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bewilderment posted:Apologies if it's been mentioned earlier, it's a big thread - but could someone suggest interesting things to use the mental stress track for? The 'normal' way it's hit, going by Fate Core, is to absorb hits from a Provoke attack, but that's pretty limited, compared to the numerous ways characters can get physically harmed. Lack of sleep, hallucinations, poisons, some diseases, information overload and sheer mental exhaustion are a few of the things that can justify attacks on mental stress. It's not used as often in a D&Desque game, but that doesn't mean it doesn't see use. You can also use it as the stress track through which greater battles are waged, such as wars. There, each commander is trying to inflict Mental Stress on the other, trying to make him slip and reveal his strategy, or commit his forces to a foolish gambit. That's something that doesn't come into play so often because most games take place on the murderhobo scale, but it shouldn't be forgotten either.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:45
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Mental stress in Fate core also absorbs social damage/controls social combat. I use it in my game to represent CoC-esque sanity loss as well.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:45
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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Mental stress is more than just being Provoked (although honestly Fate Core's skills are pretty lackluster anyway). You can be mentally taxed by any or all of the following: spending too much time researching in a library, seeing a dead person for reals, getting embarrassed at a social function by a grand duke, being unpleasantly surprised by a spooky monster, finding out your parents are dead, finding out your parents are spooky monsters, finding out the dead person you saw for reals is one (or more) of your parents, seeing your parents shot by a grand duke, spending too much time in the company of dead people/grand dukes, licking a toad. If you do not find much use for the mental stress track, scrap the idea of separate stress tracks and just have the one that applies to everything. If you want to have the whole "this person is tougher in the body, this one has a stronger will" thing, then use Armor rankings.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:49
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Here's a question - do you allow social attacks to take place simultaneously as physical attacks? In a game of XCRAWL I ran, the players yo mama joke'd the final boss into a fetal ball, and it was awesome. But in more serious play, is that desirable? I admit I'm still a little fuzzy on stunts. In Camelot Trigger, one of the example stunts is 'use Shoot instead of Notice when creating a combat advantage'. But why would you use Notice for an advantage anyway? You could create a 'pin them down' advantage with Shoot regularly.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:01
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Well yeah, of course. Beating an enemy by breaking his spirit is a classic of any genre with fight scenes. The important thing to remember is that you can only make mental attacks with provoke if you have some grounding, though. You can't just say 'I Provoke him!' and go for it - that's a no-go. Generally it's required that you uncover one of the target's Aspects to make your barbs stick, whether it's through a roll or an FP.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:36
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Hugoon Chavez posted:IIRC the guy doing SoF wanted to make a Cyberpunk game, and I think that's what pushed him to include a bunch of equipment and equipment rules. Honestly SoF is a completely useless book since it's not fun to read, and Fate Core already gives an actually good generic Fate toolkit, with clear goals and mechanics. I actually converted a heavily augmented Shadowrun character using Atomic Robo while I was exploring character creation and she turned out fine. I mean yeah, you lose out on the gun porn shopping list poo poo, but in terms of "can I make this crazy cyborg character in a way that feels mechanically interesting and not just a fuzzy abstract blob" I think that FATE's design is at a really good point for that sort of thing.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:43
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Transient People posted:Well yeah, of course. Beating an enemy by breaking his spirit is a classic of any genre with fight scenes. The important thing to remember is that you can only make mental attacks with provoke if you have some grounding, though. You can't just say 'I Provoke him!' and go for it - that's a no-go. Generally it's required that you uncover one of the target's Aspects to make your barbs stick, whether it's through a roll or an FP. Once the villain takes a mental consequence, unless he's completely unprepared for the PCs, he's going to the battle tank. And "HE CAN'T HEAR YOU" is a valid reason for provoke attacks to be Notice is extremely useful in combat for non-combat characters. You can use it in a car chase to read the map and suggest a NARROW DETOUR. You can observe a kidnapper's OLD WAR INJURY. Even in the Olympics, you could USE THE BETTER POLEVAULT or WAIT UNTIL THE JUDGE IS DISTRACTED. Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 09:00
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Golden Bee posted:Once the villain takes a mental consequence, unless he's completely unprepared for the PCs, he's going to the battle tank. And "HE CAN'T HEAR YOU" is a valid reason for provoke attacks to be unbalanced. ...Unbalanced? I'm not sure what you meant there and I'm curious. Mind elaborating a bit?
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Jul 16, 2014 09:22
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Squidster posted:Here's a question - do you allow social attacks to take place simultaneously as physical attacks? In a game of XCRAWL I ran, the players yo mama joke'd the final boss into a fetal ball, and it was awesome. But in more serious play, is that desirable? Ever play mass effect? The first one? That fight with Saren where Shephard convinces them they've been mind controlled and Saren pops his own head? Mental stress track. You could happily be doing that in combat. Or. He has "AVENGING DEAD RELATIVE" "this isn't what s/he would want!" Or maybe you are just flamethrowing people and shouting about how much it hurts so someone gives up.
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Jul 16, 2014 09:32
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Fuego Fish posted:Faith This is a good way of having a difference between arcane and divine magic, too.
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Jul 16, 2014 09:55
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ShineDog posted:Ever play mass effect? The first one? That fight with Saren where Shephard convinces them they've been mind controlled and Saren pops his own head? Mental stress track. You could happily be doing that in combat. And some FATE variants, like FAE for example, don't even differentiate between mental and physical stress, it all just goes on a single track. Even if you have a game where physical and mental stress are separate there's no real need to keep physical and mental conflict from ever touching as it all effectively works the same way in the same manner without any of the wonkiness you get in something like Exalted or whatever.
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Jul 16, 2014 10:05
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Remember that Consequences are shared, too. So if you want to physically kill someone, insulting him to tears effectively makes it easier to cut his head on your next swing. (Since he just used his moderate consequence) Honestly a social character is probably more efficient against a physical opponent, which is cool.
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Jul 16, 2014 10:48
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Hugoon Chavez posted:Remember that Consequences are shared, too. So if you want to physically kill someone, insulting him to tears effectively makes it easier to cut his head on your next swing. Fate models spiderman better than any other game, thats pretty great.
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Jul 16, 2014 11:22
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Fuego Fish posted:Mental stress is more than just being Provoked (although honestly Fate Core's skills are pretty lackluster anyway). You can be mentally taxed by any or all of the following: spending too much time researching in a library, seeing a dead person for reals, getting embarrassed at a social function by a grand duke, being unpleasantly surprised by a spooky monster, finding out your parents are dead, finding out your parents are spooky monsters, finding out the dead person you saw for reals is one (or more) of your parents, seeing your parents shot by a grand duke, spending too much time in the company of dead people/grand dukes, licking a toad. Seeing a dead person for reals is a pretty good one. I pulled that on a PC, Alex, the session before last, and he flubbed his Will Defense bad enough to get a minor consequence, "Oh god we could die here". Later, in the recovery scene, he still didn't have the Will to get the image out of his head. Another PC had to give him a pep talk through the bathroom door, and the result was still just a tie with the Fair difficulty of the consequence. I ended up giving them the recovery, but taking a free-floating Boost to use against Alex, since it ended up being kind of a wash of a pep talk. Last night was a good session. The party had to regroup and find their way out of the mysterious, apocalyptic hellscape dimension they were in. After they took some time to patch up from the battle that ended the last session, they decided to look for a train station. They arrived by train originally, after all. Following the signs pointing toward the nearest station to them, they found their way blocked by an enormous 30-foot wide ravine, one of the weird bottomless fissures that mar the landscape there, and of unknown horizontal length. After some deliberation, and some self-compelling of various injuries to rule out more athletic methods, they decided to hotwire an abandoned car and ramp it. I gave them a three-part challenge: find a car, build a ramp, ramp it! The net results of their challenge were pretty bad, but I didn't want them to fail outright. I combined two of the minor failures together to launch a minor group physical attack in the form of initially colliding with an office building on the other side of the fissure, instead of just landing it. I took their major failure and turned it into basically a conflict against their car, which was now starting to tip backwards out of the building, and drop into the fissure. Alex and Torero got out with relatively little incident, but their first action of getting Torero into the front of the car started the building a crumbling around the vehicle. So, when it was time for K to climb out, the vehicle began to suddenly lurch back and go vertical. K escaped the falling car since Torero had a grip on him, but it's not the most athletic party, so even the car's Average "tipping into oblivion" skill was really messing with them, and the dice were misbehaving on top of that. Torero was down 2 on his roll to pull K up to stable ground, and out of fate tokens. We collectively allowed K to invoke his Easy Lover aspect, channeling whatever the male equivalent of a damsel in distress is, to stoke the fires of passion in Torero, giving him enough strength to pull his friend to safety, with the minor cost of a lingering situational aspect. I gave Torero a choice- awkward feelings, or teenage crush. He chose "awkward feelings". In the end, they caught their weird ghost train back to Earth, and I closed out the scenario. That first scenario was meant to be an "origin story", and as such it went pretty well. I fished some good story questions out of it to build the second scenario around. There are some mundane concerns to be addressed, and some more pressing questions regarding their mysterious assailant, who by all means is supposed to be away on the first year of a 10 year stint in prison right now. There's still the question of the nature of the weird powers of Persona that the party manifested in the shadowy dimension that seems to be tied to the city's subway tunnels, and whether they should trust the weird, indifferent train conductors that took them there in the first place. Good session.
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Jul 16, 2014 11:47
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The mental stress track gets pretty heavy usage in the Precure game I'm in. Let's put it this way: my villain character's final showdown with her rival amongst the magical girl? We didn't even bother rolling for the physical attacks, just narrated them as background to the intense social conflict that we were actually resolving. This was to my character's disadvantage as she was far more geared for physical (and she's pretty scary there) than social conflict, but that worked out well as the plan was to have her lose and convert to good. Or talking Apathy-corrupted victims into remembering their dreams. Simply beating them up would've solved the corruption issue, but their dreams would've been forever lost.
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Jul 16, 2014 12:01
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JDCorley posted:I played some Venture City Stories, got depressed, and wrote a blog post about it. This is from a while back, but: Venture City Stories updated on Monday to fix this issue:  Honestly, I think the "NPCs can only combine up to the faction's rating" rule would have been better, but at least this is a fix.
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Jul 16, 2014 12:03
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I honestly prefer the approach of having one stress track and letting both physical and mental stress accumulate on it, then having the effects of defeating the character depend on what sort of methods the party was using. I think that's how FAE does it.
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Jul 16, 2014 18:29
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The problem with using mental stress to reflect disturbing situations, is that it clears immediately after the scene. Discovering a dead body, losing your wallet, and finding that the man you thought was a bard is actually the moon - unless these things do enough stress to cause a +4 consequence, they're ephemeral roleplaying elements. They often end up being unneeded mechanical distractions from a narrative twist. Unrelated: Is there a max limit to how much a roll can be boosted? I.e: 5 players spend their turn building advantages on a boss for a total +10, then each spend a fate point to boost one player's attack by an additional +10?
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Jul 16, 2014 18:44
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Squidster posted:Unrelated: Is there a max limit to how much a roll can be boosted? I.e: 5 players spend their turn building advantages on a boss for a total +10, then each spend a fate point to boost one player's attack by an additional +10? Only the narrative. If they can justify all of that making sense then roll with it. While they're doing all that you can have the big bad wailing on them.
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Jul 16, 2014 18:52
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Squidster posted:Unrelated: Is there a max limit to how much a roll can be boosted? I.e: 5 players spend their turn building advantages on a boss for a total +10, then each spend a fate point to boost one player's attack by an additional +10? Nope, there's no upper limit on how much you can stack a roll through created advantages/invokes, it's mainly down to how much effort you're willing to put into it. In your example above, that combo takes 5 players all spending a turn laying the groundwork for one massive attack, so in that time they could all theoretically have attacked that dude five times. On the other hand if not everyone in the party is that great at combat then joining together to help out in other ways is a good way for them to directly contribute towards toppling the evil overlord that doesn't boil down to "I guess I plink with my crossbow." 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 its own reward.
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Jul 16, 2014 19:11
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ProfessorProf posted:I honestly prefer the approach of having one stress track and letting both physical and mental stress accumulate on it, then having the effects of defeating the character depend on what sort of methods the party was using. I think that's how FAE does it. Yeah, I brought this up as a suggestion to the GM of that Precure game, but she preferred to keep two stress tracks.
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Jul 16, 2014 20:06
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Transient People posted:...Unbalanced? I'm not sure what you meant there and I'm curious. Mind elaborating a bit? Inapplicable, sorry. Normally I'd be a hard proponent of "different mental and physical stress tracks!" but I've played 4+ hour fate games and only filled up a few stress boxes. I had fun, but fate characters are pretty dang durable if they create advantages regularly.
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Jul 18, 2014 02:31
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Lemon Curdistan posted:This is a good way of having a difference between arcane and divine magic, too. Funny you should mention that. Magic in 10,000 Wonders is technically Alchemy, due to the narrative convention of the guy who throws fireballs typically being the bad guy, but it can be reskinned pretty easily. Each alchemical creation - let's just call them "spells" for the sake of brevity - has four distinct parts. A name, a description of roughly 1-2 sentences in length that describes the function, a rank on the ladder, and a number of uses. So an example might look something like this: Vulcan Dust [+2] This bag contains a blend of ground spices and powdered coal. After dipping it in oil, handle with care, for it will explode when struck forcefully. [x] [ ] [ ] Essentially it acts a little like a limited-use skill, where every time you bring one out, you check off a use. You can then employ it yourself or (because it's an object and not some ephemeral concept) hand it over to a teammate to use. That last part is optional. If you wanted a Cure Light Wounds spell that only you could use, its doable. These spells can be "levelled up" (in a sense) by increasing their ladder rank, or the number of uses, meaning it's down to the player to decide whether they want a tougher spell or one they can use more often. The limitations set by the description mean that the characters shouldn't be spamming the same spell over and over. Vulcan Dust is going to be useful for, say, blasting open doors or blasting open bad guys, but that's about it. It won't send guards to sleep silently, or revive a wounded colleague. Unlike some systems' wizards, you don't start with the full Swiss army knife at your disposal. You begin with a few spells, and must discover/invent new ones as you progress. Inventing new ones could be a long form quest, or perhaps one of those project-as-fight deelies I mentioned before. I prefer a mix, depending on the spell's potency and usefulness. Nothing particularly revolutionary so far, I know, but there are additional ways this can be modified or worked upon. Under the 10,000 Wonders system, alchemists must make a skill roll to replenish their "spells". Much in the same way you count the shifts in an attack to work out damage, you do the same to work out the regained uses. The difficulty is based on the environment the alchemist is in, some places are better than others for finding the right ingredients. The regained uses can be "spent" however the alchemist wishes, so there's never a case of "you can't have this one back". A spell could be considered to deplete over time, starting with a very high rank on the ladder, but taking a penalty for each use expended. So the first fireball of the day could be a mighty one, and the last a bit of a damp squib. This might be useful for emulating a sort of "mana" system where a spellcaster's inner power is what fuels their magic. For those GMs who enjoy making more work for themselves, consider the following: a pre-made list of spells which the character picks from, rather than creating themselves. Then, rather than just accepting these spells as they are, there are special stunts (let's call 'em "runes") which modify the spells in set ways. So a rune might be "This spell now affects multiple targets, but its effectiveness is reduced by 1 shift per additional target." Slap that on the Lightning Strike spell, and you've got Chain Lightning instead. Nice for clearing the mooks out of a room. For the sake of balance and sanity, runes would be uncovered by the player's character and only be applicable to one spell at a time. So upon getting the multi-target rune, that's only for one spell. Not all of them. Don't be greedy and/or mad with power, now. Other ways you can mess about with this subsystem:
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Jul 18, 2014 05:43
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All right, I need some help for my Fate game. It's time for my characters to hit a midboss, and I don't know how to turn this idea into a reasonable combat encounter. I have a sneaky, a thinky, and a smashy character. The 'boss' I'm thinking of is a sniper. Now, the universe we're in has a whole bunch of floating rocks with different magical laws orbiting a planet. No overt magic, only innate. So the sniper's innate talent is that he can shoot between fragments. The characters do have an interfragmentary ship, and since one is an armored fungus that punches buildings to death, one has psychic steel for eyes, and the last one can phase between dimensions, I'm not worried about necessarily overmatching them with such a boss. I just don't know how to contextualize this so it can be run as a good combat encounter.
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Jul 19, 2014 14:43
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Daetrin posted:All right, I need some help for my Fate game. It's time for my characters to hit a midboss, and I don't know how to turn this idea into a reasonable combat encounter. I think Zones are your friend here. Draw a big map, with loads of little zones, and lots of little obstacles in the various zones to overcome. Then stick Sniperman on the farthest zone away from them. Make the challenge getting to him - they need to Overcome the various obstacles in the way, while Defending from his sniper fire, and obviously the sniper will be Creating Advantages by blasting appropriate things and making life generally difficult all around. Once they Overcome everything between them and the sniper, have the battle basically end right there. The fight is just reaching the guy. If you have obstacles for the smashy dude to break through, a route for the smart guy to plan, and some shenanigans the sneaky guy can get up to, it should run smooth.
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Jul 19, 2014 14:52
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gnome7 posted:The fight is just reaching the guy. Seconding this - and make sure the sniper can also oppose them by shooting stuff to create new obstacles, rather than just suppressing fire.
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Jul 19, 2014 15:14
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gnome7 posted:I think Zones are your friend here. Draw a big map, with loads of little zones, and lots of little obstacles in the various zones to overcome. Then stick Sniperman on the farthest zone away from them. Make the challenge getting to him - they need to Overcome the various obstacles in the way, while Defending from his sniper fire, and obviously the sniper will be Creating Advantages by blasting appropriate things and making life generally difficult all around. It seems so obvious when you put it that way! Awesome, thanks, that's exactly what I wanted. Not sure if I can manage having him an entire Fragment away with that setup (I mean that's like eight hundred miles) but that's what zooming out is for. And I can always use the fragment they're in, which is made of living metal with rivers of molten steel so.
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Jul 19, 2014 17:00
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I'm thinking of running an Avatar: Legends of Korra game with Tianxia, but I was curious about how to relate element styles to LOK elements. Any suggestions? Or would it be best to make my own custom element substyles based on the lore behind the elements themselves?
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Jul 21, 2014 00:46
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This may be an unhelpful suggestion but if I were going to do an Avatar-esque game using FATE I wouldn't try to systemize bending using Tianxia's method for creating kung-fu styles. If it were up to me, I'd simply make "-bending" a Weird Skill ala Atomic Robo with multiple applications (most bending styles would probably get the core four of Attack, Defend, Create Advantage, and Overcome, special styles like waterbending healing could add more) and then flesh out a bender's personal style using stunts to taste. Tianxia's system is decent-ish if you're going for a game where specific kung-fu techniques are in theme, but Avatar's depiction of bending, while still categorizing various styles of bending, is a lot more freeform and characters come up with new ways to use their abilities all the time without needing a training montage first.
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Jul 21, 2014 05:33
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Kai Tave posted:This may be an unhelpful suggestion but if I were going to do an Avatar-esque game using FATE I wouldn't try to systemize bending using Tianxia's method for creating kung-fu styles. If it were up to me, I'd simply make "-bending" a Weird Skill ala Atomic Robo with multiple applications (most bending styles would probably get the core four of Attack, Defend, Create Advantage, and Overcome, special styles like waterbending healing could add more) and then flesh out a bender's personal style using stunts to taste. Yep, exactly this. Maybe take from Tianxia the Chi skill and Jianghu as inspiration (the chi armor mechanic, for instance, is pretty fun), but the kung fu in it is not very similar to -bending, Kung Fu-ness aside. Just use stunts for all your special technique needs!
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Jul 21, 2014 10:41
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Consider checking out Stormcallers from the Fate Toolkit and picking the stuff you like from it. 
Mitama fucked around with this message at 11:48 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 11:22
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Kai Tave posted:This may be an unhelpful suggestion but if I were going to do an Avatar-esque game using FATE I wouldn't try to systemize bending using Tianxia's method for creating kung-fu styles. If it were up to me, I'd simply make "-bending" a Weird Skill ala Atomic Robo with multiple applications (most bending styles would probably get the core four of Attack, Defend, Create Advantage, and Overcome, special styles like waterbending healing could add more) and then flesh out a bender's personal style using stunts to taste. Yeah, for a “magic" system, unless you're really focusing on fiddly wizard poo poo, which bending is not, the broad-usage skill is my favorite. You do have to get used to pulling some teeth with some players when they try to do something abstract. Like, "I summon a massive tornado of fire" is all well and good, but I'd want to push for something more like, "a massive vortex of flame wells up, but what are you trying to accomplish with it?" Of course, sometimes a giant fire tornado is just a giant fire tornado, and your character just wants to use its free invokes to slam it into somebody next turn as an attack, or give the invokes to their buddy who wants to toss a badguy into it.
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Jul 21, 2014 13:26
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Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'm checking out storm-caller as we speak and will look into mixing it into Tianxia, probably using it as a wierd skill.
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Jul 21, 2014 14:02
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My group is just getting into Fate, and we're coming to the close of our first Scenario. It's gone mostly smooth, minus a few people that are stuck in the old mindset of chart and rules based games (most of us have 20+ years of games like D&D under our belts). We've run into a question, though. Do you need to be explicitly aware of an Advantage on an enemy to invoke it for the +2? Mostly in a conflict here. Let's say a character was in a conflict that was mental - some sort of Cthulhu like horror, and used their moderate consequence to avoid a 4 Shift hit, and decided on something like "Harrowed Soul". That's purely internal, though. If someone else in the next conflict wants to invoke it for a +2 on their attack, can they? Do they need to roll Notice or something first to determine that the character is looking unbalanced first (which rather wastes a turn to get the +2, but still)? The character always has Harrowed Soul, the attacker just doesn't get the mechanical +2 unless they spend the Fate Point to abuse it.
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Jul 21, 2014 16:58
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Mortanis posted:Do you need to be explicitly aware of an Advantage on an enemy to invoke it for the +2? Technically, yes. It's under "Creating and Discovering Aspects in play", and covered by "Create and Advantage". quote:Generally speaking, we assume that most of the aspects in play are public Now, sometimes aspects are obvious (like "Broken Leg" or "Stunned"), so in those cases it makes sense and is perfectly allowable to just let everyone know that aspect's in play. But for things that wouldn't be obvious have people try to Create an Advantage to see if they can suss out the aspect.
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Jul 21, 2014 17:37
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I'd argue that if characters are reasonability communicating, anyone can tag it. If the count's fiancee knows about his Broken Heart [-], but the barbarian chieftain doesn't, he can't use it. BUT, the other side makes sense. If the count and the chieftain are dueling, the Chieftain might say "his spirit isn't in it. I'm tagging his broken heart as he doesn't raise his sabre fast enough"... the argument could be made. I this case, adjudicate in favor of the person being awesome.
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Jul 22, 2014 06:45
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So I was just thinking about a framework to run a murder mystery investigation as a modified Fate conflict. The results seem interesting enough that I'd be interested in shoehorning it into a game I run at something. The idea is that you have The Case as a "character", with two Stress tracks and two sets of Consequences - one each for Mystery and Truth. It has a set of skills or approaches - this could just be a general Mystery approach, or an Approach for each suspect, or however you want to model it. The case doesn't take actions (although maybe it could in another version of the schema), all actions are taking by the detectives. You create advantages as normal, but Attacks are special: If you hit, you deal damage to the case's Mystery Track/Consequences as normal, but if you miss, you instead deal damage to the Truth Track/Consequences as if you hit by the same margin you missed by. As the Mystery Track accumulates Stress, the party learns more about the case - clues are revealed, alibis are expanded, time of death is cemented, and so on. As the Mystery Consequences are filled, you learn important things about the case - dramatic revelations that cut down on your pool of suspects, bringing you closer to the truth. If the Mystery Track is defeated, you catch the culprit. As the Truth Track accumulates Stress, the case becomes more confusing - clues seem to contradict each other, promising leads dry up or get more complicated. As the Truth Consequences are filled, new Aspects are added to the scene representing trouble at the investigation - maybe Reginald has become convinced without proof that Victoria must have done it because he has a grudge against her. Maybe the bumbling constable shows up and tries to muscle in on the investigation. These must be overcome to continue the investigation. If the Truth Track is defeated, the culprit gets away without being identified. Here is a quick and dirty example of the rules in action. I didn't start writing it up with a coherent crime explanation in mind - the solution formed gradually over the course of the scene. e: Going further, you could use this as a framing mechanism for an entire adventure. Make an interrogation a Contest, and the number of successes each side ends with being used to determine Mystery/Truth damage. Depending on the game tone, there could even be combat scenes embedded into the investigation. Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 17:43
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Having read through Atomic Robo's stat blocks, I'm thinking of doing a generational supers games where everyone has several different characters in several different eras, all with a unifying theme/identity (mechanically represented by having a similar/identical Concept on all your characters - i.e. Atomic Robo and his Robot aspects, or the Sparrows and Britain's Top Agent). The idea would be to have a flashback mechanic that's used to switch time periods during play and provide backstory for a "later" era - so you could be fighting some evil Russian mercenaries in the 00s and flash back to the 60s/70s era where your Cold War characters are fighting some evil Soviet spies, and use the scene to provide backstory/context for the evil Russian mercs. The setting would obviously be the real world, and you wouldn't have to detail it out at all beyond some general notes on what the PCs would be in each era (e.g. 16th century PCs are people like Robin Hood and the Three Musketeers, 1890s PCs are gentlemen inventors, explorers and vigilantes; 1930s/40s PCs are vigilantes fighting organised crime or serving as Allied special commandos, fighting Hitler's wizards and werewolves; 1970s PCs are superspies or superheroes fighting for their bloc; etc.). I'm not too sure what to actually do for the Flashback mechanic, though. Maybe "pay a fate point to trigger a flashback and play out a scene from an earlier era that's related to the current scene in whatever era the game is primarily set for this session, get a free scene aspect with some free invokes?" e; how's this? Once per scene, everyone at the table can pay 1 Fate Point (each) to trigger a Flashback. A Flashback "pauses" the current scene and establishes a new scene set in an earlier era which serves to contextualise the paused scene. For example, while fighting some Russian mercenaries smuggling nuclear weapons, you could choose to Flashback to the Cold War or World War II eras to frame a scene about your characters in that era fighting the rogue Soviet spies or the Nazi scientists who hid those nukes. Regardless of how the scene goes, once it is over, everyone should agree on a new, relevant scene aspect that reflects the newly-uncovered backstory. That aspect starts with one free invoke per Fate Point paid to trigger the Flashback (so if there were five players, each paying one Fate Point, the scene aspect starts with five free invokes). Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 24, 2014 11:36
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I think there's the core of something there. I like the idea of Flashbacks and that basic structure, but if you're going to go with that theme I think you could do several different things with it. 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? They could also come into play for the cost in 'at a cost' features in mega-stunts. I really like the concept as a whole. I think the more you do with flashbacks the better.
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Jul 25, 2014 20:06
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The campaign that I run just recently switched over to Fate (from SW:EotE) mid-story. I couldn't be happier. Fate is so good at supporting our narrative-heavy style of play, and I love that combat doesn't feel like a major gear-shift, but rather flows in and out perfectly. We're currently using a mix of Fate Accelerated (which we started with) and Fate Core, as we pull more and more things from it. It's been a great way to ease in to full-blown Fate. I am still not sure if and when we want to switch from Approaches to Skills though. I REALLY like that Approaches are fast. Really fast. We never (well, infrequently) have to stop and figure out which approach is appropriate, because it's so naturally driven by the narrative. The little we did of Fate Core in the past showed that there was a moderate amount of slowdown with Skills, especially when trying to figure out which skill was appropriate for Defending against a particular attack/advantage. Has anyone else made the switch from Approaches to Skills mid-stream? Any tips or opinions on the matter? I also know there are some hybrid hacks out there as well but I worry that that would simply complicate the matter even more. -- Next topic: calling in powerful help. For many sessions, I was trying to figure out what the best way to handle the issue of my players having access to a very large pool of resources. We're doing a modern day campaign, and over the story they have gained powerful allies and access to advanced technology. If they wanted to requisition a tank for a mission, it's within their ability to do so. At first I was just putting them as aspects that they could potentially pull in to a scene to take advantage of, or maybe requiring a Create Advantage roll to use the resource. The problem is that this reduced sometimes narratively significant allies or tools to a single aspect, and didn't feel right in many of the cases. Finally, I came up with a solution, inspired by the Atomic Robo rules: We are speccing out the powerful "side-assets" that they have access to as Extras. Some are more complex than others, and some are simply a single aspect. The key is this: the COST for pulling in one of those resources is increasing the GM's fate point pool. Want to bring along that powerful dude you made friends with who could serve as a major asset on this mission? Sure, but now the GM has 2 more fate points. Want to make use of that ultra powerful weapon you stole and have been waiting to use? 4 GM fate points. We haven't been using it long, but I think it's perfect. It allows them to use their resources whenever they want, but it comes at a satisfying cost. The challenge will become more difficult, but if the thing you're pulling in is the right tool for the job, it should be more effective than the thread of those fate points. I'll check in when we've been using this system for longer and let you know how it goes. I haven't seen a hack online that works like this, but point me in the right direction if someone has already come up with this!
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Jul 25, 2014 22:57
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