GrahamWills
Hero
I have found that once players get comfortable with Fate, they will interact with anything and expect that it becomes as important as anyone cares it to be. A strong concept ion fate is that of the "Fate Fractal" -- which basically says that you can detail anything in as much or as little detail as you wants and (importantly) that this is normal.
So when I tell a player that there's a guard on a door, they know that if they start talking and interacting with the guard, that I'll add aspects to her and make her more fully fleshed out. And if I mention she has a nice-looking gun and the players steal it, they know that too will be fleshed out. And so on and so on.
From the point of view of system like Fate, the concept of "awakening" something to seems actually a bit old-fashioned. Your detailed character that you've been playing for a decade is just "grizzled piratical space captain" to the guard, and the guard is just "bored looking guard-for-hire" to the player -- one is no more furniture than the other, and when they interact, either players or GM don't need to change the state of either from "furniture" to "alive" -- they just decide how much detail they care about exploring today.
90% of the time, the guard will not be of interest to anyone and will be treated superficially. But all it takes is a player to say "how bored is this guard?" or "Is this guard human?" and I'll whip out a flash card and soon the guard will have more detail
As an example, in my Mindjammer campaign, I have an NPB "Seb, Caravan Leader" who the players wanted more info about beyond the three words I had given to him and so they uncovered some more aspects about him, including that he had some followers, and so I then fractal out his followers (see below for the Fate fractal on his organization) and now it looks like they're going to set him up as leader of the planet.
But the important thing for this convo is that the players know that every single person or item they meet has the same degree of detail there. It's potential, but no character is ever "furniture" turned into "real". There is no mental division in GM or player's minds that says one is just set dressing, and so players feel very comfortable asking for more detail. And a Fate GM who says "he's just a guard" is either trying to finish the session off in reasonable time (which I respect!) or not really doing the best job they could.
New Vision Merchants
Merchant Sub-Culture / Scale 2
Memes
+3 Security +2 Resources
+1 Contacts, +1 Structure
Stunts / Special
Stress and Consequences
Physical: O O O
Mental: O O
Credit: O O O
Minor (+2) ________________________________________
Moderate (+4) _____________________________________
So when I tell a player that there's a guard on a door, they know that if they start talking and interacting with the guard, that I'll add aspects to her and make her more fully fleshed out. And if I mention she has a nice-looking gun and the players steal it, they know that too will be fleshed out. And so on and so on.
From the point of view of system like Fate, the concept of "awakening" something to seems actually a bit old-fashioned. Your detailed character that you've been playing for a decade is just "grizzled piratical space captain" to the guard, and the guard is just "bored looking guard-for-hire" to the player -- one is no more furniture than the other, and when they interact, either players or GM don't need to change the state of either from "furniture" to "alive" -- they just decide how much detail they care about exploring today.
90% of the time, the guard will not be of interest to anyone and will be treated superficially. But all it takes is a player to say "how bored is this guard?" or "Is this guard human?" and I'll whip out a flash card and soon the guard will have more detail
As an example, in my Mindjammer campaign, I have an NPB "Seb, Caravan Leader" who the players wanted more info about beyond the three words I had given to him and so they uncovered some more aspects about him, including that he had some followers, and so I then fractal out his followers (see below for the Fate fractal on his organization) and now it looks like they're going to set him up as leader of the planet.
But the important thing for this convo is that the players know that every single person or item they meet has the same degree of detail there. It's potential, but no character is ever "furniture" turned into "real". There is no mental division in GM or player's minds that says one is just set dressing, and so players feel very comfortable asking for more detail. And a Fate GM who says "he's just a guard" is either trying to finish the session off in reasonable time (which I respect!) or not really doing the best job they could.
New Vision Merchants
Merchant Sub-Culture / Scale 2
Memes
- Seb is the only leader with a true vision for the future
- Individuals exist to serve the state
- Survival is the priority
- Violence is a tool, like anything else
+3 Security +2 Resources
+1 Contacts, +1 Structure
Stunts / Special
- Mole: Your organization has long-term sleeper agents. For a fate point, once per session, you can declare you have one in a target organization.
- Armament: Excellent equipment means successful security actions cause +2 stress
Stress and Consequences
Physical: O O O
Mental: O O
Credit: O O O
Minor (+2) ________________________________________
Moderate (+4) _____________________________________
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