Character Generation: Phases - in Practice

As you will recall, last time I laid out the "phases" used in Fate character creation, and some of my players' issues with it. This time, we'll go over what I did to attempt to pacify my players, and how well it worked out.

I created a haphazard, jury-rigged solution, inspired by the two DFRPG Aspects that are unassociated with phases -- High Concept, which is a capsule description of your character, like "Spell-Slinging Anti-Hero" or "Grizzled Soldier of Fortune," and Trouble, which describes an internal conflict or external problem plaguing the character, like "I Know Who I Stand With, What Do I Stand For?" or "On the Run From Jabba the Hutt." The Aspects I laid out for my players were as follows:

• Bloodline: This Aspect describes the character's Bloodline, as well as their relationship to it. My players had ones like "Grudgingly Power-Hungry Sky-Carver" or "Pariah Pariah"
• Character Concept: This Aspect is identical to the High Concept from DFRPG, but with a name I liked better. My players had ones like "Mad Philosopher Trying to Improve Humanity" and "Assassin Detective."
• Dilemma: Again, the same as DFRPG, but with a more evocative name for the mundane Trouble. My players had ones like "Can't Reconcile Myself to My Race" and "Future Good vs. Present Necessities."
• Youth: Essentially, I simply distilled Phase 1 into a single Aspect, requiring nothing more than a single thought about the character's origins. This was difficult for many of my players, but (eventually) I got ones like "Sons of Light Killed My Mother" and "Old Soul, Young Perspective."
• First Adventure: Again, I distilled Phase 3 into a single Aspect, asking that each player consider how their character got into the business of "adventuring." Several players bristled at this, considering it my job to come up with the exciting bits, not theirs, but eventually I got Aspects like "New Views of the World" and "My Mother's Resurrection Went Wrong."
• Aspect 6 and Aspect 7 were free-form, available to be filled however the player liked. However, as mentioned briefly in my first Magic: Rules of the Game post, each Craft a character learned required an associated Aspect to reflect how living that magic changes a person, and since every PC had at least one Craft, most of these free-form Aspects became Crafting Aspects, like "Getting Around the Obstacles" for a Realmshifter and "Revealing the Hidden and Hiding the Visible" for a Lightshifter.

Most of my players ended up taking a long time to fill out these seven Aspects, having difficulty defining their character (and in coming up with pithy names, which several were far too obsessed with). Arguably, because they skipped the Phases step of character creation, they found their characters too loosely defined to easily figure out.

But that was the minor problem. The major difficulty was in the lack of party cohesion. None of the PCs (save two) had any link to one another before the game began, so I had to introduce an artificial force to bring them all together (as I had no intention of using the old "you meet in a tavern, and decide to explore the old ruins together" cliche). This artificial force was a woman offering them a job -- but since the vision for the campaign was epic and open, I knew the job wouldn't last past the first story arc.

As I predicted, they eventually decided their employer was untrustworthy, and chose not to finish her job... and immediately they began to break apart. The party stayed together far more out of metagame necessity rather than in-story reason -- one character in particular, a rather deceitful mad scientist with his own set of priorities, had no plausible excuse for sticking with the rest of the characters -- and all of them hated him, so they had no reason to let him stay. Another character was motivated primarily by a love for explosions, so when I introduced the epic quest that was to become the main focus of the campaign, she had no interest and no reason to embark on this dangerous journey.

Not all of these problems would have been solved through the use of Phases -- certain problems of motivation and intra-party conflicts arise in all campaigns... but I do think a sense of camaraderie and trust would have gone far in keeping the party together and on track.

In short, phases are a useful tool, and one I plan on incorporating into the final City of Lives product -- but perhaps with an optional alternate system in place for players like my current playtesters. Next time, join me as I examine the range of Skills useful in The City of Lives...

Character Generation: Phases - the Theory

Phases are an innovative and integral part of Fate character creation -- and yet, oddly enough, one that many players despise, and which can be easily ignored.

In short, phases are a method for laying out a character's past in a clear and mechanically useful fashion. For each phase, a player writes a few sentences about their character's history, covering a particular period in their life. In every Fate game so far, there are five phases as a default. Their names and precise function vary from game to game, but essentially look like this:
Phase 1: Background and Youth
Detail where the character came from, what their childhood was like, what inborn talents and deeply-ingrained beliefs they have.
Phase 2: Becoming an Adult
Detail how the character started "coming into their own," how they began the occupation detailed in their Archetype, what lessons they learned in late adolescence and early adulthood.
Phase 3: The First Adventure
The first truly exciting moment for the character, what thrust them into the adventurous lifestyle they will play during the game proper. The player is encouraged to write the events of this phase in the style of the game: Spirit of the Century as the blurb on the back of a pulp novel, Starblazer Adventures as a comic book synopsis, my old time-travel game as a military-style mission report.
Phase 4: First Guest Star
The character takes part in another PC's First Adventure phase, establishing a history between the two characters.
Phase 5: Second Guest Star
Same as Phase 4, but in a second PC's First Adventure.
[note that this means that two other PCs will guest star int his character's First Adventure].

The phases serve three purposes:

1. To lay out a character's history, to make sure every player knows their PC and where they came from.
2. To establish a shared background between PCs, so that during play they will have both interesting interactions and reason to stay together.
3. To help establish Aspects...

As you will recall, Aspects are physical or mental characteristics of a character that help define who they are. Logically, anything that defines a person must have arisen at some point in their life -- at birth, if biological; in childhood or adolescence, if a personality trait; in adulthood, if a trauma or deeply-held belief. Thus, phases are a tool for helping a player determine their Aspects.

In Spirit of the Century, Diaspora, Starblazer Adventures, and Legends of Anglerre (the newest Fate-based product, a generic-fantasy game with the same ruleset as Starblazer Adventures), each phase has two associated Aspects, for a total of ten; in The Dresden Files RPG, each phase gives only one Aspect, while two Aspects are unassociated with phases.

So as you see, phases are a fundamental piece of Fate, and ensures PCs knew each other before the adventure begins. However, some players find phases repellent. They don't like looking into the background of their character, seeing where they came from. Perhaps they don't yet know their character well enough to find their past; or perhaps they like their PC to have a bit of mystery (who wasn't a bit disappointed at Wolverine's origin, whether in comics or on film? Alternately, they may not like the idea of associating Aspects with time of life -- who can say when or how someone acquires "A Sense of Justice," or figured out "My Favorite Color is Blood?"

Additionally, many players don't like creating characters with previous ties to one another. "I don't know their character," reasons the player, "it will ring false to pretend my character does, instead of just getting to know them naturally." So, for two of three Fate-based games I've run, I've modified or abandoned the phase system. For one, I cut the phases down to three, allowing the players to work out who their characters were, but removing the links between their respective characters' pasts. Luckily, the campaign structure allowed me to keep them together, as they were a mission team within a military command.

The most recent group, who have been playtesting The City of Lives, has perhaps not been so lucky. They disliked both parts of the phase system, and requested I cut it out entirely. Next time I will go over my solutions, and what happened, in Character Generation: Phases - in Practice.