I see there is a new book out called Deep Dark Blue, which places the action into the waters instead the space. IRL they are like heaven and earth (or to be more precise, space and deep waters), but gameplaywise I expect them to be similar. Breach is deadly, you need suit up to go outside, and there are stations to refuel.

I'm reading it atm. but don't know when will I finish. My personal favourite is Psychademia so far.

I was wondering how much you'd have to tinker with fate before it ditinctly becomes 'no faith'.

Mainly because I was thinking about how to make it more pbp friendly by dumping the fate point economy and treat every aspect as a free aspect to invoke or compel without cost, making fate points unneeded.

I kept thinking, and my little seed of a system kept growing more and more away from fate. I still have the idea of aspects, which I love, and a sort of ladder for success. I'm thinking of eliminating skills and approaches (rather letting the narrative guide that) and stress and concequences to avoid play that revolves around trying to get the best for your character, and rather try to find something that rewards storytelling in general, kind of like "The Fall of Magic", which is pretty sweet! I like it if the focus is more on the story than on the characters. And being diceless makes it easier for forum play too I think. Or even at the table.

But I guess my question is: What makes Fate, Fate? Are it aspects, is it the fate point economy? Something else? Thoughts?

I think it's somewhat the aspect to each other. All of the games I played in it has stuck on the last aspect, as it is quite hard to have people together for that long on a pbp game. If I were to GM one, I would cut that one out, and replace it with an individual aspect instead. Like in the Psychademia mentioned before.

What really makes Fate Fatey is the Fate Point Economy. It's how Aspects relate the mechanics to the narrative and give players and GMs more control over how to shape things, making it more a group storytelling session rather than a tactical competition. The FP economy is at the heart of how aspects work in a way that makes it Fate.

What Frili's described sounds almost exactly like HeroQuest, with exclusively aspects, no FP, and focusing entirely on how the story flows because of the character rather than how the story affects the character (which is what Consequences are about). I'd take a look into HeroQuest and see if you can take anything from that to apply to what you're doing, but it honestly sounds like you accidentally completed that transition yourself.

Any thoughts on posting what you've written up, once you've got enough to be comfortable?

In reply to Nintaku (msg # 254):

Once I have time to work it out (probably only in the summer) I might start a testing game on here. I actually really don't have time to type it out right now between study and work. I'll see if I can check out HeroQuest in the meantime. Thanks for the tips!

I'm currently reading Mindjammer. It's setting really clicks with me. Its like Ian M Bank's Culture trying to (forcibly) spread their utopian civilization among the lost human colonies spread throughout the galaxy with their major rival being WH40K's Imperium. Has anyone read it or tried running a game?

I haven't read it, but your description sounds amazing.

got it but never got round to more than a quick flick through looks good though

For me, all it comes down to is the ability of players to contribute to the reality of the game.

I make all games I play, under any system, as Fate-like as I can, without fate points or explicit aspects. I'm not certain, but I assume a lot of Fate arose out of the designers, in their own games, getting tired of exchanges like

Player: "I'm a dwarf and we all know that dwarves are hardy, and mine comes from the Carbine Mountains which are super rough. So, can I do [thing that requires extreme hardiness]?"
GM: "Uh, I guess so, makes sense." (Best case. Worst case being an argument or a debate or a pointless series of rolls.)

In Fate, it would be much more acceptable for the player simply to say "I have the aspect 'Hardy Dwarf from the Carbide Mountains' so [thing that requires extreme hardiness] is a cinch. What next?"

Whether or not that was the actual sort of thing that spurred the development of Fate, it's the approach Fate has inspired me to take in my games. If a player tells me that something about their character means that they should get some advantage, then they do. If it makes sense to them, then it makes sense to me and we go with it. I was surprised to find that they'd actually bring down bad things on themselves for no real advantage, based on what they'd established before.

I guess what it comes down to is letting flavor text (including what players invent, or what the table commonly understands to be true) matter as much or more than the mechanics. The fate point economy, I feel, just keeps the highly creative people from running away with the game, but it's not strictly necessary, and from what I hear some veterans of the game don't even really move points around when they play, they just tend to go with what feels right, in terms of both good and bad things for the characters and the pacing.

I'm just curious if anyone's run into any issues long-term with running Fate. Specifically, any instances of actions not falling squarely into one of the four actions. I know the general consensus is to just create an advantage for anything that's not explicitly one of the other three, but I'm wondering if there's been any situations that have come up where the four actions aren't enough.

I would say that the difficulties I've had (other than my own health) involve character creation taking too long in a forum setting. Other than that, I haven't seen any.

I would agree with steelsmiter, any Fate game that's gotten past the initial creation has worked really well for me. Seems like the biggest stall out point.

One game I'm in is wheel of time based and we figured the aspects out a lot in play, just left them blank until it felt like a moment where my character could be fleshed out. Then we'd hammer out another aspect.

People focus far too much on the core rules and not enough on the platform. Due to the nature of the beast, we don't have much of a choice other than to focus on strengths rather than weaknesses.

Building characters in a form setting is a weakness. So I usually opt for a more optimal route of building a character using the basic rules and leaving it at that. I don't delve into a bunch of who know's who bs because most people don't care, they have a set character they want to play let them play them. Use KISS to keep it simple stupid and play on.

Another thing I do to keep the gaming running I inform players the game has a beginning, middle, and end. Fate points and experience is awarded from good posting habits as well as gameplay to spur better posting rates.

Going back to liblarva's question, I haven't encountered any cases where the four actions weren't enough. In some cases, I even think about them in terms of just three actions (combining Attack and Overcome in my head, since an Attack is just Overcome against active opposition). Did you have a specific instance in mind? That might make it easier to see where there might be a problem.

As to the problems of making characters on forums, I think any instance of character creation on RPoL is incredibly difficult, not just Fate. It takes a lot of time and energy, and you need to make sure everyone's starting on the same page. It's possible for a game to stall out at that point, but it's no more likely with Fate than with D&D, Shadowrun, or freeform games.

My own experience differs from rabideldar's, I think. Most players in games I've been in are very interested in their PC's connections with other PCs, which is where Fate comes in handy. Having connecting Aspects gives some solid mechanical oomph to those relationships that would otherwise be discussed at length during game creation, then mentioned briefly and forgotten in play (again, these things aren't just Fatey).

On top of that, I think creating characters in a forum is actually a strength when it comes to Fate in particular. You get more opportunity to see what everyone's thinking and doing, and how the ideas have progressed, since they're all written down. Around a tabletop it's easy to miss a more quiet player's ideas, and you need to really remember what people said they wrote down on their sheet.

It might just be my players being better suited for Fate and better suited for forum play, but just letting you know that these elements aren't troublesome for everyone. No more so than any other system, anyway.

In reply to Nintaku (msg # 264):

I had nothing specific in mind, I was just wondering if players / GMs with more time invested in the system had found any flaw or oversight with the four actions. I'm considering running FAE for a game in the "love the setting, not sure about the system" vein and was curious.

For PBP, are people finding that fate point bargaining slows things down? In most games I've played and run (Fate or otherwise), each interaction or back and forth adds a lot of time (hours to days) to the handling time of the game. I haven't run a long-term Fate game via PBP, so I'm not sure if that's going to add up enough over time to bother me or not.

I find that a Discover action can be very useful to add.

There is one: Create an Advantage. It can be used to either make a new aspect or discover one already on a target. In FATE editions, it used to be called Discover, Reveal, or Assess. Now that's all wrapped up in the Create an Advantage maneuver.



That's partially a function of the game's natural posting rate (which is about the players, not the system) and the way your group is handling those FP bargains. There's actually two areas where that might happen, so not sure if you're talking about one or both.

With negotiating compels, so far in my experience the GM simply suggests "what if Terrible Thing X happens because of This Aspect You've Got?" Players tend to get all excited and take the compel if it's properly awesome. It might slow down if the compel is truly going to wreck the player's day instead of making it more fun, or if a player suggests a compel that just isn't worth a Fate Point.

With negotiating roll boosts, so far I haven't seen it be that much of an issue, but there are considerations to be made. With static opposition, players may or may not get to know the difficulty, but will often say in the post where they made their roll whether or not they're willing to spend FP on it or succeed at a cost. This is usually easiest if they /do/ know the difficulty, cuts out a whole step. With contested opposition, it's usually against the GM, who will only really be spending FP to boost NPC rolls if it's a major NPC who should be tough enough to be kicking PCs around. It might slow the game down a bit during those scenes, but those are big a dramatic things where the focus should be, anyway. Also, so long as you're playing up the aspect being invoked for each roll boost, then everything's working as intended. Feature, not a bug.

In reply to Nintaku (msg # 267):

Yes, and no on the posting rate. Sure, it's a function of the players to a point, but shit happens and you can get a few days between player responses, especially with fixed initiative order (ugh). That's normal and not about system. But it becomes about system when you have to interact more (ie have more posts) to accomplish things. Something like say Apocalypse World that has fixed difficulties and generally lacks modifiers other than the base stats, you can resolve an action with one roll, basically... which is one back-and-forth. "I do X, here's my roll." "Okay, so that means...".

My concern is that with Fate, especially when you're bidding up a result, you're exponentially increasing the handling time.

P1:"I do X, here's my roll."
GM: "Okay, the bad guy's roll is Y."
P1: "But I'm going to spend a fate point to invoke..."
GM: "And the bad guy's going to invoke..."

On and on till the bidding war stops and a final result is reached. So you go from resolution in one back-and-forth, you're adding in however many more just to resolve that one roll.

My concern is that there's generally several hours to 1-2 days between each poster being able to post. You roll at noon. I respond the first time around 8pm. You're Johnny on the spot and respond by 10pm. I don't see that till 8 the next morning... in Apocalypse World that one roll was resolved in my first response and the story's moved on. In a Fate bidding war we're likely still resolving that one roll for another few posts... which pushes the other players' actions back, and their actions take several posts each way to resolve, pushing the next player back, it seems like that would cause a lot of people to drop simply from waiting to get to act.

That's the system interacting poorly with the format (pbp). Sure, you can have an alignment of stars where the one player and GM are online at the same time and tear ass through that in an hour, but in the few years I've been here, I've never seen that happen with any game or system.

I'm not knocking Fate, not at all, just wondering how others handle this peculiarity of the system in the pbp environment. That the system does this isn't really the problem, that it adds several days to the resolution of a given roll in PBP is the problem. I for one would like to know of some solutions so I won't have players waiting a week before they can post because Bob's got a sweet chain of invokes lines up.

Yeah, that's exactly the issue I was talking about that shouldn't even really happen. :P

Like I said, the easiest solution is for the GM to tell the players the difficulties for things before they roll. They then get to decide how much FP they'll spend when they roll, and you get that Apocalypse World one-exchange action. It means the players are more likely to succeed, but then again, they may choose to succeed at a cost rather than fail regardless of the difficulty. You're just cutting out a step and giving them more agency in the process.

When it comes to opposition that can actively use Fate Points themselves, then simply spend your FP ahead of time and then give them /that/ difficulty. Or, better yet, just spend the one FP to have a thing happen. "Because you're standing on a Rickety Bridge, Jerkface the Not Very Nice *spends a Fate Point* cuts the rope suspending it! This Conflict just became a Challenge: climb the brand new Rickety Wooden Ladder!" I suppose that's a bad example. Still, there shouldn't be that bidding war unless you really want there to be. It requires the GM to orchestrate it, it isn't built into the system on its own, far as I'm aware.

In all my time on RPoL, I have never seen it come up. Honestly, I've seen that situation of a player and GM having a flurry of posts, like ten in an hour, far more often.

In reply to liblarva (msg # 268):

My experience aligns with Nintaku's. This situation just doesn't come up like you think it would. Probably because, like you, the players and GM anticipate it.

In my experience as a GM I try give my players the difficulties they are trying to hit when I have their opponents or obstacles do something before them. When I don't or when a player is being proactive they usually post something along the lines of:

"Here's my roll. I'd be willing a spend a fate point to succeed if necessary by invoking "Aspect X" on the roll. If I tie could I succeed at a cost, please?"

Even when I offer Fate points to compel my players they tend to gobble them up rather than counter-offer fate points, so that's never been a issue either.

Why are Fight and Shoot not used as themselves for anything other than Conflicts? The rules imagine using them to show off or impress people, or in competitions, but not as actually combating something.

I understand that there are separate rules for Conflicts, and that if Fight or Shoot get used the game is supposed to shift to that (though why a Conflict can't be happening at the same time as a Contest or Challenge is something I don't understand - happens all the time in movies and books).

What I'm thinking are uses of Fight and Shoot so minor that they don't count as full Conflicts, but fit better in, say, a Challenge. The example challenge in the book involves protecting a house full of people from horde of zombies, by boarding it up, keeping people calm, and performing a ritual. To my mind, Fight and Shoot could fit right in, with the character having to chop back grasping hands so a window can be boarded, or take shots from the roof to thin out the horde (which probably isn't modeled as actual enemies that could normally be fought).

Those could be handled as "Create an Advantage" where Fight/Shoot is just taking the heat off the people doing the actual work. That's a good mirror for other skills being used to Create an Advantage during a Conflict, where Fight/Shoot is doing the actual work of generating stress. Perhaps that was intentional, though not every Challenge will lend itself to Fight/Shoot advantages nor every Conflict lend itself to advantages from any particular skill, so I don't exactly see a mirroring.

(And, come to that, a thoughtful GM could look for ways to make Fight/Shoot necessary to Overcome in most Challenges. Most scenes involving Indiana Jones involve Fight and Shoot in some way, even sometimes other than causing stress. Fight to obtain a uniform, Shoot to open a lock.)

My main reason for thinking along these lines is that I'd like to run a Fate game in which all characters can take part in every type of exchange. I don't want the game to be focused on Conflicts, nor on Challenges and Contests, and I want to treat Fight/Shoot as much like any other "support" skill as possible, so that someone could take it as a pinnacle skill and not feel sidelined like a D&D fighter once initiative isn't tracked anymore.

Long post short: What am I risking by making Fight/Shoot more about Overcoming?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:52, Mon 26 Sept 2016.

Shoot can easily be used to Create an Advantage like "providing cover", "bullets in the air" or "suppressive fire". To use Fight or Shoot to Overcome, make the opposition passive instead of active. That hoarde of zombies in your example is not trying to dodge. I can see that being more Overcome than Attack.

In reply to jollygrin (msg # 272):

Thanks for the reply.

The rules give examples of Fight/Shoot for Create an Advantage, but I'm looking at how we go from "providing advantage for a necessary part of a challenge" to an actual "necessary part of a challenge."

Given that I'm talking about a challenge, I'd generally make the opposition passive, yes. I'm sure one could find a way to apply a Fight or Athletics score to a horde of zombies, but they're more of a force of nature. Arguably, Fight/Shoot would have zero effect on the horde, but I'd frame it as the Fighter/Shooter managing to stem or reroute the main tide, to keep them from busting through.

There really isn't anything stopping you from using Fight or Shoot in a Challenge. The rules as written are totally fine with using them that way, since the very first example of a Challenge, even before the long one with Zird and the zombie horde, includes using Fight as the very first skill.

And besides relatively combat-like options, there's also things like using Shoot to hit the track switch while you're on top of a train so it doesn't go barreling off a cliff (because everyone knows every train has a normal track and the dead end leading to a cliff), or using Fight to pass through a bladed deathtrap room (might be Athletics, but Fight should serve just as well for that one).

Use Shoot to paint the laser on the target long enough for the drones to attach themselves.

Use Fight to arm wrestle the biker so they'll like you enough to get you a meeting with the boss.

Use Shoot to throw your sword at the door to bar it shut from across the room (totally happens in fiction, it's ridiculous and awesome).

Use Fight to hold on to that enraged bear monster for dear life while it tries to throw you off, ultimately running straight back to its master who has the MacGuffin.

Lots of potential Overcome actions.

Yep, I was too focused on the skill descriptions, the example challenge with Zird and the oil-and-water nature of Conflicts and Challenges.

This is the kind of thing I'd want to keep to a relative minimum, mainly because it smacks of "Flex your muscles to impress/intimidate" which I grew to despise after too many years of my fellow D&D players arguing that Athletics can be used to impress and that Intimidate should be Strength-based.

Thanks again.