Simple Magic for Fate Accelerated

Basics

If you have a permission aspect that implies that your character can do magic, you may describe any action that fits into the paradigm of your magic as a magical action. That's mostly a narrative function. Now, this allows you to work magic that affects a single target in your zone for a scene at most. If you want to break those limitations, you need either a specific stunt or ritual magic.


A stunt describes how you break one or more of those limits. Each limit broken with the same stunt costs a refresh. So affecting multiple targets: one refresh, affecting someone in a different zone than your own: one refresh, or a longer duration than a scene: one refresh.


Ritual magic is in essence a challenge with at least three exchanges: creating some sort of focus for the magic, gathering the magical energy (or attaining a heightened state of being for doing the magic, etc), and finally unleashing the spell. At the GM's discretion, the stage for the gathering the energy could be extended to several actions, depending on the magnitude of magic described. Recommendation: limitation broken adds one exchange to the challenge

Summoning

Summoning an entity grants a nameless NPC with a either two things they are good at chosen by the caster, and one thing they are bad at chosen by the GM, or it grants an Fair (+2) nameless NPC with one approach at Fair, and two approaches at average. In any event,, the nameless NPC has one stress box.

Spells that augment a character in a specific way are create advantage actions, attacks & defenses are straightforward, as is overcoming an obstacle.


To me, most of this is implied by the Fate Accelerated Edition.


Thoughts? Ideas?

FAE and Fate Core: Random Thoughts

I am getting back into Fate Core and FAE in the past couple of weeks. I am still impressed by the simple elegance of the game that starts with the dice, continues with the rules (four actions, four outcomes) and ends with the character sheet. The more I look at the game, the more I realize that you don't need many moving parts for a character: aspects, skills and stunts. Even though the Fate System Toolkit offers a lot of nifty parts, they are not really required to run a game of Fate. FAE ups that elegance by a notch. Instead of numerous skills you have instead six approaches that define how you do stuff and not what you do. This reminds me of the PtbA games. There, you usually have a handfull of attributes that also describe how you approach a situation and not what you do. What you do emerges from the fiction. I think that's the important lesson from PtbA: what you describe in the fiction is going to happen in the rules.

Transferring that back to Fate, you suddenly realize that you don't have to worry about Extras (chapter 11 in Fate Core). Like FAE says, if one of your aspects says that you can do magic, then your character can do magic. That aspect will color the player's narration. If her wizard opens a door, she'll do so forcefully with a magic spell bashing the door in, not by throwing her body weight against the door like the barbarian or using lockpicks like a thief. The end result is the same: a broken door, but how your character breaks it in the fiction, informs about who you are playing. If you apply this principle from FAE to Fate Core, you suddenly see how you arrive at Collegia Arcana Magic (page 275, Fate Core). An aspect permits you to use the Lore skill for magical overcome, create advantage, attack, and defend actions. If you want to have something extra, you can always take a stunt that improves a specific action when you do magic.

Once I realized that stunts can literally allow you to do anything within the boundaries of the fictional laws of your gameworld, and that they are triggered by the narration, I suddenly had a much easier time creating them. This was a learning curve fueled by playing PtbA games (in particular Monster of the Week) a lot in February. Now, stunts come a lot easier. I just think about awesome actions I imagine the character to take in the fiction, and which one of the four actions and which skill/approach would best cover the intended course of action.

One of the comments about the Fate, Blood & Seven Sins I received was the idea of not using hunger stress to represent the need for blood of a vampire, but instead to simply use compels on aspects (the particular comment was talking about game aspects), though I can see this working with character aspects as well (either concept or consequence).

That all feeds back into the utter beauty and simplicity of the Fate system. Narratively important facts can always be represented by aspects. Character aspects inform how an action is accomplished by a character, and even what the character can do. When the narration triggers a formal game action, dice hit the table, and skills/approaches and stunts decide the outcome.

Yes, you can system bloat Fate Core by using stuff from the Fate System Tookit, designing Extras like crazy, and layering game mechanics on top. But the important thing is realizing you don't have to do that to arrive at a satisfying genre emulation.

Which gets me back to Fate Core and FAE. As much as I like the fullblown rules of Fate Core, I always realize that I do not necessarily care for the Fate Core skill set. I find FAE approaches much more compelling, because they get you to think about how your character acts, his personality and way of doing things. So, while I like using Fate Core rules, I prefer approaches to skills. Therefore, I guess I am going to start using a FAE character sheet with Fate Core rules (or I could even use a Fate Core sheet with FAE style approaches: simply insert the approaches into the pyramid, and get rid of one stress track). Of course that means slightly different rules for recovery and advancement and creating the opposition, but those are exactly the rules changes I want in my games.

Okay, that's it for today. My rambling thoughts have gone on long enough.

Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: Conditions

I feel that I need to address stress and consequences first, before going into other parts of the system. How you get stress and consequences informs a lot of design decisions around conflicts, and probably also stunts (i.e. dark gifts & powers) and how to scale humans in regard to vampires.

Instead of stress and consequences, I am going to use a set of defined conditions. Partly because I want to make the game easier to handle (no need to explain how stress boxes work, no need to think about consequences), partly because conditions are going to implicate truths about the setting (both by their description and by how you are removing them).

The Conditions

There will be six conditions in the game, allowing for 14 shifts of stress-soaking as recommended by the Fate System Toolkit, page 19. The conditions will follow all of the rules outlined there. You need to take a specific action (namely, drinking blood) to get rid of the two-shift consequences, and you need to initiate a specific recovery action and roll at a Great (+4) difficulty to begin recovering the four-shift condition.

The conditions are:

• Irritated (1-shift condition)
• Hungry (1-shift condition)
• Angry (2-shift condition)
• Famished (2-shift condition)
• Raging (4-shift condition)
• Ravenous (4-shift condition)

So you are progressing from irritated to angry to raging, and from hungry to famished to ravenous. This implicitly models vampires as very emotional creatures and also dependent on blood. Remember that conditions can be invoked and compelled just like other aspects, and that the first invoke is free after gaining the condition.

NPCs and conditions: It is recommended to treat nameless NPC as an obstacle with a difficulty of Average (+1), Fair (+2) or Good (+3) and not even worry about anymore details (see Fate Core, page 217). Supporting NPC should have a skill column (maybe up to two steps better than the PC), and if they are vampires they get either the irritated, angry, raging or the hungry, famished, ravenous condition track, but not both (decide what you would like to highlight about the supporting NPC: his anger or her hunger). A human supporting NPC will take conditions along the lines of bruised (1-shift condition), injured (2-shift condition) and broken (4-shift condition). Main NPC should get a complete character sheet (according to Fate Core, page 220). If they are vampires, they get both condition tracks. If they are humans, they still get only the bruised, injured, broken track to reflect that they are more fragile than vampires.

How to Gain Conditions

You gain conditions mostly as a result of conflicts,when you push your character to his or her limits. Of course, the GM is still at liberty to assign conditions as a consequence of events in the fiction (Fate System Toolkit, page 18).

When you concede a conflict, you gain one Fate point plus one Fate point for each condition suffered during the conflict, as normal.

Getting Rid of Conditions

The 1-shift conditions (irritated, hungry, bruised) vanish after you had some time to cool down. Usually it takes a scene to recover them.

The 2-shift conditions (angry, famished, injured) need a set of specific actions. A vampire's body and mind are pretty capable of healing themselves, if you have enough blood to recover. Thus, the angry and famished conditions go away, when you have time to drink blood. This can be either freshly acquired at the carotid artery, from animals or a blood bag. How to get blood will be explored later,

The injured condition can be recovered, when you get your injury attended either by first aid or at a hospital. No rolls necessary, just an in-game justification for getting well. It will still require some time to get the treatment, though.

The 4-shift conditions (raging, ravenous, broken) require more effort in order to get rid of them. A broken human probably needs treatment at a local hospital and a Great (+4) roll of someone skilled in medicine. That could either be some nameless Good (+3) doctor or a named NPC or PC with medical knowledge (probably an appropriate aspect and a roll with Greed to represent your knowledge).

To start healing the raging and ravenous conditions, a vampire has to reassert himself as an apex predator who bows to nobody. Starting the recovery process requires exsanguinating a human (an animal will not suffice), and overcoming a Great (+4) obstacle with Gluttony:

• Failure: either you aren't satisfied by one single death and need to continue, or you can start the recovery and erase the first box at a serious cost (typically, someone catches you in the act).
• A tie: you can start the recovery and erase the first box, but the body will probably turn up sometime later, leading to unpleasant news and maybe an investigation into the death. Create an appropriate aspect for the game.
• Success: you start the recovery and erase the first box.
• Success with style: you start the recovery by erasing the first box and can also immediately recover another condition (either a 1-shift or 2-shift condition is removed immediately, or you also start or complete the recovery process of the other 4-shift condition).

The second box of the 4-shift condition is removed at the end of the next game session in which the character participates.

Disclaimer: Remember that Fate is a game where people make up stories about wonderful, terrible, impossible, glorious things. It is not meant to incite you to any real-world action! Vampires are fictional.

Fate, Bloood & Seven Sins: Some More Thoughts

After reading some feedback last week and thinking about the hack (game) myself, I am going to take stock again. Where am I at? What do I want to accomplish? What parts need to be addressed by the hack.

First off, I've decided to drop FAE Hack from the tags of Fate, Blood & Seven Sins articles. Even if the simplicity of the FAE approaches was the first inspiration for the Seven Sins, I want to tap into the wider ideas of Fate as presented in Fate Core and the Fate System Toolkit. I'd also like to push the boundaries of a Powered by Fate game in terms of adherence to the traditional character components (aspects, skills, stunts, stress, and consequences). So I am going back to Fate Core as the starting point and will see what the Fate System Toolkit can offer for my hack.

My current plan is to describe player characters with:

• Aspects: Named to convey specific information about the character, but not tied to a phase model of describing previous adventures.
• Skills: Obviously a condensed list of seven skills that describe how you are approaching a particular situation emotionally. Each skill has a specific application, defined in narrower terms than approaches in FAE.
• Stunts: They will probably be renamed as dark powers or gifts and be from a quite specific list. Currently I am thinking about having five dark powers for each sin, 35 dark gifts in total. This is intended to convey a clear vision about vampires in the game, and also to facilitate faster character creation.
• Stress: Will probably completely replaced by Hunger conditions. I want to address blood as one of the basic facts of vampiric existence, and also replace stress.
• Consequences: Might be dropped in favor of Hunger conditions.

Stuff I need to define (not necessarily in that order):

• The Dark Gifts: This will be an interesting exercise in writing a lot of stunts and defining the way stunts are defined for the game.
• Conflicts: I have some very specific types of conflicts in mind and how to resolve them.
• Conditions: What are they? How do you get them? How do you get rid of them?
• Seven Sins: Each sin needs a more in-depth description than is currently available.
• Character Creation: I will have to tell how everything fits together to create a player character.
• Mythology: What are vampires? Where do they come from? What do they actually do and care about?
• Setting Creation: How the setting creation rules of Fate Core will be applied to the game.
• GM Stuff: To roll or not to roll? How to define humans, NPC vampires and other tricks.

Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: The Seven Sins

The core of Fate, Blood & Sevens Sins are of course the Seven Sins. They describe vampire player characters and what they are capable of doing. They replace the approaches of FAE.

The Seven Sins

Each sin is described from the perspective of someone having a high rating in that particular sin.

• Envy: Wanting, needing, taking. Envy is used to get things, to take stuff away, to get it into your possession. The impulse to grab, to steal, to cheat and to swindle.
• Gluttony: Hunger and thirst. Gluttony is used to drink, to feed, to supply you with blood and thus power. The impulse to gorge yourself, because tomorrow there might be nothing left.
• Greed: Keeping things, defending what is yours. Greed represents your hoarded possessions and your knowledge. You keep them in a tight grip, refusing to let go. Like a spider in a web or a dragon on his hoard, you let nothing escape.
• Lust: Turning someone on, getting them to do what you want, getting them to want you. Lust is used to have your way with people. You are walking desire. They starve for your attention. You are the flame, they are the moths.
• Pride: Turning someone down, refusing them. Pride is your armor. Let others bend knee, let them bow. You are too good for that. You will not bend. You will not do as you are told and fulfill other people's desires at your own cost.
• Sloth: Age cools your blood. With age comes power. Sloth represents that. Your blood  turns cold in your veins. It runs heavy, not easily roused. You are a rock, secure in your own abilities. Let them come, you will prevail.
• Wrath: Violence and the inclination for using violence. Wrath gets you in a fight and sees you emerge victorious. You are uncontrollable, rash, hair-triggered. Always ready to pounce on your opponents and tear their throat out. You don't stop when your opponent is down. You go all the way in your red-hot rage.

I'll post a more detailed description of the Seven Sins later, including the four actions: overcome, create advantage, attack, defend for each.

Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: Taking Stock

It's been a long time since I took a look at Fate, Blood & Seven Sins my planned Fate Hack (dare I say game?) about vampires. Last I did a lengthy write up in German and had one test game. After that game I shelved the project again. My last attempt included options for building mythology, gifts of the blood and most importantly a definition of the seven sins as approaches/skills and how they interact in a pretty specific way. Play testing went reasonably well. Players were complaining that getting blood was too easy mechanical-wise and didn't feel right (basically, it was just a scene played out without any rolls).

By now I had some time to think about what I am trying to achieve and why:

• I want a game that appeals to those of my players who like Fate.
• I want to have a replacement for the current rules set of Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem available because I find VtM deeply flawed system- and setting-wise, and I don't really like the changes to VtR 2.0. On top of that I find both systems cumbersome.
• I want a game about vampires, because they continue to fascinate me, and they are the Urban Fantasy I am most comfortable with.
• I want to use Fate because it is an OGL/Create Commons licensed game engine that easier to hack compared to PtbA. Also Fate is enjoying quite the popularity.

After defining what I want and why, let's take a look at the Vampire games (Masquerade and Requiem) and see what I think their strengths are:

• A rich and deep mythology, especially VtM shines with its Caine myth.
• Turning vampirism in a struggle vs. self through mechanics (namely humanity and frenzy).
• Emphasizing the dependency of a vampire on blood; portraying the vampire as an addict.
• Faction wars (or rather intrigues) that put the actions of a single character into a greater context.

But I still wanted my game to be different. Therefore I introduced things like mythology and city creation, etc. That was an attempt to differentiate Fate, Blood & Sevens Sins as a toolbox for building your own unique vampire game (kind of like Vampire City). But I realize now that I already have a strong vision of things I want in a vampire game and things I don't want to be there. So, instead of a toolbox the next time around it will be mythology of my own devising. Probably there'll be parallels to existing mythology, but mostly it's planned as a grounding for the game to give it a stronger hook.

What also needs to be differentiated is the genre of the game. VtM and VtR both lean heavily in the direction of horror and intrigue. I know that both games often hit the table as "superheroes with fangs" or an intrigue-load that turns people off. Also, Gothic music still shows its influences heavily in the games. So I am not sure yet, if Fate, Blood & Seven Sins should do things differently. Personally, I like the slick and stylish aesthetics of movies like Blade, Underworld and We are the Night, or the creepy horror of Byzantium and Let the Right One In, or the languid atmosphere of Only Lovers Left Alive.

At the moment, the only thing I have nailed down firmly in my opinion are the Seven Sins. They replace the FAE approaches for doing things. Their definition seems to be valid, in so far that they all do very specific things. Expect to see them here soonish.

That's it. This where I stand, and where my ideas are taking me.

Sword & Sorcery: First ideas for a Fate Hack

Recently, I had an idea for a very simplified version of Fate Core/FAE. You have two only two values on your sheet: Sword & Sorcery.

Sword: The value for sword governs all physical actions your character takes, including social actions that rely on your physical presence (such as intimidation).

Sorcery: The value for sorcery governs all mental actions your character takes, including social actions that rely on cunning and manipulation (such as persuasion or oratory).

In addition to those values, each character has a number of Talents. A talent can be sword-mastery, breaking & entering, horsemanship or seduction. If a talent applies to a roll, you get +2 on the roll. Only one talent at a time can be applied to a roll. Talents replace stunts.

The talents shouldn't be too broadly defined, but also not too narrow. Currently, I am torn between them having either the name of a profession (like swordmaster, sorcerer's apprentice, courtisan or knight) or being named like typical skills (like seduction, sword, axe, climbing).

Everything else remains like in FAE: five aspects, one stress track, consequences, four actions, four outcomes, etc.

If you like fantasy races, you could describe permissions for those races with the relationship between Sword & Sorcery. For example, elves have to have Sorcery > Sword; dwarves vice versa (Sword > Sorcery); and maybe half-elves have to have Sword = Sorcery.

I am going to refine this somemore in the next days.

Playing around with the Deck of Fate

I finally got my Deck of Fate in the mail. I want to use it for some fancy tricks during play. Here are my ideas:

The Hand of Fate: Each player is dealt three to five cards, depending on the style of the campaign. Three might be grim and gritty, four is about average and five is heroic. Instead of rolling dice, you play cards. Each card with a negative value you play, nets you a Fate point at the end of the current scene. After playing a card, you immediately draw a new one.

Fate Points:  When playing with a Hand of Fate, Fate points allow you to add +2 to the card value.

Stress: There is no stress track! Instead of taking stress, you reduce the value of a hit by discarding cards from your hand. If you cannot (or don't want to) discard any cards (because they have a zero or negative value), you take the remaining value of the hit as consequences. Cards lost to stress may not be refreshed until after a conflict. If you cannot discard any cards and don't want take any more consequences, you are taken out.

Shuffling: All discarded cards are shuffled back into the deck after either the -4, +4 or unique 0 has been played.

Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: Interesting Discussions on the Web

This is just a short, informative reminder for myself. There are two rather interesting ideas pertaining to my planned Fate, Blood & Seven Sins hack:

How to convert VtR Blood & Smoke straight to FATE Core

How to use the Wild Blue Hack to do vampiric weaknesses

Interesting things to take away from both articles:

• The more powers vampires gain, the more weaknesses they get
• Hunger is basically a trinary state: vampires are sated, hungry or ravenous. In FATE this might translate as having no consequences associated with thirs, one or more consequences associated with thirst and being taken out by thirst.

Now, the only issue is: how do you gain thirst consequenes and how do you get rid of them?

You would probably gain thirst consequences for not meeting the blood requirements of a discipline, as defined by a roll. You would lose them by hunting and feeding. How to emulate that ties-in to the sevcn sins. The sin related to the thirst would of course be Gluttony.

From there, the question is: can each sin be used for all four actions or is each sin tied to specific actions, thus losing a bit of the free format of FAE? Thus, would Wrath be limited to physical attacks and overcoming physical obstacles, Pride to social attacks and overcoming social obstacles, and so on? Most importantly, what would I use Sloth for? Getting other people to do your job? Could it even be the "Age" statistic, thereby implying that older vampires are getting tired and bored?

Drinking blood and satiating your thirst could change internal consequences into external ones. For example, by removing your mild "Thirsty for a sip of blood" consequence, you would create an external aspect: "Drowsy party goer" aspect that symbolizes your feeding and goes away at the end of the scene. Or removing the severe "Thirsty beyond reason" condition creates a "Dead body hidden in the closet" aspect.

Or, drinking blood removes your consequences but creates campaign stress. Campaign stress clears at the end of each session. But stressing out the campaign creates a lasting consequence related to the discovery of vampires.

Enough rambling... as long as the central issue about drinking blood is not solved, I can't really go ahead with FATE, Blood & Seven Sins.

Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: Humans are Fragile

Today, I was browsing through the FATE System Toolkit and discovered the section on scaling the stress tracks. Then it suddenly became clear what I need to do. Humans don't have stress tracks at all. If they are Supporting or Major NPCs, they take consequences right from the start. If they are mooks, they are taken out immediately. In FAE a mob of mooks would have a standard stress track. In FATE Core mooks would still get the supporting bonus. But if they take even a single point of stress, they are taken out.

Vampires on the other hand will have stress tracks, and probably complications acting as a blood supply, as suggested by one comment. Not sure how to go about this. The stress track of course represents the ability to shake of minor (and not so minor) damage. The complications will power the stunts and allow the vampires to get additional bonuses for physical feats.

Fate, Blood & Seven Sins: Continuing the Work

I am starting to itch for my go-to-game Vampire: The Requiem, when reading "Reap the Whirlwind", the FreeRPG Day starter kit for Vampire: The Requiem 1.5 called "Blood & Smoke: The Strix Chronicles". But I don't really care for the rules update in God Machine Chronicle. It seems to be a bit excessive compared to the leaner versions of Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem. Also, I have a long-running chronicle (8.5 years) that shouldn't have a radical switch of rules after such a long time.

But then I remembered my first steps with Fate, Blood & Seven Sins. Back then it was based on White Picket Witches, but before my first playtest I switched to FAE. The first playtest was ho-hum. The player feedback was: you didn't notice that you were a vampire. The playtesters had a lot of experience playing vampire, and the said there should probably be some mechanic to remind you who you are. They said, there was no blood pool of any sorts, nothing to really get you to hunt for blood at all. Something they think is very elementary for the vampire experience. A bit disheartened, I put the design away to be pulled out later. Now I feel later has come around.

Today, I re-read Duncan Bain's blog post on The Thirst by accident. My game needs something similar as the Thirst. Maybe something called the Hunger, which would be nice since there is a vampire movie with Bowie, Sarandon and Deneuve by the same name.

Also this got me thinking. In his Shadowrun 2050 hack for FATE Core, Rob Wieland calls out stunts as spells or as cyberware. In my first attempt, I created the vampiric powers close to the spells from White Picket Witches. But since the stat I associated with these spell-like powers was Age, the players kept failing their activation rolls. Therefore, I am thinking of doing it differently this time. Maybe I'll call out certain stunts as "Powers" or "Dark Gifts" or something like that. These stunts emulate the supernatural powers, work like real stunts (i.e. no activation roll) and you get to have a maximum of Age+X of them. But because you are a vampire, you have to take at least two. Not sure about their power level though. If they work on the same level like regular stunts, they won't feel very vampiric. One way would be to rule that mortals do not get to take any stunts in this game, thus de-powering them compared to vampires. Another way would mean stronger stunts. Stunts that don't balance with other stunts. But I am not so sure I like this. Having only vampires (and maybe other supernaturals) with stunts creates an immediate divide between ordinary humans and vampires. Also, I can still keep the traditional stunt structure in place... hm... on the other hand, the Extras chapter in FATE Core nicely details how stunts can be double or triple-strength. Need to do some more thinking on that. Suggestions welcome.

The next thing to consider: standard vampiric powers as portrayed in popular TV series like Vampire Diaries or True Blood should be baked into the character from the beginning. Things like supernatural strength, speed and resilience (except towards sunlight) should be available to any vampire. Maybe relative strength based on Age, as this seems to be a common denominator when watching or reading about them in a modern context. Using those abilities might kindle the Hunger (much like described in The Thirst). Still need to decide how Age plays into this, how Hunger is handled (e.g. as separate stress track, as mental stress or something else, but stress seems to be a good way to do this).

The last item to consider is mythology and origin. With Vampire City there is already a game out there that allows you to custom build your vampires, their origins, the social structure and so on. Then, there is Vampire: The Masquerade. One of the strongest aspects of that setting was the involved and complex mythology surrounding the Kindred, as well as the easy to grasp war between two vampiric groups. When looking at Vampire Diaries and True Blood, then personally I found the stories involving the origins very fascinating. Same with reading "The Queen of the Damned". In the end I am torn between creating a toolbox that can be used to create a variety of vampire settings or creating a firm background on what it means to be a vampire in my game.

Expect to see some solutions to various quandaries I've pointed out in the not too far future.

Something awesome...

I just have to show off those

Extra: Secret Societies for FATE Core

This is an idea based on the "Schools of Power" on page 291 of the FATE Core System. This can be used for games about secret societies, spy games or similar campaigns. I am going to use it for a Victorian Age game. This article gives the basic template without any examples.

Extra: Secret Society

Permission: an aspect describing the membership in the secret society
Costs: 1 Aspect slot, 1 refresh

Being a member of a secret society grants the character access to the resources of the society. Therefore, she is able to use either her own skill or the skill of the secret society (which ever is higher). Also, the character may learn the special stunts listed for her secret society at normal cost. If she is using skills at the societies level or the special stunts, she is employing techniques, tools or manpower from that society. Someone watching the character and being knowledgeable about secret societies, might recognize which society she belongs to.

A character willing to pay the costs may belong to several secret societies, as long as they are no rivals. It is almost unheard of to be a member of two rivalling secret societies.

Secret Society Template

Aspects: Each secret society has three aspects related to its organization.
Skills: Each secret society offers a single skill column topped at great (+4).
Stunts: Each secret society offers three stunts related to its concerns,
Rivals: Each secret society has at least one rival secret society.

For skills it is probably best not to include any skills that have a direct attack application. So, from the default skill list Fight, Shoot and Provoke should not be used. In case a society teaches combat techniques, it's probably best to give them an appropriate stunt.

Stranger Shores: Character for a Hangout Game

On Thursday, I am GMing a hangout game in the Stranger Shore setting. The game is supposed to serve as a short introduction into FATE Core. I've prepared five characters for the players to choose from. The skills are already adjusted to reflect the latest changes to FATE Core. All characters still have aspects and skill slots for the players to customize them. The faction names are explained in this post. All characters start with Refresh 3, stress boxes are based on Physique and Will respectively (and thus not listed).

Malthusian Fallen Angel

Aspects:
High Concept: Fallen Angel
Faction: Malthusian Conspirator
Community: Shady Dealings

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Contacts
Good (+3): Elemental Control (Light), Resources
Fair (+2): Fight, Shoot

Stunts & Extras: 

• Sinister Reputation: You can use Contacts instead of Intimidation to create advantages based on the fear generated by the sinister reputation you’ve cultivated for yourself and all the shady associates you have.
• Seven League Stride: By apparently walking straight into a wall or a shadow, the character can teleport to another location within one day travel of his current location. The player needs to spend a FATE point to use the stunt.
• Elemental Control (Light): Can use light to overcome obstacles, create advantages, attack and defend.

Humanist Community Leader

Aspects:
High Concept: Coarse,yet gentle Ogre
Weakness: People & things are fragile
Faction: Humanist Spokesperson

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Physique
Good (+3): Provoke, Empathy
Fair (+2): Fight,

Stunts & Extras: 

• Brutal: Use Physique instead of Fighting to physically attack a physically unharmed opponent.
• Tough Hide: Armor:2 vs all attacks causing physical stress.
• Incredibly strong: gain +2 to Physique, when overcoming any physical obstacles to movement.

Demonic Geneticist

Aspects:
High Concept: Purified Demon
Weakness: Cold-wrought iron
Faction: Darwinist Geneticist
Job: Researcher at GenTech Industries

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Lore
Good (+3): Elemental Control (Fire), Investigate
Fair (+2): Fight,

Stunts & Extras: 

• Scientist: Gain +2 to Lore, when creating advantages related to biological research.
• Flaming whip: Gain Weapon:2 when physically attacking with your flaming whip
• Elemental Control: Fire. You can use fire to overcome obstacles, create advantages, attack and maybe even defend.

Iconoclast Warlock

Aspects:
High Concept: Wicked Warlock of the North
Weakness: For whom the bell tolls
Faction: Iconoclast clawing at the gates of Faerie

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Witchcraft
Good (+3): Lore, Will
Fair (+2): Deceive, Notice

Stunts & Extras: 

• Witchcraft: You can use the Witchcraft skill to overcome obstacles and create advantages
• Warlock: You can use the Witchcraft skill to attack and defend.
• Knowledgeable: You gain +2 with Lore when creating advantages related to the weaknesses of supernatural creatures

Albigensian Nephilim

Aspects:
High Concept: Haughty & arrogant Nephelim
Faction: Disgusted Abligensian
Community: Fear and Loathing in Juneau

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Provoke
Good (+3): Sorcery, Will
Fair (+2): Fight,
Average (+1): Physique

Stunts & Extras: 

• Indomitable: Armor:2 vs all with Provoke or Witchcraft/Sorcery attacks causing mental damage
• Sorcery: You can use your Sorcery skill to overcome obstacles and create advantages
• Curse Heaven! You can use Provoke instead of Sorcery to attack people in churches, cemetaries and other sacred places mentally

WPW Hack: Club Babylon Part 3

This post takes a closer look at the setting. I am still struggling with parts of it. It is suppossed to be a rundown part of the city where beings from fairy tales have appeared. As I discovered this is somewhat similar to the Borderland Series (which I haven't read yet) and decided go in the general direction of that.

Fairyland (or whatever you want to call it) is touching our world in that neglected part of town and monsters start crossing over. They take on the guises of the modern world while still retaining their powers and appetites from fairyland. They are disguised by the refusal of people to see the truth of the aggressive biker gang (they are goblins), the creepy janitor (he is an ogre) or the head of the modelling agency (a medusa). But not all monsters are repulsive, some are terribly beautiful and alluring. But all of them are dangerous to the unprepared mortal.

But the people living in this part of the city aren't defenseless. At around the same time the connection to Fairy formed, longtime clubbers at Club Babylon suddenly found that they possessed a special kind of magic that levels the playing field with fairy tale monsters. Some have taken the fight to the street and protect the neighborhood, but others have become enticed by the monsters. Possibly to gain acceptance or lash out at the world around them.

In my mind this part of the city has the following three aspects:

• Abandoned and neglected
• Beauty in the most unlikely of places
• At the border of the Otherworld

The assets are: Great /(+4) Dangerous, Good (+3) Bitchy and Fair (+2) Sensitive.

WPW Hack: Club Babylon Part 2

This post is about creating characters for the Club Babylon setting. You are all longtime regulars at the somewhat seedy, yet also strangely magical Club Babylon. Your life might not be the best, but you come to Club Babylon to forget, to meet old friends and to do your own kind of magic.

Your Aspects

Who are you really (Mikky Ekko)? In White Picket Witches this is your canon aspect; in FATE Core it would be your High Concept. Write down in two to three words what your character is about. Are you a "Single Mom", a "Hard-Working Lawyer", a "Overworked & Underpaid Waiter", a "Closeted City Official", or someone else entirely?

Getting nowhere (Magnetic Man feat. John Legend)? Well, this is really your Trouble aspect or rather Tragic Flaw in White Picket Witches lingo. Your life is stuck. Others have moved on. Why do you keep coming back to Club Babylon? What do you hope to find here? Who or what are escaping from? There is a reason why a thirty-something (or older) person goes clubbing, while his friends lead well-adjusted lives with double-income, 2.1 kids, a cat and a dog. What drives you to come to Club Babylon on so many nights?

Who's That Girl (Eurythmics)? This is your Casting aspect. Either pick an actor in a certain role that you'd like to pattern your character on, or give a short type description. Basically, pick the aspect as you would do in White Picket Witches.

Who loves you (Alannah Miles)? There is a person in your life who loves you. Tell us about him or her. This can be any kind of love. Chaste love, love for their child, love for their parent. Carnal lust for you. Romantic love. Unrequited love. Love grown cold. What is your relation to them?

Sex and Violence (Scissor Sisters)? The darkness of fairytale monsters has come to roost in your city. Why do you fight them? Have they taken something from you? Someone? Do you protect your neighborhood? What motivates you in your fight against monsters that no one will believe in anyway. Or is it just the opposite? Are you attracted to them and their dark powers? What do you want from them? Have they lured you with promises of wealth, power or love? Do you lust after them?

Your Assets

For Club Babylon I am using the following seven assets:

• Bitchy (replaces Treacherous)
• Brilliant
• Butch (replaces Powerful)
• Dangerous 
• Fabulous (replaces Classy)
• Sensitive
• Witty (replaces Savvy)

The replacement assets function pretty much as the ones they replace.

In addition, you get an eighth, magic asset. The magic asset describes the kind of magic spending so much time at Club Babylon has infused you with. Currently there are three kinds of magic that'll be described in a later post in some more detail:

• Butch Wizardry: The magic of inner power and outward strength.
• Gay Glamour: The magic of illusion, make-believe and enchantment.
• Transvestite Sorcery: The magic of change and transformation.

Each character receives one asset at Great (+4), one at Good (+3), one at Fair (+2) and one at Average (+1). One of the four assets chosen must be the magic asset. All other assets begin at Mediocre (zero). The magic asset is used to activate your spells.

Antagonists

Antagonists are build like in White Picket Witches. Possible antagonists include the urban developer who is secretly a well-off goblin, the iconic Troll under the Bridge (of course), rivals from the Club, rival lovers, jealous exses, goblin gangs, an ogre groundskeeper, or an urbane and handsome devil who's deals are just too good to refuse. Maybe a sluagh is whispering secrets into the wrong ears or the sidhe turned out to be beautiful and terrible. 

Hangout

A hangout is the favorite place of your character. Where does he spend his time away from Club Babylon? A hangout is created like a Place of Power with a leitmotif and three assets. Here the Face-Offs happen. These are the places intimately connected with the characters. Some of their magic has become part of the place. Here, the magic of a character is at it's full strength. Here she can face the monsters invading her district. The leitmotif can be invoked once for free in each scene a character spends at "his" hangout. But don't forget: like Places of Power, a hangout should be easily accessible to others. It could be a street corner, a favorite coffee shop, the comic store around the corner, a small city park or something else entirely. One additional hangout is shared by all players: Club Babylon.

Club Babylon

Leitmotif: The Invisible Light (Scissor Sisters)

The players get to choose the three assets and their ratings. I'd recommend the place to be at least Fabulous and Witty. But it's your club now. You tell me where your characters spend their late nights.

Next: A closer look at the city, the darkness and the monsters hiding there.

WPW Hack: Club Babylon Part 1

Painted whores, sexual gladiators, fiercely old party children,

All wake from their slumber to debut the bacchanal.

Come to the light! Into the light! The invisible light.

Scissor Sisters, The Invisible Light

Somewhere in a big city, sometime in 21st century, in a dark and deserted back alley lies the entrance to Club Babylon. Down a short flight of stairs into the basement, a ten dollar bill pressed into the hand of short-statured, aging drag queen Regina and off you go into a seedy establishment that had it's heyday probably in the late 80ies, early 90ies. The regulars surely look like they've been here since then. They've aged with the club and yet, they still come here. 

You are one of the regulars at Club Babylon. Maybe you are not going each and every night, but you come here at least once a week. Here you are among your oldest friends. Aged partygoers, some in jeans and t-shirts, some in leather, others in full drag; gay, lesbians, transgender and their friends. You are here to capture the old magic of your youth again.

After midnight, Regina turns up the music, the strobed lights and the dancefloor becomes a stage for the dancers, each one of them fabulous and unique in their own way. A sense of community pervades Club Babylon and the atmosphere of lost glamor works its own charm on the guests. Regulars like you command a strange and wonderful magic of your own: the sparkling magic of Glamour, Butch wizardry and sweet Transvestite sorcery. That which makes you different, makes you strong.

Club Babylon is a peculiar haven of light in a run-down part of the city. The shadows and darkness of neglect are falling and with them come the creatures of the night, the scavengers of human society, dangerous monsters from myth and legend that remain hidden from the human eye. Only your magic penetrates the guises of the goblins, ogres and trolls that feed (sometimes literally) on the humans in the shabby parts of the city. Despair and lost hope are their meals, and sometimes they add meat and bone to the stew.

But you are fighting back. You protect the part of town that is yours from night's predators!

Next up: Character Creation.

WPW Hack: Fate, Blood & Sevens Sins Part 3

Welcome to the third (and most likely last) part of Fate, Blood & Seven Sins. This post discusses some random bits and pieces that go beyond the character & setting creation and powers stuff.

Vampire Healing

The description of Bo from Lost Girl in FATE Core stats finally gave me an important idea: how to handle healing based on drawing life force, blood, etc. from another being. I am going to use something similar for vampires.

A vampire is (only) able to heal consequences by inflicting consequences of equal or greater severity on someone else. Then she spends a FATE point to heal her own consequence. Nameless NPCs can only be used to heal mild consequences.

Alternatively, the GM can rule that all consequences downgrade by one level of severity at the beginning of a game.

Dominance & Submission

Vampires are predatory, territorial creatures. When they meet, they try to establish a pecking order. This can be either handled by a single overcome role with Age, or you can enter special Face-Off. In that Face-Off, the only Asset that can be used to attack and defend is Age. Whoever wins the conflict gets a special Dominance aspect. Each character can only have one Dominance aspect. If a new one is gained, the old one is erased.

Turf War

Vampires defend their territories, but they also like to acquire more. Turf War represents a way to do that. When a vampire declares a Turf War, he first has to spend a FATE point to change the Leitmotiv of the turf owned by another vampire (according to the rules in White Picket Witches). Then he has to announce his claim on the territory and initiate a Face-Off against the current owner. But this Face-Off is rather ritualized. It is up to the gaming group to decide if that ritual carries over into the fiction or not. The attacker has to attack alone. After all, there is only turf to go around. The defender can ask her allies to join her. In a Turf War, the GM uses the turf to attack the challenger. A place will fight subtly against the change of ownership. If the attacker succeeds in the Face-Off, he gains the turf and may switch out any one Asset of the place and select a new Leitmotif. He doesn't gain a new intent aspect. If the owner of the place concedes this Face-Off, she gets to keep her territory, but the attacker gains an intent aspect and a dominance aspect against her. She may subtly twist the wording as usual. If the defender wins the Face-Off, she gains an intent aspect and a dominance aspect against the aggressor.

A vampire may have as many turfs as her Age indicates. When a vampire looses her last remaining turf, she can create a new turf upon reaching the next significant milestone. Until then, her Pride is penalized by -2.

White Picket Witches: The Hangout Game Part 1: Setup

Yesterday, I started the White Picket Witches game with members of my regular gaming group via Google Hangout. We are using Hangout to accomodate a couple of players who are out-of-town, but still want to play. I am planning on having an offline component to the game as well, but let's see how that goes.

After a lot of technical issues with computers, connection and microphones, we finally started designing three of the Five Families. The players and I felt, it would be good to leave the other two families for players who'd be joining later (either online or offline). The three families are the Davenports, the Hargroves and the Pierces.

Note: Aspects were done in our native language, so they might not translate their whole intent into English. I am trying to find an equivalent translation that at least carries some of the double meanings attached to the aspects.

The Davenport Family

We quickly decided that the Davenports had something to do with the port of the island... namely the airport.  Sometime in the 20th century, there was a landslide that buried the harbor. It was located at the bottom of the cliffs that surround most of the island. Now the only regular access to the island is the airport. It's built on land graciously donated by the Davenport family.

Aspects:

• Everyone ends up with us.
• Pillars of the community
• We can afford that
• We show you the ropes

Magic: Breath Work

The Hargrove Family

The Hargroves are connected to the island in mysterious ways. They serves as guardians in the literal and figurative sense and have a close connection to nature. Also, they are a large and willful family.

Aspects:

• The Guardians of the Isle
• Animals are our friends
• Firm as a rock
• We are a stubborn bunch

Magic: Muscle Work

The Pierce Family

The Pierce are the traditional parish priests and perform other functions related to the church and community. Probably because they don't take bullshit and are always looking (and talking) about the truth of a matter.

Aspects:

• Nobody likes us
• We love the truth
• We only want your souls
• We bestead the sinners

Magic: Bone Work

After that we started with the creation of the characters. But they aren't finished yet, I am going to post them, when we are finished. So far we have ideas for Felicia Davenport, a tour guide and history buff; Gail Hargrove, a deputy trained in a big city; and William Pierce, the sole professional photographer on the Island.

This doesn't read like much, but we spent almost two hours coming up with this stuff. It was great fun to do this together as a group.

WPW Hack: Fate, Blood & Seven Sins Part 2

This is the second part of my vampire hack for White Picket Witches. This time it's about vampiric powers. The powers are all activated by successfully rolling with Age, usually against a difficulty of Great (+4). The difficulty represents that all vampires have access to the same powers, but older vampires are generally better at using the power of their blood than newly made vampires. The younger ones have to work harder (read: expend FATE points, set up scene aspects or boosts) to make their powers actually work.

Vampiric power often resides in the blood. To emulate this, a vampire character can take a consequence and apply the number of stress usually mitigated by the consequence as a bonus to his Age roll. As a consequence he should take an aspect that alludes to her being hungry, starving, thirsty or worse.

One important note: vampiric powers are inherently nocturnal. They do not work in daylight as long as the sun is in the sky. Your vampire may not burn in the sun, but he is weakened and cannot use his Age score.

Slight change: In the last post, I stated that each vampire starts with one extra at no cost. I think, all vampires should start with two extras at no cost. Simply because Age can't be really used to attack, defend or create an advantage.

Also, the powers listed here are just suggestions. If you or your group comes up with any other ideas, just take those.

Animal Magnetism

The vampire exudes predatory sexuality and lust. By succeeding on an Age roll at Great (+4) or better, he gains a +2 bonus on all rolls with Lust to Overcome or Create Advantages for the rest of the scene.

Claws & Fangs

The ability to grow claws and fangs is a staple of vampire literature. The wounds they inflict in physical combat become more serious. If they succeed on an Age roll against difficulty Great (+4) or better, the vampire grows claws and/or vicious fangs that inflict an additional two points of Stress (as Weapon:2) for the rest of the conflict.

Cold Commands

Some vampires can command lesser creatures to follow their very commmands. Whether by voice or eye contact, if you succeed with Age against a difficulty of Great (+4) or better, you can hand over a FATE point to a player character or non-player character. You ask them to take an action (Overcome, Create Advantage, Attack or Defend) that can be accomplished with one roll. If they take the action, they get to keep the FATE point. If they don't, the FATE point goes to the turf.

Dark Rebirth

This power is a nod to all the sequels where the vampire defeated previously returns. At the end of the session in which a vampire with this power was destroyed, the player rolls the Age of the character. If she succeeds at a Great (+4) or better roll, then the vampire returns from the grave. He looses the power and regains one refresh. The Rebirth power may only be bought again when the next major milestone has been reached.

Daywalker

Your character has achieved a remarkable feat: she can walk in daylight and still access some or all of her vampiric powers. At dawn she rolls Age against Fair (+2) difficulty. For each two points of shift she achieves on the roll, she can designate one of her powers to be useable during the day.

Dreams & Memories

Some vampires are able to project their thoughts into another person's mind. With Dreams & Memories, a vampire can reach into the very core of another being. If this done by telepathic command, sharing their dreams or whispering into their ear is up to the group or even the individual vampire. By succeeding on an Age roll at Great (+4) or better, they are allowed to change one of the aspects of their victims. This can be either the Canon Aspect, the Mortal Days, the Vampire Nights, a Consequence or the Intent Aspect. They are allowed to add or change up to two words of the aspect. The change remains in effect until the character rests the next time.

Heightened Perception

If the vampire succeeds at a roll with Age at Fair (+2) or better, then his senses become very acute for the rest of the scene. He get a +2 on any rolls involving the five senses, but his Defense against loud noises or other forms of sensory overload is reduced by two points.

Hypnotic Voice

The vampire can use his voice to confuse his opponent in a Face-Off. He makes it difficult to concentrate and retain cohesive thoughts. If he succeeds at a Great (+4) or better roll with Age, he can ignore two points of stress generated by a verbal attack (like Armor:2 against non-physical attacks).

Mind Reader

Some vampires are adept at reading another's thoughts and memories. If the vampire succeeds at a Great (+4) or better roll with Age, she may ask another character one question that can be answered with yes or no. The other character must answer truthfully. The truth being as he knows it.

Mists & Shadows

The Legendary (+8) Dracula was capable of transforming his body into an insubstantial mass of fog or shadow. This power allows a vampire to do the very same thing. If they succeed on a roll with Age at Fantastic (+6) or better, they turn into a wraith-like mist or shadow. For the rest of the scene, they cannot be attacked physically anymore, but sunlight will burn the vampire to ashes. Also, it is hard to notice the vampire, requiring a roll of Great (+4) or better. This power is beyond most fledgling vampires.

Renfield

This power can be turned on a nameless NPC. By rolling Great (+4) or better on an Age roll, the vampire turns the nameless NPC into a Fair minion (see FATE Core). The minion gains a name and an aspect. If it is taken-out or overcome, the vampire looses any influence over him. When a Renfield survives his first session as a vampiric minion, the power can be used on him again and turn him into a Good minion. A vampire can have no more minions than his Age.

Shapeshifter

By succeeding on an Age roll at Great (+4) or better, the vampire can turn herself into a bat or wolf. She can choose the form at the moment of transformation. Her canon aspect changes into an appropriate aspect. As a bat she gains the Wall-Walker power (by virtue of being able to fly) and as a wolf she gains the Claws & Fangs power.

Swarm Shape

Some vampires can turn into a whole swarm of bats, rats, cats or spiders. This power emulates this. The vampire succeeds in a Great (+4) or better roll to affect the transformation. A swarm can either completely escape the Face-Off (without the initiator gaining the intent based aspect) or can be used to get additional stress boxes (one per shift generated). The player can choose which effect to gain upon transformation.

Ultra-sonic Scream

An ability that may point to bat-like ancestry. If the vampire succeeds at an Age roll with Great (+4) or better result, any shifts generated are applied as stress to any and all creatures involved in the Face-Off.

Vampiric Resilience

Most vampires are hard to take down. Resilience is the power that emulates that. On a Great (+4) roll with Age, the vampire can ignore two points physical stress from each blow (like Armor:2) for the rest of the scene.

Vampiric Strongness

The antiquated word describes the vampire's knack for supernatural strength. When a vampire rolls Great (+4) or better with Age, he gains a +2 bonus on any rolls related to raw strength for the rest of the scene. This bonus also extends to any and all physical attacks made with the sin of Wrath.

Vampiric Swiftness

Vampires are shown as being incredibly swift. On a Great (+4) or better roll, they get a +2 bonus to Defend against physical attacks in a Face-Off for the rest of the scene.

Wall-Walker

The vampire can walk on ceiling or scale walls with ease. If she succeeds at a Greater (+4) or better roll with Age, she can ignore ground-based and height-based obstacles to movement for the rest of the scene.