[FATE] this is blowing my mind, seriously

[Lmns Crn]

From the FATE devblog at faterpg.com:

So that's an exploration of stress, consequences, and some of the thinking that goes into setting the dials. Is that good enough for your purposes? I think it'll work well for most people, and at the very least I think it's the right kind of starting point. But, being Fate, there are always places you can hook in something more detailed or (YMMV) more evocative by involving the fractal.

Here, I'm thinking about consequences. Consequences are aspects, and to a fractal-hacker, an aspect being on or representing something is a bit of a flag that 'hey, this could be treated like a character'. So here's a grab bag of thoughts about that. If you're looking for consequences to have more depth or teeth, any one of the ideas below might give you what you're looking for.

Consequences are like characters, therefore'¦

'¦ they're represented by aspects.

This is the core already-established function, our springboard for the rest. It means that consequences can be compelled and invoked (usually by someone else, in acting against the possessor, but not always).

'¦ they have a skill rating.

Maybe a consequence could have an adjective rating tied to it based on the number of shifts it absorbed, so a 4-shift consequence would be rated at Great (+4). (Or maybe you're doing away with the stress track entirely, with rated consequences replacing that function.)

That skill could then be used as a block on actions that you're trying to take that would be affected by the consequence. Or it could even launch attacks of its own if the consequence represented something ongoing, like a festering wound or a nasty scandal. Or maybe those are too heavy-handed; even then, the skill could be used as an opposing difficulty when  trying to do away with the consequence.

'¦ they have stunts.

Stunts might resemble special conditions imparted by specific kinds of attacks or weapons. To reference the above, maybe your festering wound consequence gets the 'Ongoing Damage' stunt, granting the ability for the consequence to make its own attacks. Or maybe it's an 'Entangling' stunt that says 'this consequence will prevent your movement' (or maybe just add a border value of 2 to moving out of your current zone).

'¦ they have a stress track.

For real! The consequence might have a stress track of its own, for tracking your progress in getting yourself rid of the consequence. 'I attack the Ongoing Scandal with my Politician skill!' Which takes us back around to'¦

'¦ they HAVE aspects.

If you're going really nuts, consequences might possess aspects of their own (aspects inside of an aspect! aaaaagh!) '" at least temporarily. A doctor might maneuver/assess/declare a temporary aspect on the consequence as part of his diagnosis, which he later invokes to help in the operation to fix the condition. If a stress track is in play, a particularly tough consequence might take consequences of its own before getting taken out. (For that matter, if a consequence can be taken out, what's to say it can't concede? What sort of concessions might be offered, then? 'The treatment sends the cancer into remission, but there are complications'¦')

the bleeding edge[/i]

[SA]

Oh why'd you have to do that? I'm trying to wean my self off of FATE and then you have to go and remind me of its many seductive charms.

Now Spirit of the Century is staring at me from across the room.

[Lmns Crn]

Oh why'd you have to do that? I'm trying to wean my self off of FATE and then you have to go and remind me of its many seductive charms.

Now Spirit of the Century is staring at me from across the room.

Why are you trying to wean yourself off FATE?

Man, I just this evening found out about the existence of Diaspora.

[SA]

Just trying to make a change. Broaden my horizons. But every time someone mentions FATE I salivate and wanna crawl back to it like a humiliated lover or half-human Pavlovian nightmare thing.

I think I need to detox.

EDIT: of course, I'm so committed to it that I went and purchased Diaspora even so.

[Ninja D!]

If you enjoy the system, stick with it for your stuff. I do my stuff with GURPS...I still try to keep a basic knowledge of some other systems so I can jump in on games, though.

[Superfluous Crow]

This seemed to be the most appropriate old thread for the following question:
I've been a little disillusioned with "skills" lately. It wasn't that long ago that our own Xathan had a fight with his TMacabre skill list because, as opposed to aspects, skills are fairly rigid. They fit into specific nichés and generally don't play well with others.
So what if one dropped the skill list?
What I am thinking is that players instead devise "skill aspects". These are not aspects in the traditional sense, but have the same sort of freeform structure in that players can pick pretty much anything from "casanova" over "hedge witch" to "master swordsman" without it having to fit into predetermined boxes or skill groups.
Now, these don't give a fixed bonus like aspects and they don't require fate points (in that way, they are rather dull aspects which is why they also don't have terribly interesting names), but instead they have a rank (mediocre, average, good, etc)* associated with them like normal skills and they describe the character's capabilities rather than his identity (sorta; there is some overlap). As with aspects, whenever you can convince the GM that your skill aspect applies, you can use the skill to solve the task at hand. 

Another way to look at this: instead of having skills you have a set of "classes", with each class implying a certain level of skill while performing certain activities. 
There are some (read: quite a few) issues with this, such as the unconstrained breadth of each skill aspect, but I still think it's a fairly interesting idea.

*admittedly, I am not sure how one can be a mediocre master swordsman :D

[SabrWolf]

SC - I think (and Sparkle can, and likely will, correct me if I'm wrong on this one) that you're getting into a sort of "Free Form" skill list. Basically, whenever you think of a skill that your character should have, you add it to your character sheet (as long as you have the ability to do so given your particular brand of FATE) as long as the GM agrees that the addition is actually covering ground that you don't already have covered.

I vaguely recall Sparkle saying that this was how she wants/wanted/got Asura to work... but I may be wrong or have misinterpreted what she was saying.

Now, since a Skill is just a list of little minor "situational" aspects that your character can do, having each skill be devised by an individual at the table isn't a bad idea; I actually kinda like it. But, it does create a little more work for you and the players at creation by forcing you to put some general boundaries on the skill (with the caveat of being able to "explain" a skills use into any situation) so that the GM and player can know what the general use of the Skill-Aspect is going to be.

There are some (read: quite a few) issues with this, such as the unconstrained breadth of each skill aspect, but I still think it's a fairly interesting idea.

I'd also like to point out that "Unconstrained Breadth" is exactly what makes Aspects awesome and, if that's how you want your skills to work, then that's something that you should keep in the mechanics. As I mentioned earlier, you'll just want to make sure that your Skill-Aspects are at least a bit defined so that you know what situations they will typically work under with the understanding that "As long as it makes sense, any skill works anywhere."

*admittedly, I am not sure how one can be a mediocre master swordsman

As for this? There are degrees of mastery in any particular martial practice or art form (swordsmanship being both) and I find that Master Swordsman Mediocre (+0) would be totally accepted among FATE players.

[Xathan]

Swear I'm not tooting my own horn here, but if you go into the TM FATE thread and read Sparkletwist's posts, she was strongly advocating a system similar to the one you're propsing, and did one for Asura. It's actually how the original FUDGE system worked - I' reccomend checking that out as well (I was really, really tempted to go that route, but decided to go the more classic list of skills)

However, calling them Aspects has some interesting connotations that could work really well, but wanted to toss this out:

first of all, non-fate point generating skill aspects basically become skills where you make up the name and give them ranks. Which is fine, but why not go all the way? Allow them to generate FATE points - a DM could tap Master Swordsman for a compell when someone challenges you to a duel even if you know they could win, or Talented Con-man to have the cops recognize you when interacting with you and suddenly start mistrusting you. If you're going to call them aspects, that's awesome, but use the aspects - and make them longer. Instead of Master Swordsman, what about an aspect that includes that but also mentions the character is skilled at blocking with his blade, giving him normal skill bonus allowing him to tap that for the typical +2 aspect bonus when defending? (which would replace the usual stunts).

Also, you should make it clear now narrowly these are defined - Why would someone be a Master Swordsman when they could be a Weaponsmaster, or a Skilled Con Artist when they could be a Criminal Mastermind? While such decisions would ultimately be up to the GM and Players, I'd reccomend at least including some note on how broad/limited these are.

As for how many, I suggest using the SOTC pyramid - 5 fair, 4 average, 3 good, 2 great, one superb, period. It's a lot of aspects, but it was also a lot of skills, and helps prevent the system from becoming even more complex with the addition of Dresden-Style skillpoint bookkeeping.

[Superfluous Crow]

Yeah, I can see Sparkletwist is kinda alluding to something like this on her Wiki, but the details of how it works in her system aren't quite clear to me from the wiki alone. Seems like the Aspect-skills/superskills/archetypes in her system mostly serve as a kind of umbrella skill for other, more well-defined, skills.
   
The FATE fractal is interesting, but I fear it could quickly spin out of control if skills == aspects.
There would be two ways to go about that, both possibly disastrous (and, of course, possibly awesome).
1) make skills behave as aspects. First of all, as you mentioned yourself, you would have a shitload of aspects unless the number of skills was reduced considerably. Secondly, skills just don't make great aspects. Remember, the general guideline is that a good aspect should be a) evocative and b) both good and bad. Skills are most often neither.
2) make aspects behave as skills. Ditch the skill list. Just give aspects ranks. I find this approach more interesting, but it does suffer from some issues as well. First, a lot of aspects don't work well as skills. Secondly, there is simply too much synergy. Whenever you would be able to use the skill you'd also almost inevitably be able to tap it. This dilutes the whole aspect-action dynamic that the game otherwise excels at. Finally, this might actually result in a general "lack of competence" as the aspects would restrict the skill use too much by virtue of being fairly specific by nature. If "the duel is my life" is your aspect, is your rapier suddenly useless in your hands when you get ambushed by highwaymen? 

So I think it might be too troublesome to make them behave in the same way. There needs to be a difference, although not necessarily a pronounced one, between a character aspect and a skill aspect. One of them, namely, that the latter has a rank associated with it. 

An interesting take on skill scope would be to tie it directly to the iconic Skill Pyramid. The Pyramid already (indirectly) implies breadth for low levels of competence and specialization for high levels of competence. Now, we could take this literally and make it so that "mediocre" and "average" skill aspects can cover a lot of ground, while higher levels like "superb" have to be very specific.
So you might have be an average "Student from the Barast Academy", a good "Adept of the Pseudonatural Sciences" and a superb "Abstract Metaphysicist".
Basically, your character has to build his competence from the ground up and there is an inherent hierarchy to the level of skills e.g. a more general level can't be higher than a more specific level (although I guess it could work the other way around with you being really bad at a specific thing).
It will always be the most pertinent skill aspect that applies.   

In addition, I'm toying with keeping a small suite of "raw skills" which work exactly like normal skills, as presented in the various FATE books. Weapon skills would probably be raw, to ensure that everyone doesn't have to be a "down-on-his-luck mercenary" just to survive the first session. (of course, depending on what kind of game you are running). This prevents you from having to suffer through long-winded discussions about why your player's average "master swordsman" lost in a fight against a superb "sullen city guard".
So being a "deserted soldier" would still give you a host of useful skills, but weapon use would be governed by the raw skill.   

p.s. did Dresden coin "archetype" for something? Because otherwise I feel that'd be a good name for these fancy skill aspects.