Challenges, Contests, and Conflicts

There are three kinds of scenes where the four actions and four outcomes come into more complex play:

Challenges, when one or more characters try to achieve something dynamic or complicated
Contests, when two or more characters are competing for a goal
Conflicts, when two or more characters are trying to directly harm each other

Challenges

Sometimes, things get complicated. It’s not enough to pick the lock, because you also have to hold off the hordes of attacking zombies and set up the magical ward that’s going to keep pursuers off your back. It’s not enough to disarm the bomb, because you also have to land the crashing blimp and keep the unconscious scientist you’re rescuing from getting hurt in said landing.

GMs, when you’re trying to figure out if it’s appropriate to call for a challenge, ask yourself the following questions: Does the situation require different skills to deal with? Holding off the zombies (Fight) while pushing down a barricade (Physique) and fixing your broken wagon (Crafts) so that you can get away would be a good instance for a challenge.

Amanda sees several different components to this scene. First there’s the ritual itself, then there’s keeping the inn boarded up, and finally there’s keeping the panicking inhabitants of the inn calm. That calls for Lore, Crafts, and some kind of social skill—Ryan immediately chooses Rapport.

Now they’re ready to start.

GMs, after the rolls have been made, you’ll consider the successes, failures, and costs of each action as you interpret how the scene proceeds. It could be that the results lead you into another challenge, a contest, or even a conflict.

Ryan takes a deep breath and says, “All right, let’s do this.” He takes up the dice.

Ryan sighs and nods, and then goes for the second goal in the challenge, which is calming the locals with his Good (+3) Rapport. He makes his roll and gets a terrible –3 on the dice! Now he has the option to fail or to succeed with a major cost. He goes for success, leaving Amanda to think of a good major cost.

Ryan says, “But they have to be in the inn for that to work!” Amanda is just grinning. Ryan sighs again. “Okay, fine. Some people get totally the wrong idea and are potentially going to get themselves killed. I can just hear them now… Zird, why did you let my husband die? Augh.”

Ryan goes for the final part of the challenge—the ritual itself, cast with his Great (+4) Lore. Amanda invokes the boost she got earlier and says, “Yeah, you totally have very distracting zombies chipping apart your barricades. Very distracting.” That pushes the difficulty for the final roll up to Superb (+5).

Amanda nods and together they finish describing the scene—Zird finishes the ritual just in time, and the holy power of the Qirik descends on the inn. Some zombies on the verge of breaking in get sizzled by the holy aura, and Zird breathes a sigh of relief… until he hears the panicked screams of villagers outside the inn…

If you have any boosts that went unused in the challenge, feel free to keep them for the rest of this scene or whatever scene you’re transitioning to, if the events of the challenge connect directly to the next scene.

Attacks in a Challenge: Because you’re always up against passive opposition in a challenge, you’ll never use the attack action. If you’re in a situation where it seems reasonable to roll an attack, you should start setting up for a conflict.

Contests

GMs, answer the following questions when you’re setting up a contest.

That’s when the assassins’ leader, a cutpurse she knows well as Teran the Swift, blinks in with teleportation magic next to Zird’s unconscious form! He starts casting another teleportation spell, clearly intending to leave with Zird. Cynere breaks into a run. Can she get there before Teran finishes his spell?

The previous conflict scene had a situation aspect of Muddy Ground, so she decides to keep that in play.

Teran’s going to be rolling his Lore skill for the contest, because he’s casting a spell. Because this is a pretty straightforward movement-related situation for Cynere, Amanda and Lily agree that Athletics is the most appropriate skill to roll.

A contest proceeds in a series of exchanges. In an exchange, every participant gets to make one skill roll to determine how well they do in that leg of the contest. This is basically an overcome action.

If you got the highest result, you win the exchange. If you’re rolling directly against the other participants, then that means you got the highest rank on the ladder out of everyone. If you’re all rolling against something in the environment, it means you got the most shifts out of everyone.

If you succeed with style and no one else does, then you get to mark two victories.

The first participant to achieve three victories wins the contest.

Cynere has Athletics at Great (+4). Teran has Lore at Good (+3).

In the second exchange, Lily turns the tables, rolling exceptionally well and getting a Superb (+5), whereas Amanda only gets a Fair (+2) for Teran. That’s a success with style, so Lily picks up two victories and the lead. Lily describes Cynere in a full-on sprint, bearing down on Teran.

In the fourth exchange, they tie again, this time at Great (+4). Lily says, “Forget this noise. I want to invoke two aspects—one, because I have I’ve Got Zird’s Back on my sheet, and Magical Distortions, because I figure that they’re going to interfere more with his spellcasting than my running.” She passes Amanda two fate points.

Amanda and Lily describe how she snatches Zird just before Teran finishes his spell, and he teleports away without his prize.

Creating Advantages in a Contest

Doing this carries an additional risk—failing to create an advantage means you forfeit your contest roll, which means there’s no way you can make progress in the current exchange. If you at least tie, you get to make your contest roll normally.

She rolls Athletics to create the advantage and gets a Great (+4). Teran rolls Athletics to defend and gets a Good (+3).

Because Lily didn’t fail, she gets to make her contest roll normally. Amanda decides that being semi-blinded isn’t going to stop Teran from continuing to cast, so he also gets to roll normally.

Conflicts

In a conflict, characters are actively trying to harm one another. It could be a fist fight, a shootout, or a sword duel. It could also be a tough interrogation, a psychic assault, or a shouting match with a loved one. As long as the characters involved have both the intent and the ability to harm one another, then you’re in a conflict scene.

Setting up a conflict is a little more involved than setting up contests or challenges. Here are the steps.

Setting the Scene

Who’s in the conflict?
Where are they positioned relative to one another?
When is the conflict taking place? Is that important?
What’s the environment like?

You don’t need an exhaustive amount of detail here, like precise measures of distance or anything like that. Just resolve enough to make it clear for everyone what’s going on.

The participants in the conflict are pretty obvious—the PCs, plus Og and four nameless enforcers, all NPCs under Amanda’s control. The warehouse is the environment, and the group takes a moment to talk about it—boxes and crates everywhere, large and open, there’s probably a second floor, and Amanda mentions the loading door is open because they’re waiting for a ship to come in.

Situation Aspects

Good options for situation aspects include:

Situation Aspects and Zones in Mental Conflicts: So, you may not even need situation aspects or zones for a lot of mental conflicts. Don’t feel obligated to include them.

Considering our warehouse again, Amanda thinks about what might make good situation aspects.

Zones

A zone is an abstract representation of physical space. The best definition of a zone is that it’s close enough that you can interact directly with someone (in other words, walk up to and punch them in the face).

If you can describe the area as bigger than a house, you can probably divide it into two or more zones—think of a cathedral or a shopping center parking lot.

“Above X” and “below X” can be different zones, especially if moving between them takes some doing—think of the airspace around something large, like a blimp.

She knows there’s also a second floor ringing the inner walls, so she makes that an additional zone. She adds Ladder Access Only to the scene.

She sketches the rough map on an index card for everyone to see.

Establishing Sides

The normal assumption is that the player characters are on one side, fighting against NPCs who are in opposition. It doesn’t always have to be that way, however—PCs can fight each other and be allied with NPCs against each other.

It might also help, GMs, to decide how those groups are going to “divvy up” to face one another—is one character going to get mobbed by the bad guy’s henchmen, or is the opposition going to spread itself around equally among the PCs? You might change your mind once the action starts, but if you have a basic idea, it gives you a good starting point to work from.

In our continuing warehouse fight example, the sides are obvious—Og and his buddies want to do in the PCs, and the PCs want to keep that from happening.

The conflict starts with everyone on the main warehouse floor. Amanda decides that Og and one of his friends are going to go after Landon, two of the other thugs are going after Cynere, and the final one is going to chase after Zird.

Turn Order

If there’s a tie, compare a secondary or tertiary skill. For physical conflicts, that’s Athletics, then Physique. For mental conflicts, Rapport, then Will.

Zird has a Notice of Average (+1), so he goes second.

The Exchange

Exchanges in a conflict are a little more complicated than in contests. In an exchange, every character gets a turn to take an action. GMs, you get to go once for every NPC you control in the conflict.

GMs, if you have a lot of nameless NPCs in your scene, feel free to have them use passive opposition to keep your dice rolling down. Also, consider using mobs instead of individual NPCs to keep things simple.

Regardless, you only get to make one skill roll on your turn in an exchange, unless you’re defending against someone else’s action—you can do that as many times as you want. You can even make defend actions on behalf of others, so long as you fulfill two conditions: it has to be reasonable for you to interpose yourself between the attack and its target, and you have to suffer the effects of any failed rolls.

On Ryan’s turn, he has Zird do a full defense—normally, he’d be able to defend and get an action this exchange, but instead, he gets a +2 to his defense rolls until his next turn.

Amanda goes last, and she just has all of her NPCs attack their chosen targets.

Full Defense

If you get hit by an attack, one of two things happen: either you absorb the hit and stay in the fight, or you’re taken out.

If, for whatever reason, you want to forego your defense and take a hit (like, say, to interpose yourself in the path of an arrow that’s about to skewer your friend), you can.

Stress

One of your options to mitigate the effect of a hit is to take stress. Mentally, stress could mean that you just barely manage to ignore an insult, or clamp down on an instinctive emotional reaction, or something like that.

On your character sheet, you have a number of stress boxes, each with a different shift value. By default, all characters get a 1-point and a 2-point box. You may get additional, higher-value stress boxes depending on some of your skills (usually Physique and Will).

You can only check off one stress box per hit.

After a conflict, when you get a minute to breathe, any stress boxes you checked off become available for your use again.

Og batters Landon with a whopping 3-shift hit on this exchange, wielding a giant club with spikes.

Because his 3-point box is already checked, the hit must be absorbed by a higher-value box. He reluctantly checks off the 4-point box.

Landon has one more stress box on his sheet, a 2-shift box. That means his reserves are almost gone, and the next major hit he takes is going to hurt bad…

Consequences

Consequences come in three levels of severity—mild, moderate, and severe. Each one has a different shift value: two, four, and six, respectively. On your character sheet, you have a number of available consequence slots.

Still, it’s better than being taken out, right?

She has two ways to take the hit. She could take one severe consequence, which negates 6 stress. She could also take a moderate consequence (4 stress) and use her 2-point stress box.

Amanda and Lily agree to call the severe consequence Nearly Gutted. Cynere takes a wicked slash from one of the thugs’ swords, gritting her teeth through the pain…

Mild consequences don’t require immediate medical attention. They hurt, and they may present an inconvenience, but they aren’t going to force you into a lot of bed rest. On the mental side, mild consequences express things like small social gaffes or changes in your surface emotions. Examples: Black Eye, Bruised Hand, Winded, Flustered, Cranky, Temporarily Blinded.

Severe consequences go straight to the emergency room (or whatever the equivalent is in your game)—they’re extremely nasty and prevent you from doing a lot of things, and will lay you out for a while. On the mental side, they express things like serious trauma or relationship-changing harm. Examples: Second-Degree Burn, Compound Fracture, Guts Hanging Out, Crippling Shame, Trauma-Induced Phobia.

What Skill Do I Use for Recovery? If you want it to be easier to help people recover physically, you could add it as a default action to a skill. Lore is a good default option, but we could see it as a function of Crafts, too. It might even be important enough in your game to add a Medic or Survival skill.

Recovering from a Consequence

In order to regain the use of a consequence slot, you have to recover from the consequence. That requires two things—succeeding at an action that allows you to justify recovery, and then waiting an appropriate amount of game time for that recovery to take place.

The difficulty for this obstacle is based on the shift value of the consequence. Mild is Fair (+2), moderate is Great (+4), and severe is Fantastic (+6). If you are trying to perform the recovery action on yourself, increase the difficulty by two steps on the ladder.

If you succeed at the recovery action, or someone else succeeds on a recovery action for you, you get to rename the consequence aspect to show that it’s in recovery. So, for example, Broken Leg could become Stuck in a Cast, Scandalized could become Damage Control, and so on. This doesn’t free up the consequence slot, but it serves as an indicator that you’re recovering, and it changes the ways the aspect’s going to be used while it remains.

Then, you just have to wait the time.

Back at the inn, Zird attempts to bandage up the cut. He has a stunt called, “Scholar, Healer” which allows him to use his Lore skill for recovery obstacles. He makes his Lore roll at a difficulty of Fantastic (+6) and succeeds.

Potions and Other Insta-Healing: In Fate, however, a consequence is largely just like any other aspect. It only comes into play when someone pays a fate point to invoke it (after the initial free invoke, of course), or when it’s compelled.

Extreme Consequences

In addition to the normal set of mild, moderate, and severe consequences, every PC also gets one last-ditch option to stay in a fight—the extreme consequence. Between major milestones, you can only use this option once.

Unlike other consequences, you can’t make a recovery action to diminish an extreme consequence—you’re stuck with it until your next major milestone. After that, you can rename the extreme consequence to reflect that you’re no longer vulnerable to the worst of it, as long as you don’t just switch it out for whatever your old aspect was. Taking an extreme consequence is a permanent character change; treat it as such.

Conceding the Conflict

Concession gives the other person what they wanted from you, or in the case of more than two combatants, removes you as a concern for the opposing side. You’re out of the conflict, period.

Second of all, you get to avoid the worst parts of your fate. Yes, you lost, and the narration has to reflect that. But you can’t use this privilege to undermine the opponent’s victory, either—what you say happens has to pass muster with the group.

Before Amanda’s next turn, Lenny says, “I concede. I don’t want to risk any more consequences.”

Amanda says, “So, what are you trying to avoid here?”

Amanda chuckles and says, “Fair enough. So, we’ll say that Og knocks you out cold and doesn’t bother to finish you off, because he still has Cynere and Zird to deal with. He may even think you’re dead. I feel like the loss needs some more teeth, though. Hm…”

Amanda nods. “Yeah, that’s good. He knocks you out, spits on you, and takes your sword.”

Getting Taken Out: If you don’t have any stress or consequences left to buy off all the shifts of a hit, that means you’re taken out.

Character Death

So, if you think about it, there’s not a whole lot keeping someone from saying, after taking you out, that your character dies. If you’re talking about a physical conflict where people are using nasty sharp weapons, it certainly seems reasonable that one possible outcome of defeat is your character getting killed.

Others are more circumspect, and consider it very damaging to their fun if they lose a character upon whom they’ve invested hours and hours of gameplay, just because someone spent a lot of fate points or their die rolls were particularly unlucky.

That doesn’t mean there’s no room for character death in the game, however. We just recommend that you save that possibility for conflicts that are extremely pivotal, dramatic, and meaningful for that character—in other words, conflicts in which that character would knowingly and willingly risk dying in order to win. Players and GMs, if you’ve got the feeling that you’re in that kind of conflict, talk it out when you’re setting the scene and see how people feel.

Movement

In a conflict, it’s important to track where everyone is relative to one another, which is why we divide the environment where the conflict’s taking place into zones. Where you have zones, you have people trying to move around in them in order to get at one another or at a certain objective.

If you want to move more than one zone (up to anywhere else on the map), if a situation aspect suggests that it might be difficult to move freely, or if another character is in your way, then you must make an overcome action using Athletics to move. This counts as your action for the exchange.

If you fail that roll, whatever was impeding you keeps you from moving. If you tie, you get to move, but your opponent takes a temporary advantage of some kind. If you succeed, you move without consequence. If you succeed with style, you can claim a boost in addition to your movement.

In our continuing warehouse conflict, Cynere wants to go after one of Og’s thugs, who has started shooting arrows down from the second floor. That requires her to cross one zone to get to the access ladder for the second floor, and then climb it, making her opponent two zones away.

Lily tells Amanda her intent, and Amanda says, “Okay, the thug you’re fighting is going to try and keep you from getting away, so he’s going to provide active opposition.”

Lily and Amanda describe Cynere faking out the thug, vaulting over a crate, and taking the ladder two rungs at a time to get up top. She takes a boost, which she calls Momentum.

Advantages in a Conflict

Remember that aspects you create as advantages follow all the rules for situation aspects—the GM can use them to justify overcome actions, they last until they’re made irrelevant or the scene is over, and in some cases they represent as much a threat to you as an opponent.

Cover Fire and Other Impositions: You could also put yourself directly between the attack and the intended target, such that the bad guy has to get through you to get to your buddy. Then you’re just defending as normal and taking the stress and consequences yourself.

In terms of options for advantages, the sky’s the limit. Pretty much any situational modifier you can think of can be expressed as an advantage.

Other Actions in a Conflict

As stated above, you may find yourself in a situation where you want to do something else while your friends are fighting. You might be disarming a death trap, searching for a piece of information, or checking for hidden assailants.

Free Actions: GMs, don’t fall into the trap of trying to police every little detail of a player’s description. Remember, if there’s no significant or interesting opposition, you shouldn’t require a roll—just let the players accomplish what they say they do. Reloading a gun or fishing for something in your backpack is part of performing the action. You shouldn’t require any mechanics to deal with that.

Cynere is trying to get a door open so that she and her friends can escape into an ancient vault rather than fighting off endless hordes of temple guardians.

On that exchange, Cynere successfully defends against an attack, so she uses her action to pick the lock. She fails, and decides to succeed at a cost. Amanda figures the easiest thing is to hit her with a consequence because she’s in a fight. So she gets the door open, but not before one of the temple guardians gives her a Gouged Leg.

On the third exchange, she defends and succeeds with style at the Physique roll to get the door open. She signals to her friends and takes a Head Start boost, because it’s about to be a chase…

Ending a Conflict

GMs, once you know a conflict has definitively ended, you can pass out all the fate points earned from concession. Players, take the fate points for when your aspects were invoked against you, make a note of whatever consequences you suffered in the fight, and erase any checks in your stress boxes.

After much struggle and insanity, the warehouse conflict is finally over. Amanda concedes the conflict on behalf of Og and his remaining thug, meaning that the PCs stay alive and can proceed to check out the smuggled goods they were interested in.

Because Lenny conceded, he gets fate points. One for conceding, and another two for the mild and moderate consequences he took in the conflict. All the invocations used against him were free, so that’s all he gets. Three fate points.

Lily gets no fate points, because all the invocations against her were free, from advantages and boosts. Because she won, she doesn’t get awarded for the consequences she took.

Transitioning to a Contest or Challenge

Now, the guardians and the PCs have mutually opposing goals but can’t harm one another, so now it’s a contest. Instead of running the next exchange, Amanda just starts setting up for the chase.

Teamwork

Characters can help each other out on actions. There are two versions of helping in Fate—combining skills, for when you are all putting the same kind of effort into an action (like using Physique together to push over a crumbling wall), and stacking advantages, for when the group is setting a single person up to do well (like causing multiple distractions so one person can use Stealth to get into a fortress).

If you fail a roll to combine skills, all of the participants share in the potential costs—whatever complication affects one character affects all of them, or everyone has to take consequences. Alternatively, you can impose a cost that affects all the characters the same.

Continuing with our temple chase example, because it’s group vs. group, everyone decides it’d be easier to just combine skills.

Amanda’s temple guardians only have Average (+1) Athletics, but there are five of them, so they roll Superb (+5) for the purposes of the contest.

Zird and Cynere want to set Landon up for an extremely big hit on Tremendor, the much-feared giant of the Northern Wastes.

They pass those to Landon, and on his turn, he uses them all for a gigantic +6 to his attack.