Extras

Defining Extras

An extra in Fate is a pretty broad term. It is used to describe anything that’s technically part of a character or controlled by a character, but gets special treatment in the rules. If your Fate game were a movie, this is where the special effects budget would go.

Some examples of extras include:

• Magic and supernatural powers
• Specialized gear or equipment, like enchanted arms and armor in a fantasy game or hyper-tech in a sci-fi game
• Vehicles owned by the characters
• Organizations or locations that the characters rule or have a lot of influence over

The tools in here will let you tailor extras to fit your game or provide material to steal right off the page. It’s okay, steal away.

Extras are considered to be an extension of the character sheet, so whoever controls the character to whom the extra belongs also controls that extra. Most of the time, that’ll be the players, but NPCs may also have extras controlled by the GM.

Extras require a permission or cost to own.

The Bronze Rule, aka The Fate Fractal

Before going any further, here’s something important:

In Fate, you can treat anything in the game world like it’s a character. Anything can have aspects, skills, stunts, stress tracks, and consequences if you need it to.

This is called this the Bronze Rule, but you may also have heard of it as the Fate Fractal if you pay attention to the Internet. You’ve already seen some examples of this in other places on the site; you give your game its own aspects during creation, you place situation aspects on the environment as well as on characters, and the GM can let environmental hazards attack as if they had skills.

Extras extend the Bronze rule even further.