Fate Core stress tracks and consequences - a question for data file authors!

[Colen]

Fate Core currently knows about two types of consequences - they can be Physical, or Mental. This works great for normal Fate games, but not (for example) if you're playing a game with a Social stress track, and want to add Social consequences, or if you're playing a Horror game and want to add Sanity consequences.

We have two options for how to add better consequences support. These options are:


Option A: Characters would be able to select only consequences for which there were stress tracks on that character.

For example, if your character had Physical, Mental, Social, and Sanity stress tracks, you'd be able to choose between only Physical, Mental, Social, and Sanity consequence. Hero Lab would NOT let you choose a Wealth consequence, even if your game used them, because there is no Wealth stress track.


Option B: Consequences would be separate from character stress tracks.

This would mean if you had Physical, Mental and Social stress tracks, you could have only Wealth and Sanity consequences, if you wanted. There would be no relationship between the stress tracks that are shown for a character and the types of consequences that are available to that character.

This would mean things a little more complicated to implement for custom data files (as you'd have to implement your own consequences in addition to your own stress tracks), but it would be more flexible overall.


Which of these models works best with the kind of things you're trying to model for Fate Core in Hero Lab? They're very different ways of doing things, so whichever one we pick, we're stuck with it for the future.

Thanks for your feedback!

 

[ShadowWalker]

Could you not have, within a campaign, something to associate a stress track with a consequence track?

 

[EightBitz]

I think I'm inclined to choose B, but first ...

Which way is it set up now?

And for option B, when you say things would be a little more complicated for custom data files ... how much more complicated?

And if it's not B right now, that means I'd have to modify my existing custom data files, right?

EDIT: Or if you can do what ShadowWalker suggested ... I'd go for that.

 

[Colen]

Could you not have, within a campaign, something to associate a stress track with a consequence track?

I guess we could, but what's the advantage of that over just allowing the consequences to be specified separately (i.e. option B)? Is there some situation where that would be helpful?

 

[Colen]

I think I'm inclined to choose B, but first ...

Which way is it set up now?

And for option B, when you say things would be a little more complicated for custom data files ... how much more complicated?

And if it's not B right now, that means I'd have to modify my existing custom data files, right?

EDIT: Or if you can do what ShadowWalker suggested ... I'd go for that.

Right now, the consequence menu is fixed - the options "mental" and "physical" are always shown, and there's no way to change that. That's why making this change is more complicated than just "adding another option to the menu" - we have to rewrite the mechanism to allow it to be flexible at all.

For option A, let's say you want to define two new stress tracks in the editor. You define those just like you do now, and once you do, they automatically appear as consequence types in the list (although I guess we could have a tag that makes them not be used for consequences). There's no way to have other consequence types appear that aren't stress tracks.

For option B, if you wanted the new options to appear as consequences, you'd have to define them on a new "Consequence" tab in the editor as well as defining the stress tracks. The only consequence types that would appear in the list would be the ones defined on the Consequence tab (plus Mental and Physical). You wouldn't get any "free" extra consequence types, but it'd be pretty simple to define new ones.

 

[ShadowWalker]

I guess we could, but what's the advantage of that over just allowing the consequences to be specified separately (i.e. option B)? Is there some situation where that would be helpful?

Would allow for a stress track without a consequence track. It would just mean being able to create consequences as well as the already existing ability to create stress tracks. I guess one thing is they could have different names. Which might end up being confusing. Doing it this way would allow for both A and B to be done as people see it fit their game.

 

[EightBitz]

Right now, the consequence menu is fixed - the options "mental" and "physical" are always shown, and there's no way to change that. That's why making this change is more complicated than just "adding another option to the menu" - we have to rewrite the mechanism to allow it to be flexible at all.

For option A, let's say you want to define two new stress tracks in the editor. You define those just like you do now, and once you do, they automatically appear as consequence types in the list (although I guess we could have a tag that makes them not be used for consequences). There's no way to have other consequence types appear that aren't stress tracks.

For option B, if you wanted the new options to appear as consequences, you'd have to define them on a new "Consequence" tab in the editor as well as defining the stress tracks. The only consequence types that would appear in the list would be the ones defined on the Consequence tab (plus Mental and Physical). You wouldn't get any "free" extra consequence types, but it'd be pretty simple to define new ones.

OK, if it would be pretty simple to define them, then I vote for B.