Fate Points - Their history & implementation

[Zak Arntson]

Something I've been thinking of, after playing Jay's Gallant and reading Mongoose Publishing's Conan, are Fate Points. I remember them first appearing in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay with the sole purpose of keeping a character who has just died from actually dying.

As what they are, I see it as a resource which allows the player to exert narrative control beyond her playable character: To introduce an event/element into the game otherwise not allowed via the rest of the system. This is usually a way to avoid death, arbitrarily increase the chance of success, or introduce material goods or events beyond the GM's planning.

What I'm interested in this thread is solely to compile a history of this style of mechanic. Please reply with the game, what the mechanic is called and how it is usable in-game.

Thanks, in advance, for your help with this. When I get home I'll also go through my game books and contribute.

[Matt Wilson]

Earliest use I can think of is in Victory Games' James Bond RPG, which is from, I think, 1983.

In that game, PCs have "hero points," which can be used to improve die rolls and avoid taking damage.

NPCs have "survival points," which can only be used to reduce damage.

[Sean]

An old chestnut by a little publishing house called TSR called "Top Secret" had both Fame and Fortune points that allowed you to avoid death through their expenditure. IIRC you got Fortune points for successful missions and at DM whim and one fame point per level earned. Neither replenished.

Another idea which was already around in the seventies, if I'm not mistaken. I incorporated these into some of my D&D homebrews early on and players really liked them - but they were almost always used to avoid death, and only rarely to do anything cool. (I'm not sure if they even could be used to do things other than avoid death in Top Secret.)

[Michael S. Miller]

Marvel Super Heroes (c) 1984 had Karma points. You spent Karma to increase (or decrease? -- I'll have to check) your die rolls (percentile system on a single Universal Table), so you could succeed, or up the level of success, even if you didn't roll well.

PCs got Karma back by doing heroic things--saving innocent victims, beating up supervillians, paying their bills on time (I kid you not), speaking at charity events, going on patrol. PCs could also lose them by doing uheroic things --running from a fight, committing a crime, missing an appointment, or, most of all, killing someone.

Karma was also used like experience points, to increase stats & buy new powers.

Karma could also be pooled by a team, so that everyone could share some of their Karma.

I don't recall if it had any ability to lessen damage, except that you could, of course, spend it to succeed at Stun/Shock/Kill resistance checks

[Mike Holmes]

(I'm not sure if they even could be used to do things other than avoid death in Top Secret.)

They couldn't be used for anything but to keep your character alive. Basically, TS dropped the idea of escallating hit points like D&D had, so they needed another form of plot immunity.

TS came out in 1980, and I think it was the first to use this concept. No surprise that James Bond had them too - they're really genre appropriate if you think about it. How many times does Bond just luck out of trouble?

Mike

[coxcomb]

Good topic, Zak! I was actually thinking of a similar thread myself.

My contribution is DC Heroes, where they were called Hero Points. Again, you could use them to fix a bad roll, or IIRC, to increase effectiveness of an action.

Something that I find interesting is that the first places I ran across them (Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes), they were the same currency used for improvement. So in order to use them to exert control (in these cases limited to just fixing a missed roll) you had to give up experience.

I assume this started as some sort of "balancing" effort. The trade-off for exerting choice in resolution was that your character didn't get better as quickly. Probably well-meaning, but it doesn't exactly encourage players to exert control on the story, does it?

[Scourge108]

Note:  This post has been dramatically edited.

Adventure! from White Wolf has a stat called Inspiration, which can be used in many ways, including something very similar to fate points.  First of all, Inspiration is used to activate the characters' super powers (called knacks) and insane inventions if you happen to be a mad scientist.  Once per scene you can spend an inspiration point to double your dice pool for a single action for a feat of sheer heroism (better hope you don't botch).  It can also be spent to gain a useful hint to represent some kind of intuition.  It's most frequent use, however, is Dramatic Editing, which gives the player some narrative control to insert details, particularly life-saving details.  The bigger the detail and the more continutity problems it causes, the more inspiration it costs, from 1 to 4 or more.  Games are encouraged to end with a Cliffhanger ending (bad if the right people can't show up next time), and players spend their inspiration to figure out a way to get out of this mess, taking narrative control as dictated by Inspiration points. Players may build on details presented by other players to make more effective use of their limited Inspiration.  Since Inspiration ranges from 1 to 10, with most characters having about 3 or 4, it goes pretty fast.

Hope that's more helpful now that I am home where my books are.

[rafial]

West End Games' Star Wars (now known as Star Wars D6) provided Character Points and Force Points.  Character points were the currency of improvement, but could also be spent in game to add an extra die to your die pool on a given roll.  Force points doubled all die pools for a round, and were given back to the user if used for a virtuous purpose (or even given back with interest if the purpose was both virtuous and heroic).

[coxcomb]

Add White Wolf's Adventure! to the list with their Inspiration points.  Basically the same thing as mentioned, if your adventurer falls off a cliff or is stabed in the heart, spend some Inspiration for dramatic re-editing, and you grabbed hold of a root sticking out of the cliff, or your lucky pet rock was in your shirt pocket and deflected the knife.

I don't have the book with me to check, but doesn't Inspiration let you do lots more than that? It's been a while since I read it carefully, but I thought you could edit a great many things, not just avert death.

[montag]

Add White Wolf's Adventure! to the list with their Inspiration points.  Basically the same thing as mentioned, if your adventurer falls off a cliff or is stabed in the heart, spend some Inspiration for dramatic re-editing, and you grabbed hold of a root sticking out of the cliff, or your lucky pet rock was in your shirt pocket and deflected the knife.

I don't have the book with me to check, but doesn't Inspiration let you do lots more than that? It's been a while since I read it carefully, but I thought you could edit a great many things, not just avert death.

Yes, you're right, you can do a lot of stuff beyond that. There's minor to major dramatic editing, (IIRC 3 steps overall), with the first being more or less addition of colour and the latter close to scene framing.
However, all the examples in the book suggest that players might only want to use this to ensure or heighten the survival/success of their character. You pay one point of Inspiration less if you include some complication, but the idea that player might want use Inspiration to shape plot, e.g. by adding dramatic tension is not really considered. So, while the rules let you do more than save your characters bacon, the text IMHO clearly suggests that there is no other purpose for Inspiration.

[Zak Arntson]

Thanks for the replies, all! I'm trying for a strict "only the facts" thread, so please list the exact rules as they are stated in the game. For example, for the Adventure! game I am not only looking for their use as "dramatic rewrites" but exactly how the rules are applied during play.

[M. J. Young]

I'm trying to decide whether Legend of Alyria's Inspiration/Corruption points are of this sort or not.

You can be awarded these during play for exceptional character choices for good or evil; it's not a scale, but points positive and negative.

A player can spend these to override the resolution system, but it takes a unique form. An inspiration point causes the situation to be resolved in favor of good and a corruption point in favor of evil, but from something of a divine perspective--it does not necessarily mean that the good guys or bad guys will accomplish what they're attempting to do here, but rather that whatever happens will be a victory for universal good or evil.

They can also be spent to alter character traits. Traits are part of the resolution system, and so you can make your good traits stronger and your bad traits weaker with inspiration points, the reverse with corruption points. My recollection is that the cost of changing character traits is related to how many "phases" different they are from your virtue, but I can't put a precise correlation on it off the top of my head.

You can give inspiration and corruption points to other characters, but you have to roleplay some means by which these are done (e.g., encouraging the character in character, such that he is strengthened).

If you collect seven of either sort of point, your virtue automatically shifts one "phase" in that direction and you spend all the points immediately.

That's all I remember at the moment.

--M. J. Young

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks for the replies, all! I'm trying for a strict "only the facts" thread, so please list the exact rules as they are stated in the game. For example, for the Adventure! game I am not only looking for their use as "dramatic rewrites" but exactly how the rules are applied during play.

The problem is that you've widened the scope considerably in that case. If you're not just looking for point systems to avoid character death, then you're talking about any currency that can be used for Director Stance empowerment of any sort? If so, the list is going to be long. Universalis would count, for example, and the entire rule book would have to be entered as an example as all of the rules are about how the players spend currency to do Director Stance stuff. Nobilis may have to be entered in large part depending on just how metagame you find the PC powers.

Even for games where it's less extensive, it's not short, often. The Adventure! material on dramatic editing along takes several pages to explain.

So, are you sure that you don't want to narrow it down a little bit? Or just try to get some exemplars or something?

Mike

[John Kim]

What I'm interested in this thread is solely to compile a history of this style of mechanic. Please reply with the game, what the mechanic is called and how it is usable in-game.

Well, I can cover the origin and early history pretty well, I think.  Some of this has already been covered, but I'll recap.  

1980 - Top Secret has Fortune Points and Fame Points as an optional rule.  These can be spent only to reduce a fatal wound to a non-fatal wound.  The GM secretly rolls 1d10 at the start of the game for how many Fortune Points each player has.  The player never knows how many are left.  Players gain 1 Fame point per level raised.  

1983 - James Bond has Hero Points as a central mechanic.  You gain 1 Hero Point every time you naturally rolled a critical (Quality Rating 1) success.  You can spend a Hero Point to turn a failure into a success or improve the Quality Rating by one.  Incidentally, this encourages players to try to show off in their strong skills, which is a nice bit of genre emulation.  

1984 - Marvel Superheroes has Karma Points.  You can make a roll an auto-success, and then you have to spend Karma equal to the difference between your roll and what is needed for success (minimum 10).  They are gained by stopping crimes and acting as a good citizen, and can be lost by unheroic behavior or neglecting your normal life and relationships.  They are not used for character improvement (the original game had no character improvement).  

1986 - Ghostbusters has Brownie Points which can be spent to reduce damage or guarantee success.  These also function as XP.  This was the predecessor of the D6 Star Wars system, incidentally.  

1987 - Ars Magica has Whimsy Cards as an optional system (mentioned in the basic game but with cards sold separately).  Each player gets a set number of cards at the start of each session.  

1987 - Star Wars has both Force Points and Character Points.  Force Points have to be declared before the roll, and double the dice rolled.  They are lost if used unheroically, or regained at the end of the adventure, or gained back plus one at the end if used at the dramatically appropriate moment.  Character Points are normally XP, and can be spent as a last-ditch guard against death and failure.  You can declare after a roll that you are using a CP, and you get to add an extra die to that roll.  

1989 - Prince Valiant has Storyteller Certificates as a rule for the advanced game.  Spending one can be used for one of 13 Special Effects, ranging from "Save in Combat" to "Find Escape Route" to "Kill a Foe in Combat".  A player gains a certificate for GMing a session, or they may be awarded by the current GM for "good acting or other reasons".  

1989 - Shadowrun has Karma Points used both to improve rolls and as XP.  

By 1990, these mechanics are getting pretty ubiquitous and I can't cover them all.  White Wolf's Storyteller system adopted Willpower as a general roll-improving mechanic.  I suppose I should note 1993's Theatrix.  This is a diceless system which has Plot Points as a central mechanic.  It's a bit long to go into here: Plot Points are required for dramatic use of Descriptors (i.e. your character's central traits) and Personality Traits.  They can also be used to establish character statements as true.  

So this covers the main examples through 1990, I think.

[Zak Arntson]

Mike, you're right. This is embarrassing to admit, but I didn't realize how many games had such a fate mechanic! But now that we have a history, and as it turns out, an explosion of fate mechanics in the 90's.

So, John's compiled and added for a list of pre-90's games (anyone, feel free to add to it). Any exemplars from the 90's and beyond? And yeah, I mean fate points for any kind of Author/Director Stance. To narrow it down, how about sticking to games where Author/Directory Stance isn't allowed except when fate points are used?