FLaW: Fate Luck and Will

[MathiasJack]

I'm smacking my forehead into the desk right now.

Invoking Luck - spend a Luck point and you get a redraw - except for the redraw the number of stones is based on your current Luck points rather than your permanent Luck rating! Duh! Much more intuitive... but does it weaken Invoking Luck compared to the others. Not when one weighs everything you can do with Luck compared to the other two forces. I think it balances out nicely.

As a advanced trick, rather than the basic Invoction, Ecstatics can later on learn how to stack a draw on top to hopefully add successes...

Basic Draws will have to work with the math; ie, decide what stat covers what you want to do, draw one's permanent rating in stones, the main stat being worth 2 for success, the aiding stat 1, and the opposing stat worth -1. With taalyn's help, maybe a simple relationship map of the forces aiding and opposing can be made for some interesting and simple "complications" for special uses and surprises.

Now if only I could make Invoking Fate a bit smoother,
I think this just might work....

I guess I'm thinking there are levels of use for the stats.

Basic Draw: running, singing, writing...
--- This includes the stats aspects of Being, Social, Combat and Abilities

Basic Invoction: This covers the most basic and universal application of the forces. Comes free at character creation. 1 point costs for use.

Advanced Invoctions: Advanced uses of the forces that are intuitive with practice, essentially twists and other ways of using the Basic Invoction. I'm thinking that Blessing/Slagging/Cursing/Whatever-it-ends-up-being-called is at this level. Ecstatics stacking draws would be at this level. Bought at character creation or earned. 1 point costs for use.

Special Invoctions: This is Fate's Designs, Luck's Charms, and Will's Inspirations. While focused on one stat as a foundation, they mix and match all three stat points in different combinations for interesting results. Bought at character creation or earned. Each one costs varied amounts from across the board for use.

Using the Word: The ability for the player to effect the narration of the story, the world, and other characters by spending a point of the pertaining stat. Ideas for right now: Fate effects objects, setting, and time. Luck effects action, and rewriting storylines in the moment. Will effects one's own character, NPCs and to a limited effect other characters. This is kinda fuzzy at the moment.

Have to go read posts on Currency, since it seems like I am attempting to create a game about how only three types of currency with different uses effect everything in the game.

[Spooky Fanboy]

No, it feels right that the Free have to "go it alone."

[taalyn]

Looking good to me. Two thing:

- of course I'll help with mapping out relationships and stuff. Just say what and when...

- Designs (Fate Invocations): I can see what Luck and Will do to create an amazing effect, but what does Fate do? AS it's coming across to me so far, it seems like Fatalists just emphasize Fate, whatever that may be. If that was the case, though, I hardly think there'd be many Fatalists around, as Fate would want to get them (at least, that's the sense I get). It seems to me that what a Fate actually does is read the "Rules" of Fate, and then rewrites them. So they are following Fate, it's just that Fate is different from what it was a minute ago. Does this make sense? Is it right? How does it affect draws and invoking and such? Is this actually just Will sneaking around as Fate?

Aidan

[MathiasJack]

Fatal Invocations are interesting. They aren't so much about changing Fate, as being able to read Fate.  So Divinations are about reading the different Fates of people and things around you. The GM uses riddles and visual clues as to what Fate has in store. I'm developing a whole system for that. Designs are using that knowledge to your advantage; ie, knowing about someone's death and using that to reap Fate; being at the right time and place to use a Fate to one's advantage; knowing that something it supposed to happen and help make that happening come to place.

Example: A Fatalist could learn how another Weaver is supposed to die, get a two word or three word description of that moment, then makes Designs to have that two or three word description happen. While the Fatalist plans are helping Fate, Fate points can be used /similiarly/ to Will, but not exactly. If the plans are not quite right, maybe the Fate points don't work like hot/cold, and more Divinations can be made to garner more details with each success enabling of Fate and the closer the moment of actual Fate is.

I'm still considering how the whole Fate stat works with the actual force. Such as, when the Fate rating is low to nothing, what happens then? Because I like the idea that the more Fate you have, the more you are matching what Fate wants for you... Maybe the lowerer one's Fate is, it is harder to earn any points at all for any of the Forces? Being a magnet for Fate itself makes since that it happens when you have more Fate, but maybe it happens when you have less... I think the theory I am going with at the moment is that the more Fate points you have, the more you have your own Destiny on your side, you have the favor of Fate. The lower it goes, the closer you are to bringing your Death, your Fate, how ever that End is supposed to happen, to reality.

Almost as if Fatalist are the teacher's pet of the Cosmos, the teacher Fate: the teacher's pet figures the more the teacher likes them, the better grade they'll get and less trouble. The Fatalist figures the more they help Fate, the more they will be able to avoid their own and less chance of dieing. Like their putting their big moment of death on lay away by doing favors.

The Fatalist can Invoke Fate then, as long as the Invocation is not counter to the desires of Fate, to deter death and other obstacles, saying "this is not in the stars, not written in the book of Fate, for me." But if it is a Divination a Weaver makes on a Fatalist, they might find out something that /is/ written for the Fatalist, and then the Fatalist is helpless to fight that except with Luck or Will.

The biggest fear a Fatalist has is for someone to figure out how they will die and making that Fate come about. So it helps to fight a Weaver and lower their Fate, so that you can then make a moment of Fate come about for them.

This is one of the main reasons why Fatalists are extremely paranoid, and secretive. True names play into this part.

So Fate is definitely NOT a masquerading Will. It is about finding out what the cosmos has in store for you, others, and the world, and using that to your advantage in different ways. You have to use Will and Luck to /avoid/ what is Fate. Fatalists and other Weavers actually gain more Fate when they help Fate's plan stay on schedule.

[taalyn]

Fatal Invocations are interesting. They aren't so much about changing Fate, as being able to read Fate.  So Divinations are about reading the different Fates of people and things around you. The GM uses riddles and visual clues as to what Fate has in store. I'm developing a whole system for that. Designs are using that knowledge to your advantage; ie, knowing about someone's death and using that to reap Fate; being at the right time and place to use a Fate to one's advantage; knowing that something it supposed to happen and help make that happening come to place.

But the problem here is that it would happen anyway, as it's Fate, and the Fatalist doesn't need to do anything at all. It seems pointless to be a Fatalist at all.

I think the theory I am going with at the moment is that the more Fate points you have, the more you have your own Destiny on your side, you have the favor of Fate. The lower it goes, the closer you are to bringing your Death, your Fate, how ever that End is supposed to happen, to reality.

If that's so, then a Fatalist, theoretically, wouldn't ever Invoke a Fate (however that works - I'm not happy with it so far) because it's bringing Death closer every time, if it actually eats up stones (which I think it does at the moment...)

Almost as if Fatalist are the teacher's pet of the Cosmos, the teacher Fate: the teacher's pet figures the more the teacher likes them, the better grade they'll get and less trouble. The Fatalist figures the more they help Fate, the more they will be able to avoid their own and less chance of dieing. Like their putting their big moment of death on lay away by doing favors.

This is a good explanation, but again I have to ask, why? It's not as if Fate is open to doing anything but what actually is fated. Unless there are actually personified forms that can be argued or reasoned with.

The Fatalist can Invoke Fate then, as long as the Invocation is not counter to the desires of Fate, to deter death and other obstacles, saying "this is not in the stars, not written in the book of Fate, for me." But if it is a Divination a Weaver makes on a Fatalist, they might find out something that /is/ written for the Fatalist, and then the Fatalist is helpless to fight that except with Luck or Will.

So why bother? Whether the Fatalist Invokes or not, Fate will happen as it is written. Why invoke to make sure something will happen that already is going to happen?

So Fate is definitely NOT a masquerading Will. It is about finding out what the cosmos has in store for you, others, and the world, and using that to your advantage in different ways. You have to use Will and Luck to /avoid/ what is Fate. Fatalists and other Weavers actually gain more Fate when they help Fate's plan stay on schedule.

Which supports my concern - why be a Fatalist at all, since you can't, and only Will or Luck can avoid Fate. Maybe I'm missing something here.

Aidan

[MathiasJack]

Just for the fact that there are the forces of Luck and Will working against Fate, most specifically other Weavers who take up the standards of Luck and Will as Ecstatics and the Free'd.

Mr Glass from Unbreakable is the perfect example of a Fatalist. He Divined that there should be heroes out there, heroes that the legends of long ago were based on (the Free'd actually!) and that comics continued telling about in modern form. To bring about the Divination he saw, he made specific detailed Divinations and started methodically going about ways of producing such moments of Fate (Designs) where these beings could be discovered and then made to realize their potential, ie, the airplane, car and train accidents that Mr Glass orchestrated which finally produced Willis's character, one of the Free'd. The strongest part of the example being here that Mr Glass as a Fatalist felt he had no choice in the matter. He was a tool of Fate.

SO Fate is not omnipotent. It is omniscient, and has a lot of momentum in orchestrated things the way it wants to. Fatalists help things in favor of Fate, in exchange for some of that knowledge and a free hall pass.

I also want to add that I don't think Fatalist have to be a terrorist. I think they could possibly use Divinations to cheat Fate like in the TV series Early Edition, but after using Fate to find out what happened, the Fatalist would then be using Will and Luck to change things. In this case the Fatalist thinks that life is ultimately controlled by Fate, is paranoid of dieing, and uses what Divinations he can and is real good at it because he wants it to be his strength. But then uses Luck and Will to go against it. Like he uses his status as the teacher's pet to actually help out the students, the key being he has to be ateacher's pet to gain that edge, ie, be a Fatalist.

A Free'd in contrast believes that ultimately they are in control of their life, and they can make it on their own through any circumstance. They might use Fate and Luck at times as tools, but ultimately Will is what they focus on the most.

An Ecstatic kinda just sees everything as meaningless. REAL simple def.

So it isn't so much of a choice of what force to use as it is a perspective.

Does that help?

[taalyn]

Yes, that helps a lot! I get it now.

Aidan

[MathiasJack]

It isn't too forced or contrite is it?

[Spooky Fanboy]

See, here I would say that Fate has an actual ability beyond cushioning the Fatalist from the inevitable fall (i.e. death).

I would say that, if a stone is spent, the Bender gets to pronounce a person or persons' fates. This would be like the Monologue of Victory, only used as a weapon. Then the current Fate pool is the difficulty to avoid that fate from occuring.

Of course, abuse of power has it's price. Hence Fate going lower as those stones are spent, and if they go too low...

[MathiasJack]

Exactly Spooky! Now you can see the fun in being a Fatalist and coming up with Designs! (and the danger)

[taalyn]

I don't thinks it's forced or contrite. It makes sense to me (now!) and doesn't require weird twists to get there. It's good.

Spooky, your idea is great! Applied to all Weavers: temporarily, I am Luck, when Invoking, and I can make whatever happen, at the cost of losing temp stones in Luck. This is a part of Aisling magic too (I forgot to mention it, MJ) - after you draw your Motes for magic, it takes a while for everything to settle back into place in your system - you can't replace the Motes in your Caern right away. Do a lot of magic and you're f***ed.

Aidan

[taalyn]

I'm really starting to get into this, MJ. I can't wait to playtest it - of course, having someone to playtest it with would help a lot. Do you think we could do it via email, you, me, and Spooky? Whaddaya say, Spooky?

I think playtest would highlight issues for us to solve in the design, and we're already working so close we might as well bump it to the next step. It's easy to talk about it, but when we're doing it, some of our suggestions or ideas will be immediately and obviously workable or not....

Aidan

[Spooky Fanboy]

Eh, why the hell not?

I can get to my e-mail pretty much every day.

I'm not a fan of e-mail games usually, but this is just too damn cool.