Never Home – Game Basics

We will be using FATE as written. The game itself is very user friendly and flexible. It will do everything we need it to do for the game.

Phases

We are starting out with 8 phases of one aspect and 4 skill ranks. The two phases will represent large stretches of time (your childhood and learning your trade); the rest will be one year of the war and a year after the war’s ending.

Magic Skills and Aspects

There are three kinds of magic inherent to the setting.

• Divine Magic – available to Humans and Elves only, this magic is that of Faith in a God or Goddess of a Pantheon (there are no Monotheistic Deities). This magic is “Hedge Magic” as discussed in FATE (page 53). The worshipper is allowed to take a hedge magic aspect in a single skill offered by the deity they pay homage to. Multiple Deities can be devotees, but they must be on good terms with one another and the aspects must be sympathetic. There are no miracles, per se, in the setting. Religion could just as easily be magic shaped by faith as it could be real divine action.
• Arcane Magic – Wizards use the rules found here.
• Mysticism – The mystic orders are basically a fantasy kung-fu underground. Mystics use the “Martial Arts” system as discussed in FATE (page 55). An aspect must be taken for each path the mystic has studied. They must also take a “Flow Sense” skill to measure how well they sense Chi Flow. This value will also become the expendable Chi used in that magic system. Paths are subject to GM approval and the GM reserves right to design new paths of whole cloth.

Magic Items (the Rule of Five)

Magic items will exist in the setting, as will strange and exciting gadgets made by Gnomes that border on Magic. There is a mystical principle that limits magic items to one per Moon Rune (one for each element: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, and Moon). A person may only use one item for each type at a time. If you have active more than one magic item of any one type or more than 5 total, no magic items will work for you until you deactivate or drop items to come back into tolerance.

All items will be designated as a certain element when assigned to you. If you wish to start with magic items already, please see the GM to verify the elements of your item.

Items cannot be switched from active to inactive at will unless specified. The description of the item will make it clear when the item is active. Be sure not mix ‘reactive’ items that might react at the same time and short out all of your items!

Combat

Combat uses “Exchange-Based” rounds and “Dramatic Weapons and Armor”. Combat will be very fast and loose, with players expected to add some excitement to the festivities by describing their actions to the other players.

There are 4 levels of Combat skills to consider, each with their own skill categories: Hand-to-Hand (HTH), Melee (armed with a weapon or melee spells), Ranged Weapons (or ranged spells), and Ship’s Weapons (or Siege Engines, or Large-Scale Spells).

Events Cards

At the start of each episode, the GM will issue each PC an event card. These will have things to do and lines to say to get some extra Fate Points. The GM will award Fate points as usual for player additions to the game and player-coolness as usual, but these cards events will set up situations or encourage witty dialogue like the inspirational material contains.

By no means is anyone required to make their character do or say what is on the cards. It is your character, so you are in control. Think of the cards as fan mail or Internet chatter about your character. “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” or “That sounds like something <blank> would say!” Please do not feel the cards are a railroading step. Indeed, if they feel too constrictive, we may just do without them (like we did with the cool paper figures I made up…sniff…wink).

Contributions

In the great Amber tradition, any player contribution to the game or anything that makes the game more fun for everyone will be rewarded by Fate Points. Bell = Snack.