Author Topic: How do you handle Declarations at your table?  (Read 1620 times)

Offline devonapple

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 2165
  • Parkour to YOU!
    • View Profile
    • LiveJournal Account
How do you handle Declarations at your table?
« on: January 23, 2012, 06:02:47 PM »
How do you handle Declarations in your FATE games? Specifically:

Are they always Perception or Knowledge-based (i.e., are you generally using Search/Investigate/Alrtness and Scholarship/Knowledge)?
Or are you and your players using other skills to create them, when justifiable?

Do you handle them as a free action (as the rules indicate)?
Or do you consider them a different kind of Maneuver that still takes an action (or supplemental action), with the rationale that the character is spending an action to "notice" the element which they are Declaring?
Would you be inclined to make them free Actions if the player did not get a free tag?

Do you find your table has a natural "saturation point" on Declaration-based Aspects?
Or do you find a way limit them?
Are you and your players spending every action making them, because hey: free Aspects?
« Last Edit: January 23, 2012, 09:19:38 PM by devonapple »
"Like a voice, like a crack, like a whispering shriek
That echoes on like it’s carpet-bombing feverish white jungles of thought
That I’m positive are not even mine"

Blackout, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

Offline Sanctaphrax

  • White Council
  • Seriously?
  • ****
  • Posts: 12405
    • View Profile
Re: How do you handle Declarations at your table?
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2012, 07:11:34 PM »
Free action.

No limit, but I set the difficulties higher if I think people are making too many.

Can be used to represent all sorts of things, including situational modifiers and magical manipulation of the world.

Offline CottbusFiles

  • Conversationalist
  • **
  • Posts: 135
    • View Profile
Re: How do you handle Declarations at your table?
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2012, 08:57:17 PM »
Free action. One or two per action if they make sense.
Trouble Aspect : The nazis are trying to kill me
                       I have a phoenix inside of me
                       Nothing goes like i want it to

Offline admiralducksauce

  • Conversationalist
  • **
  • Posts: 577
    • View Profile
Re: How do you handle Declarations at your table?
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2012, 10:00:52 PM »
My players haven't gone wild with Declarations yet, but when it's come up I've ruled it a free action.  I'm trying to think if I've ever required a supplemental action for a Declaration, and I can't think of any prior situation where I might have done so.  But that's how I'd start restricting their use if I felt they became overused.

Offline UmbraLux

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 1685
    • View Profile
Re: How do you handle Declarations at your table?
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2012, 11:12:09 PM »
How do you handle Declarations in your FATE games? Specifically:

Are they always Perception or Knowledge-based (i.e., are you generally using Search/Investigate/Alrtness and Scholarship/Knowledge)?
Or are you and your players using other skills to create them, when justifiable?
They're based on knowledge, perception, and pre-existing fact yes...but not Knowledge and Perception skills alone.  Declaring you own something may be Resources, declaring a custom pistol round is probably Firearms, declaring you've practiced picking a lock type before is Burglary, etc.  Scenery declarations will often use the Perception skills and "I know X" declarations will use Knowledge skills but they're a subset of the whole.

Quote
Do you handle them as a free action (as the rules indicate)?
Or do you consider them a different kind of Maneuver that still takes an action (or supplemental action), with the rationale that the character is spending an action to "notice" the element which they are Declaring?
Would you be inclined to make them free Actions if the player did not get a free tag?
They're a free action, after all they're pre-existing.  If they're changing something or acquiring something they didn't have before it's probably a maneuver.  But Declarations are generally past tense or statements of being.

Quote
Do you find your table has a natural "saturation point" on Declaration-based Aspects?
Or do you find a way limit them?
Are you and your players spending every action making them, because hey: free Aspects?
I set soft limits* of one per skill per scene...and still don't get as many as I'd like to see in game.   ???

*By 'soft limits' I mean the target number for success goes up on repetitive declarations.
--
“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”  - Albert Einstein

"Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength."  - Eric Hoffer