I’d been running my Dresden Files game for just a few weeks when the FATE Core preview was released to Kickstarter backers in December last year. I read the book voraciously and was very impressed by the clarity and flexibility of the updated rules. In fact I liked them so much that I immediately began updating my Dresden game to use the FATE Core rules.

Only one area of the new rules caused me significant confusion and that was the handling of the “Block” action.

In Dresden Files blocking was one of the core actions types. The player would describe what their character was doing and what types of action they were trying to block and then roll an appropriate skill at a difficulty set by the GM. Shifts on this roll would then increase the difficulty for blocked targets to perform the action(s) which were intended to be blocked. Likewise the borders between conflict zones could be assigned a Barrier Rating which acted as a block for anyone attempting to cross them.

Blocking and barriers have both been deleted in FATE Core and their function has been absorbed within the more general rules for the Create Advantage and Situation Aspects. In the first draft however it wasn’t entirely clear exactly how this had been done.

Over the next few weeks I and many others discussed the topic exhaustively with Fred Hicks and system developer Lenny Balsera. They gave us lots of details of the intent behind the new rules and examples of how they apply that made the situation a lot clearer, but these examples were scattered across the Yahoo Group, Google+, the Kickstarter comments and Twitter.

The guide you are about to read was compiled primarily for my own reference before the March preview of the rules was released that makes most of these systems and the intent behind them much clearer. I’ve been sharing it on Google+ whenever the topic arises (which it is still wont to do with some regularity) as I had the freedom to go into the ideas behind the different types of obstacle with more depth and clarity than the book’s page count allows. Where possible I’ve quoted clarifications from the developers or given explicit page references.

All page references relate to the March 18th Preview of FATE Core.

Blocking and Obstacles in FATE Core

Aspects Are Always True

This is a fundamental rule of Fate Core which is worth stressing before you read the rest of this text. Aspects remain true whether or not they are invoked (FC 76). Once someone gains the Hands Cuffed Behind My Back aspect they aren’t going to be doing anything that requires their hands to be in front of them until they have overcome the aspect. The GM is also free to consider aspects when working out what difficulty should apply to an action (FC 192).

Situation Aspects may provide Passive or Active Opposition

Situation aspects now fill the role that was previously occupied by barriers, representing obstacles that apply to crossing between zones (e.g. “Sheer Cliff”). Other situation aspects, like “Blacker than Midnight” or “Slippery Floor”, may provide constant passive opposition to certain actions (FC 131). The type (passive or active) and level of opposition is set by the GM. For instance, “Slippery Floor” might provide passive opposition at Fair to any action involving rapid movement while an “Imposing Wall” might provide Great passive opposition to moving between zones. You can also mix in the rule about treating Aspects as characters – for example “Moat of Fire” might provide Good active opposition when you try to cross it and also inflict damage with a “Burning Things” skill if you fail (FC 208).

Lenny says:

“You could have passive opposition by GM fiat, or passive opposition justified precisely from a scene aspect like ‘Littered With Debris’ at the GMs discretion or player insistence or whatever. Group consensus.

“Like, a major, major role of [situation] aspects is to serve as a rubric for the GM to say, “Hey, there should probably be opposition there, because X is true.” So, that debris could still affect someone if no one invoked it – the GM always, always has the power to suggest that opposition exists. If someone did invoke it, it could add to that opposition.”

Situation Aspects can be used as a passive Defence

It’s implicit in the previous notes on aspects as opposition but I’ve separated out to highlight it as an important concept: Characters can create advantages with situation aspects to obtain a passive defence against certain kinds of action as long as this is internally consistent with the fiction.

Example: You’re a stealthy but not particularly athletic character who has ended up in a gunfight in a packed warehouse. Rather than trying to dodge the gunfire you decide to take cover behind some packing crates. You roll Stealth to create advantage on the “Piles of packing crates” to establish that you are now tucked behind cover, making it harder to shoot you. Mechanically the GM decides that the gunman needs to beat a passive difficulty of Good to hit you through the crate. Because you succeeded on your create advantage action you not only established your position behind the crates in the narrative but also gained a free invocation which you can use to make the passive opposition to shooting you Superb for one exchange.

Situation Aspects can be created tactically to block certain actions

Characters can proactively block certain actions by creating applicable advantages. If you successfully place the “Painful Headlock” aspect on another character then that aspect remains in play until you let it go, the victim manages to overcome the headlock, or the fiction otherwise implies that the grapple is no longer sustainable. Narratively this restricts the actions available to the victim until he has overcome the grapple and at the very least allows you to provide active opposition against actions where that makes sense in the fiction (see below).

NPCs and Characters can provide active opposition when this is supported by the fiction

If you can arguably be ‘in the way’ of an action (as is often justified by aspects like Grappled or All Up In His Grill) then you can provide active opposition to it (FC 131). This does not require an action and it does not count as a Defend action.

Example: You have created advantage with your Shoot skill to establish that you’re providing “Covering Fire” in your zone. This means you can provide active opposition to movement or to other actions that would logically be hampered by the flying lead with your Shoot skill.

This does not necessarily require a situation aspect though if in doubt a relevant aspect should always be considered as sufficient justification.

Example: If you’ve mentioned that you are standing next to a door then you can provide active opposition to anyone trying to move through the door by physically getting in their way, even though there isn’t an aspect in play to support this: It just makes sense in the fiction.

Where your active opposition helps to defend another (such as when you have a gunman grappled) then the active opposition and defence rolls do not stack. Either one of them rolls and the target has to live with the result or if the table agrees the the defender or the target (whoever has the highest value) rolls with a +1 teamwork modifier (Per discussion with Lenny).

If you allow the teamwork option bear in mind that a teamwork action means that all participants are subject to the negative consequences in the event of a failure (FC 174). Depending on the exact events unfolding this may or may not be appropriate.

Example: Fred uses his eldritch powers to create a Wall of Fire aspect between him and Lenny and a psychotic gunman. The gunman shoots at Lenny and Fred argues that he can use his wall of fire as justification for providing active opposition. Lenny says he’s also going to try and dodge in case the bullet makes it through the wall of fire. The table agrees that this is an example of teamwork so the one with the highest skill rolls against the gunman with a +1 bonus. If they fail to defend it doesn’t make any sense for the bullet to hit Fred and Lenny, so the table agrees that the worst that can happen is Lenny takes the hit by himself.

NPCs and Characters can Defend to provide opposition

Defend actions are usually reserved for cases where you are trying to fend off an ‘attack’ or negative consequence for yourself. However, you can also defend others as long as it makes sense for you to be able to get in the way of the attack (or get them out of the way of it) but this has the drawback that you must suffer the hit yourself if you fail to defend successfully. (FC 159) This is subtly different from the case of providing active opposition. Lenny says:

“The assumption I probably left out of the text is that being the source of active opposition and taking a defend action aren’t the same thing. The former is just a fictional justification – it’s no different than the GM setting a difficulty. It just changes who gets to roll. The latter is specifically intertwined with attack and create advantage as described in the book.”

The observant among you will note that FC 140 says that opposition to an attack always counts as a defend roll and this remains true when the one providing opposition is the target.

An invoked aspect can add +2 to any opposition you choose

If you can justify how the aspect gets in the way you can either pass a +2 benefit to another character’s active opposition roll or simply add 2 to a source of passive opposition. This means that if there would have been no opposition, your invocation provides it at Fair (FC 68).

Overcoming Obstacles

The other side of the coin relates to getting rid of or overcoming obstacles.

If you want to get rid of a situation aspect, you can do it in one of two ways: roll an overcome action specifically for the purpose of getting rid of the aspect, or roll some other kind of action that would make the aspect make no sense if you succeed (FC 78).

Example:, if you’re Grappled, you could try a sprint action to move away. If you succeed, it wouldn’t make sense for you to be Grappled anymore, so you’d also get rid of that aspect.

If a character can interfere with your action, they get to roll active opposition against you as per normal. Otherwise, GMs, it’s your job to set passive opposition or just allow the player to get rid of the aspect without a roll, if there’s nothing risky or interesting in the way.

Finally, if at any point it simply makes no sense for a situation aspect to be in play, get rid of it.

Example: If you’re Grappled but the opponent holding you describes wandering off to do something else, it no longer makes sense for the Grappled aspect to be in play and it is immediately discarded.

Regarding the level of difficulty to overcome an obstacle, Leonard says:

“Setting the level of passive opposition for anything is the GM’s province unless a player is making a hard statement by spending a fate point. You can talk about it, like you can talk about anything, but the GM retains the last word.”

This is an important change from Dresden Files, where the difficulty to overcome a block was set by the shifts obtained on the block. Changing the way this works has two major advantages:

1. You don’t have to remember the successes rolled when you later come to work out the difficulty of overcoming an obstacle
2. You can’t stack lots of aspects when you create the obstacle to make it virtually impossible to overcome. Instead you have to burn fate points or invocations whenever the obstacle is challenged in order to maintain it at a high level. This prevents the game from getting blocked or bogged down for a sustained period by an obstacle.

This means that a character’s skill (+/- luck) no longer correlates directly to the difficulty to overcome an obstacle. Instead GMs are encouraged to use the usual rules for setting difficulty based on the needs of the story or the realities of the situation.

Example: John Rambo is alone in the forest and he decides to set up some pits and wooden traps to deter people from following him into the wilderness. He describes what he’s setting up and the GM considers his description, Rambo’s aspects, the materials available and the time he’s taking and settles on passive opposition of Good to overcome the traps. He also notes that most of the traps are deadly and that they will inflict a Good attack with weapon 2 on anybody who fails to overcome them…

When an obstacle is overcome, it’s overcome

As to what happens to an aspect/obstacle when it’s overcome, Lenny clarifies:

“When an obstacle is overcome, it’s overcome – whatever considerations need to go into effect to make that legitimate, make them. That may mean the aspect goes away. That may mean you call ninja bullshit on pulling the same trick over again. It’s the same kind of thing as, ‘talk about a concession until you find something that has real teeth’.”

If the obstacle is not overcome, it’s not overcome. i.e. it stays in effect until it’s overcome, subject to modification by context.

Lenny says:

“So, in the cover fire example that’s starting to make me feel like hearing “Love Shack” at karaoke, failing [to overcome] means no opportunity to fire, and maybe other costs atop that. Next turn, whatever that person does, firing at the intended target is off-limits. That can choose any other actions, though.”

Conclusions

The changes on blocking in FATE Core may take a little getting used to if you’re used to Dresden and earlier iterations of FATE. Once you realise that it’s all about aspects though it becomes apparent that the Core way of doing things is a significant improvement, streamlining the process of getting in people’s way so that it doesn’t get in your way.

The Block action was always basically a Manoeuvre action that created a slightly unusual aspect which required a certain amount of effort to overcome. Now all aspects are the same and there’s no need to refer to the action of creating an obstacle aspect by a special name.

Hopefully this has been a useful guide to the various options available to you in FATE Core and, more importantly, gave you some insight into how and why these options work.

Have fun!

This will be a “quick sketch” post, rather than a deep discussion of the matter, making some assumptions that folks reading it have already read Fate Core (via the Kickstarter or, later on, after its release) and are wondering where blocks and borders went.

Where did they go, anyway? Create Advantage is where.

Let’s suppose I’m a pyromancer, facing off against a ice-slinger and his buddies, and that me and my foe both are using a quick magic system involving a skill roll.

I’ve got the drop on them, but I know they could overrun me, and I have someone with me I’m looking to protect, so I’ve got to think fast. A wall of fire feels like something that would do the trick, and they’re not close enough to me to interfere, so I go for an easy, quick, Create Advantage roll with my magic. I make the roll, an easy success.

Bam! Now there’s a Wall of Fire aspect on the situation, and I’ve got a free invoke on it besides (or two, if I succeed with style—I’ve got a good shot at that, so let’s say I did). I’m dropping the wall on the zone I’m in, since I’ve got escape in mind and I’m hoping it’ll interfere with my aggressors.

Iceguy slings a face full of ice shards at my friend-in-need, figuring if he can take him down, an escape is kinda moot.

Here’s the block moment: I previously established that Wall of Fire aspect, right? And it’s reasonable to say that the Wall would interfere with such an attack on my friend. There are a couple options I have here.

The presence of the aspect that I created provides justification for me to roll a defense against that attack. (EDIT: A change of procedure follows. Original post incorrectly suggested the original target could roll as well in such a case.) When I make that decision, I’m essentially stepping into the way of the attack myself. I’ll be rolling my magic instead of my friend rolling his defense, and if I win that roll, the attack doesn’t land (and if I don’t, it hits me; maybe I narrate that as some kind of magic backlash if so). I’m also positioned to make use of one of those free invokes on Wall of Fire if I want to improve my defense roll.

My second option, if I don’t want to get in the way of the attack myself, is that I can at least use those free invokes to improve my friend’s defense roll, since I can invoke an aspect to increase the opposition/difficulty faced by a foe.

Either way, let’s say the Wall does the job, and those shards vanish in a few puffs of steam. I tell my friend to hoof it, and square off in the interests of buying some time before I follow after. (Let’s also say I did get in the way, and rolled well enough, so I don’t have to burn my free invokes yet.)

My friend burns his action on a sprint to get the heck out of dodge, and thankfully there’s nothing that’s been established to interfere with his escape route.

Then my opponent’s goon-friends get to go. They come at me, but I’ve established there’s a Wall of Fire on this zone, standing between me and my frosty foes.

Here’s the border moment: First off, the GM can look at that Wall of Fire and say “normally it’s no difficulty to move over to Fred, but there’s a Wall of Fire there, so you’ll have to roll to close with him” and then set a difficulty for anyone to cross over that thing. It’ll probably be a modest one (perhaps just Average) unless I step in there and make it a bigger deal.

I can, of course: those free invokes will let me increase the difficulty of anything reasonably affected by the aspect, +2 apiece. I could take that Average traversal difficulty up to Superb if I’m willing to cash in both free invokes (assuming both haven’t been used already) as they approach. (The GM might rightly insist I have to increase the difficulty separately for each goon’s attempt, but I check and she’s treating both goons as a single character for ease and speed.)

It would also be reasonable to say that I can do some more blocking here; that Wall of Fire gives me justification to Defend against their Overcome rolls to move towards me.

Whatever the case, it turns out I don’t need to spend more than one of those free invokes to foul up their approach, tho; they’re not heavy on the Athletics. Good news, because I’m about to bolt, and this keeps everyone else still on the far side of the Wall.

My turn, and I hightail it to the door, trying to catch up with my friend. That’s my action, and I’m out of the warehouse.

Those guys are still set to go after me, and so long as we’re still in the same situation/circumstances, the Wall of Fire will persist. But without me present, it won’t have quite as much teeth. I can’t reasonably defend against anything they want to do against it, because I’m no longer there. But it’ll still provide passive difficulty as set by the GM, and I can still cash in that final free invoke to make that difficulty heftier—maybe saving it to resist an Overcome roll to remove the Wall in the first place. It’s pretty clear they’ll cross the barrier I’ve erected eventually, so the GM decides to simply look at the free invoke and say it’ll buy me another exchange or so of head start to get me and my friend away from the situation.

By moving the special-case language and implementation of the older ideas of blocking and borders into Fate Core’s established, understood aspect mechanisms, the system moves cleanly and quickly from the intent (“I want to throw a Wall of Fire in front of them to buy us some time for an escape!”) into mechanized action (“Okay, roll to Create Advantage”). And then the aspect simply doing what aspects are allowed to do in Core takes over — with all the pizzazz and story-flex that aspects bring to bear, while ditching the somewhat flavorless just-numbers special cases of the borders and blocks of yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jlksn_mblw

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/fate-core

http://www.evilhat.com/home/coming-soon-fate-core/

To round out the writing team, we’re adding Brian Engard and Mike Olson.

Brian you may recognize as one of the co-authors of Bulldogs!, a science fiction space opera game of kickassery from Galileo Games. Brian has been helping Evil Hat out on a number of projects, and always impresses.

Mike is, among other things, the lead developer on the Atomic Robo RPG for Evil Hat — to be based in part on Fate Core – as well as the guy behind the excellent Spirit of the Blank blog, as well as the Fate adaptation of the Kerberos Club. His pedigree speaks for itself!

Our new editor will be Jeremy Keller.

Jeremy is one of those guys who seems to be good at everything. He’s created fantastic games like Chronica Feudalis and Technoir, crafted eye-popping videos, and done art direction for the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game for Margaret Weis Productions. We’re pleased to have his perspective and talents deployed on making Fate Core as accessible, clear, and engaging as it can be.

Welcome aboard, folks!

Check out the video here:

And if you’re excited by what you see — please show your support!

Read on.

Man, that “on fire” thing is probably the biggest buggaboo in all of Fatedom.

So, here’s the thing. Aspects are not the core engine of Fate. They’re the most different from other systems, which makes them, I guess, more obvious, but they’re also not the answer to every “problem” and they’re not the sole thing that drives the game. This, I’ve already said. To go further:

The core engine of Fate — for me, at least, from a design perspective — is the Fate Fractal principle. Search for that text here -  http://www.faterpg.com/2011/the-core-of-fate-core/ - but in short, it’s the idea that anything in the system can be treated as a character. That is to say, to model the thing you want, you should look at the pieces parts of a character, think about what they do, and use the parts that are most appropriate to express what you’re after.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. There’s no need to invent new parts when a recombination of existing parts works out well. Think about aspects, yes, but think about stress tracks, think about skills. (Think about more, too, if you want to get into the down & dirties — stunts, powers, whatever — but I’ll focus on those.)

So, let’s talk about “on fire” a bit in light of that.

Aspect: Aspects give you two functions (more or less) — they create constraints on action via compels, and they provide means for advantage via invocations. So if you’re going to have fire create a reason for the heroes to stay trapped/hold back while the bad guy escapes (a compel!), then the aspect makes good sense. If you’re going to get into a fistfight on the edge of the blaze and want to, y’know, knock the guy back into the fire so he gets singed a bit — invoke/tag that aspect and you’re in great shape. That’s the bounds of it: folks have a shared understanding of what something being on fire means – in terms of how it affects the choices made and the actions available — and the aspect is an interface to a few game mechanisms that support that.

Skill: Skills are there to show how things take action. Fire grows, spreads, and burns. That sounds like moving and attacking actions, to me. So give your fire a skill. It can take an action to intensify (increasing that skill, maybe — or maybe it’s a maneuver, putting more taggable shit-be-burnin’ aspects onto things); spread (take the action, move into another zone); burn (attack people in those zones with its skill, dealing stress and consequences). I mean, why not? Fiction talks about fire as a “living thing” all the time.

Stress track: Maybe your fire’s tough to put out — not as easily dismissed as any other scene aspect. Makes sense. So yeah, give your fire a stress track. Let people attack it with fire extinguishers and oxygen-destruction powers. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Aspects are great. Use them a lot. But don’t let them become blinders. Look around a little. There are other tools in the box.

It enters into editing  starting February 1st.