When building your own implementation of Fate, the first thing to think about is whether or not you’ll keep the same skill list. Often you can work with the one given, combining, changing, or splitting apart a few of the skills given. But it’s possible that the granularity of the default example skill list we’ve given above isn’t to your liking. Here are some things to think about.

• The default skill list has 19 skills in it, and players rate their characters above the Mediocre (+0) default in 10 of them. If you change the number of skills, you may want to change how the ratings are allocated.
• Our default skills are focused on answering the question “what can you do?”—but your list doesn’t need to follow in line with that. You might want a list focused on “What do you believe?”, the question “How do you do things?” (as with approaches in Fate Accelerated), job-roles in a crew of grifters and thieves, and so on.
• Skill ratings in Fate are structured to support character niches. That’s why, in the default, players start with a “pyramid” shape. Make sure niche protection is possible in whatever new list you create.
• The best starting skill should come in around Great (+4). You can alter this up or down as you see fit, but make sure to keep an eye on what that means for the difficulty and opposing skill ratings your PCs will face.

Fred decides he wants to do a space-faring Fate game with a shorter skill list that’s focused on action-words. He settles on this 9-item skill list: Fight, Know, Move, Notice, Pilot, Sneak, Speak, Tinker, and Will. He also likes the idea of a “diamond” shape for skill ratings rather than a pyramid, so he has players rate their starting skills as follows: 1 at Great (+4), 2 at Good (+3), 3 at Fair (+2), 2 at Average (+1), and 1 at Mediocre (+0). His PCs will have a lot of overlap and core competencies due to the fat middle of his diamond, while still enjoying some niche protections at the top of the diamond’s “point.”

If you’re considering making your own skill list for your game and are looking for some ideas to kick-start your imagination, see page XX.