Temporary Conditions

In a Fate Core game that uses conditions, temporary conditions are a compromise to make up for the lack of more flexible consequences. They aren't temporary in the same sense as fleeting conditions are - they just aren't part of the permanent condition list.

Why Use Conditions?

I realized I kind of jumped the gun when I posted my tweaks for Fate Core conditions so I'm going to talk about my thought process for deciding to use them.

First off, I like consequences a whole lot. And stress tracks. They're hands down one of my favorite "damage mechanics" of any game. In fact, I like stress tracks so much that whenever there's a need to track timing, or pacing, or progress of some kind my first instinct is to use a stress track. This leads to "stress track creep." In my original Strands of Fate conversion for Tribe 8, I had a whole bunch of them - I think five for characters and at least a couple other setting-level tracks. When I started working on a Fate Core version of Tribe 8, I said I wasn't going to add any more - and I still did. It bugged me because I had tried to take a reductionist perspective to breaking out various elements I thought should be in Fate of Vimary, but I couldn't shake myself out of the mindset that I needed physical, mental, social, spiritual, etc. stress tracks.

Reading about conditions in the Fate System Toolkit made a light go on in my head, but I wanted to sit on them a bit. I didn't want to use them just because they were new or different. Having moved recently, I had a (forced) break from the Fate of Vimary material and only recently was able to come back around to looking things over. When I did I realized that conditions were what I needed and a number of things struck me about them.

First is that a set of carefully defined conditions could be just as flexible as naming consequences on the fly yet still go a long way toward communicating a specific feel. In fact, in the long term I figured most consequences representing the same general concept would wind up looking pretty similar. So why not just name them ahead of time? The exact details after that are just window dressing. Second, in a game where stress was coming from a larger number of sources, with as many stress tracks as I had it would lead to consequences being in play less and not more (by virtue of having more stress boxes that needed to be checked off). I know I want some kind of minor consequences - or in this case fleeting conditions - in play the majority of the time.

As a result I started looking at what a conditions list might look like for Fate of Vimary. I wanted the names and the balance between fleeting, sticky and lasting conditions to be just right. I'm very happy with the end result. On top of that, I've become aware of just how much is going on in what seems like a simplified concept. For one, the broad nature of how they are named - Exhausted, Disoriented, Bloodied, Broken, etc. - are suitable for a variety of stress. You can be mentally or spiritually exhausted, or emotionally broken, or socially bruised. Having the conditions has also streamlined the process of revising some of the Synthesis stunts I had adapted. Granted all of this is possible using consequences, but conditions tighten things up quite a bit.

For most Fate Core games I'd use off-the-shelf stress tracks and consequences. But for something a bit more targeted, like Tribe 8, conditions are a great way to tweak the tone of the setting without straying too far spiritually from the core rules.

Conditions in Fate of Vimary

Conditions are an alternate way of handling stress, introduced in the Fate System Toolkit.

Each condition can be thought of as a pre-defined consequence. Players can choose to soak stress by taking a condition, and the GM can impose a condition if it would make sense from a narrative standpoint. The GM may call for a roll to resist the condition when appropriate. Conditions are treated like aspects and can be invoked and compelled normally.

Conditions are either fleeting, sticky or lasting. Fleeting conditions last until you get a spare chance to recover from them - typically not longer than a scene. Sticky conditions require that an action or event take place to clear them. For example, if your character is dehydrated they need water, or if they are exhausted they need sleep. Lasting conditions require an overcome roll of Great(+4) passive opposition to begin to recover from them.

When you take a condition, you check off the box next to it. Once the box is checked, you can no longer take that condition. For lasting conditions, there are two check marks next to it. When you take a lasting condition as a result of the GM saying you have that condition, you check off both boxes. When someone makes the recovery roll for the lasting condition, you erase the first check box. At the end of the next full session, you can erase the second check box. Characters may have stunts that add additional boxes or even new conditions. High skill levels, such as Physique, do not add more boxes for conditions - instead, they simply mean the character has a better chance of actively resisting a condition if the GM calls for it.

You can take conditions in order to “soak” stress. Fleeting conditions are worth 1 stress and sticky conditions or each box of a lasting condition are worth 2. Note that if you check off one box of a lasting condition to soak stress, that box still will not clear until the end of the next session.

There is one last level of conditions: permanent. Permanent conditions are like extreme consequences in Fate Core. You can soak up to 6 stress when you choose to take a permanent condition. When you check off the box, you must replace one aspect (with the exception of your High Concept) with an aspect that represents the permanent condition. There is no recovery roll for a permanent condition, although at your next major milestone you can rename the aspect to represent some recovery from the condition. At that point you can erase the check box next to the permanent condition.

Here are the conditions that I have settled on for Fate of Vimary:

Winded [Fleeting] ☐
Bruised [Fleeting] ☐
Disoriented [Fleeting] ☐
Frightened [Fleeting] ☐
Exhausted [Sticky] ☐
Famished [Sticky] ☐
Dehydrated [Sticky] ☐
Injured [Lasting] ☐ ☐

Crippled [Permanent] ☐