I have a chart. I should post it some day soon. Anne...I dont know how to work the internet, could you post the chart on here somehow? (Anne: See the Fatebonds page for more detail.)
It lists on the left, all the positive fatebonds you have, and on the right the negative ones you have.
Each week, an equal amount of xp equal to how much you got goes into both the left and right side of the chart. When they get enough xp, they buy you something(or have you lose something).
So lets say on the right side, you have animal ken, because you have a positive fatebond to animal ken. Each week I'll put some xp in animal ken, and when it reaches 10 xp(you're 5th dot of animal ken). They buy you that dot of animal ken and you dont have to spend any of your own xp on it.
However lets say you also have negative fatebond to fire, but you have several fire boons(you should probably fix that). Your highest level is the 3rd dot of fire "summon salamander". Your fatebonds slowly save up, and when they have 15xp, they buy off that dot of fire. You can stop this by buying another fire boon(or knack, or ability dot). However, if it is successfully bought off, that 15 xp travels to the positive side, and add to the xp they have there to buy stuff for you.
There are a couple caveats for balance:
Because the fatebonds are getting the xp, that actually means the players are getting less xp. If I felt like at that legend they needed 16 xp to get by, they only get to spend 8, and the fatebonds spend 8.
Because of this, fatebonds buy stuff at a 20% discount. So although the players may feel like their losing xp(although after only a month or so they just got used to it, and now its 2nd nature), its being spent at an increased rate to sort of balance that out.
If you stop them from buying something off, it goes to the next thing on the negative fatebond list to attempt to buy off. If you "protect" them from buying off everything in a row, and then rebuy the first thing again(in our example, fire) then all the negative xp goes away, and you have saved your things.
Ex: The characters fatebonds have enough xp to buy off a fire boon. The other negative fatebonds are health, and wits. If they save fire(and there is enough negative xp) they then buy off health, if that is also saved, they'll attempt to buy off wits. If that is saved then they attempt to buy off fire once again, but if that is saved again. All the negative xp they have accrued disappears and they start from scratch.
Because of this players often save for the deluge when they need to buy many things at once to save their stats.
Whenever a stat is bought off, for that character, that stat forever costs 1 additional xp per time it has been bought off. This was necessary because otherwise players would let things be bought off to take advantage of the increased fatebond xp rate, but then just buy them back later at the same cost, losing nothing, but gaining xp.
The system starts out very slowly around legend 5 as players accumulate fatebonds, and grows and changes through demigod(god is a whole nother ball game that I'll get into another day).
It can seem very harsh, and no one likes their powers being taken away, but it goes very far towards creating a system that represents the characters becoming less human and more divine. Their myths and legends change who they are and what they can do. Human belief actually ends up spending their xp, changing their vary abilities and powers as they grow toward godhood.
I think few people however can grasp it in a positive way without living through it. It also requires extreme trust in your ST, which not everyone has the luxury of having.
It also kinda adds a fun 30 minute mini game at the end of every session.
Im sure people will have some questions and many will not be "happy" with it. So please feel free to ask away, but we've been doing it for 3 years in 5 different games and its worked very well for us so far.
(there are also some extra nitty gritty things that are harder to explain(like how much xp each thing gets based on how many people are fatebond to that thing), that I'll skip)
How about increasing the xp award the higher you go. 5x regular xp for demigod and 10x xp for god? The session+ story bonus multiplied by five or ten.
ReplyDeleteThat seems like a ton of xp. 60 per game, with 120 per end of story game?
ReplyDeletemaybe but when you think about the high cost of boons and epic attributes at the highest levels. One of the main complaints about the game is how much progress grinds to a halt at the higher levels due to the increasing xp costs and the static award system. I think most players give up when it takes 2 to 3 times longer progressing there demigod and god characters than it did their hero characters.
DeleteIt depends how quickly you want the players to grow. You have to think about the characters "purchasing power" How long it takes them to buy the things they want. We'll represent this with a max epic(not associated for math ease). We'll start with a legend 2 scion getting 5 xp per game, and show a trending line based on your suggestion of xp increase.
DeleteLegend 2: 5 xp per game. New epic in 2 weeks
Legend 3: 5 xp per game. New epic in 2 weeks
Legend 4: 5 xp per game. New epic in 3 weeks.
Legend 5: 25 xp per game. New epic every week(5 bonus)
Legend 6: 25 xp per game. New epic every week
Legend 7: 25 xp per game. Almost a new epic each week
Legend 8: 25 xp per game. Almost 2 epics/3 weeks
Legend 9: 50 xp per game. New epic every week(10 bonus
Legend 10: 50 xp per game. New epic every week(5 bonus
Legend 11: 50 xp per game. New epic every week
Legend 12: 50 xp per game. Really close to epic weekly
So theres a basic lay out. It makes the demigod/god jumps really powerful in terms of purchasing power. I like players to think players can get something small every week, something medium every two weeks, and something large every 3 weeks. I think its perfect for scaling their power, but still letting them have fun. There is also that feeling of euphoria that you have when you get something you've been saving for(depending on your age you may not know this yet), and its an important thing for players to feel, so I wouldnt want them to be able to buy their biggest stuff weekly because then that feeling is gone.
I think 5 xp per game into demigod is absurd. However I also think 25 is absurd. I think its important to find a happy medium. I believe at legend 5 I went with 8 per game, and at 6 it was 10 per game.
I've never actually heard of players giving up at demigod and god, almost all games that I hear break up at demigod and god are from the ST not being able to handle the power creep in a meaningful way.
I actually have never heard of an ST still giving 5 xp per game at demigod and god, have you experienced this? How many sessions did it last at still 5 xp a game? Because that is a huge lack of mathskills/empathy on the part of the ST if they cant see those problems arising.
I understand that your players have a lot of trust in you, but most players are not as good as yours. How would you recommend explaining the system to players who get upset that you are giving them powers that don't fit their character concepts?
ReplyDeleteIt's easier if you're just starting a game; if you explain up front that this is something the system does, as well as noting that it doesn't really kick in much until Legend 5 or 6, most players will be ready for the idea when it finally happens. As with any game, though, you have to gauge your players and their preferences; if you have someone who will absolutely hate the mechanic, you may need to decide either to not use it out of deference to them, or to suggest that this game might not be for them.
DeleteThe great thing about the Fatebond system is that it's directly affected by what you do. If you want Fatebonds that give you Strength, get out there and start knocking things down so that the people can see you're strong. If you want Fatebonds that give you Fire, light some shit up until they believe in you. Conversely, if they're giving you, say, Illusion, and you are not an illusionist, being spectacularly bad at it in front of people goes a long way toward convincing them to stop expecting it from you; hilarious hijinks have occasionally occurred when our players, trying to get rid of someone buying them that pesky off-concept power, have chosen the worst roll they possess for it and gone out with intent to fail.
It's true that a few of our players have ended up with a few things that they never intended to buy; Sangria has a few Illusion boons, for example, and Will ended up with several dots of Science (Chemistry). But more often than not, things characters didn't intend to buy actually become a big theme for them; without Fatebonds, Marcus would never have started getting Moon, which became a huge facet of his character, and Aurora would never have had enough Stamina to survive her prophecies.
Hi! I'm one of the players in John's game (Goze (Terminus), Will, John Doe)
DeleteI remember when fatebonds had begun showing up in our games. John had begun by telling us that we'd get +2d to a roll. It wasn't all the time, just when we were in a specific area where we'd dropped a good deal of our legend. We didn't think much of it, just that something to our advantage happened.
Of course there's the flip side to that. Eventually we'd try to do something else and he'd say we had -2d. It probably came up during that same game. And we probably said something along the lines of. "Ok. how come?" And a simple explanation ensued that probably consisted of:
"When you spend legend around non legendary people, there's a chance that you'll be fatebound to each other When that occurs they become latched onto that stat. There's also a negative side to that where they'll go for something contradictory. If If you have a plus to the Sun Purview, you might get a negative to the Darkness Purview"
So i'd start simple with any players who are new to the thought. Ease them in and explain a bit of the system. Tell them about the perception knack 'Sense Fatebond'. It can add another dimension to the game. It did for me on Terminus. Avoid piling on the info though. It's not something they need to understand fully right away. With some cool storytelling plots, it could also be a good reveal for the players. Perhaps a Cautionary tale.
I mean hell, Will has +140autos to his Survival rolls that comes with some SERIOUS consequences and it's in the worst way. If it were just 1 to 1 that'd be great. But his fatebonds were "underdeveloped" and they saw that he was GREAT at Fire, Wits, Survival (can you guess what i did a lot?) For 4 games we were in a situation where all i could effectively do was Dragon's Breathe. It was a HUGE legend dump and that's all the mortals "saw". So they did as any people who can't explain what they saw did. They filled in the blanks. Randomly. Great bonuses to a few things. Lots of Negatives to, quite literally, everything else. It took a lot of work, legend, and deeds with the right people to dig him out of that horrible hole. Now he's just ok with some things but still nuked on others.
Fatebonds... they're a tricky game. Hope that helps a little...
You're terminus and Will Nodstrom? How do you manage two players at once, and do any of the other players have more than one character?
ReplyDeleteSome of them do, while others stick to just one character. We run several interconnected games, so they're never played at the same time; Terminus runs different nights and with a different band than Will does, and so on and so forth.
DeleteBarring special crossover events (which are rare), we generally wouldn't allow players to play more than one character at once; not only would it be difficult for them to do so effectively and with any level of thorough roleplaying, it'd have the potential to monopolize game-time centering on one player, since with two characters they'd need much more of the spotlight than others.
Hello Mystery Friend!
DeleteBecause of the awesome time and effort John and Anne put into this world of ours, there are several games going. A couple of them have had some brief (and do i mean brief) crossovers but on the whole, I'd rather not play Will and Terminus at the same time... that'd be a nightmare.
To actually answer your question there, Sophia and Kettila are played by the same player, as are Sangria and Aurora.
We spend a lot of time ruining things for the other game that lives in this continuity. It's pretty cool.