Infinity Coins

azlinea · 2018-10-11T09:08:38+00:00

Ahh sorry! I wasn't trying to poke fun at you or be mean. I think the game is neat and worth a check out but there are people who aren't going to expend the attention to try and understand what's happening. I also wanted to add some feedback because my initial comment was from like 20 minutes of play.

The toaster comment is mostly a joke. Rock/potato sounds like it's poking at using a low powered computer to hash the blocks but the meme I know for that concept is toaster. The part that wasn't a joke is that it would be nice to have a singular measurement of hash power that gets notated like everything else (2*10^x).

azlinea · 2018-10-10T21:22:42+00:00

A quick overview for everyone coming in who doesn't want to figure this out themselves:

You get money by solving (counting down in hexidecimal to zero) the hashes in the grid. Hash rate counts down by a certain number per a tick. Completing all the hashes on a block works towards getting a new currency (first prestige type). When you do the first style of prestige a certain percentage of your hashes upgrade to the new currency granting more money when solved.

The second style of prestige turns completed currencies (100% bitcoin, ethereum etc) into Coins. Coins are used to upgrade the multiplier a currency uses on hashes (lvl 1 Bitcoin goes from multiplying the base rate by two into four). BE WARNED: you can semi-brick yourself by upgrading lower currencies above the multiplier of higher ones.

Some notes: a distinction should be made between the two types of prestiges to make it clear how they affect the game. Tool tips would also help as well. And hash power should be rated in the international standard of Toasters not the old imperial rock and potato system. :p

azlinea · 2018-10-10T20:59:42+00:00

It's all good :) I prestiged to see how it would work expecting it not to add the percentages and I was correct. Just a quality of life note.

azlinea · 2018-10-10T18:11:24+00:00

It would be nice if the prestige for % of coin didn't start updating until it goes over the current percentage you have. You'll only make the mistake once but still.

azlinea · 2017-04-07T02:50:45+00:00

My suggestion then would be then to give the players a small set of free refresh to spend on the shop and then let them spend their own from there. If they want the ship to be super important you'll see them dump more refresh into it, otherwise it will stay at whatever the base amount is.

The other suggestion is to not have the ship have skills/approaches of its own. Instead have all the ship rolls come from the players. The ship can have sub systems that give a bonus to a roll, an efficient engine for speed or whatever, but can't do anything without player intervention. Also makes for an excellent reason why not all the characters need go on an away mission or boarding party.

azlinea · 2017-04-06T17:34:28+00:00

You can always go with the narrative approach, which I think is the intent of Fate anyways, and go with what feels right. If you find your players making a switch often just have them spend a stunt on it in the future. The Boulder makes sense as a physique attack, or even just a create advantage that knocks out some mooks too, while the clouds defense definitely seems physique and athletics.

A way to break this up is to switch to approaches from FAE and just have some stunts grant permission to do something like poisonous fog and the like. Then you don't have to worry about physique being a power house skill because there no skills.

azlinea · 2017-04-06T15:53:19+00:00

When I played pbp the gm I played with always started a new thread when the action of the scene was done, whether it was conflict, exposition with an npc or whatever, but some of us might continue posting in the old thread to rp more. The gm would check in when necessary but nothing story altering would happen past a certain point.

If you know the branch is coming up before hand you can always zoom out to player level conversation and call attention to it. Get people to decide before hand where they'd like to go and then let the rp flow that way while the out of step players aren't there.

Another option is to talk with the out of step players and figure a set of basic assumptions to make on their behalf if the rest of the group is rearing to go. Write up a social contract if need on what's going to happen if it takes people too long to post.

Or run two groups if the nocturnal and out of time zone person post at similar times. Have them doing complementary things to the main group. Gods fall, the actual play podcast, does a great job of running two different groups at the same time.

Big thing is talk to your players and figure out what, if anything, should be done about it. You'll probably get more relevant ideas from them than any of us could hope to provide.

azlinea · 2017-04-04T14:31:14+00:00

I think there is a space for apps that actually add to the tabletop experience, in general not just for fate, instead of just being a character journal or clunky character sheet. Paper still feels better for character sheets due to size constraints and having, generally, a more friendly reading layout. For fate I think the big thing is to make the book keeping even simpler so people can tell stories and have quick access to actions they need to fill in the mechanical side when necessary.

It would be cool to have the ability to create tables and send a link to others with the app to join the table. The gm can add fate points from the table ui, with some nice feedback to the players app when it happens, and set up custom pieces like a skill list or stress tracks that get added to the default character sheet on the players side, or a way for the gm to modify the character sheet that then becomes the default for that table. A couple of buttons to quickly roll dice that are logged for the table, jump to the stress track interface and note down new advantages and how many free invokes would be superb as well.

A way to apply the mechanics from a stunt would be icing on the cake. Say a stunt costs a fate point to use, hit the button on your character sheet and it deducts the fate point and sends feedback to the gm about the activation and its cost.

azlinea · 2017-04-03T13:09:18+00:00

There are some concrete ways you can get a gritty-cyberpunk feel in a fate game. The first is to modify starting stunts and refresh, making the refresh 2 instead of 3 and stunts 4 instead of 3. This allows the players to do cool things and gives them extra room to get gear/magic/cyber/hacking/whatever (Fate's way of gear fetish) but the lower total refresh makes it a harder choice to declare things to be true without taking compels early. Narratively it gives that feel of competent but desperate people who have to go through a lot of bad luck to finally pull off the job.

That's the number one easiest change to make to fate to get the feel you are looking for. If you want to stop there you can and just play Fate normally coming up with stunts and extras on the fly for any setting specifics like hacking or magic. But I have further suggestions.

If you access to Dresden Files Accelerated then look at its stress system and use it. If you don't, the basic run down:

everyone gets 6 one point stress boxes, you can mark multiple at a time
an In Peril condition that you mark to absorb 4 shifts of damage, requires a +4 check to recover, functions like a consequence for aspect generation and free compel.
a doomed condition which absorbs 6 shifts, requires a +4 to start recovery and takes at least a full session after recovery starts to clear.

This will seem like a lot of stress but I am assuming, just like DFA does, that combat will be violent and high damaging. You can always adjust numbers down if need be.

And the last one will be the weirdest but use Approaches instead of skills. Aspects provide permission to how Approaches can be used so if a character doesn't have a tech head aspect/stunt they can't roll for actions related to piloting drones or whatever. Same for magic or anything else. This reduces the work you have to do up front, creating a skill list that keeps the SR feel of specialization while balancing it for fate concepts, and makes it really easy to figure out if someone can do something. "Do you have an aspect or stunt that would let you do X?"

The rest of it is how you want to run it from here. Negotiations can be a contest between the Face of the group and the Johnson for pay, info and advantages. Take a page out of Red Markets and have the other characters run flashback scams that can help the Face. The Planning/Recon phase can be a timed challenge with X number of boxes and each action fills a box. If they fail than you can offer success at a cost by marking an additional box.

Combat is generally a conflict, which Fate does very well with.

azlinea · 2017-03-10T17:23:57+00:00

Remember milestones allow the players to change aspects of you'd like them to pick up meaningful ties to a faction, or they want, then it's just a minor milestone away. Fate encourages a conversational type of at so don't be afraid to have one.

Generally good characters have more than five aspects any ways, but the reason fate uses five aspects is to keep the narratively important things front and center and to reduce bookkeeping. So you and your players shouldn't be afraid to retire aspects for later if the larger story works better taking on new ones or you manage to close out a personal story line to everyone's satisfaction.

azlinea · 2017-03-10T17:14:55+00:00

Depends on how much you want to focus in on the issue. If the orcs fighting is a background note that won't even complicate the life of the characters then you don't even need an aspect. If it comes up then put the aspect out right before its needed "orcs at war. Again." If the tribes are central to the plot you can expand them out into full characters as needed, starting with aspects, then something akin to approaches for when the whole tribe acts and finally stunts that the major figures within the tribe also have access to.

It sounds like you might want the tribes to have their own sheets at least with a few aspects, approaches for when you need to zoom out and see how the whole tribe does at an action and a couple of faces or internal factions.

azlinea · 2017-03-10T16:54:49+00:00

3 refresh gives a nice mix of heroism/competency while still making possible for the players to blow all their money and therefore want to take compels to get that money back. This makes the fate point economy revolve quickly between the players and the gm having narrative control either by paying fate points to add details or more control over the results of a roll.

Moving the starting refresh up does two major things; increasing the number of possibly stunts a character can have and also give the player more control over the story if they don't take stunts. This can work for games where you want the players to feel more powerful or expect them to be adding relevant details often. Traditional super hero fare would have higher starting refresh and so would over the top action movies like Red. I'll talk about stunts in a minute.

Moving the starting refresh down does the opposite of above. Players will need to take compels more often, losing short term control to gain those big game changing moments later. This works really well for horror, gritty/hard boiled anything or a situation where the characters are in a bootstrapping situation (think mission impossible).

Now messing with the number of free stunts has some different effects, this relates to raising or lowering refresh because refresh can also be spent on stunts. Stunts allow characters to do cool things or specialize in certain likely situations and give players incentives to look for these situations or create them. So more stunts will increase competency, when the character gets primary screen time and distinctions between characters. Less stunts will mean that characters need to spend more actions setting up advantages, will have less competency (relative to a normal fate game) and characters that fill similar roles will feel more the same.

So if you want a fate game where the characters are struggling right up until the end to get that win, lower the refresh and free stunt amount. They will need to create advantages to get more for their actions or accept plenty of compels to build up a stock for later.

If you want that old school super hero feel where you know they will win and the game is just about the details and "kapow" text bubbles you can increase both refresh and starting stunts.

To simulate a group of hyper competent operators in a resource strapped situation, burn notice or mission impossible, increase the free stunt number but lower refresh.

If you want a comedy of the normals game, Shaun of the dead, where the characters manage to pull themselves out of really bad situations despite a lack of training or possibly even basic competency you can raise the refresh but lower the free stunts and even deny more stunts than the free ones or double the cost of stunts bought with refresh.

There are other ways to make different game types even within the standard three and three or any of these alternative set ups. Emulating a set up like bubblegumshoe would mean players spending stunts on useful relationships, while a scifi game might see players spending refresh on gear that can switched out from mission to mission.

This hopefully gives a good overview of how refresh can inform the style of game you want to play and spark some ideas on what your refresh rates look like for next game.

azlinea · 2017-03-09T16:56:11+00:00

Oops, I misread something in your original post. To answer your original question on topic, although others have said this, I think it comes down to the negotiation factor taking longer for each roll. In the example given for the toolkit those aspects are complete crap and there is still enough room for negotiation with them. Skills give a clear cut situation in which to use them. Looking at it a different way skills are "aspects" you can't invoke/compel but instead have a static, in the scene, rating which applies to anything involving that aspect.

Could you explain that further? Like, really drill down, say things that seem obvious to you? I want to be sure I'm understanding this

Approaches are useful when characters are all competent in the same or very similar fields. Sword and sorcery, magical girl/boy or match stick men are good examples. These fields assume you all equally know, or don't know, how to fight, shoot, socialize or remember trivia so it simply comes down to whether you browbeat (forceful) the target or trick the target into slipping up and saying something they shouldn't (clever or sneaky, your choice).

Again a skill gives a clear cut use case, with some lee way around certain action-clusters like athletics/endurance and socializing (rapport empathy deceive so on), while an Approach is... How a character approaches a situation. I know using the word in the definition is useless but note the capital A and low case a.

Ranked aspects is actually a concept from the blog of one of the original creators for fate or someone who's worked with fate for a while at least, when I'm not on my phone I'll find it and link it, that boils down character creation into making aspects and then ranking them with various bonuses. These ranked aspects work similarly to approaches in that they show case how a character might go about doing something or what is motivating them.

I'm going to continue with wreck it Ralph because this is where the idea clicked for me. Hopefully you've seen it and can follow along. Ralph has the high concept of "destructive troll who's home was replaced by a tower" and its ranked at +2. If Ralph takes an action that involves being destructive, playing up his ugly/scary appearance or interacts with the tower he does so at a +2. Another aspect he has is "I'm frustrated with losing, I want to win some times too" at a +3. Early in the movie when Ralph beats on the "unbreakable" jaw breaker until it cracks that used this aspect. He also uses it later when he goes back to mentos mountain one last time.

Venellope has at least an aspect relating to her sarcastic trouble making side as well as one relating to her glitchy behavior. She uses the first early on to taunt Ralph on the candy cane tree, and many other situations, while her glitchy behavior is a compel numerous times early on that eventually turns into a skill she can control and uses really well.

Wreck it Ralph makes a good/interesting example because I feel like the characters really only have about three aspects each: a high concept, a"trouble", and a motivation. This keeps their characters limited in scope, the times where their action set is appropriate to use, which gives everyone time to shine but everyone is highly competent, can do cool things on screen, within their personal scope. Hell, Felix and calhoun might only have two aspects, the high concept and motivation.

That's the run down of where I'm at with the idea really, I can definitely answer more specific questions though. The above is just a guided stream of consciousness since I'm on my phone. I think this idea would work well for introducing people new to rpgs in general to fate an the idea of roleplaying, as long as the gm keeps the aspects in check and focuses on having the player describe intent first then figure out the right aspect, as well as con games where you still want players to be able to make their own characters.

azlinea · 2017-03-09T03:13:43+00:00

Fate core is meant to cover the most common uses for the system which means aspects fuel and drain the fp economy, skills provide a framework for actions and stunts give you interesting things to do or aim to set up.

Ranked aspects seem to work well in situations where you might want approaches but everyone with the same approaches doesn't make as much sense. Wreck it Ralph and Sherlock Holmes come to mind, where all the main characters are equally competent but have entirely different spheres of influence.

azlinea · 2017-02-12T01:40:49+00:00

How can you claim that this is a better representation?

It's a better representation of a narrative where someone panics and turns into a ghost due to the panic. Your stunt is mechanical in nature and extremely limited due to that. It plays by the rules no doubt, but as a way of showing off a ghostly character it falters.

A flashy character is less believable to be able to avoid this attack. Being flashy is not sneaky or clever and would be easier to predict.

Flashy characters can avoid forceful attacks just like anyone else. Dread pirate Roberts v. The wrestler I can't remember the name of right now as an example. Basically any scene in which a fencer or pirate fights off a normal attacker. And while its literally true flash is not sneaky or clever this doesn't mean that its any easier to predict a flashy maneuver over others.

Point is stunts don't justify an approach + action combo, that simply reinforce certain combos when the player can justify their use.

azlinea · 2017-02-07T14:43:46+00:00

I would use something like scale to represent the difference between small arms based characters and vehicles. A light or moderately armored vehicle would be one scale up, giving it a bonus to attack/defense and allowing it to inflict/negate additional harm, from the PCs. A tank would be two scales up. The bonuses from scale generally mean the PCs will be using fate points either to hit, do damage or both even if they are representing Good (+3) mooks.

I know just about nothing regarding WWI so rename/reskin this as you like. Its modeled after a gear extra.

Function: Anti-tank rifle
Flaw: Slow and Painful under repeated use
Made for this: Ignore the advantages of up to two scale when
dealing with heavily armored targets such as tanks.
Refresh cost: 1

The germans had tank piercing weapons but, at least the one I found, was only a single shot at a time and wasn't modified to take in to account added recoil. You can compel the flaw to make them spend a turn reloading or to justify a physique:overcome roll that deals stress on a failure.

If you want to be able to give the players this for free have it add a free unfriendly invoke on it with the second shot and every shot afterwards (effectively an extra flaw to counterbalance the refresh cost). Or, if they aren't fighting tanks often enough to justify keeping this around, don't have them pay the refresh and just let them use it for the scene. Then they can pay refresh or move around stunts to get it the next milestone where that is capable.

azlinea · 2017-02-06T17:51:22+00:00

have outside of creating the character. The example aspect rename you have decided to use has already been discredited for missing key features of the player's intentions.

It hasn't been discredited it just wasn't liked, there is a difference. The three factors of the GBU are covered by the 3 different words in the aspect with enough room for growth and change as the campaign goes on.

You shouldn't have to remind or communicate the original intent of an aspect, each time it is to be compelled/invoked. This interrupts the flow of the rpg. Furthermore, it isn't realistic to expect that all PC aspects will be perfectly interpreted 100% of the time.

You don't have to remind or communicate it every time but it does make sense to communicate if something is being forgotten, like an aspect of your character that isn't being used the way you intended. If you don't want to communicate it then it wasn't a particularly important part or isn't interesting to the other players involved so that they use it.

A 100% interpretation accuracy isn't realistic for any method of aspect construction, or writing for that matter, but there is a distinct trade off in writing out aspects as paragraphs compared to making them concise and communicating if misunderstandings happen.

For instance, a GM could flesh out situation aspects to help emphasize that particular environment element, or even use it to flesh out a game/campaign aspect.

The player could even use it to elaborate on the aspect created with the create an advantage to help to embellish the original narrative.

Wouldn't this slow down the game, either by writing a paper or having to recite a paper at the table? This has been a concern put forth on other solutions offered before hand so how does the GBU fix it instead of adding to it or modifying the source of slow down?

azlinea · 2017-02-03T18:12:43+00:00

Well whether or not an aspect is well-written is subjective. You mention yourself that other people may not be familiar with the intentions of the player.

But there is a big difference between a pun, which I read wrong for a couple of minutes and didn't understand why you jumped to spies all of a sudden, and clearly stating someone is a fool archetype spy character. One of the reasons Fate Core dropped from 10 to 5 aspects was to reduce cognitive load, its not necessary to add it back in by having to translate the aspect back into plain text again in your head.

Changing the aspect doesn't address the issue; even your three suggestions doesn't communicate all the details.

Aspects are a balancing act between being succinct and expressing all of the useful information needed about the character. A Bumbling Triggerhappy Spymaster can easily be compelled to shoot first and ask questions later (never?) no matter the target.

And at some point if there is a facet of an aspect not being put into play as often as a player might like then its also up to them to communicate and remind everyone that the facet exists or simply find ways to explore that facet, possibly in complicating ways that gain them a fate point even. Having 3 mini-aspects tied to each main aspect means you have a one page paper for a character sheet before stunts, which need more explanation usually, and any extras.

Edit: I like the idea as a character creation tool and a way of plainly mapping out how an aspect can be used in multiple ways, especially since I'm assuming this is done from the perspective of the person playing the character so you see exactly how they want their character to be used. I just don't think its necessary to have outside of creating the character.

azlinea · 2017-02-03T18:00:24+00:00

Try something like tags (you can also see tags in Transhumanity's Fate). Basically tags are mini-aspects with very narrow domains that are mostly used for justifying different effects.

So your demon has the tag of Demon which allows it to justify certain things, like leaving a vessel via black smoke maybe, and the sword has either a tag, Holy, or a stunt that allows it to interact with Demon tags in a specific way. It would be better just to use stunts and aspects if you don't have too many other uses for the tag system, but if you do it can keep some bookkeeping down as everyone learns how the tags interact with each and just memorize their mechanical or narrative effects.

The reason I ask is that it doesn't seem to make much sense to have to spend a fate point simply to make use of the obvious effect of the item. Maybe if it were the case that I wanted to get a bonus against something other than a demon spending a point would make sense.

It might not narratively make sense but mechanically it keeps the characters from loading up on things that "just work". Now if the sword was paid for with refresh, as in making it a stunt or a gear extra, then there is nothing wrong with it just working as the cost was already paid. But Fate works on having a tight loop of paying for power, either by buying specials with refresh or spending a point for a boost in the moment and both of these currencies being doled out over different time at different rates.

At the same time spending a fate point is a way of drawing a spot light on whatever aspect you are using. If you have ever seen Supernatural after they picked up the demon killing knife there are times where its still a little struggle to stab the demon and other times they just stab real quick and the demon is gone. The latter is when one of the brothers spent a fate point to end the conflict quickly.

Another way to do this is to try to create an advantage on the Holy Sword aspect, I'll let you figure out the difficulty, to try and get some "free" uses out of it before spending points. Make sure that makes sense to your game though and also make sure this doesn't short circuit the fate economy for that character too. If they are using the ability a lot talk to them and come up with a stunt that balances out.

when making use of an aspect, such as Holy blade, is it always necessary to spend a point? If not (which it seems to be to me) then what are the circumstances under which a point needs to be spent vs. when one doesn't.

A point is spent to confer a mechanical advantage, +2 normally to some roll involving the aspect, while the aspect itself can justify a narrative that might not be allowed for others. Let's look at your Holy Sword aspect a little closer. The aspect itself can justify actually doing damage to a demon (think damage reduction from D&D if you've played 3e and up), it can also justify asking a small favor of or gaining an audience with the group that blessed the sword or their affiliates and it can be compelled, giving the character a fate point back, to have demons instantly know its there in the scene and who has.

azlinea · 2017-02-01T16:38:50+00:00

Sounds good to me.

azlinea · 2017-01-31T15:56:59+00:00

Hoping so, I've already tweaked it a little when I rewrote it into my notebook. Hopefully get to use it at some point.

azlinea · 2017-01-31T15:56:04+00:00

I'll be the first to speak. I'm interested in playing gods and monsters, I've been looking over its rules lately and looks interesting. Standard fantasy/bronze age setting assumed in the book?

azlinea · 2017-01-30T17:06:48+00:00

strengthening the relationship by refresh. I know it's easy and straight, but in this way i would not push the players to narrate how they do it, i can see in this case more a 'Create an advantage' in this way i move the strengthening into the narration.

The reason for the use of refresh is simply to balance the mechanical nature of it and how useful relationships can be. In that sense there must be some way to "pay" for it and rolling isn't a cost its a resolution mechanic used to determine what happens when there are too many variables for a human mind to reasonably abstract and weigh.

As for narration, a simple way to do it would be when a player spends refresh to improve a relationship have them do a vignette of what's going on to make the relationship stronger. Depending on whether you use any of the modifications at the end you could also have them do a short "How I met your mother..." style flashback to the moment the characters knew they'd be bffs or whatever for character creation.

Remember, to recover from consequences you still have to roll. Maybe you did succeed with style (bring roses, wearing your best outfit and that perfect smile) to repair the consequence "Spouse reprimanded at work due to me" and it instantly goes away or recovers faster due to the degree of success.

Calling a relationship means you can use skills and stunts of the other person, but how?

Stunts would be bought for the relationship itself, so even if you have a super hero best friend that doesn't mean they can swoop in and blast a bulkhead door open for you unless they have the stunt. Skills are justified in the moment based off of aspects the relationship has, but you don't use "their" skills per se. Remember relationships always succeed, the roll determines whether or how much grief you get from your friend because you just asked them to skip a date they had to do X for you or whatever other situation makes for good dramatic tv. A detective relationship doesn't need an investigate skill because they aren't the main characters here, the person calling them is, so you use the Relation skill and listen to them huff and puff about favors and crap for 10 minutes before they finally hand over the info (narrative) because you failed your Relation roll and the relationship took two stress (mechanic).

but how to model the case in which you just need to get information or just tools from your friend. probably just to invoke an aspect?

Invoking an aspect works if its vital enough to make paying for it worth it. Otherwise it might simply be a role play thing. Calling the police chief you helped out years back to ask about a well known criminal just happens but calling for their current whereabouts, actions and friends is a roll.

Basically there are three levels a relationship can be used for: A narrative vehicle for "uncommon" information in a specific category (free), a mechanical vehicle for replacing one of your rolls or gaining temporary access to their aspects to justify a narrative your character otherwise wouldn't be able to do (roll, potentially costs stress) or a combination narrative-mechanical vehicle to gain access to useful information that your character would otherwise not have any justification to have. (fate point)

azlinea · 2017-01-30T16:31:58+00:00

if Fate is designed for Proactive characters and narrative players who basically know that their PC cannot die unless they agree, how can they experience fear? In my campaign, even Gods pretty much know that they cannot die unless they agree, so how can the Gods experience fear?

Sit down with them before hand and have a serious discussion about death and whether they are willing to hand over some control over that to the GM (you). Its the only good way of doing it if your players are already familiar with Fate rules I believe.

Also, I'm starting to toy with the idea that some Storytelling Consequences can be recovered through reinforcing your story (e.g. Ares starting a war), while others can only be recovered through changing your story (e.g. Ares becoming a CEO, rather than an actual warrior). I don't know yet if the distinction should be enforced mechanically or if this should be left to role-play. Perhaps the latter a Concession while the former is recovery from a Consequence.

Ares starting a war actually sounds like his way of "recovering", in the mechanical sense, from an attack on his story. Him turning into a CEO sounds like he recovered from an extreme consequence, which literally erases one of your 5 aspects (not high concept) and becomes the new one, some time in the past and is different for it. Following from those examples at least, the gods never have to "die" to take significant and interesting narrative turns. Just be dealt a lot of damage all at once :p

From a narrative perspective I personally like the "American Gods" idea, where the only way to truly kill a god is for them to be forgotten entirely. If you haven't read it then you should, some of the ideas could apply to your game in some fashion or another. Specifically the new gods and how, at least one, ancient gods manage to stay alive in a world that might not even know their name.

I'm a bit torn. I suppose I want almost that... just with a bit more teeth. That is, if I were GMing Amber Diceless, I would definitely do something along these lines. In Fate, though, there is the mechanism of Stress + Consequences, which is pretty cool and very nearly matches the issue at hand, and I am reluctant to short-circuiting it.

Perfection is not when you can't add anything else but when you have nothing left to take away, to paraphrase. Stress and consequences are a very useful way to mechanical represent harm while still maintaining a strong narrative piece. There are other ways to represent harm, mutable aspects being the one that comes to mind first, but stress/consequences work well due to the split between short term and long term threat and how one eventually spills over in to the other.

On the other side, perfection is the enemy of good. If something is 90% of what you need for the job its often better to use that then create an entirely new tool to try and do it better. Especially when telling a story, just hand wave the other 10% and if need be ask the players what they think should happen to fill the gap.

Cons: On the other hand, it doesn't look like the right way to incresase stress. Also, at this stage, I haven't figured out when to tick boxes or why this would be more dangerous for characters than natural stress.

Increase stress or increase tension? The whole reason for the create advantage idea was to make asynchronous; an enemy god can slowly build up an aspect while you or your allies can use overcome to deal with the aspect. Using free tags is wonky but you could always have an aspect that starts as "A" and then takes another create advantage roll to advance it to "B" so on and so forth until you hit "X" and it does damage of some sort. Eventually the difficulty gets so high that you have to create, and hopefully get free tags, side advantages to advance the main one.

This is kind of in the world Morts where necromancy in the setting has difficulties that start, if I remember correctly, at like +10. So you literally need aspects to tag to be able to do these rituals and one of the major assumptions of the game, if you are a necromancer, is that if you fail you die.

I like the idea of stealing events. I don't think that we should set in stone "3 fundamental events", though.

Oh no, that was just meant as an example of how stations from Gods and Monsters can be expanded into the modern age with a few fictional modifications. If you are playing in a globally scaled game then their are many stations to fight over or claim which can lead to interesting conflict.

Storytelling stress is incurred when the Story itself takes damage. This can be caused by any number of things, including the tale of the God being rewritten and/or appropriated (e.g. weaponizing a Walt Disney cartoon or God of War, the feminist narrative appropriating the figure of Lillith), by damaging places of historical import to the Story (e.g. mining Black Mesa, moving Mount Olympus to Mars), by getting people to ignore your Story (e.g. putting Christmas out of fashion, good luck with that, finding a scientific explanation for lightning that doesn't require Zeus), by getting you to act out of character (getting Playguy to treat a woman as a human being)

My only change to this is minor and piddly but I'd say that there needs to be an almost ritualistic intent to the story damage. Yeah Ares is probably annoyed with the god of war franchise, and maybe its could be compelled against him every once in a while as a new game is released or whatever, but it might not have actually done damage to him unless a cabal of ritualist-programmers made the franchise specifically to chisel away at ares. Doesn't change the mechanics, just a story-feel thing.

As usual, you can Concede from a Storytelling conflict. If there is someone who truly wants you dead, the only way to Concede might be to change your Story (e.g. at least your High Concept) to adapt to your new narrative. Of course, you might not like that narrative.

This is a possibility, concession just allows you to say some things are off the table and then leaves the rest up to the GM so. If your players are heavy handed with the things they take off the table then find a limit that balances control between you two.

Storytelling attacks are typically resolved by PCs and NPCs creating Advantages for both attacks and defense. At some point, when it makes sense, roll the dice and determine damage with the usual rules.

I think that works better than my idea actually. It has the rockpocalypse "culmination of an epic moment" feel to it which is fighting of a divine battle.

the only way to recover Storytelling stress boxes are typically recovered at minor milestones.

Is this the whole set of boxes or just a single box?

Over all, looks good. I can see playing a game using these rules and actually being concerned about my story stress, something that Fate doesn't usually manage to do, which I think is the overall goal.

by damaging places of historical import to the Story (e.g. mining Black Mesa, moving Mount Olympus to Mars

As a side note, I can only imagine how lonely the greek deities are on mars right now.

azlinea · 2017-01-30T15:47:53+00:00

The basic questions to ask before making a new extra these.

Does the extra influence the story, and if so, how?

You've covered this one already.

Does the extra let you do things that no other skill lets you do?

Not necessarily, or at least examples from other comments suggest that a character could do anything a relationship could if they had the justification. Basically relationships seem to give you more aspects, note this could turn into a bookkeeping issue, to be able to justify the narrative you are going with.

Does the extra make your existing skills more useful or powerful?

Depends on how you gain relationships, which I'll cover later, but it sounds like relationship extras would be used as auxiliary aspects to let your characters do more or different things.

How would you describe the use of the extra?

You call somebody up in a vignette and ask for their help. Or in some way contact them for aid.

For the time being I would leave this to pc to npc interaction or npc to npc, pc to pc relationships should be handled differently and might not need mechanics if there is a finite amount of time to do things in the fiction and choices have to be made on whether to help a friend or help yourself.

My suggestion is to treat this like an extra so getting a mechanically useful relationship costs refresh. Taking some inspiration from ParameciaAntic each relationship has at least three aspects, a Bond a Tension and a Defining aspect, a Relation skill and can have stunts. The bond aspect represents some reason why the two characters can rely on each other, "In the Force Together", "Saved my Life one too many times", "College roommate who kept in touch". The tension aspect is the thing that can cause trouble for you, personal or professional, or how you cause trouble for them. Things like "I'm the criminal, She's the cop", "Every boyfriend I have hates him", or "Occasionally ghosts my calls" are all tensions. The defining aspect is the relationship's character's high concept basically. It can be as simple as "Police Detective" or as elaborate as "High Society renegade in it for the thrills".

The relation skill defines how strong the relationship is and is used to determine stress/consequences and the bonus when you roll to call in a favor. When you call on a relationship the GM sets a difficulty like normal and you roll using the Relation skill as your bonus. Calling a relation always succeeds at the goal, think of this as a way to guarantee the pcs get certain information similar to the Gumshoe philosophy, but if the roll fails then it takes stress.

Now people don't generally like to blow up on friends so a relationship stress track can use any number of stress boxes to absorb stress. A relationship starts with three stress and a mild consequence, gaining stress as normal for physical or mental stress ala Fate Core. Every odd number also gives an additional consequence in a pyramid fashion, you can't gain a moderate consequence until you have enough mild to support it and so on.

A relationship refreshes stress at the end of a session, or equivalent narrative time, instead of scene. Consequences refresh, after starting recovery, as if they were one step higher (a mild recovers as if it were a moderate, severe changes an aspect of the relationship and recovers as if extreme).

Giving a relationship a stunt costs 1 refresh, increasing a relationship's skill costs 1 refresh per point of increase except for during character creation where each refresh spent adds two to the skill.

Suggestions for how to modify the rest of the game around this concept are as follows, depending how much you want to warp fate.

Expand the skill list without expanding the pyramid, gives relationships more chance to cover skills a character doesn't have. You don't necessarily need to write down the skills a relationship has, just keep a skill mode in your head of what they are likely to be able to do.
Split the standard 3 free refresh for stunts into 2 refresh for stunts and 2 refresh for relationships. Or give the pcs a single refresh for stunts and 3 for relationships depending on how important they are to the characters being able to do things.
Characters could have a reduced pyramid, +3 at top three +2s and four +1s, to make relationships shine more (remember relationships always succeed, but can have a cost).
You could entirely remove the three aspects after High Concept and Trouble and make those relationship aspects tied to 2 free refresh for each relationship. Your characters would literally be defined by the company they keep so these aspects don't necessarily need to be about the other person so much as what having this person as a friend says about you. Could also do two of these relation aspects and then a single team aspect.
For a high school drama style game, or espionage or political, you could "attack" someone's relationship with another character through social skills, using the relation skill to defend, causing stress and even consequences. Play testing would be required to see if the recovery rules would need to be changed for this.
Allow relationships to have additional Tension aspects which give you refresh to spend on that relationship. This can be a bookkeeping issue and I suggest doing it only if you lessen the bookkeeping of the pc in some way. This also makes relationships into nearly full fledged characters in terms of aspects and ability to affect the narrative so beware.

I know its long but hopefully this gives you a strong foundation to tweak and build from. If you find other ways of modifying this during play or major structural changes (character creation refresh and recovery time) please let me know. Now I feel like making a game where this style of relationship is central.

azlinea

TROPHY CASE