No Fate Anonymous threads?

A lot. Summed up by my players all playing vidya and other stuff in the background by the end.

I started on it about six months ago and yeah, the book was really fucking hard to understand. It took me a week before I figured out how the stress track actually worked, how each box soaks that amount of stress rather than being 1, 2, 3 hit points.

Now I've been running it since summer and players have been saying, "This is the best session you've ever run," every other game. I'm still not sure what's really up with a lot of the mechanics though, but I am kind of kenning to the fact that shit tends to work the way you'd think it should work based on the narrative and I get tripped up by thinking a rule might not let me do a narrative thing.

Yeah, the kind of mental gear-shifting you gotta do when you come from games like D&D or Call of Cthulhu (my first RPG) is just plain incredible!

And yeah, I'm reading "The Book of Hanz" right now, a series of articles written by a d20/D&D player about the things he learned while playing Fate, it talks about exactly that thing you mentioned about it all fitting IF it suits the narrative.

Like gurps it is only good for mentioning in threads asking for systems since it has no inherent setting to talk about Duh

There's not much to talk about, it's the most rules lite system of rules light systems. Even the math is just simplified into + and - symbols. FATE is more of a storytelling game than a roleplaying game, even universal games with more defined rules like Savage Worlds and Genesys have a hard time holding a general without dissolving rather quickly.

Plus fate is not a very good system for long term play, or playing anything that's not an action movie

Oh. Would it be cool for this setting?

I'm actually having trouble understanding how compels work, still.

Let's say a character is battling inside a giant oven. The searing heat is making it kinda tough to concentrate on doing anything. Would any penalties to rolls just be a matter of fact of the Way Too Hot situational aspect or would they be a compel and thus the character gets a Fate Point for dealing with it? Logically, a compel should be something optional, right? Since the player can turn it down?

Yes. The big thing Fate does better than most games is teamwork through the create an advantage action and the way initiative works by picking who takes the turn after you.

Oh god, YES!!! A Tokusatsu-style RPG would work well with a narrative-first system!

In your giant oven example, let's say that applies "Way Too Hot" as an aspect, and you're right in thinking that this would be a good source of compels.

However, refusing a compel is only partially optional, as you have to pay a Fate Point in order to refuse compels as well. If the fight drags on and you keep compelling for penalties because of the oven heating up, they would eventually run out of FPs and take penalties or stress, depending on what kind of compel you want to apply as a GM.

Spirit of the Century has a great 'rule kit'. I love the special abilities. Its a very simple and exhaustive list of stuff PCs might want.

I'm not entirely sold on the mathematics of the system, but I like the Aspects and general structure of the game.

>I don't get it, you sit down with your group and you all create the world, story, villains etc? That seems stupid.
It's not very good for people who want a DM to do everything and who don't like getting engaged in the story, no.

Cool. I want to run in the current combined KR/SS/other SS/Revived Ishinomori setting without having to bend and break a rules heavy system to work.

I've been in an investigation-and-diplomacy-heavy campaign run using the Spirit of the Century rules which worked out quite well. It also ran for a pretty long time.

I'm quite fond of Fate, but Veeky Forums doesn't seem to like it much.

I'd say it depends on what the characters are capable of narratively. If they can survive the heat of the oven, then the situational aspect "Way Too Hot" would be good. This allows the player and opponent to use this situation to their advantage like:
>I try to Create Advantage by sweeping the enemy off of his feet. Oh, I need 1 more to succeed? In that case, I invoke "Way Too Hot" - this is going to hurt like hell when he lands.

You can also use it to compel, but I'd say only to do that if you're going to do an interesting drawback for it. If you're constantly compelling to just force them out of the oven, I'd say it's better to straight up tell them to get out and make them roll an overcome or contest in order to get out in time.

It's more popular than a lot of games that do get general threads on Veeky Forums. Like, for example, Exalted.

It's a moderate crunch narrative-driven game engine that is suitable for a wide variety of storytelling goals.

Its real Achilles heel is that it lacks advancement in the sense that most autists desire to fill their real life advancement hole with.

A lot of the details don't work well and add up to the game not working well. It's a good source for ideas but its core concepts are better as add-ons to a more solid system (say, as a magic system) than as a self-contained thing.

It doesn't feel right that the oven scenario could be an endless stream of fate points along with the penalties though. The inverse situation might be a firebeast attacking you while you're sitting in a pool; the water should be providing you some protection whether you're specifically invoking it or not. We've had similar situations come up where sometimes you're in an area that could provide cover, but I don't give the bonus unless you invoke cover, but there was another situation where a player was in an area where he couldn't not have cover, so I gave him the bonus for free.

What would you think of the following for a diceless version of Fate Core, intended for an extremely combat-light game?

1. """""Dice rolls""""" (they are not actually dice rolls) are strictly only for meaningful, impactful, and challenging actions. If you are just trying to make a good impression on someone, or if you are recalling non-critical information, then you do not roll. This helps prevent the stacking of free invocations.

2. The environment can always succeed with style against you. If you fail by 3, someone or something will have always succeeded with style against you.

3. NPCs never apply active opposition. They always use passive opposition.

4. """""Roll""""" difficulties are always announced beforehand.

5. Invoking another character's aspect against them never generates a free fate point for them.

6. Each player has a pool of nine results: -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3, +4. Each time they use a result, they cross it out from the list. They refresh the pool only when all nine results are crossed out.

Such a variant of Fate might be crude and simplistic at first glance, but where it gets tense is the bidding wars with invocations. It is possible for you to use a +4 result only to get thrown down by invocations anyway. Conversely, it is possible for you to use a low result knowing that you can shore it up with invocations.

Could it work well?

I like it in theory a lot. But I have never ran it in person, every time I'm about to I find a system more better suited for what I want and ditch Fate. I do use it for my play by email game though.

Sounds like you may be onto something here. Check out Dogs in the Vineyard, it's got a similar system going on with "Traits" working similarly to aspects and you dice pools similar to what you just mentioned.

>> Puts on fireproof suit
*raise spork*
*teleport behind you*
"Eh not bad kid..."

You don't have to create the story to get engaged in it

Seems a bit hamfisted to me. Especially since the players, if they want to build the invocations you're talking about, are going to need to burn their good rolls just to get invokes to use later. It makes higher-difficulty tasks borderline impossible, especially to prepare for them.

On top of that, an even spread like that doesn't represent the way the dice fall. You're much more likely to get -1 to 1 as a result on the dice than the outlying numbers, so you're, in effect, making the "roll" results more random. Ironically, this means you're giving players even less control over the narrative while at the same time removing chance.

A some of the other things you mentioned aren't actually changes.
>are strictly only for meaningful, impactful, and challenging actions.
This is part of the game already. If failure wouldn't be interesting or it's something your character should do easily, you don't roll.

>"Roll" difficulties are always announced beforehand.
Already a thing.

>Invoking another character's aspect against them never generates a free fate point for them.
Why do this? This stifles the point economy even more, limiting your method of getting Fate points back to only compels.

All in all, characters in that diceless version would have less control and will more often fail.

Whenever stuff like this happens, where one side refuses to budge because of some weird gameplay mechanics, I shake things up by upending one of the things that keeps it there.

This is a lot easier in Fate, as I observe, and encourages this behavior with the "Silver Rule": Don't let the mechanics get in the way of what makes narrative sense.

>You don't have to create the story to get engaged in it
Of course not. But outright rejection of collaboration as "That seems stupid" reeks of autistic pissbaby.

>I don't get it, you sit down with your group and you all create the world, story, villains etc? That seems stupid.

I was in the same boat until I gave it a try. My experience is that you need to strike a balance between world building improv and prepared material. What works for you will vary depending on your game group.

I made some notes on the world and a general plot outline, then took everything else eith the players. When the elf player says “would it be cool if my race is kinda samurai like?” Injust run with it, and use what I can. “Sure, but remember you have this crazy code of honor”, stuff like that.

... It came from... Behind... *facerolls*

True maybe saying it sounds stupid was a stupid thing to say.

Not the user that posted it, but would the things that you just mentioned make it appropriate for something gritty and generally dark game where the characters are mostly expected to fail, eventually?

So a compel is more a tool to use to shake things up, make a situation more interesting, than a consequence of anything that might give a player a -2?

I think it'd work really well for that, actually. To make things more threatening/dark/gritty in regular Fate, you just increase the scale of the enemies since the math is so simplistic. But the diceless version that user posted would do a similar thing - maybe better, actually. It takes the idea of "You are going to fail" as an absolute certainty.

I've only recently started GMing for my family, but FATE seems to be working well for them. I've got a low-tech, high magic far future setting, in which retreating glaciers have exposed long lost technology (missile silos and bunkers). The looks on their faces once they realized that they were in the ruins of St. Louis was worth the effort to make the setting appear to be an age of sail fantasy.

>So a compel is more a tool to use to shake things up, make a situation more interesting
Exactly. Fate really pushes for "only do it if it makes things more interesting". This applies to compels as much as it does requiring rolls. Naturally, you can reject this bit for different flavors of game, but in standard you should be using compels for three main reasons:
1) To shake up complacent/easily succeeding characters to make the scene less straightforward. (IE. Everyone needs to make a good impression to this local lord, and everyone is invested in doing so - a complication here could be interesting).
2) To make a dragging conflict more interesting. (IE. Two characters are in a pretty boring sword fight. Toss a situational compel - the floor/ceiling collapses!)
3) To let your players earn back their Fate points. This usually comes from the player themselves since they can compel themselves for free. I also allow my players to, if they need a Fate point but their strapped on ideas, to ask for a compel and I'll think of an interesting one.

I love it, but have pretty much sworn off ever playing or running it again. It is designed for narrative minded role players. If you are not one of those, the system will either frustrate you, or you will frustrate everyone else fighting with it. I have run about half a dozen games and never had more than two players at a time who really got the game or embraced it. The others either couldn't wrap their heads around its basic remnants, or just devoted all their time to trying to minmax and break it. I have also played in several games of it, and I have not met another GM who seemed to really grasp the game either. They just treated it as rules lite GURPS, with no real effort to tell a story or use aspects in a narrative manner.

If you can find a group who are all the right type of player, I think it would be great. But I have barely found enough people in my whole gaming career to assemble such a group, and never been playing with more than a couple of them at the same time. It is just a game that requires a somewhat rare type of player to fully work.

I do think GM prep takes a lot of undue flak in Fate fan circles. I hear some APs where every door has a "Now describe this monster to us, player," lurking behind it and not only does that tend to be laserghosts or orcs in pink tutus, now you know this isn't an important thing woven into the GMs underlying narrative. A big component of playing is discovery and unless the player has some interconnected narrative motives and a solid vine with what everyone else is doing, a lot of that discovery can get list to momentary giggles in collaborative improv.

I would rather not use a more distributed curve, because I want the management of lower and higher results to be key to the game.

Statistically, characters are no more likely to fail in such a scheme than they would with regular dice rolls. It is just that it will take more work and strategizing, like intelligently using higher results to succeed with style and create boosts, then piggyback off those free invocations to keep a success spiral going.

One thing I am unsure about is how the "reroll a dice roll" function of invocations should work; what would be a good way to handle such a thing?

I agree. I cant stand games where everyone is the GM. How many groups have you been in where everyone at the table was capable of contributing anything worthwhile to the game in that way? Or anything at all, worthwhile or not? I have been in damn few.

>Why do this? This stifles the point economy even more, limiting your method of getting Fate points back to only compels.

I have never liked the idea because all it does is encourage players and GMs to invoke their own aspects.

Why ever invoke an enemy's aspect (strictly a zero-sum affair with no net benefit) when you could invoke one of your own aspects?

None of that applies to Fate, though. The only parts where the players encroach on what the GM typically does in other games is at game creation and during the game by paying a Fate point and declaring something (that the GM or other players can veto for being stupid).

You guys are bringing up criticisms that don't even apply to this game.

A lot of Fate players take it too far. I've seen plenty of posts suggesting Fate GMs that prepare anything for the game at all don't understand the spirit off collaboration or they're too mired in the barbaric dynamic of d20 or whatever other bullshit. Not knocking the system, I'm complaining about jackasses that do it wrong.

But as a bonus, there needs to be less Actual Play videos and podcasts focused on five hours of boringass world-building before they get to two hours of play or nothing. Everyone tries to sell the shit out of the game based on the aspect that's most repellant to an onlooker.

>If you are just trying to make a good impression on someone
I know this is ancillary, but there are definitely plenty of cases where this should be meaningful, impactful, and challenging.

>They refresh the pool only when all nine results are crossed out.
This seems s bit limiting when you're coming up on a refresh. A method to begin regenerating them when you're at about half might be better - this wouldn't be diceless, but just selecting one at random? A relatively conventional but similar take would be if you instead have cards with these values and draw automatically when using one. This would have the added effect, which subjectively may be considered a benefit, that you could save up and build a "run of luck" or a "bad day" for more flexible narrative. Then depending on the amount of control you want players to have over outcomes, a hand size of about three, five, or seven would be appropriate as one would be the same as rolling while nine would allow vastly more player control to the point that it cheapens the mechanic altogether. I believe, apropos of no actual mathematical analyses, that five should play out about right for a default.

Well FATE does allow players to do create the world, and to declare story points, so that is them taking part in the building of the game.

>I know this is ancillary, but there are definitely plenty of cases where this should be meaningful, impactful, and challenging.

I should clarify that I mean "making a good first impression on someone just from your opening line alone." It can be meaningful, yes, but I believe that it should simply set the tone for future social rolls.

The Dresden Files RPG handled this in a weird way by having you open up with a Presence roll for first impressions, which I always found weird.

>this wouldn't be diceless, but just selecting one at random? A relatively conventional but similar take would be if you instead have cards with these values and draw automatically when using one. This would have the added effect, which subjectively may be considered a benefit, that you could save up and build a "run of luck" or a "bad day" for more flexible narrative.
I am trying to avoid using randomizers other than uncertainty between players and GMs here.

>I am trying to avoid using randomizers
Maybe set some kind of a cycle, then? You can give players a modifier "queue" of which they can use only the soonest few, and after using one it goes to the end of the line. That would be essentially the same as I described but without randomness, as each modifier would have a set number of rolls until it became an available option once more.

Fate Core can work fine for long-term games, but really only if the players are on board for it and also if you're willing to houserule things. The "everything is a character" thing just doesn't quite work right in my opinion.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with compelling only your own Aspects. For my games at least, that's what I expect them to do, however it's a pleasant surprise for me every time a player asks to compel a Location aspect.

Find the other players, or take the time to run and teach others the system. It worked well for me, but maybe because all of the people at the table were practicing artists.

This. So much this.

>Plus fate is not a very good system for long term play, or playing anything that's not an action movie
Wrong

While I can agree with your conclusion, I'm interested in what makes you think that way

Thanks, this is really helpful.

The books seem to have a weird way of explaining everything like it's a crazy hack or pro Fate GM trick instead of the base intent of a core mechanic. I often wonder if something is a component of the batter or experimental icing on the finished cake.

I do not see what this has to do with the point that invoking enemy aspects is bad, because it gives them the fate point rather than tossing the fate point to the wind.

Fate is better suited to it in general, because you don't need a map/grid or to take turns, strictly speaking. I'd love to play fate with you, desu.

>it's the most rules lite system of rules light systems.

Nah, bruh. Just because it's not content driven doesn't mean it is extremely rules light. It's simulation light, sure. You don't have different swim speeds, fall damage, burning and acid rules, etc. But in terms of rules for roleplaying and describing the world, it's pretty fucking dense.

Should try reading the game.

Not him, but I think if you consider the total amount of moving parts and overall numbers spread, especially in FAE, a character does make about as much progress as in D&D. Maybe more.

It does lack in small rewards, upward tally bookkeeping and phat loot though. Gaining more gold and exp isn't kept track of. I think this can be covered with extras if a group is unhappy with the progression though. Nab an equipment list from another game and start tracking money. Hell, you could even run old-school Vancian magic and drip players a feed of new spells as you convert or invent them.

You would simply invoke "Way Too Hot" negatively against the character, probably for free.

Remember, there are such things as free invocations. You, the DM, would just say, "You're in a pool, so you're [Submerged in Water]. You can invoke this twice for free."

Yes, this.

A lot of the mechanical crunch and strategy lies in language and construction of aspects and how you're using them. Whenever a player has kind of a weak narrative to use a particular approach or invoke an aspect, I nudge them towards a better description. If they can't manage it, they don't get it and at the end of the session we talk it over a little, work on key words and symbolism they could shoot for or how they could reword an aspect to better reflect their intention.

I feel like it depensa on the group. The DM should be in charge of most evetything, as usual, but when a player says something like "Oh I know a guy from here who can help us or some shit." You can allow it if you like or make them roll for it. You make the world, just let them have lived in before the game started. You still have that veto power, just let them add stuff now and then. Maybe let them make up the backstory for their race or tribe even.

But from what I've seen from above, unimaginative rules-lawyers (both players and GMs) make this especially hard. Moreso when they come from dice and mechanics heavy games like D&D

Maybe you neee to invoke more than one to win, and your other aspects don't work for you? Sometimes you just need more.

Fair enough I suppose, but those don't sound like people I would want to play with anyway. Unimaginative players might be teachable, but ruleslawyers are just dicks.

The problem with D&D isn't so much complexity as it provides an endless buffet of end results without much in the way of processes to get to an end result. You end up with mechanics, optimization and the illusion of choice deciding who you play and what they do. Coming over to Fate, the game will seem a little ass-backwards.

With that in mind, back in D&D, if you want your own castle, you take this and that feat and prestige class and oh, you fucked up because now you have a useless build. In Fate, you can just write a castle into an aspect and talk over your expectations of what it does with the GM. That gives you an idea of how you can invoke that castle for effect in-game if not a stunt or two.

In my experience, it's not a lack of imagination holding back, it's just waiting for that lightbulb moment where they realize how much freedom they suddenly have. Sometimes you have to just sot and wait for it, but as a GM, you can do a lot to set examples for what they can do: invokes, invoking for effect, teamwork, etc.

Would like to run it, but my group (both DMs and players) are either bad at our don't like improv. They like lots of crunch and structure. Not a terribly creative lot either.

Did you offer to DM it yourself so you can run them through the system and show them examples of how to do stuff while the game is running? That's usually how I get my players through the rules.

L5R conversion here. Better than the 5e crap.

Much Epic awesomeness, user! Thanks!

Thanks, only took two months. Let me know any quibbles you run into.

That reminds me, if anyone else has a homebrew setting or adventure built to run on Fate Core or FAE that you want to get out into the interwebs, now's a great time to do that.

The adventures must flow.

Wyrdwalkers (wyrdwalkers.wikidot.com/) plug, the 2e Scion before it was cool.

When playing, do you explicitly state aspects? Do you just describe things and leave the aspects implicit until invoked? Do you write them on index cards?

>Much Epic awesomeness
Reddit still exists, there's no need for you to come here.

Index Cards are usually used.

>like who NEEDS rules man. We can just like freeform, that way dice don't get in the way of the story.
Fate is for idiots.

I state Aspects ahead of time, or keep them hidden to be discovered or exposed during play.
We use a big Chessex mat to draw out scenes so I just write the Aspects as little "tooltips" for features.
Character Aspects generally get index cards (I want to make some laminated ones for repeat use).

I like it when players ask if a certain scene aspect exists, and have them roll--if successful, then yeah, that alternative staircase totally existed the whole time. It's discovery but not really.

Ironically the guy who invented it went on a huge rampage about how it's not the panacea that players seem to think it is.

Basically, it's ONLY a useful way to approach things if it's capable of acting. So for example, if you're in a horror movie plot, then the Night of the Living Dead could probably be a character. It can throw more zombies at you, it can light your house on fire, whatever.

On the other hand, The Death Star probably isn't a character. It doesn't have will, or even a facsimile of will. It doesn't hate Alderaan, and want it to die.

So it doesn't need to be intelligent per se, but there needs to be some "intention" to it, if that makes sense. The issue is that you can have aspects that are based on things that really aren't characters, and the Fractal was really poorly explained to mean that Your Father's Sword was a character.

If they're obvious or help set the scene, or if you intend for them to get toyed with, they're best off used as part of the introduction of things.

So you might introduce a new area like
>You enter the [Very Dark] warehouse. Inside seems to be row after row of big shelves holding [Pallets of Plastic Drums] with eye-catching warning labels...
Or what have you.

How do you like it so far?

Y'know, I was thinking it was toy musical drums. I got excited at the possibility of throwing someone into them and it making a bunch of really obnoxious noise.

I think the bronze rule fails if people think of anything as a full character sheet with all the nuts and bolts and actions. Something like the Death Star can certainly have some characterlike mechanics and be tossed into a battle's turn order though. Like, it can definitely attack if you don't want to track a thousand gun turrets and it can theoretically use suppressive fire to defend against some kid shooting a bomb down its strategic holes. I'm not sure it has the will to narratively create an advantage though.

I guess if it can make something more interesting or work as a shortcut, cool, but if you're thinking it means a thing can act more like a full character, then it's goofy.

Gotta get dat adversary toolkit

Oh yeah, that's a thing now, isn't it? How is it?

Speaking of which, there are a lot of examples therein that are essentially "you can't damage the golem but you can kill it by drawing a stick on its forehead." Now in an ideal world they ask how to kill it, I tell them to roll for it, they pass, all good.

But what if they never ask? They lose and get frustrated? What if they fail the roll?

At the same time I'm aware that you ought not to roll off you can't accept one of the results, but are all my players experts on Jewish lore, know all about magical swords that can cut through unbreakable dragon scales?

I'm just not sure how to convey these things unless my players read my mind.

Just downloaded. Looks OK so far.

Right, I have trouble figuring out how to telegraph things while leaving it for the players to discover too.

To be fair I have historically struggled with any situation that involves asymmetrical information between GMs and players. I also don't know how or when to identify items for players, for example, or how much pixel bitching I should do before I give them a clue (If the game says it's hidden under the bed in the bedroom, do I give it to them when they look under the bed? When they enter the bedroom? Or when they enter the entire house?)

I try to make sure that at minimum "necessary" information will be conveyed plainly during the session, though usually producing a problem.
Therefore, the question lies in how much of this information--maybe just hints of it--the players will discover before it becomes this problem.

Although I also have no perfect answers.

I'm pretty sure with Fate, assuming you get a few good rolls and the GM is cool with it, you can...

Sure, how many clues to toss at your players (dummies) is the eternal mystery.

Particular to Fate, I have more trouble knowing how to show players that the Golem has a [Weak to Sticks Drawn on his Forehead] Aspect. The book suggests giving him a [Doesn't Seem to Like Sticks and Crayons] Aspect to serve as a stand-in until players discover the truth, but how do they actually go about discovering that, mechanically?

I would like to offer you this rare, custom Fate Point in exchange for making it a pallet full of melodicas and keytars.