Hey guys

Hey guys.

My friends want to get together and do a quick 1 shoot. I was wondering, what is the easiest system to do this? I was thinking about FAE but the need for specific dice or a deck of cards is inconvenient.

Was maybe about thinking of running a 4e 1 shoot but even then it might be too advanced

Other urls found in this thread:

randomaverage.com/index.php/2014/01/escape-from-the-science-tubes-fae-supers-gaming-with-my-family-part-one/
ryanmacklin.com/2014/10/fate-the-discover-action/
fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/introduction
members.dsl-only.net/~bing/frp/fudge/dice.html#4dF
twitter.com/AnonBabble

FATE doesn't actually require the special dice, since converting a regular d6 is easy
1-2 = minus
3-4 = nothing
5-6 = plus

For added convenience, you can also go ahead and get some paint, fill in the 1-2 with red, the 3-4 with black, and the 5-6 with green or blue.

Before I bought Fate dice I used a marker pen. Join up the dots (well, mostly) on each face to make a +, - or a square.

Terrible idea. FATE is not a game (it's a Collaborative Storytelling Experience, a CSE) but above and beyond that, it's not fun.

Fate has the absolute worst combination of someone having ridiculously forced """"""clever"""""" rules and narrative mechanics that many people have ever seen.

If you want a game with extremely simple rules, FATE isn't it. FATE is an actually pretty complicated way to give everyone involved what tries to be a fair chance of having equal input while telling a story.

>FATE is not a game but above and beyond that, it's not fun.
I keep hearing people say this, but my friends and I had a lot of fun with it when I GMed a game. I guess we must have been doing it wrong.

To the OP, if you want to try Fate but don't like the dice, you could replace the 4dF roll with 1d6-1d6, which is close enough to work. If you want to use it for a quick one-shot, you could take a look at randomaverage.com/index.php/2014/01/escape-from-the-science-tubes-fae-supers-gaming-with-my-family-part-one/ . It shows an example of playing Fate with literally no preparation by the players. They start with 'you wake up with no idea how you got here' and create characters and learn the rules as they go along.

You keep hearing it because it's the most common complaint people make about the product. A shit sandwich is a shit sandwich even if you love the taste.

Things like Simple d6 or Risus will be significantly simpler, and those sorts of games usually only use d6. The only issue is if they'll be too simple. Might also look at stuff like Microlite (which has a ton of variations) and MiniSix.

>FATE is not a game
It never crossed my mind to think about that like that, but i guess it makes sense. Is your DnD (or whatever you play) games... more game-y? Where's the difference?

>Fate has the absolute worst combination of someone having ridiculously forced """"""clever"""""" rules and narrative mechanics that many people have ever seen.
Why do you think so? It seems to me they work just fine.

>If you want a game with extremely simple rules, FATE isn't it
Finally something i can agree, but its certainly not more complicated than 5e. Also, because of certain complexity, you can run longer games than just one shot. Unless you use Accelerated Edition, from witch the OP's picture is taken.

I just use d6-d6.

FAE is simple enough, and the one time I played it was quite fun.

You're an idiot. FATE is an incredibly flexible system that rewards creativity and punishes autistics that need 200 pages of rules in order to do anything.

If you want a simple system, go with FATE. It's the best bet.

I've been playing risus a ton with family and friends. It's super simple to teach and I can do one shots and short campaigns with only an hour or two of planning. All you need is some d6 dice and the rules which are only 6 pages long and completely free. Plus it can take place in any genre you can think of.

It all works on something called 'cliches' which are sort of like your stats. Your cliches can be literally anything you can think of so long as the GM approves. I could be an ex-alchoholic space detective for example. You assign dice of up to four in each cliche but you can't spend over 10. Each one represents a die you can roll to overcome challenges that that cliche can be used to overcome. So if I had 4 in space marine then I get to roll 4 dice for doing things like shooting a lock open or operating a turret gun.

Go check it out OP. I often just do spur of the moment games and the game is so simple I can just whip it out real quick. Perfect for introducing folk to tabletop RPGs too in my opinion.

All in all, use Risus. Super simple and there's no doubt in my mind you and your buddies couldn't put together a quick one shot with the system.

You realize that lying to protect your pet storytelling system will just piss off the people you conned into trying it under false pretenses, right? Far better for you to be honest about the system's huge glaring flaws that make everyone in the world really hate it and then accept that despite it being really terrible there's a very small percentage of people who will like it anyway like yourself.

Wow, you sound like someone I should trust with your condescending tone and use of """""""ironic"""""" quotes. Hey, maybe you'd like to insinuate even more, and talk about how it's made by (((Evil Hat))).

If that were true, then why is the core rulebook over 200 pages?

You continue to be an asshole who thinks that your opinion must be held by the majority because you can't conceive of things outside your own head. Congrats.

OP, give it a whirl. FAE works for a one shot, especially if it's something very genre specific where everyone knows the various tropes and expectations. However, it's got a ton of flaws that make it trouble for some types of roleplayers and I don't think it's newbie-to-roleplaying friendly, either. You gotta remember, Fate was born out of the houserules of a specific group who heavily played Fudge. So if your group isn't like that one, you might have trouble adjusting.

Other good oneshots are Risus (might be too barebones) and yes, D&D (insert your favorite edition here) if only because you can come with character sheets pre-filled and ready to use and it's familiar to a lot of people.

Hey kid, calm down. You aren't doing yourself any favors flipping the fuck out/lying.

so what are the drawbacks to using fate?

see for the truth, see mad guy for some fanboy lies

For some reason bad niche games like this attract some of most crazy and rabid fanboys

>claims to be an rpg, isn't, it's a storytelling "game"
>claims to be rules light, isn't, it's a clusterfuck of weird and stupid rules that feel like a drama class group exercise

That's enough for me to never play it again but ymmv

i mean can you expand on "not fun" a little more?

Imagine you are telling a story, or listening to a story. Now imagine that the point of the game is that everyone listening to the story has a turn to interject material into the story and it comes true in the story. It's not a game, it's a collaborative storytelling exercise.

What, um, is usually the point of the games you play?

Not that guy, but getting the experience (or "role") of a person/character in a fantastical setting or situation.

Here's the difference between a CSE and a game

Game: "You find a treasure chest." "We open it" "As you open the treasure chest a trap goes off, roll to avoid it"

CSE: "You find a treasure chest." "We open it and no traps go off and there is lots of treasure inside" "Okay that happens but inside the treasure is also a map" "Okay we'll allow the map to be in there"

>CSE: "You find a treasure chest." "We open it and no traps go off and there is lots of treasure inside" "Okay that happens but inside the treasure is also a map" "Okay we'll allow the map to be in there"

lol nice strawman there

clearly you've never even played the game

Does the GM create the character for you or do you get any sort of input? How in-depth do you usually go with the person/character's background?

Fate Core, and FAE by extension, is a game I've had a considerable amount of playtime with. While I have a number of ways to elaborate on this down to specific mechanics, the way the narrative currency flows and influences the pacing and play strategies of the game, the way aspects are billed to work as opposed to how they actually work in play, etc.... the short version is this (very much IMHO):
Fate is a game that has some storygame elements and some traditional game elements, and has mixed them together. Unfortunately, the execution ends up being the worst of both worlds.

I'm not even anti-storygame; I like both 'traditional' and 'narrative'-style RPGs. Fate doesn't hit the right buttons for either of those tastes, in my case.

It is a game that reads deceptively great, but in play a lot of the inadequacies become readily apparent; some were easy to go "oh I think I can smooth those out," only for others to rear their ugly heads over long term play which due to certain aspects of the core mechanical conceits (pun intended) were unable to extricate without basically tearing the narrative side out completely and just playing FUDGE.

Conversely, if it were to be a more fully fleshed out storygame/narrativium-fuelled RPG, I feel that Heroquest 2 does a much better job in this respect.

tl;dr Fate Core, the most modern iteration of Fate (previously 'FATE'), is a strange hybrid of storygame and trad RPG. It somehow manages to be the worst of both worlds, while inexplicably missing most of the primary draws of both.

Again, IMHO.

Hey, crazy fanboy, welcome back. Do you really have to lie in every single post you make? Feel free to make a better analogy, but yes that is how the narrative mechanics work.

Yeah, dude, I don't really know any systems that work like that off the top of my head. Certainly not Fate.

That's a per game thing, but you get to make your own character if they let you

>It is a game that reads deceptively great, but in play a lot of the inadequacies become readily apparent; some were easy to go "oh I think I can smooth those out," only for others to rear their ugly heads over long term play which due to certain aspects of the core mechanical conceits (pun intended) were unable to extricate without basically tearing the narrative side out completely and just playing FUDGE.

Can you be more specific? Like about some specific issues that you ran into in play?

>I'm taking notes because we're getting killed over here and we're about to start a new kickstarter so you need to help me design a better game because you're one of the only people who has ever played it

Oh, right, right, my bad, I forgot the most important part. Between each of those steps the players or the GM have to pay storytellin' points to participate.

>yes that is how the narrative mechanics work.

Point to a specific mechanic in FATE that would allow the player opening the chest to declare that there are no traps and that it is full of treasure.

I'll wait.

>If I never articulate my position I can never be engaged which means I can never be rebuked

It's an analogy, angry fanboy who refuses to stop defending m'lady fate's precious honor. Feel free to make a better analogy if you'd like.

I'll wait.

Ok seriously, why the hateboner over Fate? Why take it this far when anyone who has even glanced at the whopping 50-page rulebook knows what you're saying is a total crock? What happened between you and Fate?

Also interested in this. Can you elaborate on what sort of scenarios gave you the most trouble during games?

>Hey guys do you think this game is good
>No and here's why
>Ok seriously, why the hateboner over Fate?

Why can't you insane fanboys just accept that not everyone forgives your favorite game for the parts of it that are really terrible? It's okay that you like it, nobody is saying you can't. It's just that other people think the mechanics and the writing are really really terrible.

>"yes that is how the narrative mechanics work"

>"n-no, I never said that was how the mechanics work, it's j-just an analogy!"

nice one

Normal character creation, as in most games. I'm not sure if you're heading for some strawman about how it's unrealistic that the player controls things about the character's life situation, or if I was being kinda unclear, but what I was getting at was basically "I think 'narrativist' games like FATE are usually less immersive than other games, since, like guy was bitching about in exaggerated terms, the players are influencing the world in ways that don't map to anything their characters are doing." It might make for a more compelling story for XYZ Superhero to suddenly encounter a trap in exchange for a hero point or whatever, but it breaks immersion a bit because when the player's influencing the story like that, they're making decisions that don't have any relation to decisions their characters are making or thoughts their characters are thinking, and it also creates a sense that the players have some sort of magical control over the game world- that the game world is basically changing on whims. A lot of the times it feels like playing with a lot of contrived plot and weak writing.

>shitposts every thread about a game with lies about how the game works
>"lol why are you fanboys so ku-razy? you're really obsessed with this!"

If you're going to project, don't project about samefagging, little lad. Try projecting about being insecure.

If you feel like your threads are filled with people criticizing the game it might be that people honestly don't like the game. But no, it's probably a conspiracy.

So are you going to explain any of those 'great problems' that you've definitely come upon with your "considerable amount of playtime", or are you just going to talk about how there are so MANY glaring flaws that make it so bad on all aspects of the TTRPG spectrum, without giving even a single example?

Shit I can do it for you if you want, from my own months of playing a consistent campaign too.

Combat is fucky by default and leads to a bad death spiral. It's practically mandatory to mod the combat rules if you want combat to be anything other than rocket tag lethality due to wound aspects and invoke stacking, which means it's fortunate that the game is built for modding in the first place. (file related, for anyone who isn't just here to heard the newfags back to the 3.pf ghettos)

It's exploitable as fuck if you let a powergamer into your group, which is solvable by not letting powergamers into your group, and keeping a decently strict hand on aspect and stunt generation as a GM.

weapon and armor ratings are fucked, but that's just part of the broken combat system.
Fudge dice are dumb if you play IRL like a normie, solutions to that upthread, and aren't supported on all online dice rollers.
etc

hell call out a specific part of the system and I'll do my best to give it's flaws and perks, but vagueness just makes you sound like a lazy tabloid.

>I don't like your opinion so it's literally Fake News
Jesus christ it really is the current year

I wouldn't call one dumbass shitposting every thread about a game that touched his naughty places much of conspiracy

It'd be nice if people actually explained out those criticisms then, instead of just declaring how the arguments already over and everyone needs to learn who's right here.

Fate has plenty of problems and anybody who's actually played (and then subsequently hacked) the game will agree with, the issue is that people "criticizing" it do nothing but make vague statements about it's 'badness' and fall back on hyperbolic lies when asked to explain.
Parallels modern politics quite nicely it does

Well there are at least two of us here saying it's outright garbage and one extra guy who played the game and still thinks it sucks, so that's at least three just today.

We must have met up on the local nazi pissbaby transphobia forum and came down here to harass innocent womyn of color

I provided a handful of my own problems about the system and explained them to a minimum, and I provided what I thought was a good solution to them (that isn't just to ignore the problem).
Why not throw up a few detailed criticisms of your own? Specifics are nice, and they'll only help your case.

Reminds me of how every Numenera thread gets spammed with people screaming "monty cuck" and how terrible and aweful it is that he dare to make a sandbox science-fantasy instead of a railroad 3.5 clone.

You can call anything garbage, but unless you give examples and reasons you're not really likely to convince anyone. Same goes for claiming expertise with zero explanation and laughing at anyone who wants to know the actual whys and hows of it being bad.

No, I was mostly making fun of the guy who seems to hate player agency in the story of the game.

However I'm not entirely sure your argument isn't that far off from their own. Because, taking your example, the only relevant scenario that would play in to "immersion breaking" is if XYZ Superhero is currently pouring a bowl of cereal and the player declares "SUDDENLY A SMALL THERMONUCLEAR DEVICE FALLS OUT AND ON TO MY CHEERIOS WITH A CRUNCH OH NO that'll be one hero point please." As I stated before, I can think of no "narrativist" systems that function like this, especially Fate; all aspect usage, including self-compels, involve the group. The group gets to decide if the compel makes sense and would make the story more interesting. The only control the players have over the world is what is allowed and agreed upon, not so much "magical" or "random."

I think I'm seeing the core problem here, and why you would consider such endeavors contrived and such plots weak. The players are total shit. Maybe you should stick to video games.

>No, I was mostly making fun of the guy who seems to hate player agency in the story of the game.

lol why the fuck do you people always do this? "anyone who disagrees with me must hate fun that's the only logical reason why they might be so insane as to call me incorrect"

ok no seriously what happened

mostly because these threads always devolved into bad jokes of shitflinging so nobody wants to put out much effort anymore.

Well I'm definitely not playing this game now. My goodness.

alright. any insight on what made your mind?

Obviously has an insanely toxic fanbase.

Well now I'm definitely going to try this game. Wow.

so... based on one thread of trolling and nothing to do with the game itself?
Not how I'd advise making life choices, but you do you.

Definitely look into popular modules for the game. The basic building block of Aspects and the solid bell curve is good, but the game was build with modification in mind and it absolutely needs it.

I will. This game obviously has crazy detractors.

Man this was funny but it just got really sad. Sorry nobody likes your game bro, I know that feel.

I don't like it either.

Honestly for the past year or so just about anything not utterly mainstream gets a lot of empty trolling just for being something that isn't cordoned into a general. It's really sad since it means you can't really have good critical debate over the points of a system because the threads are filled with noise of IT'S SHIT or IT'S FLAWLESS.

any particular points on what you don't like about it?

>the issue is that people "criticizing" it do nothing but make vague statements about it's 'badness' and fall back on hyperbolic lies when asked to explain.
this

I've GMed Fate Core for years and to be honest, it's pretty much a homebrew built on Fate Core since some of its rules are just annoyingly clunky to actually play.

The 'criticisms' being listed in this thread simply aren't true. Seriously, there are perfectly legitimate criticisms to make - which I will make - and you discredit yourself by failing to make them.

Not legitimate criticisms:
>It's not really an RPG, it's a CSE, based on my autistic personal definition I made up that I expect the world to follow, even though narrativist systems are quite popular nowadays
>The GM doesn't GM because the players can earn input on the story direction so long as that input is ruled to make narrative sense
>vague bullshit like "forced clever rules" and "narrative mechanics" as if the former means anything or the latter is a bad thing
>"you're just a fan," "these games always have crazy dedicated fans" and other such ad hominem
>"it's not fun" "everyone else hates it" "the rules are weird and stupid" and other such unfalsifiable opinions presented as facts
>unsubstantiated claims like "the rules don't work" or "it's bad in practice even if it reads well" without explaining why
>strawmen that don't actually resemble a typical game session, such as mis-casting how fate points are used or pretending every detail is a groupwide negotiation
>ignoring basic good-faith assumptions in it and literally any other tabletop game, such as the assumption that elements of the story make narrative sense

These are bad arguments and you should feel bad. If the game is so bad, you should be able to explain why they are bad. Loudly insisting they are and then attacking anyone who asks you why makes you look like a wingnut.

So what ARE valid criticisms of Fate Core and FAE? Reply follows.

Valid criticisms:
First off, see >combat and death spirals
I actually disagree that combat is overly lethal, and have in fact run into the opposite problem. The base game's mob rules and rules for mooks makes them basically one-hit-point enemies. Of course, these are for trash mobs - but then I find a "real" enemy with a full character sheet and stress and consequence tracks takes far too long to actually kill, to the point where conflicts get a little old before they're resolved. Damage can get quite high with a modicum of teamwork, but Fate Core is definitely a system where many hits are better than harder hits unless you're going for the one-hit-kill threshold (which is defined as every available Consequence slot plus the highest applicable Stress track plus one). We had to write many special rules to get around these problems for combat and I largely ignore social encounter rules outright except for the occasional rolling to detect a lie.

>combat and maps
Fate Core is not, at heart, a game designed for elaborate maps. Movement rules are terrible, and after adapting some of the "supplemental action" rules from the System Toolkit, I found myself much more able to make elaborate maps like those seen in D&D or minis-based games.

>powergamers
Yeah, everyone in the game needs to be on board the narrativist train. The solution is simply to not play with munchkins and powergamers. Playing a narrativist game to "win" is kind of retarded, so don't do that.

>weapons and armor
Definitely requires some homebrew systems. or just not bothering. This also brings me to...

>Resources as a skill
I see what they were going for, I really do. I just can't make it work in practice. I just can't. Give your homebrew Fate concoction a currency system or just don't bother at all.

cont.

>Magic
Tellingly, no two fantasy games based on FAE or Fate Core seem to agree with one another on how magic is supposed to work. Is Magic one singular skill? Is it several skills? Are there supplementary skills (like, say, 'Fire Magic' and 'Casting')? You really just have to look at some games built on Fate and see how they did it and decide what would work best for your group.

>Fudge dice
It's a 4d3-8 or a 4d6-14. How is this hard to figure out? You can easily substitute something like 1d6-1d6 although that does slightly change the bell curve (which some people prefer anyway). Or just write two +s, two -s, and two 0s on four d6s.

>Scenes, sessions, scenarios
This shit makes no sense and hinges in-game mechanics such as wound recovery on real-time passing. I do not like the idea of sessions beginning and ending marking a mechanical change, not one bit. Instead, my group had to homebrew rules for governing how time passes in-setting and how wounds recover based on that. It doesn't make much sense to walk off a bullet wound because the fight ended and the next scene is five minutes later.

>Area-of-effect attacks
If applied too literally, these become ludicrously powerful, especially since the base game's rules don't really work well for combat maps with more than a few Zones in them. To be fair, if I recall correctly the rules even recommend using these as Zone Aspects, but that just makes them too weak and you might as well have just Created an Advantage instead.

>The entire milestone system
No, just, fucking, stop. If an aspect no longer fits your character, just change it.

>it costs a Fate Point for a player to suggest a Compel
This confuses player and character. My group waives this cost with the exception of times when a player character directly benefits from compelling another character.

cont.

>Aspects, Aspects everywhere
It's quite common for long-running games to switch to a "soft aspect" system, to the point where the Fate fandom even has the term for it. Coming up with character, scene, zone, and other such aspects for every single thing rapidly gets obnoxious, especially when certain aspects may be spoilers. Then, you have to come up with even more aspects as boosts are exchanged during the game, and there's only so many times a character can get a boost against them for tieing a roll or their opponent succeeding with style or whatever before the boosts you give them start to become repetitive. The solution is to cut down on the number of aspects you actually name but allow players to ask if something would reasonably be an aspect. Do I really need to write down as an aspect that that titanic 30-foot golem is large, just in case a player with a fate point to spare feels like its size might make it easier to hit? As long as the suggestion makes sense and is in line with established descriptions, I consider such a thing to be an unwritten aspect and allow it.

>Equipment
The game really offers no good way to track consumable equipment. This is easy to houserule, just treat them like limited-use aspects.

>Vehicles
This is another area where the fate fractal broke down and required extensive houseruling. Enemy vehicles can be treated like characters with total ease, which is nice, but vehicles under the party's control become really strange really fast.

cont.

Now with all that said, you must think this game sounds terrible. To be honest? I still love it. I recognize that it has a lot of flaws, and despite its reputation for being open, it requires a lot of tailoring to use, especially if you're not playing a one-shot. But what it does do, it does quite well.

My point is not that the game is bad, my point is that you really should be able to explain what it's flaws are if you've played it even just once or twice. The prior refusal to address any of these flaws is telling, and pic related explains the lengthy reply, really.

I could go on just as long about the good parts of the game, but I feel like that's going to invite flaming. So instead I'll just say that the game takes to modding very, very well - and so all of the above problems have long since been smoothed over in practice, at least for my group.

Thanks a bunch for writing all this out, it's a breath of fresh air to get real critical response in what's usually troll threads.
A lot of these things and the fixes you've mentioned on the side are things I've ran into in my group as well; Milestones have gotten less concrete as we go on and find them inconvenient to hold hard to, fate point costs for inter-player compels are treated more as a "justified fp transfer" than anything else, and special equipment is often treated as a pseudo-stunt with 1 invoke that can be lost depending on events.
General vibe agreement; the game is best when you just take the core engine and build off of that as you run into problems with it.
It's pretty much the Linux of game systems obnoxious arguments and flame bait and all

>It's pretty much the Linux of game systems
Nicely done, I didn't think you could get this autistic and I was wrong.

>low-tier troll tries to provoke fate players by calling them names and implying they're hyperdefensive
>fate players respond by honestly discussing the game's shortcomings and how they address them
>troll calls someone autistic and fucks off

Well this was an entertaining thread.

Anyone else have any suggestions or experience with houseruling and Fate Core or FAE?

>four people make fun of me and my bad game
>I get called autistic and then everyone stops talking to me
>hey guys anyone still here?

The system's malleability is probably what I like most about it. The System Toolkit gives a lot of examples you can use to springboard your own. I've come up with houserules for all sorts of things because of the ease. Summoners, deity worshipers, transformations, mech pilots, just for fun.
But I've had problems finding anyone who actually wants to play. :(

>four people
hm yes of course

One very important house rule I would recommend to any GM running Fate is to introduce a fifth action: discover.

Ryan Macklin explains here:

ryanmacklin.com/2014/10/fate-the-discover-action/
>If I could go back in time, I would add this to the ruleset.

Without the discover action, it is trivial to break the game through low-risk create an advantage actions under Empathy, Investigate, Lore, and Notice which stockpile free invocations.

...

I find Fate-based games are decently popular on roll20. As for the System Toolkit, do you have a pdf? I can't ever seem to find one.

fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/introduction

you can also check the pdf share archives

If you do FAE, probably tweak the stats, or talk with your players about what you are going to use them for; smart can be used for fucking everything, unless you reel it in.

Also, adding the "discover" action cuts down massively on the no-risk snowballing that is "optimal" play, and just generally enhances game-feel (google "Fate, discover action" and you'll find what I mean).

>If you do FAE, probably tweak the stats, or talk with your players about what you are going to use them for; smart can be used for fucking everything, unless you reel it in.

This is perhaps the single most damning consequence of using Fate Accelerated over Fate Core: the definitions of approaches are a complete wreck, to the point wherein Clever can apply to nearly anything.
>Clever: A Clever action requires that you think fast, solve problems, or account for complex variables. Finding the weakness in an enemy swordsman’s style. Finding the weak point in a fortress wall. Fixing a computer.
The optimal Fate Accelerated character is an Ozymandias/Amadeus Cho expy who uses Clever for everything.

It gets particularly degenerate in the Dresden Files Accelerated, wherein Clever is renamed "Intellect," and somehow manages to cover even more than before.
>Intellect: Quick thinking, the solving of complex problems, or accounting for numerous variables at once. Examples: Code breaking, outwitting a fae courtier, counting cards in a poker game.
Fae illusions are Intellect-based, because apparently, being intelligent is more important for weaving illusions than being sneaky or guileful. Likewise, the Sight and Soulgaze are both powered by Intellect and defended against with Intellect, because surely such willpower-based activities are simply a matter of being smart and clever.

I have mentioned the discover action here .

Perhaps, but common/narrative sense can be used to wrangle them. There's a difference between thinking fast and acting fast, after all. The surrounding context of the action should decide the approach. Is it possible to Cleverly sneak past someone? Sure, but unless the player can make a damn good case as to why this is one of those times (ie: perhaps they are currently disguised) I wouldn't let them use Clever without raising the difficulty somewhat. Same for anything else Clever could attempt to substitute. What really made me go ah hell nah was the description for Forceful.

>A Forceful action isn’t subtle—it’s brute strength. Wrestling a bear. Staring down a thug. Casting a big, powerful magic spell.

Oh good, now every single magic user will be pic related. I opted to regulate "big, powerful magic spells" to Clever instead.

Magic spells might be "Magical" instead. You can make up your own approaches, after all, the default list is just that, a default.

As for Clever, I almost never make it the optimal choice. So it's a "jack of all trades, master of none". You can clever your way into somewhere undetected, but it'll never be as good at stealth as sneaking.

What "huge glaring flaws" are we talking about? I must have missed them, altough i dont play Fate that much, admitedly.

>Oh good, now every single magic user will be pic related. I opted to regulate "big, powerful magic spells" to Clever instead.

I know you are making a joke but it's worth elaborating.

Forceful isn't tied to how a character looks (although it can be). Forceful isn't STR. A Forceful wizard would levitate (or more likely, blow up) a stone in the way with his magic, not with his brawn.

Putting all Magic under Clever means that now clever absolutely can do all the things.

The entire point of the Aspects approach is that you don't care about what exactly the character is using ((it could be a hammer, explosives, or magic), only what, well, approach he's using to achieve the goal he has set.

Thank you very much for your input!

see
the guy you're responding to is just a troll.

Here's my problem with that. You have a character with the high concept Pyromancer. They've put their +3 in to Forceful to show how good they are at slangin' those 'balls. There's a sizable stone statue that needs to be shoved -- upright -- on to a switch.What justification do you give this character to be unable to use their Forceful +3 for this task? The action (moving a heavy lump of stone) can most certainly be resolved with a Forceful approach. Or, if you allow them, how would you decide upon a fair difficulty that takes in to account the pyromancer's lack of physique? Obviously he cannot use Forceful with the intended representation of force to move this object without ripping credulity to shreds.

I shifted "powerful spells" (which is not *all* magic, just the spells designed to cause great destruction) to Clever because otherwise you have a Forceful where only specific kinds of Forceful apply in specific situations and no other approach has that sort of problem.

>What justification do you give this character to be unable to use their Forceful +3 for this task?

Why should I? He could just say "Okay, I make an explosion next to it to make it topple over".

Wait, I misread your example.

Then a torrent of flame to push it.

The statue fractures and is reduced to pumice from the extreme, concentrated, constant heat. But even if you want to call bullshit, what if this weren't about a statue? What if it were something heavy but extremely flammable?

What does a character do when their "approach's approach" is not applicable in a situation, even though the approach itself is perfectly logical? Forceful seems to be the only approach that could have this problem, and attaching magic to it is how.

One thing I like to houserule in for long-running campaigns is having the "milestone" or "level up" happen once every PC has had each of their Aspects Compelled at least once.

This encourages the players to Compel each other and themselves, which is something players used to more traditionalist systems often balk at but is quite important to make Fate really shine. It also incentivises the players to pick appropriately double-sided Aspects.

This sort of tilts the game away from Narrativist and more towards Gamist but I feel that's needed for longer games. And all of Core's Gamist rules are janky anyway, as people have pointed out re: combat, etc.

I usually scale damage up and recovery times down, but of course it depends on what tone you want your game to be. As people have mentioned, once you become accustomed to it, homebrewing is a breeze. That flexibility is ultimately it's strongest feature, which makes sense for a universal system.

Concepts I've run or played in Fate or Fate homebrews:
> Alt-history colonial Canada with Vikings and Native American folklore
> Rogue Trader
> Postapocalypse-wastes-meet-Cyberpunk
> Hardish Sci-fi spaceship crew doing dirty jobs and dodging the law, Traveller-esque

>The statue fractures and is reduced to pumice from the extreme, concentrated, constant heat.

Bullsh...

> But even if you want to call bullshit

Oh, okay...

>what if this weren't about a statue? What if it were something heavy but extremely flammable?

Then it'd have the implied "flammable" aspect and things would be working as intended.

>What does a character do when their "approach's approach" is not applicable in a situation, even though the approach itself is perfectly logical?

Then you come to terms with how the fiction sometimes overrides mechanics; although, in the above example assuming we are using tags it should still be within reason; in fact, if the pyromancer says "he tries to push the cart with his pyrokinetic blast, but it catches on fire because the hay has "flammable" aspect" that sounds like he gets a Fate point to me.

Also, I'd like to mention that pyromancy would probably be more Flashy (that's that aspect, right? Been a while since I checked FAE) than forceful. I'd mostly keep magics that can primarily exert force in forceful.

>Flashy (that's that aspect...

*approach

god, I'm a mess today.

I feel like this is again ignoring the "results must make narrative sense" rule. If you can stretch it somewhat to make sense, it works. If you can't stretch it at all in a way that makes sense, then it can't be used that way.

Just because a character uses a certain style doesn't mean they don't have to explain what action they're doing in that style. If they can't, they can't use it.

My long-runnign Fate game has gradually become more gamist, as well.

>a wizard with ranks in Forceful for using magic can suddenly claim muscles to-
COMPEL THEM

This is literally the use of the Compel action.

>I'm compelling your Squishy Wizard aspect - even though you're trying to Forcefully move the statue, your real strength is of the mind, not the body. Roll at -2.

>and things would be working as intended.
Indeed. Your heavy object quickly turns to ash on the switch and the spiked ceiling continues its descent or the opening of the pit containing a horde of man-eating gophers continues to widen or what have you, and you just destroyed the only object around that could have saved you.

Flashy's description denotes actions that are stylish and made to grab attention. I mean, shooting a ball of fire is pretty attention grabbing, sure, but it's meant to kill not entertain or distract.

Exactly my point. This wizard states he will use all his strength to try and move this object, and he does have that +3. Which brings us to

and the second question I posed. What would you rule as a fair difficulty for this task? -2 would bring them to +1. Even using what the rulebook says is a Great Challenge (+4), the squishy wizard still has a possibly-more-than-fair chance to make the roll.

members.dsl-only.net/~bing/frp/fudge/dice.html#4dF

While thinking about it, I decided in this scenario I might even tell the pyromancer something similar, only skip the compel and inform him he'll be making this roll with NO bonus, since his power is more of the mind. So +0. He'd have to roll perfect, but it's still possible.

My main issue as I stated is that this essentially creates a dichotomy in Forceful (physical, magical) that simply does not exist in any other approach. It's a hell of a lot easier to get "knowledge and application of varied thaumaturgic principles" to smoothly jive with everything else Clever represents; going off the assumption these spells would be instantaneous and used mostly for destructive purposes, obviously something that required like a ritual would be better suited for Careful.

>Even using what the rulebook says is a Great Challenge (+4), the squishy wizard still has a possibly-more-than-fair chance to make the roll.
Rolling a +3 is hardly a more than fair chance. If what you really want is to say it's impossible then just say that.

For reference, rolling a +3 or better is only a ~6.1% chance, or slightly better odds than rolling a nat 20 on a d20.

>Indeed. Your heavy object quickly turns to ash on the switch and the spiked ceiling continues its descent or the opening of the pit containing a horde of man-eating gophers continues to widen or what have you, and you just destroyed the only object around that could have saved you.

Yes? You are not immune to making a bad choice. And that's the point where you blast the top of the dungeon off or spend the Fate point you got in exchange for the compel.

Anyway, let's take your example but replace the "flammable" tag with a "fragile" tag. Now the brawny barbarian tries to push it, breaks it, and we are having the same "brawn should have worked!" situation. Any application of forceful could have the same "hah, I gotcha bullshit aspect you didn't know about!" shit you describe there.