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I've been pondering running my Fate fantasy hack, or possibly working to improve it, but I'm in two minds about running a game at all. So I'm probably the worst person to ask, come to think of it 
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Oct 1, 2013 00:31
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| # ¿ May 4, 2024 10:58 |
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Don't give your gribblies stats like a player, make them part of the environment. Obstacles to be overcome, not enemies to be vanquished.
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Oct 20, 2013 03:30
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MadRhetoric posted:The Bronze Rule makes them enemies to be vanquished if you don't want to make it a contest/chase. No offence meant, but gently caress the Bronze Rule. gently caress it hard in this instance. In horror, you do not have opponents, you have scenarios and situations. Any enemy you have that can be beaten in a regular straight-on fight is going to be inconsequential. In a zombie movie, you can kill lots of zombies, but those individual zombies are pointless. It is the vast horde of the dead that is the threat, and there's no way to effectively murder that one shambling member at a time. So if you want, sure, you can have the minor mooks who exist only to inflict stress and consequences on the players. But if you're doing something like Alien where it's a single entity menacing your players, that entity does not get stats. It would have no stress boxes, it wouldn't be getting into prolonged fights. That's counter-intuitive to horror as a genre.
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Oct 20, 2013 18:14
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How about something like this: You have different martial arts "styles", and to slip into one of these styles is to tag yourself with an aspect like "Mantis Style" or what have you. While you're in a style, you can access the relevant stunts, allowing you to attack and tag advantages onto your opponents with ease. Certain styles would "defend well" against others, so you'd try and out-position your opponent. Sort of like a rock-paper-scissors deal. If you wanted to go further, you could have grades involved: Novice, Disciple, Master. Assuming "Mantis Style Novice" would unlock the tier 1 stunts, and so on. Learning or upgrading a style would require different levels of effort: novice you could do just by spending enough time studying opponents (exchange for a milestone, in other words), but for master you'd need to dedicate a significant character arc to the training. It's a little out there compared to the core material but, hey, that's what we're supposed to do with this stuff 
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Oct 29, 2013 20:37
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I've been thinking of combining parts of Dungeon World with Fate - how stupid is this plan? (I legitimately think that making stunts more like moves would be a good thing, and I'm also planning on stealing the "7-9, 10+" style of success/great success.)
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Dec 23, 2013 07:52
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I was thinking along the lines of "when you use this approach/skill to do a particular thing then this other thing". So as a more concrete example, "When you make a Sneaky attack against someone, add an additional shift of damage. If you succeed with style, you can instead choose to create an advantage on your target." Representing some sort of backstab/sneak attack kind of deal, although mainly to demonstrate the language than my capacity for game design in the space of 60 seconds.
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Dec 23, 2013 08:31
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At this point I think I'm creating a monster. I'm veering away from Fate Core so much that I'm starting to co-opt other games' mechanics and design. My major problem is that I'm never happy with how it is, I have to keep tinkering and altering things. Right now I've made so many changes and jotted down so many design notes I haven't got a Goddamn clue where to start rewriting from.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:46
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Hey! I like the name I've got  I've really come to like a lot of the Fate mechanics but the more I try and adapt the subsystems I like, the more I am coming to think that sooner or later I'm going to have to start from scratch and build a system rather than adapting Fate. Probably gonna steal so many mechanics from Fate, though.
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Dec 23, 2013 16:00
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Error 404 posted:And fuego I totally wanna That's if I can write it up. So far half of it's nothing but "I'd like x but y" and general frustration that I am not as good at game design as I thought I was.
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Dec 25, 2013 12:24
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Error 404 posted:Well then, let me add "help" to the offer of theft. I'll bug you on irc next time I see you, or we can PM or whatevs. Fair warning, I may make you watch the Harryhausen Sinbad movies to help explain what exactly it is I am trying to emulate in my system.
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Dec 25, 2013 17:58
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After buying and reading (in that order) the Atomic Robo book, I have been thinking a little about Modes and I am thinking that they are a good solution to one of the minor problems I was having with my 10KW project. However rather than having a Mode with a related Aspect, I'm cutting down on the character sheet real estate by making the name of the Mode into the Aspect. I'm also going to scrap the skill list in favour of allowing the players to invent their own skills, subject to GM approval. Still wish that stunts weren't so dang nebulous, though. They are very hard to pin down.
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May 27, 2014 21:57
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It doesn't affect blanks, so something like +□□- for a total of +0 could become +□□+ for a total of +2. Which is a big swing but not a broken one. On the other hand, ++□+ could become --□- and go from +3 to -3. Maybe instead of "A Fate point and a Minor consequence", the character has to take one shift of stress for each die being flipped? So turning that +□□- into +□□+ would be one shift, and ++□+ to --□- would be three shifts. That might make it a little more balanced for the big swings.
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Jun 4, 2014 16:03
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Evil Mastermind posted:This is pretty neat: an official random stunt generator. Nothing too fancy, and they state flat-out that you can't just drop them into games without looking at them first, but still it's it's a neat toy. Somehow I feel cheated.
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Jun 11, 2014 11:53
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I have been working on a Fate hack which is a li'l bit Core, a li'l bit FAE, a li'l bit stealing-mechanics-from-other-systems-and-adapting-them, and a li'l bit not very finished and in need of excessive playtesting regardless. Some of the language is clumsy, some is a bit overwrought, some is missing entirely - but I thought I'd show it and get a little feedback (if any) from you guys. Feel free to ask questions or whatever.
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Jul 10, 2014 05:02
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Evil Mastermind posted:How many Themes should a setting have? It looks like 3 based on the examples. Three seems like a good number, honestly, but I think it can vary depending on how many setting elements need to be exploited in aspect form. For some it might just be one "theme" with the rest of the setting's foibles enacted through the storyline and so on. Yes, it's one Reputation, one Origin, and the number of traits is determined by the GM beforehand. I'd say for me, it'd be 2 to start with and maybe an additional one later. I haven't finished writing them up yet, but you can kind of think of proficiencies as like... stunt packages, I guess. Or additional rulesets. So something like "I have an adorable animal sidekick" is a proficiency, because it's essentially a card-carrying member of the group at that point, rather than just something you bought. So instead of a skill called "I have an adorable animal sidekick" (which would otherwise hurt your capacity to do more useful things) or a poorly-worded stunt, you take the Sidekick proficiency and stat the little bugger up so it can run off and lift keys from belts for you, or whatever the general clichés are for animal sidekicks. I made "you are hella good at fightin'" a proficiency because I had magic (of sorts) as a proficiency, and it didn't seem right to go "hey wizards you get all this cool poo poo wow, and fighters you get... some extra refresh I guess" because that's D&D level design. So if you wanna be the fighty type, you take the fighty proficiency, which doesn't unfairly raise your fighting skill, but does mean you hit harder and have a better time doing compels on advantages.
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Jul 10, 2014 16:36
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So, here's a thing I've been meaning to try out: detailed projects as fights. Let's use a couple of examples here. Our first project is "fix up this craptastic old car into something workable", and our second project is "develop a permanent ghost containment system". (I may or may not have come up with this concept when thinking up ideas for a Fate Ghostbusters hack.) The GM gives the task of fixing up the car three stress boxes, a single consequence (+2), and a "skill" that is "What a Lemon!" at +3. Rather than making a single overcome action to turn the car from shitheap to Ecto-1, the player characters now have to (metaphorically) grapple with the process of refining it into a workable vehicle over a period of time, sometimes involving teamwork. They can "attack" it directly with a Mechanics skill, perhaps, or maybe try to create an advantage like Discount Parts with a social skill, or Let Me Get the Manual with an intellect skill. When the project is "defeated", it's complete. So it shouldn't take long to bash the ol' clunker into a workable condition if everyone chips in. But what if you want a more long-running project. For developing a permanent ghost containment system, the GM gives the task four stress boxes, two consequences (+2, +4), two "skills" ("Unexplored Branch of Physics" at +3, and "Esoteric Materials Required" at +4), and Armor 1. This project is much more of a beast, and will require a serious approach to taking it down. Or, uh, completing it satisfactorily. Unlike most fights, this is not something which needs to end before anything else can happen. It's a project, you can put down the books/wrench/microscope and do something else, although there may be sort of a time limit going on. Like, maybe the portable traps are not meant to hold ghosts for this long. So the project lurks in the background, but it doesn't blank out those stress boxes when you leave it alone. That would be crazy talk. Instead it's like a punching bag the players can go back to when they feel like they can do something with it. Maybe they've got some new advantage they can exploit, like Fifth Mortgage or Scientific Breakthrough. This is all assuming that the project is not actually hitting back at any point, though, but that doesn't have to be the case. If you're a particularly While this whole exercise is obviously part and parcel of the fractal, it's a bit of an interesting take (in my opinion, anyway) because it's an abstract concept rather than "give the [city/piece of equipment] some aspects and stuff" which is how a lot of the Fate fractal stuff I've read on tends to go. (Although I am still a little new to the system as a whole.)
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Jul 15, 2014 11:12
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Here's something else that has come out of my experimentations with Fate's core rules, a little sneak preview of the workings of the Faith proficiency from my 10,000 Wonders hack. The Stress track measures when bad things happen to you. You check off boxes, and when there are no more boxes left to check, you're hosed. So let's reverse that. The Faith track measures when good things happen because of you. Every selfless act, every noble gesture, they add up. You check off the boxes, and when there are no more boxes left to check, you're doin' good. Rather than Consequences to mitigate the damage, the Faith track has Blessings, which are beneficial aspects (instead of negative ones). Maybe you're highly regarded as a holy man, maybe you get special powers goin' on. Regardless, much as Stress fades, so too does Faith. You cannot max out your saintly demeanour and then coast for the rest of the game. You must be constantly However you can also "burn" one of those checked boxes during a scene for a bonus equal to the checkbox's value, meaning you can forgo those Blessings for a spot of miracle instead. The roll has to be thematic, of course, and certainly worthy of semidivine intervention. So if you're attempting to bring someone back from the brink of death, that's a solid usage. Trying to punt an orphan into a volcano? Not so much.
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Jul 15, 2014 23:27
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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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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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Considering my experience with the original Zybourne Clock project, I feel compelled to see so I can grade you on historical accuracy.
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Jul 27, 2014 21:09
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Zephirum posted:Speaking of canon, the novelization is the That's not canon, that's parody. Fanon, at best, I suppose, although I dunno if "fans" is the right technical term for the people responsible. As for the character sheets, that's a 0/10 for accuracy, but 8/10 for fun. I like Johnny's stunts.
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Jul 27, 2014 23:27
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Just do the Marty McFly thing from BTTF2 where he falls off the roof and then rises back up on a flying car, arms crossed, looking smug. Or whatever flying entity is thematically relevant to your setting.
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Aug 5, 2014 06:39
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I have the preliminary rules for my 10,000 Wonders hack in a state where I am comfortable thinking about running it. Admittedly the wiki format makes it a bit length and dense to read, but assuming I can playtest over the course of several PbPs, I might be able to get it to a point where I'll consider putting it into a pdf.
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Aug 8, 2014 12:32
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Me, eventually? As soon as I do some proper playtesting for 10,000 Wonders and subject it to a few more passes of refinement and upgrading, I'm hoping to do something with it.
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Sep 7, 2014 14:50
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Or help me playtest 10,000 Wonders
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Oct 4, 2014 05:53
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I've got a brief bit about stunts in my 10,000 Wonders hack, mostly using the Apocalypse World style language to show how a stunt should work, and giving examples of stunts that are bad.
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Feb 27, 2015 07:59
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When the stunt is "+2 to this skill when I use this skill" then yes, it's bad. Otherwise it's just boring.
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Feb 27, 2015 09:42
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Everything Counts posted:I'm working on converting Shadowrun into Fate, and wanted to represent the team with its own sheet. There'd be an aspect or two about how the team met/how they feel working together, and another aspect to represent their reputation around town. I want it to be more than just a few aspects but I'm having trouble coming up with other things to put on the sheet. Basically, yes, although I decided that the best avenue would be to have the group "entity" purely made out of skills, no aspects. It's responsible for having the money/resources and social standing skills, that's all. Going beyond that seemed sort of like it'd be stepping on toes.
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Mar 10, 2015 12:19
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Are there any Fate games out there which don't use Stress? I'm just curious as to what, if any, sort of alternate methods have been used that still work well with the base Fate system. The system toolkit has some interesting stuff, but a lot of it is just "Stress but slightly different".
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Apr 11, 2016 13:50
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