What the broadcasts never show you about boarding a ship is how much work it is. Even if all the passengers keep to their cabins, no one want- ing to be a hero, there’s still all the climbing. Once you’re aboard and the engines are secured, you need to go up. Up past the cargo; up past the cabins. You have to make the bridge, and secure that before the crew separate the command deck from the rest of the ship. Without the com- mand deck, your salvage is worth nothing. If they kept the autolift on, it would be easy; but they never do. So you learn how to climb. You earn your prize.
Spacecraft will typically be organized with small decks stacked along the axis of thrust so that the ship’s acceleration provides “gravity” for the occupants. This presents a minor problem for running personal combat: the decks are not going to be very big or very interesting, so a familiar overhead deckplan view might not be the best way to proceed. Certainly you can, and progress from map to map as characters move through the vertical, in which case use the same heuristics as you would for an outdoor map, except that the space is constrained.
Another possibility is to display the ship in lateral cross section instead of the usual overhead view and increase the abstraction. In this case (or any case where you want to use a cross section instead of a floorplan—a fight in an office building, for example) it will be handy to invent a Stunt that makes a whole set of zones (a deck or a storey) behave accordingly. We’ll call that set of zones a “level.”
Cluttered: a cluttered level is full of things that block line of sight and make move- ment difficult. It can still be huge (two, three, four, even five zones), but the clutter means that weapons cannot be used beyond range zero.
Complicated: a complicated level is such that it is impossible to acquire line of sight past an adjacent zone. A good example might be a deck with a central shaft and four or five rooms arranged radially around the shaft, or a floor in a hotel with many rooms. There’s no line-of-sight from one room straight to any other, and so the maxi- mum range characters can engage in is one zone regardless of the number of zones in the level.
Open: an open deck has no interesting obstructions and characters can engage at any range.
When using this slightly abstracted map, it is not necessary (or even desirable) to attempt to represent literally the features of the interior.
As with the overhead map, borders (doors in this case) are given numeric values for the number of shifts needed to cross. In all these cases, the borders are stateful. As- sume it takes the same number of shifts to open a door as to close it unless the map clearly states otherwise.
Bridge deck
cluttered
Crew quarters
complicated
Galley and gym
complicated Passenger decks complicated 2/0/2 4/0/4 4/0/4 4/0/4 4/0/4 airlock airlock airlock 4/0/4 4/0/4 4/0/4 4/0/4
the sequence
Combat occurs according to a strict sequence of events. In order to run the Se- quence, one player should be named the caller (usually the referee, but if one player’s character is not physically present, it makes sense for him to call, while the referee controls the opposition). The duty of the caller is to run the Sequence: he ensures that each phase is given sufficient time and that there is a smooth pace as phases proceed. The caller should have the Sequence Summary in front of him during the game.
While objectively it is more appealing to poll characters in order of some Skill (Alertness is the usual choice, with ties broken by Agility), in practice this does not have a huge impact on play except to slow it down and confuse the order. A more ef- fective solution for actual play is for the caller to select a player by any criteria he likes and then poll players clockwise or counterclockwise around the table.
The caller decides on the order in which players will declare ac- tions in the combat Sequence.
Combat is organized into turns of non-specific length, but each representing something between twenty seconds and a minute, depending on the actions described. Consequently, it may be assumed that more is happening within each turn than is actually being described, and in a given round a guy with a pistol might shoot an op- ponent, or he may defend against multiple attacks by shooting (but never hitting) in the direction of his attackers.
In combat, each player may only use a given Skill only once per round. You can- not use the same Skill for offense and defense in the same round.
Each player’s turn consists of a “free” one-zone move and an action. The “free” move may constitute eroding a pass value by one.
The action will fall into one of four categories: attack, move, maneuver, or do something else.
attack
If an attack action is declared, the player will announce their character’s action for the round and will interpret it, with the assistance of the caller, in game mechanical terms as a Skill test roll of some kind with appropriate results.
Attacks roll 4dF + the appropriate Skill and add the weapon’s harm value. The De- fender rolls 4dF + an appropriate Skill + any defense conferred by armour. Armour de- fense is reduced by weapon penetration, though no lower than zero. See the weapon tables to find the harm and penetration values for weapons. See the armour tables for the defense values of armour.
A weapon used inside its minimum range or outside its maximum range applies a modifier of -2 to the roll. Brawling and Close Combat weapons may not be used out- side of the weapon’s maximum range unless they have a Stunt that allows it.
Both attack and defense rolls may now be modified by invoked or tagged Aspects (though only one of each type: see Playing with Fate), spin, and any other available modifier.
The difference between the attacker’s roll and the defender’s roll after all modifica- tions is the number of shifts. If this number is positive, the attack was successful. If zero or negative the attack fails. If the result is -3 or lower, the defender gets spin.
For each successful attack, damage is noted, and mitigated as per the Damage section below. If this is the first time the character has been hit in this session, the damage is to both Health and Composure stress tracks as per the First Blood section below. Free tags resulting from Consequences are immediately available to the next opponent character to announce action (or any following opponent, until the free tag has been tagged).
Leave defensive rolls on the table (note the value on a piece of paper or the map if Aspects have been tagged or invoked—the value left at the table is the roll + Skill + any Aspect related improvement). If the character is attacked a second or further times, before acting, use the roll on the table whenever the same skill is used for defense.
a bad defensive roll expect to be ganged up on. Second, if you get a great defensive roll you could generate multiple spin counters.
When it’s your turn to act, remove your defensive roll record.