When it comes to character advancement I know where I sit: don't bother. I tend to prefer the characters to be built as who they need to be to tell the story in question and then I prefer character development, which general involves shifting relationships, goals, connections and premises, etc. If these elements are supported by the system to drive the narrative all the better. I tend to like systems that include those elements. Not all players are the same though, and at times character advancement is in synch with character development, the oft quoted example being Luke Skywalker.

The big question: Do I have character advancement in my space fantasy experiment? I've put some thought into it over the weekend and I'm still torn on the issue as there is a number of elements in play.

In system terms, Fate isn't character advancement friendly. It tends to be slanted towards producing dramatically competent characters acting within concept of 'maximum capacity'. The focus is then on character development via resolving and changing aspects which represent the protagonist's narrative space. It also tends to be narrowly scoped, with the advancement differential being relatively small and not that granular at the same time. I have no problem with this in principle. I'd be even fine with this in a campaign as long as the 4E one, as long as aspects where being resolved and changed and the character's narrative space changing over time. It does raise the question of how long the campaign will be? As even I recognise the longer the campaign the more people who prefer character advancement would feel its absence.

The other issue from my point of view is what level of advancement to pitch the characters at? Because if they're not at their maximum there is room to move towards it. As an example, the default Spirit of the Century level represents hyper-competency, which worked well in Thrilling Tales as that was the idea, each character, in their own way, was a God-damned supernova of brilliance on a Doctor Who scale. No problem with that in principle, but even I can see growing to that has some interesting facets. At the moment, based on images, concepts and ideas in my head, I have no problem with the characters being at the Spirit of the Century level of competence, and certainly want to play the concept out at that level at some point, but I'm not sure I want it as the default throughout?

The tools in the box at the minute involve advancing three elements: Aspects, Stunts and Skills. You start with less of each and move to having more. I don't think I'm convinced about fine grained advancement, such as gaining a bit of currency after every session and getting to spend that currency. It's certainly going to be 'saga' advancement linked into the structure of the affair. This tends to mean after acts, series or whatever the characters will move up a scale. Looking at the options in Starblazer Adventures for beginning characters and the advancement rules, the options seem to be skill point breaks of 15, 20, 26, 30, 35 which allow the construction of different skill trees with 35 being the typical Spirit of the Century tree with 1 skill at Superb. I'm not wanting to begin characters at 15 so that is out, which leaves for breakpoints which can be reduced to three as it stands a chance of forming around a beginning, middle and end. I've listed them below complete with a skill tree based on always pursuing the highest on the ladder:-

• Aspects: 8, Stunts: 4, Skills: 26 (Gr1-Go3-Fa4-Av5)
• Aspects: 9, Stunts: 4, Skills: 30 (Gr2-Go3-Fa4-Av5)
• Aspects: 10, Stunts: 5, Skills: 35 (Su1-Gr2-Go3-Fa4-Av5)

So, characters would start with 26 skill points and then advance to gaining an Aspect and 4 skill points (enough to get a second Great) and then to 35 which gets them a Superb and 1 Aspect and another stunt putting them circa Spirit of the Century level. Each breakpoint would involve some skills moving on the ladder I suspect. This shows the weakness in more granular advancement, as in each case the skill points are spent on 1 skill at the highest level. This doesn't have to be the case, but the ladder system in Fate might have particularities if one character goes for more lower skills than pursuing the top most on the ladder.

The conclusion? At the minute I'm not sure. It does depend on a lot of other criteria. How long is the campaign going to be? If it's 'short' and 'intense' then there is less room for advancement and the best bit is to build for purpose and just go for it. If there is a sense of build, no matter what the length, then matching the advancement to a beginning, middle and end may have some merit and work well. Then you have to consider how much width there is in the above proposition? How different and powerful is a character from the first one to the last one? The other factor to consider is sometimes it's just better to start small and build no matter what the structure of the campaign or the character advancement agenda, it's just players tend to grow into their character's over time and the break points with aspect additions may well work on that principle.

At the moment, I'm satisfied I've broken down some of the possible, and I'm happy to wait for other things to become clearer as time progresses. This is another large part of the experiment, not concerning myself with sweating out some of the details way to early. I also suspect there will be a bit of a catch-22 to this in terms of the relationship between campaign structure and characters. I'm also aware that starting lower and just changing character advancement leaves options open, while starting at the top tends not to. Plenty of time and discussions will no doubt take place.

I realise a Space Fantasy campaigns leave lots of options for other forms of advancement, such as a base, modifying the ship, controlling an organisation all of which is possibly in Starblazer Adventures, which may de-prioritise character advancement.