5: The Big Game
Fate System Toolkit
Gimme Some Drama!
Sometimes a small change is enough, but then again, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you need a big, dramatic change to the system, something that really shakes things up.Character Generation Options
The character generation system in Fate Core presents a particular style of character creation, one that presents a lot of freedom but also provides structure and guides the players into creating a coherent group of individuals. Maybe you want something a little less open-ended, or something a little more guided.Professions and Races
Anyone who’s played fantasy RPGs is at least passingly familiar with these ideas. For those who aren’t sure what we mean, a profession is a broad group of skills and abilities that follows from a particular character concept, often linked to what you do in the world. A race describes what you are—where you come from, who your people are, and where your natural talents lie.In Fate, a profession is represented as a collection of skills arranged in the pyramid, with specific values. Some slots are left open, some are defined. When you pick a profession, you get the pyramid provided. Fill in any blanks with whatever you want. A profession also includes a few aspects; pick at least one of these, or create new ones based on the theme represented by the aspects provided. Don’t take more than two aspects from your profession. Finally, a profession has a list of stunts available. These are profession-exclusive stunts; if you’re a member of a profession, you can take its stunts. If you’re not a member of the profession, those stunts are off-limits. A race in Fate provides a number of aspects; choose at least one but not more than two. Just as with your profession, you can make your own if you want to. Your race also gives you a racial skill in a few different flavors. (See example below.) Slot your racial skill into whichever empty slot on the pyramid appeals to you and pick the flavor that most appeals to you; it’ll tell you how you can use your racial skill. You can take additional flavors of your racial skill as if they were stunts.choose to instead destroy your armor or your shield, provided you’re using the appropriate item. Once your armor or shield is destroyed, you’ll have to get it repaired or get a new one.THE WORD “RACE” The term “race” is both inaccurate and problematic in this context. We’re not describing a race as modern people use the word; what we’re describing is more akin to a species. When you’re making a race in Fate, what you’re really doing is making rules for a type of being other than human, not a nationality or ethnicity. So why do we use the word ‘race’? It’s familiar in the context of a role-playing game. People know what it means because of numerous games that have come before, and it imparts an immediate understanding of what we’re talking about. Is it the best word? No. But we don’t have a better word with the same level of history within the hobby, so we’re using it here, with the understanding that it’s a problematic term.
Profession: Thief Aspects: Acquisition Specialist, Cunning Swindler, Guild Thief, Knife in the Dark, Second-Story Man/Woman. Skills
Great (+4): Deceive or Stealth
Good (+3): Athletics or Provoke, one other
Fair (+2): Fight or Shoot, two others
Average (+1): Any four skills
Stunts Backstab: When you can surprise an enemy or attack from a place of hiding, you can attack with Stealth. If you succeed, you create a boost. If you succeed with style, you get to invoke that boost for free twice. Cover: You have a cover identity you can assume. Describe your cover identity, choose a high concept and a trouble aspect for your cover identity, and choose an apex skill for your cover identity. You can assume that identity with enough preparation and the expenditure of a fate point. While you’re in that identity, its high concept and trouble replace yours and you can use Deceive in place of its apex skill. You lose these benefits as soon as your cover is blown, and you may have to spend some time creating a new cover identity. Criminal Underbelly: Whenever you enter a settlement for the first time, you can spend a fate point to declare that the local criminals know you. Choose one of the following: they have a lead on a promising job, they’ll give you and your companions free room and board for a few weeks, or they’ll help you with something right now but you might owe them afterward. Not a Threat: Choose Deceive or Stealth when you take this stunt. When you create an advantage with that skill to make yourself as non-threatening or unobtrusive as possible, enemies will find other targets for as long as that aspect exists. As soon as you successfully attack someone, the aspect goes away.
Race: Elf Aspects: The Experience of Centuries, “I Know These Woods.”, The Long Game, Magic in the Blood, Perfection in Everything. Racial Skill (Elf) You may use the Elf skill to recognize useful flora and fauna, know your way through the woods, or notice hidden dangers. In addition, pick one of the following flavors; you may pick more at the cost of one stunt or refresh each. Elven High Magic: You can use Elf to cast spells relating to nature or growth, even if you have no other magical ability. Perfection in Battle: Choose Shoot or Fight. When you’re using the traditional armaments of your people, you can use Elf instead of the chosen skill.
Race: Orc Aspects: Blood and Glory, Everyone Fears the Horde, “Pain Is for the Weak.”, The Spirits Guide Me, Warrior of the Seven Clans. Racial Skill (Orc) You may use Orc to resist pain, call upon the spirits for aid, or perform feats of brute strength. In addition, pick one of the following flavors; you can pick more at the cost of one stunt or refresh each. Blood Rage: When you use Orc to create an advantage representing an overpowering battle-fury, you get an extra invocation on that aspect if you succeed or succeed with style. Thick Skin: You may use Orc instead of Physique to determine your physical stress and consequences, and you get one additional minor physical consequence.
The Origin Story
The origin story is a method to kick-start character creation through play, using vignettes that target each player. Before playing through an origin story, a character needs two things: a high concept and an apex skill. Most players will have at least a general idea of who they want to be, but they may be fuzzy on the details. The high concept and the apex skill define a character in the broadest possible terms, providing a starting point for an origin story vignette. When you play through an origin story with a player, it’s just like playing the normal game except that you’re playing with an eye toward defining who that character is. Start in medias res—when you start with action, you give the player opportunities to make choices about their character. A character starts her origin story with one fate point.Choosing New Skills
During the origin story, call for a lot of skill rolls. Spotlight the character’s apex skill to some extent, but also call for other skill rolls. Whenever the player must make a skill roll and doesn’t want to roll at Mediocre (+0), she can assign that skill to one of her empty slots. Once assigned, it’s part of the character.Choosing New Aspects
Throw the player into a variety of different situations, pit her against a variety of different difficulties. When the player runs into trouble, when she needs a +2 or a reroll for example, suggest an aspect to her. If she takes you up on your suggestion or comes up with her own aspect, let her invoke it once for free and give her a fate point!Choosing New Stunts
You can offer the player new stunts the same way you offer her new aspects—offer her something that might get her out of a tight spot, or allow her to do something she needs to do. Just like in Fate Core, the character gets three free stunts and may take additional stunts by reducing refresh—unless you changed these dials, of course. If it’s a stunt with a limited number of uses or that costs a fate point, let her use it once for free.Involving the Other Players
Playing a character’s origin story is a communal activity! Other players can jump in to play NPCs—you can suggest they do this, too, if you need someone to play a particular character. They can even jump in with their own characters, whether or not they’ve gone through their own origin story yet. Other players can also suggest aspects, but only if those aspects define a relationship with their own characters. If the two players define a relationship during an origin story, they both get an aspect and a fate point—which the other player can use in his own origin story!Ending an Origin Story
Follow an origin story to its logical conclusion, but try not to let it last longer than fifteen or twenty minutes before you move on to the next origin story. The idea is to play through an origin story for each player at the table during a single session.Pre-Compels as Adventure Design
If you’re stuck for an adventure idea, you need look no further than the PCs’ aspects! Here’s a neat trick to kick-start an adventure and also start the players off with some extra fate points. First, take a look at all of the PCs’ aspects and see if any jump out at you. If you see one that seems to have an interesting adventure hook, particularly something that’s tied to the world or an organization within the world, tell the player you want to use it as the seed of an adventure and offer him a fate point. Most players will accept this compel without much convincing, but if the player isn’t interested, don’t charge him a fate point for refusal—just come up with a different aspect to compel. Once you’ve got your seed, open it up to the table. Suggest other aspects and solicit suggestions from the players. Talk with them about what’s going to show up in the adventure and hand out fate points for good suggestions. These suggestions don’t have to be tied to aspects, but it’s best if they are. After all, if you’re tying multiple aspects into the story, you can keep compelling that aspect later! If you do take suggestions not based on existing aspects, turn those suggestions into aspects. They can be situation aspects or they can be aspects placed on the entire adventure. Once you’ve got a good starting point, start playing! Now you’ve got a starting situation with a lot of player buy-in, and the players have some extra fate points so that they can be extra-awesome from the start!Aspect Events
This is a trick you can use to create the framework of an adventure—you can even combine this technique with the previous technique to inject events based on player input. An aspect event has two components: the event list and the crescendo aspect. The event list is a series of things that will happen, leading up to the crescendo aspect. Think of the crescendo aspect as what will happen if the players don’t intercede. A good event has three to six aspects plus the crescendo aspect. When the adventure starts, check off the first aspect and bring it into the story. This is the inciting incident, the thing that gets the PCs involved. It’s an aspect like any other—you and the players can compel it or invoke it as appropriate. It stays in play until it’s no longer relevant, at which point you simply cross it off. Whenever the story suggests that things should move on, or whenever there’s a lull in the action, check off the next aspect and bring it into the story. It’s now an aspect that can be invoked or compelled, and it’s a new element to the story. Keep doing this for as long as you need to. Accelerate the rate at which you bring in aspects, if the players are getting distracted or not getting involved, or slow it down if they’re being really proactive. If the crescendo aspect gets checked off, things have gotten really, really bad. This usually indicates that the bad guys are on the verge of winning, and that the players need to step up their game! If you don’t check off all the aspects by the time the PCs wrap things up, that’s fine! It just means the PCs were on their game, and that they got to be awesome and win big. If you check off all the aspects and things go badly for the PCs, that’s also fine! You can snowball what happened in this story into the next one, and up the ante a bit. Here’s an example:- Explosions and Fire!
- A Rash of Murders
- Citywide Panic
- Under Terrorist Threat
- Three Hours to Detonation
- Smoking Crater
Power Level
Fate Core provides a default power level that emulates a specific kind of action. It’s heroic and action-oriented, but it’s also a bit gritty, with heroes that are fragile enough to get hurt badly after a few good hits but tough enough to stay alive for a while. It also provides a certain level of competence in the form of the skill levels and fate points you get. That power level isn’t right for every game, though. Sometimes you want to emulate high-octane pulp or gritty noir, and the default settings for those dials aren’t quite right. Well, no problem—just adjust those dials!Skills
In Fate Core, characters have ten skills in a pyramid ranging from Average (+1) to Great (+4). This emulates highly competent individuals with a small number of things that they’re very good at and a wider variety of things that they’re pretty good at. There are two things you can adjust when it comes to skills: number of skills and skill cap. When you increase the number of skills available, you’re making the characters competent at a wider variety of things. When you increase the skill cap, you allow PCs to become very good at a few things, possibly reaching into superhuman levels. Decreasing these things tends to push things into a grittier area; fewer skills means the heroes have more niche protection but also increases the chance that the group won’t have a specific, important skill. Decreasing the skill cap makes the PCs less competent, which can be good if you’re trying to emulate a group full of regular folks. Most games increase or decrease both; adjusting one without adjusting the other can result in skill bloat or the upper limits of capability going unused.Refresh
Adjusting refresh up or down impacts PC competency and versatility directly. More importantly, it also affects how often the PCs have to accept compels. Higher refresh means the PCs get more fate points every session, which means they can refuse more compels. Lower refresh means compels are more important, but it also means the players are more at the GM’s mercy. Refresh also affects how many extra stunts a player can buy, which has a direct impact on specialization, niche protection, and competency.Stunts
It should come as no surprise that handing out more free stunts makes PCs more powerful, and handing out fewer makes them less so. This will also have an impact on refresh—fewer free stunts means players might need to spend some of their precious refresh on more stunts, and vice versa. A second way to adjust power level through stunts without affecting the number of stunts a PC gets is to adjust the power level of the stunts themselves. In Fate Core, a stunt is worth about 2 shifts. Adjusting that up to 3 or 4 means that each stunt has more individual impact, while adjusting it downward makes each less important.Stress
Fate Core sets stress tracks at 2 each, adjusting them upward based on certain skills. You can increase this to make characters tougher if you want them to be able to take more of a beating, while adjusting stress downward makes them more fragile. This change has a direct impact on how long fights last. More stress means PCs can shrug off more punishment, which makes fights less risky and probably more common. Lower stress means fights are a lot more dangerous, which means that players will think twice before starting one. It also means they’ll need to consider conceding more often in order to avoid getting taken out.Aspects
Adjusting the number of aspects upward or downward from five doesn’t have as much effect on power level as some of the other dials you can turn, but it does have an impact on character versatility. More aspects means there are more tricks the players can call upon to pull their bacon out of the fire, while reducing the number of aspects gives them fewer. However, be careful about adjusting the number of aspects. The more aspects there are, the less important each aspect is and the more likely it is to be forgotten or ignored. Reducing the number of aspects means that each individual aspect becomes more important and less likely to be overlooked, but it also means you’ll have to make up for it to some extent with extra situation aspects. In general, more than seven aspects leads to aspect bloat, while fewer than three gives characters too little depth. You’ll also want to think about adjusting refresh if you adjust the number of aspects. If you have a ton of aspects but low refresh, most of those won’t get invoked.Examples
Here are a few examples of power levels you can use for your own games. GRITTY NOIR- Eight skills: 3 Average (+1), 3 Fair (+2), 2 Good (+3) (15 skill points equivalent)
- Skill cap at Good (+3)
- Refresh 2
- 1 free stunt
- 2 stress boxes to start
- 5 aspects
- Fifteen skills: 5 Average (+1), 4 Fair (+2), 3 Good (+3), 2 Great (+4), 1 Superb (+5) (35 skill points equivalent)
- Skill cap at Superb (+5)
- Refresh 4
- 5 free stunts
- 4 stress boxes to start
- 7 aspects
- Eighteen skills: 5 Average (+1), 4 Fair (+2), 3 Good (+3), 3 Great (+4), 2 Superb (+5), 1 Fantastic (+6) (50 skill points equivalent)
- Skill cap at Fantastic (+6)
- Refresh 6
- 5 free stunts
- Stunts are worth 3 shifts each
- 4 stress boxes to start; stunts can provide more
- 5 aspects
