Kerberos Fate Thoughts

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

I have been running Kerberos Club Fate Edition since 2011. It's an interesting system, with a lot of cool features, and with some features that have been problematic in a long campaign. (Short version: Scaling becomes a problem.) (Slightly longer version: We started in game year 1837. It is now the end of 1840. If the players spent all the points and refresh they've gained, they would be more powerful than the sample Late Century PCs in the book.)

Kerberos Fate predates Fate Core and Fate Accelerated. Unless one of my players feels strongly motivated to do so, we're not likely to redesign the system. And, I'm not expecting Mike Olson to do so, as he's got other projects. So, we've been improvising as needed, while still keeping to a combination of the main Kerberos Fate rules and a Gentlefolk's Agreement not to grow the characters too quickly. (Yes, I'd prefer to have mechanics helping us out here, but that's a topic for a very different post.)

The conceit of Kerberos Club is that, within the club, all are equal, but society is still society. We want to play this way. We love the social drama, the comedy of manners. A glance at the bits that I manage to transcribe to the wiki, or the rather large bite-sized chunks I post to Story Game threads demonstrates the joy we all take in not having the PCs try to overthrow society's norms.

Kerberos Fate has Social Conflict, as well as Physical and Mental Conflict. Social Conflict is a little odd, because it isn't about witty one liners per se. For example, Josh's PC, Lady Alice Beauchamp, and her cousin, the NPC Winston Beauchamp, fight Mental conflicts. Alice's cousin wants her to mind her manners. He does not want to destroy her socially. That would not be in his best interests. He did use social conflict to spread the rumor that she'd be marrying an earl, although she soon corrected him on that score.

More recently, I was trying to figure out how to do a social conflict to make aristocratic society accept the idea of Consulting Detective Victor Knight (PC) marrying the younger, highly eccentric (she's becoming a _doctor_!) NPC daughter of a minor nobleman. We decided to create a long stress track (25 boxes, but I can shorten it if we think things are dragging) and give Society As A Whole a skill at social conflict of Supernatural +6, and allow a limited number of rolls per session to move Society towards accepting this particular marriage. Every five or so boxes, there should be an Aspect reflecting Society gradually softening towards it. I'm guessing the first one should be At Least He's Trying, given that Victor's got an Aspect of Truth Before Tact.

Having started to watch Phineas and Ferb, I am pondering how to create the cast in Kerberos Fate terms. Clearly, Agent P is already a member of the club. Candace is obviously worried that her brothers will jeopardize her chances of marriage. I am thinking that the brothers' Trouble Aspect is Easily Bored, which explains why they do the weird and wonderful stuff they do and why they never do anything twice.