I'm hoping this thread will become a "check here first" resource for general Spirit of the Century questions.  I know I have a lot.  Some are "How do you do this?"  Some are, "Why is this done this way?"  Some are, "I don't quite understand how this works".  Here goes:

While adventuring in the Lost Jungle, suppose a PC is covered in a sticky, entangling gloop by a Glooposaurus, a Maneuver that puts an "Entangled" Aspect on him.  Obviously, the Glooposaur can Tag that Spect for a bonus, no sweat.  But say I want to Compel that Aspect to work against the PC as he tries to run away or jump a chasm:

  A) Do I give the PC a Fate Point every time the gloop acts against him in the scene?

  B) Is there a way to use the Aspect against him in a purely mechanical way, such as a -2 to the roll?  The rules as they stand only allow another NPC to Tag the Aspect for a bonus, or the GM to Compel the Aspect to force a difficult choice.  But there are no rules for simply making an uncontested roll more difficult (like jumping a chasm).

On pg 155 of the pdf:  "Man of Iron" description:

Very simply, this means that the character doesn’t start picking up consequences unless someone hits him for more than his capacity (difficult at best!) or all of his boxes are filled up.

Hudson wrote:
You could take a guy out in five really good shots:

The first hit is a five-point hit, filling in the top Stress box.
The second hit is also a monster 5 pointer.  Since that Stress box is already filled in, the target can either choose to be Taken Out or take a minor consequence.
Ditto for the third hit, but now must take a Moderate Consequence.
Ditto for the fourth hit, but now it's a Major Consequence.
On the fifth hit, the target has no more options and has to be Taken Out.

Is that right, oh Gurus?  And is five shots the absolute minimum it would take to take out a dedicated character who refuses to concede at any point?

iago wrote:
Hudson, you've got it right.

What would be the best way to model a "Powerful But Slow" attacker?  (I'm still thinking giant robot for an upcoming game.)  Another way to put this is "Is there a way to separate damage done from the chance to hit, for highly accurate attacks that do minor damage to for inaccurate attacks that do a lot of damage?" 

The best way I can think of is to give the NPC "Wrestler" so that Might is used instead of Fists, and then let the PC's tag the NPC's "Slow and Clumsy" Aspect for defense.  That is just a tad unsatisfying, though: 

It only allows a 2 level difference (as opposed to only an Average chance to hit but with a Superb level of damage). 

It costs the PCs a Fate Point each time to take advantage of the clumsiness, whereas I'd like it to be more inherent to the creature, like a skills.

Other ways I can think of are too complicated (roll Fists vs Fists to hit, but apply the shifts to Might vs Endurance to figure levels of damage - blech).

Any suggestions?

The "Master of Fear" stunt requires 6(!) stunts (Master of Fear, Fearsome Gaze, Aura of Fear, Steely Gaze, Aura of Menace, Scary), meaning it is impossible for a beginning level PC to have.

Master of Fear = prerequisites "Fearsome Gaze" and "Aura of Fear"
  Fearsome Gaze = preq "Steely Gaze"
  Aura of Fear = preq "Aura of Menace"
  Both "Steely Gaze" & "Aura of Menace" = preq "Scary"

Is this on purpose, and if so, do you remember what other stunts are impossible for beginning PC's?

In actual play, has it been your experience that NPC's run through FP's pretty quickly?  For instance, say you've got some mobsters armed with superscience ray guns stolen from a crashed time machine.  The guns all have a "Superscience" Aspect just waiting to get tagged by the mobsters with every shot - but at 1 FP per shot, it seems like they'd run out of FP's pretty damn quickly, and the guns would stop being any more useful than a normal pistol.

This also applies to a question I posted on rpg.net about how to armor a giant robot.  The short answer was "Aspects", but it seems like that would also burn through FP's even more quickly, at about 1 FP per attacker per round.

I know I can GM fiat a lot of this, such as just say "The robot has armor that reduces all damage by two shifts" or "the futuristic ray guns give a +2 to the Guns skill of anybody using them."  I'm just wondering if that is either against the general spirit of rules or if I'm missing a better method that's already spelled out.

Given the likelihood of giant robots, apes and dinosaurs in pulp adventures, all of which probably have some degree of armor and tremendous damage (but not a tremendous change to hit), I think these are issues that definitely need to be addressed.

I just wanted to give a big giant "THANKS!" in advance.  I feel like I've unloaded a dump truck of questions, and I know everybody has lives outside of publishing this game.  Take your time.  And another "Thanks!" for all the questions that Fred and Rob and others have already taken the time to answer.  (The breakdown of how to pace and set up a climactic fight on top of a zeppelin over on rpg.net was incredible, not only in clarifying how much of the game works but also as a source of inspiration, and really made me want to run this game even more than I wanted to already.)

Hudson wrote:
A)  Can a single very powerful attack jump straight to causing a Consquence on a previously unhurt and unStressed character? Or does the first attack have to fill in a Stress box, regardless of how powerful it is.  (Given the pulp nature of the game, I could see either way being correct, but I'm curious as to the official ruling.)

B)  Can a single very powerful attack jump straight to causing a Moderate or Severe Consequence on a previously unStressed and un-Consequenced character?  Or even straight to "Taken Out"?  (A Superb attacker rolls ++++, and an average defender rolls ----, for instance.)

Hudson wrote:
What would be the best way to model a "Powerful But Slow" attacker?  (I'm still thinking giant robot for an upcoming game.)  Another way to put this is "Is there a way to separate damage done from the chance to hit, for highly accurate attacks that do minor damage to for inaccurate attacks that do a lot of damage?"

Hudson wrote:
The "Master of Fear" stunt requires 6(!) stunts (Master of Fear, Fearsome Gaze, Aura of Fear, Steely Gaze, Aura of Menace, Scary), meaning it is impossible for a begin

Is this on purpose, and if so, do you remember what other stunts are impossible for beginning PC's?

There are a bunch of individual questions that come up regarding the flow of FP and I probably can't give a comprehensive answer in the time I have available, so I'll cut to the end - it's a self-correcting economy.  There's a lot of leeway in making judgement calls about when to compel aspects, when to make aspects sticky or fragile and such, but generally speaking, as long as those judgement calls are consistent, it's hard for things to go wrong.

As short answers:

* Jumping over a chasm is one of those terrible, terrible areas of rules, and is part of the reason the fallign rules aremostly not about falling at all.  It is, to my mind, kinder and more clear to the player to invoke the goop and remove an option (There's no way you coudl jump that chasm in yoru current state) than give a penalty on a "make it or die" roll.  But that's based around the core idea that the choices are where the meat of things are.

* NPC FP supply is your throttle for a fight.  In the absence of FP, a quick look at the stats on the board can make the sahpe of the fight pretty clear, so the FP supply has a bit more art than science to it at times. :)

* This is a fudge, but if you want to have a death machine it might perform manuevers on itself, adding various versions of the "Charged up" aspect and then at some point tagging them all at once.  Honestly, though, I'd use the kind of thinking in the Falling rules section, since it's really the "rules for stuff that should totally kill your characters in one shot, but that would be lame".

-Rob D.

Rob wrote:

* Jumping over a chasm is one of those terrible, terrible areas of rules, and is part of the reason the fallign rules aremostly not about falling at all.  It is, to my mind, kinder and more clear to the player to invoke the goop and remove an option (There's no way you coudl jump that chasm in yoru current state) than give a penalty on a "make it or die" roll.  But that's based around the core idea that the choices are where the meat of things are.

drnuncheon wrote:

B)  Can a single very powerful attack jump straight to causing a Moderate or Severe Consequence on a previously unStressed and un-Consequenced character?  Or even straight to "Taken Out"?  (A Superb attacker rolls ++++, and an average defender rolls ----, for instance.)

Doesn't look like it.  Later on on p67: "The first consequence a character takes is a mild consequence, the second is a moderate consequence, and any additional consequences are severe."

SotC wrote:
Example: Sally Slick has been in a slugfest with Blitzmann, and has
filled his three highest stress boxes (4, 5, and 6). She lands a monstrous
6-shift hit next – but only really needed a 4-shift hit to force a taken out
result, due to roll-up. Therefore, Sally has 2 shifts of overflow, and uses it
to beat a fast retreat as Blitzmann’s secret base falls apart around him.

Hudson wrote:

drnuncheon wrote:

B)  Can a single very powerful attack jump straight to causing a Moderate or Severe Consequence on a previously unStressed and un-Consequenced character?  Or even straight to "Taken Out"?  (A Superb attacker rolls ++++, and an average defender rolls ----, for instance.)

Doesn't look like it.  Later on on p67: "The first consequence a character takes is a mild consequence, the second is a moderate consequence, and any additional consequences are severe."

I just figured this one out.  Yes, you can jump straight to a Severe Consequence, or even straight to a Taken Out result, with a single attack.

Basically it looks like Consequences act like additional Stress Boxes, only they don't clear immediately after a conflict and they force a temporary Aspect on you if filled.

SotC wrote:
Example: Sally Slick has been in a slugfest with Blitzmann, and has
filled his three highest stress boxes (4, 5, and 6). She lands a monstrous
6-shift hit next – but only really needed a 4-shift hit to force a taken out
result, due to roll-up. Therefore, Sally has 2 shifts of overflow, and uses it
to beat a fast retreat as Blitzmann’s secret base falls apart around him.

Well, you're the author, so you know what you intended and what the rule are actually supposed to be, but the example certainly looks like it matches my conclusion.  You say:

The example talks about how if you have excess shifts from the minimum necessary to push the hit past the end of the target's stress track, then you can use those shifts to do something else, like retreat from an exploding base.

Hudson wrote:
... but the example from the book clearly says "force a Taken Out result" not "force a Consequence".  Plus the math is pretty clear: She's got a 6 shift hit, Blitzman's #6 Stress box is full.  "She only need a 4-shift hit to force a taken out result, due to roll up" and has 2 shifts of overflow.  That's 1) Minor Consequence, 2) Moderate Consequence, 3) Major Consequence, 4) Taken Out and 2 shift of overflow.  Pretty clear.

I'll take your interpetation as official, but if there's a revision or errata in the future, I think this should be rewritten or made clearer.

Ah, okay, I see now.  Well, like I said, I was considering your intention "official" anyway. 

I guess that's a (minor) pitfall of having so many examples in the book; as you go through revisions of rules, that's all the more things you have to check with a fine tooth comb to make sure there's no contradictions.  Unless you wait until the rules are all done and set in stone before writing any examples, and that's totally impractical, I'd imagine.

Hudson wrote:
Ah, okay, I see now.  Well, like I said, I was considering your intention "official" anyway. 

I guess that's a (minor) pitfall of having so many examples in the book; as you go through revisions of rules, that's all the more things you have to check with a fine tooth comb to make sure there's no contradictions.  Unless you wait until the rules are all done and set in stone before writing any examples, and that's totally impractical, I'd imagine.

Hi,
I have a couple of Chase questions:

1.  Does the Pursuer in a chase have to match the maneuver difficulty of the Pursued in order to maintain the chase?
The write–up in the rules (pp 240-241) indicates the following process:
Step 1.  Pursued declares a maneuver, sets a difficulty, and rolls against it.
Step 2.  Pursuer can either:
A. Match the maneuver, rolling against the same difficulty; or
B. Roll for a different maneuver (implicitly declaring his own difficulty)
My interpretation of these rules is that a Pursuer could choose to make his maneuver as easy as possible and would be able to maintain the chase forever. 

This leads to my second, related question…

2. Do the Pursued and Pursuer have to declare maneuvers of Average or better difficulty?

Thanks much!
Mel 

Mel wrote:
1.  Does the Pursuer in a chase have to match the maneuver difficulty of the Pursued in order to maintain the chase?
The write–up in the rules (pp 240-241) indicates the following process:
Step 1.  Pursued declares a maneuver, sets a difficulty, and rolls against it.
Step 2.  Pursuer can either:
A. Match the maneuver, rolling against the same difficulty; or
B. Roll for a different maneuver (implicitly declaring his own difficulty)
My interpretation of these rules is that a Pursuer could choose to make his maneuver as easy as possible and would be able to maintain the chase forever.

This leads to my second, related question…

2. Do the Pursued and Pursuer have to declare maneuvers of Average or better difficulty?

Ok, here's the thinking, and you can put it through the filter you like.

Theoretically, the lead person will always set the difficulty, and will descriptively do this with more an dmore harrowing stunts, in the hopes of doing something their pursuit will fail out.  Most of the time, that's all there is too it, but sometimes, there are exceptions.  Specifically, these come in two specific cases:

1) All or nothing stunts.  The train is coming and the lead car needs to cross the tracks in time to avoid getting cut off.  If he succeeds, it's awesome, but there's no logical way to say that the pursuing car does the same thing.  The train is already there, and if it hadn't been a close thing the first time, it wouldn't have been much of a stunt.  As such, the pursuing driver is put in a position where they need to do _something else_ to overcome the obstacle.  If the system were _purely_ abstracted, then the difficulty for, say, Driving up into a nearby parking garage and *jumping* over the train would be identical to the original person's difficulty, but I consider there to be some flex to account for creativity and cunning problem solving.

2) Mismatched capabilities.  Sometimes you have a chase where the capabilites of the two participants are very different.  As examples, consider what happens when a helicopter chases a car, when James Bond chases a parkour guy, or when sports car chases a jeep.  Sometimes the stunt that is goign to be hard for one party is going to be trivial for another party, which is why a helicopter is such a pain in the ass to get rid of when you're in a car.

The flexibility in the difficulties primarily exist to handle those two situations, though I suspect that could definately have been more clearly laid out.  I'm pleased as hell with the chase rules as an escalation game, and feel they're much closer to what we see in cinema, but at the same time, as a fairly young idea, they probably have some room for refinement.

-Rob D.

PS - And technically, no, there's no reason difficulties need to be above average, but excepting a golf cart chase, I admit I would address attempts to do that with Mockery.  The only reason i would not erratta this right htis second is that I would, instead, probably do something like allow the pursuer tot ake a benefit from spin on these rolls, so that the pursued has incentive to keep things rough.

Rob wrote:
Theoretically, the lead person will always set the difficulty, and will descriptively do this with more an dmore harrowing stunts, in the hopes of doing something their pursuit will fail out. 

New question.  I've been playing with created Red Pollard and Seabiscuit, America's Horse! as a character.  (In between winning races, Red and 'Biscuit travel around fighting crime.  "Oh no!  We just found out that Professor Vyle has hidden the kidnapped orphans in the old mine, and there's only 20 minutes to save them!  We'll never make it in time!"  "Don't worry, Seabiscuit and I can make it!  C'mon, Biscuit!  Yaw!")

I'm pretty confused on how to do it, though.  I don't want to do something weird like make Biscuit the main character and Pollard be a Companion.  I want Red to be the character, and Biscuit an animal companion.  But Companions top out at Great quality, and Seabiscuit obviously has Superb Athletics when it comes to running (even for a horse).  I'm also not sure how to handle Might for 'Biscuit, since it'll probably be important from time to time when pushing or pulling something.  And if you take more than one skill with the Skilled advance, you lower the rank of all the skills, and I already can't seem to get Biscuit's Athletics or Might up high enough.  Finally, it's been stated flat-out that Companions can't have Stunts, but Seabiscuit seems a cinch for some of the speed-based Athletics stunts.

Even if I do make Biscuit the main character, how do I handle his "horse-ness" when it comes to his speed and strength?  You just can't put a horse's speed and strength on the same scale as people.  Strength I could maybe see - Doc Sampson in a tug of war with a horse could almost make sense, but no person, and I mean NO person, should be able to outrun or even keep up with Seabiscuit.

Despite the oddness, this is a serious question.  I'm realy digging this concept, and I'd love to run it if anyone besides me in my area runs a game of SotC.

I'd make Seabiscuit an Animal Companion, Great quality and Skilled in Athletics, and give Pollard the Hell Bent for Leather stunt (+2 for sprint actions, use either your Survival or your mount's Athletics.)  With that stunt combination, Pollard on Seabiscuit has a base skill of Fantastic for any test of pure speed, and Great for all other feats of horsemanship (jumping high fences and going up steep slopes come to mind ...)

Pollard's talent as a jockey should be as relevant to winning races as Seabiscuit's native speed; sure, Seabiscuit can run at fantastic speeds, but he won't want to unless a rider who knows him well persuades him.

Mike nails it.  I got nothin' to add, really. ;)

What about Seabiscuit's Might?

Darren wrote:
What about Seabiscuit's Might?

Well, what if it the answer is "it matters a fair bit"? 

I'm talking about the horse as an integral part of the team, not just a rarely-seen walk-on whenever Red needs to get somewhere fast.  " 'Biscuit, kick in that door!"  "Seabiscuit, we've got to pull this boulder to clear the trapped miners!  Heave!"  "We can't hold that dern crazy horse!  He's kicking the damn walls down!"

Hudson wrote:
Well, what if it the answer is "it matters a fair bit"? 

I'm talking about the horse as an integral part of the team, not just a rarely-seen walk-on whenever Red needs to get somewhere fast.  " 'Biscuit, kick in that door!"  "Seabiscuit, we've got to pull this boulder to clear the trapped miners!  Heave!"  "We can't hold that dern crazy horse!  He's kicking the damn walls down!"

iago wrote:

Where is it writ that SotC is the right tool for this job?

I'm talking about the horse as an integral part of the team, not just a rarely-seen walk-on whenever Red needs to get somewhere fast.  " 'Biscuit, kick in that door!"  "Seabiscuit, we've got to pull this boulder to clear the trapped miners!  Heave!"  "We can't hold that dern crazy horse!  He's kicking the damn walls down!"

Quick question regarding NPCs (specifically Villains) and tagging aspects for the mechanical effect.  Are the NPC's under the same rule for not knowing aspects of the PCs as the PCs are for NPCs?  If so, does this mean the GM needs to keep a separate list of what each villain "knows"?

Joshua wrote:
Quick question regarding NPCs (specifically Villains) and tagging aspects for the mechanical effect.  Are the NPC's under the same rule for not knowing aspects of the PCs as the PCs are for NPCs?  If so, does this mean the GM needs to keep a separate list of what each villain "knows"?

iago wrote:
I tend to handwave this, and instead proceed on the idea that villains don't get much in the way of "free tags" -- thus making their (slightly unfair/unbalanced) tendency to know PC aspects merely another avenue for funnelling the PCs more fate points.

That said, a player who's heavy into Deceit or Rapport should be given opportunities to ably defend against (and confound!) his enemies whenever they try to get an Empathy read on him, so this tendency to handwave needs to be set aside when it's important to a PC's shtick.

Put another way, this answer basically says this:

It depends on the PCs. 

If they're the sorts who don't mount much of a defense against attempts to discover their aspects, you can assume the villains (at least the Named ones) know a useful handful of them. 

If they're the sort who are able to remain cryptic and hidden, they should find themselves beset by attempts to discover those aspects, and one should proceed on the assumption that the villains do not know those aspects.

Dig?

I'm not Iago or nothin' but one way to do this would be handle at least some of his machinations as conflicts where he tries to inflict a Consequence on the PC -- probably social or composure-related if he's a guy who uses his desk phone as a deadly weapon.  If he's successful in giving the PC an Aspect, and then a bunch other of NPC's get a free Tag off of thet Aspect, the players will be getting furious with him even if he never does anything violent to them. 

Note that the other NPC's don't have to allied with "Lex" or even be villains.  Maybe the newspaper editor or chief of police will use that Aspect to win an argument with the PC.  "I can't be seen working with you.  You're a mad dog and everybody knows it!"

Also note that a lot of the Leadership and Contact stunts might be a little dull to take for a PC, but have lots of nasty applications for a malicious NPC.

Joshua wrote:
One follow up question then.  I'm trying to create a Lex Luthor-ish (the non super-engineering version) type villain for the game I'm currently running.  Other than the obvious stunts / skills (Minions, Leadership, etc), what would you recommend for him?  The idea behind him is he doesn't do anything directly bad to you other than the minions, it's all about him making the right phone calls and I'm having trouble translating indirect actions like that down to the mechanical game level.

I have a question about the chase scene rules.  In the "Passengers" section, the rules state that even though only one passenger per exchange may help the driver with a skill roll, all passengers are allowed to spend fate points on behalf of the driver.  I assume that the other passengers must invoke one of their own aspects in order to spend FP (for instance, I could spend an FP on my "Eyes Of A Hawk" aspect to point out a shortcut to the driver, thus giving her a +2).  However, given a reasonably imaginative group, it would be a simple matter for all of the passengers to chuck in at least one FP each for a single roll, thus allowing the driver to declare incredibly high maneuver ratings (+10 or so) without having to worry about missing them.  This will tend to bring any chase scene to a quick end.

Have I missed something here, or misread something?

That's as designed.  And the group's supply of Fate Points will feel it. :)

I've got a pretty large group (7 PC's) so the FP pool hasn't been feeling it much ... I guess instead of having the group's aircraft pursued by fighter planes, I'll have to start pursuing them with rabid pterodactyls with jet packs and tommy guns! :)

Thanks for the quick response.