 |
| http://no.wallpapersus.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Abstrakt-Green-Smoke.jpg |
An in-depth look at skills. You will need to have access to the Fate Core rules to get the most out of this post. Check out the Kickstarter, all it takes is a buck and you get access to the whole shebang. I am not liking how I worded the Spirit section, any thoughts on that would be very helpful. Having been writing game material for almost thirty days straight now, I have had some thoughts on the process. Writing for RPGs is very different from the other types of writing I have done. Normally when I am writing I spend all day spewing forth a steady stream of words and then going back through later and making it clear. In game writing I spend all day working on details. I will write a few sentences, look at them and then look at them again. Editing three to four sentences is weird.
Affinity
Description: Everything is connected.Or more to the point, everything can be connected. This skill deals with the connections between people, places, and things. It is a difficult skill to fully grasp on its own. The easiest example is movement and teleportation.
Overcome: you roll to move through rough or blocked terrain, or to move further or faster. This could be via teleportation, seven-league-stride-altering you form to a faster one, cybernetics, or whatever. This can also be used to understand the connection between things, roll to find out what that connection is. This could be post-cognition(the past connects to the present), some sort of Kirlian apparatus(aura reading the connection between people), or whatever.
Advantage: Creating an advantage with this skill is changing the distance, altering the relationship, or creating a new relationship: being in two places simultaneously, Someone liking yo for no real reason(this does not manipulate memory, just relationship).
Attack: You attack to break down relationships, physical or mental. Mental attacks are easier with this, but physical attacks are also doable. remember this is about altering an existing relationships and affinities. Major movement(kinetic energy) is covered by Forces. Attacking someone mentally(altering there relationship with another person or thing) will not change the memories of how they were, just the emotions of how they relate. If you have ever fallen out of love, its a lot like that. Physically altering the affinity of someone with gravity or there connection to the world can send them flying into things.
Defend: You defend with this skill by altering where you were, or altering when you were, or altering how people view you. You can stop someone from hating you, or wanting you dead.
Elan Vital
Description:There is a difference between the living and the nonliving. What the difference is has been debated and fought over for many cycles. But the difference is there. This skill deals with living things. Examples include manipulation of form, creation of/summoning creatures and people, and anything dealing with living things.
Overcome: Use this skill to understand living things and the residue they leave behind. you can see the living, know the living, feel the living, and in all ways comprehend them. This may also be used to create a new living thing. This could be done with some kind of mystic circle(summoning), A genetics lab(creation), or a spidey sense(sensing living things)
Advantage: Creating advantage with this skill would involve temporarily changing yourself or adding temporary creatures to the scene. Shape shifting, Biokinesis, summoning(pokemon style), and any other short term life effect works well for this.
Attack: Again this can be done with claws or a summoned creature, or simply rending the forces of life itself. Disintegration effects and the like are just as good as claws and fangs.
Defend: You can form a hard carapace, have a creature you create jump in front of the attack, or changing your form to move quicker. This is using life as your defense.
Forces
Description:There are things that exist, being neither life, spirit,nor matter. These things are known as forces. they direct and follow laws. those laws can change, but to be a force law must apply. Fire, speed, kinetic force, gravity, light, and many many others are examples of forces.
Overcome: To know what forces are affecting you, understanding of them. Removing obstacles and barriers are also there.
Advantage: Creating advantages with this is very easy, moving faster, removing gravity, altering the flow of light, adding heat, or removing it are all the kind of advantages you can create.
Attack: Forces are a blunt force in a fight.lighting things on fire, shoving them, breaking them, rending the very universe around you itself. Forces are not often subtle, and when they are subtle, they are lethal in unpredictable ways.
Defend: Using the forces of the universe to block(force field. eh? eh?), to increase your speed, or to reduce the speed of others. Much like attacking with this skill, defending is not subtle. This is the brute force solution.
Matter
Description: The 'things' in the universe are made of matter. Matter has no person-hood. It has no animation, no life. Matter is the stuff of the universe.
Overcome: To create/change matter(lead to gold, or creating a table, both are doable), remove/overcome obstacles(create a door in the wall, or just flatten the wall).
Advantage: when creating items you can treat them as short term aspects(longer term stuff is much harder), also you can alter the terrain around you to aid you in a conflict. Building traps and understanding your environment can give you subtle advantages with this skill. Beware the master of matter for they are long in memory and subtle in their anger. Often this skill is technological or highly ritualistic, it takes time to shape the world, and the masters of this skill often take the long view on things.
Attack: You can do a direct attack with matter(earthquakes, heaving a boulder at them, using a gun), or indirectly(weird Rube Goldbergesque coincidences, cars flying off the road and hitting the bad guy, guns exploding in their face, and the like).
Defend: The attacker fails because suddenly there is a wall there, or the ground pitched to the side, or his bullets refuse to harm you. If they are using a weapon, they are making a mistake. That weapon is made of matter, and that is all you need to stop them.
Psyche
Description:The mind is a haunted house, a labyrinth with no map. masters of this skill are the guides that can get you in and out, they know the rules of the mind and can change themselves or anyone else as easily as breathing.
Overcome: to know the thoughts of others, you can create a mind(in a body if you build it with Life), understanding others is the purview of this skill.
Advantage: against a mind you can create advantages all day. you can ask questions that cut them to the core, you can find the core of their beliefs, tear away the layers of deception and see the truth of them, and all other forms of mental manipulation.
Attack: Attacking the mind directly can lead to aneurisms, or crisis of faith, loss of belief, or severe brain damage.
Defend: to attack the master of Psyche is folly, for they know what you are going to do as soon as you do. they have altered their minds to deal with stress. they have sped up their mental processes, and are so smart that the confrontation was won before you even got there. they are the psychics and super geniuses of the Magi community. Tread carefully around them.
Spirit
Description: there are beings and locations that exist in neither matter, life, nor mind. these are places and beings of spirit. Masters of the art often claim that spirit is the prime material of the universe. That all things started out as spirit and the other concepts came later. The other are creatures of almost pure spirit, so there is some traction with that theory. they do not have minds or bodies(though they can if they choose) they merely believe things without thought. they are alien. If spirit is the prime material of the universe, that says many strange things about the nature of being.
Overcome: To find your way in the spirit pathways, or to create/summon a spirit being, or overcome a barrier of spirit. You can travel through the spirit realm and understand its inhabitants.
Advantage: creating an advantage with spirit involves the spiritual places and beings. it is difficult to create an advantage against a Magi or shadow with this skill.
Attack: Attacking spirits and spiritual entities is the primary focus of the attack action with this skill.
Defend: defending from spirits and spiritual attacks.
Tempus
Description: Time is the ordering of events sequentially along a path through a fourth dimension. It flies, it heals all wounds, and it marches on. Time is the eternal river, flowing inexorably to the end of days. It makes nonsense of infinity and requires eternity. Time is a truly subtle skill.
Overcome: to see the streams of time, the future, the past, all things are revealed in time. overcoming obstacles, or altering the time stream(time travel)
Advantage: Creating advantages with time is easy, anything where forethought would be useful, or where speeding up or slowing down time would be handy is fair game. you can travel back in time and give yourself aid in the current battle, or leave the item you need for yourself.
Attack: You ever see the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? The part where Donovan(I think that was his name) drinks and ages to death and dust in seconds? Yeah, you can do that. or you can alter time to hit precisely and hard. or you can study each and every micro expression in slow motion.
Defend: You know where all the attacks are coming from, you have seen it in a thousand futures. Dodging attacks is as simple as walking across the room. You can play the temporal game, having left yourself a clue or item you need to defend. Or you can jump back in time and stop the attack from happening.
No comments:
Post a Comment