# Edgerunner Role Playing Game {% hint style="info" %} Edgerunner is now hosted on [Gitbook](http://gitbook.com), because the previous platform it was hosted on: [Radiant CMS](http://radiantcms.org) is no longer maintained, and began rotting away. It takes effort to stay on the edge. Welcome to 2020. {% endhint %} ## Welcome to the Edge This is a work in progress site about building a FATE system powered Cyberpunk role playing game. It is pretty much playable as it is now, with most of the rules and resources ready. Only a few sections and some examples are missing, but those are easily guessed if you have played any FATE game before. *The game is going through a big overhaul right now, and many things are changing. Please bear with any inconsistencies and check the* [*changelog*](/edgerunner/changelog) *to keep up on what has changed.* Please ask your gameplay questions at [RPG Stackexchange](http://rpg.stackexchange.com/). The reference FATE implementation is [Diaspora](http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/), a very good sci-fi game in itself, with an [online SRD here](http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/diaspora-srd.html). Consider everything not defined here to be the same as the Diaspora SRD, until this work goes beta. ### Game resources PDF sheets for [characters](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-character.pdf) and a [foldable version](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-folding-character.pdf), [factions](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-faction.pdf), [the world](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-world.pdf) and [technology](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-tech.pdf). Also, for secondary characters; [alternates](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-alternate.pdf), [extras](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-extra.pdf), [goons](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-goon.pdf) and [mooks](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-mook.pdf). Plus a [reference](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-reference.pdf) cheat sheet. # Edgerunner > **It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.** — Charles Darwin ### So, what is an edgerunner? An edgerunner is a person striving to live a meaningful and fulfilling life in the cyberpunk future. Just like a surfer proficiently rides a majestic ocean wave, the edgerunner tries to keep his life balanced on the precariously narrow and rapidly moving sweet zone of the society called the edge, hence the name, edgerunner. The edge is a thin strip in the social landscape of the dark future, the steep ridge that defines the boundary between despair and madness. And it is moving at a frightening rate. Behind it is the ocean of despair, where masses of people feel that they are left behind by the society, seen as ignorant flocks of sheep that lack the courage to keep up with the future. In front of the edge is the mælström of madness, a deep chasm that swallows those few that overindulge in the future. They get addicted to the rapid change of society and like any kind of junkie, they will commit any atrocity to get increasing doses of their fix. Between the two is the edge, and on the edge are the edgerunners. These are the people trying to leave a meaningful mark on the world. But they have to spend a continuous effort keep their balance on the edge, to avoid falling into despair or madness. ### The edge wasn’t always an edge. It was more like a ridge, maybe a plateau. Maybe even an open field, once upon a time. Long ago, change was a rarity. Generations would live and die just as their great grandparents did. Any groundbreaking change in life would become legend. But innovation, be it social or technological, drives more innovation. And so the rate life changed began to increase, slowly at first then with increasingly accelerating acceleration. (Math: That’s hopefully the correct wording for a seventh order curve) The industrial revolution caused the first major breakpoint. Life changed for so many people so fast that they revolted. Many skilled weavers were put out of work overnight by the steam powered loom, so they went out and destroyed the demonic machines. But this did not stop the future. Many industries followed, many people despaired, some adapted and a few became addicted. They asked for more and destroyed who stood in their way. So people had to adapt, willingly or begrudgingly. Thus began a vicious cycle. The twentieth century saw the cycle accelerate from one major change per generation to one major change per year. The twenty first brought that up to multiple groundbreaking changes a year in its first three decades. Adapting to change without being overwhelmed by it became an omnipresent requirement of living, just like breathing. Stop for two minutes and you begin to choke. As of 2030, the latest life-changing breakthrough is in the field of human augmentation. Many corporations and medical institutions had been looking into ways of improving the human condition (and make profits) using advanced biotech and robotics, but nobody expected the fashion boom that suddenly made advanced prosthetics into something that any self-respecting contemporary would be considered naked without. Fueled by eased legislation on human augmentation (which were limited to a very tightly controlled set of applications before) and advent of cheap and available compound rapid manufacturing technologies that allowed making of reasonably priced tailor made devices, human augmentation spread like wildfire across the world. And it took many by surprise. Suddenly, you had to get your lungs cut out and replaced if you wanted to keep your job as a fireman. Not everyone reacted nicely. Most people just refused to allow the invasion of their body’s integrity. Some others went for everything they could afford to put into their body. Compared to the former, they became supermen. Their capabilities were in high demand, so they quickly rose to the higher end of the socioeconomic scale. Such a high-g ascent proved to be too much for many of those and they lost touch with their former self. They began to see themselves as gods, and the rest as insects. Only a handful managed to keep their humanity intact after their transformation. They became the latest generation of edgerunners. This game is about those edgerunners, and their struggle to stay on the edge. # Changelog As you know, this is a game in the alpha stage of its development, and this website is constantly changing as I add, revise and remove rules, explanations and examples. Here you can find a list of major changes I have made to the game, as well as the ones I intend to make soon. I won’t list minor revisions that do not change the game. ### December 2012 [Declarations](/fate/creating-aspects#declarations) are no longer tied to character skills. They are player actions, independent of the character. [Assessments](/fate/creating-aspects#assessments) no longer create new aspects. They only make existing aspects taggable. In the [character skill list](/characters/skills) *Netrunning* is no more. It is folded into a new skill called *Net-smarts* that acts more like an online version of Streetwise. *Stunts* and *Augmentations* have been rolled into a single system, and are called [Upgrades](/characters/upgrades) now. Conflict actions have changed. There are no longer any opposed rolls in a conflict. All actions are now rolled unopposed, and the only way to oppose them are through the new [Resist](/fate/conflicts#resist) action that turns shifts into stress. [Contests](/fate/resolution#contests) now involve a single roll by the initiator, not two rolls. [Challenges](/fate/resolution#challenges) no longer have a “difficulty”. The base target is always zero, and the referee will only determine how much time a result of zero takes. [Consequences](/fate/creating-aspects#consequences) now only clear after the designated game time. They can be modified, though. ### January 2013 There are now fewer character aspects. Hope you haven’t printed a huge bunch of the old character sheets, because the [new one](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-character.pdf) is already here, as well as a special [fold-up character sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-folding-character.pdf) in the FATE tradition. The new sheets also include room for the [ghost list](/characters#the-ghost), Edgerunner’s rather unique answer to character advancement. [World creation ](/the-world#world-creation)is now a mini-game on its own regard, played by players but without characters. ### February 2013 [Medias](/characters/roles#media-credibility) finally get the power they deserve. [Techies](/characters/roles#techie-jury-rig), [alternates](/characters/secondary#alternates) and [mooks](/characters/secondary#mooks) have revised rules now. ### To Do Being taken out in a conflict will have effects based on shifts from the attack roll. Referees will get a limited amount of FATE points to spend. #### Fate Core Compatibility Evil Hat Productions, the original authors of the FATE system have started a [Kickstarter campaign for Fate Core](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/fate-core). I will try to make Edgerunner compatible with this new incarnation of Fate. Edgerunner will continue to have its unique rules but they will be renamed to use a common language with Fate Core. #### Renaming concepts I intend to rename some concepts in Edgerunner, in order to either increase language compatibility with Fate Core, or because I believe that the new name will better reflect the cyberpunk atmosphere of Edgerunner. Here’s a list of the old words and the new. You may still encounter either of them until the day I finish editing. Just remember that they mean the same thing. | Old | New | | --------------------- | ---------------- | | Augmentations | Upgrades | | Stunts | Upgrades | | Tag | Free invoke | | Temporary consequence | Mild consequence | | Progress | Issues | ## Edgerunner Scrapbook Here is some of the stuff I have been considering for inclusion in the game. Some of it may or may not make sense, read at your own risk. ### Faction Functions aka. Faction roles * Gang — Turf : Designated zone recovers deployed assets * Corporation — Subsidiaries : Can deploy other factions * Unit — Cohesion : Deployed assets cannot be interrupted * Tribe — Kinship : Can target all deployed assets at once * Syndicate — Connections : Free scene aspect * Agency — Jurisdiction : Always invoke aspect for free * Movement — Momentum : Can use excess shifts ### Motivation stress track (Factions) The Motivation stress track represents the willingness of the faction members to keep pursuing the faction agenda. A faction taken out on the Motivation track may fall victim to internal squabbles, or just grind to a halt. Its people stop doing their best, or even desert or sell out the faction. ### Asset stress spillover * Characters > Motivation * Tech > Leverage * Factions > Prestige ### Positive consequences You may want your character to have longer lasting aspects than what scene aspects can provide. If you want such a robust aspect but cannot wait until the next refresh to swap one of the character aspects, or you want something robust but not really almost permanent, then you can use one of the available consequence slots on your character to put this aspect in. You may pick any available consequence slot, and narrate a scene about how your character gets the said aspect. Then write down the aspect in the slot of your choice. This aspect is like any other consequence in most regards. It takes up the slot and persists for the same duration. The only difference is that you get a free invoke for it rather than an opponent. If there is a techie involved in the process (your own character or a helping hand) then you can turn this aspect into an upgrade that persists for the same duration. # The Game Edgerunner is a tabletop, pen & paper *role playing game*, of the kind that you play with a few friends, gathered around a table, trying to form an interesting story out of a loose set of [rules](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate) over the course of an evening or several. If you have never played a role playing game before; a role playing game is a social activity where friends around a table portray fictional [characters](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters) in a fictional *game world*, determining their characters' actions in response to story events. This involves some strategic decision making by the players, and maybe some acting(voice-acting mostly) to portray the character. There is also a pre-designated special player, called the *referee* in Edgerunner, also known as the gamemaster in many other games. The referee is tasked with arbitrating the game, and playing everything and everyone else in the game world other than the players' characters. *Characters* are represented by some numbers and text detailing their characteristics on a *character sheet*, according to the rules. These details are essential in determining the capabilities of a character in the game world. The *rules* in a role playing game are there to determine how the story resolves when critical things happen. Roleplaying games are freeform, non-deterministic games where the outcome of any game action depends on the interpretation of the players, and there are many opinions on how rigid/flexible or elaborate/abstract the rules should be. Edgerunner is based on the [FATE](http://faterpg.com/) system of rules, which are somewhat simple, rigid and abstract. Simple here means that there are few rules to learn to play the game, and rigid means that they are not meant to be overridden in specific situations. Abstract means that these rules do not try to model and resolve every detail in the game world. The rules provide a resolution mechanism for general results, and the details are left to the players' imagination and narration. To play a game of Edgerunner, you will need; * *A few friends*, 3-6 recommended, more is possible but harder. * Sets of *four Fudge dice*, a set for every player is recommended, but one will be enough. [Fudge dice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge_\(role-playing_game_system\)#Fudge_dice) are specialized dice which have an equal number of plus, minus and blank sides. Don’t worry if you can’t get Fudge dice in short notice, there are [many alternatives](http://rpg.stackexchange.com/a/1733/554). * Some printed *character sheets* and other sheets, available for download and printing on this website. You may just use blank paper as well but it is easier to use the printed sheets. * *Pencils* for everyone, and some spare *paper* to take notes or draw maps * *These rules*, though you probably will no longer need to look them up after a few sessions of play. You may also want to have; * A set of *tokens*, approximately 10 per player, to keep track of fate points. Fate points continuously change hands during the game, so this is better than using pen & paper to keep track of them. * A *whiteboard* and a *dry-erase marker* to draw the map and note other details. You will be altering the map and taking transient notes on it, so this looks nicer than a paper map with lots of scratches or erase marks on it. It also helps you to use less paper, a rare resource in 2030. If you have played role playing games before, you may find that Edgerunner may be a bit [different](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/edgerunner/the-difference) than the ones you have seen before. It is a game where players collectively try to form an interesting story with their characters, rather than play their characters in a simulated game world. This form of gaming is often referred to as *narrativist* games, where telling a good story is the objective of the game, in contrast to *gamist* games where the objective is to gain meta-game benefits like points or levels, or *simulationist* games where the objective is to portray the fictional game world as precisely as possible. Edgerunner is also somewhat different than other narrativist games you may have encountered, where the burden of story-forming is mostly on the shoulder of the gamemaster, while players only contribute only when their characters act directly. In this game, every player contributes to the game world and story in an equal manner. All players have the power to affect how any story unfolds, or even establish facts about the world. ### First session A game of Edgerunner starts with all the players working together to create [the world](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/the-world) they will be playing in, and the [characters](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters) they will play. This is a collaborative activity, where everyone gets to define a part of the game world. It should take about 2 hours the first time you do it, and around an hour once you become experienced with the system. Once you have your world and characters set up, you can keep playing with them indefinitely in subsequent game sessions, without having to go through the same process. Of course you are encouraged to extend and enrich your world occasionally with more mini-sessions of world-building later. After the initial world and character building process, you should pick one player among your group to act as the referee. The referee is supposed to control and run the game from this point on, and give life to the game world by playing everything in it. All other players assume control of their characters, which will be the protagonists of the story that is about to unfold. # Difference Edgerunner is a collaborative game. That is, everyone at the table shares the responsibility of running a rich, smooth and enjoyable game. If you come from an established traditional RPG background, you may be expecting one or more of the ideas below, but you should replace them with their new counterparts when playing Edgerunner | Traditional RPG's | **Edgerunner** | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |

The gamemaster prepares an adventure in advance, putting down hours of hard work.

The game world is an established, rich setting, complete with maps, NPCs, monsters etc. It is based on some fiction that is canon, untouchable even by the GM

| Everyone in the game gets together and spend a couple of hours building their own world, plot, and characters from scratch. There is no authority, only consensus during this phase. | | The gamemaster is the ultimate authority, in other words, god, in the game. |

The referee is not an authority. The table decides collectively, and the referee only has a tiebreaker vote.

The referee's main task is playing the rest of the world. Just like a player.

| | The players are expected to behave in character. They are not supposed to know what their character does not know. | The players are expected to keep a double awareness. The character may know little, but nothing is hidden from a player. The player is supposed to keep his knowledge and his character's knowledge separate. | | The gamemaster reveals a plot and the characters react to that plot. | The players pursue a plot they created, and the referee makes the plot react. | | The players are the actors portraying the characters | The players are puppeteers *controlling* the characters and some other things | # Fate FATE is the game engine that drives Edgerunner. It’s an interesting system, quite different than traditional role-playing game systems. The primary difference is that both the responsibility and the powers associated with a traditional gamemaster are not present in FATE, therefore Edgerunner. It is distributed among all the players, including the gamemaster(called *the referee* in Edgerunner) First of all, in Edgerunner, creating a setting, a story and related plot elements is a collaborative endeavor. Everybody pitches in about what kind of a world they want for their story. Edgerunner provides sructured mechanisms for creating a cyberpunk world to play in. The players need not even have picked a referee among them at this point. The play relies on two key elements. *Aspects* are short, evocative statements that define anything in the world and make them special. Characters, corporations, items, locations and many other things have a number of aspects that define them. Aspects are used in play to drive the story, and to activate aspects, the FATE game engine uses *fate points*. Fate points are a form of currency, exchanged and spent to gain narrative power over the story. Players have a limited number of fate points. The referee has unlimited fate points. The use of fate points grants the players temporary gamemaster-like powers, but also imparts them with similar responsibilities. Contrary to usual RPG practice, the referee keeps almost no secrets. Information is available to everyone at the table, but the players are expected to be aware of the difference between their own knowledge and their characters' knowledge. The referee has three main responsibilities. He manages the flow of fate points, arbitrates all disputes, and plays the rest of the world (ie. anyone except player characters). He even does not have to drive the story because there isn’t a “the story” in Edgerunner. A story emerges as everyone plays. Edgerunner FATE contains as few rules as possible, but is flexible enough to cover a lot of things in game. The system is a mechanism for facilitating a story, rather than simulating a world. The game mechanisms in Edgerunner only come into play when there is a conflict of interest among all the players including the referee on how they want the story to proceed. {% hint style="warning" %} *Anybody may narrate anything anytime. If everyone agrees, it happens. No need for dice or other game mechanisms.* {% endhint %} Of course it is reasonable to offer modifications and discuss a bit to arrive at a story everybody likes, but *if anybody objects, it is time to roll the dice*. The FATE system allows everyone at the table to affect the task resolution, which depends on a structured system of rolling dice and comparing numbers, and using aspects with fate points to affect the outcome. In traditional RPG’s, players detail their characters' intentions, and the gamemaster determines a form of task resolution, usually involving dice. The result of the resolution just indicates a predetermined outcome. In Edgerunner, this is a bit different. *Dice are rolled before the story is detailed*, with only a rough definition of the character’s intentions. The result is a baseline degree of success/failure, which is first modified by any stakeholders using aspects and fate points, and then used to tell a nice story that fits the result. See the following pages for the task resolution and storytelling mechanisms in Edgerunner. Download the [reference sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-reference.pdf) in PDF format. # Resolution Story resolution in the FATE system is different from traditional RPG’s, as it represents events that span more than single actions. It is used to form a foundation based on the competence of the character, on which the players form their story, using aspects, fate points and other game mechanisms to modify the baseline, and offering a fitting narrative. It resolves a branching point in the story rather than a single action of a character. For this purpose, we use *the ladder* to identify a base adjective, and join that with the name of a character *skill* to form the basis of our narrative. The ladder is a list of adjectives, matched to numbers between -4 and +8 | The Ladder | | | ---------- | ------------ | | +8 | Legendary | | +7 | Epic | | +6 | Fantastic | | +5 | Superb | | +4 | Great | | +3 | Good | | +2 | Decent | | +1 | Average | | ±0 | Mediocre | | –1 | Poor | | –2 | Terrible | | –3 | Abysmal | | –4 | Catastrophic | #### Challenges To obtain a result on the ladder, we choose a character skill, roll the *dice* and add that skill’s value to obtain a result on the ladder. The name of the skill and the resulting adjective on the ladder tells us what kind of a story we must tell. {% hint style="success" %} Let's say that our story hinges on the ability of our character Hacksaw to drive through gridlocked streets of downtown Chicago. Hacksaw's "Driving" skill is at level 2 and Hacksaw's player rolls the dice and gets a ⊞⊞⊟⊡. The total is 3, which corresponds to "Good" on the ladder. We are supposed to tell a story of "Good driving". {% endhint %} All of the mechanisms described here are best used for broad results, like a “Cooking” roll to see if the character can make a great five course meal, rather than multiple rolls for each action, like a roll to see if he can whip up the mayonnaise and another to see if he roasts the meat to perfection. *Always remember that dice rolls are story devices, not simulation devices.* Such roll chains are usually too tedious and add very little to the story. If the single cooking roll turns out to be bad, it is just story flavor whether that’s because of bad mayonnaise or overcooked meat. Feel free to choose which. If you say that resting the fate of your story on a single roll is unfair, first of all, remember that this system is called FATE for a reason. FATE offers mechanisms for modifying these rolls after the fact, using *aspects* and *fate points*, but that is a subject that deserves its own chapter. And yet, there are cases where you would want to have a fine-grained approach to resolving actions. For that, we have a resolution system for various types of *conflicts*, but that is yet another subject with its own chapter. **The dice** The dice used in Edgerunner, as well as other FATE games, are specialized cube dice known as Fudge Dice. These dice have two blank faces · equal to zero, two faces with a plus sign + equal to one and two faces with a minus sign - equal to minus one. You will need at least four of these dice to play Edgerunner, but having four dice each for everyone at the table definitely helps the game. When we mention a roll, we mean four Fudge dice rolled together, and the face values added up. You may occasionally see this combination of dice referred in abbreviated form as *4dF*. However, there is rarely a different kind of dice rolling in Edgerunner, so when we just say “a roll”, we mean a 4dF roll. And when we say “Athletics roll” we mean a 4dF roll plus the athletics skill level, also shortened to “roll” in context. This will give you a result between −4 and +4, with a nice [gaussian probability curve](http://anydice.com/program/c94/graph) centered on zero. What this means is, your results will be mostly around zero, rarely in the extremes. The level of the skill used will always represent the average result that a character gets on rolls for that skill. Fudge dice are not very common, and you may be wanting to play as soon as possible. Dont let the lack of dice stop you. There are [many ways of using regular six sided dice in lieu of Fudge dice](http://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/39/554). ### Shifts Some specific rolls in Edgerunner are not simply about obtaining a story adjective. The result obtained in the roll in this case are counted as **shifts** that may be used for certain effects. Negative results count as shifts that an opponent may use. There are some general effects of shifts, and also some more action-specific effects explained in their own section. #### Contests Whenever a character’s skill is pitted against a resisting entity’s relevant skill or other characteristic, like when one is trying to beat another to a conclusion or one is trying to stop another from achieving something, the referee calls for a *contest*. In a contest, skills are pitted against each other. The skill of the opposing entity is subtracted from the skill roll total, arriving at a number of *shifts*. These shifts may be used to get an adjective from the ladder, or to get one of the effects below. {% hint style="success" %} Cassidy needs an audience with the elusive individual known as The Wizard, leader of the Chrome Reapers. The referee has determined that the Wizard has the equivalent "Elusiveness skill" of 3. (Yes, it is perfectly fine to make up "skills" on the spot to represent more complex entities with a single number) With a Streetwise skill of 1 and a roll of ⊞⊞⊞⊟ , Cassidy gets a total of . Subtract the opposing skill of 3 and he ends up with zero shifts. {% endhint %} Any negative shifts must be neutralized by getting negative effects. They must turn into worse results or longer time or more stress as appropriate. Or when the opponent is acting in a comparable way, the negative shifts become positive shifts for the opponent, who then decides how they affect things. To determine who makes the roll, consider these priorities. A player always rolls when his character is involved. If both sides are players and not the referee, the player of the more important character (bigger skill pyramid) rolls. If the characters are equivalent, then the player that initiates the action does the rolling. **Time shifting** | Time track | | ------------- | | Instant | | A few moments | | Half a minute | | A minute | | A few minutes | | 15 minutes | | Half an hour | | An hour | | A few hours | | An afternoon | | A day | | A few days | | A week | | A few weeks | | A month | | A quarter | | Half a year | | A year | | A few years | | A decade | | A lifetime | If appropriate, shifts obtained in a roll may be used to modify the story time of a narrative. The referee determines a base time on the *time track*. Any shifts in the roll may be used to move up or down the time track to determine the actual time taken by the action. That means you can use all or some of your shifts to move in the direction you prefer. The referee may decide that a roll is all about time, that is, the character always gets his way but the actual time taken will be based on shifts. In this case, negative shifts cause you to slide in the undesirable direction on the time track. If you’re trying to finish something ASAP, up is desirable on the track. If you’re trying to keep something going, down is desirable. {% hint style="success" %} Assume that Cassidy managed to get 2 shifts while trying to score an audience with The Wizard. The referee had previously decided that this would normally take a few weeks. With his 2 shifts Cassidy can get in touch with The Wizard in a few days. {% endhint %} The time track should be used in a way that makes sense. If you happen to get a whopping eight shifts when trying to fix a faucet, and go down from “an hour” to “an instant”, then the story isn’t about magically fixing the faucet. It becomes a story about realizing in an instant that the faucet didn’t need fixing in the first place. #### Persistent results A roll made to build, make or establish something may contribute shifts to the numeric indicators of its quality or capability (ie. its skill when appropriate). {% hint style="success" %} Assume that Jade got 4 shifts while writing a custom firewall to keep her freshly acquired hot data safe until she can fence it. She can distribute her shifts among the software's two critical properties, the "*Anti-Intrusion*" capability and the "*Integrity*" stress track. She decides to set its *Anti-Intrusion* capability to 1, leaving enough shifts to give its *Integrity* stress track 3 boxes {% endhint %} It’s important to persist such rolls into entities, because as you will read later they can be modified using fate points, which represents an investment in the outcome by a player. It would be plainly unfair to have them roll every time and invest again and again, just because some floozy keeps poking at the thing he built. The shifts from a roll may be used to affect any of the above parameters when appropriate. You may use some shifts towards time or getting better results as you see fit. When it makes sense, you may even worsen one of the parameters to get better results on the other. The most common version of this is when deciding between quick and sloppy results versus good results that take a long time. Whenever possible that choice always lies with the acting player. Most of the time, the basic mechanisms explained here are not enough. Sometimes, you need to factor in some other details (ie. other than skills) about your character or the environment into a roll. That is exactly when you must use [aspects and fate points](/fate/aspects-and-fate-points) to make things interesting. Other times, you will want to delve into details when resolving life and death situations like a firefight or world changing events like a political campaign. Then it is time to clear the table and set up for a [conflict](/fate/conflicts). # Conflicts Whenever the push comes to shove, and a simple task or a contest isn’t enough to satisfy everyone, it is time to dive into a *conflict*. A conflict is a systematic and verbose method to resolve a complicated situation and unlike some other games you may know, conflicts in edgerunner are *not limited to combat* situations, although it is the preferred method for that. Conflicts are verbose, and take some time to resolve. Before breaking out into a conflict, always consider resolving the situation with a simpler method. The best conflicts are ones that generate lots of story details, without dragging out the outcome. If a conflict looks like it is going to consist of mostly the same moves repeated over and over, reduce it into a [contest](/fate/resolution#contests) and be done with it. A conflict has a number of specific features * It consists of a sequence of *exchanges*, periods of time where everyone involved gets to take one action. * It is played on a *map* that sets the scene. This map can represent a real location, or it can represent an abstract space such as moods, social circles or network nodes. The map consists of discrete *zones*, with *borders* between them. * Every action in a conflict must conform to one of these: * A *move* action to move something between zones on the map * An *attack* to take out an opponent * A *defense* to modify a stress threshold * A *maneuver* to place an aspect on something * A *recovery* to reduce hits on a stress track * A *resist* action to prevent one of the above from happening * A *continue* action to keep on doing the same thing * A very simple action that does not require a test or contest * It ends when one side either *concedes* or is *taken out* Other than that, what you can represent with a conflict setup is quite flexible. A firefight or brawl is an obvious candidate, but a heated debate, a hacking attempt, a car race or a corporate hostile takeover action can very well be played as a conflict. Conflicts may seem mechanical, but do not skip the storytelling. Every action made in a conflict should generate a story detail. Remember, that’s what this game is all about. ### Exchanges {% hint style="warning" %} Things happen step by step in a conflict. An exchange consists of a time period where *everyone gets to act once*. {% endhint %} The duration of an exchange is not set in stone but it is a good idea, for the sake of consistency, to pick a duration from the time track. “3.3 seconds” or “2 weeks” is too rigid. “a few seconds” and “a couple of weeks” are better, as the implied flexibility of time reduces debate on what can and cannot be done in one exchange. The characters take their actions one by one. The question of who goes first is called the *initiative*. There are multiple methods for determining initiative, but the one we recommend is called social initiative. Social initiative is simple: *Whoever wants to go first, goes first.* Of course this requires some arbitration. Designate a player to be the *caller*. The caller should preferably be someone not involved in the conflict, otherwise the referee can become or appoint the caller. The caller is supposed to keep track of who has acted and who will act next. At the beginning of an exchange, and after every action, the caller asks “Who’s next?”. Whoever responds first gets to act. If multiple players want to act, the caller runs an auction on how many shifts the players are willing to commit for acting first. The highest bidder gets to act but must subtract his bid from his roll. ### The map The map is probably the most important feature in a conflict. It portrays the environment and provides details for all kinds of opportunities and threats. A map consists of zones, which are of variable size, geometry, and description. A zone should be defined as any space(physical or abstract) that is discrete from others. The basic rule in considering if a feature on the map warrants its own zone is *if it would make a diffrence to be there or not, then it is a zone*. Considering an indoor map, a room with walls and a door is definitely a zone, but a huge room may be split up into multiple zones, because it would matter which end of the room you are in. In an outdoor map with huge spaces, that whole building may be represented as a single zone because all that matters is if you are inside the building or not. Zones are connected to each other with borders, through which movement may be possible. All borders have a *pass value* which defaults to 1, and that pass value represents the cost of moving through that border. A border may represent any kind of persistent obstacle, or just inherent difficulty in passing from one zone to the other. For example, a low wall may be a border with a pass value of 2, or a border between two crowded zones may have a pass value of 3 because of the difficulty of moving through the crowd. Things like firewalls defending computers connected to the net, or the red tape around scoring an interview with an important government official may also be represented as borders with higher pass values. It is possible for a border to have more than one pass value for different conditions. For example, the wall between two rooms, with a door on it may be; 1 to go through the open door, 2 more to open or close the door, 4 to break the door or 7 to break through the wall. A border on a slope may be 1 when going downhill and 3 uphill. ### Actions Conflict actions are different from tests and contests that they are limited to interacting with things on the map only. Anything beyond this principle is out of the scope of that conflict, and should be resolved afterwards. {% hint style="warning" %} Every character on the map can take *one action per exchange*. After taking your action, you have to wait until the next exchange to do anything else. {% endhint %} After a player declares his character’s action but before he rolls the dice, the caller calls for compels. Compels work the same way as described in [using aspects and fate points ](/fate/aspects-and-fate-points)but the result of a compel is more constrained in a conflict. *A successful compel causes the compelled character to skip his turn*, for whatever reason that fits the compelled aspect. #### Move A move action represents the concentrated effort to cover distance on the map. The character rolls the appropriate skill vs. 0, and the number of shifts is the limit on the total pass values of borders he can go through. If he rolls badly and gets a negative result, he may get spin, which can be used against him later. He can still use his free move though. If shifts from the movement roll are not enough to overcome a border value, the character cannot move through that border. He may attempt invoke aspects or take stress and consequences to boost his movement. {% hint style="success" %} Gatto is trying to make it to the other side of the crowded warehouse in order to give his opponent a solid punch in the face. The warehouse is one big rectangular space, large enough to consist of three square zones side by side. The warehouse is not very well organized, and the aisles between racks and containers resemble a labyrinth. Therefore the borders between zones in the warehouse have a pass value of 3 each. That requires 6 shifts to make it to the other end in one exchange. Gatto manages 2 shifts with his Athletics skill 3 of and and a roll of ⊞⊡⊟⊟. Not even enough to move a single zone! Jon considers marking stress and/or consequences to make up for the more shifts he needs to go all the way, but decides to save his resources for the upcoming scuffle. {% endhint %} **Move another** You may want to force a resisting target to move on the map. Driving the enemy out of Hill 319 and persuading someone on a map of opinions are examples of moving another entity on the map. When determining range to the target, use the target’s starting zone. The target’s player has the option of resisting the move, stealing shifts from the roll. {% hint style="success" %} Jade is online as her alternate identity; Nephrite. She is trying to get rid of the IC daemon that is giving her a hard time. This iceboy is very effective in keeping her from reaching her goal, the research data she was hired to “liberate”. Since her attacks seem to be totally worthless against this hardened pile of binary code, she chooses to go for another tactic. Nephrite decides to move it out of the way and uses her Deception of 4 against the daemon’s Netrunning of 2. After dice are rolled, she gets 4 shifts. Great. She pushes the daemon four zones out, by tricking it to believe that it is defending the wrong spot. This will give her enough time to make a dash for the data she’s after. {% endhint %} Unless it is a map of metaphorical space, *factions don’t move* on the map. Instead, they [deploy](/the-world/factions/playing#deploy-action) resources on the map. #### Attack An attack is an attempt to *take out* an opponent in the conflict. An attack can take any form that is reasonable in the context of the conflict. Attempts to shoot, distract, tackle, frighten, persuade or any other thing that would force him to give up on the conflict are considered attacks. Any shifts from the attack roll are applied as stress against the appropriate stress track of the target. It is assumed that the *target always resists an attack* action. Not resisting an attack always ends up in being taken out, which is quite undesirable. The mode of attack must make sense when the skill used and range to target is considered. You simply can’t punch a guy with two rooms in between, but assuming conditions are right, you may taunt and scare him. **Inanimate targets** Not only characters are the targets of attacks. Anything that resists anyone can be a target of an attack. For example, you can attack the integrity track of the stubborn lock on the gate with your electronics skill in order to bypass it. It may also be possible to attack some kinds of borders on the map. If the attacker takes out a border, he can then redefine the border and its pass values, within reason. The border’s stress threshold is assigned by the referee unless preemptively declared by a player. {% hint style="info" %} [Complex devices ](/the-world/technology/complex)may actively defend themselves with an appropriate capability. {% endhint %} #### Defense A defense is the active use of a skill to protect yourself(or something else) from stress. You may use an appropriate skill to replace the stress threshold on a stress track on your character or on another target. {% hint style="info" %} *The number of shifts you get from your roll determines the new stress threshold of the target stress track.* You must continue your action for this new stress threshold to remain in effect. It reverts to its original value once you take another action. It also reverts if the target moves. {% endhint %} If the stress threshold later reverts to a level where there remain marked boxes higher than the threshold, nothing happens. The stress threshold matters only at the moment stress is received. The boxes above the stress threshold remain as they were, to be considered if the threshold is raised with a defend action again. {% hint style="warning" %} Don’t forget that the range to your target is subtracted from your shifts. {% endhint %} #### Maneuver The [maneuver](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/creating-aspects) is simply put, an action taken to place an aspect on something. Valid targets for maneuvers in a conflict include zones and borders on the map, any equipment used or lying around, and any of the characters involved. The target number for a maneuver is zero. The aspect is considered placed with zero shifts. If a resisting target wants to block the aspect completely, they must reduce the roll to at most *-1 shifts*. Seems easy, but with zero shifts, you just place the aspect but must use fate points to invoke it later. One shift on the roll buys you a free invoke to use in the conflict. Two more shifts buys a second free invoke, three more buys a third. The number of free invokes you can get is also the number of stress boxes this new aspect has, for the purposes of constituting a target if someone else attempts to get rid of it later. You should remove such an aspect instantly *if it ceases to make sense*. This doesn’t mean the you can instantly remove an aspect if your character is attempting to get rid of it. That would be the subject of an attack action with the aspect as its target. It only means that you should remove it if the description of the aspect becomes meaningless because of the things that happened after the aspect was created. This is especially true if the aspect describes a situation that requires the active participation of a character, and that character is no longer capable of participating. When in doubt, use table consensus. Many preemptive defensive moves can be emulated with aspects. Want to do nothing but take cover? Use a maneuver to place `Dug in` on yourself, and tag it to boost your defense roll later. Want to keep a net node secure? Place an aspect; `Icewall` on the node, use it to compel anyone trying to enter. Want to protect your girlfriend’s peace of mind? Maneuver to place `"Let me handle this, baby"` on her and use it to give a hard time to anyone who approaches her. #### Recovery Recovery is an attempt to clear up a stress track in anticipation of more damage. Anybody may attempt to clear the stress on anybody else but both of them must use their action, ie. act together. The shifts on the roll are used to clear stress track boxes. *You need a number of shifts equal to the box number to clear a single box*. You may clear any number of boxes anywhere on the track as long as you have enough shifts. {% hint style="danger" %} You cannot clear a box unless you get enough shifts. This makes higher level boxes very hard to clear. Invoke aspects to get enough shifts to clear them, or don’t get hit in the first place. {% endhint %} Recovery does not necessarily represent “healing”. Anything that gives any kind of relief or breathing room to a character may be represented as a recovery action. Supporting a friend’s lie may be a recovery action if she’s being grilled. Covering fire may give the other squad a moment to catch their breath, recovering their stress boxes. {% hint style="danger" %} *Only stress tracks may be cleared in a conflict*. Any consequences remain regardless of how long an exchange may take. {% endhint %} #### Continue This is a special type of action that lets you keep the investment you made for a previous action. In Edgerunner, you cannot retry an action. Any retries your character makes are rolled into the story generated by the single roll you make. But in conflicts that consist of exchanges with a limited time frame, this does not work. For this purpose, there is this “continue” action that allows you to build on the action you chose in the previous exchange. Remember that the core parameters of a conflict action are the *skill*, the *action*, and the *target*. If all of these are the same as they were in the previous exchange, *you cannot roll again*. Instead, you must take a continue action. {% hint style="info" %} With a continue action, you *don’t roll the dice*, but *you get the same number of shifts you got for the previous exchange*, including any bonuses gained from aspect invocations. You may spend these shifts as allowed in the previous action. {% endhint %} You may still opt to invoke more aspects and boost your roll, except the ones you had already used previously. You may also use an invocation to re-roll the dice from the previous exchange. (It’s a good idea to keep your dice untouched until it is your turn again. It makes keeping track much easier) {% hint style="danger" %} Any [upgrade effects](/characters/upgrades#upgrade-effects) are already rolled in from the previous exchange, so you do not add them again, but that means you do not receive any additional humanity stress either. {% endhint %} #### Resist Resisting is the only thing you can do if it isn’t your turn. It is the only immediate response you can give *if you are the target* of an action. You do not roll when resisting. Instead, you *take stress and/or a number of consequences, and remove shifts from the ongoing action*. You may choose to drive the shift total to zero or less, completely stopping the action, or you may just kill some of its shifts to reduce its effectiveness. You may also invoke aspects to reduce the roll by 2 or force a re-roll. Except when resisting direct attacks, you determine the type of stress you take from a resist action. Of course, your decision must be backed up by your story. Better come up with an interesting explanation of how your Reputation gets bruised by bullets or the table may override your decision. You must be the target of the action in order to resist it. You cannot resist actions directed at other targets. Try to “defend” them so that they can resist more. Get your defenses up early in a conflict, so that you can resist more. #### Simple actions If an action is simple enough not to warrant a roll, and it can fit in the time frame of an exchange, then it can be done in a conflict. Anything that involves a roll however, must be modeled as one of the actions above. #### Long actions If you are trying to do something that would take longer than an exchange, then model it as a *problem* that has an aspect (or two) and a stress track that can be attacked using a skill. The stress threshold of such a problem is determined based on the difference between the duration of an exchange and the time it would normally take with a mediocre roll. The difference as steps on the time track is stress threshold of the problem. The problem can be “attacked” to solve it, and “defended” to keep it from being solved. A “recover” action can be used to revert it to its initial state, and aspects can be placed on it with a maneuver. If it makes sense, it may even be moved on the map. A problem is solved if it is taken out. Whatever the original intent was, consider it accomplished. ### Game over There are two distinct ways that conflicts end in Edgerunner. If every actor on one side of the conflict is *taken out*, the conflict ends in a messy manner. To prevent that, the losing side can offer a *concession*, a story acceptable to all sides, that marks the end of the conflict. #### Taken out If a character(or any other thing) receives stress higher than his *threshold* on any of its stress tracks, he is considered taken out. This is an important thing. *The player loses his control over the destiny of a character who is taken out.* The opponent now determines what happens to the character, in accordance with the last action that took him out. This is a powerful ability. The opponent can narrate anything that makes sense in the context. The character is almost completely at the opponent’s mercy. {% hint style="success" %} Gatto got a real bad roll for his defense, and his opponent Hargan took advantage of this by invoking Gatto’s `Only if this @#! gun fired once in a while` aspect to deal a whopping 8 points of stress to his cool track. This is something that Gatto cannot handle with all the previous stress he suffered. Gatto is taken out.Gatto has lost his cool, and Gatto’s player, Jon, has lost his right to say what happens to Gatto. That right now belongs to William, Hargan’s player.William considers the fact that Hargan and Gatto both used their Firearms skills for offense and defense respectively, and that he invoked Gatto’s aspect, he comes up with this story: > While Gatto was trying to keep Hargan from shooting at him by some heavy return fire, he suddenly realized that he had a bad bullet in the chamber. With his gun jammed, he hesitated just long enough for Hargan to put two bullets in his right arm, dropping him instantly due to shock. Gatto is reduced to a bleeding pile of meat on the ground, in too much pain to move or do anything meaningful except maybe call for help. Jon, Gatto’s player can do nothing but accept the sad fact about his character. He shouldn’t have let this happen. {% endhint %} {% hint style="danger" %} Conflicts are the highest form of dispute resolution in Edgerunner. If you enter a conflict and get taken out, you have to suck it. There is no appeal for a plausible taken-out result. {% endhint %} #### Concessions There is something you can do if you are stuck in a losing battle. You can offer a concession. A concession is a story that ends the conflict, possibly one that will be advantageous to your opponent, but not as detrimental for you as actually being taken out. *If your opponent accepts your concession, the conflict ends with the story you just offered.* {% hint style="success" %} Now that Gatto is down, Sandra, Jade’s player realizes that Jade doesn’t stand a chance against Hargan alone. She offers a concession: > Jade breaks her data uplink and while firing her SMG frantically, she scuttles Gatto out of there. She fails to upload the data they came for. William sees that this story is good enough for him, as Hargan has successfully kept Gatto and Jade from stealing the data, and continuing the fight may still result in Hargan getting taken out. He accepts the concession, and the conflict ends. {% endhint %} It is good to discuss and modify the offered story a little, but if it turns into a haggling slugfest, stop and continue the conflict. Just as in a game of Go, a conflict ends when everybody agrees that it ends. # Aspects & Fate points Aspects and fate points are two key concepts that lie at the heart of any FATE game. These two are always used in conjunction in order to move the story along and give it some interesting twists. ### Aspects *Aspects are short, evocative statements that hint at whatever makes a specific something special* Aspects are attached to a *context*. That context may be a character, faction, scene, item, map, zone, event or whatever else you can think of. We say that an aspect is “on” that context. Aspects can be adjectives, short descriptions, catchphrases or even a reference to other things. Some examples are; * `Strong as an ox` * `Thick smog` * `Cars everywhere` * `“Go ahead dude, do it!”` Out of their context, these phrases are probably meaningless, but when put in perspective, they enrich whatever they are attached to. Let’s reconsider the same examples; * `Strong as an ox` — on a character * `Thick smog` — on a city * `Cars everywhere` — on a parking lot zone in a map * `“Go ahead dude, do it!”` — on another character {% hint style="info" %} A little side note. On this game guide, `aspects are always shown like this`. Wherever you see that, it’s an aspect. And the example in the previous sentence is an actual aspect on this guide. {% endhint %} ### Fate points Without *fate points*, aspects would just be narrative flavor without any game effects. Together with fate points, they are strong story generators with tangible game-mechanical results. Fate points are the currency of Edgerunner. Every player has a limited amount, and the referee has an unlimited supply. They are spent and exchanged in game, according to specific rules, in order to gain narrative power over details in the story. They represent the players' agency, their ability to command their characters' fates. *Players (not characters) start every game session with 5 fate points*. Fate points are not tracked between sessions. Every session starts anew. Spending a fate point gives a player an opportunity to change things in game. But there is a catch. *Fate points must be used with aspects* There are two basic mechanisms for bringing aspects into play. They are called *aspect invocations*(invokes for short) and *compels*. Invocations affect dice rolls but compels can affect almost anything in game. ### Aspect invocations Remember that a skill roll gives you a baseline adjective-noun pair to narrate a story with, like “good driving” or “terrible cooking”. Sometimes these results turn out to be against what you would like it to be. That is the time to invoke an aspect. *An invoke gives you either a +2 bonus on your roll, or lets you reroll the dice, on the condition that you spend a fate point and reasonably include the aspect in your narration*. A “mediocre cooking” can be upgraded to “decent cooking” with a fate point, if `mommy's always there when you need her`. The narration should now include mom’s involvement in the cooking process. If you can’t find a suitable aspect to improve your cooking, well, tough luck. You re stuck with a mediocre meal. Not really. You can, in fact, [create aspects](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/creating-aspects) on the fly, and use them afterwards. But let’s cover that in its own page and stick to usage here. One important rule: *Aspects are invoked **after** the dice are rolled*. You don’t have to spend fate points if your roll is good enough by itself. {% hint style="success" %} Hacksaw has just rolled a +1 with his driving skill of 2, for a total of 3. That corresponds to “Good driving”, which is unfortunately not enough for getting Hacksaw to his destination today. Hacksaw opts to invoke his `Crazy when required` aspect, and gets a +2 bonus, upgrading his total to 5, a “Superb crazy driving” result. He narrates the details, telling how he jumped the drawbridge and drove against oncoming traffic to make it in time. {% endhint %} If the roll you’re modifying with an invocation is an opposed roll, your opponent receives the fate point you just spent. Otherwise the referee gets it. If the referee invokes an aspect on a roll against a player, that player gets the fate point. An aspect can only be invoked once for a single roll. However if you can find multiple relevant aspects, spend a fate point for each of them and make up a story that involves all of them in a sensible manner, you can stack those +2 bonuses to gain a huge advantage. #### Tagging aspects Tagging is a special type of aspect invocation. Remember that it is possible to create aspects on the fly. If you are the creator of such an aspect, you(or anyone else you allow) get to invoke it once for free, without spending a fate point. This is called *tagging*. After getting tagged once, the aspect can only be invoked again with a fate point. ### Compels Compels are a different usage of aspects and fate points. They are used to offer alternative stories to whoever is narrating at that point. Right after a you declare an action for your character, but before you roll the dice(if any), the referee calls for compels. Anybody can now offer you a story related to a relevant aspect, along with a fate point. You can either take the fate point and accept the offered story, forfeiting your original action, or you can give a fate point to reject the offer and keep on as you intended. {% hint style="success" %} Switch wants to get through a security checkpoint without revealing his firearms. The referee compels the `"I like big guns"` aspect on Switch, and says that any gun he would tote around would be too big to hide, while offering a fate point. Switch has two options. He can take the fate point and accept that his guns are way too big to sneak through a checkpoint. Or he can say “not today”, and give the referee one of his fate points to refuse the compel and insist on trying to sneak through. {% endhint %} If you have noticed, *getting compelled by the referee is your only source for getting fate points as a player*. It is in your best interests to accept compels and accumulate fate points strategically, so that you may use them to push the story in the direction you want when it matters. If you run out of fate points, you have to accept a compel. Don’t let that happen. Compelling isn’t a referee-only action. Players can and should compel other player or referee characters at every opportunity. **Invocation summary** * Make skill roll * Find suitable aspect * Give fate point to referee or opponent * Add +2 to your roll or re-roll the dice * Narrate story involving aspect **Tagging summary** * [Create relevant aspect](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/creating-aspects) * Make skill roll * Add +2 to your roll or re-roll the dice * Narrate story involving aspect **Compel summary** * Acting player declares action * Referee calls for compels * Find relevant aspect * Offer alternative story based on aspect * If acting player accepts * Give fate point to acting player * Active player forfeits action * Alternative story becomes true * If acting player declines * Receive fate point from acting player * Acting player goes on as intended # Creating Aspects Aspects are probably the most important facet of this game. They are the glue between game mechanics and great stories. Many aspects are created during a game of Edgerunner. Some of these are permanent aspects that stay on their context until deliberately removed. Others are temporary aspects that last until it makes sense, and then disappear. There is no strict mechanism that defines when a temporary aspect dissolves. Use common sense to determine if they are still relevant. Many aspects are created in the first session when the players are building their world and characters. All of these are permanent aspects, written on their related sheets. They remain on their contexts until the controlling player decides to change them during a refresh or an opponent removes one when taken out. When determining aspects for your character or any other thing, keep in mind that aspects are the main conduit on which fate points flow. There may be a tendency to think of aspects as perks or flaws, but the best aspects are both of those at the same time. A good aspect is versatile, such that it creates opportunities for positive and negative invocations and compels. `Intelligent` is a lame aspect, as it only allows for invokes, without offering a way to regain the spent fate points. `Unbelievably intelligent` is better because it opens the door for the occasional compel, without losing the potential for invocation. A good aspect is also not too broad. Something as vague as `Sometimes good, sometimes evil` is a poor aspect. It can be invoked or compelled for any roll without generating an interesting story. Aspects are supposed to generate stories. `I turn evil under fire` is a much better aspect, giving the character some, well, character. Other aspects are created in game. They may be permanent or temporary depending on how they are created, plus common sense. The referee may assign both kinds of aspects to anything he controls (ie. everything except player characters and their related entities) at will. He can assign only temporary aspects to things he does not control, and that is subject to a [declaration](/fate/creating-aspects#declarations) roll by the controlling player if she disagrees. The referee should never assign permanent aspects to a player controlled entity, unless that entity is taken out. Temporary aspects have a condition that determines how they expire. Some aspects just expire with time, some others depend on the presence or active maintenance of a character or other context. Use common sense in determining how and when a temporary aspect expires. If there is ambiguity and disagreement on if an aspect should expire, you may use a *declaration* (explained below) as a resolution mechanism. Consequences are also temporary aspects with stricter rules on their creation and expiration. The players can also create aspects. They can modify the permanent aspects on their characters or other contexts they control whenever there is a refresh. They can also modify the permanent aspects of other things they take out. ### Aspect actions | Shifts | Free invokes | | ------ | ------------ | | 0 | 0 | | 1…2 | 1 | | 3…5 | 2 | | 6…9 | 3 | | 10+ | 4 | The players can also create temporary aspects on everything they do not control, using *declarations*, *assessments* and *maneuvers*. They all have the same mechanism. The player wishing to place an aspect on anything announces her intended aspect, her target and the skill and mechanism she will use. If the target is a passive thing like the environment or an object, then the referee determines a target number for the roll. If the target is a character or similar, then its appropriate skill is used as the target number. In any case, zero shifts are enough to place the aspect on the target. Any additional shifts can be used to gain free invokes as per the table here. {% hint style="info" %} **Creating aspects** Skill + 4dF vs. 0\ Skill + 4dF vs. Defense skill {% endhint %} {% hint style="info" %} **Removing aspects** Skill + 4dF vs. Shifts from aspect creation. {% endhint %} All aspects created this way can be invoked once by the creating player(or anyone they allow) without spending a fate point. All of these three moves can be compelled before dice are rolled, or boosted with other aspect invocations after the fact, just like regular skill rolls. While they all use the same mechanism above, the difference between declarations, assessments and maneuvers is only in how they affect the story and how they make sense. #### Declarations *Declarations* are just stating facts about the world. The player invents a fact out of thin air, and attaches it to an entity as an aspect with a declaration. It is assumed to be true all along, and it is just made prominent for the story by the declaration. The declaration is a bit different than other actions because it is a *player action*, not a character action. The skills of the character are irrelevant when making a declaration. Instead the support of other players decide the “skill” for making the declaration roll. *When a player makes a declaration, he starts with a skill of 0, and every supporting player can contribute a +1 to this skill, or a -1 if they oppose the idea.* Then he rolls the dice. Since the aspect is assumed to be there all along, there is no “time” involved, so all of the shifts from the roll go towards the persistence threshold of the new aspect. {% hint style="success" %} Lydia, Jade’s player declares that the library Jade just connected to has `an extensive collection on pharmacology`. Jon and Selena(the referee) second the idea, but William opposes, so the effective “skill” is assumed to be *+1*. Lydia rolls a *+1* ⊞⊡⊡⊟, getting 2 shifts. That is the persistence of the new aspect. {% endhint %} As an alternative form of declaration, it is also possible to [compel](/fate/aspects-and-fate-points#compels) an aspect into existence, based on another available aspect, subject to the rules of the compel as usual. {% hint style="success" %} Selena(referee) notes that Jade is `light on her feet` and compels Lydia into accepting that Jade is currently wearing `old comfortable sneakers`, which she will promptly use to make Jade unfit for the posh social event she’s about to attend. As in every compel, Lydia has the option of taking the fate point and accepting the compel, getting the new aspect on Jade, or giving Selena a fate point and telling why Jade isn’t wearing her sneakers today. {% endhint %} It is also possible to “declare” character or faction aspects, upgrades and skills as well as local and global issues this way, if they were left blank in the first session. If you are declaring an upgrade for your character this way, you must get enough shifts to match the bonus the upgrade provides. #### Assessments *Assessments* are observations or preparations made by the player’s character. A player can *gain a free invoke for an existing aspect* by having a character assess it. The story representation of the assessment is that the character employs a skill in order to observe the target and prepare for exploiting an aspect he discovers. Since the aspect in question is an already established aspect, shifts generated on an assessment are only good for reducing the time required or making the assessment harder to resist in a conflict. Making an assessment assumes that the assessing character is on the scene and able to observe or study the target. {% hint style="success" %} William, Hargan’s player wants to exploit Gatto’s `Never without a cigar` aspect, so he makes an assessment using Hargan’s Empathy of 1 versus Gatto’s Stealth of 2. He rolls a +2 ⊞⊞⊞⊟. Hargan has just noticed that Gatto is `never without a cigar`. He’s going to remember that. It’s one free invoke William can use later. {% endhint %} #### Maneuvers *Maneuvers* are actions taken by a character to change something in the world. The character must be able to perform the required action. If successful, then the new aspect becomes immediately available. You can use manuvers to model preparing for another action, even another maneuver. {% hint style="success" %} Switch wants to take out the perimeter guard before he reaches his pillbox and raises the alarm. At this long range, it is a tough call. He would risk giving away his position in addition to missing the guard. He wants to take aim first, but with this range and a running guard, even that is quite hard. So he decides to `dig in for the long shot`. That is an easy maneuver with a target of zero, easily done. Then he takes aim to put the guard `in his sights`. He misses the target for that but tags the first aspect (`dig in…`) for a +2 bonus to make it happen. Finally, he makes the shot, tagging `in his sights` and invoking `dig in for the long shot` (spending 1 fate point) for a whopping +4 bonus and takes the guard down. {% endhint %} #### Consequences *Consequences* are mostly negative or impeding aspects voluntarily taken by a player controlling a character (or another entity) in return for receiving a boost to a specific skill use. Every entity (characters, factions etc…) has a fixed number of consequence slots.\ Each slot provides a set amount of boost to a roll when used. Characters, for example, have three slots, *mild*, *moderate* and *severe*, providing +1, +2 and +4 to rolls by default. Other entities may have different sets of consequence slots. {% hint style="success" %} Jade is trying to finish her research about her target datafortress (a maneuver which will allow her to place the aspect `"Like the back of my hand"` on it, giving her an advantage later) before it is too late. She managed to reduce the time from a day to a few hours with shifts from her roll, but even that is not enough. Lydia, Jade’s player elects to give Jade a moderate consequence to get another +2 on her roll and reduce the time to half an hour. She writes `"Tired and confused"` on Jade’s moderate consequence slot. Jade will be really groggy for some time. {% endhint %} The consequence can be *tagged* by an opponent if there is one, and it can be *invoked* or *compelled* just like a regular aspect. Only a controlling player may voluntarily take consequences. You can’t put consequences on characters or other entities you do not control. A consequence slot, once used, remains full for a specific period as shown here. It is not possible to alter these periods. Once a consequence slot gets used, it remains full and thus unusable for the specified period of time. | | | Altered in… | Clears after… | | -------------------- | -- | ----------- | ---------------- | | Mild consequence | +1 | a few hours | the next scene | | Moderate consequence | +2 | a few days | the next refresh | | Severe consequence | +4 | a few weeks | the next session | But it is possible to modify a consequence, that is, replace it with a more benign version of itself, reflecting the effort to mitigate the original. Turning a `deep cuts all around` into `bandages and grafts all around` with the Medical skill, or transforming `lack of sleep` into `so much caffeine` with some clever use of the Survival skill are all acceptable. The original strength of the consequence (the bonus it provided when used) is taken as an opposing skill in a [contest](/fate/resolution#contests), with shifts used to modify the time and the quality of the result. # Characters Ah, the reason we are here. The heroes and the villains of the world we create in our minds. The edgerunners we aspire to be or the leftovers we dread to realize that we already are. Characters are the primary elements in a game of Edgerunner that all the players including the referee use to drive the story. Everyone gets a single character to play as they like at the very least. As a player, your character is probably your only means of pushing the story where you want. ### Creating characters Characters in Edgerunner are defined by a few sets of simple characteristics. These are used to drive the story whenever the need arises to resolve an ambiguous situation. You will also see that many other things in Edgerunner are modeled very much like a character. Learn to build a character and you probably can build anything else. When creating a character, you should first think of a character concept that describes the kind of character you want to play. The [roles](/characters/roles) in Edgerunner are designed to give you a starting point for a concept and they come with special abilities that are typical of dark-future-edgerunners. So, a role should be the first thing you pick for your character. The role you picked roughly defines what your character is right now but to have a unique and refined character, you will need [aspects](/fate/creating-aspects). But to generate consistent and nice aspects for your character, you will need a backstory first. In Edgerunner, we call that backstory a lifelog. #### Lifelog The lifelog is a short account of the character’s past consisting of five phases. Writing a lifelog is a collaborative activity in this game, and unlike other RPG’s where player characters are assumed to have just met, Edgerunner assumes that the characters are already part of each others' history. This helps in getting the story going without requiring the referee go through a cliché scene, and helps you make more interesting characters. *The characters are created together. Everybody, including the referee creates a character* The lifelog has five phases describing the character’s past. Each one of these phases correspond to an important part of the character’s backstory but they are not limited in terms of time or duration. A phase may tell about something that happened to the characters' parents before he was born, or something that happened just before the play began. It may even jump between the extremes. The events depicted may span minutes or years. There’s no limit. The actual limit is on the subject of the story you will be telling. Each phase has a title and a subject, and that’s what you must talk about. First, *tell your story* to your friends around the table. Answer and clarify if they have any questions. Then *write down* your phase, and *keep it short*. Two or three sentences is all that is needed to give an idea about the important stuff. Once everybody has told their story and written it down, move onto the next phase. Repeat until you have gone through all five phases. **Phase 1: Boot sequence** This is the story of the character becoming an edgerunner. How he became what he is now, and how he acquired his role. This is a good place to mention his initial ideals if any. Tell your story and write it down in 2-3 sentences. **Phase 2: Login** This is the story of how all the characters became a team, and what kind of team it is. Discuss among yourselves, decide together, and write from your character’s perspective. **Phase 3: System Error** This is kind of a different phase. It’s the story of the major crisis in the character’s life and how this event transformed him. But it also has something important to do with another character being created right now. When telling this part of the story, make sure the character of the player to your right has an important part in it. You may assume that character is new to your story at that point, or that she had been in your character’s life for a while by then. The part that matters is that she should play an important role in your major crisis story. Tell and write. **Phase 4: Remote access** Remember the story that the player on your left just wrote for phase 3? Remember that your character was important for that story. In this phase, you are going to re-tell that story from your character’s perspective. Do not overrule the original story but add to it. Bring out the parts that mattered for your character. Then write it down. **Phase 5: Shell prompt** This phase isn’t actually about the past. It’s about the present, and the future. Tell and write about where your character stands now, and what he aspires to do in the future. Reveal your character’s motivations. #### Aspects | **Sample character aspects** | | ------------------------------------------------- | | Traits | | `Strong as an ox, and just as agile` | | `Darker than a black hole` | | Talents | | `Absolute pitch` | | `Made a lot of ships-in-a-bottle` | | Personality | | `Helping friends 24/7` | | `Introvert unless alcohol is involved` | | Quirks | | `Never eat pizza for dinner` | | `Standing on a windy ledge` | | Style | | `Black turtleneck, blue jeans` | | `And finish with a roundhouse kick` | | Relationships | | `Daughter of an army general` | | `Friends with the Aldecaldo nomads` | | Affiliations | | `PlaxoSmithClane WageSlave™` | | `Proud member of the 387th airborne` | | Motives | | `Jinchiro will pay for what he has done` | | `I'll be famous someday` | | Background / History | | `West Point dropout` | | `Never forget St. Petersburg` | | Habits & Reflexes | | `Check the door twice, forget the windows` | | `The three bullet salute` | | Specializations | | `The best cardiologist south of the Antarctic` | | `Anti-hacker` | | Fame / Notoriety | | `Chased off the irritating kid with a broomstick` | | `The rude baron is in town` | | Handicaps / Liabilities | | `I left my left eye in San Francisco` | | `Mom, the last alzheimer patient.` | | Assets / Equipment | | `Quite a collection of classic cars` | | `Mean looking combat knife` | After you have written down your five phases, you should *extract aspects* from them. A character has six aspects that define him. And they come from the backstory you just wrote. Think of how the events you described shape your character, and put them down as the aspects you character has. Talents surfaced, reputation gained, friends or enemies made or lost, habits made or broken as the result of the phase are all good aspects. There are two special aspects here. The first one is your role aspect. Your role aspect is the one sentence answer to the question “Who are you?”. It is the core aspect that defines your character, and it should be truly unique to your character. And it should also refer to the [role or special ability](/characters/roles) you picked for your character. e.g. `Rocker with a dark secret`, `The icy stare of authority`, `The calm and collected media` or `Once a SWAT solo` The other special aspect is your character’s style. It is what makes him *visibly unique* in a world mass-educated corporate drones. It is what makes him stand out, sometimes even to his detriment. It is the detail that fans, employers and cyber-assassins will look for when seeking you out. It is the thing that boostergang kid sporting retractable arm blades will remember about him after cutting him down in a dark alley over a quasi-imagined slight. Four other aspects are there for you to further detail your character as you see fit. Write them wisely, they will be your main tool in playing this game. Read your aspects to other players, clarify and rephrase them as needed. #### Skills [Skills](/characters/skills) determine what your character is good at. Everybody is very good at one thing and less so in others. This is modeled in Edgerunner by a skill pyramid. You get to pick 10 skills from the [skill list](/characters/skills) and assign them to the slots on the pyramid. The top slot at level 4 represents what your character is best at. Level 3 is stuff he is known to be good, and level 2 is enough to earn a living. Level 1 means he regularly uses that skill for some purpose. Your character is assumed to be mediocre at anything that you haven’t included in the pyramid. Pick and place your skills on the pyramid, justifying your choices with the events in your lifelog. #### Upgrades Upgrades are special rules that apply to specific use cases of skills. By definition, They are also aspects on your character. They are not limited in their number or potency, but their inherent risk of humanity stress puts a practical limit on what you would want to take up. Define your own upgrades by the guidelines in the [Upgrades](/characters/upgrades) page. #### Stress thresholds Determine the stress thresholds for the three [stress tracks](/characters/stress-tracks) your character has. Each track has a base threshold of 2, and you may use skills with the same name in order to increase them. You may have also invested in upgrades that boost your stress thresholds. If such a boost is a general boost, just add it to the threshold now. If it is conditional, then mark the two thresholds, one general purpose, and the other for the specific situation in the upgrade. Download the [character sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-character.pdf) in PDF format. ### Playing characters Now here’s another twister for you. *Edgerunner is a third-person game.* You have your character but you are not your character as in many other RPG’s. You as a player are a gamemaster, everyone at the table is, but a restricted one. You get to tell the story as long as everyone agrees but your character is the only part of the game world that you have final say over. And there’s something that you should internalize. Since *you are **not** your character*, you should always maintain a dual awareness. What you know as a player may be much more than what your character knows. There are no secrets among players in a game of Edgerunner. You are expected to play your character according to what *he* knows, not what you know, just like the way a traditional GM plays a traditional NPC. If you have played traditional RPG’s before, you will probably be tempted to use your knowledge as a player to gain an advantage for your character. Resist that urge. In Edgerunner, characters don’t ever “improve”. There are no levels, no XP, no skill advancement etc. Characters change, but their overall potency remains the same. What you want to do is make your character part of a great story, and great stories often involve conflicts, troubles and hardship. So don’t tell that your character “suddenly decides to take the long and arduous route instead of the convenient shortcut” where you -not he- know that an ambush is waiting for him. Knowingly walk him into the ambush because he doesn’t know. If you think he’d have the wits to detect and avoid the ambush before walking into it, just say so and be prepared to back it up with his skills and aspects. Because someone else at the table may challenge your assumption and then you would have to roll the dice and see how it turns out. #### The Ghost The traditional notion of character advancement in role playing games does not hold for Edgerunner. Characters don’t gain abilities as they progress in the story. They are assumed to be quite competent from the beginning, they are the edgerunners of the dark future after all. They do change as the story progresses, but they do not gain levels and become immeasurably stronger as in some other games with “singing birds and happy elves”. But they do accumulate experience as they change. The experience they accumulate is not in the form of higher skills or abilities, but in the form of past aspects. The collection of all the aspects, upgrades, and peak skills a character has ever had is called their *ghost*. You may access your character’s ghost by spending a fate point, which gives you the ability to use any aspect or skill in the ghost once. A fresh character’s ghost is empty. All she has is her active aspects, skills and upgrades. Whenever the character changes, (in a refresh or as the result of being taken out) the ghost list changes as well. Permanent character aspects that get swapped out go to the ghost list, as a part of the character’s past. Upgrades lose their boost and stress potential, they become bare aspects as in their name when they are transferred to the ghost list. A peak skill gets its own place in the ghost list when it loses its peak status. When transferring aspects to the ghost list, feel free to rephrase them to reflect their past status. So, `Fencing master` may become `Once a fencing master` Once you spend the fate point to access your character’s ghost list, you may invoke aspects or use one of the skills in there, for a single roll. Ghost aspects cannot be compelled at all. As a result of this, experienced characters are not any stronger than fresh ones, but they are full of surprises. I believe this mirrors real life more closely, and it probably is a very unique feature of this game. # Roles A character’s role gives him a clear cut advantage and makes him excel in a specific field. Having a role confers special *abilities* that cannot be accessed with skills or upgrades. A character may have only one role, and if he wishes to change it for another, he must announce the switch during the refresh and go through the next session without the benefits of his old or new roles. Note that it also helps to prepare by acquiring useful skills before the switch. A solo without firearms training is only a fractional solo. ### Solo: Combat sense The solo is the combat specialist. His reaction time under fire is a fraction of a normal human being. And he has an uncanny ability of knowing how a person will move before they even lift a foot. In conflicts, the solo can interrupt any character at any point in their turn and act before their action resolves. The interrupted character’s action resumes as intended after the solo finishes, if it still makes sense. If it doesn’t make sense anymore, then that action is forfeit. The solo can interrupt at any point, and if the interrupted character is moving, the solo can elect to interrupt at any zone the interrupted character is moving through. {% hint style="success" %} Gatto is being chased by the police. The cops decide to blow the tires out on Gatto’s VW Camper and open fire ([Maneuver](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/creating-aspects) with Firearms to place `Flat tires` on the van) but after the referee announces the cops' intent, Gatto decides to interrupt. He takes a Move action with Driving to put some distance between the Police car and his Camper. He manages to increase the range from 0 to 3 zones, which becomes the target number to beat for the cops' maneuver. The cops cannot change their mind now, and take a long shot that fails. The camper’s tires are intact. {% endhint %} A solo cannot directly interrupt another solo, but an interrupted character can be interrupted by multiple solos during his turn. ### Nomad: Family The nomad is probably the only truly social edgerunner. He really cares about his comrades, and treats them as family. It is easier to cope with the dark future if you have a nomad for a friend. The nomad can give his unused stress track and consequence slots to his comrades. If a comrade takes a hit that he’d rather not mark as stress or a consequence, the nomad may offer to take the hit instead. Note that this does not mean that the nomad actually takes a bullet, just that the nomad’s presence makes it easier for a friend to take another bullet and still keep going. If the nomad takes a consequence for a friend, the consequence taken is on the friend, not the nomad. The friend is still prone to any tags and compels on the consequence. The nomad is not. He only provides the breathing room. Also, any upgrades that increase the capacity of a consequence slot are valid if on the friend, and invalid if on the nomad. The nomad can only offer to take stress or a single consequence from a single hit. Some things are a bit too overwhelming. This is probably why big nomad gangs are scary. You can’t take them out unless you take them all out. ### Media: Credibility The media is the ultimate social fighter. She can project her opinion across different channels without difficulty. She is taken seriously in every circle. Her words hurt giants even after she has left the scene. The media can participate in faction-to-faction conflicts and directly take all [conflict actions](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/conflicts#actions) against factions. She may only target the [prestige stress track](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/the-world/factions#prestige) of a faction when taking an action that requires a stress track as a target. ### Rockerboy: Sway The rockerboy is adept at moving crowds. He can mesmerize the masses and subtly shift their opinions. The rockerboy’s [move another](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/conflicts) action in conflicts has an area effect. A single move another action can affect any number of entities on the map as the rockerboy desires. Each entity defends with their own modifiers(range etc.) and skills, and the direction of motion must be defined as ‘towards the rockerboy’ or ‘away from the rockerboy’. If this results in any ambiguity about where an entity will end up, it becomes the defender’s choice. ### Corporate: Power The corporate has spent his life vying for positions of power, using every clean and dirty tactic there is. And his efforts have paid off in the form of power, money and perks. He is the person that others answer to. He is the one that sips his expensive wine while others do the dirty work. The corporate has access to his own [faction](broken://pages/-LwAxmW4Fofzhpz3BPXP). He can effectively run that faction as an alternate character. This can be one of the previously created factions(if it fits the rules below) or a new faction can be created. A faction controlled by a corporate has special restrictions placed on its three characteristics. The total value of this faction’s disposition, focus and influence cannot exceed the value of the corporate’s *Organization* skill. The organization skill is a special skill that helps a corporate keep his staff and resources in effective working order. It only affects the cap on faction characteristics. The slot it occupies on the skill pyramid represents the time the corporate devotes to running his faction. If you want to play a lower level executive in a big organization or megacorp, you can model a branch, department or chapter of that outfit as a separate faction having its own aspects and characteristics. Note that other characters may also land in a position of power, especially with an appropriate upgrade. The difference is, they do not directly control that faction. The referee controls their faction for them (or against them) and only hands over direct control when he wants to. ### Enforcer: Authority The enforcer is the most direct manifestation of law and order in the dark future, and that is something to be respected or feared depending on where you stand. An enforcer may make an Intimidation maneuver to place the special aspect `Stop in the name of law!` (or equally cheesy phrase) on any number of opponents present at a scene. Everybody defends separately. When this aspect is later compelled, it takes two fate points instead of one to refuse it. The enforcer always gets the extra point regardless of the compeller. The aspect persists until the end of the scene as long as the enforcer is still there. ### Netrunner: Alternate The netrunner is the man that has become one with the machine. He thinks in binary, and speaks in C++ for the convenience of humans. The netrunner not only runs the net but rather lives a whole life in it. He assumes another personality while in the net. The netrunner has an [alternate](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters/secondary-characters#alternate) identity with its own name, personality and skill set in the net. The alternate is active only in the net and offers a way to build a fully net-focused character with its own skills, while the regular character can focus on real life. The alternate does not have upgrades. Instead, he has *mods*, the software equivalent of upgrades. Mods augment the alternate the same way upgrades augment a regular character. ### Fixer: Entourage A fixer knows everyone and everything. She is the one to go to when you need something. An object, a contact, information, anything. Including a crash course in indefinite pronouns. For this purpose, the fixer has a huge network of people doing things for him. He deals in favors, giving one here, collecting another there. And there is always someone who owes him something. A fixer has a number of secondary characters under the player’s direct control, always ready to do the fixer’s bidding. Create an [extra](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters/secondary-characters) as a *lieutenant* or two [goons](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters/secondary-characters) as *henchmen*. Or even get yourself a *gang* represented as level 5 [mooks](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters/secondary-characters) The fixer may replace these characters during a refresh. ### Techie: Jury rig Upgrade anything. Mass production is efficient for the manufacturer, not for the end user. The techie exists to reverse that. Quickly. Every character can create scene aspects by maneuvering. The techie can create *scene upgrades*. These upgrades can be applied to any type of entity on the scene, and last until the end of the scene. The techie makes the skill roll for the maneuver normally, and he can use shifts from this roll to pay for an upgrade. The cost in shifts of an upgrade is equal to the base stress level of the upgrade effect. The techie may choose to include constraints to reduce the effective stress level when the upgrade is being used, but constraints do not reduce the required number of shifts. If the recipent of the upgrade is a kind of entity that doesn’t have an appropriate stress track for receiving stress inflicted by the upgrade, the techie may also define a stress track for this purpose and spend additional shifts to set its stress threshold. # Skills *Skills* are the basic abilities of the character, chosen from a list provided here, and used mechanically to add to the basic roll during any conflict in which the skill is relevant. Skills in Edgerunner are defined in somewhat broad terms. A single skill may account for a lot, and there isn’t any room for any more fine grained skills. If you want your character to specialize or shine in doing something, you should use *aspects* and [upgrades](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters/upgrades) for that. All skills provide a number of basic capabilities on their subject. First, a skill provides *knowledge* related to the field. If you have high Athletics, you also know about the rules of many different sports by default . Second, a skill grants *awareness* about the subject. You find it easy to notice that someone is packing if you have a high Firearms skill. Third, a skill gives you *aptitude*. The ability to get something done in a good way. With high Research, not only you can dig up an obscure fact but also present that fact in a comprehensible way. Next, a skill allows *appraisal*. The ability to evaluate. You would need a decent level of Close Combat to be able to identify a Masamune sword. Last but not least, a skill gives you *renown*. You are known for being good in that field. Everybody knows you in the aviation industry if you have Piloting as your apex skill. Whenever appropriate, a skill also implies access to *equipment, licensing, facilities and contacts*. For example, an apex Survival skill may mean that you always have your swiss army knife on you and your camping gear is top notch. You may be a certified SAR specialist and member of the local SCUBA and mountaineering clubs. You know people that have survived in the Amazon rainforest with just a rusty knife. If you want to be good in just one of these capabilities, you can always define aspects and upgrades that help you shine. For example, if you want to be a connosieur of cars, you can take Driving at +2 and the upgrade “`Motorhead:` +3 to Driving for non-conflict assessments”. That gives you an effective +5 in your chosen specialty and a free apex skill slot that you can use for something else. Everyone is assumed to be at least Mediocre, that is, level ±0 at these skills. If you want to model extreme ineptitude in a skill, write a nice aspect for it. Like `Big fingers` for bad electronics skill or `Perpetually broke` for bad assets. *A skill does **not** give you specialist knowledge*. If you want access to an obscure field like Hitite culture or something requiring special training like Neurology, use an [upgrade](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters/upgrades) to extend an existing skill. *Every character has 10 skills arranged in a pyramid*. One skill at level 4, two at 3, three at level 2 and four at 1. All other skills are at level 0. * *Athletics* — How fast, flexible, and dexterous a character is. Running, jumping, throwing, acrobatics. * *Assets* — Availability of cash, contacts, convertible properties, loans, or an ability to evade debt collection. How rich the character is money wise. * *Biotech* — Competence in the field of biotechnology. Biotech upgrades, growing organs in a vat, or using DNA analysis. Also, pharmaceuticals. * *Business* — Running a profitable business. Being active and up to date in the business world. Trading and making critical decisions about business or strategy. Handling bureaucracy. * *Charm* — One-on-one persuasion Skill. Persuading, seducing, convincing, entertaining. A circle of cool and attractive friends. * *Close combat* — Martial arts of all forms. Using fists or all kinds of melee weapons. * *Composition* — Creating works of art and literature. Painting, sculpting, composing music, writing a novel, designing haute couture. * *Cultures* — Knowing about other people in the world. Different nations, customs, subcultures and languages. Different music, movies, dances. International friends. * *Deception* — Telling a lie, cheating in exams, forging fake database records, pretending to be someone else, disguising, and spotting any one of these. Untrustworthy friends. * *Driving* — All kinds of vehicles that don’t fly. Cars, trucks, bikes, boats, hovercraft. * *Electronics* — Every device without moving parts, hi-tech or lo-tech. Designing, repairing, upgrading, jamming. * *Empathy* — The people skill. Understanding, consoling, cheering up. Compassion, sympathy, tolerance. A circle of nice people. * *Firearms* — Guns and other things that you point at a target and shoot. * *Hacking* — Netrunners' destruction skill. Bypassing firewalls, crashing programs, cracking encrypted files. * *Intimidation* — Scaring people. Threatening, bullying, coercing, interrogating and torturing. * *Leadership* — Directing, motivating and inspiring people. Running an organization. * *Mechanics* — Every contraption with moving parts, hi-tech or lo-tech. Designing, repairing, improving or destroying. * *Medical* — Understanding of the human body. Diagnosing, healing, hurting. * *Net-smarts* — Knowledge of the Internet. Evading detection systems, moving data quickly through safe channels, avoiding cyber-bullies. A network of net-savvy online friends and contacts. * *Performance* — The stage skill. Public speaking, dancing, theatrics, singing, playing an instrument. * *Piloting* — Controlling all kinds of vehicles that fly. Planes, gliders, helicopters, balloons, aerodynes… * *Programming* — The digital creation skill. Building new software. Modifying and upgrading existing software. Everything has some sort of software. * *Research* — Digging up facts. Data mining. Asking the right questions to the right people. Extracting information from data. Making sense of information. * *Science* — Physics, chemistry, biology. Mathematics. * *Stealth* — Ninja stuff. Hiding, evading, moving silently. Leaving no trace. * *Streetwise* — Survival in the urban jungle. Navigating a city. Awareness of combat zones and gang turfs. Finding people and things in cities. Returning from a late night stroll in one piece. * *Survival* — Living in the wild. Camping, hunting, mountain climbing. Handling extreme weather. Navigating extreme terrain. Eating raw frogs. Finding raw frogs. # Upgrades {% hint style="warning" %} *Stunts and Augmentations from the previous version of Edgerunner have been rolled into one, and are called Upgrades now.* {% endhint %} Enhancing your body and mind with technology is all the rage in the dark future. People go out of their way to shed their mortal limitations and embrace a smarter, faster, stronger version of their former self. Fortunately, there is enough technology in dark future to make this possible, practical and affordable. Unfortunately the only cost of transcending your meat body is not money, you also have to pay a price in lost humanity. *An upgrade is a combination of an **aspect** and an **effect**, and optionally some **constraints**.* The *aspect* part of the upgrade, which is also its description, is treated like a character aspect in the game, and subject to all kinds of rules that apply to character aspects; invokes, compels or being subject to modification during a refresh or after the character is taken out. As in other character aspects, try to make these unique, versatile and colorful, so that they contribute to the game. {% hint style="info" %} Let’s make a new upgrade for Cyra. These are a pair of designer bionic legs made to order, and they have been built to look good. Let’s call them `Incredibly hot bionic legs with glowing lace patterns` {% endhint %} The *effect* is the way the upgrade provides a boost to the character. The strength of the boost provided also determines the level of humanity stress the character will be subject to. {% hint style="info" %} Continuing from the previous example, Cyra’s bionic legs are beautiful and quite distracting. They provide a *+2* boost to her *Charm* skill, bringing it up from 3 to a superb *5*. This means that Cyra will also be mesmerized by her own beauty, slowly developing narcistic tendencies. She will be subject to an average of *2 shifts of humanity stress* every time she uses her Charm. {% endhint %} *Constraints* limit the scope of the upgrade to certain applications, as described below. They also reduce the humanity stess level. {% hint style="info" %} Let’s constrain the effectiveness of Cyra’s legs a bit. They are good looking and interesting, but only as a diversion. Let’s say the *+2* boost they provide is only valid when using an *attack* action directed at the target’s *cool* stress track. Now that there are two explicit constraints on this upgrade, its effective average humanity stress drops from 2 to *0*. Also, Cyra isn’t even subjected to any stress for any other situation that doesn’t fit the constraints. {% endhint %} Keep in mind that constraints only limit the boost provided. The aspect part of the upgrade can be used for anything without limits, just as a normal aspect. {% hint style="info" %} Cyra doesn’t get any boost for anything except the exact description of the upgrade effect for her legs, nor is she subject to humanity stress for those. But she may for example invoke her upgrade aspect with a fate point to give her Athletics roll a +2 or to reroll it. They *are* bionic legs after all. {% endhint %} Upgrades come in many different guises. *Bionics* is using implanted robotic and electronic devices to augment the body and the mind, while *Biotech* refers to lab-grown, genetically engineered tissues and organs transplanted (or ingrown) to enhance physiological functions. *Nanotech* involves using microscopic machines to either improve metabolical mechanisms at the cellular level, or just augmenting cells themselves. Also, *DNA manipulation* can be used to change the inner workings of a human body at the very fundamental level. Also of note is the *special training* a person may have, and maybe even *psychological conditioning* that allows you to do better than you would normally allow yourself. And don’t forget *Pharmaceuticals*, which are just temporary ways of boosting your body and mind using chemicals. Even special *tools and equipment* may be defined as upgrades. Also not to forget are the “social” upgrades a character may have, such as *positions of authority, power or influence*. And never limit yourself with the options presented here. Use your imagination. Not everything that may be in one of the above categories is an upgrade though. An upgrade is something that provides a clear and consistent advantage to the character. Nanotech toothpaste is *not an upgrade*, so is an artificial hip joint, or being the shift overseer at the local bottling plant. In Edgerunner, we *define upgrades based on what they do, not what they are*. Put effects before causes (as everywhere else in the game). Do not try to figure out how a bionic leg would affect your running. Instead, note how much of a boost for running you would like, and then describe what combination of devices lets you get that boost. In an age where mass customization is the norm, no two upgrades look the same. The players should be able to define their own upgrades when creating their characters. There should be no hard limits on what’s possible, as the humanity risk imposes a soft limit on how much a player can cram into her character and survive the ordeal. ### Upgrade effects Every upgrade provides a tangible, clearly defined effect that modifies an action the character may take during the game. Most of these effects have an associated numeric value, called the *boost*, usually a number that is added to a roll or another value. Every effect also has a base stress value used to determine how much humanity stress it causes when used. Below is a list of the core upgrade effects in Edgerunner. **Boost a skill** The simplest upgrade there is. Choose a skill to boost, and a number between +1 and +4 to boost it by. You can choose as high as you like, just remember that the more you boost, the more risk you take, because the base stress value is equal to the boost you choose. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ----------------------------------- | -------------- | -----: | | Nanoscale blood thermal controllers | +2 to Survival | 2 | You may boost one of the stress track skills with this effect. Just keep in mind that those skills are considered in use when the associated stress track takes a hit. The only exception is if you choose to boost your own Humanity, the upgrade causes Cool or Reputation stress instead when used, choose which when defining your upgrade. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | --------------- | --------------------------------- | -----: | | Adrenal booster | +3 boxes to the Cool stress track | 3 | **Boost a consequence** You may boost an existing consequence slot by up to +4, increasing its capacity to absorb shifts. You may even create a new consequence slot. The base stress is equal to the boost. It is considered in use whenever the upgraded consequence slot is filled. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ----------------------- | ----------------------------------- | -----: | | Crisis control protocol | +1 to the Moderate consequence slot | 1 | If you use an upgraded stress slot for something that falls outside the constraints of the upgrade, it doesn’t come into effect. No boost, no stress, and the slot absorbs shifts at its original value, not the boosted value. A consequence slot created from scratch does not work at all outside its constraints. **Accelerate consequence recovery** The upgraded consequence slot recovers as if it is one step smaller. An upgraded severe consequence recovers after a refresh like a moderate consequence. An upgraded moderate consequence clears after single scene like a mild one. A mild consequence clears when the scene it was inflicted ends, just like stress. The base stress level is equal to the extra shifts the consequence provides. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | --------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -----: | | Immunity enhancing nanobots | Severe consequence slot recovers after a refresh if used for absorbing cool stress | 3 | **Replace a skill** You may choose to use an existing skill in place of another that you don’t have. The base stress value is 0, and it can even go lower with constraints. You can choose to replace stress track skills with regular ones or vice versa. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ---------- | ----------------------------------- | -----: | | Con artist | Use Deception in place of Resources | 0 | The upgrade is considered “in use” only when you use the replacing skill in place of the one being replaced. You can use the replacing skill for its original purpose without any stress or limitation. **Extra action** You get an extra action with the specified skill for every exchange in a conflict. You may choose not to use it at all, avoiding the complications entirely but if you do, remember that it has a very high base stress value of *4*. You may perform this extra action before or after your regular action but when it is your turn, you must perform both your actions consecutively. Once you take such an action, you may use the extra action to continue the original in the subsequent exchanges. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | --------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | -----: | | Hardwired tactical computer | Extra Tactics action every exchange | 4 | This effect has no use outside a conflict. Just assume that its aspect implies some kind of “doing without thinking” attitude when you are telling stories involving this upgrade. **Control another entity** | Entity type | Base stress | | ----------- | ----------- | | Faction | +4 | | Extra | +2 | | Goon | ±1 | | Mob | Level | You may have another entity under your control, one that would normally be played by the referee. Make yourself a sidekick, subordinate, ally, mentor, brother, gang, company etc. Your character takes humanity stress whenever the entity takes a scene action under your control, or when it is first brought into a conflict. The base stress threshold depends on the entity type as shown in the sidebar. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ------------------- | ---------------------- | -----: | | Proud field officer | Control 387th Airborne | 4 | When creating this upgrade, consider the relationship your main character has with this entity, and include it in the aspect-description of the upgrade. **Other effects** You may want to define other kinds of upgrade effects for your game, and you are welcome to do so. Just make sure that your effect is consistent across different use cases, fair in its balance of risk versus benefit, and everyone at your table is on the same page about how it works. #### Choosing constraints Constraints limit the application of upgrade effects to clearly defined game mechanics, and they also reduce the stress level of the upgrade to more manageable levels. When playing the game, an upgrade has no effect at all if the action falls outside the scope defined by constraints. An unconstrained upgrade is possible, but it is either very weak or very dangerous. *Every constraint placed on an upgrade reduces its stress level by one* **Single action** The upgrade is only effective for a single action type. Choose one scene action or conflict action. It is useless for other action types. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | -----: | | CAT-3 Threat detector | +2 to **defend** your Cool track using Tactics | 1 | **Single opposing skill** Choose an opposing skill, the upgrade is only effective when your opponent is using the said skill. > `Voice stress analyzer`: +3 to Empathy *vs. Deception* Stress 2 | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | --------------------- | ------------------------------- | -----: | | Voice stress analyzer | +3 to Empathy **vs. Deception** | 2 | **Single stress track** Choose one of the cool, humanity or reputation stress tracks. This upgrade is good only for actions that affect the said track. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -----: | | Sarcastic blogger |

Use Charm instead of Composition
to affect the Reputation track

| -1 | **Effective range** Determine a range where this upgrade has its effect. It becomes unusable if the target is closer or farther. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | -----: | | Big black sniper rifle | +3 to *attack* using Firearms at **range 3** | 1 | **Limited targets** The upgrade is usable only for actions targeting either the character himself, or another character. Choose which. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | -----: | | Distraction tactics | +2 to move **another character** with Performance | 1 | **Stress level** This upgrade is only active when the chosen stress track has the chosen stress level. Choose one of the stress tracks and one of *no stress* or *overstressed*. No stress means that the upgrade is active only when the selected track has no marked boxes. Overstressed tracks have at least one marked box *above the current stress threshold*. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | -----: | | Adrenal gland stimulators | +3 Athletics when **cool is overstressed** | 2 | | Seeing the heart of the nemesis | +2 Close Combat when there’s **no humanity stress** | 1 | **External effect** The upgrade helps another character’s actions. The player of that character must be willing to receive the effect. Your character still takes the resulting humanity stress. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | --------------- | ------------------------------------- | -----: | | Chatty co-pilot | +1 to Driving of **other characters** | 0 | You may choose to boost the skill-equivalent characteristics of other types of entities. Faction competencies, tech capabilities, skill categories for goons and mooks are all fair game. | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | -----: | | Strategic consultant | +1 to **Strategy of factions** | 0 | | Neurowired hotshot dogfighter | +2 to **Anti-air capability of aircraft** that have it | 1 | **Delayed effect** The upgrade takes effect later than typical. For scene actions, this means that the action takes one step longer on the [time track](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/resolution#time%20track). For conflict actions, this means that the upgrade comes into effect only on a [continue action](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/conflicts#continue). | Aspect | Effect | Stress | | ------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | -----: | | S-40 Homing Antitank Missile Launcher | **Delayed** +3 Firearms vs. Armor(Capability) | 1 | If it is an opponent’s turn, then this upgrade comes into effect only if the opponent is continuing his action. For scene actions, it comes into effect only if no shifts are used to quicken the results. ### Humanity stress Every time you or someone else makes a skill roll that is somehow affected by an upgrade on your character, he is subject to some Humanity stress. When you are rolling, *take the raw value on the dice and add the stress value of the upgrade*. That is the Humanity stress your character will have to absorb. Use any combination of invokes and consequences to reduce it, and mark the remaining shifts off your character’s Humanity stress track. {% hint style="success" %} Jade has a `Broadband neural link` that boosts her already high Research skill of 3 by another +2. She does her homework find out about the mysterious individual that just gave her the cryptic warning about her boss. Lydia (Jade’s player) rolls ++-· getting a *+1* on the dice, adding up to a fantastic *+6*. Lydia describes how Jade uses the residual image on her visual cortex to run an image matching search on the net, finds out that the mysterious man appears under six different names on various social networks but after running a cross-check with the census database, the original is identified to be a Wilson Quinch, who happened to attend the same high school with Jade’s boss. A deeper search reveals that they had been close friends up until two years after their college graduation, after which they suddenly ceased to communicate apparently after a quarrel over an unknown financial issue. Fantastic results indeed, but it comes at a price for Jade. The original dice roll of *+1* is added to the neural link’s stress level of *2* to give Jade *3 shifts of humanity stress*. Jade’s Humanity of 1 isn’t enough for absorbing all of this, so Lydia opts to give her a moderate consequence; `Curious of little secrets` to show that Jade has set her ethics aside for a while. {% endhint %} If your opponent is rolling the dice, **subtract** the raw value on the dice from the stress value of your upgrade. That means the better your opponent rolls, the less humanity stress you suffer. {% hint style="success" %} Gatto has `Kevlar aramid subdermal armor` that grants him an extra severe consequence slot versus Firearms. When Hargan shoots Gatto with Firearms 3 plus a whopping +4 on the dice, Jon considers his options. He’s out of fate points and Gatto’s already in pretty bad shape after a prolonged scuffle with the cyber-psycho called Hargan. Gatto should be glad that he invested in the subdermal armor and endured the painful procedure to get it installed. Jon opts to use the extra severe consequence this upgrade provides, and writes down `Kevlar stops bullets but not the pain` in it to describe Gatto’s shock after surviving an attack that would instantly kill anyone, with only some chest pain. Now, with an extra severe consequence as its effect, Gatto’s subdermal armor upgrade has a base stress level of 4, with the single constraint (vs. Firearms) reducing that to 3. Since this was an action against Gatto (rolled by William, not Jon), we subtract the dice total of 4 from the upgrade’s stress value of 3, getting a *-1*. Gatto takes no humanity stress. {% endhint %} # Stress tracks Stress tracks absorb specific kinds of stress in conflicts. A character or entity is taken out if any track takes more stress than it can handle. In other words, a taken out character is out of control and his fate is in the hands of the opposition. Characters have 3 stress tracks by default. Cool, Humanity and Reputation. The first two represent the essential balancing act of staying on the edge in the dark cyberpunk future. #### Stress Threshold Characters have a stress threshold for each track that determines the level of stress they can sustain without being taken out. Each character gets a base threshold of 0 for each of his tracks, and adds to that the level of the special “stress skill” he may have put on his skill list. This special skill is only used to modify the stress threshold. It is not a real skill. Whenever a stress track is hit above its threshold, the character is [taken out](/fate/conflicts#taken-out) It is possible to temporarily replace a stress threshold with a [defend action](/fate/conflicts#defend). ### Cool **Cool** track represents your composure against the forces of the dark, fast and dirty world, without which, you would easily be overwhelmed by the information overload, curl up and wait to die in a corner, future-shocked. You take cool damage from anything that threatens to destroy your existence as an individual. If you are taken out on the Cool track, well, you lose your cool, and start doing silly things. You are rendered totally ineffective and your comeback is narrated by your opponent. Notice the absence of a Health stress track. Combat in the dark future is so deadly that any real hit, even a graze results in a consequence. In armed conflict, attacks wear down the Cool track, which represents the attack stressing you out and forcing you to make a mistake, but any consequences taken are real physical damage. If you are taken out, you have made ‘the mistake’ and at the mercy of your opponent, who has been waiting for the right moment to send a 5.56AP round through your skull. ### Humanity **Humanity** track represents your composure against your inner monster, that only lives to see the world subdued at your feet. The most common form of that in a cyberpunk world is the “Metal is better than meat” attitude, a.k.a. cyberpsychosis. The advent of human augmentation made it possible for regular scumbags to feel like a god, at least for a while until C-SWAT sends their sorry asses into scrapville. You take humanity damage whenever you overwhelm your opponent with inhuman methods and abilities. Needless to say this almost always includes the use of upgrades. If your inner monster takes you out by depleting your humanity, you lose control of yourself, and who knows what regrets you will bear if you survive your deranged self. If any time during the game you kill anybody purposefully (i.e. tell their ‘Taken out’ story without a return clause) your humanity track gets filled, regardless of any previous damage. This includes ‘killing’ someone’s reputation so that they never recover. ### Reputation **Reputation** track represents how you are perceived by your peers. It is a networked world and information travels in nanoseconds. Nothing stays hidden for long, and how you’re known goes a long way when dealing with people, who are still -surprisingly- running the show on planet earth. You take hits to your reputation when you flunk your assingnments, fail to keep your promises and pay your debts or generally act like an asshole. Also when others expose, smear, denigrate or discredit you. Being taken out on reputation means you are ousted from the society in general, and nobody takes you seriously for what you claim to be. You are either a zero, a man with no money, property, rights, friends or anything, or you are branded a dangerous criminal, either already in lockdown or with a warrant on your capture, dead or alive. # Secondary Most of the time, you may not want to invest the substantial amount of time and effort a full blown character requires, especially if the character in question has only a tangential role, or if you’re just making them up on the fly during the game. Edgerunner offers two reduced levels of character definition for such purposes. ### Extras Extras are flat characters, meaning they lack the depth of a well “round"ed character. They otherwise have much of the same functionality, and can be upgraded quickly if needed. They have only four aspects, and they may or may not have a stunt. They have 6 skills arranged in a pyramid that peaks at level 3. They have only Cool and Humanity stress tracks, with a base threshold of 3 and 2 more points to assign to them. They take consequences like normal characters. Download the [extra sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-extra.pdf) in PDF format. ### Goons Goons are the cannon fodder, the lowlife, the faceless minions of the dark future. They affect the story only in a predetermined way, therefore they are only defined by their relevant details. They have two aspects and their skills consist of a stack of three *categories* at levels 1 thru 3. They have a single general purpose stress track with a base threshold of 4 and a single consequence worth 3 points. Download the [goon sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-goon.pdf) in PDF format. #### Skill categories *Skill categories* are more like broad skills that let you define simple characters with less effort. Rather than trying to figure out multiple skills for a goon, you can just determine a skill category that encompasses multiple skills. The goon is assumed to be competent in all of those skills at the level indicated. The skill categories are; * *Combat* (Close Combat, Firearms, Intimidation, Athletics etc.) * *Mental* (Academics, Science, Research, Business etc.) * *Mobility* (Driving, Piloting, Athletics, Mechanics) * *Net* (Netrunning, Hacking, Programming) * *Social* (Empathy, Intimidation, Leadership, Performance etc.) * *Technology* (Electronics, Pharmaceuticals, Mechanics etc.) Notice that there is some overlap among the categories. If a skill exists in more than one category for a given goon, use the better category. ### Mooks Sometimes, using even goons to represent threats like pack of dogs, a gang of teenagers or a party crowd becomes too tedious. Mooks are groups of characters that are too insignificant individually but constitute a threat when they are in numbers. In such cases, establish a *threat level* to represent how much trouble these mooks are. Their skills will be represented with a single skill category. They have a single stress track that is used to mark all hits, with a threshold equal to the threat level. Mooks have a single aspect that defines what they are, and can be invoked or compelled as appropriate. They usually don’t have upgrades, but their single aspect can be promoted to an upgrade at the discretion of the table. Download the [mook sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-mook.pdf) in PDF format. For comparison’s sake, assume that a level 5 mook is equivalent to a regular character, and a level 4 and 3 mooks are on par with extras and goons respectively. You can use mook mechanics to represent such characters if you don’t want to bother with fleshing them out for a very short stint. By the way, again for game-balancing issues, any level of mooks is worth two of the lower level. You can use this metric to split or join mooks that represent crowds or swarms of things. So a level 5 `Swarm of robotic scorpions` may split into two level 4 swarms, or a level 3 bunch of `underpaid beat cops` may be reinforced by another of the same to form a level 4 bunch. ### Alternates An alternate is a special type of secondary character, played directly by a netrunner. It is the online persona the netrunner develops, after spending most of her time in the net. The netrunner assumes this personality when online. The meatbody identity of a netrunner is called the *primary*. The alternate has a stack of four skills that can be used only when online. The primary cannot use these skills but the alternate can use the primary’s skill pyramid. If there’s any overlap, the alternate’s skills have precedence. Remember that the primary and the alternate are the same person, different identities. Therefore the alternate uses the primary’s cool and humanity stress tracks when those are threatened. However, the alternate is a separate identity, whose connection to the primary may not be public knowledge. Therefore the alternate has her own reputation stress track independent of the primary. If the alternate is taken out on the reputation track, the story cannot directly affect the primary. The alternate has two consequence slots that can be used when online. While the netrunner can easily run the net as her primary, she can not plausibly replicate her alternate identity in the meat world by default, although social skills may help with this if she wants to. #### Mods In addition to her upgrades, the netrunner has a number of *mods*, the software equivalent of upgrades that allow the netrunner to boost her online performance. The advantage of mods over regular upgrades is that they can be modified by the netrunner herself. Before any roll involving the netrunner, including rolls made against her, the netrunner gets a chance to activate, deactivate or adjust the boost on one of her mods. The netrunner can also create mods from scratch, for herself or other online entities, but she must do this as a maneuver action just like a techie, and the target entity must consent and use his action as well. Mods do cause humanity stress just as upgrades do. It is fortunate that the netrunner can tune her mods to be just right for an anticipated threat. Download the [alternate sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-alternate.pdf) in PDF format. # The World Edgerunner is set in the dark future, where corporations rule the world, power is the only reliable currency, and life is as cheap as dog food. This world is fast and fluid. Something big happens every week, there’s something making the headlines every second. This world is almost entirely urban. Life outside a big city is almost always unsustainable for the people of the dark future. This is a world where people do the extreme in order to transcend themselves, but end up more miserable than ever. This is a world that requires constant effort just to live a decent life. Other than that, it is your world and you are going to create it. I did not define the world of Edgerunner in precise terms, because building, modifying and maintaining a world is part of the game itself. The game only provides a general framework and guidelines so that you can create your own cyberpunk setting and play in it. The key here is *cyberpunk*. It is the name of the literary movement that tells about the inability of people to deal with changing times. This is the core concept of Edgerunner. There are a few things to keep in mind when creating your world and story, if you want to keep it cyberpunk. * It is the *near future*. We assume the 21st century but you are free to decide. * It is *our future*. No alternate history or reality. No fourth reich. * It is a *dystopia*. The world is dark and gritty. Hope is scarce, despair is abundant. * It is a *fast* world. Things constantly change. Nothing stays the same for long. * It is a *connected* world. Nobody and nothing can stay in isolation. Information travels in nanoseconds. * It is *urban*. Always crowded, always active. There is little to do outside a city. * It is *this world only*. No spacefaring civilization yet. Not for a long time to come. There may be a lot going on in the orbit and inner solar system, but that’s still focused on this little blue(?) dot * It is *run by corporations*. There is a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots. * *Conflicts are lethal*. You want to avoid real conflict as much as possible. * *Technology is everywhere*. Everything is infused with technology. Technology grows exponentially and changes lives. * *Science, not fiction*. The principles of the universe are not different than what we know today. Technology still depends on today’s real science. No antigravity, no teleportation or warp drives. Also no supernatural. No wizards, no vampires, no telepathy. No aliens or zombies. Especially not zombies because I really don’t like cyber-zombies. Of course, if you want to make it interesting, you can always remember this great statement: > *Any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.*\ > — Arthur C. Clarke The rules in Edgerunner are designed and fine tuned to facilitate creating and playing a game in such a world. Yet still, you can choose to adjust the emphasis on any of these cyberpunk principles in your game. However, the rules probably will not be able to support your game if you utterly violate any of them. ### World creation A game of Edgerunner begins with all the players coming together and creating their game in a collaborative manner. There is no referee at this point, and everyone participates equally in this phase. Everyone will create some world aspects, a [faction](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/the-world/factions) and a [character](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters). *World aspects* are omnipresent aspects that define the interesting points of the world. Things like technology, social structure, demographics, history, global politics and culture should be expressed in the form of world aspects. These aspects are assumed to be present and accessible in every scene and conflict throughout the game. In the first session of a game, everybody writes a single world aspect. There are nine slots in the world sheet for aspects but you do not need to fill all of them in the beginning. You will get opportunities to define them as your story progresses. After all, this game is about a changing world and your characters' struggle to drive that change. The nine aspect slots are numbered from +4 to -4 on the world sheet. These numbers correspond to the numbers on the [disposition](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/the-world/factions#disposition) characteristic of factions, and represent a similar distribution of aspects, with +4 indicating a very new, unstable and radical aspect and -4 indicating a very backward aspect on the brink of obsolescence. That makes the aspect on the ±0 slot the most stable aspect of the world. A *faction* is any kind of organization where people stick together for a purpose. Gangs, tribes, corporations, teams, military units or mafia families are just a few examples. Factions have their own mind and goals, so they are represented quite like a character in Edgerunner, and with a single exception, always played by the referee. A *character* is a key actor, played directly by a player, and the primary means of the player in affecting the story and the world. Everyone creates a progress and a faction for the game world, but they create their characters for themselves. Note that the referee does not have to prepare anything before a game. The referee does not even have to exist at this point. Even if a referee is chosen in advance, he should join this process as an equal and create a progress, a faction and even a character. #### Determining world aspects When determining world aspects, it is important that everyone at the table provide their input, and try to make it their own world. So everybody should propose world aspects, discuss and vote on them. You can do this as a freeform discussion but if it gets stuck, take turns in clockwise order around the table. Whoever has the next turn *must* propose a world aspect. When proposing world aspects, remember rule zero. If everybody is cool with the new aspect you propose, just write it down on the world sheet, in the slot that seems appropriate. If somebody disagrees, then it is time to treat it as a [declaration](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/fate/creating-aspects#declaration). Vote on it to determine the base value, and roll to see if it becomes a real aspect. Any world aspects that were previously put in place can be used to affect this roll, either as a compel to override it before it happens, or as an invocation to push the result in the direction you prefer. In the first session, everybody at the table must at least create one world aspect. Any more is optional at this point, as the players can still declare world aspects for empty slots any time during the game. **World creation summary** * Determine world aspects * Create factions * Create characters Download the [world sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-world.pdf) in PDF format. # Factions *Faction* is a broad term covering all kinds of human organizations that act as one. A faction is a major or minor corporation, an NGO, a boostergang, a government agency, a labor union, a nomad pack, a military unit or anything else where people have come together for a purpose. Factions are the key actors in driving the change and defining the edge in the dark future. A faction is defined in Edgerunner by its *characteristics*, *aspects* and its *competencies*, the faction-scale equivalent of skills. They also have a *concept* and their own *stress tracks* with consequence slots. ### Aspects A faction has five aspects, plus its concept for a total of six. When determining a faction’s aspects, consider things like its vision and mission, its assets and relations with other factions and its culture and attitude. #### Concept A faction’s concept is its defining aspect. It should summarize the type and definition of the faction into a single phrase. It should be the brief answer to the question: “What is it?”. Some examples are: `Ruthless boostergang`, `Elite marine company`, `US branch of European agricorp` or `Nationalist political movement` ### Characteristics A faction has three characteristics. Each one is a number between -4 and +4, representing the the magnitude and direction. These numbers represent the effectiveness of the faction in different scales, against other factions, progresses and single characters. **The total of a faction’s Disposition, Focus and Influence must be zero** #### Disposition The disposition of a faction defines how it positions itself in the social landscape. A positive number indicates a progressive attitude, striving to advance the society and embracing change. A negative number is a conservative attitude, trying to keep things as they are, or as they were in the extreme end. | −4 Luddite | Bent on destroying the new until only the old remains | | ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ | | −3 Nostalgic | Trying to bring back the old ways | | −2 Conservative | Holding onto the status quo with vigor | | −1 Cautious | Keeping to good old methods as long as possible | | ±0 Adaptive | Going with the flow and adapting to change, rather than driving it | | +1 Optimistic | Welcoming, adopting and advocating progress | | +2 Progressive | Actively pushing for change | | +3 Revolutionary | Attempting to bring about major change | | +4 Radical | Set on crushing the last vestiges of the past | The disposition of a faction is used when it is trying to affect issues. #### Focus Focus describes the amount of commitment a faction has towards its goals. Higher numbers mean that the faction puts more weight behind its objectives. | −4 Lost | Don’t even know why they are still here | | --------------- | ---------------------------------------- | | −3 Apathetic | When the mission is just an insider joke | | −2 Distracted | Drowning in TPS reports | | −1 Preoccupied | Doing the small things first | | ±0 Aware | Everything according to the plan | | +1 Enthusiastic | Going the extra mile | | +2 Committed | Trying to do their best | | +3 Passionate | The mission comes before everything | | +4 Zealous | No mercy for whoever stands in the way | The focus of a faction is a modifier when using competencies against individuals. Factions with low focus are ineffective against single characters while high focus faction can project their power with surgical precision. #### Influence Influence defines the faction’s ability of affecting or being affected by the world around it, with whatever means available. It is also an indirect measure of the faction’s means and strength. | −4 Futile | Laughing stock for friend and foe | | -------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | | −3 Weak | Hardly a threat for anyone, easily manipulated | | −2 Vulnerable | Open to exploitation if you know how to | | −1 Incompetent | Not the best it can be | | ±0 Neutral | Capable of holding their ground | | +1 Efficient | Adept at making a small difference | | +2 Influential | Others take notice when they do something | | +3 Powerful | Hard to stand in their way | | +4 Dominant | Opposing them is suicide | The influence of a faction is used as a modifier when using competencies against other factions. ### Competencies and upgrades [Competencies](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/the-world/factions/competencies) are a faction’s equivalent of skills. Although some competencies overlap with character skills, their application almost always represent the coordinated actions of the whole faction and not any single individual. A faction’s *upgrades* are not much different than [character upgrades](http://edgerunner.merttorun.com/characters/upgrades) in what they can do. The only difference is that the player of the faction can choose any stress track to absorb stress caused by upgrades. ### Stress and consequences Factions also have stress tracks and consequences of their own. Just like a character, when a faction is taken out, its fate is determined by its opponent, be it stock value crash, bankruptcy, hostile takeover, union strike, crippling legal action or just being wiped out to the last man. Faction stress tracks have a base threshold of 3. #### Leverage The leverage track represents the faction’s ability to get things done. If a faction loses its leverage, it is rendered incapable of doing anything. This may mean loss of physical assets, personnel, money or any other tangible resource essential to the operation of the faction. #### Prestige Prestige represents all the intangible assets of a faction. Loss of prestige causes the faction to lose its value in the eyes of whoever matters. A faction taken out on the prestige track loses its allies, business or image. It may be subject to the scorn of other factions. This track also receives any attacks made to lower the morale of the personnel. A faction has three consequence slots just like a character. Download the [faction sheet](https://s3.amazonaws.com/merttorun.com/edgerunner/edgerunner-faction.pdf) in PDF format. # Competencies Competencies are a faction's equivalent of skills. Like characters, factions roll their competencies when they want to accomplish something that matters. Having a competency assumes that the faction has the necessary means in the form of personnel, equipment, expertise, assets and contacts. Naturally, there is a matter of scale. There are tiny local factions like neighborhood gangs and gigantic global factions like megacorporations. When factions of different scales confront each other, their Influence is used as a modifier to their competency rolls. The same holds true when a faction acts against a character or progress, but the faction's focus or disposition is used instead. Factions have six competencies, arranged in a pyramid. One at level 3, two at level 2 and three at level 1. They are assumed to have all other competencies at level 0. * *Black ops* — Sabotage, assassination, and other things requiring a dirty hand. * *Corruption* — Dishonest and fraudulent conduct of business. Bribery. * *Diplomacy* — Managing relations with other factions in a sensitive and effective manner. * *Finance* — Finding and managing money and other liquid assets. Getting loans. * *Human resources* — Having, finding and keeping the best people for the job. * *Intelligence* — Getting information through contacts, data mining, espionage or any other means. * *Legal* — Using laws, regulations and bureaucracy to your advantage. * *Logistics* — Managing the supply chain. Getting something to the right place at the right time. * *Manufacturing* — Making things in large volumes. * *Marketing* — Positioning a product or idea so that it achieves success. * *Net ops* — Fighting in the net. Having data security. Breaking others' data security. * *Operations* — Running a multi-level organization. Managing subordinate factions. * *Public relations* — Getting along with people. Persuading, apologizing etc… * *Research and Development* — Creating new technology. * *Resources* — Having liquid and fixed assets. i.e. being rich. * *Security* — Defending against physical threats. * *Strategy* — Making and executing complex plans with multiple layers. * *Trading* — Buying and selling things. Making a profit. * *Urban warfare* — Literally, fighting with other factions in a city. # Playing factions Look carefully, and you will notice that a faction is a lot like a character. In Edgerunner, you can play whole factions just as you play characters. You can even build a game around factions, and never involve a single character sheet in your game, keeping the story mechanics on a grander scale and only going down to the character level for narrative flavor. But remember that this game is about edgerunners, and those are singular people with a whole lot of personality. Though it may be fun to play the clash of the titans every now and then, the more interesting stories always involve real characters that you and I can relate to. Not to mean that those characters can't get involved (or possibly crushed) in a clash of the titans. As players, your primary agent in affecting the game world are your characters. However characters are always limited in what they can do. They can't change the future, and they cannot move mountains. At least not by themselves, not directly. It takes a faction to do that. Factions can create or stop progress, they can spawn or destroy other factions. Characters cannot do that all by themselves. They need a faction to do that for them. As a player controlling a single character, you do not normally have access to factions. The referee controls all factions involved, unless you use one of the mechanisms below to control a faction. There are four ways for you as a player to take control of a faction, and almost all of them involve using your character at some point. #### Lead the faction If you are playing a \[corporate] character, then you also have a faction under your direct control. You can just play the faction as it was another character. You also get to receive the fate points when your faction is compelled. #### Be a part of it If your character has defined his affiliation to a faction with a dedicated upgrade, then you may take control of the faction for the duration of a single scene or conflict, by spending a fate point. The referee can refuse this by giving you a fate point instead. #### Take it out When a character takes out a faction, the character's player can choose to assume control of the faction for the remainder of the conflict, and for one single action following the conflict. Be careful with the narrative though. Taking a faction out does not mean that they capitulate and obey your character's commands. It only means that they *somehow* are forced to act in a way that is in your interests as a player. If you can't tell a plausible story, then you probably can't make the faction do that. #### Compel it This is the usual game mechanism, no more. You can just compel a faction through an aspect, in order to get it to act in a certain way. Of course the controlling player(referee) can refuse the compel as in the rules, giving you a fate point. These are the four game mechanisms for getting a faction to act in a certain way. However, do not forget the rule zero of Edgerunner: You can narrate anything any time. If everybody at the table likes your story, then it happens. No need to use any game mechanism. That holds true for any and all factions as well. ## Factions in conflict There are two different types of conflicts that factions may find themselves in. *Faction vs. faction* and *faction vs. characters*. The first case is played mostly like any other conflict, where factions attack, move, maneuver and do all the other conflict actions on a map. The only major difference is that the map usually does not represent physical space but an abstract space such as political standing, or research progress that the competing factions are going after. When the map in faction vs. faction conflict represents physical space, that space is usually much larger than what is represented in character conflicts. The zones may be city neighborhoods, whole cities or even countries. But in this case, it usually does not make sense for the factions to move about, unless they are roving gangs or similar. Assume the faction exerts its maximum influence in a certain zone (which probably begins where its base of operations are) and let the faction affect every zone on the map, subject to range from this focus zone. The faction may "move" this focus to other zones, thus changing range to its targets, but as a target itself, it always resides in its original zone. Moving this base of operations should be a major undertaking, and it may or may not make sense in the scope of the conflict you define, especially considering the length of an exchange. When you consider it possible, make sure that moving the focus is easier than moving the base. In a faction vs. faction conflict, remember that the *Influence of involved factions are applied to their competency rolls* Characters have no effect in a faction vs. faction conflict. But if the story of an action in such a conflict involves the characters, you may opt to break into a sub-conflict involving the characters, whose outcome determines the results of the action in the bigger conflict. Evaluate the results of the small conflict and assign it an adjective on the ladder, from the perspective of the acting faction in the larger conflict. Assume that to be the number of shifts the acting faction obtained. When a faction is involved in a character conflict, it is not represented on the map. It may only take a maneuver action targeting the entities on the map, or use the special *deploy* action to put various human and tech resources on the map to fight on behalf of itself. #### Deploy action The deploy action allows a faction to spawn characters and tech on a character-scale conflict map. Roll an appropriate competency. Shifts allow you to place a new character or tech at the far end of the *deployment map*. Full characters require 8 shifts for deployment, extras and goons require 6 and 4 shifts respectively. Mobs require shifts equivalent to double their threat level minus one. Deploying vehicles and other technology takes enough shifts to cover double their cost. The deploy action is assumed to be targeted towards characters, so the faction's *focus* is in full effect as a modifier. The required shifts are deliberately quite high. A faction has a number of options to make deployment at character scale possible. It may maneuver and accumulate aspects to invoke, which means it is taking steps to prepare the asset for deployment. It may also take Leverage stress and/or consequences to cover some of the shifts needed. Or it may simply *continue* the deploy action. Continuing a deploy action increases the previous result by +1, eventually generating enough shifts to put the asset on the scene. If successful, the deployed asset appears on an appropriate entry zone on the map, ready to act on the next exchange. When a deployed asset is taken out, any unabsorbed stress overflows to the faction as Prestige stress. Wasting assets looks bad on you, so remember that a strategic withdrawal is the prudent option when circumstances call for it. # Technology The future would not be the future without all kinds of technology, and the world of Edgerunner is no exception. Technology is everywhere. Technology is large, visible and prominent as in the orbital elevator that reaches out to the sky. Technology is small and ubiquitous as in the plaque-eating micro-machines in the nanotech toothpaste that you can buy from a vending machine. But whatever its scale or prominence, technology is always everywhere. And how does that matter for our story? What difference does technology make for our characters? Technology basically gives you the power to do more. In a story about the dark future, this may mean the difference between life and a life worse than death. But enough of the eulogy to technology already. You may be wondering how technology affects the game mechanisms in Edgerunner. Technology comes in a number of different forms: * *Ubiquitous* technology, all-prevalent in the urban life. Screens everywhere, polymer clothing, targeted advertisement with face recognition. Not represented mechanically because it is everywhere, and makes no difference. Just story flavor, unless you want to repurpose it for your own ends. * *Personal* technology. All the gadgets, devices, weapons, tools or instruments that characters would employ to give them an edge. These are represented as *upgrades* that apply to their user. They alter the basic use of skills in specific ways. This also covers all forms of human augmentation. * *Complex* technology. Not necessarily high tech, but any system or mechanism complex enough to have a life of its own. Most vehicles (from motorcycles to aircraft carriers), manufacturing systems or even whole buildings or or other structures are in this category. They are represented by a full suite of aspects, upgrades, skills and stress tracks. * *Groundbreaking* technology. Something so new and powerful that it may change the face of the world forever. This does not mean it is big, bad and mean. It may be subtle, it may even be good. Not a device, or even a prototype, but the science and knowledge itself. Stuff like eternal youth, instant manufacturing or almost-free energy. Represented as a [progress](broken://pages/-LwDCUJ4m-1u2-hItAQP). And then there is the *Internet*. The parallel universe, the nervous system of the world, the demi-plane of data. The net is an integral part of everything in the dark future. Every imaginable object more complex than a shovel is somehow online and connected. All the communication technologies of the past have been swallowed by the Internet. Independent systems like telephone, television and radio have either become services on the Internet, or they have just become part of the invisible infrastructure that powers it. Any leftovers of this transformation are interesting only for collectors and archaeologists. Game wise, the Internet is not the niche of a few things and characters (as it is in some other cyberpunk games out there). Almost everything that has mechanical representation in the game needs to account for being online (You will know better once that netrunner hacks your bionic legs to leave you lying helpless in the middle of a firefight). ### Equipment People of the dark future depend a lot on a very long list of objects in order to survive. What’s funny is, most of these people are so inured to the technology around them that they begin to see the stuff as a part of nature. Yes, smartphones do grow on trees, and that is real meat from a chicken on your plate, as you can see from this picture on the packaging. There is a lot of things a character in Edgerunner has on himself at any given time, and even attempting to list all of them, let alone give them stats or other distinctive properties would be a futile endeavor. So we take a simpler approach. We assume that every character has the stuff pertaining to the [skills](/characters/skills) he has. If you have Survival 1, you probably have a basic Swiss army knife. If you have Survival 4, you have a more expensive monogrammed Swiss army knife with more contraptions, but both of them cut stuff and open bottles with similar efficiency. There is no need to detail them. Their presence and contribution have already been rolled into your Survival skill. What we are interested in is the *stuff that gives you a decisive edge* when it matters. These are things that let you do things that you wouldn’t be able to do without them. Special purpose tools and gadgets, almost all weapons and armor, and some personal vehicles fall into this category. *These things are represented as upgrades* that function as an extension of a character’s own skills. # Complex technology Complex technology is anything whose capabilities are more important than their users' characteristics. This category may include vehicles, systems, machinery or even buildings and similar structures. But do not think that every such thing needs to be represented mechanically in the game. It would be boring and tedious if we had to produce a sheet for every car out there. Therefore before you write up a complex object into game terms, make sure it fits one of the guidelines below: * Its behavior depends on something other than the actions of a single character. Maybe it has a crew, or maybe it is automated. In any case, it is not an extension of a single character. A building security system with multiple sensors, operators and guards is such a thing. * Its *capabilities* are far more important than the skill of its operator. Probably it is optimized for a purpose, and that makes a bigger difference against other non-optimized things, regardless of the operator skill. A combat helicopter with all its weapons and avionics systems may be a good example. In any case, before starting to define a thing as complex tech, ask yourself this question: *Does it matter for the story?* If you are entering a corporate HQ in order to interview the CEO, the building's stats don't matter. If you intend to bomb the building, its stats still don't matter. If you intend to stage an assault on the building with multiple ground and air units, only then its stats begin to matter. If a tank is chasing you down the street, and you have a pistol, do not bother about the thickness of the tank's armor, it is thick enough. Run, you fool! In other words, it only matters when it is a challenge for everyone involved. Now that we have decided that it is worth our trouble, how do we model our complex thing? Well, just like we model a character; With skills(called capabilities), upgrades, aspects and stress tracks. The only difference is that we don't have a rigid template like we have for the characters. The number of characteristics a complex object has is solely based on your table's discretion. Only one aspect? OK. Eight upgrades? Good. No skills? Fine, it's your call. {% hint style="success" %} Let's say that we want to model our covert ops van for eavesdropping on and intercepting a shady exchange. It makes sense because, the van is crewed by more than one person, and it probably is going to go into a conflict with other characters and vehicles involved. {% endhint %} #### Capabilities In other words, skills for complex tech. Capabilities define the baseline for what this thing is good at. Used just like a skill roll, you add the capability's value to a 4dF roll, and compare it to either a static difficulty number or an opponent's roll tin order to determine your shifts. Unlike skills, capabilities are almost always assumed to be self contained, that is, the thing has, by default, everything it needs to use its capability. A character would need a pistol in order to attack with his Firearms skill, but a tank is assumed to have an integral stabilized AT gun with SABOT rounds if it has Anti-armor:4 as a capability. Otherwise it wouldn't have that. Capabilities take a number between 0-5, but most will be in the range 1-3. The number represents the relative advantage of the capability against other things of a similar function and scale. Do not compare the Sensors capabilities of a man-portable microwave field scanner and an AEGIS cruiser. They work on different scales and aren't comparable. {% hint style="danger" %} There is no default value for capabilities. If a thing doesn't have a capability listed, then it is helpless on that front. {% endhint %} There isn't a normative list of capabilities but here are some samples that you can use. Experience has shown that stories become more interesting if you name capabilities after methods, opponents and environments rather than qualities like Power or Speed. * *Mobility:* Road, Off-road, Water, Underwater, Low altitude, High altitude * *Offense:* Anti-air, Anti-armor, Anti-personnel, EW, Anti-IC * *Defense:* Stealth, Evasion, Net-security, Security * *Awareness:* Sensors, Intelligence {% hint style="success" %} We want our covert ops van to be normally a inconspicious vehicle with superior eavesdropping capabilities. For mobility, we take a decent *Road:2* capability and also a mediocre *Off-road:0* just in case we need it. It is not armed, save for the solos in the crew, but it has a powerful but discreet electronics suite. We can put up some decent *EW:2* and have great *Sensors:4*. Of course, most of those sensors are passive, making our van hard to detect with *Stealth:3*, with the help of the silent electric drivetrain. The van is also well connected to the Internet, with two workstations for collecting and analyzing external data, giving us *Intelligence:3*, well defended by *Net-security:2* and *Anti-ICE:2* {% endhint %} #### Aspects and upgrades Tech aspects and upgrades are quite the same as any other aspect and upgrade in the game. They define special story elements and rules respectively. Tech upgrades do not necessarily cause stress of any kind, but you may define them as sources of stress at the discretion of your table. {% hint style="success" %} Our van is `as black as it gets` and has `rotating license plates`. It also has the upgrade *`Light Armor:`* +2 to Crew stress threshold against small arms, because we want to protect our team. This upgrade does not cause any stress. We do suppress the urge to write down every feature and gimmick down as an aspect or a upgrade. It is OK to assume that the first aspect implies something more sophisticated than matte black paint, while the second one means that there is probably matching fake electronic identification to the license plates. No need to detail everything. Just imply what it is good at/for. {% endhint %} #### Stress tracks Stress tracks for complex things are again, quite similar to character stress tracks. Their base stress threshold is determined by the table. Most things will at least have an *Integrity* track that represents their ability to keep on functioning. The thing will malfunction or break down if taken out on the Integrity track. When it matters, vehicles may also have a *Crew* track. Taken out means bad things happen to people. Complex things may have any other tracks that represent other fragile features. What they are, and what happens when they flunk is again your call. {% hint style="success" %} For our van, we stick to the basics. It's a relatively robust van with base thresholds of *Integrity:4* and *Crew:3*. (Which fortunately counts as 5 against small arms, thanks to its Light Armor upgrade) {% endhint %} # Glossary | Term | Description | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [**Action**](/fate/conflicts#actions) | A specific kind of thing a character can do in a conflict. Each character takes one action per exchange. Everything a character does in a conflict must be played as one of the predetermined actions. | | [**Alternate**](/characters/secondary#alternates) | A secondary character that represents the online persona of a Netrunner. | | [**Aspect**](/fate/aspects-and-fate-points#aspects) | A short and evocative statement about what makes a context (character, faction, map zone, etc…) special. May be written on the related sheet, or temporarily assigned. Can be invoked or compelled (using fate points) to affect game actions. | | [**Assessment**](/fate/creating-aspects#assessments) | A scene action that represents preparations made to use an aspect. May be a simple challenge or a contest. Prepares the aspect for a free invocation. | | [**Border**](/fate/conflicts#the-map) | A line between two zones in a map, that defines the difficulty of moving between those zones. | | [**Character**](/characters) | A person in the game world, important to the story being told. Represented with aspects, skills, upgrades and stress track on a character sheet. Every player controls one character, the referee may control multiple characters at once. | | [**Capability**](/the-world/technology/complex#capabilities) | The name given to skills of a complex device. Works exactly the same way as skills do in game. Named differently to avoid confusion with character skills. | | [**Challenge**](/fate/resolution#challenges) | A tight situation whose outcome may change the story. Represented by a skill roll against a fixed difficulty determined by the referee. | | [**Compel**](/fate/aspects-and-fate-points#compels) | An offer of fate points from a player to another to alter the story based on an aspect. | | [**Competency**](/the-world/factions/competencies) | The name given to skills of a \[faction]\(/the-world/factions). Works exactly the same way as skills do in game. Named differently to avoid confusion with character skills. | | [**Concession**](/fate/conflicts#concessions) | A story offered to an opposing player to end a conflict. Ends the conflict if accepted by all sides in it. | | [**Conflict**](/fate/conflicts) | Detailed and elaborate game mechanism used to resolve hairy situations that players don't want to resolve with a single challenge or contest. | | [**Consequence**](/fate/creating-aspects#consequences) | A detrimental aspect voluntarily placed on a character (or other context) by the controlling player, in order to gain a boost to a skill roll. | | [**Contest**](/fate/resolution#contests) | A simple game mechanism to resolve a situation between opposing characters. Involves comparing skill rolls to determine the victor. | | [**Declaration**](/fate/creating-aspects#declarations) | An attempt by a player to declare a fact about the world, scene or other context. The declared fact is assumed to be true and written down as an aspect if the roll is successful. | | **Dice** | Randomizing device used in challenges, contests and conflicts to add variation to the outcome. In this game, this always means four special Fudge dice rolled together and added. | | [**Difficulty**](/fate/resolution#shifts) | A number that indicates the relative difficulty of a challenge. Determined by the referee. Usually betweeen 0 and 6 but can be less or more. | | **Entity** | Catch-all term that refers to all the mechanically represented things in the game that can be played like a character. Includes all kinds of characters, factions, complex technology and anything else you may come up in your game that has game-mechanical representation. | | [**Exchange**](/fate/conflicts#exchanges) | A standard block of fictional time that everyone involved gets to act once during a conflict. | | [**Extra**](/characters/secondary#extras) | A secondary character that is less important for the story, and less capable than a regular character. Usually played by the referee, occasionally by other players, either as the lieutenant of a fixer or temporarily handed over to any player by the referee. | | [**Faction**](/the-world/factions) | A group of people working towards a single purpose. Represented in this game with its own sheet of aspects, skills (called competencies), stunts and stress tracks. Controlled by the referee or the characters when the referee allows. A player playing a Corporate character can directly control his character's faction. | | [**Fate point**](/fate/aspects-and-fate-points#fate-points) | Points players use to affect the flow of the game. Mainly used to invoke or compel aspects. Players have a limited supply, referee has infinite points. | | [**Ghost**](/characters#the-ghost) | The collection of all the past aspects, upgrades, and peak skills of a character. | | [**Goon**](/characters/secondary#goons) | A secondary character that isn't really important for the story. Less capable than regular characters or extras. Has skill categories instead of skills to facilitate creation and playing. Usually played by the referee, occasionally by other players, either as the henchman of a fixer or temporarily handed over to any player by the referee. | | [**Mod**](/characters/secondary#mods) | Name given to the software based upgrades of an alternate. | |

Invoke, invocation,

tag

| Using an aspect to modify a skill roll, usually by spending fate points. Tags are called free invokes now. | | [**Ladder**](/fate/resolution) | A list of adjectives matched to numbers from -4 to 8. Used to generate stories from the result of skill rolls. | | [**Maneuver**](/fate/conflicts#maneuver) | An action taken by a character or other entity to place a scene aspect on something. | | [**Map**](/fate/conflicts#the-map) | A representational map, divided into zones. Used in conflicts to represent physical or metaphorical space, and the position and movement of characters or other entities within it. | | [**Mook**](/characters/secondary#mooks) | Simplified representation of a group of people (or other things) that don't matter individually but can be a force when in numbers. A type of very simple secondary character. | | **Player** | That's you and your friends around the table. Unless otherwise specified, we also include the referee when talking about players. | | [**Progress**](broken://pages/-LwDCUJ4m-1u2-hItAQP) | A structured definition of something important happening in the world. Represented by aspects and stress tracks on its own sheet. | | [**Referee**](/edgerunner/the-game) | Player responsible for playing "rest of the world", i.e. anything not directly controlled by a regular player. Also responsible for defining the scenes, conflict maps or challenge difficulties. | | [**Role**](/characters/roles) | Part of a character's definition, that puts him in one of the cyberpunk stereotypes, and gives him a special ability. | | **Roll** | A numeric result obtained by rolling the dice and adding a relevant skill. Also known as a skill roll. | | [**Shift**](/fate/resolution#shifts) | The difference between the skill roll and the difficulty or the opponent's roll. Can be used to enhance the result in multiple ways. | | [**Skill**](/characters/skills) | A field that a character is skilled in. A character has multiple skills chosen from a list, at levels ranging from 1 to 4. The character's level in a skill shows how capable he is in that field, and forms the base number for skill rolls. | | [**Skill category**](/characters/secondary#skill-categories) | Groups of character skills, used for the simplified representation of some secondary characters. A character is assumed to be competent in all skills in a category he has, at the level specified. | | [**Stress**](/characters/stress-tracks) | Abstract measure for pressure put on a character, driving him towards being taken out. Used in conflicts. There are different types of stress that can be inflicted depending on the type of conflict and the form of attack, and every character has different thresholds for different stress types. | | **Table** | The collective authority and decision-making power of everyone playing the game. The highest form of authority in a game of Edgerunner. | | [**Taken out**](/fate/conflicts#taken-out) | Losing control of a character (or other entity). Happens when the character suffers stress higher than his threshold. The opposing player inflicting the stress gets to determine the fate of the character. | | [**Threshold**](/characters/stress-tracks#stress-threshold) | The highest level of stress a character (or other entity) can withstand without getting taken out. | | [**Time track**](/fate/resolution#shifts) | List of time divisions used to determine how success and failure affects time of a task dependent on a skill roll. | | [**Upgrade**](/characters/upgrades), *Augmentation, Stunt* | A property of a character or other entity. A special rule that allows a character to bend or override the regular game rules in a specific way. Among other things used to represent all forms of human augmentation in Edgerunner. *This game mechanism replaced Stunts and Augmantations from the previous version as of December 2012* | | [**Zone**](/fate/conflicts#the-map) | An area in a map that constitutes a particular location in the physical or abstract space the map defines. Surrounded and linked to other zones by borders. | # Credits Formerly humans.txt ### Mert Torun — Author & Designer | | [@merttorun](https://edgerunner.merttorun.com/twitter.com/merttorun) #### Betül Erdem — Editor & Sponsor | [@turumcu](https://edgerunner.merttorun.com/twitter.com/turumcu) #### Playtesters * Gönlüm Erdaş * Yunus Emre Çalışkan * Sertaç Horkal * Burak Eren * Semih Uzun * Ali Çataltepe * Muhammet Çağrı Karakaya * Sercan Hanazay * Can Mıhcı * Burçin Gürbüz * Emre Soyak * Çağrı Özer * Hazal Kalfa * Alper Ozan * Oğuzhan Selçuk * Atakan Dülker #### Based on [FATE](http://faterpg.com) by Robert Donoghue and Fred Hicks \ [Diaspora](https://edgerunner.merttorun.com/vsca.ca/Diaspora) by Brad Murray, C.W. Marshall, Tim Dyke and Byron Kerr \ [Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0](https://talsorianstore.com/products/cyberpunk-2020) by Mike Pondsmith