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That honestly makes perfect sense to me, and is a fine way of doing extra help or big weapons. I think you're onto something there. Go for it!
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Jul 26, 2014 00:04
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Is there anything a complete FATE newbie should know before buying Bulldogs? I've been itching to play a pulpy Firefly-ish sci-fi game and I keep seeing it mentioned as a good place to start. I've seen some people talk about how it's built on an older version of FATE or something? Skimming this thread, at least one person suggested reducing total aspects characters have down to 5 or so. Are there any other changes people suggest? If it requires a lot of alterations to run well I may avoid it, as I would be learning the system at the same time.
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Jul 26, 2014 02:04
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incogneato posted:Is there anything a complete FATE newbie should know before buying Bulldogs? I've been itching to play a pulpy Firefly-ish sci-fi game and I keep seeing it mentioned as a good place to start. Yeah, it's based off SotC, where everyone had 10 aspects. Bulldogs starts with that and adds another five or so global aspects into the mix. And in actual play, most of them never get used because there's so many in play. Basically, everywhere it tells you how many aspects thongs should have, divide that number by two.
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Jul 26, 2014 02:11
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Lemon Curdistan posted:generational supers games That sounds equal parts brilliant and a nightmare to run! I'd suggest taking a look at Microscope would be a good move, it deals with generational stuff well, and might be able to be merged into fate (or cannibalised for ideas). At very least, you'll probably want some sort of timeline on the table for players to keep track of what's going on. Microscope organises stuff in a tree of index cards, running (as best I recall off the top of my head): code:RE: bulldogs (and many older FATE-based games) - Evil Mastermind's bang on, halving the aspects was exactly the houserule we did on Diaspora (default 10 aspects per PC, 5 per ship, etc), and it made my life infinitely easier and didn't lose anything. The players agreed that it helped streamline character concepts tons.
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Jul 26, 2014 02:16
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Evil Mastermind posted:Yeah, it's based off SotC, where everyone had 10 aspects. Bulldogs starts with that and adds another five or so global aspects into the mix. And in actual play, most of them never get used because there's so many in play. Cool, I'll keep my thongs simple and halved. If that's the only fix needed to make Bulldogs work, I'm totally grabbing it. I had just worried that it was built on an outdated system that would need numerous fixes. I don't know enough about Fate to tell at first glance. Any other words of warning and/or praise for Bulldogs? Will it work alright as an introduction to Fate generally?
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Jul 26, 2014 02:24
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Bulldogs is two or maybe even three editions old at this point. Think of it like playing AD&D 2e. It's a good game, but it's a very different one from D&D 4e, or a theoretical D&D 5e that continued 4e's lineage instead of chucking everything into the trash (this would be ARobo). It's gonna be good because FATE is a Good Game regardless of iteration, but I'd personally recommend just using Atomic Robo or FATE Accelerated instead because it's got some clunky bits here and there. It's your choice, really - it's easy to port any mechanics from Bulldogs you like to a more modern FATE anyways, and viceversa.
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Jul 26, 2014 02:52
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incogneato posted:Is there anything a complete FATE newbie should know before buying Bulldogs? I've been itching to play a pulpy Firefly-ish sci-fi game and I keep seeing it mentioned as a good place to start. I adore Bulldogs!. Some fans already made a Fate Core conversion thingy. http://spacebulldogs.wikidot.com/rules It is very playable as is though. Last time I played I just cut the aspects down.
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Jul 26, 2014 05:15
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Kai Tave posted:"The one caveat is that there's no real bonus benefit for succeeding beyond "success with style," you won't ever get "success with super-duper style" or something, but being able to lay into some guy with a +10-15 attack is standard operating procedure. Dresden Files has a problem with causing shift inflation due to the silly numbers a wizard can throw at just about anything. I'll admit I contributed to this problem with pure mortal overcompensation, but it seems like ARobo removes the need to regularly throw +10 Weapon:4 Area attacks around just to get things done.
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Jul 26, 2014 08:38
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Fundamentally the same basic capability for a party to build up enough bonuses for one guy to attack at +15 exists across every version of FATE. Dresden's Magic rules let a Wizard in and of themselves pull that sort of thing off if they wanted to which is what kind of threw things way out of whack. Like, Atomic Robo is totally cool with you having Weapon 4 (6 at a cost) Lightning Guns that come with a stunt that lets you bypass someone's stress track on a stylish success, the math isn't quite as bounded as it is in default FATE core, but in general the problem with Dresden was mainly tied to its magic system and the ease with which you could go from zero to "gently caress that guy and everyone near him" without even really intending to.
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Jul 26, 2014 08:53
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Yeah, bolting a complex sub system onto FATE will do that (or any other system, for that matter) Using dresden DID help make the cyberpunkish game feel shadowrun-esque, but in large part because, mechanically, shadowrun is a sub-system choked piece of garbage. Edit: In ARobo, adding an Area effect to a weapon/attack is worth 1 benefit, right? Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 09:03
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The example they give in p.163 is letting you spend a Fate Point to declare (as a story detail) that your grenade or a similar explosion totally hits everyone in a zone. I sorta prefer that over a stunt (which you can still do!) or a flat -2.
Mitama fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 09:13
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Atomic Robo has basically nothing to really say regarding area attacks except for one example where Robo pulls out some grenades to deal with a horde of hostile warbots (like you do) and the GM says that's good for a one-time area attack. Using my amazing skills of inference and a bit of educated guesswork, what I would say is this: 1). Nowhere does Atomic Robo, even in the grenade example, talk about area attacks affecting yourself as well which always seemed like a particularly dumb rule (yes, grenades are dangerous, but the characters in an action movie aren't having to constantly dodge their own explosions, that's dumb) so I'd say you can safely ignore that. 2). The given example involved paying a fate point for a one-use area attack. So my guess is that zone-wide attacks aren't really meant to be an always-on thing because that's pretty powerful, even for something you spent a stunt on...it's basically letting you take multiple actions on your turn even if all the actions are "blow something up" (especially because all the actions are "blow something up"). I would use that example as the basis for a rough guideline...area effect is something that happens with a stunt or ability that works either 1/interval or with the expenditure of a fate point or maybe even both depending on how big an attack we're talking about. edit; or you could do what TurninTrix said and just keep it at "declare a story detail, pay out a FP, make an area attack."
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Jul 26, 2014 09:20
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I mean, if you use the mob rules, then area attacks don't need to come up so often anyway. 
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Jul 26, 2014 09:26
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Yeah, mob rules are definitely a good thing.
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Jul 26, 2014 09:31
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Speaking of which, re: earlier discussion in the thread: Yes, you can totally attack mental tracks with skills other than Provoke.
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Jul 26, 2014 10:57
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Comrade Gorbash posted:In addition to the big Flashback scene to get an aspect, perhaps PCs could use a Flashback as a consequence, similar to the Interesting Times concept in Tianxia or Collateral Consequences? This is a pretty great idea, actually. My main issue with the rules I have so far is they feel kind of handwavey and it definitely feels like I could have a more developed framework for what the Flashbacks actually do. petrol blue posted:That sounds equal parts brilliant and a nightmare to run! I'd suggest taking a look at Microscope would be a good move, it deals with generational stuff well, and might be able to be merged into fate (or cannibalised for ideas). At very least, you'll probably want some sort of timeline on the table for players to keep track of what's going on. Since the whole thing is just an excuse for people to have multiple related characters so you can rotate time periods between adventures like you'd expect in comics, I hopefully shouldn't need to use Microscope, but a timeline is totally a good idea.
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Jul 26, 2014 11:21
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It turns out FAE is really good for bashing out an idea in little to no time. It can even make bad ideas good! Case in point, Fate Zybourne Clock. I'll upload the character sheets if you guys want to look at them.
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Jul 27, 2014 20:50
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Considering my experience with the original Zybourne Clock project, I feel compelled to see so I can grade you on historical accuracy.
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Jul 27, 2014 21:09
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Zephirum posted:It turns out FAE is really good for bashing out an idea in little to no time. It can even make bad ideas good! Case in point, Fate Zybourne Clock. I'll upload the character sheets if you guys want to look at them. I'm insulted you even felt the need to ask.
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Jul 27, 2014 21:26
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Ladies and gentlemen, Fate Accelerated Zybourne Clock Google docs link: A Shameful File Path Speaking of canon, the novelization is the
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Jul 27, 2014 22:09
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Zephirum posted:Speaking of canon, the novelization is the That's not canon, that's parody. Fanon, at best, I suppose, although I dunno if "fans" is the right technical term for the people responsible. As for the character sheets, that's a 0/10 for accuracy, but 8/10 for fun. I like Johnny's stunts.
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Jul 27, 2014 23:27
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My headcanon makes the fanon canon 
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Jul 28, 2014 01:12
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In other news, Dresden Files Accelerated playtesting is opening soon.
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Jul 29, 2014 19:50
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I ran a game of medieval Camelot Trigger yesterday, and run into some issues. Specifically, I had three players who, completely unarmed, bludgeoned the absolute poo poo out of a lone Mecha. They didn't even take a consequence! It seems odd to me that a Mecha with a system that lets it attack at +4 - the very strongest it can get - can be equally matched by a squirrelly pigfarmer at character creation. There is a sidebar in the Fate Worlds book which says to run uneven combats without any modifiers, but to my mind that renders the Mecha way less satisfying to play.
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Aug 4, 2014 13:53
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Squidster posted:I ran a game of medieval Camelot Trigger yesterday, and run into some issues. Specifically, I had three players who, completely unarmed, bludgeoned the absolute poo poo out of a lone Mecha. They didn't even take a consequence! With FATE, character creation doesn't result in a squirrelly pigfarmer; FATE assumes all PCs are competent and skilled. There are ways to 'fix' it though - just as Consequences mean that if you have a broken leg you have no narrative permission to sprint (or perhaps even walk) without at the very least spending at Fate point, similarly an Aspect such as Iron Hide or whatever would mean there's no narrative permission for anything less than a real weapon or super-strength to damage a mecha. Or you could make it more explicit with a Stunt. That said, it sounds like a pretty badass moment to me, like something out of Samurai Jack.
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Aug 4, 2014 14:25
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It was literally brought down by a squirrelly hogwrestler, her blacksmith friend and an washed-up inventor shouting words of encouragement. It was definitely a badass moment, but I feel like they could reliably reproduce it every day of the week. And I do want man-vs-mecha combat, so I don't want to lock it away from them by requiring an aspect or megaweapon. I just want fighting a mecha to be more of a boss battle and less of a speedbump.
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Aug 4, 2014 14:54
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Fate Worlds Vol.2 p.234 posted:BIG STOMPY ROBOTS VS. TINY SQUISHY HUMANS Basically, Camelot Trigger is designed with the idea that players on foot could hypothetically still take down a mecha of they needed to. But because of that, if you want the combat to be different from other fights, yes you are going to need to use thing like aspects that way in order to require players to do more than run up and punch the robot to death. A "Siege Armour" aspect or whatever is not going to mean that your players suddenly don't stand a chance -- it is going to mean they're going to need to do something to justify being able to hurt the mecha, though, and Core gives them plenty of buttons to press in order to do that. It won't make the task insurmountable. Just more cinematic and interesting. With FATE, if you want an enemy to be tougher than the PCs you're going to need to insert something to mechanically make that so, because the default assumption is that the PCs kick a lot of rear end. You could always do the other thing the book suggests and run it as a series of challenges, if the idea bothers you. You could even still deal stress to the robot as they completed acts of sabotage; I played a FAE game where the GM statted up a storm as an enemy and we needed to do things to weather the night in order to defeat it -- it was a really cool and memorable scene, and it gave us a situation where we weren't helpless, but still couldn't solve the problem by punching it in the face.
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Aug 4, 2014 15:36
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Squidster posted:It was literally brought down by a squirrelly hogwrestler, her blacksmith friend and an washed-up inventor shouting words of encouragement. It was definitely a badass moment, but I feel like they could reliably reproduce it every day of the week. The main advantage that mechs get in Camelot Trigger is that they basically get more skills/stunts, which they can then convert into consequences. This by itself is enough for them to beat a regular person in single combat, but it's not enough to overcome the PCs having three times as many actions as it. You need to give it multiple actions in a round, you need to fictionally stop people from just punching it to death, you to do something to make it work like a boss and not just another character. At least, you need to do that if you run it as a combat. You could just run a challenge around trying to disable a mech without being seen and then blown up by it's Doom Cannon, although it might be hard to justify it when they just beat a mech by themselves. (And Gazetteer basically posted the same thing while I was writing this, but I'm already here so I might as well post.)
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Aug 4, 2014 15:53
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There's also Very Large Monsters on the evil hat download site.
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Aug 4, 2014 19:24
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Golden Bee posted:There's also Very Large Monsters on the evil hat download site. Running the fight as a challenge would work, but I also want the situation to be reversible - I want my medieval mecha protagonists to still have good reason to fear a few well-trained squads of pikemen. I'm thinking I'll implement the optional scale rules, and establish that some badass aspect weapons just ignore scale.
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Aug 4, 2014 19:41
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My players really want to do things like throw the villain off of buildings and other sorts of forced movement shenanigans. They argue it's entirely cinematic and not at all trying to pull D&D-esque rules-minutia into Fate. I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing stuff like that in general. One player has stunts that lets him grapple and then use Physique in place of Shoot, so that seems fine to pick someone up and chuck them with two separate rolls on two separate turns. But it came up last session when a player simply wanted to kick a sniper in the face right off the roof and got pissy when things devolved into a discussion on whether Fate really should get into forced movement or not. There's not really an Aspect for "falling" after all.
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Aug 4, 2014 19:50
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Make it a "succeed with style" thing; beat the guy's defense by 3 or more and shove him one zone. Fate doesn't normally do forced movement because positioning doesn't generally matter beyond who's in what zone, and people are assumed to be moving around inside the zone all the time anyway. Still, "falling" should never be an aspect.
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Aug 4, 2014 19:57
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I've run into some confusion with forced-movement myself. I've allowed bullrushing through opposed Physique checks, but it can feel a little weird. What I might suggest is to have zone hazards - establish that all non-rooftop areas inflict 10 stress on anyone who ends their turn there. So SniperKickerExtreem rolls opposed Physique to boot the Sniper into a bad zone, and then on that Sniper's turn they try to Athletics back onto the building somehow. If they fail, they're taken out, and if they succeed they get an aspect 'barely clinging on.'
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Aug 4, 2014 19:58
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Dresden Files had some rules for throwing dudes but they were kind of complicated and fiddly. They boiled down to: 1). Is there an aspect on the target that would allow you to initiate a grab (like, I dunno, "Off Balance" or something)? If so go to step two, if not create one. 2). Roll Physique to grapple that guy. 3). Then on your next turn you can end the grapple to chuck'em a zone. So moving someone a zone winds up being a 2.5 step process. Even in FATE peoples' attempts to make grappling rules wind up being an incredibly fiddly pain in the rear end that nobody wants to use.
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Aug 4, 2014 20:03
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I can't really comment on this too much. The game I'm in regularly does forced movement (honestly, most of the time it's my character doing it), but it's a magical girl game where getting tossed around is basically no big deal (I mean, we're talking about a game where a PC temporarily gone villain summons a Godzilla knockoff and the PCs do things like swinging it around by the tail). For something on a less superhuman scale, requiring a success with style or even requiring a Taken Out result for something lethal to most people like getting thrown off buildings sounds like a passable solution. Or allowing the sniper to make a roll to grab hold or whatever.
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Aug 4, 2014 20:08
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One way you could approach it if your players really want to kick the rooftop sniper off the building is to just treat it as the sniper conceding and bank the fate points for future use.
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Aug 4, 2014 20:16
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Kai Tave posted:One way you could approach it if your players really want to kick the rooftop sniper off the building is to just treat it as the sniper conceding and bank the fate points for future use. This one's pretty good. Your character can "try" to throw a target off a building. If they don't do enough shifts to take them out, then they couldn't throw far enough or just ended up still struggling in the grapple. Or, their opponent takes the opportunity to concede, disappearing over the side of the building, but really catching a ledge and pulling himself into a window to escape. For my money, I'd rather throw an enemy by Creating an Advantage. "Dangling by his fingertips" is a pretty serious aspect to put on somebody.
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Aug 4, 2014 20:31
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deadly_pudding posted:This one's pretty good. Your character can "try" to throw a target off a building. If they don't do enough shifts to take them out, then they couldn't throw far enough or just ended up still struggling in the grapple. Or, their opponent takes the opportunity to concede, disappearing over the side of the building, but really catching a ledge and pulling himself into a window to escape. If you do the concession angle you don't even have to make it so that the sniper survives for later, especially if the sniper is an NPC or no real importance. Conceding in this case could just be "yeah, you kick him off the roof and he's dead, moving on," and then you get the fate points to spend on behalf of other NPCs down the line. But I agree that if the GM doesn't necessarily feel like letting that happen that completely taking someone out of a fight shouldn't be possible just on a single roll, it should be a conflict with all that entails, whether it's battling with someone until you get the opening you need or creating advantages and moving zones. Basically the tools exist to allow the players to short-circuit a fight by punting someone off a roof but the default assumption in FATE is that if you're engaged in a capital-C Conflict that you're in it for an actual back-and-forth exchange instead of a brief snapshot.
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Aug 4, 2014 20:42
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deadly_pudding posted:This one's pretty good. Your character can "try" to throw a target off a building. If they don't do enough shifts to take them out, then they couldn't throw far enough or just ended up still struggling in the grapple. Or, their opponent takes the opportunity to concede, disappearing over the side of the building, but really catching a ledge and pulling himself into a window to escape. Yeah, this is pretty much the best way to handle the specific case of getting thrown off a building or something similarly lethal. As for general forced movement, in many cases PCs likely won't be throwing full-grown humans a whole zone away. An aspect like "Thrown And Knocked Around" is good enough. If the circumstance warrants it, you can move them a zone away. EDIT: And this assumes it's something worth of being a full-blown Conflict, as noted in the post just above me. For something minor, one-shotting opponents is fine.
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Aug 4, 2014 20:51
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| # ? May 18, 2024 06:17 |
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Oh, yeah of course. If the sniper's just a grunt with like one stress box or whatever, toss him off any roof you want.
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Aug 4, 2014 21:17
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