Your characters are employees of Spearhead. It goes without saying, you went through rigorous and surreptitious recruiting channels before landing your position within their organization. Their non-disclosure agreement was immense and left no room for open discussion with friends and family about your involvement with the company.
At the beginning of the story you will wake up and be informed that you have been involved in an 'Event'. You will have no memory of the Event. The Event, and the circumstances surrounding your apparent amnesia, will be the initial focus of your characters.
Your primary contact will be Dr. Aaronson. The game will ultimately be about what your characters do in light of what they learn about the Event. In order to understand what happened during the Event you will be working with Dr. Aaronson. He will guide you through a series of psychological stimuli and triggers that will generate flashbacks to the Event.
During our initial discussions we as a group threw out a number of ideas. For reference, these are the key ideas that I wrote down and have been wrestling with. Please note that these are thematic only and may not apply directly to the story once its all in motion:
- Agents being activated
- Psy-ops
- Terrorism and terrorist motivations (what could 'new terrorism' look like)
- Secret research and the weaponizing of a chemical agent in aerosol form
- Dan Brown - Illuminati type underpinnings for government or private military groups
- Hypnosis, mind-control, and brainwashing
Regarding Fatecore and how I use the system. I do not use Stunts, they didn't exist in the original Fate system. I focus on aspects and skills only. Regarding aspects, I like aspects that are both good and bad things. 'Impetuous' is a good example, it can be positive and negative depending on the situation. 'Respect for authority' is another good example, it could help you stay in-line or it could get you in trouble if you shouldn't have been so trusting. Try to find aspects that are good and bad. Three aspects is enough, but if you want a fourth you are welcome to it.
In terms of skills, I tend to err on the conservative side and not have my players assign tons of skills. Assign one skill at +2 and three skills at +1. As private military contractors it can be assumed that you have a military skill set. Therefore, using a skill slot for 'firearms' would be redundant. When rolling dice I already assume your characters know how to handle a gun. If you were scientists your rolls with guns would start at -1 or -2 depending on how nerdy you are. A scientist is not expected to be good with guns. That being said, do not spend your skills on things that we can all assume your character is knowledgeable about. Instead, you should be clarifying what makes you special. Maybe you are an expert in Linguistics and can speak lots of languages, maybe you were a Biology major before joining the military, or perhaps you know your way around Motorcycles. Use your skills to define what makes your character unique from the standard 'soldiers' archetype.
A quick note about the function of your character sheet. Think of your character sheet as a 'honey-do' list for me. It's my job to look at your sheets and craft situations around the things that you list as critical to your characters. Not that you would, but if you put windsurfing as one of your skills it would tell me that you would like situations to arise where you could windsurf. Obviously I can veto random skills that I cannot see as applicable, but on the whole, your choice of skills heavily influences the types of scenarios that I craft for your characters. Craft your character sheet as a love-letter to the game we are about to play; let it list what you would like to get out of the relationship we are creating.
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