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- So I don't know how many people are up on Fate, as this is going to be a little heavy on jargon, but I wanted to
- get this initial decantation from the mental alchemiter out there.
- It's intentionally vague on a lot of the crunchy aspects. Like, all of them.
- ---
- My Little Pony: Fated for Friendship is a Fate-engine game which can be played in either the conventional story-
- resolution "pickup" manner, with players and a GM, or in a collaborative "progressive" manner with only players.
- In the progressive mode, each player character has a current Goal: to advance a Skill, discover or explore an
- Aspect, or master or refine a Stunt. This Goal will be accomplished when the player overcomes an Obstacle --
- either Takes Out an Adversary of a certain power, or withstands the Stress and/or Consequences of
- accomplishing a difficult task in a limited time frame. Characters have three Stress tracks, representing their
- capacities for physical, mental, and social stress: Health, Focus, and Composure.
- Players take on the task of creating and adjudicating these Obstacles for each other, and can pursue shared
- Goals by increasing the strength of the Obstacle accordingly. (e.g. "Griffon the Brush-Off" is Pinkie Pie and
- Rainbow Dash discovering a shared Aspect, "The Merry Pranksters". They do this by Taking Out an Adversary,
- Gilda the Griffon, through Composure Stress.)
- In the process, characters Invoke Virtues: ways to spend multiple Fate Points at once to accomplish unusual
- things or set up pools of "narrative potential" which can be used for rerolls or bonuses unconditionally. Here are
- the seven Virtues, six of which are possessed by individual characters and the last which is possessed by the
- player group simultaneously.
- Honesty - Invoke the Virtue of Honesty to project a personal Aspect temporarily onto another character, a scene,
- or even an adversary, and establish a pool to let other players tag it. For example, if another character’s “All
- Planned Out” Aspect is being Compelled to worsen their rolls in a crisis situation, you could project your “I’ll Live
- Through This” Aspect to them, giving them a tag and some points to resist the Compulsion.
- Generosity - when taking Consequences to mitigate Stress for any reason, you can Invoke the Virtue of
- Generosity to transfer Consequences from another player, or “steal” Intense Hazards from a Scene or Aspects
- from an Adversary (which can cause them Stress). For example, in social conflict with an adversary, you could
- steal the “Cruelly Defaced” Aspect they had been invoking to resist your social rolls, gaining a bonus to your roll
- and causing them additional Composure Stress, in exchange for taking the Consequence of “Cruelly Defaced”
- yourself.
- Loyalty - Invoke the Virtue of Loyalty to activate one of your Aspects as, effectively, a source of Grit, letting you
- lose opposed rolls or even be Compelled without deviating from your current course of action. For example, you
- can keep helping your friends in spite of an Adversary’s attempts to deceive you, appealing to your desires to
- “Steal the Spotlight” and realize your “Big Dreams”; your friends are counting on you, and you’d “Never Leave
- Them Hanging”.
- Kindness - when trying to find Aspects to tag, Invoke the Virtue of Kindness to “convert” adversarial Aspects,
- turning them into positive ones for you. For example, you can calm a raging beast, even though it’s been using
- “Ferocious” and “Bigger Than You” as positive Aspects to prevail so far -- clearly it’s being driven to be so
- ferocious by something it can’t effectively address because it’s bigger than you.
- Laughter - when trying to discover, evoke, engineer, or transform Aspects, Invoke the Virtue of Laughter to
- spend a large number of Fate Points all at once to shift the roll in your favor, letting you pull off transformations
- that might seem impossible. For example, you can use your Art to transform a Scene’s Intense Hazard,
- “Terrifying”, into a positive Aspect like “Ridiculous”, turning what might have been a persistent source of Stress
- into a way to allow you and your friends to recover.
- Magic - Normally when you discover, evoke, engineer, or transform an Aspect you get a single free tag against it
- and have to spend Fate Points to keep activating it. Invoke the Virtue of Magic to establish a pool that lets you
- or others keep tagging novel Aspects. For example, when you’ve used your Academics to discover that an
- Adversary has the Aspect “My One Weakness”, and that the current Scene has the Aspect “Ancient Treasure”,
- you can establish a pool to help you connect the dots, as it were.
- Friendship - You can’t just Invoke the other six Virtues left and right. Generally they can only be invoked once in
- a given scope -- Scene, Stage, or Session. Invoking the Virtue of Friendship establishes a pool of Fate Points that
- other characters can use to Invoke their Virtues, even if they’ve been Invoked already in the appropriate scope.
- There is no such second chance for Friendship -- it is the Virtue all the players hold collectively, and they must all
- agree to let you Invoke it.
- Virtues have four levels - Novice, Practiced, Devoted, and Extraordinary. At higher levels of a Virtue, you can
- activate it more often and its effects can become more potent or last longer. Progressive games generally begin
- with the six individual Virtues spread at Novice level between the characters, with Friendship potentially
- available at Novice level as well, especially if there are enough players that each generally has just one Virtue. In
- general, characters can possess Virtues either equal to their collective level of Friendship or at one level higher.
- It might seem as though certain Virtues are naturally suited for affecting certain Skills, or influencing certain
- Stress tracks. Certainly this is true, but that doesn’t limit them. The only limit is how many Fate Points a player
- is willing to spend. Keep in mind that when you Take Out, or win Concessions from, an Adversary you’re gaining
- the right to narrate the results how you see fit. You can do something as seemingly inappropriate as Invoking
- Kindness on a Might roll to Take Out an Adversary with Health Stress -- not by narrating how you damage or
- cripple them, but by giving a “practical demonstration” of how their various defensive Aspects wouldn’t be able
- to save them.
- In a progressive game, characters can’t set their Goal to be to advance a Virtue. Virtues are advanced through
- being Sparked. If, in the process of attempting to overcome an Obstacle, a character acquires sufficient Stress
- and Consequences that they would be Taken Out, they can instead attempt to Spark a Virtue, spending Fate
- Points -- and gaining bonus points based on the size of the relevant Stress track and severity of the
- Consequences -- to Invoke a Virtue one level higher. They are not Taken Out until the Virtue wears off, and if the
- Obstacle is overcome in that time, they advance the Virtue instead of whatever character trait they were trying
- to progress with their Goal.
- Characters can only Spark a Virtue if they could legitimately possess its advanced form, based on the collective
- level of Friendship -- or the collective level of the other Virtues, if a character is attempting to Spark Friendship.
- This suggests that progressive play will follow the general pattern of Sparking the various Virtues and then
- Sparking Friendship, and, in fact, this is true.
- The ultimate goal of progressive play is to discover the circumstances under which your characters Spark an
- Extraordinary Friendship.
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