Question: While your Fatebinding system sets things up to make fatebinding less trivial, I feel it goes too far. How is robbing control of character ability justifiable? I mean, while the syphon thing is bad, the 'phantom' xp is practically inexcusable from a game design standpoint.
And we think you could not be more wrong. So we have that in common, at least!
Something we've striven very hard for with the Fatebinding system is to make sure that it never takes control of the character away from the player. It makes life easier or harder, depending on what Fatebonds have attached and what the PC is trying to do, but that's what the original system in the book was designed to do; all we did was emphasize it so that it wasn't totally ignorable by everyone over Legend six. The great thing about our Fatebinding system is that if you get Fatebonds you don't like, or that are making things hard for you, you can always go change them. There are actually direct ways of doing this thanks to spells like Meddlesome Fates and Twist the Web, boons like Shuck Fate or artifacts like the Well of Urd, but it doesn't even need to be that complicated; everybody, regardless of magical ability, has the power to alter their Fatebonds through action.
Some mortal thinks you're weak and that's making your damage rolls go down? Go find some other mortals, start spending Legend and lifting battleships in front of them, and presto, suddenly you've evened out or even gained bonuses to your Strength. The entire point of Fatebonds is that they're the very tangible effect of your legends being believed in by humanity; if they've got the impression that you're stupid, you can always just go do something legendary that involves your incredible brains, and guess what? They will change their minds! If legends are being repeated about you that don't embody what you want to be as a demigod or god, go generate legends that do. The Fatebond system encourages PCs to do and be what they want to be; if they're acting like the ideal version of themselves they want to be, odds are people will begin believing in it, whereas if they do a bunch of things that are at odds with their self-proclaimed role, it stands to reason that they may find that their actions are saying something quite different from their ideas and that the mortals (and Fate) around them recognize it. It's not taking control of the PCs away from the players; on the contrary, it's in a very real way forcing them to take complete control of their characters and decide where they want them to go.
Your complaints about game design are off-base. I mean, yeah, if we were designing a game that aimed to have nothing whatsoever to do with character advancement and leave it entirely in the hands of the players, then yeah, it would be poor game design, but that's not what we're doing, so judging us as if we were trying to design D&D is an exercise in futility. The Fatebinding system is not some kind of cruel, evil trap we spring on our players, who we keep chained in irons in our gaming dungeon and feed only thimbles of alcohol and Red Bull to force them to keep on playing. It's a feature of the system that they are not only fully aware of when they start playing, but also fully on board with, and furthermore I'm pretty sure most of them actually enjoy the extra levels it adds to the game. One of the big draws of Scion is that it's a game about Fate, legends and human myth; the Fatebinding system is a great mechanical implementation of that, and we loved it in the original rules so much that we expanded it to what it is today. The Scion idea that Fate is the great trump in the game of gods is an awesome foundation for a game, and Fatebonds are a very direct and tangible expression of that idea.
It's not that I don't understand the knee-jerk panic reflex of the Fatebond system. I actually do. If there was ever a player who has a hissy fit over anything that seems like it infringes on their ability to be in charge of their character's development and personality, it's me. But that's not what's happening here; what's happening is simply a different way of approaching what character advancement means and how it happens. Scion with the Fatebond system is radically different from a lot of other games, wherein XP is a kind of sacred and incommutable reward that players are entitled to merely for showing up, and wherein there is no greater power like Fate that delivers consequences beyond the scope of angry opponents or upset political allies. But here's one of my favorite realizations in the gaming world, one that it took me years to arrive at:
Your XP is not sacred.
XP is, at its baseline level, a simple measure of what your character has learned and how they have developed. It's what lets you advance them so that they don't remain the same in abilities and behavior forever. But it's not sacred. It's not an inviolate right of all gamers that only ogres would try to contravene. It's just a way of figuring out how to let everyone advance somewhat evenly to allow for new experiences and encounters and skills. It's a tool of the system, not a holy endowment for the player. And if a different system can use it in a way that benefits the game better - in the case of our Fatebinding system, allowing characters to advance based on their actions as well as giving them the ability to choose where some of that advancement happens - then what's wrong with that? Some role-playing games award new skills only when you've done enough similar things (i.e., I fought with a sword all day, I gained some melee!). Some games award advancement points only when certain goals are achieved or enemies conquered. Some games don't even involve the player choosing what new skills they gain; they simply appear based on what's been happening and what a GM thinks is most appropriate. We've come a long way since the days of "I showed up for four hours, gimme twenty points".
Not all of those game designs float everybody's boat, of course, and they shouldn't and don't have to. Some people like the wide freedom of being able to choose anything to advance to, no matter how wacky. Some people like the specialization tracks that allow them to really dig into a character concept and fill it out to its corners. Some people like to see their development be based on what they did in the game itself, and some even enjoy having no control at all and getting to anticipate what might happen. There's nothing wrong with finding the one(s) that you like and sticking with them, but there is something wrong with declaring that any ones you don't enjoy must be bad game design. There's a difference between bad design and design that doesn't cater to your preferences.
Our goal with the Fatebinding system is, oddly enough, always to make player choice more important, not less. When Fate is in the mix, your choices for your character become incredibly poignant and important: do I fight my Fate? Do I let it do whatever it wants? Do I try to change it, knowing that it might become worse but might also become better? They're the core questions that resonate throughout heroic myth the world over, and Fatebonds bring them home very elegantly and simply.
Fighting Fate is completely possible. Eztli did it, when her Fatebonds believed she was too much of a nurturing mother to be related to Death and she came out the other side as a death goddess with her own Underworld. Yoloxochitl did it, when her Fatebonds believed that she was a fragile child and she came out the other side as a stone juggernaut who soaks more damage than the giants in her band. Folkwardr did it, when his Fatebonds believed that he must be a mindless warrior under Vala's control and he came out the other side as one of the wisest prophets the Aesir have ever had. Even Terminus, poor Terminus, who has gone through the most insane ups and downs of Fatebonds out of everyone in our games, never stops flipping the bird to the Fates and bending things to his own will. It's beautiful to watch and incredibly fun to play, whether it's Vala reshaping her own Fate under the shadow of the Norns or Sowiljr accepting their will and charging in with the force of their approval behind him. It makes the players' and characters' choices matter so much more than just whether or not they've found the best build for a given kind of combat or who they can and can't whammy with a knack or boon.
It's totally valid for you not to like or want to use our Fatebinding system; as I said above, not every player will enjoy every system or style. Lots of folks use rules or powers from this site but don't use our Fatebinding system, and that's totally cool (it is still really irritatingly complicated - we're sorry, we promise we're working on streamlining it). There's nothing wrong with deciding not to use our version of Fatebonds, or even with not using Fatebonds at all, though cutting the dimension of Fate out of a game like that would make me very sad indeed.
But I can say, with no reservations and no regrets, that our Fatebinding system is not poorly conceived nor poorly designed, other than its need for a mechanical slimdown. It's not a way of taking character choice away from players; it's a way of reminding them every day that those choices are theirs, and that as heroes and gods they shape the world with them every day.
And that is awesome.
Response from me to poster:
ReplyDeleteHow is it robbing character anything? Please explain what you mean.
How is the phantom xp inexcusable? If you just say damning things, you should probably back them up. Anne outlined many great reasons that it is not inexcusable. And I can understand how someone can dislike it, but to find it inexcusable....just seems silly.
Not the OP, but the fatebinding system as you have written it is simultaneously a great intellectual idea but also impractical. I really love what you are trying to accomplish here, allowing players to benefit from the legends they actually work to correct. But there are a few problems.
ReplyDeleteFirst, it is so easy to improve your fatebonds with a bunch of awesome actions that the mechanical penalties might as well not exist for anyone that is actively play the fatebond game.
Second, anyone who dislikes promoting their fatebonds can rack up a lot of penalties and the system can become a downer for them. The player can find their agency taken from them unless they get with the program and play the fatebond game.
Overall, it feels a lot like Pazzak, Blitzball, Chocobo Racing, or all the other minigames you have to play in video games to get all the best stuff.
It's never a sure thing what you're going to get with Fatebonds, because the higher the level of the Fatebond, the more things that person believes, and it's very difficult to control all of them (unless you have the Magic spells that let you meddle with exactly what a Fatebond believes, those do give you a degree of direct control). A Legend 10 Fatebond believes you're good at five things and bad at five things; if you were lifting battleships to convince them you had Strength, well and good, they probably gave you the positive Strength you were after, but maybe they also gave you negative Magic because they think you must be all physical stats or negative Politics because hefting warships is totally a breach of social etiquette. You can almost always get what you want if you work hard at enough with Fatebonds, but the odds are that you will also get some weird stuff you weren't planning for, either things that people now think you're good at that you never planned on (at one point I believe Sangria had a Fatebond trying to buy her Science: Geology because she had been carving houses out of a mountainside with her bare hands) or things that people now think you're not good at that you have to go and fix. It's pretty much a neverending balancing act and can lead to unexpected developments, both good and bad.
DeleteWhich is kind of how Fate rolls. There's a reason gods send Scions to go do this stuff for them.
It's true that players who don't like the Fatebond aspect of the game are probably going to be grumpy at their negatives, but keep in mind that every time someone gains a new negative Fatebond, they're also gaining a new positive one. It's never all good or all bad, and even the crochetiest players usually find that the bonuses to things they love doing are awesome enough to balance out the negatives on the other end.
Most importantly, though, it goes back to what I was saying about systems above: if a player doesn't want to play with Fatebonds, they don't want to play in our Scion games. Fatebonds aren't an optional frill on the system; they're an integral and important part of the storytelling and game experience. If they don't like the system, they probably shouldn't play the game.
Luckily, we've never had a player that felt that way.
Not being sure about your fatebonds just leads to playing the fatebond minigame until the storyteller gives you something you are content with.
DeleteBut the last paragraph is the most important one. Anyone who does not like the system can ignore it or change it to work in their own games. This is probably the system that makes your players the happiest, but maybe not someone else's players.
No one is ever content, cause they have to keep spending legend. They can choose to stop spending legend I guess....or they run out of legend...or they pick up the fatebond types that give them reverse of what they wanted.
DeleteBut again, its not a minigame. Its an integral part of the system. The entire world of the game is worked around fatebonds. If it wasnt for fatebonds the gods would do whatever they wanted on earth all the time.
DeleteIf fatebonds are not incredibly dangerous and punishing it makes ZERO sense for scions to even exist.
The world NEEDS to make sense, or the pcs dont make sense in it, and when that starts to break down the game stops feeling real, your choices stop mattering.
The BASIS of the entire scion world is that fatebonds can be dangerous and incredibly crushing and punishing. If that isnt there the game of scion makes zero sense.
I think I realized why the blitzball analogy doesn't work for me - you really can't play Fatebonds like a minigame, because they're ongoing no matter what you're doing. It's more like if you had to be playing blitzball all the time while you were also doing boss fights; every time a Scion spends Legend and isn't in a totally mortal-free zone, Fatebonds have the potential to happen; it's not something you get to just go tinker with until you like it and never touch again. They're changing all the time. It's only a minigame if you're taking time out just to go try to accrue Fatebonds, and while PCs certainly do do that, they don't do it much because they really haven't got the time in between saving the world and whatnot.
DeleteBut yes, that's always the most important paragraph in any discussion about game mechanics: not every game is good for every player. I know of games where Fatebonds aren't used at all in any form, and it seems to work fine for them. They'd probably be disoriented in our games; I know I'd be bored in theirs. It's all a matter of what you like playing. I'm not suggesting that everyone should do it our way and suck it up, just that our way is certainly legitimate and, in my opinion, awesomesauce.
But I am, as stated above.
DeleteFatebonds may be ongoing no matter what you're doing, but you always have to keep in mind that you're playing the fatebond game and try to structure your actions in a way that will get you the fatebonds you want. Maybe the blitzball or pazzak analogy doesn't fit great because when you play them you have to stop playing the primary game, but sometimes your players do exactly that, and whenever your fatebonds get to a point where you do not like them you can go tinker with them until you like them again, whenever they have the free time.
DeleteI'm not sure what John is talking about. I couldn't imagine playing a game without fatebonds that are incredibly dangerous and punishing, it would just be a different fatebond system than what you guys use. I don't even think the OP was suggesting such a thing, but I cannot speak for him/her.
Can you try to rephrase your last paragraph? Ive reread it a couple times and I dont think I understand what you're trying to say. May just be word choice or something, but before I respond I want to make sure I know what you're meaning.
DeleteI'll try, but I think we are confusing each other.
DeleteYou said "If it wasn't for fatebonds the gods would do whatever they wanted on earth all the time". I agree with this, and I don't think anyone suggested that the game should not have fatebonds.
You said "If fatebonds are not incredibly dangerous and punishing it makes ZERO sense for scions to even exist". Well, there are plenty of reasons for scions to exist besides fatebonds, but nobody suggested that the game should not have fatebonds.
You said "The world NEEDS to make sense, blah blah blah". Yes, this is correct but it seems like an odd thing to say since nobody suggested that the world does not need to make sense. I'm really confused about this one.
You said "The BASIS of the entire scion world is that blah blah blah". Yes, this is correct again but it seems so odd since nobody suggested that the world should not have dangerous and punishing fatebonds.
I'm totally with Anne that your way is certainly legitimate and probably awesomesauce to your players. I just listed some ways that it would be impractical at my table or maybe someone else's.
The reason that it is given to us in the books the scions have been tapped and exist, is because gods dont want to get fatebound anymore. Its also the reason that they stopped hanging on earth and doing all kinds of crazy things in their full forms. The fatebonds were too punishing and so they left for the heavens.
DeleteBy having fatebonds "not" be punishing, the world of the game as given does not make sense. The gods dont need scions to do things because they could handle all problems with small legend expenditures and could just easily crush any hero or demigod level problems that there were.
I can see that it being impractical at some tables, but there has to be something equal in its place. Its fine that someone wouldnt want to use mine, but every system has to be punishing/rewarding enough that at some point the gods, en masse decided that it wasnt worth it to spend legend on earth anymore, because fatebonds were that bad.
In addition, for magic to have any real use/consequences fatebonds have to be pretty powerful and play a role in pcs lives pretty heavily.
Kind of off topic, but I always wondered why gods bother with scions when there are plenty of legendary creatures around to do the job for them. A bunch of your purviews let you create minions that could easily deal with any hero or demigod level problems that exist.
DeleteNot to mention gods can go down in avatar form and convince mortal agencies to deal with most hero level problems that exist also. In fact, there are so many ways a god could easily deal with the problems of their children that I can only assume that fate likes to punish anybody who is not a scion doing awesome deeds.
I imagine the major reason gods don't just deal with it themselves in Avatar form is that they're way too busy. There is a massive war going on with gigantic Titans that can destroy all of existence; they don't have the time or the energy to waste on being Legend 3 to clean up small numbers of Titanspawn right now. They really need to delegate that shit.
DeleteI'd assume they do use lesser immortals as well, but that they're just not as effective as Scions in most cases. Scions are almost always better equipped (unless it's a specialty situation for the lesser immortal in question) and more creative when solving those kinds of problems. Scions can also eventually become gods, which means they'll be able to help in the front lines and trenches of the Titan war instead of being stuck as low-level gofers forever. And, after all, Fate loves Scions. It doesn't much care about Random Elf #5, so the odds are highly against them doing or achieving nearly as much as a Scion.
In the default setting, don't Scions die by the absolute bucketful? I mean the book says 1 in 100 become Demigods and of those 100 less than one in 1,000 becomes a God.
DeleteThat basically means you need 100,000 actively visited children in order to get one god out of the mix. It seems like the random elves would have a better chance than Scions. Do you guys run a different set of numbers?
We have around 15 or so scions who became gods in the one universe. Hopefully from there its easy to see that those numbers listed were pulled out of someone from whitewolfs ass and make zero sense.
DeleteMy biggest problem with y'all's Fatebinding system that I feel like (I haven't played with it seriously, so I don't know for sure) that it'd get annoying to have to check which Fated you're in range of and recalculate all your +s and -s any time you move around.
ReplyDeleteThat ...totally was annoying. They dont have to deal with it at god anymore, but there was a period where it was annoying. It was solved with a ton of work on my part, and just knowing(usually) where they were going, and having quick switch cards ready for them whenever they changed locations.
DeleteBut yeah, that's one of the things we hope to fix when we streamline it; mostly we love what it does, we just need to make it less of a chore for the ST.
Delete