Discovering Aspects

## **Creating and Discovering Aspects in Play**

 *There are several ways previously unknown or nonexistent aspects can show up in play. Here, we’ll discuss the methods.*

### **Guessing Aspects**

Sometimes, you might want to use an **aspect** that’s on a scene or character without actually knowing if the target has the aspect in question. In other words, you’re making a guess—maybe, just maybe, an aspect fitting a particular description is there—and, while guesses are allowed, they’re subject to some special rules. One way to make a guess is to roll it as an assessment action , if it’s successful, the GM can reveal whether or not the target has a similar aspect. The good part about this option is that, even if your guess is wrong, you’ll still get an aspect from the target if the action succeeds. The bad part is that a target will usually get a roll to defend himself from being assessed, and therefore the attempt might fail.

 Another route is to spend a fate point and try to guess the aspect, explaining how you intend to use the aspect if it exists. This is basically “gambling” with an **invocation**  or **compel** — you’re committing your fate points on the possibility that your hunch about the target’s aspects is correct. You won’t get another aspect from the target if you’re wrong, but because you’re spending the fate point, the target will not get the option to defend against you. If, conceptually speaking, the guess hits reasonably close to the mark—even if it doesn’t match the aspect’s exact name—the GM should exercise some flexibility and allow it.

 If the guess just plain misses the mark, and the fact that the mark was missed doesn’t amount to a significant and potentially secret piece of information, you should get the chance to reconsider your guess and take back the fate point you spent.

 If the guess misses the mark, but missing the mark tells you something significant and potentially secret, the fate point is still spent. This sort of circumstance almost never comes up with scene aspects, but it can come up when guessing at aspects on another character, and may even amount to a “reveal” of the target’s true aspect.

 In the worst case scenario, your guess misses the mark because you’ve been duped. This will most often happen as the result of a Deceit action ,although it might arise from other circumstances. In such a case, the deceiver can either return the spent fate point to you or leave it spent.

 If he leaves it spent, you just learned you were duped—you don’t get the benefit of tagging the aspect, but you’ve learned something significant about your target. The deceiver does not get this spent fate point for himself, either—it’s simply gone.

 If the deceiver returns the fate point to you, things may actually be a bit worse for you—the deceiver gets to place a temporary aspect on you (and tag it), representing how he managed to snooker you.

 Regardless, guesses can’t, and shouldn’t, be made willy-nilly. There must always be a justification for making the guess. If the guess seems unjustified—if the player is “shotgunning” guesses to randomly try to figure out another character’s aspects—the GM is completely justified in shutting that player down cold.

### **Temporary Aspects**

Unlike the “permanent” aspects built into a character’s sheet, temporary aspects are introduced to (or inflicted upon) a character or scene by the actions of a character in the game, but fade from that recipient over time. Temporary aspects may differ in terms of the duration and tenacity with which they stay on their recipient. Most commonly, a temporary aspect results from a successful maneuver. If you get no shifts on a maneuver roll, the maneuver is considered successful, but the aspect is considered fragile—that is, it can only be tagged once and then it goes away. Fragile aspects are usually described as very momentary changes of circumstance— if you use Guns as a maneuver to aim at a target and you don’t get any shifts, you might call that aspect **A Quick Bead**. When you attack the target, you can tag it; but then you lose your bead on him for some reason, like he shifts position or slips behind cover or something else.

 If you get shifts on a maneuver roll, the resulting aspect is said to be sticky—in other words, it “sticks” to the target until something can be done about it. Sticky aspects don’t go away after they’re tagged, allowing people to spend fate points to continue to invoke them. These are usually described in more severe terms than fragile aspects, to represent that they’re a tangible problem or advantage for a character. If you get shifts on a Guns maneuver to aim, you might call that aspect **Right in My Sights**—essentially, you can hold a steady aim on your target until he does something drastic to throw your aim off.

 Sticky aspects may be easier to place on a location or scene rather than on another character, because the scene can’t roll to “defend” against your maneuver. This is especially true when they potentially offer complications to everyone present, on both sides, as with a maneuver to add a **The Building’s on Fire!** aspect to a scene.

 Getting rid of a sticky aspect requires making a successful maneuver roll to cancel the effects of the maneuver. If a character is in a position to stop you from getting rid of the maneuver, he can try to make an appropriate “defense roll” to oppose you. If he succeeds, the aspect remains. If you succeed, it goes away. If no one is in a position to stop you from getting rid of the maneuver, it’s very easy—you just have to make a roll against a difficulty of Mediocre (+0). Temporary aspects that result from maneuvers will always go away at the end of a conflict or scene.

 Some temporary aspects have real staying power and have the ability to outlast a scene; they may even stay affixed to the target for as long as a session (or more) of play. Those kinds of temporary aspects are called consequences, and each character has a certain limit on how many he can take, based on his skills. They represent lasting effects such as physical wounds, psychological problems, and so forth. These aspects usually can’t be removed by normal means— they require appropriate justification to remove, as well as the expenditure of a certain amount of recovery time

### **Assessments**

Sometimes you may choose to use your skills to make a careful assessment well in advance of taking action—maybe as part of putting together a plan, or simply observing the target long enough to learn something that would be a critical advantage. This approach is most often used with skills that have an element of perception— such as Investigation and Empathy— but knowledge skills could also be applied to discover “knowable things.” Here, the skill is not used to place a temporary aspect on the target so much as to discover an existing aspect on the target that may have been hidden or secret.

 Because this aspect is freshly introduced into play by your action, you should be able to tag this aspect. However, you’re often going to use assessment as a way to prepare for a future encounter, which may not happen for several scenes. So, if you’ve discovered an aspect this way, you don’t have to worry about the usual time limit for tagging until the first scene where you encounter the target of your assessment. Aspects discovered in this fashion are still present after these time limits expire, so they can still be invoked later.

 All assessment efforts require the use of a significant chunk of time, usually indicated in the skill write-up. However, this time invested in preparation allows these skills to come to bear in more time pressured environments (like a fight) where they would not typically be useful.

### **Declarations**

Traditionally, perception and knowledge skills usually focus on the discovery of what already exists (“knowable truths”). But in The Dresden Files RPG, these skills also allow for declarations. That is to say, using these skills successfully can allow you to introduce entirely new facts into play and then use those facts to your advantage. These new facts might also take the form of an aspect. (For example, if your character has a strong Alertness or Investigation skill, you might use a declaration to add features to a scene for you to use to your advantage—when the fire starts, your character just “happens” to notice that the janitor left a bucket of water in the hallway.)

 As with maneuvering and assessment (above), the resulting aspect can be tagged. Unlike assessment, declaration doesn’t take any actual in-game time at all—just successful

 Many skills have a trappingallowing some kind of knowledge—for example, someone might use his Guns skill to make some declarations about the firepower an opponent is carrying.

 As with assessments, aspects created with declarations don’t go away after being tagged, so long as circumstances make it reasonable that they hang around. This does mean that occasionally assessments and declarations can backfire on the character establishing them (other characters might use the same aspect, or the GM might bring that aspect back around to complicate the character’s endeavors).