Aspects are, according to the SotC SRD, "Aspects can be relationships, beliefs, catchphrases, descriptors, items or pretty much anything else that paints a picture of the character," but Aspects can be much more. In my play, it's become clear that Aspects are the lazy man's mechanical shorthand for anything you need to model in the game. Your players will get a chance to tie they're "Burning Hate for the Empire" to the system, and you can show that "The Building's on Fire" without looking up fire damage in the DMG.
So, how can we go about tacking Aspects onto a system like D&D? In Fate 3.0, a character can "invoke" one of their Aspects by spending a fate point, or they can spend one to "tag" someone (or something) else's aspect.
A Fate invocation is worth a reroll or a +2, a tag is only worth a +2. In D20 terms, let players invoke their Aspects to reroll any D20 rolls. If you're generous, guarantee that rerolls are 11 or higher (add 10 to lower numbers.) My gut says that a +2 for tags would correspond to a D20 +5, but that's untested.
The other thing you'll need to figure out is how your characters will generate Aspects for their characters. While you could implement phase-based creation as seen in SotC, it might be easier to create a list of five or so questions and have your players generate an aspect for each.
- What was your background like?
- What motivates you?
- Who is your greatest enemy?
- Who is your best friend?
- What's a quote your character likes to say?
P.S. Aspects might be a useful stand in for players missing the Profession skill from third edition. A character with the "Sailor" Aspect can get the mechanical juice they're looking for when they try to tie knots, balance on a rolling deck, or socialize with some other scurvy dogs.
6 comments:
Must share this with my DMs....
What do you plan on using as the "currency" for aspect-tagging? I get the feeling that Action Points as 4E uses them would be a bit slow to contribute properly. And would you adapt this similarly to prior editions?
While a tie-in with action points is possible, I'd reccomend adding a fate point currency to the game. At the begining of each session, start players off with as many fate points as they have aspects, and go from there.
Oh, and as far as previous editions, this hack should work fine in third edition. I don't have experience with earlier editions.
Thanks for the comment,
Nick
I'd leave the +2 as a +2, rather than a +5 -- I was thinking about this a while back, and it seems to me that the point of taking the +2 rather than the reroll is that it's what you should do if you're close to meeting the difficulty, and just need something to put you over the edge. Even on a d20, a +5 is a pretty dramatic edge, of the type you'd need when normally you should be just taking the reroll ("when 'oh my god' happens..."). Put it this way: in 3.0, angels have +5 weapons, whereas the Favored Enemy ability rangers have grants something like a +2. Given that scope for comparison, and the above, I'd lean more towards leaving it +2 -- but we can play them both to test, if you'd like (and if you're willing to play that much D&D).
Very neat, got the $5.00 pdf of Houses of the Blooded yesterday and it got me thinking Aspects in D&D as well.
For that matter Monsters could have Aspects too. Goblins are Pysco's, Dragons Greedy etc.
I like how HotB also uses the Style Currency to enforce its themes in play.
For a currency, it could be a back and forth. Each Player starts with X, when they spend it the GM gets it in their pool to "tag" negative sides of their aspects, putting it back in the Player's pool. Being "tagged" is a Refreshment mechanism - can't be your best without being your worst.
Monster aspects would definitely make for great play. "I tag the kobald's Skittish aspect to scare him into running away." As to HotB, I really need to invest in a copy, at the very least so I can examine how it has hacked Fate.
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