[iago]

I'm out of time to post today, but I wanted to weigh in on this quickly!

Several folks have piped up talking about treating spaceships like characters -- aspects, skills, the works. This is absolutely what I would regard as Right Thinking, even though I try to avoid making such pronouncements.

In fact, I honestly think that Fate is all about treating EVERYTHING as a character, on some level. In SOTC, we've got this at its most reduced form, by putting aspects on everything, but there's absolutely nothing at all saying you can't also give those things skills, stunts, a full collaborative character creation process...

Imagine creating your own setting by having each player own a part of it and creating the Five Spacefaring Cultures of the game *just like characters*, running through the phased process, giving the cultures "guest starring" moments where they interact with other cultures, putting aspects on them, building out a skill list to represent the culture's strengths and weaknesses...

Then you zoom in. Planets and star systems within Space Empire X get treated like characters. One player grabs Tattooine and slaps a 'Mos Eisley - Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy' aspect on it at one point. Bam, instant locale for the game they're about to run...

Then you zoom in. Neighborhoods within the city get done up like characters...

So on and so forth.

Ultimately I like to think of Fate as a fractal system. Like a fractal, it's made up of a bunch of different pieces that all resemble one another. Pick one section and zoom in, and you'll see something entirely different -- and yet very familiar, the smaller part having patterns that resemble the greater whole.

Design like that.

Okay, I'm out!