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Mediocre Attorney is what happens when you want to explore RPGs centred around nonviolent conflict, and then get bored and make a FATE conversion for Phoenix Wright instead.

Hold it! Start slow with the basics.

I’d explain what an RPG is here, but if you’re reading this, odds are I’ve linked it to you personally and know you’re clued in. I'll put a summary here for the final product.

Necessary Evidence

Before you dive in, there are a few necessary things you’ll need for your casefiles:

• Four six-sided dice, preferably one set for each player and the GM. You could also use Fudge dice, but if you own those, why are you reading the intro section?
• Some character sheets. I don’t have any for you yet: Use scrap paper and be creative.
• Something to write with. Pens, markers, needles and your own blood, whatever.
• Friends. I know this part’s hard, but it’s kind of important.

The Ladder

When I refer to “the ladder” later, this is what I mean:

Rank	Adjective
+8	Legendary
+7	Epic
+6	Fantastic
+5	Superb
+4	Great
+3	Good
+2	Fair
+1	Average
0	Mediocre
-1	Poor
-2	Terrible

The adjectives down the right side are used to describe things like being an Average Academic or a Good Burglar. Whenever I mention ladder rankings, it’s going to be in a format like Good (+3) or Mediocre (+0), since the numbers attached to the rankings are important. The ladder is generally used to rank character skills. Most people are somewhere between Average and Good at the skills they practice usually, such as for their job or a hobby. Some especially devoted or gifted types can even work themselves up to Great (+4) and beyond at something. Otherwise, folks are Mediocre at things they don’t have much practical experience with.

Roll 'Em

When rolling the dice, take four, blow a little luck on them, and roll. Every die that comes up as 1 or 2 is worth -1, ones that come up 3 or 4 are worth 0, and ones that come up 5 or 6 are worth +1. Add up the total of the roll. For example, a roll of 2, 5, 4, 1 is worth -1+1+0-1=-1 overall. You then add this total to the skill you’re using for the final result, sometimes called the “effort.” For example, if you made the above roll with a Good (+3) Redirect skill, the end result would be an effort of Fair (+2=3-1).

When you make a roll, you’re trying to match or exceed a given target number, which is called the difficulty for the roll. The difficulty indicates how hard it is to perform a certain task, and is measured on the ladder like everything else. It might be a Mediocre (+0) difficulty to jump over a knee-high rock, but a Good (+3) difficulty to quickly scale a ten-foot chain link fence.

So, what’s on your character sheet?

Skills are rated on your character sheet with ladder ranks, and represent how well your character performs certain tasks. They’re covered in their own chapter, Skills, below.

Aspects are traits that, taken all together, give an outline of who a character is, who they’re related to, what ideals or mementoes are important to them, what their catchphrases are, or anything else that could paint a clearer picture of the character. For example, aspects could be things like “Plus-Size Cat Burglar”, “Rusted Ancestral Shield”, “Bonnie, My Spunky Teen Sidekick”, “Skyscraper Physique”, or “Unconscientious Objector”. When one of your aspects applies to a situation, you can invoke it by spending a fate point to get a bonus, making your character better at an action due to the way their aspect applies (for example, using “Plus-Size Cat Burglar” to disable a security system). An aspect can also gain you more fate points by introducing complications and trouble into your character’s life, like “Bonnie, My Spunky Teen Sidekick” stirring up chaos when you need to look good in front of a judge. This is compelling an aspect to earn a fate point, and can be initiated by yourself or the GM. Aspects and fate points are a huge part of the game, and will both receive more attention later in this chapter and in the Aspects chapter below.

Gimmicks are little ways your character breaks the usual rules, expanding the purview or power of certain skills or giving you entirely new abilities, like a gambler betting their well-being on the strength of an argument. Gimmicks get their own writeup in their own chapter, below. Fate points are a kind of currency used to measure the ability you have to influence the story in your character’s favour. You spend them to take control by giving your character brief bonuses or introducing a new detail into the story. You earn them by allowing your character’s aspects to cause trouble and inconvenience for them. Keep a bunch of glass beads, poker chips, or whatever else you have on hand to represent the number of fate points the player has. You may, at any time, spend a fate point to invoke an aspect, make a declaration, or fuel a gimmick.

Usually, players regain fate points between sessions. This recovery of points is sometimes called a refresh, and the number of fate points regained is dependent on the player character’s refresh level. During a refresh, if a character has a number of fate points less than their refresh level, they gain points until they have a number equal to their refresh level. If they have more fate points than their refresh, their total remains unchanged. Refreshing isn’t the only way to gain fate points! You can also recover them in the middle of play by having one of your character’s aspects be compelled. When your character ends up in a situation where one of their aspects could get them into trouble, the GM can offer you a fate point to go along with the problematic course of action. You can turn the offer down by paying a fate point of your own, but you shouldn’t do that all the time since you’re going to need those fate points later! It’ll also make your story more exciting to have your character intermittently frustrated by their own vices, shortcomings, or rivalries. An underdog stories lives and dies by how many setbacks the heroes can endure, after all!

And those are the basics! Read on to get the nitty-gritty of everything I’ve talked about here.

Character Creation

Before putting pen to paper, it’s important to start out with a character concept. It’s not necessary for you to have some kind of expansive vision at this point, just an abstract idea to move forward with. You’ll be fine with a quick two or three-word description of the character, like “Haunted Beat Cop”. If you’re having trouble, think of your favourite mystery stories or crime dramas and think of a stock character you’d like to put your own stamp on. Bounce ideas off of the other players and the GM and see what ends up sounding like the most fun.

Now it’s time to actually put your defender of justice together!

Concept

Think of a particular character archetype you’d like to work with, or a particular set of abilities you want to use. Get a backbone down that you can build off of for the rest of the steps.

Name

It’s not necessary that you get this down before anything else, but you might as well start thinking about it. Mediocre Attorney descends from a tradition that’s more than a little referential and irreverent, so slightly punny names aren’t out of place. It might feel a little silly to name your redneck lawyer hiding behind a layer of Old World sophistication Joseph Sichspaque, but there’s always room for a little silliness at the gaming table.

Why You Fight

The life of a Mediocre Attorney is full of struggle and general peril. Your characters are usually skilled at something they can make a decent living off of, so why did they choose the hard road? Maybe it’s a personal reason, for example, “To Clear My Uncle’s Name” suggests a long-term goal to help the character’s family. Maybe it’s a little more idealistic and abstract, like “Everyone Deserves A Fair Shake.” It might even be frankly selfish, like “Money And Prestige.” Consider your character concept, think about why they continue to fight, and create an aspect related to that. Note that this should go two ways: “Money And Prestige” gives your character the motivation to keep going and helps them through invokes to pursue high-profile cases, but can also be compelled to tempt them to give in to avarice. The best aspects are those that can be both invoked and compelled!

Background

During this phase, consider your character’s childhood and teenage years. Everyone starts out young and grows up, and the traits and habits we pick up young can stay with us for the rest of our lives. Write down maybe a sentence or three summarizing where your character is from, what their family life was like, their early education, and similar background. After that, create two aspects tied to your character’s life before finding a job or getting a degree.

First Case

Some defenders of justice just have the passion for truth from an early age, while others are jolted into action by a traumatic event during their adult lives. Wherever your character falls, they definitely had a career-defining First Case that spurred them to action, or made them commit themselves even harder to their cause. Note that if your character isn’t a lawyer or police officer, they still have a First Case; it’s just that they didn’t participate in a professional capacity. Maybe they were a witness in a trial that left a relative in jail, or were trying to break and enter a fancy mansion when they saw evidence of some bloodier crime. Whatever your story is, there is only one rule: At some point, you witnessed or were affected by an injustice, and it bothered you to the point of acting against it. Write down a few sentences about this defining point, then create two more Aspects linked to what happened and how your character acted. Note: The term “First Case” implies that your character is at a pretty early stage in their career, since that’s when they’re likeliest to be the kind of unprepared underdogs this game is about. You’re free to make an older character if you want, but if you do, make their First Case recent. Even if they’ve been around the legal world a while, they only truly discovered their calling to right wrongs relatively recently.

Walk-In Role

If your characters are an effective legal team, they have to have some kind of history with each other. Every player picks one other player (and ideally, every player is picked by someone) to have a role in their First Case. It doesn’t really matter if that was the first time your characters met or not, but the Walk-In did have contact with the star of the First Case and participated in some capacity. Maybe the witness’ lawyer brother was part of the defence for that one fateful case, or the ethically-challenged forensic genius gave the beat cop some advice on his current case while handcuffed in the back of his squad car. Get out there and make a tangled web of relationships! Write a few sentences about what your character did during their Walk-In, and create two final Aspects related to what happened.

Skills

Take a look over the skill list below. You get 15 skill points to buy skills for your list. Buying a skill costs a number of points equal to the skill’s numeric ranking: Buying Science at Fair (+2) costs 2 points, buying Mysteries at Great (+4) costs 4, and so on. You can’t buy any skills at Superb (+5) or higher at character creation. In addition, you can’t have more skills at a rank than you have at the rank below it: For example, trying to take two Good (+3) skills while you only have one Fair (+2) skill is a no-no. Write your skills along with their corresponding ranks on your character sheet. Don’t bother writing down the skills you didn’t spend points on: They all default to Mediocre (+0). Also, don’t sweat it about locking yourself into a skill that won’t be useful: If you end up not using something, talk to your GM about shuffling your numbers around. There’s nothing wrong about dropping that Drive skill you never use in favour of some better Contacts.

Gimmicks

If you want any extra abilities or powers that extend beyond the usual reach of your skills, check out the gimmicks chapter below. You can pick out up to two gimmicks at character creation to give yourself an extra edge, but watch out: You have to pay for them by reducing your refresh level!

After this, you’re almost ready to go. Determine how many stress boxes you have (two by default, increased by having a higher Resolve) and what your refresh level is (7 by default, reduced by gimmicks). You should have a short paragraph or two of backstory, seven Aspects, and 15 points worth of skills. Have at it!

Example

Reese decides that he wants to play a lawyer in his upcoming game, and, having recently watched a marathon of shouty fighting robot cartoons, decides he wants his character to be defined by an iron will and a brash kind of tenacity. He decides to start out by writing down the half-ironic, half-punny name Temperance Steele on top of his character sheet. She prefers to go by Miss Steele, or among friends, Big T. Then Reese starts filling out life phases and aspects.

For a hot-blooded superwoman like Steele, Why You Fight is an uncomplicated thing. Reese writes down “Losing Is For Chumps” as an aspect. Next, Reese considers Steele’s background. When she was really young, Little T was a bit of a holy terror, getting into fights with schoolyard bullies and inventing new ways to sustain injuries on playground equipment. She eventually grew into some semblance of social responsibility, but shades of her earlier self still bleed through from time to time. As time went on after she’d left home for school, though, she kind of lost her connection to her roots as she looked forward to an increasingly active future. She has a few things in her past she'd rather forget anyways. Reese writes down the aspects “Rough And Tumble” and “Put My Past Behind Me”.

Steele’s First Case took place in her final year of law school, when she found hidden evidence of a professor illegally selling off valuable artifacts from the history department. It ended with her chasing down his car while on foot. He got caught, but, predictably, Big T was left a touch beaten up when she got in a fistfight with a car, and some of her bones are still held together with metal plates. There are a few things Reese can pull aspects from in this story, but he wants to focus on Steele’s determination and relentless sense of justice, so he goes with “Iron Skull” and “I’ll Never Stop Chasing You”.

For Steele's walk-in appearance, Reese ends up with his buddy Jenny's sheet for Agent Davidson, former federal agent, current alien conspiracy theorist. Davidson's first case involved a the vandalism of a high-tech government communications station. Reese and Jenny decide it would be funny if Steele had walked in on the scene and pulled some hijinx that caused the rubble of the station to collapse even further, landing her in trouble with the investigators, but revealing the mysterious chrome pod that turned out to be vital evidence. They go on to decide that Steele and Davidson would probably make for good friends afterwards, even though they frustrate the hell out of each other. Reese picks "Sorry, Davidson" and "Destructive Luck" as aspects.

When it comes time to buy skills, Reese immediately buys both Resolve and Intimidation at Good (+3). This defines Big T’s debate style: When on the attack she’s bluntly straightforward, and she’s less concerned with deflecting others' assaults as much as taking it to the chin and not stopping. He can’t have just those skills without some lower skills to support them, so he takes Athletics and Authority at Fair (+2) and Drive and Ruckus at Average (+1). Steele’s straightforward charisma can also bleed through in debates via Authority, which also covers her defences in case she comes up against any other debaters with Authority, and the rest of the skills represent the twitchy action-heroine side of her personality, ready to spring into action to chase down a suspect herself. Doing some math, Reese find that he’s only spent 12 skill points and still has 3 left, so he decides to upgrade Ruckus to Fair (+2) and take both Contacts and Academics at Average (+1) to represent what little education and connections Steele has remembered after leaving school. The skills add up to 15, and Reese doesn’t have more at a higher rank than the one below it (2 Good, 3 Fair, 3 Average), so everything’s hunky dory.

Finally, it's time to choose gimmicks. Reese figures he wants to conserve his refresh level to get as many fate points as he can, but Unyielding is just too perfect for Big T. He takes it, reducing Steele's refresh level from 7 to 5. Reese counts up his stress box total, a formidable 6 (2 default, 2 for Good (+3) Resolve, 2 for the Unyielding gimmick). With that final accounting done, Temperance Steele is ready to go!

Aspects

Using aspects can work either for or against a character’s current interests. If it’s ever unclear who should be spending fate points to do something with an aspect, here’s the general rule: If using an aspect would help you, it’s on you to pay the fate point to activate it. If an aspect would hold you back, it’s on the GM to offer a fate point to activate it, or it’s on a player if you’re the GM.

Invoking!

After making a roll for some action related to one of your aspects (but before the GM announces the result), you may invoke one of those aspects by spending one fate point. Doing so allows you to either get a +2 bonus to the final result of the roll, or reroll the dice and use the new result. You can invoke multiple times to get multiple bonuses to a single roll, but you can only use each aspect once per roll. The GM gets final say in whether an aspect can be invoked on a particular roll. They shouldn’t force the players to constantly defend themselves, but they should keep everyone on the same page by ensuring that aspects are used in interesting and appropriate ways.

You can also invoke an aspect in order to make a declaration: You spend a fate point and announce something that becomes true in the story. Don’t try to slip things that skip over the entire story (“The murderer confesses!”), go for smaller things that will help out with an immediate problem (“I’m handcuffed to a radiator? Good thing I just happened to be wearing bobby pins...”). As before, the GM has veto power, but if the declaration is relevant to one of your aspects, they should give you some leeway.

You can also spend fate points to invoke aspects that aren’t your character’s, like those on another character or those on a location or object your character is interacting with. Generally this will be for the standard +2 bonus to a roll or a reroll, but feel free to compel another character’s aspect like the GM would compel one of yours. As always, it’s up to the GM to okay the fate point expenditure.

Compelling!

When an aspect complicates your character’s life, it’s usually because of a compel. The GM is the most likely person to perform a compel, by indicating that one of the character’s aspects could hold them back somehow and offering a fate point. The player of the compelled character can pay one of their own fate points to ignore the conflict and keep going, or accept a complication of some kind and take the fate point. These complications shouldn’t be harsh and restrictive: A compel can close off one course of action, perhaps, but shouldn’t keep a character from some more long-term goal. A compel could also allow a character to continue with their intended plans, but introduce some kind of twist that makes things messier than anticipated. Also, players should note that if they decide against their characters’ own interests in line with an aspect, they can always tell the GM and lobby for a retroactive compel. As a player, don’t be afraid to accept compels, or actively seek them out! Mediocre Attorney is a game about underdogs who are frustrated by their own limitations and prejudices until everything threatens to fall apart, when they make a brilliant, rise-from-the-ashes move. Accepting compels so you can invoke your aspects for bonuses later is how you make this happen!

Tagging!

When you create a new aspect by, for example, pulling off a manoeuvre or attacking someone and letting them take a consequence, you get to tag that aspect once. A tag is basically like invoking an aspect, but you don’t have to spend a fate point. Tags can be passed on to an ally at the option of whoever created the new aspect, so if, for example, you perform a manoeuvre (see conflicts, below) to put an aspect on an opponent, you can allow another person on the defence team to tag it instead of you, for an “I set ‘em up, you knock ‘em down!” display of effective teamwork. High fiving or fistbumping afterwards is unnecessary, but encouraged.

Creating Aspects

Aspects can be hard to grasp. They're the most flexible part of the FATE system, but that also means that it can be hard to get a grip on what they really are and how to make good ones for your character sheet. Here are some tips that will hopefully be helpful:

The best aspects are ones that can be both invoked and compelled, since you can get bonuses coming or going with them. When creating an aspect, think of three example situations where it might be invoked or compelled. If you can only come up with three invokes or three compels, the aspect leans really heavily towards being a pure help or a pure hindrance. It's totally fine to have a few of these on your sheet, but if the majority of your aspects lean only one way or the other, you might find yourself unbalanced and unable to find the bonuses or fate points you really want in-game!

Go for evocative names. Any putz can be "Strong", so just having that as an aspect doesn't really give anyone else a good vision of the character. Fleshing it out with the source of the trait helps a lot: "Strength of the Lucha" retains "Strong's" expression of your character's physical power, while also bringing in the particular flavour of his strength. Luchadores are also very honourable: By fleshing out an aspect about strength, you also have an aspect that expresses your character's sense of justice, duty, and bravery! This opens up all kinds of new options for invokes and compels, and still takes up the room of only one aspect!

Skills

Players with experience in other RPGs might be looking over the list of skills and finding themselves thinking, “Hey, most games have skills for lying or seeing through lies, but this one doesn’t! I thought debate skills were really important in this game?” They are, true, but keep in mind that Mediocre Attorney is a game about solving mysteries: Everyone’s going to be lying at some point, and the lies are going to be pretty important to keep the case interesting! Since everyone has to lie effectively a single lie skill would be disproportionately important, so lying as a trapping has been spread among all three main debate skills, and there’s no skill for telling whether somebody’s lying with certainty, though Insight helps in that regard.

All the skills are listed in the table here, alongside the kind of activity they’re most applicable to, as guidelines. Sure, maybe you could use some knowledge of Science to impress the crowds during an academic debate, but generally you’ll be using it to understand evidence during an investigation. Don’t be afraid to get creative, though!

Skill	Type
Academics	Investigation
Athletics	Physical
Authority	Debate
Burglary	Physical
Contacts	Investigation
Drive	Physical
Insight	Debate
Intimidate	Debate
Investigate	Investigation
Mysteries	Investigation
Redirect	Debate
Resolve	Debate
Resources	Dosh Dosh Dosh
Ruckus	Physical
Science	Investigation

Academics

Academics is a catch-all knowledge skill. If it has anything to do with having a fancy degree or a lot of book-learning under your belt, odds are you roll Academics to see if your character knows it or not. Note that advanced scientific knowledge falls under Science (no way!) and especially esoteric knowledge that proper academics know as “poppycock” is the domain of Mysteries. Knowledge that falls outside of those specific niches, like world history or state vandalism law, is safely covered by the Academics skill.

Athletics

Athletics is a general physical fitness skill. Characters with high Athletics are better at running, jumping, throwing balls, and basically anything else that involves moving their bodies. In addition, Athletics can be used to defend against Ruckus attacks by dodging. Athletics covers a wide penumbra of uses, so don’t be afraid to roll it when you don’t know what other skill would govern a physical action you’re attempting: However, remember that breaking things and lifting weights fall under the purview of Ruckus, and extended exertion like running a marathon tends to be restricted by Resolve.

Authority

Authority is one of the three main debate skills, used for attacking other characters’ arguments. Those with Authority understand that it doesn’t really matter whether what you’re saying is correct, but it does matter that you’re able to say it in a way that comes across as believable and agreeable to your audience. By the end, even your opponents find themselves nodding along to your charismatic speeches, despite your position being against whatever their own position is. Authority is good at defending against itself, by getting into contests of congeniality, and against Intimidate, by making yourself seem like a reasonable debater to contrast against your would-be intimidator’s upstart insolence. It’s ineffective at defending against Redirect, since a skilled manipulator can tailor their arguments to twist your own rebuttals against you.

Burglary

Burglary covers skills involved in breaking and entering, skulking in the shadows, and generally engaging in the kind of skulduggery that makes you the subject of a trial rather than a part of the defence team. However, sometimes you just don’t have time for a search warrant! Burglary can be used to pick locks, bypass security systems, and hide from people looking for you.

Contacts

Contacts represents how well-connected your character is. Those with high Contacts tend to have a wide and informed web of acquaintances, and they keep their ear to the ground where current events are concerned. If you’re looking to find out something about current events or prominent people in the area, Contacts is the skill to use.

Drive

Drive is the character’s ability to handle a vehicle. Most people nowadays are capable of handling a car under the controlled circumstances of Sunday drives, but a Drive skill higher than Mediocre (0) indicates that they’re good at driving under stressful situations, like chases, street racing, or corkscrew jumps over rivers. GMs take note: A player taking this skill is basically the same as them saying “I want to get into car chases.” Throw in some car chases every so often.

Insight

Insight is your character’s ability to read the mood of other people, by carefully analyzing their body language, tone of voice, and other subconscious flags of how a character truly feels. It’s usually used to make an assessment of another character in a social situation to search for an aspect or some vital context-granting detail by rolling a contest of Insight versus the subject’s Resolve. Note: Insight CANNOT definitively reveal whether or not a character is lying in a given situation, but it can certainly tell whether or not they’re stressed or distracted, which are signs that the subject could be lying... Or they could have just remembered they left the oven on.

Intimidation

Intimidation is one of the three main debate skills, used for attacking other characters’ arguments. Skilled intimidators favour the direct approach in a debate, flustering opponents with straightforward, blunt, and sometimes frightening or enraging behaviour. Intimidation can be used to defend against itself, by getting into shouting matches, and against Redirect, by ignoring manipulative suggestions and hammering on an established point. It’s not effective as a defence against Authority, since barking insults at someone who’s trying to hold a civil debate with you is an excellent way to look like a moron.

Investigate

Investigate is your character’s skill in going over a scene with a fine-toothed comb for details. It’s generally used at crime scenes to make assessments, finding out details, aspects, and, most importantly, evidence. This skill is important to defence teams if they want to gain an information advantage: Finding evidence the prosecution missed is one of the few ways you can get the high ground in the trial!

Mysteries

Mysteries is NOT a character’s knowledge of Sherlock Holmes novels. Instead, it’s a character’s knowledge of bizarre esoterica, such as urban mythology or traditional Buddhist exorcism rituals. Mediocre Attorney is, by default, set in a world that’s a little weirder and larger-than-life than ours, so having someone like a cloistered spirit medium or amateur UFOologist federal agent might be a huge help on a case! Usually, a character with the Mysteries skill has a specialization that they’re interested in, like hollow Earth theory or the Kabbalah. The GM should note this and present information filtered through the character’s lens: A UFOologist might recognize a haunted house, but instead of seeing it as a hotbed of poltergeist activity, he’d see it as “a site of enhanced subspace interference.” As a skill, Mysteries comes along with a lot of weird baggage: If your group wants a more grounded game, you can ignore that it exists, but make sure everyone is on the same page! You don’t that one player who spent a lot of time working on a reptite conspiracy theorist showing up and finding out that the group won’t go along with it.

Redirect

Redirect is one of the three main debate skills, used for attacking other characters’ arguments. It’s all about manipulation: Asking leading questions to get witnesses to say more than they meant to, deliberately twisting opponents’ arguments to make them look absurd, and generally having a grand old time ensuring that everyone in the room only knows what anyone else is saying through your filter. Redirect can be used to defend against itself, by starting games of counter-schemes to straighten out your argument before your opponent deliberately misinterprets it, and against Authority, by misrepresenting the argument of someone trying to establish themselves as credible to knock them down a peg. It doesn’t work as a defence against Intimidation, since intimidators don’t really care when you echo a distorted view of their opinion at them: They’ll just repeat themselves, and louder this time.

Resolve

Resolve represents a character’s ability to endure stress, keep their emotions in check, and keep fighting the good fight. Among other things, it’s used to maintain your poker face, defending against Insight. Aside from this function, it’s not rolled all that often, commonly used as a modifying skill, but its most notable effect is that it increases the capacity of your stress track. A character with Fair (+1) Resolve gets 1 extra box on their stress track, for a total of 4. You get another extra box at Good, and then at Superb and every two full levels thereafter, you can take another mild consequence. Given all of these benefits, it should be obvious that this skill is vital to those who want to get into rhetorical slugfests in the courtroom.

Resources

Resources isn’t a character’s skill as much as it is an abstract representation of their disposable cash. Resources is rolled whenever you want to do something with your fat sacks of cash, whether it be buying an exotic piece of forensic equipment or bribing particularly sleazy witnesses into talking. It also helps determine the opulence of your character’s outfits and surroundings, feeding into manoeuvres that would be determined by that kind of thing. Sure, there are a lot of characters in Mediocre Attorney who are distinctive and flamboyant, but are they the ones in a gold lamé dinner jacket?

Ruckus

Ruckus represents a character’s ability to cause physical chaos and exert physical force. It can be used to lift or break objects, and can also be used as an attack skill, defended against by itself or Athletics, in conflicts. This application is generally used outside of debates, in more action-oriented games: If you get on the wrong side of some organized crime thugs, they aren’t going to be as interested in arguing their platform with you as much as they’re itching to break your shins. Ruckus could also be used to make attacks in the courtroom, but make sure you check with your group! It’s cool if everyone’s okay with Three Stooges hijinx taking over the courtroom, but people might want to restrict frequent use of Ruckus in a debate setting. This said, it’s not out of the question for particularly intimidating or underhanded debaters to accidentally knock their coffee mugs across the courtroom sometimes...

Science

Science represents a character’s knowledge of scientific methods and facts. The obvious application of this kind of skill to investigations is in the hands of the forensicist: Assessment actions to learn things like time of death by taking body temperature or reveal evidence aspects like “Partial Fingerprints” would fall under this umbrella. However, don’t think that a little bit of hard scientific know-how limits you to looking over corpses all day! You never know when knowing the basic physics for, say, throwing a pile battery or potato cannon together would come in handy.

Gimmicks

Gimmicks are mechanics that serve to add a little colour in play to your character. Note that though they may be named after professions, hobbies, or personality traits, you don’t have to take that gimmick to have that trait: They’re just ways to bend or break the normal rules to reflect some of the flavour of that trait. Gimmicks are listed in name-cost pairs like Gimmick [-X], where X is the refresh cost. In order to take that gimmick, the character must have their refresh value reduced by X. For example, a character who takes Gambler [-2] would reduce their default refresh value (7) by 2, for a final value of 5. A character cannot take a combination of gimmicks that would reduce their refresh level to 0 or less.

Armour of Dignity [-1]

Your naturally unflappable demeanour shields you from petty insults. While in a debate and defending against attacks with Authority, you take 1 less stress when hit.

Boss [Special]

This is a Gimmick available only to NPCs to make them the match of multiple player characters on the defense team at once. The character gains an additional two stress boxes and an additional action per exchange. Extra actions may only be taken after all other characters on the Boss' team have acted for the exchange. This Gimmick can be taken multiple times, once per additional PC the Boss is supposed to go toe-to-toe with.

Companion [-1]

Your character isn’t a solo act: They have a sidekick or other companion that accompanies them around, and helps out with specific kinds of tasks. Pick a division of skills (debate, investigation, or physical). While your companion is with your character, you get a +1 to rolls on that variety of skill. In addition, when in a conflict that uses that kind of skill, you can remove your companion from the conflict as an extra mild consequence, on top of whatever other mild consequences you can hold. Feel free to get creative with who or what your companion is: Maybe it’d be a loyal K-9 unit that helps with investigation skills, or your character is one of a pair of identical twins whose combined debate skills embarrass the competition.

Gambler [-2]

Gamblers play with fire, making the big plays early to ensure that later on they have all the chips while their opponents fold. When a gambler is about to participate in an opposed roll, they may bet one Fate Point on it before any rolls are made. If they do, they may spend that point on that roll and get the point back if they win the roll. If their opponent wins, they take the Fate Point for themselves. Watch out! This ability can drastically increase your Fate Point sustainability, or just feed a lot of free resources to the bad guy.

Interrogator [-1]

You're the bad cop (or lawyer, or polo champ, or...). You can make people sweat with the mildest of small-talk questions, and people feel it on the back of their necks when you look at them. When you perform a successful assessment action on another character using Insight, you may deal 1 stress to that character as they feel the heat from your staredown.

Medium [-1]

Though most characters with a high Mysteries rank can commune with their extranormal entity of choice, it usually takes a while to burn the incense, tweak the capacitors, and sacrifice the goat, and others in the room aren’t likely to interpret what’s happening in an intelligible manner. Mediums have trained or modified their senses to always see extranormal entities or disturbances as what they are, forgoing the need to roll Mysteries to detect them, and can act as go-betweens to allow the unenlightened to communicate directly with the extranormal, whether by letting a demon borrow their mouth for a while or adding a translator node to their reptite thoughtwave detector.

Merciless [-1]

Like a shark, you are to be feared most after the water has been bloodied. After the first time you inflict a consequence on another character during a conflict, you gain an additional +2 bonus when invoking your own aspects for the rest of the conflict. This stacks with the normal +2 bonus for invoking, so each fate point potentially counts for a staggering +4 bonus! However, this only applies for the first fate point spent on a particular roll (so spending two on one roll would get you +6 instead of +8) and this effect only triggers after you inflict a new consequence during a conflict: Walking into a conflict with somebody who has a consequence from an earlier scrape won’t help you.

Poisonous Words [-1]

You can put an idea into someone's head that slowly eats away at their resolve. Whenever you inflict stress on another character with a Redirect attack, you may put the "Poisonous Words" aspect on that character. While a character has this aspect, they take 1 stress at the beginning of each exchange. This aspect lasts until the end of the conflict, but may be removed earlier by taking a manoeuvre action at a target difficulty equal to your Redirect.

Rise From the Ashes [-1]

You’ve internalized the spirit of the true underdog: Your superiority only becomes apparent after an opponent has seen you bleed. After a consequence is inflicted on you during a conflict, you gain an additional +2 bonus when invoking your own aspects for the rest of the conflict. This is subject to the same limitations the bonus from Merciless is subject to: It only applies to one point spent per roll, and you need to have suffered a new consequence during your current conflict to receive the bonus.

Rival [-2]

Rivals are devoted to personal vendettas. Once per conflict, a rival may declare a rivalry against another participant in the conflict. Afterwards, the rival and the target may only attack each other, and take 2 less stress from being attacked by anyone not involved in the rivalry. This effect ends after the conflict ends or one of the two involved in the rivalry are taken out or concede.

Roar [-1]

You understand the grand secret of arguments: People will go along with whoever is loudest, if only for the sake of their personal safety. Whenever you attack using Intimidate, you inflict one stress if you miss.

Unyielding [-2]

Unyielding characters take a much bigger beating before backing down than normal. A character with this gimmick gets two extra stress boxes. Straightforward, but very effective!

Valedictorian [-2]

An average lawyer might put up a good screen against verbal attacks through liberal use of five-dollar words, but any ivory-tower academic worth their goofy square cap knows that such a defence is laughable compared to a single five-hundred-dollar word. You may use Academics as a defence skill against any of the three main debate skills (Authority, Intimidate, Redirect).

Playing the Game

When you roll with a skill to make something happen, we call that taking an action. Actions can be divided into two general groups: Conflict actions and non-conflict actions. Non-conflict actions tend to resolve problems more quickly, so they should be used when whatever obstacle you’re trying to overcome isn’t terribly complicated or doesn’t involve much meaningful opposition. Use conflicts to settle things in a more thoroughly detailed way, when somebody’s really invested in the outcome, like a confrontation with a rival or a court battle.

Non-conflict actions break down into four categories: Simple actions, contests, assessments, and declarations.

Simple Actions

Simple actions are, as you probably guessed, the simplest kind of roll you’ll make in Mediocre Attorney. The GM describes the situation and a target difficulty from the ladder ranks, and you roll with one of your skills in an attempt to match or exceed the difficulty. If you get shifts on your result, that’ll improve the quality of your result: You move faster, write more elegantly, palm a coin more subtly, and so on. Simple actions include tasks like climbing over a fence, looking up an obscure chemical formula, or going over an area with a metal detector looking for evidence.

Contests

Contests are used to quickly resolve actions where one party is being opposed by the other. Instead of a difficulty being set, every character involved rolls a GM-defined skill and the one with the highest effort wins. Contests are best used for fleeting, but still opposed interactions: Trying to pull some files off the prosecutor’s desk while he’s in the room with you, brushing off a nosy cop, or even just having a footrace. More involved confrontations should be handled with conflict rules.

Assessments and Declarations

Assessments are a specific kind of simple action that are used to try to figure out one of a target’s aspects, or some other important piece of information about them. The thing you’re assessing could be a room, a character, a piece of evidence... It doesn’t really matter, everything’s assessed the same way. To make an assessment, say what kind of information you’re looking for, the GM assigns a difficulty, and roll away. If the target is a character or something else with skills, the GM might call for a contested roll instead. When you succeed on an assessment, the GM reveals an aspect or some information about the target. If an aspect is revealed, you can tag it for free, as outlined in the aspects chapter above. Declarations are basically assessments, but instead of the GM revealing information or an aspect, you insert new information or aspects. Use this for when your character is making an effort to change their surroundings, or if you just had an idea that would be cool if it made its way into the scene. For example, the GM might not have planned for the crime scene to have high magnetic interference, but if you’ve got a neat idea behind why it should, you could make a Science roll to “discover” the source of the interference!

Conflicts: Intro

Conflicts! Use conflicts when two or more characters are at each other’s throats over something and are willing to fight past a single roll to see their side win. Conflicts are a good choice for modelling things like court debates, extended chase scenes, or racing to find vital evidence first while another forensics team is on the scene.

When a conflict begins, the first thing that needs to happen is the GM framing the scene. The setting is described, which might be important for scene aspects: A negotiation will certainly have a different feel depending on whether it’s in a courtroom that exudes “Legal Formality” as opposed to a “Shaded, Slick, and Sketchy” warehouse. After that, they define what characters are there and where they are at the moment. In general in Mediocre Attorney, location isn’t a big deal: It’s possible that characters could access different areas, like a waiting room away from where the main action is or a mancave under their office desk, but unless a supplemental action is taken to move to such a location everyone’s where they have to be to be able to affect everyone else.

Once who’s there is defined, who’s on what side will be determined. Typically this breaks down to the defence team versus everyone else, but sometimes things get shaken up: A three-way race for evidence or, if the group’s okay with debating each other, the team breaks down to harsh words over a proposed course of action.

The last step is to determine who acts when. This is referred to as initiative, since characters who “take the initiative” act faster. Pick the primary member of the opposition to act first, then one of the defence team, then keep alternating until any leftovers all go together at the end of the round. If there are more than two sides, break ties with your preferred arbitrary decision-making method (you have dice right in front of you, after all). During a conflict, each turn is known as an exchange: The order of initiative is kept between exchanges unless two characters on the same side choose to swap order at the beginning of a new exchange. After initiative is settled, it’s time to take action!

When taking action during an exchange, you have four general kinds of basic conflict actions to choose from: Attack, Manoeuvre, Block, and Full Defence.

Attacking

Attacks are direct aggressive actions meant to break down the opposition by inflicting stress and consequences. An attack is always rolled as a contest between the character initiating the attack (the attacker) and the chosen target (the defender). Attacking takes up a character’s action for the exchange, but defenders can roll to defend themselves as many times as they have to. The skills used for attack and defence are determined by the context of the conflict and the attacker’s preferred technique: See the chart below for some example attack/defence skills in given contexts.

Conflict	Attack Skill	Defence Skill
Debate	Authority	Authority or Redirect
Debate	Intimidate	Authority or Intimidate
Debate	Redirect	Intimidate or Redirect
Foot Chase	Athletics or Ruckus	Athletics or Ruckus
Forensic Race	Investigation or Science	Investigation or Resolve

Stress

If the attacker wins the attack roll, they inflict stress on the defender equal to the number of the shifts produced by their roll, as detailed below. If the defender wins the roll, the attack fails and doesn’t inflict stress. Similarly, if the roll ties and the attacker has no way to boost the stress they would deal, the attack is simply ineffective. Groups who’d rather be aggressive can have zero-stress attacks inflict a temporary aspect, as if it were a manoeuvre (see below). Note that, though terms like “attack” and “hit” are used, conflicts can represent a lot of nonviolent disagreements. In fact, the most common kind of conflict in Mediocre Attorney is a debate where nobody’s throwing any punches.

When an attack succeeds and produces shifts, it inflicts stress equal to the number of shifts produced. The defender counts off a number of their stress boxes from the left and marks off the last one counted. For example, a character that takes 2 stress marks off the second-leftmost box on their track. If that box is already marked off, the hit shifts rightwards to the next box. If a hit would go off the end of the defender’s stress track, they’ll have to take consequences to reduce the stress, offer a concession, or else be taken out of the conflict! A character’s stress track is cleared after a conflict ends: After a minute to collect themselves, they’re ready to take on the world again.

Taken Out and Conceding

A character that’s taken out is removed from participating in the conflict in some way determined by the attacker. For example, being taken out of a trial could mean that the judge decides the defender’s case is unsound and has a bailiff escort them out, while being taken out of a chase scene at the hands of Mafia thugs could mean that the defender gets knocked out by a thrown brick and falls into the thugs’ hands! A character could instead concede at any point where they would take stress, offering specific terms of surrender to the attacker. If the attacker accepts, the character is taken out on their own terms and does not suffer the stress from the attack in question. Players probably want to use this option when a conflict is going poorly, and they don’t want to have to deal with consequences before coming back to fight another day.

Consequences

Stress is pretty temporary, so the way to inflict lasting harm, shame, or general unpleasantness on a character is through consequences, which are a particular kind of aspect. Any time a character takes stress, they may take as many consequences as they want (and are capable of taking) to reduce the stress inflicted. The consequence should relate to the nature of the attack: A consequence from having an argument turned against the defender in a debate could be something like “Egg On My Face”, while a consequence from a frantic forensics competition could be something like “Lost My Monocle”. In any case, the player taking the consequence decides what it is, with GM arbitration. The attacker is credited as putting the consequence aspect on the defender, and gets a free tag of the consequence, as with any other created aspect. A character may, by default, only have one of each kind of consequence at a time.

Mild consequences reduce a hit by 2 stress. They last until a few minutes after the conflict they’re gained in. They tend to be the kind of thing that a character can just walk off and forget after a few minutes away from trouble.

Moderate consequences reduce a hit by 4 stress. They last about a day, being removed after the character has had a night’s rest or some equivalent. They sting for a while, but some devoted recovery time will make them just a memory.

Sever consequences reduce a hit by 6 stress. They last for a matter of days or weeks, being removed only after the character has completed their current case. They’re pretty serious, requiring the character to devote days worth of time and effort to fix.

Cashing Out

Now this all sounds bad, but there is a bit of a bright side: Once a character is removed from a conflict, whether by conceding, being taken out, or the conflict simply ending, they get a number of fate points equal to the number of consequences they took during that particular conflict. This isn’t recommended as a primary means of harvesting fate points, more like a consolation prize.

Manoeuvres

Manoeuvres are another frequently-used action in conflicts. In brief, a manoeuvre is using one’s action to roll a contest against a given target. On a tie or if the attacker’s roll beats the defender’s, the attacker puts a temporary aspect on the defender, which they get a free tag on. This aspect is fragile, and is removed after it is tagged.

Blocks

Blocks are actions dedicated to preventing some other action from happening: A player who wants to make a block can declare an action they want to prevent, roll a GM-defined skill, and then note the effort as the block’s strength. Until the blocker’s next turn, another character attempting the blocked action has to beat both the stated difficulty and the block strength. For example, a character blocking others from climbing over a fence and rolling a Great (+4) effort when climbing the fence is normally an Average (+1) task makes the climb’s difficulty Great (+4). If the blocker had rolled Mediocre (+0), the difficulty of the climb would still be Average (+1). Blocks have to have a specific focus. A character could block all attacks against a specific other character, or all attacks from a specific other character, but not all attacks everywhere.

Full Defence

A full defence is the easiest kind of action: The player declares that they’re taking a full defence on their turn, and then gets a +2 bonus to all defence rolls they make until their next turn. Use full defences when you’re on the ropes, but your team is still in the fight.

Now that the basics are down, it’s time to talk about some specific contexts for conflict that you’ll probably consider while playing Mediocre Attorney. Don’t take these as the only kinds of conflicts you can have in game! I’m just putting them down here to give you an idea of what you can consider, given that most crime-drama court-battle stories will involve these kinds of confrontations.

Trials introduce a few elements that make them very distinct from regular conflicts. The most obvious is that the participants in the conflict are generally set. The prosecution faces off against the defence team, with the witness providing testimony that supports either side (or just causes problems for both). Maybe the judge takes an active stance in the debate, maybe some twist occurs and an unexpected personality barges onto the stand, but generally speaking things stick to the traditional structure. Don’t take this to mean that you shouldn’t shake things up if you think it would be interesting, though! Anyways, this conflict is a debate. The defence, witness, and prosecution make attacks with their debate skills (Authority, Intimidate, Redirect) and manoeuvres with whatever skills the GM okays.

The Web of Lies

The Web of Lies is where you draw out connections between suspects and evidence and you work to solve the crime. It's set up on the first day of the three-day trial, and determines who the Judge finds guilty at the end of the third day.

At the beginning of the first day of trial, begin setting up the Web. Write all suspects' names in the centre. Typically, there is only one suspect at the dawn of the first day, and that's your client. Write the pieces of evidence around the edges. Draw lines between the suspect's name and the evidence for whichever pieces of evidence are clearly linked to a suspect, and put a note on the line describing the nature of the link like “Has Fariq’s Fingerprints” or “Found In The Victim’s Fist”. This initial setup lays the ground the first trial will tread. If any of the three days ends with only one suspect maintaining links to evidence, that suspect is found guilty. Make sure this doesn't happen to your client, and make sure the sentence sticks on the fiend who actually did it! If day three ends and no single conclusive perpetrator has been found, the suspect with the most links to evidence is held for a followup trial that amateur legal teams typically aren't deployed to. Make sure to make it stick by the third day, or the fate of justice is out of your hands!

An important note: When in the courtroom, anyone tagging an Aspect in a contested roll with a suspect may take a bonus to the roll equal to the number of evidence links to that suspect instead of the normal +2 bonus. It's very bad news for anyone who's linked to three or more pieces of evidence! Break links on your client fast if they get too many, and put lots of links on that unflappable suspect who you just need to crack, just for a second.

Here's how you modify the Web of Lies:

Evidence is added when you find it. Typically, you'll start with a few items the police have found. This is meager and points uncomfortably close to your client though, so take the afternoon on days one and two to snoop around the crime scene for more evidence. As long as the cops make sure it's not forged, it doesn't matter who found it, right? Watch out, though, since the prosecution has a nasty habit of reserving their own pieces of evidence to reveal at the nastiest times. Don't let old evidence pile up and confuse you: At the end of a trial day, the GM should remove from the Web of Lies old pieces of evidence with no links to suspects and no capability to make the case fall together later.

ADDING AND REMOVING SUSPECTS

ADDING AND REMOVING LINKS