Interacting with Aspects

## **Interacting With Other Aspects**

*The aspects on your character are not the only **aspects** that you can use. Your fellow players’ characters have aspects, of course, as do some NPCs. Sometimes even the scene itself may have aspects (called, shockingly, scene aspects), like **Dark** or **Cluttered**.*

Additionally, the city where your campaign takes place will have aspects on it that your group will make up during city creation , which can be considered scene aspects on nearly every scene. To interact with an aspect other than your own, your character needs to directly interact with the object, location, or person that has the aspect you want to invoke, in a way that is appropriate to the action in progress. This means that if a scene has an aspect of **Ill Met by Candlelight**, not only can characters be described as emerging from the shadows with eerily under-lit faces, but those characters may also invoke the aspect to aid their Stealth rolls (thanks to the low lighting implied). They might later invoke it to knock the candles over and set the room ablaze, or to trigger encounters that are inopportune to one or more parties (“Ill Met” indeed!).

Your character also needs to have reasonable access to the aspect in question. With scene aspects, this is easy—your character usually just needs to be present in the scene to interact with the aspect. There are several ways you can gain access to an aspect that is on another character or scene:

·         **Discover**  it via assessment

·         Create it with a declaration

·         Establish it with a maneuver

·         Inflict a consequence

If your character can interact directly with the owner of the aspect in an appropriate manner and has reasonable access to the aspect in question, you may use that aspect in a number of different ways.

### **Invoking Other Aspects**

The procedure to **invoke**  an aspect that isn’t on your character is precisely the same as a regular invocation: just declare how that aspect is relevant, spend a **fate point**, and take a +2 or a reroll. The only thing to keep in mind is that, if you’re invoking an aspect on another PC or on a NPC to gain an advantage over them, that character will *receive the fate point you spent*, either at the end of the exchange

 Invocations on other aspects can also be done for effect, allowing you to use someone else’s aspect or a scene aspect to make a declaration. All the guidelines for invoking for effect apply here.

### ***Tagging***

A tag is a special move that you may be able to do when you're invoking aspects other than your own. Whenever you make a roll to gain access to create an aspect, you may invoke it one time, and one time only, for free - as in, you don't spend from your pool of fate points to take advantage of the aspect. A tag is subject to one key limitation: it must occur almost immediately after the aspect has been brought into play. Some minor delay is acceptable, but should be avoided when possible.

At worst, a tag should happen sometime during the scene in which it was established. Some assessments are an exception to this time limit. If you wish, you can allow another character to use the tag for an aspect you’ve discovered or introduced. This allows for some great set-up maneuvers in a fight; you can maneuver to place an aspect on a target, then pass the tag to an ally who attacks, using the advantage on his own roll. This can only be done, however, if it is reasonable that the advantage could be passed off. A sniper who uses a maneuver to aim his rifle at a target, putting an **In My Sights** aspect on it, can’t pass the advantage to someone else—the aspect placed is specific to him. But if Harry uses a maneuver to put a **Spritzed With Holy Water** aspect on a vampire, he could reasonably pass the advantage to Billy, who moves in for the knockout blow. Tags, even if they are to a character’s detriment, do not award a fate point like a normal invocation would. If no fate point was spent, there’s no fate point to pass around. Tagging often involves temporary aspects that result from maneuvers.

### **Compelling Other Aspects**

Being able to interact with the aspects of others creates a powerful opportunity for the clever player to set up another character to be **compelled.** If you are aware of and can access an aspect on another character or NPC, you may spend a fate point to try to trigger the circumstances of a compel on the target. If the GM decides this is a compel-worthy circumstance, then she takes the offered fate point and proceeds with a compel, running it as if she had initiated the compel herself.

 This is a chain reaction—the first player calls for the compel, and if the GM accepts it as valid, she negotiates it with the player of the target character, who either decides to accept (gaining a fate point) or avoid (spending a fate point). Once the initiating player spends the fate point, he *does not get it back even if the target buys out of the compel*.

### **Scene Compells**

Scene aspects may imply some circumstances that will befall any (or many) of the characters in the scene—**Everything Is Burning!** Is a classic example and a frequent aspect in any scene involving Harry Dresden. In such a case, it’s entirely apropos to act as if that aspect is on each character’s sheet and compel the aspect for each of them, dishing fate points all around and nicely covering the effects the aspect has on the characters in the scene. Technically speaking, a player could try to use a scene aspect to initiate a mass compel, but it’d be a pretty expensive proposition—he’d have to spend a fate point for every character he wants to be affected by the compel.