Powered by the Fate-pocalypse: Rules - More thoughts on Aspects

Thinking about Aspects and chatting with my wife (who is a big fan of that old-school D&D (but simpler) feel that Dungeon World provides, less so of Fate) last night; it occurred to me that one of the problems I have had people mention to me when talking about Aspects is that it can often be difficult to know what to pick since the choices are almost limitless, certainly newcomers to the game can find it a little bewildering at first. It occurs to me that perhaps combining Aspects with the Bonds system of Dungeon World might work well.

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Bonds

Effectively in Dungeon World each playbook has a number of sentences describing connections to other characters and they just have to fill in the names of other PCs; for example the barbarian sheet has the following:

Fill in the name of one of your companions in at least one:

_______________ is puny and foolish, but amusing to me.

_______________’s ways are strange and confusing.

_______________ is always getting into trouble—I must protect 

them from themselves.

_______________ shar

When a bond is resolved the player receives XP and replaces it with a new bond appropriate to the setting, however, aside from the resolution XP gain and being a great RPing guide the bonds have only a very small impact (a couple of moves have you roll 2d6+bonds) on the system.

So how could I link this with Aspects?

Well I was considering effectively providing a big list of Aspects but in a similar format and with blanks to fill in, the player could then pick a number of them for their starting character. For example, I might have something like:

• I am being hunted by the [type] organisation known as [name of organisation].
• I am well known throughout [name of country] as being the finest [occupation] in the land.
• My [object] was stolen from me by [name of thief] and I cannot rest until it is returned.

I'm considering perhaps using this system to effectively replace Aspects and Bonds, also i'm considering removing the use of Fate Points and simply giving the player the 'advantage' (roll 2d12 rather than 1 and pick the highest) when actively pursuing the bond.

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