[FATE]Intrinsic Extras and what I learned of them

[iago]

Hey there.  Co-author Rob pointed me at this thread; sorry I didn't see it sooner.

I'll try for a sort of generalized reply here.  (Though, please keep in mind, I myself haven't made use of extras, per se, for a few years, now -- they're meant to be there as a sort of minor catchall, but I've usually got better solutions in mind and, thus, most things don't need to be "caught".)

I'll first say that my general posture with Fate assumes you've got a functioning trust relationship (social contract, whatever) going between players and GM.  Extras are vague, I suppose, because they're really meant to be expressions of that trust relationship, in the sense of "hm, okay, so you want Foo, and that's not clearly an Aspect or a Skill, but there should be some amount of cost for that, so we'll call it an extra."

If we'd intended scene-framing power in extras, we'd be correctly blamed for them getting used that way.  Really, that's not the point of them at all, and if someone's getting that kind of oomph out of an extra, you should either a) disallow it, or b) charge them a lot more than a single skill rank for it. Someone remarked that extras, effectively, are intended as sorts of toggles, when they're intrinsic -- I have this / I don't have this.  They're meant to broaden the applicability of a particular skill, so to speak.  Nightvision's the classic here.  Normally, your perception skills can't be used well (or at all) in darkness. With Nightvision, perception is broadened to work at night.

If you're going to start giving some Real Serious Game Effects with 'em, you need to start getting super-consistent with how they're "statted".  Historically, I've been beyond loath to go to that kind of level of detail in my games, and thus, you have the (insert accusing tone of voice here) vagueness problem.

(Sidebar: Looking to the future, these sorts of things are going to get handled, in newer versions such as we're putting in the Dresden Files RPG and Spirit of the Century RPG (both Fate derived and currently under development) by things called stunts, which are the spiritual descendants of Extras, but with a much more careful level of attention to exactly how much of a game effect any one of them can have.  In this utopian future, skills and aspects also have purer definition of purpose, and it all works together much, much better.  But we aren't there yet, no matter how much Ron might urge us to "grab a clue".  We have day jobs, so it'll take us some time, and your patience is appreciated!)

[Rob Donoghue]

Heh.

Ok, I'll take issue with "Crap" if only because extras aren't supposed to have that much authority, but I'll totally concede to the reasoning behind it. :)

So that said, yeah, problems.  It's not a terrible rule, and it's not terribly written, but it's a kind of bad rule and written not terribly well, and that's just an ugly combination. 

Extras were a concession made to more traditional play.  And not a terribly smart concession to make.

Extras were really conceived to cover weird cases, so you could have the one guy who, I dunno, could breathe under water.  It was something entirely divorced from skills.  For those, I have fewer problems, because they're basically powers bought at Average (assuming that syncs up with the magic of the setting) and placed outside of the pyramid.  Sometimes it works out fine, but when you get into the area of skills and stats, things get ugly.

For a while I would reverse the thinking a little and have them come into play in narration rather than in character effectiveness.   That means, for example, that a "sharp eared" character rolls alertness as normal, they get no more information than anyone else, but the information they get is pitched in terms of hearing, which can mean that combined with information other characters gather, the gestalt of data is more comprehensive, but that only happens when I'm feeling particularly clever.

Problem is, that kind of guts extras.  It's a skill rank that gets you nearly nothing but flavor.  So my concession to that is that it sometimes allows for rolls to occur when they otherwise wouldn't or it means I spotlight the character in question, such as calling on them alone to make an alertness check to hear an approaching opponent.  It's nicely organic, works out in play, and we don't give a single damn guideline to doing it, which is on us.  Also, frankly, it's a bit too fuzzy a solution to standardize.

In the stuff we're working on,  extras have gone out the windows.  If things like that are appropriate to the setting, we tend to use a stunts system (A powers/schticks model that we haven't published yet).  Certain recurring schticks, like "use a skill in a non-standard way" or "Get a bonus to this skill under limited circumstances" might provide the guidelines for what you're looking for.  

I don't know what terms you offered for trade in, but I woudl suggest taking another swing at it, this time pitched as either a trade-up or a clarification.  If you offer some specific, repeatable capability, a lot of players will find it very tempting.  On one hand, they have somethign explicit and mechanically supported they can trust, and on the other hand, it's now more distinctive, which helps reinforce the "cool" element that distinguishes him form the other characters.

With that in mind, I would offer to treat a sharp eared extra as one of the following:
* The player can hear something genre specific (voices of ghosts? Blood Magic?) that normally can't be heard, thus allowing them to apply perception skills in certain circumstances.
* To tip our hat to Wolverine, the character is keenly aware of the cadence of voices, and can use alertness rather than (whatever) to try to spot a lie.
* Character's hearing lets them hear things farther away than most, so they may roll perception skills at things from a greater range than normal (such as eavesdropping across the room).
* Character's keen senses are less about how sharp they are and more about how well they filter information.  The character may ignore any penalties for excess noise or volume when making perception checks.

Alternately, you can explicitly say "gives a +1 Under X circumstance" (such as eavesdropping, outdoors or in crowds).

The value of offering an _explicit_ bonus is not only for your player, it's for you.  As a GM, you look at Sharp Eared on the sheet and because it's so fuzzily defined, it's not much of a hook for you.  If, on the other hand, you know that it means that the character is a skilled eavesdropper or can ignore aural distractions, you know that you want to start throwing some whispered conversations or deafening crowds at the game.  However it settles out, once you are comfortable with what it means, everything else should fall into place.

I hope this was at all helpful.

-Rob D.

[loki's wrangling]

With that in mind, I would offer to treat a sharp eared extra as one of the following:
* The player can hear something genre specific (voices of ghosts? Blood Magic?) that normally can't be heard, thus allowing them to apply perception skills in certain circumstances.
* To tip our hat to Wolverine, the character is keenly aware of the cadence of voices, and can use alertness rather than (whatever) to try to spot a lie.
* Character's hearing lets them hear things farther away than most, so they may roll perception skills at things from a greater range than normal (such as eavesdropping across the room).
* Character's keen senses are less about how sharp they are and more about how well they filter information.  The character may ignore any penalties for excess noise or volume when making perception checks.

Wow, those are really great suggestions! For now I'm using it more or less as flavor and the player seems fine with that, but offering some bonus in exchange for a narrower scope is something worth discussing with him.

I think I finally got the hang of using this intrinsic extra last session, at least as flavor. I simply set a rule of thumb that "sharp hearing" is going to come into play two or three times a session, and won't be a) controllable by the player or b) very important.

So in our session last Sunday(which incidentally ROCKED, the specifics of which belong in another AP thread), the hearing extra came into play in these ways:

1. Reyn heard and recognized the voice of a senior member of hisThieves' Guild, Camilla, on the other side of a trapdoor. I took advantage of the fact that we were playing on a chat client by telling him this fact through a private message. Reyn casually remarks that he's glad Camilla's survived the attack on the Guild HQ at another city, prompting an NPC to comment on his hearing being sharp as ever.

Now, because Reyn suspects Camilla of being a traitor to the Guild and responsible for the death of the Guildmaster, he could have easily taken her unawares by striking just as she emerged from the trapdoor. Instead he chose to hide his suspicions and interact normally with her, but either way the player was apprised in advance and given a choice.

2. That night, while Reyn stood guard before the door of a noblewoman and fellow PC who'd hired him to be her bodyguard, he heard someone coming nearly silently up the stairs. (In this case I used the extra to bypass an Alertness roll, but it seems a better idea now to allow rolls where normally they wouldn't be allowed.) This gave him time to make a Hide check to melt out of sight, enabling him to catch Camilla trying to sneak into the noblewoman's bedroom. As it turns out Camilla was just checking to see if he was doing a good job guarding his client. Or so she says.

3. The next morning Reyn sleeps in due to his adventure above, and comes down late to breakfast at the inn's common room. (In reality the player had to grab a quick lunch, but anyway...) The other two members of the party get into a bit of an argument, which Reyn hears while he's coming down the stairs. He then pretends he heard nothing when he finds his traveling companions in strained silence, curiously asking them what they've been talking about. Neither the conversation nor the PC's feigned ignorance was crucial to the plot, but I thought it was a nice moment.


Both the player and I are satisfied about the way the extra played out, but I'm still worried about any consistency issues that might crop up. I might yet work with the player to clarify the scope this ability. Drat.

[Ron Edwards]

I'm still worried about any consistency issues that might crop up.

Oh, now you're just worrying to make yourself happily miserable.

Problems so far? No. Then quit imagining disasters and keep doing it as you're doing it.

Best,
Ron

[loki's wrangling]

Oh, now you're just worrying to make yourself happily miserable.

Maaan...How did you know?

Problems so far? No. Then quit imagining disasters and keep doing it as you're doing it.

Yeah, I guess you're right... I really should be writing about how hard my last session rocked and how it's all the Forge residents' fault that the players and I had such a good time, but gimme a moment to wallow in misery first. :p

[joepub]

You also have to consider one other thing that makes extras "cost" more in a way:

They are outside of the pyramid... meaning that you lose an (Average) skill count. Meaning that you have a smaller base, meaning that you cannot move on to upgrade your highest skills because of that missing skill point...




Even though it's not directly relevenant, I just wanted to point out that drawback.