Should There Be an Aspect Economy?

[devonapple]

My perception is that many of the questions that come up in DFRPG (or FATE in general) can be possibly solved by approaching Aspects as having different values.

I'm also thinking about the FATE Fractal, and how a game can zoom in or out, and apply Aspects/Skills/etc. to micro-systems (a Poison being given its own FATE character stats to represent how it hurts a victim and how easy it is to be defeated) or macro-systems (a Country or Organization being run as a FATE character against other, similar-scale entities).

I am imagining a Maneuver/Declaration/etc. resulting in an Aspect which has not only a Meaning/Identity but also a Quality rating. At the moment, the "Quality" of an Aspect is inherent in what you ask for. At the moment, the Quality of an Aspect is inherent in how it is named: the Aspect itself implies the Quality, and the GM determines the target Quality on the fly and lets the player know how hard it is to establish that Aspect. Tell a GM you want to create the Aspect "Building on Fire" and you'll get a particular difficulty rating. Tell a GM you want to establish the Aspect "Entire Mercenary Emplacement Ablaze" and you'll get a higher difficulty rating.

But what if we gave Aspects an *explicit* Quality rating, which not only made it clear how difficult it was to undo or fight, but could also be broken down and "spent" on various applications. Instead of just the Aspect "Fire" - which has its own implied effects and scope - we could establish A Mediocre Fire, a Legendary Fire, or a Superb Fire.

And then we could break down that Quality and spend it on various things. A Fire or Poison could attack and defend based on its Quality. You could spend some of that Quality to "buy" other "powers" or Aspects.

So maybe you get 12 shifts on the Maneuver to create the Aspect "Neighborhood Ablaze". You could trade that for a simple 12 Quality Fire, or you could say you made a 6 Strength, 6 Speed Fire.

Get 8 shifts on your attempt to make a Poison, and you could get a 6 Quality, 2 Sneaky Poison, or a 3 Quality, 5 Sneaky Poison.

[ARedthorn]

Seems interesting, but could get way too complex way too fast.

Also, we'd need to lay out exactly what you could spend shifts on. So far, you've already mentioned Strength, Speed, Quality (I assume this is really just strength), Sneaky....

[Sanctaphrax]

It could work.

But why bother? What do you plan to get out of this?

[EdgeOfDreams]

Eh, this kind of goes against the whole concept of aspects as a way to allow subjective narrative to EASILY and QUICKLY interact with objective mechanics.  The idea of "an aspect is an aspect is an aspect" is, I think, important to the smooth flow of a FATE game.

Do you really want to turn this into a D&D-like system with a table of poison qualities, a table of fire sizes, etc. etc. ad absurdium?

[Llayne]

I do think you should be able to get extra free tags if you have enough spin on the maneuver to place the aspect. That won't work on all aspects though, so I can see the desire to get some sort of extra oomph out of it.

[devonapple]

But why bother? What do you plan to get out of this?

Guidance, really, on adjudications, and a bridge towards getting the FATE fractal to take some of the heavy lifting.

I can also operate with the GM as the arbiter of what an Aspect gets to do.

[Sanctaphrax]

Alright.

I suppose that if you want to use fractals, this is probably a good way to do it.

But I don't know enough to say more.

[devonapple]

Seems interesting, but could get way too complex way too fast.

Also, we'd need to lay out exactly what you could spend shifts on. So far, you've already mentioned Strength, Speed, Quality (I assume this is really just strength), Sneaky....

Complication is always a risk, but people propose complications all the time to better fit what they want to include into the game. My conception stems from games like PDQ in which players have a budget of points to spend on Qualities which serve as de facto skills: buy X ranks of a Quality, and whenever that Quality comes up, you count it in your roll.

Do you really want to turn this into a D&D-like system with a table of poison qualities, a table of fire sizes, etc. etc. ad absurdium?

Certainly not. But there is plenty of demand for more of a framework, and some of us put a great deal of time and thought into proposing an explicit alternate mechanism for Summoning and Construct Creation, for example. Just musing about another potentially useful tool to guide the adjudication of Aspect scope.

[devonapple]

So, even if we set aside the question of assigning a Quality to an Aspect, I am still left with the following question:

Setting aside the difficulty of establishing Maneuver Aspects against an unwilling opponent, should some Aspects, because of their narrative potential for an Invoke for Effect, simply cost more shifts than others to establish (for example, the "Magical Parachute" Aspect mentioned here)?

[Tedronai]

Against the environment, the maneuver is
performed as a simple action against a fixed
difficulty set by the GM, which is usually very
context-dependent

It could easily be argued that similar principles could be applied to represent a 'base' difficulty for targeted maneuvers, representing a minimum defense for the recipient (edit: whether they want it or not).

[devonapple]

It could easily be argued that similar principles could be applied to represent a 'base' difficulty for targeted maneuvers, representing a minimum defense for the recipient (edit: whether they want it or not).

So in the case of a Magical Parachute aspect, the GM would be wise to consider the most useful application of the Maneuver Aspect (invoke to prevent damage from a fall that would ordinarily achieve maximum velocity and kill the victim) and set the difficulty for that application?

[Tedronai]

Or set the difficulty as a replacement of the resources trapping that would have allowed for the acquisition of an actual parachute, and adjudicate the effects of the invoke as appropriate to that simulated circumstance.

[Sanctaphrax]

Sure.

I always figured the point of letting the GM determine maneuver difficulty was something like this.

[devonapple]

I always figured the point of letting the GM determine maneuver difficulty was something like this.

I get the impression many people default to requiring 3 shifts for establishing any given Maneuver Aspect, regardless of its Invoke-for-Effect potential.

Or set the difficulty as a replacement of the resources trapping that would have allowed for the acquisition of an actual parachute, and adjudicate the effects of the invoke as appropriate to that simulated circumstance.

A parachute looks to be either a Good (+3) or Great (+4) Resources check to acquire, until you factor in the time needed to acquire one into the spell (going from "an afternoon of shopping" to "instantaneous"). Or should we consider that already factored into the Resources check?

For comparison, however: if we ran the parachute effect as a straight Block against damage, we would need a much higher number of shifts to diffuse the kinetic energy of terminal velocity.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

A parachute looks to be either a Good (+3) or Great (+4) Resources check to acquire, until you factor in the time needed to acquire one into the spell (going from "an afternoon of shopping" to "instantaneous"). Or should we consider that already factored into the Resources check?

For comparison, however: if we ran the parachute effect as a straight Block against damage, we would need a much higher number of shifts to diffuse the kinetic energy of terminal velocity.

Only if they'd actually reached terminal velocity.  Cast beforehand there's no such requirement.  Me, I like screwing with my players over things like this, so I'd require they spell out the mechanics of the spell and assign a difficulty based on that.

Example: A force parachute would take relatively few shifts to create, creating planes of force to walk on would have the same hilarious effects as pulling up on your bootstraps, and wind blowing you upwards would have to be strong enough to allow acceleration the first round but not any subsequent rounds.