Stunts

Stunts?

Okay, I feel like I owe you all an apology. I have not been posting for several months, and that is a pretty big failure on my part. In my defence, I have had a health scare of a larger than I like to find at the same time as I started a new job, and I will be honest and say those things don't work well together. I looked back at some of the drafts I wrote in the last few months, and they were frankly gibberish. Or more gibberish than usual.


So, stunts. I make no bones about the fact that I am much more of a trad gamer than a lot of big fate fans. I mean, I love fate, and I recognise that aspects are pretty much its unique selling point, but I also like that it takes that story game sort of feeling and puts it with a normal old-fashioned RPG.

I think that if you are playing fate, then a lot of the interest and uniqueness of your pc are going to come from your stunts. They are a big part of how they mechanically define your pc and their abilities that are different from other people with similar skill choices.

Back to Spirit of the Century

So, I am running fate for a party who are not generally big fate gamers. One of them, however, had loved the hell out of spirit of the century when it came out, and he was deeply disappointed by the stunts in fate core when he got a hold of them. Why? because the stunts in spirit of the century were big, often narrative things. They gave you permissions and large abilities that others did not have a  lot of the time. Examples included being able to land a plane anywhere where it was physically possible (which could be upgraded to add being able to land where it was not physically possible) or being able to declare that minion number 4 in the next scene was you in disguise all along! These were awesome permissions, but then he got a +2 to deceive to create a disguise and felt underwhelmed.

As soon as he mentioned it, I understood and to a certain degree, agreed. I also loved the bigger stunts of Spirit and was a little sad when I read the stunts chapter of fate core. In the time since reading it and running fate core a lot, though, I reckon you could still do those things without having to change much about stunts except how you think about them

Now back to fate core.

Okay, I love fate a lot. I run it all the time. I play it whenever I can. I write a blog about it. I am a fate nerd. But the section of fate core that left me the most disappointed when I read it was the section on creating stunts. I don't think it was well written or explained, and I think that has damaged a lot of fate games since, mechanically. It generally gives three guidelines for what a stunt can do:

Add 2 to an action of a particular skill under a specific circumstance.

Okay. This is solid, workable and deeply unexciting. It allows you to say you are good at something specific within a skill. My main problem with these is they are very boring. I don't feel like they add a lot to a character if you have these other than increasing competence. I mean, when I am playing, I often have one of these skills, since they are mechanically strong, but I don't want more as they are not exciting. I can see why people are not enthused.

My advice: Think of the thing you want your pc to do well, or be a badass at. Probably put that skill at your pinnacle or one less. Then add a +2 stunt for the thing you want to do particularly. This will generally mean you are good at a thing.

Add an action to a skill 

Right, this is an improvement. This is at least adding something to what a character can do as a new outlet. When you tell a thief that they can attack with stealth if they are invoking the aspect "in hidden club", then you have just given someone the backstab mechanic. Nice. I have had some stunts from this category for players. Some of my favourite PCs I have played have had these stunts.

This is a good set of stunts, in my opinion, and closer to the sort of things we used to have in spirit of the century. Mechanically, they are pretty sound. You can normally get a pretty solid upgrade by adding actions to a skill you already have at a good rate, and you can get a lot of narrative heft by interpreting pretty liberally the things going on in the stunt.

My advice: Look for something that you can make do with a stunt like this. They are often easy to make interesting and characterful. Find a skill you are good at, something you are bad at and think about how you could use the skill you are good at to do the thing you are bad at in a narratively sensible manner.

Rules exception

Finally, this is the one. This is the one which will allow you do do all the weird and wonderful things you want your pc to be able to do. But with anything as vague as this, you always run into a  problem of having to ask the GM what your stunt is allowed to do. There is an enormous amount of potential here, but also huge variance between games. As a GM, you need to make sure that you do not let this be too much more powerful than the other types of stunts.  But there needs to be a bit of thought about what sort of thing you will allow here. I am always pretty happy to allow something narrative like the old barnstormer stunt. I even allowed the old master of disguise where you declare that you were one of the mooks all along, but I did say that they could only do it once a milestone.

Is it a good design space? I am not sure. It is a little vague for a catch-all stunt area. I would have loved a little more care and detail in this section since there is very little to go on for what the stunts made by this set of rules should generate. 

Conclusion

I am not ready to conclude. But this is getting long. I want to talk about the toolkit stunts and how they are a bit better, and what I do in my games. But to sum up: stunts are super important in my opinion, can help fight the fate detractor's common call that all characters feel and play the same, but they could have been better served by having this section written a little better and with more detail and fun things to do. Next week I will write up my advice. But for now, thanks!