For players who aren't well versed in the Fate system, I'll put a quick summary of the basics here.  If you want to go more in depth than what I'm posting here, you can find the full rules at https://fate-srd.com/fate-core or an abbreviated version at https://fate-srd.com/fate-condensed (note that I haven't read Condensed myself so I don't know what's different between that and Core, but I'm posting the link here anyway for your convenience so no one feels compelled to read the long version).

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So, the basics.  Fate dice (labeled as Fudge dice in the RPOL roller) each give you -1, 0, or +1; all rolls are 4dF, so you get a range from -4 to +4 with a tight bell curve around 0.  You want to roll high, and you want your enemies to roll low.

There are three parts of your character sheet that matter:

Skills - These are rated with a number, usually between 0 and +4.  Your rolls will pretty much always be based on a skill, so you roll 4dF and add your rating in that skill to get the final result.  There is a set list of skills that you choose from when you create your character.

Stunts - These are special abilities or talents.  Each stunt is connected to one skill, and gives you one of the following bonuses:
* +2 when using that skill in a specific situation
* ability to use that skill instead of a different skill in a specific situation
* a unique ability showcasing your expertise, which will usually have a limit such as "once per session" and/or "costs 1 Fate Point to use"
Stunts are custom made by the player; there are plenty of examples at the links above, and the other link further down has a few examples specifically relating to Night's Black Agents.

Aspects - These are phrases that describe a character, object, location, or situation.  They describe something that is absolutely true in a narrative sense, and also has some mechanical weight in the game.  If you invoke an aspect, describe how it can help you on your current action and then either reroll the dice or take a +2 to what you already rolled (you don't need to commit to this until after you roll).  Invoking usually costs 1 Fate Point, although there are ways to earn freebies.  You can use your own aspects, of course, but you can also use someone else's aspect, a situational aspect, etc, if you can explain how it will help with what you are trying to do.  There is no limit to how many aspects you can invoke for a single action (as long as you can pay for all of them), but you can only invoke a given aspect once per action.
If an aspect is compelled against you, it makes things more difficult in some way - +2 difficulty on a roll, pushing you to make an unwise decision, adding complications to a situation, etc.  You gain 1FP for your trouble, unless whoever used it against you had a freebie.  If the compel was about you making a bad decision then you can choose to resist it, but this will cost you 1FP.  You are welcome to suggest compels, voluntarily make a bad decision related to one of your aspects, etc, and you will gain 1FP just as if I had pushed it on you.

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Actions are categorized into four types:
* Overcome - catch-all for getting past obstacles outside of combat
* Create Advantage - set up something that will benefit you or your allies
* Attack - try to hurt someone (not necessarily physically, but it'll probably be physically more than anything else)
* Defend - try not to get hurt when someone attacks you

For any action you are either rolling against a set difficulty number or against another character's roll.  The result of your roll depends on the type of action and whether or not you beat the opposing number.


a boost is an aspect that can be invoked for free one time and then it goes away

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Conflict and Injury

Initiative is based on one of your skills, depending on the type of conflict.  For a physical conflict it's based on Notice (with Athletics as a tiebreaker).  For a social conflict it's Empathy (with Manipulation as a tiebreaker).

Exact distances are not tracked during a conflict.  Instead, the area is divided into zones, which are kind of arbitrary and based on what makes sense in that scene.  You can make a melee attack against anyone in the same zone with you, throw a weapon into the next zone, or shoot someone up to two zones away (maybe more depending on the gun you're using).  If there are no obstacles then you can move one zone and still take some other action, or roll Athletics (difficulty TBD) to move to any zone on the map.  Sometimes there will be an obstacle in between zones, like barbed wire or angry guards, and then there's no free move between them.

Everyone has a few boxes of Stress on their character sheet.  Stress represents minor damage, like a bruised shoulder or a bruised ego.  When you take damage, look to stress first.  Each box on your sheet can absorb up to as many points of damage as the number next to it (and if you add more stress boxes, like for having a high Physique or Will score, then each subsequent box is one number higher).  Once a stress box is marked you can't use it again until it's cleared, so if you take 1 damage but your 1 box is already marked then you'll have to mark off the 2 box instead (and the extra is lost - you can't use half of a stress box).

If you don't have enough available stress boxes to absorb the damage, then you have to take Consequences instead.  A consequence is an aspect that describes the injury, insult, or whatever kind of damage you took.  A Minor consequences can absorb 2 damage, a Moderate absorbs 4, and a Severe absorbs 6.  Like with stress boxes, any extra is lost if the consequence could have absorbed more damage than it did.  You can only take one of each consequence.  You can choose to take a consequence now and save your stress boxes for later if you want to.  Healing a consequence takes more time and effort, depending on the severity.

If you take more damage than you can fit into your remaining stress boxes and consequences then you are taken out - you're out of the fight, and your opponent gets to narrate what happens.  In a physical conflict this can very well include death, although it doesn't have to.  If this sounds unappealing, you can concede instead - you're still out of the fight, but you get to narrate what happens instead, and you get 1FP while you're at it.  You can declare at any time that you're conceding, but it won't get you out of dealing with the outcome of a roll that has already been made.

If things are going really badly but you're not ready to drop out just yet, you can also choose to take an Extreme consequence.  This absorbs up to 8 damage, and replaces any one of your regular aspects except for the high concept.  This is life-changing kind of damage, like losing a limb or experiencing overwhelming flashbacks and hallucinations.  You can only do this once per major story arc.

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That's the bare bones summary, which should cover us for most situations (and now that I've said that there should be a crazy edge case coming within the next dozen or so IC posts).  Besides that, this document: https://docs.google.com/docume...3A0RuBkgAGRrqgY/edit describes how to convert these rules for this specific game here.  The basics are the same, but it changes some of the details of the game, like the skill list.

Next post will go into character creation.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:54, Sun 31 Oct 2021.

Character creation follows these steps (although you can do them in any order you're comfortable with):

1. Define your aspects.  You have five, which each describe your character in a different way:
  -High Concept - the "elevator pitch" for your character, which could be the same as the phrase some of you already have describing your backgrounds
  -Trouble - while any aspect could potentially be used to cause problems for you, this is the one that's most obvious about it.  Might be a physical limitation, character flaw, mental quirk or illness, etc
  -MOS - describes your role on the team
  -Drive - describes why you are hunting vampires (or what's going to keep you involved once we get there, since you haven't discovered them yet in-character)
  -the last one is whatever you want, something to round out your character.  It could still be related to espionage shenanigans but doesn't have to be.
When you are coming up with your aspects, you should have some idea of ways they might be used in the game.  We'll talk through it together if anything is unclear.

2. Assign skills.  The full skill list is on page 3 of the FBA document I linked in the previous post.  Assign one skill to each of the blanks in the character sheet below.  Skills that don't get put on your sheet can still be used as normal, with a +0 modifier on your roll; there is no penalty for untrained skill use.

3. Pick stunts.  Choose at least one to start with; you may leave the others blank and fill them in later when they become relevant.  Each stunt should say what skill it is attached to, what benefit you get from it, and when you can use it (e.g. "get a +2 bonus when rolling Violence to escape from a grapple").  Fate Core and FBA both list plenty of sample stunts which you can use, or you can create your own (although I think a few of the FBA sample stunts are too broad, so if you take any of those we might need to talk about narrowing them down a little).  Fun title for your stunt is encouraged but not required.

4. Refresh and Fate Points.  Your Refresh score is how many FP you have at the beginning of each session (although if you ended the previous session with more than that you can keep the extras).  By default your Refresh score is 3, but you can lower it in exchange for starting with extra stunts on a 1:1 basis, to a minimum of Refresh 1.

5. Stress.  You have separate tracks for physical and mental stress.  Each of them starts with 2 boxes.  If your Physique is +1 or +2, you get one more box of physical stress, if it is +3 or +4 you get two more boxes, and if it is +5 you get the two boxes and also can take a second mild consequence (physical only).  Will grants the same benefits for mental stress.


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REFRESH: 3
CURRENT FATE POINTS: 3

ASPECTS
High Concept:
Trouble:
MOS:
Drive:
(other):


SKILLS
+5 ___
+4 ___, ___
+3 ___, ___, ___
+2 ___, ___, ___, ___
+1 ___, ___, ___, ___, ___


STUNTS
___
___
___


STRESS
Physical 1[] 2[]
Mental 1[] 2[]

CONSEQUENCES
Mild (2):
Moderate (4):
Severe (6):
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:23, Sat 18 Sept 2021.

A couple more things, specific to Night's Black Agents:

Investigative abilities - the whole mechanic of investigative abilities which automatically succeed is one of Gumshoe's selling points, and not present in the Fate system.  Instead, gathering clues will usually be an Overcome roll using whichever skill is appropriate.  If it's what Gumshoe would call a "core clue" then you will still get it even on a failed roll, you just might be inviting some unwanted complications while you're at it.

Languages - standard NBA rules make it very easy for the party to have 20 or so languages covered, so it kind of comes down to flavor text more than anything else.  The FBA conversion doesn't give much in the way of guidelines for this.  I'll just say that for major European languages it's pretty much a guarantee that at least one of you can cover it, and for more obscure dialects or for languages outside of that region (and not your native language) it will require an Academics roll, with the difficulty depending on how obscure it is.

Gear - as before, you have any standard equipment that you would need to make use of your skills.  Preparedness now works by making Create Advantage rolls, where the aspect you create is the piece of equipment you want.
Weapons and armor work by adding to, or subtracting from, the damage dealt on a successful Attack roll.  Page 8 of the FBA document lists common examples.  The numerical rating is the damage modifier, e.g. Weapon 1 adds 1 damage on a hit, and Armor 1 subtracts 1 damage.  If armor reduces a successful hit to 0 damage then the attacker still gets a boost.

Heat - I don't really like the way FBA is doing it, so I'd like to try it this way instead and we'll see how it works out in play:  Heat will be a separate stress track shared by the whole group.  I'm thinking 4 boxes, plus 3 consequence slots like for a character.  Since the NBA guidelines for Heat go up to 4 points gained per incident, I'll stick with that for how much "damage" you take.  Heat that goes into stress boxes doesn't have any immediate mechanical effect, it just lets you know that tension is building; Heat that goes into consequences will create aspects like "Wanted on Suspicion of Terrorism" that can be compelled against you (since it affects the whole group, everyone in the group will get 1FP for those compels).  Unlike personal injuries, stress boxes for Heat will not clear automatically, but will require either a significant passage of time or some kind of effort (though still less effort than it will take to clear consequences).  Compelling a Heat aspect will also clear that same amount of current stress.