I have gotten a variety of insightful comments on the first version (v1.0) of the Spark RPG Open Beta and I wish to thank all of you for your feedback to date. I will be making a revised version (v2.0), incorporating these comments. My current target is to release this revised version on August 1st, 2012.
Various astute readers have found two major flaws with the current version of the game text. I wish to correct these problems with the revised version.
What makes Spark Different?
I created the Spark RPG with two different, distinct goals in mind.
1) To create a game about exploring and struggling with your Beliefs.
2) To create a genre-agnostic system, on purposefully built to support world building. The system would be equally useful for adapting existing fictional worlds without requiring system modifications.
In the introduction, I did a tolerable job in explaining my first goal and failed utterly in explaining the latter. One of the game’s strengths is in supporting world building and I woefully undersell that in the current version of the text.
Fate
Fate is a major component to the game, functioning as the major currency that you gain by challenging beliefs in a scene. I failed to explain this crucial element of the game in its own dedicated section of the text to explain it properly. Amusingly, I actually originally dedicated an entire _chapter_ to Fate in an earlier iteration. All of the necessary rules for using Fate are in the text, but I never explained what Fate actually was.
You may gain Fate by:
- When you challenging one of your three Beliefs in a scene, either directly supporting or refuting it, you gain 1 Fate during “Closing the Scene” phase.
- When someone (Player or GM) challenges all three of their Beliefs over one or more scenes, everyone in the game recieves 1 Fate.
- When someone siezes the platform/tilt/question from you during the Framing phase, they give you 1 Fate.
- When someone uses the Inspire Resolution on you, they need to offer you an amount of Fate equal to the size of your Spark die. Eg, if someone has a Spark of D8, they need to offer you 8 Fate if you change your Belief as they suggest.
You may spend Fate in these ways.
- You may give 1 Fate to seize a platform/tilt/question in the Framing phase,
- You may spend 1 Fate to maximize your dice in a conflict where you challenge your beliefs,
- You may spend 1 Fate to gain a resolution in conflict
- You may give 4-20 Fate to inspire someone to change a Belief to one of your choosing.
- You may spend 4 Fate in a Conflict or the Advancement phase to add a Rise Condition or remove a Fall Condition.
- You may spend 8 Fate in the Advancement phase to add a new Talent.
- You may spend 20 Fate in the Advancement phase to add another level of Attribute.
- You may spend 1 Fate to gain a proxy die the same size as your Spark Attribute
Your comments are welcome!