Thinking of borrowing something from another game...

[Richard_Chilton]

About a month ago I was at a con and played a pre-release copy of a game call Leverage and now I'm thinking of borrowing an element from it for Dresden.

The element? It's called the Flashback and it can save a lot of planning time.  Rather than sit around planning things to the Nth degree you make the rough outline of a plan and when something unplanned for happens you spend a chip and describe how you thought about that and have already done X to deal with it.  Basically fixing things on the fly rather than plan for every possible thing.

No, that doesn't happen all the time in Dresden, but in virtually every books there's a "I go off and do something" or "I tell him the plan and he says I'm crazy" or similar moment and when the big bad thing needs to be dealt with Dresden has the perfect solution ready to go.

So, does anyone have any thoughts on doing something like this?

Richard

[Papa Gruff]

Can you provide a little bit more information? A more elaborate example perhaps. At least to me it's not clear what exactly you are going for here...

[lordoracle]

I know the game he's talking about. It's based on a TV series and I think I get what the idea is. The series is centered around a group of con artists and as an episode goes on, you never see fully what the con is they are pulling. Once the con is complete, the leader "flashes back" to explain what you saw and what you were not shown that really was going on.

How I see this idea working is when something major happens that you didn't see coming, you turn it around as though it was all part of the plan.

[Dumbledresden]

First, Leverage gets his own RPG? Awesome..

Second, I think what Richard was asking for, was, if other Players have borrowed game-mechanics from other RPG's and added them to the DFRPG. In his case, he had borrowed a mechanism called "Flashbacks". I don't know how it works in the Leverage RPG, but assuming it is really based on the TV-series, i would compare it to some kind of declartion, combined with a suitable aspect.

[Amseriah]

First, that is awesome that they are making a RPG for Leverage!

Second, I see no reason why you couldn't use a mechanic like this for DF, especially if your character had an aspect that showed him being a mastermind type, or explained that he alway expected the unexpected.  You could use the aspect to spend a Fate point to cover your rear if something unforseen comes up.  The more I think about it the more I like it actually.

Third...I really really hope that they DON'T decide to make every tv show into an rpg....I love House, but I really don't want to play House....

[Richard_Chilton]

A good way of thinking about it would be a declaration in the past tense.  Use to patch a hole in a plan or to fill in the gaps of a loose plan.

As in:
"There's a guard dog? I didn't think about that but my PC would have so how about a flashback of me stopping to get some doggie treats to distract him with?"

"There's a guard in the Lobby? How about a flashback to us learning the guard's name and a bit about his family - so I can go up to him and say 'Joe, is your phone working? Your wife Peggy called the main board and something about a car accident' - while hexing his phone?"

An unanticipated problem arises, something that is normally beyond the scope of a declaration, but rather than derailing everyone's plans the situation is resolved with 'we already did something to handle that'.

Since they are more powerful than a normal declaration they would probably cost 2 chips in the FATE system, but they have ability to speed up game play by cutting down on long planning sessions.

Just wondering what others think of the idea.

Richard

PS: More details on the Leverage game can be found at: http://www.margaretweis.com/mwp-online-store/leverage.

[Richard_Chilton]

Second, I see no reason why you couldn't use a mechanic like this for DF, especially if your character had an aspect that showed him being a mastermind type, or explained that he alway expected the unexpected.  You could use the aspect to spend a Fate point to cover your rear if something unforseen comes up.  The more I think about it the more I like it actually.

Linking it to an aspect actually makes more sense than just having it generally available...  Maybe a fair way of doing it would be 'normal cost' if you have an aspect and two FATE points if you don't...

I've been told that Leverage is based off of the same system as the Smallville RPG, but I've never played Smallville and the person at the con was running it off of printoff from the game company - so I couldn't get an in depth look at the rules.  The Leverage game is due out this month and it might be worth picking up.

Richard

[Arcteryx]

Haven't looked at Smallville yet but its getting a lot of love out there in the wild... resisting the urge, too many systems out there and not enough hours in the day...

[TheMouse]

I've been told that Leverage is based off of the same system as the Smallville RPG, but I've never played Smallville and the person at the con was running it off of printoff from the game company - so I couldn't get an in depth look at the rules.

The game system it uses is called Cortex. Smallville and Leverage both use a specific iteration of the system that has a name associated with it, but I don't remember what it is.

From what I can gather, it mostly seems to be an attribute + skill based system where they're rated in dice. Smallville has something where your relationships also add dice, so saving Lana lets you add your Lana dice to your roll. It uses d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12 I believe. Roll the dice, add them together, compare to difficulty.

There are some other widgets, but it seems simple enough from what I've seen of it. I will admit that I haven't looked at the Leverage or Smallville versions, though.

Anyway...

Mostly, I think that you could accomplish this with declarations. I've used declarations for that in FATE games in the past. You're adding a fact to the narrative, and it doesn't really matter whether that fact is in the past or present.

So if someone has an Aspect like "hard core survivalist" the player could spend a fate point to flash back to the PC stashing survival gear in a tarp in the woods.

[luminos]

You can do this without drifting the system at all just with declarations.  Its just a matter of having the right aspect to justify it with.

[HumAnnoyd]

You can do this without drifting the system at all just with declarations.  Its just a matter of having the right aspect to justify it with.

Yeah this is what I was thinking.  Something like "Master Planner" or "One step ahead of everyone else" or even "I love it when a plan comes together" would work.

[Wordmaker]

This is definitely just an example of one way to frame declarations, especially those based on an appropriate Aspect.

Inicdentally, I would love to play a character with the Aspect "I love it when a plan comes together." 

[BenQ]

Third...I really really hope that they DON'T decide to make every tv show into an rpg....I love House, but I really don't want to play House....

At the risk of taking this off topic - I'd love to have a go at writing up House as a FATE character - there's someone who has Aspects written all over him!