Sample PC: Robot Unicorn

Learn by doing, right?

Reading through the FATE rules, I made a simple character as I went along. Perhaps you remember Robot Unicorn Attack hitting it big a few years back? I figured that's about as straightforward as videogame characters get, so here's what I came up with:

As far as I can tell, the Robot Unicorn has no name. I just picked "Rob" as a handy abbreviation.

The character's High Concept is totally already defined. Robot Unicorn: exactly what it says on the tin.

The Trouble aspect was trickier. At first I was leaning against having Priceless Horn as the aspect, because Trouble aspects are not supposed to be redundant with the High Concept. The book gives the example that a character with the high concept Lead Detective shouldn't pick the trouble aspect Hated By The Underworld, because that drawback is already implied by the high concept. But I thought about it, and attempted horn thievery is not as universal a plot complication as I'd initially assumed. Sure, Darkness wants unicorn horns, but the villains of The Last Unicorn want unicorns themselves, not the horns, and I don't remember Unico having to avoid horn-poachers either. That said, perhaps the aspect could be made more specific, like "Horn Coveted by the Cyberwizards" or "Horn Valued as Droid Aphrodisiac", but this will do for now.

The Genre aspect (remember, I'm not using the games default "phase trio" for the last three aspects) was surprisingly easy. Rather than try to define the genre of the setting (synthpop fairytale robo-fantasy?) I just picked the gameplay genre. Endless Runner can totally be invoked to justify bonus relating to movement or stamina or whatever.

The Catchphrase aspect seemed tricky at first, since Robot Unicorn doesn't talk at all. But even though there's no dialog in the game, there is a catchy and iconic theme song. So I took the most memorable line from that, which presumably reflects the character's intense loyalty, or something.

The Wild Card aspect was actually challenging to come up with. After going through the wikipedia page for Robot Unicorn Attack a few times, I settled on Pixie Collector after the game's bonus point mechanism. I'm not exactly sure what this entails, but one of the neat things about FATE is that the aspects invented to describe the characters can also contain details to help guide the GM's worldbuilding. And since at least one Disney film setting does include pixies, this character would motivate me to make sure those pixies show up in the campaign, ideally sooner rather than later...

FATE and Aspects

After considering several options, I think this campaign would work best with FATE. In particular, I think the Aspect system is the most elegant way to differentiate between characters from entirely different genres.

A decent summary of the system is written up on wikipedia, What I'm mostly interested in right now is the five phrases (the aforementioned "aspects") which sum up each character, and can be invoked by the player for re-rolls, bonuses or other effects.

So, a sample character in the book has the following Aspects:

Cynere
High Concept: Infamous Girl with Sword
Trouble: Tempted by Shiny Things
I've Got Zird's Back
Sucker for a Sob Story
Secret Sister of Baranthar

These aspects are defined during character creation. The default system in FATE is that your first Aspect is your "high concept"; literally just  a short phrase describing your initial idea for a character. The second is your "trouble", a sort of long-term flaw or complication that further defines the character. The last three aspects are the "phase trio", aspects derived from a specific collaboration between the players on the group's background/origin story.

The first two aspect choices are perfect, and I foresee using them as-is in Imperialist Hearts. The phase trio, while a really clever idea for forming a rapport between a starting party that might not otherwise have one, is not right for my campaign. Having wildly disparate characters thrown together for the first time against a common enemy should be too fun to be relegated to the backstory. Also, the players will need those Aspect slots to define the difference between their characters' original genres and settings.

I haven't figured out the specific procedure for this part of character generation, but I have a few ideas. Something along the lines of: Genre, Catchphrase, Wild Card. That is, the character has one aspect that describes their original setting/context, one derived from a catchphrase (or other dialog attributed to their character in their source material), and then the last one is free-form to fill in anything the player thinks is important that hasn't yet been covered. Some examples:

Bugs Bunny
High Concept: Wisecracking Rabbit
Trouble: Holds a Grudge
Genre: Looney Tunes
Catchphrase: "Ain't I a Stinker."
Wild Card: Looks Great in Drag

Sterling Archer
High Concept: Superspy
Trouble: Alcoholic Womanizer
Genre: Cold War Satire
Catchphrase: "Something Something Danger Zone!"
Wild Card: Walking Arms Encyclopedia

This is still very much first impressions/brainstorming. I'll need to reread the FATE Core book another time or two, at least skim the FATE Toolkit, and look around on blogs or forums for examples of FATE variants and gameplay, before I set anything in stone (or even a .doc file). I expect I will write many more posts in this topic as I delve further into the system and adapt it to my needs.