An afternoon with Fate

The Fate RPG caught my attention at the start of the pandemic when the publisher, Evil Hat, offered some sourcebooks for free. I can't even remember how I heard about that, to be honest, but it piqued my interest and I started reading some more about it. The different versions of the RPG confused me for a bit. I started by reading some Fate Core, then I found Fate Accelerated (FAE), which is a briefer version that, it turns out, is still in keeping with Core. I read through some of FAE, then learned about Fate Condensed, and this one seemed like it might be the right size for me to try out. However, even when reading Condensed, I found that I had to go back to Core to try to wrap my head around some essential ideas such as invoking aspects.

I gave my family a heads-up during an evening walk that I wanted to try running a one-shot of a fiction-first RPG with whomever was interested. I explained that it could be any setting at all, and I encouraged them to think of one that might be interesting. This afternoon, I invited any who were interested to actually sit down, make a world, create some characters, and try a session. My 13-year-old, 10-year-old, and 5-year-old all expressed interest, so we set down to it.

We batted around a few ideas for the world. The first suggestion was a sword-and-sorcery world, but I said I'd rather not use that since it's too familiar. (Also, I have secret plans to try Unlimited Dungeon with them.) Other ideas that were mentioned included steampunk, Star Wars, and age of exploration. I suggested we could combine the steampunk and exploration idea and make a world of floating cities and airships. We were all pretty excited about this, so we set into making characters. The eldest wanted to make a tinkerer, and he got started making Fredrick Sparksmith the Expert Mechanic without trouble. The second son had some trouble narrowing down what he wanted: some kind of fighter, thief, sneaky character. After some back and forth, he settled on the concept of "sneaky deserter." To establish his premise, we decided that the floating cities were all independent, and there was an ongoing war between the Kingdom of Terrinoth (the city's name taken from Runebound's world, of course) and the Republic of Loramor. His character, Danny Lorens, had been a soldier for Terrinoth who deserted after his team were nearly all wiped out. The team lacked a captain, so I asked the youngest if he would want to play the captain of an airship. We worked up Apple Cider (which was also the name of his Exspelled character), the Adventurous Captain. 

During this discussion, we returned to the world. I remembered having read in Fate Core that it's good to start with two setting aspects, potentially one current issue and one impending issue. The war between Terrinoth and Loramor was an obvious current issue, so I suggested we try to come up with an impending issue. At first, the boys focused on side-effects of the war, such as resource shortages and rebellions, but I suggested that these were sort of implied by the war and maybe we should try something separate. I was thinking a bit about Dungeon World fronts here. (I wrote about my first game of Dungeon World a few weeks ago.) I suggested something like a looming disaster, like an oncoming storm. The conversation turned to whether or not there really was a ground beneath the floating cities or not, and we decided there wasn't. One of the boys then suggested that there could be some kind of evil coming from the depths themselves, and we came up with the idea of the Shadow Creatures: beings that were increasingly coming up from the depths and attacking airships, and now everyone was afraid to fly or even go out at night.

After a brief recess, we got back together. I asked Apple Cider what kind of treasure he might be seeking, to which the answer was donuts. On one hand, that's a good answer, but on the other hand, I think we can see that there's a disconnect between the narrative desires of 5-year-olds and 10–13-year-olds. The little guy was awfully bored during character creation and actually had asked to leave. I worked out his skills for him and then invited him back to the table for the storytelling part. Even here, though, he did not last long. He changed his mind from donut to trophy, and so I set the initial scene as the group flying to a "scatter" of islands (our word for the equivalent of an airborne archipelago) that were currently being fought over by Terrinoth and Loramor. One of the islands held the treasure, or at least a key to it. However, the ship was stopped by a scouting party of Loramor soldiers, and were asked to identify themselves.

We had some fun with this encounter, and I'm of two minds about it now. My intention was to use it to explain the rules of play, since we really hadn't talked about them yet. I had explained only that aspects and skills were useful, and we had just skipped entirely over Stunts, figuring I could help guide them in those definitions as we played. I think the scenario was useful here, but it was also hardly in media res. I wonder if I should have done something more adventurous. 

They got to the floating island in the scatter and found an ancient vault when the scouts they saw previously got into a firefight with some from Terrinoth. As the heroes opened the vault, the battle escalated, and this put them into a spot: should they try to sail away and risk being seen as enemy combatants, or should they stay and risk being on the island at night? They chose the latter. 

Naturally, this is where I had some shadow creatures prowl around the ship. By this point, the five-year-old really had had enough and left, but I had invited by 7-year-old to join us and play Apple Cider. He was happy to do so, and he loved the game. I knew he would, given that he loves storytelling and he reads effortlessly. I'm sure all the text on the character sheets and index cards was frustrating at best for the littlest guy. In any case, Apple Cider had the aspect, "Takes on more than he can handle," so I compelled him to want to take a shot and see if he could capture one of these mysterious creatures. He loved that, and we started our only Conflict of the game. It was highly cinematic, and the boys loved being able to describe their actions, even if they found it challenging to improvise a compelling narrative. Highlights include: a shadow creature leaping onto a lamp and turning it from a "light" (that spreads light) into a "dark" (that spreads dark); Fredrick running in to turn off the "dark", but accepting a compel for his Scatterbrained aspect that made him forget the switches and just wildly turn things on and off; Danny getting a Success with Style to throw one of his daggers through a shadow creature and right into the "dark", shattering it.

This is where we wrapped it up, not exactly a cliffhanger but with more questions than answers. Thinking back, I clearly had "campaign" mindset rather than "one-shot" mindset. All the boys said they would happily play again, the older two especially feeling like we had made a really exciting and interesting world. 

Even with my one-page cheatsheet from the Condensed rules, I still found it hard to think about the conflict resolution rules. In particular, it wasn't always clear to me when I should simply set a difficulty for an Overcome vs. create a Challenge, Contest, or Conflict. I intend to re-read the corresponding portions of the rulebooks. After having taken a quick look at the FAE character sheets, I'm wondering if the reduced number of skills would actually make that a better fit for the table. Balsera-Style initiative, which I think everyone at the table enjoyed, could easily be imported from Condensed to FAE. 

Another problem I ran into is who makes choices in the face of failure. The one-page sheet leaves it ambiguous who makes the decision between Failure or Success at a Major Cost; the full rules explanation, however, makes it clear that it's a discussion with the GM and, potentially, the defending player. I realize too in cursory re-reading of a few pages of the rulebook that our conflict looked maybe too much like D&D combat rather than fiction-first. I need to remember to turn the narration over to the player rather than feeling like I have to take that all myself. It's not that I didn't do this right at all, but it's a matter of degrees, and the fiction-first approach is the direction I want to lean toward.

One area I can definitely improve is giving sensory descriptions of the scene and using these to define aspects. I really did not do this enough, focusing more on ensuring I had the rules right in my head than providing a compelling scenario description. 

Another problem I should have seen coming is that I could not read the other players' character sheets during the game. I really need to have my own copy of their aspects so that I can more readily scan them for opportunities to compel.

In summary, we had a great time, and we all enjoyed the world that we created. Part of me would like to go back there, but part of me would also like to try something completely different, maybe with FAE, to see what the boys think. The two younger ones definitely were excited by the combat, but it was really fun to see how the older one recognized he didn't have to stand and shoot: he could instead modify the environment.