I'm working on designing for Fate, and so I've been breaking down the system to its screws and gears.
By default, Fate Core has 47 discrete mechanical elements to keep track of: five aspects, three stunts, two refresh, ten skills, twenty skill points, and two two-box stress tracks with three consequence slots. Fate Accelerated has 32 discrete mechanical elements to keep track of: five aspects, three stunts, two refresh, six approaches, nine approach points, and one four-box stress track with three consequence slots. So an ideal goal in designing an equally simple, elegant setting for Fate, is to have no more than 32-47 discrete mechanical elements to build from.
If you break down stunts into further quanta, you find that the default character in Fate Core has two physical and two mental stress boxes, with the potential for up to two more of each. However this breaks down into a base of three shifts of physical and three of mental for a total of six stress shifts before getting to consequences. If the character has a third stress box in one or both, they have a total of twelve shifts, and if they have four stress boxes in each they have a maximum of twenty shifts of stress. Six, nine, twelve, sixteen, or twenty shifts… that makes the potential for a lot of granularity if you break down Resources into individual stress boxes, and makes it possible to connect Resources to treasury and storehouse type stress or conditions depending on how you design it. That was a key issue in my decision to break up stress into individual single stress boxes; see FST 60.
As a mechanics light system, Fate requires a whole lot less to digest the crunch, and a whole lot less bookkeeping than say Pathfinder, or GURPS. That is neither bad nor good in and of itself, as both of these are very well designed games, and both have a lot of thought behind their extensive mechanical crunch. It is however a difference that is very important to my present taste in games, as spare time is much more precious a commodity for me at this time in my life. But here's the problem; I am working on designing a political game and Fate is the engine I want to use. However, a political game can be very much a very large wheels-within-wheels affair, and the level of mechanical complication could potentially add up very fast. That is something I want to avoid which is what brought me to dig Fate in the first place, and yet I want the ability to account for many of those wheels within wheels anyway because I like verisimilitude.
So how do I get the big machine without big maintenance? How can I get something that feels as big as reading Dune or A Distant Mirror or watching Game of Thrones?
Currently I have copies of two published Fate world books that beat me to print on settings that include a political angle (Romance in the Air, and House of Bards), but fortunately, they each fill a different niche, and neither one fits the niche that I want to design for. The first assumes nations are important to the narrative, but they act in a distant canvas backdrop shaping the context for personal drama. The second puts the point of view characters in the position of wheeling and dealing for influence in the districts that compose a large city. I am looking for the middle ground with the faces and factions that push the action across the broad canvas. As such, I need to address issues of not only personal and party political power, but all the tools of power from diplomatic to legal, from production to foreign trade, from spies to warfare.
The dials for this build are five aspects, five stunts, three refresh, and six approaches one of which includes a separate stress track. In addition, there can be a number of extras in play at any given time that may regularly change, and multiple issues that are shared by some or all.
The prime movers in my design thinking should be the factions with their associated faces, and the treaties, accords, and compacts that provide soft leverage in the game. Through these should be backed by the various tools of power from the soft power of diplomacy and trade to cajole, to the hard power of spies and armies to threaten, all backed by the factional agendas and signed treaties. I did not want to have a massive amount of book keeping (I don't want a tabletop game about number crunching) but I wanted lots of options available on an ad hoc basis since cities and states have a lot more than individuals.
I chose five aspects for many of the reasons that Ryan Macklin discussed in Fateful Concepts: Character Aspects. However, I knew that I wanted to create a stronger funneling mechanism for conflicting agendas which is why two treaty aspects each of which more or less inverts the more conventional crossing paths aspects in the default phase trio by creating links of conflict rather than cooperation. Another design benefit of this decision, is that it dovetails nicely with the fact that the stunts dial is increased above standard, while the refresh dial is still default; there had to be a way to create more opportunities for compels to fuel the fate point economy, and at the same time, it encourages more use of the create an advantage action which is in my opinion, the most narrative oriented action which encourages more colorful story moments.
The resource stress track seemed to be an important consideration as I wanted to provide a more solid mechanical hook to hang the concept of abundance and destitution; this needed to be something that feels realistic and sometimes antagonistic in political decisions, without requiring a lot of mechanical book keeping. A full treasury can directly add to your power to bargain, trade, and wage war, while the lack of resources can mercilessly drive your people into a morass of despair, desperation, and anarchy. Mechanically in game, this also provided a neat way to essentially pay for ad hoc extras that are more or less equal to a stunt or aspect in play for that scene or season, and can then be disposed of to clean up the book keeping until you want or need them again unless you pay to keep them active in play. An active trade fleet, assassin, or diplomatic mission, or army should be able to do a little more than the single use of an aspect or one refresh stunt, but still be disposable. Thus, they are paid for by a combination of a successful created advantage supported by resources depending on their level of capability. They should be disposable, so that other players can screw with you by pirating your ships, and sending your diplomats heads back home in a basket.
On the other hand, another factor in my design thinking, was trying to think of how to crack the nut of a problem that I had from the very first time I tried to make a political game: the players almost immediately resorted to war as the most expedient method to get results. In reality, war is costly and should as one Prussian general observed, be kept as diplomacy carried to its furthest extreme. I wanted keeping armies to be a headache unless you really had burned all your other bridges. By making armies expensive to keep, and factions and faces essentially free, the players will naturally discover that they can get more done for less that way… unless they have no more leverage with factions and faces and are backed into a corner. War is very possible here, but costs a lot to keep up.
One thing I did not want was a vast amount of mandatory book keeping that has no immediate effect in a scene, but still give the feel of real capability and consequences in each arena of decision making as represented by the approaches. That is why I settled on fire and forget or fragile economics, warfare, etc. Armies, caravans, gold mines, and even patriotic movements are all as maintainable as you want and easily disposable when you have no more interest in them by making them largely ad hoc aspects introduced by create an advantage, and maintained by resources or simple overcome actions as long as you need them. More important examples of the same can be promoted to stunt level elements which essentially equate to a permanently accessible invokable aspect in mechanical terms.
I plan to add more of my design thinking as I go.
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