Builder's Manual · Chapter 3

Adding Skills, Stunts, and the Rest

Every content type here has conventions the existing records follow. Match them and new content is indistinguishable from the originals; break them and the sheet's math quietly goes wrong.

Aspects

An aspect file is its name plus aspectKindcharacter, situation, issue, boost, or consequence — and the kind decides where it can be linked. Write invokeSuggestions and compelSuggestions on every one: an aspect the Narrator can compel from its own text needs no prompting, and the double edge is the whole point. @Missing file is the model — read how each suggestion names a concrete scene complication, not a vague mood.

Skills

A skill file describes what the skill does on each of the four actions — overcome, createAdvantage, attack, defend — plus special for anything it feeds structurally. @Missing file shows the register. Adding a skill takes two edits: the file in Skills/, and the skill's row in the character schema's skills expression (the eighteen keys are listed there). Miss the second and the skill exists but never appears on a sheet. If it should grow a stress track, wire its threshold the way Physique and Will are wired.

Stunts

A stunt is stuntKind (bonus, new-action, rule-exception), its rulesText, and — this is the load-bearing part — its mechanical plumbing: a skillBonuses entry (skill, bonus, label, circumstance) for bonus stunts, or extraPhysicalStressBoxes / extraMentalStressBoxes / extraMildPhysicalSlots / extraMildMentalSlots for the rule-exceptions that grant them. The sheet reads those fields; rulesText alone is just a promise. Keep the register narrow and flavorful — @Missing file bends one skill in one circumstance, and that's a whole stunt.

Extras

Extras carry the same bonus plumbing as stunts, plus the Fate-specific trio: permissions (the aspect that justifies it), costs (refresh or trouble — and if it costs nothing, say why in trouble terms), and rulesText. @Missing file is the worked example: one-box hull, borrowed, a standing compel magnet.

NPCs

The NPC type is deliberately lighter than Character: npcTier (nameless, supporting, main), a flat skillRatings list, aspects as plain strings, and stress as filled-box counts. Nameless NPCs get two boxes and no consequences — @Missing file is the pattern. When an NPC graduates to a full Character sheet, that promotion is the statement that they now matter.

Scenes and zones

A scene is sceneKind (roleplay, challenge, contest, conflict), linked zones, situationAspects, opposition, and its campaign. Zones carry connectedZones, barriers, and their own aspects — @Missing file shows a barrier written as fiction with a difficulty in it. Give every situation aspect its freeInvokes up front.

Manual updated Jul 29, 2026.