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It's not really a major mechanic, it's just a mechanic, and if you're not comfortable with going there you can always stipulate ahead of time that sex will be implied rather than explicit*, or that sex moves trigger off intimacy rather than sex, per se, or ultimately even just skip them. I don't feel like they serve an inextricable purpose that holds the entire game up, but they do make it a little richer and help set the tone that Vincent Baker was going for. *(By explicit I just mean specifying that sex is happening, describing clothes coming off maybe, vs just having the characters go off somewhere private, end scene. I trust that most groups probably would not by default go into any pornographic-level detail.)
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Sep 28, 2013 18:45
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Captain Walker posted:God is the conflict resolution system ever great though; death to d20 and ability scores it's all about 2d6 plus flat number now. Upside of FATE is that four Fudge dice provide an even better bell curve of probability than 2d6. Your stats are rated by how you perform on average, and you can reliably expect to roll between -1/+1 degrees off that.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:30
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Not if you have my dice, you can't. I swear, NPCs average a -3.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:38
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petrol blue posted:Not if you have my dice, you can't. Just think of it as your dice contributing to the narrative. I'm thinking about starting a FATE game with some of my friends soon and I was curious how well the proposed first session - where you figure out your setting and so forth - tends to go. I don't mind inventing things on the fly in general so coming up with a launching off point from level zero sounds right up my alley. But on the other hand I could very easily see it ending up being a complete hash. I know it's going to be group specific but does it go better if you come with a list of possibilities or just let it go freeform?
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Sep 28, 2013 19:45
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Daetrin posted:I'm thinking about starting a Fate game with some of my friends soon and I was curious how well the proposed first session tends to go. I've done both and they both work out great. I find that if you come in with a basic idea it goes a bit faster, but if you don't have any preconceptions you sometimes get a more interesting setting. The whole idea is fantastic and every time I've done it it creates a real connection between the players and the setting itself. They have good reasons for caring about the world and what is going on because they helped create it all.
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Sep 28, 2013 20:04
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petrol blue posted:I swear, NPCs average a -3. Yours too?  I think our dice-bot is secretly watching the game because it always seems to come up with the perfect roll for the story. I only get good rolls for NPCs when it'd drive the story in most satisfying direction. Or really bad ones when it's downright hilarious. Recently my DMPC Warden failed a +2 difficulty roll (he got a 0) on kicking an evil magic skull (it was spitting out snakes) into the river, so I had it land in their getaway boat instead. Failing in Fate can be much more fun than succeeding sometimes.
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Sep 28, 2013 20:34
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You guys too? I thought I was the only one krysmphoenix's dicebot hated! 
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Sep 28, 2013 21:31
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Davin Valkri posted:You guys too? I thought I was the only one krysmphoenix's dicebot hated! Wanna know the scary thing? I technically house Krysm-bot in my home now that krysmphoenix is my housemate. I have that spiteful chaos-dice-god in my house 
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Sep 29, 2013 00:38
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^^^^ Going by last night's game, I think Krysmbot is infecting the other Fudge dice in the house.Davin Valkri posted:You guys too? I thought I was the only one krysmphoenix's dicebot hated! Look, Krysmbot hates me too! It's not just you guys! Krysmphoenix fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 00:42
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Krysmphoenix posted:Look, Krysmbot hates me too! It's not just you guys! That doesn't make it any better.
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Sep 29, 2013 00:45
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What, you guys are only catching up to the dice being plot-sensitive just now? I've been a firm believer in that since forever. The dice only respond to two stimuli: First, the plot kicking up, and two, a player's emotional state. A focused player whose head is in the game always, *always* rolls better, somehow. I blame the Heart of the Dice or something.
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Sep 29, 2013 00:52
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Transient People posted:What, you guys are only catching up to the dice being plot-sensitive just now? I've been a firm believer in that since forever. The dice only respond to two stimuli: First, the plot kicking up, and two, a player's emotional state. A focused player whose head is in the game always, *always* rolls better, somehow. I blame the Heart of the Dice or something. It's a good deal more entertaining to have a single player's misfortune skew the dice result distribution to center on -1 instead of 0. That was one seriously unlucky guy though.
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Sep 29, 2013 01:35
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Daetrin posted:Just think of it as your dice contributing to the narrative. If it makes you feel any better, my group decided to try FAE for the first time, and someone jokingly suggested that he wanted to play a "sexy secret vampire butler", so I I wrote that on a post it note and after about 10 minutes of talking we were playing a Downton Abbey style manor house intrigue game...with vampires. I've been sold on Fate ever since that experience. Having a system where you can something as simple as "I really want to play X character" and turn it into a playable game in such a short time is amazing. It makes it highly appealing for roleplayers like me who don't have the time to play a more involved system like D&D.
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Sep 29, 2013 02:51
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I think collaborative world-building sessions in general are amazing - my current sci-fi game has so many great ideas that I wouldn't have come up with by myself, and a very important bonus is that your players spend a whole session telling you exactly what they want in the game, in terms of style as well as 'things'. It also gets the players a lot more involved in the world, and means everyone has more of a feel for things outside their character. e: For me, it was using the Diaspora world-gen, which is '2 solar systems per player, roll for it's tech level, environment, and resources, then people flesh that out and figure how they all fit together'. Why does Burrackas have lush garden worlds but no resources? Because the Giant Robot Overlords are keeping people from getting at them. Suddenly, the first major plot arc is born: a galaxy on the verge of starvation, bickering over scant resources, the PCs must unite everyone and defeat the robot menace for good. petrol blue fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 21:45
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Speaking of sci-fi, I just started gming a game, and its my first time playing. We just had our first session, and it went well enough, aspects came into play, everyone enjoyed themselves. We kind of forgot to compel aspects as much as we should, but that's not the point. We hacked out some spaceship rules, keeping them really simple, and having one spaceship conflict that turned into a contest, and I realized I'm horrible at coming up with situation aspects that would apply for space. I can do indoors and even outside pretty well, but my mind goes blank when I try to think of space. I can see asteroids, or maybe being near a black hole or a star, but those are all pretty high concept, and I can't think of anything at all for lower-key conflicts. Any suggestions I could use as a jumping off point?
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Sep 29, 2013 22:48
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By situation aspects, do you mean aspects that describe the scene as opposed to maneuvers? Things that come to mind for those are heat emissions, solar flares, stardust, true 3D movement ('the enemy gate is DOWN'), any free-moving objects just passing by, micrometeorite rains...
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Sep 29, 2013 23:20
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It is hard to come up with them without space becoming not-very-empty. The diaspora system is pretty over-complex, I'd not really recommend it. In future, I'm planning on using the chase-scene rules from the toolkit, but it's not perfect by a long shot.
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Sep 30, 2013 01:28
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Loki_XLII posted:Speaking of sci-fi, I just started gming a game, and its my first time playing. We just had our first session, and it went well enough, aspects came into play, everyone enjoyed themselves. We kind of forgot to compel aspects as much as we should, but that's not the point. For space, if you want it to be moderately realistic, I think all your aspects are going to be something to do with your ship or the opponent's ship. ECM, ECCM, Overloading Shields, Rerouted Power, She Cannae Take Much More Of This, Cap'n. Or even things like Incoming Reinforcements. I should say I don't know much of anything about the Diaspora system.
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Sep 30, 2013 03:31
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Been thinking a lot about running a huge, sprawling time travel game, basically so I can  out and end up with a ridiculously convoluted timeline chart.Fate's perfect for it because declaring past and present events to gently caress with is basically just another kind of Declaration.
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Sep 30, 2013 07:15
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Daetrin posted:I should say I don't know much of anything about the Diaspora system. Diaspora has a seperate mini-game for ship combat, with ships placed on a line, maneuvering for position, and so on. Ships have 5 aspects each, space itself has none. It's not a bad system, and using the line makes a lot of sense (it represents relative speed and distance, similar to [can't remember the system, WHFRP?] where you model 'distance from the centre of the fight'). The problem is that it's another set of rules to learn, which is something Diaspora does a lot (there's also advanced rules for squad-level engagement and weapons/armour). Really, if you're using all the systems, it suggests that you're after a complexity of rules that just isn't fate. The cluster (the set of ~10 solar systems that makes up the game world) generation system is amazing, but otherwise I'd recommend Bulldogs or just Core for sci-fi.
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Sep 30, 2013 09:32
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We're three sessions deep in a new campaign, and I'm loving it so far. Fate makes it really easy to pitch high-concept games like "hardboiled detective occult noir: Unknown Armies meets Raymond Chandler in 1950s St. Louis." And the system can handle it with minimal tweaking, the Aspects do all the heavy lifting when it comes to setting and tone. I highly recommend the Fate Toolkit for other new Fate players, it has a bunch of great ideas and examples for expanding the game. The only issue we've had is balancing conflicts. Our GM has no idea how tough PCs are and how much hurt they can soak up. I keep pushing for more difficult encounters, 'cause we can always Concede if it's too tough, right? Most of our conflicts only last two rounds, Max. The book is not very clear on what an "average encounter" looks like. It tells us that NPCs are statted up according to their story role and not by objective ability, but that's about it.
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Sep 30, 2013 15:23
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petrol blue posted:It is hard to come up with them without space becoming not-very-empty. The diaspora system is pretty over-complex, I'd not really recommend it. In future, I'm planning on using the chase-scene rules from the toolkit, but it's not perfect by a long shot. What kind of space travel are you working with? Simple space combat aspects if your spacecraft are inert. Your relative velocities, angles and facing, which are all hard to change(and thus make nice scene aspects) since you spent a lot of time and energy getting those values to begin with.
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Sep 30, 2013 16:20
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For enemy statting, you should want the enemy's defense stat (athletics or whatever else) to be very close to the party's attack stats. So if you have 3 PC's with +5 guns, your mooks should have +4 athletics (or +3 if you want them to blow up real quick) your regular bad guys should have +5, and your Big Bad should have +6 (probably augmented by stunts or other abilities.) Fudge tends to roll 0, +1, or -1 the vast majority of the time. Take that into account when you're statting your baddies because it doesn't matter if they should probably only have +2 athletics if you were being realistic, if your PC's are rolling at +5 anything with a +2 is going to be slaughtered indiscriminately. You have to kinda inflate it for any real contest. The other thing to remember is the zone should be more interesting than a white room. Have stage hazards and limitations, (darkness, civilians, walls, "On fire", incoming law enforcement etc) so that your PC's can't just spend every round attacking and combat feels much more like an action movie and less like a crunchy numbers game. Throwing in a time limit every now and again is a good change of pace too.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:25
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Paper Kaiju posted:Upside of FATE is that four Fudge dice provide an even better bell curve of probability than 2d6. Your stats are rated by how you perform on average, and you can reliably expect to roll between -1/+1 degrees off that. I think it would be the best of both worlds if FATE had DW/AW partial successes (I know FATE does with ties, but how often do those come up) and no rolling for the GM. I think using the moves in FATE would be easy enough to do. Pretty sure that would be my dream system.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:30
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mistaya posted:For enemy statting, you should want the enemy's defense stat (athletics or whatever else) to be very close to the party's attack stats. So if you have 3 PC's with +5 guns, your mooks should have +4 athletics (or +3 if you want them to blow up real quick) your regular bad guys should have +5, and your Big Bad should have +6 (probably augmented by stunts or other abilities.) One option you can take is to have half your mooks running interference for the other half by simply dedicating themselves to creating and passing around aspects. This lets you get away with low stat mooks without them being instant stains. Or you could just combine multiple mooks into one higher stat character to just account for all that mess being done in the background.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:35
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Yeah, it's been hard for our GM to break out of statting NPCs realistically instead of narratively. Like, we were tracked down by some thugs while investigating an occult murderer, a "stay away from this one" deal, and those dudes lasted two rounds max. I blame myself; I made an NPC stat sheet for the GM because it's our first FATE campaign and I listed stats for a Thug as one-hit takedowns. I made a new sheet and renamed Thug, Trained Killer, and Assassin as Mooks, Challenging Fight, and Boss Fight instead. Hopefully this makes it clear that enemies should be statted by their purpose, not with any verisimilitude in mind. Any more conflict advice? These are useful system/math info so far.
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Sep 30, 2013 17:55
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Mooks with ranged attacks, especially taking advantage of scene or setup aspects to hit, are pretty nasty. As long as they can hit at all, they limit the stress the PCs can handle when coming up to the significant fights, so use them freely that way. For example, four grunts with guns, two of them create a Crossfire aspect on the scene and then pass the tags to the other two grunt, who each barely hit and clip off a box of stress. The players then crush them in a single hit, but when the boss fight comes, the costs reveal themselves.
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Sep 30, 2013 18:08
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I think we seriously misunderstood the damage system, so can someone check me here? I was under the impression that Stress boxes were there to prevent Consequences. But it sounds like the other way around: once the Stress boxes are filled, you're out of the fight. So you use Consequences to save your Stress boxes, even though Stress refilled after each fight? Also, can you check multiple Stress boxes? If I take a five point hit, I can check the 3 and 2 box, right? Should I instead take a 2-point Consequence and then check the 3 box? Or do I only do that of I expect the fight to last a while? Basically, we treated Consequences as last-resort options. How are we supposed to work this? So far, it's not a combat-heavy game but I think that's gonna change tonight...
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Sep 30, 2013 18:50
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Naw, what I meant was, by occupying your lower stress boxes, when you take a high stress hit later, and pay it off with a consequence, you'd be STILL filling in your higher stress boxes, because the minions used up the first and second box with glancing hits. EDIT: If you take a 5 stress hit, you must check a box of 5th or higher. If you are unable to check a stress box, you are taken out, but you may take any number of consequences to decrease the hit, to 0 stress. So their use depends on the fight. On a fight you expect to clear quickly and recover stress from, you avoid taking consequences, let them knock you out even. On a fight you MUST win, you take consequences in order to spread stress out across your track, keep the higher boxes open for big hits. veekie fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 18:56
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Scrape posted:I think we seriously misunderstood the damage system, so can someone check me here? I was under the impression that Stress boxes were there to prevent Consequences. But it sounds like the other way around: once the Stress boxes are filled, you're out of the fight. So you use Consequences to save your Stress boxes, even though Stress refilled after each fight? Also, can you check multiple Stress boxes? If I take a five point hit, I can check the 3 and 2 box, right? Should I instead take a 2-point Consequence and then check the 3 box? Or do I only do that of I expect the fight to last a while? I'm pretty sure you are not supposed to check off multiple Stress boxes for a single attack. In your example you would either check the 3 box and take a Mild 2-point Consequence, or get Taken Out of the combat. (This is, of course, assuming you do not have 5 stress boxes.) I would personally say Consequences are there to prevent you from being Taken Out, since you can always choose not to take one. Consequences are supposed to be last resort options, yes. They are what you take if you need to keep fighting. But if you're a player where it's clear you guys have already won and an enemy gets a lucky roll, getting Taken Out is not that bad. It just means you get knocked to the side and take a breather to let your friends keep going.
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Sep 30, 2013 19:12
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Scrape posted:I think we seriously misunderstood the damage system, so can someone check me here? I was under the impression that Stress boxes were there to prevent Consequences. But it sounds like the other way around: once the Stress boxes are filled, you're out of the fight. So you use Consequences to save your Stress boxes, even though Stress refilled after each fight? Also, can you check multiple Stress boxes? If I take a five point hit, I can check the 3 and 2 box, right? Should I instead take a 2-point Consequence and then check the 3 box? Or do I only do that of I expect the fight to last a while? Okay, let's break this down. The "damage" system in Fate has two parts: stress (the boxes) and consequences (the aspects). When you take stress damage from a hit, you fill in the box equal to the amount of stress you take, and only that box. Let's say we have a character with three stress boxes. code:code:code:Looking back at the the example above, I can be taken out if I take a 2-stress hit or 3-stress hit because those boxes are filled and the hit would roll up past the end of the track. Regardless of how my boxes were filled in, I'd be taken out by a 4-stress or higher hit because I don't have that many boxes. Before we move to the next part, remember this: as long as you're not taken out, all your stress clears out at the end of the conflict. You can reduce taking stress damage by voluntarily taking consequences, which are aspects that represent longer-term damage. Consequences come in three varieties that determine the overall severity of the aspect and how much they reduce stress by:
For example: I'm in a fight and I take a 6-stress hit. That's way off the top of my 3-box stress track, so I have a few options:
To go back to your question about the 5-stress hit, you have to fill in your fifth stress box. If you don't have a fifth stress box, you have to take at least a minor consequence or be taken out. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Oct 1, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 19:32
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By the way, the "one one stress box per hit" is in the Fate Core book, page 165 or so.
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Sep 30, 2013 19:35
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I don't remember which game it was in, but there is also a "more deadly" option for stress. You essentially fill in all lower boxes on a hit. So if you take a 2 stress hit, you fill in boxes 1 and 2.
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Sep 30, 2013 19:59
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Oh my god, you're a lifesaver. Thanks. I understood that the boxes were increasing in value. Like, I knew three boxes was not worth 3 shifts, but rather 1+2+3= 6 shifts total... but somehow totally misinterpreted the rest of the system. To clarify: my Totally Awesome Snowflake PC has four Physical Stress boxes. Are the following statements correct? 1. If he takes a single 3point hit, I could fill in the 3rd box, or a 2point Consequence and the 1st box. 2. If he gets hit for 1 "damage" three times in a row, I just check the boxes off one at a time, in order. So the third time I take 1 dmg, I'm forced to check off a 3-point box even though it's just 1 Stress. At that point, it makes more sense for me to fill in a 2point Consequence, because the 3-point Stress box is more valuable, right? 3. If I'm rolling really poorly but still don't expect this battle to last long, I'm better off filling in Stress before Consequences. Because Stress resets after the battle. Say, in the example above, if I somehow know for a fact that this fight is going to end after the third 1point hit, I should just suck it up and use the 3point box for it because they'll reset (but the Consequence would stick around) 4. Conversely, if this is the Big Final Battle of the adventure, I should take Consequences earlier because I need those high-value Stress boxes to win the encounter. A 4-point box is hella valuable for taking a big hit and staying in the fight, and a 4-point Consequence is worth taking because it's the Final Showdown and I gotta win it. 5. There are no mechanical penalties from Consequences, right? They're just negative Aspects that the GM can use against me as long as they're around?
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Sep 30, 2013 20:04
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Oh oh oh, and: 6. NPCs work the same way. Doing multiple 1Stress hits to an NPC can take her down. Obviously a single 8point hit might knock her out immediately, but doing like six 1point hits will get me there eventually. Yeah?
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Sep 30, 2013 20:08
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Demon_Corsair posted:I don't remember which game it was in, but there is also a "more deadly" option for stress. You essentially fill in all lower boxes on a hit. So if you take a 2 stress hit, you fill in boxes 1 and 2. Scrape posted:To clarify: my Totally Awesome Snowflake PC has four Physical Stress boxes. Are the following statements correct? quote:2. If he gets hit for 1 "damage" three times in a row, I just check the boxes off one at a time, in order. So the third time I take 1 dmg, I'm forced to check off a 3-point box even though it's just 1 Stress. At that point, it makes more sense for me to fill in a 2point Consequence, because the 3-point Stress box is more valuable, right? quote:3. If I'm rolling really poorly but still don't expect this battle to last long, I'm better off filling in Stress before Consequences. Because Stress resets after the battle. Say, in the example above, if I somehow know for a fact that this fight is going to end after the third 1point hit, I should just suck it up and use the 3point box for it because they'll reset (but the Consequence would stick around) quote:4. Conversely, if this is the Big Final Battle of the adventure, I should take Consequences earlier because I need those high-value Stress boxes to win the encounter. A 4-point box is hella valuable for taking a big hit and staying in the fight, and a 4-point Consequence is worth taking because it's the Final Showdown and I gotta win it. quote:5. There are no mechanical penalties from Consequences, right? They're just negative Aspects that the GM can use against me as long as they're around? Scrape posted:Oh oh oh, and:
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Sep 30, 2013 20:18
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On statting NPCs, the key I think is to play them like they were PCs. That means You also have a lot more freedom with stunts when statting up NPCs. I wanted a character to be basically invincible, so I gave him this stunt: Stunt: Always wins the roll in a contest of strength or power by +1. My PCs can get around that with fate points, free invocations, the aforementioned boosts, or anything special they might cook up, but basically it let me make a recurring villain that the PCs can definitely take down in a climactic fight, whenever that happens, but makes it less likely in skirmishes. Other stunts I've used are erase one stress box each
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Sep 30, 2013 20:42
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This is great stuff, thanks. Next question: my current campaign is mostly social, not a lot of combat (it's like, 1950s gumshoe stuff). There's some confusion about the Overcome action. It can be used, but not must be used, to place or discover an NPC Aspect. Like, we're interrogating the mobster's wife. I can roll Rapport to get the whole story out of her, and if I succeed with style I get a Boost. So maybe we put the Convinced Aspect on her and get one free Invoke to use for follow-up questioning. Or we could flat-out state "I want her to trust us, can I place the I Trust These Guys Aspect on her?" And it's the same Rapport Overcome roll? Is that right? Like sometimes you'd want to place an Aspect so it sticks around, but sometimes you just want to make an opposed Negotiation roll or whatever to just get what you want, and it has nothing to do with naming an Aspect or Boost? There's some confusion over when we have to use Aspects. Only when we care enough for it to matter, right? Also, is it a harder DC to place an Aspect (versus just getting answers) or is it basically the same roll/difficulty, just with situational results? Scrape fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 21:14
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Depending on how important that information she can give you is, you may even want to run it as a social/mental conflict with multiple rolls to "take out" her mental stress boxes (which she gets to defend against, and she would get to make her own attack rolls to try to take you out by making you go away and leave her alone.) There's multiple ways to do something like that encounter, and none of them are wrong. The idea is to use the method that makes the most sense. If she's a key witness identifying a murderer, the conflict is much more important and should be harder than say, trying to find out where Slimy Joe hangs out on Friday nights. Use the method that makes the most sense for the gravity of the scene.
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Sep 30, 2013 21:34
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Scrape posted:This is great stuff, thanks. It's really more of a situational thing; I'd say you could use Rapport or Empathy to "Create an Advantage" by putting the Co-operative aspect on the person, then invoke that to get a bonus when you try to use your Rapport to "Overcome" her opposed Will roll. Also, like mistaya said, if it's an important scene, make it a social combat. quote:There's some confusion over when we have to use Aspects. Only when we care enough for it to matter, right? quote:Also, is it a harder DC to place an Aspect (versus just getting answers) or is it basically the same roll/difficulty, just with situational results? The big thing to bear in mind is that theres no "one right way" to model things in Fate. Don't worry about getting things exactly by the book; as long as you stick to the attack/defend/overcome/create advantage guidelines you should be good.
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Sep 30, 2013 21:47
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