Arthur Lives! Dev Blog #2: Character Creation

Welcome back to our running series of blogs on the development of Arthur Lives! Fate Edition (or ALFE as we call it in my headspace). If you have read or played Fate Core, the process of making a character in AL will be very familiar to you. If you’re coming from another Fate game, you’ll notice a few more differences.

You’ll still begin with a high concept, but as you do this you will also decide what your past life was, in the Arthurian Age. This is called your path and it gives some suggestions for aspects, stunts, extras and other character details which might suit that reincarnation. From there you will choose your trouble and a name (you’ll have two: one from the past and another for the present).

Your past life may suggest a nemesis, a particular person for whom you held a special grudge. Not every character feels this way, so don’t feel obliged to select a nemesis, but in many cases the choice is clear.

To determine your other aspects, you will describe a past adventure of your character in the Arthurian Age and a past connection with another player character. Since you are a reincarnation of that Arthurian character, you’ll also come up with a present adventure for your “second life” and a present connection to a different player character. Each of these will add an aspect to your character, so you will end up with six aspects in total, including your high concept and trouble.

You will select ten skills and at least one stunt, just as you do in Core, and calculate your Refresh, which begins a little higher in Arthur Lives! Stress and consequences are calculated in the same manner as Fate Core.

Finally, as you are making your character, you will probably also be looking ahead to the moment of recognition, when the modern you realizes that you are the reincarnation of an Arthurian character. When that moment happens, your character will gain some additional skills and stunts, or even extras. It’s wise to figure out what those additions are now, so that you don’t have to put a break on the action later, when Recognition occurs.

Let’s get to the specifics.

Aspects

Your High Concept and Path
The first thing you will need is a “high concept” for your character, an idea of who your character is. Many players begin with an Arthurian character: “I have dibs on Tristan.” That’s a perfectly good way to start. Other players don’t know much about the legend and benefit from suggestions and guidance. To help both sorts of players, we’ve included paths.

A path is a collection of aspect advice, skills, stunts, extras and other information that detail a character from the Arthurian Age. Four of the paths are very broad: Damsel, King, Knight and Magician. With these “open” paths, you can model the vast majority of Arthurian characters, including original creations (Brave, Brave Sir Robin) and famous characters (Lancelot).

Open Paths

• Damsel
• King
• Knight
• Magician

More detailed “named” paths have been created for ten characters from the legend; they include several well-known Arthurians but also some lesser knowns and surprises.

Named Paths

• Arthur
• Balin
• Gawain
• Guinevere
• Kay
• Merlin
• Morgause
• Nimue
• Nineve
• Pellinore

If you want to play a particular Arthurian character and don’t see the right named path, just use one of the first four paths. That’s what they’re for. If you don’t know anything about the legend, start with your high concept and see if one of the paths fits. You may want to play a character whose former life doesn’t fit any path — a squire, for instance, or a holy hermit. That’s fine. paths don’t give you anything a regular Fate character doesn’t have. They’re just guidelines and suggestions. In other words, they’re entirely optional and you don’t even need a path if you don’t want one.

The best high concepts unite your past and present life into one phrase, something like Once and Future King (of Rock and Roll) or Lawyer of the Lake. But if you’re stuck, just focus on the character as he or she exists in the present. After all, your character probably doesn’t know he or she is a reincarnation anyway; at least, not yet. You will have a chance to adjust and add to your character when recognition takes place, when your character learns the truth about his or her past life.

It’s perfectly legitimate to focus exclusively on your character’s present day life and put off the Arthurian aspects of the character.

Trouble
Your character has a trouble, an obstacle that makes life difficult. Your path will often suggest a trouble: Guinevere’s jealousy, for instance, or Pellinore’s obsessive nature. Characters in Arthur Lives! don’t escape their troubles simply by dying; it’s likely that whatever trouble you had in your first life continues to plague you in the second. Characters with difficult relationships in the Arthurian Age end up with similar relationships today.

If you are stuck trying to figure out something that encapsulates both sides of your character, past and present, focus on the present. When your character recognizes herself, you will get a chance to change her trouble to something that better represents her legendary baggage.

You Can Change Things Later
Throughout this section on character creation, you will see references to the fact that, when your modern character recognizes herself as a reincarnated Arthurian, you will get to add stuff to her sheet and potentially adjust the stuff that is already there. Specifics on this can be found in the section on recognition, but here’s a short summary:

Recognition is similar to a Major Milestone. It is a transformative moment in which your character suddenly understands who she really is. Many old memories come flooding back. You get to add skills and stunts to your character. You also have the chance to change an aspect or a stunt, and you can spend some of your refresh on extras or more stunts.

When your character recognizes herself:

• You can change your high concept.
• Your skill cap rises to Superb (+5).
• You gain one skill at Great (+4), one at Good (+3), one at Fair (+2) and one at Average (+1). If you are using skill points, you get 10 points to spend.
• Your refresh rises by 2; you can spend these points to buy new stunts or extras.
• And you can do one of the following things:

1. Change another aspect.
2. Change one stunt for another, or trade it in for an extra.
3. Swap two skills in value.

Recognition gives you a chance to add those Arthurian skills which are necessary to your concept, but which didn’t make any sense for your modern reincarnation, or which you just couldn’t afford to buy. The extra refresh allow you to acquire the extras and stunts which your character had in the legend. Some extras require an aspect, or even a high concept, as part of their cost; recognition gives you a chance to pay that cost.

The options that come with recognition are useful in one other important way: they allow you to start play in the modern world without a clear idea of who you were in the Arthurian Age! You may not know a lot about the legend, or you may simply prefer to let the Narrator make that kind of decision. Maybe you’re torn between Galahad and Guinevere. Because you know this decision can be put off, you can just make your character as she exists in the 21st century. When recognition takes place, and you learn your former life, you can change your high concept to suit and take the skills and stunts you need to suit that concept.

Name

If you’re making up an entirely new Arthurian — which is perfectly fair, by the way — you’ll have to come up with his Arthurian name as well as his modern reincarnation. Don’t worry too much about historical accuracy; some of these characters have pretty odd names. What’s most important is that it sounds good to you, and it’s not going to get confused with anyone else. (Conan, Katniss and Aragorn are right out.)

Example: Eric has an idea for a reincarnation of Arthur who is an Elvis impersonator. He takes the high concept Once and Future King (of Rock and Roll) and the trouble I Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound-dog, naming the character Leonard “Lennie” Fontaine. He sees Lennie as a womanizer, which is a real problem for him because Lennie is married with two kids. But he spends most of his time on the road touring, and the road is a lonely place.

Past and Present
Fate Core details the “Phase Trio,” an important step in character creation during which the players describe the past adventures of their characters, build connections between each other, and flesh out their aspects. There are some very strong advantages to this approach and Arthur Lives! does not make major changes to it. But, because every AL character has two lives and (at least in the traditional game) does not start play aware of his or her prior identity, this phase of character creation is played out a little differently.

1. Your Past Adventure: Describe an adventure your character had in the Arthurian Age. Although nothing stops you from using a famous adventure already recorded for your character (The Sword in the Stone, for example, or Gawain’s quest for the Green Knight), it’s usually more fun to make up a new tale, one which we haven’t heard before. From this, you acquire one aspect.
2. Past Connections: Hand your sheet to another player who, in the Arthurian Age, got involved in the adventure with you. Between the two of you, figure out what that second character did in your story and add an aspect that reflects it.
3. Present Adventure: Now leave the Arthurian Age behind and get into the shoes of your present-day self. Describe a story of the modern era in which your character was the star, and use it to create a third aspect for your character. This is a good time to focus on whatever skills, talents, or unique assets your modern-day self has; after all, she doesn’t know she’s an Arthurian reincarnated at the time of this adventure.
4. Present Connections: Hand your sheet to a second player and elaborate or complicate the story you just came up with. Working with that player, add a final aspect to your sheet.

At the same time that you are handing your character to two other players, of course, other players are handing their sheet to you. So when this is all over, you will have connections to a couple of characters from the Arthurian Age, and a couple of connections to characters from the present.

But I Don’t Know My Own Past!
Some of you will start play without having chosen a path, an Arthurian identity. You can’t do the Past Adventure and Past Connection part of character creation, because your past is a mystery.

That’s fine. Just leave those aspects blank for now. You can fill them in as you go. If anyone gives you a hard time, tell them you are using the Quick Character Creation rules from p. 57 of Fate Core.

Example: Eric sees Lennie as over-the-top, and he wants to focus on Arthur in his later years, a veteran of many wars, rather than the young Boy King. Turning to his past adventure, he makes up a story in which Britain is plagued by a rebellion led by giants who march on Camelot. In the climactic battle which followed, Arthur leapt onto the shoulders of the King of the Giants and, by yanking on his hair, steered him like a battle-chariot, decimating the Giant’s own ranks. He writes down, I’ve Done Things You Wouldn’t Believe.

Now he hands his sheet to another player, who in this case is making an incarnation of Nimue. Nimue’s player decides that the only way to end the War with the Giants was to pacify them with a fantastic feast, one so magnificent and large that they would be forced to acknowledge Arthur as the greatest of all kings. There was only one catch: only one animal could possibly be large enough to feed all those giants, and that was a monstrous boar which had died years ago. Nimue guided Arthur to Annwn, the horrifying land of the dead, braving evil spirits and wicked Faeries to capture the ghost boar and bring it back to the world, where its magical pork-flesh fed an army of giants. The journey would have driven a lesser man mad, so Eric writes, I Never Lose My Cool.

It’s time for Lennie’s adventure in the present. He’s run afoul of organized crime a few times, and in this case, he was performing at a local hotel whose attractive female owner was being threatened by the mob. Lennie tried to solve the problem diplomatically, but one thing led to another and he ended up in a fist fight and shoot out with the mob boss and his flunkies at a strip joint downtown. He gets the aspect I’ll Do Anything For A Fan.

Finally, he needs a Present Connection. He turns to the player making Isolde, who in the 21st century is a celebrated surgeon named Rose. She decides Lennie’s hard life on the road caught up with him after the shootout in the strip club, and he collapsed with a heart attack, which brought him to her emergency room. Rose discovered Lennie has a tear in the walls of his heart and needed an immediate transplant at once. Naturally, it was at this moment that the mobsters returned, taking the entire hospital hostage in order to force an operation on their dying boss, suffering from Lennie’s gunshot wounds. Over the course of a harrowing night, while Isolde was performing surgery on the mob boss, Lennie took them all out one at a time. But this meant he was too late to save himself, and the transplanted heart had expired. Strangely, he felt fine. Isolde once again examined his heart, and found that the previous damage was gone, without explanation. It was a miracle. Eric writes Sometimes Prayer Is the Best Choice You Can Make as his final aspect.

Nemesis
Every character in Arthur Lives! has at least one nemesis, a person for whom you have a special grudge or ill will. We say “at least one,” because in addition to any obvious nemesis you might have, alternate versions of your own past life also count as a nemesis. If you are King Arthur, Mordred — the bastard son who killed you — is your nemesis, but so are other incarnations of King Arthur!

For named paths, your nemesis is already specified. If you’re making a Knight, Damsel, King or Magician, you will want to figure out who your nemesis might be. Usually the person who killed you is a solid place to start, but you may have made an enemy in your younger adventuring days who made a more emotional connection. Sometimes your nemesis might be a group of people, such as a family. A rival is also a potential nemesis; if you and another knight both competed for the same woman, that knight may be your nemesis, even if the two of you never actually came to blows.

You have certain combat advantages against your nemesis, which are discussed elsewhere.

Skills
When you’re happy with your aspects, its time to select and rate your skills. The simplest way to do this is to follow the process outlined in Fate Core: you have a pyramid of ten skills, one of which you are Great at (+4), two of which you are Good at (+3), three of which you are Fair at (+2), and the final four of which are Average (+1).

If you want to get more complicated, you can buy your skills individually with skill points. Spend one skill point for every level of the skill; you cannot have more skills at any given level than you have skills under that level. So, if you have three skills at Average (+1), you can have up to three skills at Fair (+2), but not four.

At character creation, no skill can be higher than +4. If your Narrator is running a game in which the PCs have already recognized themselves, the skill cap will be +5 or higher.

As you make your character, focus on his abilities in the modern era. It might be fitting for your knight to have Melee, Survival or Athletics, but if his modern-day incarnation is an accountant, you may feel it a stretch to write those skills on your sheet now, before the character has recognized himself. That’s fine. Don’t force Arthurian skills onto your modern concept. You will have a chance later, when your character recognizes himself, to add those skills.

Example: Eric sees Lennie as being rough-and-tumble, a hard drinker who is physically impressive despite his age. We already know he can fight and shoot, and he can sing. But his other real talent is making an emotional connection with people. He’s charismatic and likable.

He starts with Great Performance, Good Rapport and Brawl, and Fair Physique, Firearms and Empathy. He finishes off with Average Intimidation, Athletics, Confidence and Contacts.

Eric also knows Lennie is going to recognize himself as King Arthur pretty soon. He takes a few minutes to figure out what skills that might bring, and he settles on Great Melee, Good Willpower, Fair Resources and Average Occult. He doesn’t have these skills yet, but he’ll get them.

Stunts and Refresh

Characters in Arthur Lives! start with one free stunt and 5 refresh; that’s more than typical characters from Fate Core. You can trade refresh for more stunts, but you can’t reduce your refresh below 1.

That higher refresh, and the additional refresh that comes from recognition, is there so that enchanters can buy the magical talents they need, characters like Gawain can buy their supernatural abilities, and characters like Arthur can buy enchanted weapons. In addition, the legendary feats of Arthurian characters suggest a great many stunts, and Arthur Lives! preserves that heroic tone with a slightly higher power level. These are mythological characters come to life; they may be a bit down on their luck, but they’re still legends.

Example: Lennie doesn’t have a lot of money; in fact, his Resources start out at Mediocre. The Haggle stunt will allow him to use his Rapport to buy stuff that isn’t too expensive. Tough as Nails will give Lenny more endurance in a fight. Looking at the Rapport stunt Popular, Eric invents the stunt Look, it’s Elvis!, which allows Lenny to make a Performance check against a DC 2 to place the aspect Elvis Fan on someone he’s just met. This makes the person well disposed towards Lennie, but he doesn’t get a free invocation of it. This leaves Lennie with 3 refresh, and Eric expects he will need those points once he recognizes himself as Arthur, so he stops there.

Stress and Consequences
Calculate your physical and mental stress boxes exactly as you would in Fate Core, modifying the base two boxes with additional ones from Physique (for physical stress) or Willpower (for mental stress). You have one minor, major, and one severe consequence; this may be modified by stunts.

Example: Lenny’s Mediocre Willpower means he still has only two mental stress boxes, but he has three physical ones thanks to a Fair Physique. He doesn’t have any additional consequences, but he can reduce the severity of a consequence by spending a Fate point, thanks to Tough as Nails.