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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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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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Scrape posted:To clarify: my Totally Awesome Snowflake PC has four Physical Stress boxes. Are the following statements correct? Just chiming in on the Stress discussion to point out an important thing that you might want to know: Except in a few rare, extremely uncommon circumstances, you never want to take a Consequence if you can help it. While Consequences are handy for soaking up stress, their true value lies in the fact that they are Aspects, can be invoked and used as such, and above all the enemy gets them for free when he hurts you. Taking a consequence is like handing the other team a free, automatically successful Create Advantage action on top of their successful attack. If you accept a Consequence, the next bad guy down the line can use it to tag his attack and make it 2 points better, making it almost a certainty that he'll hurt you again and make you take another consequence (and if he's a real rear end in a top hat, he might succeed with style, take the one-shift reduction on the inflicted stress and gain two different aspects for his next buddy to hit you with!). FATE has what is called a 'Death Spiral', where the first relevant injury quickly leads to a crushing defeat for the wounded side unless it can do something very drastic to turn the tables. Probably the number 1 use of Fate Points is dodging or reducing Consequence inflicting attacks, and for good reason - once your injuries start going past the threshold of minor cuts and nicks or mildly bruised egos, things are going to escalate dramatically very hard and someone is going to walk away broken in some way, pending Concessions - if they can walk away at all.
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Sep 30, 2013 22:06
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Well, ChrisAsmadi's old Planescape game is going to relaunch as a FAE Freeport game pretty soon, so you might want to keep an eye on that one. So far, it seems like FATE works pretty well for adapting D&D characters into it, but we won't know for sure until we actually get going. EDIT: That said, a lot of people have long held the belief that D&D 4e with 13th Age Backgrounds in place of Skills and Fate Points replacing and integrating Action Points is probably the absolute best quicky and dirty fix for getting the perfect crunchy fantasy game. So it can't be that bad of an idea. Transient People fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 22:16
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Scrape posted:Hmmmm, this is what I assumed originally, but it seems kinda weird to me. Like, is that extremely uncommon? If you know a fight is going to last for a while and you're facing a 4-point hit, wouldn't you want to save your 4-point Stress Box to stay in the fight, and instead take a Consequence? Or should you pretty much always wait until your Stress track is full before moving on to Consequences? You don't want to 'save' your stress boxes because once about half of your boxes are filled up, a Consequence hit means your opponents will start to simply bypass the rest of your track entirely. At that point, your stress boxes may as well all be full for all they good they'll do you. As for your experiences, I can't say without having access to your statblock and the statblock of the enemies your GM used. In general, my experience is that PCs are untouchable so long as they have Fate Points to burn and that's alright, just the system working as intended (if you've played D&D 4e, this is the equivalent to you burning your healing surges to stay upright). Without them, concentrated fire can make a PC drop dead in a single round.
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Oct 1, 2013 07:01
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So here's a question that's been on the back of my mind for a while. FAE Freeport has Consumable Items, which as you might suspect are items you use and are then spent. Nowhere does it say if consumable items can be replenished somehow, like Dresden Potions could. This brings up an interesting question because of the following quote:Freeport Consumable Items posted:Consumable items come in both major and minor variations. They are single-use items, like potions, oils, scrolls, and the like. A minor consumable item has an effect equivalent to a stunt, while a major consumable item can be roughly twice as powerful. A minor consumable item is destroyed or rendered mundane after using it, but has no other cost. A major consumable item also costs a fate point to use. Does this mean major consumable items are permanently lost after using them, or are they meant to refresh somehow?
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Oct 2, 2013 20:57
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Golden Bee posted:Actually, rapport is for creating advantages. Only Provoke is used for social attacks (just like Empathy is used for social defense). That's one of the first things people recommend houseruling for the most part, though. Dresden Files had it right with allowing all three of the core talky stats (Provoke, Persuade, Deceive) to be used to attack instead of just creating advantages.
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Oct 8, 2013 22:11
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Evil Mastermind posted:The Fate Freeport Companion is now available for non-backers. It uses a modified version of FAE where the approaches are the D&D stats. It's also a really cool setting. Of note though, the NPCs are TERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Way too many of them have one or two (!) ranks of Sneak Attack, which means that their main method of attack is catching you unawares (possibly with the consequent Mediocre defense roll you get instead of your normal +skill roll) and then hitting you with a default roll of Epic (+7) or higher. Freeport's rules are cool but for the love of god make your own NPCs using them.
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Oct 10, 2013 17:17
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Considering the Stress Tax is the second worst bit of Core (the worst one being 'max athletics, burn a stunt on buying a catch-all defense skill, or die'), anything that helps take the sting off of it can only be a good thing. Very few characters can get away with not spending points on at least Physique, if not Will, even if they don't fit the concept perfectly.
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Oct 17, 2013 18:20
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MadScientistWorking posted:What the hell are you doing that requires a Stress range more than the default? Any game that uses straight weapon shifts just ignores the first half of the stress track for the most part. There's also those characters who take a +2 to attack rolls stunt, who tend to succeed with style at a minimum, meaning they will instantly inflict consequences on anyone without at least +1 Physique or Will. There's a lot of reasons why the Stress Tax is a thing, really.
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Oct 19, 2013 08:02
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:My lazy way to pump up a normal npc into boss levels is to say that for every pc it is outnumbered by, it gains a temporary fate point for that round, and those points refresh/reset at the start of each new round. This is terrible no good advice and should be ignored. Don't punish the players for trying to succeed and using their edges smartly, you'll just bore them or depress them as they can't get things done. Instead, encourage them to get creative. The chief example of this I can think of is when I was up against a bunch of mooks and a named enemy who outnumbered me four to one and had guns primed at my head, and to even things up I Created an Advantage on myself called Suppressive Fighting so that I could get to perform active interference using Fight against anyone who tried to shoot me, getting to hit them for each shot they made. Get your players thinking in terms of blocks, active opposition, interferences and the like and they'll stop trying to build pure navel-gazing advantages all day erryday since those have no payoff beyond being an invoke and can even be compelled by a wily enemy to ruin a PC's day (say that a PC creates a Spell Focus Aspect to amp his next spell. The enemy team can spend a Fate Point to compel Spell Focus and say they get an attack against the PC as if he were Surprised, since he's in such a deep trance). Don't ever punish a player for doing something smart like dropping people off the side of an airship with tackles when they can fly. quote:Question to throw to the thread since I'm thinking of running a FATE game in the future: How would you go about statting a major boss monster? The first thing you want to do is give the Boss some extra actions. This is a core tenet of literally every single RPG with character-to-character conflict ever: Action Advantage Is God. Unless you make your boss a boring overpowered piece of poo poo who rolls everything at base +10 and requires a billion invokes or free tags to even scratch, he's going to get brutally swamped by the PCs because they simply have more actions to throw around, and it'll get particularly bad if they coordinate to place down blocks and straight up stunlock the boss. Instead, hand out anywhere from one extra action per two PCs after the first (so 2 actions for 3 PCs, 3 for 5...) to one action per PC, and spread them across the initiative ladder evenly. This way you'll have a lot more play and counterplay instead of players engaging in an FP burning war with the boss. Second, set the boss' skills at the same level as the party's apex skills, or 1 point higher, like Krysmphoenix said - you want your boss to be tough to take down, except for maybe a couple skills or approaches he's not so hot at and that act as his Achilles Heel. Third, think about what the boss is going to fight like (whether it's a social conflict or a fight scene) and give him stunts that help model that. Is he a domineering politician who can silence fools with a staredown? Give him a stunt that places Intimidated Aspects with no free invokes down whenever he succeeds at a Provoke attack on PCs to block them from acting unless they can pull themselves together. Does he fight with a long ranged polearm and controls the battlefield? Give him stunts so that he can attack from one or two zones away, automatically make attacks against characters who exit a zone within his range and so on. Use the tools at your disposal to model the way the fight would play out in a movie or game through the mechanics. If you keep all these things in mind, your boss should be a scary son of a bitch and your players will talk about him for weeks. 
Transient People fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 23:47
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What, you mean using Create an Advantage to generate a real advantage is bad? Not according to Lenny Balsera and Fred Hicks. CTRL+F to 'NPCs and Characters can provide active opposition when this is supported by the fiction'. Turns out CaA works a little differently than you thought, and this is why you don't need to hold back from making stylish and difficult actions be actually difficult - the reward from thinking creatively exists and it's big! There's no need to punish players if they want to hedge their bets, and conversely, big awesome moves are rewarded not by being easier, but by having clearer payoff. EDIT: Post was previously too assholish. Edited into something nicer. Sorry for lashing out Q_W, had a long day. Transient People fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Oct 25, 2013 |
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Oct 25, 2013 00:41
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Ratpick posted:I'm in agreement with Quadratic_Wizard here: if suppressive fire gives you a bunch of free attacks out of turn, it's not only too powerful in terms of game mechanics but also in narrative terms: the whole point of suppressive fire is that you're taking shots to keep whomever it is you're shooting at on the defensive while sacrificing accuracy. By the rules it should thus be modeled as something that interferes with enemy attacks, but if you actually want to shoot to kill that should be modeled as an attack that you can only do on your own turn. It's not Suppressive Fire but Suppressive Fighting, mind. The context of it is mentioned in the original post: the character started swinging indiscriminately to keep enemies on the defensive because if they tried to stop and aim they'd simply get cut in half. It makes more sense when you think of it that way as opposed to unleashing a ton of lead in the air while people dive behind cover. quote:Right there. Once you say that Create Advantage can give you a ton of free attacks, balance goes off the rails. Why would you not try to do that every single fight? With every single character in every single game? Why wouldn't the gunman use Suppressive Fire to do the same thing? Or the wizard casting Rain of Fire to not only boost his average defense and get free attacks to boot? Because trying to suppress the zone you're in has a really obvious counter to it - you just use your free action movement to get out of it, overcoming it without rolling. It worked in this particular instance because this character had a stunt to generate opposition to attempts to move out of his zone automatically, meaning he stuck his enemies in a Catch-22: Try to move out, fail and get punished, or stick around, make the attack and hope to not get punished. Other characters wouldn't get the same luxury, because their circumstances wouldn't be suited to it. For example, a gunslinger would need a weapon capable of attacking areas or a stunt to target them to do what you suggest, and a wizard likewise. What stops a player from trying something like this is the same thing that prevents him from chaining block after block after block to stunlock an encounter: Context. Considering how much better the Attack action is than CaA normally, I don't think allowing CaA to do impressive things is off the hook, since it'll get a player thinking instead of just stacking bonuses to Hit It With Sword and KOing everything in one go.
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Oct 25, 2013 15:00
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Wow. So it had a counter, except that you were munchkin enough to make a stunt to get rid of it, and it's entirely something you can use in every single encounter to gain a ton of free attacks. No, the stunt existed before the advantage. This is kind of obvious enough that I'd assume it'd go without saying, but apparently not! And of course you're ignoring the fact that the Aspect only allowed me to apply active opposition and punish fails only against enemies who were trying to shoot in melee, or that it only granted 'free' attacks because I was getting swarmed by enemies who were all applying the gang-up bonus against me. Trying to apply that in the context of a different fight might not go so well, since Aspects can be compelled and of course melee opponents won't care about this at all. Coupled with your talk of nerfing attacks by removing the entire point of Consequences and referencing how players should be punished for trying to generate advantages they can succeed at reliably, I'm starting to suspect you haven't played FATE all that much. The system doesn't really work the way you think it does. Transient People fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Oct 25, 2013 |
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Oct 25, 2013 15:42
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What new rules? It's right there in the link I posted, give it a look.Active and Passive Opposition posted:Situation aspects now fill the role that was previously occupied by barriers, representing obstacles that apply to crossing between zones (e.g. “Sheer Cliff”). Other situation aspects, like “Blacker than Midnight” or “Slippery Floor”, may provide constant passive opposition to certain actions (FC 131). The type (passive or active) and level of opposition is set by the GM. For instance, “Slippery Floor” might provide passive opposition at Fair to any action involving rapid movement while an “Imposing Wall” might provide Great passive opposition to moving between zones. You can also mix in the rule about treating Aspects as characters – for example “Moat of Fire” might provide Good active opposition when you try to cross it and also inflict damage with a “Burning Things” skill if you fail (FC 208). You're really, really freaking out about FATE working differently than you thought it did by the developers' word. It's not as punishing and formulaic a conflict game as you think it is!
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Oct 25, 2013 16:23
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TheDemon posted:Suppressive Fighting could easily be justified to let you Defend regardless of who an NPC in the zone attacks. And guess what, the section of the blog you refer to, titled "NPCs and Characters can provide active opposition when this is supported by the fiction", tells you to do exactly that. At no point does the blog mention any kind of action advantage. Read the last quote I posted again. It mentions doing exactly that, with no special stunts. Provide Active Opposition, take action yourself with a skill if the target fails to make the roll.
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Oct 25, 2013 17:35
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quote:Damage bonus. What most weapons do. Since they only work with a hit, they’re only half as valuable as attack bonuses, so a +1 attack is roughly equal to a +2 damage bonus. This isn't actually correct because the usefulness of extra stress is nonlinear. One extra stress is worthless if you have to pay an equivalent price to +1 attack bonus, two extra stress is bad compared to +1 attack bonus, three extra stress against a +2 to attack rolls is again bad, and four extra stress against a +2 to attack rolls is broken because you bypass the stress track and directly jump to instantly inflicting consequences, generating action advantage, bonuses to actions and an incredibly fast death spiral. There's noe xact fix but generally, 'don't use flat stress bonuses tia' is the only sane way to handle stress I've found. No game mechanic should allow you to jump straight to consequences, ever, and flat stress has a remarkable tendency to do that.
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Oct 31, 2013 05:03
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We do have a better mechanic, though - Weapon Dice (and Armor Dice I guess) are it. They seriously fix like two thirds of the issues with trying to crunch up FATE.
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Oct 31, 2013 05:22
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Ah, right. I really don't think those are that good. Say you have 4 weapon dice. Since you're only counting the total pluses, calculating the probability becomes easier. That is the point, yes. You don't try to compare things that are not comparable, and hitchance+damage versus pure damage is incomparable because there is no situation where one is not obviously better than the other. Instead you make damage an extra. You're also forgetting the ripple effect of weapon dice, which makes the reroll option of invokes better compared to taking the flat +2, something which is useful as well. Killing two birds with one stroke is a wise move. quote:It kind of slows the game down to add one more step to attack resolution by rolling damage though. You don't, though. Your attack roll is your damage roll as well, it's just that you're fishing for plusses instead of flat numbers.
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Oct 31, 2013 07:57
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Qwo posted:Is making 4 - (minuses) a critical failure a bad idea? I want a flipside of 'succeeding with style' aka critical hits, but I'm not sure what the statistics of rolling 4 - is. Ask yourself three questions when dealing with failure mechanics: A) Are players going to enjoy it? All players, from the goofballs to the guys who play for keeps to get the story they envision for their characters to happen? If not, how many groups are you going to alienate? B) Are they going to take it when it happens, when rolling a quadruple minus already has the problem of potentially causing you to get one-shotted, giving your enemy a success with style, when they could just invoke to reroll and ignore the pain? C) Is the mechanic not covered by the system already? Do you really need critical botches when successes with style are already a thing, especially when the botches can happen on reactive rolls like defenses? If the answers to these questions are no, no and yes, then scrap the mechanic. Otherwise maybe it's good to develop. Remember though, failure isn't as entertaining as success because most players want their characters to be competent individuals, not useless wastes of space, and the guys who want to be the latter are either disruptive assholes or will constantly be taking compels to fail rolls without trying anyways.
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Oct 31, 2013 08:12
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Quadratic_Wizard posted:Right, my point was only that it doesn't really do much. One weapon or armor die is such a tiny, tiny improvement that you don't really have any options to customize it. I mean, you could say that players get 4 dice to spend on weapons or armor, but that's about it. And I'm not convinced that you can't compare a damage bonus to a hitchance+damage bonus. -3, actually. Right now you only want to reroll if you got a -3 or worse, which is part of why you want rerolling to be better - if it was a legitimate choice instead of an unfavorable gamble to take a reroll on a -2 then you'd more or less have parity between FP uses.
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Oct 31, 2013 16:34
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Tollymain posted:The entire point for choosing to have a more flexible sort of power is that it will be more applicable in scenarios where one approach might not be appropriate. Using a single scenario to attempt to prove your point doesn't help. Unless you have a boring and inattentive GM, you can't roll the same minmaxed approach for every problem you come across. Neither permutation is superior. I think you're missing his point Tolly. Quadratic Wizard is telling you the following: Why would the tech supergenius who makes a gadget for everything (by rolling Clever, because Being The Smart Guy is his schtick) have so much less chance for blowback than the guy who chose Is Batman for his power and took three approaches? One of them will be using +6 Clever for drat near everything, the other one will be rolling with three approaches gaining +1 over baseline and doing less with it.
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Nov 4, 2013 23:58
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Demon Negotiation as a way to power is very much a videogame trapping and needs to be left there. You can't and shouldn't try to replicate it because the format of tabletop RPGs does not allow for it. Fusing works just fine as spending refresh and skillpoints to get better at things though, so that's easy.
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Nov 20, 2013 19:54
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Additionally, both of them have active sides to them - Physique allows you to throw stuff, Will is what you use to create Aspects related to intense concentration, determination or ignoring pain. They have a place IMO.
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Nov 26, 2013 03:14
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neaden posted:Well I'm not really sure I like the extra stress boxes, it seems like it is just another checkbox to have a useful combat character. Will power is always kind of weird in an rpg and you already have compels to tempt them. I haven't played Fate Core yet though, just FAE so I am not sure if it works better in practice. If stress is a problem to you, I suggest consolidating the tracks and making it so the best of Physique or Will applies to it. It's very rare that a character will both be not at all tough AND not have a strong personality given FATE's setup. And at that point, there's always the option of taking a stunt to use something else for the track anyway.
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Nov 26, 2013 04:14
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Glazius posted:So I came up with something interesting for Fate Accelerated, and I think I might actually like it more than Fate Core now if I can work this into it/refine it some. Putting on the playtester hat and dropping all niceness for a second, I can shoot down that hope with one question: What am I trying to break when I want to move using Forceful? This is easy enough to justify normally (I tax myself to the limit, straining my muscles as much as I possibly can, or if I'm riding something I spur it onwards), and yet it doesn't work with those questions. It's not like I'm trying to break a speed record, I just want to get from point A to point B. For that matter, the same thing goes with Flashy: Moving with cartwheels, pirouettes and acrobatics is a perfectly legitimate way to use it to move, but a complete flop with that system because it's not like I am trying to attract someone's attention intentionally, it just happens because of the way I get around.
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Nov 27, 2013 08:25
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thefakenews posted:I just meant that the specific examples Transient People raised don't fall outside the frame of the stakes questions you set out because neither of his examples would require a roll. If a player declares "I'm moving forcefully" they wouldn't roll unless there is something to be gained or lost from doing so - part of the point of your stakes questions is to determine if there needs to be a roll at all. In both cases raised by Transient People the effect of applying the relevant stakes question is that there is no need to roll. But there is something I want there. That thing I want is as simple as "get where I need to be", but I don't really need to be noticed and I don't need to break anything. I just need to be in the right zone, at the right time, to do what I want to do when it's useful. That's how conflict movement in FAE works, you roll and the shifts determine the zones you move by. quote:Who says that what you're trying to break and what you don't want to break have to be different things? You're running hard enough to break your heart or fast enough to break your legs, pushing your horse until it breaks, swerving your plane so hard you hear the wings groaning, but baby, hold together. And the problem here is that these things are entirely too punishing when my goal is, at the same time, simple and yet of supreme importance: Be at the right place at the right time, so I can do what I need to do to achieve an objective or help out a friend. Making the failure to move be "you take a Consequence/die/lose out on being able to continue your tale like you wanted entirely" is just disproportionate as all hell and just means that I, as a player, would simply stick to burning Fate Points to deny the GM the opportunity to hit me with something so ridiculously mean ever. Likewise, reducing a Flashy character to being a lucky punk, no matter what, is just needlessly constraining concepts (when in fact, most of the Flashy characters I can think of are the opposite, acrobats, swashbucklers and showmen of tremendous skill and charm instead of bumbling buffoons). The stakes you have right now are flawed, because you're trying to create one-size-fits-all answers for a game that already gives you answers in every situation that are tailor-made for the conflict at hand. Instead of trying to answer the 'what' of stakes, which FAE does by itself, answer the how. What makes a flashy infiltration of a base differ from a Stealthy one, or a Forceful one, or a Clever one? We know the stakes already: Success, you get in. Fail, you don't. The important question is what that means through the lens of the approach.
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Nov 27, 2013 11:58
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What Zandar said is basically why I'm critical of the idea. Just to give examples off the top of my head, these are things that are all forceful, but two of them most certainly cannot really be made to work with the questions without making the player jump through some very awkward hoops, even though they fit perfectly: -Coolly and mercilessly deconstructing the motives, means and odds of another person to prove just how pathetic their plans are and why they are fools for thinking they could achieve them, using nothing but truth and facts. Bullying, in other words, but honest bullying. -Summoning up force of will when you need it most. -Hefting an enormous two-handed sword and cutting someone in half with it. -Lifting a stone far too big for anyone else to move, because you are strong and stubborn enough to not quit. All four are very obvious and valid uses of the approach, but two of them make the player twist around and contort what he wants to do into 'break stuff' for no reason. The questions really should be more general than that and handle all the basic applications of an approach. quote:More generally, it seems like the first part of each stake is basically justifying why the approach would help with what you're trying to do. This might be why Flashy also seems a bit off - sometimes it's not impressing people that helps you, it's just that being able to disarm someone with a flick of the wrist tends to impress people. I dunno, Flashy's a bit of an odd duck even in original FAE, being more defined by what it can't do (be subtle) than what it can; maybe it needs something different, like, "Tell everyone why you're not insane for trying this..." Something like that is basically what I'd use to set the stakes. Depending on the power level, what Flashy can do is just "Would El Zorro/Raiden (Metal Gear Rising)/Dante (Devil May Cry) do this?". And the consequence for failure is "And what would happen if he screwed up?". PS: As for Quick, if we're talking about successes with a cost, my instinctual tweak would be to make the second part "...And what would be your five-second plan should your first attempt fail?".
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Nov 27, 2013 17:34
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quote:Well, the trick is to realize that Aspects are not actually there to define the things you can and can't spend Fate Points on. There's never a case where you can get creative and spend Fate Points even if you aren't "supposed to", or desperately need to spend Fate Points but can't. I can certainly think of one: In the New Orleans Dresden Files game going on in these very forums, the Warden in a child's body had to pull a fast one on a ghost and could tap into no Aspects to make his lie better, even though it could've been important. It's not that none of them lend themselves to lying, they just didn't fit THIS situation. So he had to bite the bullet and suck at lying even though he didn't really want to. Just because it's not the most key roll ever doesn't change the fact your Aspects constrain you on spending FP sometimes.
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Nov 30, 2013 06:32
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FrozenGoldfishGod posted:I invoke the ghost's 'Unliving Memory' Aspect. Since it's an unliving echo of the person it once was (as per Dresden Files canon, assuming that's relevant), it doesn't actually have the instincts that would have cued in a living witness to my deception, making my invoke valid. ...Which assumes the ghost has that Aspect, which it didn't. I've played FATE for years, and I have never (literally never) seen an opponent-targeted invoke except to Compel them to do something really dumb, and even then only on already revealed Aspects or PC created ones. It's a gamble that can cost you FP for nothing and is supremely not worth it. We can talk hypotheticals all we want but it doesn't change the point I am making: There are situations where an action is something your character would do, but he doesn't have an Aspect he can fall back on to boost the roll if it goes badly. This is not a flaw of the system, but it's dumb to pretend it doesn't exist. That's all.
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Nov 30, 2013 09:21
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Glazius posted:And there wasn't anything he could go the other way on, either? Nothing he could say was being compelled, that he found himself in a situation where he had to lie to a ghost but wasn't that good at it? Conceding the 'fight' would have meant death, see, because we were in the middle of an encampment with hundreds of ghosts. So instead his lie failed and another PC had to cover for him with a better, higher roll. You're missing the point though: There wasn't need to compel anything there, or make the situation worse intentionally. It's not what the player wanted. He just had an obstacle he wanted to overcome, failed, and his Aspects weren't there to back him up and that's all. You're trying to do the same thing as with the 'stakes' for approaches before and trying to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to FATE and...it doesn't really work that way. Not everything is an Aspect, you don't always have Aspects to compel, and there's no need to go four layers deep into the fractal every time.
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Nov 30, 2013 17:28
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You would be, since other players were there and could make rolls as well. It wasn't a one-and-done affair. The other player COULD invoke his Aspects too, because they fit the situation. A bunch of angry ghosts getting on our tail was the worst case scenario situation if everybody botched their rolls badly (and didn't opt to succeed at a cost)
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Dec 1, 2013 03:40
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Rexides posted:In another forum I am a member of we are talking about starting a play-by-post game, and I suggested FAE (the alternative and original idea was AD&D). I haven't actually played FAE (or FATE, for that matter) before, but they seem to lend themselves better to the play-by-post format than DnD, but I still have some questions, like when it's appropriate to refresh your fate points when "session" is not really a thing (every page? every other page? every milestone?), or how do you structure your actions/reactions when you can't immediately respond to the GM. Are there any guidelines for that type of play anywhere? Do you have any links to SA play-by-post games that you considered to be good examples? A session IS a milestone, so yes, this one. As for actions and reactions, the way the games I'm in have done that is have people be on IRC so they can do things more or less in realtime, but if that's not an option, another game I'm in just used preemptive conditional declarations, e. g. 'If my opponent beats this Fight roll by 2 or less, invoke Master Fightguy. If he FPs to counter me, invoke The Bone Of My Sword'. This kind of setup tends to work pretty well, I feel.
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Dec 17, 2013 11:32
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The problem is that DW and FATE run on entirely different paradigms. DW seeks to make failure not sting by rewarding you for it. FATE seeks to give you the tools to decide when a failure is not going to happen and declare in mechanical terms the narrative is going to follow THIS path in THIS moment, with the only cost being in the 'luck control' resource. If you want to mash them up, solve the puzzle of integrating those two paradigms of failure first, THEN think about everything else. Otherwise your mashup will just be an ugly frankenstein.
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Dec 25, 2013 09:10
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Error 404 posted:On a 10+ succeed with style And at this point it's not really DW's fail/pass system, is it? Just FATE with new dice. This is what I mean when I say you have to solve the puzzle - integrating two ways to handle a PC not getting what he wants that are so different isn't easy.
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Dec 26, 2013 00:03
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It becomes a lot more glaring when you realize that's how Core handles Blocks. Suddenly Aspects' Truthfulness is enormously important because it makes Create Advantage more or less as good as an Attack, since it can give you a bonus and deny the other guy the ability to do what he wants to do.
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Jan 5, 2014 05:52
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Chiming in to say that it's also really easy to adapt the Freeport spell system into fightman techniques. If you wanted to do a game like D&D 4e but without all the random clutter like feats and fiddly bonuses, you could do much, much worse than allowing fighters to take 'battle technique' spells and running FAE Freeport. It's a legit good game with a somewhat clunky presentation that got shat on because a looooooot of people misread some important sections and got Mad At Elfgames.
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Jan 14, 2014 01:12
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Jack the Lad posted:How are you guys handling magic? Is this a matter of hypotheticals or practicals? That is, are you looking for a magic system for a specific game or just one to get ideas for the future? If it's the former, maybe we can work something out. Just yesterday I did a basic skeleton for a system based on demon pacts and bindings in like five minutes.
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Jan 20, 2014 13:10
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In that case, what do you envision magic *not* doing? Can it make you fly? Raise the dead? Generate energy (AKA fireballs, magic missiles, basically all attack magic except things that hurt the body directly)? Manipulate people? Make you happy if used judiciously and wisely? Gotta start setting down the limits before a system can be found.
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Jan 20, 2014 13:49
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 15:18 |
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Galaga Galaxian posted:So did you pick that up? What did you think? I didn't really care for the way Camelot Trigger did mecha, though I found Camelot Trigger in general mildly disappointing. When a friend mentioned "King Aurthur + Mecha" I was hoping for Medieval Mecha similar to Escaflowne as opposed to King Aurthur flavored Space Opera with Mecha. #ADX is a really good game, settingwise. It's a terrible game mechanicswise. Say what you will about Camelot Trigger's world (I have some problems with it myself), it did mechbuilding right. #ADX falls into the age-old trap of splitting pilot abilities and mech abilities and then forcing you to pay for both out of the same pool, meaning you can only be a good pilot OR a functional human being, not both. In fact, I may as well just go ahead and tell you what all of its pros and cons are so you can make an informed decision about whether you want to buy it or not: Pros: -The setting is good, really good. Lovely stuff and if you like fluff, you'll love it (as I did). -It includes a system for representing emotional proximity via Zones that is absolutely brilliant. Your starting emotional proximity ranges from Aloof (four zones away) to Heated and Intimate (one and no zones away respectively), depending on how many Aspects you and your opponent share (such as direct relationship Aspects, being part of the same faction, or sharing an ideology) and which you can move through freely one zone at a time, and every single proximity status except Aloof has a special rule to it. For instance, when you're emotionally Intimate with someone, compelling their Aspects doesn't cost you a Fate Point! This provides a real, tangible incentive to using Zones to represent emotional conflicts, which is awesome and you could easily poach it for other relationship-driven games to excellent effect. -It includes an implementation of d6s into Fudge that doesn't suck, which blew my mind. Starting with the fourth of the game's generations (out of 7), you gain access to a Drive Die, which is a d6 you can swap a fudge die out for. The catch is, this d6 can only be used when you're doing something favored by your Drive (the thing that pushes your pilot to fight and succeed where others would fail), you have to spend a Fate Point, and can only use it a number of times equal to your Transcend skill, which may as well be 'Limit Break: The Skill'. It's inspired me in my stuntmaking, and I love the concept of it. It's a much better way to go about implementing d6s than Kerberos Club's 'hurr de hurr hurr let's give players different tiers of power and being a tier down against someone means you're boned, hurr hurr hurrrrrrrrr' system. -It includes the idea of controlling characters other than your own, who are the 'bit' characters and whom you can elevate to prominence by spending a point of refresh to give them a skill ladder up to Great (the same cap as PCs). The execution has some problems, but the idea is excellent. -It includes a set of Directives to follow that will help rookie Gms find their footing. Consdiering new blood is what keeps the hobby alive, that can't be anything but a good thing. -Each Generation is tangibly stronger than the last, as climbing up the Generational ladder gives you a bonus for each subsequent generation, all of which stack. A Generation 6 Titan is exactly the terrifying force of nature you'd expect him to be, which rocks! Cons: -It falls into the trap of splitting pilot skills and mech skills, and then you have to pay for them out of the same (small) skill pool. If you wanted a guy who was an ace marksman in all situations (a really, really simple concept that I just picked out of a hat while writing this that a robot game should be able to handle no sweat), you're hosed, because you need to burn a stunt for it. Did I mention you only start with 3 refresh and two free stunts, even less than FATE Core? Yyyyyyep, you do. Siiiiiiigh... -The implementation of the Transcend skill is garbage. The idea of the Drive Die is good, but look at what I wrote in the Pros section: its main schtick only comes online in Generation 4, but the skill is available from Generation 1 onwards. Surely it does something else, though, you say! Well...yes, and no. It allows you to attack with it, overcome obstacles with it, and create advantages...if, and only if, you've filled a Severe Consequence already. You know, the biggest consequence you have, the one you fill in when you've ticked off everything else and take an enormous blow? Yep, that one. In practice, Transcend is a skill tax that you put at 1 or 2 on a pilot so you can use the Drive Die a bit and summarily ignore. Great design, guys! -The Mech Creation system is hosed too. See, there's three options to choose from when making a mech: Weapons, Defense and Armor, each of which will also have an Aspect, and you get three points to distribute between them as you see fit. Weapons does nothing because its effect is listed nowhere in the book (at least as far as I can tell. Disclaimer: My PDF is still an alpha version so this may have been finally fixed, but it's unlikely. Someone else confirm/deny if it did?), Defense gives you stress boxes (did I mention your Titan never starts with any stress boxes? Can you say 'point tax'?), and Armor gives you a Moderate Consequence per point, normally a Titan has no moderates, only Milds and a Severe if you don't buy Armor. So you have a trap stat, a must-take stat because otherwise you get exploded in record time, and an alright stat that you'll stack to holy hell once you've capped your Defense (you spend a point of refresh for two more points for your Titan - it's a good idea to dunk 3 points to defense and 2 to Armor to get a beef-machine and ignore the useless Weapons stat). Not exactly brilliant design, here. -Directives and Challenges are loving godawful, and whoever came up with them should be shot. See, the most remarkable thing about #ADX? Unlike every other FATE game ever, the GM starts with no Fate Points. Not for the opposition, not for compels. You heard it right: If you take a compel to start things off in #ADX, you get no FP reward for it, no matter how much the GM wants to give it to you. This is because he only earns FP when following the Directives. This means two things: One, the 'best' course of action to survive a session is to make sure the GM can trigger no directives (since they determine his FP pool for enemies for the most part, meaning you can bleed him dry) which includes things like making sure your pilots aren't recognized as being awesome and no hard-hitting themes are explored. Two, that by doing the smartest thing you can do as a player, the thing the game mechanically encourages you to do, you reduce your fun. A game should never punish you for doing fun things by making your life harder, nor make things easier for you if you're boring. That's dumb as hell! Then you have the Challenge system, the guaranteed way to earn Fate Points PCs have by challenging their beliefs. There's two problems with it, too: One, you can only do it once per session, so uh, good luck bro, hope you can use that one Fate Point to great effect. Two, the penalties and costs associated with it are pants on head retarded. See, you declare that one of your Aspects is on the line on a roll and gun for success, getting a FP if you succeed, and you cannot invoke any Aspects for it so you're gambling with your soul, putting yourself at risk of changing your mind on something important to you if you fail. Awesome and flavorful, right? Go big or go home, right? Yeah, except you take a -2 penalty to the roll on top. Yes, you read it right: On that roll where you challenge your beliefs and do something that could reaffirm your beliefs or change the way your character thinks about things forever, you're much more likely to fail. And if you happen to fail the roll? Whoops, you're taken out of the scene instantly. Sucks to be you I guess! Needless to say, a savvy player will never use this because gambling on an extra-hard roll to get one fate point in exchange for possibly taking your character out of a key scene is garbage, but it's particularly insidious because it will fool people who aren't interested in math to try to Challenge in a climactic scene, KOing themselves and leaving the other characters facing that much more risk of losing the conflict outright. What kind of moron came up with this? So yeah, #ADX is a neat setting, but its mechanics are terrible, something I didn't think was possible in FATE Core. If you want to buy it for the fluff, do it, but I highly suggest getting FATE Worlds first so you can replace every rulesy bit except emotional zones with Camelot Trigger's stuff (and I guess rework the Transcend skill so it keeps the Drive Die but is useful and usable without it, too). It's not a worthwhile game if you want to mechanically represent charged, high-stakes mech action. Transient People fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 00:17
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