Aspects

Characters have a set of attributes called aspects. Aspects cover a wide

range of elements and should collectively paint a decent picture of who the

character is, what he’s connected to, and what’s important to him. (By contrast,

skills could be said to paint a similar picture of what the character can

do.) Aspects can be relationships, beliefs, catchphrases, descriptors, items

or pretty much anything else that paints a picture of the character.

Scenes also have aspects. Aspects in this context serve as a compact way

to describe the relevant details of an environment, and can be used by the

characters present in the scene. See Encountering Other Aspects, page 40,

for more.

In terms of game rules, aspects are the main avenue by which a player gains

or spends action points, a kind of currency that can be spent for bonuses or

earned when aspects cause problems for the player.

Some possible aspects for characters include:

Quick Witted First on the Scene

Sucker Girl in Every Port

Rugged Silver Spoon

Irish Big Man on Campus

“You’ll never take me alive!” Ivory Tower

Stubborn Honest

For many, many more examples, see the Sample Aspects section.

Picking Character Aspects

More than anything else, aspects are a player’s most explicit way of telling

the DM, “This is the stuff I want to see in the game”. If the player picks an

aspect like “Death Defying”, then he should be able to fully expect that the

DM will put him in death-defying situations. DMs should want players to

use their aspects; players should pick the ones they want to use, and DMs

should encourage them to choose aspects that will be both interesting and

useful.

Once a player decides on an idea for an aspect, he needs to figure out what

aspect name best describes what he intends; there are usually many possible

names for a desired aspect, which can make this choice somewhat

difficult. However, most of the time, an aspect is going to be a phrase, a

person or a prop.

A phrase can be anything from a descriptive phrase (“Strong As An Ox”)

to a simple descriptor (“Strong”), or even a literal quote (“No One Is

Stronger Than HERCULOR!”). Phrase aspects come into play based

on how well the situation matches them; a colorful phrase adds a lot of

flavor and innately suggests several different ways to use it. This potentially

makes phrase aspects some of the most flexible aspects in the game.

A person can be anyone important to the character. A friend, an enemy,

a family member, a sidekick, a mentor – as long as someone matters to the

character, he makes an appropriate aspect. A person aspect is most easily

used when that person is in the scene with the character, but the aspect

can come up in other ways, depending upon the person’s history and relationship

with the character. For example, if a character has his mentor as

an aspect, that aspect might be useful for things his mentor would have

instructed him on.

Props are things, places or even ideas – anything external to the character that

isn’t a person. A prop can be useful if it’s something the character has with him,

or if it’s the crux of a conflict, but it may also imply things about the character,

or even be useful in its absence (if only I had my “Trusty Toolbox”!). These

three categories of aspects aren’t hard and fast. An aspect like “Jet’s in Trouble!”

has elements of both a phrase and a person, and that’s just fine. We’ve just

provided these categories to help provide a way to think about how to frame

aspects.

Why Would I Want a Bad Aspect?

You may have noticed that a number of the aspects throughout this article

are “bad” aspects – they indicate a downside for a character, either in their

directly negative connotations, or in their two-edged nature. Aspects like

Drunkard, Sucker, Stubborn, and Honest all suggest situations where the

character will have to behave a certain way – making an ass of himself at

an important social function, falling for a line of bull, failing to back down

when it’s important to do so, or speaking truth when truth is the path to

greatest harm.

So why put such aspects on your sheet if they’re only going to make trouble

for you? Simple: you want that kind of trouble.

On a basic, game-rules footing, “bad” aspects are a direct line to getting

you more action points – and action points are the electricity that powers some

of the more potent positive uses of your aspects. We’ll get more into how

aspects can generate and use action points later on in this chapter.

Outside of just the rules, a “bad” aspect adds interest and story to a character

in a way that purely positive aspects cannot. This sort of interest means

time in the limelight. If someone’s trying to take advantage of the fact your

character’s a Sucker, that’s an important point in the story, and the camera’s

going to focus on it. “Bad” aspects also immediately suggest story to your

DM; they tell her how to hook your character in. From the perspective of

playing the game to get involved and have fun, there’s nothing but good in

this sort of “bad”.

Clever players will also find positive ways to use “bad” aspects. The

Drunkard might get looked over more easily by prying eyes as “just a

drunk”; someone who’s Stubborn will be more determined to achieve his

goals. This brings us the “secret” truth about aspects: the ones that are most

useful are the ones that are the most interesting. And interesting comes

most strongly from aspects that are neither purely good nor purely bad.

As a rule of thumb, when picking an aspect, think of three situations where

you can see the aspect coming into play. If you’ve got one reasonably

positive situation and one reasonably negative situation out of that set,

you’re golden! If they’re all of one type, you may want to reconsider how

you’ve worded your aspect – try to put a little of what’s missing in there.

Ultimately, though, one aspect that’s “all good” or “all bad” isn’t that much

of a problem, so long as you have a good mix throughout your whole set.

Jazzing It Up

Aspects are one of the major sources of flavor for your character; they’re

the first thing a DM will look at on your sheet when trying to work out

what sort of stories to throw you into. This is powerful juju, and the best

part is, you are in total control of it with the words you choose for your

aspect.

Whenever you’re writing down the name of an aspect, ask yourself, “how

much flavor does this aspect suggest?” If it seems fairly colorless, then you

might well be off the mark, and it’s time to kick it up a notch. Certainly,

don’t feel like you have to do this with every aspect you take, but if your

character is served up as a bland dish, you may discover that your DM is at

loose ends for keeping him involved in the story.

A few “good – better – best” examples are pictured here.

Bland Tasty Bam!

Strong Strong as an Ox Man of Iron

Dark Past Former Cultist Eye of Anubis

Swordsman Trained Fencer Trained by Montcharles

In each of these cases, the “bland” option certainly suggests its uses, but

doesn’t really jump off the page as something that suggests story. The

“tasty” option is certainly better by dint of being more specific; both DM

and player can see some potential story hooks in these, and they serve to

differentiate themselves interestingly from their blander predecessors. But

the “bam!” options are where it’s at.

“Man of Iron” could easily be the phrase others use to identify the character,

and suggests more applications than simple strength. “Eye of Anubis”

names the cult the character was once a part of, sends the DM looking

to ancient Egypt for some story ideas, and starts to put some NPCs onto

the map. “Trained by Montcharles” gives the player plenty of opportunity

for flashbacks to his time with Pierre Montcharles, which may include lessons

and history that don’t just have to do with fencing, and also hints at

the possibility of Pierre himself showing up in a story down the line. So

when you pick an aspect, ask yourself: is this bland, is this tasty, or is this

“bam!”?

Story vs. Situation

Here’s a point to follow on the previous ones: more often than not, aspects

tend to divide into another set of two camps – story and situation – and

it’s a good idea to make sure you have aspects of each type.

Story aspects suggest one or more sources for stories involving the character,

by bringing in an external element from the world at large. People

and prop aspects are almost exclusively story aspects. Phrase aspects might

be story aspects, but if they are, it’s usually because they mix in some elements

of the other two Ps. You can most easily identify a story aspect by

asking yourself if the aspect, independent of the character, is something

other characters might interact with, affect, and change. Strange cults, lost

artifacts, enemies, hidden lairs, foreign lands, spouses, and more, all fit into

this category.

Situation aspects suggest the kind of situations a character might be in

much more than they suggest the origin of those situations. Phrase aspects

fall strongly into this camp, and they operate as a statement to the DM of

the style of stories the player wants his character to be in. Phrase aspects

like “Nick of Time”, “Stubborn as a Mule”, and “Last Man Standing” all

suggest vivid situations – ones which should rightly repeat themselves over

the course of playing the character – but don’t really suggest the context of

those situations.

We’re taking a few moments to focus on the split between story and situation

aspects, because it’s an easy one to miss if you’re not looking for it.

You can very easily fall into the trap of creating a character who only has

situation aspects. On the surface, situation aspects may be more attractive,

since they usually apply in a multitude of circumstances; certainly, you’ll

want to have at least a few situation aspects in your repertoire.

But if situation aspects are all that your character offers to the game, you

run a real risk of being difficult to hook into the bigger storyline. This is

why you should be certain to include a few story aspects on your character.

Fundamentally, story aspects offer easy hooks to your DM to pull you into

her story. You want this, since you came to the party to play the game. But

it’s more than just that. By providing story aspects, you’ve provided some

things which exist separately from your character. At the core of it, this

means you’ve helped to build the game world. You’ve got ownership and

stakes in the bigger picture. The DM will be grateful to you for it, and that

kind of gratitude pays out in the form of a more satisfying game.

Getting On the Same Page

You may have noticed that, so far, we’re using a lot of ink to talk about how

your aspects communicate things about your character to the DM. We

mean it. Out of all the things in the game, aspects are probably the clearest

message you can send to the DM about what you want from the game,

short of walking right up to the DM and saying so. Also, in all likelihood,

the DM is going to have copies of your character sheets when you’re not

around, so the aspects you’ve picked are going to represent you in absentia.

Once you’ve picked all the aspects for your character, take a step back and

look at them as a whole, and ask yourself if they make the kind of representation

you’d want them to. If they don’t, change them!

By themselves, aspects can’t say it all, of course, and it’s important to

remember that. Short of making each aspect a paragraph or essay, you’re

dealing with a few short, catchy phrases and names here. You want them

reasonably short, because you want to be able to talk about them casually

without running out of breath.

But the brevity of an aspect’s name means some things are left unspoken.

Take the time with the DM to speak these unspoken things when you can.

Both the player and the DM should look at an aspect not as the end of an

idea, but the start of one. You’re both going to bring your own ideas of

what the aspect means to the table and, at least to some extent, you’re both

right. Usually this works out fine – the combined perspectives make the

whole greater than the sum – but sometimes the DM and the player will

have a radically different idea of what the aspect entails. Be clear with one

another, and figure out how to iron out any differences – ideally, before the

action points start flying.

That said, after you’ve gotten one or more sessions of play under your belt,

you might feel like you’ve picked one or more aspects that don’t “feel right”.

We’re sympathetic to that, and your DM should be, too. If an aspect doesn’t

seem to be working out well for you, you should feel free to ask your DM

if you can change it.