A Science Fiction RPG based on Fudge/Fate
- Pilot Wave
- The Fudge/ Fate Ladder
- Five Outcomes
- Four Actions
- Pilot Wave Character Creation
- Pilot Wave Aspects
- Stunts
- Attributes, Skills and Powers
- Astrogation
- Resolving Attacks
- Consequences
- Recover
- Aspect Types
- Invoking Aspects
- Compelling Aspects
- Refresh
- Spending Fate Points
- Challenges
- Contests
- Conflicts
- Earning Fate Points
For conflict resolution, Pilot Wave uses an expanded ladder of adjectives and numbers to rate the attempt, the dice results plus modifiers against the difficulty, either a passive difficulty, set by the game master, or an active opposition, the opponent’s dice results plus modifiers.
Roll four fudge dice (4DF) and add the result to the skill rating to get the final attempt.
| Difficulty | 4dF | Attempt | Probability of Success |
|---|---|---|---|
| Certain | -4 | Abysmal | 100 |
| Cinch | -3 | Awful | 98.77 |
| Effortless | -2 | Terrible | 93.83 |
| Easy | -1 | Poor | 81.48 |
| Trivial | 0 | Mediocre | 61.73 |
| Normal | 1 | Average | 38.27 |
| Routine | 2 | Fair | 18.52 |
| Difficult | 3 | Good | 6.17 |
| Formidable | 4 | Great | 1.23 |
| Staggering | 5 | Superb | - |
| Impossible | 6 | Fantastic | - |
| Hopeless | 7 | Epic | - |
| Futile | 8 | Legendary | - |
| Absurd | 9 | Extraordinary | - |
| Inconceivable | 10 | Phenomenal | - |
| Preposterous | 11 | Prodigious | - |
| Unattainable | 12 | Freakish | - |
- Fail: Fail your action, or succeed at a major cost.
- Tie (0 shifts): succeed at a minor cost
- Succeed (Average or Fair, 1-2 shifts): succeed with no cost
- Succeed with style (Good (3+) shifts): succeed with additional benefit
Hazardous skill rolls risk a fifth outcome, a mishap. Not all skill rolls are hazardous.
- Mishap (Awful (-3) or more shifts): Your action fails, and comes with a consequence.
- Overcome: get past an obstacle
- Create an Advantage: invoke an aspect for free
- Attack: harm another character
- Defend: prevent attacks of advantages against you
Each player character starts with five aspects, chosen from an archetype, including one or more careers, trouble aspects, convictions and ties. A player character also gets to choose three stunts, assign attributes and assign skills, one Great (+4), two Good (+3), three Fair (+2) and four Average (+1).
Your archetype is your character’s High Concept. Your high concept is a phrase that sums up what your character is about. Here’s a list of example high concepts.
Each player character has a former career, or careers. These can be any manner of schooling or job training that result in the set of skills and other aspects, aligning with the Archetype. Typically, most characters will only have one career, but may have a career focus, or a significant shift in careers. Common careers include military, exploratory, academic, law enforcement or agent, trader, extralegal or ship crew. Employers may be government, corporate or private. You may wish to select your skill set first, then add a career justifying those choices, or the other way around. Sample careers
Every character has a troublesome aspect that’s part of their story.
Choose two convictions that guide your character’s decisions and role play. Here’s some examples of convictions.
Choose two ties that inform your character’s patrons. These can be friend or foe, but define aspects of your character.
Choose one gear aspect, a military grade weapon or armor, a high tech level sensor, sensory implants, battlefield computer, gravity belt, high tech medical scanner, high tech environment suit, combat drugs, truth drugs, energy weapon, etc.
Each player character gets three stunts. Stunts may be aspected, triggered, broad or combined. Examples.
Navigation to and from nearby stars is limited to systems within two parsecs. To visualize the path, you can use In-The-Sky. Fixed three dimensional maps can be viewed at atlasoftheuniverse.
Inducing a wormhole involves precise vector targeting of the destination, thereby limiting the range. Jump calculations take 10 minutes on average. Travel through the wormhole throat uses the maneuver drive through non-Euclidean space. Regardless of speed, exiting the wormhole takes about 5 days.
- Legendary (+4): Instantaneous and flawless calculations (0 minutes)
- Superb (+3): Very quick and accurate calculations (2 minutes)
- Great (+2): Quick and reliable calculations (4 minutes)
- Good (+1): Efficient and generally accurate calculations (6 minutes)
- Fair (0): Average performance with room for improvement (10 minutes)
- Average (-1): Some errors or delays, but still manageable (12 minutes)
- Mediocre (-2): Significant errors or complications, requiring additional time to resolve (14 minutes)
- Poor (-3): Major mistakes or complications, significant time needed to rectify (16 minutes)
- Terrible (-4): Catastrophic failure, unable to complete, must start over (20 minutes or more consumed with the first effort)
Executing a jump at 100 or more diameters is Routine. Performing a jump from 10-100 diameters is Difficult. Closer than 10 diameters is both Impossible and Hazardous.
WHIP (WormHole Induction Propulsion) or Jump drives can perform a two parsec jump, depleting the ship's power and causing a radiation buildup on the reactor that must be dissipated in a gravity well of at least 0.1G for 10 hours. Ships have fuel cells, solar cells or batteries to complete maneuver drive operations to a star port, gas giant or other hydrogen source (like water) for refueling. Jumping to a system without a hydrogen source is a one way trip. Jumping to a system without a gravity well will irradiate the crew unless the ship is abandoned.
A three parsec jump can be attempted, but it risks a loss of primary containment, immediately leading to a catastrophic hydrogen explosion, destroying the ship and killing the crew.
When traveling at a constant velocity, turning over at midpoint and constantly decelerating to the destination, travel time is expressed as the following formula, where T is travel time in days, D is distance in thousands of kilometers and A is acceleration in Gs. Ship maneuver drives are rated in sustained G such that an M2 drive is capable of sustained 2G travel.
| AU | Million km | 1G | 2G | 3G | 4G | 5G | 6G | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.01 | 1.5 | 0.28 (7h) | 0.2 (5h) | 0.16 (4h) | 0.14 (3h) | 0.12 (3h) | 0.11 (3h) | Safe Jump distance from a size A world. |
| 0.07 | 10.5 | 0.75 (18h) | 0.53 (13h) | 0.43 (10h) | 0.37 (9h) | 0.33 (8h) | 0.03 (45m) | Safe jump distance from a gas giant. |
| 0.3 | 45 | 1.5 | 1 | 0.8 (19h) | 0.7 (17h) | 0.6 (14h) | 0.6 (14h) | Typical distance to a neighbor world. |
| 2 | 300 | 4 | 2.8 | 2.3 | 2 | 1.7 | 1.6 | Typical distance to a far neighbor world. |
| 6 | 900 | 6.9 | 4.9 | 4 | 3.4 | 3.1 | 2.8 | Typical distance to a far gas giant. |
| 30 | 4500 | 15.5 | 10.9 | 8.9 | 7.7 | 6.9 | 6.3 | Typical distance to an outer planet. |
Fill in one stress box greater than or equal to the value of an attack, take one or more consequences, or fill in one stress box and take consequences—if you can’t do one of these three things, you’re taken out.
- Mild: –2 to attack value
- Moderate: –4 to attack value
- Severe: –6 to attack value
- Extreme: –8 to attack and permanent character aspect
- Mild: overcome Fair (+2), one whole scene
- Moderate: overcome Great (+4), one whole session
- Severe: overcome Fantastic (+6), one whole scenario
- Game aspects: permanent, made during game creation
- Character aspects: permanent, made during character creation
- Situation aspects: last for a scene, until overcome, or until irrelevant
- Boosts: last until invoked one time
- Consequences: last until recovered
Spend a fate point or free invoke. Choose one:
- +2 to your skill roll
- Reroll all your dice
- Teamwork: +2 to another character’s roll versus relevant passive opposition
- Obstacle: +2 to the passive opposition
Free invokes stack with a paid one and each other.
Accept a complication for a fate point.
- Event-based: You have ____ aspect and are in ____ situation, so it makes sense that, unfortunately, ____ would happen to you. Damn your luck.
- Decision-based: You have ____ aspect in ____ situation, so it makes sense that you’d decide to ____. This goes wrong when ____ happens.
At the start of a new session, you reset your fate points to your refresh rate. If you ended the last session with more points, you keep the extra. At the end of a scenario, you reset to your refresh rate no matter what.
Spend fate points to:
- Invoke an aspect
- Power a stunt
- Refuse a compel
- Declare a story detail
- Each obstacle or goal that requires a different skill gets an overcome roll.
- Interpret failure, costs, and success of each roll together to determine final outcome.
- Contesting characters roll appropriate skills.
- If you got the highest result, you score a victory.
- If you succeed with style and no one else does, then you get two victories.
- If there’s a tie for the highest result, no one gets a victory, and an unexpected twist occurs.
- The first participant to achieve three victories wins the contest.
Earn fate points when you:
- Accept a compel
- Have your aspects invoked against you
- Concede a conflict