Wow, this may have been my longest hiatus from writing in this blog. Not much to say about that other than I've been busy, and that's included doing a whole lot of gaming. Gaming to the point where I'm not in the mood to think about it at my leisure. I suspect that as long as I keep up with all of my weekly games my posting rate will probably remain sparse, alas.
My Saturday group has been playing through the D&D 5e beginner box, and we've actually been having a blast so far. While the point of this post isn't to review 5e, I mention it because of the Inspiration mechanic, which we're quite fond of. Half of this group hasn't played 13th Age yet, and that's what we're going to be playing next. While considering character options I couldn't help but think how much I'd miss Inspiration, and then the gears started turning about how I might be able to implement it in 13th Age without introducing 5e's Traits (which are largely redundant with Backgrounds, OUT, and Icons).
Ultimately Inspiration is a narrative carrot that serves the same purpose as Fate Points, or Plot Points in Cortex+. While I get why Inspiration isn't cumulative, I think everyone in the group agreed that we prefer being able to bank 'points.' The question still remains of how to earn those points, though. I'm getting close to running Firefly with the Tuesday group, and I think Cortex+ really nailed it with Plot Points. In that game characters have three Distinctions which can have up to 3 triggers. Think of Distinctions like Aspects in Fate, or Traits in 5e. It's a narrative phrase or concept that can either work to your benefit or detriment. Whenever you roll a dice pool and a Distinction would be a boon for the action you can add a d8 to the pool. The first trigger for all distinctions (which starts automatically unlocked) is that if the Distinction hinders you, you add a d4 to the pool instead of a d8, and you earn a Plot Point. It's important to note that rolling a 1 has detrimental consequences in this game, and that d4 is going to make that really likely to occur. That's why it gets added to your pool (possibly helping you a little) instead of the opposing pool.
This provides for interesting, dramatic stories because the player is self-handicapping their character with certain rolls in order to bank a benefit for later. A character needs flaws in order to be interesting, and this mechanic provides a narrative incentive for players to play up their characters' flaws. I think that it simply works better than the 5e and Fate versions (at least on paper).
So here's how I'd make it work in 13th Age. Any time a Background would be a disadvantage for a given action, the player can opt to apply its negative value to the roll as a penalty. Doing so grants the player a plot point, which can be spent later to re-roll any d20 roll. Optionally if your OUT would be a hindrance you can take a -4 penalty in order to earn a plot point.
Showing posts with label Fate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fate. Show all posts
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Fate Accelerated Edition: Thoughts After Playing
I picked up the PDF for Fate Accelerated Edition a while back, and wrote a "first impressions" review of it. As I said in the review I couldn't see myself running the game in the near future, largely because I've got so many other things I want to run. But one of the players in my group was intrigued by it, bought it, and decided to run a three session mini campaign to test drive it.
The setting was a modern day alternate universe where the Cold War never ended, and recently Russian terrorists launched nuclear warheads at many major cities across the globe. The twist is that it was combined with a bio-weapon, and the resulting disease (called RadPox) wiped out most of the global population. The PCs began in Missoula, Montana. We had an interesting array of characters, which is perhaps to be expected from a modern game without a tight thematic focus (i.e. spies, or dungeon delvers, or fringers trying to get by under the radar of the Empire/Alliance, etc.). My own character was an old man (under description I wrote "current Harrison Ford") with the aspects Retired Border Patrol Ranger - Canadian Border (high concept), I'm Getting Too Old For This Shit (trouble), Sucker For a Pretty Face, Bruce Collins Is My Oldest Friend (refers to an NPC), and My Dead Brother's Shotgun. The other PCs were a large animal veterinarian and a quirky accordion player (part of a duo with an NPC mandolin player; like I said, quirky). The premise was that we were leaving Montana because of the imminent onset of winter, headed south to pursue rumors of a "holy land."
Approaches
Approaches are a great narrative "shortcut," but they definitely have their limitations. While it's easy to liken them to ability scores in D&D, they feel a bit more like watered down backgrounds in 13th Age. That is to say, they represent a philosophy or broad thematic archetype much more than a physical trait (and I say "watered down" in that it lacks the specificity and detail of a good 13th Age background, which isn't to say that it's "worse"). So having a high Sneaky approach doesn't just make you the stealthy (Dex) guy, but you're good at tricking people or lying to them in social situations as well. One big strength is right there in the name: it encourages players to think about different ways to approach a situation. Different GMs will draw the line differently insofar as how much they'll allow a PC to justify a shaky or borderline approach; it seems like too much leniency can lead to approach-spamming, whereas strict adherence to the GMs vision can stifle creativity.
There are two big issues that I have with approaches in play. The first is that sometimes (at least once per session) a PC will try something that doesn't neatly fit one of the approaches. It might not even kind of fit one of them. At that point you just have to try to shoehorn it into a category, which can feel like fitting a square peg into a round hole. It's awkward. It also means that certain approaches (Clever, Careful, and perhaps Forceful) tend to be more useful because it's easier to justify "off" actions as being one of those. Sneaky and Flashy seemed to be noticeably more limited than the others. It's worth mentioning that my character's highest approach was Sneaky, and the accordion player's was Flashy, and we both ended up using them less frequently than we would have expected. In contrast, the vet had Clever at the top and probably used it about half the time.
My second issue is unavoidable given the abstracted, streamlined nature of approaches, and it's simply that sometimes suspension of disbelief can be strained. Skill systems imply previous experience at a given task, but with approaches your potency with the same task will vary depending on which angle you're coming from. For example, I ended up using no less than 4 different approaches at different times to shoot a shotgun. Charging in guns blazing was Forceful, an ambush was Sneaky, a "quick draw" type situation was Quick, and most of the time it was assumed shots were aimed, and so Careful seemed most appropriate. Now I don't know about you, but I tend to be more accurate when I actually aim. Problem was, my PC's Careful was only rated at +1, and so I ran into this strange situation where I was more effective making more reckless shots. Fortunately the GM awarded us a milestone after session 2, and so I boosted Careful to +2.
Aspects and The Fate Point Meta-game
At its heart this game is all about the Fate Point economy. Oftentimes it would be necessary to invoke multiple Aspects in order to succeed at a roll, and so having more Aspects is useful, even if they're redundant. Indeed, redundancy can be really useful if the Aspects apply to common situations! I think more ideally though is that PCs should make judicious use of the Create Advantage action to get more Aspects into play, and while we didn't do that as much as we probably should have it probably becomes habitual the more you play.
The extent of the meta-game, and how players and their characters might have very different goals, really clicked for me in session 3 last night. The climactic final battle was an EPIC firefight, and I honestly thought it would end up being a TPK. Anyways, at one point I got shot at and hit for 1 shift, and decided to compel an Aspect against myself to turn it into a 3 shift hit so I could get a Fate Point out of the deal that would help me out with offense later. Yep, that's right, me as a player wanted my character to get more hurt, and the game actually rewarded me for it.
While a +2 bonus might not seem like much, especially if you come from a d20 background, Aspects (and sometimes Stunts) will determine whether you succeed or fail more often than what you roll on the dice. The results for a pool of Fate dice ends up being between -2 and 2 most of the time. We calculated a result of +4 on the dice as happening 1.25% of the time, which is sobering considering a natural 20 on a d20 happens 5% of the time. Exciting rolls are the exception (such as when I rolled +4 on my attack when the enemy's defense roll was -3), and so you really have to embrace Aspects as your primary "success currency."
What hit home in that third session, when I tried to get my character hurt to give him more Fate Points, is that the player's job is to orchestrate the tempo of their character's story as much as it is to roleplay them. The player can contribute to deciding when the character gets beat down, all so that they can come back swinging later, when the stakes are higher. It's an interesting twist, for better or worse, that can really only occur in a game with Fate Points (or Plot Points; hopefully I'll get to play Cortex+ Firefly soon!) as the game's major currency.
Stunts
I wrote up my first Stunt using the guidelines in Fate Accelerated Edition, but I found that implementation really dull. Yes, a +2 bonus is a pretty big deal in Fate, but when everything of consequence boils down to "another +2!", my interest starts to wane. Sure, the game is more about how you use the elements that give you the bonus, but there's already plenty of that with Aspects. If something is called a "Stunt," I want it to feel cool. Besides that, I find the "fill in the blank" statements of the FAE stunts to be pretty clunky. And the +2 modifier makes it feel like part of a skill system tacked onto the more abstract approach-based system.
The easy solution is to port in some of the ideas from Fate Core and the Fate System Toolkit when you're making your Stunts. Some of these also boil down to a situational +2 bonuses, but at least the wording is more free-form and so the stunts feel more organic. In addition to the modifier, Fate Core also outlines examples for creating rules exceptions, using balancing mechanisms like "once per session I can..." and for creating Stunt "trees" with effects that build off of each other. The Fate System Toolkit really goes into detail with Stunt costs, broader Stunts with smaller bonuses, triggered Stunts, combined Stunts, and tying Stunts to Aspects. Essentially as long as you keep in mind the refresh equivalency you have more flexibility in creating balanced Stunts. While some of these options might be considered to crunchy for FAE by some, others are just as simple (if not moreso) than the default FAE Stunts.
Final Thoughts
I can see why Fate is so popular, but it definitely requires a different mindset to play than most traditional games (even traditional/narrative hybrids like 13th Age and Edge of the Empire). We had a bit of a rocky transition period that made me really glad that my GM went with a 3-session arc; the first session was a messy disaster where we struggled to fully use the system (half the group are new to RPGs, having just played one campaign of Edge of the Empire that lasted a few months), the second went fairly smoothly, and in the third session things really started to click.
I don't see Fate becoming my go-to system (I prefer medium crunch, hybrid narrative/traditional games), but it was definitely an interesting change of pace and it makes me excited to try out Firefly (Cortex+ seems very similar to Fate). This also wasn't the last time I'll play it, though. In fact, I'll GM the next mini-campaign for this group, and at some point we'll probably have the main group try it out.
The setting was a modern day alternate universe where the Cold War never ended, and recently Russian terrorists launched nuclear warheads at many major cities across the globe. The twist is that it was combined with a bio-weapon, and the resulting disease (called RadPox) wiped out most of the global population. The PCs began in Missoula, Montana. We had an interesting array of characters, which is perhaps to be expected from a modern game without a tight thematic focus (i.e. spies, or dungeon delvers, or fringers trying to get by under the radar of the Empire/Alliance, etc.). My own character was an old man (under description I wrote "current Harrison Ford") with the aspects Retired Border Patrol Ranger - Canadian Border (high concept), I'm Getting Too Old For This Shit (trouble), Sucker For a Pretty Face, Bruce Collins Is My Oldest Friend (refers to an NPC), and My Dead Brother's Shotgun. The other PCs were a large animal veterinarian and a quirky accordion player (part of a duo with an NPC mandolin player; like I said, quirky). The premise was that we were leaving Montana because of the imminent onset of winter, headed south to pursue rumors of a "holy land."
Approaches
Approaches are a great narrative "shortcut," but they definitely have their limitations. While it's easy to liken them to ability scores in D&D, they feel a bit more like watered down backgrounds in 13th Age. That is to say, they represent a philosophy or broad thematic archetype much more than a physical trait (and I say "watered down" in that it lacks the specificity and detail of a good 13th Age background, which isn't to say that it's "worse"). So having a high Sneaky approach doesn't just make you the stealthy (Dex) guy, but you're good at tricking people or lying to them in social situations as well. One big strength is right there in the name: it encourages players to think about different ways to approach a situation. Different GMs will draw the line differently insofar as how much they'll allow a PC to justify a shaky or borderline approach; it seems like too much leniency can lead to approach-spamming, whereas strict adherence to the GMs vision can stifle creativity.
There are two big issues that I have with approaches in play. The first is that sometimes (at least once per session) a PC will try something that doesn't neatly fit one of the approaches. It might not even kind of fit one of them. At that point you just have to try to shoehorn it into a category, which can feel like fitting a square peg into a round hole. It's awkward. It also means that certain approaches (Clever, Careful, and perhaps Forceful) tend to be more useful because it's easier to justify "off" actions as being one of those. Sneaky and Flashy seemed to be noticeably more limited than the others. It's worth mentioning that my character's highest approach was Sneaky, and the accordion player's was Flashy, and we both ended up using them less frequently than we would have expected. In contrast, the vet had Clever at the top and probably used it about half the time.
My second issue is unavoidable given the abstracted, streamlined nature of approaches, and it's simply that sometimes suspension of disbelief can be strained. Skill systems imply previous experience at a given task, but with approaches your potency with the same task will vary depending on which angle you're coming from. For example, I ended up using no less than 4 different approaches at different times to shoot a shotgun. Charging in guns blazing was Forceful, an ambush was Sneaky, a "quick draw" type situation was Quick, and most of the time it was assumed shots were aimed, and so Careful seemed most appropriate. Now I don't know about you, but I tend to be more accurate when I actually aim. Problem was, my PC's Careful was only rated at +1, and so I ran into this strange situation where I was more effective making more reckless shots. Fortunately the GM awarded us a milestone after session 2, and so I boosted Careful to +2.
Aspects and The Fate Point Meta-game
At its heart this game is all about the Fate Point economy. Oftentimes it would be necessary to invoke multiple Aspects in order to succeed at a roll, and so having more Aspects is useful, even if they're redundant. Indeed, redundancy can be really useful if the Aspects apply to common situations! I think more ideally though is that PCs should make judicious use of the Create Advantage action to get more Aspects into play, and while we didn't do that as much as we probably should have it probably becomes habitual the more you play.
The extent of the meta-game, and how players and their characters might have very different goals, really clicked for me in session 3 last night. The climactic final battle was an EPIC firefight, and I honestly thought it would end up being a TPK. Anyways, at one point I got shot at and hit for 1 shift, and decided to compel an Aspect against myself to turn it into a 3 shift hit so I could get a Fate Point out of the deal that would help me out with offense later. Yep, that's right, me as a player wanted my character to get more hurt, and the game actually rewarded me for it.
While a +2 bonus might not seem like much, especially if you come from a d20 background, Aspects (and sometimes Stunts) will determine whether you succeed or fail more often than what you roll on the dice. The results for a pool of Fate dice ends up being between -2 and 2 most of the time. We calculated a result of +4 on the dice as happening 1.25% of the time, which is sobering considering a natural 20 on a d20 happens 5% of the time. Exciting rolls are the exception (such as when I rolled +4 on my attack when the enemy's defense roll was -3), and so you really have to embrace Aspects as your primary "success currency."
What hit home in that third session, when I tried to get my character hurt to give him more Fate Points, is that the player's job is to orchestrate the tempo of their character's story as much as it is to roleplay them. The player can contribute to deciding when the character gets beat down, all so that they can come back swinging later, when the stakes are higher. It's an interesting twist, for better or worse, that can really only occur in a game with Fate Points (or Plot Points; hopefully I'll get to play Cortex+ Firefly soon!) as the game's major currency.
Stunts
I wrote up my first Stunt using the guidelines in Fate Accelerated Edition, but I found that implementation really dull. Yes, a +2 bonus is a pretty big deal in Fate, but when everything of consequence boils down to "another +2!", my interest starts to wane. Sure, the game is more about how you use the elements that give you the bonus, but there's already plenty of that with Aspects. If something is called a "Stunt," I want it to feel cool. Besides that, I find the "fill in the blank" statements of the FAE stunts to be pretty clunky. And the +2 modifier makes it feel like part of a skill system tacked onto the more abstract approach-based system.
The easy solution is to port in some of the ideas from Fate Core and the Fate System Toolkit when you're making your Stunts. Some of these also boil down to a situational +2 bonuses, but at least the wording is more free-form and so the stunts feel more organic. In addition to the modifier, Fate Core also outlines examples for creating rules exceptions, using balancing mechanisms like "once per session I can..." and for creating Stunt "trees" with effects that build off of each other. The Fate System Toolkit really goes into detail with Stunt costs, broader Stunts with smaller bonuses, triggered Stunts, combined Stunts, and tying Stunts to Aspects. Essentially as long as you keep in mind the refresh equivalency you have more flexibility in creating balanced Stunts. While some of these options might be considered to crunchy for FAE by some, others are just as simple (if not moreso) than the default FAE Stunts.
Final Thoughts
I can see why Fate is so popular, but it definitely requires a different mindset to play than most traditional games (even traditional/narrative hybrids like 13th Age and Edge of the Empire). We had a bit of a rocky transition period that made me really glad that my GM went with a 3-session arc; the first session was a messy disaster where we struggled to fully use the system (half the group are new to RPGs, having just played one campaign of Edge of the Empire that lasted a few months), the second went fairly smoothly, and in the third session things really started to click.
I don't see Fate becoming my go-to system (I prefer medium crunch, hybrid narrative/traditional games), but it was definitely an interesting change of pace and it makes me excited to try out Firefly (Cortex+ seems very similar to Fate). This also wasn't the last time I'll play it, though. In fact, I'll GM the next mini-campaign for this group, and at some point we'll probably have the main group try it out.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Fate Accelerated Edition (FAE): First Impressions
I recently purchased PDFs of Fate Accelerated Edition and Fate Core because Fate appears to be a really popular game right now, and I was intrigued by the concept of using its Zones for 13th Age. They're definitely worth picking up even if you're only slightly interested, because they're Pay What You Want on DriveThruRPG, and that includes free. I'll tackle FAE first because at 48 pages (and it's not a particularly dense book), I was able to breeze right through it.
Overview
Fate is a highly narrative universal RPG that uses Fate or Fudge Dice
, though you can easily use regular d6s as well. FAE is the "lite" version of the game, with minimal rules ideal for players who don't like a lot of "crunch." It appears to be a good game for introducing new people to RPGs (if they're the type who will latch onto the storytelling aspect of the hobby), and especially kids since they can let their imagination run wild and there are simple mechanics to back up their crazy ideas.
Each character has 3-5 Aspects (free-form statements about that character that can be invoked and compelled for mechanical benefits), a rating in each of 6 Approaches (a more active, narrative version of ability scores), one or more Stunts (like Aspects they're narratively driven, but they're much more specific), a Refresh rate for Fate points, and a Stress/Consequences track. That's it.
To perform actions that carry a risk of failure you roll 4 Fate/Fudge dice, add any bonuses from your relevant Approach, any Aspects that you can invoke, and/or possibly a Stunt, and then you compare the results to the Ladder (DC/TN) or your opponent's roll. While each PC has a list of Character Aspects, Aspects also come into play with situational environmental conditions, advantages created by a PC's actions, or Consequences (which are Aspects created when you suffer negative consequences from the opposition, such as taking damage).
Some examples of Aspects:
Overview
Fate is a highly narrative universal RPG that uses Fate or Fudge Dice
, though you can easily use regular d6s as well. FAE is the "lite" version of the game, with minimal rules ideal for players who don't like a lot of "crunch." It appears to be a good game for introducing new people to RPGs (if they're the type who will latch onto the storytelling aspect of the hobby), and especially kids since they can let their imagination run wild and there are simple mechanics to back up their crazy ideas. Each character has 3-5 Aspects (free-form statements about that character that can be invoked and compelled for mechanical benefits), a rating in each of 6 Approaches (a more active, narrative version of ability scores), one or more Stunts (like Aspects they're narratively driven, but they're much more specific), a Refresh rate for Fate points, and a Stress/Consequences track. That's it.
To perform actions that carry a risk of failure you roll 4 Fate/Fudge dice, add any bonuses from your relevant Approach, any Aspects that you can invoke, and/or possibly a Stunt, and then you compare the results to the Ladder (DC/TN) or your opponent's roll. While each PC has a list of Character Aspects, Aspects also come into play with situational environmental conditions, advantages created by a PC's actions, or Consequences (which are Aspects created when you suffer negative consequences from the opposition, such as taking damage).
Some examples of Aspects:
- Sarah has my back (Character Aspect)
- Suncaller of the Andral Desert (Character Aspect)
- On Fire (Situation Aspect describing the environment)
- Distracted (Boost, which is an aspect created when a PC used a Create Advantage action)
- Broken Leg (Consequence)
Flexibility
Again, as a universal system you can do pretty much any setting or genre with this game, though some will work better than others. One of the main examples throughout the book is a Harry Potter type game (without actually coming out and saying it), and as I was reading the rules I couldn't help but think how perfect it would be for that purpose. I've always been surprised that an official Harry Potter RPG has never been published (at least not to my knowledge), but every time I've thought about it I couldn't help thinking what a nightmare it would be to come up with spells and actually have them translated to RPG mechanics. That was thinking from the perspective of a more crunchy baseline, though. In a narrative game like Fate, spells are easy; they just do what they do in the Harry Potter books.
Of course since this flexibility is a direct result of minimal mechanics with a high narrative burden, it puts a lot of responsibility on the players and, especially, the GM to keep the game vibrant and interesting. Everyone at the table is going to have to judge what kinds of Aspects best fit with the collective vision for their specific game. This goes beyond the example in the book of "don't define an Aspect that lets you use magic if magic doesn't exist in the setting." Because Aspects are so broad, they can model things as disparate as class features in D&D, investigative abilities in Gumshoe, or Smallville's Relationships. Games of dungeon-delving murder hobos, investigative mysteries, and character-based soap opera games are all very different styles, and while they're all valid, they probably won't mix well in the same party.
This sort of comes with the territory of a narrative game, but it's especially important to keep in mind in a universal game like Fate. Dungeon World is a narrative game, but it has a pretty clear style in mind and specific mechanics to support that style. Unfortunately the GM section of FAE is really sparse. This helps to keep the page length down, but for what would otherwise be a very good introductory game for new players I would hate to GM for the first time based solely on what FAE offers. Even experienced GMs more accustomed to traditional games could benefit from more guidance here. My guess is that Fate Core is more substantial on this front, and while that means FAE might not be a "complete" product for some groups, at least the Fate Core pdf can be picked up for free.
Closing Thoughts
The main reason I was interested in this game was to use some of the ideas from it for 13th Age. While FAE touches on Zones only briefly, knowledge of Aspects can also help when crafting and adjudicating 13th Age Backgrounds and One Unique Thing. I'm not sure whether or not I would actually run a Fate game, but if I were to try to sell my group on running this style of game FAE would be an ideal starting point. It's dirt simple, doesn't require much effort or buy-in to get started, and by its very nature it only contains the most important, core concepts of the system. My players would definitely want more crunch, but narrative-defined mechanics like Aspects are their own kind of fun.
It's also a nice game to have in your back pocket. If half the group can't show up to a session of your regular game, or if the GM TPK'd the party halfway through the session, FAE would make a great backup since character creation is super-quick and you can just jump right in and get down to business.
I'm expecting to get more out of Fate Core (when I get around to reading that; I've got a substantial reading list at the moment), but FAE has its own niche and I can see why some groups really like it.
Addendum: I've since played the game, and posted an article with further thoughts.
Addendum: I've since played the game, and posted an article with further thoughts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)