Unwritten: System Reference Document/Aspects and Fate Points

Defining Aspects

An aspect is a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it’s attached to. They’re the primary way you spend and gain fate points, and they influence the story by providing an opportunity for a character to get a bonus, complicating a character’s life, or shifting another character’s roll.

Defining Fate Points

GMs and players, you both have a pool of points called fate points you can use to influence the game. You represent these with tokens, as we mentioned in The Basics. Players, you start with a certain number of points every scenario, equal to your character’s refresh. You’ll also reset to your refresh rate if you ended a mid-scenario session with fewer fate points than your rate. GMs, you get a budget of fate points to spend in every scene. When your aspects come into play, you will usually spend or gain a fate point.

What Aspects Do

In Unwritten, aspects do two major things: they tell you what’s important about the game, and they help you decide when to use the mechanics.

Importance

Your collection of game and character aspects tell you what you need to focus on during your game. Think of them as a message from yourself to yourself, a set of flags waving you towards the path with the most fun. GMs, when you make scenarios for Fate, you’re going to use those aspects, and the connections between aspects, to generate the problems your PCs are going to solve. Players, your aspects are the reason why your PC stands out from every other character who might have similar skills—lots of characters might have a high skill in some science, but only Victor Laxman is a DRC Expert in D’ni Technology. When his specialization in D’ni technology comes into play, or the DRC takes action, it gives the game a personal touch that it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The game aspects do something similar on a larger scale—they tell us why we care about playing this particular game in the first place, what makes it concrete and compelling to us. We can all say, “Oh, we like games about exploring new places,” but until we drill down to the specifics of a universe where There is Always a Surprise Over the Next Hill, and where D’ni Left Their Mark Everywhere, we don’t have anything to attach our interest to.

Situation aspects make the moment-to-moment interactions of play interesting by adding color and depth to what might otherwise be a boring scene. A scene in ancient ruins is generic by nature—there are a lot of ancient ruins around D’ni, after all. But when you add the aspect Huge Bronze Statue to the scene, and people bring it into play, it becomes “that time we were at the Bronze Statue, when I was blocking the door and you were deciphering the inscription.” The unique details add interest and investment.

Deciding When to Use Mechanics

Because aspects tell us what’s important, they also tell us when it’s most appropriate to use the mechanics to deal with a situation, rather than letting people decide what happens just by describing what they do.

GMs, this comes up for you most often when you’re trying to figure out whether to require a player to roll dice. If a player says, “I climb this ladder and grab the idol,” and there’s nothing special about the ladder or the idol, then there’s no real reason to require an action to grab it. But if the situation aspects tell you that the ladder is a Rotting Rope Ladder and the idol is Protected by Deadly Traps, then you suddenly have an element of pressure and risk that makes it worth going to the dice.

Players, this comes up for you most often when invoking your aspects and considering compels. Your aspects highlight what makes your character an individual, and you want to play that up, right? So when the opportunity comes up to make your character more awesome by invoking, go for it! When you see an opportunity to influence the story by suggesting a compel for your character, do it! The game as a whole will be much richer for it.

Game Aspects

Game aspects are permanent fixtures of the game, hence the name. While they might change over time, they’re never going to go away. If you’ve gone through game creation, you’ve already defined these—the current or impending issues that you came up with. They describe problems or threats that exist in the world, which are going to be the basis for your game’s story. Everyone can invoke, compel, or create an advantage on a game aspect at any time; they’re always there and available for anyone’s use.

Character Aspects

Character aspects are just as permanent, but smaller in scope, attached to an individual PC or NPC. They describe a near-infinite number of things that set the character apart, such as:

• Significant personality traits or beliefs (Argues at the Drop of A Hat, D’ni is the Epitome of Civilization).
• The character’s background or profession (Top of His Class at West Point, Just a Working Stiff).
• An important possession or noticeable feature (Mysterious Ancient Pendant, Built like a Sherman Tank).
• Relationships to people and organizations (Wanted by Surface Authorities, Heir to a Fortune).
• Problems, goals, or issues the character is dealing with (I’ll Never Amount to Anything, Determined to Master the Art).
• Titles, reputations, or obligations the character may have (World-Renowned Physicist, I Promised to Look After My Sister).

You can invoke or call for a compel on any of your character aspects whenever they’re relevant. GMs, you can always propose compels to any PC. Players, you can suggest compels for other people’s characters, but the GM is always going to get the final say on whether or not it’s a valid suggestion.

Situation Aspects

By default, a situation aspect is temporary, intended to last only for a single scene or until it no longer makes sense (but no longer than a session, at most). Situation aspects can be attached to the environment the scene takes place in—which affects everybody in the scene—but you can also attach them to specific characters by targeting them when you create an advantage. Situation aspects describe significant features of the circumstances the characters are dealing with in a scene. That includes:

• Physical features of the environment (Freezing Winds, Humming Crystal Shards).
• Positioning or placement (Behind Cover, Poised to Strike).
• Immediate obstacles (Piles of Rubble, Crumbling Bridges).
• Contextual details that are likely to come into play (The Natives are Restless, Walls Covered in Ancient Symbols).
• Sudden changes in a character’s status (Blinded, Off-Balance).

Who can use a situation aspect depends on narrative context— sometimes it’ll be clear, and sometimes you’ll need to justify how you’re using the aspect so it makes sense based on what’s happening in the scene.

GMs, you’re the final arbiter on what claims on an aspect are valid. Sometimes situation aspects become obstacles that characters need to overcome. Other times they give you justification to provide active opposition against someone else’s action.

Reserving situation aspects

As a rule, situation aspects last as long as makes sense. Rarely does this extend past the end of the scene (though occasionally you create aspects for use in the next scene). Situation aspects are transitory by design.

You might want to make something that lasts for longer. Maybe you want to set up something that you might use later, but not necessarily in the next scene. Another possibility is that you want to take some situation aspect and extend its usefulness.

You can choose to ‘reserve’ an aspect for later usage by spending a fate point. That aspect sticks around. When you invoke the aspect, it becomes active; the clock starts ticking. It will be available for use but may go away soon like any other active situation aspect.

Unused reserved aspects go away at the end of the chapter. Or a character can release the aspect at any point. Additionally, a change in the situation may nullify the aspect. Something might have happened to counteract it, or it simply might not make sense anymore. It goes away. Here is the tricky thing: reserved aspects can still be compelled. And a compel does not necessarily activate the situation aspect like invoking it does.

Boosts cannot be reserved—they are simply too momentary.

Consequences

A consequence is more permanent than a situation aspect, but not quite as permanent as a character aspect. They’re a special kind of aspect a character might take in order to avoid getting overwhelmed in a conflict, and they describe lasting injuries or problems that you take away from a conflict. Consequences stick around for a variable length of time, from a few scenes to a chapter or two, depending on how severe they are. Because of their negative phrasing, you’re likely to get compelled a lot when you have them, and anyone who can justifiably benefit from the consequence can invoke it or create an advantage on it.

Consequences come in three levels of severity—mild, moderate, and severe. Each one has a different shift value: two, four, and six, respectively. On your character sheet, you have a number of available consequence slots.

A character can receive a consequence as a result of one of the following situations:

• Being the target of an excelled Advantage action (see p. 135)
• Succeeding at a cost (see p. 143)
• Making a sacrifice

Making a Sacrifice

When you are out of fate points and want to make one final effort as a last resort, you can make a sacrifice. To make a sacrifice, you describe what you are doing to push yourself beyond your ordinary limits. Then, you place a consequence on yourself that fits the situation at hand— he GM gets a free invoke on the consequence. In exchange, you get a number of fate points. You can only take a consequence in an available slot (i.e. if you only have one Minor consequence slot, you cannot take another).

Consequence Fate Points

Minor	1
Moderate	2
Severe	3

Naming a Consequence

Here are some guidelines for choosing what to name a consequence:

Mild consequences don’t require immediate medical attention. They hurt, and they may present an inconvenience, but they aren’t going to force you into a lot of bed rest. On the mental side, mild consequences express things like small social gaffes or changes in your surface emotions.

Examples: Black Eye, Bruised Hand, Winded, Flustered, Cranky, Temporarily Blinded.

Moderate consequences represent fairly serious impairments that require dedicated effort toward recovery (including medical attention). On the mental side, they express things like damage to your reputation or emotional problems that you can’t just shrug off with an apology and a good night’s sleep.

Examples: Deep Cut, First Degree Burn, Exhausted, Drunk, Terrified.

Severe consequences go straight to the emergency room (or whatever the equivalent is in your game)—they’re extremely nasty and prevent you from doing a lot of things, and will lay you out for a while. On the mental side, they express things like serious trauma or relationship-changing harm.

Examples: Second-Degree Burn, Compound Fracture, Gaping Wound, Crippling Shame, Trauma-Induced Phobia.

Recovering from a Consequence

In order to regain the use of a consequence slot, you have to recover from the consequence. That requires two things—succeeding at an action that allows you to justify recovery, and then waiting an appropriate amount of game time for that recovery to take place.

The action in question is an overcome action; the obstacle is the consequence that you took. If it’s a physical injury, then the action is some kind of medical treatment or first aid. For mental consequences, the action may involve therapy, counseling, or simply a night out with friends. For social consequences, you may need to do some ‘damage control’ to counteract the consequence.

The difficulty for this obstacle is based on the shift value of the consequence. Mild is Fair (+2), Moderate is Great (+4), and severe is Fantastic (+6). If you are trying to perform the recovery action on yourself, increase the difficulty by one.

Keep in mind that the circumstances have to be appropriately free of distraction and tension for you to make this roll in the first place—you’re not going to clean and bandage a nasty cut while an out-of-control fire rages around you. GMs, you have the final judgment call.

If you succeed at the recovery action, or someone else succeeds on a recovery action for you, you get to rename the consequence aspect to show that it’s in recovery. So, for example, Broken Leg could become Stuck in a Cast, Scandalized could become Social Damage Control, and so on. This doesn’t free up the consequence slot, but it serves as an indicator that you’re recovering, and it changes the ways the aspect can be used while it remains.

Whether you change the consequence’s name or not—and sometimes it might not make sense to do so—mark it in some way at the end of the current scene, so that everyone remembers that recovery has started.

Then, you just have to wait the time.

• For a mild consequence, recovering consequences go away at the end of a scene.
• For a moderate consequence, recovering consequences go away at the end of a session.
• For a severe consequence, recovering consequences go away at the end of a chapter.

Overwhelmed

If a consequence is ever placed on you and you have no empty consequence slots, you are overwhelmed.

Boosts

Boosts are temporary, free-floating invocations that happen when you get a momentary benefit that isn’t lasting enough to be an aspect. You get a boost when you’re trying to create an advantage but don’t succeed well enough, or as an added benefit to succeeding especially well at an action (notably defending). You invoke boosts just like you would for an aspect, for the +2, reroll, or other effect that requires an invocation. As with aspect invocations, you need to describe what’s happening that makes that boost relevant to your action.

Once you invoke the boost, it goes away. They go away on their own fairly quickly—usually after the next action when you could use them—so use them as soon as possible! If you want, you can allow another character to invoke your boost, though it needs to be relevant to their action and could help them out.

When you earn a boost, give it a name like you would an aspect to help you remember where the boost came from and how you can use it. Don’t dwell on coming up with something clever, since it doesn’t last long.

Just remember that a boost isn’t a full, “grown up” aspect—you can’t compel with it, use it as permission for extras, pay a fate point to invoke it again, or other things that manipulate aspects or that aspects affect. But you can promote it to a full aspect; see Promoting Boosts below.

Leaving Boosts Unnamed

If you’re struggling to name a boost, let it be unnamed and continue playing—boosts aren’t worth stopping play to name! If you do, though, you’ll have to keep track of the situation that created the boost, which some people find difficult to remember.

Promoting Boosts

Sometimes when you’re creating a new aspect, you find that there’s a boost in play that’s exactly the aspect you want to make, turning a momentary benefit into a lasting one. Great! That’s called promoting a boost. Just declare an aspect you’re making to have the same name as a boost in play, and you’re done. If the action gives this new aspect a free invocation, it has two instead thanks to the boost being active. If you haven’t named the boost yet, now’s the time to do it.

For example, say I am trying to wrestle a Book from your grasp and get a boost from that Oppose action, and we say that you managed to get me A Little Off-Balance. On your next action, you follow-up by saying that you want to keep me off-balance by creating an advantage. You roll for the advantage, succeed without needing to use the boost, and then name the advantage A Little Off-Balance with two free invocations (or three if you succeeded with style—essentially one extra free invocation).

Even if you’ve used a boost already, nothing says you can’t bring that idea back around as an aspect later in the scene if it’s appropriate. There’s no special rule about that, just something to keep in mind. In our example above, you could still create the A Little Off-Balance advantage, even if you use the boost on that roll or on a past turn.

Boosts are not full Aspects

Unlike aspects, you cannot compel a boost or pay a fate point to invoke a boost (including invoking it against its owner). Any other rules that require an aspect to exist or be used don’t count for boosts. Don’t let the fact that they’re often given names mislead you.

Making a Good Aspect

Because aspects are so important to the game, it’s important to make the best aspects you can. So, how do you know what a good aspect is? The best aspects are double-edged, say more than one thing, and keep the phrasing simple.

Double-Edged

Players, good aspects offer a clear benefit to your character while also providing opportunities to complicate their lives or be used to their detriment. An aspect with a double-edge is going to come up in play more often than a mostly positive or negative one. You can use them frequently to be awesome, and you’ll be able to accept more compels and gain more fate points.

Try this as a litmus test—list two ways you might invoke the aspect, and two ways someone else could invoke it or you could get a compel from it. If the examples come easily to mind, great! If not, add more context to make that aspect work or put that idea to the side and come up with a new aspect.

GMs, this is just as true of your game and situation aspects. Any feature of a scene you call out should be something that either the PCs or their foes could use in a dramatic fashion. Your game aspects do present problems, but they also should present ways for the PCs to take advantage of the status quo.

Say More Than One Thing

Earlier, we noted several things that a character aspect might describe: personality traits, backgrounds, relationships, problems, possessions, and so forth. The best aspects overlap across a few of those categories, because that means you have more ways to bring them into play.

GMs, for your situation aspects, you don’t have to worry about this as much, because they’re only intended to stick around for a scene. It’s much more important for game and character aspects to suggest multiple contexts for use.

Clear Phrasing

Because aspects are phrases, they come with all the ambiguities of language. If no one knows what your aspect means, it won’t get used enough. That isn’t to say you have to avoid poetic or fanciful expression; Just a Simple Farmboy isn’t quite as fetching as Child of Pastoral Bliss. If that’s the tone your game is going for, feel free to indulge your linguistic desires.

However, don’t do this at the expense of clarity. Avoid metaphors and implications when you can get away with just saying what you mean. That way, other people don’t have to stop and ask you during play if a certain aspect would apply, or get bogged down in discussions about what it means.

If you’re wondering if your aspect is unclear, ask the people at the table what they think it means.

If You Get Stuck

Now you know what makes for a good aspect, but that doesn’t narrow down your potential choices any—you still have a nearly infinite set of topics and ideas to choose from.

If you’re still stuck about what to choose, here are some tips to make things a little easier on you.

Sometimes, It’s Better Not to Choose

If you can’t think of an aspect that really grabs you and the other people at the table, you’re better off leaving that space blank, or just keeping whatever ideas you had scribbled in the margins. Sometimes it’s much easier to wait for your character to get into play before you figure out how you want to word a particular aspect.

So when in doubt, leave it blank. Maybe you have a general idea of the aspect but don’t know how to phrase it, or maybe you just have no idea. Don’t worry about it. There’s always room during the game to figure it out as you go.

The same thing is true if you have more than one idea that seems juicy, but they don’t work together and you don’t know which one to pick. Write them all down in the margins and see which one seems to really sing in play. Then fill the space in later, with the one that gets the most mileage.

Always Ask What Matters and Why

We said above that aspects tell you why something matters in the game and why we care about it. This is your primary compass and guide to choosing the best possible aspect. When in doubt, always ask: what do we really care about here, and why?

The events of your Journey should help you figure out what your aspect should be. Don’t try to summarize the events of your Journey or anything like that with your aspect—remember, the point is to reveal something important about the character. Again, ask yourself what really matters about the phase:

• What was the outcome? Is that important?
• Did the character develop any important relationships or connections during this phase?
• Does the phase help establish anything important about the character’s personality or beliefs?
• Did the phase give the character a reputation?
• Did the phase create a problem for the character in the game world?

Assume that each question ends with “for good or ill”—these features, relationships, and reputations aren’t necessarily going to be positive, after all. Developing a relationship with a nemesis is as juicy as developing one with your best friend.

If there’s more than one option, poll the other players and GM to see what they find interesting. Remember, you should all be helping each other out—the game works best if everyone’s a fan of what everyone else is doing.

Vary It Up

You don’t want all your aspects to describe the same kind of thing. Five relationships means that you can’t use your aspects unless one of them is in play, but five personality traits means that you have no connection to the game world. If you’re stuck on what to pick for an aspect, looking at what kinds of things your other aspects describe may help you figure out which way to go for the current phase.

Let Your Friends Decide

We’ve talked before about the fact that the game works best if everyone is invested in what everyone else is doing—collaboration is at the heart of the game, and we’ll probably say it a lot more times before the end of this book.

You always have the option, especially with aspects, of simply asking the GM and other players to come up with something on your behalf. Pitch them the events of the phase, and ask them the same questions they’re going to be asking of you. What matters to them? What are they excited about? Do they have suggestions about how to make the events of the phase more dramatic or intense? What aspect do they think would be most interesting or appropriate?

You have the final decision as to what your character’s aspects are, so don’t look at it as giving up control. Look at it as asking your ever-important fan club and audience what they want to see, and using their suggestions to jumpstart your own train of thought. If everyone has a bit of input on everyone else’s characters, the game will benefit from that sense of mutual investment.

Invoking Aspects

The primary way you’re going to use aspects in a game of Unwritten is to invoke them. If you’re in a situation where an aspect is beneficial to your character somehow, you can invoke it.

In order to invoke an aspect, explain why the aspect is relevant, spend a fate point, and you can choose one of these benefits:

• Shift the result of your current roll by +2 after you’ve rolled the dice.
• Reroll all your dice.
• Pass a +2 benefit to another character’s roll, if it’s reasonable that the aspect you’re invoking would be able to help.
• Create an obstacle worth passive opposition of Fair (+2) that represents a complication caused by the aspect.
• Add +2 to any source of passive opposition, if it’s reasonable that the aspect you’re invoking could contribute to making things more difficult.

It doesn’t matter when you invoke the aspect, but usually it’s best to wait until after you’ve rolled the dice to see if you’re going to need the benefit. You can invoke multiple aspects on a single roll, but you cannot invoke the same aspect multiple times on a single roll. So if your reroll doesn’t help you enough, you’ll have to pick another aspect (and spend another fate point) for a second reroll or that +2.

The group has to buy into the relevance of a particular aspect when you invoke it; GMs, you’re the final arbiter on this one. The use of an aspect should make sense, or you should be able to creatively narrate your way into ensuring it makes sense.

Precisely how you do this is up to you. Sometimes, it makes so much sense to use a particular aspect that you can just hold up the fate point and name it. Or you might need to embellish your character’s action a little more so that everyone understands where you’re coming from. (That’s why we recommend making sure that you’re on the same page with the group as to what each of your aspects means—it makes it easier to justify bringing it into play.)

If the aspect you invoke is on someone else’s character sheet, including situation aspects attached to them, you give them the fate point you spent. They don’t actually get to use it until after the end of the scene, though.

Free Invocations

You don’t always have to pay a fate point to invoke an aspect—sometimes it’s free.

When you succeed at creating an advantage, you “stick” a free invocation onto an aspect. If you excel on the action, you get two invocations. Some of the other actions also give you free boosts. You also get to stick a free invocation on any consequences you inflict in a conflict.

Free invocations work like normal ones except in two ways: no fate points are exchanged, and you can stack them with a normal invocation for a better bonus. So you can use a free invocation and pay a fate point on the same aspect to get a +4 bonus instead of a +2, two rerolls instead of one, or you can add +4 to another character’s roll or increase passive opposition by +4. Or you could split the benefits, getting a reroll and a +2 bonus. You can also stack multiple free invocations together.

After you’ve used your free invocation, if the aspect in question is still around, you can keep invoking it by spending fate points.

If you want, you can pass your free invocation to another character. That allows you to get some teamwork going between you and a buddy. This is really useful in a conflict if you want to set someone up for a big finish—have everyone create an advantage and pass their free invocations onto one person, then that person stacks all of them up at once for a huge bonus.

Compelling Aspects

The other way you use aspects in the game is called a compel. If you’re in a situation where having or being around a certain aspect means your character’s life is more dramatic or complicated, someone can compel the aspect. That aspect can be on your character, the scene, location, game, or anywhere else that’s currently in play. We’ll start with character aspects, and then talk about situation aspects in a bit.

In order to compel an aspect, explain why the aspect is relevant, and then make an offer as to what the complication is. You can negotiate the terms of the complication a bit, until you reach a reasonable consensus. Whoever is getting compelled then has two options:

• Accept the complication and receive a fate point
• Pay a fate point to prevent the complication from happening

The complication from a compel occurs regardless of anyone’s efforts— once you’ve made a deal and taken the fate point, you can’t use your skills or anything else to mitigate the situation. You have to deal with the new story developments that arise from the complication.

If you prevent the complication from happening, then you and the group describe how you avoid it. Sometimes it just means that you agree that the event never happened in the first place, and sometimes it means narrating your character doing something proactive. Whatever you need to do in order to make it make sense works fine, as long as the group is okay with it.

GMs, you’re the final arbiter here, as always—not just on how the result of a compel plays out, but on whether or not a compel is valid in the first place. Use the same judgment you apply to an invocation; it should make instinctive sense, or require only a small amount of explanation, that a complication might arise from the aspect.

Finally, and this is important: if a player wants to compel another character, it costs a fate point to propose the complication. The GM can always compel for free, and any player can propose a compel on his or her own character for free.

Types of Compels

There are two major categories for what a compel looks like in the game: events and decisions. These are tools to help you figure out what a compel should look like and help break any mental blocks.

Events

An event-based compel happens to the character in spite of herself, when the world around her responds to a certain aspect in a certain way and creates a complicating circumstance. It looks like this:

You have ____ aspect and are in ____ situation, so it makes sense that, unfortunately, ____ would happen to you.

As you’ll see with decision-based compels, the real mileage is in the complication itself. Without that, you don’t really have anything worth focusing on—the fact that the PCs continually have complicated and dramatic things happen to them is, well, exactly what makes them PCs in the first place.

GMs, event-based compels are your opportunity to party. You’re expected to control the world around the PCs, so having that world react to them in an unexpected way is pretty much part and parcel of your job description. Players, event-based compels are great for you. You get rewarded simply by being there—how much more awesome can you get? You might have a difficult time justifying an event-based compel yourself, as it requires you to assert control over an element of the game that you typically aren’t in charge of. Feel free to propose an event-based compel, but remember that the GM has the final say on controlling the game world and may veto you if she has something else in mind.

Decisions

A decision is a kind of compel that is internal to the character. It happens because of a decision they make. It looks like this:

You have ____ aspect in ____ situation, so it makes sense that you’d decide to ____. This goes wrong when ____ happens.

So the real dramatic impact from these kinds of compels is not what decision the character makes, most of the time—it’s how things go wrong. Before something goes wrong, the first sentence could be a prelude to making a skill roll or simply a matter of roleplaying. The complication that the decision creates is really what makes it a compel.

The decision part should be self-evident, and something a player might have been thinking about doing anyway. The same goes for players trying to compel NPCs or each other’s PCs—make sure you have a strong mutual understanding of what that NPC or other character might do before proposing the compel.

Players, if you need fate points, this is a really good way of getting them. If you propose a decision-based compel for your character to the GM, then what you’re basically asking is for something you’re about to do to go wrong somehow. You don’t even have to have a complication in mind—simply signaling the GM should be enough to start a conversation. GMs, as long as the compel isn’t weak (as in, as long as there’s a good, juicy complication), you should go with this. If the compel is weak, poll the rest of the group for ideas until something more substantial sticks.

Compelling with Situation Aspects

Just like with every other kind of aspect use, you can use situation aspects (and by extension, game aspects) for compels. Because situation aspects are usually external to characters, you’re almost always looking at event-based compels rather than decision-based ones. The characters affected each get a fate point for the compel.

Retroactive Compels

Sometimes, you’ll notice during the game that you’ve fulfilled the criteria for a compel without a fate point getting awarded. You’ve played your aspects to the hilt and gotten yourself into all kinds of trouble, or you’ve narrated crazy and dramatic stuff happening to a character related to their aspects just out of reflex.

Anyone who realizes this in play can mention it, and the fate point can be awarded retroactively, treating it like a compel after the fact. GMs, you’re the final arbiter. It should be pretty obvious when something like this occurs, though—just look at the guidelines for event and decision compels above, and see if you can summarize what happened in the game according to those guidelines. If you can, award a fate point.

GMs, remember that a player is ultimately responsible for everything that the character says and does. You can offer decision-based compels, but if the player doesn’t feel like the decision is one that the character would make, don’t force the issue by charging a fate point.

Instead, negotiate the terms of the compel until you find a decision the player is comfortable making, and a complication that chains from that decision instead. If you can’t agree on something, drop it.

If you offer a decision-based compel, and no one can agree on what the decision part should be, it shouldn’t cost a fate point to counter—just drop it. Countering a decision-based compel should only mean that the “what goes wrong” part doesn’t happen.

Aspects and Roleplaying

Finally, aspects have a passive use that you can draw on in almost every instance of play. Players, you can use them as a guide to roleplaying your character. This may seem self-evident, but we figured we’d call it out anyway—the aspects on your character sheet are true of your character at all times, not just when they’re invoked or compelled.

Think of your collection of aspects as an oracle, like a tarot spread or tea leaves. They give you a big picture of what your character’s about, and they can reveal interesting implications if you read between the lines. If you’re wondering what your character might do in a certain situation, look at their aspects. What do they say about your character’s personality, goals, and desires? Are there any clues in what their aspects say that might suggest a course of action? Once you find that suggestion, go for it.

Playing to your aspects also has another benefit: you’re feeding the GM ideas for compels. You’re already bringing your aspects into the game, so all she has to do is offer you complications and you’re good to go.

GMs, you’ll use your NPCs aspects the same way, but you get an additional way of “reading the tea leaves”—you can also use them as a way of figuring out how the world reacts to the characters. Does someone have the aspect Strongest Man in the World? That’s a reputation that might precede that character, one that people might know about and react to. People might crowd in to see that character when he’s passing through. Also, it suggests something about that character’s physical size and build. You know that most people are going to give that character a wide berth in a crowded space, might be naturally intimidated, or might be overly aggressive or brusque as overcompensation for being intimidated. But no one’s going to ignore that character. Inserting these kinds of aspect related details into your narration can help your game seem more vivid and consistent, even when you’re not shuffling fate points around.

Removing or Changing Aspects

Game and character aspects change through milestones. 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. (For example, if you’re Grappled, you could try to get away. If you succeed, it would no longer be Grappled anymore, so you’d 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, the GM sets passive opposition or just allows 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.

Unlocking Aspects in Play

In addition to your character aspects, game aspects, and the situation aspects that the GM presents, you have the ability to create, discover, or gain access to other aspects as you play.

For the most part, you’ll use the Advantage action to make new aspects. When you describe the action that gives you an advantage, the context should tell you if it requires a new aspect or if it derives from an existing one. If you’re bringing a new circumstance into play—like throwing sand in someone’s eyes—you’re indicating that you need a new situation aspect. Questions from Discover actions can make aspects available as well.

With some skills, it’s going to make more sense to stick an advantage to an aspect that’s already on some other character’s sheet. In this case, the PC or NPC you’re targeting would provide active opposition to keep you from being able to use that aspect.

If you’re not looking for a free invocation, and you just think it’d make sense if there were a particular situation aspect in play, you don’t need to roll the dice—just suggest it. If the group thinks they’re interesting, write it down.

The Fate Point Economy

For the most part, the use of aspects revolves around fate points. You indicate your supply of fate points by using tokens, such as poker chips, glass beads, or other markers.

Ideally, you want a consistent ebb and flow of fate points going on throughout your sessions. Players spend them in order to be awesome in a crucial moment, and they get them back when their lives get dramatic and complicated. So if your fate points are flowing, you’ll end up with cycles of triumphs and setbacks that make for a fun and interesting story.

Refresh

Each character has a refresh rate, which determines how many points they receive when their pool of fate points are refilled. Refreshes usually happen at the beginning of a session, though the gamemaster can decide to declare a refresh at other times.

During a refresh, your fate points refill up to your refresh rate. If you have more fate points than your actual refresh, you don’t lose the additional points, but you don’t gain any either.

At the start of a new chapter, you reset your fate points to your refresh rate no matter what. You lose any extra fate points you have.

Spending Fate Points

• You spend fate points in any of the following ways:
• Invoke an aspect: You can spend a fate point to invoke an aspect.
• Declare a minor detail. You can spend a point to declare a minor detail as true, related to the aspects in play.
• Power a stunt: Some stunts are potent, and as such, cost a fate point in order to activate.
• Refuse a compel: Once a compel is proposed, you can pay a fate point to avoid the complication associated with it.

Earning Fate Points

You earn fate points in any of the following ways:

• Accept a compel. You get a fate point when you agree to the complication associated with a compel. As we said above, this may sometimes happen retroactively if the circumstances warrant.
• Have your aspects invoked against you. If someone pays a fate point to invoke an aspect attached to your character, you gain their fate point at the end of the scene. This includes advantages created on your character, as well as consequences.
• Concede in a contest or dangerous action. You receive one fate point for conceding in a contest or dangerous action.
• Make a sacrifice. If you choose to make a sacrifice and take a consequence, you get fate points in exchange for the sacrifice.
• Avoid using a hint. If you excel on a Discover action, you can request a hint from the gamemaster. If you do not use your hint, you receive one fate point. p.

The GM and Fate Points

GMs, you also get to use fate points, but the rules are a little bit different than the rules for players.

When you award players fate points for compels or concession, they come out of an unlimited pool you have for doing so—you don’t have to worry about running out of fate points to award, and you always get to compel for free.

The NPCs under your control are not so lucky. They have a limited pool of fate points you get to use on their behalf. Whenever a scene starts, you get one fate point for every PC in that scene. You can use these points on behalf of any NPC you want, but you can get more in that scene if they take a compel, like PCs do. You reset to your default total, one per PC, at the beginning of every scene.

There are two exceptions:

• You accepted a compel that effectively ended the last scene or starts the next one. If that happens, take an extra fate point in the next scene.
• You conceded a conflict to the PCs in the previous scene. If that happens, take the fate points you’d normally get for the concession into the next scene and add them to the default total.

If the immediate next scene doesn’t present a significant interaction with NPCs, you can save these extra points until the next scene that does.