The RPG System

This campaign will be run using the FATE variant of FUDGE.

Because this is not an epic campaign, and the game is about children, the meanings of the skill ladder have altered. As a general guideline, Average now means how well the average child, with no special training or experience with something, does, and Superb indicates a truly outstanding, Mummy and Daddy Would Be Proud, result.

Character Generation

Character generation will be done in six phases. Each phase represents three years. The phases (and, just for reference, the world events taking place at the time) are as follows:
Phase 1: 1921 - 1923
Miners, dockers, and railwaymen strike in 1921. Also in 1921, Hitler becomes head of the Nazi party; the disastrous Beer Hall Putsch takes place in 1923. The Irish Free State is established in 1922. Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister in 1923.

Phase 2: 1924 - 1926
In 1924, the First Labor government is headed by MacDonald. In 1925, Britain goes back on the gold standard. In 1926, the union conflicts come to a head with a General Strike of some 2 million key workers, but the strike fails.

Phase 3: 1927 - 1929
Women are granted the right to vote at the same age as men (21, rather than the previous 30), in 1928.

Phase 4: 1930 - 1932
1931 marks a financial crisis; the gold standard collapses and Britain goes off it.

Phase 5: 1933 - 1935
The Conservatives regain power in 1935, and Baldwin becomes PM again.

Phase 6: 1936 - 1938
In 1936, George V dies, but Edward VIII abdicates, in order to marry an American divorcee; George VI becomes King. Also in 1936, Germany begins to make aggressive moves, starting with occupying the Rhineland. In 1937, Neville Chamberlain becomes the new Conservative PM. In 1938, Chamberlain cedes Czech territory to Hitler in the Munich Agreement.

Character generation will be run as a session. Each player will inform the GM of how old their character will be prior to the beginning of the session. You must be at least six years old, but no older than eighteen, at the start of the campaign (1939); thus, no PC can be born any later than Phase 5 (in 1933).

Depending on your age, you will receive an automatic Aspect rating as follows:

  • Age 16/17/18: Mature II
  • Age 14/15: Mature I
  • Age 11/12/13: no aspect
  • Age 9/10: Young I
  • Age 6/7/8: Young II
This age aspect is used to take into account differences in size, general education, life experience, and the like. Basically, the span between Young II and Mature II can be thought of as the difference between five ranks on the FATE ladder.

All characters will start with a one-point Connection aspect for the Family.

During the phase that you are born in, you cannot buy skills; you can, however, buy Aspects. If in that phase you choose not to buy an Aspect, you simply accumulate a point of Potential.

All skills are assumed to start at Average. You may not buy any skill up beyond Superb. Most characters are likely to have a handful of skills at low ratings, plus a bunch of Aspects. The GM will review all skill purchases for reasonability, based upon the age of the child.

Each phase, you may convert any number of points of Potential into Experience Points. You can spend an Experience Point to do ONE of the following:

  • Buy three Skill Points.

  • Train, for four Skill Points, and a Connection to the Trainer. The GM will determine how one or more of those Skill Points are spent. You can only spend one Experience Point on training during each phase.

  • Increase a non-Connection Aspect by one point, plus buy one Skill Point.

Any Skill Points bought must be spent in that phase; they cannot be held over into the next phase. At the end of the phase, skills must form a balanced pyramid -- you must have more skills at each lower rung of the FATE ladder than you do above it. For example, if you have one Superb, you must have two Greats, three Goods, and four Fairs to balance it. If you have four Goods, you must have five Fairs.

Children are assumed to automatically have an average level of education for their age. You may buy greater levels of knowledge either by buying a relevant Aspect (such as "Bookworm"), and/or by spending skill points on specific areas of knowledge.

If you choose to either train with the same trainer, or otherwise pursue the same activity in a phase that another PC is pursuing, rather than automatically accumulating one dot of Rivalry between the PCs, you have the option of accumulating a dot of Rivalry or a dot of Alliance, depending on how you and the other PC would like the story to work out. You cannot have both a Rival and Alliance aspect with another PC; you can, however, use this option to reduce a Rival or Alliance aspect by a dot. Some of these relationships may be asymmetrical, based on GM adjudication of the story situation.

Depending on the circumstance, you may also train with another PC. That PC must have at least three ranks more than you have, in the skill that you are picking up with the bonus skill point, and that PC gets to pick what that skill is. The PC that you are training with must be at least two Young/Mature dots worth of age older than you. You will gain a dot of Influenced by that PC. The GM will adjudicate all such training desires for reasonability.

Training with Mummy and Daddy

In a given phase, you may elect to train with Mummy or Daddy. However, each only has sufficient time to spend with one child.

If you are the only one to want to train with a particular parent, you receive four skill points to spend that phase; you can choose what to do with three of them, but the fourth is at the GM's discretion (in the role of the parent). You accumulate a point of Connection to that parent.

If two or more PCs want to train with the same parent, a bidding system goes into effect. Each player secretly informs the GM how much he is willing to suck up to that parent -- one, two, or three skill points' worth. The player who bids the most "wins", receiving a fourth skill point (spent at the GM's discretion, in the role of the parent), and a point of Connection to that parent. However, all involved PCs have the number of skill points they "bid" spent at the GM's discretion (again, in the role of the parent, since they spent part of the phase trying to cozy up to that parent, who thus dictates their activities). Players may also conspire to overbid; one or more PCs (including those not involved in this rivalry) can "give" skill points to another PC to be used in the bid, representing attempts either to make that PC look good or make his rivals look bad in the eyes of that parent. Any such overbid skill points are lost, regardless of who wins. A PC receiving overbids does not need to himself bid more than one point. Overbids can also be submitted secretly to the GM; the player doing so need not inform anyone else. PCs collaborating in an overbid gain a point of Alliance with each other; all PCs opposing one another (including in an overbid) accumulate a point of Rivalry with each other. Ties will be broken based on the higher Connection rating with the parent.

The GM may adjust Connection ratings to parents at the beginning of each phase, based on the circumstances of the phase. In particular, whenever a new child is born, the attitude of the parents towards the older children is altered.

Standard Skills

The following skills are considered "standard". You do not have to buy any of them, but they are described here so you know what skill names cover certain common tasks.

Observation

Alertness: Alertness allows you to notice things when you're not actively looking for them. Hearing a faint cry in the distance, while you're strolling along, is Alertness. So is catching movement in the darkness while you're standing guard. Alertness also includes a faint sixth sense that something is amiss.

Examine: Examine allows you to notice things when you are actively looking for something. You use Examine to find a secret door in a room, to search a pile of trash for an item, to listen at a door, or to spot a ship when you're scanning the horizon with a spyglass.

Physical

Athletics: Athletics covers running, jumping, climbing, swimming, and similar physical activities. It also covers dodging in melee combat if no other combat skill is directly applicable.

Stealth: Stealth covers hiding, moving quietly, and certain types of sleight-of-hand tricks (for example, quietly sneaking a piece of candy from the bowl when nobody is looking).

Survival: Survival covers various outdoor survival skills, such as knowing how to use a map and compass, hunting and trapping, foraging, fire-starting, making shelter, etc.

Social

Charisma: Charisma is the "positive" side of social persuasiveness. The ability to get someone to like you, to wheedle something out of someone, and to otherwise get what you want by making someone well-disposed towards you.

Presence: Presence is the "negative" side of social persuasiveness. The ability to make someone fear you or respect you, to intimidate someone, and to otherwise get what you want by making someone believe that it would Good For Their Future Health.

Empathy: Empathy is the ability to read other people -- to sense their emotional states, read their expressions, pick up on subtle cues of their tone of voice, and so forth. Among other things, it is used to figure out if someone is lying to you.

Sincerity: Sincerity is the ability to assume and maintain a social mask. The British "stiff upper lip" falls into this category. Among other things, this covers lying to people.

Educational / Vocational

Domestic: Domestic covers the traditional "girl's skills", such as embroidering and cooking, as well as the skills needed for a woman to run a traditional British household, which includes the protocol for dealing with the servants, running a social function, managing the household accounts, and so forth.

Industrial: Industrial covers a variety of "shop" skills, such as carpentry, together with general use of tools, and knowledge of how to use and repair mechanical objects.

Medical: Medical covers the ability to provide first aid, such as bandaging a wound or splinting a fracture, as well as recognizing the symptoms of diseases that are endemic to the period, guessing when someone has been poisoned, knowing what some commonplace drugs do, and so forth. This is a "battlefield medic" skill; professionals will have a Physician or Surgeon skill. This Skill cannot be taken until a PC's third Phase of life.

Sciences: Sciences covers knowledge of the physical and natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, biology, and botany. It also includes higher mathematics. This Skill cannot be taken until a PC's fourth Phase of life.

Classics: Classics covers the traditional underpinnings of a classical education, including the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy), knowledge of Latin and Greek, and the great authors and ideas of antiquity.

Combat

Brawling: Brawling covers rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred fighting, without any particular style or structure. Improvised weaponry (whacking someone with a chair or bottle, for instance) also falls into this category. A kicking - biting - screaming tantrum is Brawling.

Unarmed: Unarmed covers no-weapons fighting in a structured manner. This may be boxing, wrestling, a martial art, etc.; the styles should be specified when the skill is bought.

Fencing: Fencing covers traditional fencing techniques, as they would be taught to a sportsman of the time period. This Skill cannot be taken until a PC's third Phase of life.

Firearms: Firearms covers handling a pistol and rifle, as they would be taught to a sportsman of the time period. This Skill cannot be taken until a PC's third Phase of life.

Maintained by webmaster@black-knight.org
Created 09.01.01 | Revised 11.21.01