- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Good point. What do you think a good range would be for how often to let Hazō tweak his Aspects?
Objection! That sentence has violated the Geneva Conventions against the torture of grammar!
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
I know, isn't it great how you can twist English into knots of itself?
As far as this goes, I would say something like:
Both the QMs and the players can change Hazou's aspects, though the players through proposal of the aspect it will be changed to, and through concerted work to change his behaviour (Similarly, though more indirectly, for other characters).
For instance, we could work to change Hazou's Chronic Foot in Mouth Syndrome aspect, but we'd need to account for that in planning.
The downside of this process is that it would cost us fate points in denying compels. I'm not sure this is actually appropriate given the context of milestones.
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[x] team Akane training
It's not meant to be mechanically difficult for players to do, so...
I would say that during any "downtime" (that is, not literally in the middle of combat), players can alter any one of Hazou's aspects that is not his High Concept or Trouble as part of a standard Plan vote. Must include a brief explanation as to why the Aspect has changed and what the new Aspect means; may be subject to GM veto if it somehow seems unreasonable. For instance, he recent reunion for his mother could easily justify some kind of, "Do it for Mom" aspect if players thought that was now more important than one of his other aspects.
Altering an Aspect of an NPC may be possible in some cases, but it's hard to put any concrete rules to it because every one will be different. I don't know how long it will take Yukino to convince Zabuza to give up "Forever Alone" or if it's possible. Probably such things should just be left to GM judgement. Happily, it's not a decision with a lot of mechanical consequences if you screw it up, so no big deal.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Aspects are generally long-term things though, so giving the players basically free reign to juggle Hazou's aspects around as we please doesn't really fit. A flat rate of permission to change aspects would let us do stuff like swap out cleverness aspects for combat aspects as we prepare a fight under the justification that Hazou probably feels upset/confrontational/prepared to fight, etc.
At the same time, the things that make up a person's aspects sound like the sorts of things that can change in the middle of combat. For instance, if Noburi dies in a fight and we're planning the rest of the fight, it could be justifiable for Hazou to, mid-battle, drop an aspect to pick up a vengeance related one. A single codified rate may introduce irregularities on both ends of the spectrum.
Since aspects directly relate to characterization, that puts them at least somewhat out of character-building territory like XP expenditures, and more into narrative character-building that the QMs control. At the very least, I expect a major event would allow the QMs to impose an aspect on us, and similarly for repeated moderate events.
Apart from imposed changes, though, I imagine an aspect, barring a really major event, would last for at least one arc, so to speak. If we gave Hazou an aspect just before stumbling upon Hidden Mountain, we shouldn't be able to remove it until after we're gone, and even then only if Hazou's meaningfully changed over that time period.
I'm not sure what to think on handling it inside action plans or outside of them, be it in separate votes or just dialogue with the QMs, but I do think that instead of a general 'you can change an aspect this often' rule we should have a 'your aspect lasts at least this long, and longer if you don't change' kind of rule.
The baseline in FATE is that you can change an aspect every single game session, so I'd say you're wrong about that.
FATE has a "per arc" tracker and a "per game session" tracker, and it says to change per game session rather than per arc.
I think it's not going to be a big deal and there's no need to worry about hard time limits. In real life play, most players that I've seen settle on a comfortable mixture of cleverness and combat aspects and let the PC sit there rather than try to optimize for situations, because you never know what's going to happen. When they change aspects it's because they think the PC has changed.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I wonder how frequently Hazō would have to change Aspects before "Unstable Personality" became one of them. [happy QM fantasies]
- Location
- Canada
[X] The Adventures of Zabuza and Yukino
[X] team Akane training
[X] team Akane training
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Wait, he doesn't already have that one? I mean, hive mind and all...
ALSO. Can you (@eaglejarl @OliWhail) please (god, I'm begging you) clarify that this line from the new rules doc:
Refers not just to infusion but sealing research as well? Some unnamed elements of the hivemind are unconvinced that sealing research poorly done presents as much of an X-risk as sealing infusions poorly done.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As part of sealing research, you have to periodically test your theories by making prototype seals and seeing if they do what you want them to do. This is explicit in the new version of the rules, which identifies each research roll as a prototyping roll. If you fail a research roll, you have created a seal that either does nothing (likely), reliably does the wrong thing (unlikely) or exhibits undefined behaviour (too likely). A seal exhibiting undefined behaviour is also what happens as the result of a failed infusion.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
What @Velorien said.
To make it more explicit:
SEALING RESEARCH INVOLVES INFUSIONS; IF YOU FUCK UP A RESEARCH ROLL HARD ENOUGH YOU WILL DIE. POSSIBLY SO WILL EVERYBODY WITHIN SEVERAL MILES. POSSIBLY SO WILL THE WORLD.
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- Location
- Yes.
Right, Watchers are actually real. Got it.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Have we had any of these in our sealing research?
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Who would be stupid enough to use the same failed seal twice?
- Location
- Yes.
- Location
- Earth
Didn't we want to recreate the blade-monster failure to fight Zabuza?
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Nah, we just wanted to lead him to them.
e:
I believe we heard that Arikada was doing research on sealing failures with the aid of her young apprentices.
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Mechanics look cool! One big concern I have though is that they won't actually reduce the amount of work for running a fight. RPG rules are specifically designed to create lots of engaging and consequential decision-making during fights so that it's fun for players. Since this is a quest, that's the OPPOSITE of what we'd want for two reasons:
1. More decisions/fight means it takes the QMs more time and effort to run combat
2. More meaningful combat decisions means that the QMs are now responsible for Hazou acting optimally in fights to a greater degree.
Also I'm pretty opposed to Fate Points since they drag out fights a lot via rerolls and look like a pretty straight trade-off of narrative vs realism. They also seem to me to be better suited for an RPG than a quest. Since there's already a layer of QM interpretation between the plans and Hazou's actions, there's already a mechanism that ensures the player acts in-character. Even in the infamous youthsuit incident, the radically out of character plan made in-universe sense when filtered through the QMs interpretation: Hazou had suffered an entirely believable mental break.
Aside from those though.. it's a really cool system! 1v1 battles especially look like they'll be really exciting and fun to follow. Nice job
1. More decisions/fight means it takes the QMs more time and effort to run combat
2. More meaningful combat decisions means that the QMs are now responsible for Hazou acting optimally in fights to a greater degree.
Also I'm pretty opposed to Fate Points since they drag out fights a lot via rerolls and look like a pretty straight trade-off of narrative vs realism. They also seem to me to be better suited for an RPG than a quest. Since there's already a layer of QM interpretation between the plans and Hazou's actions, there's already a mechanism that ensures the player acts in-character. Even in the infamous youthsuit incident, the radically out of character plan made in-universe sense when filtered through the QMs interpretation: Hazou had suffered an entirely believable mental break.
Aside from those though.. it's a really cool system! 1v1 battles especially look like they'll be really exciting and fun to follow. Nice job
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
[X] What would have happened if the YOUTHSUIT chapter stayed canon