Fate of the Budayeen, and Behavior Stats

Fate of the Budayeen is a fan-made adaptation of the Budayeen setting from George Alec Effinger’s “Marîd Audran” series to FATE, specifically FATE Accelerated. I won’t detail the adaption process here, as Mechante Anemone has already done so. Instead, I want to talk about FATE Accelerated as a system.

FATE Accelerated is a hack of the Core FATE system. Like FATE Core, FATE Accelerated uses aspects to define characters, forcing them to engage with the game narratively as well as mechanically. The changes are fairly minor: simplifying the stunt system, removing multiple stress tracks, removing the Extras mechanic, etc. The largest and most significant difference for our purposes: Unlike Core, the Accelerated ruleset don’t use skills, it uses Approaches.

In most games, Stats say what your character “is” mechanically, while in FATE, Aspects detail what your character “is” narratively. Similarly, while Skills say what your character can “do” mechanically, Approaches say what your character can “do” narratively…or more accurately, how your character does what they do.

In Fate of the Budayeen, your character has six Approaches: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, and Sneaky. Each approach represents a manner in which a character can behave while attempting to progress the story past an obstacle. For example, a character might try to get passed a heavy door forcefully, or try to get past a guard carefully.

Consider how in stat- or skill-focused RPGs, two characters could have the exact same stats, skills, class, race, etc…and still behave differently; how a character behaves is independent of mechanical stats. Approaches, on the other hand, force players to consider their character’s actions from a narrative perspective rather than a mechanical one.

With skills, character ability is structured around specific character actions; if a character is trying to fix a plane, the player needs to check the character’s “plane fixing” skill. Skills push a character into thinking about what they are trying to do. They focus on their goal.

Approaches, on the other hand, reference not the action, but the style of the character. For example, a persona who is sword-fighting might roll their Forceful approach if they are trying to overwhelm their opponent with their strength, but Careful if they’re fighting defensively. They might roll Flashy if they’re trying to intimidate through showy displays of skill, or Clever if they want to maneuver their opponent into position to spring a trap.

Isn’t this a little overly flexible? If you’re trying to avoid a punch, couldn’t that be either Quick or Flashy, depending on whether you give a little spin while you dodge? Yes, it most certainly could, and dodging with either approach does the same thing, mechanically. But it doesn’t do the same thing narratively.

Approaches suggest that certain characters are better at behaving in certain ways than others. A character with a high Crafty approach would be good at feints in combat, picking locks without setting off traps, and navigating intrigue at the ball. A Flashy character, on the other hand, would be good at attracting attention during a fight, impressive outfits and bon mots, and picking locks with dynamite.

Okay…but why?

Let’s talk about Primary Stats. Imagine a fantasy barbarian for me. Now, by the power of my incredible ESP, I will tell you that the person you are imagining is strong.

What about a bard? Well, they’re charismatic, right? A roguish cat-burglar is certainly quick and stealthy, no doubt. A ship’s head-scientist must be smart. These are the “primary stats” of these characters. If you have a warrior who is weak or a thief who is clumsy, you’re playing a comedy game.

It may be only a rule of thumb, but it’s pervasive. If you’re a warrior, you swing swords and you better be good at swinging swords, or else the game is going to be harder. At some point you have to ask yourself: why wouldn’t you put all of your points into Strength? If your whole purpose is to hit things with sticks, then what use do you really have for “Wisdom,” especially if the cleric over there has more than you’ll ever need?

Almost every RPG that has stats has this problem to some extent; Weak soldiers or stupid spies don’t last long, so every successful spy and soldier must be smart and strong, respectively.

So if we’ve established what type of character we’re playing, what use are stats?

In the early years of D&D, stats mattered because you didn’t chose your class until after you had randomly acquired your stats through dice rolls. If you rolled a high strength and low intelligence, then you’d best play a warrior instead of a wizard, or else you’ll get squished by a goblin.

Nowadays, RPGs encourage players to choose which kind of character they want to play. Random stats are replaced with a “standard array,” which gives every character a balanced set of stats that the player can adjust as they see fit.

It’s an interesting shift in character creation; a recognition that our characters are supposed to be effective, and therefore must be exceptional. Instead of building a character from random stats, we can create a character of our own design.

Fate Accelerated realizes that this makes stats uninteresting. If you want to play a warrior, your stats don’t tell you how strong of a warrior you are, because warriors are strong. Non-random stats give us more control, but reduce character diversity. When was the last time you played a middling-dexterity thief, or a poorly educated scholar?

In Fate Accelerated you can be a quick warrior, an intelligent warrior, or a clever warrior, all reflected by your in-game actions. Approaches don’t define how effective your character is, but what kind of character they are.

If this feels far more narratively focused then mechanically focused, you’re correct. Fate Accelerated wants you to think less about what your character can do, and more about how your character does it: a howling barbarian charging into the fray with a maul whirling overhead is a different kind of warrior than a calm and stable fencer, whipping their sword back and forth like a scalpel. A slow and thoughtful thief with their ear pressed against the safe door is different than the flashy vagabond who blows the safe with TNT. A wide-eyed scholar slowly turning their books pages is different than the vengeful seer who will call the magic of the gods down on his foes.

Does knowing which of these characters has an 15 in Strength really matter?