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By the way, the new Bundle of Holding is Spirit of the Century, with the Spirit of the Season adventure, and beat the average for Strange Tales of the Century, which is a great sourcebook and has rules for updating SotC to Fate Core.
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Apr 29, 2014 23:42
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Could one of you guys explain the damage system in this game to me? I've read it a few times and I don't really get it.
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Apr 30, 2014 23:06
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Swags posted:Could one of you guys explain the damage system in this game to me? I've read it a few times and I don't really get it. It helps to think of damage as being a "class-2 hit" then "doing 2 damage," to start off with. If you have 4 stress boxes, for instance, and take a 2-shift hit, then you'd mark off the "2" stress box only. 1 is left open. Next time you take a shift-2 hit, you'd have to either take a consequence to avoid the damage or mark off the "3" stress box. If you are unable to mark off a box or take a consequence, you're taken out. Stress is automatically cleared between scenes; consequences last longer depending on their severity.
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Apr 30, 2014 23:14
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That helps a ton. Thank you.
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Apr 30, 2014 23:19
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Swags posted:That helps a ton. Thank you. Awesome! Happy to help!
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Apr 30, 2014 23:53
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One of my players just got a new job that's taking up a lot of his time, so the rest of us are gonna be starting up a Venture City game for the month of May until his schedule opens up. Right now I'm debating whether I'm going to convert it all to FAE or keep it Core. It doesn't seem very hard to convert, but I'm a notoriously lazy gm.
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May 2, 2014 00:26
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As far as I can see, all it would involve is splitting skills by approach, then averaging them, or maybe just get the players to 'make their character under FAE' - shouldn't take more than 5m? I should point out I've not actually run FAE yet, though I'm looking at it for my next game - skills seem the most clunky/(usually needlessly) granulated parted of FATE, and I'm totally in favour of combining stress tracks. Are there any other differences that I'm missing?
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May 2, 2014 00:41
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Oh, if I do it in FAE I'll just have the players build their characters with that, I don't need to convert that. But I do want to convert the pre-written NPCs. And some of the power effects might be cheaper because of approaches instead of skills. Instead of getting a +2 to two different skills, it could just be a +2 to an approach. None of it is too difficult, and I prefer FAE to Core, but I also like being able to run things out of the box with almost no prep aside from a few adventure notes, and mechanical conversion takes away from that.
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May 2, 2014 00:59
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In that case, let me hit you up for some advice - what sort of skill level should opposition be in FAE? My FATE campaign was pretty awesome, but I really struggled to put enough challenge against the PCs. They were happy being Utterly Awesome At Everything, but it was a bit too one-sided. Then I made a big bad to be a bit more of a threat, rolled +4, and one-shotted a PC (though she saved the universe in her death, and the player was happy to have a 'heroic death fighting the big bad'.)  . e: The PC was only taken out, bleeding out on the floor, and then the other players set off the suitcase nuke they'd been toting around all campaign.It's about the only problem I have with FATE, the core book does a shite job of telling you how to work out a decent threat for the players, and it's something I still don't have a feel for after more than a year of running it. petrol blue fucked around with this message at 01:12 on May 2, 2014 |
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May 2, 2014 01:09
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Well, I'm pretty new to Fate myself, and I've had that problem myself, so I'm probably not who you should be hitting up for advice. I've mostly had the Awesome At Everything side of things, it took an entire arc the first game of Core I ran to even managed to lay a severe consequence on a character, with only a handful of mild and moderates before that. And even that was a battle of attrition to get to that point. I find that the more survivable your enemies, the harder the fight will be, even if your only getting in small hits you'll eventually use up some stress. I've also had luck with bringing multiple baddies to one fight, in general I have trouble making solo monsters a threat in rpgs. Other than that I don't really have a lot of advice. And my preference for FAE is pretty theoretical, I've only actually played Core. From just a reading, though, I prefer Approaches to skills and I think the stunt design in FAE is better than Core.
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May 2, 2014 01:37
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In my FATE Core Exalted game, when we were rolling up characters, I explicitly told my players, "Stunts work in three ways: one is to give you an 'always active benefit', one is to give you an explicit ability that isn't spelled out in an Aspect already, and one is to give you a +2 to a particular kind of action in a certain circumstance." I mostly borrow the wording from the Apocalypse/Dungeon World moves for these: Ancient Voices Remembered "When you attempt to translate an ancient scroll in a language your First Age incarnation could reasonably have known, take a +2 to your Lore roll." I also pointed out that these are probably among the less 'interesting' choices for stunts, but they are an option. The first one is demonstrated best by a Medicine-based Stunt the party Twilight Caste took: Enlightened Physician's Diagnostic Excellence "When you attempt to diagnose an illness, it takes a matter of minutes." This isn't directly tied to an Aspect, or I'd have told her that the Aspect applies anyways; I don't see the need for two bits of the system to both be hitting on the same thing. The second one is best exemplified by a stunt the Dawn Caste took: Cloud-Mounting Leap "When you move across open-roofed zones with an Athletics roll, ignore rough terrain or multiple zone penalties." This one allows him to do what he wants to do; play a highly mobile fighter who can move between areas of the fight, and also incidentally allows the Twilight Caste to use long-range abilities to set up useful situation Aspects for him to exploit.
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May 3, 2014 03:59
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FrozenGoldfishGod posted:The first one is demonstrated best by a Medicine-based Stunt the party Twilight Caste took:
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May 3, 2014 05:04
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FrozenGoldfishGod posted:Enlightened Physician's Diagnostic Excellence It might also be cool if the diagnosis was a matter of moments, not minutes. Have you got any more of these typed up FrozenGoldfishGod? I'm doing research for a hack of my own and I'd love to see what you've done!
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May 3, 2014 05:16
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Evil Mastermind posted:Maybe it's just me, but this one feels pretty weak; maybe adding something like "and you automatically learn one of the target's sickness-, disease-, or injury-related aspects (if any)" would be better? Neither really seems practical in the actual game. "Mysterious illness" is a plot thing, and it's not something you can run into more than once every few campaigns without it being just House. I think it's okay if you expand the scope a bit. Enlightened Physician's Diagnostic Excellence You can diagnose most any illness with only a quick inspection, and even the most obscure take only minutes. You also know the proper treatment for any illness you diagnose, and how to procure those items, even if they are inaccessible at the time (for example, a rare flower at the world's tallest mountain, or an elixir in the king's vault). Finally, your ability to properly treat wounds can greatly speed the healing process. Moderate Consequences you personally treat heal one step more quickly. Most of the time, only the consequence related part of the stunt comes into play. Every now and then, a mysterious illness pops up and the other part comes up too. Ancient Voices Remembered "When you attempt to translate an ancient scroll in a language your First Age incarnation could reasonably have known, take a +2 to your Lore roll." This is another one that needs some work. A stunt needs to be able to be at least as useful as a fate point, and if someone can just Invoke their past life aspect for that same +2 bonus to their Lore roll--and virtually any other roll--it's not going to be useful, unless there are just going to be a ton of plot critical untranslated junk that is going to screw the PCs over if they don't translate it. Try this. Ancient Voices Remembered Once per scene, if you can describe how something relevant feels familiar to your past life aspect, you can Invoke your past life aspect to aid on a non-combat roll free. For example, you could gain a bonus to a Lore roll to translate a language your past life was able to read, or gain a bonus to your Physique roll to resist poison, because your past life tasted that same poison before and you know to spit it out.
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May 3, 2014 08:10
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Neither really seems practical in the actual game. "Mysterious illness" is a plot thing, and it's not something you can run into more than once every few campaigns without it being just House. I think it's okay if you expand the scope a bit. I think it's a legacy problem from the original game though; there are so many Charms that are ridiculously situational that translating them as-is into another system causes issues because at least in Exalted you get bunches of them, but stunts in Fate are a more limited resource.
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May 3, 2014 16:53
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So, there are two things I've been meaning to ask this thread about. First, what would you do for actions that are both at an increased difficulty, and actively resisted? Like trying to shoot someone in the dark (without having to invoke that aspect for defense) or unhook someones bra as they dodge? Basically I know my players are going to try to do ridiculous stuff that would also be resisted actively, and I want to know how to handle it. I've mostly dealt with White Wolf games for the most part, Exalted specifically, and I'm looking for ways to add penalties to actions. Second, what do you all think of the Ryan Danks articles about Ironman and Superman? Do you agree with his assessment of what aspects can allow, or do you think those sorts of things should be handled by stunts?
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May 5, 2014 06:06
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slut chan posted:So, there are two things I've been meaning to ask this thread about. If you want to make something harder, either require success with style (and have a regular success give a temporary aspect as if they did the Create an Advantage action) or give a penalty. Handling stuff through aspects or or handling it through stunts are both perfectly acceptable as long as everyone is on board as to what you are doing.
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May 5, 2014 14:08
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I've encountered 0 problems using aspects to justify powers, in over 15 different Fate settings/variants. As long as you don't weld on tons of powers ('everyone has weapons! Everyone has planes that give them +2 to rolls defensively! Everyone has kinetic barriers!), the system endures. Just give problems that different players can solve.
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May 5, 2014 20:06
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I ended up picking up an Omegazone deck the other day, and it's pretty interesting, if having a bit of wasted potential. It uses FAE, and character creation is done by picking cards. You have 13 "Character Definition" cards, which give you 4 points split between the approaches, and suggested stunts.  (Sorry for the crappy phone pics) You also have 13 Mutation cards, which give you a further +1 to an approach and another suggested stunt.  There are also 13 Gear cards, each of which is basically free Boosts under certain circumstances.  Character creation involves drawing two Definition cards and a Mutation card, adding up all your approaches, and selecting some or all of the stunts.  So with the above draw, I have Forceful+2, Careful +3, Quick +0, Clever+0, Flashy+3, Sneaky+1.  That's the character sheet card that comes with the deck. There are a few "how to use this deck" cards in there. The other cards are six Location cards which I guess are the setting of the game, and seven Adventure Hook cards that the GM can hand out at their leisure.  Overall it's pretty neat, but I think it would have been better served as a two-deck set; one for players with more backgrounds/mutations/gear, and a GM's deck that has more locations/hooks/etc. As it is it feels limited, but not in a "I don't have a lot of options here" way but in a "I want more stuff" way. Like, as a GM I'd love to be given 20 Location cards of varying tones, deal five, and that's the default starting setting, the deal out four of the provided "power players" cards and those are the main organizations, then interpriting all those cards into a full setting. As a minor issue, the random chargen can lead to a bit of imbalance, as it's possible for someone to start with a +5 or +6 in an approach and suck at all the other ones, but I guess that's just a problem inherent to random chargen.
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May 10, 2014 20:01
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Piell posted:If you want to make something harder, either require success with style (and have a regular success give a temporary aspect as if they did the Create an Advantage action) or give a penalty. That's actually kinda elegant. It sounds better than having the aspect use the teamwork rules, but has the same effect statistically. Would they still get the boost? Golden Bee posted:I've encountered 0 problems using aspects to justify powers, in over 15 different Fate settings/variants. As long as you don't weld on tons of powers ('everyone has weapons! Everyone has planes that give them +2 to rolls defensively! Everyone has kinetic barriers!), the system endures. This actually kinda clicked for me the other night. Aspects affect the realm of the story- so while the Kryptonian aspect wouldn't keep you from taking that 4 stress hit, you'd need a stunt for that because it's firmly a mechanic, but it will inform any consequences he takes. This is kinda supported by Danks' choice of stunts for Supes. I'd want a bit more mechanical support though, for such a bold aspect. Like, you couldn't have the aspect "Ultimate Swordsman" with a fight of 2 and no stunts. Or is that still being stuck in my old ways? Iunno, the Kryptonian aspect seems a little overpowered for a real game, although I understand the exercise.
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May 10, 2014 22:38
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I imagine that not everyone on Krypton was a muscleman, at least comparatively. Remember all the juicy compels you can give - the weakness to magic, the secrecy of being a space alien, the loyalty to one's forgotten cousins, the duty to send prisoners back to the phantom zone... If you want a Superman, not just a Kryptonian, you'd need stunts like "Man of Steel: Once per combat, take a -2 to your defenses for a turn and clear your stress track" or "Stick Out Your Chest: When creating passive obstacles with Physique, defend actively."
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May 11, 2014 01:08
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Thanks for the writeup, EM, those cards do look pretty awesome. Not the first review I've seen that says it felt like it was lacking something though.
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May 11, 2014 08:51
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Alright, so I have a few questions for the game I'm running now. Not everyone's aspects apply all the time, but I don't want it to seem like I'm only dealing with certain people in terms of Compels so: can I compel a situational aspect at someone? Like if I say the forest is Non-Euclidean or that the inn is Full of Angry Ruffians can I compel those? What would happen in situations like that? Say someone takes an 8-shift hit, thus using their major consequence (and their 2-shift box, too, right? still not sure on that). Can I compel the major consequence when they gain Gutted or Arm-Fall-Off Boy or whatever? Does it work like a non-invokable aspect? How exactly should boosts be used for stuff? I've got a player that wanted to start off as 'Butterfly Effect Shaped Like a Man' for a high concept. Basically, he can drop a pencil, which will trip someone, which will send their coffee flying from their land, which will land on a windshield, blinding the driver, who careens into a pole, etc., etc. So I gave him an Extra that costs 1 Refresh and says, "Once per encounter, make a Notice check with a penalty of 3. You can place that many unclaimed boosts on the table and give them to whoever you wish, so long as they follow your directions." So he can tell other people how to start the butterfly effect. Is that cool? Too powerful? I like this system, I really do. It was this or Pathfinder again and I think we made the right choice, but I've never played in the game before so I'm still trying to wrap my head around some stuff.
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May 11, 2014 12:01
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Firstly, yeah, consequences work like aspects. Secondly, that extra kicks rear end. Don't worry about whether something's too powerful- the beauty of playing a tabletop RPG, particularly a universal system like FATE, is that you can adjust the difficulty to match your players rather than having to make sure they stick to the script. Plus, stuff like that (particularly if it's an aspect and not just an extra) can work against him just as well as it can work for him. 
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May 11, 2014 12:10
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A question! I was trying to map some characters to aspects, and came up with an issue. How would you deal with Transformation? A human transforming into a superhero, or a werewolf, thinks like that. More specifically, a transformation that could cause an Aspect to change. For example, the character that made me wonder this is a superhero. When he is human, is is "The Unluckiest Boy On Earth". BUT, when he transforms, he is "The Luckiest Hero In The Universe". The two are related, mutually exclusive, but may affect each other (If, as a Hero, he has a magnificent stroke of luck, his and luck will be WORSE when he becomes human again, for example).
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May 15, 2014 21:58
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It's been done a few different ways. Dresden Files just gives you a new character sheet more or less, so you now switch between two characters for the cost of two Refresh. I think the Eclipse Phase hacks, where people switch bodies all the time, have solid Ego aspects and changeable Morph aspects. For this specific problem there's an easy solution without any extras though, just give him one Aspect: The Unluckiest Boy and Luckiest Hero. You and the GM both know that when he's a boy he's very unlucky and gets Compels all the time, when he's a hero he invokes it and spends Fate Points for strokes of luck.
Mr. Prokosch fucked around with this message at 22:30 on May 15, 2014 |
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May 15, 2014 22:23
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I'd probably just use a 'Transform' stunt that describes what happens. You could even go all out and have two character sheets if there are all sorts of differences between the two forms. That might make sense in a game where significant powers are gained by transforming, kind of like the Power Rangers.
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May 15, 2014 22:25
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Myself, I'd do it with a single aspect "Feeble scientist, strong when angry" or whatever. As said before, the important part is that everyone knows what you both mean by it; my take is that a relevant aspect emphasising the difference should be enough unless the game is based around it (like if all the PCs were werewolves, etc).
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May 16, 2014 00:06
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I'm polling my group to see what genre we end up settling in, but meanwhile I'm kind of mulling around in my head about superheroes, in case they settle on that one. I don't want to introduce too much crunch, so I'd like powers to be primarily Aspect-based. The idea is that every PC gets 2 extra Aspects which are used specifically to describe what their superpowers are, as well as imply what their weaknesses should be. There probably will be a range of Stunts, as well, for bending rules with said powers. So, a person going for super strength might take a Stunt, "Shotput", that lets him make ranged attacks using Physique, while his aspect, "Unbelievably Strong" can be leveraged on the regular to make his apex skill of Physique really send the message home. It can also be compelled to complicate his life outside the costume, potentially compromising his Secret ID when he accidentally breaks durable things, and such. The part that I'm getting kind of stuck on, is I'd like PCs and equivalent NPCs to have their skill pyramids bumped up 2 levels, so the Apex Skill is at +6. If I do this with the whole pyramid, I'll have to add like another 15 pretty relevant skills in order to retain the balance of skills taken/not taken. I could do this if I really had to, where any given skill I add just represents a category of superpower, but it seems kind of counter to what FATE tries to do. I'm kind of leaning toward one of these: 1.) Just bump the whole pyramid up 2 levels, but not add the new +2 and +1 layers that would come up with it, so skills go +6,5,4,3 or 2.) Only bump up the first 2 layers, so skills go +6,5,2,1, making the characters kind of savant-ish? Any thoughts about this?
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May 19, 2014 19:49
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You don't really NEED to move everyone up to +6. There's an easier solution: Move everything else down. Compared to Captain America's +4 Great Physique, the average person has -1 physique. A frail person may be at -2, the average soldier is at +1. Otherwise, you make Fate more fiddly ("What do you mean Beastbrat has drive but not pilot? He has a flying boat!") and make it so someone like Nick Fury, whose Physique is probably +2, can NEVER compete with a +6 someone. Stunts, higher refresh, and broader aspects ("Last Son of Krypton", with the right GM/player understanding, could cover flight, laser eyes, magic allergies, the need to keep his identity secret...") will do most of the work for you. If that don't work, there's always FAE.
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May 19, 2014 20:55
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Golden Bee posted:You don't really NEED to move everyone up to +6. There's an easier solution: That makes sense. Especially since there aren't any real guidelines on how difficult it should mechanically be to throw a car, or whatever, I can achieve kind of a "Man of Steel, Planet of Cardboard" effect by just making everything that's not a superhero or superhero accessory really weaksauce compared to the standard character sheet. I'll keep that in mind.
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May 19, 2014 21:04
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Speaking of a world of cardboard, Ryan Danks wrote some cool articles about depicting supers in Core, particularly this one about invulnerable characters like Superman.
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May 19, 2014 22:27
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Okay, here's something I've thought about a lot and I'm not sure how to best handle: "Super mode" for characters in Fate. Say you're running a Power Rangers game, so all the PCs can transform into super fighting heroes to fight the enemy monsters, but can also potentially fight (at a serious disadvantage) as regular humans if they have to. Or a Super Robot game, where anyone can throw their mech into overdrive for a limited period of time to turn the tables on the enemy. Or something like Xenogears, where people can get into mechs to fight other mechs, or just hulk out and fight mechs with their bare hands, but the latter turns a relatively weak mech into a serious threat. How would you model this kind of thing in Fate?
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May 20, 2014 16:21
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Stat them up as FAE characters.
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May 20, 2014 16:23
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That's a good question; Fate doesn't really do in-game scaling like that. The easiest solution is to take a Strange Fate-ish approach and say "now that you're in Fighty Mode, change one of your Fate dice to a d6". But that only really makes sense if you're going to have multiple scaled things going on at the same time (i.e., some people are in Fighty Mode while others aren't in the same scene). If the idea is modelling Sentai-style shows, would you really need to scale things mechanically? After all, if everyone in a scene is at the same "level" then scaling doesn't matter. Like, if the only way to fight the bad guy's minions is to Power Up, then you don't need to worry much about how the mechanical difference between a monster and a normal-human-level PC because they're not interacting on those levels. Piell posted:Stat them up as FAE characters.
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May 20, 2014 16:40
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ProfessorProf posted:Okay, here's something I've thought about a lot and I'm not sure how to best handle: "Super mode" for characters in Fate. Give the monsters a stunt on their Physique- Super-Villain: Reduce all Physical shifts against this character to zero from any source that is not currently Super Heroic. Give the PCs a Stunt, or an extra or something- Henshin Device: Pay 1 fate to become Super Heroic for the rest of the Scene. Maybe also let PCs cancel the transformation once per session to prevent 6 shifts of Physical damage from a single source? It seems thematically appropriate for the source material, but you could probably also just roll it into a Concede.
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May 20, 2014 18:44
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deadly_pudding posted:Give the monsters a stunt on their Physique- I'm liking this, actually. Maybe slightly less powerful version of Super-Villain to make it possible (if very hard) to take them on without transforming - something like reducing all damage by 2 shifts. Depends how serious you want the divide to be.
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May 20, 2014 18:49
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Base Raiders uses multiple tiers of power that you compare to see how many Fate dice you swap for d6s when directly opposed. That might just be cribbed from Strange Fate, I dunno. But it seems potentially appropriate.
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May 21, 2014 00:47
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malkav11 posted:Base Raiders uses multiple tiers of power that you compare to see how many Fate dice you swap for d6s when directly opposed. That might just be cribbed from Strange Fate, I dunno. But it seems potentially appropriate. It is; Strange Fate is from Kerberos Club.
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May 21, 2014 01:14
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| # ? May 17, 2024 23:55 |
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So, it sounds like my group wants to do a take on Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. Mechanics-wise, it should be pretty straightforward. I'll do a character's Persona as a slightly re-tooled gadget. It will have a "Light" aspect to describe its benefit and powers, a "Shadow" aspect to describe its drawback and maybe other powers, and one Stunt that it can provide while fully manifested, costing a total of one Stunt or Refresh from the main PC, and can be beefed up the same as a gadget, with additional functions per Refresh or offset by additional Shadow aspects. I want a Persona to be kind of a real entity, so once it enters a scene, it's "on the table", and can be affected by any other element of the fiction, and be subject to Situation Aspects, and all that. I'm probably going to consider "Persona Disrupted" to be a legit Mild Consequence that prevents a PC from using its abilities for a scene or so. I'm trying to leave the setting pretty open for discussion during character creation. I've got a vague idea of the sort of hosed up conspiracy/apocalypse-in-progress I want to have happen, involving kind of a sinister Dr. Oz-like person at the center of some kind of hosed up body-snatching Shadows agenda involving bog-standard tabloid remedies, binaural noises, and social media, but that can be plugged into just about any setting. I'm going to leave the details of the specific setting and the PCs' life situation up for discussion, but I wanna gun for a location with robust public transit, like New York or Boston, where I can have "underground" become increasingly a more hosed up place, acting as this setting's equivalent of the Midnight Channel or the Dark Hour. This is my first time doing completely collaborative worldbuilding, so I wanted to get my methodology evaluated a bit- Probably I'll start with like a "Do Want/Do Not Want" board of disembodied elements to hash over, which I'm hoping will snowball into some kind of common link or genre tone that the players all kind of want to focus on, like "police procedural", or "struggling electro-punk band". From there, we can figure out stuff like the exact setting, real place or fictional place, PC High Concepts and Troubles, and then spin some NPCs and Locations off from those. For my Phase Trio, I want to do something along the lines of "The First Time We Met", "When you were so Cool", and "I can't believe that actually happened to us."
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May 21, 2014 16:50
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