Author Topic: Can Items Have Aspects Too? (Ideas From Diaspora)  (Read 1575 times)

Offline bibliophile20

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Can Items Have Aspects Too? (Ideas From Diaspora)
« on: March 28, 2011, 01:14:51 PM »
Just got my hands on Diaspora, going to be starting a short campaign tonight with some gamers from the club to give them a taste of GMing; we're going to rotate who is in the hot seat depending on which system we're in. 

Anyway, there were some ideas in there that I rather liked; for this thread, the idea I liked was Item Aspects.  First and foremost was the "Out Of Ammo" aspect that all slugthrowers got automatically; your enemy could compel it (you'd get the fate point) but you'd be, well, "out of ammo" if you didn't buy it off, at least until you reloaded.  I like this better than the book keeping approach of keeping track of how many bullets you've fired.  (Taking a "stunt" during the weapon creation called "High capacity magazine", which costs build points, removed that aspect)

Other aspects were ones like:

"Military Equipment" for guns, weapons, vehicles, armor, etc. You would need special training to use, maintain and transport correctly. (For a Dresdenverse game, that'd be an aspect I'd slap on anything not licensed for civilian use; you KNOW using it is going to cause fits at the police commissioner's office)

Cheap: crap weapons; makes the price cheaper by 1 shift to buy them.

And a personal favorite: "Transfer Aspect".  An aspect/special feature that the weapon has, but isn't covered in the given list, which is modeled by applying an aspect to the character so long as they have the weapon (one example given of a transfer aspect is a "net" of a sword and net set; build a sword and take the transfer aspect of "have a net").  For another versatility example, one of my fellow players and I designed a Goober Immobilization Gun for her gun-bunny character quite easily (we're debating what Color-Mods she has access to...)

So, I'm thinking about importing parts of this to my table; they won't have to keep track of how many rounds they've fired, but their enemies can compel that they've emptied their magazines and that sort of thing. 

Thoughts?
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Offline admiralducksauce

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Re: Can Items Have Aspects Too? (Ideas From Diaspora)
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2011, 01:33:58 PM »
I've been rolling with the idea that pretty much everything has at least a High Concept aspect relating to what it is.

A semi truck has "Truck" and can be invoked to do things a truck is good at, and compelled for things at which trucks suck.

It somewhat crosses the line between High Concepts and declarations, though.  You can declare that your opponent's FN FAL is a terribly long, unwieldy weapon for a gunfight inside an elevator car, OR I suppose you could compel the weapon's "FN FAL" aspect.