Future Imperfect chapter 6
Contents
Edges
A collection of Traits and a list of skills is a good start to determine what your Hero is capable of—his strengths and capabilities, by the numbers. Another aspect of any good hero (or villain, even!) are some of their facets that aren’t so easily quantifiable. When creating your Hero, you surely have a notion in mind of what sort of character you wish to portray in the story. Assigning traits lays out the frame work. When selecting skills, you are beginning to flesh out what this Hero knows how to do. You might even be thinking about how your Hero learned some of the things he knows how to do. Building the background for your hero is good! It will keep him from being so faceless to you and the other players. One final touch for a Hero in Future Imperfect are his edges—both sharp and rough—that help give a greater sense of what kind of person the Hero is and how he can impact the story, beyond the sheer numbers that define him.
But what is your Hero’s background, other than talking points that you made up? How does your intricate personal story affect the game, if at all? What possible benefit can there be to having a flawed character? This chapter aims to answer those questions and others with the introduction of edges.
Perks: The Sharp Edges
Edges that are generally beneficial to the Hero are called Perks. They will generally allow for some ability that the average human (or alien!) is not capable of doing (such as the gills perk that would allow one to breathe underwater) or grant an innate bonus to an ability (such as the Brave perk that might help with fear and terror checks).
Flaws: The Rough Edges
Edges that are generally detrimental or impose complications on the Hero are called flaws. They will usually impose a penalty when trying to accomplish a task, or establish a Scene Attribute for the character in question. If the flaw is psychological or a compulsive behavior, the penalty may apply to any check that goes against the nature of the compulsion. If you have the Coward flaw, but try to stand and fight when the master has invoked your flaw, you may face penalties during the fight because every fiber of your hero’s being is telling him to run.
Leonid Kovnachuk has led something of a blessed life. You might not believe it for the myriad wounds that line his thick skin and are the root cause of the irregularity and patchiness of his thick fur, but if you had been there to see how he got those wounds, you would wonder how he had survived at all. Chuk’s player has chosen the Edge “Lucky” for his Hero. To counterbalance this edge, he also chooses the flaw “Vengeful.” The player imagines that Chuk will be a kind of rough and tumble soldier who often wades hip-deep into a fight and manages to come out every time (so far!). However, Chuk has a mean streak when it comes to people doing him wrong; he suffered for many years under the oppressive yoke of the GPR, and refuses to let others get one over on him without making them answer for it.
Imposing penalties in relation to flaws is purely mechanical and largely devoid of storytelling or creativity, however. Many flaws may be handled in the game with creative roleplaying without the cold imposition of penalties. By altering how the player approaches or deals with an obstacle, the flaw has made its presence known on the metaphorical page of the story. However, not every instance of a flaw being invoked need be that momentous; sometimes it will be much smoother for gameplay if the master simply imposes a brief penalty for a check or the duration of an encounter when he invokes one of your Hero’s flaws. The storytelling importance of the flaw will become quite clear if the Hero has to deal with the consequences of failure!
Edges are intended as another means by which the players and the Master can interact with the story, by invoking special abilities or dealing with limitations. Though many of them are used as such, they should not be considered “powers” or “weaknesses.” They are not necessarily “always on,” but when they are called into play, they should have some kind of impact on the story.
When Tara 7 slips away from the brewing tension in the ship’s lounge, Chuk is seated across the poker table from Sid Scorpio. The Blarad is certain that his friend has just fleeced him of over 400 credits at a game of poker. Clearly, luck was not on Chuk’s side in this scene (as his player chose not to invoke his perk). However, the Master informs the player that this is a moment where Chuk’s vengeful nature might kick in, and invokes the Hero’s flaw. It is now up to the player to determine Chuk’s path.
A Hero is more than his edges and flaws, though. They do not completely define him any more than his highest trait or skill. For this reason, edges need not play a part in every scene. By the same token, flaws shouldn’t prevent a Hero from acting, but should provide the opportunity for complication beyond the player’s control. To simulate this storytelling convention in game terms, we use the mechanic of frequency to determine how large a part any given edge or flaw plays in a Hero’s life, which is to say, how often it comes up in the course of the story.
When you choose an edge for your Hero, you must also choose a frequency for it. This frequency will determine how often you can “invoke” a perk; in essence, bring it to the fore and make it part of the story. Frequency may also determine how great an impact a perk may carry with it. For a flaw, the frequency determines how often the Master should consider invoking it. When edges come into play, it is the chance for something special to happen, even if it is mundane in nature. It is an opportunity for something you have crafted about your Hero to make a splash on the metaphorical pages of the story. The frequency is rated in terms of storytelling time: scene, session and chapter. This rating determines how often perks can be freely invoked, and how often flaws may affect your Hero.
This doesn’t mean that once you or the master have reached the frequency “limit” that the particular edge or flaw is used up or out of play; that is where story chips come in.
Story Chips: The Currency of Cool
Throughout the game mechanics of Future Imperfect, story chips can frequently be utilized by the players to influence the game in multiple ways. Chips are cashed in periodically as “experience” to improve a Hero’s skills and traits and other vital statistics. They can be used to improve dice rolls or shift results on an action card. They can be used to heroically soak damage and withstand punishment like a boss. These are but a few of the more common uses. With edges, story chips earn another use.
Ultimately, story chips are a kind of benny. They are something you can earn and use for positive effect in the game, the story. If you want your Hero’s perks to make more of an impact on the story (either in frequency or effectiveness), you can spend story chips to do so. Likewise, since people tend to learn and grow more from their failures rather than their successes, your Hero’s flaws are an important mechanism for earning story chips. When a Hero’s flaw makes an appearance, it is impacting the story in a way not possible without your flawed nature! For that, you should earn a story chip that can later be used for something cool. This can also be used to discourage flawless “Mary Sue” types. Heroes who elect to have no or very few flaws might find themselves short on chips compared to others who have chosen to play Heroes with a greater number of flaws that give the Master more to work with. Sometimes flaws and complications help move the story better than any other motivators! The movement may not always be in the proper direction, but sometimes a story is like a road trip: It’s not always the destination that is important, but how you got there!
Designers note: If you play RPGs long enough and with a talented set of players and game master, you will inevitably come across situations like these. Sometimes it is an innocuous situation that becomes a focal point due to one simple skill check failure that quickly becomes a comedy of errors! Eventually, these encounters often snowball into a major plot point, or a scene that the players all reminisce about later on because of how things went wrong (and became memorable!) rather than how they went right. We aren’t suggesting that as a player you should purposefully try to be a fail magnet, or that as a Master you should crush the heroes with misery and defeat (because sadness is fun?), but focusing on making an entertaining aside out of bad luck or mishap can be just as enjoyable a story as success. Besides, is final victory ever as sweet when the road to the climax isn’t a little bumpy?
Chuk hurls the table to the side, filling the air with cards and chips like confetti. Sid Scorpio jumps back, holding his hands up and tries to calm his buddy down. “Chuk! C’mon, pal! It was a fluke! What are the odds I’d get four of a kind while you were sitting on a full house? It’s just a game!”
“’Is just game?’ You never believe in play fair! You say is for suckers! You were just trying to impress pretty girl. And make me look like fool!” Chuk advances angrily, flexing his massive paws. The dim lights of the lounge glint on his knife-like claws. Sid backs up, hoping to find some time to say something to defuse Chuk before the marine gets his hands on him, but he runs out of room. With his back against the wall, Chuck grabs Sid by the collar and hoists him off the floor. Chuck pulls out a credstick loaded with 440 credits. “Here is your damn money, pirate. One week’s pay for me.” He jams the thumb-sized credstick in Sid’s mouth. “I hope you choke on it!” he growls as he tosses his friend to the side and mopes off to sulk.
The Master thinks that the player portrayed Chuk’s vengeful flaw well in this situation and awards him a story chip!
Character Creation
A Hero’s edges are chosen during character creation. The point value of edges must zero out between perks and flaws. The point value of an edge is determined by its frequency rating:
Frequency Value
Scene 4
Session 2
Chapter 1
If you choose a perk with a high value, you can counter it with several flaws of lesser value and vice versa. Barring Master approval, the total quantity of Edges (perks and flaws) should be no greater than 10, to encourage thoughtful choices rather than spamming your character sheet with entries. Depending on what rank was assigned to edges earlier in character creation, you may start with a positive or negative balance of edge points. These will have to be zeroed out, as well, meaning your hero could feasibly begin the story with only perks or flaws as his only edges.
Charles decides that his Hero, Stony Krantz, has a very low ranking in edges so that he can assign more points to skills and traits. He begins with 3 points of edges. At first blush, that sounds good, but what it means is that he will have to give Stony 3 points worth of flaws just to zero things out. In the end, Stony will wind up with more points worth of flaws than perks.
Perk Frequency
In many stories across all media and genres, you will find a situation where the protagonist pulls a trick out of his bag to save the day, and a common question the audience asks is “if the Hero could do that all along, why didn’t he do that earlier?” Why doesn’t Gipsy Danger lead with the giant mecha-sword when squaring off against a Kaiju? First off, this is not a forum to defend a movie. But, one must also consider the genre and its accepted conventions—silly as some of them may seem—before playing the realism card. Depending on your play style, RPGs need not be realistic, and for the purposes of storytelling in Future Imperfect, we have skewed certain conventions and mechanics in an attempt to favor the kind of literary style common to classic science fiction novels and films. Why doesn’t Voltron form the Blazing Sword right away, all the time, and flame-chop his way to victory?
The simple answer is that each episode would be a minute long after the monster of the week showed up, and the fight scenes wouldn’t be any fun to watch.
A more complex (and realistic) answer is that sometimes the benefits offered from some perks are one-offs; they must be reloaded or some such before they can be used again. Other abilities (such as contacts or allies) may require some kind of cool-down before the Hero can call upon them again (“I just saved your hide yesterday! What do you want now, dammit?”). But what if your perk is an innate ability, or a permanent feature of your body, or an item you have access to?
Our answer to that is, fine. Use it. Nothing is stopping you. However, the cost for using your perks isn’t some pool of energy or mana or anything; it is the currency of the story. When you use your perks, it may cost story chips in much the same way that your flaws will earn you story chips when the Master invokes them. The key point here, though, is that you, the player, choose when the cool bits of your Hero shine and make their mark on the story. Tit and tat, yin and yang. Balance.
In this vein, all perks and flaws are treated much the same when it comes to their relative power level, because the frequency of their use is the limiting factor, not how innately useful, powerful or debilitating each edge is.
Invoking Perks
When choosing your perks, you will assign a frequency to each one. This will determine how important it is to your character and how often you envision bringing it into play. Frequency is given three ratings: Scene, session and chapter. Unless stated otherwise in the perk’s description, or per the Master’s ruling, the effects of a perk will last for the duration of the encounter (one combat, mini-game, conversation, etc.)
- Scene—You can freely invoke your perk once per scene; it is something intrinsic to your Hero’s being, and he can use it or call on it fairly regularly.
- Session—You can freely invoke your perk once per game session. While still fairly accessible to the Hero, this kind of perk may not be his go-to solution, or maybe he only uses it on special occasions.
- Chapter—You can freely invoke your perk only once every “Chapter,” or story arc (see chapter XX for more on narrative structure). Generally, a chapter will encompass a storyline that spans more than one game session, with 2-5 sessions being a good approximation. If your Master tends to have very long, drawn-out story arcs, or if your play sessions are very short making chapters span many sessions, you may find it helpful to work with the Master to determine “chapter breaks” or some other method to figure when a chapter ends.
Bruce is playing Frost, a feline Avatar Space Marine. He intends that her claws will be used pretty often, and assigns them a frequency of “Scene” (4 points). Jason is playing the Ursoid, Leonid Kovnachuk, another member of the ship’s Marines. As a bear-like non-human species, Chuk has claws as well. Since Jason envisions Chuk as being the type of Marine who is perfectly happy laying down sheets of fire with his trusty Blast MMG, he anticipates that his character’s claws might come into play only once every few game sessions. Jason takes the perk “Natural Weapons: Claws,” but assigns it a frequency of “Chapter.”
So you have selected a frequency of “Scene” for your perk. You should be able to use it almost all the time, right? Yes and no. A lot can take place in one scene. Some game sessions may consist entirely of just one scene, or only a few. The duration for a perk, once invoked, is described in loose detail above, and one scene will often span several separate and various encounters. Additionally, perks that are ever-present tend to be less dramatic. They lack that “wow” factor. You may be able to invoke them quite often, but to make the most of them, you may wish to spend story chips to make a greater impact on the game. Most perks will have relatively standardized effects, and depending on what ability they are granting or boosting, they will generally add one, two or three dice (or shift the row down in the causes or effects sections for action cards). In contrast, perks that are available infrequently are inherently more potent because of their rarity within the story.
- Perks available every scene will add +1 die to the dice pool. One white chip will boost this to +2 dice, and two white chips or one red chip will increase this to +3.
- Perks available every session will add +2 dice to the dice pool. One white chip will boost this to +3 dice.
- Perks available every chapter are potential game-changers; they will add +3 to the dice pool when invoked.
Frost’s demo charge collapses the tunnel just in time, cutting off the main body of the Klackon warriors, but one of the slippery aliens managed to dash past the falling rocks, right at Chuk. The Blarad’s ruined Blast MMG won’t do him any good in this fight, and he doesn’t have time to draw another weapon before the insectoid is upon him. Jason determines that now is the right time for Chuk to be a Hero. He tells the Master that he is invoking his Claws perk and attacking the Klackon to hold it off and help cover the others’ retreat. Because Chuk’s claws have a frequency of “chapter,” they will give him an additional 3 dice to his damage pool, which is fitting because he is a giant bear-man! Bruce, playing Frost, knows that Chuck will need some help with the dangerous Klackon, but doesn’t want to fire a blast rifle into the melee! He also knows that merely one extra die of claw damage won’t do much against the heavy armor of a Klackon. Bruce invokes Frost’s claw perk, as well, but spends two white story chips to boost Frost’s damage for this encounter. “Frost doesn’t have the size or strength that Chuk does,” the Master says. “But if Chuk’s claws are like hatchets, then yours are like razors. Your claws naturally find the seams in the bug’s chitin, and slice at the softer tissues while Chuck cracks and tears through its exoskeleton!” The two marines make short work of the final Klackon, and the entire crew escapes the tunnel system and boards the dropship that will take them back to the Chain Lightning…
If you have already used a perk in a given scene, session or chapter, it is not necessarily unavailable to the Hero. You can still invoke a perk beyond its given frequency, however, it will cost story chips. When invoked this way, the perk’s effectiveness will grant the +2 dice bonus, regardless of its frequency rating. If you choose, you can spend two white chips or one red chip to boost it to +3.
Designers Note: This mechanic exists as it does because under most circumstances, you can spend one white chip to add +1 to your dice pool, anyway; having a perk that affects the actions in question should have some benefit. Additionally, the perk will endure for the encounter while a simple expenditure of a story chip to boost a check or task is only for that particular outcome.
If, for whatever reason, the Master invokes one of your perks, this activation does not count against its frequency. To determine the bonus, draw a chip from the pot. If you so choose, you can boost it with your own story chips.
Flaw Frequency
By the fact of stating that your Hero has a flaw, you are making a kind of statement as to what kind of actions the character may take in certain situations. If your character has the coward flaw, you are not likely to exhibit an abundance of bravery. You may actively try to avoid conflict. That is fine; that’s what a cowardly person might do. However, this being an RPG, you will likely find your cowardly character in a fight sooner or later, which may give the Master an opportunity to invoke your flaw. Your “Hero” may be a yellow-belly through and through (with a frequency of “Scene” for his coward flaw), or he might just have a touch of PTSD and only freaks out occasionally (frequency of “Chapter”). The latter character might not have the same reservations about conflict, but would probably realize that it is possible for him to go into vapor-lock and freeze up at the worst possible time in the middle of a fight.
Aside from informing how you might roleplay certain aspects of your Hero based on his flaws, they can be one method for your Hero to earn story chips. The frequency rating of a flaw dictates how focal it is to your Hero, how much it informs his actions and decisions. With a high frequency, it is very common, and only under the most adverse of conditions will it be noteworthy in the grand scheme of the story. If it is less frequent, it clearly isn’t as much an issue for your Hero, but it will still occasionally crop up to complicate his life. The frequency of a flaw doesn’t necessarily point to the rarity or regularity of any potential triggers; simply how much your character is affected by the complication in question. If you choose a flaw to be frequent, you are letting the master know that your Hero is easily affected by the flaw, that it may come up often. An infrequent flaw should be invoked less often.
Players are still encouraged to roleplay their flaws to a degree; they don’t disappear just because the Master isn’t forcing penalties on you at every turn. However, they can crop up when you least expect or want them to, which is why the Master has the power to invoke them. Plus, if a flaw makes your Hero’s life harder and enriches the story with the complication you put out there for the Master to utilize, you might get a story chip out of it. Winners all around! Huzzah!
Just as perks only cost story chips to use once you have exceeded their frequency rating, Flaws will only earn you story chips when the Master invokes them beyond the frequency rating you have established. Thusly, a Hero with a flaw rated at “scene” for its frequency would require the Master to invoke it twice in the same scene to earn a story chip. This means that the flaw in question could potentially come into play multiple times in the same session or a bunch of times in the same chapter without the Hero earning a story chip. If, for example, your character is likely to be a coward in every scene, then it will take a remarkable scene of epic cowardin’ for the event to really register!
Eric’s Ursoid, Nick Nestor, grew up on an arctic planet. There were no trees to climb, and all the buildings were dug into the ground to protect them from the elements. As such, he decides that his Hero has Acrophobia (fear of heights), and that it is a fairly strong aversion—he gives it the frequency of “Scene.” By this, he is telling the Master that he fully expects this flaw to potentially play some part in almost every scene of the game. Eric decides to play Nick such that he will go to great lengths to avoid triggers to his phobia. Even though the rating is “Scene,” if Eric plays Nick such that he stays rooted to the ground almost all the time, the Master may rarely even be able to invoke the flaw, but then it is also serving its purpose by causing Eric to play his Hero faithfully to his flaw!
Now, just because you have a low frequency for a flaw doesn’t necessarily mean you will be earning story chips for it hand over fist. Regardless of the frequency rating for a flaw, you can only earn a maximum of two story chips from each flaw per chapter. You might decide that your Hero has a prejudice against humans in a campaign setting that is predominantly human, and only give it a frequency of “Chapter,” in hopes of earning easy story chips. The frequency is a suggestion to how frequently the Master should invoke it, not how common the trigger is. Clearly, your Hero’s prejudice doesn’t bother him too often. The master should only invoke it on special occasions. And if you choose such a common trigger for your flaw, you should still roleplay it. If you try and ignore it and in the above example, try to rub elbows among the humans with impunity, the Master may well be in his right to invoke your flaw left and right, secure in the knowledge that you have already earned your story chips for the current chapter!
Designer’s Note: The short version of the harangue that is that last paragraph? Don’t try to game the system. We are perfectly capable of breaking the system all on our own. We don’t need your help. Thank you.
Invoking Flaws
When a likely trigger for a Hero’s flaw comes up, the Master may choose to invoke it. When this occurs, the Master will draw a chip from the pot. The color of the chip will determine how severe an effect the flaw incurs in this instance. A white chip reduces the dice pool by one, a red chip by two and a blue chip by three. If the dice pool is reduced to one die, then each further reduction shifts the die type down by one (shifts the result left one column for reading action cards). Depending on the situation and the nature of the flaw, this penalty might only last for one check or task, or it might persist for an encounter or even the entire scene.
Racial Edges
Though your universe in your own Future Imperfect campaign may be inhabited by nothing but pure strain humans, the "Canon" setting is not so vanilla. All races (even humans!) are defined to a degree by certain edges. These are called Racial Edges, and they do not follow all the same rules as normal edges.
Early in character creation the player chooses ranks for various aspects of his Hero. One of these aspects is Race. Simply put, the greater the ranking assigned to your Hero's race, the more racial edges he is allowed. Racial edges do not count toward the max 10 entries for edges. Racial edges are kept separately. Racial edges will help define what sort of alien (or even human) you are. Several standard templates are provided, but even with these there is room for customization.
Part of the standard template for an Ursoid character is the perk Fur. Based on the description of the perk, this would grant Chuck some resistance to cold and a small boost to his armor rating against some attacks. Jason decides not to include this as a racial edge for Chuk; his myriad injuries have left him so scarred and his coat so patchy that he almost appears mangy! Instead, he chooses the perk High Gravity Homeworld.
You can use a template for your Hero, or create your own unique alien species or flavor of humanoid. While there is a list of suggested Edges that are clearly "racial" in nature, it could be argued that many other perks and flaws could be a part of your race.
Justin decides that his Hero is from a race of humanoids who have more Psionic Adepts per capita than most other races, and chooses the "Lucky" perk to represent this sensitivity, and gives it a frequency of "session" (2 points). To balance that, he chooses the racial edge "Non-standard diet," also with a frequency of "session." What is non-standard about the diet of his Hero's race? Justin thinks about it for a moment and decides that while members of his race are not on their homeworld, they must take enough blood from a sentient being to cause 1 wound. For Justin's hero, that requirement might come up once every game session. Great. He has created a race of Lucky, Psionic Space Vampires.
Just as with regular edges, racial edges must zero out in the end.
