Conditions?
I've run 5 or 6 sessions of the Dresden Files Accelerated game, but I'm still struggling with a few things. My group is having fun so it may not be a problem, but I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around Conditions.
This seems to be unique to the Dresden game - I don't see it reflected on the standard Fate Accelerated character sheets, but I could be missing it.
In short - a PC can acquire a condition in a few ways - taking damage, or doing something unique like a stunt - there are also character specific conditions (bear with me here).
For example a magic practioner can mark Exhaustion to boost a stunt, a monster hunter can mark In Pursuit to learn about their quarry, or a vampire can mark Hungry if using their supernatural charisma.
My question is, in these cases there's 4 or 5 boxes for each condition, and despite playing several sessions, I haven't had a PC mark more than 2 boxes of any condition during a story arc. The fact the game has effects built in to impact the characters if the boxes are full, tells me it expects them to face this challenge. Imagine a vampire PC struggling against their hunger as they navigate the story.
But to me they would have to spam the stunt intentionally to reach this level. How many times does the situation reasonably arise for these conditions to be relevant?
Am I missing somthing?
EDIT: It turns out, Yes, I was missing something. I thought conditions cleared at the end of story arcs. While I had the PCs mark conditions over the 2-3 days of in-game time for an arc/chapter, I assumed they would clear by time the next session began after in-game weeks-months.