Friends and Familiars

[austiknight]

Hey again. How do you guys stat/reflect friends/contacts/allies/familiars?

For instance, how would you do:

Butters as a useful contact and occasional friend? Or Murphy/Stawlings in the early books?
Mister or a kick-butt rescue dog?
Bob the Skull or a similar resource with occasional very useful stuff?
Mouse, or a pseudo-character beast-creature?

I could see doing many of these as an aspect, but some of them seem to be a bit much. Thoughts?

[Taran]

Contacts?

[narphoenix]

I actually have the theory that a genuine familiar may be a focus item (probably a Thaumaturgy one).

[Haru]

It all depends on what you want the friends and family and such to be.

I had a player take a stunt for his character that allowed him to replace contacts for lore, because he had a guy he could call. We named the stunt "Bobby".

If it is a recurring NPC, just give him a location and you are done. Butters could be the face for the morgue forensics department, and that would be that. If you hadn't thought him up at the beginning of the game, a player could simply declare him into existence with a fate point or roll contacts to do so. As a friend, you'd have to treat him as such. Look at DB, Harry doesn't just tell him to shut up and do as he is told, he talks to him, tells him what he wants to know about the supernatural and such. Just play out the friendship, or at least the important parts of it.

Mister would be an aspect on Harry's apartment rather than on Harry himself, since he doesn't come up all that much, I think.

Mouse can either be a PC, or you could make him an NPC that just tags along with the rest of the group. He would probably  have an aspect like "I won Harry Dresden". There is actually a playable sheet for him in Our World. No Pseudo at all.

Murphy I would see similar to Butters, only she becomes a PC after a while.

Bob is a GM character, mainly for information drops (see: Talking Head). You can argue a bit back and forth, but usually, the players are going to get the information they need from him, if sometimes at a minor price.

You only need aspects for those, if you have a special bond to the characters in question, and this bond comes up in play quite often. If your character loves his mother, even though she lives 2000 miles away, that is well and good, but it will almost never come into play. On the other hand, if he is "taking care of his sick mother" she will probably come up quite often. If he is just visiting her every now and again, that's just what he does. No need for an aspect or even a character sheet, the character just has a mother, as most everyone has. Done and done.

[Sanctaphrax]

Aspects are the easiest and often the best way to represent such things.

However, sometimes you might want something a bit crunchier. In that case you might want to try a variation on Item Of Power. This would work well for Bob...attach some knowledge stunts/Powers to an IoP and bam, it's Bob.

You can also try folding minions into stunts. That might look something like this...

Attack Dog (Survival): You have a big dog that bites people you don't like. You may make weapon 2 attacks with your Survival skill against characters in your zone as long as you have your dog with you.

In all of the above cases, the pet/ally is not (mechanically speaking) an actual character. In the story it's a character, but in the mechanics it's one of your character's traits.

If you're not satisfied with those approaches, you could try looking here.

EDIT: Probably also worth looking at the Contacts stunts over here.

[blackstaff67]

For something to replicate Bob, I took "Victor Sells' Grimoire" as an Aspect, though since I've had it for ten years now and it's absorbed my psyche, I get to refer to it as Irving (Naming it) and talking to it (though it doesn't talk back).  "Irving, open to the chapter on Barrie, see if there's an actual Peter Pan and can I actually steal his shadow."

For friends, I have the Aspect "Fix is my mechanic."  My character doesn't know he's the Summer Knight, just a guy he saved from some Winter Fae a while ago.  Maybe later the GM will bring him is as an NPC but for now, I invoke him when I 1) need my car delivered to a certain spot with extra equipment in it or 2) a self-compel ("If only I had my car with me, by back-up gear and musical instruments are inside but it's in the shop right now.  Fix has it.").

[Wordmaker]

I love the idea of a stunt called "Bobby," but that may be because my wife and I have gotten hooked on Supernatural. 

I think stunts to let Contacts have other trappings are a nice way to handle it. Aspects are also good, especially if the character will be a constant presence or means a lot to the PC.

Of course, I do think that just having an NPC hanging around can be appropriate in most cases. Using stunts, aspects and focus items is a choice to make depending on just how much the ally/familiar's role is tied to the PC and how reliable their are.