Like a lot of people, I suspect they’ve had more important things to do in the last 16+ months since I’ve written anything new here, but this is just a quick note with some copy/paste of work I’ve been doing for my space opera setting. It’s progressing with the system-free setting guide clocking in at 40 pages and 23,000 words. I know that isn’t a terribly fast pace but the majority of the effort has been in designing the game mechanics using Fate as the base engine. The Professions alone come out to 16,500 words and another 38 pages.
Several other sections of this project are coming along and they range somewhere between 10-20 pages apiece as well. Some of the systems used in Rose City Knights, my expansion of the Venture City rules, have been designed for use in both games and beyond, especially if you look at some of the galactic- and dimensional-spanning superhero stories from franchises like DC and Marvel.
Below is one of the psychogenic professions you’ll find in A Thousand Dying Stars. The design is meant to invoke fear as much as a desire to have this sort of power over others that everyone’s wanted at some point or another.
Profession: Sifter
Some psychics use their powers to uncover stolen secrets, others use those same abilities to steal those very secrets for their own personal gain or the organizations they work for. These telepaths are adept at investigations and espionage missions, making them highly sought after. Sifters have a knack for pushing past the mental blocks people use on themselves as much as to keep telepaths out of their minds. Depending on their personalities as much as their talents, sifters may gain information without the target ever knowing they were there.
Aspects
Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe, Tainted by Darkness, Can Use Some Alternative Therapy, Nasty Headaches, Nose/Eye Bleeding
Skills
Great: Telepathy or Investigate
Good: Deceive or Rapport, one other
Fair: Provoke or Will, two others
Average: Any four
Stunts
I Want to Know What You’re Thinking: When attempting to intrude on another’s mind, you’ve learned to use brute force to bypass resistance. You get a +2 to Telepathy to overcome your target’s Will to keep you out.
Tell Me What’s on Your Mind: After gaining access to a target’s mind, you’ve learned subtle suggestions to get people to reveal what they really believe/feel without any strain on either party. You get a +2 to Investigate to create an advantage to look through a person’s thoughts for a specific event or knowledge on the topic of your inquiry.
Cloud the Mind: Some people don’t take kindly to having their memories being viewed like someone’s personal video library. You’ve learned how to obfuscate any traces of yourself in their minds. You get a +2 to Deceive to overcome their Will to create a Fair (+2) memory block of you in their attempts to remember ever meeting you. If you succeed with style, you add +2 to the difficulty to overcome the obfuscation.
Causal Correlation: You can link memories together that don’t have anything to do with each other when you are looking through someone’s mind. By spending a fate point you can use Deceive to create an advantage that makes a target believe that seemingly unconnected memories are part of a sequence of events. They might think it’s an epiphany on their part, but is a result of the trigger that is the advantage created. If you succeed with style, you can add another memory to this sequence.