WotA, Fate, and Step Dice

I've posted about alternatives to Fate dice before, and it's an idea I keep coming back to as I work on Wrath of the Autarch. Mainly this comes in the form of varying a single dice by steps (d4, d6, d8, d10, etc) and then subtracting d6 from it. The baseline roll of d6 - d6 is a slightly more chaotic approximation to 4dF.

One of the motivations comes from compels. Traditional Fate compels aren't a good fit for the game. Their function is typically to introduce narrative complications into a character's life. They propel the story forward and add new wrinkles.

Will a d14 be needed?

But Wrath already has a mechanism for that. In the narrative phase, players can get narrative control and introduce all manner of complications. If they use an aspect as the basis for that narration, they get a Fate point. They have motivations for adding those sorts of complications.

So far, though, in playtesting, that doesn't generate quite a big enough stream of Fate points to the players. Using step dice presents another, more mechanical, option.

I've been playing with the idea of invoking aspects to step up the first dice, and compelling them to step down the first die. Once the first die is chosen, it's locked into place. After the roll, Fate points may only be spent on re-rolls. This opens up the option of players using aspects negatively against themselves, and just stepping down the first die roll.

This is less valuable than a normal use of an aspect, since it's only an expected value of +1, rather than a guaranteed +2. But it's also a little easier to keep the Fate points flowing, so maybe it will offset.

Also, this opens up some options for sources of increasing die steps:

Developments

It makes sense for different development types, such as Improved Casting, Advanced Armors, Thieves Tools, etc, to grant bonuses to the first die on any applicable rolls.

I would like it if at least some development provides bonuses for each mini-game (Infiltration, Skirmish, Diplomacy, and Warfare). Currently it's pretty random, with some mini-games like Diplomacy not having any such developments.

I'll have to think about that. I do have some developments that I'm not so keen on, and could probably swap out for a different effect.

Stunts

Stunts could also be used for bumping up dice rolls in a similar fashion. It will be tricky, though, to not overlap what developments are doing too much. Developments are more significant, since they apply to every character.

Using step dice also opens the door to stunts like this:

Wild Attack - Step up both the positive dice and the negative dice by one when using Fighting to attack.

So, a character could roll d8 - d8 to attack, increasing the range of the results.

Relationships

Currently characters have bonds with other characters that are just modeled as aspects. I reset all of these with one free invoke to encourage their use.

Another option would be to allow one step up/down on any applicable roll. This would make relationships really desirable, and make for some conscious choices on how characters interact.

Even more so if there are limited relationship slots. Because this is a troupe style game, this would make for some interesting choices when picking characters to take on a mission.

Stronghold Oath

Finally, there might be room for some sort of interaction with the Stronghold. After all, the Stronghold has aspects, and it's assumed that each character feels some way towards them.

So, in a similar style to relationships, having the option to step up/down the dice based on a particular Stronghold aspect might be interesting.

Baseline d4 - d6

If there are *too* many ways to step up dice without spending Fate points, it may be necessary for the baseline roll to be d4 - d6, just because the first dice will frequently get bumped up higher than that.

Rerolls

One thing that stepping up the first dice does is increase the value of re-rolls. As the range of results widens, they become more and more valuable.

Retroactive Compels

One of the things that I really like about Cortex+ is that there exists a mechanism for players to easily gain plot points (story points or fate points or whatever you wish to call them) by adjusting their dice pools prior to rolling if some trait (aspect) applies in a way that makes life difficult.

In my experience both playing and running in Fate games, GMs almost universally have trouble keeping the Fate point economy moving enough on their own, and players usually don't overcome the table inertia to subtly maneuver for compels.  Certainly, familiarity with the characters helps, as does practice on the part of the GM, but I still find myself not doing it well when I run traditional Fate games even though I'm consciously looking for opportunities to do so.

In Wrath of the Autarch, I remedied this by allowing players to get a Fate point when they failed a roll during the narrative phase, and then used an aspect to color the nature of the narration.  If the aspect involved a relationship with another player, both players could get a Fate point.

This worked really well to bring the downside of aspects into play quite a bit more, because failing a roll is a such an easily remembered concrete trigger.  It also worked really well to springboard into the next dilemma, failing forward to the next problem.

In WotA, during the narrative phase, players have quite a bit of narrative control over the developing story, more than in Fate Core, but I don't see any reason this couldn't be used in a similar fashion for standard Fate, although I've yet to do so.

There is an economy of rolls in the narrative phase of WotA that doesn't exist in Fate Core, so it might have to be constrained a little (particularly for subsystems like the Conflict rules which have lots of rolling), but I still think it could work in general.

The benefits of something like this are twofold: a way for players to easily get Fate points without GM oversight as well as a method to make failure a little more rich by bringing in new problems related to a character's aspects (failing forward).