Fate: No Exit - New Skill: Clarity

[Charlotte]

In No Exit, when you have encountered someone from your Phase Trio and spend sufficient time together, the experience you shared - positive or negative - strengthens your memories, and gives you Clarity. Clarity is a custom skill used in No Exit. It is advanced independent of the skill pyramid via special circumstances in play, but it draws its Stunts from the same Stunt/Refresh ratio that other Stunts draw from.

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Clarity represents the ability of a character to spot the illusions crafted around them and spot the inaccuracies of deceptions perpetrated by the Complex. Each player begins with Clarity at +1 to indicate that they are conscious of something odd occurring around them. However, any advancement in Clarity must be earned ingame through confrontation with the mysteries of a player's past.

• Overcome: You can use Clarity to face down the mind-bending obstacles of the Complex. When presented with a never-ending hallway, or a staircase that loops on itself forever, you call upon your Clarity to see through the illusions and see what is really in front of you.
• Create an Advantage: You can use Clarity to place aspects on yourself that indicate your ability to see past individual components of the Complex's lies (example: you do not feel the vertigo on the roof).
• Attack: You can channel your Clarity into an attack that destabilizes the Complex's hold on you through sheer power of disbelief.
• Defend: Clarity is used to Defend against the mind games of the Management, such as attacks of Deceit, Rapport or Intimidation.

Stunts:

It's Not Real! With the expenditure of a Fate Point, use Clarity to Create an Advantage so that another player may see through the lies of the Complex.

I Remember Now! With the expenditure of a Fate Point, your character may delve into their memories to dredge up the use of a Skill they do not have on their character sheet. The character only has as many ranks in that Skill as they have in Clarity and may be used for the remainder of the scene.

Clarity Is My Weapon When combating an agent of the Complex, you may use Clarity in place of Fighting for your attack. The player must be utilizing one of their Touchstones to focus the attack.

How Clarity is Gained

To increase Clarity to +2 and to +3, you must confront your own worst enemy: yourself.

The longer your character has been at the Complex, the less Clarity they have about their own memories. These memories and their power are what gives players the strength to face down their demons and fight against the crushing atmosphere of the Complex. Only through focus on their memories can characters explore the pieces of their past that have bogged them down and grant them the strength to face where they are now.

How does that work in game play?

Well, remember your Phase Trio? One of those memories was designated as inviolate - this is where your +1 rank in Clarity comes from. (Before you were jolted awake by whatever did the jolting, you had Clarity 0 - but this memory was still inviolate.) The other two memories from your Phase Trio, by contrast, happened... but they may not have happened exactly as you remember them. You have forgotten details. Important ones.

During play, when you Invoke one of the Aspects tied to these other two memories to Create an Advantage or to Overcome, I may - or may not - give you the option to forego the boost that FATE point gave you, in favor of increasing your Clarity by 1 rank. If you accept, you will be PMed an extended flashback detailing the truth behind the Invoked memory. Whether or not you like what you find out about yourself or what you've done in your life - well, can't help you there. This is a horror game.

Melinda takes the stairs to get down to the basement. She’s out to discover what Management is hiding down there. As she reaches the bottom landing, the lights flicker out and she can’t find her way. Melinda wants to tap her Aspect Spelunking Accident Survivor to help Overcome the problem when the GM offers to Trigger a memory for her instead. Melinda chooses the memory--and is told by the GM how this time, she remembers her last spelunking trip very differently. The rope that broke and sent her plummeting into the dark didn’t just slip. It was cut--and the only one on the trip with a knife that day was Todd.

Once the flashback resolves and the player faces down the demons of that memory, the associated Aspect is changed into a new one via Revelation. This new Aspect can relate to the memory, or to your reaction to the memory - you may come out with a determination to do the opposite of what you remember doing, or with a redoubled dedication. It must change in some way, however - and this is the only way in which your Aspects in this game can be changed. For example, Melinda may change her Aspect to I Know Todd Tried To Kill Me, if she's not about to let that sort of thing go - or she might decide to Let Bygones Be Bygones instead.

A Revelation about your own memories is one of the most important moments your character will experience in this game. So don't tread lightly.

Sacrificing Memory and Loss

There will be moments throughout play, however, when a character might desperately need to Overcome a situation

or create a serious Advantage to beat an obstacle thrown at them by the Complex. To do this they may choose to

sacrifice a single Touchstone (and its associated memory) to create a major Advantage or Overcome something serious.

However, in doing so, your character is literally relinquishing that memory to face down the situation. The Touchstone associated with it is destroyed - the vase shatters, the lucky rabbit's foot falls from your hand down the

drain - and the Aspect associated with that memory is also now gone and cannot be replaced with anything. Your

character gave up an important piece of themselves in that moment, never to be reclaimed. You also lose a corresponding point of Clarity.

Characters may sacrifice multiple Touchstones and Aspects should they deem it necessary. Upon the loss of the third Aspect and associated Touchstone, they gain an immediate Severe Mental Consequence that should reflect their now nearly total amnesiac state. These characters are considered lost. They become empty versions of their former selves, content to remain in near mindless solitude at the Complex forever.

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You may do this with an Aspect you have discovered the true nature of, should the memory be too much to bear. Once it's gone, however, there's no getting it back. Do you toss away memories you can't endure any more - perhaps playing into the Complex's hands - or do you hold onto them, even if the whole reason you came here was because they led your life to pain and ruin?

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I can't answer that. The choice - and consequences - are yours.