So the other night I once again inflicted "DramaAspects" on my players (previously discussed here and here). I'm still experimenting as they're not as easy as I first thought...
I created pre-generated characters for the adventure with multiple-choice drama aspects. I did this because recently I found myself in the position of creating a drama aspect for my own character, and I found it surprisingly hard when faced with a blank piece of paper.
So I took a leaf from the Apocalypse (and Sophie Lagacé’s excellent Fate of the Inquisitor playbooks) and went for a multiple-choice approach to my pre-generated characters, including the drama aspects. (Why I find my player characters so hard to create yet pregens so easy may be a topic for another time. But never mind.)
Of the five pregens, Jon chose Ezekial Gunn (overconfident student of cat magic) and Terry Chose PC Simon Ironwood (lazy half-fae career constable).
Their drama aspects, were, as presented to them:
Drama aspects are all very well, but the point of an aspect is being able to invoke and compel it. For many aspects invoking and compelling is obvious, but I’ve found that one weakness of drama aspects is that I don't find them as easy to invoke or compel. So I'm taking the time now (between sessions) to think about that in advance.
In essence, I see it that the drama aspect can be invoked to help with the thing that the character wants, and compelled to encourage the character to overcome the objection.
Ezekial Gunn: I need Ironwood to let me protect him, but he won't because he's never trusted anything to do with cats.
Gunn can invoke this aspect when he is somehow protecting Ironwood.
This aspect can be used to compel Gunn to do something that will persuade Ironwood that cats can be trusted. Such as:
PC Simon Ironwood: I need Ezekiel to let me teach him to See, but he won't because he believes that if he learns such fae blood magic then his totem cat spirit (that grants magic powers) will leave him.
Ironwood can invoke this aspect if Gunn is present when he is Seeing, and Ironwood explains what he is doing (i.e. is teaching).
This aspect can be used to compel Ironwood to do something that will persuade Gunn that Seeing won't affect his magic powers. Such as:
I haven't discussed these ideas with Jon and Terry yet, and I expect that they’ll have other, better, ideas.
I haven’t seen anyone use a character flaw as a reason for refusal yet. That may be because when players are choosing their reason, they don’t want to project onto the other character, so they pick a reason internal to their character.
I think the way for that to work is that to phrase it so that it’s a perceived character flaw, not necessarily a real one.
The keywords being “...because he/she thinks that I…”
So: ...but she won’t because she thinks that I [ can’t be trusted / am too immature / am too bookish / am not worthy.]
These can then be used to compel a character to do something foolish/dramatic to show that they do not have the character flaw. (“I am not too bookish, I’ll show her…”)
Next time I do this I will try to remember to ask the players to think about compels and invokes when they write their drama aspects. And I might nudge them towards “he/she thinks that I…”
(I’m sure this will all get easier with practice.)
The next thing to think about is resolving a drama aspect, but that’s a subject for another time.
I created pre-generated characters for the adventure with multiple-choice drama aspects. I did this because recently I found myself in the position of creating a drama aspect for my own character, and I found it surprisingly hard when faced with a blank piece of paper.
So I took a leaf from the Apocalypse (and Sophie Lagacé’s excellent Fate of the Inquisitor playbooks) and went for a multiple-choice approach to my pre-generated characters, including the drama aspects. (Why I find my player characters so hard to create yet pregens so easy may be a topic for another time. But never mind.)
Player characters
Of the five pregens, Jon chose Ezekial Gunn (overconfident student of cat magic) and Terry Chose PC Simon Ironwood (lazy half-fae career constable).
Their drama aspects, were, as presented to them:
- Gunn: I need ____________ to [teach me to _____________ / let me protect them / forgive me for scarring them] but he/she won’t because _______________________
- Ironwood: I need ___________ to [support my promotion request / let me teach them to See / respect me as a policeman] but he/she won’t because _________________
Invokes and Compels
Drama aspects are all very well, but the point of an aspect is being able to invoke and compel it. For many aspects invoking and compelling is obvious, but I’ve found that one weakness of drama aspects is that I don't find them as easy to invoke or compel. So I'm taking the time now (between sessions) to think about that in advance.
In essence, I see it that the drama aspect can be invoked to help with the thing that the character wants, and compelled to encourage the character to overcome the objection.
Ezekial Gunn: I need Ironwood to let me protect him, but he won't because he's never trusted anything to do with cats.
Gunn can invoke this aspect when he is somehow protecting Ironwood.
This aspect can be used to compel Gunn to do something that will persuade Ironwood that cats can be trusted. Such as:
- Trusting a cat not to kill an important mouse
- Trusting a cat with an important task (like that’s going to go well!)
PC Simon Ironwood: I need Ezekiel to let me teach him to See, but he won't because he believes that if he learns such fae blood magic then his totem cat spirit (that grants magic powers) will leave him.
Ironwood can invoke this aspect if Gunn is present when he is Seeing, and Ironwood explains what he is doing (i.e. is teaching).
This aspect can be used to compel Ironwood to do something that will persuade Gunn that Seeing won't affect his magic powers. Such as:
- Capturing his totem cat spirit and demonstrating that Gunn's magical powers are unaffected by its absence.
- Doing something that removes Gunn's cat magic (and thus the obstacle to learning).
- Getting Gunn to learn some other fae blood magic first to demonstrate that it doesn’t affect his cat magic.
I haven't discussed these ideas with Jon and Terry yet, and I expect that they’ll have other, better, ideas.
Character flaws
I haven’t seen anyone use a character flaw as a reason for refusal yet. That may be because when players are choosing their reason, they don’t want to project onto the other character, so they pick a reason internal to their character.
I think the way for that to work is that to phrase it so that it’s a perceived character flaw, not necessarily a real one.
The keywords being “...because he/she thinks that I…”
So: ...but she won’t because she thinks that I [ can’t be trusted / am too immature / am too bookish / am not worthy.]
These can then be used to compel a character to do something foolish/dramatic to show that they do not have the character flaw. (“I am not too bookish, I’ll show her…”)
Looking ahead
Next time I do this I will try to remember to ask the players to think about compels and invokes when they write their drama aspects. And I might nudge them towards “he/she thinks that I…”
(I’m sure this will all get easier with practice.)
The next thing to think about is resolving a drama aspect, but that’s a subject for another time.
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