In Arcadia Ego was designed and tested with the following rulesets:
- Fate Accelerated (which you may download for free here);
- N-Dimensional Tourists (which you may download for free here).
Both rulesets are members of the family of Fate.
While you are encouraged to use whichever ruleset you prefer – whether Fate or anything else – you will need to understand and possibly adapt the notion of Aspects, which is used throughout the game.
An Aspect is a sentence (or a word, or a description) that describes something important and real in the story. Typically, important characters, places, events, have Aspects. For instance:
- Wolves are howling in the forest;
- An Ethereal Creature of Light and Beauty;
- The War is over, but Famine, Pestilence and Death still roam the land;
- The Knights Templar are always involved;
- Here, all debts must be paid;
- A well-planned ambush;
- …
Aspects may be temporary or permanent. The Well-planned Ambush may turn into a Humiliating Rout or into One more victory for the Rebellion or simply disappear once it makes no more sense in the story.
By definition, Aspects represent something real and may be used by the GM and players alike to extend the story. If the character is An Ethereal Creature of Light and Beauty, it makes sense for the player to claim that this creature has no problem seeing in the darkness. Similarly, it makes sense for the GM to claim that the character simply cannot hide in this same darkness.
This is all you need to understand about Aspects.
In the following chapters, we will use Aspects to describe both setting and characters.
