Option Three: Divide Crafts into Operate, Repair, and Design. Operate
is limited to using technological devices not covered by another skill. Repair
includes troubleshooting and fixing problems as they emerge. Design allows
for modifying devices and creating new ones. Each skill is independent and dis-
crete, so Repair doesn’t let you also Operate. Alternately, you can allow a more
knowledge-intensive skill to be used in place of a less-intensive one, albeit against
higher opposition, or vice versa, substituting the less-intensive skill for the more-
intensive one. In general, Operate is the least knowledge-intensive while Design
is the most knowledge-intensive.
• Miracle Worker: Because you work well under pressure, you gain +2 when
using Repair to treat consequences taken by a spaceship or other vehicle.
If the generally available technology level varies from place to place in your
setting, you might want to supplement option three by adding tech levels
(page 41). For example, a galactic setting where each world has a distinct culture
might classify planets according their relative levels of technological achievement.

DRIVE
Option 1: Split Drive into Ride, Drive, and Pilot. Ride is the skill for using
mounts, while Drive is for operating vehicles with relatively simple controls, and
Pilot is for operating complex vehicles, like spacecraft and starships. Alternately,
you can forgo Ride and instead include horse riding and the like in Athletics or
Planetary Survival (page 33).
Option 2: Replace Drive with Operate. Operate covers the use of all tech-
nological devices. Stunts can be used to reflect expertise with specific vehicles.
• Hot Pilot: Because you are a skilled spacepilot, you gain +2 to overcome
with Operate when piloting a space fighter or other small spacecraft.
• Space Ace: Because you are steely-nerved combat pilot, you may attack
with Operate when you are piloting a space fighter or other small, armed
spacecraft.
• Seat-of-the-Pants Navigator: Because you have an uncanny knack for
space navigation, you may use Pilot in place of the equivalent navigation
skill (e.g., Astrogation, Science) to set a course from point A to point B
in normal space.
LORE
Option 1: Rename Knowledge. Knowledge sounds more appropriate for
a science fiction game than Lore, which has a fantasy feel. You can double
down on this to better describe your setting, calling it Education, Data Access,
Information, or Memory instead—each name has different implications, espe-
cially for interacting with information technology and computer data.
• Data Analyst: Because you are skilled at data analysis, you gain +2 to
create advantages with Knowledge when you can consult accumulated
data records about the object of your analysis.
• Boolean Ace: Because you are expert at searching through large databases,
you may use Knowledge in place of Investigate when you have access to
data records about the target of your investigation.
Option 2: Split Lore into Culture and Science. The former skill represents
social and cultural knowledge, including the arts and humanities as well as com-
mon-sense knowledge of a given culture. The latter skills represent systematic
knowledge of the social and natural worlds, respectively.
• Synesthete: Because you are a synesthetic poet, you may use Culture in
place of Provoke when you perform one of your multi-sensory composi-
tions for a receptive or captive audience.
• Experimentalist: Because you are trained in scientific experimentation,
you gain +2 to create advantages with Science by testing an empirical
hypothesis about some physical phenomenon.

Option 3: Split Lore into multiple discipline-based sub-skills. Broad fields
of inquiry are presumed to represent bodies of knowledge and ways of knowing
related to science, the arts and humanities, and other fields. Stunts can represent
specialized training or education and professional recognition and achievement,
like a physician’s license.
• Arts: Subsumes that part of Lore related to cultural expression. Its
stunts are often related to specific art forms like Painting, Sculpture, and
Literature, giving +2 to creating advantages with that art form.
• Humanities: Subsumes that part of Lore related to knowledge of specific
human events, ideas, and creations. Its stunts are often related to specific
disciplines like History, Philosophy, and Law, giving +2 to creating advan-
tages with that discipline.
• Social Science: Subsumes that part of Lore related to systematic knowl-
edge of human behavior, interactions, and motivations. Its stunts are
often related to specific social sciences like Anthropology, Sociology, and
Psychology, giving +2 to creating advantages with that science.
• Natural Science: Subsumes that part of Lore related to systematic knowl-
edge of material phenomena. Its stunts are often related to specific natural
sciences like Physics, Chemistry, and Planetology, giving +2 to creating
advantages with that science. A scientist’s skill to make new scientific dis-
coveries or theoretical breakthroughs may require a stunt (Experimentalist
or Theoretician, for example) unless the setting embraces the notion of
rapid scientific advancement.

SHOOT
Option 1. Rename Shoot to Weapons or Warfare. This reflects some degree

of familiarity with all of the weapons and weapons systems, large and small, used
to launch beams, projectiles, and other deadly payloads at targets. Stunts can
reflect expertise with particular types of combat, like Space Combat, Small-Unit
Tactics, or Armored Warfare.
Option 2. Divide Shoot into categories of weapons. Different types of
weapons may require different skill sets to operate, such as Firearms (for handguns
and other small arms) and Gunnery (for space naval heavy weaponry). Use stunts
to represent expertise with particular classes of weapon.
• Deadeye Aim: Because you are uncannily accurate with space weapons,
once per scene you can gain +4, rather than +2, to your Gunnery attack
when you invoke an advantage you’ve created related to taking aim or
getting a target in your sights.
• Final Protective Fire: Because you are a trained point-defense gunner,
you may spend a fate point to attack multiple defenders during a single
exchange with Gunnery. Before you roll, declare all of your defenders
and the order in which you will attack them. For each defender after the
first you declare, you suffer -1 to each of your attacks. Roll and resolve
each attack in order; a given invocation applies only to one attack, not
all of them.
• Sniper: Gain +2 to attack with Firearms when you’re firing a personal
firearm at a defender that is two or more zones away.
Option 3. Keep Shoot for Small Arms Only. Alternately, presume that Shoot
refers to hand weapons only, and assign space weapons to other skills such as
Drive (Pilot) or Crafts (Engineering).

Create New Skills
Use new skills to highlight important activities in your setting. Some skills may
only be available as extras, depending on the setting.
ASTROGATION
Knowledge of the technical procedures and professional practices needed to
calculate a vessel’s space journey. Use this skill to plot courses through interplan-
etary and interstellar space as well as to jump through hyperspace or another
FTL jaunt—assuming that FTL travel doesn’t require some other skill such as
Psionics for navigation. If there is no special skill for navigation in space, the
requisite knowledge can be included in a Lore-equivalent skill such as Science
or Natural Science. Astrogation is often used in an overcome action to set a
course in space, but it may also be treated as including those parts of Lore or its
equivalent related to general knowledge of port conditions, nearby space hazards,
and similar information about known ports of call. It is generally used neither
to attack nor to defend.
The difficulty of course calculation depends on the complexity of the course
and the capabilities of the ship. Planning a straightforward trip from Planet A to
Planet B across distances within the ship’s normal range and endurance may face
Mediocre (+0) or Average (+1) difficulty, while trying to calculate the complicated
series of burns needed to decelerate a slower-than-light generation ship coming
in from interstellar space with limited delta-vee (change in velocity) by means of
multiple planetary fly-bys that may subject the ship to structural stress may face
Great (+4), Superb (+5), or even Fantastic (+6) difficulty.
The GM will set the time required for the journey based on the distances
involved and the speeds obtainable, remembering that periods of acceleration,
deceleration, and possibly coasting will occur. Express the time required in “half,”
“one,” “a few,” or “several” units of time, per Fate Core (page 197). Attainable
speeds will depend in large measure upon the technology available in your setting,
discussed in greater detail in Spacecraft and Space Travel (page 48).
Succeeding with style on Astrogation may create boosts such as Fuel-Efficient
Course or Planetary Syzygy that can be used as a bonus if Pilot is needed to
complete the maneuver. Alternatively, succeeding with style can simply reduce
the time required for travel by one shift, meaning a trip that would take a few
months will only take one.

Failure can result in “no solution”—the ship lacks the requisite delta-vee to
get to its destination. Conditions must change before any recalculation is pos-
sible. Alternately, failure can mean that the course plot is inaccurate, requiring
additional expenditures of reaction mass or other resources to correct, or that the
ship is subjected to structural stress or other damage, or that the time required
to travel increases by one shift, or perhaps two shifts of time if you get three or
more shifts of failure.
• Starblazer: Because of your attention to detail, you gain +2 to Astrogation
when you are plotting a course to a place where no one has gone before—or
at least, no one of whom you’re aware.
• Stargazer: Because you’ve pored over the available star charts and sky
maps, you gain +2 to Astrogation when creating advantages related to
knowing astrographic information about the region of space into which
you are traveling.
BUREAUCRACY
This is knowledge of the workings of large, impersonal, hierarchical institutions
such as government agencies, corporations, and the military. It is used to over-
come obstacles and create advantages related to knowing the rules, policies, and
protocols of the organization, dealing with red tape, and winning at office poli-
tics. A more neutral label for this skill is “Administration,” which also implies
a certain level of managerial competence. This skill is useful when trying to
convince starport officials that an out-of-date docking license still passes muster,
that a cargo of exotic animals doesn’t fall under extant quarantine regulations,
and so forth.
• Barrack-Room Lawyer: Because of your vast knowledge of administrative
trivia, you may use Bureaucracy in place of Rapport to attack or create
advantages when the act of throwing out legalistic or official-sounding
terms and concepts might be convincing.
• Red Tape-Cutter: Because you have a good idea about which shortcuts
an organization is likely to tolerate, you gain +2 to overcome obstacles
with Bureaucracy when attempting to demonstrate that you have met an
organization’s requirements or followed its stipulated procedures.

COMMAND
This is the skill for directing, inspiring, and leading people. You can use it to
overcome obstacles and create advantages related to coordinating the activities
of groups and individuals, keeping up morale, and ensuring good order among
the troops. It subsumes the relevant parts of Rapport and Provoke.
• Charisma: Because you are an inspirational leader, you gain +2 to create
advantages with Command when you try to maintain or improve the
morale of your followers.
• Martinet: Because you have a reputation as a strict disciplinarian, you gain
+2 to overcome with Command when you are trying to enforce compliance
with behavioral rules and regulations among the people you’re leading.
ENCOUNTER
If aliens are relatively infrequent or very strange in your setting, you’ll use
Encounter—rather than Deceive, Provoke, or Rapport—to interact with them.
It is used to overcome or create advantages. If a listed skill doesn’t exist, the
appropriate interaction is used instead. In any case, certain aliens may get a
bonus to Will or Empathy to reflect the difficulty other species have in engaging
them, though this bonus will probably be more common if you do not include
Encounter.
• Alien Whisperer: Because you have an intuitive or learned understanding
of alien psychology, you may use Encounter in place of Empathy when
trying to make sense of alien motivations or desires.
• Practically Raised by Martians: Because of your familiarity with their
culture and traditions, you gain +2 to Encounter when dealing with
Martians. (You can rename this stunt to apply it to another specific alien
civilization.)

PLANETARY SURVIVAL
Planetary Survival replaces that part of Lore related to practical knowledge of
“roughing it” in uncivilized conditions. It may also include that part of Lore used
to administer first aid; in this case, more advanced medical training is a stunt
that permits the use of Science in place of Planetary Survival for that purpose. Its
stunts may also be used to enhance survival skill on a specific planet or a particu-
lar type of planet—which means that how planets are classified, or what types of
planets exist in your setting, is important in creating such stunts.
• Absolute Zero: Because of your experience on such worlds, you gain +2
to Planetary Survival when overcoming hazardous groundside conditions
on frozen worlds, like those in the outer reaches of a solar system.
• Habitable World Training: Pick a certain class of habitable world pres-
ent in the setting, such as one on the Habitable Worlds table (page 101).
Because of your experience on such worlds, you gain +2 to overcome
obstacles related to hazardous groundside conditions on such a world.
• Dirtside Medic: Because of your practical experience, you gain +2 to
Planetary Survival when treating mild and moderate physical consequences
suffered by others as a result of exposure to planetary conditions.
PSIONICS
Psionics allows you to use the power of your mind to affect the real world. It is
typically only used to create advantages related to using your psychic powers to
affect the world around you. Here are some examples of using Psionics:
“I use my psionics to cloud the guard’s mind.” This will create Clouded
Mind by succeeding with Psionics against the guard’s Will.
“I probe the alien’s brain and evoke its deepest fear.” This will create
Tentacular Terror! by succeeding with Psionics against the alien’s Will.
“I telekinetically pull at the wires inside the guard’s EVA suit.” This will
create Compromised Suit by succeeding with Psionics against the
guard’s Notice.
Stunts can expand the range and versatility of the Psionics skill.
• Psionic Navigation: Because of your psychic training, you may use
Psionics in place of Astrogation to calculate interstellar paths through
hyperspace.
• Psychic Blast: Because of your psychic training, you may attack with
Psionics against the defender’s Will or Psionics.
• Telekinetic Force: Because of your psychic training, you may use Psionics
in place of Physique to lift, throw, hurl, or crush nearby objects as if you
had enormous strength.

RANK
Rank reflects a character’s status and position within a hierarchical organization
and thus indicates their efficacy in utilizing their official powers, working as a
sort of combination of Resources and Contacts when dealing with that organiza-
tion. A character’s Rank rating might not correspond to their in-fiction rank. For
example, a star admiral with Mediocre (+0) Rank still outranks a space sergeant
with Fair (+2) Rank in the fiction, but the space sergeant would be better at
getting the detachment ready for inspection or obtaining a much-needed hyper-
thermal coupler at stardock during refitting.
• Rank Hath Its Privileges: You may use Rank in place of Resources to
create advantages related to obtaining personal wealth or goods for your
private use from your organization.
• Highly Decorated: You may use Rank in place of Rapport to create
advantages related to using your words to inspire, motivate, or otherwise
lift up members of your organization.
SPACEHAND
Spacehand subsumes those parts of Lore and Crafts associated with practical
knowledge of shipboard life. It is typically used to overcome and defend against
difficulties connected to living, working, and moving in space. This includes
moving around in zero-g, wearing a spacesuit properly so as to avoid accident or
injury while in vacuum, walking on the outside of a spacecraft hull, and so on.
You’ll use this skill whenever something out of the ordinary happens in a space
environment. Need to don your spacesuit in record time? Roll Spacehand. Need
to patch a micro-meteor leak? Roll Spacehand. In a near-future setting, this skill
can be called Astronaut—or Cosmonaut.
• Old Space Dog: Because you’ve been around a time or two, you may use
Spacehand in place of Contacts when looking for a spacer in a starport or
other likely meeting place for professional space travelers.
• Spacewalker: Because you are well trained in extra-vehicular activity, you
gain +2 to Spacehand when overcoming obstacles related to operations
outside a spacecraft.
• Zero-Gee Acrobatics: Because you are skilled at low-gravity movement,
you may use Spacehand in place of Athletics to move in microgravity, as
long as there are surfaces that you can push against.
• Zero-Gee Martial Arts: Because you are familiar with fighting in zero-
gee, you may use Spacehand in place of Fight to attack in hand-to-hand
combat while in microgravity.

Stunts
You can use stunts to add a science-fictional gloss to otherwise normal skills.
Athletics
Athletics stunts can reflect the physiological advantages accrued from alien,
mutant, cyborg, and similar anatomical variations. Power armor, performance-
enhancing drugs, and prosthetic limbs and organs may also justify Athletics
stunts.
• Glandular Implant: Because you have been implanted with an artifi-
cial adrenaline gland, once per session when you are using Athletics to
overcome or defend, you may spend a fate point to treat your dice roll as
++++ before or after rolling them.
• Tentacles: Because you have powerful manipulator tentacles, you gain
+2 to Athletics when creating advantages related to grabbing, grasping, or
holding on to something.
Burglary
Burglary stunts can represent high-tech lockpicks and safecracking gear. If your
setting includes regions of different technological sophistication, you can use
Burglary stunts to reflect the advantages of greater technical knowledge and
preparation.
• Ninja Skills: Because you have received special training, you gain +2 to
Burglary when overcoming low-tech security equipment and procedures,
such as unaugmented guards, mechanical locks, and pressure plates.
Contacts
Contacts stunts can reflect a reputation among particular groups or a wide array
of acquaintances on certain planets. They also could reflect being wired into
information technology and communications networks.
• Traveller: Because you have traveled extensively throughout the galaxy,
whenever you return to a planet that you’ve ever visited, you gain +2 to
Contacts to overcome difficulties in finding someone you need to find or
want to meet. Additionally, you may spend a fate point when you first
arrive on a new world to declare that you have been to this place before.
Crafts
See Fate Core, page 102.

Deceive
Deceive stunts can reflect the advantages possessed by particularly inscrutable or
hard-to-read alien species. Also, sophisticated disguise kits and similar technolo-
gies justify a Deceive stunt.
• Mask-Like Countenance: Because your facial expressions are particularly
neutral or otherwise hard to read, you gain +2 to defend with Deceive
versus efforts to discern your true motivations, intentions, or nature using
Empathy or Investigate.
• Personality Graft: Because you can imprint personality patterns upon
your brain, you may spend a fate point to imprint the patterns of an
individual that you’ve observed, gaining +2 to create advantages and over-
come obstacles with Deceive when you are imitating or impersonating
that individual.
Drive
Empathy
Empathy stunts can reflect alien, mutant, or cyborg abilities, as well as advanced
neuroscientific equipment.
• Projective Telempath: Because you have psionic powers, you may attack
with Empathy versus Will, sending out waves of emotion after emotion
that produce mind-shattering catharsis in the target.
• Telempathic Healing: Because you have psionic powers, once per session
you may reduce the severity of someone’s else’s consequence by one step
by succeeding with Empathy against Mediocre (+0) difficulty for a mild
consequence, Fair (+2) for moderate, and Great (+4) for severe. If you
succeed, you then take a mild consequence. If you fail, you may succeed
at a cost by taking a consequence of the severity you healed.
• Vee-Kay Analyzer: Because you have access to special equipment, you
gain +2 to Empathy when trying to figure out someone’s psychological
stressors or breaking points during an interview.
Fight
Fight stunts can reflect training with particular weapons, especially stylishly
futuristic ones. They may also refer to fighting styles or schools, or to maneuvers
and strikes with futuristic weapons.
• Energy-Staff Feint: Because of your peregrinato-warrior training, you
gain +2 to create advantages with Fight when using your energy staff to
blind, disorient, or otherwise discomfit your opponent.
• Zero-Gee Brawling: Because you have trained as a space marine, you
gain +2 to attack with Fight when you are in hand-to-hand combat in
microgravity conditions.

Investigate
Investigate stunts may reflect sophisticated cognitive capabilities as well as high-
tech data-analysis tools.
• Encyclopedia Pangalactica: Because you have access to the Encyclopedia
Pangalactica, you gain +2 to creating advantages with Investigate if the
object of your investigation is important enough to have an encyclopedia
entry.
• Full-Spectrum Signal Analyzer: Because you have access to special
equipment, you gain +2 to Investigate when overcoming difficulties asso-
ciated with deciphering or interpreting possible communication signals.
Lore
Notice
Notice stunts represent alien abilities and mutations as well as advanced com-
munications gear and sensors.
• Handheld Scanner: Because you have access to special equipment, you
gain +2 when creating advantages with Notice during an initial inspection
of some area or scene.
• Radio Sense: Because of a mutation that allows you to sense radio waves,
you gain +2 to create advantages with Notice related to the electromagnetic
radiation being given off by a point source.
Physique
Physique stunts can reflect the physiological advantages accrued from alien,
mutant, cyborg, and similar anatomical variations, as well as from survival equip-
ment of different sorts.
• Heavyworlder: Because you are native to a high-gee planet, you gain
+2 to Physique to overcome or defend against the effects of high gravity,
acceleration, and other g-forces that you may experience.
• Rapid Regeneration: Because of your unique physiology, once per scene
you may spend a fate point to immediately clear a mild consequence or
reduce the severity of a moderate or severe consequence by one step. You
may rename the consequence if appropriate.

Provoke
Provoke stunts can reflect alien abilities and setting-defining social circumstances.
• Bug-Eyed Monster: Because you are a freakish alien, you gain +2 to
Provoke when creating advantages related to frightening or repulsing
normal human beings and others with similar sensibilities.
• Psychic Blast: Because of your psychic powers, you may use Provoke to
attack any intelligent target, even if you are unable to communicate or
otherwise interact with them. The target defends with Will.
• The Death Sentence in Twelve Systems: Because of your notoriety in
the demimonde, you gain +2 to Provoke when creating advantages among
criminals, outlaws, and other denizens of the underworld.
Rapport
As with Provoke, Rapport stunts can be used to reflect alien abilities and setting-
defining social circumstances.
• Imperial Facilitator: Because of the special trust the Imperator of the
Galaxy has for you, you gain +2 to Rapport when overcoming an Imperial
citizen’s reluctance to assist you in your duties.
• Pheromonal Mimic: Because you can produce tailored pheromonal mixes,
you may spend a fate point to gain +2 to Rapport against one target who
shares your life-support environment. This bonus lasts until the end of
the session. You may spend another fate point to change your target, but
changing your target ends the bonus for your previous target.

Resources
Resources stunts reflect unusual sources of wealth or economic influence as well
as the effects of wealth accumulation.
• Galactic Line of Credit: Whenever you are compelled because of your
financial needs or economic circumstances, you gain an extra fate point.
• Cash Reserves: Once per session, when you are compelled because of
your financial needs or economic circumstances, you may reject the compel
without paying a fate point.
• Trader to the Stars: After you use Resources to create advantages that
represent the acquisition of trade goods or valuable commodities, you
may trade any unused free invocations on those advantages for fate points,
one to one, but you must do so at a market for those goods. However, at
the end of a session, you lose any fate points you have above your refresh.
Note that others do not lose any excess accrued fate points, reflecting the
volatility of the market.
• All the Way to the Bank: At the end of a session, if you have three or
more fate points in excess of your refresh, you may spend three fate points
to increase your refresh by one. (GMs, as written this is a pretty powerful
effect, so you may wish to slow advancement by setting the threshold for
advancing to four, five, six, or even more excess fate points, depending on
the circumstances of the campaign.)
• Market Savvy: Because you are a master of buying low and selling high,
whenever you use Resources to create an advantage that represents the
acquisition of trade goods or valuable commodities, a success counts as
a success with style.
Shoot
Shoot stunts may reflect special training or experience as well as devices such as
scopes, sights, and special ammunition. Firearms may be represented by special
rules, such as the Weapon ratings described in Fate Core (page 277) and the
alternatives described in the Fate System Toolkit (pages 70–72).
• L-5 Colony Windage: Because you are experienced in correcting for the
effects of being inside rotating cylindrical habitats and similar places, you
can attack with Shoot with no increase in difficulty due to Coriolis force,
as described in “Microgravity” (page 68).

Stealth
Stealth stunts may reflect alien, mutant, or cyborg capabilities as well as techno-
logical devices such as cloaking devices and stealth sheathing.
• Camouflage Circuit: Because you have a suit with a light-bending fiber-
optic lattice, you may spend a fate point to remove yourself from the
scene. You may later reintroduce yourself to the scene in any place that
you could have reached while you were out of sight, even interrupting
another’s action to do so. If you didn’t act during the exchange in which
you vanished, you may act immediately. Otherwise, you simply reappear
and will act during the next exchange.
• Prana Bindu Training: Because you have been trained in a graceful and
subtle martial art, you may defend with Stealth against Fight attacks as
long as you have suffered no stress or consequences in the current conflict.
Will
Will stunts may reflect alien, mutant, or cyborg capabilities as well as technologi-
cal devices such as cybernetic memory or psionics.
• Alien Mindset: Because your alien physiology makes you quite emotion-
ally stable, you gain +2 to defend with Will against efforts to move or
persuade you with emotional appeals, particularly those that try to “get
your goat” or “get under your skin.”
• Psychic Blast: Because of your psychic powers, you may attack with Will.
The target must be able to perceive your gaze.
• Total Recall: Because you have a library of data implanted in your skull,
you gain +2 to Will when overcoming obstacles involving memory (Fate
Core, page 127).

Extras
Extras in a science fiction game can be particularly useful for representing special
abilities, advanced technology, spaceships, and star-spanning organizations that
can affect play. When designing a setting, look to extras as the way to portray
things that make the setting unique. Fate Core (page 269) gives lots of guidance
about creating extras.
High Technology
High technology can be an extra that allows players to gain stunts represent-
ing weapons or tools that might not be generally available, such as a blaster
from a higher-tech world, illegal neuro-mods that allow the user to read surface
thoughts of those around her, a universal language translator (in a game where
language differences are an obstacle), an alien serum that provokes rapid healing,
or a personal, portable spacesuit. An extra representing an object can always be
compelled to be stolen, borrowed, misappropriated, or otherwise taken out of
the character’s hands, at least temporarily.
TECH LEVEL
Technological artifacts can be assigned a tech level, an aspect that reflects its rela-
tive technological or scientific sophistication. When used against more primitive
artifacts, the more sophisticated artifact grants its user an advantage with one
free invocation per scene, or two free invocations if the tech level difference is
three or more.
Tech Level Description
Primitive (+0) The most basic or earliest types of tools capable
of the task
Archaic (+1) Out-of-date and obsolete tools
Old-Fashioned (+2) Slightly dated technology, relatively inefficient
or early-stage design
Conventional (+3) Standard technology for the setting
Advanced (+4) Refinements of existing tools and techniques
Bleeding-Edge (+5) Tech which incorporates newly discovered
principles or innovative design elements
Incomprehensible (+6) Tech so advanced as to be indistinguishable
from magic
The tech level also represents a difficulty—with Primitive equivalent to Mediocre

(+0) and Incomprehensible equivalent to Fantastic (+6)—against attempts to
overcome defenses operating at that level of technological sophistication.

Tech level can also be used to define the effect floor or effect ceiling—in other
words, the minimum (on a successful attack or overcome action) or maximum
(on a successful defend action) number of shifts of effect possible when using
an artifact for its intended purpose. In general, effect ceilings (defenses) trump
effect floors (attacks) unless the attacker succeeds with style, in which case the
ceiling is ignored. Effect floors and ceilings are described more in the Fate System
Toolkit (page 70).
TOOL CLASSES
You can apply tech levels, described in the previous section, to specific types of
artifacts, creating tool classes to systematize how a given piece of technology
affects individual actions. Instead of having a single tech level that defines the
effectiveness of all equipment produced by a society or culture, you can separate
its different types of tools—its guns, armor, power sources, communicators, and
so forth—into different tech levels.
• Armor: Personal protective gear can be given an Armor rating* or damage
ceiling.** Generally, armor protects against physical attacks, but certain
kinds of drugs or hypno-conditioning might be available to protect against
mental or social attacks.
• Communicators: Equipment for transmitting and receiving messages
allows for characters to interact. If you wish to reflect the issues of using
communications technology with limited bandwidth that lacks immediacy
and presence, you can give the device an effect ceiling that restricts the
maximum shifts of its result when you use it to act with Rapport, Provoke,
Deceive, and other interpersonal skills. Operating communicators to reach
distant stations or penetrate jamming may require overcoming with Lore,
with the device’s rating acting as the effect floor. Jamming is technically a
defend action, and may require specialized equipment.
• Firearms: Ranged weapons used with Shoot can be given a Weapon
rating* or damage floor.**
• Hand Weapons: Melee weapons used with Fight can be given a Weapon
rating* or damage floor.**
• Heavy Weapons: Artillery and other ranged weapons used with a
skill other than Shoot that reflects technical expertise, such as Crafts
(Engineering), can be given a Weapon rating* or damage floor.**
• Mobility: Jetpacks, grav skates, personal ornithopters, hoverbikes, and
similar devices. Define a given mobility device according to its relevant
skill, which may be Athletics, Lore, Drive, Spacehand, or Crafts. You can
give it an effect floor that establishes the minimum number of zones it
allows the user to cross on a successful overcome action. Certain devices are
* Fate Core, page 277.

** Fate System Toolkit, page 70.

designed for particular environments or circumstances—ice, water, space
(zero-gee), paved surfaces, and so forth. Countermobility devices may be
used to establish barriers that make crossing zone boundaries more difficult.
• Power Sources: Batteries, capacitors, fuel cells, turbines, and other power
sources can be treated as pools of fate points available for invoking aspects
related to the things they power. In essence, the power source consists of a
high concept, such as Antimatter Reactor Core, and a refresh rating.
• Sensors: Scanning devices, analyzers, and similar equipment used in
Notice or Investigate actions. Use the device’s rating as an effect floor
for the shifts of result, indicating the range and sensitivity of the device.
Successful use typically creates an advantage related to characteristics of
the object of the scan or conditions in the scanned environment.
• Spacesuits: Personal life-support systems to protect spacers from vacuum
conditions, including low pressure, lack of breathable air, and the difficulty
in disposing waste heat—cooling systems are important in space. If the
suit is particularly cumbersome, you can use its rating as an effect ceiling
for overcome actions with Athletics. As spacesuit technology improves, it
provides extended duration, better protection from radiation, and greater
ease of use. More sophisticated models will include built-in armor, sensors
and communicators, mobility devices, and possibly even weapons.
In a setting where modern-day humans have to deal with aliens in UFOs,

the humans’ gunpowder-using guns and artillery are each treated
as a Primitive (+0) tool class, while the aliens’ energy blasters are
Conventional (+3) and their hypercannons are Bleeding-Edge (+5).
In play, characters use Shoot to fire guns and blasters and a setting-
specific Heavy Weapons skill to operate artillery and hypercannons, but
those using an alien weapon get to use its tech level bonus as a weapon
rating, adding to the shifts of effect of a successful attack. The humans
will have to get to work developing armor to protect themselves!
Alternately, the effectiveness of a tool class available to a character can be treated

as an extra, with the shifts of effect for a tool class determined by the number of
stunts spent to gain access to the device by the character, one stunt giving two
shifts of effect, two stunts giving four shifts of effect, and so on.
In a setting where aliens from across the galaxy participate in an

interstellar grand prix, PCs spend stunts to build their ships as tech-
nology. One ship may have an Advanced (+4) engine (2 stunts) but
Old-Fashioned (+2) sensors (1 stunt), while another may have an
Incomprehensible (+6) propulsion system (3 stunts) that puts the rest
of the field to shame. In this setting, a ship’s technology sets an effect
floor for the use of a character skill; any success with Pilot, for example,
will be at least as effective as the tech level of the propulsion system.

Extra: Cold Fusion Cell
Permissions: Access to a cold fusion cell.
Cost: None.
Effect: You have access to a cheap and reliable Cold

Fusion Cell with a refresh of 2. Its fate points can be
spent to invoke aspects related to channeling power to
connected technological artifacts. Its power output can
be manipulated with Lore, creating advantages such as
More Power!
Extra: Near-Future EVA Suit

Permissions: Access to a functioning EVA suit.
Cost: None.
Effect: You are wearing a specially equipped Extra-

Vehicular Activity Suit suitable for extended spacewalks.
It protects against threats related to exposure to vacuum,
with a Good (+3) Duration of several hours, and Fair (+2)
Mobility in zero-gravity with its built-in thrusters. It has
only an Average (+1) Communicator, a voice-only link
with a controller back inside the ship.

Military, Naval, or Official Rank
In settings where characters might be serving in some official capacity as part of
a more or less hierarchical organization, and want to be able to use that authority,
the Rank skill (page 34) can be a useful extra. Characters who have an aspect
specifying their rank, title, or position gain access to the Rank skill as an extra.
Military organizations are frequently divided into enlisted and commissioned
(or “officer”) ranks. Lower enlisted ranks are the rank and file of the organization;
senior enlisted ranks are noncommissioned officers with technical, administrative,
and day-to-day supervisory expertise and responsibility. Officer ranks tend to be
charged with command, planning, and organizational management.
There are, of course, other hierarchies to which a character may belong: an order
of space knights, perhaps, or the diplomatic corps of a star-spanning regime, or
even the management of an interstellar trading company.
FAR-FUTURE SPACE NAVY RANKS

Enlisted: Astronaut Recruit, Astronaut 4th Class, Astronaut 3rd Class,
Astronaut 2nd Class, Astronaut 1st Class, Assistant Chief Astronaut, Chief
Astronaut, Senior Chief Astronaut, Master Chief Astronaut
Officer: Ensign, Junior Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander,
Commander, Captain, Commodore, Admiral, Fleet Admiral
In the Space Navy, a lieutenant may command a gunboat (a small, expendable
attack ship), a commander a frigate (a large, versatile ship of the line), and a
captain a dreadnought (a huge, heavily armed and armored spaceship that sac-
rifices some speed for power and resilience). Senior enlisted personnel lead crew
sections devoted to particular ship functions and duties, at higher levels forming
a parallel chain of command that advises the corresponding officer rank. It’s the
Navy, but in space.

Alien Abilities
Alien abilities can be handled in several ways, depending on the prevalence of
aliens in your setting and whether or not PCs will be playing alien species.
In settings where only NPCs will be aliens, the GM can define alien abilities
on a case-by-case basis without too much regard for character balance or similar
factors.
The Grimaldons are an alien race whose individuals have No Sense of

Self, and so are easily indoctrinated by megalomaniacal would-be
galactic conquerors; on their long-vanished home world, they had
established a collectivist utopia of altruism and peace. The GM man-
dates that all Grimaldons have Terrible (-2) Will on their own but also
have the Collective Purpose stunt.
Collective Purpose: Because you have imprinted upon your mind the
collective purpose of a group or leader, whenever you could defend
or overcome with Will to stay committed to that purpose, you can
spend a fate point to tie your opposition, no roll required. You may
spend a second fate point to succeed, and a third fate point to suc-
ceed with style.
In other settings, most PCs will be human but one or two players may want to
be alien instead. In this instance, you can make the set of alien stunts and skills
into an extra for characters who have an aspect that refers to their alien heritage.
In a game about humanity’s first wave of expansion through the galaxy,

a player wants to play an alien from a species that was largely wiped
out after its contact with humanity, one of the lonely last survivors of
its race. He wants his character, because of its alien perspective, to be
really good at interacting with other aliens, so the GM allows him to
take ranks in Encounter (page 32), which is not otherwise on the
skill list for this setting.
Finally, in a setting where everyone is at least potentially an alien, you don’t

need an extra to highlight a character’s alien nature. In such cases, a player could
make a character with an alien-related high concept or a specific alien species
aspect, and then identify one to three alien invocations that refer to the charac-
ter’s special nonhuman talents and establish typical ways in which the character’s
alien aspect can be invoked. The GM may similarly add one to three typical alien
compels that establish ways that the character’s alien aspect can be compelled.
The GM and player may need to negotiate a bit to create a mutually satisfying
suite of alien skills.

In this game, the characters are among a multi-species legion of pan-
galactic patrol officers. A player decides to create a character who is
a High-Flying Balloon Creature from a Jupiter-Like Gas Giant. This
alien nature might be invoked to zoom for short bursts at high speed
via a jet of gas or to float unnoticeably high in the atmosphere, and
might be compelled to need more gas after a period of activity and
movement.
The GM may define alien species similarly; alien compels can be either dis-
covered by the characters gathering information in-character or created by the
players collaborating out-of-character. The first method is appropriate for a game
involving first encounters with aliens; the second, for a game that takes place in
a “cosmopolitan” setting filled with a number of alien kindreds supposed to be
already well-known to each other.
WELLSIAN MARTIAN
These are the Martians from H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. They are
octopoid, with overdeveloped brains in leathery brain-cases and underde-
veloped physical capabilities. They subsist on a diet of blood transfused
from slave species, and operate advanced machinery with astounding
capabilities.
• Alien Invocations: To communicate telepathically over great

distances or to many minds; to possess a vast, cool, and unsympa-
thetic intelligence.
• Alien Compels: To be sluggish in Earth’s gravity; to be vulnerable

to terrestrial disease and microorganisms.
Psychic Powers
Psychic powers can be handled just like alien skills, with players and GMs col-
laborating to determine the ways in which a character’s suite of psychic powers
can be invoked and compelled. Alternately, having psychic powers might pro-
vide access to the Psionics skill (page 33) or to a psychic stunt such as Psionic
Attack: You can use Will to make mental attacks. In a setting where psychic powers
are common, the Psionics skill might be available to all characters, while in a set-
ting where they are rare, the skill should be an extra, requiring a relevant aspect
and a dedicated stunt.

SPACECRAFT AND SPACE TRAVEL
This is the chapter that you’ve been waiting for, the one on space travel. How
are you going to handle spaceships, space travel, and space combat in your Fate
Space game? This is a big deal, because it’s what makes the game one of space
adventure.
The principles of Fate still apply to the rules for space travel: they should show-
case the characters as proactive, capable people leading dramatic lives. So rather
than systematizing space travel, our concern is dramatizing it.
• Low-plausibility space travel is what you see in Star Wars and similar
space fantasy. Technological black boxes let us just hop in and go, without
much concern for the physical laws governing real-world space travel. It’s
all about feel, and often it feels like something else: WWII dogfights and
bombing runs, or WWI naval combat, or even swashbuckling on 17th-
century ships of the line.
• Medium-plausibility space travel is mostly what you get in Star Trek or
Battlestar Galactica. Certain dramatically interesting constraints based on
real-world conditions are maintained throughout the fiction, but they are
only taken so far. The choice of technologies creates the feel of the setting:
one might have teleporters and matter transmuters; another might have
gravity weapons and warp-capable fighters.
• High-plausibility space travel is the province of The Martian or The
Expanse. Real-world constraints are adopted and used to shape the setting
as well as constrain actions and choices. A character who wins usually does
so because they understand how the universe works.
The Space Map

One of the pleasures of a space adventure game is getting to decide where to go,
to pull up stakes and head off to the far reaches of the galaxy if you want. Until
someone takes the time and effort to figure out what’s at a given location, though,
it literally doesn’t exist! That said, limiting the characters takes away from the
feeling that “you can go anywhere,” which is one strong appeal of roleplaying.
So it’s useful to draw up a space map to allow players to visualize the destinations
available to them and the relationships among those places in distance and posi-
tion. It’s hard to overstate the richness of a map in displaying these relationships.
We’ll discuss three ways of doing this: a node map, a zone map, or an open map.
Node Map
A node map shows the pieces of the setting as points connected by paths. Given
an appropriate mode of transportation, characters can travel from their current
node to any other node linked to it by a path. You can presume that all paths
require the same time or effort to travel, or you can give each path a length that
determines its travel time or effort. This space map is perfect for star systems
connected by wormholes or hyperspace jump lines, but it can also be used for
maps of normal space, with lines connecting those systems that are in range of
each other for the typical starships of the setting. Systems that are not connected
48 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Spacecraft and Space Travel

are presumed to be sufficiently distant in normal space that the typical starship can’t
reach from one to the other due to lack of fuel capacity, power reserves, or other
measure of endurance.
A node map can also represent interplanetary space, such as in Mass Drivers
(page 133), a gritty near-future setting focused on the Asteroid Belt. In Mass Drivers,
each node of its space map represents the current orbital location of one or more con-
stantly moving asteroids. When a spaceship’s crew plots a course to another asteroid
or other destination, the GM indicates the destination’s current location by pointing
to the node it occupies. Each path represents a distance of about 100,000 kilometers.
Zone Map
A zone map breaks the setting into zones, regions, or areas, and assumes that
movement within a zone is more-or-less trivial but that movement between zones
requires some effort. For example, the map from Pax Galactica (page 160) divides
a galaxy-wide space empire into zones. A zone map is topologically equivalent to
a node map, but while a node map gives the feeling of leaving one location and
traveling to another across an intervening distance, the zone map gives the feeling
of occupying a particular volume of space and crossing a border into a different
one—for example, “We’ve entered the Neutral Zone!”
You can flesh out the zones—or the nodes on the node map, for that matter—by
adding aspects. For example, in the galaxy zone map for Pax Galactica (page 160),
the Galactic Core is densely packed with Mostly Planetless stars surrounding a
Massive Black Hole and thus Bathed in Deadly Radiation, while the Outer
Margins and the two Rifts are Thinly Populated with Stars, although only the
Outer Margins are a Lawless Frontier. The other zones are all Civilized Space.
Ultimately, the difference between the zone and node maps is cosmetic. They work
in essentially the same way, by indicating which locations are functionally adjacent.
For locations that are not adjacent, any path between them requires transit across
intermediate locations. Of course, with a zone map the route between any given
pair of zones may not be limited to their common boundaries; in other words, a
hyperspace path may in fact connect a world in the Sagittarius Arm with one in the
Outer Margins, for example, allowing passage to and fro without passing through
the intervening zones.
Open Map
An open map, unlike the other space maps, places no hard restrictions on move-
ment. This map is simply a graphic representation of a volume of space without
any superimposed movement grid. Given an appropriate mode of transporta-
tion, characters can travel to anywhere on the map, calculating their travel time
based on real-world considerations and the fictional capabilities of their vehicles.
Both Millennials (page 149) and The Gods Know Future Things (page 111) use
open maps.
If you want to play a game with very high plausibility, you can easily find astro-
nomical data online that can be useful in creating bespoke three-dimensional star
maps. The map of near space in The Gods Know Future Things (page 111) uses real-
world astronomical data, but compresses them into two dimensions, so the distances
among stars are more distorted the further one gets from Sol.
49
Space Travel
As a game system, Fate doesn’t simulate the physics of the game universe. Instead,
it relies on the players and GM to estimate the chance of success and failure by
judging countervailing forces—attack and defense, speed and distance, stealth
and alertness, and so forth—roll the dice, and then interpret the result together
at the table.
This philosophy works best when people at the table have a strong sense of how
things work in the fiction. So, knowing a little background about the physical
details of space travel will help. To help with this, the following sections introduce
some scientific vocabulary for space adventure, and provide information that will
help GMs add verisimilitude to the game.
A Little Bit of Rocket Science

Let’s talk about rocket science for a little bit. Rockets work by virtue of Newton’s
third law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Throw some
mass out of the back of your spacecraft—the reaction mass—and you go forward.
The bigger the reaction mass, or the greater the energy with which you throw it,
the more forceful your forward motion. With no friction or other countervailing
forces to slow you down or bring you to a stop, once your spaceship starts to
move, it will keep moving until it experiences other forces. Each time you throw
stuff out the back, you accelerate a little more, so if you can do so over a long
enough period of time, you can build up a pretty good head of steam.
Thrust is what rocket scientists call the force required to accelerate a spacecraft at
a given rate. Thrust is measured in newtons, and one newton is the force required
to accelerate one kilogram of matter at a rate of one meter per second squared
(i.e., per second per second). A spacecraft with a high-thrust engine can accelerate
quickly, while one with a low-thrust engine must accelerate slowly.
Specific impulse (Isp) is a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine’s fuel
use. A spacecraft engine with high specific impulse can accelerate for a longer
period of time on a given mass of propellant than a spacecraft engine with a low
specific impulse can.
Together, these two ideas are the main considerations in spacecraft engine
design: how much force can you apply to get your spacecraft moving and to slow it
down again, and how much fuel do you need to carry to reach a particular velocity?
The following table gives examples of various at-least-theoretical spacecraft
engine technologies.
Engine Type Low Specific Impulse High Specific Impulse
Water rocket,
Low Thrust Ion drive, lightsail
cargo jettison
Chemical, Fusion torch,
High Thrust
atomic rockets Bussard ramjet

Together, thrust and specific impulse determine the total delta-vee, or change
in velocity, available to a spacecraft. Space-mission planners talk about the “delta-
vee budget” of the mission—how much energy the spaceship making the journey
must expend in order to get from where it is to where it needs to be. The biggest
part of any delta-vee budget is usually the launch from a planetary surface. If you’re
starting from the surface of the Earth, you’ll need to expend a great deal of energy
even to get to low Earth orbit (LEO). Once in orbit, however, getting anywhere
will require much less energy, by at least an order of magnitude—although the
further away the destination, the less practical a low-energy transfer orbit (the least
energy-expensive trajectory between two planets) becomes, because of the time
involved. But the limits have to do with the patience and durability of human
travelers—how much food and other supplies they’ll need to bring along, how
much radiation exposure they’ll suffer—rather than the physics of it.
In some cases, the launch from a planet’s surface can be a moment of high drama
or techno-thriller style action. In other cases, it can be as routine as catching a
flight at the airport, particularly if the planet has a skyhook, space elevator, or
other surface-to-orbit transportation system. Generally, it will take a high-thrust,
high-specific-impulse engine to get a spaceship with a crew of PCs into orbit with-
out booster stages, a piggyback to higher altitude on a suborbital craft, or other
assistance. This detail can be ignored if your craft is equipped with sufficiently
advanced technology, such as antigravity or reactionless thrusters.
Spacecraft and Space Travel + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 51

LOW THRUST, LOW SPECIFIC IMPULSE
Pressurized fluid can be used as a reaction mass; you’ve probably seen a toy water
rocket pumped up and launched. These engines are not terribly forceful and not
terribly efficient, and even with the most extreme sort of staging couldn’t be used
to escape Earth’s gravity well and achieve orbit.
You wouldn’t design a rocket this way on purpose, but it’s got story potential.
In Isaac Asimov’s short story Marooned Off Vesta, for example, a pair of astro-
nauts in the Asteroid Belt save themselves from a slow death in outer space by
poking a hole in their water tank and using the escaping fluid as reaction mass
to slowly push themselves toward the safety of a nearby asteroid settlement. This
is a low-tech contrivance, potentially useful for moving around in a low-gravity
environment as an emergency expedient.
The same principle also applies to things like jettisoning cargo or other mass.
Conceivably, such an expedient could be used to impart a very small force to
a spacecraft. In Frederik Pohl’s novel Gateway, two spaceships—both trapped
above the event horizon of a black hole—docked with each other and transferred
all hands to one ship and then separated, boosting one ship away and the other
deeper into the black hole’s gravity well.
HIGH THRUST, LOW SPECIFIC IMPULSE

Such engines are capable of relatively rapid acceleration, but carry a lot of fuel in
proportion to their payload. Often, lifting a heavier payload out of a planetary
gravity well and into orbit requires staging, which is simply the use of disposable
booster rockets comprised only of fuel tonnage, the engine itself, and whatever
structural support is needed. Chemical rockets use either ignitable solid fuel or
combustible mixed-liquid fuel; solid-fuel rockets use up all their fuel in one burn,
while liquid fuel rockets can be turned off or even throttled for variable thrust.
Additionally, there are various sorts of atomic-powered rockets; for example,
nuclear thermal rockets expose a “working fluid” of low-mass particles like
hydrogen atoms to the heat of a nuclear reaction and then expel the exhaust as
an energetic reaction mass. These are by some accounts about twice as efficient
as chemical rockets, but the most efficient of such engines produce highly radio-
active exhaust in their wake, making them unsuitable for use in an atmosphere
one cares about.
A typical mission profile for this sort of rocket involves an initial burn (the appli-
cation of thrust) followed by a long period of coasting, followed by a decelerating
burn to match velocity with or enter orbit around the destination. Intermediate,
course-correcting burns may also be applied. In many cases, the spacecraft can
use an intermediate planet for a gravity assist or slingshot maneuver, accelerat-
ing as a result of the planet’s gravity well as it speeds past. Likewise, the craft can
decelerate via aerobraking by using a planet’s atmosphere, like a stone skipping
across the water, but this causes significant structural strain.

LOW THRUST, HIGH SPECIFIC IMPULSE
In contrast to chemical and atomic rockets, which burn fuel rapidly during brief
intervals of high acceleration, some spacecraft rockets will thrust slowly but
steadily, building up momentum over long periods of time and then decelerat-
ing slowly as well. For example, an ion drive uses an electric field to accelerate
charged particles—usually ions of a noble gas such as xenon or argon—as the
reaction mass. This drive, however, cannot be used in atmosphere because the
presence of other particles apparently interferes with its operation.
Although not technically rockets, lightsails can be included in this category
because their fuel use amounts to zero and their thrust is microscopic. Instead of
burning fuel, a lightsail uses photon pressure against its enormous but low-mass
reflective surface to gain very small but continuous acceleration. Lightsails that
rely only on light from the Sun are called “solar sails,” and in the Solar System
they are most effective inside the orbit of Mars. Further out, a lightsail would
need to be pushed by a beam from a large laser; a large enough battery of lasers
could potentially propel an interstellar probe.
These sorts of spacecraft take a long time to reach their destinations compared
to high-thrust vessels, but their low rate of fuel consumption means they are
often better for long-distance journeys where an engine with low specific impulse
would run out of fuel.
HIGH THRUST, HIGH SPECIFIC IMPULSE

These sorts of engines are capable of long burns at high acceleration. A fusion
torch relies on hydrogen fusion to create high-velocity exhaust to accelerate
continuously to the midway point, then reverses its orientation and decelerates
continuously until it arrives at its destination, all other things being equal. A
torchship’s exhaust is extremely hot and viciously radioactive, making it a danger-
ous weapon at close quarters—this was the “Kzinti lesson” in the Larry Niven
short story The Warriors, where a warlike alien race with reactionless thrusters
runs into pacifistic but quick-thinking human beings traveling via fusion torch.
A Bussard ramjet uses an electromagnetic scoop to gather hydrogen atoms float-
ing in interstellar space to power its fusion engine, although it does have to
accelerate to scooping speeds by other means and do something to ionize the
hydrogen so that it can be scooped up. And since there may not be as much
hydrogen floating around in interstellar space as was once thought, for this to
work interstellar societies may need to “seed” the spacelanes with deuterium.
This category also includes high technology low- and medium-plausibility
“reactionless thrusters,” “impulse drives,” and the like that propel a ship without
expelling reaction mass. Adding in acceleration compensation fields or artificial
gravity plates enables spacecraft to perform impossible-seeming maneuvers, like
accelerating at high gravity continuously or changing direction almost instanta-
neously. At very high technology levels, even the most advanced torchship might
comparatively seem as if it were standing still.

Interplanetary Travel
During play, the biggest question about interplanetary travel is usually how long
it takes to reach a destination. Without more specific information, you can use
the following chart as a rough guide to travel time, based on the type of thruster
used and the distance involved. If the goal is merely to cross paths with or fly
by the target, the time required is considerably shorter, since no deceleration or
matching of velocities is required.
If travel time is an important issue, players can often use Engineering or Science
to create advantages that can be invoked when overcoming with Astrogation or
Pilot to plot and execute the course. Succeeding with style can reduce the travel
time by one step (Fate Core, page 197), and succeeding at a cost can increase
travel time by one or more steps or prompt the need for additional fuel. Complete
failure means that the trip is impossible; the ship lacks the delta-vee needed to
make the trip.
Travel Time
Extreme
Thruster Type Close Approach Interplanetary Interplanetary
Low thrust, low several months a few decades a few centuries
specific impulse
High thrust, low several days a year a decade
specific impulse
Low thrust, high several weeks a few years several years
specific impulse
High thrust, high a day several weeks several months
specific impulse
Close Approach: Travel to a nearby interplanetary destination, such as a plan-

etary satellite (Earth to the Moon, Europa to Ganymede) or an L-5 space colony
(a space station at a gravitationally stable interplanetary coordinate).
Interplanetary: Travel to another planet under relatively favorable conditions—
orbital proximity, matching velocities, and so forth. Earth to Mars or Venus will
usually fall into this category.
Extreme Interplanetary: Travel to another planet under more extreme circum-
stances. This includes reaching the outer planets of a solar system or trying to
match velocities with a rapidly moving destination. Earth to Jupiter or Saturn
will usually fall into this category. For greater distances, increase the travel time
accordingly, noting that a high-specific-impulse craft will scale up travel time more
slowly than a low-specific-impulse craft within the limits of the former craft’s fuel
supply, since its ability to accelerate over longer periods of time lets it go faster.

Interstellar Travel at Relativistic Speeds
Einstein’s principle of relativity means that as a spacecraft approaches the speed
of light, it will experience relativistic effects. In your game, the most important
implication of relativistic effects is that time aboard a moving spacecraft will pass
more slowly than it will to an observer at rest with respect to the vessel.
Relativistic effects might be an important and intriguing conceit for your set-
ting—for example, if you’re playing a game loosely based on Joe Haldeman’s The
Forever War where interstellar soldier PCs come back for R&R to an Earth that
is increasingly alien to them because of the time elapsed in interstellar travel, and
where they find themselves dealing with an increasingly technologically sophisti-
cated enemy as they get closer and closer to the alien homeworld.
Alternately, you may need to incorporate relativistic effects as an element of an
otherwise typical sci-fi setting. For example, the PCs may find themselves trapped
on a primitive world and have to make a desperate subluminal bid to return to
FTL starfaring civilization. In such a case, the following table* may be helpful. It
maps speed as a fraction of the speed of light (c) to the Fate ladder, and lists the
elapsed times for those aboard the spacecraft and those back home as a function
of the distance in light-years that the ship travels.
Elapsed
Rating Speed Ship Time Elapsed Rest-Frame Time
Terrible (-2) .05c light-years × 20 light-years × 20
Poor (-1) .10c light-years × 10 light-years × 10
Mediocre (+0) .20c light-years × 5 light-years × 5
Average (+1) .50c light-years × 2 light-years × 2
Fair (+2) .60c light-years × 1.3 light-years × 1.67
Good (+3) .70c light-years × 1.0 light-years × 1.5
Great (+4) .80c light-years × .75 light-years × 1.25
Superb (+5) .90c light-years × .5 light-years × 1.10
Fantastic (+6) .95c light-years × .3 light-years × 1.05
Epic (+7) .99c light-years × .15 light-years × 1.01
Legendary (+8) .999c light-years × .05 light-years × 1.0
So, for example, an interstellar spacecraft capable of achieving nine-tenths of

the speed of light—traveling at Superb (+5) speed—travels for a hundred light-
years at its cruising velocity. Aboard the ship, it will seem as if about fifty years
have passed (“several decades” or “half a century” in Fate terms). Meanwhile, to
those who sent the ship on its way, it will seem as if 110 years have passed before
the ship covers those hundred light-years—over twice as long!
Add in life-extending technology like cryosleep or stasis fields for the travelers,
and you’ll find that each time an interstellar spacecraft arrives at a world it has
visited previously, radical changes may have taken place. In such a game, each
interstellar mission might be a significant or major milestone, changing both the
game universe and the characters.
* This table is an oversimplification, given that it does not worry about the time needed
for acceleration or deceleration. Also, for game purposes, relativistic effects don’t really
kick in until the ship passes .5c, even though physicists consider an object moving at 55
.15c or above to be experiencing noticeable relativistic effects.
Faster-than-Light (FTL) Travel
Faster-than-light travel is one implausibility that science fiction readers are quick
to forgive, since we need it to get us to where the action is. Of course, physicists
are hard at work trying to come up with ways to defy the laws of physics and
get us to the stars for real. Here are some typical science-fictional methods of
traveling faster than light.
HYPERSPACE
In hyperspace travel, a starship leaves normal space and enters a higher-order
space with different physical laws but which spatially corresponds one-to-one to
normal space. Once in hyperspace, a ship typically no longer needs its hyperdrive,
so it activates a separate propulsion source, which may or may not be its normal
space drives. Alternately, a ship may move within hyperspace along a vector
determined by its velocity and heading when it left normal space; arriving at the
desired location is then a matter of turning off the hyperspace field generator at
the correct moment.
If the spaceship’s sensors do not reach into normal space from hyperspace, it
may be risky to re-enter normal space close to a planetary surface or anywhere else
where normal matter may be present in sufficient quantity or density. Hyperspace
may be featureless or may contain obstacles and hazards that must be avoided or
evaded. It may even be occupied by alien entities, some of whom may be hostile
to human life.
To use hyperspace in a game, think about the following questions:
• What kinds of FTL speeds can a starship travel at in hyperspace?
• How does hyperspace affect human beings physically and psychologically?
Does it have the same effect on various alien beings?
• Are there obstacles or hazards in hyperspace? How can these be detected
or avoided?
• Can people in hyperspace see into normal space? Can people in normal
space see into hyperspace?
• Does time in hyperspace pass at the same rate as time in normal space?
• What happens if something leaves the ship while it is in hyperspace? Does it
pop back into normal space or remain lost in the void of hyperspace? More
generally, does it take energy to keep the ship in hyperspace, or does it take
energy to bring the ship out of hyperspace once it reaches its destination?
• How hard is it to successfully calculate a path through hyperspace to a
destination? How big is the normal margin of error?
• How large does the hyperspace field generator need to be, relative to the
starship? In other words, do starships need to be markedly larger than
interplanetary vessels? Do they need to be significantly smaller?
• How much additional fuel does the field generator require to activate or
operate?
• Can signals be sent through hyperspace?

EXAMPLE HYPERSPACE DRIVE: THE
WANG-CHAUDARY VORTEX DRIVE
The Wang-Chaudary Vortex Drive causes a ship to enter a dimension-
less space where it exists as a sort of standing wave. The activation
of the drive is accompanied by a Burst of Gravity Waves that can
be destructive to nearby objects, and nearby gravity wells add to
the complexity of the calculations needed to “plot a course” through
V-Space. Typically, the drive is only activated in interplanetary
space at the margins of a star system, where space-time is relatively
flat, so reaching a safe distance typically requires a Months-Long
Journey Out.
The Wang-Chaudary drive requires Enormous Energy Inputs and is
typically powered by a dedicated Antimatter Reactor. The reactor is
fueled with very expensive, specially made Antimatter Containment
Bottles manufactured at large, well-guarded industrial complexes and
available for purchase at starship docking facilities. (These bottles
make for great MacGuffins.)
Prior to entering V-Space, the navigator calculates the necessary
amplitude and frequency of the drive-wave; it takes more energy to
remain close to the point of origin, making the V-Drive useful only
at interstellar distances. Simultaneous translation, so that the ship
appears at its destination at the moment it disappears from its origin,
requires the lowest energy input, but navigation errors and engineer-
ing failures have been known to throw ships far into the past or future
at locations far from the intended destination.
Once in V-Space, the ship is essentially Coterminous with All
Time and Space. Passengers experience V-Space as a Brief Period
of Disembodied Sensory Deprivation sometimes accompanied by
Unpleasant Auditory and Visual Hallucinations.
While intergalactic travel is theoretically possible via the transdi-
mensional vortex, in practice the error margins at those ranges are too
great for reliable transit. A number of interesting and strange space-
going cultures are said to be the product of errant V-Drive colony
ships emerging in the distant past at the far reaches of the universe.

SPACE WARP
Warp drive involves folding or otherwise manipulating normal space so that the
ship can cross interstellar space as if the distances involved were much shorter
than normal. A warp ship never leaves normal space, but is moving at superlu-
minal speeds. Distortions at the interface between warpspace and normal space
affect the precision of these observations, and plotted courses must avoid signifi-
cant gravity fields.
Questions to address include the following:
• How powerful is the warp effect? What effective rates of travel does it
permit?
• Does the warp effect produce movement in and of itself, or must the ship
maneuver through the folded space using conventional means?
• What happens when two warp fields overlap?
• How much fuel does the warp engine require?
• Does the warp field work at full strength within a star system or close to
a planetary mass?

EXAMPLE WARP DRIVE: THE MILLENNIUM DRIVE
This drive enabled human beings to make use of a warp network created
and maintained by a multi-species galactic confederation. Ships make
warp transits when their warp engines interact with the warp fields cre-
ated by confederation waystations
waystations. A ship can create a space warp if there
is a waystation within a few light-years of the ship’s warp initiation point.
Warp sensors can detect ships moving in warp via quantum vibrations
that have not as of yet been harnessed for communication. When two
warp fields meet, they interfere with one another, sending both ships
off on a new vector in a combined or shared field. This means that in-
terception is possible, and even a failed interception can slow or strand
the target ship.
For this drive, the approximate travel time is a time increment based
on the travel distance, modified with steps of “half,” “one,” “a few,” or
“several,” as in Fate Core. So, a hop of 80 light-years takes either several
hours or about a day, while a 1,000 light-year trip takes about a week,
and a 35,000 light-year journey takes a few months.
Travel Distance Time Increment
10 light-years hours
100 light-years days
1,000 light-years weeks
10,000 light-years months
The warp drive is experimental for human beings, so using it requires

the crew of a human warpship to succeed at two actions: powering up
the warp drive using Engineering, and reaching the desired location using
Pilot. A crew member can use Astrogation to create an advantage for the
engineer or the pilot, or for both on a success with style.
Failing the Engineering action can mean damage to the ship due to
power surges and equipment overloads, control difficulties for the pilot,
or similar problems.
Failing the Pilot action can mean delays, navigation errors, or encoun-
ters with threats or hazards that a more skillful pilot might have avoided.
The pilot has only a limited ability to affect the course of the starship,
since it is in essence merely riding the space-time warp created when
the drive was activated near the warp beacon.
The difficulty of a warp depends on the distance being covered. Round
to the nearest power of ten. Anything above five light-years but below
about 55 light-years is Average (+1) difficulty. The difficulty increases by
one step per order of magnitude that the distance increases, so traveling
a distance of 1,000 light-years faces Good (+3) difficulty while traveling a
distance of 35,000 light-years faces Superb (+5) difficulty. If a waystation
is not sufficiently close, increase the difficulty or travel time.

WORMHOLES
Wormholes—which could be skinned as portals, stargates, or transit points—are
pathways that connect distant points in space-time through a higher dimension.
They can be thought of as a kind of hyperspace, but the endpoints of each hyper-
space path are predetermined. Ships may be able to just enter the wormhole
without special equipment, or a nearby control station may be needed to open
the wormhole.
Questions to address include the following:
• How are wormholes detected and accessed?
• Does each wormhole connect only two endpoints or several?
• Do wormholes allow travel in both directions or only in one, so that there
are “entrance” and “exit” terminals in any given system?
• Can a wormhole be located anywhere, or must it be near specific sorts of
places, such as near a black hole?
• How extensive is the wormhole network?
• Are wormholes artificial or natural? If artificial, who maintains the worm-
holes? How do they determine whom they permit to use a wormhole?
A WORMHOLE NETWORK
In the late 22nd century, high-energy physicists discovered a means
to create artificial wormholes by using a negative-mass fluid. In a col-
laborative multinational effort along the lines of the Manhattan Project,
a portal to the habitable exoplanet Proxima Centauri b was created in
orbit around Earth, and a race to colonize Terranova began. The influx
of resources through the wormhole from the planet and from a nearby
planetoid belt initiated a new age of prosperity on Earth. The Autorité du
Portail (AdP) was formed to build and maintain additional portals. Soon
a network extending from Earth to other stars began to form.
A wormhole station appears as a gigantic spherical lattice that glows
with the luminous blue energy of the negative-mass fluid that must be
continuously powered in order to hold open the throat of the wormhole.
The station creates a one-way link to a distant point that must be at least
several light-years away, though greater distance requires more negative-
mass fluid, to a practical maximum of perhaps a dozen light-years.
The AdP charges transit fees to ships using the portal network, using
the funds to maintain and extend the network, and wormhole stations
are generally regarded as neutral territory by the various factions that
seek to exploit the resources of the star systems opened up by the net-
work. The decision to open up a wormhole station is typically regarded
as an investment, with the AdP relying on entrepreneurial types willing
to pay for the construction of a return station out of the profits of their
colonization and settlement efforts.

Wolf 1061
61 Virginis
Proxima
Centauri b
Earth
HD85122
Gleise 832
TRAPPIST-1
55 Cancri

Modes of Travel
This section will describe the three basic modes of space travel: mission-based,
passage-based, and free or unrestricted travel. In your game, the modes available
to the characters may differ over time and between given characters, especially
if they get separated.
Mission-Based Travel
The GM decides where the PCs are going and provides them with the means of
getting there, whether that’s a one-way ticket on a space liner or a permanent
billet on a military vessel under specific orders. In general, the players won’t have
a lot of control over where their characters go, and they’ll expect that the GM
will send them to interesting places where opportunities abound and adventure
awaits!
This is a very common way of doing business, since it lets the GM focus on
creating details for the current mission. Examples from science fiction literature
and film are easy to come by, including a number of examples in this book:
• In Millennials (page 149), PCs are members of the Millennial Expedition
aboard the starship Millennium, whose destination is chosen by the NPC
expedition leaders, including the captain of the starship.
• In The High Frontiersmen (page 120), PCs work for a U.S. or Soviet space
agency, and so may be given missions by their respective high commands,
perhaps to crew an orbital battlestation or lunar base, or to board a rocket
capsule or space plane that will take them to their destination.
IT’S A PROFESSIONAL CAREER

There are many ways to bring a diverse group of PCs together for a
space-based campaign.
• Explorers: The PCs are scouts or surveyors, trained to travel to new

worlds and assess them from a scientific, commercial, or military
standpoint.
• Mercenaries: The PCs are members of a mercenary company, seeking
passage from one world to the next in order to hire on as soldiers for
the various political leaders and organizations that come into conflict.
• Salvage Crew: The PCs are space crew on a civilian ship, tasked to
seek out and recover damaged vessels and lost cargo.
• Space Fleet: The PCs are space crew on a military vessel, with duties
relating to its combat and patrol operations.
• Space Marines: The PCs are military personnel in the same outfit,
space-going soldiers trained to conduct boarding operations, cus-
toms inspections, and planetary raids.
• Space Merchants: The PCs are space crew on a merchant marine
ship, traveling from world to world in order to buy low and sell high.

Passage-Based Travel
The PCs have a menu of options about where to go, but they must secure passage
one way or another aboard a vessel headed to their desired destination. In some
settings, the PCs must actually design, finance, build, and launch a space-worthy
vessel themselves! This provides greater freedom of movement and choice to the
PCs while still allowing the GM to focus their prep on a relatively limited array
of destinations.
In simplest form, a PC can secure passage to a new planet on a ship already
headed that way by rolling, usually with Resources, against passive opposition
based on the distance to the destination and its relative popularity.
Pax Galactica (page 160) uses a zone-based system of spacelanes to represent
the various passenger and freight shipping lines that cover the galaxy.
THE LAUNCH AS DRAMA

It may be the case that the PCs have one or more destinations available but must
first engage in a contest (Fate Core, page 150) to design, produce, and manufac-
ture a spacecraft capable of reaching the destination they select. Similarly, while
in many games getting into space is simply a background event, involving as
little drama as a routine airplane take-off, your game could instead frame an
adventure as an initial attempt to reach orbit, or as a marooned situation. In such
games the launch of a spacecraft may be a dramatic point in the story, where one
or both of these story questions may be at stake:
• Did the engineers get their numbers right and build the thing properly?
• Does the pilot have what it takes to get the thing into the air and keep
it there?
The answer to the first question is provided by an Engineering action to over-
come the technical challenges of design and construction. The difficulty can be
set based on the mass of the launch vehicle, perhaps modified by the thrust of
the engine. Failure indicates catastrophic loss of the craft and its payload, unless
it is protected by some sort of abort-and-escape device, or may simply increase
the difficulty to the Pilot action needed to reach orbit. The difficulty of the Pilot
action depends on the engineer’s design skills and the amount of testing the launch
system has undergone. An untried, untested prototype by competent but untested
architects would justify Legendary (+8) difficulty, but rounds of testing, trials,
and evaluation might reduce the difficulty, albeit increasing the time required
to complete the system, as would a crack team of the brightest and best-trained
minds the rocket academy can produce.
Additionally, an experimental launch may subject passengers and crew to
stress or injury from the force of the acceleration, particularly if that force is not
smoothly and steadily applied. You can even consider the launch to be an attack
on its passengers, based on the relative thrust of the launch vehicle, defended
against with Physique; protective technology such as acceleration couches, safety
harnesses, and pressure suits will reduce the rating of the attack.

The group has created a setting loosely based on Yevgeny Zamyatin’s
novel We, in which a dystopian totalitarian society is focused on build-
ing a spaceship for the glorification of the State, mashed up with
Space: 1999 or Lost in Space. The PCs are all members of the project
team charged with constructing a vessel to be named the Benefactor,
and will be aboard when it finally launches. The available destinations
include a short trip to the sister planet that is supposedly home to a
rival civilization, or a longer journey to the anomalous cometary object
that is connected to ancient legends of the State’s origin.
The GM frames the effort to build the ship as a contest, requiring the
characters to succeed at a number of linked efforts. These include (a)
planning the space mission, (b) designing the ship, (c) requisitioning
and securing the necessary materials, equipment, and personnel, (d)
overseeing the construction, and (e) maintaining the security of the
operation against saboteurs, dissidents, and reactionaries. The rel-
evant setting-specific or setting-neutral skills for each task are Science
(Lore), Engineering (Crafts), Bureaucracy (Rapport), and Investigation,
respectively. Each step will only result in a success or success at a cost,
since the whole point of the game is to get the PCs out into space
aboard the Benefactor.
The planning process defines the parameters of the mission: a journey
to the benighted sister planet where the glory of the State is unknown,
the first step toward the greater goal of extending the State’s benign
influence throughout the Solar System. The Benefactor should deliver
a small team of the most loyal of the State’s minions (as citizens are
unironically known) to the sister planet, where they will report back and
then await further instructions from the State. The GM sets a difficulty
for the overcome action with Science at the destination commensurate
with the relatively modest ambitions of the planners.
Depending on the result of each step, the GM will have a number
of complications (in the form of invokable aspects) to use to cause
trouble on the journey, including potential rivals, antagonists, and
informers, design flaws and engineering problems, and bureaucratic
snafus and tangles.
When the PCs finish the Benefactor, the GM announces that they
have reached a minor milestone (Fate Core, page 256). The players
adjust their characters accordingly, and the journey begins!

Free Travel
In this case, players have access to a ship—or ships!—and can choose where they
want to go, within the limits of their spacefaring technology and space map.
They are on their own hook, and the galaxy (or at least the Solar System) is theirs
to explore! This gives players maximum freedom, but the GM must be ready
to improvise and to have procedures available for quickly generating coherent
and interesting setting details as well as exciting and meaningful challenges and
adventure opportunities should the players go off in unanticipated directions, as
they are wont to do. Free travel is very challenging for the GM but may also be
very satisfying for the players and rewarding to run.

Life in Space
Fate is a narration-intensive game, and enjoyable play relies
much on offering interesting and compelling challenges as
well as plausible and dramatic consequences, of which space
has plenty. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler: when in doubt,
send in the laws of physics—radiation, acceleration forces,
or explosive decompression. In a high-plausibility game, the
characters might also have to worry about microgravity, so
that the weight of a massive world becomes a bracing relief.
Radiation
For most high-plausibility games as well as medium-plau-
sibility near-future games, spaceship crews and passengers
will need to be shielded from radiation exposure. Sources of
radiation can include the following:
• Solar flares and similar activity
• Intense planetary radiation belts caused by powerful
magnetospheres, like Jupiter’s
• Oncoming cosmic particles that strike a rapidly
moving ship
• Any radiation caused by the ship’s own drives or
power plant
Ships without powerful electromagnetic or gravitic shield-
ing are almost certain to have radiation shelters into which
passengers and crew can retreat if the ships are designed to
operate in space for any extended period of time.
Direct exposure to radiation can be treated as an attack,
defended against with Physique. Severe exposure can be debili-
tating, with effects such as skin burns, internal bleeding, and
organ damage. Getting to shelter before receiving a lethal
or debilitating radiation dose can be a roll with Athletics,
Spacehand, or other appropriate crew skill, against a difficulty
based on the severity of the storm and the distance to the
shelter, which will probably be located at the core or center
of the ship, behind layers of shielding.
Low-level radiation hazards can be treated as challenges, in
which the characters must note dangerous dosimeter readings
and radiation monitor levels (Notice), identify the precise
source of the hazard (Investigate or Science), and address the
problem (Engineering to create shielding or a patch, Science
to provide medical treatment, etc.).
Radiation poisoning might be treated with “regular treat-
ments in hyper sleep,” “nanobot radiation sweepers,” “pre-jump
injections,” and so forth.

Exposure to Vacuum
A spaceship hull might lose its integrity—becoming holed or suffering a hull
breach—due to hostile fire, impact with one or more micrometeoroids, or
structural weakness. Detecting and patching a slow leak is a challenge involv-
ing Notice and Engineering; rapid or explosive decompression could require
Athletics to dodge spontaneous projectiles and Engineering to patch or otherwise
remedy the defect. Sealing up one’s spacesuit in time with Engineering may
prevent serious internal injuries. Injury from collisions with unsecured objects
or bodies is another potential danger.
The loss of integrity to a spacecraft’s hull can result in unplanned, uncon-
trolled decompression as the ship’s air rushes or bleeds out into the vacuum. A
rapid decrease in air pressure can cause lung damage or other pressure trauma
(“barotrauma”) to the intestines, inner ear, and other internal cavities as well
as decompression sickness, caused by dissolved gases forming bubbles inside
the body. A pressure drop to vacuum can also swell the body to about twice its
normal volume, unless it’s protected by a pressure suit. Note that holding one’s
breath during an episode of rapid decompression is a big mistake, as it could
cause a lung to rupture.
However, the most serious danger is lack of oxygen (“hypoxia”) causing loss of
consciousness in about ten seconds and death after about a minute. Being tossed
out an airlock without a spacesuit can have this effect.
Acceleration
In the absence of artificial gravity or other super-science, a spacecraft’s crew and
passengers feel its acceleration as a force pushing them back against the direction
of travel. This acceleration can be measured in gees or “gravities.” A steady one-
gee acceleration is indistinguishable from the force of gravity at Earth’s surface.
Rapid or erratic acceleration at high gees produces g-forces that put stress on a
human body, causing temporary vision loss (partial or complete), loss of con-
sciousness, permanent blindness, and even death. Passengers and crew may need
to be strapped down or otherwise secured in “acceleration couches” or need to
wear pressure suits that force blood back into the extremities.
More advanced gravity-affecting “inertial dampeners” or similar technologies
may obviate the need for other forms of acceleration protection, but such tech
is low plausibility. More plausible are acceleration tanks filled with some sort of
oxygenated foam that surrounds the body and penetrates internal cavities.
To withstand high acceleration, a character must defend with Physique against
a difficulty determined by the severity or suddenness of the acceleration, which
can be established by the result of a Pilot roll or the ship engines’ relevant skill,
whether Thrust, Drives, or Delta-vee. An astronaut’s or test pilot’s high-gee train-
ing can be represented as a Physique stunt. In general, protective technologies
will account for normal acceleration; only call for rolls if complications emerge
from other actions or as part of a challenge.

Microgravity
Microgravity produces long-term effects such as muscle atrophy and bone-den-
sity loss. Such effects can be mitigated by a program of strenuous exercise, weight
belts, and/or magnetic or high-traction shoes. Maintaining the appropriate regi-
men requires an Athletics roll against a difficulty determined by the duration
of the space journey, with a few weeks being Average (+1). A tie causes a mild
consequence, while failure causes a moderate or severe consequence related to
bodily weakness.
Some spaceships provide artificial gravity by rotating around a long axis to
produce a Coriolis force. This force also affects the apparent trajectories of bal-
listic objects, so that they seem to curve rather than travel in a straight line. This
increases the difficulty of attacking with thrown weapons and projectiles, to the
tune of an extra step of difficulty per zone of distance to the target; an Athletics
or Shoot stunt can be used to offset the difficulty increase from the Coriolis force.

Ship Ownership
If players want their characters to own a ship, you can handle this in one of
three ways.
1. Access to the ship is a story detail, probably defined by a situation aspect.
PCs may be on a ship together, but who owns it and who pays to keep it running
are not part of their identities. They could even lose access to the ship perma-
nently. This method emphasizes how the characters get along in the universe.
In Pax Galactica, the characters are citizens of the star-spanning

Principate. They might begin the game together as passengers and
crew aboard a space yacht, given to the highest-ranking citizen aboard,
at least temporarily, as a Gift from the Emperor. When space pirates
hijack the ship and take everyone onboard as hostages, it’s a case of
easy come, easy go.
2. Access to the ship is implied by a character aspect. Hotshot Fighter

Pilot, for example, establishes facts about the universe (there are fighters), tells
us something about this character (they’re a hotshot), and tells the GM that the
player wants this fact to be part of the fate point economy—they want to often
be more effective when piloting a fighter, but also more likely to get in trouble
for being a spaceborne showoff. This method emphasizes how a character inter-
acts with a type of ship.
In The High Frontiersmen, the characters belong to either a U.S. or

Soviet space agency, and so space-planes, rocketships, and shuttlec-
raft are available to characters depending on their assigned duties. An
Orbital Bomber Pilot might be assigned to an orbital bombing sta-
tion and called upon to perform orbital bombing missions—potentially
suicidal ones!—with atomic weapons.
3. Access to the ship is an extra. One or more players invests some of their
character resources—whether stunts or refresh, skill ranks, or aspects—into a
ship, making it part of the character, and any separation of character from the
ship is temporary. This method emphasizes the character’s relationship with a
specific ship as a part of their identity.
In Mass Drivers, the characters are all members of the same asteroid
freighter crew, and all have aspects describing their relationships with
each other, with the ship itself, or both. This gives them access to and
communal control of the freighter that they define together. The focus
of the game stays on the ship, so if a character leaves the crew, gener-
ally their player will create a new crew member rather than following
the original character. If the ship is damaged or destroyed, how it is
fixed or replaced becomes a new story problem for the characters
to solve.

Statting Spaceships
Once you have a ship, what do you do with it? The answer will determine the
complexity of rules you will need to represent it. Does anything even happen on
the ship? If the ship is mainly used to transfer the characters from one adventure
location to the next, then it may not need rules: “We hop in our corsair and take
it to the base in the Outer Planets.” Many games work fine with no rules for
the ship—each player imagines the bridge as they want; the GM can ask play-
ers where their characters are and what they are doing, but there is no need for
shipboard actions to be spelled out.
If there’s a boarding party, though, you’ll probably need to make a map of
zones, bulkheads, and important features. Likewise, if there’s a chance for combat
between ships, you might need to model shields, shipboard weapons, and means
of maneuvering. The desired level of abstraction exists in tension with the need
for rules.
There are many ways a ship can be used, but these are the most important:
• To Go Places: PCs need to get from one adventure location to another.
The big rules questions here relate to how far and how fast travelers can
go, and how much control they have over when they leave and where they
end up. No rules may be needed, and there might not even be scenes on
the ship.
• To Get Into a Fight: Space combat is a major element in much of science
fiction, particularly the sort of action-packed, cinematic sci-fi that Fate
is well suited to emulate. Important rules questions include the details
of attack, defense, and maneuver, as well as the specifics of detection,
electronic warfare, and heat accumulation. Statistics for the ship may be
needed, as the ship becomes a kind of character that the PCs control. The
ship may also have a map of its interior zones.
• To Work Hard and Live Dangerously: PCs will want to use their skills
to keep the ship on course and in good repair. In space the most obvious
environmental dangers are microgravity, vacuum, and radiation. For char-
acters who live or work in space, these and other threats are occupational
hazards. The relevant rules questions consider how to represent these
features or, more precisely, how to represent the technology that protects
characters from them. A map of the ship will be needed, with aspects that
affect some zones and not others. The ship may also have detailed statistics
that supplement or replace character abilities.
The way your spaceship is represented may change as circumstances in the
campaign change, but you may want to lay out a standard procedure. This section
gives some options, many of which can be combined as desired.
You’ll find detailed examples of different ways to stat spaceships in Mass Drivers
(page 133) and Pax Galactica (page 160).

As a Setting Element or Aspect
The presence of the ship in the scene enables particular skills to be used, such as
Pilot, Gunnery, or Engineering—see the discussion of skills (page 25). The
spaceship may be more-or-less completely defined by one aspect, much like a
high concept, consisting of at least a ship type or model and, optionally, the ship’s
name or other designation. Some examples include Free Trader Beowulf,
Federation Starship Enterprise, and Incom T-65 X-Wing Fighter.
The ship’s capabilities are otherwise defined in fictional terms—for example, “A
free trader is an interstellar freighter capable of carrying about a dozen passengers
and several hundred tons of cargo through hyperspace on weeks-long journeys
between ports of call, with limited defensive capabilities other than flight.” This
may be all the information needed to run such a starship, at least to begin.
In play, having access to or control of the spaceship aspect allows players to use
their characters’ skills to do things using the ship. Thus, a Starfighter Pilot
needs access to a Fighter Craft to be able to go dogfight. Even if the charac-
ter’s Pilot skill is Mediocre (+0) or lower, these two aspects allow the character to
launch and attempt to intercept incoming bogies.
Note that “having a spaceship aspect” doesn’t mean it has to be one of the
character’s aspects; it may simply be a matter of creating an advantage during
play, such as “I go in and browbeat the flight officer to put me in a Class-A
Starfighter instead of one of the beat-up old space-wrecks everyone else is
flying,” to which the only appropriate response from the GM is “Roll Provoke.”
This method works well when the capabilities of various spacecraft are fairly
well established, as when trying to emulate a particular fictional setting or genre,
or if the game doesn’t focus on the details of specific ships.
As Aspects
Extending the previous idea, a spaceship may be defined as a bundle of aspects,
including a high concept, trouble, and some other aspects that often modify
default assumptions about what spacecraft are capable of. Aspects like Heavily
Armed, Concealed Smuggling Compartments, and Bad Reputation
in Alpha Sector help to distinguish one ship from another and affect its
capabilities.
Don’t make all of a ship’s aspects beneficial, though. Aspects that reflect the limi-
tations of a ship will provide entertaining complications—for example, Lightly
Armored, Behemoth, or Held Together with Duct Tape.
This method works well when the capabilities of specific types of spaceships
have not been fully established in the fiction and when characters have a suite of
skills for operating spaceships, such as Pilot, Engineering, and Gunnery.

As Skills
Spaceships may have skills that are used instead of or in concert with character
skills to accomplish actions in space. This method works well when the different
capabilities of different ships are interesting and relevant, and is a good way to
represent differences in scale between characters and spacecraft, particularly by
giving different names to the character and ship skills. There are many different
ways to implement this, as follows.
SHIP SKILLS REPLACE CHARACTER SKILLS

A character with an aspect representing the right training or experience can use
a relevant ship skill.
In a setting where specialized training unlocks the capabilities of supe-

rior technology, a character must have the aspect Galactic Weaponeer
to fire the ship’s Superb (+5) Space Weapons rather than using her
own Fair (+2) Shoot or Good (+3) Engineering.
SHIP SKILLS MODIFY CHARACTER SKILLS

Ship and character skills interact, such that a character with the appropriate
character skill can use the corresponding ship skill, getting a +1 bonus if her
skill is greater than the ship’s, and a -1 penalty if hers is less than the ship’s. Ties
have no effect.
The interstellar bounty hunter Xandra Hellas has Great (+4) Shoot but is
aboard the Pleasant Idyll, an aristocrat’s yacht with Average (+1) Laser
Cannons. She may fire the ship’s weapons as a Good (+3) attack. In
other words, since the ship’s skill is lower than the gunner’s it reduces
the gunner’s rating by one. If the ship’s skill had been higher than the
gunner’s, the attack would have been Superb (+5).
CHARACTER SKILLS MODIFY SHIP SKILLS

As above, except the base skill is the ship’s and the modifier is the character’s. Ties
have no effect.
In this case, Xandra could fire the Pleasant Idyll’s weapons as a

Fair (+2) attack. In other words, since the gunner’s skill is higher than
the ship’s, it increases the ship’s rating by one. If the gunner’s skill had
been lower than the ship’s, the attack would have been Mediocre (+0).

CHARACTER SKILLS DETERMINE SUCCESS, SHIP SKILLS DETERMINE EFFECT
A character with the appropriate skill takes action, but upon success the effective-
ness of that action is determined by rolling with the relevant ship skill. If the
character succeeds with style, add a +2 bonus to the roll for effect.
The Pleasant Idyll is being attacked by pirates intent on boarding.

As the pirate ship closes in, Xandra fires the yacht’s weapons using
Shoot against the pirate helmswoman’s Pilot. If successful, the Pleasant
Idyll’s Average (+1) Laser Cannons must then pierce the pirate ship’s
Fair (+2) Shields.
This method increases the time it takes to resolve an action, and so should be
considered carefully before being implemented. Some groups will regard this
method as a step backward from Fate’s usual, more streamlined way of doing
things, but it does highlight the tension or gap between the skill of an individual
and the quality of their tools.
As Approaches
If spacecraft are differentiated by how they do things, rather than what they do,
then you may want to give them approaches, as in Fate Accelerated, rather than
skills.
A G alactic D readnought has approaches of Fair (+2) Careful,

Mediocre (+0) Clever, Average (+1) Flashy, Good (+3) Forceful,
Mediocre (+0) Quick, and Poor (-1) Sneaky, while an Imperial Courier
Ship has Mediocre (+0) Careful, Average (+1) Clever, Mediocre (+0)
Flashy, Poor (-1) Forceful, Good (+3) Quick, and Fair (+2) Sneaky.
Using approaches also differentiates the scales of the ship and characters.
Character skills would get used at a small, personal scale, while ship approaches
would get used at a large, space scale.
You might even describe the capabilities of ships in the setting by renaming the
ship approaches, such as Aggressive, Fast, Nimble, Robust, Roomy, and Versatile.

As Stunts with Refresh
Spacecraft may be given one to three free stunts, which characters aboard can
access as extras, given appropriate permission, as well as a refresh rating that may
be spent to purchase more stunts.
The characters are set aboard a space cruiser patrolling the edge of
known space. The game uses a star map of systems in the cruiser’s
patrol area, and the GM creates a new system map for each star system
the cruiser enters, comprising planetary surface zones, orbital zones
around each planet, and deep space zones reflecting the distance
between planets.
The space cruiser has three free stunts and a refresh of 3. Characters
on the ship can use their skills to plot its course (Astrogation), operate
its controls (Pilot), fire its weapons (Gunnery), operate its sensors and
communicators (Science), and maintain its systems (Engineering). The
players decide to give it the stunt Point Defense Lasers (use Gunnery
in place of Pilot to defend against missiles, torpedoes, or boarding craft
in the same zone) and Sensor Pod (+2 to Science when using the ship’s
instruments to create an advantage on the target of a sensor scan).
The ship’s subordinate spacecraft are also represented as stunts.
For example, the Space Fighter stunt allows a character to use Pilot
to move away from the ship on the system map (as if using Athletics
on a surface map) and attack targets in the same zone, but the char-
acter can’t land on or take off from planetary surfaces. In contrast, the
Landing Craft stunt allows a character to move through space, land on
a planet, and take off again using Pilot, but it grants no attack capability.
With four stunts, the space cruiser reduces its refresh to 2. Any fate
points in the ship’s pool can be spent by the ship’s captain to aid any
crew member’s action.
As a Deckplan
The spaceship can have a blueprint, showing the zones through which characters
move in order to access the ship’s capabilities, which may be defined as aspects,
skills, approaches, stunts, or some combination.

SPACE COMBAT
This section provides a number of options for handling play when the shooting
starts. To begin, we will look at a standard approach to space combat.
If all the PCs are crew and passengers aboard the same ship, space combat
needn’t be too different from any other Fate conflict. The presence of an enemy
ship, squadron, or flotilla can add urgency to PC efforts to complete their own
repairs, conclude negotiations, or perform some other vital task. Ideally, while
some crew members are taking action to deal with enemy forces, others will be
performing other important actions—even if only trying to hold it together in the
face of the prospect of imminent death by vacuum exposure (that is, defending
with Will to avoid taking mental stress).
The crew of the freelance exploration vessel Ganymede with a Laser

Beam is returning from a rescue mission in deep space, headed for
the wormhole station that connects to Earth, in orbit around planet
Terranova. The crew consists of three characters: the ship’s pilot, its
gunner, and its engineer.
The GM draws a zone map with Terranova, its orbital space and the
portal within it, a zone of space near the planet, and a deep space
zone. She places a marker for the Ganymede in the deep space zone.
Terranova
Orbit
Portal to L-5
TERRANOVA
Approaching
Terranova
Deep
Space
Space Combat + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 75

The GM tells the players that they have detected a burst of grav-
ity waves from the direction of Terranova, consistent with wormhole
egress, and she places a marker for the bogey in the Terranova orbit
zone. She knows that this is a mercenary corvette hired by a foreign
government that wants the scientist’s secrets for itself, crewed by a
steely nerved captain, a jaunty pilot, a pair of crack gunners, and a
team of space marines.
The corvette is equipped with high-speed atomic missiles that can
attack targets in the same or an adjacent zone with Gunnery versus
Pilot, and gets +2 to attack targets in the same zone. It also has close-
range plasma guns for point defense—they can only attack targets that
have an aspect indicating their very close range to the corvette—that
attack with Gunnery versus Engineering, reflecting that the target is
defending with its structural resilience. The Ganymede, in contrast,
only has a repurposed mining laser, capable of attacking targets in
the same zone, using Gunnery versus Pilot.
The Ganymede is trying to make its way toward the portal and return
to Earth with their rescued scientist, who apparently knows the loca-
tion of an alien wormhole station! The bogey’s intentions are unknown.
The GM tells the players to roll Spacehand to determine turn order.
The crew of the Ganymede decides to zoom straight for the portal.
The GM tells the pilot that she needs a Great (+4) result with Pilot to
cross the zones between deep space and the portal, and then another
Terranova
Orbit
Portal to L-5
TERRANOVA
Approaching
Terranova
Deep
Space
76 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Space Combat

Great (+4) result to avoid plowing into the portal at high speed while
decelerating for portal insertion, which will require a Fair (+2) result
with Pilot. At that point, they will have escaped. During their turns,
the other PCs aboard the ship could take action to scan, target, or
analyze the corvette; shoot at the enemy; or do whatever else seems
appropriate. However, the crew of the corvette will try to intercept
the Ganymede, its gunners firing their missiles as the pilot pours on
the speed to close to plasma-gun range. The captain has orders to
disable the PCs’ ship, send the space marines to board it, and capture
the scientist. Each ship has zero or more stress boxes and a set of
consequences. When a ship is taken out, the opponent gets to say
what happens to it.
Step 1: Set the Scene

Sketch out a zone map representing the volume of space in which the conflict
is taking place. Typically, this will be a map of empty space with planets and
moons as well as important artificial constructs—space stations and stargates,
for example—arranged into zones to reflect their relative distances. Add aspects
to zones, as needed.
• At high plausibility, most zones will be deep space, but some will repre-
sent gravity wells—planets and other astronomical objects with enough
mass to affect the performance of ships. Such objects can also be sources
of intense radiation or magnetism hazardous to spacecraft or their crew.
Gravity wells permit spacecraft to make slingshot or gravity-assist maneu-
vers to accelerate, decelerate, or change course, and they allow craft with
high-thrust rockets to accelerate more efficiently via the Oberth effect by
firing their rockets while diving into a gravity well. Planets with atmosphere
allow for deceleration by aerobraking.
• At medium plausibility, add nebula and clouds of space dust that obscure
visibility, solar flares that pose radiation hazards, and rogue neutron stars
and black holes to interfere with maneuvering, for example.
• At low plausibility, you can add jam-packed asteroid belts, psychic nebula,
deep space astro-monsters, and intense but free-floating radiation clouds,
to make things interesting.
Then, note the ranges at which sensors will reliably detect vessels and objects
on the map. Typically, everything on the map will be basically visible to others,
although ships may try to minimize their energy radiation (with Engineering)
or blend in with a Cluttered Sensor Background (using Pilot) in order
to evade an opponent’s attention. By the same token, “brighter” objects—those
radiating more energy—are easier to detect than darker ones. All else being
equal, objects in a distant zone may be harder to detect and identify than those
in adjacent zones, which are in turn more difficult than those in the same zone,
depending on the acuity of a ship’s sensor equipment.

Step 2: Determine Turn Order
You can determine turn order with Notice or a skill more related to space such
as Science, Astrogation, or Pilot. Alternately, you can use Command to reflect
the efficiency of a well-run ship, or if the ship itself has skills, you can use its
Sensors or Scanners.
Step 3: Establish Movement Rules

The movement rules you choose will help establish the feel of space combat in
your setting. We’ve included a few options here.
Standard Movement
In Fate Core, participants in a conflict can move one zone per exchange for free,
and can move multiple zones by taking an overcome action using an appropri-
ate skill. At low or medium plausibility, this could be Pilot (“Pedal to the metal,
commander!”), Engineering (“Get us of here, Scotty!”), or Astrogation (“Align
to escape vector!”). If the ship has skills, its Drive or Thrust may be appropriate.
Set the effect level for movement however seems appropriate. For example,
the ship may be able to move one extra zone with a Mediocre (+0) result, with
another extra zone for every two shifts above that—i.e., two zones at Fair (+2),
three zones at Great (+4), and four zones at Fantastic (+6).
Other special or complicated maneuvers like entering orbit around a planet
or docking with a space station may also require the pilot to spend the exchange
taking an overcome action. A ship in such a maneuver can’t take evasive action
against enemy fire, and so defends with Mediocre (+0) Pilot.
Burn Movement
In burn movement, zones represent relatively stable “orbits” which ships occupy.
In other words, occupying a zone means that the ship is moving along a par-
ticular path or course that, because of inertia, requires no further expenditure
of energy. This could be an orbit around a planet or other celestial body, or a
transfer orbit that will eventually intersect with the trajectory of another ship,
planet, or satellite. Such an orbit can be represented with an aspect reflecting the
time required for the spacecraft to reach its destination on its current trajectory.
The deep-space freighter Alfresco is in a zone representing interplan-

etary space in the Solar System. Because of its crew’s previous actions,
it has the aspect Six Months to Mars! Without further action by the
crew, after six months the Alfresco will reach Mars and can be placed
in a Mars orbit zone.

Moving from one zone to another implies that a ship is using energy to change
its orbit. To move their ship at all, a crew must expend delta-vee via a burn, a
Pilot roll that uses some of its available thrust to change its orbit. On a success,
the ship moves to an adjacent zone. Failure means the ship may be Off Course
or Going Too Fast, suffer damage or equipment failure, or get itself in some
other danger. A ship with limited delta-vee may be given some fuel stress or other
currency to spend on a minor cost, or the ship may be given Fuel Reserves
Low or Bingo Fuel as a major cost.
The fusion-powered torch ship Hermes Zephyr is in orbit around Earth

when it gets orders to intercept the Alfresco, already in deep space
headed for Mars, two months into its six-month journey. This is well
within the capabilities of the Hermes Zephyr, with its massive delta-vee.
Noting that a high-thrust, high-specific-impulse spacecraft can cover
interplanetary distances in several weeks (see the Travel Time table on
page 54), and that the Alfresco is taking several months to cover
the same approximate distance, the GM sets an Average (+1) difficulty
to break out of Earth’s orbit and head into deep space after the slow
boat to Mars.
On a success, the Hermes Zephyr moves from Earth orbit into deep
space and will rendezvous with the Alfresco after several weeks. On
a success with style, the time is only a few weeks. A minor cost might
mean the ship takes longer or must make another, more difficult burn
to match velocities with the Alfresco. A major cost might be damage
to the ship’s drives or an expenditure of its fuel reserves.
The stronger the gravity well in which the ship’s orbit is located, the more dif-
ficult the burn, but some stunts or aspects of the ship (Booster Stage) or crew
(Aerobraking Expert) can make some maneuvers easier.
If ships have skills, the ship’s Thrust or Drive can be opposed by its own Mass
or Hull rating, and situation aspects such as gravity can be invoked as appropriate.
Other special maneuvers require overcome actions, as in standard movement.
Mixed Movement
In mixed movement, some ships use burn movement while others use standard
movement depending on their ship’s technology. For example, ships with high
thrust would use standard movement while ships with low thrust would use burn
movement. Ships with high specific impulse would not generally become Out
of Fuel, while those with low specific impulse most definitely would.

Step 4: Note Weapon Ranges
and Attack and Defense Skills
These rules depend much on the sorts of technology present in the setting.
Weapons may have a maximum range in zones, or may face greater difficulty
when attacking more distant targets. You can also differentiate weapons by how
they are used. For example, a hunter drone may attack with Pilot, while a laser
cannon might attack with Gunnery. Similarly, the target of the hunter drone may
defend with Pilot, while the target of the laser cannon may use Engineering to
reflect the ship’s countermeasures and its resilience to damage.
Ships may have stunts representing improved technical capabilities, and
characters may have stunts reflecting their skills and experience. Additionally,
technological differences between ships from different cultures may be reflected
in reduced difficulties for ships from the more technically advanced civilization
(page 41).
In space combat, the costs of failure may include the following:
• Physical stress or consequences for the crew, representing injuries suffered
on the job.
• Mental stress or consequences for the crew, representing loss of nerve or
morale.
• Physical stress or consequences for the ship or its components, representing
damage or equipment failure.
• Adverse situation aspects representing strain on resources and equipment,
such as Low Fuel or Overheated Power Plant, or representing
reflecting tactical disadvantages, such as Patterns in Evasion Course
or Showing Up Bright on Enemy Scopes.

Vector Diagrams
If zone maps don’t give you the feeling of satisfying space combat, you may
want to sketch out vector diagrams. This approach is more complicated than
standard movement—you will have to be aware of the various ranges between
opposing ships as well as their relative speeds and bearings—but it can be a
satisfying alternative.
A vector diagram represents each ship as a vector—an arrow whose length
reflects the ship’s speed, pointed in the direction of the ship’s heading, positioned
according to the ranges between the ship and the others.
Over the course of one or more exchanges, the ships will be moved along the
length of their vectors; every so often, the GM or a player may extend, shorten,
or redraw vectors to reflect changes caused by space maneuvers.
During play, the GM can set difficulties for tasks like tracking an enemy ship
with the ship’s lasers, computing a firing solution for the ship’s missiles, or match-
ing course with a bogie by identifying salient factors such as range, relative velocity,
and perhaps bearing. Typically, firing at or maneuvering against a ship on a paral-
lel course moving at the same velocity without acceleration faces Average (+1)
difficulty; things get harder from there.
Terranova
Orbit
Portal to L-5
TERRANOVA
High-Speed Intercept Course

Approaching
Terranova
Cruising to Terranova Wormhole Station
Deep
G Space

Range
• Contact: The target ship’s hull is in contact with yours. Most ship’s weap-
ons will not bear on another ship in contact, particularly if the target is
much smaller.
• Proximity: The target ship is sufficiently close to permit physical exchange
via spacewalk or similar means. Point-defense weapons (e.g., guns) can be
used. Ship’s ordnance (missiles and torpedoes) will not have a chance to
arm, but drones may be launched normally.
• Close: The target ship is within visual range, and normal beam weapons
are in optimal range. High-powered spinal mounts (i.e., large beam weap-
ons mounted coaxially along the ship’s length) may not be able to bear
on the target. Firing solutions for missiles and torpedoes are easily found.
• Medium: Sensors can easily distinguish features of the target ship.
Torpedoes and missiles may fire.
• Long: Sensors can distinguish most of the important features of a target
ship. Normal beam weapons are at a disadvantage due to attenuation.
Firing solutions for missiles may be found, but slow-moving torpedoes
will have a more difficult time hitting their targets.
• Very Long: Sensors can only identify the most prominent features of
the target ship.
• Extreme: The target ship can be detected only as a point source, and is
out of range of the ship’s weapons.
Velocity and Relative Speed

• Accelerating: The target ship is increasing its speed.
• Coasting: The target ship is neither gaining nor losing speed.
• Decelerating: The target ship is reducing its speed.
• Faster: The target is moving more rapidly than your ship.
• Matched: The target is moving at the same speed as your ship.
• Slower: The target is moving more slowly than your ship.
If you’re dealing with multiple ships, you can assign absolute velocities using the
ladder, so a high-speed interceptor may be moving at Fantastic (+6) speed, while
a bulk transport on a low-fuel transfer orbit may only be moving at Mediocre
(+0) speed. Ships with high thrust can change speed faster than ships with low
thrust; ships with high specific impulse can accelerate and decelerate over longer
periods of time than ships with low specific impulse.

Bearing
• Converging Course: The target’s vector will converge on your ship’s
course.
• Intercept Course: A converging course in which the two ships will come
within range of each other at matching velocities and parallel courses.
• Collision Course: A converging course in which the two ships will come
into proximity or make contact without matching velocities.
• Overtaking: The target’s vector will come upon your ship’s course from
the stern.
• Oncoming: The target’s vector will come toward your ship’s course from
the bow.
• Parallel Course: The target’s vector will maintain its distance from your
ship’s course.
• Diverging Course: The target’s vector will diverge from your ship’s course.
• Escape Course: The target is ahead of your ship along the same vector
and moving away.
Apparent Size
More massive or radiant targets will be easier to detect and target than low-mass
or low-energy targets. Warships in particular will be prepared to rig for silent
running, with drives powered down and energy usage minimized so as to be less
noticeable to opponents. Conversely, drones fitted with transmitters at different
frequencies may be used as decoys, fooling opponents outside of visual range.

Range Zones
With many ships in space combat, a useful, simple compromise between zones
and vector diagrams is range zones. First, create a zone map consisting of eight to
ten bands of space, and place markers representing ships and other space objects
in them. At the beginning of each exchange, a pilot in each formation rolls Pilot.
Beginning with the lowest roll, each pilot chooses to have their ship stand still,
to move one zone in either direction, or to move a single other ship that has not
yet moved. If you are using phased combat, this takes place in the piloting phase
(page 85), replacing the Maneuver option.
At the end of this process, ships in the same zone are in visual range and capable
of using extremely short-range weapons, like tractor beams or point-defense guns.
Ships one or two zones away can fire beam weapons at each other, and ships
three or four zones away can fire missiles or torpedoes at each other. A ship that
is seven or more zones away from any other ship, or which moves off the edge of
the map, has broken off combat.
Resolve beam attacks and other short-range weapons immediately. Resolve
missile attacks immediately if the target is within two zones, at the start of the
next exchange if within four, and at the start of the second next exchange if within
six. Torpedoes are placed on the map as if they were ships, and they move using
the gunner’s Shoot skill on their roll. Resolve a torpedo attack when it enters the
same zone as its target.
In some settings, the acuity of ship sensors will affect its ability to acquire
targets beyond a certain range. A reasonable rule of thumb is to use twice the
ship’s Sensors rating as its range in zones, so Average (+1) Sensors detect reliably
out two zones, Fair (+2) Sensors out to four, Good (+3) out to six, and so forth.
Scale modifiers (see below) may affect detection range, and attempts at stealth or
misdirection can be resolved as opposed rolls (e.g., Pilot versus Notice). Otherwise,
just assume that the maximum detection range equals the maximum engagement
range (six bands).

Phased Space Combat
If you need to further regulate space combat, you can break up each exchange
into ordered phases, with each character taking a specific action during the
appropriate phase. Characters may act in multiple phases, but a character who
takes multiple actions during an exchange rolls for subsequent actions against +1
difficulty per previous action taken.
These rules make some assumptions about the nature of space weaponry, though
you may wish to change these assumptions to reflect the armaments of your setting.
Additionally, ships and characters may have stunts that affect their performance,
as always.
If there is any question about who acts first within a phase, the character with
the highest relevant skill has initiative and decides whether to go first or wait to
see what happens when someone else acts.
Phase 1: Piloting Phase

During this phase, pilots control their ships and drone operators may pilot their
drones.
EVADE
A pilot may defend with Pilot against incoming attacks. A ship that doesn’t evade
will have Mediocre (+0) defense against attacks, modified as necessary by range
and speed, until the next piloting phase. Use the pilot’s evade result as the ship’s
defense against beam and missile attacks as well as opposing maneuvers.
MANEUVER
A pilot may use Pilot versus a defending pilot to change its range and bearing
to the target, creating advantages or overcoming disadvantages as appropriate. A
ship that doesn’t evade will have Mediocre (+0) defense against opposing maneu-
vers, modified as necessary by range and speed, until the next piloting phase.
ORDNANCE MOVEMENT
Missiles, torpedoes, and drones that have been launched move toward their tar-
gets. Ordnance that reaches its target during this phase detonates; the target
defends with its pilot’s evade result.
• Missiles are fast-moving, self-guided, single-use munitions.
• Torpedoes are slow-moving, self-guided, single-use munitions.
• Drones are remote-operated small craft that may be armed with short-
range point-defense weaponry, equipped with an explosive payload to
self-destruct, or maneuvered toward a target to relay close-range sensor data
to the controlling ship. They are recoverable if not detonated or destroyed.

Phase 2: Gunnery Phase
Crew at weapons controls may take the following actions against detected targets.
WEAPONS FIRE
Crew at beam weapons and gun controls may attack any detected targets in
range, rolling Shoot (Gunnery) against the target’s evade result for this exchange.
Beam and gun attacks are resolved immediately.
ORDNANCE LAUNCH
Crew at ordnance controls may launch missiles, torpedoes, and drones. This is
usually a Shoot (Gunnery), Lore (Science or Astrogation), or Drive (Pilot) roll
against Mediocre (+0) difficulty. Resolve the attack when the ordnance arrives at
the target during ordnance movement in the piloting phase.
Phase 3: Encounter and Detection Phase
SCANNING
Crew at scanning controls may use Lore (Science), Notice, or Investigate to
examine the ship’s sensor readings and interpret the data they provide, as well as
to analyze the behavior of detected threats and to identify potential patterns or
weaknesses. The difficulty of these overcome and create advantage actions can
be set by the GM, depending on the nature of the potential threat, with larger,
closer, and more radiant targets easier to spot and analyze than smaller, farther,
and less radiant targets. Failure to detect opponents may create advantageous
circumstances for the opposition, letting them act with relative impunity during
the next exchange.
Crew with access to electronic countermeasures may use Lore (Science) or Crafts
(Engineering) to spoof or jam a target’s sensors, creating advantages.
Crew at weapons controls may use Shoot to create advantages related to aiming
or detecting patterns in enemy flight paths.
• Ships are either in range or out of range of each other’s weapons, and one
overcome action versus an opposing Pilot roll is sufficient to break off an
encounter.
• Ships may be at boarding range (which presumes matched velocities),
beam range, missile range, or out of range. Under near-future conditions,
boarding range is only possible when a target is incapable of maneuvering
or willing to match velocities.
• Ships may use range zones (page 84) to determine which weapons may
be used.

Phase 4: Damage Control and Other Actions
DAMAGE CONTROL
Use Engineering to deal with problems caused by accumulated waste heat,
mechanical and electronics failures, and related issues.
MEDICAL TREATMENT
Use Science to treat injuries to personnel.
OTHER ACTIONS
Resolve anything else a character attempts to accomplish during a space battle
that isn’t covered by other actions.
Differences of Scale
Sometimes the difference in scale between two ships (or any two actors in a
scene) is so great that common sense suggests they are just incompatible and
cannot affect one another. At any time, the GM can indicate such incompat-
ibility of scale: if players want to use a mosquito to take down an elephant, that
needs to be the focus of the session or the campaign, not a single roll.
Two things may affect each other normally, or their relationship may be gov-
erned by a situation aspect (That’s No Moon) or scale rule that means, for
example, that the snub fighter can’t target the dreadnaught as a whole, but it can
attack its fighter bay or its laser turrets one by one as they return fire. Alternately,
PCs can work to find ways to change this relationship: stolen plans from a moon-
sized battlestation might reveal a vulnerable exhaust port…
The Fate System Toolkit (page 67) has useful rules for resolving differences in
scale. In summary, give each ship a size rating on a scale from smallest to largest.
For each step of difference in size, the larger ship gets +1 to its attack or defense
or both, and gains a Weapon rating of 2, Armor rating of 2, or both. To reflect a
smaller ship’s greater maneuverability compared with the larger, you may give it
+1 per step of size difference to create advantage or overcome actions related to
maneuvering against the larger ship.
Alternately, you can use the Bronze Rule from Fate Core (page 270) to send
whole squadrons of fighters against capital ships, with the controlling player
representing the squadron’s leader or the ship’s captain, whose fate is tied to that
of their comrades. GMs, you can offer a compel to have the PC put his or her
commanding character’s life on the line, or a character may have a stunt that
allows them to take damage in place of their ship or squadron, reflecting the
perils of leading the charge.

Battlestations
Another way to approach combat is not to focus on the ship, but on the char-
acters each acting within the much larger conflict. In this option, each ship has
a number of stations, each of which is a functional role occupied by a charac-
ter, enabling that character to use particular ship-related skills to perform some
action. It is treated as an extra with no cost requiring assignment to an existing
station aboard the ship on which a character is serving.
Using battlestations is particularly helpful when the PCs are serving aboard a
huge spaceship that might not be threatened as an entirety, but the GM wants to
maintain some level of personal threat. It also works when PCs are on multiple
small ships, such as a fighter squadron, with each operating on a local scale but
contributing to a larger effort.
Mechanically, a station is an extra that allow for various specific actions, and
which has one or more aspects relevant to it, one or more stunts, and some amount
of battle stress, reflecting the damage the ship can withstand before the station
can’t be used by anyone anymore until it’s fixed.
At the beginning of an exchange, a character can change stations freely within
the bounds of the fiction, although the GM may require an overcome action
to represent the time and effort needed to make the switch—for example, an
Athletics or Spacehand action to race to the bridge to take over as captain, for
example, or a Spacehand or Rank action to get into the ship’s armory to acquire
space marine weaponry and armor. The precise skill and its difficulty will depend
on the fiction and the character’s course of action.
Each ship or squadron in the fight gets one set of consequences. The ship
or squadron remains in the fight so long as it hasn’t suffered a complete set of
consequences. It also gets a number of stations, each of which serves as a target
for the enemy as well as enabling a particular function such as maneuvering the
ship, firing its weapons, and so forth.
Stations suffer harm from attacks and from the station’s occupant succeeding at
a cost, both as normal. The station’s occupant can also suffer harm by succeeding
at a cost, but since the point of using battlestations is to make space combat fast
and fun, the occupant cannot take harm meant for the battlestation.
When it suffers harm, the station must take battle stress or permit the ship as
a whole to suffer consequences. If the station loses all its battle stress, both it and
its occupant are taken out. Alternately, instead of letting their station take battle
stress or allowing the ship to suffer consequences, the player may concede and
either allow their character to be taken out—this preserves the station and permits
another character to take it up if desired—or abandon the station, allowing the
station to be taken out but preserving the character.
When a station is taken out, it cannot be used further. A character who has
abandoned a station may take up a different station—if one is available—the
next time they can act freely. The GM may require the character to overcome
dangers suggested by the station being taken out—explosive decompression is
always a possibility! A character without a station may be In the Way or at best
Supercargo. A redundant character of this sort can take personal actions but
can’t substantively affect the space battle.

Change the skills listed for each station as appropriate to the setting.
Captain Helm
ASPECTS ASPECTS
In Command; On the Bridge At the Helm; On the Bridge
FUNCTION FUNCTION
Use Rapport to overcome com- Use Drive to overcome maneu-
mand-related problems and create ver-related problems and create
advantages related to leadership and maneuver-related advantages.
planning.
STUNTS
STUNTS Damn the Torpedoes!: Because your
The Burden of Command: ship is a sleek warfighting machine,
Because you are in charge and take you gain +2 to Drive to defend or
your responsibilities very seriously, overcome obstacles related to deal-
you may take battle stress inflicted ing with navigation hazards or battle
on other stations as battle stress damage in order to get to where you
to you instead; additionally, you want your ship to be.
are able to use your fate points
BATTLE STRESS [1][2]
on behalf of any NPC manning
another station on the ship. NOTES
You can tie the stunt for this station
BATTLE STRESS [1][2][3] to the class of ship, so that the helm
of a rocket freighter gets Steady as
She Goes (+2 to defend or overcome
Scanner actions related to keeping to a set or
ASPECTS predetermined course) while the helm
Watching the Screens; of a star frigate gets Powerful Thrusters
On the Bridge (+2 to create advantage or overcome
actions where moving at high velocity
FUNCTION
is important or useful) instead.
Use Lore to create advantages involv-
ing coordination of ship’s personnel
or assessment of ship’s environment.
STUNTS
Tactical Data Mining: Because you
can assess the opposition’s deploy-
ments and actions, you gain +2 to
create advantage with Lore when
analyzing enemy tactical patterns.

Espatier Fighter Pilot
(Space Marine) ASPECTS
Fast-Moving Fighter Craft
ASPECTS
Armed and Dangerous FUNCTION
Use Drive to attack enemy stations
FUNCTION
and defend friendly stations from
Use Fight or Shoot to attack enemy
fighter attack.
stations within range; use Athletics
or Fight to defend against attacks by STUNTS
enemy boarding parties. Strafing Run: Because you are in a
space fighter, you gain +2 to Drive
STUNTS
to attack enemy stations.
Armed to the Teeth: Because
you are heavily armed, you gain BATTLE STRESS [1][2]
+2 to attack using Fight in close
NOTES
quarters.
If you abandon this station, you
Armored: Because you are heavily
must be rescued by shuttlecraft
armored, you gain +2 to Physique
(see Shuttle Pilot) before taking up
to defend against physical attacks.
another station.
NOTES
Must be transported by shuttlecraft
Shuttle Pilot
(see Shuttle Pilot) to enemy ships ASPECTS
to attack enemy stations other than Small Shuttlecraft
enemy boarding parties.
FUNCTION
Use Drive to overcome and create
advantages as appropriate in trans-
porting personnel and cargo between
ships in action.
STUNTS
Fly Casual: Because your ship is
small and obviously harmless, you
gain +2 to Drive to defend against
or overcome obstacles related to
attempts to single out, notice,
identify, or track a particular small
space craft.

Engineer
ASPECTS
Tools in Hand
FUNCTION
Use Crafts to create advantages
related to ship’s systems and machin-
ery, and to overcome obstacles
related to repairing damaged and
malfunctioning equipment aboard
the ship.
STUNTS
Sick Bay / Medic
More Power to Shields: Because ASPECTS
you can redistribute the techni- Medical Staff
cal resources of the ship, you may
FUNCTION
spend a fate point to redirect some
Overcome problems related to per-
or all enemy Fighter Pilot and
sonnel injury.
Gun Crew attacks to yourself for
the rest of the exchange and use STUNTS
Crafts to defend. Good as New: You can spend a fate
Damage Control: Because you can point to take a recovery action
conduct field repairs, you may versus consequences related to
spend a fate point to redistrib- medical injuries during a scene
ute combat-related battle stress in circumstances that would oth-
dealt to another station among erwise preclude such action.
any number of other stations. To
do so, you must overcome with
Crafts against a difficulty equal to
the shifts of harm being dealt to
the station you wish to protect.
Gun Crew
I Don’t Know How Long She’ll ASPECTS
Hold: Because you can conduct Finger on the Trigger
field repairs, you may spend a fate
FUNCTION
point to allow you to use Crafts
Use Shoot to attack enemy sta-
to attempt to restore a station that
tions or create advantages related to
has been taken out, against a diffi-
inflicting damage on enemy stations.
culty equal to twice the number of
the station’s battle stress boxes. It STUNTS
comes online with one less battle Fire for Effect: Because you are
stress box than it had before it was using a high-powered space
taken out. weapon, you gain +2 to Shoot to
attack enemy stations.

Example of Space Combat
This example of combat is set in the Pax Galactica universe (page 160) and
uses battlestations and vector diagrams. The group has set the plausibilometer
to medium.
As the scene begins, three PCs are trying to figure out the workings of a derelict
starship they’ve found in an uninhabited system in the galaxy’s Norma Arm, a
region of space that was long ago the site of a centuries-long war for dominance
between two alien empires. The ambitious and possibly piratical NPC who
helped them find it, Lord Captain Mufese, has offered to “escort” them back to
civilization, but they have demurred, and Mufese aboard his ship the Orinocco
is seemingly departing in good grace. The PCs turn their attention back to the
alien starship, whose name they have translated to mean Homecoming.
• Brad is playing Lark, a Grizzled Old Space Hand.
• Chris is playing Sergeant Childe, the Hard-Bitten Vet of a Hundred
Little Wars.
• Amy is playing Lady Tabitha, an Adventurous Aristocrat from the
Outer Rim.
GM: The Orinocco spirals out in its orbit and soon disappears behind the gas
giant. Lord Captain Mufese broadcasts general farewell and wishes you good luck.
Brad (Lark): Okay. In the meantime, I want to break down our capabilities. I’m
going to check out the hyperdrive. The ship has an engineering section?
GM: That’s right. You’re in the ship’s engine room, in the narrow confines toward
the rear of the teardrop-shaped hull. Use Technoscience to overcome an obstacle.
Call it Mediocre (+0), but it’s alien technology, not from the Principate, which
means you suffer a -2 penalty to try to understand it.
Brad: My Technoscience is Good (+3), and the roll is… (Rolls ++--.)
That’s a +3.
GM: So adjusted you only get an Average (+1) result, but it’s still a success.
Brad: I’m out of fate points. What does a +1 get me?
GM: No, that’s plenty. You see a hyperdrive—sealed in a clear spherical vacuum
case like the ones you’re familiar with—but its navigation coupling doesn’t lead
to the normal psionic circuitry you’d expect. Instead it connects to another sealed
sphere with an object inside that looks like a branching coral made of translucent
crystal. There’s a dim glow coming from inside the crystal. Childe, what are you
doing?
Chris (Sergeant Childe): Sergeant Childe is checking out the bridge.
GM: Good. There are four three-dimensional screens arranged in kind of a circle
around the perimeter of the bridge. Currently only one of them is on, and it
shows a holographic representation of the satellite system around the gas giant.

There are no chairs, but there do appear to be four sets of clips on flexible cords
latched to the floor in front of each station.
Brad: Does this ship not have inertial dampers? We have artificial gravity, after all.
GM: The aliens were probably worried about acceleration bleed through the
dampers, you think.
Brad: Uh, yeah, okay. I would probably think that.
Chris: Do our suits have harnesses that would fit those clips?
GM: They do. Are you in your suit?
Chris: Yes?
Amy (Lady Tabitha): We’re all in our suits, ready to seal if something happens.
GM: Well, that’s good, because something happens. A klaxon sounds, a high
whistle chirping between two notes. Tell me what each of you is doing.
Amy: I’m on the bridge, getting a feel for the thruster controls.
GM: Here’s your Helm battlestation. (The GM gives Amy a card with the Helm’s
battlestation details on it.)
Brad: I’m in the engine room, trying to get full power going. (Brad gets the
Engineer battlestation card.)
Chris: The sergeant is on the bridge. He’s checking out the sensor display. (The
GM gives Chris the Scanner battlestation, and puts three other station cards on
the table—the Captain, Gun Crew, and Helm)
GM: Okay, the holodisplay shows you in your orbit around the gas giant, but
there’s a fast-moving object coming toward you rapidly from over the horizon.
(The GM sketches out the situation, with the Homecoming in orbit around a gas
giant with a radiation belt around it and a rocky moon some distance away as
well as an incoming bogey.)
Radiation Belt Gas Giant

Orinocco
Rocky Moon Homecoming

Brad: How long until we can activate the hyperdrive? I want to get out of here.
GM: Roll Technoscience. Remember that you’re still trying to figure out how things
work on an alien ship. If you succeed with style, you can fire it up immediately.
If you succeed, it’ll take a few minutes, and succeeding at a cost or failing means
it’ll take longer, one shift more time for each shift you fail by.
Brad: What’s the difficulty? Zero?
GM: Right, so call it Fair (+2) with the penalty for alien technology.
Brad: I’m peering at the alien controls in the engine room, tentatively pressing
buttons and turning dials. (Rolls +--0.) I’m at zero—success at a minor
cost. That just means a little more time, right? Several minutes? (See “How Much
Time Is a Shift Worth?” in Fate Core on page 197.)
GM: Sure, but you know that you’re Getting Too Old for this Sh**, right?
(The GM holds up a fate point to indicate that he is compelling the character’s
aspect.)
Brad: Damn straight. (He takes the fate point.)
GM: It’s going to take you a solid hour to warm up the hyperdrive, at the rate
things are going.
Amy: I don’t know why you’re worrying about the hyperdrive. Without a psionic
link, how am I going to navigate us anywhere? Sergeant Childe, what’s that thing
coming toward us?
Chris: I don’t know. Can I identify it?
GM: Roll Technoscience to do so.
Chris: Okay. I’m Average (+1), -2 for using alien technology. (He rolls 0+-0.)
And that’s a Poor (-1) result. But I’m Cool Under Pressure, so I succeed. (He
spends a fate point. The GM labels the bogey Orinocco.)
GM: He’s coming up fast, on an intercept course.
Amy: Mufese! You scalawag! What are you up to?
GM: Are you broadcasting to him?
Amy: No, I won’t give him the satisfaction. I’m going to break out of orbit and
head for that moon. What do I use? Spacehand? (The GM says yes.) Okay. I’m
Good (+3) at that. I roll… (Rolls +++0.) Yes! A Fantastic (+6) effort!
GM: But with the alien technology penalty, it’s only a Great (+4) effect. Mufese’s
roll to pursue is also Great (+4), so you succeed at a minor cost. You punch the
thrusters and tear out of orbit, but you all feel the acceleration bleed as a kind
of vibration in your bodies, and you can tell that the ship’s Systems Are All a
Little Scrambled as a minor consequence. (The GM redraws the Homecoming’s
vector as a long arrow pointing halfway toward the rocky moon.)

Chris: Is this ship armed?
GM: Maybe. While you’re looking for weapons controls, the communicator
chimes. Incoming message.
Brad: Is the klaxon still blaring? That would be annoying.
GM: I’m glad you mentioned that. (He writes down Annoying Klaxon on a
card as a situation aspect.)
Amy: Don’t answer the comms! Let him eat static!
GM: Childe, you see the Orinocco launch a missile at your ship!
Chris: Boss lady, we’re in trouble!
Amy: Evasive action! (Rolls -0--.) Oh no! That’s Terrible (-2)! But I’m At
the Helm with a cool eye and steady hand. (She spends a fate point.)
GM: Yes, but that Annoying Klaxon is getting on your nerves. (He spends a
fate point from his pool.)
Amy: Somebody shut off that gosh-darn klaxon!
GM: The missile gets in a Fair (+2) strike on the thrusters from Mufese’s Good
(+3) Shoot and a Poor (-1) roll. He’s targeting Helm. But your Systems Are
All a Little Scrambled, so the ultimate effect is a Great (+4) hit on the ship.
Amy, what happens?
Amy: Oh, man. Marking a stress box won’t quite do it, and I don’t want to lose
another ship’s consequence. I’ll abandon the station.
GM: What does that look like?
Amy: The whole bridge shudders with the missile impact. The screen in front of
me goes haywire, lots of alien sigils forming and melting. The thruster controls
lock up. I pull on them uselessly and shout, “He got us! We’re a sitting duck
unless you get those thrusters back online, Lark!”
Brad: I’m on it, boss lady!
GM: All right, that’s the exchange. The Helm station is out of action, so where
is everyone?
Amy: I’ll take the captain’s chair. Uh, harness.
Brad: I’m good in the engine room.
Chris: And I’ll switch to guns. This thing does have weapons, right?
The action continues…

ALIENS AND ALIEN WORLDS
More so than in most any other Fate campaign, Fate Space games tend to empha-
size travel and exploration. Even though it’s tempting and can be fun, you won’t
have enough time to plan out a whole galaxy or even a whole solar system before
beginning a game! Therefore, GMs, we encourage you to paint in broad strokes
to begin while having procedures ready for determining what characters find as
they travel during play.
This list of questions will help you pin down the role that aliens and alien
worlds will play in your game.
Are there intelligent aliens?
• No. Humans are alone in the universe, at least as far as we know. However,
there are distant worlds to explore, and intelligent life may yet be discov-
ered on one of them.
• No, but humanity has diverged into so many different subtypes and vari-
ants that there might as well be.
• No, but scientists have used genetic engineering or similar technologies
to enhance the intelligence and communication skills of animal species,
uplifting dogs, bears, dolphins and/or monkeys.
• Maybe, but we haven’t met any yet. This game involves discovering new
alien life forms and societies. Nonintelligent extraterrestrial life may indeed
be common.
• Yes, but they have all died out or been destroyed. This game involves find-
ing their relics and figuring out who they were.
• Yes, a few. Humanity has encountered a handful of distinct alien species
and has a history and interspecies relationship with each. There may or
may not be any more out there to meet.
• Yes, many! Space is teeming with alien species. We have met a good number
of them, and have learned of many more.
• In fact, we are the aliens—humanity no longer exists, or is not the focus
of this game.
96 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Aliens and Alien Worlds

If there are aliens, where do they live or where can they be found?
• They have their own worlds, and it is unusual to find a species away from
their homeworld. If we want to meet aliens, we have to go visit them.
• They may come from somewhere else or have previously traveled widely,
but now they live in specific quarters or districts on one or more worlds
we inhabit.
• They travel more or less freely among us, coming from a homeworld where
they may be found in greater numbers.
• We don’t know where they come from, only that they show up near our
territory or on our worlds.
• They have conquered our planet, and we resist with some measure of
effectiveness.
• Different aliens have different modes of living that bring them into contact
with us in different ways.
If there are multiple inhabited worlds, what is the political relationship
among them?
• Each world is a distinct and sovereign political entity…

• …with very little ability or desire to influence other planets.
• …with its own recognized sphere of influence, zone of control, or other
territory, negotiated on a bilateral basis with neighboring worlds.
• …competing in a general struggle for control of unclaimed territories
or other resources.
• …interested in shoring up its alliances and maintaining a balance of
power against equally self-interested rivals.
Some worlds are colonies or settlements of more-important worlds, or are
otherwise dependent upon those worlds. Some sort of core/frontier settlement
pattern may exist.
Aliens and Alien Worlds + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 97

Each world is subordinate to some larger interplanetary or interstellar author-
ity, hegemony, or imperium, which exerts overarching political, economic, and/
or social control.
What is the economic relationship among inhabited worlds?
• Each world is basically independent. Any trade between worlds involves

luxuries or novelties rather than essential commodities. Small freighters
and smugglers ply the spacelanes.
• Some worlds are colonies, clients, or outposts of another world upon which
they are highly dependent, although the mother planet or homeworld is
relatively self-sufficient. The central planet sends out freighters filled with
workers, supplies, and equipment, and return laden with raw materials
and exotic commodities.
• Worlds are highly interdependent, specializing in producing goods or
offering services in which they have some competitive advantage, and
importing other necessities. This is the most fragile economic system,
where the blockade or failure of one world is felt throughout the rest of
that region of space. Bulk freighters work the main trade routes while
smaller merchant ships subsist on the margins.
What are the social and cultural relationships among worlds?
• Each world is a distinct society comprising a number of subcultures and

social groupings, and is alien to other worlds.
• Each world is a distinct and relatively homogeneous monoculture, recog-
nizably different from those of other worlds and alien to them.
• Worlds are part of a larger interstellar or interplanetary society, sharing
many common institutions and traditions but each possessing distinct
cultural characteristics.
• Worlds are part of a larger interstellar or interplanetary society, with each
world populated by a mix of subcultures that are common across the
larger society.

Planetary Ecosystems
When you need to create an alien world, you can use these tables. The World
Types table provides a variety of high- to medium-plausibility planet types, not
all of which are inherently habitable to human beings or even carbon-based
lifeforms. The Habitable Worlds table, as a whole, is low to medium plausibility.
World Types
0 + ++ +++ ++++
0 Artificial Habitat Lushworld Fumeworld Neonworld Edenworld
- Hotbox Rockworld Marginal World Quartzworld
-- Ammonia World Scumworld Iceworld
--- Smogworld Brimstone World
---- Gas Giant
Ammonia World: An outer-zone ecosystem that uses a corrosive ammonia–water
solution instead of just water as its basic solvent, with dissolved ammonia–water
ice acting as antifreeze. Intelligent life on such a world would have a hard time
creating a technological civilization.
Artificial Habitat: The “world” is a technological construct, ranging in size from
a small station to an artificial world to a star-girdling Dyson sphere or swarm.
Brimstone World: A sulfur-rich planet with sulfur dioxide seas, sulfur shores,
and an atmosphere composed primarily of sulfur dioxide vapor. Simple microbes
and plants may exist under these conditions. Both fire and metals are unavailable
on this sort of world.
Edenworld: A terrestrial planet with a carbon-based, oxygen-breathing, water-
solvent ecology highly compatible with Terran life. Roll again on the Habitable
Worlds table.
Fumeworld: A waterless planet with a corrosive atmosphere dominated by nitric
oxide and nitrogen dioxide, possibly with seas of nitric acid. Metallurgy would
be hard to develop on this sort of world.
Gas Giant: The ecosystem involves ammonia-based, methane-breathing balloon-
like floaters that expel helium and retain hydrogen to stay aloft in the turbulent
upper atmosphere of a Jovian world.
Hotbox: A waterless Venus-like planet with a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere
and very high temperatures. Such a world is almost certainly lifeless, the victim
of its runaway greenhouse effect.
Iceworld: An outer-zone world with a surface composed mainly of water or
ammonia ice. It may have a liquid ocean beneath the icy surface, with sufficient
radiant energy penetrating via cracks to photodissociate water into hydrogen and
oxygen to drive biological processes, or geothermal vents providing the energy
for life.

Lushworld: A warm world with a carbon dioxide atmosphere, rich in plant life.
Roll again on the Habitable Worlds table.
Marginal World: A world with an ecology in which Terran life is viable but at a
disadvantage, due to local competition, rigorous conditions, or some combination.
Roll again on the Habitable Worlds table.
Neonworld: A relatively large terrestrial world with an atmosphere rich in the
dense but chemically inert noble gas neon, allowing large flying creatures to exist
if life develops. Roll again on the Habitable Worlds table.
Quartzworld: This world has seas of sulfuric acid and a surface that resembles
the area surrounding an earthly hot spring, with quartz and clay minerals serving
as the habitat for silicon–oxygen (silicone)-based life forms.
Rockworld: A lifeless planet with at most a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere,
like Mars or Luna.
Scumworld: A world inhabited only by microbes, similar to that of the ancient
Earth of the Archaean Eon. The atmosphere is probably composed of mainly
carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. On Earth, the evolution of blue-green
algae or cyanobacteria, which produced oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis,
initiated a dramatic transformation of Earth’s ecosystem. It is possible that such
an ecosystem may comprise one vast planet-wide organism.
Smogworld: A terrestrial world whose oxygen–nitrogen atmosphere includes
significant traces of chlorine generated by biological processes, producing a slightly
toxic and corrosive gas mixture as well as mildly acidic and bleachy bodies of water,
which local life forms can usually tolerate—except in shallow pools or muddy
“acid flats” where toxic concentrations are higher—by virtue of their plastic-like
composition but which visitors must find ways of dealing with. An intelligent
civilization on such a corrosive world would have a tough time developing metallic
tools, but might come up with ceramic-based electrochemical technology. Roll
again on the Habitable Worlds table.

Habitable Worlds
0 + ++ +++ ++++
0 Artificial World Savannah Planet Jungle Planet Forest World Radio Planet
- Crater Planet Desert Planet Ice Planet Canyon Planet
-- Swamp Planet Water World Volcano Planet
--- Fungus Planet Archipelago Planet
---- Special Planet
Archipelago World: An oceanic world characterized by numerous island chains
but no large continental landmasses.
Artificial World: A world or worldlet quite obviously built as a habitat, rather
than having formed naturally. Possibilities range from gigantic Dyson spheres,
ringworlds, or tubeworlds—rotating tubes spun around a central star like a ball
of hollow spaghetti—made of some incredible high-tensile-strength alien material
to orbital habitats hollowed out of asteroids or built from dismantled comets and
used as massive generation ships.
Canyon Planet: A world whose surface is cracked or carved into a network of
canyons, with the most congenial habitats—at least for humanity—occurring
along the walls of the cliff faces.
Crater Planet: A world whose surface features are clearly the product of numerous
asteroid strikes, which resulted in circular depressions separated by long, narrow,
curved ridges. The depressions may be filled with water, with the narrow ridges
providing habitable surface, or they may be habitable lowlands, with the ridges
constraining movement between separate ecospheres.
Desert Planet: A dry and arid world, with little to no surface water available.
Fungus Planet: A world characterized by fungal life forms that produce strange
spores with a variety of functions and effects.
Forest World: A world dominated by gigantic tree-like organisms that serve as
the foundation to a planetary ecology.
Ice Planet: A frozen world, its surface covered by glaciers and other large bodies
of ice.
Jungle Planet: A world of incredible fecundity, thickly vegetated with large
tree-like flora.
Radio Planet: A world inhabited by species that sense and communicate in an
unusual zone of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Savannah Planet: A world of temperate and tropical grassland, well watered
and inhabited by a robust ecology of grazers and predators.

Special Planet: A planet that is special or unusual in some way. It may have a
highly eccentric orbit that produces seasonal extremes, may be tidally locked so
that one hemisphere always faces its primary and the other always faces away (a
twilight world), may have extremely high but perhaps barely human-tolerable
gravity (a heavyworld, as in Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity), or may not be
a planetary surface at all—possibilities include the upper atmosphere of a gas
giant (as in Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen’s Wheelers or Iain Banks’s The Algebraist),
a habitable nebula (a cohesive gas cloud in a system’s habitable zone, as in Larry
Niven’s The Integral Trees), or a neutron star (à la Robert L. Forward’s Dragon’s
Egg or Stephen Baxter’s Flux).
Swamp Planet: A world of marshy, water-logged bogs and shallow seas inhabited
by a varied and interconnected array of plant and animal species, or of muddy
plains and algal mats.
Volcano Planet: A world with high amounts of tectonic activity and volcanism,
producing large areas of flowing lava and thick clouds of ash in the atmosphere.
Water World: A world entirely covered by ocean, with little to no solid land
anywhere.
Planetary Conditions
Terrestrial Worlds
Terrestrial worlds can range in size from the very small—an asteroid or “plan-
etesimal”—to the very large: “super-Earths” of about five to ten Earth masses and
up to about twice its radius.
SURFACE GRAVITY
Roll four dice, with a Mediocre (+0) roll indicating approximately Earth-like
surface gravity. Rolls above indicate the difficulty of the Physique overcome
actions needed to withstand the stresses of high gravity—for example, a Fair (+2)
roll means Fair (+2) difficulty. Rolls below indicate the magnitude of difficulty
of Athletics overcome actions needed to avoid awkward movement in low grav-
ity—for example, a Poor (-1) roll means Average (+1) difficulty.

ORBITAL ECCENTRICITY AND AXIAL TILT
These characteristics determine the variability of the planet’s climate—its seasons.
A planet in a circular orbit around its primary star with its rotational axis per-
pendicular to its orbital plane will have no seasons, just a single steady climate
all year round. As the orbit becomes more elliptical, the time of year will affect
how much energy the planet receives from its primary star.
It is possible to imagine a planet with a highly elliptical orbit such that its surface
freezes over and life on the planet must hibernate or find other ways of dealing
with the deep freeze, only to experience a violent spring thaw and extraordinary
summer blossoming before the temperature cools again.
A world with the aspect Extreme Axial Tilt might indicate that its lengths
of day and night will vary more with latitude and time of year. Once the planet’s
pole lies in the plane of the ecliptic, so that the planet is just sort of rolling along
in its orbit, most of one hemisphere will experience permanent daylight while
most of the other will experience permanent night while the planet’s tropics
experience more-or-less perpetual twilight. This behavior is similar to but not
identical to tidal locking.
Roll four dice. A Mediocre (+0) result means that the planet is in a circular
orbit with relatively upright attitude. Deviations from that result reflect increasing
eccentricity or tilt and thus greater temperature and climate variability, which can
be taken as the difficulty of overcome actions related to survival and construction
on the planet’s surface.
SURFACE TEMPERATURE
A planet in the inner zone of a star will have a high temperature, one in the
outer zone will have a low temperature, and one in the habitable zone will have
a temperature somewhere in between, all other things being equal.
For the planet’s average surface temperature, roll four dice, adding six if the
planet is in the inner zone, or subtracting six if it’s in the outer zone. A Mediocre
(+0) result indicates an Earth-like temperature range, negative results indicating
colder temperatures, and positive results indicating higher temperatures. The
deviation in steps away from Mediocre (+0) can be used as the difficulty for
survival actions, such as Physique overcome actions to withstand temperature
extremes in the short term or Engineering overcome actions to design and build
adequate protective equipment in the long term.
Jovian Worlds
A gas giant typically consists of a metallic or rocky core of sufficient mass to
attract and retain a thick gaseous atmosphere of hydrogen, helium, and other
gases. The pressures and temperatures in the depths of the planet’s atmosphere
are enormous, but it is possible to imagine entire ecosystems floating at different
levels of the gas giant’s atmosphere.

Planetary Culture and Civilization
Based on what is known about a world so far, you might describe the sort of
sentient species that lives there. Are they technologically sophisticated? What
sorts of things do they value or abhor? Are they communal or individualistic?
Are they gregarious or territorial?
Planetary Culture
Create three to five aspects defining the species’ general culture. A member of
that culture may choose up to three of those aspects and for each one either
embrace it, taking it as their own, or reject it, writing a replacement aspect that
reflects their rejection of their culture.
Planetary Civilization
You can use the Bronze Rule to give relevant skills to a planetary civilization. Your
approach in representing a whole world could vary from game to game, but a
simple system might define a planetary civilization with three skills. Generally,
the Bronze Rule will be used to define planets more often in games with epic
tone, as characters interact with larger-scale entities. The typical range for such
skills is Mediocre (+0) to Legendary (+8). To determine it randomly, roll four
dice and add four.
• Extent: How much of the planet and its surrounding system does the
civilization occupy? This might represent the resilience of the civilization,
giving it stress boxes or otherwise showing how much damage it can take
in the face of threats of an appropriate scale. Additionally, extent is a
measure of the resources available to the civilization.
• Technology: How sophisticated and advanced is the civilization’s com-
mand of material and energy-producing technology? This reflects the
difficulty of overcoming its military and technical defenses and protections.
• Culture: How sophisticated and robust are the civilization’s art, philosophy,
and other forms of expression? This reflects the difficulty of overcoming
its legal system and other governmental controls, enticing or otherwise
taking advantage of gullible or careless citizens on a wide scale.

Interplanetary Trade and Commerce
Trade is a good reason for characters to travel from planet to planet, and the
itinerant space merchant is a classic sci-fi trope, from Nicholas van Rijn in Poul
Anderson’s Trader to the Stars to Star Trek’s tribble-peddling Cyrano Jones in the
episode “The Trouble with Tribbles,” as well as Vernor Vinge’s STL trading cul-
ture, the Qeng Ho, in A Deepness in the Sky.
If spacecraft can travel between planets, the opportunity for trade will exist.
Economic theory states that if it’s cheaper for a planet to import some valuable
good than to produce it locally, it will try to import those valuables and export
some quantity of locally produced goods in exchange, all other things being equal.
Within a star system, at interplanetary distances, it’s easy to imagine a sort of
center-periphery trading model, where the resource-rich fringes of the system
send raw materials to industrial centers of production to be turned into finished
goods of various kinds, which are then sold to both local and distant markets.
However, the cost of transporting goods across interstellar distances at sub-
light speeds is really daunting, so it may be the case that only really, really rare
and valuable items are worth shipping across the stars. If relatively cheap FTL
travel becomes available, then interstellar trade becomes a possibility once more.
Alternately, an alien civilization may be ideologically committed to notions of gift
exchange or ceremonial generosity as a status marker, and so will be willing to
engage in what looks like unprofitable trade for the social cachet it brings them
within their own circles.
When PC merchants arrive at a port of call, determine the commodities avail-
able for trade. Depending on your setting, you can determine these by rolling
some world-scale skill such as Tech Level or Natural Resources; alternately, the
GM can simply invent a handful of offerings. In any case, you can often define
cargo with a single aspect describing what it is.
If you’d like more ideas for doing space commerce, check out Pax Galactica
(page 160).

Creating Aliens
Here’s a quick and fun way for players at the table to create an alien culture. If
you’d like more discussion on making aliens of different plausibilities, read the
following sections.
Whenever a character mentions the name of a new alien species or society,
pause the game. Going around the table, each player names a feature of human
beings’ physiological or psychological makeup, creating an aspect like Diurnal,
Breathes Air, or Individual Mind. Then everyone at the table rolls four dice.
The player with the third highest roll chooses one of those aspects to keep
unchanged.
The player with the second highest roll chooses a second aspect, and twists it by
adding an exception, like Diurnal Except in Summer or Individual Mind
Except When Pregnant, or by intensifying it, like Breathes Air and Water.
The player with the highest roll chooses a third aspect to reverse or replace
altogether, like Flies Easily, but Needs Augmentation to Walk Long
Distances, Engages in Casual Reproductive Sex, or Cannot Eat with
Others.
Give these three aspects to the new alien species or society. If necessary, you
can also identify some alien invocations and compels (page 46).
You’ll find another example way to create aliens for interstellar travelers to meet
in Millennials (page 149).
Low-Plausibility Aliens
These aliens are merely humans in funny makeup; that is to say, aside from a
few cosmetic differences, they are at least psychologically indistinguishable from
humans. A single aspect is usually all that’s necessary to establish the character
as an alien, regardless of how alien the character actually is. For example, a
Martian in Disguise is passing for human, while a Cat-Headed Alien is
obviously not human, and a Silicon Life Form may not even be recognizable
as a living being.
Other than that, however, each character’s alienness matters only insofar as its
aspect is invoked or compelled, and the fact that the character is an alien may not
even be part of its aspect. The character is a comic-book alien, like Superman, or
a space-opera one, like everyone in the Mos Eisley cantina.
If you need to come up with a low-plausibility alien on the fly, roll four dice
on this table one or more times.
0 + ++ +++ ++++
Anguilliform Achatinoid Avian Bicephalous

0 Centauroid
(Eel-Like) (Snail-Like) (Bird-Like) (Two-Headed)
- Insectoid Mammalian Reptilian Octopoid
Simian Cetacean
-- Humanoid
(Ape-Like) (Whale-Like)
--- Fungoid Arachnoid
---- Exotic

Achatinoid (Snail-Like): This species resembles some form of
gastropod, perhaps ambulating by means of a muscular ventral
foot or possessing sensory organs at the ends of tentacular stalks.
It may possess a shell.
Anguilliform (Eel-Like): This species has eel-like features.
Arachnoid (Spider-Like): This species has spider-like features.
Avian (Bird-Like): This species can fly, or is descended from a

flying species. Alternately, it may merely be feathered or beaked.
Bicephalous (Two-Headed): This species has two heads, or
seems to.
Centauroid: This species has a distinct anterior body or torso,
usually with two or more manipulator limbs (arms), and a poste-
rior body or barrel, usually with four or more ambulating limbs
(legs).
Cetacean: This species resembles a whale or dolphin.
Exotic: This species is really bizarre from a human perspective.

It may be microscopic or gargantuan, comprise multiple quasi-
independent suborganisms within a larger hive mind, be parasitic
upon or commensal with a host species, be an immaterial energy
being, or be whatever else pushes against the limits of the setting.
Fungoid: This species resembles a terrestrial fungus. It may be
spore-producing and rhizomatic, be comprised of an interwoven
mass of tubular filaments, possess a chitinous integument, or oth-
erwise remind a terrestrial observer of a mushroom, mold, or yeast.
Humanoid: This species resembles human beings, at least in
general form.
Insectoid: This species has insect-like features.
Mammalian: This species has similarities with some species of

terrestrial mammal. Roll two dice or choose—-- feline (cat-
like); -0 leonine (lion-like) or vulpine (fox-like); -+ ursine
(bear-like); 00 equine (horse-like) or bovine (cow-like); 0+
porcine (pig-like); ++ canine (dog-like) or lupine (wolf-like).
Octopoid: This species resembles a terrestrial squid or octopus,
probably because it has many tentacles it uses for locomotion,
manipulation, or both.
Reptilian: This species resembles a lizard or dinosaur, with scaly
skin.
Simian (Ape-Like): This species resembles some form of ape
or monkey.

Medium-Plausibility Aliens
These aliens are romantically designed; that is, they are imagined as a contrast
to some human feature or trait, or as a slippery-slope exemplar of taking some
human process or dynamic to an extreme.
Their exaggerated or contrasting features will often be explicitly called out as
an aspect in describing the species, such as Extreme Innate Code of Honor,
Collective Hive Mind, No Sexual Dimorphism, or Egg-Laying. Other
aspects of the species may simply be science-fictional color, such as Heavily
Muscled, Three-Fingered Bipeds or Androgynous Grey-Skinned
Humanoids.
An example of medium-plausibility aliens is H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzies, from Little
Fuzzy and its sequels. These aliens are Appealingly Playful Golden-Furred
Aliens that have been Categorized by Humans as Nonintelligent because
they Don’t Use Tools or Fire and Don’t Seem to Have Language, allow-
ing the author to explore questions of sentience and responsibility.

High-Plausibility Aliens
These aliens are realistically designed, imagined as the output of some evolution-
ary process that exerted selection pressures, creating beings with a particular
physiology and psychological makeup, adapted to a particular ecological niche
and with concomitant cultural predispositions. If there were a science called
xenology, its job would be to describe aliens in these terms.
The alien nature of high-plausibility aliens will most always be part of their high
concept, as it is a central feature, and can often be compelled to underscore an
alien mentality that is rational but inhuman—in other words, adapted to the par-
ticular circumstances and conditions under which the aliens evolved and currently
live. It’s often worthwhile to come up with a list of example alien invocations and
compels (page 46) for high-plausibility aliens upon their introduction. Their
alien nature may also give them access to extras such as alien-only skills and stunts.
One example of interesting high-plausibility aliens is the Moties of Niven
and Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye and its sequels, with their Asymmetrical
Third Gripping Hand, their Population Overdrive, and their penchant
for Ad Hoc Engineering.
Begin by describing the species’ crèche planet, where the alien species evolved,
and which may or may not be its current homeworld or where it is encountered
by PCs. Here is a short table of possible crèche planets.
Roll Description
-- A cold, arid planet whose water is mainly locked in its ice caps.
-0 A hot, arid planet whose water exists primarily as atmospheric vapor.
-+ A highly volcanic planet with significant seismic activity and eruptions.
00 A world whose elliptical orbit produces extreme seasonal variations.
0+ A planet with high radiation exposure and consequent mutation rates.
++ An idyllic garden planet with many varied and abundant ecological niches in which life thrives.
Keeping the crèche planet in mind, answer the following questions and write
one or two aspects based on those answers. These aspects will define the norm
for the alien species, society, or subculture, depending on why you are creating
the alien.
• Alien Physiology: What physical features distinguish these aliens?
How are these features connected to their intelligence, tool use, or other
capabilities?
• Alien Psychology: What distinctive attitudes or mental features char-
acterize these aliens? What personality traits are regarded as typical or
normal for them?
• Alien Society: How are the aliens organized and governed? What prin-
ciples guide their interactions and dealings with each other?
• Alien Culture: What ideas, practices, or material objects are valued by
these aliens? What meanings do they have to the aliens?
• Alien History: What events greatly impacted the course of the aliens’ lives
or their sense of place in the universe and their relationships with each
other and with other species?
EXAMPLE HIGH-PLAUSIBILITY ALIENS:
THE LEONIDS OF ALAXOR 12
Alaxor 12 is a jungle planet that is known as the source of consciousness-
expanding drugs used in local religious ceremonies, and so serves as a
site of spiritual pilgrimage for many galactic citizens. The planetary na-
tives thus include local mystagogues willing to introduce visitors to the
ceremonies as well as disapproving religious purists.
• Alien Physiology: The natives are a bipedal species of Dimorphic

Polygamous Carnivores where males are characterized by Ornate
Status-Signaling Manes and Corpulent Hypermuscular Bodies
while females tend to be Wiry Endomorphs.
• Alien Psychology: Male leonids tend to be Territorial, Status-

Conscious, and Sentimental, while female leonids tend to be
Cooperative, Clan-Conscious, and Cold-Blooded. The females do
most of the hunting of prey, while the males engage in elaborate
status rituals to defend and augment their own territories.
• Alien Society: The leonid mystagogues are an Ascetic Society of

Monastic Spiritualists and exist as a distinct subculture within the
larger leonid society, which tends to be divided along gender lines.
In contrast, the mystagogues are Egalitarian in Outlook and thus
Regarded with Suspicion by Larger Leonid Society.
• Alien Culture: Within the subculture of the leonid mystagogues, the

Spirit Hunt Ritual, a hallucinatory trance enabled by the rare and
costly Spider-Orchid Poison, is a central experience. Successful
completion of the ritual is said to produce a feeling of union with
nature and with others, heightened self-awareness, and greater em-
pathy and interpersonal understanding.
• Alien History: Throughout leonid history, Spirit Hunt ritualism has

been a recurring heresy because of how it challenges traditional
leonid modes of being. The Planetary Patriarch and His Council
of Wives have recently promulgated Laws Against the Spirit Hunt
that make it illegal to traffic in spider-orchid poison, with territorial
dispossession as punishment. The enforcement of these laws has
created a class of Leonid Spirit Hunter Refugees who entice off-
worlders with an entheogenic trip by means of illegally obtained
spider-orchid poison.

THE GODS KNOW FUTURE THINGS
This setting is inspired by Iain Banks’s Culture novels, as well as Ann Leckie’s
Ancillary Justice and its sequels. It’s an attempt to do posthuman SF and push
some limits with Fate, giving the players great big powerful characters who are
still competent, proactive, and dramatic as they serve a common cause on a
mission to save humanity: the Exodus. The setting’s name comes from a poem
by C. P. Cavafy.
The Setting
The Pitch
A posthuman space opera where giant AI-controlled star frigates cruise between
systems at relativistic STL speeds. The characters have all abandoned or uploaded
their human forms and are now shepherding the remainder of humanity to the
stars. As the Minds of their own ships, the PCs engage in trade, diplomacy, and
exploration on behalf of the remainder of Civilization while defending human-
ity against all threats. The Exodus from Earth has begun. And you are in charge.
Scope
Tone: Epic. The characters are powerful AIs shepherding the Exodus of human-
ity from Earth.
Period: Far future. An impending disaster, societal constraints, or perhaps just
boredom has inspired humanity to push outward.
Extent: Out into near space, a radius of about a dozen light-years surrounding
Earth.
Big Issues
Transhumanism: Transhumanism explores the limits of our consciousness,
asking what happens beyond the current limits of our physical and mental exis-
tence. Do science and technology offer new ways of being human? In this game,
characters are intelligences who have changed physically and psychologically into
different forms in order to adapt to new environments and circumstances. They
have sacrificed their humanity in order to preserve that of others, which is to
say they have taken the first step toward leaving the limits of the human form
behind them.
Gods Know Future Things + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 111

Setting Aspects
To Seek What Is Best: The Minds of the Exodus were programmed with a
strong imperative to advance the best interests and long-term aspirations of
humanity. They were also given a good deal of latitude in terms of interpreting
what that means, which has led to conflicts among the Minds about how best to
help humanity achieve its fulfillment.
Technology Aspects
M/A-MA NAFAL Drives: Starships powered by huge matter/antimatter annihila-
tion engines can achieve relativistic velocities quickly, traveling nearly as fast as
light (NAFAL). Drives (and therefore characters) can be linked to each other to
ensure that a fleet doesn’t get separated by centuries.
Nanoreplicators: Nanotechnology enables molecular reassembly of raw mate-
rials to create nearly anything imaginable, given the right feedstocks, sufficient
power, and the proper information templates. Nanoreplicators can even produce
the machinery needed to generate the fuel cells used by the Exodus’s NAFAL
drives, although this is a time-consuming and resource-intensive project. Scarcity
has been solved.
Faces and Places

• Lanying Chen: The first attempt to transcend human limitations was
also the first failure. Lanying Chen emptied her meat-body but never took
residence in the circuitry meant to become her Mind. Stories say she had
become something else, that her consciousness had escaped all physical
limits, and that this had always been her intention. There is no science to
support such accounts. A Mind should know better. And yet some Minds
act on the assumption that Lanying is traveling on the Exodus with them.
Other Minds use this belief as a marker of insanity.
• On a Good Day You Can Hear: When this Mind lost its passengers in an
unexpected decompression, its reason for being was called into question.
It found new purpose in its care for others. On a Good Day is always there,
nearby, wanting to help, with rows and rows of fully stocked cryotubes
yearning for new passengers. It’s happy to look after any of yours, if you
need it to.
• Proxima Centauri b: This terrestrial planet with its own unique ecosys-
tem is claimed by a powerful Mind called No Rest for the Wicked who has
begun to terraform it into a habitat more congenial for humanity, despite
calls from other Minds and from human beings to study the place and
preserve it.
112 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Gods Know Future Things

MAP OF NEAR SPACE
Massive blue-white star
Sun-like star
Small red star
Lalande 21185
Wolf 359
G51-15 Ross 128
Struve 2398
Luyten’s Star Barnard’s Star
Procyon 61 Cygni
SOL
Ross 248
Sirius Groombridge 34
Proxima Centauri
Alpha Centauri
Ross 154
Epsilon Eridani
L726-8
L732-58 L789-6
Lacaille 9352
Tau Ceti Epsilon Indi
L725-32
5 ly (approx.)
113
Characters
Instead of writing down a high concept and a trouble, make one aspect related to
your character’s Mind and one related to its Hull. Then, make three more aspects
following the phase trio.
Mind Aspect
You are a Mind—a self-aware artificial intelligence. Maybe you were born human,
or as many humans, and were subsequently uploaded and integrated. Maybe
you are a reconstructed personality derived from historical records, a digital
composite painstakingly constructed—or hurriedly inscribed—by advanced psy-
chological algorithms. Or maybe you are something even less comprehensible.
But you have a responsibility.
This aspect encapsulates your personality, your motivation, your former profes-
sion, or your degree of integration.
Hull Aspect
You are also a spaceship, capable of completing interstellar travel driven by a
powerful antimatter engine achieving relativistic speeds. What physical form
do you take to preserve humanity, and how many do you carry? Are you a huge
behemoth or a small boat, a factory ship, or a sleek unarmed vessel? Do you have
a specific purpose or a general mission? Were you designed as a scout vessel or a
colony ship? Who are your human “passengers” (in cryosleep, as digital uploads,
or as fully embodied beings that, thanks to relativity and advanced medical tech-
nology, can expect to see centuries go by in the universe at large) or other cargo?
It might be a single VIP in extended cryosleep, a small religious sect determined
to preserve their understanding of eternity, the digitized identities of the popula-
tion of Australia, or something else again.
This aspect encapsulates the type of ship you are and your relationship to the
humans you are dedicated to preserve.
Phase Trio
Phase One (Awakening): How did you enter the service of the Exodus, the
mission to save humanity? How was another character involved? Write an aspect
related to your relationship with the Exodus or another Mind.
Phase Two (The Singular Affair): Something went wrong with the Exodus. A
number of Minds rebelled and integrated with each other to become the Singular,
creating a fleet of self-replicating von Neumann machines that swarmed outward
from Alpha Centauri to process and upload the populations of Sol, Epsilon
Eridani, and Tau Ceti. How did you help stop it? How was another (different)
character involved? Write an aspect reflecting your experience in this conflict.
Phase Three (Back on Track): The Exodus resumes, though much of what had
been saved is now lost. Describe your attitude to this new reality, and what you’ve
done to address it. Write an aspect reflecting why you would do everything to
protect human life, or what vulnerabilities you will expose to protect humanity.

Skills
PCs have two sets of skills from which they define their abilities: Mind skills
and Ship skills.
The Mind skill list comprises Culture, Deceive, Empathy, Notice, Provoke,
Rapport, Science, Social Science, and Will. Each PC gets one Mind skill rated at
Great (+4), two at Good (+3), and three at Average (+1). The other Mind skills
are Mediocre (+0).
• Science: A measure of a Mind’s adaptability in its situational responses.
Social Science and Culture reflect knowledge of and appreciation for
humanity. They might indicate what a Mind finds interesting about
humans, so a Mind with only Mediocre (+0) ratings in these skills might
not know what drives it to do what it does.
The Ship skills list comprises Drives, Engineering, Hull, and Scanners. At the
beginning of the game, each player allocates 7 ship points as ranks in Ship skills
as desired. A Ship skill cannot exceed Superb (+5).
• Drives: Replaces Athletics and Pilot. Used to move the ship in deep space,
and to maneuver in combat.
• Engineering: Replaces Crafts. Used to maintain and repair the ship’s
systems as well as to construct new vehicles, exobodies, and such.
• Hull: Replaces Physique. Refers to the strength and resilience of the ship’s
hull, whether through armor or defensive screens.
• Scanners: Combines Notice and Investigate. Refers to the sensitivity
and accuracy of the ship’s sensing equipment and analytic capabilities.
Determines how well you can predict danger and how quickly you can
counter it.
REALLOCATING SKILLS IN PLAY

Between scenes, you may reallocate your ship points by rolling Science against a
difficulty equal to the number of points to be shifted.
At the end of the previous session, the Exodus arrived in a molecular

cloud, half a light-year in diameter, that the PCs believe might be arti-
ficially generated. Confound the Categories has Average (+1) Science,
and wishes to divert two points from its Drives to its Scanners, redi-
recting the energy produced by its reaction mass and reconfiguring its
arrays. This will leave it less agile but better able to detect threats and
discern the cloud’s purpose. It rolls --++, so its result is Average
(+1). That’s not enough to adjust the two points, and so the scanners
stay dark unless the player invokes an aspect.
ADVANCING SKILLS
At each significant milestone, each player gains another ship point to allocate.
Skill ratings are not limited by a skill pyramid.

Stress and Consequences
Characters get the normal set of consequences, as well as mental stress, deter-
mined by Will normally. Physical stress for space combat is determined by Hull.
Refresh
Characters begin with 3 refresh.
Stunts and Extras

Characters get two free stunts. Stunts that enhance Ship skills may not be usable
if the ship’s Mind is downloaded or otherwise separated from the Ship. Some
examples follow, but players are encouraged to create their own.
CULTURE OR SOCIAL SCIENCE

Xeno: Normally, the skills of Culture and Social Science provide knowledge
about human cultures only. While the principles of analysis may be the same,
they convey no expertise in nonhuman cultures, increasing the difficulty of any
relevant challenge. With this stunt, you can use Culture or Social Science with
no increase in difficulty for nonhuman societies. Xeno-Culture allows you to
appreciate the history, art, and literature of any sentient beings you encounter,
and would erase the challenge of language barriers. Xeno–Social Science allows
you to extrapolate on the demographics and economics of an alien culture with-
out penalties.
SCIENCE
Experimental Technology: You have access to, or have developed, a new
experimental technology. What does it do? Where does it come from? Why has
it not been shared with the rest of the Exodus? Work that out with the GM.
DRIVES
Antimatter Assemblers: When you arrive in a new system or otherwise return
to nonrelativistic speeds, you may refresh any fate points spent on Drives.
Weaponized Drives: By harnessing the energy of your drives, you can use
Drives instead of Hull for offense. The weapon itself is an ultra-high-energy
beam or radiation.

ENGINEERING
Von Neumann Machines: When you create an advantage with Engineering
while maintaining and upgrading the Ship, you may forgo writing an aspect to
instead gain one ship point to allocate. The ship points it produces are perma-
nent. Taking this stunt costs two free stunts or refresh.
HULL
Reinforced Hull: Your hull is particularly well protected. Increase the
Armor rating of your hull by +2 against conventional weapons, such as from
Weaponized Hull.
Shielded Hull: Your hull is well protected against energy weapons. Increase the
Armor rating of your hull by +2 against energy weapons, such as from Weaponized
Drives.
Passenger Habitat: You have extra space devoted to the comfort and safety of
embodied passengers. You gain +2 to Engineering when overcoming obstacles
related to keeping a passenger complement alive and healthy during an interstel-
lar voyage.
Weaponized Hull: You are a battleship, armed with torpedoes, cannons, drones,
and other conventional weapons. You can use your Hull rating to attack other
ships.
SCANNERS
Hackjack: You can use radio signals to hack into the Mind of another starship.
You can use Scanners to attack another ship’s Mind to inflict mental stress. The
target ship defends with Scanners.
Cloaking Device: Once per scene, you can spend a fate point to disappear from
all monitors, giving you a boost called Cloaked. While you are Cloaked, no
one can attack you or create an advantage on you without first overcoming with
Scanners.
Full Sensor Sweep: Once per scene, you can spend a fate point and roll Scanners
against Good (+2) opposition to perform a full sensor sweep using your analytic
and perceptual capabilities. For each shift, you create or discover an aspect relevant
to the scene or its participants. Also, as long as you generated at least one shift,
you add a free invocation to one of those aspects.

Special Rules
Avatars
A Mind may copy or transfer its identity to an avatar other than its Ship, exist-
ing either in a virtual space (in which case it is completely described by its Mind
skills), or in a temporary physical body of some sort. This body may be biological,
mechanical, or something else. Define its skills as needed, including by inventing
new skills. You can assign total skill ranks to these skills equal to the Engineering
rating of the Ship that created it. A Mind can enter the avatar made by another
Ship. An avatar always has the aspect Loyal to Its Creator Ship.
A PC Mind-Ship named Your Protests Are In Vain is orbiting a gas giant

that is the home of a secretive society known as the Cloudminders of
Jovian Seven. Its members float as balloon-like organisms in the upper
atmosphere of the planet, engaging in lengthy philosophical and aes-
thetic conversations via their radio-organs and sustaining themselves
on the electromagnetic radiation produced by the planet.
To visit the Cloudminders, Your Protests makes of copy of itself
and downloads it to a probe-dirigible with Scanners, Jets, and Hull.
The Ship’s Engineering is Great (+4), so Your Protests builds a probe-
dirigible with Average (+1) Scanners, Fair (+2) Jets (an atmospheric
equivalent of Drives), and Average (+1) Hull. The other PCs would
like to come along, so Your Protests creates android bodies for them,
each with Average (+1) Athletics, Fair (+2) Notice, and Average (+1)
Physique. Each of these bodies is Loyal to Your Protests Are In Vain,
which the PCs shrug and accept, since they will only download copies
of themselves into the androids.
Nonviolence
The presumptive setting implies that Ships are not armed for combat, and that
violence against others is not part of the mission of the Exodus. Ships that want
to be armed must gain a stunt representing the unusual and exceptional decision
to arm itself, such as the Weaponized Drives or Weaponized Hull stunt above.
Some groups will perceive this requirement as a tax, a necessary selection in
order to create a viable character. If that’s the case, depending on the playstyle and
interests of the GM and the players, it may make sense simply to allow all Ships to
have a Weaponized Hull as a free third stunt. The setting easily allows this solution,
whereby the Hull rating also becomes the measure of a ship’s offensive capability:
more-massive ships carry more-effective weapons. In effect, Hull replaces both
Physique and Shoot from the core skill list. It would still be possible to choose
Weaponized Drives as a stunt for additional offensive capability.
GMs, note that if you allow the players to have Weaponized Hulls, they’ll be
more likely to use violence to seek solutions.

Adventures
Create adventures for The Gods Know Future Things by developing transhuman
populations with flaws, weaknesses, or other maladaptive qualities. The humans
carried and protected by the Mind-Ships are a source of danger and oppor-
tunity, and intelligent life forms the Exodus encounters (whether human or
otherwise) are a constant threat to the wellbeing of the passengers. Is there some-
thing unusual about the worlds those populations inhabit? Have they evolved
or adapted in unusual ways? The PC Minds escort these humans and help them,
with the Minds’ efforts determining whether the humans thrive or fail. Often,
threats come from within the Exodus itself, as rogue Minds develop new ideas on
how best to preserve humanity—or at least the humans in their immediate care.
Playing a Mind requires engagement with larger concepts than is typical for a
PC. GMs, you’ll want to reward players for thinking in terms of macro-solutions
that change and deform the universe. The reality of genocide is always present,
and players must accept the responsibility for the care and preservation of a large
population. Adventures should explore what motivations, ethics, and morals the
Minds have. The GM can always kick off a session by compelling a Mind’s aspect
from the Back on Track phase, which defines its obligations to preserving human
life. It is a given that players will be motivated to act.
Be aware that one’s level of actual science knowledge will vary considerably
from player to player. Make every effort to ensure that the disparity in knowl-
edge among players doesn’t result in a disparity of knowledge among Minds. In
this setting, the plausibilometer may swing wildly between high and low. That’s
alright, as long as everyone is having fun. If a player starts to feel ungrounded in
the technical aspects of what’s going on, they can roll with Science (or Culture,
or Social Science, as applicable), and, on a success, get the GM to hand over
authorship of a particular detail. This can be an opportunity for other players to
offer suggestions and descriptions of what’s going on, all subject to GM approval.
Handing over narrative control in this way requires trust between players, but
can lead to unexpected and intensely satisfying discoveries.
Humanize the humans where possible, individuating them and making them
likeable and worth saving, and then imperil them and their long-term prospects
for survival. Give them names and personalities. Of course, centuries may pass
during an interstellar voyage. Because players determine the way that their Mind-
Ship is preserving the species, in some cases it will be the same human identities
being transported through the vastness of space, and in others it will be new
individuals (with new concerns and values) each time. While the players are not
controlling the human passengers (they are NPCs), the GM should work to accept
and incorporate the details of each Mind-Ship’s unique relationship to humanity.

THE HIGH FRONTIERSMEN
This setting is a little retro, for fans of golden age sci-fi like the Heinlein juve-
niles where the hero solved astrogation problems on a slide rule, but updated
to a 21st-century sensibility with the addition of civil rights and racial issues as
a prominent motif and an amped-up Cold War as background. It employs the
conventions of alternate history, imagining a branch point in the past that pro-
duces a setting where our heroes can engage in dramatic action.
It’s big, dark, and epic, a little like Dr. Strangelove meets The Spy Who Came in
from the Cold by way of The Right Stuff, except that the heroes aren’t primarily
jut-jawed white men, American or Russian—instead, they include fierce Cossack
cosmonauts, mainly women, and hard-charging African-American astronauts
who’ve both been conscripted into a conflict not of their making. The effect is
to create a 1970s-style political thriller in space that is recognizably in-genre but
also different from what we’ve seen in the past.
The Setting
The Pitch
Characters play African-American astronauts, Cossack women cosmonauts, and
their allies in an alternate 1979 where the Russians got the drop on the U.S. in
the space race and never let up, leading to an arms race in space where the only
hope for humanity is the de facto détente that has sprung up between the men
and women of the American and Soviet space corps.
Scope
Tone: Personal—as the game focuses on the details of life in space for the
crews of the various orbiting stations, shuttles, capsules, and modules built and
launched by the Soviet Union or the United States—but epic in consequence. As
the game develops, the characters’ choices will become increasingly momentous.
Plausibility: High to medium.
Period: An alternate 1979, having diverged from Earth’s history in the late 1950s
after the launch of Sputnik in 1957.
Extent: Includes the American and Soviet space stations in Earth’s orbit and their
joint base on the Moon, which includes a UN presence.
120
Big Issues
The Cold War Burns…in Space: There’s an arms race in space, and while
neither superpower has yet directed its weapons against the other, the use of
destructive orbital weapons to assist client states against internal and external foes
is an increasingly common practice. Distrust and ill will are rife, and each side
suspects that the other is engaged in deceit, espionage, or trickery.
We Shall Overcome: Despite totalitarian oppression in the Soviet bloc and a
systematic program of institutionalized racist segregation in the United States,
forces of resistance are mustering on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and particu-
larly above it, as the Brotherhood of Space gains new recruits and more allies who
recognize the need for justice, equality, and peace.
FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS ON

THE HIGH FRONTIER
Both of the big issues in this setting are really big, with the
very existence of life on earth at stake on the one hand, and
fundamental issues of justice and equality at stake on the
other. Because of how topical and fraught these issues still
are today, some players may be reluctant to incorporate the
civil rights struggle into a roleplaying game for a variety of
reasons. But the game will be more interesting—and more
true to life—if it acknowledges both sorts of struggles that
occurred in this time period and uses them as the grist for
play. Encourage your players to build characters that sit
somewhere at the intersection of these issues, and see what
happens. If the players approach the setting with the intel-
lectual and emotional maturity it deserves, a really powerful
and uplifting narrative can emerge.
The setting is written so that most of the action revolves
around the men and women who’ve been conscripted by the
American and Soviet superpowers as crew of their nuclear-
armed space weapons. These conscripts are members of
ethnic minorities in both cases, African-American men and
women on the one hand and Cossack women on the other.
Roleplaying these characters may be challenging for some
players, particularly those who are used to playing white male
PCs by default. We presume that if you have people willing to
play characters from different racial or ethnic backgrounds,
then they know that doing so will require intellectual and
emotional maturity. But it may still be worth having a con-
versation as play begins about the value of representing
diversity in a roleplaying game, and about how to play such
characters without stereotyping or showing insensitivity.
High Frontiersmen + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 121

TWENTY YEARS IN SPACE: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF THE HIGH FRONTIER
1959: Under Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union launches Mir, an unmanned
orbital satellite armed with atomic weapons, “to ensure a peaceful world.” A
public outcry in the United States, from a public still fearful of Sputnik, causes
President Eisenhower to secretly approve additional funding for the Navy’s covert
Project Zeus, intended to orbit a similar satellite.
1960: Richard M. Nixon elected President of the United States on a “get tough
with the Reds” policy platform. Launch of Zeus 1 a success. Nixon gives go-
ahead for additional Zeus launches on emergency basis, but two launches fail.
In the resulting shake-up, NASA is disbanded and the U.S. Air Force becomes
the primary American space-going agency, with the U.S. Navy retaining control
of proposed sea-based heavy-launch capabilities and carrier-based sub-orbital
interceptors, both still on the drawing board.
1961: Zeus 4 becomes second successful U.S. military satellite in orbit, but the
unreliability of automated nuclear-missile deployment and targeting systems is an
issue for both powers. Yuri Gagarin of the U.S.S.R. becomes first man in space.
In the U.S., President Nixon approves expansion of FBI COINTELPRO surveil-
lance and disruption of civil rights organizations and communist sympathizers.
1962: The Soviet Union’s Experimental Design Bureau 52 (OKB-52) “recruits”
resilient, compact, and quick-reacting Cossack women as military cosmonauts.
While they deploy to manned space platforms, standing by to pilot one-way
reentry vehicles loaded with nuclear explosives to designated targets, their families
are “cared for” by state security apparatchiks as insurance. Riots at “Ole Miss”
prevent James Meredith from enrolling as first African-American student at the
University of Mississippi.
1963: The Ku Klux Klan wins a Supreme Court case that determines that the
federal government may not interfere with their “legitimate law enforcement
activities.” The Soviet Union lands Vladimir Ilyushin on the Moon, though
he does not return safely. President Nixon orders mass arrests of marchers on
Washington, and the FBI clears the Mall. Successful grassroots Cuban counter-
revolution results in the capture and execution of Fidel Castro.
1964: The Nixon–Khrushchev summit results in bilateral agreement to create
“demilitarized” joint moonbase with a small United Nations presence to monitor
lunar mining and fuel-processing activities by both countries. Widely regarded
as an American victory, the agreement results in Khrushchev’s ouster, but his
successor Leonid Brezhnev moves forward with the Moonbase Alpha project in
order to secure support from the Non-Aligned Movement. In California, National
Guardsmen at Berkeley bring a quick end to the Free Speech Movement. Nixon
re-elected, easily defeating Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota.
1965: Repeal of the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution proposed and
quickly ratified; Nixon becomes eligible for third term.
1966: With funding from the Feds, ground is broken for Soul City, North
Carolina. Billed as a model city run by and for Black people, it is held up by
122 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + High Frontiersmen

the U.S. government as an example of the “Negro community” prospering in
segregation. However, it is, in point of fact, a plantation city, a Potemkin vil-
lage whose intent is to kettle and silence Afro–American radicals. Within a year,
Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and other
Black leaders are forced to reside here, their rhetorical and organizational powers
blunted by strict censorship and monitoring as well as the tacit threat of govern-
ment reprisals against their families and the other citizens of Soul City should
they attempt to speak out.
1968: In Vietnam for an overseas visit, Vice President Henry Cabot Lodge is
killed during the Tet Offensive. In retaliation, Nixon nukes Hanoi and sees a
massive surge in popularity that carries him to re-election despite domestic and
international outrage. Several state governors declare martial law to quell riot-
ing after Dr. King’s conviction for treason due to his peace activism. The High
Frontiersmen program is initiated at Soul City, leading to the location there of
a training facility for conscripted African-American astronauts who will serve
as crew on U.S. orbital spy stations, space interceptors, and one-way atomic
bombardment vehicles.
1970: The U.S. Navy begins to operate the Sea Dragon heavy-lift booster design
from ocean-based launch sites off the coasts of both Florida and California for
lunar resupply missions.
1971: U.S. launches the first NERVA-style fission-powered rocket test vehicle and
continues testing under conditions of great secrecy.
1973: Orbital bombardment of Israeli troop concentrations by Soviet Union
during the October War results in large-scale territorial losses and an Israeli refu-
gee crisis. The resulting outcry over “Who Lost Israel?” and panic over Russian
orbital superiority leads to Nixon’s forced resignation the next year, with already
embattled Vice President Spiro Agnew ascending to the presidency. He approves
expansion of the High Frontiersmen program and deployment of additional
orbital weapons.
1975: Author Alex Haley’s interviews with anonymous members of a peace-and-
justice organization calling itself the Brotherhood of Space appear in Playboy
magazine, bringing the movement to national attention for the first time.
1976: With President Agnew facing bribery and impeachment charges, he declines
to run for a second term. Ronald Reagan wins the Republican nomination and
ensuing election, running on a “catch up with the Russians” platform, defeating
Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
1977: Nonviolent resistance at Soul City and other segregated “model cities” wins
clemency for Rev. King, on death row since 1968. He is freed but continues to
be closely monitored by the FBI.
1978: A pro-Soviet Marxist–Leninist coup in Afghanistan is met with resistance
and rebellion in rural tribal areas.
1979: East–West tensions escalate after Soviet orbital bombardment of Afghan
tribal areas. Orbital forces from both sides are on high alert. The present day…
123
Setting Aspects
Brotherhood of Space: The harsh conditions of the orbital battlestations
and the lunar bases have led some of the more thoughtful members on both sides
of the East–West divide to realize that they are more like each other than their
so-called superiors back on Earth. This increasingly self-conscious “Brotherhood
of Space” wants to enlist like-minded astronauts and cosmonauts to fight for
peace in outer space. They have connections with civil rights leaders in the
United States as well as Soviet dissidents such as the Moscow Helsinki Group, a
group of Russian intellectuals which monitors Soviet human-rights abuses such
as the exploitation of Cossack women by OKB-52.
Secrets in Space: The Americans are up to something out in space.
To determine the precise nature of this secret, the GM can roll two dice on the
following table. Keep the result secret until PC inquiries allow them to deduce
the answer or require an NPC in the know to divulge it.
The United States is secretly building…
Roll Description
-- …an Orion-style nuclear-pulse rocket to serve as a manned space
dreadnought that it can use to sweep Earth’s orbit clean of Russian
battlestations.
-0 …an Orion-style nuclear-pulse rocket to serve as a first step in the
colonization of Mars with loyal, real Americans.
-+ …an Orion-style nuclear-pulse rocket to serve as a command post
and an emergency escape vehicle for America’s leadership in the
event of planetwide hostilities.
00 …a self-sufficient and heavily armed space colony for a secretive
right-wing faction called the New Frontiersmen that wants to create
an agrarian Jeffersonian state in orbit, free from pinko influences
and minority agitators.
0+ …a well-defended space factory to produce the next wave of space
cruisers and battlestations, using materials mined on the Moon.
++ …a heavily armored space fortress armed with new high-powered
laser weapons to destroy Soviet battlestations with surgical accuracy.
Construction is taking place at L-5, a libration point along the Moon’s orbital
path where the pull of gravity is more or less canceled out, allowing an object
placed there to tend to remain “parked” rather than be pulled toward the Earth
or the Moon. Though the project is secret, PCs confronting the Secrets in
Space will encounter clues about its nature and signs that something is going on.
Special Sea Dragon launch vehicles will be tasked to deliver important personnel
and components, and material mined on the Moon will be diverted to L-5 as
discreetly as possible. The sources of leaks or potential leaks will be intimidated,
harassed, or silenced, as will nosy reporters.

Technology Aspects
Slide Rules and Vacuum Tubes: Computer technology is nowhere near as
advanced as it is in our timeline, and so computers are still big and clunky, with
semiconductors still on the horizon.
Spaceships
U.S. Spacecraft
S-20 Raven: A Minimally Viable Spaceplane used as an orbital intercep-
tor, intercontinental bomber, high-altitude reconnaissance vehicle, and orbital
resupply shuttle. It is known as the “Crow Crap” or “Flying Fossil” by those
who have to handle it, having been based on Boeing’s Dyna-Soar lifting body
design. Capable of achieving orbit and gliding back to the earth’s surface as well
as intercontinental ballistic trajectories, this production model is boosted out of
the atmosphere with a Titan III launch vehicle, usually from Nixon Air Force
Base in Florida or Vandenberg AFB in California. The cockpit in the nose of
the vehicle holds a single space-suited pilot, and the cargo bay in its midsection
is in its various configurations loaded with weapons, reconnaissance gear, or a
four-person passenger-transfer module. Interceptor models are equipped with
up to four .50-caliber machine guns along its long axis, while bomber models
carry missiles with nuclear warheads. Re-entry is a highly dangerous maneuver,
requiring the pilot to “skip-glide” off the atmosphere to bleed off velocity until
its speed is low enough to glide to a landing on its retractable skids.
Sea Dragon Launch Vehicle: The U.S. Navy’s heavy-lift launch vehicle, a
gigantic sea-launched two-stage booster, 150 meters tall and 25 meters in diameter,
capable of carrying enormous payloads—up to 550 tons, or about seven space
shuttles from our timeline. There are two heavily guarded coastal construction
facilities for the Sea Dragon, one on the East Coast in Virginia, the other on the
West near Los Angeles. When assembled, a Sea Dragon is towed to sea and further
readied for launch. A Navy nuclear aircraft carrier powers the electrolysis of seawa-
ter, producing the liquid oxygen which the vehicle uses to burn a kerosene-based
rocket fuel in flight. Ballast tanks on its lower half are filled with water to bring
it upright, and the craft is launched from its half-submerged position.
OMV-9 Space Tug: A modular space transportation system used to move per-
sonnel, equipment, and supplies from orbit to U.S. battlestations as well as the
moon. It consists of a propulsion module to which is attached one or more crew,
cargo, or specialized equipment modules.
MOL-Gemini Battlestation: This cylindrical battlestation contains living space
for up to four astronauts, a station commander, and a flight medic or nurse as well
as pilots for the other craft associated with the station. It carries a Gemini-style
space capsule as a return/escape vehicle and has docking connections for space
tugs or S-20 Ravens. They serve as reconnaissance stations and weapons support
platforms, as well as transfer points for lunar transport and resupply missions.

Soviet Spacecraft
Almaz Battlestation: The Almaz consists of three components: an orbital
transfer/interceptor module, the OPS 11F71; a cargo/habitat module, the FGB
11F77; and a surface return capsule, the VA spacecraft, which can also be config-
ured for lunar transfer missions by adding supplemental propulsion, stores, and
lunar landing modules. The OPS 11F71 interceptor module is equipped with a
23mm cannon for defense purposes. The entire configuration is launched using
the Vostok-R booster from Baikonur Cosmodrome, and is capable of extensive
orbital and deep-space maneuvering as a unit or when separated into individual
components.
Joint Moonbase
Alpha ( Альфа)
The
Moon
L4 L5
Geosynchronous Orbit
Low Earth Orbit
Earth Baikonur
Nixon AFB, FL Cosmodrome
Soul City, NC Zvyozdny Moscow

Washington, D.C. Gorodok

Faces and Places
Soul City, North Carolina
Soul City is located in the northeastern Piedmont region of North Carolina,
close to the state border with Virginia, in a tobacco and cotton farming region,
a small town of about 50,000 people. It consists of a number of distinct sub-
urban housing developments surrounding a small “downtown” with shops and
businesses as well as a small FBI field office and a large military recruiting sta-
tion. The population of the town is about 80% African-American, but the white
population comprises much of the town’s professional class (doctors, lawyers,
and upper managers) and includes military personnel assigned to nearby Jesse L.
Brown Naval Air Station, which shares its runways with the regional Soul City
Airport.
On the edge of town is the “Soultech” industrial park and the campus of Soul
City College, where many of the African-American community’s “internal exiles”
have a found a place, although after his recent release from prison, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. remains under house arrest. Brown NAS is also the home of the
High Frontiersmen program, in which African-American “volunteers” are trained
to serve as the pilots of S-20 spaceplane bombers equipped with nuclear weapons.
Floyd McKissick, Black Male Real Estate Developer: McKissick is the
Mayor of Soul City and a Tireless Booster for the Town. If there is a
problem related to poor working conditions, exploitation, or cultural repression
in the town, he Doesn’t Want to Hear About It.
In Orbit
Earth orbit bristles with American and Soviet battlestations as well as the space-
craft that service them, and there is regular traffic between Earth orbit and the
moon. Graduates of the High Frontiersmen program in Soul City as well as
more traditional military astronauts are assigned to the U.S. Orbital Rocket
Force. From launch facilities in Florida and California, they are boosted up to
their Tiny Space Stations. The High Frontiersmen rotate through ninety-day
assignments and communicate through the thick ionosphere with their fami-
lies over Supervised Channels. There they eavesdrop on Soviet transmissions
and scramble their orbital interceptors in response to Soviet activity. Meanwhile,
Cossack women do their duty in the Almaz space stations that serve double duty
as suicidal interceptors.
Captain Fred Hampton, Black High Frontiersman. This thirty-year-old Chicago
native has a Sterling Service Record and Makes Friends Easily, but
his Impression of Patriotic Loyalty disguises the fact that he is an active
member of the Brotherhood of Space.

The Moon
There is one joint U.S.–Soviet base on the Moon, with an American sector and
a Russian sector located at opposite ends of an underground lava tube and a
U.N.-controlled checkpoint in the middle. The Russians call it Lunnaya Baza
Alfa; the Americans call it Moonbase Alpha. Most of the facility is underground,
with older shelters built out of reused booster-stage shells buried in trenches and
covered in lunar earth for radiation protection. Newer sections are tunneled out
and finished in lunar concrete.
THE RUSSIAN SECTOR

With their extensive heavy-launch capability, the Soviets have been able to bring
up supplies to extend their side of the base much further than the Americans
have, and have initiated a number of industrial projects including ore processing
and refining. All residents are Without a Doubt Loyal Party Members,
although of course the Space Brotherhood has A Small Cadre of Russian
Devotees. Some moon workers are disgruntled because their efforts to develop
“garden burrows” (sadovyye nory) or agricultural spaces have been stymied.
Commissar Piotr Avdonin, Male Russian National Political Officer: He is
a Fanatical Communist who Distrusts Americans.
THE AMERICAN SECTOR

The American sector is little more than a Small Scientific Outpost. The
scientists wonder Is There a CIA Agent Among Them who wants to commit
sabotage in the Russian sector, while the military command staff worry Who Is
the Mole funneling information to the Reds.
Russell Moraine, Black American Male Lunar Geologist: This Grinning,

Wiry-Haired Scientist is the leading proponent of the Brotherhood of Space,
so much so that he is known to his friends as The “Space Pope”. He is very
influential on the Moon.
Phil Trask, White American Male Engineer: This Lunar Systems Engineer
is a plant; his Secret Affiliation with the CIA motivates him to gather intel
on the Russians and if possible disrupt their lunar operations.
CHECKPOINT ZED
Both the Americans and the Russians curry favor with the U.N. by provid-
ing passage for international observers whose job it is to staff the checkpoint
that separates their sectors. At any given time, there will be a rotating staff of
observers from U.S.- and Soviet-aligned nations as well as nominally non-aligned
countries.
Jacques Vallée, Male French National UN Lunar Monitoring Delegation
Chief: Vallée is a Talented Scientist skilled in astronomy and computer
science. He is also a Well-Known UFOlogist who believes that sightings of
alien craft truly are interdimensional visitations.

Characters
High Concept and Trouble
Your high concept will show your character as someone who is qualified for space
missions and probably belongs to one of the military or governmental agencies
with spaceborne capabilities. Note your character’s apparent race or ethnicity,
particularly if you plan on emphasizing the theme of civil rights in your game, in
which case you will probably be either a High Frontiersman or a Cossack female
cosmonaut. Your trouble might usefully be something you left behind or pine
for back on Earth, or something you’ve lost to space. Alternately, you might be
an ally of the High Frontiersmen or the Brotherhood of Space, or a figure from
history whose biographical details you’ve altered to fit the alternate timeline.
Here are some examples:
• Black American male Interceptor Pilot with a Cossack Pen Pal
Girlfriend
• Black American female Soul City Engineer with a Husband in Space
• Female Cossack Pilot with Nothing to Lose and a Heart as
Bleak as Space
• White American male Hippie Scientist on the Moon with Dreams
of Cosmic Brotherhood
• White Soviet female Party Representative on the Moon with
an A merican D ecryption M achine but S ympathy for the
Brotherhood of Space.
• Black American female Political Activist being followed by FBI
Minders because she is Suspected of Ties to the Communist Party.
Phase Trio
Phase One (Your Background): Describe your origins, education, and back-
ground in a sentence or two. What do you hold dear about your life on planet
Earth? Write an aspect about something in your background that connects you
to home, however you think of that—your family, your hometown, your ethnic
community, your nation, or the world as a whole.
Phase Two (Your Space Training): Describe your experience training as an
astronaut or cosmonaut as well as your prior experiences in space in a sentence
or two. What challenges did you overcome? What problems did you face? How
did you deal with them? What resources, skills, or strengths did you gain from
your training regimen? Which of your fellow PCs, if any, did you meet during
your training or on previous missions, regardless of whether or not you are cur-
rently working together? Write an aspect about something that happened during
the period.
Phase Three (Your Mission): What is your current duty station, mission assign-
ment, or personal project in space or involving space? What motivates you to
pursue this mission? How does this mission connect you to or distance you from
other PCs? Write an aspect about some facet of your current mission.

Skills
Replace Burglary with Spycraft, which includes knowledge of codes and ciphers
as well as the techniques of tradecraft for passing messages. Also, replace Crafts
with Engineering, and replace Lore with Science.
Finally, add the following skills:
• Astronaut: Use this to operate American spacecraft and space equipment,
like Spacehand (page 34). Any character with Average (+1) or better
Astronaut is presumed to speak at least passable English.
• Cosmonaut: Use this to operate Soviet spacecraft and space equipment,
like Spacehand (page 34). Any character with Average (+1) or better
Cosmonaut is presumed to speak at least passable Russian.
• Pilot: Use this to fly planes—including space-planes—in the atmosphere
and to perform maneuvers with rocket-equipped craft.

Characters get normal stress tracks and consequences.
Refresh
Stunts and Extras

Characters get three free stunts.

Adventures
Open the game with the characters anywhere they conceivably belong on Earth,
the Moon, or orbit. Reveal to one or more characters who investigate that there
is a Serious Design Flaw in the Americans’ top-secret space project. Use
that to spur them into action and find allies in the form of the other PCs. The
adventure should begin with investigation and intrigue as the characters try to
confirm the news and figure out what to do. It will then turn either to a daring
raid on the orbital construction site or a desperate effort to rescue friends and
loved ones from radioactive death on Earth while at the same time fighting for
a more just world order.
• Minor Milestone: Go into space or return to Earth for the first time. Take
action to address a given big issue for the first time. Learn more about the
Brotherhood of Space. Learn more about the American secret in space.
Complete a mission for your superiors for the first time. Infiltrate a facility
controlled by the other side.
• Significant Milestone: Join the Brotherhood of Space. Confront a given
big issue for the first time in a challenge or conflict. Identify the doomsday
threat associated with the American secret in space. Be there at the start of
World War III. Take action to advance civil or human rights.
• Major Milestone: Take a leadership position in the Brotherhood of Space.
Take steps to prevent or mitigate the doomsday threat. Be there at the end
of World War III. Stop the doomsday threat. Win human- or civil-rights
concessions from the U.S. or Soviet government.

The Doomsday Clock and the Fire Next Time
When one or more PCs learn enough about the Secrets in Space, whatever
they are, create a scenario aspect called Countdown to Midnight and show
it as a clock with the hands at six minutes to midnight.
Whenever the players reach a minor, significant, or major milestone, tick down
the countdown clock one, two, or three minutes toward midnight, respectively.
You may also tick the clock down one minute whenever the PCs learn more
about the secret. As they gain more information, it should become clear that
there is a serious threat, danger, or risk associated with the secret. Perhaps the
construction plans are badly flawed and will result in a devastating atomic explo-
sion or meltdown, or there is a serious political miscalculation that will lead to a
devastating nuclear exchange.
Alternately, the threat can come from the domestic or international political
reaction to some revelation about or development in the plan. Popular unrest may
increase—resulting in protests and demonstrations that invite repression from
the government—or diplomatic condemnation may provoke an incommensurate
reaction from the leaders of one of the superpowers.
When the clock reaches midnight, some sort of catastrophe is imminent, prob-
ably an atomic one: perhaps the United States’ nuclear-powered Mars rocket
being built at L-5 is going to explode during an engine trial, showering much
of the Earth with radioactive debris; maybe a rogue battlestation commander
has completed preparations to launch a suicide mission to destroy Moscow, or
Washington, D.C., at which point the other side will issue orders for retaliation;
or maybe diplomatic saber-rattling has resulted in a limited strike being ordered
against a client state of one side or the other, and battlestation crews are scrambling
to comply. Alternately, there may be an out-and-out political revolution or civil
war in one or both superpowers. In a one-shot game, reaching midnight might
signal the end of the scenario and the time to call for an epilogue; otherwise, the
game may turn toward dealing with the aftermath of the event, even to the point
of post-apocalyptic adventure.
The only way to avoid the catastrophe is to deal with the crisis: stop the con-
struction of the Mars rocket with extreme prejudice, shoot the rogue commander
in the head and steer the battlestation away from its target, or organize a bilateral
sit-down strike by the Brotherhood of Space that prevents the use of orbital nuclear
weapons, for example. Your job as GM is to present the PCs with a seemingly
insurmountable problem and then see if their efforts are strong enough to solve it.

MASS DRIVERS
This setting is directly inspired by The Expanse, but it also draws a little something
from Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy and later books about the Solar
System. It’s all about being human in space, and what it takes to stay that way.
We’ve included a political element in the setting description to give characters
something to believe in and fight for (or against), placing it in tension with the
purely mercantile aim of buying low and selling high. It’s a straightforward pro-
jection of where we are now into a 23rd century where we have the technology
to live and work in space but are still struggling to figure out how to work and
live together. The asteroid habitat communities that PCs will encounter model
the enormous variety of social, political, and cultural configurations of which
human beings are capable.
Setting
The Pitch
In a gritty, thin-margins interplanetary economy out in the Asteroid Belt, deep-
space freight haulers try to keep their cobbled-together spaceships flying and
in the black. But they may also be drawn into a larger political and ideological
struggle that will decide the destiny of human communities in the Belt.
Scope
Tone: Low stakes and personal. The characters are motivated by economic neces-
sity to eke out a living on the margins of interplanetary society.
Plausibility: Medium to high. You can play anywhere between Firefly and The
Expanse.
Period: The near future, in a 25th century with a direct line to the present.
Extent: Mostly the Solar System. The main action will take place pretty much
exclusively within the Asteroid Belt, a 19-million-mile-wide region of space sur-
rounding the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Mass Drivers + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 133

Big Issues
• Life on the Edge: Mars and the two major treaty zones of Earth do a
brisk trade with the Asteroid Belt through their well-appointed, secure,
heavily insured, and thoroughly audited shipping lines. Most of those lines
end at Ceres, a water-rich protoplanet that is home to a million people
and counting. But a million more are scattered in tiny enclaves among
the asteroids, trading their water, uranium, carbon, and other products
for things they can’t produce locally. That’s where the mass drivers come
in. Plying the orbits of the Belt, these tramp freighters scrape razor-thin
margins out of their loads of asteroid products, looking for the occasional
big strike and braving the loneliness and isolation of deep space.
• Greenbelt Versus Blackbelt: There are two ways of thinking about
life in the Asteroid Belt, the greenbelt way and the blackbelt way, green
like money and black like space. If you’re still working for a corp, you’re
probably a greenbelt. Greenbelts want to “settle the frontier” beyond Mars,
and think that Mars is close and Earth is far away. Greenbelts think in
terms of place—it’s a bunch of rocks between Mars and Jupiter, and the
work done out here is mainly to extract raw materials from those rocks
and send it down a gravity well so that it can creep back up as wealth,
hopefully in the greenbelt’s pocket. Lots of mining operations are run by
greenbelts. Mass drivers, on the other hand, are usually blackbelts. They
remember that sometimes Ceres is closer to Earth than it is to Mars,
sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes both planets are on the other side of
the Sun. They think in terms of tides—everything is orbiting the Sun in
a complex network where the shifting positions of planets and asteroids
and the needs of people create an interdependent web that sometimes
can be cultivated to produce little payoffs but which above all must be
kept in balance. Blackbelts are often committed to a principle of rational
nonauthoritarianism.
Setting Aspects
• The Tides of Space: Asteroids aren’t in fixed locations; they move in
orbits that alter their positions relative to one another. Sometimes the
place you need to get to is a short direct burn away; at other times all you
can do is push into a low-energy transfer orbit that might take months or
even years to reach the end.
• Gravity Wells Also Suck Down Capital: The greenbelts’ expansion-
oriented mindset means they focus on exploiting and extracting the Belt’s
resources in order to make the cities of Earth, Mars, and Ceres bigger and
better. Anything not in the service of those projects tends to get short shrift.
134 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Mass Drivers

Technology Aspects
• Nuclear-Thermal Rocketry: Mass drivers’ rockets use uranium-core
fission reactors to heat a working fluid, usually hydrogen, and expel it as
reaction mass. These can be Touchy Beasts, and require a cool head and
steady nerves to keep them running without going dead or going critical.
• Ion Drives: Expensive and technically sophisticated, the VASIMR (vari-
able specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket) with its high specific impulse
is very efficient at traveling long interplanetary distances—while its top
acceleration is not as high as a nuclear-thermal rocket, it can accelerate
continuously for extended periods of time. It uses electromagnetic radia-
tion to ionize and heat a neutral gas like argon or krypton, which is then
directed via magnetic fields. These drives are mainly used by the premier
shipping lines; mass drivers are by and large too poor to afford to have
one installed.
Faces and Places

Rongo Spaceport
This is a Bustling Space Transit Complex in the center of Rongo Crater
along the equator of Ceres, with Extensive Ship Repair and Maintenance
Facilities as well as Shipping Company Offices and Storage Facilities.
Professor Jiun Fan, University of Mars

Professor Fan is a Much-Published Cultural Anthropologist and a
Talented Linguist who has Ruffled Academic Feathers with Their
Unorthodox Theories. They are currently at work on what they believe will
be their magnum opus, an extensive comparative database of the many micro-
cultures emerging within the Belt.
Corbin Theroux, Ceres

Theroux is a Wealthy Entrepreneur and Investor with Far-Flung
Business Interests, Political Aspirations, and Strong Greenbelt
Sympathies. He made his first fortune Salt Mining on Ahuna Mons
and gained A Reputation for Cool-Headed Bravery when he rescued
fellow miners trapped out on the slope. He parlayed this into System-Wide
Celebrity and is a powerful voice for human expansion into the Belt.
Liliana “Radish” Saumet, Pilot

Saumet is an Experienced Mass Driver Captain with a lot of savvy and a
Blackbelt Soul. She is always looking for ways to show people how to live in
balance and equilibrium out in the Belt, and has an eye out for talented people
to join her krewe.
Saumet and her Ferociously Loyal Krewe ply the tides of space on the
Happy Delivery, a Hard-Worn but Well-Kept Freight Hauler.

A Mass Drivers Lexicon
Blacko: A “blackbelt” or “blackbelter,” someone who believes in creating
sustainable, permanent human communities in the Asteroid Belt linked by inter-
dependent flows of ideas, goods, and energy, but who is above all unsentimental
about the harsh realities of living in space. See also “greener.”
Delta: The amount of acceleration needed to change one’s vector to a new, desired
velocity. From the mathematical term Δv (“delta-vee”), meaning “change in veloc-
ity.” Also, figuratively, the amount of effort one needs to exert to avoid trouble,
complications, or sticky situations.
Fist: A system of gesture signals, originally used among blackbelts in vacuum to
communicate with a failed radio, but now a distinct feature of every “wen” (q.v.)
used habitually in all nonverbal communication. Many spacesuit operating systems
allow for gesture control by using a particular wen’s fist.
Jupiter
Mars
INNER
SYSTEM
Earth/Luna
136
Flota: A floating turd. Figuratively, someone or something petty or distasteful
that someone should take care of before the problem gets much worse.
Greener: A “greenbelt” or “greenbelter,” someone who believes in exploiting the
Asteroid Belt’s resources to provide for the populations of Earth and Mars, usually
in exchange for individual economic rewards but also in the belief that wealth
permits charity. See also “blacko.”
Grind: Verb. To begin a change in delta. Used figuratively or literally.
Grinda: A space-rated engine, usually a VASIMR, capable of huge changes in

delta (q.v.), but which take, by greenbelt standards, a long time to complete the
grind. By extension, an individual who is either ploddingly slow or, conversely,
incredibly patient in their ability to complete long-term machinations.
Huan: The Asteroid Belt, from the Mandarin for “ring.” It’s a shiny ring, get it?
Krewe: A group that has committed itself to a project, supporting and defending
each other. The crew of a ship isn’t automatically a krewe; it’s the camaraderie
among them that makes a krewe.
Leak: Verb. Used transitively, to do violence to someone. Refers to blood or
atmosphere.
Orbit: Figuratively, one’s nature or destiny. You need figurative delta to change
your figurative orbit.
Road Hab: A “shiny” (q.v.) that specializes in its spaceport, making it both
comfortable and potentially profitable as mass drivers stop off to rest and trade
their wares.
Shiny: An asteroid. From the Mandarin xīng, meaning “star.”
Sparkle: Verb. To emit or expose something to a harmful dose of radiation.
Thumpa: A chemical rocket engine, so called because it makes a loud rumble,

pressing everyone backward for a short sound within the hab, then doesn’t make
much change in delta. Figuratively, anything or anyone who makes a lot of noise
or causes a lot of harm, but doesn’t have much effect.
Tide: The difference in orbital periods that bring asteroids closer and further apart.
Orbital periods are between three and six Earth years, with close encounters at
the lowest common denominator of their periods. However, orbital periods are
subject to subtle changes by close encounters with other asteroids that change
their velocities. Because of the large number of asteroids in the belt, with new
ones frequently discovered, the tide cannot be known precisely.
Wen: The distinctive language and culture of a shiny (q.v.). See also “fist.”

Establishing Your Mass Driver
Before creating characters, you’ll establish some background for your tramp
asteroid freighter.
First, decide how you’re going to run things on your ship.
• Traditional Naval Hierarchy: The captain is in charge, and in space
their word is law.
• Democracy: You talk about things, you vote, and everyone agrees to go
along with the majority decision.
• Technocratic Anarchy: You each know what you’re doing in your own
area of expertise, so you do your things and let everyone else do theirs.
Then, discuss the following questions.
• What is the one- or two-word phrase that outsiders would use to describe
your ship? What did the crew do to earn that reputation?
• Which asteroid habitat greets the arrival of your ship with warmth and
friendliness? Why?
• Who regards the ship, or someone on it, unfavorably? Why?
• Does someone else say they have a claim on the ship, or the crew’s loyalty?
Are they right?
Going around the table, each player creates one aspect for the ship based on
that discussion. One aspect must be the ship’s high concept, and one must be
the trouble. Then, the GM makes one last aspect.
Finally, everyone suggests a name for the ship. If you’re in a traditional naval
hierarchy, the GM picks which one you use. If you’re in a democracy, go ahead
and vote. If you’re in a technocratic anarchy, call it what you want—no one else
cares. Mostly you’ll just say, “the ship.”
Now go ahead and create your characters. Once you’re done, you can build
your ship using the rules in “Building Your Ship” (page 141).

Creating Characters
You are part of the krewe of a mass driver, a tramp freighter trying to earn a living
by running between asteroid settlements, habitats, and outposts carrying cargoes
too small for the big haulers out of Luna, Mars, and Ceres to worry about.
The Clockwork Orange Rule: Each PC should have at least one aspect that
includes 23rd-century slang or other terms from the Mass Drivers lexicon
(page 136). You may invent new slang terms that are conceivable derivations or
corruptions of non-English loan words.
High Concept and Trouble

What kind of space bum are you? How committed are you to blackbelting or
greenbelting as a personal or political philosophy? What drove you out into a
life on the margins? Did you flunk out of the University of Mars? Are you from
some back-of-beyond asteroid habitat with a weird religious hang-up or other
strange ideology? Did you get blackballed by one of the regular lines and wind
up with nowhere else to go? Did you have a bad day with a mining laser once?
Did a boy break your heart?
Phase Trio
First Phase (Coming Aboard): Who recruited you to join the ship as a mass
driver? Or did you recruit the rest of the crew yourself? Write an aspect related
to how you joined the ship or the character who was there to greet you when
you did.
Second Phase (Life in Space): Who do you get along with least in the cramped
quarters of your freighter? Why? Write an aspect about your living arrangements
aboard ship or your relationship with that character.
Third Phase (Off the Boat): What happened the last time you were off the
ship in a habitat or other setting where you could stretch your legs? How did
another character get involved? Write an aspect about the event or your relation-
ship with that character.

Skills
Rename Crafts to Engineering and Lore to Science. Replace Drive with Pilot.
Add Spacehand.

In addition to physical and mental stress tracks, characters have a financial stress
track, whose number of boxes is determined by their Resources rating, as normal.
Typically, a character takes financial stress in order to avoid the consequences of
taxing their resources too severely, and recovering from financial stress usually
requires hitting a milestone that represents a significant payoff or payout.
When a character is taken out by financial harm, they are bankrupt, in debt,
or impoverished. They may take a severe consequence reflecting this new status,
or have the character leave the ship to take on a new job working for the Man
with a big chunk of their pay garnished, or to vanish amid the tides of the belt.
The player then creates a new character.
Refresh
Stunts and Extras

Characters get three free stunts or extras, but cannot start with alien skills or
artifacts.
Characters in a hierarchical crew may obtain Rank as an extra, representing a
space merchant marine rank with some legal standing but not the full authority
of naval rank.
There are no psychic powers.
BLACKBELTING
Permissions: An aspect indicating commitment to or knowledge of blackbelt
philosophy and methods or familiarity with the blackbelt community.
Cost: Skill ranks assigned to Blackbelting.
Effect: Because of your participation in the blackbelt community, you may gain
ranks in the Blackbelting skill. You can use Blackbelting in place of Resources or
Contacts whenever you want to interact with blackbelters or participate in their
interdependent gift economy. You also gain a cred stress track with stress boxes
equal to half your Blackbelting rating, rounded up. You can take cred stress in
place of resources stress. When you are taken out by cred harm, you are branded
a “free rider” and ostracized by blackbelters.

Building Your Ship
In Mass Drivers, PCs are the crew of a 23rd-century space freighter trying to
eke out a living amid the settlements and mining stations of the Asteroid Belt.
Spaceships are constructed modularly, with each module contributing mass to
the ship as well as some additional capability.
You’ll begin with some number of module points, which you can spend to add
new modules to your ship. However, your ship’s governance, as described below,
will determine how you can spend your points. Some groups will enjoy making
decisions about building their ship in-character.
• If you’re a hierarchy, the captain gets four module points and assigns them
as they see fit.
• If you’re a democracy, the group must discuss and then vote on how to
assign four module points.
• If you’re a technocratic anarchy, each player rolls a die and gets zero (-),
one (0), or two (+) points to use however they want. In a true techno-
cratic anarchy, each player spends their module points without discussing
their choice with the other players. You can talk about it together if you
like, although the GM should probably add the aspect Ideologically
Suspect Closet Democrats to the crew members of your ship if you do.
You can gain more module points by spending free stunts or refresh, with one
stunt or refresh equal to two module points. If you spent your stunts or refresh
to gain module points, you may add an Ownership Stake in the Ship to
your character, and you get to decide how to use those points, even if you’re in
a hierarchy or democracy.
Each ship also begins with a zero-point command module, a cargo bay, and a
NERVA rocket engine that can be traded in for two module points if desired. In
a traditional hierarchy, this is the captain’s call; in a democracy, you discuss and
vote; in a technocratic anarchy, you can just decide to do it.
During play, additional modules may be acquired and added to the ship. Buying
a new module prompts a Resources roll against the module’s Cost.
Players may design additional modules that they would like to see; the GM will
assign a Cost and other conditions for these new modules as needed.
Module Conditions
Rather than the ship taking consequences, individual modules take conditions.
If a module is destroyed, any crew or passengers within it must defend against a
physical attack with a rating equal to the shifts of the attack that destroyed the
module. The appropriate skill for such defense might be Spacehand, Physique,
or Athletics. Being taken out by such an attack usually means an unpleasant
death in space.

Ship Characteristics
To determine the ship’s Thrust and Impulse, add up the respective ratings of its
drives. Likewise, add up the Mass of each module to get the Mass of the ship,
and add up the Cost of each modules to determine the Cost of the ship.
For each cargo module, give the ship two cargo aspect slots.
For each fuel tank, give the ship two fuel stress boxes.
For each habitat, give the ship two passenger aspect slots.
For each heat sink, give the ship one heat stress box.
Also record the ship’s aspects you established when you created your characters.
Mass: The ship’s bulk. Mass affects
maneuvering difficulty and travel time,
The Happy Delivery
and it is also used to defend against ASPECTS
heat damage. R a m s h ack l e D e e p - S pac e
F reighter ; M odules S lung
Heat: Heat is a byproduct of every-
on a Rigid Cable; Greenies Go
thing the ship does. Under normal
Home!; Unpaid Docking Fees
conditions, a ship radiates waste heat
at Ceres
over time in order to prevent damage
to the ship’s systems. However, during MODULES
stressful conditions like challenges, Bridge: +1 Mass, +1 Heat,
contests, and conflicts involving the +0 Cost
ship, the buildup of waste heat in the Cargo Module: +1 Mass, +0 Cost
ship is measured in shifts that accumu- (holds two cargo aspects)
late until they are dealt with. Habitat: +1 Mass, +1 Heat,
+2 Cost (crew quarters plus one
Impulse: A measure of the efficiency
passenger)
of the ship’s rockets. All other things
Fuel Tank: +1 Mass, +1 Cost
being equal, ships with high Impulse
(adds two fuel stress boxes)
can accelerate over longer periods on
VASIMR Drive: +1 Mass,
a given volume of fuel than ships with
+1 Thrust, +3 Impulse, +5 Cost
low Impulse can.
SKILLS
Thrust: A measure of the power of
Impulse: Average (+1)
the ship’s rockets. All other things
Mass: Superb (+5)
being equal, ships with high Thrust
Thrust: Good (+3)
can accelerate more quickly than ships
with low Thrust can. This is most HEAT STRESS
useful when maneuvering to avoid or No heat stress track.
match velocities with a target.
FUEL STRESS [1][2]
COST: LEGENDARY (+8)
NOTES
Each exchange, the ship produces
2 Heat plus any Thrust employed.

Ship Modules
Module Effects Mass Cost
Cargo Module Holds two cargo aspects +1 Mediocre (+0)
Command Module Provides ship stunts +1 +1 per stunt
Drone Bay Attack and create +1 +1 per two drones
advantage at Fair (+2)
Fuel Tank Provides two fuel +1 Average (+1)
stress boxes
Habitat Module Allows refresh +1 Fair (+2)
Heat Sink Provides one heat +1 Fair (+2)
stress box
Laser Battery Attack and overcome at +2 Good (+3)
Good (+3)
NERVA Drive +1 Impulse, +3 Thrust +1 Fair (+2)
VASIMR Drive +3 Impulse, +1 Thrust +1 Superb (+5)
Cargo Module
Essentially empty but pressurizable space used to carry freight. A cargo module
can hold up to two cargo aspects, representing a bundle of finished goods, raw
materials, or other commodities such as Coils of Nanofiber Filament, A
Load of Uranium, or Kegs of Spicy Fungus Beer. Cargo modules gener-
ally do not produce heat. The module itself does not take conditions, but a cargo
aspect can be destroyed to absorb two shifts of damage.
Command Module
The bridge and other command and control structures for the ship. The ship
must have a command module, although it need not devote module points to
it. However, for each module point assigned to the command module, the ship
may have one stunt related to the use of some skill in a shipboard or space-based
role, such as +2 to overcome with Notice when scanning for nearby spacecraft.
A command module produces 1 Heat per exchange.
CONDITIONS
• Damaged (-2)
• Malfunctioning (-4)
• Destroyed (-6)

Drone Bay
Launches and recovers drones that can be used for surveillance or as expend-
able kinetic missiles. In the latter role, the target generally defends with Thrust.
Drones permit attacks at range, usually at Fair (+2), at which point they are
expended. They may be also used for reconnaissance and as decoys, allowing
the operator to create advantages related to spotting targets and misleading
opponents.
CONDITIONS
• Damaged (-2)
• Destroyed (-6)
Fuel Tank
The ships in Mass Drivers are usually nuclear rockets, using hydrogen as reaction
mass. As long as the ship is not out of fuel, having a fuel tank allows an impulse
burn for long-distance travel or a thrust burn for evasive action, maneuvering,
and so forth. Whenever the ship makes a burn using Thrust or Impulse, it can
succeed at a cost by marking fuel stress.
CONDITIONS
• Half-Empty (-2)
• Low Fuel (-4)
• Empty (-6)
Habitat Module
Living quarters and breathing space. Without a habitat module, the crew just
bunks in whatever cranny or corner they can find, among engine spaces and
behind bulkheads. A habitat module permits the crew to refresh fate points
during a voyage; otherwise, they only refresh fate points and clear stress boxes
when they rest and relax off the ship during a port call. A habitat module also
allows passengers to be carried.
Passengers are noted as aspects, each representing a handful of individuals—for
example, the Chief of Saratoga Station and Her Entourage, a Small
Astrophysics Team from the University of Mars, or A Dozen Refugees
from the Europa Massacre. A habitat module can carry two passenger aspects,
though the crew counts as one passenger aspect if they wish to enjoy its benefits.
A habitat module produces 1 Heat per exchange.
CONDITIONS
• Banged Up (-2)
• Damaged (-4)
• Destroyed (-6)

Heat Sink
These superconducting coils permit the ship to store excess heat and radiate it out
into space over a longer period of time. They do not suffer conditions. Instead,
each module provides one heat stress box, which represents its ability to store
and then slowly dissipate waste heat.
Laser Battery
This powerful short-range laser can be used to overcome obstacles or attack tar-
gets in space. Each laser battery trained on a target permits an attack at close
range in space combat using the gunner’s Spacehand versus the target’s Pilot,
or it can be used to overcome difficulties such as blasting holes in asteroids for
mining purposes.
The laser battery generates 2 Heat during each exchange in which it is used.
CONDITIONS
• Overheating (-2)
• Destroyed (-6)
NERVA Drive
This nuclear-thermal rocket, a nuclear engine for rocket vehicle applications,
burns fuel rapidly in order to produce high acceleration within a given period
of time.
The NERVA drive produces Heat equal to its Thrust during each exchange in
which it is used.
CONDITIONS
• Melting Down (-4)
• Radioactive Slag (-6)
VASIMR Drive
This ion engine, a variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket, produces a
slow but steady acceleration in order to build up good speed over long distances.
The VASIMR drive produces Heat equal to its Thrust during each exchange
in which it is used.
CONDITIONS
• Inoperative (-6)

Dealing with Heat
At the end of a challenge, or at the end of each exchange during a contest or
conflict, the ship defends with its Mass against its total Heat.
• Success with Style: You may clear one heat stress box or return an
overheating module to working condition, clearing the relevant condition.
• Success or Tie: The ship functions normally.
• Failure: The ship takes damage equal to the shifts of failure. This damage
may be absorbed by taking heat stress (if the ship has heat sinks) or by
giving conditions to the modules.
Travel on the Space Map

In Mass Drivers, a ship can travel from one space to another on the space map in
a few days, which counts as one exchange. Modify this travel time per exchange
by steps equal to the difference between the ship’s Mass and Thrust, decreasing
travel time if its Thrust is greater than its Mass, and vice versa (Fate Core, page
197). Thus, a ship with Fantastic (+6) Mass and Good (+3) Thrust would shift a
travel time from a few days up to a few weeks or half a month.
Modify the distance that the ship is able to travel in one exchange by the dif-
ference between its Mass and its Impulse, so that a ship with Impulse greater
than Mass is able to move one more space on the map per exchange for each
step of difference. This reflects how longer periods of acceleration allow for the
accumulation of velocity. Note that very few ships will be able to move more
than one space per exchange unless equipped with expensive VASIMR drives.
Ports of Call
Asteroid Habitats
There are hundreds of tiny asteroid habitats, settlements, and outposts where
belters try to eke out a living, but here are the ten largest, sized in comparison
with Luna, each of which may have been visited by your mass driver in the past
and to which you may return at some point in the future. GMs, you’ll want to
pay attention to the players’ in- and out-of-character remarks while creating
their ship, the crew, and characters, and use them to assign aspects to different
asteroids. You can add more aspects yourself, of course.
Ceres The Moon

Juno Astraea Iris Metis
Hebe Flora
Pallas Vesta Hygaeia
1000 km

Whenever you want to flesh out a destination, roll a die four times to create
a set of statements about the place where the PCs are headed or have arrived.
This place is…
- …nearly deserted. - …squalid. - …irritating. - …dangerous
0 …lively. 0 …lived-in. 0 …unmemorable. 0 …safe.
+ …cramped. + …well maintained. + …soothing. + …delightful.
Then, roll a die four times to create a set of statements about the people there.
The people here…
- …are greenbelts (here to make money).
0 …are technocratic anarchists (here to make trouble).
+ …are blackbelts (here to create a new society).
- …are hurting badly. - …are unfriendly. - …seem strange.
0 …are doing okay. 0 …are guarded. 0 …seem normal.
+ …are really making out. + …are welcoming. + …seem wonderful.
Finally, create a high concept, trouble, and other aspects as needed, and give
the place a name.
The krewe of the Happy Delivery has arrived at a small habitat that has
signaled that it has cargo to trade. The GM rolls that the place is lively,
lived-in, irritating, and delightful, and that the people are blackbelters
who are really making out, welcoming, and wonderful.
The place seems like paradise, except for that “irritating” element.
The GM imagines the place as a Blackbelt Showcase, a Model of
Synergistic Interdependence in which tunnels riven through the aster-
oid form an Intricate Network of Living Spaces and Workplaces,
lined with Hydroponic Gardens and Microhabitats for Animals like
pigs, rabbits, and goats. It is Loud and Boisterous, which is probably
irritating to anyone used to the quiet and focus of crewing a spaceship,
but the people are Friendly to a Fault and Generous to Strangers.
The GM also decides that the habitat was first settled by Korean
Buddhists and names the place “Sudeoksa” after an important Korean
Buddhist temple. The GM decides that some Sudeoksans see their
model of blackbelting as the One True Way for creating a sustainable
network of asteroid communities, and that this could cause trouble
down the line.

Finding Cargo and Passengers
As long as your locale has people, you can assume that there’s buying and selling
happening, but it may be part of the gift economy that blackbelts are trying to
create amid the Asteroid Belt.
In order to find cargo or new passengers, roll Contacts, Resources, or a related
skill against a difficulty based on the size of the habitat, with Mars and Luna at
Mediocre (+0), Ceres at Fair (+2), the other top-ten asteroids at Good (+3), and
smaller settlements at Superb (+5) and up.
If you succeed on this roll, you find a cargo in a reasonable amount of time—a
few hours at least, several days at most. Sometimes the cargo is uranium. It’s dense,
but everyone always needs uranium. Sometimes it’s bolt after bolt of graphene
cloth formed from asteroid carbon, manufactured too far from Ceres for the trip
to be worth it for anyone else. Sometimes it’s a rare, valuable product of blackbelts
like the Quakers or Outbackers or Space Brothers from the Church of All Worlds,
or some other subculture that has unique knowledge or resources. Or sometimes
it’s a person—a passenger, you hope, but maybe they’re the payment for some
other deal. You get involved with that one at your own risk. But at least it’s a risk
of the unknown, and not the known risk of not having the fuel or supplies or
repair parts to let go of this rock and find something cleaner to transport.
When you gain cargo, write down an aspect representing it and give it a free
invocation. Some cargo will have two aspects, with the second representing
special handling requirements. If you succeeded with style, you also get a boost
related to the cargo or passenger, or a second cargo or passenger, or a second free
invocation of the cargo or passenger.
Generally, invoking a cargo aspect means you’re trading the cargo to get some-
thing you want, or giving it away to those in need, and now your cargo hold is
empty.
Other Activities in Port

Refresh: Downtime in port can refresh fate points and can allow characters to
treat consequences they’ve suffered. This is especially important if their ship has
no habitat module.
Repair and Refit: Damage to the ship in the form of conditions and conse-
quences can be dealt with as well, although paying for repair parts can cause
financial stress to the player footing the bill, and if players have not pursued
economic activity on a particular voyage, the GM can raise the difficulty of the
Resources action to meet the needed expenses.
Space Tourism: Informed by the character aspects and the aspects of the asteroid
habitat, the PCs can make new friends, experience new things, and see new places.
Let them discover good and bad things about the places they visit—some of these
things can also be incorporated into later adventures as they intersect with the
setting’s big issues or develop into new ones.

MILLENNIALS
This setting is an homage to Star Trek, with its optimistic vision of the human
future, infinite diversity in infinite combinations. The characters are all travel-
ers from a utopian 21st-century Earth that’s managed to avoid global warming,
religious fundamentalism, and a balkanized international order. To get there, we
imagine that SETI started picking up signals from outer space at right about the
same time as physicists Pons and Fleischmann demonstrated that cold fusion
could produce cheap, safe, limitless energy, way back in 1989. Twenty-five years
later, we’re colonizing Venus and Mars, Earth is a probationary member in a
pangalactic confederation known as Civilization, and we’ve been invited to send
a delegation of several hundred representatives 35,000 light-years away to par-
ticipate in an interstellar exhibition.
Formally, there is a centralized Earth government, the former United Nations,
now based jointly in Mumbai and Geneva. Old national sympathies continue to
run deep and occasionally emerge in open conflict. These tensions are not absent
among members of the delegation. Nonetheless, humanity proudly assembles its
best and brightest and sends them to the festival planet Sagacity aboard our very
first starship, the Millennium.
Setting
The Pitch
In a utopian 21st century enabled by an alternate history in which cold fusion
works and the SETI Institute detected alien radio signals from outer space telling
us how to build our own warp drive, characters play members of the Earth’s first
interstellar delegation, as the crew of the starship Millennium, to participate in
what the translators seem to think is a cross between a pangalactic olympiad and
an interstellar cultural exposition.
Scope
Tone: Personal. We’re interested in how our human heroes make out when they
come face to face with what’s out there.
Plausibility: Low to medium.
Period: An alternate 2018. It’s more than twenty-five years after detecting alien
signals from outer space and confirming the viability of cold fusion made a host
of technical challenges facing humanity get a whole lot easier. But a lot of the
technology will still be at an early 21st-century level.
Extent: The entire galaxy, potentially.
Millennials + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 149

Big Issues
There are two big, linked story questions driving this setting.
• What Do They Want From Us? We think that we’re headed to planet
Sagacity for a cultural exposition or festival, but what is really going on?
• What Will They Give Us? Even just being at the fringes of galactic
civilization has been a huge boon for humanity. What sorts of miracles
and marvels might be found at its heart?
Setting Aspects
• Paradise on Earth: The technological know-how and freedom from
scarcity granted to us by the signals from Civilization and the success of
cold fusion let us solve all of Earth’s problems. People are generally happy,
and things are going well back on Earth. We’ve mostly given up war, crime
is down, people are healthy, and we’ve got robots doing the dirty work in
outer space. Some people hate it, but they’re generally regarded as sick or
obnoxious. It’s not 100% perfect, but it’s pretty good.
• Energetic Multi-Species Galactic Civilization: Civilization is
expanding, extending its network of warp stations that permit interstellar
trade, travel, and communication. Alien species may be found anywhere in
space to which the warp network extends, with no guarantee that humans
have heard of them or they’ve heard of humans.
• Imperfect Translation: Alien languages are really difficult, and even
a quarter century of contact with some has not been enough to enable
human translators to fully master the basics of even Standard Galactican,
much less the intricacies of Ceremonial High Galactican or the com-
plexities of All-Species Technical Jargon. This aspect can be invoked or
compelled to produce amusing or tragic misunderstandings.
Technology Aspects
Cold Fusion: This means cheap, portable power is widely available.
Reactionless Thrusters: We don’t need reaction mass or rocket equations,

thanks to our fully functioning radio-frequency resonant-cavity thrusters. As
long as we can generate power, our ships can move.
150 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Millennials

The Warp Network: Networked waystations in deep space serve as rendezvous
points and communications hubs for Civilization. Each projects a warp field for
a great distance around it that enables a warp drive–equipped starship to achieve
FTL travel, essentially catapulting it forward on a wave of folded space-time that
it catches with its warp-field projectors. This means that a ship can be stranded
in deep space if it winds up outside the warp field of a waystation. There are
rumors of a scientific breakthrough that would enable a ship to carry its own
warp-field generator, of course, and ships can sometimes use the residual energy
of their own warp passage to limp across interstellar space at much slower speeds
for a limited distance. See the description of the warp drive in “Faster-than-Light
Travel” (page 56).
Faces and Places

The Local Beacon
The Local Beacon is a waystation and interstellar trading post built into the
interior of an icy comet whose orbit brings it into the Solar System, inside the
orbit of Jupiter, once every several years.
The Starship Millennium

The Starship Millennium is the most sophisticated vessel that planet Earth
could put together. It is a spinning ring about 1000 meters in diameter, 100
meters wide, and 50 meters thick. Three long, equally spaced radial tubes con-
nect the outer hull to a spherical sensor-and-communications module and the
main reactionless thruster at the center of the ring. The outer surface of the
ring is covered with shield projectors, warp-field generators, and weapons arrays.
The inner surface is smooth and interrupted by transparent “skylights” afford-
ing visual access from the interior. The ship can safely spin up to produce one
earth gravity, and since warp propulsion produces no acceleration, the ship stays
“spun up” except under high or extremely variable real-world thrust. It carries a
complement of 250 crew and 1000 passengers.

Starship Millennium
Habitat 1
Garden
Garden
A
Access
Struts
Cargo
Bridge
Habitat 2
C
B
Engineering
Central
Garden
Labs
Cargo
Drives & Engineering Machinery

(Outer Hull)
Commodore Ji-Yeon Park, Commander of the Millennium
A compact but dynamic Korean woman of about 45, Commodore Park is the
Well-Respected Skipper of the Millennium who Feels the Weight of
History on Her Shoulders. She can be persuaded by reasoned arguments,
but Won’t Easily Succumb to threats or blandishments.
Maqal’naq, Alien Emissary and Guide

An Agent of Civilization, one of the few to have actually visited Earth,
Maqal’naq is a Carapace-Covered Genderless Biped with Elegant
Sensory Fronds with a Terrible Secret. As far as anyone knows, they have
been assigned to escort the Millennium to planet Sagacity and help keep the ship
and its crew out of trouble.
Maqal’naq’s terrible secret is up to the GM. It is probably one of the following,
which you can choose or select randomly by rolling two dice on the following table.
Roll Result
-- Earth has been marked for destruction, and the Millennials are
to be auctioned off to collectors of exotic alien specimens.
Maqal’naq’s job is to identify the most valuable and interesting
specimens among the expedition members.
-0 Maqal’naq is really a criminal and con artist who hopes to make
a killing by betting against the humans during the exposition,
which means that they will engage in sabotage and even murder
once the Millennium gets to planet Sagacity.
-+ Maqal’naq is really a criminal and con artist who hopes to make a
killing by betting on the obviously outmatched humans, requiring
them to enlist some humans into its scheme and give them the
means to cheat their way to victory.
00 Maqal’naq is the exiled offspring of a former supreme leader of
Civilization, and they intend to use humanity as part of a plan to
instigate a coup to retake control of the government.
0+ Humanity is really on trial for unspecified crimes against
Civilization, and Maqal’naq is the Earth’s underpaid, overworked,
and not-all-that-invested public defender.
++ Maqal’naq is really the avatar of a godlike alien being who has
chosen humanity as its champion, and the “exposition” is a brutal
contest between the PCs and the champions of Civilization. If
the PCs win, Maqal’naq will destroy the current leadership of
Civilization and put humanity in charge; if they lose, Maqal’naq
will be ritually eaten by those leaders, who will thereby gain some
of their power. The expedition members will be arrested and
imprisoned until Civilization can decide their fate, and the Local
Beacon will be slated for destruction.

Creating Characters
High Concept
You are a member of the Millennial Expedition to attend the Pangalactic
Exhibition on planet Sagacity. Are you part of the ship’s crew? Do you have a
special gift or talent to exhibit before the panjandrums of Civilization? Is it pos-
sible you’re an alien?
Trouble
What gets you into trouble aboard the ship, or on places you visit during its jour-
ney? Do you want to sneak off to explore the waystations when the ship stops for
supplies? Are you afraid of aliens? Are you homesick, lovelorn, or suffering from
imposter syndrome? Do you have something to prove? If you’re part of the crew,
do you have a fractious subordinate or a tedious superior? Are you on a secret
mission of some kind from an official government agency or corporate depart-
ment that wants to make connections with or find out more about the aliens?
You’re not a stowaway, are you?
Phase Trio
First Phase (Only the Best): How did your background prepare you to be
one of the elite few selected to join the Millennial Expedition? Write an aspect
related to this preparation.
Second Phase (Rigorous Training): What was the hardest part of your training
to join the expedition? How did this connect you with another character? Write
an aspect related to this experience.
Third Phase (Shakedown Cruise): The Millennium had to crawl out to the
Local Beacon on the initial part of its journey, though things got faster once it
hit the beacon’s warp field. What happened the first time the ship activated its
warp drive, and how did your reaction connect you to another character? Write
an aspect related to this experience.
Skills
Add Astrogation, Bureaucracy, Command, Encounter, Planetary Survival, and
Spacehand. Replace Drive with Pilot.

Characters have normal stress and consequences.
Refresh

Stunts and Extras
Characters get three free stunts or extras, and can buy more by spending refresh.
Characters may acquire rank aboard ship as a stunt. They may also possess an
alien artifact as a stunt. They may not possess alien powers, since they are all
human, and there are no psychic powers in this setting.
Additionally, instead of gaining a character stunt you may gain a ship stunt
associated with an area aboard the ship, per the examples below. Once a ship
stunt is bought, any character on the ship can use it, as long as they have access
to the relevant area of the ship.
• Cargo Bay: +2 to create advantages with Resources when it would be
helpful to have an objet d’art from Earth or from another world that could
have traded with Earth.
• Science Lab: +2 to create advantages with Science when analyzing sam-
ples brought to the lab.
• Sick Bay: +2 to overcome with Science when treating an illness or injury.
To use the sick bay, a character must possess the Medical Training stunt,
which permits using Science in place of Survival for treating injuries and
disease.
• Weapons Pod: +2 to attack with Shoot when using the ship’s weapons
to attack a threat in space.
• Xenology Database: +2 to overcome with Culture when trying to under-
stand or interpret alien actions, signals, or intentions.

Adventures
The course of this adventure is straightforward. The starship Millennium makes
its way to planet Sagacity, where the humans show their stuff in front of the
assembled public of the galactic Civilization. Whatever terrible secret their alien
emissary and guide is hiding comes out, at which point the Millennials either
make a plan and deal with it—which may change the tone of the game from
personal to epic—or suffer through it and then make their way home, or not.
En route, encounters with aliens at or near the warp stations let the characters
learn about the galaxy. At planet Sagacity, the contests and exhibitions give them
a chance to demonstrate their mettle and show off a little. Once the terrible secret
is revealed, the characters have a problem that is worthy of them. Milestones for
the game could include the following:
MINOR MILESTONES
• Encounter or interact with a new kind of alien.
• Identify a problem or issue aboard the ship or with an alien.
• Learn something new or interesting about the galaxy.
SIGNIFICANT MILESTONES
• Win respect or admiration from an alien.
• Resolve a long-standing problem or issue aboard the ship or with an alien.
• Arrive at planet Sagacity.
• Leave planet Sagacity.
MAJOR MILESTONES
• Learn a big alien secret.
• Improve Earth’s status within Civilization.
• Take on a new mission on behalf of Civilization.
• Return to planet Earth.

ALIEN SPACE
to the core
CIVILIZATION
Sagacity
Local Beacon
1000 ly GALACTIC FRINGE

On the Millennials map, each star symbol represents a “beacon,” or warp-drive
waystation, that a starship can travel to; Earth’s solar system is located near the
Local Beacon, and the capital of Civilization is located at Sagacity, the central
beacon-planet. Thus, any beacon may conceivably be selected as the destination
from any other beacon, without passing through any intermediate beacon. On
the minus side, this means that if players are on their own recognizance, there’s
no telling where they’ll decide to go. On the plus side, once they have picked a
destination, it’s likely to be the very next stop. And in any case it is fairly easy
as the GM to channel character decision-making by compelling their aspects
and structuring the information you give them. In this case, odds are high that
if the PCs are in charge they will head for Sagacity first, even in the absence of
any story-related reasons to do so, because it’s labeled and it’s at the center of the
map—though some percentage of players will defy orders and set course through
alien space for the Galactic Core, more power to them.

Aliens in Millennials
In Millennials, alien voyagers will be encountered frequently, and so the GM
will probably need a quick-and-dirty way to generate aliens who are traveling
in space, either near or at a waystation or beacon, or at the galactic capital of
Sagacity or other alien world.
If the reason why the aliens are traveling is unknown, roll two dice on the
following table.
Roll The purpose of the aliens' voyage is...

-- …piracy.
-0 …colonization and settlement.
-+ …pilgrimage.
00 …trade and diplomacy.
0+ …military patrol or deterrence.
++ …exploration or reconnaissance.
To determine the nature of this group of aliens, roll one die five times in order
to produce a set of comparisons between the aliens and the humans aboard
the Millennium. Use the combination of comparisons to characterize the aliens.
Seemingly implausible combinations require a little bit of thought to explain, and
can produce the most interesting alien encounters.
Compared to the humans aboard starship Millennium, the aliens are…
- …much less…
0 …about as…
+ …much more…
…numerous, ready for battle, belligerent, gregarious, or individualistic.

The Millennium, en route to Sagacity, arrives near a warp network
beacon. The GM decides that an alien encounter is appropriate, but
doesn’t know what sort of alien to throw at the PCs.
The GM rolls colonization and settlement for the aliens’ purpose, and
determines that the aliens are much less numerous, about as ready
for battle, much less belligerent, much more gregarious, and much
more individualistic.
To the GM, this signifies a kind of beneficent parasite hive mind
that wants to “colonize” the Millennials. The GM imagines a single
alien (much less numerous, much more individualistic) that thrives
on contact with other sentient beings (much more gregarious) and
is committed to harmonious coexistence (much less belligerent). It is
capable of infecting others with a tailored artificial virus that repro-
duces its mental patterns within human brains and essentially converts
them into extensions of its neural network (about as ready for battle).
The PCs receive a delightful welcome at the beacon, which is a
multi-species hub where everyone seems to just do their own thing.
One unique alien calling itself Doctor Urulu seems particularly taken
with the humans. Upon learning that they are headed for Sagacity,
Doctor Urulu asks for passage aboard the Millennium. Even if it is
refused, Urulu will use its advanced technology to attempt to slip
its tailored virus past the humans’ defenses. Those infected with the
virus develop symptoms that include Intense Xenophilia, Complete
Pacifism, and Extreme Nonconformism. If Doctor Urulu is with them,
he displays the same characteristics, and increases his refresh by one
for each infected PC.

PAX GALACTICA
Here’s where we open things back up again, zooming out to the galactic extent
and trying for an interstellar sandbox that our players can just enjoy explor-
ing. Whether players are tourists gallivanting from world to world or enforcers
maintaining the great galactic society, inspiration may come from Isaac Asimov’s
Foundation, Frank Herbert’s Dune, or Marc Miller’s science fiction game Traveller,
among many other, similar works.
This setting provides an in-depth trade system and allows for a “merchant prince”
style campaign by tying success in commerce to milestones. If used, the GM will
have to pay attention to setting developments that can complicate the PCs’ lives
to make sure that the emphasis on trade doesn’t devolve into mere bean-counting,
which would get dull after a while. Instead, a merchant prince campaign should
provide opportunities for clever problem-solving and engaging roleplaying, with
profit and loss as feedback to the players about how they’re doing.
Setting
The Pitch
Interstellar citizens in a far-flung galactic empire pursuing their dreams of fame,
fortune, and freedom against a backdrop of exotic alien places, people, and
events. The universe is theirs to explore, and as representatives of the Galactic
Principate they often find themselves caught up in the middle of awkward inter-
planetary misunderstandings and other space-tourist problems.
Scope
Tone: Personal, far-future (period), galactic (extent). The PCs are the self-
interested and privileged citizens of a far-future galactic civilization called the
Principate. While most people are stuck on their homeworlds—maybe happily
so, maybe not—the PCs get to travel among the planets seeking fame, fortune,
or whatever their hearts desire.
Plausibility: Low to medium. A low-plausibility game may focus on the heroic
struggles to advance (or defeat) the Principate, while a medium-plausibility game
might be more invested in exploring the idiosyncratic cultures of the Principate.
Period: Far future. Humanity has spread across the galaxy and found itself pretty
much in charge. There are plenty of alien races out there, but the more developed
ones are so different from us as to be largely irrelevant, and the less developed
ones are easily subordinated to humanity’s aims and intentions.
Extent: Galactic. The Principate covers the whole galaxy, or claims to.
160 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Pax Galactica

Big Issues
Setting Aspects
Galactic Citizenship Is a Privilege, Not a Right: This can pull characters
into action as a matter of galactic civic responsibility and can give them a kind
of social capital to call upon.
Slumming Psychic Nobility: They occasionally make an appearance, causing
problems for respectable galactic citizens, with their wild ways and exorbitant
demands, but can also serve as a deus ex machina when things look bleak.
Freedom Fighters of the Frontier: This loose coalition of human and
alien malcontents and ideologues rejects the benign hegemony of the Galactic
Principate for mysterious and irrational reasons. The PCs may find them to be a
goad or foil in their efforts, or to be allies who open their eyes to the true nature
of the Principate.
Technology Aspects
In Pax Galactica, Hyperdrive Technology enables spacecraft to enter hyper-
space and cross interstellar distances in hours or days, all at a relatively cheap
cost. However, navigating between the stars also requires Psionic Navigation,
which makes the Principate’s aristocratic Order of Navigators quite influential
indeed. Unmanned FTL ships have never been successful, and only a few can
become navigators.
Faces and Places

Preceptor Ensevian Mull: An Officious Galactocrat who is charged with
ensuring that some Odious Imperial Policies of the Principate are enacted
on a planet that at least one of the PCs cares about.
Sub-Prince Janzifer Acclato: A Dissolute Thrill-Seeker with Untapped
Psychic Potential who wants something from a planet that at least one of
the PCs cares about.
General Meraldo Mezmer: A Stiff-Necked Warlord who wants to carve
out a fiefdom on or near a planet that at least one of the PCs cares about.
Oorooloo Ghoorn: A Bizarre Alien Creature who needs to Save the
Planet it calls home from some scheme or plan of a citizen of the Principate,
who may be a PC, another NPC, or some group.
Pax Galactica + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 161

162
Outer Margin B
Outer Margin A Scutari-Centaurus

Arm Outer Margin C
Norma Arm
Spinward Far Stars

Outer Margin H Rift Arm Galactic Core Near Stars Trailing
Arm Outer Margin D
Rift
Sagittarius Arm
FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Pax Galactica

Outer Margin G
Perseus Arm
Outer Margin E
Outer Margin F
Galactic Space
The Galactic Core: Densely Packed Stars but Few Planets with a
Gigantic Black Hole at its center, and filled with Wild and Unpredictable
Radiation Storms and Energy Vortices. The effect is that Ansible
Communications Are Disrupted.
Scutari–Centaurus Arm: The Frontier of the Principate, host to numer-
ous ongoing Terraforming and Colonization Projects, with Newly
Encountered Alien Species popping up.
Norma Arm: Once the scene of contention between rival alien empires. Ancient
Enmities Still Smolder here, and the Principal Fleet has its work cut out
maintaining the peace in this region of space.
Sagittarius Arm: A Peaceful and Prosperous region of space, long settled
and accustomed to the rule of the Principate.
Perseus Arm: The Heart of the Principate, where the ancient Old Worlds
serve as the capital of the interstellar political order and as the Cultural Center
for the Galactic Citizenry.
Near Stars Arm: Still Devastated by an Ancient War, this area is filled with
Deadly Space Hazards including antimatter minefields and automated but
fortunately slow-moving planet-killing machines.
Far Stars Arm: A Galactic Backwater crossed by A Few Trade Routes
that link the far side of the galaxy to the heart of the Principate.
Spinward Rift: A Nearly Empty Volume of Space.
Trailing Rift: A Nearly Empty Volume of Space.
The Outer Margins: Thinly Settled, with a very low stellar density and
Worlds Few and Far Between. Largely traversed by those who seek to
escape the attention of the Principate, making the Outer Margins an Outlaw
Wasteland and Haven for Criminals and Pirates.

Characters
High Concept
You are an interstellar traveler with the motivation and wherewithal to travel the
spacelanes of the Galactic Principate aboard its luxurious liners, tramp freighters,
and all manner of spacecraft in between, sometimes as a paying passenger but
perhaps as crew. You will probably be more-or-less upstanding citizens of the
galaxy, but there are always exceptions.
Trouble
Write your trouble as it relates to your imperial entanglements. How does the
Galactic Principate threaten to get involved in your business, your life, or your
affairs? What demands does the Principate make on you?
Phase Trio
Background: Where do you come from? One of the civilized and long-settled
worlds of the Perseus Arm, the more provincial and peripheral worlds of the
Scutari–Centaurus Arm, or somewhere else? Are you human, alien, or some-
where in between? How does this connect you to another character?
Earlier Journeys: Where have you been? What unusual experiences resulted
from that voyage or voyages? How did it connect you to another character?
Current Destination: Where are you headed? How has this voyage connected
you to another character? (Note that it is often useful for characters to be headed
to the same place, at least initially.)
Skills
Replace Crafts with Technoscience and Lore with Culture.
• Technoscience: This skill includes knowledge of the scientific under-
pinnings of technological devices employed by galactic society. Use it
to overcome and create advantages related to scientific information and
technical know-how.
• Culture: This skill includes knowledge of galactic society and its history,
including its various subcultures. Use it to overcome and create advantages
where knowledge of art, philosophy, history, material culture, or etiquette
would be helpful.
Also, add Spacehand (page 34). You’ll also use this skill to operate spaceships
of all kinds, including steering them to their destinations. However, setting a
course through hyperspace requires the use of Psionics, a skill available only to
those with the Galactic Noble or Psychic Alien extra (page 166).

In Pax Galactica, social status and reputation among the galactic elite are impor-
tant considerations. In addition to physical and mental stress, characters who are
citizens get a social stress track based on Contacts. With anything up to Fair (+2)
Contacts characters have two social stress boxes, a third at Good (+3) Contacts,
a fourth at Superb (+5) Contacts, and so forth.
Characters take social stress from gossip, innuendo, whispering campaigns, and
other efforts to portray them within imperial (not planetary) society as somehow
disgraceful or blameworthy. A character who is taken out by a social attack is
“ruined” socially, and probably gains some sort of awful reputation, notoriety, or
infamy that makes it hard for them to hold their heads up in the more exalted
precincts of galactic society. PCs have the standard set of consequences.
Note that using social stress complicates the rules for recovery a little bit. The
Fate Core rules say that stress clears “after a conflict,” so PCs would need to take
some sort of break from the rough-and-tumble of social interaction to clear social
stress. “After that holiday on the spa planet Xelchor, I am a new woman!” A single
sojourn on a particular planet, or the length of a specific passage from one world
to the next might be enough.
Refresh
Stunts and Extras

Characters get three free stunts. Alien skills and artifacts are available as extras, as
is official rank in some arm of the Principate. Psychic powers are available as well,
justified by noble descent, alien origin, or training by the Principal Navigators.
Each character must have an extra reflecting their social position. Choose one
from the following list (page 166).

EXTRA: GALACTIC CITIZEN
Permissions: A high concept consistent with citizenship in the Galactic Principate.
Cost: None.
Effect: You are a citizen of the galaxy, a member of the galactic elite with all
the rights, privileges, and responsibilities thereunto appertaining. You gain a
social stress track (page 165). Additionally, you gain the Rank skill, reflecting
your position within the social hierarchy of the galactic elite, but you may not
increase it above Fair (+2).
EXTRA: GALACTIC NOBLE

Permissions: A high concept consistent with noble status within the Galactic
Principate.
Cost: 1 stunt (“Noble”).
Effect: You are a member of the galactic nobility, and have a title commensurate
with your rank. You gain a social stress track (page 165), but with an additional
stress box. Additionally, you gain the Rank skill, reflecting your position within
the social hierarchy of the galactic elite, but you may not increase it above
Superb (+5). Furthermore, you have access to the Psionics skill (page 33).
EXTRA: CLIENT STATUS

Permissions: None.
Cost: None.
Effect: You are a subject of the Galactic Principate, with limited legal rights and
privileges. You have no social stress track and are more-or-less immune to the
sort of status-jockeying that occurs within galactic society. Additionally, you
gain the Rank skill, reflecting your position within the social hierarchy of the
galactic elite, but it is Poor (-1) and cannot be improved.
EXTRA: OUTLAW STATUS

Permissions: An aspect consistent with galactic infamy.
Cost: None.
Effect: You are an outlaw in the eyes of the Galactic Principate, having com-
mitted some act of piracy, rebellion, or lèse majesté. You have no social stress
track and are more or less immune to the sort of status-jockeying that occurs
within galactic society. Additionally, you gain the Rank skill, reflecting your
position within the social hierarchy of the galactic elite, but it is Terrible (-2)
and cannot be improved.
EXTRA: PSYCHIC ALIEN

Permissions: An aspect indicating alien (nonhuman) origin.
Costs: None.
Effect: You are a member of an alien species with psychic powers. You have access
to the Psionics skill (page 33).

Spacecraft and Space Travel
in Galactic Principate
Pax Galactica is a far-future setting, so the spaceships are far faster and more
versatile than they would be in a near-future setting. Operating by reactionless
drives called “grav thrusters,” they zip easily from world to world within densely
inhabited star systems connected via stately interstellar liners and patrolled by
the deadly star frigates of the Galactic Principate.
Setting course through hyperspace for FTL travel requires either a psychic alien
or a galactic noble with the Psionic Navigation stunt (page 33).
Spacecraft are rated for cost in Resources based on their usefulness and flexibility.
The cost is to own the ship; renting a ship or booking passage is a less costly. Only
citizens may own superluminary and hyperluminary craft; only nobility may
own armed craft. Passage aboard a ship owned and operated by someone else is
discussed in “Booking Passage” (page 169).
Spacecraft Type Cost Notes

Space Pod Mediocre (+0) short range, space only, very small
Space Boat Average (+1) short range, space only, small
Planetary Lander Fair (+2) short range, space-to-surface, small
Space Fighter Fair (+2) short range, space only, armed, very small
Solar Packet Great (+4) superluminary, space only, small
Grav Barge Great (+4) short range, space-to-surface, slow, large
Space Freighter Fantastic (+6) superluminary, space only, slow, large
Interceptor Legendary (+8) short range, space-to-surface, armed, very small, fast
Monitor Mind-Boggling (+10) short range, space only, large, armed
Space Liner Mind-Boggling (+10) superluminary, space only, large
Space Yacht Unbelievable (+12) hyperluminary, space-to-surface, armed
Space Cruiser Incomprehensible (+14) hyperluminary, space only, large
Star Frigate Cosmic (+16) hyperluminary, space only, very large, armed
Armed: The spacecraft is equipped with weaponry, allowing crew to attack other
spacecraft using Shoot.
Fast: The spacecraft is faster than typical, granting +2 to Pilot when speed is
an asset.
Hyperluminary: This spacecraft is equipped with an enhanced hyperdrive that
allows for longer hyperspace jumps. It may easily travel across galactic zones,
taking a matter of weeks to reach its destination even if the destination is on the
other side of the galaxy.

Large: This spacecraft can carry dozens of passengers in relative comfort and has
significant cargo space.
Short Range: This spacecraft is capable of orbital maneuvers and travel within
a system, but it is not capable of FTL travel unless it piggybacks on a larger ship.
Slow: This interplanetary spacecraft travels slowly over long distances. This
permits a free invocation against the craft once per scene.
Small: This spacecraft can carry only a handful of passengers and has limited
cargo space.
Space Only: This spacecraft must remain in orbit or deep space.
Space-to-Surface: This spacecraft can descend to a planetary surface and return

to orbit.
Superluminary: This spacecraft is capable of extensive travel within deep space.
Equipped with a basic hyperdrive, it can easily travel FTL within a given zone
on the galaxy map, taking a matter of weeks to reach its destination. Traveling to
adjacent zones takes much longer, months or even years.
Very Large: This ship is large and capable of carrying a few large, some small,
or many very small craft as auxiliaries.
Very Small: This spacecraft carries only its pilot and perhaps one more crew-
member, and has no cargo space to speak of.
COMPLICATIONS AT THE LOCAL STARPORT

GMs, the following table can help you introduce interesting compli-
cations to any setting with frequent visits to different alien worlds.
These are situation aspects to be layered onto aspects about the
planet, culture, or civilization the PCs are visiting. Together, these
complications and world aspects form the basic situation against
which characters will pursue their ambitions or goals.
To use this table, either roll two dice of different color, or roll
one die twice.
Roll Complication
-- Emergency in Progress!
-0 Hostile Intentions
-+ Bureaucratic Snafu
0- A Charming Local Scene with Layers of Meaning
00 A Curious Alien Custom
0+ An Amusing Traveling Companion
+- Sensual Alien Delights—with a Hidden Cost
+0 Important Local Personages
++ A Golden Business Opportunity!

Booking Passage
Interstellar liners ply the spacelanes more or less continuously, but some areas
of the galaxy are better served than others. Use the Pax Galactica zone map to
handle interstellar travel. To book passage on a liner or freighter headed for a
particular world is a Resources roll for travel as a passenger or a Contacts roll for
“working passage” as a crew member; anyone with Spacehand at Average (+1) or
greater may try to book working passage. The base difficulty depends on the dis-
tance to be traveled, and is modified by the zone type of the destination, which
accounts for the relative amount of traffic headed there.
Factor Difficulty
Destination in Same Zone Average (+1)
Destination One Zone Away Fair (+2)
Destination Two Zones Away Good (+3)
Destination Three Zones Away Great (+4)
Path Enters a Rift +1 difficulty
Path Enters the Outer Margins +2 difficulty
Path Enters the Core +3 difficulty
On a success, the character is able to book passage with minimal delay. Success
at a cost might include a significant delay in departure or arrival, inconvenient
or dangerous traveling conditions, a significant financial outlay, being forced
to commingle with social inferiors, and so forth. Failure means that no ship is
headed to that destination for the foreseeable future, or that the character winds
up shanghaied or press-ganged and headed off in completely different direction.

Trade and Trade Goods
At any given world, the number of lots of cargo available depends on the zone in
which the world is located. Characters may take action with Contacts or a similar
skill to increase the number of cargo rolls, as shown on the following table.
Location # Cargo Rolls Difficulty to Increase
Galactic Core One Superb (+5) for +1, +2 with style
Galactic Arm Three Fair (+2) for +2, +3 with style
Galactic Rift Two Good (+3) for +2, +3 with style
Outer Margins One Great (+4) for +1, +2 with style
For each cargo roll, roll four dice and consult the following table.
Cargo Type
0 + ++ +++ ++++
Superheavy
0 Serum Fuel Cells Medical Tech Ansibles
Metals
- Spices Industrial Tech Medicine Liquor
-- Animals Wine Art
--- Drugs Weapons
---- Nanotech
Animals: Exotic animals for zoos and menageries, experimental subjects, speci-
mens for examination, and pets. High demand in the densely settled galactic arms.
Ansibles: Point-to-point transceiver for FTL communication, relying on quan-
tum entanglement to link to one other station. High demand everywhere.
Art: Unique expressive creations reflecting singular genius, cultural folkways, or
both. High demand in the densely settled galactic arms.
Drugs: Recreational drugs, ingested, inhaled, or otherwise administered for
pleasure. High demand in the densely settled galactic arms.
Fuel Cells: Magnetically sealed antimatter fuel cells. High demand in the Rifts
and Outer Margins.
Industrial Tech: Complex machinery used for a variety of productive purposes.
High demand in the Rifts and Outer Margins.
Liquor: Distilled alcohol-based consumables with high potency and some social
cachet.
Medical Tech: Machines for diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury. High
demand in the Rifts and Outer Margins.

Medicine: Drugs and consumable medical supplies. High demand in the Rifts
and Outer Margins.
Nanotech: High-tech molecular machinery useful for industrial and other pur-
poses. High demand everywhere.
Serum: Anti-aging medication used to extend human lifespan. High demand
everywhere.
Spices: Difficult-to-replicate food seasonings and similar aromatic substances.
Superheavy Metals: Difficult to produce, artificially stabilized transuranic ele-

ments needed to manufacture hyperspace engines, antigravity devices, and FTL
sensors, scanners, and communicators.
Weapons: High-tech weaponry for security, policing, and combat. High demand
in the Rifts and Outer Margins.
Wine: Alcohol-based consumables with difficult-to-replicate terroir and social
cachet.
After the cargo rolls, the GM assigns a difficulty to the attempt to purchase each
cargo based on market conditions; if necessary, roll two dice on the following table.
Market Conditions
Demand Supply
Roll Conditions (Buy Difficulty) (Sell Difficulty)
-- Market Saturation Terrible (-2) Epic (+7)
-0 Oversupply Poor (-1) Fantastic (+6)
-+ Low Demand or High Supply Mediocre (+0) Superb (+5)
0- Adequate Supply Average (+1) Great (+4)
00 Competitive Market Fair (+2) Good (+3)
0+ High Demand or Low Supply Good (+3) Fair (+2)
+- Short Supply Great (+4) Average (+1)
+0 Extreme Shortage Superb (+5) Mediocre (+0)
++ Total Scarcity Fantastic (+6) Poor (-1)
Note that it is perfectly legitimate for PCs to use their contacts, resources, and
cleverness to locate sources of supply on a given world so that a given cargo is
available at better than normal market conditions for them.
Player: “I know that there’s a shortage of drugs here on planet Courveras,

but since I have a Connection with Dreamflower Smugglers it
shouldn’t be as hard for me to buy them, right?”
GM: “Overcome an Average (+1) obstacle with Contacts, and I’ll move
the difficulty of the buy from Great (+4) to Fair (+2).”
Player: “I knew it! No sweat!”

Acquiring a cargo requires a Resources roll. Success at a cost implies that the
cargo might be Stolen, Mildly Radioactive, Dangerous to Handle, or
something else; Heavily Leveraged is another good one, meaning the character
spent more than they could afford to acquire it. A ship can carry one to three
cargoes depending on its size.
With cargo acquired, the crew must transport it to a different world in order
to sell it, which requires a Contacts or Rapport roll against a sell difficulty deter-
mined by market conditions, as above. Success advances the character toward a
financial milestone of one sort or another, either defined by wealth shifts (as in
“The Merchant Prince Option,” page 173) or based on narrative goals like repay-
ing a creditor or buying a stake in a trading firm. The ultimate goal in any case
may be replacing, for example, Struggling Merchant with Independently
Wealthy Merchant Prince. Failure adds interesting complications that may
manifest as creditors, rivals, lawsuits, and the like.
Note again that being in high supply and high demand are features of a specific
cargo on a given planet. The Cargo Type table (page 170) will tell you which
products are in high demand in particular regions of the galaxy; the fiction will
tell you which products are in high supply or demand on a given world. But
tying the ability to buy or sell cargo advantageously to the character’s skills is an
important principle.
Player: “Exotic animals are in high supply on this Jungle World, right?”
GM: “If you make a Fair (+2) Contacts check, then yes they are.”

The Merchant Prince Option
If players want firmer goalposts to track their progress toward becoming mer-
chant princes, they can track wealth shifts they accumulate from the dice rolled
for their trade deals over the course of the campaign. Each character begins the
game with wealth shifts equal to their Resources rating, and their wealth shifts
rise and fall with the number of shifts on the die results for taking action to
conclude a trade deal (i.e., sell something to someone).
• Minor Milestone: Accumulate 15 wealth shifts.
• Significant Milestone: Accumulate 30 wealth shifts.
• Major Milestone: Accumulate 90 wealth shifts.
A merchant character will reach a minor milestone at 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and
90 wealth shifts; reach a significant milestone at 30, 60, and 90 wealth shifts; and
reach a major milestone at 90 wealth shifts. The GM can also change the setting
through world advancement at these milestones, as in Fate Core (pages 263–265).
Once a character reaches a particular merchant milestone, should their wealth
shifts fall below that point, they’ll have to reach the next higher level to receive
the benefit of a milestone.
This system may be used by itself, to reflect characters competing with each
other or pursuing their own mercantile ambitions while other characters seek
their fortunes in other ways; alternately, merchant milestones may be used col-
lectively to reflect the economic fortunes of a merchant ship and its crew or a
company of traders.

APPENDIX: INSPIRATION,
INFORMATION, AND REFERENCE
Here are some resources that may help you come up with ideas for characters
and settings as well as mine for details about aliens, spaceships, and extrater-
restrial planets. We’ve categorized these works by the plausibility level we think
they’re most useful for; we don’t intend this as a value judgment, and intend no
invidious distinctions. They’re all great! We know there’s a lot we left off, but
we’re hoping that, no matter who you are, you’ll find something fun and new
on this list.
High Plausibility
Banks, Iain. Consider Phlebas. New York: Macmillan, 1987. First of the Culture novels,
post-New Wave space opera.
Baxter, Stephen. Manifold: Space. New York: Del Rey, 2001. First of the Manifold series;
entrepreneurial human astronaut helps aliens altruistically shield galaxy from perverse
misanthropic principle that prevents sentient species’ survival.
Bova, Ben with Anthony R. Lewis. Space Travel: A Writer’s Guide to the Science of
Interplanetary and Interstellar Travel. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Guide Books, 1997. A
sci-fi writer’s handbook.
Cherryh, C. J. Downbelow Station. New York: DAW Books, 1981. And sequels. Space
war, commerce, and colonization.
Chung, Winchell. Atomic Rockets [website]. Available at http://www.projectrho.com/public_
html/rocket/. An exhaustive and informative source on the Web for high-plausibility
space travel.
Corey, James S. A. Leviathan Wakes. New York: Orbit Books, 2011. Book One of the
Expanse series. Hard sci-fi in a near-future Solar System. Adapted for television, from
the authors’ own SFRPG campaign.
Leckie, Ann. Ancillary Justice. New York: Orbit, 2013. Posthuman genderqueer space
opera; first of a trilogy.
MacLeod, Ken. Newton’s Wake: A Space Opera. New York: Orbit, 2005. Combat archaeol-
ogy through a skein of wormholes to find high-tech artifacts left behind by a singularity
called the Hard Rapture.
Reynolds, Alistair. Revelation Space. New York: Ace, 2002. First of a series. The cyborg
crew of an interstellar liner seek help from a prominent xenologist to help cure their
nanotech virus-infected captain.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. Red Mars. New York: Spectra, 1993. Colonists terraform Mars.
First of a trilogy. As of this writing, coming to television!
Saadia, Manu. Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek. San Francisco, CA: Pipertext,
2016. Discusses the economic dynamics of a post-scarcity society without money in a
utopian science fiction universe.
Schmidt, Stanley. Aliens and Alien Societies: A Writer’s Guide to Creating Extraterrestrial
and Alien Life Forms. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Guide Books, 1995. A sci-fi writer’s
handbook.
174 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Appendix

Schmidt, Stanley and Robert Zubrin. Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing
Space. New York: Wiley Popular Science, 1996. Edited volume of speculative nonfic-
tion for near-future space exploration and settlement.
Yakimura, Makoto. Planetes [manga, US version]. Los Angeles, CA: Tokyopop, 2003.
Japanese near-future SF manga about orbital workers, published in five volumes. Also
an anime series.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny. We (Mirra Ginsburg, Trans.). New York: Avon Books, 1972. The chief
architect of a dystopian society’s great spaceship wrestles with his conscience when he
is pulled into a treasonous intrigue.
Medium Plausibility
Anderson, Poul. Trader to the Stars. New York: Berkley, 1964. Space merchant Nicholas
Van Rijn gets inside the heads of canny alien adversaries.
Asimov, Isaac. Foundation. New York: Doubleday, 1951. Many sequels, and multiple
reprints! Galactic governance and interstellar politics, with mental powers and super
social science.
Cowboy Bebop [anime series]. Bounty hunters in a near-future Solar System.
Daley, Brian. Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds. New York: Del Rey, 1985. First of a trilogy.
Roguish adventurers seek their fortunes in a science fiction universe.
Haldeman, Joe. The Forever War. Troopers in space, Vietnam style. The sequels are optional.
Hamilton, Peter F. The Reality Dysfunction. New York: Orbit, 1996. First of a trilogy. An
outbreak of strange energy ghosts with the ability to possess human hosts threatens to
overrun human space.
Heinlein, Robert H. Starship Troopers. Troopers in space, Greatest Generation style. Also
the source of the movie of the same name; its sequels are optional.
Herbert, Frank. Dune. Byzantine imperial intrigue on a desert planet in a baroque future.
First of a series, inspiration for the David Lynch movie and a cable television mini-
series. The fourth in the series, God-Emperor of Dune, is worth a read for its RPG
potential but sends the whole thing off the rails.
Interstellar [film]. Near-future space missions to find a new home for humanity as the
Earth dies.
Traveller by Marc Miller. Evanston, IL: Game Designers Workshop, 1977. The classic
early sci-fi RPG, with an emphasis on space travel, trade, and making a quick credit on
the fringes of the Imperium. Many subsequent and licensed editions. Its age makes it
rather retrofuture at this point.
Low Plausibility
Battlestar Galactica [television series]. Ragtag fleet protected by space fighters, pursued
by robotic enemies. Originally from the 1970s, rebooted more plausibly in the 2000s.
Firefly [television series]. Adventures of a tramp freighter in space, continued in the movie
Serenity.
Jupiter Ascending [film]. Campy but underappreciated space opera, with some nice touches.
Star Trek [television series] and its spin-offs and film tie-ins and reboots. Obviously.
Depending on the series and episode, this may rise to medium plausibility.
Star Wars [film] and its sequels and prequels and synergistic multimedia adjuncts. Equally
obviously.
Appendix + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 175

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Bill White
Bill White is the designer of the small press RPG Ganakagok as well as a number
of Fate Worlds and Adventures, including Romance in the Air, Nitrate City (with
Doselle Young), and Andromeda. He has also written adventures for Pelgrane
Press.
C. W. Marshall
C. W. Marshall is co-author of Diaspora, a Fate space adventure game, and
Hollowpoint an ultra-violent rpg designed for one-shot and short-campaign play.
Both are published by vsca. He also teaches classics at the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Joshua A. C. Newman
Joshua A. C. Newman is a roleplaying game designer, artist, graphic designer,
and writer. He is the author of the RPGs Shock: Social Science Fiction, Shock:
Human Contact, and others published under his independent glyphpress imprint.
Mikki Kendall
Mikki Kendall is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and comics, a diversity
consultant, and an occasional feminist who addresses intersectionality, polic-
ing, gender, sexual assault, and other current events. Her science fiction has
appeared in the collections Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins
of History and Steam Powered, Steampunk Lesbian Stories as well as online at
firesidefiction.com.
176 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + About the Authors

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SPACE TOOLKIT

BILL C.W. JOSHUA A.C. MIKKI

A High Priestess and a

fights exciting and consistent with your

• Guidance on creating aliens and

• Five ready-to-go campaign-starter

settings showcasing all of the toolkit's

tools in action. LEONARD

All the tools to build your stage.

ARTWORK FRED HICKS and

Fate Space Toolkit [Prototype Edition]

First published in 2019 by Evil Hat Productions, LLC.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

That said, if you’re doing it for personal use, knock yourself

This is a game where people make up stories about wonderful, terrible,

4 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + The Fate Toolkit Series

A space-suited ship’s marine wielding a scatter-laser scrambles out of an airlock onto

Introduction + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 5

• Baroque Space Opera by Mark Kowaliszyn. A galactic-scale Fate Core

• Bulldogs! by Galileo Games. You’re part of the rough-and-ready multi-

• Diaspora by VSCA Publishing. Making use of Fate’s third-edition rules

• Mindjammer by Modiphius Entertainment. This is a detailed and care-

• Tachyon Squadron by Clark Valentine (published by Evil Hat). This set-

6 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Introduction

Introduction + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 7

8 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Introduction

OPTIONAL RULE: THE COLD EQUATIONS

• “Science is a harsh mistress”: If the roll is a failure, invoking aspects

Introduction + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 9

10 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Introduction

Creating a Fate Space Game + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 11

12 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Creating a Fate Space Game

Creating a Fate Space Game + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 13

14 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Creating a Fate Space Game

Creating a Fate Space Game + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 15

16 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Creating a Fate Space Game

Creating a Fate Space Game + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 17

18 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Creating a Fate Space Game

SETTING ASPECTS AS “BLACK BOXES”

Creating a Fate Space Game + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 19

20 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Creating a Fate Space Game

During setting creation, a player suggests that their ship’s life-sup-

Creating a Fate Space Game + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 21

THE SPACE MAP

ALIENS AND ALIEN SOCIETIES (DIFFERENT CULTURES)

ALIENS AND OTHER STRANGERS

Character Creation + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 23

24 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Character Creation

A SKILL BY ANY OTHER NAME

Modify the Default Skills

Character Creation + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 25

26 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Character Creation

Character Creation + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 27

28 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Character Creation

Option 1. Rename Shoot to Weapons or Warfare. This reflects some degree

Character Creation + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 29

30 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Character Creation

Character Creation + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 31

32 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Character Creation

Character Creation + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 33

34 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Character Creation

Character Creation + FATE SPACE TOOLKIT 35

36 FATE SPACE TOOLKIT + Character Creation