Elsewhere I had posed of a Confidence House Rule, there was some siscussion and a mention of an awards system. I came up with the idea of Fortune, people liked it and suggested how to revise it. So I mentalated upon it and brewed this up...
Confidence is used as normal. At the start of every story characters begin with their standard starting allotment of Confidence Points (which is twice their confidence score plus one). You don't accumulate new points as an award. You just start out every seperate story with that many points. If it is a long story, the SG may allow Confidence to replenish between acts or after segments of the tale.
At the end of a story, each player recieves an award of Fortune. The award value range is as for Confidence, 1 to 5 points and usually 3, and for all the same reasons.
It is the Player that gets the award, noth the character. The players gets the award no matter which character they are playing. Even if it is an NPC the storyguide assigns them.
In the spirit of troupe style play, the story guide should be thought of as a fellow player. The other players in that story should nominate someone to determine an appropriate award for telling the story, 1 to 5 points usually 3.
Players will all keep track of their personal Fortune, to be publically posted in a top box thread. Everyone will have their own post that they can edit to chance valuses as points are gained and spent. They are not time sensative. Points gained in one story can be used in another that actually taking place before it and hasn't concluded yet (multiple story participation, real life time mismanagment, stories running longer that expected, and other things happen to cause this).
Everyone will have their number of Fortune Points and a Fortune Score. The score is the pyramid value of your points, like xp for an Art. So say you have 10 Fortune Points your Score is 4, and when you reach 15 your score is 5.
This is important, because the Score is the limit on how many points you can use in a round. Thus your score will fluctuate up and down.
You can spend points in active play ("on-screen") on the activities of any character you are playing, even grogs and assigned NPC's. The storyguide of a particular tale suspends the use of their own Fortune, it is reserved for when you are playing as a player.
Fortune Points spent in active play can achieve one of the following results...
- Add +2 per point to the results of a roll
- Recover Fatigue at a cost of one point per level.
- Lessen the severity of an Injury as it is being recieved, one time per injury.
- Be "fortunate" to find the vis needed to do something that needs to be done there and thenm
...
We need more discussion on this, and/or the troupe needs to voice acceptance/dissention. It seems that everyone is on board, but iI see some room for refinement. Mainly I want to word it better, dress it up all nice before I post it in the HR section. I also want to tweek how it is used. Mainly one item, Recovery of Fatigue is too much, but substitution of expenditure seems the right idea (so far).
I will make three posts that follow this. The first will define the Confidence Rule. The second will explain Fortune and how it is gained and spend, and the third will be an example of how it will be posted.
Spending Fortune in place of fatigue seems like the way to go. A lot of fatigue immune things have to do that. No retroactive fatigue spending.
You should specify if Fortune points are worth one "found" vis, or all the needed vis and if it can be used in the lab or not. Again to compare it to other places where confidence is spent it seems like it would be worth one vis.
Being able to lessen injuries seems like something that Ars is badly lacking for a story based game with such lethal combat. "You botched? Sorry the house cat eviscerates you. Guess she won't be tying up her loose ends." Its great for well liked, (but not loved) Grogs/NPCs getting their femoral artery cut, but less so when it happens to the well loved companion.
I would like to see fortune be usable when taking risks in the lab as well. Not sure about a mechanism, but it seems to me that they should be able to ameliorate results such as "lab explodes, everything lost"
Sorry, with all the stuff going on, this thread missed my attention.
I have no problem with the Fortune system as proposed.
My question is, what about those of us with a surplus of Confidence Points? Will we be able to spend them until we get down to zero and then start on the new CP system?
It seems to me that there should be an exchange...
which also brings up the thought of whether there should be a way to use fortune points to buy up the confidence score.. maybe at the same pricing as xp for abilities?
I would say a direct exchange of excess Confiedence for Fortune would be fair. But only from one character. Points and Score are recorded for individual players, to be used on whatever character they are playing at the moment of use.
I also favor the idea of using them to lessen or avoid disaterous rolls.
As for improving Confidence, I am unsure. I would prefer a mechanic to let one gain new General Virtues in play other than Mysteries.
I like the idea of using points to lessen injury or survive near death. Not sure about Fatigue though, since I see ways to potentially abuse it. Maybe just Fatigue loss? not expenditures.
Yeah, not reversing it, but spending in place of.
I propose substituting for Loss, not Spending. For example, let's say you are Fatigued from running a mile, you could count the Loss off of Fortune. But you cannot spend Fortune in place of Fatigue for boosting your Combat totals or to cast Spontaneous magic or Life Boost or etceteras.
Unless the rest of you do want to do it that way. It wouldn't be a game breaker.
I disagree on this. If this happens, it's because you choose to experiment. You can do perfectly safely without, which ain't the same case as, say, combat, where you don't have a "no roll" option.
Yeah, I thought the same thing. Fatigue is a big deal in Ars.
There's also no real need for it: Fatigue spending in combat gives a bonus, which may be achieved by spending confidence. And avoiding fatigue in spellcasting can be managed by reaching the spell level.
I'd keep it akin with Vis:
- Gives +2 to any roll which benefits from an attribute.
- Can be spend instead of vis in rituals: You benefit from a surge of magic (I like this, because it makes magic more "magical"), you have some vis stashed away, whatever)
- Can be spend to lessen injuries, but by one step only, sparing characters from exploding dices/botches.
Yes and no.
I think it's a good idea, and agree on the mechanism.
Problem is, "confidence", and thus fortune, is awarded relatively liberally, which would result in rapid increase of confidence scores to 2 or 3, with no fortune expenditure, and then, fortune spending anew.
So, IMO, either we stamp down on confidence awards, or we use a separate mechanism.
I thought, for characters:
- Participates actively in a story: 01 point.
- Is the focus of a story (like Roberto in the Visitor, or Arachné with Valten): +01
- The story wastes a season of a mage/companion character: +01
- Self confident is aking to a "puissant confidence score"
=> Characters that are often played and are the focus of long stories have more chance to increase their confidence score.
Note that, in a way, this may be adapted to be awarded to the player as confidence, like:
- Player participates actively in a story: 01 point.
- Player has a character that's the focus of a story (like Roberto in the Visitor, or Arachné with Valten): +01
- The story wastes a season of a mage/companion character of the player: +01
Pilgrinage? 
I think the proposal above works for me, pretty much. I approve of using Fortune to ignore "lost" but not "spent" fatigue. I'm ambivalent about reducing lab-risk - I was against Fortune being used to prevent botches, because botches can produce good stories. Lab risk feels similar - look at Vibria's current story - but perhaps less so.
Fixer's idea that participation raises your confidence score is intriguing, definitely.
Ohhh... I get it now. I saw loss and spending as the same thing. Yeah, that makes sense.
If you don't want your lab to explode when you experiment get rid of the botch die via safety.
A little tidbit I thought about...
Fortune could be used to enhance descriptions. I mean, rather than saying "I use fortune to get +2 to attack", you need to make a short sentence explaining why you get that bonus, such as:
- The sunlight gets into my opponent's eyes, giving me +2 to attack
- I use my "Swift Wolf" fencing move to gain +2 to attack
This is not unlike how marko described having a surplus vis. You might say "I received 1 pawn from a fae I helped", or "The stars are right, and I need one less (s)pawn".
The idea is to add a little descriptive, instead of just claiming a mechanical bonus.
I like that 
I like the idea of Fortune, so I just wanted to throw out a possible alternate way to view/deal with fortune.
First, let me digress a bit and explain where my thoughts come from. The RL game group I used to play with (before I had to move) played a lot of Indie/"Story" games and the idea of something similar to your concept of Fortune is out there in a lot of those types of games. We started incorporating the concept into all of out games, calling them "cool points". One of the most common ways we "disseminated" cool points was to start a session with x number of poker chips in the middle of the table. If a player or character did something someone else at the table thought was "cool", they took a poker chip from the table and gave it to them. It could have really been anything; a very cool roleplay scene, a funny reaction to another PCs action, an awesome tactic, or even a lucky die roll that saved the day. We even awarded a "cool point" if someone brought baked yummies to the game 
Note, we also awarded "cool points' to the GM.
The way I would implement something similar here is that at the beginning of an adventure thread, the SG would post how many Fortune is available for dissemination (probably based on some formula of number of players). Throughout the course of that adventure, anyone playing has the right to "hand out" one Fortune (assuming there is still some left) to any other player, to include the SG. This obviously lowers the Fortune pool by one. If there is no more Fortune left, players can actually give one of their own Fortune points to another player if they felt it is deserved (we did this in our games as well).
Any thoughts?
I don't know...it seems like it would be workable for a tabletop group, but it seems rather cumbersome for an online game. Especially one when some players are either not that active or are only active in bursts (i.e. me).
One detail- he mentioned having a score which accumulates like it does for abilities, but it seems to me that the amount we can spend would have to be that score+1, otherwise you cannot spend any fortune points until you have 5...
No, I meant like Arts. Straight pyramid value. If you have 1 you can spend 1, 2 if you have three, etc.
A day late, but here it finally is. The nicely written out version adjusted after the discussions.
It may need further revision and/or simplification.
Let me know what you all think