Category: Fate

I know I’ve not posted much as I’ve been plugging away on my various projects. One project is well over 200 pages following the 6×9 format used for most of the Fate books out there. What follows is the introduction to Sunset City, the focal point of the metropolis used as the setting’s backdrop. This is a place where image and media can change the narrative and the view the residents have of its superpowered citizens.

         To say Sunset City is expansive is an understatement.  It’s the second largest city in the nation with nearly half the population of New York City.  There are 114 neighborhoods in the city and the county has the highest population in the nation spread throughout its 88 cities.  Sunset City has attracted people for any number of economic reasons ranging from the ports to oil, to its shining lights, and to aerospace and all points in between.  While entertainment may be the dominant output of the metropolitan area, the city’s industries are diversified enough that it’s escaped some of the plights that have struck other regions much harder, such as Oakland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, with the changing times.

Sunset City isn’t immune to the hardships others faced in one recession or the other, but having so many neighborhoods has allowed it to weather the downturns by highlighting the areas where little has changed despite a stock market crash or two.  The City of Quartz has long been able to shape the narrative others view, but there are times when it has had to stand aside and let others tell the story without intervening in the narrative.

         Given how divided the city is and how much land it takes up in Verdugo County, shifting the blame from the city’s elite and government to that of the neighborhoods is easy.  After all when you have so many neighborhoods that are the size of a small town in their own right, you can show it as an isolated event or the providence of a few bad actors.

Sunset City has long been the destination for those looking to strike it rich.  After the first settlements established by the Conquistadors and the mission system that runs up the coast to just past the Marin Headlands, the region become an economic center.  The growth in population and new arrivals looking to make a name for themselves led to the city’s prominence as a shipping center and the population explosion followed each wave of technological development (oil, motion picture industry, television, aerospace, etc.) pushed the city to dominate the county’s landscape.

While all of this has helped the city diversify its industrial base, it hasn’t helped it overcome the problems of a multicultural society.  In fact, despite some of the gains that have been made, the city (like the county as a whole) suffers from the nation’s segregated past.  There are plenty of enclaves within the county and especially Sunset City where the demographic is nearly 100% one race or ethnicity.  Part of this is rooted in the desire for familiarity for the immigrants who made Verdugo County their new home, but it’s also driven by the city’s politics and various exclusions that provide the neighborhoods with some of their characteristics.

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Wealth

Your powers are bought and paid for.

Basic Wealth: You can get whatever you need or want just from throwing around a bit of cash, even if this means getting someone to use their abilities for you.

Enhancements

Super Rich: There’s the wealthy and then there’s you. You get a +2 bonus to using Resources to get whatever you need in the moment. It might take an exchange or two, but rest assured it’s on its way.

Cash is King: You understand that everyone has their price. Fortunately for you, you’re able to name it. You get a +2 to Influence rolls when you attempt to get people to act on your behalf.

Flash some Cash: You don’t have to spend money to get people to do things for you. Knowing you’re loaded sometimes is enough to get people to do whatever you want. Gain a +2 to Provoke when you use your wealthy status as power.

Common Power Synergies

Influence: It’s amazing what people will do when you can buy them lock, stock, and barrel.

Telepathy: You don’t really read minds, but you’ve become an expert in knowing what people want and selling them what they think they need.

Disadvantages

• You use money like a crutch because it’s easy to get what you want. Unfortunately, you Don’t Know What You’re Doing because you’ve never needed to with your army of servants.
• Money is its own prison. Everyone knows who you are because they want what you have, meaning Everyone Knows Who You are.
• You have access to anything anyone would every desire, but there’s one nagging problem: Someone Else Holds the Purse Strings. This could be investors, creditors, a board of trustees, or other organization that manages your wealth.
• Just because you have a lot of money doesn’t mean you can get at it whenever you want; getting a lot of cash together takes time, so you have Budget Limits for any given scene.

Collateral Damage Effects

Get Strange with the Change: Money will make people do weird things. If you are unconcerned with the fallout, you can throw out a large sum of cash (pocket change to you) and create one hell of a distraction. People will actively fight over the money, causing anyone in the zone to make a Physique roll against a Fair (+2) obstacle or take 2 points of stress from all of the flying elbows and people go for the cash grab.

Water Projection

You channel the raw elemental power of water.

Basic Water Projection: Your abilities are infused with liquids drawn from the environment, to include water vapor.

Enhancements

Neptune’s Blessing: You can breathe underwater.  It doesn’t matter if it’s fresh or salt water, you can’t drown in water—other liquids, yes; just not water.

Steambath: You can flood the zone with a mist thick enough that it provides a Fair (+2) obstacle to fires.  The vapors or so thick that it can be hard to breathe and obscure vision.

Dehydrate: You not only have the ability to flood an area with moisture, you also have the ability to dry it out as well.  You can make an area uncomfortably dry, causing all the moisture to disperse from the zone and requiring a Physique roll against an Average (+1) obstacle from taking a point of physical stress.

Common Power Synergies

Energy Blast: You attack with the force of a water cannon or have a whip-like attack made of water.

Wall-Crawling: You can adhere to just about any surface because what holds you to walls and ceilings actually takes advantage of surface tension and a sticky substance you ooze that ensures you won’t slip.

Improved Special Effect

Desiccate: You can do more than just draw moisture out of the air, you can use it to dry out objects as well.  You make a Fight roll against an opponent with a Fair (+2) obstacle to create a mild consequence representing dehydration.

Drawbacks

• Channeling water does have a price. In your case, You Leave a Trail of Water.
• You spend too much time in contact with water for your own good. You Dry Out Without Water after a few hours.
• You’re always covered in a thin layer of water. It’s not something you choose, but it does Make Everything You Touch Wet.

Collateral Damage Effects

Title Wave: You can throw around a lot of water in almost no time.  You can target a zone up to one zone away from you.  Anyone caught in the deluge is under threat of being crushed by the debris threatening to pin and drown them.  Nameless NPCs are killed, while named NPCs and PCs make a Physique roll against a Fair (+2) obstacle to avoid taking a moderate physical consequence from either being crushed by the debris or nearly drowning.  The zone is left a wet wasteland after the wave courses through.

Skill Monkey

You’re real powers are in your breadth of knowledge and ability.

Basic Skill Monkey: There are few things that you haven’t learned how to do, so much so that the way you can use skills to substitute for others amazes people.  Once per scene, you can use one skill of your choice in place of another.  So long as you can justify how it would apply to that situation, you can use the skill without penalty.  A penalty can be applied if the justification doesn’t fully explain how the new skill can solve all the same challenges as the original.

Enhancements

Master Skill Monkey: You can substitute up to 2 skills per scene.

Expert: Choose any skill you know.  Gain a +2 to rolls when using it to simulate your deep understanding of a field governed by that skill.

Make it Till You Fake it: You don’t have to know everything about a skill to look good.  In your case, you’ve learned all you need to know to make everyone else think you know a lot more about a given subject.  If you spend a fate point, for one scene you can use any one skill you know in place of Provoke, Empathy, or Rapport to convince people you know more than they do.

I’ve Done This Before: For a fate point, you can perform any skill you don’t know as if you’re trained in it.  You can use the skill as Average (+1) for the scene.

Common Power Synergies

Super Intelligence: You’re a walking repository of human know-how and ability.

Disguise: You are the ultimate mimic, getting the job done with none the wiser.

Drawbacks

• Yeah, you know a lot about a lot but it comes with a high price. You sacrifice depth for breadth to the point that you run the risk of revealing your knowledge is an Empty Façade.
• You really are an expert in several subjects, but because of that intense focus you have Gaps in Your Skills that can cripple your attempts during trying challenges.
• If there’s one drawback to being good at a lot of things is that people start to notice. It’s such a common issue that People Expect You to Help Them and solve their problems for them.

Collateral Damage Effects

Pattern Recognition:  Choose one of your skills to determine the type of damage you cause every time you use this effect.  While your superpower might not kill someone outright, you do know how to leverage it to get the most out of the terrain and environment to cause the havoc for you all thanks to your ability to recognize the similarities between seemingly dissimilar structures.  You can target any zone up to one away from your current location.  The affected zone has one of its aspects turned into the collateral damage effect with the occupants making a Will, Physique, or Athletics roll against a Fair (+2) obstacle or avoid the consequences caused by the damage.  Given the nature of pattern recognition, this effect is instantaneous and cannot be used until the scene ends or you choose to end it.

Regalia

Your powers aren’t a part of you, they belong to your items.

Basic Regalia: You don’t have any powers per se, but your items do.  This means when you do not have your items in your powered-up state, you escape notice and do not appear as a super to anyone searching for supers.

Enhancements

Deflection: Your regalia are impervious to damage.  They let you avoid being struck by objects hurtling towards you.  Better yet, you can aim them at other opponents than the original shooter.  Make an Athletics roll against a Good (+3) obstacle to target one of your opponents.

Bolster Power: Your regalia enhance the skill that best represents your superpower.  You gain a +2 to rolls for that power.

Secrets of the Ancient: Your regalia has its own skills, which you can access while wearing your ensemble.

Common Power Synergies

Item Summoning: You don’t have to carry around your regalia, it comes to you.

Super Intelligence: Your regalia confer upon you great knowledge when worn.

Disguise: Your regalia contains a full line of accessories to make you over into someone else.

Disadvantages

• The downside to having such powerful artifacts is that they don’t necessarily have the same concerns or desires as you. Your regalia Has its Own Agenda.
• Your regalia has numerous parts that do not function independently. Your regalia is Complicated and Easily Put Together Wrong, so that it doesn’t work if you’re rushed.
• You’ve never had power, fame, success, or the like before you acquired your regalia. Without it, you feel Naked and Helpless.

Collateral Damage Effects

Chains of Doom: Your regalia contain a deathly surprise: the ability to lash out and lay waste to the environment and the people within it.  In a fit of rage, you unleash the carnage stored within you and amplified by your regalia.  Objects in the zone are shattered and characters are pummeled in a metallic fury.  Nameless NPCs are killed, while named NPCs and PCs can make a Physique roll against a Fair (+2) obstacle or suffer a moderate physical consequence from the battering.

Radiation Projection

You are a true child of the modern age birthed in the nuclear fires of science.

Basic Radiation Projection: Your powers are a result of your radioactive nature, causing the energies of the universe to empower your abilities.

Enhancements

Magnetar: Your powers aren’t just a result of radiation, you can also use it to bend magnetic fields into powerful disruptors.  By making a Provoke roll against a Fair (+2) obstacle, you can scramble the magnetic fields that drive monitors, motors, and other similar devices that rely on magnetic fields within your zone.  The affected equipment malfunctions, taking a point of physical stress, but isn’t harmed beyond repair.

Ion Surge: You can shut down a device by touching it and flooding it with a surge of ionic radiation.  The device can be restarted after a successful Crafts roll against a Fair (+2) obstacle is made.

Radiation Burn: You can cause some deep tissue damage to anyone you touch.  To cause such an injury to an opponent, you make a Fight attack against a Fair (+2) obstacle to grapple and inflict the harm.  If you succeed with style, instead of taking the shift, you can instead cause a mild physical consequence to the opponent representing the irradiated tissue trauma, otherwise you create an advantage against that target with one free invoke for the scene.

Common Power Synergies

Energy Blast: You send pulses of radiation at your opponents to debilitating effect.

Telekinesis: Your powers are a form of magnetism that allow you to attract and repel metal objects within range.

Drawbacks

• Playing with such high energy particles has a cost, a very dear one: you are Chronically Ill from the damage the radiation has done to your body.
• Radiation has a lot of drawbacks. Fortunately for you, you don’t suffer them; unfortunately, you cause others around You Give Others Radiation Poisoning.
• No matter how hard you try, you can’t hide yourself completely. You Always Leak Radiation, making it easy for someone to detect you with the right equipment.

Collateral Damage Effects

GRB: If you are unconcerned with the effects your powers have on others in your zone, you can cause some seriously lethal energies to flood the area and effectively sterilize it with a gamma ray burst.  Nameless NPCs are killed outright, while named NPCs and PCs can make a Physique roll against a Good (+3) obstacle to avoid a moderate physical consequence from intense radiation.

Mystic

Your powers come from having your inner eye opened.

Basic Mystic: Your powers derive from a source science cannot explain.  Attempts to define what grants you your abilities fail.

Enhancements

Mystical Training: Choose from Will, Lore, Empathy, or Provoke.  You may add special effects to any use of this skill as if it were part of your power suite.

Reliquary: Your powers are rooted in the tools of your trade and your fellow willworkers know your items of power have chosen you.  You gain a +2 to Contacts when dealing with members of the mystic world.

Mystic Reputation: Even if people haven’t met you, your exploits are known and embedded in your aura.  Whenever you truck with the mystic world, you may use Rapport with a +2 bonus in place of Resources to negotiate favors.

Common Power Synergies

Clairvoyant: You are a seer.  You not only view what happens afar, you are able to see across dimensional barriers.

Phasing: You don’t just possess the ability to walk through walls, you project into the astral and transcend the physical world itself.  Your body may be anchored to the physical world, but you are not tied to the dictates of the flesh.

Drawbacks

• There are things mortals were never meant to know. You’ve seen things that are better off lurking in the recesses of the subconscious, leaving you Deeply Haunted by Living Nightmares.
• Having connections to the mystical world have split your time between mortal life and that of the esoteric. You have Trouble Communicating with Fellow Mortals given your insight into the deeper nature of the universe.

Collateral Damage Effects

Part the Veil: The world just outside of mortal sight can be as wondrous as it is frightening to behold.  You can offer a glimpse into the beyond to anyone up to one zone away.  Everyone within that zone must make a Will roll against a Fair (+2) obstacle or take a mild mental consequence as they see the minding horrors underpinning reality.