Hunger Stress Question

[Starjammer]

The length of the Hunger Stress track is determined by Discipline.  Does a high Discipline give extra Mild Consequences to absorb Hunger stress the way the other skills do, even though Hunger is absorbed by Physical and Mental Consequences?

[Hick Jr]

I was under the impression that every stress track came with it's own set of consequences, so I'm inclined to say yeah, you can get extra consequences from a high Discipline.

[Baron Hazard]

I would rule it so.

[Haru]

I don't think it says so in the books, but I would agree that you'd get an additional mild consequence if your discipline is high enough, like the other skills and stress tracks do.

I was under the impression that every stress track came with it's own set of consequences, so I'm inclined to say yeah, you can get extra consequences from a high Discipline.

Nope, you get 3 consequences (1 mild, 1 moderate, 1 severe) that you can take for any sort of stress, but if you take a moderate physical consequence, you can no longer take a moderate mental or social consequence, until the physical one is resolved.

You can, however, get additional mild consequences via some skills, which will only count for the stress track the skill is linked to.

[Starjammer]

Nope, you get 3 consequences (1 mild, 1 moderate, 1 severe) that you can take for any sort of stress, but if you take a moderate physical consequence, you can no longer take a moderate mental or social consequence, until the physical one is resolved.

Hang on, that makes no sense to me.  You mean that if I take a Severe Social Consequence ("The Laughing-Stock of the Society Page") I suddenly become less able to absorb punishment if I get into a fist fight?

I mean, I can kind of see some aspects bleeding over into other types of conflict (the pain of a broken arm making me less than charming at a dinner party, for instance) but I can't really see that having one area of disability makes me less robust in another.

So that's gonna be a house rule, I guess.

[Haru]

That's not a house rule, it's intended this way (YS203). Consequences are less like wounds from other systems and more like plot armor. When you are attacked, any other character would have lost, but because you are the awesome protagonist, you take the blow and keep going. So what consequences do is limit this ability to keep going more than it does reflect actual harm. That's why a moderate social and a moderate physical consequence will "heal" at the same rate. Heal in this case means that they are no longer relevant to the story. To that extent, there aren't even really "physical" or "mental" consequences, just consequences.

That's why your best bet is to choose your fights carefully. If you are good at social conflicts and bad at physical, it's going to be more effective to concede the physical conflict early and talk your way out of situations than keep going by using consequences. That way, a social character will have rather long social conflicts and short physical ones, a game with a physical character will be the other way around. It's a way to shape the story, and a very effective one at that, I think.

Edit:
Robert Hanz wrote a great article about consequences in the Fate Core Google+ group. It applies just as well to he DFRPG.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RobertHanz/posts/7dTuXhLZWrW

[Sanctaphrax]

I don't think I like that blog post, actually. Stress is about as damage-like as most of the things that games call damage. Saying it's not damage is kinda...I dunno, it rubs me the wrong way.

But yeah, you only have one set of consequences. They're narrative resources like Fate Points, and like Fate Points they don't make much sense if you treat them as if they exist in-story.

As for the actual thread topic, I'm pretty sure the White Court boss in Your Story's sample city has an extra hunger consequence from his high Discipline.

[Starjammer]

I suppose that makes marginally more sense... as a narrative tool, there's only so much crap that any one character can have going on in the story. 

I suppose I must meditate on this and decide what I think of it.

[Hick Jr]

Wow. I'd never even considered that you only got the one set. In my RL game, we've been using one set per stress track. To me, it seems absurd that being PUBLICLY HUMILIATED (social consequence) makes me unable have my ARM BROKEN (physical consequence). I understand that they're gaming abstractions and all, but still.


Also, I just checked YS, and Sanctaphrax is right. Superb Discipline nets you an extra Hunger consequence.

[Sanctaphrax]

Of course it's absurd. Consequences are fundamentally absurd if you look at them as in-story objects. They let you choose how you get hurt, and let you replace defeat in a fight with an injury of some kind. Neither of those things actually makes sense.

But they're an abstraction, so who cares? The player is not the character.

[solbergb]

In a game where you can break a grapple with a humiliating remark, social consequences make perfect sense.

Hell, look at how often  Harry gets combat advantage by infuriating opponents, and also how seriously everybody takes attacks to reputation.

[solbergb]

Wow. I'd never even considered that you only got the one set. In my RL game, we've been using one set per stress track. To me, it seems absurd that being PUBLICLY HUMILIATED (social consequence) makes me unable have my ARM BROKEN (physical consequence). I understand that they're gaming abstractions and all, but still.

Normally I'd agree with you, but actually in the Dresdenverse it makes a kind of perverse sense.  There's a reason this game has a social and hunger track, where most Fate games just have physical and mental.

I think of it as lack of resilience.  If I'm all stressed out because everybody is laughing at me because they think my wife is having an affair, a broken arm is more likely to "take me out" instead of me just gritting my teeth and using my happy marriage to bolster my resolve while fighting onward.

This is especially true for practitioners, whose magic is based on their overall state of mind, but given that the main fuel for pure mortals is fate points, (or to use the in-universe metaphor "free will") consequences limit their choices and thus reduce their power to affect the universe.    For a creature like a Fay, consequences of any kind make them less like themselves, weakening their power.

[bobjob]

Normally I'd agree with you, but actually in the Dresdenverse it makes a kind of perverse sense.  There's a reason this game has a social and hunger track, where most Fate games just have physical and mental.

I think of it as lack of resilience.  If I'm all stressed out because everybody is laughing at me because they think my wife is having an affair, a broken arm is more likely to "take me out" instead of me just gritting my teeth and using my happy marriage to bolster my resolve while fighting onward.

This is especially true for practitioners, whose magic is based on their overall state of mind, but given that the main fuel for pure mortals is fate points, (or to use the in-universe metaphor "free will") consequences limit their choices and thus reduce their power to affect the universe.    For a creature like a Fay, consequences of any kind make them less like themselves, weakening their power.

This is probably the best description of Consequences I've read.

[solbergb]

There is another kind of perverse thing about the dresdenverse that works fairly well with consequence mechanics.

Supernatural healing of various kinds is fairly common, even Harry gets healed from time to time although he lacks such resources himself for most of the series.

But nobody easily comes back from mental or social consequences.  You need a therapist and time.  Harry started dealing with the consequences of picking up a Denarian coin only after he talked to Georgia and Will about the situation...until then it was bottled up inside and not even beginning to heal (she was basically pushing him to feel angry about every little slight and push his magic with rage and thus hellfire all through the prior book and that book).   Then Harry starts working it down and eventually turns Lash into a kind of an asset (likely an aspect for a while, once the consequence went away).  He needed to given he'd filled his extreme consequence with his roasted hand and his moderate with "Fear of Fire" (something he's also working to get into recovery but hasn't yet at the time of the conversation with Will/Georgia...he picked that up to power the Ventas Servitas spell to blow the flame back in the prior book after he took the extreme consequence from the attack itself).  Harry was fighting Dead Beat with most of his consequences filled before the story even started.

Harry not getting any help for the Denarian consequence (he kept the secret for a book and a half from everybody) before this was a compel on "I work Alone" aspect that he picked up after Susan got hurt....etc.   Really Fate is a very good game system for the Dresden Files.

By contrast, a mere concussion just requires him to make a deal with his Faerie godmother....which causes problems later and gives her power over him, but he's up and running minutes after being taken out.  Likewise in Dead Beat getting injured with a shuriken is such a minor deal that he uses getting it into recovery as an excuse to investigate and learn from contacts. Harry doesn't have any room on his stress track for consequences bigger than Minor.  (later, he gets taken out because of this and needs Butters and Mouse to save him)

As for social....Murphy's stress track filled up with social consequences for helping Dresden until it broke her high concept.  Recovering from social consequences is even harder than from mental ones...there's no actual mechanic but presumably you work through contacts and presence somehow.  Indeed the mere THREAT of a social consequence to her drives much of the plot of Dead Beat, because probably Murphy needed to clear some before she picked up any more, and she was working off a "Workaholic who isn't a REAL woman" social consequence picked up at her family reunion (and inflicted by her sister+ex) with Kincaid in Hawaii (which started going into recovery when he ...um...removed her pants as part of a defuse a bomb scene in the prior book)

[narphoenix]

There is another kind of perverse thing about the dresdenverse that works fairly well with consequence mechanics.

Supernatural healing of various kinds is fairly common, even Harry gets healed from time to time although he lacks such resources himself for most of the series.

But nobody easily comes back from mental or social consequences.  You need a therapist and time.  Harry started dealing with the consequences of picking up a Denarian coin only after he talked to Georgia and Will about the situation...until then it was bottled up inside and not even beginning to heal (she was basically pushing him to feel angry about every little slight and push his magic with rage and thus hellfire all through the prior book and that book).   Then Harry starts working it down and eventually turns Lash into a kind of an asset (likely an aspect for a while, once the consequence went away).  He needed to given he'd filled his extreme consequence with his roasted hand and his moderate with "Fear of Fire" (something he's also working to get into recovery but hasn't yet at the time of the conversation with Will/Georgia...he picked that up to power the Ventas Servitas spell to blow the flame back in the prior book after he took the extreme consequence from the attack itself).  Harry was fighting Dead Beat with most of his consequences filled before the story even started.

Harry not getting any help for the Denarian consequence (he kept the secret for a book and a half from everybody) before this was a compel on "I work Alone" aspect that he picked up after Susan got hurt....etc.   Really Fate is a very good game system for the Dresden Files.

By contrast, a mere concussion just requires him to make a deal with his Faerie godmother....which causes problems later and gives her power over him, but he's up and running minutes after being taken out.  Likewise in Dead Beat getting injured with a shuriken is such a minor deal that he uses getting it into recovery as an excuse to investigate and learn from contacts. Harry doesn't have any room on his stress track for consequences bigger than Minor.  (later, he gets taken out because of this and needs Butters and Mouse to save him)

As for social....Murphy's stress track filled up with social consequences for helping Dresden until it broke her high concept.  Recovering from social consequences is even harder than from mental ones...there's no actual mechanic but presumably you work through contacts and presence somehow.  Indeed the mere THREAT of a social consequence to her drives much of the plot of Dead Beat, because probably Murphy needed to clear some before she picked up any more, and she was working off a "Workaholic who isn't a REAL woman" social consequence picked up at her family reunion (and inflicted by her sister+ex) with Kincaid in Hawaii (which started going into recovery when he ...um...removed her pants as part of a defuse a bomb scene in the prior book)