Redpill me on Fate

Redpill me on Fate.

It's very much a love it or hate it system, and the whole table needs to be on board or it easily falls apart. Try it at least once, if you have serious problems just getting through character creation with your group, chances are that too many of you fall on the "hate it" side and it won't work for you.

Adding on to this: Understanding what makes a good aspect is ESSENTIAL. You want something that in theory can be called on by both you and the GM to help/hinder you rather than having Awesome Aspect 1, 2 and 3 and Token GM Aspect.

Stealing one from a review I read a while back: It's tempting to give Marvel's Thor something like Magic Fucking Hammer Mjolnir, but that sort of aspect is entirely on-sided; instead have it be something like Mjolnir, The Source of My Might. That way, it can be used by both you to help Thor (With my magic hammer, I [X]!) as well as hurt him (The villains words fill you with doubt, and the hammer now feels unbearably heavy).

How does the whole "characters don't really advance" work out?

You get more skills, stunts, and fate points over time, so there is direct mechanical advancement. Depending on how you hack it things like special abilities or magic or powers could be improved or added fairly easily.
Aspects get replaced if they get resolved, but those are more narrative than anything. You should always have roughly the same number of potential hooks for each character at all times, even as they get stronger.

To be fair, in games with character advancement the GMs usually just adjust challenge DCs/TNs accordingly, meaning there is no meaningful difference.

I think one of the issues with the system is that it's very vulnerable to players who play with an "I must win" mentality. This includes players that exploit flaws/drawbacks just to get Fate Points. It's really a system that if you want to be "good" at it, you're better off being "bad" with its mechanics.

It's a system that works best if the players really understand that the point of the game is to craft a story, and can distance themselves from their characters enough to be willing to perform the right sacrifices to give their characters proper depth.

A "good" aspect in my eyes is simply something entertaining or interesting. This typically means having potential drawbacks (since potential drawbacks are interesting), but at the same time, it's best not to worry too much about gaming the system when the system isn't really intended to be gamed in that fashion.

+ it's the most generic system ever
+ cool bell curve
+ really freeform
+ kinda cool-ish damage system with consequences

- autistic snowflake dice
- metacurrency drives the game
- devs sperged out and added shit like fighting defensively
- just more gay rules that muddle the core concept

Overall, 6/10. Would better like Fudge was: a base to build your own system off of.

The special dice are really, really easy to adapt.
Roll regular ass d6s. 1 or 2 = minus; 3 or 4 = blank; 5 or 6 = plus. Easy peasy.

Maybe not in terms of difficulty, but having new abilities to mess around with keeps the game fresh.

You don't have to use disgusting slang to ask about things here. Maybe more people would have replied if you didn't.

I think your statement applies to all gaming systems ever. I don't know of a system where rollplaying isn't a thing.

Hell you can turn regular pipped d6s into Fate dice by connecting the dots with a sharpie. Square = zero, cross = +, line = minus

>+ it's the most generic system ever

Wait, why is this a positive? Doesn't that mean that anything you try to play with it will feel the same?

Being able to use it for literally anything is generally considered an upside Things can feel samey, yes, but there are ways around it.

I like to use magic as an example.
You can put it on the same skill list as everything else, so a magic user has to compromise in other areas. If you go that route, you can break it down into different types or applications of magic being different skills, or just have a big fat meta magic skill. Or you could make magic a set of stunts for an occult Lore skill of some kind. In that route, the stunts can again be as diffuse as you want, with each stunt being anything from a single spell or ritual to a wide array of abilities. Or you could make it so that the only people with magic are the ones who have an Aspect for it. "Wizard" could be an aspect in and of itself if there's enough social or metaphysical baggage on that term in the setting, and again, what that actually gets you can be made however the GM wants it to be. Or you could make it a special ability outside of the normal rules, that may or may not cost a Refresh to gain.

It's all using the same system, but how you apply that system can change things a lot.

The pro is that you can play your personal FoTM setting in it with ease; anime, capes, sci fi, etc. It's core is solid enough that you can add things on as necessary and not worry about breaking the game wide open.

I enjoy the skills, stunts, aspects, and dice. The rules make sure the GM is aware of "the only rule is to do what makes sense".

There are a few ways to handle a situation with the mechanics in game, which I'm sure makes a rules lawyer incredibly uncomfortable.
If you come from D&D-like RPG experience, you will be more awkward in Fate than a guy starting fresh.

Overall, it's a great system to base your own setting on. Add some crunch or even make it lighter.

>I think your statement applies to all gaming systems ever. I don't know of a system where rollplaying isn't a thing.

That's true, but I find Fate to be especially vulnerable to it with the added detriment that optimization is probably the quickest way to make Fate really unsatisfying.

>+ it's the most generic system ever

Not really. It can't do ANYTHING.

It is suited for a specific kind of game: high action, high melodrama adventures involving proficient and proactive protagonists. It's what Fate Core was designed to do.

It took some traditional RPG elements and some storygame elements, and shoved them together. The result is unfortunately the worst of both worlds.

IMO, obviously.

Works best when all the players are proficient DMs in their own right.

You can always give players more advances ("milestones") than by default. That still won't give you DnDsque power creep, but will allow PCs grow pretty fast.

Can someone give me examples of when I should use GURPs and when I should use FATE?

This is a game that is like fate but it is superior in every aspect. Including lack of those.

FATE core is way too meta and it's rules are still too heavy for a propper narative storygame, FATE accelerated is even more meta and it's unplayably vague and exploitable because how the character stats are

HeroQuest is light, it's meta doesn't affect the story in negative way, simulates dramatic action well while remaining understandable and easy to control about what does what, as opposed to FAE

games need rules because your players are shitters and you know it
thats why f8 is sh8 m8

Isn't HeroQuest a board game? Did I miss something?

Name something it can't do and I'll make it my next one-shot when the group's between games.

Not that guy, but no. Heroquest 2 (generic)/ Heroquest Glorantha (Runequest flavored) is a narrative RPG rulesset designed to let you play any type of character you can imagine. It has a set of universal mechanics designed for a few different types of conflict resolution. It does have some similarities to Fate in that you create custom phrases/word combos as "abilities", traits, etc. to draw from during play, but from there the games diverge a lot.

Personally I think HQ2 does what Fate Core is aiming for better, and weirdly with less metagame/currency flying around all the time, as the game isn't heavily reliant on/built around a point economy. I find it easy to "immerse" in HQ, where Fate made it seemingly impossible for me and my group.

As far as generic systems, GURPS is usually my "traditional" system while if I want to go heavily narrative I usually turn to HQ. Fate doesn't press any of my buttons the right way.

Not saying Fate's a bad game per se, a lot of people seem to really enjoy it and it has some neat ideas, but it just really rubs me the wrong way in play (even as someone who likes narrative-leaning systems).

There's a boardgame from 1989 called HeroQuest, inspired heavily by OD&D, Conan, etc.

Judging by the art from , he's talking about something completely different.

Why play fate, hero quest, etc if we have risus available?

Thanks for the tip, cuck.

I've considered bolting the Aspects system onto Risus.

>I'm not the only person who's played HeroQuest
Based elegan/tg/entlemen.

I remember when one of my game mates who's never GM'd before wanted to do it and asked for a good, simple system he could learn. I gave him a whole bunch of suggestions, Fate included. And I remember him coming back to me and saying:

>"So I looked over all the systems you gave me, and that Fate thing? It's basically perfect, it's just what I wanted, all we need is to remove those 'Aspects' things, they're just what we do with roleplay anyway, right?"

Thankfully, rather than requiring the whole lecture about how game mechanics work, he just took my word for it and I showed him FUDGE, which is what he ended up using.

God I fucking love FUDGE. If I wasn't already so comfortable with GURPS I'd probably use FUDGE for all that kind of shit.
I'm also pissed because I lost my anniversary edition hardback during a recent move.

I know it's hard to imagine spending all your time on Veeky Forums, but the vast majority of tabletop gamers out there aren't actually all theorycrafting system mastery mathemagicians. Most aren't even aware games other than D&D exist, trust their GM to know the rules because they haven't bought the rulebook, and just take for granted what they know about those because those are just the rules you play with. Fa/tg/uys call them That Guys or casuals or whatever, but really they're just the majority of the population. It's the fa/tg/yus who stand out as a bunch of autists.

Ever look at Blackbird Pie?

You start with 18 points to split across 3-7 general traits of your choice, which are allowed to range from 2-6 dice. So you might have 4 traits with rankings of 6, 5, 4, 3, for example. When an obstacle comes up, you get to roll dice based on whichever traits applies best. If no trait applies, you get one default die. Each 4+ on a d6 counts as a success. Difficulty ranges from 2 (easy) to 6 (extreme). You also get a generic pool of luck dice that depletes when you spend them and regenerates when you fail rolls. That's basically the entire game.

I guess aspected Risus would be about the same if you included a pool of luck/effort. Something I don't like about base Risus is how bad the math gets when there's disparity between two characters' cliche levels. Stuff gets impossible to win or impossible to fail pretty fast. It's maybe realistic but not heroic. Their method of applying extra effort seems bolted on.