Terra Macabre System (FATE Based) - Stress and Powers

[Xathan]

THE ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THIS POST ARE IDENTIFIED AS OGC AND WILL BE INCORPORATED INTO THE TERRA MACABRE SRD.
[note]Updating with the new information[/note]For those of you familiar with FATE, Terra Macabre will likely come as no surprise. For those of you who have played the Dresden RPG, or read the book, it's going to seem even more familiar. I'm going to be making a number of alterations, of course, but kind of following the maxim of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." We're going to focus at first on the crunchiest bits, then get into the fluffier stuff later.  

Character:
Your character is defined primarily by 3 factors: Your Aspects, Skills, and Attributes. These are broken down in the following categories.

Aspects:
You have two categories of aspects:
High Aspects represent fundamental traits of your character. Each character has 3 High Aspects: Your Destiny, Desire, and Danger.

Your Destiny is the overall statement of who you are and, barring major changes, who you will be: Misbegotten Rebel Against England, Chriopetri Bounty Hunter, Yith Agent Of The Czar, Reckless Aethership Captain, or something similar. It's called your Destiny because it's something that rarely, if ever, changes – it's a fundamental part of the character.

Your Desire is what you want, your primary motivator: Peace and Justice in Asgard, Sex-Drugs-And-Travel, Find My Lost Family, etc. It's assumed all desire statements are preceded by "I want." Your desire can change if it is fulfilled or your character undergoes a shift in perspective – They become jaded to the prospect of ever finding peace, they realize drugs are killing them, they find their lost loved ones.

Your Danger is something that plagues you – typically, its a difficulty you'll have to deal with on a regular basis: "My Child, My Enemy", "One is Too Many, Two is Not Enough,"  "The Best Intentions". It's something that will come up most sessions and a major source of difficulty for your character - and only changes when it is resolved in some way.

Your Phase Aspects are much more mutable - these are aspects that arise from your life experiences. You start play with 5, and they can change throughout play - and ever so often, when a Substantial Scenario is concluded, you gain a new one.

Stress: Is going to be handled one of two ways:
[spoiler=Option A]Stress Tracks:
For your typical character, Stress comes in two varieties - Physical, Social, and Sanity. How much stress you can take in any of those areas is determined by your ranks in in the relevant skill – in order, Endurance, Presence, and Resolve

Physical stress is exactly what you'd expect – blows taken to your body.

Social social is much more insubstantial, but in essence is damage to your reputation or social standing – which can be crippling.

Sanity stress is based on your ability to withstand long term rigors on your mind – essentially, your ability to battle interrogation, scare tactics, even torture (though that also inflicts physical stress.). In addition, it's also the stress track that you take to endure psychic assault. It is also[note]The tone of the game you want to run can easily be set by how often you inflict Sanity Stress against players. In games with a more mystery/horror bent, feel free to use this judiciously. In a game with an action/adventure bent, use it sparingly. For exploration games, perhaps midway between the two is best. Test it and see what works best for your game/tone/group.[/note] the stress you take from encountering the truly alien, incomprehensible, and twisted. It can be caused by anything from finding a horrifically mangled body to witnessing a Servitor shedding their human skin for the first time to directly encountering a Great Old One. Some beings can deliberately attack your sanity, taxing your ability to comprehend the rational world. [/spoiler]

[spoiler=Option B]Consequence Tracks:
This works much as the above, but instead of having 3 stress tracks, you only have one, and any stress you take goes against that no matter what type it is. After that, you have consequence tracks – 3 of them. Again, physical, social, and sanity, the difference being that you take consequences here, rather than ticking down stress.[/spoiler]

Skills:

This is a list of what your character can do. A typical TM character starts with 30 skill points, and builds their character up as a pyramid – if you're not familiar, I can outline how this works later in more detail, but the short version is you must have at least as many rank 1 skills as you do rank 2, and so on and such up the pyramid (which can really end up being more of a column, despite the name.) Each rank in the skill costs one point, so a rank 5 skill costs 5 points.

Alchemy – The ability to create and recognize different alchemical substances. Separated from inventor since this skill can be used to unique applications – creating concoctions (which will have its own section) and some quasi-magic effects.  With inventor and occult, one of the three "casting" stats.
Alertness – Awareness of surroundings, ability to notice things, initiative
Art – The creation, appreciation, knowledge, and appraisal of various forms of art.
Athletics – running, jumping, twisting, dodging, tumbling – moving your body.
Burglary – Breaking and entering, pickpocketing, casing a location, and other criminal activities other than being sneaky.
Contacts – Knowing who's who, knowing how to get in touch with people, getting information from who you know.
Deceit – Lying, tricking, manipulating, conning.
Empathy – sensing someone's intentions, getting to know them, getting them to understand you and talk to you, diplomacy.
Endurance – How tough you are.
Fists – You use this skill to punch things.
Guns – This is for shootin'. And maintaining the things you shoot with.
Influence – Wealth, prestige, social power bundled into one – exactly how your particular influence manifests itself is related to your aspects. If you have a poverty-striken aspect but a high influence, you have some means of social power though you lack financial resources.
Inventor – You create technological devices. It's kind of self explanatory – the exact mechanics for this are still being worked out. With Alchemy and Occult, one of the three "casting" stats.
Investigation – Searching, understanding clues, research, associated abilities.
Presence – Your force of personality, youra bility to be intimidating
Pilot – control ships, airships, aetherplanes, or any vehicle.
Might – Brute strength – lifting, pushing, pulling, breaking.
Occult – Knowledge of rituals, incantations, Great Old Ones, and other realms. Can be used for ritual magic, making it one of the three casting stats.
Resolve – Your determination, willpower, and ability to confront the mind-shattering and emerge intact.
Stealth – This is for sneaking.
Survival – Riding animals, identifying plants, surviving in the wielderness.
Technology – Understanding and using technology. Unlike Inventor, not used to make it, but can be used to repair it – but most commonly used to use it.
Weapons – If it's not punching or shooting but still involves hurting, you use this skill.

Stunts:
[note]Both Stunts and Attributes are bought with Talent Points. A typical game starts you with 15. Stunts cost one Talent Point, Attributes cost either 1 or 2[/note]
Stunts are additions to skills that are bought through a yet-to-be-determined mechanism. A list of ideas will be added later, but here are some basic things you can do with Talents:

Add +2 to a skill for a particular situation
Add +1 to a skill in a broad set of situations
Allow the use of one skill in place of another in certain circumstances

Of course, there are more things you could do with Talents, but these are just the basics. Examples will come later.

Attributes: Attributes are a separate category of abilities that don't have a direct skill linked to them and require more than a simple stunt. Examples include Chiropetri flight, Rethulid wall-crawling and web weaving, Duval multi-bodiedness, Elder Thing toughness, a human's grafted limb, Mi-Go Aether breathing, etc. This list will be codified later, but as with stunts you are free to invent your own – perhaps even creating an entirely new race recently emerged or re-emerged.

Weapons
A weapon has a fixed damage between 1 and 5. When rolling damage, roll your relevant skill (guns, fists, or weapons) vs. your opponents defense (typically athletics or agility, but can also counter fists with fists, weapons with weapons, and some stunts allow broader skills) (Armor will matter, but that's to come later). Assuming your succeed, you inflict a number of stress equal to how much you beat your opponent's defense by, plus weapon damage. (Note that if you tie your opponents defense with a weapon, you can choose to do stress OR to inflict a temporary aspect as if you had done a maneuver. If you tie your opponents defense unarmed, you land a hit and can inflict temporary aspect as if you had done a maneuver or forgo that, but do no damage without stunts)

What's new is how weapon aspects work.

All weapons have two aspects. One of these is set by what the weapon is, and a list will be given below. The other can be anything fitting that type of weapon - use your imagination here, but some examples for something as simple as a dagger: the dagger might also have the "rune-inscribed" aspect (making it more effective against servitors and some Elder Things, at the cost of being a bit more fragile since it has runes in it, so non-Servitors or Elder Things can tap that aspect to make it less damaging), or the "ancestral blade" aspect (allowing you to tap it when someone attempts to disarm it or steal it, since it has more emotional value to you, or conversely allowing the DM to tap it BY having it stolen, a compel to try and get it back or focus on whoever disarmed you or make an unsafe move to recover it), or the "obsidian" aspect (you tap to make better than normal against flesh or hide, they tap to make less effective against metal or such). The big thing is to make the aspect broad enough where it's not just beneficial. If no idea for a second aspect presents itself, then simply give it the "mundane" secondary aspect - it's perfectly ordinary for its type. Very careful consideration should be taken before adding a 3rd aspect to a weapon, and consider if the aspect should be applied to the weapon or the character - as a general rule, weapon aspects are an inherent part of the weapon, while anything that relegates how the character behaves towards/with that weapon should be a character aspect. (Only exception would be a cursed weapon.)

Here's a list of possible weapons with their damage values as well as their "assigned" aspect. I'm still making some decisions on biotech weapons, so those are being left off for now.

Weapon 1:
Dagger ASPECT: Light-Weight            
Gauntlet/Brass Knuckles ASPECT: Fist Covers
Shortspear ASPECT: Surprisingly Nimble
Simple Club ASPECT: Blunt
Shortbow ASPECT: Penetrating Range
Holdout Pistol ASPECT: Too Small to See
Whip ASPECT: Very Long-Reach

Weapon 2:
Short Sword ASPECT: One Hand is Easy
Longspear ASPECT: Can Stab A Good Distance
Mace/Heavy Club ASPECT: Very Heavy
Longbow ASPECT: Long-Range Shot
Gearlock Pistol ASPECT: Geared-Reloading
Spiked Chain ASPECT: Flexible Reach
Rapier ASPECT: Light and Nimble
Elder Thing Light Weapons ASPECT(S): Vary

Weapon 3:
Longsword ASPECT: One Hand Strength
Greatsword ASPECT: Two Handed Blow
Gearlock Rifle ASPECT: Ballistic Range
Greatbow ASPECT: Huge and Ranged
Flail ASPECT: Unpredictable Angle
Spraygun (shot) ASPECT: Spread Pellets
Elder Thing Medium Weapons ASPECTS: (Vary)

Weapon 4:
Spraygun (slug) ASPECT: Single but Brutal
Phlogiston Thrower ASPECT: Oh God, It's Fire!
Grenades ASPECT: Thou shalt count to three...
Gearlock Autocannons ASPECT: Stationary Death
Many Elder Thing Heavy Weapons ASPECTS: (Vary)

Weapon 5+
Battleship Weapons ASPECT: I'm On A Boat
Elder Thing Massive Weapons (some) ASPECTS: (Vary)

And that's what I have for now. I'm still working on a number of details – how damage is resisted and avoided, how natural or unnatural abilities work, etc. This is obviously very rough right now, so any and all comments are appreciated.

[Lmns Crn]

Okay, first, I love that you're going with FATE. It warms my heart.

Second, bear in mind that everything I say is said from a position of near-total ignorance about your setting and its fluff, so put all my suggestions and comments inside that context of ignorance. FATE is extraordinarily customizable, and there's really no "optimal" way to set it up, just a lot of options to tweak, to customize it to the feel and tone and setting you're using it with.

One thing I notice is that you're using kind of a lot of different stress tracks. If those do a good job of reflecting the kinds of conflicts you want to run in this system, more power to you. (They're not even the weirdest FATE stress types I've seen, either.) I think you could simplify a great deal, though. Consider the "composure" stress track that Spirit of the Century uses, to track anything that would make you lose your cool. (SotC just uses physical "health" and social/mental "composure"; that's it.) I think you could probably fold social stress, mental stress, and addiction into a single "composure" stress track, and let that handle any sort of willpower/resolve/assertiveness issues that aren't actual "I glimpsed the Old Gods!" sanity issues. I use separate social and mental stress tracks in my own FATE stuff, and there are plenty of times where it's really unclear which one a particular effect should use. (In fact, magic being mental and reputation being social is pretty much the only time it's actually clear.)

The thing about stress is that it's not a big thing, by itself. Consequences are a big thing-- they're important, they're interesting, they're meaningful-- and stress is just a pressure valve controlling consequences. You can get a lot of neat effects in your game just by fiddling around with stress and how it works-- how many stress tracks there are, how long they are, how stress is accumulated, etc.-- which makes stress really fascinating when you're designing the game. When you're actually playing the game, though, stress is super boring and consequences are where it's at.

The other thing about stress is that it's short term; it goes away at the end of the scene. It's great for answering "will I take a consequence in this scene?" and "how many consequences?" and "what kind?", but it does not work for tracking long-term, cumulative trouble. This is why I think an addiction stress track is maybe going to be problematic for you, because unless you're getting a lot of addiction "attacks" during the same scene, that stress is never going to accumulate (so it'll never spill over into consequences).

The weirdly counterintuitive thing is that the more types of stress a character has, the better they are at managing stress overall. Consider: my character is in an Intimidation shouting match with a rival (social stress) while simultaneously struggling to contain complex sorcery (mental stress) while simultaneously bugged by his cocaine habit (addiction stress) while simultaneously flipping off the Old Gods (sanity stress). As long as those are on four different stress tracks, they never interact with each other. The stresses never compound, and dealing with all of those things simultaneously is no more taxing, from a stress-absorption point of view, than dealing with them all individually.

On the other hand, if they all affect a single composure stress track (or whatever), that stress track fills up four times as fast, and if I'm trying to do all that stuff in the same scene, it's much, much harder (and I am probably boned). So this is the point in your design process where you decide how difficult stuff is for characters, by making the decisions that determine how much shit they can take before they start to fall apart.

Before I leave Stress alone as a topic, I do want to say I love the idea of addiction being A Thing in the game, and I think you should definitely keep it as a mechanic in one way or another. Generally my reflex is to use aspects for things like that-- if I have an "addicted to cocaine" aspect on my character, that's a really fantastic way to set things up, because you can compel that aspect in so many different ways, and I can burn Fate Points to exercise willpower and keep control (or I can give into the addiction, which then becomes a source of Fate Points). I'm intrigued by the idea of an addiction making attacks and causing stress and consequences, and I'm totally interested in exploring that as an alternate treatment of the topic, but aspects would also work beautifully for that sort of thing.

More later, skills next.

[LordVreeg]

Good post, LC.  I enjoyed reading that.  Makes sense, and shines a light on a possible counter-intuitive.

[Xathan]

Wow, that's a lot to chew on, LC. Thanks!

I do agree that stress tracks are pressure valves on consequences, though I'd never thought about them that way before - but now that you pointed it out, it's infinitely more interesting in game design than it is in gameplay. The addiction stress track, as it is, would not work at all, you're right about that - and honestly, the intention behind it was a more generalized version of Dresden's feeding dependency Hunger stress track, something that could be applied more universally - even to normal humans. However, most of what I want to do with it would likely work better in aspects. I'm not going to fully abandon the idea of a mechanic for addiction, because it's an interesting aspect that many games ignore and something I want to be somewhat prevalent in the setting, but it doesn't work as a stress track. As you said, I want it to be A Thing - partially because it's interesting, partially because odd addictions could also highlight the "alienness" of the non-human Nascent Things and the Elder things.

The weirdly counterintuitive thing is that the more types of stress a character has, the better they are at managing stress overall. Consider: my character is in an Intimidation shouting match with a rival (social stress) while simultaneously struggling to contain complex sorcery (mental stress) while simultaneously bugged by his cocaine habit (addiction stress) while simultaneously flipping off the Old Gods (sanity stress). As long as those are on four different stress tracks, they never interact with each other. The stresses never compound, and dealing with all of those things simultaneously is no more taxing, from a stress-absorption point of view, than dealing with them all individually.

On the other hand, if they all affect a single composure stress track (or whatever), that stress track fills up four times as fast, and if I'm trying to do all that stuff in the same scene, it's much, much harder (and I am probably boned). So this is the point in your design process where you decide how difficult stuff is for characters, by making the decisions that determine how much shit they can take before they start to fall apart.

That way of looking at it is more helpful than I can even begin to describe. More stress tracks make things easier for players and delay consequences longer - and consequences, as you pointed out, are where the real fun's at. I don't want things to be crippling difficult (a single stress track scenario) for the players, but having 4 total stress tracks allow the players to take a lot until the consequences come into play, which is not a good idea.

I think I'll eliminate the mental stress track and replace it with Sanity. The two cover the same general things, and calling it sanity instead of mental just gives a better tone to a setting with Lovecraftian Horrors - and encourage players, when taking consequences, to consider things like delusions or such in addition to the typical "mentally exhausted" I saw my dresden group always fall back to.

Hmm. Since consequences are where it's at...I kind of want to delve into that more. Almost a "consequence track" that expands what you can do with your consequences before you get into the more severe ones. I'll have to mull that one over.

[Xathan]

Added an important note that's an update to the weapon system.

[Lmns Crn]

Don't know whether or not I will have time for a more involved post later tonight, but I'm still brewing this over.

Wanted to drop by and give you a link to the FATE devblog, in case you don't already have it bookmarked. It doesn't update as often as I'd like, but there's a ton of good information on there, and it should give you plenty to think about. (For more on stress and consequences, here's a great post which ought to blow your mind a little.)

[sparkletwist]

You could always do away with the stress track altogether if you want just consequences. Instead of 2/4/6 or whatever, you could have the ability to absorb multiple minor consequences, like 1/2/3/4/6, or whatever kind of track you want to use. It might make keeping track of damage a little more troublesome, but it does add some realism as well, and allows for a multitude of different interesting consequences. However, the other thing it does is make sure that anyone who's been hit in combat has a consequence to tag, and, for free at that. That causes a sort of "downward spiral" effect, making it increasingly difficult for someone who has taken a damage in combat to prevail, as the consequence makes it easier to get hit again, and by getting hit again, that adds another consequence, and so on. So there is an argument for using the stress track, too, at least if you want to avoid this effect. It's kind of boring, but it's also "harmless," at least until there's too much of it.

As for the weapon damage, I'm not sure how sure you are that this is really what you want to do, but I personally don't think FATE dice work very well for rolling weapon damage. In particular, adding lots of dice for supposedly highly damaging weapons is just increasing variance, not actually making the weapon likely to do any more damage. The "0 damage" thing is also kind of weird, and I'm not sure if just adding aspects is really going to accomplish the goal, or if it'll just draw out combat to a boring degree because nobody's really hurting anyone, like vanilla SotC suffered from. Some solutions might be:

- Go with the FATE convention of having base damage determined by the degree of success of the attack. Of course, you could always roll dice or add damage to this.
- Have damage be constant or determined by dice other than FATE dice, i.e., something that isn't likely to impose a negative modifier.
- Have damage determined by a constant plus FATE dice, but make sure the number can never be negative, like 2F+3, or something.

[Xathan]

@LC - That Devblog looks awesome, I'm gonna have to read through it when I have some more time.

@Sparkletwist - I thought about that, but then realized that a consequence only system would have a problem I'm not sure how to resolve: it would bog down combat quite a bit, since every successful attack would require adding a consequence, which includes thinking up an appropriate consequence, and if you have 3 minor ones already coming up with a 4th becomes difficult. Also, I'm not sure the downward spiral is a good thing - how often in cinema and books to we see the hero beaten to a pulp rise to become the victor? I'm not sure I want to make that even more difficult than it already is. But I'll still ponder it.

As far as rolling weapon damage, I agree that it increase variance, but that's kind of the point - my big problem with FATE is that it rarely really matters what weapon you're using, because it's just a Weapon 1, Weapon 3, Weapon X - all weapons that are weapon 1 are exactly the same. And if it adds temporary aspects...well, it's kind of like the "No stress" system you suggestion, and gives people interesting options in combat. In theory. The problem is, you may be 100% right, and the only way to know for sure is to finish the rest of the combat portion of the system and then test the weapon stuff to see if it works as intended or if what you suggest is accurate. So for now, I'm intending to keep this in the "Alpha" version of Terra Macabre FATE, but I'm definitely going to really test to make sure that it doesn't cause the very valid problem you raised.

For the solutions:

-I wouldn't mind doing that if there was something more to distinguish different types of weapons - I'm not fond of them all being grouped into one lump category. I want it to matter what kind of weapon you're using - any thoughts on how I could do that in the default system?
-Definitely something to consider - my only concern is that the numbers could get HUGE for how small stress tracks are. Then again, that's a minor concern - I can just use small dice, ranging from a coin toss at the low end to a d5 at the high, using d4 and d3 (by halving d6 and d10's respectively.) I'd like to avoid that, however, just because part of FATE's appeal is that you only need 4 dice to play it, and they're all the same.
-If my current idea doesn't work, that's probably the way I'll go - it gives the me the variance I want without negative damage. Thanks for the Plan B - I didn't have one at all that I liked until that. :D

[sparkletwist]

I am more than not sure; my opinion is that the downward spiral is definitely not a good thing. I wasn't advocating the consequences-only approach, but I was just throwing it out there for completeness. I like the "safety margin" granted by some kind of stress track or HP system or whatever.

Anyway, as far as weapons, keep in mind that part of the fun of FATE is the way it is designed to allow roleplay and narrative to have mechanical ramifications. Does a strong distinction between weapons really need to be "built into the system," or can the players and GM worry about that as it happens with the consequences that end up being assigned? Some powerful weapons might have special consequences that are assigned, but to me this is more like a "status effect" in a CRPG: a special effect of the attack above and beyond doing simple damage. As for the numbers getting too big, whether or not you use extra dice, you could always lengthen the stress tracks and scale everything up appropriately, if that starts to become an issue. The raw numbers don't really matter as long as everything is "to scale."

[Xathan]

Last night I played my first real FATE game, as opposed to theorycrafting and some test fights. It's completely changed the way I view the system for the better. You make some very good points there, Sparkletwist, and as we discussed in the IRC...I'm really now completely unsure of how I want to handle weapons and damage, really. I'll probably, once I get the rest of the system hammered out, do some playtesting with different ways and see what comes up most interesting.

[Lmns Crn]

I'd love to hear details, both about your game, and about your epiphanies.

[Xathan]

[spoiler=Description of the Session in skeleton detail][note]I'm going to be starting a thread where we can talk about our current games, and will fill out the non-combat oriented parts of this game in that thread - everything here just relates to my FATE epiphanies[/note]Okay, the game is Dresden RPG. I'm playing the firstborn of a new Vampire Court, the Grey Court - also known as Necrophages, since they feed on ghosts. Of course, I (and to my knowledge, no one) knows this yet, but that's just brief character background. Anyway, I'm the self appointed guardian of Saint Louis (the rest of the party is the great-great granddaughter of Van Helsing who is here because Saint Louis is the last true stronghold of the Black Court, a changeling bounty hunter whose father was the Erlking but he's barely manifested, and a information broker who traffics with demons and other things (though never Outsiders) for profit, so none of them are particularly focused on our city, just here by either home or circumstance), which is getting into way more information than is needed because, for this game, it was just me and the DM (who has Adam as PC because we're rotating DMs).

Long story short, I got into a total of 3 fights. The first time, I got jumped by 3 "Super-Reinfields" - Enslaved vampire thralls, but these ones also had Inhuman speed and strength, as I discovered when one ripped off the door to my car. Now, keep in mind this was my first actual fight in an actual fate game, not a theorycrafting fight against myself or against someone else. So my initial reaction, honed from years of d20, is to throw around some magic. I pop up a shield, which saves me that turn, and next turn blast someone - and through a lucky roll, manage to one-shot him. I'm thinking, "okay, cool, I can do this." My shield drops, and the one that had tore off my car door threw it at me. I got lucky and he missed. The other one punched me for 2 physical stress - leaving me with one physical stress remaining. I tossed a spell at one of them...and also missed. Now I have one open mental stress - meaning if I cast I'm going to be running a huge risk, one open physical stress, and there's still two opponents up, both of whom had the strength to tear the door off a car and hurl it like a Frisbee.  My DnD stand and fight style was about to get me killed. I run into an alley and stealth, and finally start thinking like FATE: I spend a fate point I had gained earlier to apply the aspect "It's extremely dark" to the alley because a bulb got burned out by the stray magic. Since i get a bonus to stealth in shadows, and roll Superb, I bought myself some time to think. They spend a turn looking for me to no avail. Burning another fate point, I apply the aspect "There's a fire escape" to the alley, and use that last mental stress to cast a spell as a maneuver, attempting to apply the "There's a fire escape on their heads" to them - and fail the roll, take backlash and a minor mental consequence of "Dizzy" so it still goes off, and now they have a fire escape on their heads, allowing me to emerge victorious and find out why they were attacking me - it was a test to see how dangerous I was.

The next night (having done some plot relevant non-combat stuff that doesn't relate to my epiphanies but is notable for gaining fate points from it) I go out again to feed, and while driving get ambushed in my car by an actual Black Court vampire (For those of you who don't know Dresden, Black Court Vampires have all the weaknesses of Stroker's Dracula so mostly got exterminated, meaning the ones still around were the biggest BAMFs or any 'child' of theirs. Again, thinking DND, I try a direct approach at first, which merely gets the vampire onto the roof of my still moving car where, after punching through my roof to hit me on my shoulder, kicks through my front windshield for a massive 5 stress. I have to take a moderate consequence (in this case, blinded in one eye, due to it swelling shut from the impact), and once again starting thinking FATE - so slap down a fate point to state there's a nearby creek, and tapped the "it's gonna crash" aspect the DM had given my car to crash it into said stream as opposed to a tree - since running water and black court vampires don't mix well. (I made a Lore check to remember this.) While the vampire was now unable to get to me, I was still stuck in the stream. So I did an assessment and figured out she had the aspect "Cruel Killer", which I reasoned meant she had a lot of ghosts left behind...and since I can see dead people and they are drawn to me, I tapped that aspect and rolled discipline to draw a ghost that had a beef with her up. The problem was how I worded it - I told the DM "I'm sure there's at least one ghost out there that has a hard-on for her, and I want that one to show up." So he did...and the DM decided it was a ghost who was obsessively in love with this vampire during life and she had killed. Through some trickery on my part I get her to state how much she despised the "Pathetic little twat," causing him to go berserk, turn into a giant squid monster and manifest in physical form, swallowing her whole since a second spell on my part bound her. As I'm sitting there thinking "Damn, I'm good," the DM taps my Trouble - "My Child, My Enemy" which translates to any being I metaphorically or literally "father" is going to be a problem for me (which will be nasty when the rest of the Grey Court Vampires arise). This manifested horrific ghost who is feeding on a black court vampire for power, not to mention the power of my binding spell, rampages off.

That scene ended, wiping away my physical stress and reducing the moderate consequence I had to mild (since I have inhuman recovery), and I do a self compel for another FATE point on my aspect of "Saint Louis Is MY Town" and follow instead of doing the smart thing and waiting till dawn to contact someone who could help. I tangle with the giant squid monster (the black court vamp had escaped and, presumably, gone to lick her wounds) and get thrown through the window of a bar because I - yet again - started out the fight trying to be directly combative as opposed to thinking FATE. Finally thinking, I use a fate point to put the aspect "This is Adam's Bar", since I was supposed to be meeting him at a bar and it was near where I got jumped by the vampire earlier, so the DM's PC could be there - and since he's an expert at summoning and binding, he's exactly what I need. I fight the ghost while he's drawing a circle trap, but instead of trying to hurt him I'm tapping aspects and applying maneuvers to keep him off balance long enough - which is successful, even though it did get my swallowed whole for a bit. Finally - because this ghost had told me his name when I promised him I'd get the black court vampire his message - I actually do a combat spell to trap him within the circle and get out so Adam can put the circle up, winning the fight.[/spoiler]

What does all this boil down to? What did I learn from all of this?

1) Aspects. Are. Awesome. Moreso than I had imagined they would be.
2) Applying temporary aspects to things or making declarations about the scene is one of the most fun parts of FATE combat - and lets  you fight things that are out of your league (to a degree).
3) The stress track is only interesting as a way to build suspense - when I had one stress left I was suddenly like "Oh god." It's a countdown, like you said, but it's not entirely boring in the game - that countdown decreasing is like watching the hand tick on the Doomsday Clock if it's set up right.
4) Consequences are so much more fun. Again, something you all told me, but I didn't realize how true that was until I played the game. That's what makes fights really interesting and fun, not the stress track ticking down.
5) FATE can be brutal. I'm playing a Hip Deep character and he's not a pushover - and almost got myself killed in all 3 fights because I was trying to fight like I would in any other RPG. You have to think in terms of your environment more than any other system, and you have to be smart and not get into a slugfest (unless you build your character specifically for slugfests, but even then putting aspects through maneuvers on someone before slugging it out is going to work out better.)


As for what that means for my system...I'm not sure yet. I want there to be a heavier focus on aspects than I currently have, and I want to reflect that in the weapons system - I'm thinking about negative damage working like a maneuver being applied to your target - you hit them but don't hurt them because, say, they parried, but the blow was hard enough to give them the aspect of "off balance" for one round.

I'm going to try to come up with a way to make the "countdown to doom" feel of the stress track more pronounced so it's less of a dull count down and more of a "oh god, I'm one closer" feel.

I'm still processing this game, but now that I'm playing FATE as opposed to reading it, I'm getting a slew of new ideas - many of which are still half formed ideas for stuff that's not even mentioned in the above post.

Well, that's where I'm at now.  Off to do some reviews and update the actual setting for this system. :P

[Lmns Crn]

1) Aspects. Are. Awesome. Moreso than I had imagined they would be.
2) Applying temporary aspects to things or making declarations about the scene is one of the most fun parts of FATE combat - and lets  you fight things that are out of your league (to a degree).

This is the stuff I'm always trying to tell people, but it's hard to get a handle on it until you experience it yourself.

Aspects rock. Maneuvers (to place temporary aspects) rock. Once you get the hang of the basic types of actions (attacks, maneuvers, blocks) you can make the system do anything you like.

I am pretty convinced you could take everything else away and leave only the aspects, and still have a hell of a system.

As for what that means for my system...I'm not sure yet. I want there to be a heavier focus on aspects than I currently have, and I want to reflect that in the weapons system - I'm thinking about negative damage working like a maneuver being applied to your target - you hit them but don't hurt them because, say, they parried, but the blow was hard enough to give them the aspect of "off balance" for one round.

This was a large part of what I wanted to tell you about your weapon system (but was too busy to write that long post.) Here's the short version:

I don't think your addon damage system really gets you much benefit overall. I think adding an extra die roll for damage is unnecessary and inelegant, and it throws FATE's nice, simple, symmetrical system off its stride. I think adding extra dice to certain weapons doesn't do anything worthwhile for you (since an extra fudge die doesn't make you more likely to get a higher result, it just makes the probability more erratic.)

I think your weapon system has admirable aspirations but a really unfortunate implementation. Your goals are good: to create a scale of damage between "minor" weapons and "serious" weapons, and to give individual weapons a unique feel. That's good stuff, but I'm not convinced your current system will get you there. I propose a two-part solution:

1.) use Dresden Files RPG's weapon value / armor value system (this differentiates between small and big weapons), and
2.) give aspects (!!!) to things like weapons and armor (this gives each weapon a unique feel).

If we're in a FATE fight and I'm stabbing you with a dagger (weapon value 1, and with the "light-weight" aspect), I might tag the aspect to give myself a bonus sneaking a concealed dagger onto your airship, you might tag the aspect to give my dagger a hard time punching through your armor, I might tag the aspect to give myself a bonus throwing the aerodynamic weapon across the airship's pitching deck, and the narrator might compel the aspect to have the weapon pitch overboard when the airship crashes into a floating island. Or whatever.

Basically, I'm pretty convinced that whenever there's a problem or question or issue in FATE, aspects are going to be the solution 90% of the time.

There's a thing I read somewhere, I forget whether it was in DFRPG or in an Evil Hat blog post about DFRPG, about attacks that are hits with zero shifts. (That is, the attacker and defender roll the same number, which is technically a success for the attacker, but the attack inflicts [x - x] stress: zero stress.) The idea is that since the same result would have been sufficient to place a temporary aspect if the attack had been a maneuver instead, why not let it count as a maneuver retroactively? Rather than hitting with an attack that does nothing, let it apply a temporary aspect (exactly like you suggest.)

There are some interesting interviews and blog posts out there from Dresden Files RPG designers, talking about things they learned from Spirit of the Century (a game with a totally different feel) and the ways they went about adapting the same FATE system to DF. This includes a lot of talk about stress and consequences and how to use them to make combat feel more intense. You'll probably get a lot of mileage out of them. Here's Fred Hicks interviewed on Narrative Control; put it in your ears, it'll do you some good, I think.

[Xathan]

1) Aspects. Are. Awesome. Moreso than I had imagined they would be.
2) Applying temporary aspects to things or making declarations about the scene is one of the most fun parts of FATE combat - and lets  you fight things that are out of your league (to a degree).

This is the stuff I'm always trying to tell people, but it's hard to get a handle on it until you experience it yourself.

Aspects rock. Maneuvers (to place temporary aspects) rock. Once you get the hang of the basic types of actions (attacks, maneuvers, blocks) you can make the system do anything you like.

I am pretty convinced you could take everything else away and leave only the aspects, and still have a hell of a system.

I think you might be right there - except for it'd be hard to manage Maneuvers if you had only aspects. :P But Aspects are the core of FATE even more than, well, anything, and they're a beautiful both mechanical and narrative tool.

As for what that means for my system...I'm not sure yet. I want there to be a heavier focus on aspects than I currently have, and I want to reflect that in the weapons system - I'm thinking about negative damage working like a maneuver being applied to your target - you hit them but don't hurt them because, say, they parried, but the blow was hard enough to give them the aspect of "off balance" for one round.

This was a large part of what I wanted to tell you about your weapon system (but was too busy to write that long post.) Here's the short version:

I don't think your addon damage system really gets you much benefit overall. I think adding an extra die roll for damage is unnecessary and inelegant, and it throws FATE's nice, simple, symmetrical system off its stride. I think adding extra dice to certain weapons doesn't do anything worthwhile for you (since an extra fudge die doesn't make you more likely to get a higher result, it just makes the probability more erratic.)

I think your weapon system has admirable aspirations but a really unfortunate implementation. Your goals are good: to create a scale of damage between "minor" weapons and "serious" weapons, and to give individual weapons a unique feel. That's good stuff, but I'm not convinced your current system will get you there.

The more I talk to people who know FATE, the more I hear that. It's unfortunate - one of those ideas I want to work so badly - but between my Dresden DM, Sparkletwist, and now you, the response has been almost entirely "Great concept, poor execution," and in the wake of 3 people who know FATE better than me, I'm forced to concede my dice rolling for weapons just isn't going to work. No point clinging to an idea that seems set to fail. *tosses that idea in the garbage bin*

I propose a two-part solution:

1.) use Dresden Files RPG's weapon value / armor value system (this differentiates between small and big weapons), and
2.) give aspects (!!!) to things like weapons and armor (this gives each weapon a unique feel).

If we're in a FATE fight and I'm stabbing you with a dagger (weapon value 1, and with the "light-weight" aspect), I might tag the aspect to give myself a bonus sneaking a concealed dagger onto your airship, you might tag the aspect to give my dagger a hard time punching through your armor, I might tag the aspect to give myself a bonus throwing the aerodynamic weapon across the airship's pitching deck, and the narrator might compel the aspect to have the weapon pitch overboard when the airship crashes into a floating island. Or whatever.

Basically, I'm pretty convinced that whenever there's a problem or question or issue in FATE, aspects are going to be the solution 90% of the time.

And just as quickly as you caused me to discard one idea, you've given me a beautiful, beautiful new one. Sparkletwist had suggested something like this as well in IRC, but at the time I was still desperately trying to salvage the rolling system...and the example you gave was so evocative.

I'm now thinking every weapon has 2 aspects. One is an aspect that weapon always has - "light-weight" in the case of a dagger. However, the dagger might also have the "rune-inscribed" aspect (making it more effective against servitors and some Elder Things, at the cost of being a bit more fragile since it has runes in it, so non-Servitors or Elder Things can tap that aspect to make it less damaging), or the "ancestral blade" aspect (allowing you to tap it when someone attempts to disarm it or steal it, since it has more emotional value to you, or conversely allowing the DM to tap it BY having it stolen, a compel to try and get it back or focus on whoever disarmed you or make an unsafe move to recover it), or the "obsidian" aspect (you tap to make better than normal against flesh or hide, they tap to make less effective against metal or such), or something else the player and DM can come up with. Not only will that make a dagger different than a longsword, but it also allows individual daggers and longswords and greatswords and guns and bows and what not to be unique from each other, even though they're the same wapon without having to come up with a huge, long list of possible ways to make unique weapons - and allows the players to customize their gear in a way that's balanced and gives them more investment, and conversely allows a DM to provide loot that's unique from what players already have if that's right for the type of game (Mainly ruin-delving/exploration games). BTW, the whole "two aspects" thing is something that just now occurred to me - what do you think about it?

There's a thing I read somewhere, I forget whether it was in DFRPG or in an Evil Hat blog post about DFRPG, about attacks that are hits with zero shifts. (That is, the attacker and defender roll the same number, which is technically a success for the attacker, but the attack inflicts [x - x] stress: zero stress.) The idea is that since the same result would have been sufficient to place a temporary aspect if the attack had been a maneuver instead, why not let it count as a maneuver retroactively? Rather than hitting with an attack that does nothing, let it apply a temporary aspect (exactly like you suggest.)

I'm going to put that into the Terra Macabre core rules. It gives me what I want - and since weapons will have aspects, it even gives you a basic idea of what kind of maneuvers a 0 damage attack could reasonably be used for with that weapon. :D

There are some interesting interviews and blog posts out there from Dresden Files RPG designers, talking about things they learned from Spirit of the Century (a game with a totally different feel) and the ways they went about adapting the same FATE system to DF. This includes a lot of talk about stress and consequences and how to use them to make combat feel more intense. You'll probably get a lot of mileage out of them. Here's Fred Hicks interviewed on Narrative Control; put it in your ears, it'll do you some good, I think.

I'm awful with podcasts, though I have been reading their blog. However, I'll start popping them in my ears now and then, hopefully get some good ideas from them - considering how helpful that blog was, I think they will. :P

[Lmns Crn]

Re: two aspects, I think that might be useful in some cases and unnecessarily formalized in other cases. Some weapons are going to be central and interesting enough to potentially have a crapload of aspects if you want to portray them that way ("Forged by the Ancient Kings" plus "Dragonbane" plus "Under a Vile Curse" plus "Ogre-Sized", etc., that might be too many to keep track of during most circumstances but you get the idea) while less central weapons might be hard to squeeze a second aspect out of.

Ultimately the strength of aspects is their flexibility, and the way they can be different things to different people, or in different situations. Different characters might treat essentially identical weapons as the "Light-Weight" dagger, the "Never Leave Home Without It" dagger, the "Gift From My Father" dagger, the "Ceremonial Implement" dagger, the "Many-Folded Steel" dagger, etc., etc. I think that typically the most interesting aspects for this kind of thing are less about the item, and more about how someone feels about the item. (You'd better believe Indiana Jones has an aspect about his hat.)

If you read up on the devblog, you'll run into mentions of the "FATE fractal." This is the idea that elements that usually apply to characters (i.e., they have aspects, stress, consequences, skills, the ability to make attacks and maneuvers, etc.) can also apply to other things. These elements are basic enough to be transferable like that. So an aspect can have aspects of its own, or a consequence can have the ability to make attacks, or an object can have a stress track, etc. There's a neat example of a disease being treated as a consequence with aspects and which makes attacks against the patient, and a doctor engaging in a conflict where he's trying to treat the disease with maneuvers and temporary aspects and stress. You can do some neat things this way. (You can also get in too deep and give yourself a headache.)