[Thrilling Fate!] Cues and Aspects

So! Self-indulgent tangent time!

I was a music major for a little while -- like, four years -- back in the '90s, during my first go at college. Two years performance, two years composition. I left high school with really no understanding of music theory at all. I mean, I'd taken a fairly informal after-school "class" taught by our band director, but clearly I didn't get a whole lot of actual understanding out of it, because in college, if it was more advanced than basic counterpoint and harmony, it was a struggle for me. (I'm much better now. My ego compels me to say that.)

Anyway, when you learn music theory -- and forgive all this bloviating if you've done just that -- you generally start with Baroque music, and specifically the works of Johann Sebastian Bach (father of PDQ). Baroque music has all kinda rules to follow for it to be "right," and most of it becomes second-nature after a while. Like, avoid parallel motion if you can, and parallel fifths in particular, and this chord wants to resolve this way while that chord wants to resolve that way, and so on. These rules inform all Baroque music, but we study JS Bach because, among other reasons, he's the GOAT.

The thing is, though, Bach and his contemporaries didn't study these rules the way we do. We've reverse-engineered these rules by analyzing their music.

Shift now to game stuff. I've said before that sometimes I see making a game like making a machine: You build it for a specific function, and the more maintenance you have to do on it, the more problematic it is. From this perspective, houserules are maintenance. Relying on the players to ignore problems or exploits because they "get it" is maintenance. I want to be able to send a game out into the world and have it work for everyone else the same way it works for me.

In this case, I want a game/machine that, if you input players and characters, and everyone follows the rules, it produces a Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars story. But a Sparks Nevada story is a lot more than whiz-bang action and shoot-'em-ups. Those things, in fact, usually have very little prominence. There's probably only one fight, often even just one shot fired, in an average episode. While it looks like an action-adventure story, it's way more character-focused than you might expect. What keeps me coming back is the characters and the way they relate to one another. If a Sparks Nevada game can't produce something like that, whether or not the players know the source material, it's not much of a Sparks Nevada game, if you ask me.

One of my favorite nudge-them-into-roleplaying mechanics is The Shadow of Yesterday's (and Lady Blackbird's) keys (called milestones in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying). A few weeks ago at Gateway I ran a Saturday-night Firefly-ish Spelljammer game using the Fantasy Heroic rules from the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide, and coming up with the pre-gens' milestones was integral to getting those characters "right." I loved that the goblin mechanic could earn XP simply by complaining about the ship, or that the Githyanki monk could do the same by offering up a cryptic aphorism. These have nothing to do with complicating the character's life or even spotlight time, really. It's just offering the player roleplaying cues.

The thing I love most about keys is that when you use them correctly, you may feel (as I did) like you're abusing the system, or getting away with something. But you're not! It's a trick. All you're really doing is playing your character to the hilt, because you're incentivized with small, immediate rewards for injecting personality and color into the story.

In other words, it's a perfect mechanic for Sparks Nevada. I want Sparks to be annoyed with Croach, or announce that he's... from Earth. Likewise, I want Croach to inform Sparks of an increase or reduction in onus owed, or to drop vaguely unsettling comments about his egg sacs or multiple esophageal tracts. To me, these fly under the aspect compel's radar, primarily because they're lousy, weaksauce compels. They don't get the characters in trouble in any way. They're fun, but hardly worth a fate point. But it's these little character moments that give the show its, well, character. And for a hack like this, that's absolutely vital.

These are essentially keys, but I'm calling them cues, partially because I'm treating them a little differently, and partially (largely) because I'm writing for my intended audience, whom I figure will more easily parse "cue" than "key."

Every PC has three cues: two Scene cues, and one Episode cue. You can hit a Scene cue once per scene, and an Episode cue but once per episode/session. When you hit a Scene cue, refresh one aspect. When you hit an Episode cue, refresh up to three.

(I'm not 100% on the Episode cue's benefit there. You'll only use it in one of two circumstances: you desperately need to refresh multiple aspects and don't have a lot of time to do it, or you've already used your Scene cues this scene and are just using your Episode cue out of necessity to refresh fewer than three aspects. The right way to do this will depend on how exhausting an aspect ends up working, as I mentioned in yesterday's post. Maybe a better option would be "Refresh an aspect and gain a fate point." Dunno. The point is, the reward is getting to exhaust an aspect again for a +3, which is something we want people doing anyway because it calls attention to various facets of their characters in dramatically appropriate circumstances. That's not cheating or working the system; it's being bribed to play up your character's personality, which leads to a fun, memorable game. Everyone wins.)

So maybe these are Sparks' cues:

• Scene: Act annoyed with Croach.
• Scene: Call attention to how great you are.
• Episode: At a dramatically appropriate moment, justify your course of action by reminding everyone that you're... from Earth.

And maybe these are Croach's:

• Scene: Tell another PC your onus owed to them (or vice-versa) has just increased or decreased owing to something that just happened in the story.
• Scene: Make specific reference to some bizarre feature of your Martian physiology, or humans' lack of same.
• Episode: Rank a sensation. For example, "This is the fourth-worst pain I have ever endured" or "Your face is the seventh-most pleasing face I have ever beheld."

In other words, this is just reverse-engineering mechanics based on an "analysis" of (i.e., "re-listening to") episodes of the show itself. And hopefully, those mechanics will successfully create a play experience that feels like a Sparks Nevada story. For example, It's a rare episode in which Sparks doesn't pull the "I'm... from Earth" thing, but he doesn't run around saying it all the time, either. However, bickering with Croach? Calling (totally justified) attention to himself? Pretty common behaviors for the Marshal on Mars.

Next time: messing with stunts!

Related but non-Fate P.S.: BTW, my first whack at a Sparks Nevada game is based on Apocalypse World. There, cues get you either 1 XP or 3 XP. This essentially replaces stat highlighting as the main route to advancement.

[Thrilling Fate!] Getting Started

So here's what's going on. I'm probably going to do a few posts about this thing, so consider this the intro.

I may have an opportunity to run a game for a bunch of non-gamers whose work I very much admire, and (more importantly) who I want to make sure have a really good time with their first RPG experience. Some of them may have RPG experience, actually, but I'd be really surprised if it were recent at all.

Anyway, so my first thought is naturally to use Fate, because it's second nature to me and I've already introduced more first-timers to Fate than I can count. But because I want to make any barriers to entry as low as possible, my next thought was to use Fate Accelerated, because it's rad.

However.

This PCs for this game would be specific, well-established characters, characters with whom the prospective players are very familiar. And frankly, the default approaches in FAE don't really fit all that well. I could easily replace them with new adjectives, adverbs, or nouns that fit the property better, but not even that would really do the trick. Ranking these characters by how clever, forceful, or sneaky each one is just doesn't feel right. It feels too confining, and it doesn't put enough emphasis on what makes these characters really interesting. It's too... objective, I guess.

Plus, because of the whole new-to-RPGs angle, I want to cut down on how many things they'll have to look at on the sheet. So I decide to to cut out approaches altogether and concentrate on aspects. (Almost everything from here on out is a little weird.)

You have five aspects. Each aspect has a box next to it. When you roll the dice, if you have an aspect that seems helpful, you can check its box to exhaust it and give you a +3 bonus to the roll. You can only exhaust one aspect per roll, but you can invoke other aspects (the usual way) for a further +1 each.

(Maybe it'd be per roll, maybe it'd be for the scene. I'm not sure yet.)

What this means is that instead of having a predetermined menu of bonuses with attendant contexts, you'd choose as you go what's important right now. Any aspect is potentially a free +3; it's just a matter of deciding which one. It's a bit like Cortex Plus's distinctions.

For example, here are the aspects for, I dunno, some random character:

• Marshal on Mars
• Robot Fists
• Justice Rides a Rocket Steed
• Righting Outlaw Wrongs
• Emotionally Unavailable

So if you're chasing down an outlaw, you might exhaust Justice Rides a Rocket Steed, or Righting Outlaw Wrongs or Marshal on Mars. If you're punching out that outlaw, you could turn to your Robot Fists. If someone's trying to talk you into committing to a relationship, which does happen from time to time, and you're resisting, which happens all the time, exhaust Emotionally Unavailable to put up the wall.

Of course, all of these aspects can be invoked and compelled as usual. Situation aspects work the same way: exhaust, invoke, or compel.

But how do you clear those checked boxes? How do you refresh these aspects so they can be used again? Find out next time!

[Greyhawk] Attributes as Stunts, Skills, & Aspects

One of the interesting design decisions about Fate is the idea that practically everything is a skill. I happen to really like the concept that “Strength is a skill” and so forth.

However in AD&D, you have the concept of attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Charisma) as being established at character creation and then generally not changing too much through a character’s progression through levels.

When translating attributes into skills for Fate this also means the player now has the ability to increase a character’s attributes (as skills) throughout that character’s class progression.

Some attributes are pretty easy translations into Fate skills while others might require some additional consideration.

AD&D Attributes and SotC Skills

So most attributes translate pretty easily into existing skills in Spirit of the Century...

• STRength = Might Skill
• INTelligence = <None>
• DEXterity = Athletics Skill
• CONstitution = Toughness Skill
• WISdom = <None>
• CHArisma = Rapport Skill (probably)

...so we’re left with what to do about Intelligence and Wisdom attributes?

You could always just discard Intelligence and Wisdom attributes, but there's plenty of things in the AD&D gameworld that do depend on high intelligence and wisdom.

There’s always the idea that you could “just create new skills” to be 1:1 parallels. However, from a roleplaying perspective I happen to like with the idea that those skills DON’T exist as such. Additionally in Fate, I think there's some interesting things in place around the “meta” of things like intelligence and wisdom that I didn't want to mess with. So what to do?

Perhaps asking the question in a more “actionable” way... what are some other options for Fate about characters and rules that deal with very HIGH or very LOW intelligence or wisdom?

Attributes that Have No Fate Skill

I've started from an assumption where the middle range of an attribute typically has little if any effect on modifying the game. So then we'd just need to worry about the lower and upper range of character potential.

Translating LOW Attributes

Fate makes this pretty easy, by having more overtly negative Aspects to represent a character with low attributes.

So, low intelligence might be replaced with an aspect of something like:

• “...Whaaaaat?”
• “Tetched in the Haid”
• “See, it’s on account of this plate in my skull...”

Translating HIGH Attributes

When translating the effect of higher attributes, I think you need to consider what the higher attribute grants the character within the gameworld.

In the case of the Intelligence attribute, one feature requiring high intelligence is that it allows the character to access the higher levels of Magic-User spells (7th through 9th level, specifically).

So, it would be possible to create Stunts like “Exceptional Intelligence” and “Epic Intelligence” for the Wizard class that act as an additional requirement to access higher spell levels. Gametesting would help determine if those stunts would be progressive (one replaces the other), or if one requires another (eg., the stunt to access 9th level spells requires having the stunts to access 8th and 7th level spells).

Gameworld Impact of Translations

With those ideas as a test, then consider the gameworld’s assumptions that are placed on that attribute.

For example, AD&D has Race / Class Restrictions for "Low Intelligence" (9 or less). Working with the idea that a negative aspect about a character’s intelligence could represent low intellect, you could implement that the following races or classes CANNOT have a negative intelligence aspect:

• Paladins
• Rangers
• Assassins
• Wizards
• Elves
• Gnomes
• Halflings
• Half-Elves
• Illusionist

Depending upon how you translate the impact of acquiring a negative intelligence aspect, it might be appropriate to say that the player cannot advance in a class until the aspect is cleared (similar to a curse), or perhaps cannot actively access a race or class’ stunts until the aspect is cleared.

If you follow the Intelligence table in AD&D by rote, then you might also have the following requirements upon a character that reflect having higher intelligence:

• Illusionist class require stunt "Exceptional Intelligence".
• 7th level spells require stunt "Fantastic Intelligence"
• 8th level spells require stunt "Epic Intelligence"
• 9th level spells require stunt "Legendary Intelligence"

Additionally on the other end of the Intelligence stat spectrum, if you were following Race / Class Restrictions “as is” for high intelligence, you would also need this restriction:

• Half-orc characters can only get as high as Intelligence stunt "Fantastic Intelligence"

Attributes that Have Skills

Depending upon how particular you want to get, even those skills have direct parallels might need some review. My previous translation method of looking for a metric that can be compared could apply here.

So for example, when comparing the AD&D attribute “Strength” to SotC’s skill “Might”, you could compare the following passage from the DMG, p.15:

Exceptional Strength: Assume further that a strength of 18 indicates that the creature can lift weight equal to its own body weight, or 180 pounds, whichever is the greater, above its head.

A human with an 18 strength and an additional percentile dice roll is able to lift 1 additional pound for every percentage point up to and including 50%, 4 pounds for every percentage point from 51% to 90%, and 8 pounds for each percentage point from 91 % to 00%.

...against SotC’s “Lifting Things” (p. 258)...

Characters have a default amount of weight they can lift and still do something with that weight (like moving slowly, or trying to place it carefully), shown on this page in pounds. If purely lifting without moving – like, say, a heavy portcullis so others can scurry through – they can roughly double that capacity.

...and then decide those descriptions are close enough to equate to roughly the same measure of strength and from this you could find some common metrics. Comparing the numbers, you would end up with the following:

Max overhead lift (STR Attribute)	SotC Weight Capacity (Might Skill)
9 = 90 lbs
10 = 100 lbs	Poor (-1) = 100 lbs
15 = 150 lbs	Mediocre (+0) = 150 lbs
18 = 180 lbs
18/20 = 200 lbs	Average (+1) = 200 lbs
18/50 = 230 lbs
18/60 = 270 lbs	Fair (+2) = 250 lbs
18/70 = 310 lbs	Good (+3) = 300 lbs
18/80 = 350 lbs	Great (+4) = 350 lbs
18/90 = 390 lbs	Superb (+5) = 400 lbs
	Fantastic (+6) = 450 lbs
18/00 = 470 lbs
	Epic (+7) = 500 lbs

It appears that the functional difference between an average attribute of 9-12 and the human maximum attribute of 18 is not terribly significant in terms of the Fate scale--it’s the difference between Poor (-1) and Average (+1). This means that generally speaking, there probably isn’t enough granularity within the range of "average human" to "human maximum" in the gameworld to really allow more than just a few stunts (2 or 3) in order to simulate the bonuses associated with high attributes.

[Fantasy] Another Magic Idea

Sometimes -- on a pretty regular basis, even -- a post will appear on RPG.net to the effect of "I'm interested in FATE, but is there a good, simple, easy magic system for it?" I'm not sure why FATE in particular seems to attract this kind of inquiry so often. Occasionally, someone will ask something similar about Savage Worlds, but rarely does it come up with regards to most other generic systems.

Sure as the changing of the seasons, one such thread popped up a couple days ago, prompting myself and others to chime in with the usual round of responses. Specifically, the poster, disturbingly named irate fetus, was looking for "preferably something along the lines of DnD levels/spells per day." Fair enough.

Many responded to the call, including me, because I'm a sucker for that (and because it was pretty easy to plug Guy's Spirit of Greyhawk stuff on this very blog, which goes after AD&D-style "levels/spells per day" as a point of design). Building on something TheUnshaven suggested, and with helpful advice from TheMouse, I came up with something that also incorporated some of my own long-neglected, half-formed ideas. I think it's worth exploring here on the blog.

Suppose there is a magic-oriented skill called, I dunno, Magic. What you can do with this skill is determined by a magic-related aspect you have, like "Druid" or "Fire Mage" or something.

Give yourself a second skill pyramid that peaks at your Magic skill rating. So if you have Good (+3) Magic, your pyramid's apex is Good (+3). This is your spell pyramid. It has one Good (+3) slot, two Fair (+2) slots, and three Average (+1) slots. So far, they're all blank.

Every time you cast a spell, you claim one of the spell pyramid's slots, and use its rating as a bonus to your roll, just as if it were a skill. When you're out of blank slots, you're out of spells to cast for the day.

You know a number of spells equal to your Magic skill rating. Again, if it's Good (+3), you know three spells. Write 'em down. They only have to be names, and you only have to have a general idea about what they do -- don't sweat the details. So if your magic aspect is "Fire Mage," for example, your spells might be Fireball, Wall of Fire, and Flaming Bolt.

When you cast a spell, pick one of your spells and say what it's doing. It can Attack, Defend, Maneuver, Assess, or Block -- the standard FATE stuff. Whatever it is, it has to make sense within the confines of your general idea of what the spell does. You'll have a hard time Assessing with Fireball, for example, but an easy time Blocking with Wall of Fire. However, if you want to Attack with Wall of Fire, go ahead. It makes sense, after all, seeing as how it's on fire. You just won't be able to Block with it as well.

(Could you work in two effects, like Attacking and Blocking? Probably, if you spend a Fate Point. That seems reasonable. Still has to make sense, though.)

If you manage to get more than one magic aspect, like "Pyromancy" and "Divination," you get to write down another batch of spells befitting the new aspect, which means more types of things to do with your spell pyramid. How do you get magic aspects? Maybe with a stunt. That also seems reasonable.

You might prefer to have multiple magic-related skills instead, like a Pyromancy skill and a Divination skill, with attached aspects. This is perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of. In that case, the spell pyramid's apex is equal to the highest magic skill you have, but the rating of the spell pyramid slot for a given spell can't exceed its related skill rating. So if you have Good (+3) Pyromancy and Average (+1) Divination, you can use any slot for Pyromancy, but only the Average (+1) slots for Divination.

There is still the question of how these spell slots work, in terms of their ratings. Is that the only bonus you add to your roll, or do you add it and your Magic (or Pyromancy or etc.) skill? The latter seems a little unbalanced, although if you have a different skill for each sphere of magic, it also seems kinda necessary. Otherwise, those skills are just taking up real estate in your skill pyramid, and that's no fun. With a singular Magic skill, though, that skill could be used as a sort of magical Academics -- knowing about magic, as opposed to applying it. I suppose the same could be done with more specialized skills, but you probably wouldn't get as much use out of them.

The last piece of the puzzle is how to clear those spell slots so they can be reused. There needs to be a way. Obviously, sleeping for the night should do it, especially if we're kinda trying to emulate D&D, but I also want you to be able to clear them on the fly, in the heat of the moment. My initial ideas for that bordered on punitive -- that's our me! -- but TheMouse quickly set me straight by mixing together two of them.

The more mathematically sound way seems to be that you can clear up a spell slot with a rank equal to or less than the number of shifts your sacrificed Consequences are worth, +2 for each fate point expenditure. So if you do a Minor (2) and a single fate point, you can clear out a spell slot worth up to +4.

That sounds pretty good.

So that's the gist of it. If I have a more concrete application for it at some point, I'll do more with it, but for now it's something for you to fold, spindle, or mutilate, as you will. Comments welcome, of course.

[Kerberos] Conviction Aspects

(Crossposted on ArcDream.com.)

When I think about the original Wild Talents version of The Kerberos Club, I tend to think of Benjamin Baugh's fantastic treatment of the setting. This is probably because it is, as I may have mentioned, fantastic. But over and above that, it's important to remember that Ben also introduced some cool new mechanics for WT, not the least of which is Convictions.

In WT, Convictions make a character's beliefs, goals, and the like mechanically significant. Every Conviction has a numerical rating. When you act in accordance with a Conviction, especially if doing so puts you at some sort of disadvantage, you earn Willpower equal to the Conviction's value. And if you defy a Conviction, even by accident, you lose a like amount of Willpower.

Any of this sound familiar, FATE fans?

So obviously, for the FATE conversion, Convictions had to be aspects. I mean, they were practically aspects to begin with. But they had to be "bigger" aspects than all the others, seeing as how they represent what's nearest and dearest to the character's heart. All Convictions are aspects, but not all aspects are Convictions.

Fortunately, an easy way to handle this is already implied in standard FATE rules, if not outright stated in some implementations. Compels on Conviction aspects start at two Fate Points instead of one. The aspect is a bigger deal for the character, so the incentive to go along with it is greater too. Likewise, refusing a compel on a Conviction aspect costs just as much. And the GM can escalate to three Fate Points from there, if it comes to that.

Needless to say, I'm a firm believer in making players pay for refusing compels. For me, if refusing doesn't come with a cost, the whole Fate Point economy suffers for it. Conviction aspects illustrate that perfectly. In the fiction, a character should follow his convictions more often than not. And when they don't, it should be a difficult decision. The beauty part of the whole pay-to-refuse thing is that the mechanics nicely reflect the fiction: The character doesn't want to violate her most firmly held beliefs, and the player doesn't want to part with two or three Fate Points if at all possible.

There are some differences between how WT's Convictions and FATE's Conviction aspects shake out in play. The most notable, though, and certainly the most emblematic of the differences between the two systems, may be one mentioned above. The fact that a Conviction can cost you Willpower if it's violated even by accident -- like if you have a Conviction against killing and then happen to roll, say, 7x10 on an attack -- is something that just doesn't happen in FATE. Something similar crops up when comparing the WT Unrest mechanic, which determines unfavorable public reaction to Strangeness with a dice roll, and Strange FATE's Collateral consequences, which does the same through a conscious choice on behalf of the players. But that's another topic for another time.

[Greyhawk] The Unified Theory of Magic (Part 3) - Clerical Magic

Clerical Magic Effects Overview

A continuing concern while working through the SoG Magic system was how clerics fit into the mechanic. While the source material treats clerical prayers and magic-user spells as being practically identical with respect to mechanics, the underlying principles by which magic-users and clerics generate magical effects are very different.

The source material states that clerics don’t actually harness magical forces. Clerics pray to their deity (singular/plural/whatever) with the desire for a particular prayer’s magical effect to occur. The deity’s power structure (for lack of a better term) then determines whether or not the cleric’s prayer will be fulfilled or not and then entities within the cleric’s faith system actually generate the magical effects on behalf of the cleric.

So to apply another metaphor (a prior post mentioned Wizardry and Sorcery were like sailing), clerical magic could be considered like “calling in an airstrike”.

To flesh out the metaphor, a cleric’s Faith (the Resolve skill, see below) is the communicator upon which an airstrike is called. Remember that classic line from the character Rene Belloq in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”?

“It's a transmitter, a radio for speaking to God!”

..and we all remember what happens when you try to use that particular radio without Faith…

But anyway, the cleric’s specific prayer / spell would be the effect requested and the “casting” is the act of calling in the airstrike.

When calling in that accurate airstrike, the cleric would need to provide fairly specific information given the “right way” to the correct party “on the other end of the line”, so the prayer (spell) has some pretty specific requirements. This also assumes that the cleric is also “the right person to call in the desired effect”.

Despite these distinctions, to keep terminology consistent, SoG still considers magical effects generated by a cleric’s prayer as “spells” and the cleric as being the caster.

Skill “Resolve (Faith trapping)”

The basic skill of the cleric to cast spells is the cleric’s Resolve skill expressed with the trapping of “Faith”.

The cleric’s Resolve skill represents the maximum spell difficulty the cleric can cast. A Resolve skill of +3 means that only spells of +3 difficulty (3rd level) and below can be completed.

What About the Magic Stunt?

Because the cleric is not actually generating the magical effect, there is no requirement for a cleric to have the Magic stunt. There are upsides and downsides to this:

• Clerics have no concerns about magical recoil.
• The reliance on their deity’s power structure to generate magical effects does tend to mean that things like the cleric’s Faith, and Aspects that affect that faith (in both the positive and the negative) become especially important to the cleric’s ability to create miracles.
• There is no currently no opportunity for the cleric to modify any spells or otherwise generate effects on the fly without some story-related mechanism being involved. A cleric’s spell must be followed “rote” or it just doesn’t work.
• SIDE NOTE: While the above is SoG’s current general position, I have wondered about the situation where a clerical spell requiring a cleric’s holy symbol as a component of that spell--should the GM consider that the spell is not possible without the symbol, or just less effective (with chances of possible failure)?
• Not allowing the spell places it closer to source material canon (I think), but further distances clerical spell use from magical spell use in SoG. Specifically in that a Wizard can modify the spell requirements and then deal with the potential for things like spell failure, magical recoil and a generally less effective result.
• On the other hand, allowing the spell but making it harder (less effective) means that you have to deal with idea that a clerical spell could fail (due to 4dF and increased difficulty) but wouldn’t result in magical recoil, which taken in combination with no requirement for the Magic stunt might present balance issues.

There is no restriction against a Cleric character possessing the Magic stunt, but there would be no benefit with respect to the clerical spells that are cast. That cleric COULD however generate magical effects by themselves the same as any other sorcerous effort (see prior post for more). In fact certain faiths might actually promote their clerics being magic-users or even Wizards in their own right (Boccob seems like a good possibility) to say nothing of the whole split-class/multi-class situation. However any sort of sorcery or wizardry done by clerics would follow normal magic use rules.

Mechanics of Clerical Casting

The actual game mechanics of a cleric’s casting are similar to Wizardry:

• The cleric commits a Fate point (doesn’t spend it) that will be returned at the end of the current scene.
• Player rolls 2dF+2 and applies the result to the cleric’s Resolve skill and applies it against the desired spell’s difficulty. Remember that the spell must be less than or equal to the cleric’s Resolve skill.
• Aspects are compelled or tagged as normal.
• If the cleric succeeds in the casting, any positive shifts count towards the effectiveness of the spell.
  • Side Note: Positive shifts generated with respect to the cleric’s player doing the dice rolling might be questioned, since the cleric is not generating the actual magical effect. The source material allows for the variability and sets the expectation so it is being left in SoG. This “bonus” could be explained within the game by considering that appropriate Aspects being tagged could have resulted in the deity granting extra spell power, variability in the entity actually casting the spell on behalf of the cleric, etc.

Aspects and Clerical Spells

Compelling or tagging an aspect when praying for a magical effect would reflect the situation where the deity’s power structure might grant a more (or less) effective result based upon the Aspect.

Example of Negative Aspects for Clerics

A cleric with the aspect of something like “A Shadow of Doubt”, or “Lawful Questionable” might be compelled to deal with a –2 effect due to possible impacts to alignment or faith.

Example of Positive Aspects for Clerics

Aspects of “Smite the Wicked!” or “A Friend in Deed” could easily be tagged to increase a spell’s effectiveness.

Casting Failure & Clerics

Because Clerics don’t actually harness the magical forces of the spell, there is generally no magical recoil associated with a casting failure by clerics.

Like Wizardry, if for some reason the cleric fails a spell casting, then the general rule is nothing happens other than the loss of the spell.

While it’s possible that some sort of faith-related recoil might be possible in certain situations…

• A cleric of one faith profaning another faith’s holy areas/symbols/etc.
• A Lawful Good cleric trying to cast “Cause Wounds” instead of “Cure Wounds” a little TOO often.

…I think that would reflect more of a “smiting” attitude, as opposed to an actual prayer / spell going wrong. Any stress taken due to something like this would have to be considered carefully by the cleric, as negative Aspects that might arise from matters of faith could get pretty nasty.

Druids and Clerical Spellcasting

With respect to Druids, at this point SoG maintains the source material’s assumption that they are a sub-class of clerics and generate magical effects in a similar manner, but their faith is not so much a deity but rather in “Nature”. Additionally the source material provides them with a different spell list than other clerics.

More playtesting will be needed to determine if that needs to be more closely considered.

What’s In the Pipeline

Okay, that’s quite a lot of information this week. Unless things take a different turn, the next series of posts will be something along the lines of:

• The on-the-fly “Magic Economy”
• Translating existing spell lists
• The Fate system and Magical Topics (Sorcerous Covens, anyone?)
• Crafting Magic Items

If anyone’s got a preference as to which gets posted next, I’d be curious to hear.

Escalating Aspects

So my friend John Armstrong, down San Diego way, has plans to hack Strange FATE (the brand of FATE used in The Kerberos Club: FATE Edition) to run Scion. The premise of Scion has always interested me, but I haven't actually played it. I just don't have a lot of experience with the Storyteller system, and I've always heard that mechanically it's a little... problematic. Thus, never played it, but the idea of taking the premise and transplanting it into another system is attractive.

Anyway, in the course of trying to figure out how to model Legend, we talked about having a character aspect dedicated to how you're perceived by mortals. One idea was that when you use a power related to that Legend and your roll obtains spin, that aspect can change if you weren't acting in accordance with it. I.e., if your actions don't reflect your Legend, your Legend may change to match your actions.

Something else spun out of that, though, that got me thinking. What if accepting an aspect compel made it harder to refuse future compels? The more you establish a pattern of behavior for yourself, the more difficult it is to break that pattern.

So, resolved. But before we get into how it works, a tweak: You can't just spend a Fate Point for an aspect-free +1 bonus (I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that anyway), and invoking an aspect only yields a +1 bonus by default, Diaspora-style. This isn't necessary, per se, but it does make it feel "cleaner" to me. Oh, and there are no more escalating compels, at least not for the aspect in question. All right.

First, the aspect has a row of three boxes. Every time you accept a compel on the aspect, check a box. I guess we could call it a stress track if we wanted to, and say that accepting a compel means taking a point of "aspect stress" or something, but I don't know if that really does anything apart from making this a bit more jargon-intensive.

Second, there's the stick. When the first box is checked, nothing happens. When the second box is checked, the GM has to offer two Fate Points to compel the aspect, and two Fate Points are required to refuse the compel. When the third box is checked, it's three Fate Points instead of two.

Third, the carrot. Every box that's checked on the aspect increases the invocation bonus by +1 -- invoking it yields +2 for one checked box, +3 for two, and +4 for all three.

Fourth, back to ones. When all three of the aspect's boxes are checked and you refuse a compel on it, clear the boxes.

Now, look. I know I haven't thought this all the way through yet. I know that always getting three Fate Point for a compel on that aspect is going to mean building up quite a store of Fate Points, especially since most players tend to accept compels about 90% of the time (in my experience), and that getting a consistent +4 bonus from a single aspect might be a big deal. One word: details. Maybe the payout from a compel stays as-written; the increasing bonus is probably incentive enough. Whatever. We can work it out. Regardless, it's a neat idea worth exploring.

[Espionage] Agency Evaluations

For some reason, as I alluded to in a previous post, I'm reluctant to give these spy characters for Gamex aspects in the conventional manner (i.e., a list of aspects). I'm pretty enamored with the idea of making the character sheets look like agent dossiers -- which, BTW, is a really productive mini-obsession when you know nothing about graphic design and try to do everything with Word -- and a straight-up list of aspects just doesn't mesh with that. It'd wreck it, in other words. I mean, I'm not deluding myself into thinking that nothing on the sheet will break the illusion, but anywhere I can avoid that sort of thing, I will.

To that end, I'm thinking of couching aspects in one or more brief paragraphs of "Agency Evaluation." Actually, it'd be one paragraph for an Agency Evaluation -- relatively objective facts about the agent -- and an Agent Self-Evaluation, which would be more subjective, qualitative statements. And maybe a third for Background/Affiliations.

But as flavorful as that is, it's not really doing the trick, aspect-wise. So to bridge the gap, I'd take a page from HeroQuest and underline, say, five or six phrases. Those are your aspects. Then I'd let the player underline another two phrases during play to add more aspects from the paragraphs provided, as they wish. Or maybe I won't underline anything, and they can underline stuff themselves -- but in that case, the embedded aspects would be pretty obvious, but the players would at least get the joy (joy!) of deciding which ones they'd pick.

Of course, this means that I'd have to write enough excess material in those evaluations to allow for some genuine choice in terms of finding new aspect fodder, but that seems like a small price to pay for something that could be pretty cool for the player. My only real fear is that the aspects will end up serving the needs of the paragraph rather than being bang-zoom aspects in their own right. Y'know?

Lemme see if I can illustrate what I'm talking about here:

Background/Affiliations 

Attained the rank of Major in the British Army Special Air Service, then recruited into MI6 where he quickly advanced to Special Agent status, codename 7777. Oxford-educated with advanced degrees in Political Science, International Studies, and Psychology.

Agency Evaluation 

Agent Pierce possesses an impressive variety of skills, including excellent focus and self-discipline in high-stress environments, mechanical aptitude, and fluency in nine languages. Pierce has a range of combat training, as would be expected: A world-class marksman, he's also studied aikido under Minoru Mochizuki and distinguished himself as a national fencing champion at Oxford. Despite his education and background, in the field Pierce is best used as a blunt object, and consistently favors brute-force solutions over lateral thinking when left to his own devices. Psych profile indicates a degree of disassociation from others that nevertheless lends him a willingness to make tough mission-critical decisions. Recommended assignments: Surveillance, Elimination.

Agent Self-Evaluation 

Let it be said of me that I am at all times a consummate professional. Whether fighting for England as a loyal Briton in the SAS or in British Intelligence or fighting for the world as an agent of F.A.T.E., the mission comes first and foremost. 

Hrm... it's a little clunky, but I'm not sure that means it can't work. I'll continue to massage it. I actually think Agent Connor Pierce here is a rather tricky one to start with; he's all business, and rather devoid of some of the quirks and personality edges that the other PCs have. It might be fun to have each agent do a "Peer Evaluation" of another agent, to get some more out-there aspects in the mix.

UPDATE: Wait! In the shower today I thought of something totally better. (It's where I usually get my totally better ideas.) It'll let me list aspects without wrecking the agent-dossier aesthetic. And it will immediately look cool as soon as the sheets are presented to the players. When I have character sheets together, I'll post them here.

[Greyhawk] Clerical Turning

The effect of a Cleric (or Paladin) turning Undead is implemented as a Social Combat attack by a Cleric versus a one or more Undead, opposed by the Resolve skill.

A turning is accomplished by a cleric using the "Turn Undead" stunt, where the cleric's Resolve skill (with a trapping of Faith) is substituted for Intimidation.

Use of the Turning Undead stunt counts as an Action by the cleric as per normal.

Upon resolution of the Turning attack, there are the following possible outcomes:

Successful:

The cleric has done sufficient stress to generate a Consequence, which could then force the undead to offer a Concession or be Taken Out.

Partial Success:

Social stress was generated, but not enough to generate a Consequence. The undead cannot attack the cleric physically and is now considered "held at bay" and the Intimidation battle can continue. Note that if the undead chooses to disengage from the Intimidation battle and try to attack someone else, it can still be Intimidated by the cleric.

There's been the suggestion that a fragile aspect could be placed on an undead trying to disengage from a Turning, "trying to tear his eyes away from the Cleric", but playtesting will determine if that holds up.

Failure:

No stress shifts were generated, and the cleric can no longer attempt to Turn any undead present in that scene.

Epic Failure:

No stress shifts were generated, and the Undead generates Spin. The cleric cannot attempt any further Turning in that scene to any Undead present and the Undead with Spin gets the +1 as per normal. Have something appropriately nasty happen to the cleric! The cinematic idea of the undead grasping the cleric's holy symbol and having it burst into flames might be fun!

Requirements for Turning

A Turning requires that the following:

• Stunt "Turn Undead" (only available to the Cleric or Paladin class)
• A material component (the cleric's holy symbol)
• Somatic component (the cleric actively brandishing the holy symbol)

(See below for an option to add a verbal component.)

Consequences from Being Turned

If an undead can accept a social Consequence, it can then choose to either:

Accept A Turning Consequence

Something like "Cowering", "Driven to its Knees", "Covering its Eyes", "Shrieking in Agony" or even a physical consequence like "Blistering Skin" would be appropriate. The consequence could then be tagged as per normal.

NOTE: Use of Grit Rules (or Undead "Grit"):

Certain NPCs or monsters can potentially have Grit, a number usually at 1 or 2. The number represents how committed the entity is to the conflict. That value represents the number of Consequences the character will elect to take before offering a Concession.

Grit is contextual as most monsters "will not go to the mat over trivial matters."

EXAMPLE: A vampire out wandering around may have no Grit, whereas when protecting their coffin, they could have a Grit of 2 (very committed).

Remember that Grit is not a matter of how many Consequences are available, but rather how many Consequences they will accept before offering a Concession.

Offer a Concession

In the event that the Undead chooses not to accept a Consequence it can offer a Concession to the cleric. If an undead CANNOT accept a Consequence, there's no opportunity to offer a Concession and you go right to "Taken Out".

The nature of the concession offered by the undead depends somewhat upon the alignment of the cleric:

Undead Concession Offered to a Good-aligned Cleric:

Undead who offer a Concession to a cleric of Good alignment will compel the creature to move directly away from the cleric and stay as far away as possible for the rest of the scene, moving at full speed for the duration if at all possible. After the scene, the turned undead will be able to come back again, but they are subject to further turning by the cleric. Any Consequences on the undead in later scenes could be tagged for an improved Turning.

Undead Concession Offered to an Evil-aligned Cleric:

Undead who offer a Concession to a cleric of Evil alignment will cause the creatures to take a neutral attitude to the party and the cleric for the rest of the scene.

Neutral undead will ignore the cleric and his or her party. This Concession is only valid as long as the Undead are not the subject of a hostile act by the party or the cleric. Examples of hostile acts are:

• Entry into an area which the undead were created to guard.
• Attempts to remove guarded items or treasure which the undead were created to guard.
• Preventing the undead from carrying out commands from which they were created to guard.
• Outright attacks (physical or magical).

Taken Out Result from Turning

In the event that a Concession is not offered or is refused by a cleric, the Turning continues. Note that a refusal of a Concession should be taken into further consideration later on (see below). In the event that a Consequence CANNOT be absorbed by the undead, it is considered "Taken Out". While the exact circumstances of the Taken Out result are up to the cleric, they should obey the following guidelines:

Taken Out by a Good-aligned Cleric:

Undead who are Taken Out by clerics of Good alignment, are then considered destroyed.

Taken Out by an Evil-aligned Cleric:

Undead who are Taken Out by clerics of Evil alignment, are then at the mercy of the cleric's discretion--they can be destroyed or are automatically considered Minions for a period of time that depends on "how bad" they were taken out.

• The rest of the Scene (overflow of 0-1)
• The rest of the Day (overflow of 2)
• The rest of the Adventure (overflow of 3)

Once that period of time passes, the undead will either need to be re-controlled, destroyed, or otherwise turned. The GM should keep in mind that undead that have a degree of free will likely keep in mind their treatment for purposes of assigning any grit.

Turning-related Attack Modifiers

"Powerless before my Faith!"

In the event that a Cleric's Resolve / Faith skill (without any modifiers) is greater than the target's Social stress track (without regard to any existing damage) by 3 or better, no die roll is needed--they are automatically Turned, and the cleric receives a Concession.

If a Cleric's Resolve / Faith skill (without any modifiers) is greater than the target's Social stress track (without regard to any existing damage) by 5 or better, no die roll is needed--they are automatically Taken Out (as described above).

Adding a Verbal Component

In addition to the Material and Somatic components, a cleric can choose to add a Verbal component. If the cleric chooses to (and is capable of) speaking holy names, etc in a strong projecting voice, allow the cleric a +1 modifier.

Diametrically Opposed Alignment

It is possible to tag a target's diametrically opposed alignment (Law vs Chaos and Good vs Evil) to gain a +2 on the turning. This tag cannot be used for defensive purposes.

A Cleric with Skill of Intimidation

Having the skill of Intimidation might qualify as a bonus (complementary skill) on the Turning, but it cannot be substituted in place of Resolve / Faith.

Undead Tagging an Environment Aspect

If there is some aspect of Evil within the location or the Scene, the undead will be able to utilize a free tag for their opposed skill. However an evil cleric within the same area could tag that Aspect and earn the +2 for purposes of Control, instead of the Undead using it to resist. Similarly, an aspect of Good upon the environment or scene could be tagged by a Good cleric for use in Turning.

Repeated Turning

When dealing with multiple undead in a group, as long as a clerical turning is successful against ANY of those undead, the cleric may attempt to Turn any remaining undead as his next action until such time as the group is entirely turned, or he fails to turn any.

Note that undead minions under an undead leader, may use their leader's resistance to Intimidation.

Cleric Incapacitation

Any clerical compulsion (Turned or Controlled via "Taken Out" result) will be nullified in the event that the cleric who did the turning is killed or otherwise rendered unconscious (except for normal sleep). If this occurs the GM will consider the following factors when determining the actions of the freed undead:

• Are the undead mindless or do they have a certain amount of free will?
• What was their treatment at the hands of the cleric?
  
• How much risk were the undead subjected to?
• Possible reactions could range from mindless undead simply doing nothing, losing all animation and direction to vengeful undead attacking an incapacitated cleric and/or his party.

"Duelling Clerics"

Any clerical Turning or Taken Out result could be countered by another cleric (evil or good). However as stated previously, controlled undead would then be using their leader's Resolve / Faith as their opposed skill instead of their own.

EXAMPLE: A good cleric turned a group of undead and they began to flee. An evil cleric gaining control of those turned undead would then have countered the good cleric's prior turning and could use them as minions within that same scene.

EXAMPLE: An evil cleric with undead minions are being Turned by a good cleric. The undead will resist the turning based upon their leader's (the evil cleric) resistance to the good cleric's Intimidation.

[FATE Core] Skills, Trappings, and Stunts

Interesting post by Lenny Balsera the other day about the importance of skill trappings in FATE -- and one that aligns very nicely with the importance of trappings in FATE Kerberos, which is, let's say, encouraging. I'm confident about it, of course, but part of me is always wondering, "Yeah, but what will so-and-so think of it?" Replace "so-and-so" with any pre-existing FATE author, lather, rinse, repeat. It's more than just that, though: It's looking to those people and asking myself if what I am doing/have done with my own version of FATE is in the conceptual ballpark of what they've done with FATE. I'm not afraid to -- pompous as this will sound -- break new ground, or go exploring on my own, but I feel... more confident (?) about it if it seems like I'm extending or enhancing a portion of a map that's already been drawn rather than trying to erase and redraw it. Does that make sense?

So while while what Lenny posted is far from a one-to-one with FATE Kerberos, the emphasis on trappings -- FATE's red-headed stepchild, IMO, taken for granted compared to aspects -- is extra reassurance (on top of a successful playtest and development process) that the way FATE Kerberos puts trappings front and center is just a logical outgrowth of what's come before and not some crazy, left-field idea.

Anyway. I'm talking this to death. But the development process was, for me, dominated by a single dilemma: doing something different with FATE without alienating current FATE gamers. And Lenny's post confirms some of the thought process that went along with that "something different." So... good!

[Greyhawk] Experience & Advancement, Part the Second

Old Business Before New Business
Progressive Skill Cost Method
In the course of writing the prior article on Experience, I had a thought that my previously determined flat rate of 1 XP per +1 skill might need an alternative. I am considering that each +1 of skill upgrade costs that same number of XP as the desired skill level. This means that to get a +4 skill to now be a +5 skill costs 5 XP.

Stated differently, my previous article suggested that to get a +0 Skill to be +5 would cost a player 5 XP. To do the same thing under this new "progression method" would be: 1+2+3+4+5 = 15 XP.

Using the progression method appeals to me it addresses a couple things that had been bugging me:

• It makes the higher levels of skill proficiency MUCH more difficult to achieve. Legendary really is legendary now.
• It reduces the chances of a character being able to add new skills that "leapfrog" lower level skills that they previously had. This promotes a more natural progression within the Skill pyramid.

Additional Stress Box on Level-Up
I had forgotten to mention that up achieving a new level (creation phase), you also receive an additional "base" stress box (in addition to aspects, stunts, etc). So a 1 phase character has a single stress box and for each phase gains an additional stress box.

Note that stress boxes are still adjusted by skills, etc.

Onward to New Business
So last article, I talked about a process by which players can accumulate experience points. This time, I'm focusing on players spending those experience points on their characters.

To start with, I will lay some brief groundwork for the basis of how Advancement might work in Spirit of Greyhawk.

Advancement Method
Based upon some number crunching, I have decided to stay with the SotC standard "Pyramid Method" of character building and advancement. Originally I was planning on going with the "Column" or "Tower Method" of advancement, but decided against it for the time being.

This post was getting way too long, so I've edited this section down to just show the bottom lines of Total XP expenditures.

Using the most efficient method possible (least amount of experience) to get a single skill from +0 to a +5:

• Tower Method (Linear Cost): 15 total XP
• Pyramid Method (Linear Cost): 35 total XP
• Tower Method (Progressive Cost): 35 total XP
• Pyramid Method (Progressive Cost): 75 total XP

So I like the Pyramid Method of structuring skills because it gives a very clear "apex skill" which will become important later in the article. I also like costing the skills in a Progressive Cost method, because it makes the higher end of the skill ladder much harder to achieve.

However, that now means the XP thresholds increase dramatically.

...Any opinions on this?

Class & Level Advancement
Every character class must have both of the following:

• Class Aspect
• Apex Skill

Class Aspect
Basically the player decides what class their character should be (again, just sticking with the generic "Fighter", "Wizard", "Thief" and "Cleric" for the time being), the player then must decide (with GM approval) upon an Aspect that reflects (or defines) that character's class.

Examples of Class Aspects:

• FIGHTER: Guild Grunt, Trusted Retainer, High Lord's Shield Bearer, Duellist, Sargent of the City Garrison, Thug for the Thieves' Guild, Ranger of the North Woods
• WIZARD: Sorceror's Apprentice, Alchemist, Master of the Lost Library, Battlemage
• THIEF: Footpad, Locksmith gone Bad, Master Thief, Guild Master of Undercity
• CLERIC: Acolyte of the Dark One, Gom's Healer, The Voice of Justice, High Priest of the Order of G'nirwob.

While you can be as generic or as dramatic as you wish, I believe that the Class Aspect should also contain some clue as to the general power-level of the character.

As the character progresses, the Class Aspect is going to change somewhat. It's possible that it could be totally redefined I suppose, but I would suspect that's probably more story-driven.

Apex Skill
As I mentioned above, the character's Class Aspect must be supported by single skill at the apex of that classes' skill pyramid. It doesn't always have to be as simple as a character with a Class Aspect of something Fighter-related, the Apex skill is "Melee". It could be something else such as "Might", or "Leadership". The character's Apex skill could be anything the player can "sell" to the GM.

Some ideas could be:

• FIGHTER: Leadership, Melee, Missile, Intimidation, Survival
• CLERIC: Magic (clerical), Leadership, Medical
• THIEF: Burglary, Sleight of Hand, Deceit, Stealth
• WIZARD: Research, Magic, Crafting, Resolve

...you start to see the possibilities.


Spending XP
The player may spend the XP as they are earned to increase the character's skills. Typically increases would occur at the end or start of sessions.

How to address the idea that a player may not follow an "optimized" pyramid progression? If you consider the progression from a 2nd phase character to a 3rd phase character (requires 6 XP), the "normal" track might be starting from this:

1 Skill at Fair (+2)
2 Skills at Average (+1)

So, the first increase would give this:

1 Skill at Fair (+2)
3 Skills at Average (+1)

Next increase to get:

2 Skills at Fair (+2)
3 Skills at Average (+1)

Finally one last increase to get:

1 Skill at Good (+3)
2 Skills at Fair (+2)
3 Skills at Average (+1)

...and the character is now considered a 3rd phase character, and gets the extra 2 Aspects, 1 Stunt and +2 Fate points on the Refresh.

So this is only the "basic" progression and probably the most efficient one for the fastest advancement of the Apex Skill under the Pyramid Method. However there's a few wrinkles that could happen to complicate things:


Picking A Non-Standard Pyramid
It's entirely possible that a player might select a skill pyramid that doesn't allow for that next apex at the soonest available "threshold":
If you consider the basic example of a second phase character:
1 Skill at Fair (+2)
2 Skills at Average (+1)

The player could allocate similar increases as listed above and end up here:
3 Skills at Fair (+2)
4 Skills at Average (+1)

...So you might have spent the almost the same XP, but have not yet achieved a Good (+3) skill. Should that character still be considered a 3rd phase character?

I say no, that character is not a 3rd phase character until a Good (+3) skill has been achieved, regardless of many XP are used. I consider the phrase "Jack of All Trades, Master of None", to be very applicable here.

So there's nothing wrong with creating a pyramid like this, just understand the impact (or lack thereof) to class.

In essence, the XP thresholds from the prior article represent the minimum Experience needed to achieve that level of "mastery". Additionally, by doing it this way, there's no need to adjust any thresholds if you chose to use different Skill architectures or costs.


Levelling & Aspects
The +2 Aspects acquired by a player at the achievement of a new level could be used to either:

• Add a new aspect
• Modify an existing aspect (important with redefining the Class Aspect)
• Remove a character aspect

...at a cost of 1 earned aspect per transaction. In other words, each one of those three options costs one of the Aspects.

Whether existing Aspects were attached to the character during the course of play or from the player's prior decisions is not important.

I have considered the impact to the Advancement economy with respect to using XP to do the three things above, but at the moment I don't have a clear sense of how much currency those things cost. I had considered something on the range of 5 XP to add / modify / remove an aspect but it's not dancing and singing for me at the moment. I currently like the idea of tying a player modifying aspects based upon their level and it also reinforces the importance of a character's level in SoG.

Side Note on Epic Play: Too Many Aspects?
In my research there's plenty of mentions about folks having concerns about too many Aspects and being too much to keep track of at the high end.

I think that's a valid concern for some people, and while I have no plans to limit the number of aspects on characters, I think it's entirely reasonable for a GM to have a house rule capping the total number of aspects available on characters. In that case, you could still take the Aspect piece of the advancement and simply state that if a character's cap has been reached, their aspect modifications must be used within that capped amount.


Levelling & Stunts
Consistent with Aspects, Stunts are tied to levelling and not to XP. With that extra Stunt, the player can choose to either:

• Add a New Stunt
• Replace an Existing Stunt with Another Stunt

I'm not entirely certain about the concept of replacing a Stunt with another one, but I'm allowing for the idea that a player should be able to "focus" or "redefine" the character. Note that replacing a Stunt that is a requirement for other stunts, will essentially "liquidate" that related Stunt also. I'm currently going to side with the player and allow them to keep that empty slot and redefine that Stunt as well.


Multi-Class / Split Class
A player can have choose to effectively have multiple classes for their character, and spend Skill points as they wish, but they are working with two separate skill pyramids. I currently don't see that SoG is served by making a distinction between Split Classes and Multi-Classes, and the model appears to cover them both, so I'm going to leave this "as is".

For each class of the character (however many a character has), there would need to be:

• A Class Aspect
• A Skill Pyramid associated with the class, and by extension, an Apex Skill that supports the Class Aspect.

Plus looking back at the records of the old school gameplay experience and character advancement, it was quite common to have higher-level characters with two or three classes anyway--certainly at the higher levels of play.

[Greyhawk] Experience & Advancement, Part the First

Much credit and respect to Rob Dohoghue's blog entry as the genesis of this post: http://rdonoghue.blogspot.com/2010/10/role-of-spending.html

So, Spirit of Greyhawk is NOT dead, but had been on something of a hiatus for two reasons:

1. The demands of the non-RPG world just became too great to allow for any progress in the back half of 2010.
2. I had hit a bad case of writer's block with The Spirit of Greyhawk campaign (which tends to drive my postings here). The campaign storyline has been building to something of a "watershed moment" and I didn't feel as though I had enough planned to make it work the way I wanted.

Anyway, New Years' Resolutions and blah-blah-blah commitment to gaming blah-blah-blah, we got the game going again last weekend and though I was no further along to solving reason #2 above, I decided to stop delaying, put on my "Big GM panties" and really run the game as a "true" Fate game: stop worrying about lack of planning and let the players really have a say in where and how the game played out.

As most of you Fate-faithful might already have guessed, I was worrying too much about lack of planning. The session was actually one of the most engaging and fast-paced of any we've ever had. Being a Fate-GM, I had a very proud moment while we were cleaning up the Buffalo Wing bones, dice and empty cups when one of the players shook his head and said, "This session would have made for an amazing story to read or watch!"

In large part I credit that sentiment to a new rule I implemented with the goal of getting the players to stop "hoarding" their Fate Points--using the expenditure of Fate Points as the basis for character advancement.


Earning Experience Points
I've implemented Rob's rule pretty much as stated in the blog entry linked above:

"You can treat Fate points as XP by keeping a bowl in the middle of the table. Every time a player spends a FP, it goes into the bowl. The GM might also randomly toss into the bowl when he wants to reward general awesomeness. At night's end, the points in the bowl are converted to XP and divided among the players. Give any extra to whoever the table considers the night's spotlight player, or just let it ride til next time."

Playtest Experience
It was as though the clouds had parted: FP hoarding (or spending them only in a reactive sense) was a thing of the past. Declarations, tagging and Aspect powerings o' plenty. In a single 5 hour session, two 5-phase PCs had racked up 11 XP for the party.

Some examples of Player-related Awesome from that Session:

• Declaring a large chandelier was hanging DIRECTLY above a wounded Villain, and the various rituals in chamber that involved the creation of a vortex (long story) had weakened the chandelier's chain, thus making it primed for use in a "Death from Above" attack.

• PC encircling a villain's neck with his "chain whip" weapon while she tried to strangle him with her bare hands (big Wagnerian woman!), then using his Athletics skill and "Parkour" aspect to run up a wall and flip over the villain, thus simultaneously breaking her stranglehold on him and breaking her neck.

• Correctly guessing/tagging another villain's "Mama's Boy" aspect to send him into a wild frenzy (cuz the PC had killed his Mother in the prior bullet point) causing him to scream in rage while attacking wildly and thereby negate any protective benefit of fighting within an obscuring mist.

• Another correct guess/tag from the party that the geothermal vents upon which the town sat meant that the occupied mansion they had just cleared MUST have an escape tunnel somewhere and used it to free the mansion's servants. "If there's gonna be an escape tunnel ANYWHERE in the city, there'll be one in the mayor's mansion!"
  

This was (for me) the first time a Spirit of Greyhawk gaming session really FELT like a Fate "High Fantasy" game, rather than a Fantasy game that just happened to use the Fate ruleset. As a GM, I really felt the power of collaborative storytelling and that my job was to provide strong characters and settings to surround the PCs, keep a few things in my back pocket just in case, then put the pieces in motion and just let it happen.

And again in large part, I believe it was due to providing the players with an explicit mechanism to empower them to actively engage in the Fate system.

So now that Experience Points are a reality--how should Advancement be handled? There are other Fate implementations out there that deal with advancement in many different ways, but considering that Spirit of Greyhawk is attempting to stay consistent with players' expectations for how the gameworld works, I found that just lifting them "as is" into SoG wasn't going to work for me.

So here's my current thinking on how SoG will handle Advancement...

Spending Experience
Creation Phases and Levels
Spirit of Greyhawk makes the general assumption that each Creation Phase (as documented in Spirit of the Century) is considered as being the equivalent of "2 levels" in the source material. In other words, a Wizard with 3 creation phases is equivalent of a 6th-level Magic-User.

In Spirit of the Century, each creation phase is basically credited with having the following benefits:

• 2 Fate Points added to character's Refresh
• 1 New Stunt
• 2 New Aspects
• Increased Number and Proficiency in Skills (discussed below)

Skill Points
If you consider each +1 in a skill as costing 1 point, the SotC 5-phase character would have the following...

1 x (+5) Skill = 5 Skill points
2 x (+4) Skills = 8 Skill points
3 x (+3) Skills = 9 Skill points
4 x (+2) Skills = 8 Skill points
5 x (+1) Skills = 5 Skill points

...for a total of 35 Skill points. At it's most basic, you could just divide the points by 5 (Creation Phases for a SotC character), make the statement that each phase would be worth 7 skill points and be done with it.

However I don't think that's really consistent with how this gameworld works and would be counter to the expectations of those players familiar with the source material.


Greyhawk Assumptions - Experience & Advancement
The following are derived from the Greyhawk source material:

• As a rule of thumb, it takes roughly 2x as much XP to get from one level to the next. In other words, it takes about 2x as much XP to get to level 3 that it took to get to level 2. Then another 2x as much XP to get level 4 that it took to get to level 3.
  NOTE: This is FAR from a constant, and at many classes' higher levels, this multiple starts to drop off.
  

• XP rewards are constant with respect to who is earning them. A level 3 player killing a particular monster gets as much experience as a level 10 player would from killing the same monster. This means that a higher level character had to either do MORE of the same things, or kill tougher monsters (and get more treasure) to increase at the same pace as their lower-level counterparts.

• If a 1st level PC were fighting a monster with a 12th level PC in the party, even though the 12th level PC might have done the lion's share of the damage to the monster and might have been solely responsible for killing the monster (with the 1st player being little more than an extra target), the basic rules state that 1st level PC gains as much XP for the kill as the 12th level player.

Phases: Skill Amount and Proficiency
Given the assumptions listed above, consider the SotC pyramid progression looking at the number of skills and at what degree of proficiency they are:

Phase 1:
1 Skill at Average (+1)

Phase 2:
1 Skill at Fair (+2)
2 Skills at Average (+1)

Phase 3:
1 Skill at Good (+3)
2 Skills at Fair (+2)
3 Skills at Average (+1)

Phase 4:
1 Skill at Great (+4)
2 Skills at Good (+3)
3 Skills at Fair (+2)
4 Skills at Average (+1)

Phase 5:
1 Skill at Superb (+5)
2 Skills at Great (+4)
3 Skills at Good (+3)
4 Skills at Fair (+2)
5 Skills at Average (+1)

So, working from that, we could take the following progression of total skill points needed to achieve each character creation phase. (NOTE: I've expanded the pyramid out to 9th level to be consistent with the SoG Ladder, as well as to see if the progression holds up at the high end.)

Phase 1: Earn 1 Skill point total.
Phase 2: Earn 3 more Skill points for a total of 4 Skill points.
Phase 3: Earn 6 more Skill points for a total of 10 Skill points.
Phase 4: Earn 10 more Skill points for a total of 20 Skill points.
Phase 5: Earn 15 more Skill points for a total of 35 Skill points.
Phase 6: Earn 21 more Skill points for a total of 56 Skill points.
Phase 7: Earn 28 more Skill points for a total of 84 Skill points.
Phase 8: Earn 36 more Skill points for a total of 120 Skill points.
Phase 9: Earn 45 more Skill points for a total of 165 Skill points.

While this progression is not a perfect fit with the source material, I think it's close enough out of the box to not worry about having to come up with something else.


Playtest Experience
Back to the last playtest session of SoG: we have two PC's at "Phase 5", or the equivalent of 10th level. As I had stated, the party had accumulated 11 XP total in one 5 hour session. For right now, I'm going to generalize that into a convenient "1 XP per gamer per 1 hour of gaming time" guess-stimate.

This means that for characters to get from Phase 5 to Phase 6, they would need to earn another 21 skill points each. Restated in source material terms, that means for 10th level characters to get to 12th level (remember that 1 phase = 2 levels), they would each need about 21 hours of gaming time to get there. From the perspective of my current gaming availability (5 hour game session every 2-3 weeks), that sounds pretty reasonable or perhaps even stingy. But then again going from 10th to 12th level is no walk in the park!


...So, any comments? My goal here is to try to stay true to the assumptions players have when they are playing in "Greyhawk", while staying as close as possible to the Fate system as implemented by the Evil Hat folks.

Coming up next: Going further off into the weeds with more specifics for spending XP and Advancement for a Fate game in the Greyhawk gameworld.

Gateway 2010 Post-Mortem

This year's Gateway was one of those cons where I can say I was honestly happy with every game I was in, whether playing or GMing. I may have been utterly, comically incompetent in one (EX-47 the assassin droid in Josh's Star-Wars-via-Smallville game) and joined in the teeth-gnashing over the rules for another (Andy's otherwise very fun Shadow, Sword & Spell game), but it was all a good time. (I even got to play the Castle Ravenloft boardgame during the dinner break on Saturday, which was a nice surprise, thanks to the Vegas/Utah contingent.)

My FATE Supers game was no exception -- only Morgan was already familiar with how my particular supers hack worked, and the other four players didn't seem to have a ton of FATE experience, so it was a good playtest group. The opening scene, in which the team leader reviews the team's dossiers with her commander while the rest of the team tells stories about her, worked really well, and nobody ended up screwed by the aspects they received in the process. And it did what that opening-scene thing usually does: Give each player some spotlight time and the chance to make a skill roll. In terms of the narrative, it injected a little uncertainty about Ballista's ability to effectively lead, and let Ballista voice her concerns about her relatively inexperienced team in a safe environment.

Every character felt useful and effective and got to have at least one or two kick-ass moments. My only real regret is that I made the same mistake I seem to so frequently make in FATE games, and that's putting in Fair minions. I always think, "Well, these guys should be a cut above the Average minion," but I'm always, always wrong. As soon as I said "A couple dozen HYDRA -- er, CHIMERA guys swarm out of the doors and the jungle," I should've known making them Fair would mean the scene would eventually drag.

As a corollary, when I make minions too strong, I'm always too slow on rectifying the situation by either reducing their Quality right then and there, or simply answering the question "How many more are still standing?" with something less than complete honesty. I mean, if they don't know, and I want to move on already, just lowball it! As soon as the super-powered badguy of the scene went down, I should've wrapped things up more quickly.

As it was, all that time spent punching out mooks meant that the endgame was rushed, which was too bad. It went from "Ack! Horrible situation!" to "Ah, well that's that that dealt with, then" in a matter of minutes. I cut two major NPCs entirely for time, and the two they did face in that final scene just didn't get enough screen time to be especially effective or interesting. I tried to convince everyone that something big was happening through the clever use of words, but I don't think I really pulled it off. Ah well.

Anyway. My players were great, and despite the occasional what-skill-should-I-use-now? dithering things went very smoothly on their end. Plus, I'd like to think the game illustrated several key lessons of FATE:

• Don't bother citing all your aspects before you roll. Roll first, then deal with aspects. This is a no-brainer for FATE veterans, but newer players often see this list of descriptors and want to focus on those to the exclusion of all else. You're not a slave to your aspects -- not every action you take has to be justified by them in advance.
• Don't feel limited by what's on the character sheet. If you want to do something but aren't sure how to do it, tell the GM. If that GM is me and I'm not being a short-sighted idiot, we'll quickly work something out and get on with it.
• When you have three Fate Points, you have a lot of Fate Points. Spend 'em. You can't do anything with them once the game's over, so spend away.
• Simply acting in line with an aspect is not the same as compelling that aspect. A proper compel makes your bad situation even worse. Whatever action you take in accordance with the compel has to put you in a disadvantageous position. Taking an alternate approach to a scene that still deals with the conflict in that scene more or less effectively is not worth a Fate Point.
• If you spend all your Fate Points to avoid taking a point or two of stress, you are not allowed to then complain about your lack of Fate Points. You've chosen to blow your narrative-currency wad on not getting hit, which necessarily means you're going to be a slave to the dice for a bit. You don't have to win every roll. Seriously. Let it go. Take some stress or a consequence. You'll have more fun for having done so.
• Moreover, unlike many other fine RPGs, in FATE you want trouble for your character. You want things to go poorly, then take a turn for the worse. If you go around playing it safe all the time, you'll never earn the Fate Points you so desperately want and/or need. Alternate, non-mechanical reason for wanting all that to happen: Where's the fun in everything going your way?

Afterward, Morgan took all the character sheets for himself, no doubt to reverse-engineer them. Morgan, just ask! I'll send you whatever you want!

ADDENDUM: Speaking of Morgan, my platonic FATE-mate, I neglected to mention his DFRPG game! Or "games" plural, really, but I only played in one. As it happened, I'd played the same scenario at Gamex back in May, but that was the hole in my schedule I'd left for a Morgan game without knowing what he'd run in that slot, so that's what I happened to get. But I played a different character, so for me it was a totally different game. About half the table knew the Dresden-verse well, a couple more had only read one or two of the books, and then there was me, pretty much completely ignorant of it all. The only things I know about Jim Butcher's series are what I've picked up from the sessions of the game I've played. This time around, I played the succubus assassin who feeds off of lust, so I engineered a virtual orgy in the first scene, because that seemed like something I'd want to do. Fortunately, Morgan had the good taste to fade to black on that before... y'know.

At any rate, I enjoyed it a lot. It was like the eighth time he'd run that particular scenario, and I really like DFRPG's particular iteration of FATE. It's definitely going to inform my FATE Supers conversion, that's for sure.

A parting note re: DFRPG. In the absence of a definitive version of FATE that can be cited as the "default" or "standard" rules, it's interesting to me now to note how DFRPG is gradually taking the place of SotC in the public perception. Not that there's anything good or bad about that -- I just find it interesting.

Gateway 2010: More Stuff

It occurs to me that throwing those sheets up here yesterday without an explanation or two might lead to a little confusion.

You may notice some blank spots in the characters' aspects marked "Assigned" -- Flagstone has one, and Ballista has four. I usually like to give players in one-shots like these a chance to finish off their pre-gens with an aspect or two of their choosing. It gives a sense of investment in or ownership of the character. In this case, though, I'm doing something a little different.

Instead of each player giving his or her own PC an aspect, the players will assign each other aspects. The characters will be split into two groups: Ballista, and everyone else. Ballista, as the team leader, will be in a mission briefing with the game's Nick Fury analogue, going over the team's dossiers with him and making evaluations. One by one, she'll assign each of the other four PCs an aspect based on her assessment of their skills (which the player will invent, hopefully based on what's already on the character sheet).

The other PCs will be together somewhere else on the Hover-Carrier, talking about their team leader and the experiences they've all had with her in training or whatever. The delivery vector for this is somewhat inspired by John Harper's Agon: One player tells most of a story involving himself, Ballista, and another PC. At the climax or turning point of this story, he'll pick a skill relevant to his role in the narrative and roll it; the other PC's player will do likewise, with the same or a different skill. Whoever wins gets to finish the story and give Ballista an aspect.

So in a way, it's what I almost always do with these games -- start off with individual spotlight time, possibly describing a character's final phase, that culminates in a skill roll and an aspect. There's just more of a competitive element to it this time.

Now, there is certainly the possibility that Ballista's player could stick one or more PCs with an amusingly crippling (or crippingly amusing) aspect that kinda screws them over, but everyone should keep in mind two things. One, they're going to want everyone else to be as competent as possible. Two, turnabout's fair play. Almost all of Ballista's aspects are going to be assigned by other players, so a little diplomacy wouldn't hurt.


Part of that, too, is likely to depend on how familiar the players are with each other already. I'm willing to bet you'd be more likely to screw over a friend than a total stranger.


Here's another PC for the game, Dreamer. He's a bit of an amalgam of Planetary's The Drummer, Doctor Strange, and maybe Stormwatch's The Doctor. And Druid from Secret Warriors, too, at least in physical appearance. I find Druid compelling in that Nick Fury kicked him off the team for being a liability (by posting a note to his bedroom door, no less). Dreamer is what Druid might be like if he didn't screw up so much. His aspect "The Sorcerer Supine" pretty much says it all, if you ask me -- immense magical power in a guy who sometimes has a hard time getting up from the couch.

It's That Gamex Time of Year

Gamex is just around the corner, and for the first time since "Spirit of the 31st Century" at OrcCon 2008 -- I think -- I'm not running a FATE game. Shock! Horror!

I am, however, running ICONS, which creator Steve Kenson (a name with which you may be familiar) has described as "FATE-inspired." I.e., it has something like aspects. Apart from aspects (and consequences), I'm not sure there's a whole lot that's intrinsic to FATE that's especially unique. Take away the aspects and it could be, I dunno, Unisystem. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

However, ICONS uses aspects in pretty specific ways. Characters have Qualities (beneficial aspects) and Challenges ("negative" aspects). That's it. By default, there are no scene aspects, campaign aspects, object/item aspects, etc. Again, not that there's anything wrong with that. They seem to work like FATE's aspects: Spend a point of Determination on a Quality to get a bonus, and earn Determination when your Challenges make trouble for you. Oh -- and instead of Fate Points, we have Determination.

Really, in a way, this may be close to the "stripped-down" FATE for which people sometimes clamor. Personally, I don't really understand that clamor at all. I feel that FATE's pretty stripped-down as it is, but I've also been neck-deep in it for a few years, so fair enough.

I'm also running Leftovers on Friday the 28th, so if you're around come check it out. Did I mention that I've started getting art from the artists? Very cool! And if you have nothing to do Sunday morning... may I suggest DragonStrike, a ridiculous TSR boardgame from 1991? Well, the VHS tape is ridiculous, but the game itself is pretty fun. It's been compared to Hero Quest and Descent. I dusted it off for Hyphen-Con and we had a great time with it, so I figured I'd give it a shot with total strangers at Gamex.

Anyway, back to FATE games. Longtime platonic FATE companion Morgan Ellis is running a boatload of Dresden Files games at Gamex, Friday night through Monday morning. It's all (or at least partially) in preparation for Origins and GenCon, where he'll be running a similarly boat-filling slate of DFRPG. I only get to play in one of them (and not even that's a sure a thing), but my schedule's pretty packed as it is.