The Far Marches: Aspect Creation

They go by many names: Hunters, Slayers, Rangers, Explorers, and other more esoteric titles. Whatever they are called they they travel into the darkness in search of treasure, fame, and glory. They travel in squads, parties, groups, and cabals out into the wilderness, the forgotten ruins of the old world. They exist in a world of danger and adventure, outside of, but parallel to society at large. They are bring wealth and safety to the wild lands on the edge of civilization. They are disliked, but necessary. They are The Adventurers.

Alrighty, back when I first started this project I had a specific set of aspects I wanted to use for the PCs:
High Concept, You All Meet Up In A Bar, Your First Dungeon, Backstory, and Epic Destiny. As you can probably tell I was being a little bit flippant when I wrote those up. That said I like a lot of what those represent. The classic adventurer sits outside of civilization, yet is dependent on and supportive of it too. Like the classic western these are the dangerous people who go out into the world and tame the dangerous parts but once tamed those parts have no room for the dangerous people anymore. There is a bit of the shaman here as well. You stand outside the city and interact with the gods and demons for those who dwell within. Its also a bit like a lot of post apocalypse adventure fiction as well, where there was a great world once and now you travel into the ruins of the old world to gather resources to help you in the new world.

The World Uncharted

In the previous post I set out that I would like to have two types of personal aspects, Character Aspects and Reputation Aspects. There was a bit of discussion in the comments on how best to go about it and whether or not I should have players start out with reputations already or whether I should have the reputations grow outward from zero. So here is what I have come up with as of right now for character creation part 1, aspects:

Aspects

When you first make your character you will need to create three aspects that represent the more permanent and essential parts of your character. These three aspects are called Character Aspects(I know, right? how do I come up with such original and awesome terminology? It's like a gift or something).

High Concept: This represents the core of your character, very often a stunt tree or two will be attached to this Aspect as it is the least likely to change over time. I would like to come up with something a little more old school for the name of this aspect, but it is pretty standard Fate stuff here for this one.

Belief: I'ma steal this from Jadepunk and kind of mash it in with inciting incident(also from Jadepunk). For this aspect figure out why your character is adventuring and what keeps them adventuring. This could be wealth, fame, love , or even a total disconnect from normal society. Basically this aspect is your reason for adventuring.

Backstory: I just really like this as an aspect. I do think it it needs to be character focused though. This aspect should relate to how your character's history family and the like relates to why they are outsiders and why they adventure. Every aspect should relate to why you adventure.

Once you have those three aspects you may move on to work out your skills and the ladder and stunts from the stunt trees and all that stuff which will be in future posts. Very exciting, not gonna lie, I am excited. Now on to the second part of the aspects, the Reputation Aspects(again, not to toot my own horn but I am just nailing these super creative names for things). You do not start out with any Reputation aspects , but you do get two reputation slots. How you gain reputation aspects is like so.

At the end of an adventure, which should be roughly equivalent to a significant milestone, the person you your left will make a reputation aspect for you that represents something that happened in the adventure or how people respond to you do to the outcome of the adventure. That is how you get the first one. The second reputation aspect happens at the end of the second adventure(the next significant milestone)but instead of the person your left you get the aspect from the person on your right. Once you have two Reputation aspects they will change at every significant milestone, and be written by the person on your right or left depending on which aspect you are changing. If you want to start as less of a blank slate and more connected to the world around you you could start with one or both aspects already pre-created. This would be a more advanced character, more connected and known. If that makes sense.

I had a bit of a thought as I built this character aspect rules set. I want there to be a party character sheet. I am still not fully sure how I want it to work, but I think it would be interesting for you to get rid of one of your personal aspects at a major milestone(or something) and use that to alter and grow your Adventuring Party Sheet(man I am on fire with these names, just...so...creative). I would like this adventuring party sheet to cover something similar to what is used in Blades in the Dark for the group sheet and the maps and such. It is a really spiffy system and I think there is a lot there I can fiddle with. I think it would be interesting as well that you could take your reputation and give it to your group as a whole...in a way. Like I said this is just an idea I had as I was writing this post. It is incomplete, but I think there is something in it. So I will add a post on it later on.

And that is what I have for personal aspect creation in this hack. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Often it is difficult for me to keep writing if I don't have feedback. So if you have some feedback, by all means let me hear it. The next post, I think will delve into skills and the choices I have made along those lines here.

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