Here's the TL;DR version. Make the story a character with aspects, skills, stress, and consequences. Do the same with certain scenes. Whenever the PCs try to accomplish something in the game, and they aren't rolling against NPCs, have them roll against the story or the scene instead. As the make progress, they do stress to the story/scene, and inflict consequences. These consequences indicate how they PCs have advanced the plot. Mix and match NPC, Scene, and Story as opponents to create more exciting conflicts.
Full disclosure: a lot of this was inspired by some ideas that Rob Donoghue and Cam Banks have exchanged over on Rob's awesome blog, though I can't seem to find the specific posts that started me down this path.
There are two problems that I've run into when running FATE games. The first is definitively establishing the narrative fallout of certain scenes, and effectively communicating it to my players, particularly in non-combat scenes. Secondly, setting static difficulties for the PCs to roll against, especially outside of combat, isn't difficult, but it's rarely exciting. I want to make those non-combat moments more compelling, and I have an idea, based on the fate fractal, that I think might work.
The FATE fractal says you can make anything a character by giving it aspects. I thought it might be helpful to treat the overall plot of the adventure as a character by giving it aspects. Then I thought I could do more to address my problems by extending the analogy, and give it skills, stress, consequences, and fate points.
The fundamental idea is when you don't know how hard something should be, roll the most appropriate story skill against the character attempting the action. If the character (PC or NPC) succeeds, the story takes a consequence. The consequence reflects the progress of the plot as a result of the character's actions. Look at the story aspects to know what was going on at the beginning of the story, look at consequences to see what else has happened so far.
My generic "character sheet" for a FATE plot has at least three slots for "Story aspects". These should be filled with aspects that express the threat or challenge that the PCs will face, any themes that will enhance the story, and any direct connection to the PCs or important parts of the game world.
Give the plot a single column of skills, from Average to Superb. Skills should be more broad than those for characters. They might include elements like Mystery, Violence, Deadline Pressure, Hostile Environment, Politics, Crime, Hunted, Mystical Threats, and so forth. It's important to chose the story aspects before you chose the skills. Otherwise you might be tempted to give the story a skill that really should be expressed as an aspect. If you think more than one skill is appropriate, pick one to be primary, the other to be secondary, and use the skill modification rules as usual. If no skill is quite appropriate, roll at Mediocre, possibly allow a marginally appropriate skill to modify up to Average.
The story starts with 2 stress boxes in each of three categories: Physical, Social, and Information (Mental). If the plot has a "defensive" skill that ought to add to one or more of these, add stress boxes as usual (1 extra for Average or Fair, 2 extra for Good or Great, 3 extra or an extra consequence for Superb)
The story has room for 3 minor consequences, 2 moderate, and 1 serious. In any situation in which the players are trying to advance the story, overcome a challenge, etc. that lacks an NPC to attack (or influence) they should roll against and potentially hang consequences on the story itself.
NPCs can also "attack" the story. The PCs can place consequences, only to have the NPCs remove or change them, and vise versa. PCs and NPCs can struggle against each other in an effort to determine what consequences the plot takes. This can model conflicts where the two sides are not working directly against each other. For instance, a villain intent on causing general chaos might be trying to place a "panic in the streets" consequence on the plot, while the PCs are trying to place "a calm but alert population". They could both succeed, one achieving a minor consequence, the other getting a moderate. The two aspects will interact with each other, until the minor consequence is "healed", leaving only the moderate.
Placing an aspect on the story is one of the negotiable elements of a concession. If both sides have been "fighting" the story, and have worn down it's stress boxes, one side or the other can agree to allow the other to place an uncontested consequence on the plot as a condition of the concession. Otherwise, the story can get a temporary aspect that the winner may free tag in the next scene. [1] Extended example at the end of this post.
The story can become part of the fate economy, as characters compel it's discovered aspects, and tag or compel any consequences they place. The story should start with one fate point per PC, and receive fate points for being compelled, pay them to buy off compels, as usual. Particularly nasty or narratively appropriate compels might come out of the story's fate point budget.
If villains can have minions, I suppose the story can too. Take the rules for story as character, scale them down, and apply them to short story sequences, or individual scenes. All together, we can call these Narrative Characters. Some GMs might like to run their games with a limited pool of fate points. They can do this by dividing all their fate points among NPCs and Narrative Characters. Scenes might get one FP per PC, short sequences 1 or 2 per PC, the full Plot 2 or 3 per PC, and NPCs as appropriate.
Mix and match conflicts with NPCs and different Narrative Characters. Want to make the adventure tougher without going crazy with the NPCs? Make the Narrative Characters tougher. Want to make it possible for the PCs to take on an NPC that's normally out of their league? Let them have the scene as a Narrative Character on their side of the conflict.
In my next post, I hope to describe how to modify the Story Character Sheet specifically for The Dresden Files RPG.
1 - Extended example of narrative consequences as negotiable elements of a fight: The demon concedes the conflict, but it gets away, having taken a moderate consequence, and the PCs get to place a "Protected from demonic influence" moderate consequence on the story. Or maybe the result of the demon's flight is a temporary aspect "Sudden absence of demonic influence", which the PCs can tag in a subsequent scene when they perform a ritual to place the "Free of demonic influence" consequence on the scene. The duration of the protection depends on if they score a minor, moderate, or serious consequence. Meanwhile, the story might roll it's Good Magic skill against them, not just to resist the ritual, but also to attack them with magical backlash. The story could invoke it's "Ominous astral alignment" aspect if it has a fate point to use, or maybe free tag the "Infernal Wound" consequence that one of the PCs took in the fight with the demon.
