Fade Power 19
May 4, 2007
So, I haven’t really done any work, as such, on Fade. I am still thinking about how best to move in my revision. As a procrastination/kickstart technique I went through the power 19 for it. Here are the results. I think that the next revision is going to have a few slight changes of emphasis that should create significantly different play. But I still haven’t nailed down exactly what they’re all going to be yet.
Anyway, power 19 for Fade, for your reading pleasure:
Fade is about secret agents in a society in which violence is no longer possible. They have the ability to alter peoples’ memories using special drugs, and their enemies will try to do the same to them. So, it’s about what happens to people when they can’t rely on their memories, and what happens when memories change.
The characters will mainly go on missions to protect their home Palace (nation), attempting to strategically alter the memories of key people in order to further their Palace’s interests. They will face other agents with the same abilities, so their memories will change in play.
Each mission, one player looks after the opposition (and plans the mission objectives1) and the complications that will occur. The others play the roles of their spooks as they plan how to achieve the objectives and then execute the plan.
The setting is keyed on two things that reinforce the game’s objectives. Firstly, the agents can alter memories. Secondly, violence is not an option for conflict. The rivalry between the Palaces adds a source of conflicts.
Character creation includes building the home Palace of the characters, giving everyone a shared home base. The characters are built primarily as a collection of key memories.
The game (currently) rewards success on secret agent missions2. So, for the OP, putting together a cool but not too tough mission and for the rest, planning and executing their solution to the situation well.
There are two types of reward in the game. Characters can improve (or just change) via player choices about their memories (memories each have an associated ability, so this can be improved). Secondly, missions might allow the agents to learn of new types of drugs that increase their options and/or effectiveness in the future.
Narration and credibility are pretty evenly shared out. At any one time, one player will be the OP (GM role) but the intention is that this job is shared out evenly. OP has a set budget to build opposition from, chosen by the rest of the agents. The OP is also free to generate new details for the Palace that the mission concerns (but not to contradict details previously determined in play). The agent players get to choose the mission objective and how hard it should be. Once the mission begins, they play their agents as they plan and execute the mission, responding to the complications and opposition that the OP generates. Although character memories may change (including which Palace they are loyal to/working for), how these memory changes are interpreted is up to the player (they may even choose to ignore certain memories – after all, they know that memories may be false).
Making you care – the fact that your character is primarily defined by a set of memories, and that these can be changed, is grabby for me.
Resolution mechanics are intentionally simple for most tasks/conflicts, with an opposed single die roll, highest wins. Effectiveness varies in that what kind of die you roll can be from d4 up to d12. There’s a bonus mechanic that allows you to reroll you die if you (e.g.) narrate in one of your memory descriptions3. There are more specific rules for drugs and memory alteration, with memory changes requiring getting close to the target, dosing them with special drugs, and then talking to them to seed the memory you wish to create/alter. Each step is resolved as a normal task, with some special effects for each drug type.
The resolution mechanics focus on memory changes, which is the core concern of the game.
Characters may advance (or degrade) via memory changes (not all voluntary). Changes can add new abilities, remove abilities, increase or decrease effectiveness, and increase or decrease memory strength4.
The game should make people think a little about personal identity, hopefully while they’re having some fun with con job/technothriller type stories. Issues of loyalty and trust may also become central as play goes on.
Extra attention and colour goes into the drug rules (to make them interesting to play with), the underlying rules of how the society works (just to ensure there aren’t any gaping logical holes in the world5). I also want a lot of tables for mission generation and ideas, so that it can be run with minimal or no preparation time.
I’m really excited by the idea of playing someone who cannot rely on their memories. It seems like another version of the cool feeling you get when a Call of Cthulhu or Unknown Armies character begins going nuts. The setting, which is a mishmash of stuff from various SF authors that I like, also really works for me. No particular thing in the setting does that, it’s something about the combination.
With the exception of some of the other Game Chef 2007 games, I’ve never seen anything that really messed with a character’s identity so much. In Fade, your character can be changed to be completely different to how they were generated, only part of it under your control. A character constantly in flux like that is pretty rare.
I’d like to get this published, via POD, by the end of the year (I made myself a promise to get something finished this year. It might be that I only get an ashcan ready version in that time, which is cool with me (I have trouble getting time for extensive playtests, unfortunately).
My target audience is gamers like me – interested in trying some unusual stuff in their gaming, prefer one shot or short run games, and low preparation time.
1Maybe the spook players should determine the mission objective(s)? I think that would lead to stronger stories.
2This area is currently up for major rethink and revision.
3A few other things also give you a bonus, that is just the most common one.
4That is, how easy it is to remove the memory.
5E.g. Ways for people to get around the no-violence rule.
