We are using the Fate Condensed system. This is the latest Fate version.
You'll start with 20 skills points and you must follow a pyramid or column configuration. This can give one great (+4) skill, two good (+3) skills, three fair (+2) skills, and four average (+1) skills; but you can have a different setup with the maximum being +4.
Knowledge Skills
These are general knowledge skills, other skills can be used to know things about their areas (ex. identify a gun with the Shoot skill, remember the lyrics of a song using Art, etc.).
Academics: Knowing things and researching information of a legitimate nature.
Streetwise: Knowing things and learning information of an underworld nature.
Crafting Skills
Art: Create, perform, or evaluate artistic pieces
Craft: Creating, repairing, and disassembling practical, physical things
Technology: Software and using technology. No roll needed for normal stuff, but if you're pushing what the device can do or working under rough circumstances a roll will likely be called for.
Social Skills
Animal Handling: Convince animals to do what you want. This will include how well you ride them if you want to attempt such a thing.
Contacts: The people you know who you can call on for help.
Deceive: Convince someone of a lie
Empathy: Social perception, read the room or someone's body language, Social combat initiative
Manipulate: Coerce someone into a specific action
Rapport: Make friends and (nicely) influence people
Resources: The amount of money or other valuable resources that you regularly have access to. Make a roll for large acquisitions to see if you can afford them with the resources you have or borrow them from someone else. You'll be able to pay for things without a roll depending on your Resources level. Money and resources gained in the course of adventures will act as boosts that you can apply to a Resources roll if needed.
Will: Mental fortitude. Roll to resist temptation and overcome trauma. Determines the length of your mental stress track.
Physical Skills
Athletics: Balance, body movement, physical combat dodge.
Burglary: Picking locks, sleight of hand, bypassing security systems, etc.
Fight: Melee attacks, melee defence.
Perception: Noticing things, searching, physical combat initiative.
Physique: Strength, endurance, and vitality. This also determines the length of your physical stress track.
Pilot: Controlling vehicles of all descriptions. No roll needed for normal ship operations, but it will be needed for tricky manoeuvres, tight spaces, vehicle dodging, etc.
Shoot: Ranged attacks
Stealth: Hiding you and other things.
Survival: Finding food, water, and shelter in the wilderness
High concept
Trouble
Ambition
Past Adventure Aspects x 2
Relationship Aspects x 2 (two to start, can add one per other PC as relationships develop)
Each PC has an Ambition aspect that describes their biggest long-term goal. Ambition aspects can be compelled and invoked as normal, and has the additional benefit of giving an additional fate point during refresh if you took action to further your character's ambition during the last session.
Three free stunt slots, if you don't figure those out before play you can fill them in as we go. You can buy more stunt slots for one refresh each.
You begin with 3 refresh.
Some options:
Up to X items of Y tier with Z descriptors
X amount of credits, buy stuff with idealised prices
You can also buy a single large piece of equipment, a building, or a vehicle for 1 refresh.
You can spend further refresh to improve this item. This improvement will work like buying regular stunts, just linked to that thing instead of your character directly.
You don't have to use this at the beginning. It'll be available later if you want to spend a refresh on it, but you can only buy one thing this way.
Equipment and other items will be defined first by what it is and then by zero or more descriptors.
Example Items
Bottle of Whiskey
Word Processor
Shovel
Protein Bar
Truck
Space Suit
Store
Descriptors add extra detail to an item and act as aspects for that item, so they can be invoked and compelled as normal. I have examples of descriptors here, but there's no definitive list of descriptors: I'll add them to items as makes sense and you can add or remove them with some technical know-how (see below). Descriptors are broadly categorised as being positive, negative, or neutral. These descriptor aspects can be used as any other aspects can regardless of these categories, but...
Positive Descriptors tend to be useful and will tend to raise the value of the object.
Examples
Portable
Solar-Powered
Long-Range
Encrypted
High Foot Traffic Area
Ruggedised
Miniturised
Negative Descriptors tend to be detrimental and likely lower the value.
Examples
Rusty
Fragile
Poor Containment
Cracked Chassis
Oversized
Out in the Boonies
Neutral Descriptors either don't affect the utility and value of the item or do so in roughly equal amounts in different situations.
Examples
Flywheel generator
Micro-clockwork
Armorican vintage
Biological
Descriptor Use Examples
Your portable communicator has the Removeable Repeaters descriptor. So, when venturing into a cave you can invoke Removeable Repeaters to leave repeaters at the cave entrance and on the way down and you'll be able to maintain communication with your team on the surface.
You crash your dune buggy into a ditch. Normally, this would mean some minor damage to the buggy and figuring out how to get it back on level ground, but your buggy has the Cracked Chassis descriptor. So, the GM could offer a compel on that descriptor, if you accept you'll have to make some serious repairs before that machine is ready to move under its own power again.
You scored a case of Armorican wine as a thank you gift from a Norvelios engineer. Armorican wine has a particular floral character, so it's down to taste whether this is a good thing or not. If you're looking to sell it then it might be worth finding some Armorican ex-pats so you can invoke Armorican Vintage in your negotiation.
We're not going to worry about encumbrance much nor have formal mechanics for it. The tech is chonkier than normal, but as long as the stuff you normally carry around is reasonable we'll only worry about it when you have to move large items or a large number of them.
The aesthetic for technology in this setting is what I call "chunky tech" (a better name could surely be made). It works like steampunk, but using the 1950's - 70's as a jumping off point instead of the Victorian era (i.e. before widespread use of integrated circuits). So, compared to analogous devices in the modern world you can expect most electronic things in Frontier Space to be larger, have fewer functions, and have less wireless connectivity. This is still the future, so things will also tend to be more powerful in what they can do.
Example
The default communication device for a modern game would be a smartphone. It is a audio/video recorder and communicator as well as being a general-purpose computer, but its transmission range is only a few miles and its battery only lasts for a day or two of occasional use.
The equivalent communication device in Frontier Space would be a handheld audio transceiver that's about the size of a brick that can transmit 100km away and last for a day of continuous transmission. Adding descriptors can give you some of those features of a smartphone, but for extra cost and size.
Smaller devices do exist in this universe, but are more fragile and much more expensive. So, they are not often seen on the fringe of space. Positive descriptors in that direction like "Portable" and "Miniaturised" will make the item smaller than normal, but will increase the cost more than a normal descriptor (maybe only after the first). A "Fragile" descriptor is often added to smaller things.
On the other hand, items can be bigger and this is usually for one of two reasons: low quality or additional capabilities. A device with a Big or Oversized negative descriptor is bigger than a normal device of its kind because it uses less sophisticated components that take up more space, but it otherwise works like an average device. An item can be larger because it packs more capability into one package. Encryption modules and radio relays takes up space, so a communicator with the Encrypted or Removeable Repeaters descriptors will be bigger than the base model.
In addition to lending a somewhat retro-future aesthetic to the world I hope this will keep the focus on the people and their interactions. Technology is useful, but it shouldn't overshadow the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the person using it.
Technology in general tends toward large monotaskers in this universe, but it's even more pronounced on the frontier where most technology is made extra beefy with protection and redundancies so that it keeps working in a rough and tumble setting even far away from replacement parts and technicians.
Advanced materials are available in this setting so things can be made lighter, stronger, more/less conductive, etc.
By default, items in this setting have some level of ruggedisation. If it has a "Fragile" negative descriptor it's about the toughness of modern consumer electronics. "Fragile II" (counts as two descriptors) results in the item being as fragile as a glass vase.