Welcome to the campaign diary of what’s been codenamed Fantasy Avengers. A campaign idea of superheroes in a fantasy setting has percolated within my brain for aeons. I occasionally pretend I’m going to run it, which no doubt gets eye rolls at best or engenders much disappointment at worst when I never get around to it.
This campaign diary will work through how the campaign gets to the table and then, with hope and a prayer, morph into actual play reports.
The section on The Great Curse was updated on 29th January 2024 with a better approach.
Cortex Is a Toolbox
The last time my brain turned to Fantasy Avengers, it was established Cortex Prime was the system of choice. The first challenge of using Cortex Prime is that it’s a toolbox, so you must assemble the system from the box of tools you have available. This has the benefit of providing a level of guided construction to get what you want, but the disadvantage is you have to do it.
One of the first choices is what goes on the character sheet.
How Did I Select Traits?
It was a collection of influences, so it was pretty much on trend for how these things work in my head. Here is a quick list of influences, in no particular order: –
- Cortext Prime guidance
- The example campaign settings
- Cortex implementations like Marvel Heroic and Tales of Xadia
- Who the character is should be on the sheet
- The premise of their story should somewhat be on the sheet
- Models in my head and desired outcomes
I’d also say there was a bit of selection anxiety. I felt if I got this wrong, I’d have doomed it from the start. While not true, it’s certainly the case that it might have influenced the experience in ways that would have frustrated me and maybe not have been ideal for people, resulting in an early cancellation.
You may have guessed this has happened once before in a campaign I saw going the distance. I took my usual approach and just let it simmer.
The Trait Set
The traits are split into the prime and secondary sets, although I don’t think the latter is the official name. The importance of the Prime Set is they ALWAYS get rolled. This means they must always be pertinent while also defining what the game is about.
For example, Marvel Heroic has powers and no skills in the prime set. This suggests almost every dice pool assembled should ideally involve the use of powers, and the game’s suggested structure of play maximises the chances of this occurring as they should be included in every roll.
I know I didn’t want that.
I put two stakes in the ground that helped me: (1) the Prime Set should concentrate on Who, How and Why and I didn’t want more than five Traits on the character sheet.
The Prime Set
The Prime Set is outlined below: –
Distinctions
Everyone has Distinctions; they’re the closest thing to FATE Aspects on the character sheet. They are going to: –
- Tell us who and what the protagonist is
- Singal their future story to some degree
They’re not going to exactly the same as Aspects as you don’t have the hard compel, though you could change things so they could. They have the narrative painting and permission of Aspects but not the hard writing insert of the compel. It’s a softer approach.
Approaches
Yeah, Approaches aren’t mentioned in Cortex Prime, but they are just an ability set that wasn’t given as an example. They happen to be stolen from Fate Accelerated.
The Approaches are: –
- Careful
- Clever
- Flashy
- Forceful
- Quick
- Sneaky
They describe how a character functionally approaches what they are doing. If the Distinctions give a sense of narrative excuse for their skill set, Approaches define how.
I never intended to put as much stuff from Fate into Cortex as possible. The truth is none of the other abilities felt right. Traditional physical abilities are boring. The Marvel Heroic thing of setting out the character’s preferred interaction across Team, Solo and Buddy works great for a direct superhero comic but never felt right for Fantasy Avengers.
Approaches just always feel so damned right when you’re approaching things from the fiction.
Values
This is where things changed. If you go back far enough, the thoughts in my head were insistent that I needed to have some sense of ‘skills’ in the Prime Set. I didn’t want to face that Marvel Heroic approach of slanting things to power battles due to the Prime Set. It may end up that there is a lot of that, but I didn’t want the system pushing things towards that like a bad set of metrics.
It changed when I realised Fate and Destiny are factual and woven into the fabric of the setting, and an Exalted defines their own destiny. I only realised this as I typed the Grammar of Creation post. Surely, such figures should be driven by meaningful values that drive them to define that destiny?
The challenge was establishing what those Values should be, but Tales of Xadia came to the rescue with a perfectly applicable set: –
- Devotion
- Liberty
- Glory
- Mastery
- Justice
- Truth
I may tweak these for the superhero set outlined in Cortex Handbook, but values remain.
These values will also have trait statements to tie them to the character and further develop the why that drives them to be such a locus of destiny. This also has the advantage of writing six statements that will further distinguish characters from each other.
The more this swirled around in my brain, the more I felt it was a good idea. I don’t just want a group of protagonists who can do a load of superheroic shit. I want that widescreen stuff, but I want it to mean something, and this starts to put it on the character sheet and drives every use of the dice.
The Secondary Set
The secondary traits are: –
- Powers
- Specialties
‘Secondary’ traits aren’t automatically included in every roll, but they are if they are relevant.
Powers
Powers are obvious, they are the superhero bit of this being a superhero campaign. There are a few things to mention about powers.
You need to decide how powerful characters can be, which comes down to whether you allow D12 ratings or not.
You also have to think about how many they can select. It’s going to have to be an advisory approach rather than a hard rule. Due to how Cortex works, you can say pick what you want to model the character, but I am not sure about that working across the group.
I’ve not gone with abilities because I want that dramatic feeling of the protagonists clashing together with opposing forces like a comic, not the more dramatic resolution from something like Smallville that abilities tend to foster.
Specialties
Specialties aren’t strictly necessary. The whole campaign could run just using the Prime Sets and the Distinctions as a sense of narrative permission. I’m going with Specialties for two reasons: –
- The I’m Good at this factor is often something cool that can make protagonists stand out above and beyond the Prime Set.
- It’s another signal. If a character has Swordplay as a speciality and it’s D10, they want that to feature, and they are renowned for it, etc. You can cover this with a Distinction, but layering can also be great.
I need to create a list of Specialties, but I wouldn’t be averse to creating some on the spot. The key thing is to get the specificity correct. They cannot be too wide but not ridiculously narrow.
The Great Curse
This was the real reason I decided Approaches were a good idea. The Fate SRD had something hidden within it called Corruption in Fate Accelerated. If we ignore trigger and recovery mechanisms for a moment, the simplicity of corruption is that Approaches switch to a ‘corrupted’ version: –
- Careful -> Fearful
- Clever -> Arrogant
- Flash -> Aggressive
- Forceful -> Angry
- Quick -> Reckless
- Sneaky -> Treacherous
Just think of what the Exalted would wrought on Creation when they’re all wracked with these negative Approaches. It makes perfect sense.
The Complications of The Great Curse
How do we trigger the Approaches turning into their cursed opposites? Well, this is where Complications come in. We can apply Complications to the Approaches. Basically, Forceful has an Angry Complication, etc.
This would work as follows: –
- A triggered hitch steps up an Approach’s Complication
- A triggered opportunity can step down an Approach’s Complication
- If the Approach is used, the Approach’s Complication is added to the opposing pool
- If the Approach Complication >= the Approach, the Approach’s Complication is used
- A character can push the Approach Complication
It also focuses The Great Curse on the moments Fate intervenes in the lives of an Exalted rather than them being in full control of their own destiny, further linking into an Exalted being a locus of destiny. When they’ve not been in control of their own destiny, on balance, they lose it a bit to bring it back in line.
There is no sense of being ‘Taken Out’ by these complications. I am also assuming they can be removed stepped down by normal Complication removal rules. I may consider over time if the negatives of ‘raising’ the Approaches this way are big enough (the opponent gets an equal die, so it would seem to be zero-sum at best). I also have no way of assessing outside of play if tripping into a negative approach would be irregular, or so often it becomes a bit of a joke.
I guess the key thing is the impact of the approaches on the fiction.
Adding these types of rules is always an interesting experience. A small set of rules was devised for Werewolf: Accelerated. A core of them were not used. It’s not because they were bad rules; the emergent nature of the narrative meant the focus was on different areas of importance.
Importance of Stress
I’ve not settled on my approach to modelling Stress. It’s very likely to be a track-based approach to stress. I just can’t bring myself to use the hit point option. The choice then comes down to what tracks and how many.
It will come down to options: –
- The good old traditional Physical, Mental, and Social allows for a solid grounding of fiction-based stress.
- A wider set is used in Tales Of Xadia, which is very interesting. I’m just not 100% sure of the full implications of running with that method.
I’m also aware that the more you break away from the core three into something with more variations, the more you tailor them to your game, even if you don’t realise that’s what you’re doing. Having an Afraid stress track says something, etc.
And, Finally…
The challenge with this is how far you go. I want to keep it simple, but then you see something like Tales of Xadia and its many moving parts. Marvel Heroic has fewer moving parts, so there are examples at different points on the scale.
This is a good grounding; my only concern is the lack of things to fiddle with. It’s very straight down the line.