Aspects

The meat and bones of a character, Aspects describe their various... aspects.

In general, an Aspect is a short phrase that describes something that's true™ about the character. Aspects define your character's narrative capabilities and place within the story, while providing a mechanical anchor for those descriptions. Each character has five Aspect slots, three of which have special purpose:

High Concept

A character's High Concept embodies the core essence of the character, typically describing their personality, profession, and sometimes a quirk.

Phrases like "shy nature witch with a hidden fury" or "disillusioned crown prince who wants to actually make a difference" can make good High Concepts.

Trouble

A character's Trouble is a part of their personality, identity, or otherwise something about them that somehow always ends up getting them into trouble and drama.

Phrases like "born with a silver spoon up my butt, and somehow that's everyone else's problem", "the sunk cost fallacy is my middle name" or "way too many daddy issues" can make good Troubles.

Ship

Every crewmember shapes their ship, and every ship shapes her crew. As such, each player character has one aspect that describes both them and their ship, or the crew at large.

Phrases like "easily lost in a crowd", "never backs down from a fight", "always feels safest in the middle of a storm" or "can outmanoeuver anyone, if given time to plan" can make good Ship aspects.

Free

In addition to the above three Aspects, a character has two free Aspect slots that can contain anything else the player chooses. These can be positive, negative, or any combination of them. You don't have to fill in both free Aspects during character creation, you may leave one or both of them blank and figure out what to write in them later.

The Ladder

Many things in Fate have a numerical rating that describes their scale, level, or other degree of power or importance. Fate uses both numbers and adjectives to refer to levels on the ladder, as follows:

Skills

Player characters have 6 skills that describe their core competencies and expertise. Assign one skill a Good (+3) rating, two skills a Fair (+2) rating, two skills an Average (+1) rating, an one skill a Mediocre (+0) rating.

The skills are:

Explore

Used for swimming, running, navigating, or otherwise getting from point A to point B.

Jury Rig

Used for making things, fixing things, figuring out how things work, and getting things to work or not work.

Parley

Used for conning, negotiating, intimidating, lying, and generally getting people to think or do what you want them to think or do.

Savvy

Used for knowing things, recognizing things, and knowing and recognizing what to do with the things you know and recognize.

Sneak

Used for skulking, lurking, conning, conniving, palming, pocketing, pickpocketing, and all other kinds of sneaky shady shenanigans.

Swashbuckle

Used for stabbing, shooting, avoiding being stabbed and shot, and all other kinds of combative activities.

Rolls

Fate uses dice called Fate Dice or Fudge Dice, which are a special d6 with two sides showing a + sign, two sides showing a - sign, and two blank sides. Every roll consists of rolling 4 fate dice (abbreviated 4df or 4dF in many dice rolling apps), counting the number of dice showing + and subtracting the number of dice showing a -. Roll totals are labelled according to The Ladder, like skills.

Whenever you make a roll, you add the value of the most relevant skill. If there's more than one skill that could potentially apply to the roll, the GM decides.

While NPCs and inanimate objects have skills similar to player characters, the GM may choose not to roll for them and instead automatically take their skill value as their result. This is mainly done to save on time at the table, though it should be avoided for particularly dramatic rolls and major villains.

Outcomes

Whenever you attempt something dramatic, with stakes riding on your success or failure, that is resolved as an action, which typically requires a roll of the dice.

Each action has a difficulty set by the GM, and they will usually tell you what it is before rolling. The difficulty is usually Mediocre (+0) if the attempted task is simple and without too many obstacles or distractions, Fair (+2) if the task is slightly tricky or there are some distractions, or Great (+4) if the task is particularly difficult or there are serious distractions.

If the action is resisted by another character, whether a PC or an NPC, compare your roll to your opponent's, instead of to a static difficulty.

• If the roll total is lower than the difficulty, the action fails
• If the roll total is equal to the difficulty, the action is a tie
• If the roll total is greater than the difficulty, the action succeeds
• If the roll total is greater than the difficulty by three or more, the action succeeds with style

Actions

Now that you know what the character is trying to do and how to figure out whether or not they succeeded, it's time to figure out how to represent the action in the game's mechanics. Fate has four actions that cover anything a character tries to do in the game:

Create an Advantage

Creating an advantage represents any action you take in an attempt to help yourself or one of your friends in the future. Taking a moment to carefully aim a shot, tripping the sailor who's threatening you and your friends, spending an evening poring over books to find a specific alchemical formula, or bribing a guard to let you into the gala later that night are all actions that would be represented with Create an Advantage.

When creating an advantage, you can either try to create a new Aspect in the current scene, or try to press an advantage on an existing Aspect.

• If you fail: if attempting to create a new Aspect, either you don't create the Aspect you intended, or you create the Aspect but your opponents get a free invoke on it. If attempting to press an advantage on an existing Aspect, you get no benefit, though may continue using the Aspect by spending Fate Points (see below).
• If you tie: if attempting to create a new Aspect, you get a Boost instead. You can invoke the Boost once for free, then it goes away. If trying to press an advantage, treat this as a success.
• If you succeed: you create a new Aspect with a single Free Invoke, or add one Free Invoke to an existing Aspect.
  
• If you succeed with style: you create a new Aspect with two Free Invokes, or add two Free Invokes to an existing Aspect.
  

Overcome

You use the Overcome action when you're trying to get past something that's blocking you from achieving your goals. Picking a lock, leaping across a chasm, and sneaking past an alert guard are all overcome rolls. Trying to eliminate or change an inconvenient situation Aspect is often an overcome action as well.

• If you fail: you have a tough choice to make. You can choose to simply fail- the lock stays locked, the watching guard notices you. Or you can succeed at a major cost- maybe you drop something valuable, or bigger trouble is coming soon, or you suffer harm. Decide with the GM what the cost of failure is.
  
• If you tie:  you attain your goal, but at a minor cost. A minor complication is introduced, or the scope or degree of your action is more limited than you intended. Decide with the GM what the minor cost is.
  
• If you succeed: You accomplish what you were trying to do. The lock is open, you land safely on the other side of the chasm, or you make it past the guard unnoticed.
  
• If you succeed with style: As a success, but you also gain a Boost.
  

Attack

Use an attack when you try to hurt someone, whether physically or mentally. Swinging a sword, shooting a bolt of flame, or yelling a blistering insult with the intent to hurt your target. The primary purpose of an attack action is to cause damage and Stress, with the end goal of inflicting Consequences on the target or taking them out of the scene altogether.

• If you fail: your attack doesn't connect. Your stab is parried, your fire is dodged, the target laughs off your insult.
  
• If you tie: your attack doesn't connect strongly enough to harm, but you can use its momentum to aid you in the future. You don't inflict any Stress, but you gain a Boost.
  
• If you succeed: your attack hits and you cause Stress (see below)
  
• If you succeed with style: as a success, plus you have the option to reduce the damage your hit causes by one to gain a Boost.
  
  

Defend

When you try to actively stop someone from doing something, whether that something is Creating an Advantage, Overcoming an obstacle, or Attacking you or someone else. This is the only action that is performed during another character's turn, and typically only a single character may actively defend against an action.

• If you fail: the target succeeds in their action, though if it was an attack that targetted someone else, you may choose for it to target you instead.
  
• If you tie or succeed: the target doesn't entirely get what they want, resolve the effect according to the original action (i.e. its tie or failure effect)
  
• If you succeed with style: as a success, plus you get a Boost.
  

Fate Points

Fate Points are a tool players get to take the reins of the plot and the fate of their characters into their own hands, and away from the mischievous dice. Every player character has a Refresh score that defines the minimum number of Fate Points they begin each session with - if you ended the previous session with fewer points than your Refresh value, you gain points to fill in the gap.

By default every character beings with 3 points of Refresh, but you may spend them to purchase magic or stunts during character creation, though your Refresh can never go below 1.

At the start of each scene, the GM gets a number of Fate Points equal to the number of players participating in the scene. These may be used for any NPC or object in the scene, much like a player can use theirs, though they are lost at the end of the scene if they go unused.

Fate Points can be used in two main ways:

Invoking an Aspect

Sometimes you make a roll and aren't satisfied with the results. If your burglar character has an aspect called "ring of invisibility", it wouldn't make sense for the elven guards to notice them sneaking around, right?

Whenever you or someone else makes a roll, you may spend a Fate Point to Invoke an Aspect relevant to the roll, in order to increase the result by +2. If you are the one who made the roll, you may instead choose to reroll the dice. Invocations may be declared after the roll is made, there's no need to declare them in advance.

Spending a Fate Point isn't the only way to Invoke an Aspect: the Create an Advantage action lets you create free invokes on Aspects you create or use, letting you save on Fate Points when activating them later.

Boosts

Boosts are a special type of free invoke, that aren't tied to an individual Aspect. You usually gain a Boost when rolling a Tie on an action, or Succeeding with Style on an Attack. Boosts are a brief opportunity that your character has to gain momentum in the scene, and typically vanish within a turn or two if gone unused. A Boost may otherwise be used like any other free invoke.

Compelling an Aspect

Every character has positive and negative Aspects, and if your character's Trouble is "I drunkenly stumble back and forth on the line between courage and stupidity", you probably want to get some compensation for when it gets you into trouble.

At any time, any player (including the GM) may offer another player a Fate Point and suggest a course of action for their character, that follows from one of their Aspects. The player receiving the compel may accept, in which case they get the Fate Point and narrate their character following the course of action, or they may refuse the compel by paying a Fate Point to whoever suggested the compel.

A player may also suggest a self-compel, where they suggest a course of action for their character that would get themselves in trouble. If the GM accepts the self compel, the player gets a Fate Point for their trouble. Of course, if the GM refuses, the player may still act as they suggested, they simply don't get the Fate Point.

A player who doesn't have any Fate Points must accept a compel, since they can't pay to refuse it.

Stress and Consequences

When a character successfully Attacks another character, they deal an amount of Shifts equal to the difference between the two results. The target of the attack must absorb all the Shifts with their Stress Boxes and/or Consequences, or else they are Taken Out of the scene.

Stress Boxes

Each player character has three Stress Boxes, labelled [1], [2], and [3], while NPCs may have other configurations of Boxes. You can mark a Stress Box to absorb a number of Shifts equal to the box's value, though only a single box may be marked for a single hit.

All your Stress Boxes are cleared when you have a moment to catch your breath between scenes.

Consequences

Each player character has three Consequence slots: [mild], [moderate], and [severe]. You can fill in a Consequence by writing an Aspect in it that describes the hit's effect, to absorb a number of Shifts equal to the slot's value. You may fill any number of Consequences when absorbing a single hit.

Clearing a Consequence takes more time and effort than clearing Stress. You or another character must attempt an Overcome roll against the Consequence's value to start its recovery. On a success you can rephrase it to reduce the degree to which it hinders the character, but a failure still allows the recovery to begin.

• Mild Consequences absorb up to 2 shifts, and are cleared at the end of the scene after the Recovery attempt
• Moderate Consequences absorb up to 4 shifts, and are cleared at the end of the following session after the Recovery attempt
• Severe Consequences absorb up to 6 shifts, and are cleared at the end of the following scenario after the Recovery attempt

Additionally, the character who inflicts the Consequence gets one Free Invoke on it.

Being Taken Out

If a character takes a hit that they cannot absorb (or the player chooses not to), they are Taken Out from the scene. They cannot act anymore until the next scene, and whoever took them out gets to narrate what happens to them. Death is on the table when a character is taken out, but killing player a player character without their consent should typically be avoided, both to maintain player agency and because death is often the least interesting way out of a fight.

Conceding a conflict

When a fight scene starts to turn south and being Taken Out seems inevitable, Conceding the scene might prove a better way out. A character may choose to concede during their turn, at any point before the dice hit the table to resolve their action. When you Concede, your character doesn't get what they were after in the scene- the villain gets away, the artifact you were protecting gets stolen, and the like- but you get to narrate how your character exits the scene.

Additionally, you get a Fate Point as compensation for willingly Conceding the scene, plus an additional Fate Point for each Consequence you took during the scene.

Stunts

While the six skills describe your character's broad competencies, stunts define specific areas where they excel. Stunts are unique tricks, techniques, or bits of equipment that your character possesses, that make them distinct from other character s in the world.

Your character begins play with three free stunt slots if they don't possess one of the primary magics, or two if they do. You don't have to define all of your free stunts right at the start, you can leave them blank and fill them in later. You may also purchase additional stunts at a cost of 1 Refresh per stunt beyond your free allotment.

Most stunts fall into one of the following categories, which provide a template for the stunt's phrasing. Work with the GM to phrase your stunts, and make sure everyone is on the same page about how they function:

Passive stunts

The most straightforward form of stunt, a passive stunt gives a simple numerical bonus to your rolls in specific circumstances. Passive stunts use the following template:

• [STUNT NAME]: Because I [describe how you are cool or interesting], I get a +2 when I use [pick a skill] to [describe a type of action] when [describe a circumstance].

Active Stunt

An active stunt isn't always on like a passive one, but it typically provides some more unique effect. Active stunts use the following template:

• [STUNT NAME]: Because I [describe how you are cool or unique], [once per session / I can spend a Fate Point to] [describe a benefit]

Active stunt effects are very varied in their nature, so here are a few examples:

• Attack all characters in a zone
• Automatically negate a single hit
• Choose to go first in a fight
• Deal a 1-shift hit when I successfully defend against an attack
  
• Declare "I know a guy" when entering a new town
  
• Happen to have just the right item in your bag
• Make a single hit ignore the target's Stress Boxes, so they must use their Consequences to absorb it
  

You can also work with the GM to create stunts that don't exactly fit the template, as long as they provide about the same level of power.

Other

In place of active or passive stunts, you may take an artifact (see Enchanting below).

Other stunt alternatives exist, including Allies (permanent companions or organizations), divine gifts, and being a Fey, though they are generally less fitting for a pirate game. If you are interested in exploring these options for your character, reach out to the GM.