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Read on.

Man, that “on fire” thing is probably the biggest buggaboo in all of Fatedom.

So, here’s the thing. Aspects are not the core engine of Fate. They’re the most different from other systems, which makes them, I guess, more obvious, but they’re also not the answer to every “problem” and they’re not the sole thing that drives the game. This, I’ve already said. To go further:

The core engine of Fate — for me, at least, from a design perspective — is the Fate Fractal principle. Search for that text here -  http://www.faterpg.com/2011/the-core-of-fate-core/ - but in short, it’s the idea that anything in the system can be treated as a character. That is to say, to model the thing you want, you should look at the pieces parts of a character, think about what they do, and use the parts that are most appropriate to express what you’re after.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. There’s no need to invent new parts when a recombination of existing parts works out well. Think about aspects, yes, but think about stress tracks, think about skills. (Think about more, too, if you want to get into the down & dirties — stunts, powers, whatever — but I’ll focus on those.)

So, let’s talk about “on fire” a bit in light of that.

Aspect: Aspects give you two functions (more or less) — they create constraints on action via compels, and they provide means for advantage via invocations. So if you’re going to have fire create a reason for the heroes to stay trapped/hold back while the bad guy escapes (a compel!), then the aspect makes good sense. If you’re going to get into a fistfight on the edge of the blaze and want to, y’know, knock the guy back into the fire so he gets singed a bit — invoke/tag that aspect and you’re in great shape. That’s the bounds of it: folks have a shared understanding of what something being on fire means – in terms of how it affects the choices made and the actions available — and the aspect is an interface to a few game mechanisms that support that.

Skill: Skills are there to show how things take action. Fire grows, spreads, and burns. That sounds like moving and attacking actions, to me. So give your fire a skill. It can take an action to intensify (increasing that skill, maybe — or maybe it’s a maneuver, putting more taggable shit-be-burnin’ aspects onto things); spread (take the action, move into another zone); burn (attack people in those zones with its skill, dealing stress and consequences). I mean, why not? Fiction talks about fire as a “living thing” all the time.

Stress track: Maybe your fire’s tough to put out — not as easily dismissed as any other scene aspect. Makes sense. So yeah, give your fire a stress track. Let people attack it with fire extinguishers and oxygen-destruction powers. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Aspects are great. Use them a lot. But don’t let them become blinders. Look around a little. There are other tools in the box.

It enters into editing  starting February 1st.

• Advancement
• Aspects
• The Basics
• The Living City (City Creation)
• Stunts

He’s been doing a bunch of other stuff, too, but still, we’re on track for about 10-15k words this month, and more in the months to come. He’s juggling Fate Core duties together with his other Evil Hat responsibilities (and other life/freelancing concerns), but the progress is steady.

I’m excited.

And I thought you’d like to know.

But the people who I could list confidently are either already working on stuff for Evil Hat — or they’re already working on their own projects. So “available” not so much.

In light of that, I want to put this call out for people who are available and are confident enough in their knowledge of Fate that they’d be willing to take on some freelancing work!

In the comments below, please introduce yourself, tell us how to contact you, what kind of experience you bring to the table, and where we can find samples of your work. Please include all three, as that’s crucial for any interested publisher I point in this direction. (I may block comments which don’t fit the bill.)

I’d like this post to become a central resource for folks looking to do the work and for folks looking for those folks. Help me out!

That’s the “secret” of assessment, declaration, and maneuvering, in fact — they’re all the same action, in essence, a skill roll that gives rise to an aspect, which offers a free invocation (tag) out of respect to the successfully skill roll. The only difference between them is in terms of how the authority model appears to work.

Assessment is a discovery of something the GM thought of, uncovered by a successful skill roll. Because the aspect is presumed to exist prior to its discovery, you can look at the possibility of “getting it wrong”, as we do with some of the Empathy/Deceit interactions in SOTC and DFRPG, but that’s not a necessary feature.

Declaration is the establishment of a player-invented/introduced fact, backed by a successful skill roll. The fact is presumed to exist prior to its introduction, as far as the characters are concerned. The player’s character, typically, is the smart/alert one who’s on the ball enough to take advantage of the fact first.

A maneuver is a character-imposed change in circumstance, successfully established if the player makes a (often contested) skill roll on his behalf.

But outside of those authority models, it’s the same basic game move.

That said, they’re also a bit of an oddity. Fate is not a game chock full of subtraction. In general if we want to reflect the effect of a penalty in Fate, we instead try to shift the perspective on it such that something is getting a bonus instead (factors that increase difficulty rather than penalties to your roll, for example). It’s an odd quirk of the design, but it’s couched in the feeling that doing a series of additions feels, well, more positive. It’s an escalation, a case of something pushing to more awesome heights, rather than reaching for those heights but getting yanked back. The math is ultimately the same, but the experience of that math, at least for us, feels better this way.

So why didn’t we do this for consequences? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you for sure. I suspect we came to them thinking strictly in terms of damage mitigation — as assets which would reduce the stress you’re already going to be taking otherwise. Phrasing them instead as “armor bonuses” or something like that would, in this case, feel a bit tortured. There are times when subtraction is the better option because it’s just simpler.

But let’s push at that a little: if we step away from a model of mitigation, and start with the idea that our consequences are +2/+4/+6 (or +1/+2/+4, to take a cue from Diaspora, or whatever other progression suits you), what does that do for us?

For starters, consequences would become boosters to the defense roll that would simply eliminate the idea that you’re otherwise taking the hit at all. I might have rolled a Good (+3) defense against your Great (+4) attack, but if I’m willing to spend my +2 consequence, my defense goes to a Superb (+5) and your attack doesn’t (technically) land. Sure, I had to give myself this nasty limp to get there, but at least I’m not taken out.

It strikes me that this model would support a no-stress-track implementation pretty well, where you’re taken out simply if you fail to defend yourself adequately, but for the benefit of consequences. That could be extended a little further to Fate 2 style exchanges, I imagine, where attack and defense are the same action, and the win goes to the person whose roll comes out on top — but it’s certainly likelier both parties would get there a little bloody due to some back and forth consequence-spending. That’s intriguing for sure. There’s some middle ground there, too, where it might not take a single victory to take someone out, unless that victory was big enough (a margin of 3 or better), with lesser victories giving the victor “the advantage” (a +1 on the next roll, say). Fights would be super quick and, depending on the rules and strictures placed on “taken out”, potentially very lethal.

Outside of the familiar defense scenario, what other implications come from this?

If you’re sticking with +2/+4/+6 as your progression, that ties into the +2 from invocations by way of equivalence (-2/-4/-6 does this too but less obviously). Consequences are a way to save yourself some fate points, then. No need to spend a fate point and invoke that aspect to boost your defense if you’re willing to take a mild consequence for the same +2 boost. Extra useful if you don’t have any fate points to begin with, big spender.

If that (effective) equivalence exists, though, maybe you could let it flow both ways. Don’t have a fate point? Spend a consequence, and get 1, 2, or 3 depending on the magnitude. It’d be like an on-demand micro-refresh of sorts, with a price attached, and I know any number of players who’d cheerfully hose themselves with a consequence in order to grab a few extra fate points in an hour of need.

Those fate points are, in this case, just an exchange medium, though. They’re going to be spent to buy off a compel, invoke an aspect, declare a detail, what-have-you. But it might be simpler instead to bypass the fate point economy and instead let the bonus from a consequence apply to any part of any roll.

You may have caught in my discussion of defense, above, that I was also implying that the attack side of the equation could get the bonus from a consequence, too. And how cool is that — the guy who takes a Moderate “Deep Shoulder Wound” consequence to get a +4 that takes down the bad guy? But there’s no need to stop at combat once you’ve started down that path.

Need to get that crucial piece of research, but your Academics roll is falling short? Pull an all-nighter, and take the mild consequence “Groggy as Hell” for a +2 on that roll.

You absolutely need to get that piece of information out of that mob boss? Get a +4 on your Rapport roll and you will — but it’ll cost you that “Overplayed My Hand” moderate  consequence, which is sure to bite you on the ass when the mob boss comes to make you an offer you really can’t refuse.

Positioned this way, consequences can become even more central to your play, and importantly, a tool that’s usable in every circumstance rather than just in conflicts. And by my lights, that’s pretty damn cool.