Spooky Fanboy wrote: Okay, now that that's solved:
Now, how many successes would be needed to create a small town (pop. 150), a fictional relative for a PC, and make both so that it seems they've always existed? How much magic does it take to directly translate Director stance (creating a fictional town complete with fictional relative) into game reality as in the above example?

There are many ways. One easy way to do it? One Cosmos + One Stasis victory. You create the whole town with a Power rating (created via cosmos), then put a lock in place (created via Stasis) to make it permanent. Then, the town exists as a single "entity," albeit one with several components. Think of it, in a way, as a great big "mook." To make it a bit more interesting, you'd want to create some Urge capability, too.

[EDIT: Making it seem like the town has always existed might require you to actually win a conflict against a player character. Winning is enough, but winning with tricks to knock down the losing PCs Arete attribute is probably the best means to represent his memory lapse.]

This is one very simple way, and the whole town acts as an opponent for every experince that goes down there. However, once the players figure it out (via a conflict, of course!) the whole town goes POOF! pretty easily.

So, you could supplement this a bit with some more specifically created "automatons" or even "charmed" existing mortals to make some more opponents for conflict. Making an automaton would work just like creating the town (Cosmos + Stasis). Creating a "charmed" mortal might involve anything really. Could be (Chaos + Stasis) then (Cosmos + Stasis) to reduce some mortal's Power to nothing, then "filling up his soul" with your own power. Something like that, anyway. There are a number of ways to do it.

All told, though, I'm a little curious as to why you'd ask all this. Assuming you'd be running the scenario for several player characters, why not just assign ratings as you need them, maybe even prepare some NPCs before hand (though NOT the "plot", of course!).

What I'm saying is, when playing D&D, you don't ask how many gold pieces or XP a non-player character would need to build a monster-filled dungeon. You just have one and let the players go nuts. All this "how much would it cost" stuff really only matters if a player character wanted to do all this. And that's something I'd encourage! You could do it so that the players are pitted against one another in their Village of the Damned scenario. That'd be very cool, given that all players understand it isn't competitive gamism, but rather cooperative narrativism in which their players are bouncing conflicts against one another.

Also, a question completely unrelated to the one above: how is experience handled in this game? Is it handled in this game?

Experience works similar to Riddle of Steel. The major difference is that the power to reward is in the hands of the player himself. Any time a player enters conflict in which any Muses are "activated," the player may "bank" earned Tricks and apply them to any of the Muses being used in the conflict. The amount of the reward is up to the player (and Fate, in that he's gotta earn some tricks!). However, the GM does have some say because it's up to him to judge whether a Muse is activated in the first place.

Put simply, this means that Tricks can increase the Muse rating.

There's really no cause or need to increase the other characterisitcs, since players will be doing that all the time. Characters attributes will fluctuate often. Muses far less so. In a sense, Muses are always sacrosanct, and only the player may select when and how they increase / decrease.

Muses increase only when the player banks Tricks to do so.

Muses decrease when the player "spends" them to earn Free Tricks, most especially to restore his Hubris or Arete to stay alive!

Matt Snyder wrote: All told, though, I'm a little curious as to why you'd ask all this. Assuming you'd be running the scenario for several player characters, why not just assign ratings as you need them, maybe even prepare some NPCs before hand (though NOT the "plot", of course!)...All this "how much would it cost" stuff really only matters if a player character wanted to do all this. And that's something I'd encourage! You could do it so that the players are pitted against one another in their Village of the Damned scenario. That'd be very cool, given that all players understand it isn't competitive gamism, but rather cooperative narrativism in which their players are bouncing conflicts against one another.

Dude, way to answer your own question! ;-) Also, some handy answer to throw back if the players ask, "Could I do this, too?" Also, if the player wants to inflict revenge on his NPC rival. Although a "free-for-all" like you suggest would also be excellent.

Matt Snyder wrote: Put simply, this means that Tricks can increase the Muse rating.

There's really no cause or need to increase the other characterisitcs, since players will be doing that all the time. Characters attributes will fluctuate often. Muses far less so. In a sense, Muses are always sacrosanct, and only the player may select when and how they increase / decrease.

Ah! So we start the player with the power of the gods, then increase his human drives and obligations. Very Interesting!