Fantasy: Aspects Redux

Ah, aspects -- the very best part of SotC! These days, people are adding aspects to their non-SotC games like it was bacon. Andy used them in a D&D 3.5 Ptolus game a while ago, we used them in an M&M noir/superhero game back in 2007, and etc. Coming up with them is fun, but it pretty much ends in character creation, barring maneuvers and declarations. So I wanted a way to make character aspects even more interesting and interactive in-game. This has gotten a bit of a playtest, at OrcCon, and once the players got used to the idea they took to it like a cheeseburger to bacon. (I have a thing for bacon tonight, apparently.) Anyway, let's get to it.

Character aspects come in two varieties: permanent aspects and story aspects.

Permanent Aspects
Every character begins with five aspects, one per phase. These are your permanent aspects. If you have an aspect of "Wild Jungle Elf," then you can pretty much count on always being a wild jungle elf for as long as you're around. They're the constant core of your character, and can only be changed at significant points in his life. Those changes have to make sense, though -- it may be plausible to alter the "Wild" bit someday, but it'll take something truly extraordinary, verging on the impossible, to mess with the "Jungle Elf" bit. More on this below.

Story Aspects
Every character begins with two empty slots for story aspects to be filled in as play progresses. These are the more ephemeral, story-specific qualities of your character that you determine (or discover) on the fly. They can (and should be) things that are relevant in the moment or to the story, but may not be later, either because there's an in-character reason for it (e.g., if you give yourself an aspect of "Protective of Jimmy" because you've grown fond of a particular NPC who isn't likely to be involved in the next story arc) or because you just decide you want to go in another direction. Maybe you realize that have a "Burning Hatred of Mountain Dwarves" in a plot that involves mountain dwarves, or maybe your trusty sword is no mere sword, but is instead the "Sword of My Forefathers." It's up to you.

When the story arc is complete, a couple things happen with your story aspects. First of all, erase them -- or you can choose to erase all but one instead. If so, the one you keep becomes a permanent aspect. This is appropriate if you've really decided on or discovered something significant about your character. Mark this aspect with a star on your character sheet so you know not to erase it in the future. Second, you receive an additional empty story aspect slot (so you'll have two total story aspects in your first story arc, three in your second, and so on). This represents your character's increased experience, commitment, and adaptability over time, and gives you the chance to make changes in his personality mechanically significant and immediately apparent.

Your total combined number of permanent aspects and story aspect slots can't exceed 10. In other words, once you've received your fifth story aspect slot, regardless of how many prior story aspects have been converted into permanent aspects, you don't receive any more.

Converting story aspects into permanent aspects can also result in receiving additional boons. At your sixth, eighth, and tenth permanent aspects (in other words, the first, third, and fifth times you convert a story aspect to a permanent aspect), pick an additional boon appropriate to the aspect.

Example:
Let's take renowned actor, playwright, and secret agent Paskal Salaberri. Like every other starting character, he has five permanent aspects and two empty story aspect slots.

Permanent Aspects:

• “What is the world, if not a stage?”
• “A thousand faces, and none of them mine.”
• Danger at Every Turn
• On His Holiness’s Secret Service
• A Friend in Every Audience
  

Story Aspects:

• [blank]
• [blank]

Through the course of play, the party ends up in far-off Brightmar. Paskal's player decides that the character is well-connected no matter where he goes, and has a contact in this foreign town who can get him information. He makes this contact a story aspect, like so:

Story Aspects:

• Rinaldo the Informant
• [blank]

Later, Paskal's in a tight spot, combat-wise, and needs an additional boost. Paskal's player declares that his years treading the boards have necessarily resulted in some extensive training in stage fencing. Sure, it's not life-or-death fencing, but still -- it should count. He makes this training a story aspect:

Story Aspects:

• Rinaldo the Informant
• Stage Fencer Extraordinaire

At the end of the story arc, Paskal receives an additional empty story aspect slot, and the player has the option of erasing one or both of the existing story aspects. He figures he won't be hanging out in Brightmar with Rinaldo all that often, but being able to fight seems like the sort of thing that will always come up, so he decides he'll keep that one. Now his story aspects look like this:

Story Aspects:

• [blank]
• Stage Fencer Extraordinaire*
• [blank]

This being Paskal's sixth permanent aspect, he gets another boon. The player goes with Focus: +1 Melee with swords.

Giving Story Aspects to Other Characters
Players can also assign story aspects to characters other than their own, if everyone involved is willing. To do this, offer the other player a Fate Point and declare what the story aspect is. If the other player accepts, he writes it into an empty slot and takes your Fate Point. If he refuses, he doesn't write anything and you keep your Fate Point.

• Why pay the Fate Point? You're dictating something about someone else's character -- it's essentially a small measure of narrative control, and it'll cost you. Why doesn't the other player have to pay you a Fate Point to refuse, like he would with a compel? Well, it's not a compel, for one thing, and for another, if that were the case you'd go around trying to stick everyone else with your wacky story aspects ("Hey, I'll pay you a Fate Point if you're 'Unusually Sensitive to Colors'!") with the expectation that they'd have to refuse just so you could retire on a pile of Fate Points. So no, we're not having that.
• Why would anyone accept -- or why wouldn't they? Maybe they need the Fate Point right now and are willing to give up a story aspect to get it. Keep in mind that if someone else wants to dictate one of your story aspects, they're probably doing it with their own interests in mind. If you accept, expect to end up protective of their character, or supportive of their character's goals, and so on. If you're fine with that, then take the Fate Point and the aspect. It would be a little ludicrous, or at least a waste of a Fate Point, to dictate a story aspect that the other player would like anyway.

Changing Permanent Aspects
Apart from first-session fiddling -- that is, players realizing that one or more of the aspects they came up with really don't reflect what they had in mind, which is definitely grounds for alteration -- the only way permanent aspects can change is through a Severe consequence.

Fantasy: Boons

Those character sheets I posted for the "Spirit of the Sword" game I ran at OrcCon generated a little confusion. Specifically, the question "What are boons?" was asked. So... here's an answer.

Boons (I'm not crazy about the name, but that's another issue) are my attempt to include something like stunts without actually including stunts. My only real problem with the fix I came up with before is that it's a little flavorless -- it's missing the cool names stunts have, like "Unsafe at Any Speed" or "Master of Disguise" or "Right Place, Right Time." But then I realized that the character sheet already has something like "cool names," in the form of aspects. So if PCs in "SotS" get one aspect per phase, and one boon per aspect, boons should have the same feel as stunts, but even more personalized to the character.

The process goes from phase to aspect to boon, each determining the next. In a sense, the same way that the aspect is the distillation of the phase, the boon is the distillation of the aspect -- or a concise, mechanical reflection of the phase.

Anyway, enough philosophy. Here's the current writeup on boons.

Boons are those qualities about your character which put him or her above the common crowd. They provide guaranteed situational benefits, special abilities, and can sometimes let you bend the rules in specific ways.

Boons fall into nine general categories:

• Focus: +1 [skill] with ____ -- Fill in the blank with a broad-category use of the skill (+1 Melee with axes, +1 Art with music, +1 Athletics with climbing, etc.). No two Focus boons can modify the same skill (e.g., no matter how many times you take +1 Melee with axes, you'll only benefit from the first one). The Focus boon should reflect how you see the character when you picture her in your mind. If you were to paint a portrait of her, what would she be doing? Is she swinging an axe? Is she performing on stage? Is she crouched in the shadows?
  
• Specialty: +2 [skill] with maneuvers or +2 [skill] with assessments/declarations -- This is pretty self-explanatory: a bonus to maneuvers or assessments/declarations with a particular skill. There's a list of maneuvers in the SotC SRD, but this applies to any use of the skill in question to put an aspect on someone else. From the SRD:

If the target is another character, the maneuvering character and the target make opposed rolls, using whatever skills the GM deems appropriate. Success is usually achieved if the maneuvering character generates at least one shift. A successful maneuver may add a temporary aspect to the targeted character; the target can either accept the temporary aspect, or spend a fate point to avoid accepting it. An aspect that results from a maneuver is temporary and does not last very long ... The temporary aspect may then be tagged for a bonus on a subsequent roll. The first tag usually doesn’t cost the tagging player a fate point, but subsequent tags usually do ... If a character is simply trying to increase the difficulty of another target’s action, this is considered a block action, and should be resolved as such....

• Substitution: Use [skill] instead of [skill] when ____ -- Fill in the blank with a verb reflecting a specific condition or circumstance (Use Melee instead of Intimidation when fighting, Use Art instead of Rapport when dealing with other musicians, Use Athletics instead of Melee when attacking from surprise, etc.). In terms of the role it serves in fleshing out your character, Substitution is usually comparable to Focus, but with a different mechanical effect.
  
• Ease: Ignore penalty to [skill] for ____ -- Fill in the blank with a specific, static penalty in the SotC SRD (Ignore penalty to Melee for using improvised weapons, Ignore penalty to Art for a distracted audience, Ignore penalty to Athletics for climbing a slippery surface, etc.). The "penalty" may actually be removing an increased difficulty to a static task, but whatever. It's the same basic idea.
  
• Item: The character has some sort of special possession, along the lines of Weapon of Destiny, Personal Gadget, Prototype Car, etc. The item has three improvements that only apply when using or wearing the item in its intended manner -- generally bonuses to one or more skills. If two bonuses are applied to the same skill, or to the same use of one skill (if applicable -- e.g., +2 to attacks with Melee), then instead of a third improvement, the GM picks an aspect, preferably something detrimental (e.g., Slow, Unwieldy, Two-Handed, Dark Oaths, Glows Brightly When Activated, etc.), as the third "improvement." The improvements allowed are as follows:
• +1 to a noncombat skill
  
• +1 to attacks with a combat skill (Melee or Missile)
• +1 to defense with Melee or Athletics
  
• Use one noncombat skill instead of another noncombat skill in specific circumstances
• Use one combat or noncombat skill in place of a combat skill (This is the improvement that lets you use a melee weapon at range or a missile weapon in melee, such a throwing a dagger or fighting hand-to-hand with a bow.)
  
• An aspect
• Companion: In general, I don't see this one as being all that applicable, with the exception of animal companions -- so we'll throw it in, using the revised companion rules from "Spirit of the Season" as a base. Animal companions start with four advances. Taking this boon more than once can add more advances to the same companion, though at diminishing returns. Taking it twice for the same companion nets you another three advances, taking it three times another two, and taking it a fourth time yields but one additional advance.
  
• Quality: Every tier of skill quality costs an advance. Basically, you get one skill in each tier you pay for, up to Good. For example, if you spent three advances on your companion's Quality, you'd have an Average skill, a Fair skill, and a Good skill. Your companion can take a number of consequences equal to its Quality, as well, one per degree of severity: one Minor at Average, one Minor and one Moderate at Fair, and one Minor, one Moderate, and one Severe at Good. As long as your your companion is attached to you, its skills complement your own. Another example: If you had Average Melee and Good Athletics and your companion were a Fair-quality wolf with Average Athletics and Fair Melee, when your wolf's attached to you you get a +1 bonus to Melee from your wolf (because its Melee is superior to your own) but no bonus to Athletics (because its Athletics isn't).
• Quantity: By default, you have one companion. With this advance, you have more than that: another one or two if you take this advance once, and up to three more if you take it a second time. However, your companions' maximum Quality is reduced by one each time you take this (Fair if you take it once, Average if you take it twice).
  
• Independent: Normally, your companion can't act on its own without the expenditure of a Fate Point. With this advance, you don't have to pay the Fate Point.
• Breadth: Expand the companion's skill pyramid by one degree, up to a max of two skills at its apex. For example, if your wolf companion's Quality is Fair, taking Breadth once gets it another Average skill, and taking it twice gives it a third Average skill and a second Fair skill. It can't get a Good skill, though, without another advance spent on Quality.
• Communication: You can communicate with your animal pal somehow or other. Maybe you can growl its language, or it understands yours, or you just have some kind of empathic link.
  
• Unusual: Spend a Fate Point to do something special not otherwise covered by the above three options (e.g., Enemies denied gang-up bonus when you're armed, Use Art in place of any social skill when dealing with other musicians, Ignore all penalties when climbing, etc.), as long as it's cool with the GM. Basically, take every stunt in the SotC SRD that requires a Fate Point expenditure and put it in this category.
  
• Heritage: A collection of three very specialized benefits derived from your racial or cultural descent, and are most appropriate for characters who exemplify their race or culture. These are things like +1 Craft to stonemasonry for a dwarf, +1 Rapport when haggling for a city-dwelling sort, and so on. For balance purposes, they should not give bonuses to anything combat-related.
  
• Magic: The gateways of magical ability. The four types of magic are Alchemy, Artifice, Incantation, and Summoning; the fifth type, Necromancy, is the purview of evil, and its practitioners are so hidden in shadows that many don't even realize they exist. Each different type of magic requires its own boon to learn. Thus, if you wanted to be both an alchemist and a summoner, you'd need Magic: Alchemy and Magic: Summoning.
  

Fantasy: Talk of Updated Rules. Also, Rambling About Consequences.

In a quickie attempt to meet the stampeding demand for rules updates, which I honestly didn't realize existed until today, here's... something. On the whole, the stunts-ectomy greatly simplifies things. I would kick myself for all that time I spent poring over the stunts chapter of SotC and making minor adjustments, but the truth is that there really isn't anything wrong with that approach. Sticking closer to the SotC RAW is still totally valid, so if you're into that, go to it.

Me, I'm going a different way. Right now that way is called "Boons," but I don't know if I'll stick with that. It's basically replacing stunts with this, with the change of limiting the +2 narrow-specialty bonus to maneuvers only. Otherwise, I've recently experienced, it's just too open to abuse -- the drawback of only getting that +2 with, say, your father's sword is not commensurate with the benefit, and creates an artificial situation where the GM will constantly be forced to try to steal said sword to make the drawback worth it. In FATE, a +2 is too huge to just give away so carelessly. However, I love me some aspects, and I love maneuvers because they create more aspects in an interesting fashion, so limiting that +2 to maneuvers will hopefully encourage the use of them. That, or it'll discourage people from taking the +2 boon in the first place. Either way, I'm happier with the result.

Anyway, for this weekend at OrcCon, I'm going the route of higher Endurance/Resolve allowing the character to take more consequences: +1 Minor at Good, or +2 Minor and +1 Moderate at Great, all of the appropriate type (physical or mental). One of the PCs, Rain-Splitting-Rock, has Great (+4) Resolve and Good (+3) Endurance, and can take as many consequences as a character could possibly withstand under these rules (three more mental consequences, one more physical consequence). I'm doing something similar in "Spirit of the Fist" -- the big consequence-withstander in that group of PCs has Great (+4) Spirit, allowing her to take a total of three Minors and two Moderates (Endurance and Resolve are combined in "SotF" as a different skill -- Spirit).

Here's my it's-not-hit-points rationale for this: I see a character's skills in FATE as an indication of how he'll solve problems. It's not necessarily a literal indication of how good or bad the character is with a given skill, though. For example, if you're playing a silver-tongued swordsman of some repute, you can have Average (+1) Melee and be no less of a swordsman -- but if you have Great (+4) Rapport and Good (+3) Status, you'll solve most of your problems through talking or weight-throwing-around than through violence. And if you have an aspect or two that can relate to your skill with a blade, you can still perform in combat when it counts. Your apex skill says to the GM "Here's what I want this guy to be about," regardless of his backstory.

So then. Endurance and Resolve are both passive skills. Endurance is almost never rolled, and Resolve is almost always rolled in response to someone's else's action. If you put either of these skills at the apex of your skill pyramid, you'll succeed more through perserverance and toughness than through offense, generally speaking. For this to make game-mechanical sense, or at least have a game-mechanical payoff, the character has to be able to withstand abuse. Since stress tracks are gone, the only way to do that is through consequences. I usually have a hard time expressing what I see as the difference between consequences-as-hit-points and consequences-as-narrative-protection, but... well, I do see a difference between the two. One is the literal ability to withstand damage, whereas the other is narrative stick-to-it-iveness.

Let's take the aforementioned Qing Pei-Pei. She's not the "toughest" character, strictly speaking -- not the strongest, or the best fighter. If you're looking for a combat monster, she ain't it. But she's stubborn and headstrong (and maybe lucky) enough to keep going somehow, no matter what's thrown at her. Having Great (+4) Spirit and Fair (+2) Weapons tells the GM, "Go ahead, put me in over my head -- I can take it!"

Does that make sense? Or is it so friggin' obvious that there was no point posting it?