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Post by Probie Tim on Sept 21, 2017 7:08:26 GMT -8
This... will be long. So, it's no secret that I am a huge fan of, supporter of, and one-time professional (LOL) publisher of games using Fudge... the system on which Fate was built. I love the fact that Fate is as popular as it is, but Fate is not my cup of tea. I'm just really not a fan of the aspect mechanic, what with the compels and invokes and the whole back and forth jockeying of piling aspects on to get higher bonuses. You can try as hard as you like to tell me I'm wrong and I just haven't internalized it yet and after I play it more I'll like it better, but the bottom line is I just don't care for it much. That said, I absolutely, truly, and dearly love the approaches of Fate Accelerated Edition. If FAE didn't have aspects, and had something else instead, I don't think I would ever run another system. So, in following the advice I just gave in another thread, I've been thinking about a FAE hack. In thinking about this FAE hack, my mind is drawn to Over the Edge, a super cool RPG put out by Atlas Games years ago. They called the underlying game system mechanics the "WaRP System", and it's been released under the OGL. In OtE/WaRP, your character has traits; traits are open ended... well, aspects of your character that are defined by the player. You have a central trait, which is largely your main identity. "Model", "Former Secret Agent", "Military Background" are all examples of central traits given. Then you have side traits, but just because it's a side trait does not mean it's insignificant. "Tough", for instance, is an example side trait. Traits need a bit of definition, and they also include a sign, which is something that someone who doesn't know your traits might notice and be able to make an educated guess about. They're usually shown in parenthesis after the trait. So, for instance, consider: • Military Background — Includes fighting bare-handed and with a variety of weapons, first aid, keeping cool under fire, and possibly one specialty field, such as mechanics or demolitions. (Wears camo clothes, or battle scars) • Tough — Resist poisons, pain, and fatigue. (Big-boned) In OtE, you get a total of four traits: your central trait, two side traits (one of which is noted as superior), and a flaw or disadvantage trait. It seems to me that traits from OtE could be an almost drop-in replacement for aspects. They're wide-open and player defined like aspects, have almost the same purpose as aspects, but don't have all of that pesky compel and invoke nonsense (heh heh heh) about them. A character's traits cover what the character can do, whereas a character's approaches cover how the character would do them. All that I'd need to do is figure out how traits affect approaches... the actual game-mechanic-y glue that puts them together. Thinking on that, I should mention that when I run Fudge, I tend to rely on the numbers, using the adjectives only as an in-character reference point. I absolutely hate how, in stock Fudge, an actual result of +5 is called Legendary +1. That breaks the smoothness of Fudge IMHO. If you run with the numbers, you don't have to worry about that; +5 is just +5. If an adjective is needed for in-character reference, past +4 (which is normally Legendary) I start using ranges. So... +5 to +6 is, I dunno, Superhuman, and +7 to +9 is, like, Epic, and +10 to +13 is, maybe, Mythic. I just came up with those adjective anus-extractus right now; I have the actual list I use in OneNote somewhere, but those will suffice for example's sake. All of that said, I also prefer not throwing out a ton of bonuses which drive the numbers (and thus the need for adjectives) higher and higher. Pulling out aspects and the ability to tap a whole bunch of them to create these massive bonuses will help to keep the range of results more manageable, making a +1 bonus mean more; when the normal range is from -4 to +4, a +1 bonus is like... an 11% bonus. That's pretty sizable. My first thought was to implement my Fudge advantage/disadvantage mechanic and tie them to traits. Basically, in Fudge, when you have advantage you ignore a minus result when you roll; when you have disadvantage you ignore a plus result when you roll. So, when you roll an approach to do something covered by your central or side traits, you get advantage. When you roll an approach to do something that falls under your flaw trait, you get disadvantage. Alternately, I could not use advantage/disadvantage and use bonuses/penalties of +1/-1, but personally I really dig the Fudge implementation of advantage and disadvantage I came up with, heh. I could also change that up depending on the, eh, "level" of trait being used... the central and superior side traits could be 2 levels of advantage, with the remaining side trait 1 level, and the flaw trait 1 level of disadvantage (or, again, bonuses of +2/+1, and a penalty of -1) So... let's look at Roger. Roger is in the army, so he has a central trait of Army Soldier. He's sneaking up to an enemy compound, and notices an enemy combatant standing outside the front door. From his position behind the tree across the street, he takes aim with his rifle and shoots. This would be a Careful action, and he has the Careful approach at +2. His sniper rifle has an ODF (offensive damage factor) of +3. Because shooting someone is totally covered under the Army Soldier trait, he'll get advantage on his roll. He rolls 4dF and gets +1, 0, +1, -1, which is ignored because of advantage, for a net of +2. So! +2 (for Careful) +3 (for the rifle) is +5 total. The guard was unaware, so gets no avoidance action, but is wearing a DDF (defensive damage factor) +1 vest, which is subtracted from the +5, meaning that 4 points of damage were dealt. The guard goes down, hurt. Granted, these numbers are all anus extractus as well, but for example's sake they're fine. It seems like this could be totally workable, and would create a fast, simple, easy set of rules. What do you all think? ...and please, don't try to convince me that aspects would work better or that I'm wrong on my thoughts on aspects. My mind's made up on aspects and that's not going to change.
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Post by Probie Tim on Sept 21, 2017 7:25:01 GMT -8
Here's the adjective ladder I use when I run Fudge:
+9 to +12 (Mythic) +6 to +8 (Legendary) +4 to +5 (Amazing) +3 (Superb) +2 (Great) +1 (Good) 0 (Fair) -1 (Mediocre) -2 (Poor) -3 (Terrible) -4 and below (Abysmal)
I would probably want to use this instead of the standard FAE ladder, because without aspects and with advantage/disadvantage (even with static bonuses and penalties) the range of results wouldn't be so wide.
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Post by Probie Tim on Sept 21, 2017 7:57:39 GMT -8
...as I think about this more, I think I like a fixed bonus/penalty for traits better than advantage/disadvantage. Interesting.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2017 8:30:06 GMT -8
So looking through it I have to say I don't see why it shouldn't work. The fixed bonus/penalty gives you a greater range of results while the advantage / disadvantage has a nice effect of emphasising consistency without changing the range, very useful in certain genres where a trained character is consistent but should never have unbelievably amazing results. I would even be tempted as to allow advantage to flip a single - to + and vice versa with disadvantage.
For the traits themselves I like having the definition to them, with aspects I sometimes I feel like they can feel a bit loose and open to interpretation. I realise in some ways that that is the intention but for complex creatures (such as a vampire) it can end up with situations where you need to stop and clarify that yes, the vampire in this game can't go out into sunlight but isn't affected by garlic etc. Having that loose definition of the traits helps there.
The negative trait might be a bit harder to implement properly given I could see them overlapping a lot with positive traits - how would you handle that (for example somebody in a fight with Military background and Coward as a really extreme example)?
Given the way you seem to be going with this might I suggest looking at the way Distinctions work in Cortex Plus (if you're not already familiar with them). I feel like they might be of interest as they provide clear mechanics for when a trait / background affects a roll, help describe a character and are entirely player facing with none of the invocation type approach you're not too keen on.
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Post by Probie Tim on Sept 21, 2017 8:57:42 GMT -8
The negative trait might be a bit harder to implement properly given I could see them overlapping a lot with positive traits - how would you handle that (for example somebody in a fight with Military background and Coward as a really extreme example)? So, let's assume that I go with a fixed numeric bonus or penalty instead of advantage/disadvantage; I'm feeling that for this hack, it would work better. Given that, I almost want to say that the central trait provides a bigger bonus than does the side or flaw traits. For the sake of this example, let's say that the central trait gives a +2 bonus, side traits give a +1 bonus, and the flaw trait gives a -1 penalty. Those numbers are not fixed. Basically, everywhere that the flaw trait applies, the penalty would be used. So let's look at Roger again: he has a central trait of Army Soldier, a side trait of Cooking Aficionado, another side trait of Competitive Chess Player, and a flaw trait of Afraid of Spiders. Roger is hunting down Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who has gone on a murder spree in his home town. Roger tracks Pennywise into the sewers, where he watches Pennywise turn into a giant spider. He begins to shake as he aims to fire his rifle at the spider. This would be a Careful task, because he's aiming and wants the shot to count, which he has at +2. He's shooting with a rifle, which is totally something an Army Soldier would do, so he gets the trait bonus of +2. But uh oh! He's Afraid of Spiders, and Pennywise is staring at him with his huge spider eyes and twitching ichor-dripping spider mandibles, so Roger gets the penalty of -1 from his flaw trait. That's a total of +2+2-1=+3 adds to the roll; he rolls 4dF and gets plus, plus, blank, and blank. All told, that's +3+1+1=+5 total, which includes all the bonuses and penalties from his traits. I think. Heh. It's all fuzzy at this point, exists only in my head, and is subject to change or a complete lack of implementation in any way. Given the way you seem to be going with this might I suggest looking at the way Distinctions work in Cortex Plus (if you're not already familiar with them). I am not familiar with them, but I will totally check them out. Thanks for the tip!
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Post by Linus on Sept 21, 2017 9:08:00 GMT -8
During an early foray into the world of story-games, I encountered "The Puddle" which apparently was some sort of derivative of "The Pool" (which I never read) that worked by building dice pools. It's been a couple of years, so I'll paraphrase it: You wrote a small description/backstory of your character and highlighted 3-5 phrases from it, being your "aspects"/"descriptors"/whatever, your mechanical hooks: "Stab Manthrust was born on the back of a horse in the midst of battle. He was a strong and agile child, besting older comrades in both wrestling for sport and fighting for perceived slights. He now makes his way as a mercenary for whoever offer satisfactory pay, but prefer to hunt honest loot and a fair booty." Whenever you rolled for an action, you got one die for free, another for every mechanical hook you could tie into it. Stab Manthrust here will leap onto a horse and give chase to the Dark Knight, who's grabbed a supple yet shapely maiden of alabaster complexion - the usual Ron E. Howard Schtick. You'll get one die for free, another for born on the back of a horse and a third for hunt [...] a fair booty. Simple enough. To this pool you could add additional dice from your stash. Roll a '1' and your action succeeds and the GM narrates the outcome. Roll at least two '1's and your action succeeds and YOU narrate the outcome. When your actions succeds, all dice that has been thrown is collected by the GM. If no '1's are rolled, YOU collect the thrown dice and add them to your stash. So the meta-level mechanic is the exchange, ebb and flow of dice in your stash. Why did I write all this then? To try to provoke different approaches to hacking FUDGE/FATE/FAE: There's no pool, F*E always use 4dF - ok, what else can we do to the dice? It uses custom dice from the get go, maybe mod some d6's of another colour into Advantage and Disadvantage dice? 'Advantage' dice (dA) replaces normal dice, have no 'minus'-sides and three each of 'neutral'- and 'plus'-sides. Perhaps a single 'double plus'-side worth twice as much. The 'Disadvantage' dice (dD) are outfitted with the opposite composition of sides. Whenever you roll, a maximum of two traits may be invoked for advantages and disadvantages respectively, for a total of 4dF -> 2dA + 2dD. That's a heavily contested roll, though (contested between player and GM that is, not necessarily PC and NPC). I'm uncertain of the math here, and it'll of course change depending on how the dA and dD's sides were outfitted, but it would be cool if the usual bell curve of 4dF was flattened, leaving more to chance when there's more influencing factors. Do we have to stick to four dice, though? More dice = more fun, right? Besides, at the moment, you would only be able to tag a maximum of two traits in either direction. On the other hand, the "situation haggle" is not necessarily a fun part of the game for everyone. Perhaps it's best to get ev. meta contestion over with ASAP, and get on with the game. Then again, the same level of contestion would result in 4dF + 2dA + 2dD, a whopping 8 dice to roll! That might feel GREAT! That's it for now, I'll think about other approaches than the dice themselves later. I briefly thought about roll 5dF, keep the best 4, but that might more or less have an identical effect to your Advantage/Disadvantage as already written above. (Dice-math is like a Gordian Knot of snakes, I will NOT explore that logical labyrinth any time soon).
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
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Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
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Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Sept 21, 2017 9:13:16 GMT -8
Given the way you seem to be going with this might I suggest looking at the way Distinctions work in Cortex Plus (if you're not already familiar with them). I am not familiar with them, but I will totally check them out. Thanks for the tip! Slightly off topic, but one aspect of Correx you'll like is that players can't roll sauce without you (the GM) rolling first. I know how you don't like games where the GM doesn't get to roll...
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Post by Linus on Sept 21, 2017 9:30:18 GMT -8
I tried to run V:tM with FATE as a test and had interesting experiences with the FATE-point economy and the adjectives tied to the levels of the ladder.
First of, the players fell into the V:tM themes and looked to me to introduce and facilitate a (fairly hostile) setting. Points were seldom to never used to introduce own plot-points or NPCs. It's either that the setting, or the characters they chose to play in that setting, clashes with the cooperative nature of FATE's in medias res worldbuilding, much as a mystery or detective game would; or they were simply unfamiliar with the system itself.
The other was that I had a hard time keep up the narrative with the adjectives tied to higher levels. I think +6 was Legendary for basic FATE Core, and it was not hard for them to reach those levels routinly in play. The adjectives might be tied to a mortal's perspective, of course, and as such, "normal" vampire feats are quite literally the stuff of legends. (I remember F*E having Scaling rules to allow for parallell baselines for adjective ladders, so that's another possible solution.) But I'd probably remove the adjectives all together and go strictly with numbers if I revisited that experiment. That and make a similar effort in removing/replacing the FATE-point economy in regards to aspects/traits/hooks.
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Post by Probie Tim on Sept 21, 2017 9:41:12 GMT -8
The other was that I had a hard time keep up the narrative with the adjectives tied to higher levels. Yeah, that's my one issue with baseline Fudge and one of my issues with Fate. It's why I've decided to standardize on the numbers in play, use the adjectives for narrative reasons, and once it goes beyond the regular Fudge maximum assign adjectives to ranges. Thus, in play you got a +6, but I can still say things like, "...and you find yourself looking upon Harold of the Rocks; you've heard of him, it's said his strength is legendary" and the players can translate that to "between +6 and +8 strength". Bad example, 'cuz I'd never say something that in a game, but you get my point I'm sure. Also, removing the invoke and compel and pay a Fate point stuff to stack aspect on aspect on aspect will really cut down on the range of values generated during the game. I won't need to use Fate's expanded adjective-for-every-level up to +8 and can narrow that down a bit. That and make a similar effort in removing/replacing the FATE-point economy in regards to aspects/traits/hooks. Right. Without the need to pay a Fate point to invoke or compel or whatever, there won't be an actual Fate point economy. You'll have Fate points, and you'll be able to use them for things, but it'll be closer to how Fudge points are used in Fudge or Bennies are used in Savage Worlds.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2017 3:53:05 GMT -8
So to say you the time of finding them thought I'd present an example Cortex Distinction and how I could see it working with your Fudge game. In Cortex Plus (I'll stick with the Action variant rules) distinctions typically have a name and then are at a value of either d4 or d8. You add the d4 to your dice pool when the distinction is a hindrance or the d8 when it is helpful. Cortex Plus uses a dice pool where you only keep the 2 highest rolling dice and where 1's lead to problems. Each distinction also then has up to three triggers - extra abilities that can either provide you bonuses or cause problems (that earn you plot points). An example distinction might be:
Military background d8 - Gain 1 plot point when you roll your distinction as a d4 instead of a d8 - Sniper training. Spend an action aiming to double your shoot skill on your next action when you take careful aim with a rifle. - Squaddie humour. Gain a plot point when you disrupt a polite conversation or insult others with your crude attempts at jokes.
For your Fudge game I could see it looking like:
Military background +2 / -1 -Count your background as a -1 when it causes issues. Gain 1 Fate point. -Sniper training. Spend an action aiming to ignore an opponents DDF rating on your next shot when using a sniper rifle. -Squaddie humour. Earn a Fate point when you disrupt a polite conversation or insult others with your crude attempts at jokes.
So the distinction can cover both advantages and disadvantages, builds on the descriptive traits and isn't limited to just affecting rolls, the squaddie humour example would normally be one that only requires RP to be effective. Also none of these can be compelled by the GM, its always up to the player to chose when they come into play. Hope that's of use.
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Post by Linus on Sept 23, 2017 11:02:14 GMT -8
...as I think about this more, I think I like a fixed bonus/penalty for traits better than advantage/disadvantage. Interesting. If you go the route of fixed modifiers, they essentially work as skills and approaches. Baseline FA(T)E allow you to use one skill/approach with varied modifier values. The same structures can be used as a skeleton to build "levels" of these traits, almost as if they were class levels: Army Soldier (+1), Army Soldier (+2) etc. It's possible to combine two or more types of system hooks, such as Storyteller does with Attribute + Ability. The downside is that the spectrum of values going in become larger for every system hook added. Storyteller work around this by using pools, effectively making each step a fraction - or rather, a possibility. The same can not be done for F*E without interfering with their basic elegance and preexisting dice bell-curve. To instead make the system hook a fixed +/- 1 gives other benefits. You may use as many hooks the proposed action fit onto: Army soldier, Cautious, Steady on the hand; for a total of +3 on sniping an enemy soldier outside their compound. It has the added benefit of making external traits (Well lit, Behind cover, On fire) easily incorporated into the stack of hooks. The downside is that more definition is needed for any given trait, and character actions may be slow and tedious as players are encouraged to fit as many traits as possible, rather than find the most fitting and just go with it. (And both is always an option. Personally, I'm very fond of the Consequences in FATE Core, and it will likewise be useful to implement outside the FATE point economy as rough negative modifiers whenever they're applicable.) A way to weigh these considerations may be to consider levels of success and impact. At the moment, we have a perfectly fine system to decide whether an action succeeds or not. If we instead ponder how we may use the spectrum of results to track: character damage (hit-points, stress-tracks, wounds), abstraction of completion of a larger/prolonged task (countdown-clocks, stress-tracks), we may identify a spread of values we'd like the dice rolls to end up within. That may guide the type and number of system hooks to build the characters with. The FATE Toolkit (SRD) ought to have plenty o' good stuff that ought to be applicable on the FUDGE framework as well. Dammit, this thread makes me want to revisit my "Fate of Darkness" experiments ^w^
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Post by chronovore on Sept 26, 2017 0:45:12 GMT -8
(…) It seems to me that traits from OtE could be an almost drop-in replacement for aspects. They're wide-open and player defined like aspects, have almost the same purpose as aspects, but don't have all of that pesky compel and invoke nonsense (heh heh heh) about them. A character's traits cover what the character can do, whereas a character's approaches cover how the character would do them. All that I'd need to do is figure out how traits affect approaches... the actual game-mechanic-y glue that puts them together. (…) This seems supremely elegant. While I've been interested in OtE for ages, and even picked up the set at a bundleofholding sale, or possibly it was made free for some reason? I don't recall which it was, but I've been excited about it. I may also adopt "anus extractus," pronouncing the words with long U sounds, and wait to see how long it takes for my conversation partner to notice. …I may also include it in my next Harry Potter fanfic. n.b. I have not written any Harry Potter fanfics.
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Post by Probie Tim on Sept 26, 2017 5:41:25 GMT -8
I may also adopt "anus extractus" ... it in my next Harry Potter fanfic. Oooh, too late. I got it from a Harry Potter fanfic, it was a spell that Harry used to pull... um... things out of Ron's... er... you know what? Never mind, I totally made it up and don't ever read stuff like that.
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carrotandstick
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Post by carrotandstick on Sept 28, 2017 19:36:45 GMT -8
...as I think about this more, I think I like a fixed bonus/penalty for traits better than advantage/disadvantage. Interesting. ...so, Cortex+ ? =P
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Post by joecrak on Oct 9, 2017 14:51:21 GMT -8
So having read a bunch of what was written, I think I get what you are saying, and yes. This will work. We likely share a difference of opinion on whether or not this will be fast and easy. You want the FAE approaches, cool, keep them as your baseline bonus to dice rolling. Remove Compels & Invokes? Go for it, the aspects do something else now, sounds like you have them also giving a bonus to your die rolls? Throwing the offensive damage factor & defensive damage factor stuff is what initially threw me off, but then I realized you want to really blend your Fudge love with FAE, for Fudge Accelerated? This stuff is part of why I think it wouldn't be as fast and easy In any case, an option as suggested by Linus is blending FAE and FATE, and making your traits like the skill pyramid to determine what type of bonus they give you to die rolls. Is there anything else you plan to take from FAE, like stunts, consequences, and stress? Or is it solely the approaches?
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