RULE OF ROOKS
Sunday we started the first of four sessions of Reign of
Crows. That’s intended to be a “Game of Thrones” style Fate mini-campaign. Everyone
plays members of a single noble family within a kingdom. Together they face
threats and shifts in power. At the start of the game, the Queen has died,
leaving behind a young heir and a regent. The players plot how to advance their
agenda, enhance the family, and rise to the center of power.
I like many game systems, but in recent years Fate and PbtA
have become my go to for hacking new settings (Hellboy/Atomic Robo, ChangelingPbtA). I’ve also been looking at retooling whatever you call the
MYZ/TftL/Coriolis system. Fate and PbtA have different strengths in terms of
what they do at the table. That’s a discussion I have had before (and will have
again). But of the two, I find Fate easier and faster to hack. It doesn’t
require as much time and I’ve learned the pieces to retool.
PbtA’s a game with a more connected gears and moving parts. Fast hacks there
often lose the essence and strengths of PbtA.
So for my Fate month on the Gauntlet Hangouts I wanted to a least one game involving a deeper, or at least more extensive, hack. Hence this Reign of Crows game. We plan Gauntlet Hangouts sessions two
months out. That means I can commit to doing or coming up with something and
give myself a hard deadline rather than twiddling around. So thats how we got here.
While we’ve only played the first session, I want to post some
of the material. I plan on coming back to look at all of this once we’ve
done all four. If you like AP world-building, you can see the session video here. You can also see
the spreadsheet we’re using for game notes here. I’ve
split this post into two parts. Today I present the set-up information; next
post I’ll present character archetypes and stunts. I borrow from Fate Core, Wrath of the Autarch, Dresden
Files Accelerated, various Worlds of
Adventure, Blood & Honor, and other sources. The material below what I
presented to the players.
WELCOME TO THE REALM
On Sunday, we’ll be doing both character creation and some
world building. For characters I will have archetypes for everyone to choose
from. These represent your character’s focus and source of power.
- Force & Military
- Commerce & Wealth
- Magic & Secret Knowledge
- Faith & Populism
- Underworld & Subterfuge
- Diplomacy & Scholarship.
We will be using a modified version of Fate Accelerated.
Characters will have Approaches, Aspects, and Stunts. To make things easy, I’ll
have a set of stunts for each archetype. My plan to use FAE lightly, as a
framework to resolve plots and moves. In a sense, the resolution may be closer
to PbtA with you figuring out costs and complications to enact plans. Generally
I keep my Fate light, so I wouldn’t worry about the rules too much. Basically I
want to see what you’ll do with the tools provided.
If there’s any major mechanical difference, it will be that
groups have Scale, called Tier here. Larger, more potent, and better organized
groups are harder to affect. That’s pretty simple.
Play will (generally) follow this structure for a
Season/Session—
- Establish or Advance Threat(s).
- Random Events in the Kingdom.
- Individual Seasonal Actions for PCs.
- The Plot—everyone works together to carry out a plot for the family, determined by the group. Usually this will be a military action, extended scheme, political campaign, maneuvers at a gathering, taking advantage of a moot, or something like that.
- More individual scenes or Seasonal Actions if needed.
For Session One, we’ll also determine a few facts about your
family as well as the Kingdom as a whole. To make sure we can get things done,
I've set up some of the structures. I’ve broken things down into 20 major
factions. You can see those on the spreadsheet below. Each of your will get a
Row. You’ll assign two standard and one trouble aspect to each faction in that
row. Each row also has a couple of factions with “???” in their description,
meaning you’ll get to say what they’re like.
To make things easy, you’ll find a tab with example standard
and trouble aspects. When we do this, you should feel free to use those. I’ve
also added a tab with some random fantasy names as well as the random event
list in case you want to look at that.
SEASONAL ACTIONS
What can you do as a seasonal action?
- Aggrandize yourself or someone else
- Broker a deal or marriage
- Build or enhance something like a town, castle, magical working
- Campaign for an office
- Contact strange new powers
- Deal with enemies
- Explore new or lost territories
- Face The Threat
- Find treasure
- Gather intelligence or uncover secrets
- Incite hostilities
- Lay claim to something
- Make an alliance
- Prosecute a war
- Quest for something ancient and awesome
- Recruit people, troops, agents
- Restore and recover lost strengths and resources
- Suppress rebellion
- Undermine confidence in another faction
…and anything else which sounds cool…
TESTS
If you’re doing a personal test—your character on a small
scale, you’re just rolling your Approach (the first column). If you’re acting
on or via a group or faction, you roll Approach + Influences.
You roll against a known difficulty (set or rolled). Know
that targets of a higher tier are harder to affect; stronger targets have
higher resistance; and the less a faction likes you, the harder it is to affect
them negatively.
Anything that affects another faction has a cost. The GM
will tell you that cost—one for something basic; two for something complex or
longer lasting; three for something permanent. You can see the list of example
costs below. If you succeed, you’ll pick your other cost. If you tie or fail,
the GM picks your costs
BUT you never have to fail when you roll. The trick is how much
you want to pay to succeed. Aspects most basic currency for this. Each aspect
you invoke, by paying a fate point or using up a free one, gives you +2 to your
result. But you can also pay with other resources:
- Altered Effect or Drawback
- Burning Debts
- Gain a Family Need
- Gaining a Negative Aspect
- Gaining Debts
- Gaining Ill-Will from a Faction
- Having it Take Extra Time
- Lose a Family Surplus
- Losing a Stunt
- Marking a Personal Condition
- Marking Personal Stress
- Public Censure
- Special Components or Circumstances
- Spending Special Resources
- Take Family Stress
Look at all those options! If you beat your
difficulty—through good rolls, spending costs, or whatever—you succeed. You do
what you want. If you do well, you can spend your extra shifts on things like…
ADDITIONAL EFFECTS
- Additional Aspects
- Fictional Change
- Greater Reach
- Hidden
- Higher Tier
- Longer Lasting
- More effective
- More invokes
- Secondary Effect
…and anything else you can sell me on
CREATION PROCESS
- We first build our factions. Each of you will define one row. We’ll work column by column—but jump ahead if you want to. For your factions, you’ll define a Key and Trouble Aspect. If there’s a ??? on a faction, you’ll get to tell us who they are (name or summary).
- Next, you set the “Relation” of the factions in your row--- that’s how much they like your family. The Royals are already set, so among the other four assign a -4, -2, 0, and +2.
- Then we define your family, giving it a name. We’ll figure out how your Head of House leads, your Motto/Key Aspect, and your Trouble. We’ll also choose Surpluses and Wants.
- Finally we'll create characters. You may have already discussed this, but now you make picks.
- You have six Approaches. You always use these to roll. Assign +3, +2, +2, +1, +1, and 0 to these.
- You have six Influences. You add these to your approaches when you’re using or acting against those groups (if split, you choose). Assign +2, +1, 0, 0, -1, -2 to these.
- Define your Key Aspect-- the quick phrase that describes your character.
- Define your Trouble Aspect. This should be something you want to play out.
- You have room for three other aspects. You can define these on the fly. When you do define them, the GM will give you a Fate Point.
- Choose your Archetype, your role in the family. Each gets a special ability & resource. They also have a list of Stunts. You may choose from another archetype’s lists, but only if a someone hasn’t already taken it.
- You start with four Stunts. We assume in the fiction that you have the your archetype's abilities and resources—if military, you have troops; if magic, you can cast spells; if subterfuge, you have spies. That’s just baked into the fiction. Stunts enhance that.
- Set your Refresh to four. That means at the start of each session your Fate Points go back up to 4. If you want more stunts, you can trade in Refresh for them on a 1 to 1 basis (to a minimum of 1 Refresh).
Next post, archetypes and stunts.
