How the Digital World Works, Part 1

An important part of a story is how the world works, especially if the story is a mystery. So before I actually started I wanted to get a few ground rules down about how the Digital World Works.

I do want to take my players opinions into account and get there opinions about how they think the world should work. However there needed to be some core setting assumptions, a few of which are listed below.

Rule 1: Digital Actions Leave Evidence

Hacking into a system leaves evidence that can later be found. All digital actions leave about as much evidence as their physical counterparts and can be similarly investigated. All digital actions follow Locard’s Exchange Principle.

Rule 10: Digital Actions Can Not Kill

People can not be killed directly by the visual and audio caused by the augmented world. The only exception is for rare cases like people who suffer from seizures.

Rule 11: Digital Information Takes Form In Cyberspace

All data not in local storage, takes a form in Cyberspace. This means the data can then be passed around or stolen. Example: A digital book would appear as book when not in storage.

Explanations, Why These Rules

Rule 1 was invented to make sure a mystery story could actually exist. Since the rule ensures that there will always be evidence of digital tampering to can provide clues and evidence for the players

Rule 10 was so that the players have an understanding of the limits of the digital world. They need to know the dangers of the digital world and if it can be the cause of death. I made the decision I did because that was the type of story I felt was most applicable and deaths must still have personal dangerous action by an individual to pull off.

Rule 11 is more of a general rule about how everything works and is more of an ecstatic choice then anything else. My inspiration for this decision is from the Dennou Coil anime.

Spirit of the Code - Character Creation

Phase One - Concept

Concept Phase is the creation of the character’s core aspects. This is who your character is on the base level. You choose two aspects. The first is your Digital Aspect, who your character is in the digital worlds, the second is your Real Aspect which is who your character is in the real world. Together they create a dichotomy for your character.

Choose Two Aspects:

Digital Concept

Real Concept

Phase Two - Background

The background phase concerns what happened in your character’s past. This is captured with two aspects, the Background Aspect covers your character’s past while the Conflict aspect deals with an ongoing conflict if your character’s life.

Choose Two Aspects:

Background

Conflict

Phase Three - First Case

The character’s first case. A mystery they were involved in. They don’t need to take a prominent roll in solving the mystery but they must have been involved.

Choose One Aspect:

First Case Aspect

Phase Four - Guest Star in Case

This is your character's involvement in another character's case. Obviously you can't choose this until the other players finish their first three phases. So once you have an idea for your first three phases email it to everyone so that they can guest star in it.

Choose One Aspect:

Guest Case Aspect

Skills

You get 35 points of skills. This is enough to get 1 Superb, 2 Great, 3 Good, 4 Fair, and 5 Average, however you can get more lower rank skill instead of getting your higher rank skills because of the point buy.

Also the span of 1-5 represents a smaller range of talent then in Spirit of the Century. In Spirit of the Century Superb is really really good, while in this System Superb is a high professional level of skill. A good comparison is that a Spirit of the Century Good (+3) is about equivalent to this systems Superb (+5).

Skill List

Academics [Knowledge]

Alertness

Art [Knowledge]

Athletics [Physical]

Contacting

Deceit [Social]

Digital Warfare [Digital]

Empathy [Social]

Endurance [Physical]

Engineering [Knowledge]

Hacking [Digital]

Intimidation [Social]

Investigation

Leadership

Might [Physical]

Programming [Digital]

Rapport [Social]

Resolve [Social]

Resources [General]

Science [Knowledge]

Self Defense [Physical]

Stealth

Systems Operation [Digital]

Stunts

I'm doing a simpler version of stunts. A character has a refresh of 6 which is how many Fate Points you start an adventure with. However you may reduce your refresh to give your character stunts (To a maximum of 5 stunts). Stunts come in one of 4 types.

Focus - +1 [Skill] with a broad category of action. (Like +1 Art with music)

Specialty - +2 [Skill] with a narrow category of action. (Like +2 Art with classical music)

Substitution - Use [Skill] instead of [Skill] with a broad category of action. (Use Art instead of Rapport when dealing with musicians)

Advanced Trapping - Use [Skill] and spend a Fate point to perform an unusual action. (Use Deceit to disguise yourself as someone else, i.e. Master of Disguise)

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I would like thank many of the great FATE resources out there for many of the ideas that went into this. Including the FateRPG Yahoo Group and the Spirit of the Blank website.

Spirit of the Code - Skill List

My skill list for Spirit of the Code is currently as follows. There are currently 23 different skills. I'm still working through them so this is not a final list and any feedback (If anyone reads this) would be welcome.

Academics [Knowledge]
Alertness
Art [Knowledge]
Athletics [Physical]
Contacting
Deceit [Social]
Digital Warfare [Digital]
Empathy [Social]
Endurance [Physical]
Engineering [Knowledge]
Hacking [Digital]
Intimidation [Social]
Investigation
Leadership
Might [Physical]
Programming [Digital]
Rapport [Social]
Resolve [Social]
Resources [General]
Science [Knowledge]
Self Defense [Physical]
Stealth
Systems Operation [Digital]

Spirit of the Code - Stress & Consequences

When I played Spirit of the Century I felt that the conflicts were too long because of the way that Stress and Consequences worked. Since I didn't want the conflicts to take most of the session in Spirit of the Code I decided to use some of the faster conflict rules. I decided to make stress work like minion stress and had consequences reduce the amount of stress taken. Since I pre-ordered Starblazer Adventures and got the pdf, I basically am just taking their stress system.

The second question I worked on for stress and consequences is what different stress tracks I wanted. Eventually I boiled it down to three tracks: Physical, Digital, and Social. They each work pretty much how you would expect them to work, except for Physical. Because I wanted Physical combat to be the last resort and a sign that everything has sudden gotten serious, there is no Physical stress boxes. That means that every single requires that the character take a consequence (or more then one) or be taken out. I hope that this makes physical conflicts seem very dangerous and help make my players avoid them, which is something I want.

Anyway, those are my first thoughts on how Stress & Consequences should work in Spirit of the Code.

Spirit of the Code

I've decided to run a FATE adaption with my local group, which I'm colloquially calling Spirit of the Code. It is a mystery genre conversion which is set in the near future when Augmented Reality has completely taken over the digital world to the point that anyone could be plugged in all 24/7.

Right now I'm working on how character creation should work and I should have that done by next week when I plan on having my players create characters. I'll post the character phases and skill list when I have them done and put up the characters when they are made.

RideBack

Recently I've been watching some RideBack, an Anime series that is starting to come out in Japan. The show is about a young Ballet dance who suffers a bad injury and is unable to dance anymore, she then goes to collage with her best friend and joins the motorcycle club. However, in the futuristic setting motorcycles have been replaced with humanoid like robots that can change between cycle and mech forms.

It is a really interesting and unique way of presenting the story and I recommend that you at least check it out.