After a TPK ended my Dragon Age game, one of the players in that game offered to run a Dresden Files game in the same time slot. I had heard plenty of good reviews of the system and I’m always eager for a chance to sit on the other side of the GM’s screen, so I happily agreed to play. Because most of us are current or former University of Michigan students, we decided to use Ann Arbor as the game’s setting. In the first few sessions, we’ve investigated the collapse of two student housing buildings, found and stole some sort of magical orb, beat up some magic-using thugs, and crashed a faculty party.
This is the first time that I’ve played a Fate-based game even though I picked up the Spirit of the Century book last year. The system is quite different from D&D and d20 systems games with more of a focus on character-driven stories rather than tactical combat. One of the most interesting mechanics of the Fate system is how traits of characters and objects are represented using aspects.
Character Aspects
In the Fate system used by Dresden Files, each character has several aspects that describe them. For example, my character Adam has the aspect “To The Rescue!”. During a game, players can spend a fate point when performing an action related to one of their aspects in order to get a bonus on the roll. That means that I can spend a fate point and invoke my aspect for a bonus whenever Adam is trying to rescue someone else. The thing that makes aspects most interesting though is that a GM can compel a character to act in accordance with one of its aspects. As an example, during last Friday’s game our GM compelled Adam to run into a dangerous situation in order to help out one of the other characters. The player can avoid this by spending a fate point, but going along with the compel is how fate points are earned. This point economy encourages a player to pick aspects that can be both advantageous and problematic and at the same time provides a nice mechanical framework for character-driven stories.
Other Aspects
In addition to describing characters, aspects are also used for other traits on people and objects. For example, during a fight a character might use a spell to add the “Rough Terrain” aspect to a scene. The first time such an aspect is used it is free, but after that each use costs a fate point. While I can understand the game design reasons behind this approach, it sometimes feels a bit odd during gameplay, especially for certain aspects that seem like they should be more permanent. Rob Donoghue has some nice suggestions for representing different types of aspects (hard vs. soft tags and compels) that I’d be tempted to use if I was running the game.
Conflicts: Aspects and Stress
Characters in Dresden Files have three stress tracks that are used to track physical, mental, and social damage. When a character takes a hit, suffers an insult, or casts a spell a box is marked off on the stress track. If there isn’t a box with a value equal to or greater than the difference between the attacker’s and defender’s rolls then the defender is either out of the conflict or takes a negative aspect to represent longer-lasting damage. In addition to attacking, a character can perform maneuvers or declarations in order to add aspects to the scene or other characters. Because the first use of a new aspect doesn’t cost a fate point, these actions can be key to set up a more powerful attack later in the conflict. Because the fudge dice used in Fate produce a narrow distribution, the bonuses from just a few aspects can have a huge impact on an attack and change a roll that would be a light hit or even a miss into an overwhelming attack. Because all of the players in our group are new to the game, we’re still getting used to this approach but it has lent itself to fun combat scenes as we try to take advantage of as many aspects as possible.
Have you played Dresden File or another Fate RPG? If so, what did you think of the mechanics for aspects?
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5 replies on “An Accidental Aeromancer”
I love the Dresden ruleset; frankly, I like them better than the core Fate rules.
I’ve played in a few Dresden games (one as a wildfae changeling, one as a kenku-trained orphan) and hacked the rules to run a Scion game (in a Savage Worlds setting, actually). Aspects are an incredible tool that’s already migrated into several of the 4e games I and my friends are running as well.
Hope it continues to be fun for you!
Spirit of the Century is the only other Fate game that I’ve read, but I’m curious what elements make Dresden Files more enjoyable for you.
Also, my planned post for Friday is going to be an idea for using aspects in D&D. How have you been using them with D&D and how well is it working?
[…] I mentioned in my post about the Dresden Files RPG, I really like how well aspects from fate work as a mechanical system for character traits […]
The concept of adding Aspects to the scene, or characters is exactly what I had in mind for X-Com combat. While aliens far outclass the X-Com soldiers at first, even Rookies can creatively work together to stack bonuses (called Assets or Traits in Cortex Plus) to finally take down a dangerous foe.
Like you, I have been debating whether the X-Com Assets should be temporary (1-time-use) unless Plot Points make them permanent similar to how the Aspects are first-tag-free.
I’m actually considering simplifying all my complex X-Com rules into one rule of rolling to add/remove Assets or increase/decrease existing ones. So dealing damage is adding an Injured Trait, or increasing it’s die size, while healing is decreasing injury traits; calming someone down is decreasing fear or panic traits. Also, then, soldiers can create/increase/decrease/remove Traits attached to zones/scenes/enemies/allies to get the job done. It’d be simple and streamlined, but I wonder if it’d be too simple.
I’ve seen versions of SotC that were Aspects-only, ignoring skills even. But I wonder if in that case, and in X-Com where all rolls are about manipulating Traits, play would get repetitive, since all the rolls do the same thing (although the story has them doing very diverse things)
One system that I think could be interested is making the result of the roll determine how accessible an aspect or asset ends up being. A normal success would give one free tag of an aspect or a single use asset, but a roll with a high margin of success would result in a free-to-tag aspect or permanent asset.