Hacking with FATE ASPECTS

hack

#1

I saw these other threads about things to take from FATE, but it seems like those were about the Approaches (which I find an amusing game mechanic) or Stunts, and we saw in 5e hardcore that Zones are getting some love, but I’d like to talk about Aspects and how I think they could be hacked in.

First things first, lets bring up the Hero Coin. You do something awesome, you get the hero coin. Just the one, no hoarding, and use it to reroll or add a d12 or give it to someone else, etc. Keep the hero coin in mind when I talk about how FATE uses Aspects and the Fate Points. In FATE, when you do a dice roll for your skill (or approach) against a target or in a contested roll against an NPC, and you come up short, (or they do), so the game throws you a bone and says “You can spend a Fate Point to add +2, or reroll your dice,” and so on, which is why I mentioned the Hero Coin first since they’re very similar. However, the in game economics of the fate points are that characters are limited in their spend via to the relevant Aspects, and gaining them is also done via acting from their Aspects: do something that moves the story forward because you have an aspect for it and get a fate point. They call it “Compel” over there like it’s a bad thing, but given that it entices the players into action, I see it as a positive thing.

So lets talk about Aspects. In Fate you get these several predominant types of aspects, called the “Character Aspects”, the “Zone Aspects”, the “Boosts”, and the “Consequences”. The short of what an Aspect looks like is a short little blurb that’s a relevant truth of the character, the area, the circumstance, or the injuries sustained. I’ll give an example in a moment.

In FATE you have to create your character with 5 aspects, 1 must be the “High Concept” which is your character’s kind of archetype or whole deal, 1 is the “Trouble” or whatever your character’s vice, or source of life complication is, and then the other three are freeform or related to the setting. In short, this is your character’s backstory, but restricted to what is essentially is a single sentence with a few commas in it, and a good aspect is a versatile one, where it’s eager to be relevant. When it’s time to spend a fate point, the restrictions are that they are being spent from a relevant aspect.

The Zone Aspects and the Boost are easily understood to be stuff going in in the scene. Knock over an oil drum and light it ablaze, and the zone where the oil drum fell is “Set ablaze with burning oil!” I’m going to fast forward past these since I don’t think they make too much sense to hack into ICRPG, but if you’ve read this far and are still interested then you’ve got stuff to go google and think about. Consequences are a character aspect as well, but they come from injury. Another thing where I might have a thought about how to hack them in, but I don’t think they make that good of a fit yet.

Okay, let’s get to an example. I’m going to hack a character I used to play from Warp Shell, “Gary Wilco,” who survived the sinking of the Imperium fleet where he was an E-1 Spaceman and was recruited into a Warp Shell crew as “The Janitor” which means he the one that cleans up with as much automated weaponry as he can get his hands on. Gary is also slightly demented from his experiences and tends to speak in the 3rd person. To Aspect up this guy, I would say “three’s the sweet spot”, and that on the Backgrounds line on the character sheet I would write “The Janitor”, “Survivor of the sinking of the Arcada”, and “Losing his mind”.

Here’s the hack: instead of limiting Gary to one hero coin, he’s limited to spending his hero coins to things where it’s his aspect. Gary sees the other warp shell crew going down and realize it’s his job to clean up this mess, BAM, rush in guns lighting up the hoards. That’s something that would probably warrant me getting me a hero coin before I have to roll for it. And then I whiff, because the D20 is a harsh mistress, but not this day, I just got that hero coin from using The Janitor and I’m using it to reroll and save my comrades.

Okay, what about the troubling aspect? Same deal but from the other side of the table. PCs are in a careful discussion with the Psychers about to glass a world to stop the Yog-Eaters, but they’re dragging their feet and feeling awkward about screwing it up. Hey, Gary, aren’t you the one who doesn’t have a filter on anymore as you’re losing your mind? There’s a hero coin in it for you if you shake up this negotiation. The GM’s power here with the coin is to give them license to do the very thing they really wanted to, and get rewarded for it. But you know what, in this regard I think it’s better to highlight the ways in which the characters are great and not a mess, so I would just as soon entice a PC who’s the overly charismatic and chivalrous one before rewarding a disruption, so your mileage may vary.

And the last thing worth mentioning in this idea for a hack is what my alternative idea to consequences might be, and why I went with three starting aspects instead of five. Just because we assigned numbers and pick out starter loot, I don’t believe character creation ends there. You’re not done creating your character until it’s dead or you’re done playing it. So in that regard, I think that after some badass stuff goes down and your characters do some truly heroic stuff, I believe someone should get to enshrine that and take a 4th aspect. Or, when everything’s gone to hell and some serious defeat has hit the party, one of the survivors gets to take it to heart and aspect it up with “Never forget the ones we left behind.”

So yeah, give it a thought, maybe there’s a way to mold this some more, or sculpt it down by shedding the non-essentials.