But Harry has Listening and First Lawbreaker, both of which he basically never uses. He doesn't get to self-Compel a WASTED ONE REFRESH ON LISTENING Aspect, he just has one less Refresh.

And he'd get more out of Great Lore and Good Endurance than he does out of Good Lore and Great Endurance. But his skills are what they are.

Of course, I'm just giving examples of ways to turn apparent weaknesses in a character build into a narrative-building part of the character.

I mean when you get right down to it, there's almost no reason anyone would want to take a Lawbreaker stunt, unless you're planning to go all-out in breaking that particular law. Though even with that, the more you take it, the more you have to change your aspects to reflect its effect on you. So it's clearly in keeping with the spirit of the rules to take aspects that reflect how your skills and stunts/powers define your character.

You'd be better off doing this with high Discipline. After all, Discipline is important for doing damage. And it's not like self-controlled people can't be loose cannons.

Certainly! It's all up to the player. It all adds to the character and their own personal story. A self-controlled loose cannon can be someone who has utterly rational and carefully-planned reasons for breaking the rules. A very nice twist on the typical "maverick cop" stereotype.

Harry actually concedes ... a lot. He runs away, everytime he runs from a fight? It's a concession. When he passes out, and wakes up a prisoner? That's a concession. When he passes out, out of combat, it's a compel on his consequences.

Yep, this exactly! I try to encourage my players to focus on their aspects over their abilities. Aspects are far more important for seeing how the story goes.

In addition to the benefits explained here, there's also the potential for Sponsored Magic tripping an opponent's catch, like Seelie Magic does for the Winter Fae, and vice versa. Or using Soulfire against a Denarian.

I don't know if this has been considered, but as regards whether to pick Recovery powers or Toughness, etc, not every character concept suits Toughness, just like not every character concept suits Recovery. Sometimes the choice is more than mechanical benefit.

I'd go with Item of Power (Utility Belt of Magic Items) and buy Ritualist: Crafting through it.

Definitely not a vanilla mortal, under the Template rules, but mortal as far as in-game matters would be concerned.

I find recovery powers much more broadly useful than toughness. Toughness has such a brief utility, while recovery means you're always back in the fight before anybody else. This is especially useful if you run a big climactic battle as a sequence of separate conflicts. Doing so makes each stage of the battle a different scene, so if you have recovery powers, you have a distinct advantage.

As Deposed King said, short stories aren't really going to sell. I have one short story available and another on the way that are purely there as a little bit of an extra for my existing readers. I'd suggest getting out of thinking in terms of pages, and into thinking in wordcounts. Number of pages is decided during internal design and typesetting, and if you went to an agent or a publisher, they would ask for a wordcount, not number of pages.

You really do want to aim for 80,000 words, and then when you have that done, either seek out a literary agent, or hire a professional editor (or, if you know someone with the right skills and experience, see if they'll do you a favour an edit it for free, or in return for something else). You're going to need that expert, third-party opinion. And not just to catch spelling and grammar mistakes, but for structural edits, too, like continuity, pacing, themes. My first novel wound up having the first 50 pages cut. My second required a complete re-write before my publisher would even offer me the contract.

Of course, you can be an astonishing writer, and you won't get anywhere if you don't put in the work elsewhere. Build up an online platform. Start a blog, build a website, get on social media. Engage with the writing and fandom community, but don't act like a salesman. If you post nothing but sales pitches, people will ignore you. It's a real connection people look for, that encourages them to take a chance on your book and tell others about it. They'll help you succeed because they want to see you get to write more books.

When people tell you they've read your book, as them if they'd mind posting a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Host giveaways and contests to draw attention to your brand.

But during all this, remember that the only way to reliably draw more attention to your work is to keep writing. I had a book out in 2012 and in 2013, and this year I have two out. And I still feel like I need to write more and get more books out there.

As for time, well, I'm not renovating a house, but I work 40 hours a week, with an hour commute each way. My wife is a wheelchair-user so there are things she needs help with around the house, and certain household chores she simply can't do. And we have three babies under the age of 2. I get up at 6am every day, including weekends. After getting the girls to bed and having dinner, it's often  8 or 9pm by the time I get to sit down and unwind. I write before I leave for work, during my lunch, and for a few hours every Saturday and Sunday morning.

You find the time for the things that matter, and that's what you need to decide, as Meg said. It's all about priorities, and

Pretty much anyone can get 500 words written in one hour, if they focus on it. With practice, this will easily go up to 1,000. If you write just 1 hour a day, and give yourself weekends off, you can write a draft of an 80,000 word novel in 16 weeks. Give yourself another 4 weeks to account for spellchecking and edits before sending it to an agent or editor, and that's 20 weeks for one novel.

Even with a busy schedule, you can easily get 2 novels written each year, with 12 weeks off for holidays and special occasions.

That's another mistake I made. I never made sure the character had an aspect to reflect Cassandra's Tears.

I think the group needs to have a proper talk about the power. It should be a defining element of the campaign, and so far the group's response to visions has been to send away magic items seen in them, keep friendly characters away and have hostile characters fought and/or killed by someone who wasn't in the vision.

I'm not entirely sure why the power was taken, really. The character is a "psychic biker", and for a long time was played as though she didn't believe in the supernatural, at least beyond psychic visions and psychometry. It did strain credulity after a while, and the character has finally been convinced that monsters and magic are real.

I'm starting to think Cassandra's Tears is one of those powers that players just shouldn't be allowed to take.

Another suggestion has been to have a vision start off incredibly cryptic, but as the story goes on it recurs and becomes more and more clear. I'm not sure how to pull that off, again given that we play for 2-3 hours a week.

The funny thing is, that none of the visions so far have actually come true, because the group has always acted to prevent them. We only have about one vision per story arc, but I'm still not sure how to handle it. Anything I could do, aside from insisting that the players RP it, seems either over-powering or disruptive.