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Neopteryx
2015-03-15, 01:53 AM
Something I started working on in a brainstorming topic over in Play-by-Post recruitment, that started to become a little more involved that I had anticipated.


I've been curious about the potential for a slightly more complex Fate game designed to put a focus on base-building and commanding groups of NPCs. The player characters would be a collection of figures controlling a larger faction, building themselves up, managing underlings with varying abilities, origins, and motivations, and carving a place into a setting ruled by a collection of similarly powerful factions. It would be roleplay-heavy, with the players managing not only a hostile world of external politics, but maintaining their hold over their own underlings and resources. Physical conflicts would primarily see the players acting as commanders in small-unit assaults or tower defense scenarios.

The base, be it an underworld Dungeon, a paramilitary base, a survivor's shelter, a starship, or a corporation's extraterritorial holdings, will be represented by individual rooms or modules, each with its own aspects and abilities. This base will also house underlings of whatever sort is appropriate to the settings and the characters- a necromancer's skeletons, a bandit king's thugs, a corporate executive's drones and enforcers, a ship's crew, etc. The underlings would be divided into groups of Minions and unique Agents, but each would have particular motivations tying them to the players or affecting their behavior, and unique abilities- either simple melee or ranged combat abilities, more specialized attacks, social or resource-acquiring skills, or more esoteric effects represented by Stunts.

I haven't worked out a concrete system yet, but the player characters would divide their starting attributes between themselves, one or more "rooms," and minions. They shouldn't be impotent without them, and minions and base features will never be fantastically competent on their own, but a character's greatest assets would come from their interactions with their resources, their home base, and their minions.

I do have a few ideas for how to make this work as a system without becoming excessively complicated, but I'd like to put the idea out there and see how people feel about it conceptually before fleshing things out.

Possible concepts:
- A Dungeon Keeper style game. There would be a big focus on tower-defense style play and managing the motivations of minions.
- FTL or Star Trek: Voyager style, lost in another part of the Galaxy, discovering a new frontier of barely comprehensible alien politics, and picking up a few hitchhikers.
- (Alternately, A Fantastic Voyage with the twist of including an entire miniaturized civilization (human or otherwise) that has colonized a human or animal's body. Submarines and starships are basically the same thing, right?)
- A Shadowrun-style Megacorp with extraterritoriality. (Possibly even set in the Shadowrun universe?)
- X-COM: Apocalypse/Men in Black/Space Colony, with the players being the leadership of a military or paramilitary organization (or even the local face of a corporation) on a colony world, struggling to deal simultaneously with one or perhaps several insidious alien threats, homegrown conspiracies, and local powers with their own agendas.
- An exotic post-apocalyptic survivors setting that has filled a metropolitan area with nameless and dangerous wildlife, paranormal dangers, and rapidly transformed the skyline into a vertical jungle, forcing the players to try to rebuild some sort of society amongst themselves while learning by a mix of observation and trial-and-error how things work in this new world.


Wow, that is a huge undertaking, but you have some really great ideas and themes to explore, and I bet conjuring up some interest for players getting to take the role of a proactive leader shouldn't be too hard. Problem is getting everyone on board for a heavily modified Fate game when there are few enough players here on the forums with Fate-Core experience.

Still though, I think it's possible, especially as long as you conform to the Fate Fractal (Everything is a Character; Aspects, Stunts, Skills, etc.). I would recommend right off the bat utilizing a more freely creative Approaches system when dealing with rooms/traps/mooks, rather than the vanilla skills list. You've got the expanded Resources Track Extra to draw off of and some examples for building organizations/locales along the Fate Fractal as well. So, on the whole I think it's eminently playable.

Personally, I like the idea of running a Dungeon Keeper/Overlord/Boss-Monster style game, where each PC runs their own corner of a dungeon, and the idea is to lure heroes to their doom. Failing that a space-based colony building game could be fun, trying to build up your factions hold on an alien world.

Suffice to say, I'd love to help how I can.


Good to see some interest! I'll definitely be making very heavy use of the Fate Fractal to make this concept work. I've tended to shy away from the Approaches and Professions systems, but I can see how they would solve a big hurdle when it comes to managing so many independent entities. It might even make sense to have the commanding and administrative PCs make use of Approaches while rooms and underlings with specific purposes use Professions. That's negotiable, of course, and I'm not entirely sure just yet that I would want the PCs themselves to move away from Skills, but it's a possibility. It would help the PCs to remain versatile and thematically coherent, while still being able to invoke particular specialties and unique abilities, while their minions and structures held the capability to really excel at specific tasks.

A Dungeon Keeper/Underlords game is one I think could prove very interesting from a narrative perspective as well, exploring the state of affairs in the Underworld and questions about why the characters are where they are (and how "evil" would be treated in the context of the game). It would leave plenty of room for interactions both overtly and insidiously hostile with factions ranging from desperate overworld organizations, demons and devils from other planes, subterranean monsters and other groups fighting for the scarce resources of the underworld. Exploration of intrigue in an underworld long since driven mad in desperation for subsistence-level resources, or simply reveling in bloodthirsty madness and omnipresent treachery, there's plenty of potential for a fun game.


I think that would be a good breakdown, yeah:

PCs- Aspects, Skills, Stunts
Minions- Aspect(s), Profession, Stunt
Locales- Aspect, Approach

Or potentially, the opposite of an Approach, if they function as trap rooms or deterrents. Or resources. What would you call that maybe? An Asset?


Asset works, or maybe Function, probably fairly specific in scope. I think there's a need to clarify whether a given task should be given to a room or structure's abilities, or those of the underling using them. For most purposes, it would probably lean toward the latter. Since rooms will vary so much in function, it will probably vary a great deal whether they receive autonomous Functions of their own, or Stunts that can be activated by its owners.

So, a Gold Mine might have:
Aspects: Labyrinthine Tunnels & Untapped Riches

This room might not need much more than that. Labyrinthine Tunnels can be invoked for bonuses to defend against intruders unfamiliar with the terrain, and Untapped Riches to more quickly recover from consequences to the Resources Stress Track.

A Treasury or Hoard Room, on the other hand, might have:
Aspect: Ironclad Vault
Function: Good (+3) Traps
Stunt: "Savings:" Adds an extra stress box to the Resources stress track.

The aspect is appropriate to defensive measures, it has a function to present an immediate obstacle to intruders, and its purpose is neatly represented by its stunt. An in-game example would probably clarify in general terms the nature of the traps, clarifying what sort of obstacles they presented.

The minion actually working the mine, let's say a Dwarven Chain Gang, might look something like this:
Aspect: Starving Opportunists
Profession: Fair (+2) Miners
Stunt: "Motivation:" When the Dungeon would take a consequence to its resource track, the consequence may instead be applied as a physical consequence of equal severity to the Dwarves, provided they have an open consequence slot of the appropriate level.

That last example also opens up the question of how many stress boxes and consequence slots underlings should have, and how that number can be improved. Should they have the full suite, one unified set of stress boxes, defaulting to two, with the option to increase that number based on their Profession, and all three consequence slots? Or, for the sake of simplicity, a single consequence slot, that can be used for a mild, moderate, or severe consequence?


I can see you've put some thought in to this and I think that makes for a perfect framework and some great examples as a jumping off point. If I may though, a few general critiques/questions present themselves before I get into any specifics:

The Gold Mine and the Treasure Vault as your examples would both be rooms yes? Not distinct from one another? I believe they should have a unified template if so (Aspect; Function; Stunt or Aspect; Aspect; Function, etc.)
For the sake of conformity to the Fate Fractal I believe each room (and possibly minion) would be best served with a pair of Aspect, one positively slanted, the other negative (Concept & Trouble; Function & Flaw). This is the convention when building pieces of Equipment and Organizations as described in those Extras and I believe would be well warranted here as well.


Your Gold Mine, example I think only needs a slight tweaking to conform to that, with Labyrinthine Tunnels being a sort of 'catch' which can be compelled against it signifying the difficulty in navigating them (for friend and foe alike).

As for how to doll out and quantify the number of Stunts, Stress, Consequences, etc. I would recommend that the "Dungeon" be built with a sort of separate but equal starting template to the PCs' character. So, the players have a set template for building their overlord/boss/what-have-you: Refresh, Skill Points, Free Stunts, etc. and then a separate pool of each for building their dungeon. You spend a point of Refresh from that pool for each room/minion you want in your dungeon, then Skill Points/Stunts to flesh them out. Everything starts at +0 (maybe +1) and then you buy up accordingly, just like a character. Furthermore, to keep players from sinking all their points in to one awesome room with one awesome NPC, you use the same convention as Skill Columns to keep everything balanced. For a player to have a room with a function higher than +1, they must have at least that many rooms at the rating beneath it; so if I have one room with a Fair (+2) to it's Function and I want to build another with at the Fair (+2) rating, I must first have two rooms at the Average +1 Function (a total of four rooms).

This even suggests the classic increasing difficulty structure of a dungeon delving game. If you want to have a super awesome mini-boss NPC as the last room of your dungeon, you have to have built a whole host of rooms before with of sequentially increasing difficulty before hand.

Using a standardized format probably makes the most sense, functionally, and I like the idea of using the Columns/Pyramid Scheme convention to keep resources evenly spread. For simplicity's sake, I'm thinking it's probably best to have the underlings use a single unified Stress Track with a number of boxes dependent on their Profession rating, and the single, variable Consequence slot until stunts are applied to offer more.

I'm still uncertain about the functionality of rooms. It seems to me that some would have a clear need for a skill-equivalent stat like defensive and retaliatory functions from traps, but other functions might be trickier. A library's aspect provides a boost to a minion with the appropriate Profession who uses it to research arcane lore, and it might have stunts that help out, too, but it would be redundant (and wouldn't make much sense) for the library to have a skill-equivalent trait to roll to perform research itself. Maybe this is easily enough solved by simply getting creative with the Functions? A library's existence allows a character with the appropriate skill to perform research, and its aspect, but its Function rating might be in something like "Divination," or some other form of ritual magic, or in "Forbidden Lore" so that the library itself makes psychological attacks on intruders poking around. It might just help to make every room unique and dynamic.

LordHavelock
2015-03-15, 02:44 AM
Remember though, the convention with mooks and minions isn't to have Consequences at all; that's reserved for Named NPCs and like. Most unnamed opposition in Fate games only have between 1-2 boxes of Stress as well, but if you think about how they make up for these shortcomings, it's a function that would work well for our purposes too. Minions shouldn't have extensive Stress Tracks or Consequence Slots, they should have Numbers; as in, a Minion's health is a function of how many of them you have remaining in a group (a Mob). I'm harkoning back to Spirit of the Century on this one, where Mooks were literally their own category of NPCs (much like Fourth Edition D&D's Minions) with no way to absorb Shifts of damage except through soaking up losses to their group (and thus, reducing their effectiveness through Teamwork).

In adapting that, I think it makes sense for them to have a single Consequence slot, but it should be Mild at best and instead spending points of Refresh from your Dungeon Building pool should allow you to increase the Base Number in their Mob. There could be various ways to increase that number up from the base (to a point) through the use of Skills, Functions, and Stunts, and it would allow for a the same refresh between scenes (you leave a room in the dungeon, come back, and the enemies are there again XD). So, the base template for Minions would look like:

Concept- Name, First Aspect, etc.
Profession, Skills
Stunts
Base Mob Size; With the assumption that each Minion in the Mob can only take 1 Shift of Stress.
Mild Consequence


I think a more free-form approach to each Room's Function (basically Approach style) makes a lot more sense given the potentially diverse nature, yes. Also, I think you've hit at least part of the way on the solution in that the Occult Library can't perform research on it's own, in that Rooms have to occupied in order for their Function to be made use of. So while PCs and Minions can be proactive in the use of their Skills, you don't get to utilize the Function of every Room in you Dungeon every turn, only those which are occupied by yourself (in which case you can use their Approaches Offensively by performing diviniations, replenishing resources, equipping Minions from the armory, etc.) or Defensively if they are occupied by an enemy (The Occult Library's malignant aura draining the resolve of it's occupants, test subjects escaping from their cells in the Mutagenic Laboratory, The Crushinator, well, crushinating whoever happens to be inside). Basically, a Room provides the opportunity to use it's unique and specialized Approach to the benefit or detriment of it's occupant, but it's not as flexible as the PC with their Skills, and it's also static (and maybe irreplaceable?) unlike your Minions.

Neopteryx
2015-03-15, 04:20 AM
That works well enough. I'm not sure why I shied away from the most intuitive form of management, as if making things stranger and more abstract made them less complex. So, going from where we are now, minions and rooms might look as such...

Dwarven Chain Gang
Keen-Eyed Spelunkers, Starving Opportunists
Profession: Fair (+2) Miners
Stunt: "Motivational Beatings" - When the dungeon Resource track is made to suffer a mild consequence due to depletion, it may instead be taken by the Dwarven Chain Gang in the form of physical injury.
Base Mob Size: 3
1 Mild Consequence

The Mob size mechanic works perfectly for mobs like this.


"Minions may be either Average, Fair or Good quality. This quality denotes their base effectiveness in one sort of conflict (physical, social or mental), as well as their capacity for stress. Average minions can take one box of stress, Fair can take two, and Good can take three.

The quantity of minions is simply the number of minions present, but together, minions act in one or more groups, each of which is treated as single characters in a conflict. This allows the GM to minimize the number of die rolls she’s making, even when her heroes are facing off against a group of twenty frothing cultists. This shorthand technique also makes it a touch easier for the heroes to eliminate several minions in a single action.

Minions who act together as a group are much more effective than individual minions. When there are two or three minions in a group, the group receives a +1 bonus to act and react. If there are four to six minions in a group, the bonus is +2; seven to nine minions get a +3 bonus, and any single group with ten or more members gets +4.

...

When minions take stress, it is applied sequentially (i .e ., filling all boxes instead of just a single one). Damage that overflows one minion is applied to the next minion. This means a solid enough effort can take out an entire swath of minions."

Whether we use it wholecloth or edit it to suit the game, I thought it best to go ahead and put that there. If each minion is limited by default to one stress box, that does make it a little easier to price the whole. Though I'm still trying to figure out what each aspect of the minion would cost- one point of refresh per Profession rank, and one point per quantity makes sense, but what about starting numbers? Would you pay six refresh for a mob of three Rank 3 minions? Should the starting mob size be equal to the profession rating +1?

That also leaves open the question of individual monsters and unique agents.

Feral Troll
Underworld Predator, Hunger-Mad Savage
Profession: Good (+3) Hunter
Stunt: "Redundant Anatomy" - Gains a Severe consequence slot.
Stress Boxes: 3
1 Mild, 1 Moderate, 1 Severe Consequence

Though I suppose it would be simple enough to simply give it a number of stress boxes by the same formula with which we determine the base mob size of other minions. Or perhaps use character defaults, giving them two stress boxes, plus more based on their profession rating (by the same formula you use to increase a stress track associated to a particular skill), with an additional moderate consequence slot to make up for the fewer stress boxes and lack of a teamwork bonus, and to highlight their uniqueness?

Archive
Wealth of Rare Arcana, Forbidden Fruit
Function: Good (+3) Divinatory Nexus

With this setup, the Archive is a collection of books gathered from the shadiest corners of underworld, each containing secrets mortals were never meant to know, or ways to contact mad aberrations or devils of the lower planes. It serves as both a traditional and a supernatural tool for obtaining knowledge, even seeing into other places or contacting other mages with similar abilities (or maybe sending an ominous projection to those who don't), but making casual use of it often threatens to show the seeker something they didn't want to know, or something to tempt them. The player character using it might accept a compel to be seduced into making contact with something they were better left leaving alone, to be shown (and subsequently act on) visions that offer only partial information tailored to make them respond, or whatever feels dramatically appropriate. Similarly, adventurers who break into the dungeon with the specific goal of raiding that Wealth of Rare Arcana might find themselves coming under psychological assault as they are tempted to turn one more page, read one more line, or watch one more vision, being gradually fed half-truths or mind-warping secrets, or simply distracted to near-paralysis, if they're the sort to get lost in new knowledge for its own sake.

LordHavelock
2015-03-15, 05:34 AM
That's an excellent template, we should save that. As for associated costs . . . I think it should be inverse to the Minion's rating:

Average- Base Mob Size: 3; Costs 3 Refresh.
Fair- Base Mob Size: 2; Costs 2 Refresh.
Good- Base Mob Size: 1; Costs 3 Refresh.


Also, thinking on the Concept/Trouble balance, I was thinking that negatively slanted Aspect should afford either a Free Stunt, or a bump up in the Base Mob Size. Then you can either spend Refresh, or take additional Negative Aspects for additional Stunts/Mob Size.

Looking at that though, we still have to factor in how the base Mob size will effect their default Profession's rating through Teamwork (the SotC way anyway). That is, an Average Mob of 3 will have a Skill at Fair (+2), the Fair Mob would have a Skill at Good (+3), and the Good Mob would have a Skill at Good (+3). So it looks like point for point, the Fair Mob is the best value. We'll have to find some way to offset that.

I think SotC has rules for buying Minions as Stunt too, so let's check how they handle that.

I agree there should be something special for individuals monsters/agents (I was actually thinking of calling them 'Agents' to distinguish them from Minions and Rooms, so great minds :smallsmile:). It'd be simple enough to trade Numbers for Stress and you get a Big Minion (figuratively speaking), with an additional Consequence Slot to offset the lack of a teamwork bonus.

That even suggests a way to handle the Mob factor for the Minions, which is that you pay an additional point of Refresh depending on the size of the Mob. So it would be cheaper to upgrade the Skill Rating or Purchase additional Stunts for a Big Minion than it would a Minion Mob.

I think there should be a step up from there though, for true Lieutenants to the PC, who receive a small Skill Pyramid rather than profession.

That looks like a perfect break down for the Rooms, though I was thinking, maybe a snazzier name than just Room?

Let's see, we've got Minions, Big Minions, Agents, I suppose we don't have a term for the PCs yet (Masters? Part of me wants to keep it gender neutral lol). What about Chambers?

Neopteryx
2015-03-15, 06:20 AM
Chambers, Structures, Modules, Sectors, etc. Chambers fits best in this case.

I'm not entirely sure yet that the SotC way is best for our purposes. And it feels a little haphazard, but if each mob comes with an option of either a +1 to its base mob size or a free stunt, then we get...

Average Mob of size 3 gets a +2 skill rating. It has the option of either another stunt, or of starting at size 4 (and therefore getting a +3 skill rating).

Fair Mob of size 2 gets a +3 skill rating. It has the option of either another stunt, or of starting at size 3 (and still getting a +3 skill rating.)

Good Mob of size 1 gets a +3 skill rating. It has the option of either another stunt, or of starting at size 2 (and therefore getting a +4 skill rating).

I'm not sure how I feel about that pacing, but it does seem functional to me. Kind of clumsy, though. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to have them be inversely proportional. What if it was as simple as one refresh point per Profession ranking, plus another refresh point for every unit of Mob Size beyond 1.

An Average mob costs 1 refresh at size 1, 2 refresh at size 2, 3 refresh at size 3, and so on.

A Fair mob costs 2 refresh at size 1, 3 refresh at size 2, 4 refresh at size 3.

A Good mob costs 3 refresh at size 1, 4 refresh at size 2, 5 refresh at size 3.

Since the benefit of adding another minion to the mob is as a linear teamwork bonus and an additional stress box, it seems reasonable to me.

With an individual Agent (as opposed to a Minion) getting a default two stress boxes and an extra consequence slot to make up for the lack of Teamwork bonuses, their negative aspect might buy them a free stunt, an extra stress box, or a severe consequence slot.

Lieutenants would definitely have a place, though I'm not sure if they're somethingbthat should be allowed at character generation. (I believe there was an errata for SotC's Companion/Lieutenant rules that fixed issues they originally had with the subject, I might look that up for reference.) They sound to me more like something a character would acquire as a result of bringing a long-time foe to their knees, subjugating or converting a prominent NPC, or reaching a major Milestone.

I'm finding myself exhausted, exciting as this is. I'll be off to bed before long, and continue with more input after I'm properly rested.

LordHavelock
2015-03-16, 06:57 PM
Chambers, Structures, Modules, Sectors, etc. Chambers fits best in this case.

I'm not entirely sure yet that the SotC way is best for our purposes. And it feels a little haphazard, but if each mob comes with an option of either a +1 to its base mob size or a free stunt, then we get...

Average Mob of size 3 gets a +2 skill rating. It has the option of either another stunt, or of starting at size 4 (and therefore getting a +3 skill rating).

Fair Mob of size 2 gets a +3 skill rating. It has the option of either another stunt, or of starting at size 3 (and still getting a +3 skill rating.)

Good Mob of size 1 gets a +3 skill rating. It has the option of either another stunt, or of starting at size 2 (and therefore getting a +4 skill rating).

I'm not sure how I feel about that pacing, but it does seem functional to me. Kind of clumsy, though. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to have them be inversely proportional. What if it was as simple as one refresh point per Profession ranking, plus another refresh point for every unit of Mob Size beyond 1.

An Average mob costs 1 refresh at size 1, 2 refresh at size 2, 3 refresh at size 3, and so on.

A Fair mob costs 2 refresh at size 1, 3 refresh at size 2, 4 refresh at size 3.

A Good mob costs 3 refresh at size 1, 4 refresh at size 2, 5 refresh at size 3.

Since the benefit of adding another minion to the mob is as a linear teamwork bonus and an additional stress box, it seems reasonable to me.

With an individual Agent (as opposed to a Minion) getting a default two stress boxes and an extra consequence slot to make up for the lack of Teamwork bonuses, their negative aspect might buy them a free stunt, an extra stress box, or a severe consequence slot.

Lieutenants would definitely have a place, though I'm not sure if they're somethingbthat should be allowed at character generation. (I believe there was an errata for SotC's Companion/Lieutenant rules that fixed issues they originally had with the subject, I might look that up for reference.) They sound to me more like something a character would acquire as a result of bringing a long-time foe to their knees, subjugating or converting a prominent NPC, or reaching a major Milestone.

I'm finding myself exhausted, exciting as this is. I'll be off to bed before long, and continue with more input after I'm properly rested.

Indeed, I think you've hit on a good point cost method for the present. And upgrading their base skill would cost the equivalent Skill ranks just like regular advancement. Maybe we should hold off on allowing a Lieutenant style character right off the bat, especially because it might be interesting to make LTs the kind of thing you need to attract rather than build up. As in, upgrading a minion/agent or even better, corrupting a Hero to your side.

Neopteryx
2015-03-16, 10:30 PM
The method of acquiring them would probably vary wildly, but I think it would be representative of either a major victory or at least a major milestone. Corrupting a hero, creating a powerful Vampire, an underling somehow becomes fervently ambitious, making a deal binding a dragon or devil to your service, etc. A high-profile event, because you're taking something very nearly on your level and binding it to your service somehow. Probably not something to be done lightly. In the case of an agent becoming more ambitious or stumbling into power, it might even happen without the player realizing it at first.

One Dungeon Refresh for every +1 to an Underling's Profession and for every unit of Mob Size past 1. One Dungeon Refresh for every stunt after the first.

One DR for every +1 to a room's Function. (And, therefore, presumably, one DR for a room.)

If you use a room's Function in such a way that one of your skill's (or your Underling's profession) is relevant to what you're doing, do you get the +1 teamwork bonus, or more importantly, if your skill is higher than the room's Function, which do you use?

Tracking which rooms connect to which others will probably require a simple diagram, but that's not much of a problem.

At this point it seems like the biggest questions to figure out before starting a game are exactly how many Dungeon Refresh each PC gets to spend at the start. Or, if there are separate pools for Underlings and Rooms, what the pyramid looks like.

One Good chamber, two Fair chambers, and three Average chambers?
One Good underling, two Fair underlings, and three Average underlings?

That seems like a lot to figure out right at first (maybe the pyramid/equivalent skill points should only go up to Fair, to keep numbers down at the start), but as long as the GM (me, in this case) is willing to keep a simple chart and communicate clearly what's doing what and where, it shouldn't be too difficult to manage in Play by Post.

Edit: Setting's a big question, of course, but I think I'd rather leave that up to collaboration at the beginning of the game. Magic can probably be handled by an appropriate aspect and stunts, for players. (It will probably fall into the Profession of any Underling or Minion who's using magic to accomplish things, unless they actually need a Stunt to expand the definition of their Profession slightly.)

LordHavelock
2015-03-16, 10:49 PM
Here's an idea, what if we keep three steps worth of the pyramid, but you have to buy up from +0 or even -1?

It makes sense, given that most nameless NPCs and just about everyone else in a Fate world is assumed to be Mediocre at just about everything. Setting a lower bar allows a would-be Overlord to buy larger groups of minions at a discount, who therefore count on their teamwork to carry the day that much more.

Neopteryx
2015-03-16, 11:18 PM
Maybe. I'm not sure about it, though. The actual effectiveness of a character's skills/professions/approaches is dependent upon their rating relative to their competitors or to the difficulty ratings set in the challenges they face. I think I'd rather adjust the latter, for purely psychological reasons. Attaching a negative number suggests explicit incompetence in something, and I'd rather have +0 be the default in that case. If a minion has a Profession rating of +0, it doesn't matter what their profession actually is, because they suck equally at everything. If their rating is -1, then they're actually *more* incompetent at their own profession than they are at any task they try to perform that doesn't relate to their profession. And a spindly warlock who walks only with a cane but commands terrible cosmic powers probably shouldn't be much better at the highly physical task of mining than even the lowest level Dwarven Chain Gang, for example (assuming he's not using magic to do it, which he probably would, but that's beside the point).

What about progression? Characters can advance themselves continually with milestones, but where do the refresh points for the dungeon come from?

Or can they? I mean, sure they can, but since the game is focused on them as leaders and administrators, maybe it should just be assumed they'll invest their milestones in new chambers and minion upgrades at least as often as they use it to boost their own abilities?

Either way, Milestones will probably be doled out relatively more frequently for this than for a typical fate game, making progression more important. I think it's the kind of game where you'll want players to occasionally have a Milestone saved to use when they want to bully the local band of roving goblins into joining their efforts, or bargain for a dragon's cooperation. Maybe it would help to tie that into the lore? Whatever unique, indefinable quality that has made these characters rise (or fall) to the position of Dungeon Underlords, making the terrain (Chambers) and other creatures serve them is essentially an act of making their own dark destinies reach out and corrupt (or parasitize, or just link up to) the destinies of others. In a metaphysical sense, they stunt their own growth and development because they're spending it on binding others to themselves, which is why they don't seem to "Level Up" the way the Goodly Heroes of legend sometimes do.

That's probably trying to read too deeply into a game mechanic, but it seems appropriate to be able to save up a "Milestone" (or, perhaps more appropriately, a "Triumph" or "Conquest") and spend it later on acquiring new underlings, upgrading rooms, or empowering themselves only when it feels dramatically appropriate.

LordHavelock
2015-03-17, 02:55 AM
I guess it just makes sense to me that the minions should start out as incompetent, and by that I mean at everything. PCs start with a +0 in everything they're not rated in. What if Minions start at a -1 and then buy their way up to +0 and are thus reliant on Teamwork from the get go. Or better yet, the leadership of their Overlord? Actually it occurs to me that anything with a -1 skill rating won't get a teamwork bonus under the standard rules, because teamwork only applies when you have a bonus of at least +1 (I believe).

As for handling milestones, I should think that the Dungeon can earn milestones all it's own. In fact you could even set up a more quantifiable system for the dungeon earning milestones based on how many Heroes wander to their deaths inside them.

Neopteryx
2015-03-17, 05:24 PM
I think the image of minions as incompetent at everything and near-useless as anything other than cannon fodder is kind of incompatible with the idea of playing the role of the overlord. Minions and agents should start out as unexceptional, but should still be valuable. It's okay for them to be cannon fodder compared to their superiors and to the heroes they face, but I think that should be reflected mechanically as the heroes and villains themselves being remarkable people, not by the common folk being useless. After all, the Dungeon's minions in this case have a different purpose than standard NPCs or even that they would have in the same situations in a more traditional game. They might be weak and limited, but they do matter, both mechanically and narratively, as the tools and extensions of the player characters and even potential sources of conflict.

Besides, stories like this are good for deconstructing and reconstructing archetypal tropes. We've all seen fantastic heroes charge or sneak their way into a dungeon, cut through swathes of minions, and face a boss monster or commanding underlord who was on or just above their level.

Those heroes are extraordinary, though. Whatever the denizens of that dungeon were doing, it was enough to bring adventurers down on them, which means they struck fear, made people like regular town militias seriously worried. It's mostly just personal preference. Thinking of common NPCs as incompetent or thinking of heroes and villains as extraordinary has the same mechanical effect- but when the disparity between the two groups comes to attention, I'd rather draw attention to the latter idea. Even if we're celebrating the tropes of villainy, it's still good to make the world feel alive, if I can. Average minions will still be individually trivial in most situations, and even Good minions may be casually cut down in the face of "real" Heroes, but it's because the heroes are wield incredible skill and power- not because the normal folk are totally inept or made of papier mache.

The dungeon earning milestones makes sense. It would basically give every PC one greater milestone to spend on the dungeon. And there's a great way to parcel them out- Quests.

Not that Underlords take quests, of course not. (Though they might potentially give them, if they're especially conniving, or endeavor to insert double agents into adventuring parties.) But the heroes do, and succeeding in those quests is what gives them XP and turns them into legends, takes them closer to fulfilling their destinies.

The player characters have vested interested in not only seeing to it that the Heroes fail their quests, but of bringing that failure about in the most dramatic way possible. Or maybe of letting it succeed, but perverting its results somehow. You've kidnapped a local aristocrat, and thereby provoked a Quest to rescue him. You can cause the quest to fail by killing the heroes who enter and getting whatever you wanted out of the aristocrat (ransom, information, service, whatever), and you'll be rewarded for the victory. But you might get a sweeter reward if you manage to let the heroes think they've won, only to discover on their way out, or even long after the aristocrat is safely back home and returning to his life, that you've infected him with a particularly ferocious strain of therianthropy, brainwashed him, or otherwise subtly gotten what you wanted out of him.

Either way, I lean toward calling Dungeon Milestones something else- Conquest Points, perhaps? Mockeries? (After all, it's not as if the Dungeon itself will be receiving a refresh pool of fate points.)

LordHavelock
2015-03-18, 06:39 PM
That's a good point. What about the Fate Accelerated way of making NPCs? You give them one thing they're good at (default +2 in FAE) and something their bad at (-2) and everything else is even (+0).

That would fit well with the Profession function we're going with and also encourage Overlords to give them a kind of weakness beyond their Foible (I can't help but favor the Focus/Foible idea for the Minions pair of Aspects).

As for deconstructing standard archetypes, I like what you brought up about normal folks and I think that has to factor in to the actual play. The idea being you have to build a base of terror and malice before you attract heroes and that means presenting a threat to the local populace of wherever you try to terrorize. We could think of that as establishing regional dominance, or whatever, and the idea is that you're taking over what are essentially Dungeons just like yours, except their Chambers are villages, sites of power, natural resources, etc. and the Minions are peasants, militia, knights, etc. It's a quick way to build early Conquests Points (or we could just call them Conquests, which I think pairs nicely with Milestones for the Boss), and how you prepare yourself and garner the attention of true heroes. So the competitive elements are twofold: subjugation/land-grab, and adventuring/heroic downfalls; both of which build Conquests for your Dungeon and Milestones for the PC.

Neopteryx
2015-03-19, 11:05 PM
Antechamber
"Threatening Stonework"
"Seeping Aura"
Poisoned Spike Traps +2 and/or Triggered Locks +2

Armory
"Eclectic Collection"
"Heroic Implements"
Equipping Troops +1

Gem Veins
"Hidden Depths"
"Labyrinthine Tunnels"
Untapped Riches* +2 or Secret Passageways +2

Vault
"Ironclad Bunker"
"Nucleus of Wealth"
Reserves of Wealth*

*Contribute to the Dungeon's Wealth stress track.

Archive
"Collection of Ancient Lore"
"Forbidden Fruit"
Divinatory Nexus +2

Profane Chapel
"Connection to the Lower Planes"
"Infectious Bloodlust"
Sacrificial Altar +4

Having rolls other than the profession be made at -2 makes practical sense, so that Minions aren't equally effective to a PC when all else is equal. I don't know about having the players choose specific weaknesses- they've already done that, in part, with a negatively slanted aspect, and they don't have much motivation to choose another one that's easily exploited if it won't net them Fate Points. (Then again, do Minions and Chambers net Fate Points if their Aspects are compelled while they aren't being actively commanded by the players?) Maybe, for the sake of realism, have rolls unrelated to the profession be made at -2, and rolls that the profession implies some limited crossover in at +0. That way minions used for Mining or other very physical tasks still have physical combat at +0 by the nature of their physical strength, and mages aren't wholly incompetent in academics even if they aren't specifically being used for magic.

So...


Dwarven Chain-Gang
"Keen-Eyed Spelunkers," "Starving Opportunists"
Profession: +2 Stoneworkers [+0 on physical combat, heavy lifting, etc., -2 to most other things]
Mob Size: 3
Stunt: Motivational Beatings: If the Dungeon is forced to take a Consequence for its Wealth Stress Track, it may instead be inflicted on the Dwarven Chain Gang as a physical injury of some sort, provided they have an appropriate consequence slot and some sort of mine or mineral vein is available to mine.
1 Stress Box (Per Unit), 1 Mild Consequence Slot

Blood Cult
"Fanatic Devotion," "Avaricious Ambitions"
Profession: Death Mages +2 [+0 to explorations of magic, arcana, divinities, and mystic lore not related to violence or death, +0 to non-magical acts of violence, -2 to most other things]
Mob Size: 2
Stunt: Blood Link: If a Blood Cultist has forced an opponent to take physical stress or a consequence in a way that would cause bleeding, then for the rest of the scene they may spend a fate point to take action against them using their Profession regardless of distance or line of sight.
1 Stress Box (Per Unit), 1 Mild Consequence Slot

Copper Wyrmling
"Steel-Melting Flames," "Easily-Provoked Juvenile"
Profession: Guardian Beast +3 [-2 to most things not related to direct violence or protection]
Stunt: Scorched Earth: May spend a fate point to attack everything in a zone simultaneously with flames, fumes, and extreme heat.
Monstrous Vitality: Gains a severe consequence slot.
3 Stress Boxes, 1 Mild, 1 Moderate Consequence Slot, 1 Severe Consequence Slot

Having villages/cities structured similarly to the Chambers of dungeons makes sense- the system isn't limited to dug-out caverns and underground bunkers. The actual threat the players present will be tailored to their own characters and ambitions, of course. They might be interested in actual conquest and subjugation, or maybe their goals are better accomplished by pillaging, wreaking havoc indirectly, or subtler means like assassination and slow corruption. What draws the heroes to the Players might vary greatly, but one way or another, if the villains are affecting the world, heroes will come sneaking or barging in sooner or later.

Edit: I think we're pretty close to being able to try to get a game going.