Excellent - I opted to ask him a few of my questions, and learned that you had asked him first, so when you get something, please definitely share them!
Well, he answered my questions, though he didn't say anything about my apology, so I suppose I'm on his sh*t list now. Sigh... ah well... guess I deserved it.
Anyway, here were my questions and his answers:
Me: Is there any one good plcae to go for official answers other than using this system? A mailing list? Forum somewhere else? Communion with the dead?
Fred: The Fate community relies heavily on peer authority. That means your fellow players and readers' answers are more readily available and just as good as ones we might be able to provide.
So the forum you're already on? Official. Peer authority.
The other places I could point you, like the FateRPG Yahoo Group? Official. Peer authority.
Official word-from-the-publisher? That concept doesn't play, here.
My thoughts, here, not emailed to Fred: I don't entirely buy the whole peer authority thing, simply because they bothered to publish the game in the first place, with rules they made, playtested, and put into print. With that in mind, I don't grok the entire peer authority thing. Note, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm saying that it doesn't feel right. Perhaps someone can explain this mindset to me?
Me: How are magical circles supposed to be implemented in the game? In YS, all it says is "it should behave somewhat like a threshold," but that seems inadequate. Up to now, while Dresden had Cauncy try to break through that circle, it seems that, overall, circles are utterly impregnable to magical energies. How should this be implemented in a game?
Fred: Honestly didn't feel like it was all that inadequate if you combine the description of thresholds found on YS230 with the notion of how one builds spell effects. You treat a circle like a block (the way a threshold acts like a block), that if you push through it, reduces your powers. Take a look at page YS230: as a block, as a suppressor, as a source of harm, etc. All of these concepts apply. The circle manifests as part of the spell effect you're constructing. Want to construct a Legendary threshold-equivalent magic circle? Your difficulty target starts at 8. Etc.
My thoughts, here, not emailed to Fred: But how does a normal person then build a magical circle, when they draw it in dirt with a stick? I'd really like to email him about this, but... well, see below.
Me: Fire: Dresden goes around setting people and places on fire all the time, but there are no rules for ongoing damage applied by the players; only aspects like On Fire, which does no ongoing damage, just becomes taggable; Claws with Venomous; environmental damage defined by the GM; and grapples, which does a mere 1 damage per turn, which seems appropriate for choking someone, but not for setting someone on fire. Should there not be some means of creating ongoing damage by the player (setting them on fire, whether by fire spell or molotov cocktail) that goes beyond 1 damage grapples?
Fred: Nope. You're thinking about simulating the fire of physical concepts. The game does not simulate physical concepts. It simulates story concepts. A story that goes like "The target burned; then he burned some more; then he burned some more; then he burned some more" is dull as dirt. What fire does in a story is force people to take action or change what they'd otherwise do (that's where tagging and invoke-for-effect and compel logic from aspects should play in). That said, if you want to construct your "ongoing fire" spell like a grapple, certainly, go ahead and do that. Or if you want to create one spell that makes two attacks, the second one delayed, go ahead and do that if your GM's willing to allow that kind of thing (but man, that's gonna be a difficult one). But the aspect notion should really be doing most of the heavy lifting here because of the role that fire plays in the story.
My thoughts, here, not emailed to Fred: And how does this work then? How is the game played with a target on fire? A compel every turn by the GM? The PC compelling the target to behave in some fashion? Something else? See, someone on fire, to me, should be taking damage in some fashion, and it just drives me nuts not thinking that way.
Me: Constructs: OW defines all kinds of different constructs, such as true golems (AI+natural materials), spell constructs, demons wearing ecto-suits, etc. Well, there's been a lot of discussion on how to make these other than GM fiat and hand-waving, and we are getting frustrated at the lack of any kind of guidelines whatsoever on this. So, the question here is... how are these constructed by a player character (as, obviously, a GM can just handwave behind the scenes for what his NPCs have).
Fred: Well, that's the thing. The player doesn't do that, really. The character gets the name of a demon or figures out a way to construct some kind of artificial behavioral patterning and hopes to hell the guesswork and research is on track. The reasons the rules are a bit soft around anything having to do with summoning is because we can't know what you're trying to pull off and even if we did we don't know in advance what the context of your game is when you're doing it. Go to summon a minor demon to answer a few questions, you might end up with no answer, or something incredibly powerful that you're going to find yourself in a contest of wills with. Call for a sylph, get the Queen of Air and Darkness. That's why there's GM fiat as a big component of that, because the GM is going to be inhabiting what you "create" and offering you challenges to maintain your control over it.
(More on this below.)
My thoughts, here, not emailed to Fred: Ok, so generally, they really don't envision PCs doing constructs.
Me: In other words, how, precisely, would a PC wizard use thaumaturgy to make a Victor Sells' Scorpion, Cassius' snakes spell, or ward hounds? There are no guidelines or rules whatsoever on how to stat out such magical efforts for a PC to go by.
Fred: For those, honestly, I'd run it along the lines of what it takes to create a spell that kills such things. Think about it: taking out a target means you get to utterly define what happens to it. Such as "becomes subservient to me". So what would it take to build a thaumaturgy spell that one-shot kills the above? That's probably the equal or the ballpark of what it would take to utterly control such a creature. Shorter-term control could orient on reliably inflicting consequences of an impermanent nature. Just to moderate things a little more, I might also tack on a difficulty surcharge equal to twice the refresh cost of the creature's abilities (drawing directly from the stated logic in stunt construction that 1 refresh = 2 shifts of some kind of effect) -- or, if your GM doesn't find the notion of "you must 'kill' it to control it" appealing, use that as your summoning difficulty guideline instead. (The breadth of magic in DF is so great, we do expect people to extrapolate from existing principles rather than provide explicit step by steps for every possible thing.)
My thoughts, here, not emailed to Fred: Ok, makes sense to me.
Me: Of course, I suppose anyone making a construct will have to apply that against magical item slots or some such?
Fred: I wouldn't involve magic item slots at all. Constructed things are usually very short term. That said if you think you can build an enchanted item that produces the amounts of shifts needed to summon, bind, and control the thing in question, you could end up using slots for that item for a longer-term thing. The spell effect necessary defines what you can achieve in that regard. But really: long-term constructs and so forth are not the stuff of the novels. You don't see wizards dripping with long-term construct creatures; they're hard, and one of the few examples we have were created by Ancient Mai.
My thoughts, here, not emailed to Fred: Again, so not really expecting any construct-construction thingies here.
And then he send me an email chastising me for my attitude, even though I apologized. Ah well. Again, I deserved it, I guess, and now I'm afraid about asking him follow-up questions, so I guess I'll just keep my mouth shut from here on out. Shame on me
