Atomic Effect

A Mass Effect Guide For The Atomic Robo RPG

For a rather long time, Ive been a fan of the Mass Effect franchise. The game series was a gem
when I first picked it up and only kept the quality up as the series progressed. While the ending
was a letdown, it was a fun ride overall. The galaxy it fleshed out was a rich scifi universe with
some interesting corners to explore. From the iPod clean Citadel to the dark streets of Omega, it
offers a variety of locales to explore and worlds to saveor rob.
FATE has always been a good system for pulpy adventures and video games like Mass Effect are
pure pulp. When the Atomic Robo rpg came out, it set a great template for how to handle scifi in
FATE and sets a good starting point for where to go.
This document is a guide on how to use AR to play out adventures in the Mass Effect universe. It
will try to be unintrusive as possible. As such, this is guide will mostly suggest which weird
modes to use and/or rename for the setting, ways to handle powers from Mass Effect, some rules
on gear, and one important little change to conflicts.

Conflicts
For the most parts, the normal rules for ARs physical conflicts are just fine for Mass Effect. One
distinction is that conflicts should always take place in atleast 2 zones as Mass Effect tends to
have fights occur in big areas. You shouldnt have more than four, but a minimum of 2 is
advised.
In a similar vein, Mass Effect is a cover-based shooter. As such, situation aspects to
make travel to other zones difficult is encouraged. Even if an obvious example doesnt exist
in an environment, you could always use Enemys Fire or Out Of Cover as one.

Modes
While Atomic Robo didnt introduce modes, modes have certainly become associated with the
game. They are a nice system to ensure that characters are competent in a variety of fields and, in
most peoples eyes, make character generation fast and easy.
Some modes are ready out of the box from Atomic Robo and some need some
renaming/rewording. Some Weird Modes from AR, of course, should be avoided.

The Standard Modes are fine right out the box.

Weird Modes that are good out of the box are: Mutant, Pilot, Reporter, Robot, Soldier,
and Warbot.
Weird Modes (and Weird Skill) that need some renaming are: Psychokinetic to Biotic
(and the weird skill, Psychokensis to Biotics) and Secret Agent to Secret
Agent/Spectre.
Weird Modes to be avoided are: Beast (Someone could play a Varren or the like, but its
a bad idea), Dinosaur, Martial Artist (Kai Leng sort of fits this, but the less said about
him the better), Spirit, and Telepath.

Some may notice that I have chosen not to add racial weird modes. This was done for three
reasons: 1) to avoid humans being the baseline and 2) to avoid the every X is like Y situation
that may stymie creativity, and 3) to make it easier to be a different species.
While you are, of course, open to make your own Weird Modes for things like Krogan, I suggest
against it for the above reasons. To handle species other than humans and their weird
biology, I suggest this:

Any character can take mega stunts if they can justify it as part of their alien
biology even if they do not have a weird mode.

To avoid humans being left out in the lurch, I suggest the following rules:

Any character can take mega stunts if they can justify it as a result of cybernetic
enhancements.

Of course, if you are like me and feel locking off mega stunts based on if you have a weird mode
seems off, you can just go whole hog and do this:

Anyone make take mega stunts, regardless of if they have a weird mode.

Those prior rules were for qualifications for mega-stunts. In general, if you want to be an
alien, you are that alien species. If it is very important (such as being a Krogan diplomat which
may have its own social baggage), you can mention it in one aspects such as your concept aspect
or your most appropriate mode aspect.

Powers
Powers can easily be handled by FATEs, and by extension ARs, stunt system. They perfectly
fall under the category of special abilities that make a character exceptional. For convenience, we
converted quite a few powers from the game into stunts:
Combat

Adrenaline Rush: +1 bonus to Combat when you throw yourself into harms way with
reckless abandon.
Concussive Shot: Once per session, without rolling, create a boost related to knocking
people down.

Tech

AI Hacking: Once per session, make a synthetic enemy that is not a Reaper join your
side in battle for two rounds.
Combat Drone: Have a signature aspect relating to having a combat drone like Floating
Partner* or Holo-Ball of Destruction*
Elemental Blast: Once per session, without rolling, create a boost related to freezing,
burning, or overloading the shields of a target.
Tactical Cloak: +1 to Stealth checks when using your tactical cloak and you may attack
with Stealth when hidden by your cloak.
Tech Armor: Armor:2 and +1 when defending with Athletics from arms fire.

Biotic

Barrier: Use Biotics to defend against ranged attacks.

Charge: +2 to Combat when moving from one zone to another.
Pull: Move a target from one zone to another in addition to another action.
Singularity/Shockwave/Throw: In addition to your action, get a boost related to people
being knocked off their feet.
Warp: Weapon:2 when throwing yourself into harms way.

All

Special Ammo: +1 to Combat when fighting enemies with active Shields, Armors, or
Barriers.
Unity: Once per session, you or another of your choice may uncheck their highest,
checked-off Stress Box.

This is not an exhaustive list of stunts you can have, obviously, nor are you forced to use this
version of Mass Effects Powers. This is just to make things easier on you.

Gear
Gear has varying importance in Mass Effect despite its status as a Scifi game (a genre known for
carrying a lot about gear). While the first game cared about armor and offered a variety of
weapons, later titles kept armor constant and offered a small selection of highly differentiated
weapons.
As tabletop rpgs arent the best medium for long lists of slightly different items, we are going
with the later approach to gear.

Armor
Armor in the Mass Effect universe follows the scifi trope of creator a shield around its user. Thus
making it less about the armor, but the shield around it. Well, to be more honest, Halo is
probably the biggest reason this exists.
Regardless, armor doesnt differentiate much by type in later games. Even in the first one, it was
mostly about having varying level of stats which, in a low numbers game like FATE, isnt
something to emulate.
As such, we suggest using only one type of armor to accommodate every bit of armor you
might run into. ARs hardware as mega stunts system does a good job of handling this.

Shielded Armor
Function: Protect From Arms Fire
Flaw: Needs To Recharge
Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):
Shielded From High Velocity Targets: You get one additional 1-Stress and 2-Stress box.
Still Metal Underneath: Armor:2 when bonus stress boxes from this armor are checked.

Weapons
Even in later games, there was always a variety of weapons to choose from. Not just that, but
they came in two categories: normal and heavy. Normal being your standard array of rifles,
shotguns, pistols, etc. while heavy weapons included rocket launchers, grenade launchers,
flamethrowers and the like.
FATE isnt big on laundry list of weapons and the such. While it make sense to make a series
of different guns in a video game, there isnt enough variance to justify a long list of normal
guns. While making guns different by factors like continuous verses burst fire makes sense in
game, it doesnt make sense here.
As such, we suggest just considering non-heavy weapons as just an assumption of the
character and not to model them different from each other. If you must, you could take a
stunt to represent what you perceive makes your gun special. If you do so, we suggest making it
more about what makes you special with that type of gun (shotgun, rifle, etc.) and not so much
what makes that particular gun special.
Heavy Weapons, however, function very different from normal weapons and tend to have
specialized functions. As such, we have prepared them using the hardware as mega-stunts
rule from AR:

ML-77 Missile Launcher

Function: Boom!
Flaw: Too Close!
Mega-Stunts (3 Benefits):
Explosions!: Weapon:4
Anit Walking Away From This One: On an attack that succeeds with style, spend a fate
point to prevent the target from checking a stress box to absorb harm.

M-100 Grenade Launcher

Function: Rapid Fire Explosives
Flaw: Collateral Damage
Mega-Stunts (3 Benefits):
Boom Shot: Weapon:4
Big Boom!: On an attack that succeeds with style, hit up to two additional targets per fate
point spent.

M-451 Firestorm
Function: Set Ablaze
Flaw: Hard To Control
Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):
Sway And Burn: On an attack that succeeds with style, hit up to two additional targets per
fate point spent.
Burn, Burn!, BURN!: On an attack that succeeds with style, spend a fate point to prevent the
target from checking a stress box to absorb harm.

M-490 Blackstorm
Function: Create A Singularity
Flaw: Cant Choose Who It Sucks In
Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):
Drag Them In: On an attack that succeeds with style, spend a fate point to move up to three
people from one zone to another.
Light Cannot Escape: When you use this, you may spend a fate point to create a situation
aspect called Black Hole or something similar and get a free invoke on it.

M-622 Avalanche
Function: Chilling Foes Out
Flaw: Leaves A Freezing Mist
Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):
Burrrr: When you use this, in addition to everything else, create a bonus boost related to the
enemies being frozen.
Frozen: When someone invokes your boost, they get a +3 to their roll instead of a +2.

M-920 Cain
Function: The Nuclear Option
Flaw: Overkill
Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):
The Power Of Fission: Weapon:6, but at a cost

Arc Projector
Function: Bzzzt
Flaw: Jumps to ANYONE Nearby
Mega-Stunts (2 Benefits):
Chain Lighting: On an attack that succeeds with style, hit up to two additional targets per fate
point spent.
Shock To Your System: On an attack that succeeds with style, spend a fate point to prevent
the target from checking a stress box to absorb harm.

Collector Particle Beam

Function: Precise And Devastating
Flaw: Must Keep Out Of Cover
Mega-Stunts (3 Benefits):
Tear Away At It: Weapon:4
Gotta Pop Out: +1 to Combat when popping out of cover to fire.