Has anyone considered how a ‘bonus’ system like Fate points would work with Urban Shadows?
My thinking is that players could spend earned points to do things like upgrade the result of a roll by one step (failure -> success with cost -> success), perhaps even allowing unlocking the Advanced successes on basic moves without having bought them yet. Maybe allow them to be spent to avoid marking corruption or something.
But what I’m less clear about is how I’d want to go about awarding these points. I could simply give them for great descriptions or awesome play, but Fate also tends to award points for allowing a character to be compelled to do something, and the only thing that really seems analogous in Urban Shadows would be paying a debt without resisting it.
What are people’s thoughts? Are there ways that this could ‘break’ the underlying assumptions of the game that I might be missing? Are there similar hacks already out there that I could look at? Any other ideas for both awarding and spending these points?
I’m getting ready to run my first-ever session of Urban Shadows next week, and I’m of two minds about trying to add this kind of mechanic from the beginning.
I haven’t seen any direct merging of Fate & Powered by the Apocalypse yet, though I realized recently that Houses of the Blood/Blood & Honor is kind of that.
I know Ryan Macklin’s talked about a merge of the two as well, but I’m not sure if he ever did something formalized.
My initial thoughts on borrowing from Fate was simply to take Aspects and put them on top of almost any game. I would do the same thing here. Give players a handful of aspects, and use basically the normal Fate rules for invoking and compelling them for the Fate economy. I wouldn’t do a straight upgrade of failure -> success, but probably poke around in the math to give a +1 or +2 after a roll or something.
If you do want to allow a point like this to upgrade a roll like you described, then I would make sure points are generated only by making uncomfortable decisions, since they’re going to spent avoiding them. Maybe something like the MC making a devil’s bargain: I’ll give you this point, but I get to immediately make as hard a move as I want.
Hi, Jeff.
First off, I think you will find that players succeed pretty often already. I’ve been running US and it’s sister games for some time and while I sometimes wish I could reward players for cool stuff, I think it would hurt the game overall. In PbtA games, failures aren’t just failures. They are YOUR TURN as MC to make a hard move. If players succeed more often due to Fate Chips, you may find yourself hampered in creating any effective opposition at all. Your villains will never hit, nothing bad will ever happen to the PCs and that just isn’t really like the fiction and media we are modeling with this game. YMMV.
Secondly, there is another paradigm for bonus chips, Savage Worlds. I love SW because I can give out bennies for any reason. Play up a Hindrance? Here’s a Bennie. Make the table laugh or gasp with your awesomeness? Here’s a Bennie. In SW, Bennies are good for a re-roll and a few other things. The Bennie for RPing Hindrances is closest to the Fate paradigm of compelling Trouble aspects.
But again, I don’t think the game needs this. Failure should be dramatic and interesting. The game is a little flat when success is too common. You’ll see this on Dungeon World boards, as PCs get very powerful and rarely fail, MCs struggle to keep the campaign fun and interesting.
I have found in my games of Urban Shadows that PCs tend to turn to things that give them corruption if they are in a hard spot and fail. This seems to me to be better and more focussed approach, rather than adding another layer of resource with unfocussed Fate Points.
I really hate FATE points and, also, dont see how could they make US better.
Fate is very rule-oriented, while PbtA games are very fiction oriented.
If something is interesting the fiction will move in that way, and the rules empower that kind of play. In fact, that style of rpging is very old, but AW was the first to explain and make rules to use it for real.
Moves create interesting options. No matter you get a full score, a mediocre target or a huge fail… fiction goes on. And fiction is created by the full party, not only the master.
Using FATE points will alter the fiction…
Anyway, if you want to create something that works that way… create a custom move that allows the players to do that.
For example:
– When you pledge for the dark one favors you get +2 to any physical action you are trying to acomplish. Mark corruption.
This move (just an example), uses current mechanics and allows the players to alter their rolls.
One big issue with Fate points or bennies in a PBtA game is they are often mechanics-first instead of fiction-first. Moves have to be triggered in the fiction in order to happen in the first place. You shouldn’t just say ‘I attack’, grab the dice and roll, because you haven’t described the details, let alone adding in mechanical bonuses for Aspects or ‘good roleplaying’ on top.
Another thing to think about is the math. A +1 bonus on 2d6 is huge. As others have already said, characters succeed most of the time anyway. They have to fail for those hard moves that are essential for making the game fun. I wouldn’t even consider messing around with the math until you have a few months of playing various PBtA games under your belt. 🙂
The points about the characters already succeeding most of the time are well taken, and clearly if such a scheme were introduced, it would require that the points/bennies would be metered out rarely, making them probably too much of a novelty to bother.
There’s a very easy way to do it that I use in my own Apocalypse powered system. Just turn any move that grants +1 forward into a token that you hand the player. For example…change the option under Let it Out to something like “Take 1 Fate Token.” Then spend the fate token to give yourself or anyone else +1. OR give someone else -1. Up to you whether you want to allow more than 1 spent per roll. I say go for it. It has worked fine for me over much play testing.
WWWRPG has momentum, which is a spend-and-increase move. It’s also a non-static economy, since you have to use it against other players (to pull Face and Heel things, to Take narrative control, and to trigger moves.)
Consider the Luck mechanic from Monster of the Week.
What about acting your demeanor to get a Fate point?