FATE Numenera/Doing stuff

Intro

In normal FATE, you say you want to do something, the GM gives you a target number, you roll some dice and add your skill, and try to beat that TN. If you do, you succeed. If you don't, you fail and nothing happens. Or, rather, something bad is supposed to happen, but often this gets forgotten and nothing happens. Or you can 'succeed at a cost', but in practice this hasn't come up that often in our group.

In the new 2nd edition 7th Sea game, you declare what you want to do, the GM tells you how expensive it is to do that, then tells you how expensive it is to avoid problems happening while you're trying to do that. Then you roll, and spend your points achieving your goal and/or avoiding the problems. This seems like a potentially much more interesting system to play with, since 'success at a cost' is baked into the system more. If you have interesting costs, it seems like this would also achieve much more interesting tactical decisions on the players' part.

So, this is my attempt at re-working the basic FATE system so that success at a cost happens more frequently, and the only time 'nothing happens' happens is by deliberate player choice (i.e. they choose explicitly to avoid the problems but fail the task they set out to do.)

Accomplishing actions

Any time you try to accomplish something where there’s a risk of failure and/or of something going wrong, the following happens:

• You declare what you want to do and what skill you’re using to do it.
• The GM tells you how much it’ll cost:
  • To accomplish your Goal.
  • To avoid any Risks.
  • To accomplish any extra Opportunities (occasionally).
• You roll the dice (four FUDGE dice, each of which will give you -1, 0, or +1). Add your roll to your skill level, and make adjustments based on stunts or conditions. The amount above zero that you total is the amount of action points that you have to spend on accomplishing the task, and avoiding something going wrong. If your total is zero or less, you have no points to spend.
• Spend your action points to accomplish your Goal or Opportunities, and/or avoid Risks. Sometimes, you’ll have enough to do everything, sometimes, you’ll only have enough to do one or two things, and sometimes you’ll not have enough to do anything!

Let’s say your character is being pursued by an army, and you come to a river. You declare that you’re using your Athletics skill to swim across the river. “OK,” says the GM. “That’ll cost one action point to cross the river, one to avoid it being obvious where you came up on the other side, and one to avoid your stuff getting water damage.” If that sounds too risky, you can change your mind about your intentions, but in this case, you have an Athletics of 3, so you feel you’re pretty safe. You roll 4dF and get +1 -1 0 -1, for a total of -1. That lowers your 3 points from Athletics to 2, leaving you with two action points to spend. That’s not enough to accomplish your task and avoid all the danger, so now you have a tactical decision to make: cross (1), keep your stuff safe (1), but make it obvious how to pursue you (0)? Cross (1), damage your stuff (0), but throw your pursuers off the trail (1)?

Suddenly, you have a different idea. “I struggle in the water a bit, but realize the current is too swift to make it across and still keep the journal from getting water damage—not much use getting away from the army if the reason they’re chasing me is lost! As the sounds of pursuit get louder, I slip back on the bank behind a rock a ways downstream, hoping they’ll assume I crossed anyway.” (Spending one point to 'avoid being obvious where you came up', and one point to 'avoid your stuff getting water damage', and not accomplishing the original Goal of crossing the river.) The GM grins. “Sounds good to me! From your vantage point behind the rock, you see the army break through the underbrush. ‘Find a place to ford this river!’ shouts the commander, and one small group breaks off upstream, and a second downstream to search. As you watch, the group of three soldiers gets closer… what do you want to do now?”

How does this relate to the normal four FATE types of actions?

The four normal FATE actions are:

• Overcome: Get past an obstacle
• Create an Advantage: Add an aspect to the scene or to a character that can be 'tagged' by you or an ally for a bonus.
• Attack: Harm another character
• Defend: Prevent attacks or advantages on you.

In general, all four work as above. The only issue is that sometimes the cost of accomplishing the action are known before you even ask the GM about them:

• Overcome: As normal; the GM will state what the cost is. They may already know things like 'this is a level 3 river with two level-1 dangers', or they may make it up on the spot; it doesn't make a difference to the player either way.
• Create an Advantage: The basic cost is always 2, as it gives you a free +2 later. The risks associated with creating an advantage are not known beforehand, but are usually less severe than 'overcome' or 'attack'.
• Attack: Inflicting a minor consequence is 1-2; inflicting a moderate consequence is 3-4; inflicting a severe consequence is 5-6. The risks will not be known until you ask.
• Defend: Preventing a minor consequence is 2; preventing a moderate consequence is 4; preventing a severe consequence is 6. You can 'stage down' any consequence (severe->moderate; moderate->minor) by spending 2 action points. Defending against an impending consequence is often itself the 'risk' involved in some other action.

What if I don’t have enough action points to do what I really want to do?

There are a few options:

• Tag an existing ‘free’ Aspect in the scene to either re-roll the dice, or give yourself a straight +2.
• Spend a FATE point to activate a character Aspect (or non-free scene Aspect) to either re-roll the dice, or give yourself a straight +2.
• Ask the GM to increase the severity of an existing consequence, or introduce a new consequence, in exchange for an additional action point. The GM states what that would be, and you can accept it in exchange for the action point, or reject it and receive no points. In general, the increase in severity will be +2, and you will be given 1 point to spend how you see fit.
• Get help from a fellow player: in the same round as your attempted action, one of your fellow players may spend two action points as a Maneuver to introduce an Aspect on either you personally or the scene itself. If successful, you may tag that Aspect to either re-roll the dice, or give yourself a straight+2. Note that your teammate’s action may come with its own risk (for them).
• Get help from a fellow player, v2: in the same round as your attempted action, one of your fellow players may spend a FATE point or two action point to activate one of their character Aspects (or a non-free scene Aspect) to let you either re-roll the dice, or give yourself a straight +2.

What if I have extra action points?

• Narrative flair: describe yourself succeeding at your action *really well*.
• Perform an extra Maneuver: spend 2 action points to perform a Maneuver directly related to the action you were performing, to place an additional Aspect within the scene. Check with the GM to see if this new Maneuver would come with its own risks—it might be necessary to spend more action points (or suffer new consequences) as a result.
• Assist a fellow player: as above, you can spend two action points the same way you would spend a FATE die, to tag one of your character's Aspects or a non-free Aspect in the scene, and allow them to re-roll or get a +2 to their own action. You must be able to narrate how your action involving that Aspect helps that other player's character ('being encouraging' totally counts, though).
• Ask the GM if there are any Opportunities they may have 'forgotten to mention' beforehand.

Discussion

• It's probably worth comparing this die system to something not zero-based, like the "real" 7th sea system, or a simpler shadowrun-type one where you roll some number of d6s and any 5s or 6s count as successes. It feels like it's a bit of a waste of some of the FATE bell curve that you can sometimes get less than zero as your final total, although in practice I guess that won't happen much.
  • Yeah, every so often someone rolls a 'Terrible', but that doesn't happen too often. I imagined that in those cases, the first thing is simply that much more expensive, and is why I was careful to say that you could re-roll or get a +2, not simply 'accomplish the task'. --LS
• The 7th sea system specifically says other people can't help you with the risk, just with consequences. The way this is written that restriction isn't in place since it's laundered through Aspects. I'm not sure if that's good or not.
  • Neither was I, but general FATE assists work through Aspects and don't have a problem. I'm not sure what problem the 7th Sea rule is trying to *solve* with that restriction, honestly. --LS
• Is it a correct read that it costs two action points to do a maneuver in addition to your regular thing, or just one action point (for the initial risk) to do a maneuver as a dedicated action? Or does the second option not exist?
  • I didn't say what Maneuvers usually cost EDIT: now they do, but in my head, Maneuvers always cost 2, since they give you a +2 later. --LS
• It occurs to me it's actually a pretty interesting model if everything only costs one success to accomplish, and what makes harder tasks harder is the associated list of consequences. You can further imagine modelling big things (start a revolution against the evil duke) as a very long list of consequences, which might be unknown at the start. Like maybe the players say they want to do this, and the GM is like "ok, there are at least ten consequences associated with this". And then the players can do sub-actions (basically, maneuvers) to figure out what the consequences are and defuse them.
  • That's a really interesting idea! Or, to take a middle road, the group tells you what they want to accomplish in a single round, you tell them what the risks are, and everyone tackles something on the list. --LS
• Given the previous, I think I'd be ok with saying that all maneuvers and assistance only works against specific consequences, they're not general rerolls or bonuses. I don't exactly know how this works if player A does their thing and gets an extra action point, and then player B does their thing and needs the extra action point, but I guess A can say "and I help B if they need it", and then specify later which consequence they help with.
  • Are you saying you don't want to allow generic Maneuvers at all?--LS

FATE Numenera