[EverFATE] Character Generation Outline

Character Generation Outline

Vision Stage:

• Draw 5 Vision Cards and create a basic character idea from those cards.

Identity Stage:

• Select a character name.

• Create a Motive (High Concept) Aspect.

• Either draw three Fortune Deck Cards to develop the Fault (Trouble) Aspect and Virtue and Fate Aspects, -or- free-form create Aspects for each of them.

• Record Name and Aspects in the appropriate boxes on the character sheet.

Elements, Powers and Magic:

• Divide 20 points among Elements, Powers and Magic.

• Each is outlined below in separate stages.

• Magic is tied to one Element (Earth, Air, Fire or Water).

• Magic cannot exceed Epic (+7) and cannot exceed it's tied Element

Elements Stage:

• Each of the Elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) starts at Poor (-1).

• One (1) point raises an Element up the FATE Ladder one step.

• Record the final FATE Adjective in the Element wedge.

Specialty Stage:

• Select one free Specialty per Element.

• Specialties add a +1 to the value of the Element for that particular Specialty.

• Specialties include:

1. Earth: thick skin, resisting magic, resisting persuasion
2. Air: lying, occult lore, herb lore, oratory, singing
3. Fire: archery, jumping, climbing, running, swordfighting
4. Water: stealth, sensing ambush, diagnosing illness

• Cross-specialties are also allowed (i.e. using a speciality from one Element with a different Element).

• Record each of the Specialties with the final FATE Adjective and value in the appropriate Element wedge.

Powers and Stunts:

• Stunts can be purchased per FATE Accelerated Edition for two (2) points.

• Powers cost between one (1) and three (3) points, with one (1) point for each Major, Frequent or Versatile feature.

• Each character gets one free 0-point Power that is neither Major, Frequent or Versatile.

• Record the total Power points in the Powers hexagon of the character sheet.

• Record Powers and Stunts in the Powers section of the character sheet.

Magic:

• Spend any remaining points on Magic, with the following rules:

1. Magic is tied to one Element (Earth, Air, Fire or Water).
2. Magic cannot exceed Epic (+7). 
3. Magic cannot exceed it's tied Element.

• Record the total Magic points in the Magic heptagon of the character sheet.

• Record the final FATE Adjective and value in the Magic section of the character sheet.

Stress Tracks:

• Calculate Physical and Mental Stress Tracks.

• Physical is based on the Earth Element score.

• Mental is based on the Water Element score.

Earth or Water score	Corresponding Stress Track Size
Poor (-1) or Mediocre (+0)	2
Average (+1) or Fair (+2)	3
Good (+3) or Great (+4)	4
Superb (+5)	4 + extra mild consequence
Fantastic (+6)	4 + extra mild & moderate consequence
Epic (+7)	4 + extra mild, moderate & severe consequence

• Consequences are limited to mild, moderate and severe.

Refresh:

• Default is 3.

• Trade 1 Refresh for 2 more points to spend on Elements, Powers, Magic or Stunts.

• Minimum Refresh is 1.

[EverFATE] Character Generation: Refresh

Refresh for EverFATE defaults at 3.

If the player wants to spend some of that, then each Refresh is worth 2 more points to be spent on Elements, Powers, Magic or Stunts.

The minimum allowed Refresh is 1, so only 2 Refresh can be spent in this manner.

[EverFATE] Character Generation: Stress Tracks and Consequences

Stress Tracks for EverFATE follows the standard FATE model.

There are two categories, Physical and Mental. Each start with 2 boxes. Physical is linked to the Earth Element, while Mental is linked to Water.

Earth or Water score	Corresponding Stress Track Size
Poor (-1) or Mediocre (+0)	2
Average (+1) or Fair (+2)	3
Good (+3) or Great (+4)	4
Superb (+5)	4 + extra mild consequence
Fantastic (+6)	4 + extra mild & moderate consequence
Epic (+7)	4 + extra mild, moderate & severe consequence

Consequences are limited to mild, moderate and severe.

[EverFATE] Character Creation: Magic

So far, I've combined character creation for Everway and FATE Accelerated Edition, using Vision Cards to determine the basic character, defining Aspects, selecting from a pool of points for Elements and Specialties, and spending more of that point pool on Powers and Stunts.

The last part of an Everway character (and an EverFATE character) is Magic.

Magic in Everway is very powerful but limited by the Element the Magic is tied to, with two basic rules:

• Magic cannot exceed 7, and
• Magic cannot exceed it's tied Element.

According to Everway, having a Magic of 1 is Apprentice-level, 2 and 3 are Journeyman, 4 is a talented practitioner, while 5 and above are truly powerful mages, with 7 being Archmage category.

That's fairly easy to port into EverFATE, as the basic rules would still apply, in this case, Magic cannot exceed Epic (+7) and it's tied Element.

Additionally, the skill in Magic would follow each step of the FATE Ladder. An Apprentice Mage would have an Average (+1) skill, a talented practitioner would have a Great (+4) skill, and an Archmage would have an Epic (+7) skill.

Creating the various spells and etc. is available on many Everway websites, like this one, this one and this one.

Next, I'll provide stress tracks and consequences.

[EverFATE] Character Creation: Powers and Stunts

Last time, we talked about EverFATE Elements, which, in my opinion, were similar to FATE Accelerated Edition's Approaches.

This post, I'll cover Powers and Stunts.

Powers in Everway are extra bits of abilities that aren't covered by Elements or Magic. Powers have three possible facets to them: Is it Major? Can it have a Frequent use? And is it Versatile?

For example, Fast Healing would be considered Versatile, while being Unkillable would be Major and Frequent. Invulnerability would be all three.

Each facet costs 1 point, so Fast Healing would be 1 point, Unkillable is 2, and Invulnerable is 3 points.

Translating that to EverFATE is fairly simple: port it straight over and allow each Power to have a FATE Ladder adjective and value, with a 1 point power at Average (+1), a 2 point power Fair (+2) and a 3 point power Good (+3), for those situations that require a bonus value.

Everway also allows for a single 0-point Power, which cannot be Major, Frequent or Versitile. That's easy in EverFATE. Just take the single 0-point Power. Done.

But what about the FATE Accelerated Edition Stunts?

I don't think they should be left out, either. Since most Stunts give a +2 to a roll, then each Stunt would cost 2 points.

Next post, I'll go into magic....

[EverFATE] Character Creation: Elements

Continuing with EverFATE character creation, the next three section are Elements, Powers and Magic.

In Everway, the player has 20 points to divide between them, and I see no reason to change that for EverFATE.

So in this post, I'll cover Elements and their attached Specialties.

Everway has four Elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

The Earth Element is focused on health, might and endurance, with Specialties of resisting persuasion, resisting magic and thick skin.

The Air Element deals with intellect, thought and speech, with Specialties of herb lore, occult lore, lying, oratory and singing.

The Fire Element concerns action, strength, fighting and speed, with Specialties of archery, jumping, climbing, sword-fighting and running.

The Water Element applies to intuition, feeling and sensitivity, with Specialties of sensing ambush, stealth and diagnosing illness.

In many ways, each of these Elements behave similar to FATE Accelerated Edition Approaches.

While FAE has Approaches of Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick and Sneaky, it's easy to see that Everway combines each of these six into four Elements:

• Forceful and Quick into Fire,
• Clever and Flashy into Air,
• Careful and Sneaky into Water, and
• Forceful into Earth.

In Everway, each Element starts at 0, but I concur with Mr. Float and am going to start each Element in EverFATE at Poor (-1).

One point raising an Element up the FATE Ladder by one step.

Everway allows one Specialty for each Element, which would add a +1 to the value, so translating that to EverFATE is easy.

Like Everway, cross-specialties are allowed (i.e. using a Specialty from one Element with a different Element).

There is plenty of space in each of the Element wedges to record both the Element and the Specialty FATE adjectives and values.

Next, I'll go into Powers and Stunts...

[EverFATE] Character Creation: Aspects

I've read Mr. Float's character generation rules from that single RPG.net EverFATE thread. And I've also looked over the Everway rules (as presented here).

Part of the ideas for this Everway and FATE hack is to be able to use the Everway character sheet, Fortune Deck and Vision Cards. So I'll be building the character generation process from them.

First, even before we get to the character sheet, Everway character generation uses Vision Cards to create a character concept. Five cards are drawn and the player uses them to get an idea of the character. Since the cards can be interpreted wildly from person to person, there is no change from Everway.

After creating a basic formulation from the Vision Cards, we go to the character sheets. The top section contains boxes for Name, Motive, Virtue, Fault and Fate, the first two of which are chosen by the player and the remainder are determined by Fortune Deck card draws.

Converting this to FATE Accelerated Edition, these work with Aspects. Motive matches well with High Concept, Fault matches with Trouble and the others, Virtue and Fate, are just additional Aspects.

Create the first Aspect, Motive, per the High Concept Aspect in FAE.

The choice to use the Fortune Deck is up to the player. Either draw three cards from the Fortune Deck and determine Aspects for Fault (Trouble), Virtue and Fate.

Alternatively, ignore the Fortune Deck and create Fault, Virtue and Fate Aspects free-form, like FAE.

I'll be going into Elements, Powers and Magic in the next couple of posts. With these three abilities, the player has 20 points to divide between them to define the character further. 

[EverFATE] Some on Everway

Everway Character sheet by Felix0Qui

There are several excellent resources for Everway on the web, like the above Character Sheet on Scribd.

Besides the abandoned company website, Gaslight Press, successor to Rubicon Games, you can check out the Spherewalker Wiki.

There are two EverWiki's, but only one is the Everway EverWiki. (The other EverWiki is, unfortunately, all about Evernote, an excellent program, I grant you, one that I use myself, but not about Everway).

A fellow in Portland created an Everway Character Creation page. A fellow in Princeton created an Everway page. Another person in the UK has one, too. And yet another page from I don't know where.

Kat has an Everway page, and a rant on the magic system and spellcasting rules, with a link to a variant. Cave Felix has a character write-up. Someone even came up with a Star Wars Everway.

The Everwayan is an excellent blog on the game and Department V has some good articles on it.

And there are a few reviews: RPG.net has some (1, 2, 3, 4)  and a few blogs (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11). RPG.net also has an Actual Play thread and another couple of websites have campaign logs (12, 13).

There's even an article on Character Creation for Everway by the game author Jonathan Tweet, written in 2007, and another he wrote in 2005 on his blog.

Finally, there's a website called Amberway, mixing Amber with Everway.

[EverFATE] The Road Slightly Travelled

Other people have thought of this before, mixing FATE and Everway.

I know I'm not being unique. But then, two great tastes going together has always been the way of things. Just remember that chocolate and peanut butter candy that's still the rage.

Mr. Float over at RPG.net has a thread on EverFATE from 2010. No one responded.

Mr. Float's idea was simple:

• Draw three cards from the Fortune Deck as Aspects for Destiny, Strength and Weakness.
• Draw six Vision Cards and discard two. Come up with Aspects for the remaining four cards.
• Spend 20 points on the four Elements (Fire, Air, Earth, Water) and stunts for Powers and Magic. The Elements start at Poor (-1).
• Health is based on Earth.
• Composure is based on Water.

It's a good start.

Let's see where this goes.

[EverFATE] Everway and FATE Accelerated Edition

I'm a big fan of Everway. I've only played it a couple of times at a convention but I own two box sets and a bunch of other stuff for it. It's tres cool.

I also am a big fan of FATE. I have Spirit of the Century (two copies), Starblazer Adventures, Legends of Anglerre, diaspora, and I even backed the FATE Core Kickstarter. Soon all the FATE books will be mine!

And for years, Everway has been in my house. Always visible in the room I keep my game books. The boxes peeking out over the top of the bookshelf. And for years I've been wondering how to use them.

I want to bring the box set to the game. I want to use the beautiful character sheets and the Fortune Deck and the Vision Cards. I want to use it all!

So, one day, Evil Hat comes to the door, wanting to introduce me to FATE Accelerated Edition and I think "Hey! They could work well together!"

I think I'll see how they do.