Max's Fate - explaining and categorising

Last time you might have been confused by all the backgrounds and categories and what not, and now i'm going to explain more. if you did understand, excellent!

More on traits

Traits are what define our nobles and give them the all important Fate Cards. These are influenced by backgrounds and a certain degree of luck and dice rolling. For any chosen setting, each background has some traits, and they are rolled for randomly at the creation of the noble. I had thought that you could choose, but rolling is more realistic; when do commanders get to choose their subordinates personality?

So, let's take take a generic background from the last post, the Reeve's son. Reeves are the 'sheriffs' of Anglo-Saxon England, so we would expect them to be brave and fighters, at least in theory. His son will then roll a d6 and looks at his trait possibilities:

-1: Roll again, re-rolling a 1. He gains a negative secondary trait.

-2 or 3: Courageous

-4 or 5: Cunning

-6: Veteran

Basically, our fate is not totally within our choice, unless you don't like randomness and choose the traits.

As i began to explain last time, i have several traits already. Now i shall show you the cards they offer to us:

Courageous	Hero of the Age	Cunning	Bounding move
	Audacia		Hit and run
	Armour bright		I have a cunning plan
	Stubborn		I know the path
	Crouch lances		Assassins
Veteran	Bravery	Believer	Stubborn
	Aggressive charge		Audacia
	Sustained charge		I thought that went well
	Shieldwall braced		God is with us!
	Volley	Tribal leader	Hit and run
Berserker	Sustained charge		I know the way
	Bravery		Intimidate
	Goad		Goad
	Solid as the mountain		Mounted archers

Ok, you won't know some of the cards, because at the moment they only exist in my notebook, but you might get the idea by the names. All are primary traits.

I thought that each category has three traits that have to be taken, two for lower characters and one more for lords. The rest are optional and may be chosen for the character at his creation. I thought that:
Status I noble: 2 obligatory and 1 chosen.
Status II: 2 obligatory and 2 chosen.
Status III: 3 obligatory and 2 chosen.
Status IV: 3 obligatory and 3 chosen.
So this would give us (with two Status II nobles and a Status III lord) 9 cards. Add this to the about 15 generic cards and we have 21 cards, 33 if we add both decks together. But here lies the first big problem.

The first big problem

One or Two? One deck for each side, or one big deck for both players? Both have their advantages, and their disadvantages.

If each player had a deck, it would lean their cards would be only for their side, meaning no problems where a side can us the other player's cards even without having the right characters in their force (like a European knight using horse archers, for example). The decks are smaller, however, so powerful cards could be 'recycled' easier by canny players.

One deck means that the deck is bigger, but, as stated above, some mechanisms might be needed to stop certain characters use certain cards. This means more thinking though, but on the other hand it would be less encumbering on the table, with fewer chances of getting decks mixed up (you never know...).

I'm not sure, so any ideas are welcome.

It's all very good but...

...so far i've only been giving ideas, not hard categories and backgrounds and cards and all the rest! Do do not fear, they are being planned! The only thing is that they have to be flexible so that others can easily make characters AND decks. It's quite a slow progress, and in the next post i shall begin to set some proper walls on these foundations. I have the fate card ideas, categories and backgrounds. I guess fate cards should come first, as categories depend on they, so they might be coming this weekend.

Planning your fate - ideas and categories

I would like to point out all the rules here are drafts and ideas, and had neither play tests or fully thought through. If anyone has anything to offer, leave a comment and we can all develop these ideas, sort of for the Greater Good :-p

Ideas

I first had this idea when playing with the idea of a sort of role playing dux, with characters having to create a war band and grow in power, wealth and status. I invented more backgrounds that gave you special abilities, and had the smart idea to change the fate deck. This depended on the status of the noble (his experience  and also his background, so a nobleman's son was proud, a warrior's son was savvy in the ways of war, etc...

Players would then have some cards automatically, and others could be chosen from a list. Characters might also gain other abilities and cards later, and also have (thanks Jim) secondary traits, which can or good or bad. These are then added to a generic deck (maybe the unsuited cards in the original game).

Backgrounds and their effects

Of course, if you play a Saxon and Briton game you can use the backgrounds provided, and Jim has some interesting medieval ones (designed for the 15th century but they might work for earlier). You could also go for fantasy ones, if that's what you play.

Backgrounds, as we all know, provides money and loyalty, and, to add a bit of spice, we could give our nobles a hereditary trait, given to him by his father/family (or lack of!), that might effect lots, or not at all, the game. Some examples of what I'm on about:

-Son of a lower nobleman (Esquire, Reeve...): More loyalty to other nobles and might be trained in war, giving him 1 random Veteran card (more below).

-Son of a steppe nomad: Maybe Huns or Mongols. He can ride a horse and fire a bow on the move. Gains a  random card from the Speed or Tribal chief categories.

-Son of a priest: Knows religions practices of his country, and is automatically Devout (as well as any other Dux traits). He gains a random Believer card.

-Son of a barbarian: Gains a Courageous or Berserker card.

So what do these words in italics mean?!? Pray read on, if your still with me.

The words in italics; fate card categories

Under these ideas, fate cards are put into several categories, making them easier to class. Some ideas are:

-Courageous: Cards of knightly values, such as being brave and killing many enemies singly handily. Some are Hero of the Age, Armour Bright and some i invented.

-Veteran: A fighter, these cards give you bonuses in combat, such as Shieldwall Braced, Aggressive Charge and Bounding move.

-Speed: Allow movement through some terrain without penalties, and maybe the use of boats along rivers or the sea.

-Tribal Chief: If a steppe nomad, these cards allow a mounted force to unleash arrows at the gallop and make hit-and-run attacks of a less mobile foe.

-Berserker: Mad men and savages all, these cards are dangerous in hand to hand, but might leave men vulnerable because of their rage.

-Cunning: The sneaky tricks, allowing ambushes and feints to confuse a foe.

-Lucky: A lesser trait, these cards allow the impossible to become possible, and turn events around, but they are few.

-Believer: Reduce shock and give religious bravery to the men. These might be useful for Crusaders.

There are tons of things that could be done, the sky's the limit!

Traits; what are they?

Role players know them, the characteristics that define our heroes. Our Dux nobles are no different, so each one has 2 traits, a primary one and a secondary one. The primary is one of the above, and really defines our nobles. The secondary is either given to him through his background, or gained through battle and experience. Unlike primary traits, secondary traits can be bad; for example, a noble who sees his leader loose battle after battle might become disillusioned and begin to think he could do better (Look what a mess you've got me into! hint hint).

I won't gone into them in depth yet. There could be hundreds, but we need to keep things simple, so lets reduce it to a dozen TOPS! No more! If not i'll go mad (too late, perhaps).

Relax, the post is over

So ends part 1. I'll group these coming posts under a new label, Max's Fate and maybe create a page with links to easily find the posts. I hope some of you find them useful. Next time i'll introduce some new Fate Cards and define them into the categories, and the power of traits.