FATE Kerberos Club: Let's Make It Official

Sometime back, I mentioned that Arc Dream was interested in doing a FATE version of Benjamin Baugh's awesome Kerberos Club setting, and how equally awesome it'd be for me if I got to work on it. While it's still on Arc Dream's back burner, thanks to a constant and undeniable stream of Greg Stolze, I can finally say this: I got the gig.

(I actually got it back in May, but I didn't want to say anything without Shane Ivey's go-ahead. This made for some awkward exchanges with people when they asked if I'd gotten it. "I don't think I should say anything... which probably gives you your answer, I guess.")

I'm especially excited about this project in light of the fact that there isn't a "mainstream" FATE treatment of the supers genre on the market right now, which means that this will be the first! System-wise, I think it'll have the potential to set a standard for FATE supers in the same way that Legends of Anglerre has for FATE fantasy -- and obviously the setting itself is, as I said, already awesome, so that doesn't hurt, either. In my ideal scenario, we'll later break the mechanics out into their own generic FATE supers book (with a free online SRD!), but for now I'm more than happy to work on what I've been given.

Apart from The Kerberos Club, Ben Baugh is probably best known for Monsters and Other Childish Things and Don't Lose Your Mind, but a couple years back he was attached to a few SotC-based projects for Evil Hat, including New Horizons (social outcasts fightin' the good fight) and Shadow of the Century (SotC in the '80s), both of which sounded awesome but unfortunately never materialized. I look forward to picking his brain.

While I haven't gotten beyond playtesting mechanics yet, I can promise that my chief goal will be to leave Kerberos's fantastic setting completely intact and mold the mechanics around it. The alternative -- making little edits here and there to accommodate the change in systems -- is... distasteful to me.

Spirit of Greyhawk - Spells & Spellbooks

Writing Spells in the Caster's Spellbook
What might be the closest parallel for the writing of a spell in the World of Greyhawk?

• Engineering?
• Gadgeteering?
• Academic Research?
• Forgery?
• Artistic Crafting?

There's valid reasons to consider all of the above. I was starting to get lost in the options, so I turned it around and considered the source material first...

Characteristics of Writing a Spell in the Greyhawk Realm

• It doesn't always work--not every caster can know every spell. The wizard doesn't know until they attempt it.
• Writing down a spell is basically copying an existing spell.
• The wizard must have a skill level consistent with the level of the spell.
• There's nothing saying that wizards are prevented from copying new spells into their spellbook while in dungeons.
• For each spell written in the spellbook, certain material requirements are necessary, and the time required to write it down was equivalent to one day per spell level.
  

Categorizing Spell Books
Is a Spell Book a magic item?
Not in and of itself. A standard spell book is a mundane item. However the spells contained on the pages within can be used as one-shot scrolls. So the spells themselves are magical, but the spell book itself is not magical. A spell book might have improvements that imbue it with magical properties, but I don't consider it a requirement. Plus it's also more fun to leave it as a mundane item, with all the frailties of a mundane book.

Is a Spell Book a Gadget?
You could consider it a Personal Gadget for purposes of defining if it can be taken away, destroyed, etc. This then also implies that if the owner has an Aspect that names the Spell Book, it's more or less off-limits (game-wise).

This categorization is interesting for balance purposes, because a Wizard would need to devote a Stunt to his Spell Book (defining it as a Personal Gadget), and additionally it then becomes awfully tempting for a Wizard to want to devote an Aspect to making sure his "source" is basically off-limits, game-wise.

The other impact of making the spellbook a Personal Gadget "stunt" as written in SotC is that the stunt allows for one or two "improvements".

While there may be fertile ground here, I believe that in general a spellbook falls under essential "Tools of the Trade" for a Wizard to do his job. So making a requirement that a spellbook must be a "stunt" doesn't really work for me. This then puts a standard spellbook in the same category of a Thief having lock-picks (at least standard ones) as tools of the trade.


Translating Specifics about Intelligence & Spells
What to do about the Intelligence Stat?

In the source material, a lot of specifics about spells are tied to the Intelligence statistic. However in SotC, we don't have Intelligence as a skill. Should an "Intelligence skill" be added?

For Spirit of Greyhawk, I'm currently taking a "minimal change" approach and saying that I don't see a need to add one within the current framework. We can assume a baseline average intelligence with modifications up or down as being possible within the existing game mechanic: lower intelligence could be simulated by taking a negative aspect, and higher intelligences could be addressed by the use of Stunts (see below).

Caster's Chance to Be Able to Cast a Particular Spell
In the PHB, a stat of 10-12 Intelligence (considered "average") results in about a 45% chance of knowing a spell. Increased intelligence increases the chance of being able to know/cast a particular spell.

If we make the base assumption that people (Wizards specifically) are possessed of at least average intellect, this means that the base roll to know a spell is Mediocre (+0) or 50% chance to know a spell or not.

Fate points and Aspects can impact this positively or negatively as per normal.

In other words if someone has an aspect of "Pyromancer", then it could be tagged to improve the chance to learn a fire-related spell. Alternatively it could be compelled to make a cold or ice-spell less likely to be useable by that character.

If the roll fails, then that spell will never be available to the caster (barring some retroactive modification).

Minimum / Maximum Number of Spells per Level
Wizards in the Greyhawk realm assume that they have a minimum/maximum range for the number of spells for each level of spells that they are capable of casting. In other words, this indirectly establishes how much could be effectively stored within a spell book. The source material states that this min/max range is a function of a caster's Intelligence stat. How could this be determined when Intelligence isn't a skill?

Looking at the table in the PHB, we can simplify it by looking at it as a formula:

• The minimum number of spells is determined as half of the source material's Intelligence stat.
• Maximum number of spells per level can be determined as the minimum number of spells per level, plus half that score again (rounding down).

Example: For an INT stat of 10 in the source material, the Minimum spells per level would be 5 (10 / 2 = 5). The Maximum spells per level would be 7 (5 + (rounded down 5 / 2 or "2") = 7)

But once again, how to determine these values in absence of an Intelligence stat / skill?

I plan to address it with the assumption that a character starts with an average degree of intelligence and then can choose to modify it with Aspects or Stunts.

Start from average, which was the INT 10-12 range. This gives the min/max of 5/7.

Each progressive Intelligence Stunt (see below) will be worth an extra number of spells added to the Minimum amount of spells.

I'm going to choose to not address reducing the min/max range for the situation of "dumb" wizards.

• 1st Intelligence stunt is worth +2 to the minimum number of spells per level
  
• 2nd Intelligence stunt is worth another +2 to the minimum
• 3rd Intelligence stunt is worth another +1 to the minimum

Intelligence Stunts
While it's possible that there might other uses of this later on, for right now, these stunts are for the Magic Skill.

While these stunts have more functionality contained within than other stunts, I feel that because they are so specific to Magic-related situations, it may even out.

Stunt "Fantastic Intelligence"

• Adds +2 to the Minimum Number of Spells per Level.
• Allows the ability learn 7th Level of Spells
• Adds a +1 to the roll to be able to understand a spell.

Stunt "Epic Intelligence"
Prerequisite: "Fantastic Intelligence"

• Adds another +2 to the Minimum Number of Spells per Level.
• Allows the ability learn 8th Level of Spells
• Adds another +1 to the roll to be able to understand a spell.

Stunt "Legendary Intelligence"
Prerequisite: "Epic Intelligence"

• Adds +1 to the Minimum Number of Spells per Level.
• Allows the ability learn 9th Level of Spells
• Adds a +1 to the roll to be able to understand a spell.

Example: Wizard starts with "average" intelligence has a minimum spells per level of 5, a maximum spells per level of 7. The wizard is currently capable of learning 6th level spells or less. The Wizard's ability to understand any particular spell is a base difficulty of +0 (Mediocre).

However if the player selects the "Fantastic Intelligence" and "Epic Intelligence" stunts, the Wizard would then have the following:

• Minimum Spells per level: 5 + 2 +2 = 9
• Maximum Spells per level: Minimum Spells per level + (Minimum Spells per level / 2, rounded down), or 9 + (9/2, rounded down or 4) = 13
  

This doesn't scale up exactly with the source material in the PHB, but I'm willing to live with it for now.

The wizard's maximum spell level (not skill level) is 8th level.

The wizard also has a +2 that can be used when rolling to determine if a particular spell can be used by that wizard (assuming an available spell slot).

Spirit of Greyhawk - Spells per Level & Memorization

Hello again, everyone! After a lot of side trips and delays, we now return you to my not-so-regularly scheduled discussions on translating "high-fantasy" magic from the Greyhawk source material into my "Spirit of Greyhawk" implementation of Fate.

Setting Expectations

It occurred to me that it might be a good idea before going any further (i.e., digging into more specifics), to be clear about which versions of the source material I'm using.

While other versions of AD&D could be patched together to form a “best of breed” patchwork source, I think that’s an easy way to get focused on the finger pointing at the moon, rather than moon itself.

So, the publishings of AD&D (1st Edition) documentation that I’ll be using will be the following, when I refer to the “source material”:

• Monster Manual (December 1977)
• Players Handbook (June, 1978)
• Dungeon Master Guide (August, 1978)

Game World Assumptions for Wizardry Spells per Level and Spells Memorized

So working from the expectations of the above source material, here's a summary of topics as how the world of Greyhawk works with respect to Wizards and the spells they can cast:

• There is a pre-determined progression of spells per level that can be cast in a day by a Wizard of a particular level.
• Wizards of higher skill levels can cast (per day) more spells in a particular level than a less-skilled Wizard would.
• Highly intelligent Wizards can have more spells in their spellbook than Wizards without that same degree of intellect. In other words, they have a greater selection of spells that could be available to them.
• Higher-level spells also require a higher intelligence. Without that higher intelligence (whether from natural stats or some sort of boost), Wizards cannot cast certain spells.

Taking those assumptions into Fate we end up with the following game-related topics…

• The number of Spells that can be cast in a defined period are an important limiting factor and should be translated into SoG. There should be a reduction in the number of “slots” a Wizard can have for increasingly difficult spells.
• Having a higher skill level in Wizardry allows for higher difficulty spells.
• Given that SoG does not have a skill reflecting pure intellect (a la AD&D’s Intelligence attribute), is there a way within the existing Fate framework to account for a Wizard having an additional qualification to be able to memorize more powerful spells? Is there even a need?
  

Additionally, I want whatever I do for SoG to keep reference tables to a minimum and to keep bookkeeping as simple as possible.

Wizard's Spells per Level in Spirit of Greyhawk

Start with a Traditional Fate Pyramid

My first step was thinking SoG’s “Pyramid” approach is the cleanest way to implement this, based upon the Wizard’s skill level.

So, I'm starting off by stating that the highest spell level that can be memorized by a Wizard is equivalent to his skill level and will be generally defined as 1 spell in that level can be memorized.

So, a Wizardry skill level of +5 (Superb) allows for 1 5th level spell to be memorized for use within a particular period of time (see “Memorization Period” below). Using the example above, the Spell Memorization pyramid is structured similar to SoG’s Skill Pyramid:

• 5th Level Spells: 1
• 4th Level Spells: 2
• 3rd Level Spells: 3
• 2nd Level Spells: 4
• 1st Level Spells: 5

If we compare that to "Spells Usable by Class and Level Magic-Users" (PH, p. 26), this most closely resembles a 9th level magic-user, but gives them one extra 1st and 2nd level spells. My rule of thumb for translation is that 1 skill level should generally be equivalent to 2 AD&D skill levels (in other words, SoG's Magic skill level of 5 would be equivalent to a 10th level M-U). So that seems pretty close to the source material without having to get too fiddly.

Subsequently this also means that using the current SoG ladder maximum of +9, I'm effectively capping out SoG at about 18th level. At this point, I don’t see a real benefit in trying deal with classes past that point so I'm gonna call it good.

Problem: Higher-level Wizards & lower-level spells

However there's now a balance issue in the number of lower-level spells a higher-level Wizard gets under SoG. The source material indicates that for SoG's 18th level "cap", no M-U would have more than 5 spells memorized from spell level 5 on down. Given the difference in the number of spells per day, there needs to put be a similar cap on a Wizard's spell pyramid.

Which means that instead of a Wizard at Magic Skill Level 9 having this "pure" pyramid…

• 9th Level Spells: 1
• 8th Level Spells: 2
• 7th Level Spells: 3
• 6th Level Spells: 4
• 5th Level Spells: 5
• 4th Level Spells: 6
• 3rd Level Spells: 7
• 2nd Level Spells: 8
• 1st Level Spells: 9

…it would instead look like this…

• 9th Level Spells: 1
• 8th Level Spells: 2
• 7th Level Spells: 3
• 6th Level Spells: 4
• 5th Level Spells: 5
• 4th Level Spells: 5
• 3rd Level Spells: 5
• 2nd Level Spells: 5
• 1st Level Spells: 5

…which I think turns out to give you a fairly decent parallel to the source material. There's a few exceptions, but nothing game-killing.

The REAL Rule for Wizards and Spell Memorization

So then the actual rule for a Wizard's Spells per Level would be the following:

• The highest spell level that can be memorized is equivalent to the Wizard's skill level in "Magic", with only 1 spell at that level.
• Each reduction in level gives an extra spell.
• The maximum number of spells that can be memorized per skill level is 5.

If you're an Excel fan, it would look like this:

# Memorized per Spell Level = MAX(MIN(Magic Skill Level – Spell Level + 1, 5), 0)

Memorization Period

Source material canon states that a wizard's spell slots are allocated for a particular spell "loadout" once per day. So once a particular spell is fired, the slot used is unavailable until the next day.

However given that the Fate mechanic places an emphasis on the starting and ending of scenes, I keep wondering if perhaps a Wizard's spell slots in Spirit of Greyhawk might reset by scene, instead of by day.

My current thinking is that this is too far off canon and that SoG will stick with the “per day” memorization period. Here's why:

• Allowing a greater refresh frequency removes some of a player's angst of "planning" a day's spells. I happen to find very attractive the idea that a Wizard character should always be trying to plan ahead and the inherent risks of doing that in an adventure, especially in the fluid nature of a cooperative storytelling mechanic.
• Allowing a Wizard to refresh "by scene" also removes some of the distinguishing factors between a Wizard (who is always trying to plan ahead and look for angles that will help them survive) and a Sorceror who is more of a seat-of-the-pants caster.

…Especially when you consider that it's quite possible that 3-4 scenes could occur in a day. Anyone got a different perspective?

Next Time: Intelligence & Spells, Spell Books

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.

Gateway 2010: Sample Characters

Hey there, little blog! How've you been the past 22 days? Sorry for the neglect. You can blame the baby. Let's all blame the baby!

Anyway, Gateway's in a couple weeks, more or less, and I'm running a FATE Supers game (and two sessions of Leftovers). The setting's a cross between Marvel's Secret Warriors and Wildstorm's Stormwatch (under Ellis, anyway), so it's very different from the Silver Age teenager FATE Supers games I've run in the past. For reasons known only to myself (and, like, four other people), I want to see if my supers hack can handle something with a more serious tone.

Here are a couple sample characters. There's a lot of rampant ripping-off of stuff like S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA and all that they entail, so don't let that bother you. It's an homage.

Ballista, energy-projecting team leader
Flagstone, the brick

As you can see, there's a lot more mechanical detail on these sheets, including point costs and individual super-skill trappings, so people can see what's going on a little more.

In Before the Lock!

Whew! I almost let all of July go by without posting. I'd already let most of June go by that way, but I couldn't do the same to July.

Anyway, as it happens, I actually do have something to report, so this isn't just a completely gratuitous gimmick post. All of my Anglerre Companion material is off to the editor (as of about 10 minutes ago), which is a relief. Between moving, my son, an out-of-town guest, and Comic-Con, getting everything polished off on time was a little beyond me. At least I can say I got it all in before GenCon.

Here's what I ended up with, by the way:

• Cities: A random city generator that would be both broad enough to cover every kind of fantasy setting but specific enough to actually be useful proved to be an untenable proposition without about a million different tables. Instead, I came up with a method for statting out cities in FATE terms, some new city-specific Organization aspects, and a whole lot of fluff on cities in general. It's a fairly extensive chapter that should make creating villages, towns, and cities very easy, and I learned a lot researching it.
• Islands: I never thought a random island generator made much sense, so this chapter concentrates on what makes island-based adventures distinct from "mainland" adventures (not that anyone ever calls them that). The chapter provides 12 different island themes and ways to use them in a campaign. No mechanics -- it's all fluff, which I'm not really used to writing, but it was a fun chapter to do.
• Random Adventure Generator: Man. Revising this was a bit more involved than I'd anticipated, but I'm happy with the final result. It's significantly longer than it was when I turned it in last year, but it's also about a hundred times easier to use and much better organized. I'm proud of it, so hopefully nobody rips it a new one in a review.

Up next: some non-FATE-related stuff (finishing up Leftovers and my wind ensemble piece based on Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle, the intro adventure from the 1980 Top Secret boxed set), then onto some very FATE-related stuff that I still can't discuss out in the open like this. In between will be Gateway, where I'll probably run more FATE Supers, although the specifics are way, way beyond me right now.

As for Anglerre, I expect to see it in the mail next week, so I'm looking forward to that. I don't know what's coming up in the line, but I hope to write more material for it in the future.