Atomic Effect: A Mass Effect Guide For The Atomic Robo RPG

Atomic Effect

For a rather long time, I’ve been a fan of the Mass Effect franchise. The game series was a gem when I first picked it up and only kept the quality up as the series progressed. While the ending was a letdown, it was a fun ride overall. The galaxy it fleshed out was a rich scifi universe with some interesting corners to explore. From the iPod clean Citadel to the dark streets of Omega, it offers a variety of locales to explore and worlds to save…or rob.

FATE has always been a good system for pulpy adventures and video games like Mass Effect are pure pulp. When the Atomic Robo rpg came out, it set a great template for how to handle scifi in FATE and sets a good starting point for where to go.

This document is a guide on how to use AR to play out adventures in the Mass Effect universe. It will try to be unintrusive as possible. As such, this is guide will mostly suggest which weird modes to use and/or rename for the setting, ways to handle powers from Mass Effect, some rules on gear, and one important little change to conflicts.

Conflicts

For the most parts, the normal rules for AR’s physical conflicts are just fine for Mass Effect. One distinction is that conflicts should always take place in atleast 2 zones as Mass Effect tends to have fights occur in big areas. You shouldn’t have more than four, but a minimum of 2 is advised.

In a similar vein, Mass Effect is a cover-based shooter. As such, situation aspects to

make travel to other zones difficult is encouraged. Even if an obvious example doesn’t exist

Modes

While Atomic Robo didn’t introduce modes, modes have certainly become associated with the game. They are a nice system to ensure that characters are competent in a variety of fields and, in most people’s eyes, make character generation fast and easy.

Some modes are ready out of the box from Atomic Robo and some need some renaming/rewording. Some Weird Modes from AR, of course, should be avoided.

• The Standard Modes are fine right out the box.

• Weird Modes that are good out of the box are: Mutant, Pilot, Reporter, Robot, Soldier, and Warbot.

• Weird Modes (and Weird Skill) that need some renaming are: Psychokinetic to Biotic (and the weird skill, Psychokensis to Biotics) and Secret Agent to Secret

Agent/Spectre.

• Weird Modes to be avoided are: Beast (Someone could play a Varren or the like, but it’s a bad idea), Dinosaur, Martial Artist (Kai Leng sort of fits this, but the less said about him the better), Spirit, and Telepath.

Some may notice that I have chosen not to add racial weird modes. This was done for three reasons: 1) to avoid humans being the baseline and 2) to avoid the “every X is like Y” situation that may stymie creativity, and 3) to make it easier to be a different species.

While you are, of course, open to make your own Weird Modes for things like Krogan, I suggest against it for the above reasons. To handle species other than humans and their weird

biology, I suggest this:

• Any character can take mega stunts if they can justify it as part of their alien

biology even if they do not have a weird mode.

To avoid humans being left out in the lurch, I suggest the following rules:

• Any character can take mega stunts if they can justify it as a result of cybernetic

enhancements.

Of course, if you are like me and feel locking off mega stunts based on if you have a weird mode seems off, you can just go whole hog and do this:

• Anyone make take mega stunts, regardless of if they have a weird mode.

Those prior rules were for qualifications for mega-stunts. In general, if you want to be an

alien, you are that alien species. If it is very important (such as being a Krogan diplomat which

may have its own social baggage), you can mention it in one aspects such as your concept aspect or your most appropriate mode aspect.

Powers

Powers can easily be handled by FATE’s, and by extension AR’s, stunt system. They perfectly fall under the category of special abilities that make a character exceptional. For convenience, we converted quite a few powers from the game into stunts:

Combat

• Adrenaline Rush: +1 bonus to Combat when you throw yourself into harm’s way with reckless abandon.

• Concussive Shot: Once per session, without rolling, create a boost related to knocking people down.

Tech

• AI Hacking: Once per session, make a synthetic enemy – that is not a Reaper – join your side in battle for two rounds.

• Combat Drone: Have a signature aspect relating to having a combat drone like Floating Partner* or Holo-Ball of Destruction*

• Elemental Blast: Once per session, without rolling, create a boost related to freezing, burning, or overloading the shields of a target.

• Tactical Cloak: +1 to Stealth checks when using your tactical cloak and you may attack with Stealth when hidden by your cloak.

• Tech Armor: Armor:2 and +1 when defending with Athletics from arms fire.

Biotic

• Barrier: Use Biotics to defend against ranged attacks.

• Charge: +2 to Combat when moving from one zone to another.

• Pull: Move a target from one zone to another in addition to another action.

• Singularity/Shockwave/Throw: In addition to your action, get a boost related to people being knocked off their feet.

• Warp: Weapon:2 when throwing yourself into harm’s way.

All

• Special Ammo: +1 to Combat when fighting enemies with active Shields, Armors, or Barriers.

• Unity: Once per session, you or another of your choice may uncheck their highest, checked-off Stress Box.

This is not an exhaustive list of stunts you can have, obviously, nor are you forced to use this version of Mass Effect’s Powers. This is just to make things easier on you.

Gear

Gear has varying importance in Mass Effect despite its status as a Scifi game (a genre known for carrying a lot about gear). While the first game cared about armor and offered a variety of weapons, later titles kept armor constant and offered a small selection of highly differentiated weapons.

As tabletop rpgs aren’t the best medium for long lists of slightly different items, we are going with the later approach to gear.

Armor

Armor in the Mass Effect universe follows the scifi trope of creator a shield around its user. Thus making it less about the armor, but the shield around it. Well, to be more honest, Halo is

probably the biggest reason this exists.

Regardless, armor doesn’t differentiate much by type in later games. Even in the first one, it was mostly about having varying level of stats which, in a low numbers game like FATE, isn’t something to emulate.

As such, we suggest using only one type of armor to accommodate every bit of armor you might run into. AR’s hardware as mega stunts system does a good job of handling this.

Shielded Armor

Function: Protect From Arms Fire Flaw: Needs To Recharge

Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):

Shielded From High Velocity Targets: You get one additional 1-Stress and 2-Stress box. Still Metal Underneath: Armor:2 when bonus stress boxes from this armor are checked.

Weapons

Even in later games, there was always a variety of weapons to choose from. Not just that, but they came in two categories: normal and heavy. Normal being your standard array of rifles,

shotguns, pistols, etc. while heavy weapons included rocket launchers, grenade launchers, flamethrowers and the like.

FATE isn’t big on laundry list of weapons and the such. While it make sense to make a series

of different guns in a video game, there isn’t enough variance to justify a long list of “normal guns.” While making guns different by factors like continuous verses burst fire makes sense in game, it doesn’t make sense here.

As such, we suggest just considering non-heavy weapons as just an assumption of the

character and not to model them different from each other. If you must, you could take a

stunt to represent what you perceive makes your gun special. If you do so, we suggest making it more about what makes you special with that type of gun (shotgun, rifle, etc.) and not so much what makes that particular gun special.

Heavy Weapons, however, function very different from normal weapons and tend to have specialized functions. As such, we have prepared them using the hardware as mega-stunts

rule from AR:

ML-77 Missile Launcher

Flaw: Too Close!

Mega-Stunts (3 Benefits): Explosions!: Weapon:4

Anit Walking Away From This One: On an attack that succeeds with style, spend a fate

M-100 Grenade Launcher

Mega-Stunts (3 Benefits): Boom Shot: Weapon:4

Big Boom!: On an attack that succeeds with style, hit up to two additional targets per fate

M-451 Firestorm

Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):

Sway And Burn: On an attack that succeeds with style, hit up to two additional targets per

fate point spent.

Burn, Burn!, BURN!: On an attack that succeeds with style, spend a fate point to prevent the

M-490 Blackstorm

Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):

Drag Them In: On an attack that succeeds with style, spend a fate point to move up to three

people from one zone to another.

Light Cannot Escape: When you use this, you may spend a fate point to create a situation

M-622 Avalanche

Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):

Burrrr: When you use this, in addition to everything else, create a bonus boost related to the

enemies being frozen.

M-920 Cain

Function: The Nuclear Option Flaw: Overkill

Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):

Arc Projector

Flaw: Jumps to ANYONE Nearby

Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):

Chain Lighting: On an attack that succeeds with style, hit up to two additional targets per fate

point spent.

Shock To Your System: On an attack that succeeds with style, spend a fate point to prevent

Collector Particle Beam

Mega-Stunts (3 Benefits): Tear Away At It: Weapon:4

Gotta Pop Out: +1 to Combat when popping out of cover to fire.