Card-based Fate Aspects

[avram]

An idea that came to me in a thread on Story Games about card-game design: Fate’s Aspects could be reworked using cards.

I figure each player gets a deck of Aspect cards, with each of that PC’s Aspects written on one card. At the start of the session you shuffle your deck, place it face down, and draw (say) five cards. These are the Aspects you have available to invoke in that scene.

To invoke, you take an Aspect card from your hand, and play it face-up on the table in front of you. (No need to spend a Fate point; this system replaces Fate points.) You then get the usual stuff you get by invoking an Aspect — +2, re-roll, or declare something. But you can’t invoke that Aspect again until it comes back into your hand. Aspects on the table are available for compels. When someone compels your Aspect, you take that card and put it back in your deck. At some point you’d shuffle and redraw, but I don’t have any good ideas about that yet.

In a typical game of Diaspora or Spirit of the Century you’d have ten cards for your ten Aspects. I think maybe in a Dresden Files game, where you only have seven aspects, you’d make three extra copies of your High Concept (or maybe two of your High Concept and one extra of your Trouble?), giving you ten cards.

For tagging environmental and other character’s Aspects, I think you’d get a few extra cards in your deck, saying “Environment” or “Opponent”. Play those to tag those Aspects. When someone uses an Opponent card to tag or compel one of your Aspects, you get to pick up one of your tabled Aspect card and put it in your deck. (This part seems a bit awkward.)

Comments

[jimhenley.livejournal.com]

I like this! I'm sick of Fate Points. I think the simple way to handle Environment or Opponent Aspects is to make them only taggable via Maneuvers.

[avram]

The board-gamer in me (who's been playing a lot of Dominion) wants to add in some more deck-building stuff. Like, maybe if you've got a long-term enemy, and you perform the right maneuver, you get an Aspect card for him that goes into your deck.

Or maybe there's also a campaign deck that could be used for a combined Aspect-tagging/Everyway Fortune mechanic, and players can add cards to it.

[jimhenley.livejournal.com]

Right; see, deck-building isn't my bliss. But you've got the experience AND the inclination to make something like that work for people who like that sort of thing.

[avram]

Yeah, well, I've suddenly realized that bits of this idea have been floating around in my head since Jonathan Tweet was talking in Alarums & Excursions about his ideas for Everway.

Oh, man! Campaign deck, and at the start of each session (or scene?) the GM deals out a tarot layout, and you can tag the cards as setting Aspects!

[mneme]

Hmm. I'd say you want to make it an exercise in hand management, but I'd be worried about your hand emptying out without a good way of refilling it.

Actually, how about this:

At the beginning of a session/story, deal out half your deck face up in front of you, and draw the rest. When you invoke a tag, play it from your hand face up. Anything face up can be compelled; when one of your aspects is compelled, you can pick up any aspect back into your hand (or if you really want to balanced compel/tag, can pick up that aspect).

Manuevers: After a successful manuver, write out the new aspect and put it into your hand. It's now "your" card, though you can give it away if you want.

Guessing aspects: If you want to tag a guessed aspect, invoke and guess, and lay down one of the cards from your hand. If you're right, you get to take your card back, but if not you discard it face up for no benefit (just as if you'd tagged that aspect it).

[avram]

You've just about almost reinvented the median stage between Fate 2 and Fate 3, before Hicks and Donoghue came up with Fate points.

In Fate 2, Aspects had levels and checkboxes, and to use an Aspect you checked it off. When it was all checked off, you couldn't use it anymore. As they were developing Fate 3, they came up with the idea of the compel, which would allow you to uncheck a box. Then they dropped the boxes in favor of Fate points.

One reason I suggested a hand of five or so cards was to reduce the cognitive overhead of having ten Aspects of your own, plus everyone else's, to think about all of the time, and to introduce the challenge of having to make do with what's available.

[avram]

Hey, consequences! Each time you take stress, you can take consequences to reduce the incoming stress, 1 card = 2 stress. Write the consequences down on cards, mark them with a distinctive color, shuffle them into your deck. For a severe consequence, write the same thing on multiple cards.

Any time you draw a new hand, you place any consequence cards down in front of you, but you don't get to draw new cards to replace them; you just have fewer Aspect invocations that scene. When compelled, consequences go away, out of your deck.

Or maybe when you first take a consequence, it goes on the table in front of you, maybe with an empty check-box on it. When compelled, check off the box and stick it in your deck. An already-checked consequence goes away when compelled.