TEXT: ON THE WAll
  CaRrie HarRis
  A WORLD OF 
  ADVENTURE FOR
  A WORLD OF 
  ADVENTURE FOR
  
  This adventure was made awesome thanks to our Patreon patrons at patreon.com/evilhat—thanks folks!
  INSIDERS
  __skwrl__ 
  A.D. Hardman
  Alan Bartholet
  Andrew Pomfret
  Andrew Turbott
  Andy Arminio
  Arjun Comar
  Arknon 
  Arlo B Evans
  Ben Mullen
  brian allred
  C. J. Hunter
  C.K. Lee
  Charles Albrecht
  Chris Angelini
  Chris Flipse
  Chris Matosky
  Christopher 
  Gunning
  Christopher Hatty
  Christopher Vollick
  Clyde Clark
  D.C. Upton
  David Dorward
  David Fergman
  David Hayes
  Declan Feeney
  Demian Buckle
  Don Arnold
  Doug 
  Dusan Frolkovic
  Dustin Evermore
  Edward MacGregor
  Frank 
  Frédéri POCHARD
  Gavran 
  Giuseppe 
  D'Aristotile
  Graham Owens
  Graham Wills
  Griffin Mitchell
  Howard M 
  Thompson
  Ian Petiford
  J Quincy Sperber
  Jamie Smith
  Jan Heitger
  Jason Cotton
  Jean-François 
  Robillard
  Jeff Chaffee
  Jeff Craig
  Jeremy Tidwell
  Jim Nicholson
  Joakim Andersson
  Joe Trzos
  John Rogers
  John Rudd
  Jon-Pierre Gentil
  Joshua Forisha
  Joshua Lutz
  Justin Evans
  K T
  Katie Baker
  Katie Berger 
  Tremaine
  Keith Adams
  Keith Mantell
  Keith Stanley
  Ken Ditto
  Kyra 
  LilFluff 
  Linda Larsson
  MAINGUET Francois
  Marc Mundet
  Mark 
  Mark Fentz
  Mark Stevenson
  Martin Terrier
  Marty Chodorek
  Matt and Nykki 
  Boersma
  Matt Anderson
  Michael Bowman
  Michael Cambata
  Michael Dean 
  Hannah
  Michael Meriwn
  Michael Pedersen
  Mike Lavery
  Mitchell Evans
  Morgan Ellis
  Nick Reale
  Nicola Urbinati
  Nicolas Marjanovic
  Osye Pritchett
  Peter Gates
  Peter Schumacher
  Philippe Herve
  Polyhedral Crew
  Rachael Hixon
  Rhel 
  Rich Spainhour
  Richard Bellingham
  Rick 
  Rick Jakins
  Robert Hanz
  Roger Eberhart
  Ryan Singer
  Sarah Vakos
  Scott Vesely
  Sean M. Dunstan
  Sean O'Dell
  Selene O'Rourke
  Shawn White
  Stephen Rider
  Tara Zuber
  The Roach
  Tim N
  Timothy Carroll
  Tristan Levasseur
  Tristan Smith
  Troy Ray
  Tyler Hunt
  vargr1 
  Will Goring
  William J. White
  William Lee
  William McDuff
  Zach 
  Zach Hunt 
  ADVENTURERS
  A Person
  Adam Gutschenritter
  Adrian Arias-Palomo
  Adrian Chaluppka
  Aharon sharim
  AJ Real
  Al Billings
  Alan Phillips
  Alan Timothy Rogers
  Alan Twigg
  Alexander Gräfe
  Alexander R. Corbett
  Alexandre Malette
  Alexandros Tsourakis
  Alfred Garza
  Alistair 
  Allan Samuelson
  Alloyed 
  Amanda Kauer
  Amanda Valentine
  Andrew Betts
  Andrew Dacey
  Andrew DeLorenzo
  Andrew Grant
  Andrew Horn
  Angus 
  Anthony Damiani
  Arlene Medder
  Arthur Lace
  ArthurDent 
  Ask Charly Leetham
  B. Bredthauer
  Barac Wiley
  Bean Lucas
  Becca 
  Ben 
  Benj 
  Benjamin Cush
  Benjamin Patrick Huff
  Benjamin Wandio
  Benjamin Welke
  Bill 
  Bill Eastman
  Björn Steffen
  Bo Madsen
  Bob Hiestand
  Braden Walker
  Bradley Eng-Kohn
  Brandon Metcalf
  Brandon Wiley
  Brandt Bjornsen
  Brendan Conway
  Brent Ritch
  Brian 
  Brian Colin
  Brian Creswick
  Brian S. Holt
  Bruce 
  Bruce Laing
  Bruno Haack Vilar
  Bryan Brake
  Bryan Gillispie
  Bryan Wiltgen
  Bryce Perry
  C 
  Carl 
  Carl McLaughlin
  Carlos Martín
  Cedar Skye 
  (lunarsapphire13)
  Cerity 
  Charles Evans
  Chip Dunning
  Chloe Wandler
  Chris Caporaso
  Chris Little
  Chris Newton
  Chris Nolen
  Christian 
  Christoph Thill
  Christopher Allen
  Christopher Avery
  Christopher Mangum
  Christopher Mason
  Christopher Smith Adair
  Christopher Stone-Bush
  Christopher W. Dolunt
  Chuck Dee
  Clemens Schmitz
  Colin Matter
  Corey Johnston
  covert-banana 
  Craig Maloney
  Craig Mason
  Craig Wright
  Creative Play and 
  Podcast Network
  Curt Meyer
  Curtis Hay
  Dain 
  Damon Richard
  Daniel Byrne
  Daniel Chapman
  Daniel Ellingsen Lund
  Daniel Gallant
  Daniel Kraemer
  Daniel Ley
  Daniel M. Perez
  Daniel Maberry
  Daniel Markwig
  Daniel Taylor
  Darin Henley
  Dave Joria
  David 
  David Bellinger
  David Bowers
  David Bruns
  David E Ferrell
  David Goodwin
  David Maple
  David Millians
  David Olson
  David Silberstein
  David Starner
  Davide Orlandi
  Denis Ryan
  Dennis Groome
  Derek Hiemforth
  Didier Bretin
  Dillard 
  Dirk Methner
  Don Bisdorf
  Don Schlaich
  Doug Bolden
  Drew 
  Duane Cathey
  Duncan 
  Dylan Green
  Ebenezer Arvigenius
  Edward Sturges
  Ehedei 
  Eirch Mascariatu
  Elizabeth Creegan
  Elsa S. Henry
  Elsidar Amhransidhe
  Emmanuel 
  Emmanuel Genot
  Enrique Esturillo Cano
  eric 
  Eric Bontz
  Erich Lichnock
  Erik Ingersen
  Ernie Sawyer
  Fabrice Breau
  FelTK 
  Fide 
  Florian Greß
  Francisco Castillo
  Frank Beaver
  Frankie Mundens
  gamedave 
  Garrett 
  Garrett Jones
  Gary Anastasio
  Genevieve 
  Geoff 
  Geoffrey Walter
  George Harnish
  Gian Domenico Facchini
  Glenn Mochon
  Glenn Seiler
  Glynn Stewart
  Graham Meinert
  Greg Matyola
  Gregg Workman
  Gregory Fisher
  Gregory Hirsch
  Guillermo Calvo
  Gustavo Campanelli
  Haakon Thunestvedt
  Harry Mills
  Heather 
  Herman Duyker
  Hourousha Mokujin
  Ian Charlton
  Ian Toltz
  Impington 
  Imunar 
  Indi Latrani
  Irene Strauss
  Istrian Gray
  Jack Gulick
  Jackson Hsieh
  James Beal
  James Endicott
  James Hoag
  James Husum
  James O'Neill
  James Odom
  James Pacheco
  James Winfield
  Jamie Wheeler
  Janet Oblinger
  Jared Hunt
  Jarrett 
  Jason Bean
  Jason Best
  Jason Pasch
  Jason Penney
  Jayna Pavlin
  Jeff Mahood
  Jeff Pitrman
  Jeff Vincent
  Jeffrey Boman
  Jeffrey Collyer
  Jens 
  Jens Alfke
  Jeremiah McCoy
  Jeremy Glick
  Jeremy Hamaker
  Jes Jacobson
  JF Paradis
  Joanna 
  Joe Anderson
  Joe Mason
  Joel Short
  Johannes K. Rasmussen
  Johannes Oppermann
  John 
  John 
  John Beynon
  John Bogart
  John Fiala
  John Halsey
  John Helmuth
  John Lake
  John Lambert
  John Portley
  John S. Fetzik
  John Taber
  John Tobin
  John William McDonald
  Johnathan Wright
  Jon Smejkal
  Jonas Matser
  Jonathan 
  Jonathan Finke
  Jonathan Korman
  Jonathan Young
  Jose A.
  Joseph 
  Joseph Formoso
  Joseph Gamblin
  Josh Rose
  Josh Salyers
  Joshua Reubens
  Juan Francisco Gutierrez
  Julianna Backer
  Jussi Räsänen
  Justin 
  Justin 
  Kaarchin 
  Karl Thiebolt
  Katherine Malloy
  Keith Fannin
  Kent Snyen
  Kesh 
  Kevin L. Nault
  Kevin Lindgren
  Kevin McDermott
  Kevin Payne
  Kielo Maja
  Klaas Bock
  Kris Herzog
  Krista 
  Krzysztof Chyla
  Kyle 
  Larry Hollis
  Laura 
  Laurie Koudstaal
  Lester Ward
  Lore Graham
  Loren 
  Lowell Francis
  Luca Agosto
  M. Sawi
  m.h. 
  Madelyn Chappell
  Manfred 
  Marc Kevin Hall
  Marcel Lotz
  Marcel Wittram
  Marcus 
  Marinho Tobolla
  Mario Dongu
  Mark 
  Mark A. Schmidt
  Mark Diaz Truman
  Mark Harris
  Mark Widner
  Markus Haberstock
  Markus Sauerbrey
  Markus Wagner
  Martin Åhlenius
  Martin Deppe
  Marty Gentillon
  Matt Houck
  Matt Landis
  Matthew J. Hanson
  Matthew Price
  Max Kaehn
  Megan McKinney
  Methorphan 
  Mic 
  Michael 
  Michael 
  Michael 
  Michael Barrett
  Michael Bradford
  Michael Brewer
  Michael D. Blanchard
  Michael D. Ranalli Jr.
  Michael Friese
  Michael Hill
  Michael Hopcroft
  Michael McCully
  Michael Riabov
  Michael Thompson
  Micheal Elliott
  Mike DeZarn
  Mike Vermont
  Mirko Froehlich
  Mook 
  My Humble Assault
  Nat 
  Nat 
  Natalie Ash
  Nathan Barnes
  Nathan Fritz
  Nathan Reed
  Neil Macbeth
  Nichlas Dyhr 
  Hummelsberger
  Nicholas Hopkins
  Nicholas Pilon
  Nick 
  Nick Daly
  Nick pater
  Nicolas Decomble
  Nikkelitous 
  Nikos Lima
  Nos Doughty
  Olav Müller
  Olivier Nisole
  paolo castelli
  Paolo Jose Cruz
  Patrice Hédé
  Patrice Mermoud
  Patrick Chapman
  Patrick Ewing
  Patrick Fittkau
  Paul 
  Paul Arezina
  Paul Harmelink
  Paul Maanen
  Paul Olson
  Paul Rivers
  Pavel Zhukov
  Pete Curry
  Peter Bingham
  Peter Griffith
  Peter James Burczyk
  Peter Kahle
  Petri Leinonen
  Phil Groff
  Philippe Marichal
  Philippe Saner
  Phillip Webb
  Pint Wakefield
  Pocket Meeple
  Porter 
  R Roy
  Radosław Grzanka
  Ralf Wagner
  Randall Orndorff
  Randall Wright
  Randy M. Roberts
  Raun Sedlock
  Rebecca Harbison
  Rebecca Hubbard
  Red Dice Diaries
  Remy Sanchez
  Renzo Crispieri
  Rich Hewett
  Richard 
  Richard Greene
  Rick LaRue
  Riggah 
  Rishi 
  Rob Knop
  Rob Meyers
  Rob Voss
  Robb Neumann
  Robert Bersch
  Robert Huss
  Robert Rees
  Robert Rydlo
  Robert Slaughter
  Robinson Taylor
  Rodrigo 
  Roger Carbol
  Ron Müller
  Roy 
  Roy Wilson Jr.
  Ruben Smith-Zempel
  Ryan C. Christiansen
  Ryan Junk
  Samuel Hart
  Sarah Mayfield
  Sarah Williams
  Schubacca 
  Scott Acker
  Scott Dexter
  Scott Greenleaf
  Scott Millward
  Scott Puckett
  Scott Thede
  Sean Smith
  Sean Walsh
  Sean West Money
  Seth Clayton
  Seth Halbeisen
  Seth Hartley
  Shadowmyre Kalyn
  Shai Laric
  Shervyn von Hoerl
  Shoshana Kessock
  Simon Brunning
  Simon Streubel
  Simon White
  Sion Rodriguez y 
  Gibson
  Sławomir Wrzesień
  Sophie Lagace
  Stefan Feltmann
  Stefano Monachesi
  Stephan 
  Stephanie Bryant 
  (Mortaine)
  Stephen Figgins
  Stephen Fleetwood
  Stephen Waugh
  Steve Discont
  Steve Kunec
  Steve Radabaugh
  Steven Code
  Steven D Warble
  Steven desJardins
  Steven K. Watkins
  Steven Markley
  Stu Adams
  Stuart Dollar
  Sune Donath
  surtr 
  Svend Andersen
  Teppo Pennanen
  Teresa O
  Terry 
  Tevel Drinkwater
  Thomas 
  Thomas 
  Thomas Balls-Thies
  Thomas Elmeblom
  Thomas Maund
  Thomas Off
  Tim Davis
  Tim Popelier
  Timothy Miller
  Todd Estabrook
  Todd Willey
  Tom Lommel
  Tony Ewing
  Torolf de Merriba
  Travis Stodter
  Trevor Crosse
  Tsht 
  Tyler Duckworth
  Tyson Monagle
  Ulises Gomez
  Urs Blumentritt
  Veronica Hamilton
  Victor Allen
  Victor Serrano
  Ville Lavonius
  Viveka Nylund
  Vladimir Filipović
  Volker Mantel
  waelcyrge 
  Wayne Coburn
  Wayne Peacock
  Welsh History Podcast
  Wes Fournier
  William Hutton
  William Johnson
  Wulf 
  Yara Ohrt
  Z. Daniel Esgate
  Zachary Deane
  Zeb Walker
  Zeph Wibby
  
  ON THE WALL
  A WORLD OF 
  ADVENTURE FOR
  WRITING & ADVENTURE DESIGN
  CARRIE HARRIS
  DEVELOPMENT
  PAUL STEFKO
  EDITING
  JOSHUA YEARSLEY
  PROJECT MANAGEMENT
  SEAN NITTNER
  ART DIRECTION
  CARRIE HARRIS
  LAYOUT
  FRED HICKS
  INTERIOR & COVER  
  ARTWORK
  STIPE KALAJŽIĆ
  MARKETING
  CARRIE HARRIS
  BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
  CHRIS HANRAHAN
  
  An Evil Hat Productions Publication
  www.evilhat.com • feedback@evilhat.com
  @EvilHatOfficial on Twitter
  facebook.com/EvilHatProductions 
  On the Wall
  Copyright ©2017 Evil Hat Productions, LLC and Carrie Harris. 
  All rights reserved. Game based on the graphic novel ON THE 
  WALL, text ©Carrie Harris, illustrations ©Stipe Kalajžić, 
  published by One Peace Books. Used with permission.
   
  First published in 2017 by Evil Hat Productions, LLC.
  10125 Colesville Rd #318, Silver Spring, MD 20901.
  Evil Hat Productions and the Evil Hat and Fate logos are trademarks  
  owned by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. 
  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, 
  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, 
  photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the  
  prior express permission of the publisher.  
  That said, if you’re doing it for personal use, knock yourself out.  
  That’s not only allowed, we encourage you to do it. 
  For those working at a copy shop and not at all sure if this means 
  the person standing at your counter can make copies of this thing, they can. 
  This is “express permission.” Carry on. 
  This is a game where people make up stories about wonderful, terrible, 
  impossible, glorious things. All the characters and events portrayed in this work 
  are fictional. Any resemblance to real people, kids who can sense your emotions 
  by licking you, mean teachers with psychic powers, fenced-in subdivisions with 
  armed guards, cape-wearing teens in tracking bracelets, or heroes and villains 
  in ridiculous spandex costumes is purely coincidental, but kinda hilarious.
  
  CONTENTS
  Introduction ...................................................................................... 3
  The World of On the Wall ...............................................................4
  More About Superpowers ........................................................................6
  Schools for the Supernaturally Skilled .................................................7
  Daily Life........................................................................................................ 12
  Making Your Characters ..................................................................14
  Cliques ...........................................................................................................14
  High Concept...............................................................................................16
  Other Character Aspects ........................................................................ 17
  Stunts and Powers .....................................................................................18
  Sample Character Generation .............................................................. 22
  System Mechanics and Story Tools ..............................................24
  A Clique-Related Q&A ............................................................................24
  Predictable Approaches .........................................................................28
  Story Development ..................................................................................30
  Using Powers ..............................................................................................33
  Bringing the Outside World In .............................................................34
  Antagonists ................................................................................................. 35
  Sample Characters ......................................................................... 37
  
  Mira Mason 
  Ethics of Supernatural Abilities 
  2nd Period
  In class today, we talked about whether we’d rather be 
  movie superheroes or real life ones. I think that question 
  is stupid. Anybody with half a brain in their head would 
  rather be a movie superhero. The bad guys in those movies 
  are so lame. They don’t really want to hurt people; they just 
  want to look cool and make money. If you’re serious about 
  wanting to do damage, you don’t turn an island volcano into 
  a laser. Seriously, people. That’s dumb.
  Dealing with that kind of thing would be easy compared to 
  the life of a teenage supe like me. Those dry-hand-washing 
  morons aren’t half as scary as your average high school. 
  Maybe that comes off as an exaggeration, but look at the 
  realities—drug addiction, internet bullying, abusive rela-
  tionships, absentee parents, the constant pressure to 
  succeed. Given the choice, I’d take the megalomaniac any 
  day. Add in a world full of normal, unpowered folks who are 
  scared witless by us mutants, and it’s a pretty scary place 
  to grow up.
  So if you gave me a choice, I’d be a superhero in the movies. 
  But I’d rather just be normal, if we’re wishing for things. If I 
  could give up my supernatural abilities, I would in a heart-
  beat. After all, what use are they?
  We’re not wishing for anything. 
  Wishes are for fairytales, Miss Mason.
  2
  
  INTRODUCTION
  On the Wall is a game about super-powered teenagers living in a segregated, dysto-
  pian society where supernatural abilities are feared and tracked by the government. 
  Think the X-Men meets a dark teen drama. This isn’t a world full of colorful span-
  dex suits and supervillains with grandiose schemes involving volcanoes. Instead, 
  these teens deal with real-world problems like teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and 
  cheating…as well as the problems caused by having a superpower in a world full 
  of people who are afraid of what they cannot explain. Like superpowers.
  In order to play this game, you’ll need a copy of Fate Accelerated Edition, which 
  you can obtain from DriveThruRPG, the Evil Hat store (www.evilhat.com), or 
  other places that carry games. Fate Accelerated contains all the basic rules you’ll 
  need to play the game. In this book, you’ll find rules specific to superpowers and 
  the high school world of On the Wall.
  This game is based on the graphic novel of the same name, but you don’t have 
  to read the book in order to play the game. Although certainly, the graphic novel 
  could provide inspiration and story ideas if you’re looking for a ready-made plot.
  Lastly, this book is rated PG-13. This game is about some of the very real 
  problems facing high schoolers today, including drug abuse, sexual assault, and 
  a variety of other difficult moral dilemmas. The book makes passing reference 
  to these issues, so please use discretion when recommending it to young readers. 
  However, it’s very easy to run a PG version of the game by focusing on more 
  black-and-white issues.
  3
  ON THE WALL
  
  THE WORLD OF ON THE WALL
  On the Wall is set in an alternate America. In the 1950s, people around the world 
  began to show signs of strange abilities. At first, Americans disavowed the stories 
  as a bunch of poppycock. Newspapers reported on a man in Singapore who could 
  breathe underwater, but the American people scoffed at what they considered a 
  ridiculous hoax. But the stories grew and grew until scientists confirmed that Grace 
  Kilroy, a ninth grader from Ohio, could in fact levitate. People panicked, throw-
  ing around theories about alien invaders who could take human form. “Normal” 
  humans united against people they suspected to be the supposed aliens, and the 
  situation escalated to the point of no return. On March 14, 1958, a group of 
  terrified farmers in Kentucky lynched Theodore Muldoon. He could reportedly 
  talk to animals, and the community had recently lost a toddler to a freak bear 
  attack. The townspeople blamed Muldoon and took matters into their own hands.
  Clearly, something had to be done. The government established a task force to 
  look into the strange phenomenon. They established a testing center in Jefferson 
  City, Missouri, that was colloquially known as the Alien Farm. Its purpose: 
  determining whether these creatures were in fact extraterrestrial. At first, the 
  organization was nothing more than a witch hunt. American citizens suspected of 
  alien origin were brought in on the basis of the shoddiest excuses—often against 
  their will—and subjected to a barrage of testing, blood work, and interrogation.
  This situation lasted into the early ’60s, when a group of scientists at the Jefferson 
  City testing center made the shocking announcement that the powered individuals 
  they’d been testing weren’t aliens at all. Instead, they were humans with the first 
  discovered genetic mutations.
  That changed things. The government replaced the Alien Farm with a new 
  organization called the Bureau for the Regulation of Supernatural Powers and 
  tried to figure out what to do with the subset of American citizens that scared the 
  crap out of everybody else. It was a difficult dilemma, one faced by nations all 
  around the world as the mutations became increasingly common. The US govern-
  ment could have gone with widespread executions, like in some of the Central 
  American nations, or mass incarceration and testing like in the Soviet Union. Or 
  they could have followed the lead of the British prime minister, who invited a 
  group of powered chaps for a nice spot of tea and a chat over the whole hullabaloo.
  But the Bureau team had been hard at work on a solution to this problem, and 
  they produced it with fanfare. Their scientists had discovered that, regardless of 
  what ability a person had, their body emitted a specific bioelectric pulse when 
  they used their powers. They’d developed a tracking tattoo which, when placed 
  on the skin of a powered individual, would detect that pulse. This allowed the 
  government to track the use of supernatural abilities and, when necessary, punish 
  anyone who misused them.
  4
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  This new development helped mitigate people’s fear of unknowingly coming 
  into contact with someone who could emit fog from their pores, even though 
  fog isn’t particularly harmful. Just knowing who the supes were seemed to make 
  people feel safer. However, the system only worked if the government managed 
  to identify people with powers before they could use them to steal money from 
  banks or commit other heinous crimes like messing up the morning commute 
  with a giant fog emission, so maybe those people who were afraid of the person 
  with fog pores had a point. After some research into this, the Bureau instituted a 
  testing system. Their research had demonstrated that most supernatural abilities 
  manifested during puberty, and it was found that exposing teens to the bioelectric 
  pulse would forcibly activate their powers, even if they didn’t know they had any. 
  A system was enacted by which all students were tested at age 13 and then again 
  at 15. All powered individuals were sent to special schools, where they’d be taught 
  to control their abilities before they were allowed to graduate.
  It was the beginning of a new era of segregation. Many non-powered individu-
  als, now commonly referred to as normals, refused all contact with powered ones, 
  now called supes. A few keen property developers seized the opportunity and 
  created the first private subdivisions for normals only, complete with fences and 
  private security forces. Other neighborhoods quickly followed suit, and by the 
  1980s most Americans lived behind fences. Subdivision chains sprung up, like 
  Uncle Bob’s Safety Zone: A Normals Only Neighborhood, Diversity Acres (which 
  welcomes all residents regardless of ability), and Capetown, USA (in which every 
  household has at least one powered resident).
  Although supes didn’t have a particularly high rate of criminal behavior thanks 
  to the tracking tattoos, supes who broke the law could pose a significant problem 
  depending on their abilities. It was easy for authorities of any stripe to apprehend 
  someone who could sense people’s emotions by licking them, but things got much 
  more complicated when trying to capture and retain Guy Ranger, whose body 
  was completely double-jointed and hyperflexible. After the Ranger manhunt, 
  which lasted eight months and claimed the lives of three responding officers and 
  an innocent bystander, the government expanded the Bureau’s mission, making 
  it the home of the supe police.
  Since the mid ’90s, all investigations involving supernatural abilities have been 
  handled by the supe police. The Bureau detectives are all supes, with abilities that 
  help them identify and apprehend their suspects. Some people with anti-supe 
  leanings distrust the Bureau as a result, running on the assumption that the supe 
  police are aiding and abetting criminal behavior rather than working to eliminate 
  it. But the Bureau’s employees work under close supervision, and no proof has 
  ever surfaced to support these allegations.
  It’s a difficult world to live in, especially as a supe. Even more so as a teenage one.
  5
  ON THE WALL
  
  More About Superpowers
  Approximately 20% of the population has a supernatural ability, and mutations 
  can strike anyone regardless of gender, race, or location. Most supes manifest their 
  abilities during puberty, but there are rumors about the rare supe who manages 
  to make it through their teenage years with an undiscovered mutation and goes 
  off the deep end when said ability finally manifests. The government roundly 
  denies that this has ever happened, but everyone has heard the stories about the 
  middle-aged secretary who suddenly grew scales and claws and took out her creepy 
  ambulance-chaser boss, or some variation thereof.
  Numerous attempts have been made to determine what causes mutations to 
  occur, but with no success to date. Attempts to cause the mutations or to sup-
  press them have so far been unsuccessful. Familial genetic testing has proven 
  that these mutations aren’t inherited. Instead, they appear to be spontaneous, 
  with no exterior stimulus yet identified. As a result, there is no way to anticipate 
  whether a child will eventually manifest abilities—short of fully mapping their 
  DNA—since new mutations are being discovered all the time. This can and has 
  caused problems when the cherished eldest son of a staunch anti-supe family 
  ends up growing quills at age 13. In situations like these, the children are often 
  sent to supe boarding schools, breaking off all contact with the family, although 
  on occasion the entire family changes their tune and becomes more accepting 
  of supes in general.
  This can mean that a teenager with a newly discovered ability might be the only 
  one in their family to have one. They may be resented or misunderstood by family 
  members, or they may be fully accepted. The presence of other supes in the family 
  doesn’t always mean happy sailing either. Mutations manifest themselves randomly, 
  so children almost always have different abilities than their parents. For example, 
  a parent may have the ability to breathe underwater, while their child has the 
  ability to control probability, as in the case of Nicole “Nyx” Vega (page 38). As 
  one might imagine, probability control has much more widespread ramifications 
  than fish breath, so the two don’t really have much in common beyond being 
  empowered. This disconnect isn’t a problem for the Vegas, but other families don’t 
  handle it as well as they do.
  WHAT ABOUT MULTIPLE ABILITIES?
  So far, we’ve only discussed supes with one ability, but if supernatural 
  abilities are caused by mutations, then couldn’t someone have more than 
  one? While this is possible, most supes are limited to one ability because of 
  simple statistics. And, for some reason that is not fully understood, supes 
  with multiple abilities are more likely to exhibit problems like learning dis-
  abilities, mental illnesses, and birth defects. They’re also more likely to die 
  at puberty, when their abilities manifest. Some researchers hypothesize 
  that the metabolic load needed to fuel these abilities puts so much stress 
  on the body that it affects growth and development. Others say that the 
  bioelectric pulse that accompanies using these abilities may stress the body. 
  Either one of these things may be true, but clearly there are mechanisms 
  at work that need to be investigated further.
  6
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Schools for the Supernaturally Skilled
  As soon as their abilities are identified, supe kids are pulled out of regular schools 
  and enrolled in government-run Schools for the Supernaturally Skilled. Attendance 
  and graduation from these schools is mandatory, and dropping out isn’t permitted. 
  Regardless of their ability, all supe students must graduate from school. Anyone 
  who fails to pass is braceleted. Braceleted supes are fitted with a permanent metal 
  cuff that reacts to the bioelectric pulse emitted when powers are used, shocking 
  them into unconsciousness every time they try to use their abilities. Braceleted 
  supes are given a wide berth and mistrusted by most people, including other supes.
  Overall, these schools are fairly similar to the average high school in terms of the 
  curriculum. Students study language arts, math, and science just like the normals 
  do. But they’re also required to take classes like Ethics of Supernatural Abilities, 
  in which they discuss the rights and responsibilities involved with being a supe as 
  well as the rules governing supernatural powers around the world. International 
  travel is extra complicated when you have tentacles.
  Students are also required to pass a customized yearly Control of Supernatural 
  Abilities class, which requires each student to dig into their particular ability, 
  learning more about how it works, networking with other supes who have simi-
  lar powers whenever possible, and learning to exercise complete control. The “I 
  couldn’t help it” excuse doesn’t work when you’ve just coughed stinging darts 
  into some innocent fellow’s face. Control classes are often conducted one-on-one, 
  unless two students in the same school happen to have the same ability. But the 
  abilities themselves are so random that this doesn’t often happen, and students 
  are instead assigned to a mentor who designs a personalized program of study. 
  Abilities that are considered less dangerous tend to have a less rigorous system of 
  study than those that are not. So the underwater breather will have a much easier 
  time in Control class than the probability manipulator.
  As one might expect, the student body is full of many of the same cliques that 
  normal high schools have. At your average School for the Supernaturally Skilled, 
  you’ll find jocks, nerds, popular kids, mean girls…all the usual tropes, but with 
  one notable addition: the super supes. The super supes, or SS, are really into 
  the whole supernatural ability thing. They make a big show of wearing capes 
  and spandex, and many of them look down on normals as inferior, echoing the 
  hegemonic views of another organization that used the same initials. Members 
  of the SS often have more physical abilities or abilities that can be used aggres-
  sively. They’re more likely to grow up to work in supernatural rights advocacy or 
  for other pro-supe organizations.
  Student activities and competitions are completely segregated, meaning that 
  students only compete against other supe schools. The rationale is that supernatu-
  ral abilities might give supe students an edge over normals, but in reality a very 
  small percentage of supe students have skills that would apply to a given activity. 
  7
  ON THE WALL
  
  Control Exams
  The Control exam is a big part of a supe’s education, and each one is tailored to 
  the student. In the first few years after a student’s powers have manifested, the 
  exams simply cover being able to start and stop powers on command. However, 
  as the student gets older, the exams are developed to exploit their weaknesses and 
  put them under stress. A student who is easily embarrassed might be put in a 
  potentially humiliating position. A student who is afraid of failure will be given 
  an impossible task. The idea is that it’s easy to control abilities when things are 
  going well, but students must be able to do so under extreme stress in order to 
  function out in the world safely. This theory is sound, but it also leads to some 
  really strange Control exams—one exam, which might be familiar if you’ve read 
  the graphic novel, included an observation room, a mirror suspended on concrete 
  blocks, and a baby pool printed with happy octopi and starfish. 
  SAMPLE SCHOOL:  
  NORTHWEST REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL 
  FOR THE SUPERNATURALLY SKILLED
  NRHSSS, known simply as Northwest, is located in the suburbs of Columbus, 
  Ohio. The neighborhood is upper middle class, and certainly the colonial-
  style building and rolling campus grounds suggest money behind the 
  school. If that doesn’t, the security precautions definitely do. The entire 
  school is surrounded by an electrified chain-link fence topped with con-
  certina wire. During the day, the grounds are monitored by guards in full 
  riot gear armed with automatic rifles, and all visitors must check in and 
  out with them at the gate. At night, the grounds are guarded by vicious 
  attack dogs. While these precautions may seem extreme, about ten years 
  ago a group of anti-supe demonstrators got onto the grounds of a supe 
  school and planted a homemade bomb in the gym rafters. Since that 
  tragic event, security at supe schools has been extra tight.
  The principal’s name is George Hotchniss, although most of the stu-
  dents call him Principal Rabbit, and he’ll actually answer to it. Hotchniss 
  is spineless, and we’re not talking superpowers here. (Actually, he’s a very 
  weak telekinetic. Once, he managed to move a pencil two inches to the 
  right.) He’s the kind of guy who will cave to the slightest pressure. The 
  real power in the school is Esmerelda Elrich. Ms. Elrich—commonly known 
  to the students as El Witch…or worse—is a former Bureau employee who 
  now supervises all Control classes at Northwest. Although there are rumors 
  that her government ties aren’t exactly severed, El Witch takes her teach-
  ing duties seriously. So seriously that her Control classes are infamous 
  for their difficulty. She seems to have an uncanny knack for getting into 
  her students’ heads, but no one knows for sure if it’s supernatural or not.
  Northwest is well known for its track program, musical groups, and 
  spectacular art offerings.
  8
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  9
  
  Government Supervision of Supes
  The Bureau for the Regulation of Supernatural Powers still oversees all supernatural 
  activity in the United States. To the teens of On the Wall, Bureau detectives are 
  something of a boogeyman, and kids are encouraged to behave and do well in 
  school or the Bureau will come for them. Any disappearances or runaways are 
  automatically attributed to the Bureau, although no one ever really has proof that 
  this is the case. Bureau agents are like the Men in Black, with numerous rumors 
  and few facts surrounding them, at least among most teenagers. Perhaps some 
  have real experience with these agents and are simply unwilling to talk about it 
  in public lest people assume that they’re dangerous.
  All rumors aside, the Bureau is currently run by a moderate non-supe by the 
  name of Kiera Otatungo. Director Otatungo is a consummate politician and has 
  done a fairly good job of playing both sides of the fence. She hasn’t angered anyone, 
  but she hasn’t really achieved anything either. However, Director Otatungo is 
  reaching retirement age, and the inevitable appointment of a new director will 
  likely issue in an era of change for the Bureau.
  Currently, most of the Bureau leadership are normals, although there are a few 
  regional heads with supernatural abilities. All of the field operatives and detectives 
  are supes, as noted above. However, the history of the Bureau—along with its 
  reputation—means that sometimes the organization struggles to find supes to fill 
  open positions. As a result, a large majority of the current field corps is quite young 
  and untested. The organization as a whole seems poised on the cusp of change.
  Along with its detective and research arms, the Bureau maintains all supe-related 
  registries and tracking data. All tracking tattoos upload their information to the 
  Bureau via local satellite offices. When crimes do occur, Bureau statisticians can 
  easily pull a list of suspects based on the powers involved and quickly access their 
  tracking data to determine who used their powers at the time the crime occurred. 
  This often results in quick apprehension of the supe involved, who is sent to the 
  Jefferson City central office and never seen again.
  Given the Bureau’s ability to identify supe criminals, the crime rate among the 
  supernaturally skilled—or, at least, crimes committed with the use of powers—is 
  relatively low. Most supes who do commit crimes have the common sense not 
  to use their powers in the course of the illegal activity. But of course, there are 
  exceptions to the rule in the case of crimes of passion or insanity.
  10
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Laws Governing the Use of Powers
  The use of supernatural abilities is highly restricted in the world of On the Wall. 
  Supes cannot use their powers for financial gain beyond the limits of gainful 
  employment, so a supe who can tunnel through rock with their hands could 
  legally use their ability as a construction worker and get paid for it, but they 
  couldn’t use that ability to break into a bank. It’s also illegal to use abilities to 
  harm others physically, mentally, or financially. That rock tunneler couldn’t get 
  back at her worst enemy by tunneling under his house and causing it to collapse, 
  not without earning a visit from the Bureau.
  Some have attempted to sue supes for libelous use of powers, such as when a 
  teenage probability controller jinxed the pants of her principal, making them fall 
  down in the middle of a state board of education meeting, but those suits have 
  found limited success.
  These laws can pose particular danger to teenagers who haven’t yet learned to 
  control their abilities. Those with dangerous or wildly uncontrolled powers are 
  often sent to boarding schools, where they can’t hurt anyone except other supes. 
  This seems like an adequate solution to some.  Entering or leaving the grounds 
  of those schools requires special permission. Needless to say, those students don’t 
  compete with the other supe schools in intramural sports; they’re too busy trying 
  to learn how to avoid getting detained by the government for powers run wild.
  HOW MUCH DO ALL THESE POLITICS 
  AFFECT TEENAGERS?
  In this game, you play teenage supes. With that in mind, is all the 
  political background really important? After all, these teens have 
  grown up in an America where segregation is not only the status 
  quo but in some cases preferable to the alternatives around the 
  world. They don’t sit around wishing things were different, because 
  they’ve never known different. Their parents don’t sit around wish-
  ing for the good old days either, because supes and normals have 
  never mingled.
  So, while you could use this game to tell a story about teenag-
  ers rebelling against The Man, it’s more likely that the teens of On 
  the Wall are trying to lead their lives and deal with their problems 
  against the backdrop of a society on the brink of fracture. Simple 
  actions like going to the mall are potential brushes with danger. 
  Someone’s abilities could misfire, drawing the attention of store 
  security. They could run into anti-supe picketers. Or they could 
  see Bureau agents at work, taking one of their classmates into 
  custody for unknown reasons. Regardless of their attempts to lead 
  a normal life, all this politics will affect their actions in subtle or 
  even invisible ways.
  11
  ON THE WALL
  
  Daily Life
  While the teens of On the Wall enjoy a lot of the same activities we do, from sports 
  to movies to going out for ice cream, their world feels much smaller. Everything is 
  walled off or fenced in and patrolled by private security forces armed with lethal 
  weapons. Depending on the location, those guards may be there to protect supes 
  from hate crimes, or to protect normals from becoming the victim of a supernatu-
  ral predator. Each neighborhood is covered in signs that advertise their policies, 
  whether they be pro- or anti-supe. The most militant of neighborhoods—in either 
  direction—are policed by drones and continually monitored by security cameras.
  Public service buildings such as government offices, police stations, and fire 
  stations are open to all. However, many neighborhoods maintain their own public 
  services and shopping complexes to ensure that their residents don’t have to step 
  outside the walls. This is a society that lives in fear, although the actual crime rate 
  doesn’t appear to justify the level of paranoia and precaution exercised by many.
  Pro- and Anti-Supe Organizations
  As one might imagine, this world is full of political organizations and militant 
  groups on both sides of the proverbial wall. The Coalition for American Safety 
  advocates for internment camps for all supes. The Supernatural Superiority 
  Society—or the SSS, not to be confused with the SS, although the two groups 
  do sometimes cross-pollinate—believes that supes are a superior race and should 
  revolt against the normals. 
  Luckily, these extremist groups remain fairly small, while most people take a 
  more moderate approach. They might belong to the ASLU (American Supernatural 
  Liberties Union), who advocate for a wall-less society where all citizens are free to go 
  where they please. Or they might belong to the Society for Open Communication, 
  which advocates for open records on supes and their abilities.
  Many of these organizations are open to teens, although it’s perhaps more likely 
  that one of their older relatives or acquaintances might belong to one of them. 
  Particularly civic-minded teens, or those looking to pad their college applications, 
  might join one of these organizations as well. 
  12
  
  Superheroes in the Media
  In a world full of supes, of course superheroes are common in movies, music, and 
  television. Although there are some forms of media that are designed to appeal 
  to the anti-supe crowd, full of villainous supes who are put to rest by brave and 
  stalwart normals, superhero stories still sell well to more accepting folk, and music 
  made by supes with vocal mutations has ruled the charts for decades. Sometimes, 
  the use of supes makes special effects unnecessary, such as in the long-running 
  nighttime drama, Hearts of Atlantis: the two stars can both breathe underwater, 
  and one of them actually has functioning gills.
  The most famous supes are Alterna Girl and The Shade. Alterna Girl has a 
  popular scripted reality show in which she travels around the world to fight crime 
  using her very uncommon ability, super strength. Although the network claims 
  that it’s all real, it’s difficult to imagine that your average criminal wouldn’t see 
  Alterna Girl coming from a mile away, what with her neon catsuit and gigantic 
  mohawk, not to mention her short fuse and tendency to pick fights for very little 
  reason with about half of the people she meets. Her handlers definitely have their 
  hands full, and about half of the episodes deal more with the aftermath of AG’s 
  over-the-top behavior than they do with her fighting crime. That hasn’t stopped 
  the merch deals from pouring in, though. From action figures to Alterna Girl 
  underwear, you can get just about anything with her face plastered on it.
  The Shade is slightly more…shady, if you will. He used to be a movie star of 
  the brooding Batman variety, and all fourteen of his films were smash hits. But 
  unexpectedly, in the middle of shooting the fifteenth—The Last Fight of the 
  Shade—he quit Hollywood altogether and became a hermit, locking himself in 
  his mansion and entirely refusing to come out. No one except for his servants have 
  seen him since, and no one quite knows what caused this sudden, strange behavior.
  ALTERNATE REALITIES
  In the On the Wall graphic novel, the character Mira Mason discovers 
  that she has the ability to travel into the Mirrorrealm, an alternate 
  dimension that is accessed through mirrors. Alternate realities like the 
  Mirrorrealm carry their own sets of physical rules and characteristics. 
  For example, when supernatural powers other than mirrorwalking are 
  used in the Mirrorrealm, the bioelectric pulse can shatter the mirrors 
  and open a hole into the void beyond. The Mirrorrealm isn’t the only 
  other dimension, either. Teleporters and shadow-walkers can also pass 
  through other dimensions, each with its own rules and aspects to be 
  developed at the discretion of the player and GM.
  13
  ON THE WALL
  
  MAKING YOUR CHARACTERS
  In this game, all of the player characters are supes who attend a specific School 
  for the Supernaturally Skilled. They might be as young as 12 or as old as 18, and 
  their abilities might be new to them or feel like old hat. Depending on when they 
  changed and their previous attitudes toward supes, they might find themselves 
  feeling a bit like a fish out of water, excited at their transformation, or angry at 
  their misfortune. In short, it’s a fairly standard teenage experience—full of angst 
  and worries about belonging—except for the quills, tentacles, and strange mind 
  abilities.
  In this chapter, you’ll learn about how to create a character, develop your 
  character’s power, and build the relationships that will bind all of the player 
  characters together. You’ll make characters in On the Wall much like you do in 
  Fate Accelerated Edition, so you’ll need to read “How Do I Make the Character?” 
  (page 8) in that book in order for this chapter to make sense.
  The player characters in On the Wall are members of the same clique. As a result, 
  we recommend that you start with creating your clique as a group and then move 
  on to defining your individual characters.
  Cliques
  In a typical high school, a person’s reputation and social standing are highly 
  influenced by the people they hang out with. These cliques come with a certain 
  reputation. For example, you might describe a jock as someone who is physically 
  fit, loyal to their team, and highly competitive. But there are different types of 
  jocks. A group of meathead jocks would probably be quite different from a group 
  of silver-spoon jocks, who would be different from some sporty girl jocks. These 
  groups not only define who a student’s closest friends are, but also help determine 
  how other people see them.
  Before making your characters, your group must decide what clique your char-
  acters belong to. What do they have in common? They could all belong to the 
  same club or organization. Perhaps they’ve been friends since Mrs. Warburton’s 
  first-grade class. Maybe they’re all in detention together, or they work at the same 
  afterschool job. Maybe they’re friends by convenience who live on the same street. 
  People can be linked by a wide variety of things, and now it’s time to figure out 
  what brought your group together.
  Once you have a general idea of what links your characters, define that thing 
  with a short aspect that will represent your clique. It could be a simple description 
  like “friends from Mrs. Warburton’s first-grade class,” or it could be the nickname 
  that your characters use to refer to their group, like “The Breakfast Club.” 
  Each player then contributes one clique aspect that helps to define how other 
  people see your group, goals shared by the group’s members, or characteristics 
  that describe the group as a whole.
  14
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  The players have decided to build their clique based on characters 
  from The Breakfast Club. These characters are very different from 
  each other, so the players must focus on clique aspects that hold them 
  together. One player could focus on the group’s goal and say, “We want 
  vengeance on the assistant principal,” making the aspect Revenge 
  on BendeR! The second player might tackle the group dynamics with 
  “We’re pretty rebellious. When we’re together, we tend to drive each 
  other to break the rules.” In aspect form, that could be Competitive 
  ReBellion. The third player might say, “Something about this group 
  brings people’s walls down. We say things here that we wouldn’t say 
  elsewhere,” which could be recorded as BRutal Honesty, and so on. 
  Because each player contributes one aspect, larger groups will tend to have 
  bigger and more complex reputations and group dynamics.
  Note that membership in the clique doesn’t mean all of the characters need 
  to be the same. Some cliques are built on a shared interest, like Meathead Jocks, 
  while others are built on an experience shared by wildly different people, like 
  The Breakfast Club. The clique doesn’t determine who your character is, but who 
  the group is when they’re together and how they relate to each other. It’s possible 
  for a Meathead Jock to choose to be kind to his nerdy next-door neighbor, even 
  though you might expect otherwise from a Meathead Jock. 
  However, if the Meathead Jock starts hanging out with the nerdy next-door 
  neighbor, playing RPGs every night, eventually the other Meatheads might quit 
  talking to him, so he’ll have to change cliques. Cliques are fluid things—members 
  may come and go, or the reputation of the group might change. The friends from 
  Mrs. Warburton’s first-grade class might be teacher’s pets all through grade school 
  and junior high, but after a wild summer at camp before ninth grade, they could 
  end up starting high school as boy-crazy troublemakers. Or in-group problems 
  could arise if some of the members become boy-crazy while others become more 
  into political activism.
  With that in mind, if your group decides to play a longer campaign, then at 
  the end of each story arc, you’ll want to evaluate the clique’s aspects and decide 
  if any of them need to be changed. Teenagers tend to change pretty quickly, and 
  their relationships do the same, so there is no limit on the number of clique 
  aspects that can be changed. Adjust as many or as few as you like, so long as the 
  group reaches consensus.
  Clique aspects can be invoked and compelled for any member of the group, 
  just like regular aspects. Reputation is everything in high school. Teachers might 
  assume that the Meathead Jock was bullying the Science Nerd in the hallway, 
  simply because the Meathead Jock hangs around with a group of people who 
  tend to do that kind of thing. A group of Perfect Princesses might be able to get 
  away with cheating on the Supe Ethics final simply because most people won’t 
  believe that they’d do that kind of thing. Similarly, other Meatheads might compel 
  a fellow Meathead to pick on the Science Nerd.
  15
  ON THE WALL
  
  High Concept
  Once you’ve settled on a clique, it’s time to move on to the clique’s individual 
  members—your characters. The starting point for your character is their high 
  concept, a short phrase that summarizes who your character is. Think about the 
  characters from The Breakfast Club or any other teen ensemble story. There’s the 
  Princess, the Athlete, the Criminal, the Brain, and the Basket Case. Those phrases 
  give you an instant image of what kind of person you’re dealing with. However, they 
  tend to lead toward clear stereotypes that make characters feel a bit cookie-cutter. 
  When we say the word “princess,” it comes with a set of assumptions about the 
  character. We might assume that she’s an overachiever, a bit stuck up, or spoiled.
  To create a well-rounded character, add an adjective to the stereotype. So the 
  Princess might become a Brainy Princess, a Neurotic Princess, or a Rebellious 
  Princess. Unexpected adjectives create more realistic, unique, and multifaceted 
  characters, so it’s worth taking the time to come up with good ones.
  Here are some example concepts, taken from the pages of the graphic novel:
  • Mira Mason: Reluctant Heroine
  • Nicole “Nyx” Vega: Perky Rebel
  • Angela Laine: Tragic Perfectionist
  • Zach Schroeder: Idiotic King of the School
  • Bubbles McMasters: Desperate Mean Girl
  The trouble aspect is the same as in Fate Accelerated—it’s a thing that always 
  gets you into trouble or makes your life complicated. Your trouble may be related 
  to being a supe, or it may be a personal characteristic or relationship that tends 
  to complicate your life.
  16
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Other Character Aspects
  Beyond their high concept and trouble, each character gets other three aspects. 
  The first aspect is related to the character’s power and helps to define their attitude 
  toward being a supe. Perhaps she wants to be a normal and resents the fact that 
  she has a mutation. Perhaps she wishes she had a cooler power and assumes it 
  would make her life easier. Perhaps she resents her parents, who are normal, or 
  her parents resent her. Perhaps her first experience with manifesting her ability 
  was particularly traumatic. In this world, being a supe or a normal and your feel-
  ings about that are a very vital part of who you are. This aspect works to reflect 
  that. Examples include: My Power Is So Lame, It’s Not Worth My Time; 
  My Mom Doesn’t Trust Me Now That I’m a Supe; and Can’t Control My 
  Powers, Don’t Want to.
  The second aspect has to do with your secondary clique, as described in the 
  next section.
  The third aspect is just a plain character aspect, as defined in Fate Accelerated. 
  It can be about anything you want.
  Secondary Clique
  Can someone belong to more than one clique at the same time? Of course! There 
  are kids who hang out with the band nerds and the theater geeks, so which one do 
  you choose when making a character? The answer is that you don’t have to choose. 
  Each character has a primary clique, which represents the relationships they 
  have with the other characters, as well as a secondary clique aspect, which gives 
  you the opportunity to establish a relationship with another clique. Your character 
  might not be the center of the secondary clique, but they hang around with them 
  sometimes and share in some but not all of the benefits and drawbacks of being 
  part of the group. Being connected to another clique helps keep characters from 
  being too stereotypical, and it more accurately reflects the complex web of high 
  school relationships.
  Similar to the high concept, the secondary clique aspect has two parts. Part one 
  is the clique in question, like the Quiz Bowl Team Members, Gamer Geeks, or 
  Honor Roll Students. The second part is a limiting factor that keeps the charac-
  ter from being a full-fledged member. Perhaps a character is a Reluctant Quiz 
  Bowl Team Member who really doesn’t want to be there, or a Fill-In Quiz 
  Bowl Member who’s gung-ho but doesn’t really have the trivia chops to fit in. 
  Unlike the clique aspects, your secondary clique aspect isn’t shared by everyone 
  in the clique, but characters can sometimes leverage their connections to create 
  advantages or be compelled by those same bonds.
  17
  ON THE WALL
  
  Stunts and Powers
  Each character starts with one power and two stunts. Both powers and stunts 
  work like the stunts described in Fate Core (page 87) and Fate Accelerated (page 
  31), but they allow your character to do different things.
  A stunt represents something that normal people can do, but your character 
  happens to be particularly good at. It could involve being good at sports or musi-
  cal instruments or getting people to confide in you.
  A power reflects something that normal people simply cannot do no matter 
  how hard they try, like sprouting tentacles, spawning mold, or something equally 
  weird. It only does one thing, though, so we recommend that you select a power 
  that can be used in more rather than fewer situations. Go for “eating metal” rather 
  than “eating 24-karat gold.”
  While we don’t advise playing characters with multiple powers, you can pur-
  chase a second power if the other people around the table agree. If you do, your 
  character also gains a drawback aspect. 
  The drawback aspect represents the body’s reaction to the extreme physical 
  pressure of having multiple powers and the side effects of multiple mutations, 
  reflecting some physical or mental challenge that the character has to overcome. 
  Some examples include a club foot, dwarfism, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. 
  The GM can compel the drawback, although it may occasionally be invoked to 
  create advantages as well. For example, a blind character will have many hurdles 
  represented by compels of their drawback. However, if all of the lights go out 
  at prom, that won’t be a problem for the blind character. In fact, they’ll likely 
  have the advantage, because they’re used to moving around without sight, while 
  everyone else bumbles around in the dark. So in this case, the character could 
  invoke their own drawback to help create an advantage and save the day.
  What Do Powers Do?
  As we’ve said elsewhere in this book, the supes of On the Wall aren’t the typical 
  superheroes that you see on the big screen or in comic books. Those superheroes 
  tend to have combat-oriented powers. They solve problems with their fists and 
  a loud soundtrack. These supes are different. Because their mutations manifest 
  randomly, they can do a wide variety of things. Some of these skills may be 
  applicable in a fight—if you think creatively—but overall, powers that can be 
  used in many situations are the best option. Remember, supes who break the law 
  can be braceleted or carted away by the Bureau, so beating people up with your 
  thunder fists isn’t a good idea.
  18
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  While it might be tempting to replicate a superpower from your favorite super-
  hero series, in most cases it’s not advised. Most pop-culture superheroes have the 
  kinds of combat-related abilities that get kids sent to boarding school in On the 
  Wall. So unless you’ve decided to play a game about the “problem kids” at board-
  ing school, you’ll want to steer away from the standard butt-kicking powers like 
  super strength, super speed, and laser eyeballs.
  The easiest way to think of a power is to think about which parts of the body 
  are mutated and what those mutations would do. A mutated brain could manifest 
  a wide variety of psychic powers. Mutated eyes could see in the dark, see through 
  things, or weep acidic tears. And so on.
  Depending on the power you choose, it might make sense for the power to 
  be passive, where it just always works, or active, requiring a roll. Discuss this as 
  a group and come to a consensus. In general, passive powers are fairly limited 
  in scope. For example, a winged character like Angela Laine can fly. Period. It 
  doesn’t make sense that sometimes she’d be able to fly and other times her wings 
  just wouldn’t work. The only time she’d have a problem taking to the skies is if 
  she suffered a Damaged Wing.
  In contrast, a broader active skill like Nyx’s probability control requires a roll 
  every time it’s used, because it has a variety of uses and therefore a range of dif-
  ficulties. Angela’s wings can only be used to fly. They aren’t sturdy enough to be 
  used as weapons, nor agile enough to do anything other than beat the air. But 
  Nyx’s probability control can accomplish a lot of things. It can be used to increase 
  her chances of choosing the right answer on the Control test she forgot to study 
  for, or to sneak unnoticed out of a crowded detention room. In the first situation, 
  the test question might have four options to choose from, so Nyx already has a 
  25% chance of guessing correctly on her own, so it would be a fairly easy applica-
  tion of her power, against Mediocre (+0) difficulty. But in the second situation, 
  it would be very unlikely for her to get out of the room without anyone looking 
  in her direction or anyone hearing her. Making it happen would require success 
  against Good (+3) difficulty.
  Generally speaking, active powers are more powerful than passive powers, but 
  they also have a higher chance of going out of control, especially with a poor 
  roll. Passive powers, in contrast, are usually easier to control, if a bit more limited 
  in scope. Supes don’t take off into the air or start breathing water on accident. 
  However, a character using a passive power might still need to make a roll if they’re 
  also attempting a skilled action. For example, a winged supe can take off into the 
  air without rolling, but performing evasive maneuvers while flying might require 
  a Flashy roll, just as they would on the ground. Along the same lines, carrying a 
  fallen friend while flying to safety might require a Forceful roll.
  19
  ON THE WALL
  
  EXAMPLE STUNTS
  Sports Star: Because I’m a natural athlete, I gain a +2 to Forcefully overcome 
  in any game or physical contest.
  Natural Liar: Because I’m good at convincing myself of untruths, I gain a +2 
  to Sneakily overcome when telling a tall tale or a fib.
  Voracious Reader: Because I’m so good at digesting written material, I gain 
  a +2 to Cleverly overcome when I spout off academic material at length.
  Not-Quite-a-Bard’s Tongue: Because I’m such a great singer, I gain a +2 to 
  create an advantage when distracting others with my Flashy vocals.
  Natural Prepper: Because I’m so paranoid, once per session, I can pull one 
  needed item out of my backpack.
  On the Ball: Because I’m so adept at reading situations, I gain a +2 to Quickly 
  create an advantage when diffusing a problem in the making.
  HOW DO YOU BALANCE OUT THE GROUP?
  Some powers are naturally going to be more useful than others. For 
  example, the character who can sense emotions is going to have many 
  more opportunities to use that power than the one who can breathe 
  underwater. Discuss any perceived inequalities with your group. One 
  way to even these things out is to impose limits on the more powerful 
  abilities so they are more difficult to use. So, maybe the character who 
  can sense emotions has a mutated tongue. She can’t just sense emo-
  tions; she has to taste them. As a result, she has a reputation as the 
  weirdo who licks people all the time. A limitation like this can make a 
  broader power more difficult to use and provide opportunities for fun 
  scenes and tricky situations.
  20
  
  EXAMPLE POWERS
  Dehydration: Because of my mutated skin, I can remove the moisture from 
  any nonliving thing with a simple touch.
  Directional Voice: Because of my mutated vocal chords, I can Sneakily throw 
  my voice anywhere but still limit the number of people who can hear it.
  Eating Abilities: Because of my mutated digestive system or teeth, I can eat 
  metal, wood, or plastic (choose one) and draw nutrients from it.
  Emotion Tasting: Because of my mutated tongue, I can sense the general 
  emotional state of anyone I lick. Which is sometimes awkward.
  Eternal Stamina: Because of my mutated cardiovascular system, I never get 
  tired or fatigued. I can literally run for days.
  Fast Hands: Because of my mutated muscles, I can roll to Quickly do things 
  with my hands without anyone seeing that I did anything.
  Flight: Because I have wings, I can take flight whenever I am free to move 
  into the air.
  Fog Emission: Because of my mutated pores, I can emit a vision-obscuring fog 
  from my skin at will, filling an area of about ten square feet.
  Forgettable: Because of my mutation, I can roll to Sneakily make people 
  completely dismiss me and ignore my presence.
  Hyper Growth: Because of my mutation, I can make my hair, nails, and teeth 
  grow up to twice their size. What I can’t do is shrink them back later.
  Mesmerizing Gaze: Because of my mutated eyes, I can roll to Flashily make 
  someone follow my commands after I make eye contact with them.
  Mindreading: Because of my mutated brain, I can roll to Cleverly pick some-
  one’s current thought out of their head.
  Mirrorwalking: Because of my mutation, I can roll to Carefully step through a 
  mirror or reflective surface, emerging on the other side or in the Mirrorrealm. 
  The difficulty of this roll depends on the situation.
  Mold Growth: Because of my mutated skin, I can make mold grow on any 
  surface with a touch.
  Probability Control: Because of my mutation, I can roll to Forcefully bend 
  chance to my will and make unlikely things happen.
  Super Hearing: Because of my mutated ears, no sound escapes me. I can hear 
  hair grow.
  Underwater Breath: Because of my mutated lungs, I can breathe in any fluid, 
  although I still suffer the effects of contact with toxins and acids.
  21
  ON THE WALL
  
  Sample Character Generation
  Carrie is running a game of On the Wall, and her players—Connor, Lily, and 
  Renee—are making their characters. Because the group is having a tough time 
  coming up with character ideas, Carrie begins by asking them questions about 
  their clique. Renee suggests that they play a group of best friends who’ve known 
  each other a long time, and Connor says it would be cool to play kids who are 
  pretty average like them. Lily wants them to be nice to everyone regardless of 
  whether or not they have powers. Carrie suggests a clique name, “Old Friends 
  from Diversity Acres.” Together, the group decides on the clique aspects We Go 
  Way Back, Middle of the Social Ladder, and Friendly to All.
  Using this clique as a starting point, the three players decide on character 
  concepts. Connor decides he wants to play someone who’s got a lot of potential 
  but hasn’t realized it yet, so he decides on a Reluctant Hero high concept. Lily 
  wants to play someone who seems really amazing but has problems she doesn’t 
  talk about, so she writes down Tragic Perfectionist as her high concept. After 
  some discussion, Renee decides that the group is going to need some comic relief, 
  so she settles on a Perky Rebel high concept.
  Having good high concepts makes choosing troubles easy. Connor decides 
  that his character Mira is reluctant because her power is pretty weak, so he puts 
  My Power Sucks! as her trouble. Lily has already established that her character 
  Angela has issues, but she doesn’t know what they are yet. Ultimately, she decides 
  that because Angela has a really cool power, everyone comes to her for help. She 
  writes down Everyone Wants a Piece of Me as her trouble. Renee decides 
  that Nyx, her rebel, gets a kick out of causing trouble and records Poor Impulse 
  Control as Nyx’s trouble.
  The players select their approaches and record their approach ratings on their 
  character sheets.
  Then each player chooses their remaining aspects, selecting one that reflects how 
  they feel about supes, one that designates a secondary clique, and one additional 
  aspect. Given what he already knows about Mira, Connor decides that she Really 
  Wants to Be Normal. Because she wants so badly to be liked, he decides to focus 
  on other people with his remaining two aspects. He decides Mira is a Reluctant 
  Gymnast because the captain of the team is constantly making fun of her, and 
  she’s Crushing Hard on Zach Schroeder, the most popular boy in school.
  22
  
  Lily has a harder time with Angela, because she hasn’t quite established what 
  makes her tick. But she decides that Angela should have some kind of visible 
  power that she can’t hide, and that’s a big part of her problem. She’s incredibly shy 
  and can’t handle the attention. With that in mind, Lily easily completes the three 
  aspects: Would Love to Rip My Wings Off, Popular but Shy, and Forced 
  to Model. She decides that Angela’s mother is making money off her daughter’s 
  striking appearance, which is why Angela’s so uncomfortable in her own skin.
  Renee’s character Nyx is a fairly happy-go-lucky sort of person, so Renee figures 
  she’s the only one in the group who Thinks This Whole Powers Thing Is a 
  Blast. Given that and her troublemaking tendencies, Nyx probably gets held 
  after school sometimes, but Renee wants her to have a secondary clique that 
  could help keep her from getting caught, so she’s a Sometimes Member of the 
  Detention Crew. But beneath it all, Renee wants her character to have a heart 
  of gold, so she decides on Loyal to a Fault as her final aspect.
  Now, it’s time for the players to select supernatural powers. Connor already 
  knows he wants Mira to have a somewhat limited power, but one that Mira can 
  grow into and use in unexpected ways, so he settles on Mirrorwalking, since it’s 
  a fairly specialized skill. Lily can’t think of anything more impressive than giant 
  feathered wings, so she selects Wings for Angela. And Renee decides that Nyx 
  can only get away with her crazy schemes by chance, so Probability Control is a 
  natural fit for an adrenaline junkie like her.
  Each player selects two final stunts that reflect additional skills that their 
  characters have. At first, Connor almost takes a gymnastics skill for Mira, but he 
  decides that the conflict with the captain has really held Mira back gymnastics-wise. 
  Instead, he decides that Mira is an incredible artist, with the ability to remember 
  and draw anything she’s seen, so he writes a stunt that reflects that. Lily decides 
  that because of Angela’s inner torment, she’s probably quite good at relating to 
  people when they’re upset and helping them calm down, so she creates a stunt to 
  that effect. And lastly, Renee creates a driving stunt for Nyx, figuring that she’s 
  so fearless behind the wheel that she’s probably developed the skills of a stunt 
  driver all on her own.
  Each player adds the finishing touches, writing down a name and refresh, 
  and they’re ready to play. Full stats for these characters are available starting on 
  page 37.
  23
  ON THE WALL
  
  SYSTEM MECHANICS AND STORY TOOLS
  Once your group has created your characters, it’s time to play the game. Again, 
  the general rules can be found in Fate Accelerated. In this chapter, we focus on 
  tools that the GM and players can use that are specific to the characters, situa-
  tions, and world of On the Wall.
  A Clique-Related Q&A
  While the Making Your Characters chapter provides basic information on how 
  to create a clique and how it’s used in play, you may run into a variety of ques-
  tions or unexpected situations. The following questions and answers may be of 
  assistance, but of course we encourage you to develop your own house rules if a 
  different answer appeals to you more.
  Can a character be cliqueless?
  Characters who’ve had a falling-out with their current clique, are loners, or are 
  new in school aren’t cliqueless; they simply belong to a clique with one member. 
  If a character becomes cliqueless and has an active secondary clique, they can try 
  to establish that clique as their primary. Of course, that’s not possible for someone 
  who is new to a school and has to start from scratch to establish their place in 
  the proverbial pecking order.
  Joining a new clique—either making your secondary clique into your primary, 
  or when starting at a new school—requires an extended challenge as the character 
  attempts to prove themself to the new group. Usually, this will involve working 
  through the limiting factor in the secondary clique. So the Fill-In Quiz Bowl 
  Member will need to prove her worth to the rest of the team by volunteering to 
  lead study sessions, outscoring the top-ranked member in a practice session, and 
  so on. Once she’s proven that she deserves to be a full-fledged member of the 
  team, she can officially join that clique as a primary member. If your character is 
  a new student, they would need to create advantages with members of the group. 
  More-exclusive groups would require more advantages to be created before the 
  character became a full member.
  Can the player characters belong to different cliques?
  While it’s possible for the PCs to belong to separate cliques, at minimum those 
  two cliques should be friendly, to avoid a situation where the two groups refuse 
  to work together. This could result in a game where half of the players take action 
  while the other half are idle, and the two never manage to cooperate on anything.
  One way to bind the groups together is to have the characters from one clique 
  carry secondary membership in the other clique and vice versa. However, multiple 
  PC cliques mean more clique aspects for everyone to keep track of, so make sure 
  everyone in the group is on board with this decision before you make it.
  24
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Does the GM need to create a clique for every NPC?
  Using cliques for NPCs can actually make the process quicker. For nameless mooks 
  (hangers-on, people in the lunchroom, and so on), the character can be defined 
  by their clique. The GM can simply designate three Snobby Cheerleaders who 
  are good at athletics and making snide comments but bad at deep thought. The 
  title “Snobby Cheerleader” does double duty as the characters’ clique. Based on 
  that title, it’s likely that these mooks would be hostile to, say, a group of Uptight 
  Class Brains.
  Better developed or established NPCs should also have a clique, and key 
  antagonists or allies might have a fully fleshed-out clique complete with followers. 
  Again, this is an easy way to quickly give these characters context and background.
  Here is a short list of sample mooks and hangers-on.
  Snobby Cheerleaders
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Athletics, 
  making snide comments
  Bad (-2) at: Deep thoughts
  Uptight Class Brains
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Trivia, think-
  ing outside the box
  Bad (-2) at: Social interactions
  Meathead Jocks
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Violence, drink-
  ing games
  Bad (-2) at: Empathizing with 
  others
  Apathetic Stoners
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Being chill, man; 
  being weirdly insightful
  Bad (-2) at: Taking swift action
  Anti-Supe Protestors
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Offensive chants, 
  making snap judgments
  Bad (-2) at: Being open-minded
  25
  
  How do I use cliques during play as a GM?
  Cliques can be used in various ways. They can add tension to an existing story 
  when someone from a rival clique becomes involved in a problem, causing further 
  complications. They can drive the story, creating problems for the characters. Or 
  a character from a rival clique can be used as a red herring, drawing attention 
  away from the real villain or throwing suspicion onto the player characters. The 
  On the Wall graphic novel uses cliques in these ways and can provide inspiration, 
  but we’re not giving spoilers here!
  When introducing a new character, the GM or players will at minimum need to 
  decide what clique the character belongs to, and how well members of that clique 
  tend to get along with the PCs’ clique. To add tension, think of the stereotypical 
  high school rivalries like jocks versus nerds or mean girls versus girls next door. 
  A source of conflict that’s somewhat less expected is conflict within a group. The 
  Meathead Jocks might not get along well with the Silver Spoon Jocks, causing 
  tension and conflict at the big homecoming game. When powers get involved in 
  a situation like that, it can get complicated fast.
  Mira, Nyx, and Angela are confronted by Bubbles McMasters, head of 
  a rival clique. Bubbles is claiming that Mira tried to spy on her in the 
  locker room, while Mira claims innocence. The gymnastics coach gives 
  each girl a chance to make her case before making a decision.
  Bubbles tells a melodramatic tale about what happened in the locker 
  room, and it sounds really bad. Like, getting suspended or maybe 
  arrested levels of bad. Connor decides that Mira’s a bit speechless after 
  hearing it. She just gapes, leaving room for Angela and Nyx to react. 
  Angela decides to capitalize on the fact that their clique is known to 
  be FRiendly to all. She points out that Mira isn’t the kind of girl who 
  would do such a thing and kindly suggests that maybe Bubbles was 
  mistaken, creating the advantage sympatHetiC CoaCH. 
  Nyx follows up by compelling an aspect from Bubbles’s clique, Known 
  to Be Catty, and suggests that Bubbles might lose her cool as she 
  sees Coach’s positive reaction to Angela. The GM agrees and takes 
  Nyx’s fate point, describing how Bubbles makes a catty remark under 
  her breath, but it’s not quite quiet enough. The coach hears what she 
  says, producing another situation aspect, BuBBles looKs petty. Now 
  it’s a simple matter for Mira to make her case—the coach is already 
  inclined to believe what she has to say, so she Cleverly explains why 
  she couldn’t have done what Bubbles says, invoking both situation 
  aspects and succeeding with style.
  26
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Do adults belong to cliques?
  They don’t really belong to cliques, but some cliques can have adults—particularly 
  teachers or administrators—as allies. Think of the group of troublemakers who 
  always seems to get off scot-free no matter how extreme their pranks are, or the 
  girls who always skip Algebra and never get detention. These groups have somehow 
  managed to establish a relationship with an adult, which can be reflected in the 
  clique’s aspects. One interesting story hook could be to find out how a particular 
  clique got the ear of the assistant principal. Perhaps their parents are friends from 
  long ago, or maybe it’s something more sinister…
  Can a clique have a leader?
  Some high school groups clearly have a leader who directs the group’s actions. 
  In some cases, this leadership is subtle, while in others the leader is practically a 
  dictator. In the movie Heathers, for instance, the leadership of the group clearly 
  passes from Heather to Heather as the girls are killed off. Whichever Heather is 
  in charge quite literally rules the actions of the rest of the group. A similar situ-
  ation exists in the On the Wall graphic novel, where Bubbles McMasters holds 
  sway over her group of flunkies.
  Clique leadership can be designated in one of two ways. If a clique has a clear 
  leader, that can be designated in its clique aspects, with the approval of everyone 
  at the table. That aspect can be invoked to allow the leader to issue orders, but it 
  also makes them the figurehead in the event of trouble. 
  If the PCs have a leader, though, the leader should get a limited number of 
  orders per game, to avoid taking agency from the other players. The second 
  option is to reflect the desire for leadership or presence of leadership abilities in 
  the leader’s character aspects. This approach would be appropriate for a character 
  who is a natural leader but only chooses to exert that leadership under very par-
  ticular circumstances, or for a leader who hasn’t quite realized their potential yet.
  27
  ON THE WALL
  
  Predictable Approaches
  With only six approaches, it’s easy to default to the 
  approach that best defines your character. If your 
  character tends to be a punchy kind of person, they 
  probably have a high Forceful approach, and as a 
  default, when something happens that they don’t 
  like, they put those talents to good use and whack 
  someone in the face. To a certain extent this makes 
  sense, but it also runs the risk of making the charac-
  ter predictable and play less fun, since many actions 
  will end up feeling a bit like foregone conclusions.
  In reality, people tend to be more complicated, 
  and even the punchiest bully has moments where 
  she is deliberate, caring, or thoughtful. Life would 
  certainly be boring if we always behaved in the 
  same manner. However, there are also moments 
  when you can call what your best friend is going to 
  do in a given situation because he is so empathetic/
  temperamental/silly/whatever.
  On the Wall encourages variability in approaches 
  by tracking how often they’re used. Simply put, if 
  a character uses the same approach three times 
  during one scene, they’ve become predictable, and 
  they gain an aspect reflecting that. For example, a 
  character that keeps relying on their Cleverness 
  over and over again might become Predictably 
  Overthinking. This aspect gets a free invocation 
  and lasts until the end of the scene.
  In game, this will require each player to keep a 
  tally of approaches used in a scene. You’ll want a 
  system that can withstand being restarted every 
  scene. Dry-erase tallies are a great way to do this. 
  Either give each player a card or use a larger board 
  with each player designated by a color. You can also 
  keep track on plain index cards and simply add or 
  erase hash marks as necessary.
  Based on your group’s play style and the story 
  in question, you can adjust the number of times 
  an approach needs to be used before it becomes 
  predictable. If you tend to roll a lot of dice at your 
  table, three times may not be enough, but if you’re 
  less dice-heavy, two may be a better number. You 
  won’t want every scene to end with multiple pre-
  dictable approaches, but a predictable approach 
  should come into play on occasion, so adjust the 
  trigger as necessary.
  28
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Mira, Nyx, and Angela are trying to break into Mrs. Elrich’s office after 
  hours to look through her student files. Nyx’s brazen ways have almost 
  gotten them caught by the guards once, and Angela’s player saved 
  their hides by rolling to make a Careful plan. Now Angela has taken the 
  lead, and Mira brings up the rear. Nyx is sulking, at least for the moment. 
  Angela makes a second Careful roll to sneak through the halls, avoiding 
  the guards who are walking down each hall in five-minute intervals. 
  When they get to the office, Nyx uses her Probability Control stunt to 
  guess the combination that opens the door. When they enter the office, 
  they see that someone has already ransacked the place. Debris litters 
  the floor, and the contents of all the files are strewn all over the place.
  “What a mess,” says Connor. “We didn’t see anyone on our way here, 
  did we?”
  “No,” replies the GM. “You didn’t.”
  “They could still be in here, then,” says Lily. “I remember the Control 
  classes were held in the conference room attached to her office. Is the 
  door to that closed?”
  The door is indeed closed, and the group decides that Angela will 
  be the one to open it, since she’s the strongest of the three. Because 
  the guards are still moving around outside, Angela has to make a third 
  Careful roll to avoid alerting them or any potential intruders on the other 
  side. She succeeds easily, but she becomes pRediCtaBly Cautious in 
  the process. It’s obvious that she’s terrified of being caught, and that 
  worry has preoccupied her.
  When Angela opens the door, Bubbles McMasters tumbles out. 
  She was listening with her ear to the door and heard everything. She 
  threatens to go and find the guards, intending to pin the whole thing 
  on them. Angela attempts to intercept her before she can make her 
  getaway, but the GM compels her pRediCtaBly Cautious aspect, explain-
  ing that the floor is covered in broken glass, and suggesting that Angela 
  hesitates, worried that the noise of the crunching glass will alert the 
  guards. As Angela hesitates, Bubbles makes her getaway while Nyx 
  gives loud pursuit.
  29
  ON THE WALL
  
  Story Development
  This game depicts a world in which superheroes have extraordinary abilities, but 
  most are terrified of using them in ways that are against the law. How exactly do 
  you tell a superhero story without punching people through walls, blowing up cars 
  with your laser eyes, and generally wreaking havoc on your general surroundings? 
  And how do you create a villain without resorting to the default dry-hand-washing, 
  bald-cat-petting, volcano-laser, overly complicated villain who likes to monologue?
  That’s actually easier than it sounds. At its core, On the Wall is about everyday 
  heroes living in a world that doesn’t really appreciate them. The idea nugget that 
  eventually developed into this game was about seeing superheroes deal with 
  real-life problems. So the key to creating a plot for this story is quite simple—
  take a real-world problem that high school students might face, and then add 
  a complication related to supes or supernatural abilities. The graphic novel 
  does exactly that. It takes the real-world problem of sexual harassment—in the 
  form of a peeping Tom—and complicates it with the fact that the culprit is a 
  Mirrorwalker. Mira Mason, the hero, is the only registered Mirrorwalker in the 
  area, so suspicion naturally falls on her. Combined, the two elements create a 
  fairly realistic superhero story.
  These stories can be one-shots or part of a broader story, leading to an under-
  standing of a bigger picture. The drug addict next door might be reacting to his 
  parents’ rejection of his being a supe, and the whole problem might be solved by 
  getting him the support he needs and deserves. Or it might turn out that the drug 
  problem seems to be limited to him at first, only to be followed by an expanding 
  pattern of addiction at the school, which leads the characters to expose a drug 
  ring that points to the teachers, a fringe anti-supe group with a vendetta against 
  the school, or even the Bureau’s new program, which attempts to control young 
  supes chemically without so much as notifying them. The material on the world 
  at large in The World of On the Wall (page 4) can help if you decide you’d like 
  to size up to a full campaign.
  In the interest of getting you started, on the next page you can find a few story 
  seeds and supe complications to fuel your first game. You can select your favorites 
  as a group, mix and match, roll dice, or ask your magic eight ball. Or, if you 
  prefer, take inspiration from the graphic novel and run through that story using 
  the pre-made characters starting on page 37. The graphic novel combines the 
  story seed “sexual harassment” and the supe complications “a PC’s power makes 
  them a suspect” and “a rogue supe is on the loose.”
  30
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Story Seeds
  Supe Complications
  Drug addiction
  A PC’s power makes them a suspect
  Sexual harassment
  The PCs’ powers aren’t under control yet
  Abusive relationships
  Alterna Girl is filming in town
  Rival cliques
  Bureau investigators in the area
  Theft at school
  The PCs are new supes
  Favorite teacher is fired
  A rogue supe is on the loose
  Student Council election cheating
  A prejudicial anti-supe law is passed
  School sports scandal
  Tracking tattoos stop working
  Party gone out of control
  One or more PCs can’t pass Control 
  exams
  Corrupt school administration
  PCs fall victim to a hate crime
  Example Plots
  It seems like a big leap to go from two phrases to a full-on plot, so how does 
  that work? The following example plots will show you how. You can add more 
  complications to fuel a longer campaign, or you can just use one pair of story 
  seed and complication to start a shorter arc.
  ICARUS RISING
  Story Seed: Drug addiction
  Supe Complication: PCs fall victim to a hate crime
  A new drug has been running through the school—one that only seems to work 
  on supes. The drug is called Icarus, and all the popular kids are doing it. It ampli-
  fies powers while giving the user an unworldly high. Someone the PCs know—or 
  maybe even the PCs themselves—try it for the first time and get into big trouble. 
  Maybe they even break the law. Either way, things are serious, but they get even 
  more dire when the PCs are attacked by an anti-supe group. Maybe the PCs lose 
  and wake up handcuffed somewhere in the dim recesses of the group’s headquarters, 
  or maybe the PCs triumph in the fight and trail the group members when they 
  retreat. Either way, they discover that this group is dealing Icarus, and it’s not just 
  a drug. It seeks out and destroys mutated DNA. Long-term users will become 
  normal again. But the process is dangerous, and it could kill.
  Possible Twists: Any PCs who are unhappy with being supes may want to take 
  Icarus too, once they know what it does. The anti-supe group might try to frame 
  the PCs as Icarus suppliers. A school administrator or teacher might be involved 
  in distributing Icarus and stand in the way of the PCs. Perhaps no one will listen 
  to the PCs, since their clique has gotten a terrible reputation after breaking the 
  law while on Icarus.
  31
  ON THE WALL
  
  PARTY DOWN
  Story Seed: Party gone out of control
  Supe Complication: Alterna Girl is filming in town
  A member of a rival clique is throwing the party to end all parties, and everyone 
  who’s anyone is going. Perhaps the PCs want to go and have to find a way to 
  finagle an invitation…or counterfeit one. Perhaps they don’t have any intention 
  of going, but one of their friends is there and has gotten into trouble. Regardless 
  of the reason, they find themselves on the spot with all kinds of illegal activity 
  going down. It could be as tame as underage drinking or as wild as a bunch of 
  drunken teens using their powers in ways that aren’t legal. Things are bad enough, 
  but they get worse when Alterna Girl shows up. The erratic reality star has been 
  drawn in by all the commotion and wants to party down, and she decides that 
  the PCs are her best buds. Can they stay out of trouble and avoid breaking the 
  law—or looking totally lame—on camera?
  Possible Twists: The rival clique member could try to woo Alterna Girl over 
  to his side and enlist her help in booting the PCs out of the party. The police 
  could show up and turn out to have anti-supe sentiments, driving Alterna Girl 
  to the brink of violence. The next-door neighbor might turn out to be someone 
  important—a crush, a potential employer, the PCs’ Control teacher—and might 
  be witness to some of the happenings at the party.
  RUNNING A GAME WITH YOUNGER PLAYERS?
  This game tends to fall a bit on the gritty dystopian side of the superhero 
  spectrum, but it can easily be played by younger players if you make a few 
  simple tweaks. Focus on story seeds and complications that are a bit more 
  black-and-white such as theft at school or election cheating—stories with 
  a clear culprit who needs to be brought to justice. Make sure to balance 
  out villains in power with trustworthy characters in power too. Sending 
  the message that all teachers are evil and out to get their students is 
  probably a bad thing. Focus on a clear win, and make sure that failure is 
  exciting and interesting. There are opportunities in every failure, so make 
  sure that everyone at the table can tell how failure moved the story along 
  and perhaps even gave the characters opportunities to succeed later.
  32
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Using Powers
  This game encourages you to tell a different kind of superhero story. So many 
  similar tales involve a lot of smashing and punching, and the villains are brought to 
  justice by beating the crap out of them—sometimes with a good deal of collateral 
  damage. But in this world, supes are prohibited from using their powers to hurt 
  others, and the tracking tattoos do a darned good job of enforcing that law. It’s 
  pretty difficult—although not impossible—to work around it. And even if you 
  could, would you want to? On the Wall offers the opportunity to tell a different 
  kind of story about superheroes with the kinds of powers you don’t usually see. 
  Finding creative applications of non-combat powers is kind of the point.
  So what is allowed, power-wise? The law says that supes can’t use their powers 
  to hurt others, but what if you shoot a bunch of fog out of your pores, someone 
  gets lost in the fog, and they walk off a cliff? The touchstones here are the same 
  as in our laws—there’s a difference between an accident and a deliberate action. 
  Anyone who wants to prove that a supe has broken the law has to prove intent to 
  harm someone or gross negligence before the supe can be prosecuted. Of course, 
  this doesn’t stop anti-supe groups from skewering people online and in the media, 
  but at least it’s something.
  One way to encourage creativity with supernatural powers is to have players 
  think about what kinds of things their characters would have had to do in their 
  Control exams. The whole point of Control exams is to make sure these teens 
  have full control of their powers, and the exams do that by giving them difficult 
  things to do with said powers. So the person who can emit fog might be asked 
  to simply fill a room in their first year. But as they gain in control and power, 
  their teachers will ask them to try new and increasingly difficult tasks. Can they 
  emit colored fog? Can they emit fog in a particular shape? How long can they 
  make the fog last? Can they make it so thick that people choke when they try 
  to breathe it? Thinking through what these exams might contain in advance can 
  help give a player more options. At the end of the day, the fog-emitter can do a 
  lot more than obscure people’s vision.
  Likewise, a character’s age can have a fairly sizable effect on how much they 
  can do. Since powers tend to manifest at puberty, older teens tend to have better 
  control over their powers, and said powers are further developed because of 
  their Control classes. So, another way to balance the PCs is to make a character 
  with a more potent power younger, and reflect that in their aspects. A younger 
  character may be more likely to lose control of their power, or may not have fully 
  developed it. However, youth doesn’t always equate to lack of control. Some kids 
  just seem to have a knack for their powers, and others go through puberty early. 
  That comes with its own set of problems, though, since all supes go to a special 
  school. A kid who starts puberty and manifests powers at nine may be the only 
  nine-year-old in the entire school.
  33
  ON THE WALL
  
  Bringing the Outside World In
  On the Wall is set in a dystopian America where society has become incredibly 
  fractured and many people live in fear, regardless of whether those fears are real-
  istic or not. As in our world, teenagers respond to this atmosphere in a variety of 
  ways. Some don’t notice it at all. Others note it but write off politics and morals 
  as “adult stuff.” Still others spout off whatever their parents are saying at home, 
  blindly accepting it as truth. And then there are the teens who have their own 
  political stances. Perhaps they’ve been personally affected by the public’s attitudes 
  toward supes, or someone in their family has. Maybe someone in their family is a 
  public servant, or the teen has aspirations to work in that sector when they grow 
  up. Or maybe they’re just interested in that kind of thing. For whatever reason, 
  some characters will choose to engage with the world at large, and others won’t.
  Sadly, the kids who would rather keep their head in the sand can’t do so indefi-
  nitely. Even the most dedicated homebody has to walk to school or get on the 
  bus to go to the library. Remember, everything in this world is gated. For a supe, 
  passing through the gates means having their tattoo scanned under the stern watch 
  of guards with automatic weapons. Furthermore, there are some subdivisions 
  where they’re not welcome at all. Areas like Uncle Bob’s Safety Zone are plastered 
  with posters explaining that any supes on the property will be prosecuted to the 
  fullest extent of the law, but everyone knows they’d be lucky to reach prosecu-
  tion—supes who trespass on the property of the most ardent anti-supe protestors 
  would be lucky not to be shot on sight.
  To incorporate this into your game, players should keep their supe-related 
  aspects in mind, particularly whenever their characters are not at school or home. 
  While many normals are perfectly accepting, others aren’t, and the bar code tat-
  tooed on the outside of each supe’s right hand makes it pretty difficult to conceal 
  one’s powers in any way short of wearing a Michael Jackson glove all the time. 
  How does the character react to this? Are they envious of normals? Resentful? Do 
  they not care at all? The varying reactions of the characters can make for some 
  interesting situations and internal tension as well.
  As a GM, you can bring these situations into your game as situation aspects. 
  Remember that this is a society full of frightened people who count on external 
  sources of security to help combat that fear. Electrified fences, guards in full riot 
  gear, and fancy security cameras are a matter of course everywhere except in the 
  poorest of neighborhoods. Although the characters might see these fixtures as 
  normal, they definitely can pose a danger. While the guards for the subdivision 
  you have to walk past to get to the movie theater can’t shoot you unless you’re 
  an active threat, they can still be really scary and threatening, simply because the 
  characters know the guards want to shoot. In this setting, even the motivations 
  of regular people can be quite murky. Maybe the angry old lady who yells at kids 
  to get off her lawn is super protective of her prize mums, or maybe she’s not so 
  happy that her son moved her to Diversity Acres, and she’s looking for an excuse 
  to take out her frustrations on the local supe kids. You can use a variety of larger 
  and smaller problems, some supe-related and others not, to keep the campaign 
  moving and fresh.
  34
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Antagonists
  Compelling antagonists can make the difference between a healthy, long campaign 
  and one that dies a slow and painful death. Ideally, the characters (and the players 
  too) will feel extremely invested in bringing the bad guy down, even if they’re 
  not so sure who the villain is. However, On the Wall brings with it a few unique 
  issues when it comes to developing antagonists.
  First of all, telling a story featuring teenage protagonists can make your villains’ 
  age extra important. Older villains—particularly those in positions of power—can 
  be untouchable to a group of teenagers, which may make for a frustrating play 
  experience. GMs, you can work around this problem in various ways. Perhaps the 
  seemingly untouchable villain has a specific vulnerability—less Kryptonite and 
  more skeleton in the closet—that, if exposed, could ruin them. The characters 
  then have at least one way to topple their antagonist, if only they can discover it. 
  You could also create a tiered structure of antagonists. The big boss might always 
  get away, leaving seeds for the next game, but story arcs can end with the charac-
  ters apprehending a sub-boss, leaving them with the knowledge that at least they 
  thwarted this plan and saved the day. This time. This kind of semi-resolution fits 
  well with the dystopian, rather tragic setting. Regardless of what you choose, it’s 
  important to keep age discrepancies in mind when designing antagonists.
  To complicate matters further, this is a superhero setting without supervillains. 
  As we’ve repeatedly pointed out, no one is turning remote islands into lasers here. 
  They’re not monologuing and developing convoluted plans to take over the world. 
  And they’re not behemoths who can withstand the combined assault of a whole 
  group of superheroes, many of whom can punch holes in walls. That’s the kind 
  of thing that happens in the movies, but not in this game.
  With that in mind, how do you make the bad guys feel bad enough? How do 
  characters take down the bad guys without the ability to beat them into submis-
  sion? The following vignettes will give you some starter ideas to create your own 
  adversaries. For one-shot bad guys, these short-form stats should be enough to 
  get you through, but of course we recommend fully statting the big bad if your 
  game has one.
  Simply put, bad guys are scarier the more unexpected they are. The subdivision 
  guard discussed earlier is frightening for a few reasons. He has a giant gun and 
  presumably knows how to use it, so that’s pretty scary. But he’s also a person who 
  was supposedly hired to keep people safe. He has access to homes and security 
  systems in order to do this job. But if he’s harboring supe-related hatred, he’s 
  extra dangerous. If he wants to do something naughty, he likely has the know-
  how to break into a supe’s house and not get caught. That guy is scarier than any 
  monologuing supervillain.
  35
  ON THE WALL
  
  Bureau agents could be antagonists or allies depending on the situation and 
  the agent. Certainly, having them arrive on the scene ups the ante of any supe-
  related situation. You can think of Bureau agents about the same way as any of 
  the Feds—if they show up on the scene, things have just gotten real.  They have 
  the authority to detain any supe without proving probable cause, so a Bureau 
  agent with a vendetta, or worse, a rogue agent with a hidden agenda, could prove 
  particularly dangerous.
  Corrupt teachers and administrators present a particular danger to supe students 
  simply because their education is so important. A student who doesn’t pass Control 
  must be registered with the Bureau and will end up getting braceleted, ruining 
  a lot of their future prospects and making them an outcast. No one will want 
  to be associated with them. So, a threat to fail someone in Control holds great 
  weight. Gaining the ire of your Control teacher is never recommended, although 
  any teacher can be a formidable adversary. They have access to all of the Bureau 
  registries, and a poor report from a teacher can open up a Bureau investigation.
  Anti-supe extremists provide another natural villain for any On the Wall game. 
  These people can be found anywhere. Although you’d expect them to stick to 
  jobs in normal-only subdivisions and buildings, perhaps one of them with an 
  ulterior motive might decide to take a position in an open subdivision…or even 
  a school. Although all of the teaching staff and administration must be powered, 
  supplementary staff such as custodians and lunch ladies can be normals. And 
  what better place for someone with anti-supe sympathies to hide than at a school 
  for supes. Such a person could do a lot of damage there. They could engage in 
  blackmail, frame students for crimes, or gather information about the young supes 
  to take back to their friends with nefarious purposes in mind.
  Guard with Ill Intent
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Sharpshooting, 
  security systems
  Bad (-2) at: Hiding his true 
  feelings
  Bureau Agent with 
  Hidden Motives
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Supe-related 
  knowledge, investigating 
  things
  Bad (-2) at: Dealing with 
  normal people
  Corrupt Teacher
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Teaching their 
  subject matter, hiding what 
  they’re really up to
  Bad (-2) at: Putting the welfare 
  of others before their own
  Anti-Supe Extremist
  ABILITIES
  Skilled (+2) at: Hiding in plain 
  sight, causing problems for 
  supes
  Bad (-2) at: Being open-minded
  36
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  SAMPLE CHARACTERS
  The following characters are taken from the pages of the graphic novel to use as 
  PCs or NPCs in your own games. No worries, we’ve avoided spoilers. 
  Mira Mason
  ASPECTS
  High Concept: 
   
  Reluctant Hero
  Trouble: 
   
  My Power Sucks!
  Other Aspects: 
   
  Really Wants to Be Normal;  
  Reluctant Gymnast;  
  Crushing Hard on Zach Schroeder
  APPROACHES
  Careful: Fair (+2)
  Clever: Good (+3)
  Flashy: Mediocre (+0)
  Forceful: Average (+1)
  Quick: Fair (+2)
  Sneaky: Average (+1)
  STUNTS
  Mirrorwalking: Because of my mutation, I can try 
  to Carefully step through a mirror or reflective 
  surface, emerging on the other side or in the 
  Mirrorrealm. The difficulty of this roll depends 
  on the situation.
  Beautiful Drawings: Because I am an artist with 
  a keen eye for detail, I gain a +2 to overcome 
  or create an advantage by Carefully replicating 
  the details of a scene or face in my drawings.
  Gymnast’s Balance: Because I have a gymnast’s 
  coordination, I gain a +2 to overcome by making 
  Quick moves without losing my balance.
  STRESS [1][2][3]
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  Severe (6):
  REFRESH: 3
  37
  ON THE WALL
  
  Nicole “Nyx” Vega
  ASPECTS
  High Concept:  
   
  Perky Rebel
  Trouble: 
   
  Poor Impulse Control
  Other Aspects: 
   
  Thinks This Whole Powers 
  Thing Is a Blast; Sometimes 
  Member of the Detention 
  Crew; Loyal to a Fault
  APPROACHES
  Careful: Mediocre (+0)
  Clever: Fair (+2)
  Flashy: Good (+3)
  Forceful: Average (+1)
  Quick: Fair (+2)
  Sneaky: Average (+1)
  STUNTS
  Probability Control: Because of 
  my mutation, I can Forcefully 
  bend chance to my will and make 
  unlikely things happen. The dif-
  ficulty of this roll depends on the 
  likelihood of the thing I’m trying 
  to make happen.
  “Who, me?”: Because I have a poker 
  face, I gain a +2 to overcome by 
  Cleverly lying my way out of a 
  sticky situation or escaping blame 
  for one of my pranks.
  Stunt Driver in Training: Because I 
  have no fear, I gain a +2 to create an 
  advantage by making Flashy moves 
  behind the wheel of a vehicle.
  STRESS [1][2][3]
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  Severe (6):
  REFRESH: 3
  38
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Angela Laine
  ASPECTS
  High Concept: 
   
  Tragic Perfectionist
  Trouble: 
   
  Everyone Wants a Piece of Me
  Other Aspects: 
   
  Would Love to Rip My Wings 
  Off; Popular but Shy; Forced 
  to Model
  APPROACHES
  Careful: Good (+3)
  Clever: Average (+1)
  Flashy: Average (+1)
  Forceful: Fair (+2)
  Quick: Fair (+2)
  Sneaky: Mediocre (+0)
  STUNTS
  Flight: Because I have wings, I can 
  take flight whenever I am free to 
  move into the air. I can perform 
  the same actions in the air that 
  I can on the ground, subject to 
  the same rolls and limits.
  I Feel Your Pain: Because I’m so 
  empathetic, I gain a +2 to create 
  an advantage by Carefully gain-
  ing the trust of someone who is 
  afraid or hurting.
  Moral Obligation: Because I 
  have a strong sense of right and 
  wrong, I gain a +2 to defend 
  when Forcefully standing up for 
  someone in pain.
  STRESS [1][2][3]
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  Severe (6):
  REFRESH: 3
  39
  ON THE WALL
  
  Zach Schroeder
  ASPECTS
  High Concept:  
  Idiotic King of the School
  Trouble:  
  Secretly In Over My Head
  Other Aspects:  
   
  Everyone Knows Supes Are 
  Superior; Too Popular to Be a 
  Track Star; Everyone Loves Me
  APPROACHES
  Careful: Average (+1)
  Clever: Mediocre (+0)
  Flashy: Good (+3)
  Forceful: Fair (+2)
  Quick: Fair (+2)
  Sneaky: Average (+1)
  STUNTS
  Mesmerizing Gaze: Because of my 
  mutated eyes, I can Flashily make 
  someone follow my commands 
  after I make eye contact with them. 
  The difficulty of this roll depends 
  on the complexity of the command 
  as well as how contrary it runs to 
  the person I’m influencing.
  I Can Go All Day: Because I have 
  such stamina, I gain a +2 to over-
  come when Forcefully exerting 
  myself beyond the limits of normal 
  ability.
  Silver Tongued: Because I’m so good 
  at kissing up to people, I gain a +2 
  to attack with Flashy attempts to 
  sway people to my opinion.
  STRESS [1][2][3]
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  Severe (6):
  REFRESH: 3
  40
  FATE: WORLDS OF ADVENTURE
  
  Bubbles McMasters
  ASPECTS
  High Concept:  
   
  Desperate Mean Girl
  Trouble: 
   
  Can Never Prove Myself 
  to Dad
  Other Aspects: 
   
  Politics, Schmolitics—I 
  Don’t Care; Too Mean to Be 
  Truly Popular; Appearances 
  Are Everything
  APPROACHES
  Careful: Mediocre (+0)
  Clever: Average (+1)
  Flashy: Fair (+2)
  Forceful: Fair (+2)
  Quick: Average (+1)
  Sneaky: Good (+3)
  STUNTS
  Hyper Growth: Because of my 
  mutation, I can make my hair, 
  nails, and teeth grow up to 
  twice their size. What I can’t 
  do is shrink them back later.
  Under the Bus: Because I’m so 
  good at covering my butt, I 
  gain a +2 to overcome when 
  Sneakily shifting the blame 
  onto someone else.
  Natural Leader: Because I’m so 
  good at telling people what 
  they want to hear, I gain a +2 
  to attack with Flashy attempts 
  to get people to follow my lead.
  STRESS [1][2][3]
  CONSEQUENCES
  Mild (2):
  Moderate (4):
  Severe (6):
  REFRESH: 3
  41
  ON THE WALL
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Kid Friendly/7. RPGs/Ages 8-10 (Attention span of 2 hours +, Proficient in basic math, Starting to read or reading chapter books)/FATE Accelerated (FAE)/FATE - WOA 32 - On the Wall.pdf