Fatemaster Friday - I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

[Kimberly]

Phenomenal Friday Breachers!

Thanks for being part of the Malifaux City leg of my Grand Malifaux Tour! At a pace on par with the Iron Ram, we flew past a lot of locations at a brisk pace. Look out for more in depth explorations in the future! But, while the tour is preparing for the wilds of Malifaux, let’s take a look at a wonderful aspect of character progression in TTB, Talents!  But first, here’s what @The13Fates had to say about making Malifaux City a character of its own in a campaign:

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Rumors, gossip and more rumors. Nothing makes a city feel more alive than the people within it simply talking. These don't even have to be plot hooks or side missions, could just be a customer in a shop talking to his friend…

See the rest of their comment here!

Talents in TTB allow for a great deal of customization for a Fated both in Character Creation and during progression. These unique abilities can allow your players to refine and guide their Fated towards certain progression goals, offer customization for Fatemaster Characters, and are a wonderful resource to give any character more personality. I’m going to delve into some of the reasons why Talents are one of the handiest parts of the TTB mechanics.

General Talents aren’t just for reinforcing a character’s existing strengths; in fact, some of my favorite Talents are the ones attached to negative Aspect Values! Anyone who has made a TTB character knows that Fate can be the cruelest mistress when it comes to the Body and Mind cards of the Destiny Spread. Thankfully, those amazing General Talents are there to ease the pain of flipping a Black Joker for Body and ruining all of your hopes and dreams for that Freikorps-wannabe you planned. These Talents, like Sure-Footed or Plain-Spoken, represent a Fated’s awareness of their shortcomings and developing a work-around. The best thing about these is they don’t go away if the character improves the Aspect and no longer meets the prerequisite.

For even more character customization, the Pursuit Talents are often presented in pairs for players to choose from. These allow a character to further determine how they follow the Pursuit; a Fated on the Criminal Pursuit may want to focus more on who they know and not being on the front lines fighting, or they may decide to be a hardened and unrelenting opportunist when it comes to combat. As Pursuits are chosen at the beginning of the session after the Prologue, a character can build up quite an assortment of Talents over time, making it a wholly unique character with abilities that represent their journey thus far! 

While many other RPG systems have granted abilities during character creation and progression, the Talents of Through the Breach offer some of the most unique and rewarding options for both players and Fatemasters. Next week I’ll be giving an overview of the wonderful inaugural Penny Dreadful, In Defense of Innocence. In the meantime, be sure to consider this week’s mail-call question. What is a moment when a Talent was used in a memorable or creative way by one of your players that completely wow’d you?     

[stump_chunkman]

The Fated in our game had discovered the presence of a local Malifaux Critter fighting ring and so the Shape-Shifter though they would get in on that action by turning into a suitable skin. The PC's were not the most inconspicuous of criminal elements (downright notorious by some standards) so the House, suspecting something was afoot, said the only betting they could do was on the absolute worst odds. 

So she entered the cage-match and fought a pretty nasty Steam-Borged up former Guild Hound and when found they had bitten off more than they could chew, there was no where to run. The rest of the party begged clemency for their "beloved pet/fighting animal" knowing it would be their asses if she changed back to try to get herself out. They incurred a substantial amount of debt to some right nasty underworld criminals that I was able to use to neatly push the plot along if the players got a little too indecisive about what to do next. 

The 'Shifter had a few shiny new Critical Wounds to show off by the end of that session for their hubris.  (my Fatemaster style isn't to try ans screw my players but hey, Bad Things Happen