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Post by shadrack on May 2, 2013 6:10:09 GMT -8
Wow.
okay, so I'm a little behind. I just (quickly) read through the FAE (Fate Accelerated Edition) preview that Fred sent out a week or two ago. I have to admit that I was highly skeptical about abridging FATE even further, but I have to say that I'm impressed.
At first blush it looks to me like it could be perfect for con games and/or new players. The way the 'approaches' work will help guide the players to not on describe what they are doing, but how. The swashbuckling rogue who swings onto the pirate ship slashing her cutlass at the scurvy ridden pirate will clearly be using 'flashy'. As opposed to your axe-wielding barbarian who will clearly be going the 'forceful' route.
I think for con games, the setup is quite intuitive, and if you provide your players with a list of stunts that might be applicable for them to choose from you can quickly get a character pretty dialed in.
Well, just my first thoughts. I saw someone did a Kerberos club version of FAE so I'm going to have to read that.
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2013 8:21:46 GMT -8
Wow. okay, so I'm a little behind. Replying this long after your post, I am not in a position to criticize. I just played a game of FAE at the con without any previous FATE exposure, and I agree it works well at the con. When I got home I downloaded the PDF, and I think I had learned 90% of what is in the book in that one session. To be honest, I think I find FAE more interesting than Fate core. The part of Fate that is interesting is the fate point system, not the basic mechanic that it modifies, so the purity of placing as much weight as possible on the fate point mechanic was a much better introduction to the system. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to splice it on top of Hero mechanics instead of the given ones. The most fun part of that would be offending just about everyone's sensibilities. :-)
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Post by shadrack on May 30, 2013 6:15:57 GMT -8
I really think FAE is slick. I need to read some more, but currently my only concern would be character advancement. Fortunately, I don't think this is a concern for con games or new players and a transition from FAE to FATE would be trivial.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2013 11:25:21 GMT -8
I really think FAE is slick. I guess I'd agree with that. I certainly think it is suited for the spontaneous pick-up game they emphasize. Since I played a one-off, I can't speak to that. However, the GM was using it as a test for a new campaign concept, so I believe he expected it to be suitable for an extended game. I think it's better for new players, at least for me. If I had 20 skills, I'd concentrate on trying to use them, because I'm used to much more mechanical systems (actually, Hero is my favorite). By eliminating almost everything and making aspects do even more work and take over for more familiar mechanics (at least, that's my impression of FAE plus a glance at Fate Core), I think it teaches the core idea of aspects better. And since it was the aspect system that really interested me, it was perfect for me. Like I said, I'm interested in how it would work on top of more complex mechanics. I'm pretty sure this has been done, but I suspect I should simply run a game with FAE as written first, for the same reason: learning. If you can't rely on what you're already comfortable with, you have to work with what you've got. That's probably just as good for learning behind the GM screen as it is as a player. Even better would be to play more, but I'd probably only get to do that at a con.
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Post by ravenspoe on Jun 12, 2013 6:16:36 GMT -8
It looks like you would follow the same character advancement as FATE Core, following milestones and such. I have always been on the fence about FATE in general till I read FAE. Since taking in the new take on the system I have changed my long time Steampunk game from Savage Worlds to FATE Core (no hating on SW, the group and I just started to find the mechanism stale once they reached seasoned), and I have a Shadowrun hack using FAE that I am dying to run.
I am hoping the upcoming toolkit will allow for further awesomeness.
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Post by shadrack on Jun 12, 2013 6:27:37 GMT -8
toolkit draft is out, I haven't had time to peruse yet, but I have high hopes!
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Post by Deleted on Jun 13, 2013 9:19:33 GMT -8
A followup--after the con I ran a little test game in FAE, then ran Champions the following day. I was surprised to find that I was less enthusiastic about FAE afterwards, particularly importing the aspects system (as opposed to certain usages of hero points, which I like). After thinking about why that was so, I concluded that it was probably because I really am a simulationist; allowing something improbable or absurd "because it's cool" actually annoys me, but more importantly I, and I think my players, like to be able to reason about a system.
I think it is the equivalent of saying "role-play it instead of rolling dice." If your character is supposed to do something clever and effective, do you role-play it (i.e. reason within the system about what would be clever and effective and do what you want your character to do) or "roll dice" (i.e. say "I'm using a 'clever' approach). That's not an entirely accurate or fair analogy, but it is how it felt. It also felt like letting a Hollywood script writer loose in my game, and given how much contempt I have for the Hollywood script style and how much I hate almost all film adaptations of good books perhaps it indicates that what FAE is designed to do may not be what I usually want done. I want dramatic action in a setting with general internal consistency, not Rule Of Cool Uber Alles.
I'd still enjoy playing more FATE, but I don't know whether I'll GM it again; it might depend on the genre, I'd probably like it better for something like pulp than for High Fantasy. If I want a 'quick and dirty' system for quick games perhaps I should look at something like Savage Worlds or some of the other lite simulationist rules.
Anyway, that isn't really a criticism of FAE, more of just a reaction to the narrativist style from someone who is new to it. I thought it might be relevant since FAE seems like an excellent way to introduce people to narrativist systems and others might have reactions similar to mine.
Yes, I'm aware this discussion is decades old, but I've been away from gaming for a while. :-)
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Post by guitarspider on Jun 21, 2013 3:38:31 GMT -8
Maybe you just need to look at it as a matter of fiction vs mechanics? If you as a group set boundaries on the fiction (e.g. "guns are scary" or "our heroes will be able to dispatch countless enemies without trouble") instead of doing everything the mechanics allow you to, it might work much better. In most narrative systems players could kill a ringwraith very quickly, but that doesn't suit the fiction of LotR, so players staying within the fictional boundaries will prolong a fight and make it epic. I've had players drag out a fight against a harpy-like creature much longer than I thought they would, simply because they figured the thing was uber-scary in the fiction and enjoyed the close fight. I guess I'd overdone descriptions a bit. The system wasn't FATE, but I've noticed this issue in most narrative games (also players new to these systems will frequently try EVERYTHING once they notice they're free from mechanical shackles, until a session or two later they calm down and actually start playing). It may not be your exact issue with FATE, but it might play a role and/or help you have more fun with it. If so, you can simply have a short talk about the fictional boundaries before play starts, which is also a good opportunity to see what your players are (not) interested in.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2013 15:26:51 GMT -8
Maybe you just need to look at it as a matter of fiction vs mechanics? If you as a group set boundaries on the fiction (e.g. "guns are scary" or "our heroes will be able to dispatch countless enemies without trouble") instead of doing everything the mechanics allow you to, it might work much better. No, that's not really it at all, and what interests me even more than gaming is that it seems like a worldview test. Hmm, I hadn't gotten far enough with the game to even notice that. If so, then I'd call it an entirely separate problem and a broken system. That said, my impression is that FATE isn't that way--I think you could easily write up opponents that would mop the floor with the party. More importantly, the GM I played with at the con didn't seem to think so--when he looked at his notes during the climactic battle he actually mumbled something about the Big Bad Necromancer being written up a bit too tough and needed nerfing a bit. So my impression is that FATE won't let you kill anything you like, though it will surely let you do a lot. To be honest, if that were a problem, instead of having that talk I'd have a different one, mainly involving the current system being broken and how we'll be rewriting our characters in another system before continuing. That's related to, but I think distinct from, the issue I was alluding to, which is really I think simply narrativist vs. simulationist. Every game system exists to answer the question "what can I do, and how well?" The answers should depend on the genre as well as things like character attributes, but interestingly it seems that they also depend on a kind of meta-genre decision. In FATE, the goal seems to be to make what TVTropes calls the Rule of Cool the primary determinant of what you can do. The problem with that is really encoded in the first two letters of "TVTropes." If what you want is to simulate reality as seen by TV and big-screen scriptwriters, then that's probably the correct decision--FATE is doing a good job of simulating the "TV and movie" metagenre. I suspect the problem is that I actually dislike that genre--I have almost never liked any movie adaptation of a book, and much of the reason is that the scriptwriters and the whole industry are extremely narrow and one-dimensional, and what comes out looks like everything else Hollywood does. FATE seemed to me to do a good job of simulating that one thing. But I never watch TV (actually, I didn't even fix the feed when the last windstorm got my antenna, because I just don't really care) or go to movies anymore, and really never did so on a regular basis. I prefer a kind of perceived internal consistency to the Rule of Cool in most cases (though in something like pulp the Rule of Cool is pretty much dead true to the written source material), and FATE isn't exceptionally good at it. I suspect it will do it, but it isn't the strength of the system. My original thought was that FATE might be a go-to system for lightweight games, but I realized better what the strength of the system is and that I don't want that as often as I expected. Nothing wrong with FATE, really, just that it might not fit my so well as I thought. None of which changes the fact that it was a blast to play. :-)
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Post by guitarspider on Jun 21, 2013 17:27:08 GMT -8
Hmm, I hadn't gotten far enough with the game to even notice that. If so, then I'd call it an entirely separate problem and a broken system. That said, my impression is that FATE isn't that way--I think you could easily write up opponents that would mop the floor with the party. More importantly, the GM I played with at the con didn't seem to think so--when he looked at his notes during the climactic battle he actually mumbled something about the Big Bad Necromancer being written up a bit too tough and needed nerfing a bit. So my impression is that FATE won't let you kill anything you like, though it will surely let you do a lot. It doesn't really mean the system is broken, sometimes it's just a question of how to set the stakes and luck. Especially in games that hand a lot of narrative power to the players (The Pool comes to mind), you need to be on the same page regarding the fiction. It doesn't have to be a problem either. Example: I played several games of A Penny For My Thoughts with a group of people who had never even heard the term roleplaying. You play a group of traumatized amnesiacs who need each other to recover their memories and find out why they lost them. The stories of the first game were incredibly wild, sometimes absurd, mostly comical. The second game was much more focused on the traumas and was much more sinister and subdued in tone. Both sessions were great fun, the difference was that during the first people went "Wait, I can tell him ANYTHING?" and during the second session that novelty had worn off. I just mentioned that because it might be a new aspect when considering your thoughts on narrativist vs. simulationist and metagenre, because you can easily put fictional limits on what FATE lets you do according to the rules and mitigate the TV-Trope-ness or whatever we want to call it. In the second APfmT game the group just decided without talking about it, that they wanted different limits and the game turned out completely differently even though we used the same rules. Every time you choose a setting for your FATE game, you've actually already determined lots of fictional boundaries. Of course employing fictional limits is not going to suddenly make FATE your new favorite game, but it may work better for you when you do roll it out. Or, you know, I just saw something that wasn't there. It's possible.
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Post by ayslyn on Jun 22, 2013 1:34:28 GMT -8
Eh... While I am a fan of Penny, I would only call it a role playing game in the loosest sense of the term.
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Post by guitarspider on Jun 22, 2013 2:06:03 GMT -8
It's merely the most easily explained example of this process that I witnessed myself. As far as I am concerned Penny is more of a roleplaying game than D&D, because the system actually requires you to, you know, roleplay and narrate (compare Penny to Fiasco or Polaris, they're not that far apart). But I don't think this is the place for discussions about what is and what isn't a roleplaying game, so just take it as an example of the kind of process that I'm talking about and feel free to ignore my calling Penny a roleplaying game.
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nanoboy
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Post by nanoboy on Jun 22, 2013 11:06:31 GMT -8
I've got a one-shot for FAE that I'm taking to a local (Edmond, OK) tabletop Meetup tomorrow. It will be a pretty pulpy airship pirates and East meets West thing. I'm bringing pregens, but I figure I'll give the players the opportunity to make their own characters, if they so desire. After all, character creation is really quick in the system. I'll let everyone know how it goes.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2013 21:01:43 GMT -8
I've got a one-shot for FAE that I'm taking to a local (Edmond, OK) tabletop Meetup tomorrow. It will be a pretty pulpy airship pirates and East meets West thing. I'm bringing pregens, but I figure I'll give the players the opportunity to make their own characters, if they so desire. After all, character creation is really quick in the system. I'll let everyone know how it goes. FAE ought to do a great job on any game involving airship pirates of any kind. I'd certainly play that game. :-) I would quibble about char gen being quick in FAE, or rather, I want to quibble about how short any game can make char gen. Putting the numbers down on paper, absolutely. However, in our FAE trial run I found that I spent considerable time trying to choose aspects. Some of that was unfamiliarity, but I don't think all of it was. Even if it took no time at all to write down a character, coming up with a character concept is just as long as it would be in a rule-heavy system. That's not a bad thing, of course--I just mean that initial character conception takes the same amount of time in any system, no matter how long or short the system makes writing it all down take after you do have the character concept. It depends on the person, of course; I had a player give me pages and pages of backstory for a character that had two separate and distinct unusual backgrounds, each one more than enough for a very detailed character. I don't think FAE could have made that noticeably faster, given that even in hero writing down the mechanics must surely have been the shortest part of the job. That's just a quibble, though. Certainly writing down an FAE character is about as short as it could be, so if the players are decisive and have an idea what makes a good aspect I am sure you could do char gen on the spot. When we tested it back at home, we did just that. One player was kind of indecisive about the details of her concept, but it still went fast because I wrote some aspects and advantages based on her partial concept and she was pretty happy with the result. None of us knew what we were doing, so with a less novice GM than me it ought to work great.
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nanoboy
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Post by nanoboy on Jun 23, 2013 14:47:16 GMT -8
I've got a one-shot for FAE that I'm taking to a local (Edmond, OK) tabletop Meetup tomorrow. It will be a pretty pulpy airship pirates and East meets West thing. I'm bringing pregens, but I figure I'll give the players the opportunity to make their own characters, if they so desire. After all, character creation is really quick in the system. I'll let everyone know how it goes. FAE ought to do a great job on any game involving airship pirates of any kind. I'd certainly play that game. :-) I would quibble about char gen being quick in FAE, or rather, I want to quibble about how short any game can make char gen. Putting the numbers down on paper, absolutely. However, in our FAE trial run I found that I spent considerable time trying to choose aspects. Some of that was unfamiliarity, but I don't think all of it was. Even if it took no time at all to write down a character, coming up with a character concept is just as long as it would be in a rule-heavy system. That's not a bad thing, of course--I just mean that initial character conception takes the same amount of time in any system, no matter how long or short the system makes writing it all down take after you do have the character concept. It depends on the person, of course; I had a player give me pages and pages of backstory for a character that had two separate and distinct unusual backgrounds, each one more than enough for a very detailed character. I don't think FAE could have made that noticeably faster, given that even in hero writing down the mechanics must surely have been the shortest part of the job. That's just a quibble, though. Certainly writing down an FAE character is about as short as it could be, so if the players are decisive and have an idea what makes a good aspect I am sure you could do char gen on the spot. When we tested it back at home, we did just that. One player was kind of indecisive about the details of her concept, but it still went fast because I wrote some aspects and advantages based on her partial concept and she was pretty happy with the result. None of us knew what we were doing, so with a less novice GM than me it ought to work great. Yeah, the players ended up taking the pregens. Now, a couple of them were interested in character building, but in the interest of time, they decided to play the pregens along with the others. I can make an FAE character in 5 to 10 minutes, but I have no problem writing aspects. I've noticed that some players have a lot of trouble writing them, though. The game itself went quite well. Despite the large number of civilian casualties, the players eventually tracked down the pirate Captain Purple and the stolen Dragon Signet Ring of HuLao. A couple of players were experienced Fate players, a couple had played in an iteration of the system once, and one guy was new. They all caught on quickly, though. Great fun was had by all, myself included. My verdict is that it's a solid system for one-shots, though you will need to limit the player number to five.
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