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3:00 PM
i like fate because i have played it
and have little knowledge about dungeon world :D
 
I personally like Fate better than FAE, but that probably isn't what you wanted to know
I too haven no actual working knowledge of Dungeon World
and FAE can still work, mostly because it is a little less complex than Fate
it depends on what you are going for in the system
hmm, I have just been looking to see if I posted that pixie rogue build I came up with here somewhere, but I think that was so long ago I can't search for it
 
3:16 PM
@AlexMitan uhmmmm, hard to say. I0ve played to few at both of them (and then I played FAE, not Fate), and with GMs that had a D&D mindset
I know DW better.
 
D&D mindset meaning what?
 
@AlexMitan if you play Fate the way you usually play D&D, it's going to be REALLY WEIRD and not work well.
I say this as someone who did exactly that for a couple of sessions, and who is a member of BESW's group, and BESW's dealing with unlearning all the lessons of a decade of D&D GMing as he learns to GM Fate.
 
@doppelgreener I know, I know, but the way it seems to me is that, after having seen a lot of Fate and a lot of D&D, and GMed a tiny bit in each, it sounds like a D&D mindset is just...lacking compared to a Fate mindset
I mean, as you said, Fate with a D&D mindset is not going to work, but the other way around...?
 
could be pretty awesome
so, yes
you now enter a world where an awful lot of things can be said about the GMing guidance offered by D&D's manuals :P
 
Fate GMing just seems... better, I mean I feel that all of the D&D manuals' DM advice was a bunch of Fate wannabe-ism, down to Inspiration itself
YEAH that's what I was going to say too
 
3:26 PM
Inspiration is really a poor man's fate point system, and poorly executed and mired in the "GM rules all" design perspective.
 
The whole thing with Fate points is that you can go "Hmm, should I spend them now to bring it just past the edge or should I save them for later?"
Meanwhile in D&D HURR YOU HAVE TO DECIDE TO BURN INSPIRATION BEFORE A HUGE AND SWINGY ROLL
 
@AlexMitan example, all the bad consequences for the enemies are tied to the here and now and most are damage.
@AlexMitan yes, that's the problem with inspiration
 
And I don't know, I just can't see the huge, flat miss chances as a good thing in D&D
Before you even attack, you can go "Welp, I have a 45% chance to hit with the last spell for today"
 
It is fine when it is in the context of goblin dice
and, yes, totally sucks when it's the issue of that one spell you can only use once
D&D 4e had some of that with dailies. missing with a daily SUCKED.
 
Where is the fun in that?
I just... don't get it
And the way the DMG encourages you to reskin monsters that are already there instead of making new ones... I got all giddy about it at first, but then it dawned upon me that that's a thing just because it's very difficult to create new monsters that fit in
 
3:32 PM
yes
 
Either way, the menu-picking really kills it for me in D&D, I think the miss chances and the "pick from this huge menu in a 300 page book" thing are the worst things about it
They should have a simple spellcrafting system instead, you get spell tokens to increase damage or add CC to a spell
Dozens of numbers on a monster's character sheet to describe NOT IF, but HOW your PCs will kill them
As if the players' satisfaction when killing something is directly related to how many numbers they are killing
 
you are covering a lot of reasons why I variously either chose to move from D&D 3e/4e to Fate for my group's games, and why I am repelled by D&D 5e, haha
and things that on this side of things I love Fate to bits for enabling, like coming up with each NPC in the space of a minute and being confident in each one of them working reasonably well. Even the ones I cook up at the table.
 
Ugh, some day I'll get over my heartbreak and disappointment with D&D5e after putting so much effort into a session that never happened, but it is not today
 
[comforts with pats and banana smoothie]
 
vvfvfvvvvvvv bundles up into a ball of banana-ey hate
 
3:39 PM
there is this one story concept i wanted to run in a D&D 4e game, and still want to run one day, but i am okay with not being able to run it because we are busy doing OTHER ENTIRELY DIFFERENT AWESOME STUFF
we did a couple of sessions of it, and realised that combat was actually the most boring part of the campaign, and the exciting part had basically no rules support
(and around this time, Fate Core was coming out and I kickstated it and got the PDF and then the rest is history)
that campaign revolved around the elemental chaos WHICH I LOVE SO MUCH
LIKE ALL OF THE 4E COSMOLOGY IS AWESOME BUT ESPECIALLY THAT PART AUGH
I WILL WRITE SO MANY WORDS ABOUT IT AND HOW GREAT IT IS GIVEN THE CHANCE
but yes i recommend the healing approach of moving on to even more great stuff
 
Awww
Yeah, I know, I'm trying to do that with everything in my life now
I made up a homebrew setting over a few days
Kind of weird, but hey, if it doesn't work, it's just one of the planets
Basically a planetary core with some rather chaotic, volatile properties, charging pieces of itself embedded into rocks and earth to rise, cyclically causing floating islands to rise and fall
(as they lose their charge)
kind of like bubbles in a lava lamp, but on a planetary scale
however, the planet is composed of several layers, separated by really nasty clouds that people just can't seem to get through unharmed, so the people on the top layers are the most ignorant of everything going on, and the most afraid of what's below
all islands fall eventually, and only when they touch the core do they rise again, as ruins and barren places that serve as a reminder to everyone of the ephemeral nature of everything on the planet
 
0
Q: Good yes-or-no questions to ask

DraconisIn the Mekhet clanbook for Vampire the Requiem, the "Dream Visions" merit allows a character to get a small amount of information about other people and places by asking a single yes-or-no question. Dream Visions (•••) Effect: More than any other clan, the Mekhet dream. And sometimes, be...

VTC please
 
...so I'm still working on it, there's all sorts of refugees that ended up here, as well as plant-people trying to unite huge landmasses and peoples so that they can grow their "world tree"-like structure past the clouds and towards the sun, which nobody even remembers any more
uniting, of course, through mutations and mind-control, like the Zerg would
I'm trying to do something pretty gritty as well as fantastical and pulpy, and I hope it'll work :)
 
@AlexMitan that's pretty cool :D
and actually sounds reasonably scientifically plausible (even if it might be not remotely, who cares)
(i don't know if it is or isn't plausible, but that's beside the point of whether it SOUNDS plausible :D)
 
The "skystone" shards are made of what the core is made of, and charge means they basically repel the core directly
but only like magnets would, as in "staying away", but on a relative horizontal plane they're not as restricted, so isles move like tectonic plates and crash into each other and splinter off
what the plant people are trying to do is basically tie the landmasses together to assimilate everything into either a foundation for their Tree, or a chunk huge enough to withstand falling into the core and maybe even destroying it
 
3:55 PM
destroying the core!?
what is the 'it' meant to be there
 
they don't want to DESTROY it, but that might happen if such a huge thing falls there, I guess, or not
either way, they want to withstand falling into the core
the "good guys" that the PCs will meet are a bunch of engineers and knights of the same faction as one of my players
 
basically a galactic research and exploration faction
 
so i take it that when an island falls into the core
 
a bit like the Harpers from D&D, maybe
 
3:57 PM
... basically everything on there is going to be completely screwed
by like, maybe lava, or just sheer force of impact
 
I've yet to decide, but mainly.. yeah, what comes up if it's even vaguely recognisable is mainly ruined
 
have you seen the latest avengers movie?
 
Yep, Age of Ultron, I thought of that when I saw it
 
yar
i was going to ask, should i have that on my mind xD
though if it's anything like that... probably the islands that emerge are totally fresh and new <<
 
I've inspired myself a bit from Bastion, if you've ever played it
 
3:59 PM
I have!
played and finished and TT____TT so much
 
Yeah! I knoow!
Transistor too
 
i haven't played that one yet
but i gotta
 
Everyone's gotta
but yeah, as I finished Bastion multiple times, every time I noticed something new
and what really stuck with me were the mines, the moral implications and such of enslaving the Cores
which are really living things
and enslaving the windbags themselves
"Kid's wondering why all the windbags dress alike"
YEAH, because that's a slave uniform
So in my game there's going to be this faction really hammering a couple of points home
first, once pieces of skystone start doing strange things like moving on their own or clustering and making sounds to each other or circling settlements
it's going to be implied that the planet itself is a living thing, and pieces of crystal floating around are actually creatures
as such, these druids will not only oppose whoever is trying to "enslave them", but also will uphold the natural cycle of rising and falling to the core
the engineers, the players, they all want to stay afloat, and there's going to be a lot of research and experimenting going on over there, which the druids will disapprove of
 
\o/
so like
they'll be staying alive
 
however, the plant men are also perceived as cycle breakers, traitors even, since they are parts of nature starting to oppose itself
 
4:05 PM
but is this more or less killing a living breathing planet?
(by preventing it from 'breathing', for instance)
 
killing the planet.. maybe, but in any case harnessing living beings to stay afloat
OOH that is cool
yeah, maybe!
 
oh, one thing i liked about fate:
i can leave blanks, or i can totally have plot points filled in in secret
but the game gives the players every reason to fill in those blanks before i do, and for me to go "... YES! that is it"
and in fact enables my preferred way of handling things: start the session with a situation that compels the players to take action. know motives, have no plans. see where it goes.
 
Mhm... I don't know how much I should prepare, I feel quite intimidated by the idea of running an actual session after D&D failed so absolutely
 
so, this is the player just now having defined (officially) what their efforts to save themselves is going to do
or at least, what is PROBABLY the case
 
oh btw!
ok ok here's my idea for the starting scene
 
4:08 PM
yeah?
 
I wanna know if it sounds good to you
 
sure, shoot
 
the players wake up on these plains, with a vague memory of their ship crashing down, and specifically a memory of the sun's light in their face etc
wait, phone, damn
ok, back
so they wake up unharmed on these plains, all is nice, they miss the sun however, etc
after they take in the rather optimistic surroundings
this nice-looking, slightly flowery maybe plant person guides them to this site
where a bunch of people have gathered, mostly plant people of all shapes and sizes
they all bow down, will be interesting to see if the PCs bow as well, towards this centre of the site
 
(is it night or is the sun just... not there?)
 
and a tree sprouts from that place, clearing the clouds and letting out the sunshine for the first time in forever across the isle's surface
thick clouds up to this point, impossible to tell, decently dark
 
4:14 PM
right
 
so the tree sprouts, and everyone's all happy for a while (still working on the scene, ugh)
when there's a kind of... mechanical whining sound from "behind"
and a powerful beam of fire hits the tree, and several others start burning the area
several ships and pods land onto the ground
several dwarven and human knights start scorching the surface
maybe even fighting the players for a while, and then the scene ends
 
oh wow.
 
maybe a beam hits them or a missile or something
so basically I want them to feel all good and fluffy about the plant people
then wham, they half-wake up, but everything is dark, they are in these rather tight, humid pods
they can't see much
they'll probably try to break out of them, which is not too difficult, since they are "ripe"
and they see other people come out of the pods, with blank looks on their faces and pale skin, vines still clinging to them
several plant people investigate them, but find no problem with them
one of them will announce that a scouting drone fleet is approaching, if they hide the drone may not notice them, if they don't the ent starts fighting the drone
and when they regain their bearings, they see that they are on a small floating island with some large, root-like wings out the sides
speeding towards this small archipelago of islands, the largest one with a small fortress on it
it's an invasion
the plant people expect them to be fully brainwashed, so they're technically allied, but once the islands clash there'll be a bit of a melee
some organic siege weapons will start firing, like spores and fumes
the Knights will try to hold them back
again, I'm curious if the PCs will come to their senses and join the "right" side
if they don't, and they pass out, they end up in a laboratory where they'll have to clear things up
 
this is all super cool, and so far i would expect at this point for the players to be finding some way to ruin your plans XD
by, you know, being players
 
of course :D
 
4:23 PM
definitely use leading questions liberally in the first part with the tree
 
hm, like what?
 
leading questions in this case provide a default course of action to 'lead' them
 
and other than that I've prepared a bunch of "hooks" and NPCs
I hope I'll be able to manage things well
I got several NPCs in the citadel and their relationships, the factions
 
"a plant dude wakes you up. do you say hello?" vs "a plant dude wakes you up. what do you do?" (I STAB HIM, AAA)
 
a LOT of stuff that could go wrong
 
4:24 PM
and "he walks away and beckons you to follow. do you head over with him?" vs "what do you do now?"
 
mainly, they'll feel very victorious and stuff at first
until it'll become clear that the plant islet is still lodged into the citadel landmass, and the wing-roots are spreading through it
if things stagnate, I'll make it clear that the citadel is now moving straight towards the "plant HQ"
guess what our navigator found out
guess what [anyone] saw over the edge
 
what?
 
well, those root things
flapping around slowly, driving the island back towards where the invaders came from
thing is, the Marshall is VERY attached to the fortress
so it'll all become a mess of him refusing to leave his only home, even in the face of doom
 
i am a bit to sleepy to keep on following this far :)
you are introducing a lot of plot details and my mind isn't keeping up
but this does sound like a very cool thing you have cooked up so far
 
his lieutenant, Shannon, deathly loyal, either planning to take him out and take him away to safety, even rigging the island to blow up when it reaches the tree
sorry, sorry
I kind of have to go soon too
but I'm all excited and I have all these ideas but I'd hate to disappoint my group twice with a system that is almost the opposite of the last one
Thank you so much for the tips and for listening... it really helps to get this out of my system.. then back into my system
christ, that sounds gross
 
4:31 PM
LOL
not really until you said that XD
also, if you pick up a new system and you're not confident with it
(a) feel free to do a practice exercise unrelated to the main thing
(b) definitely have them relate to you as someone still learning with them
 
Hm, okay... how would I practice with it though? Twosies?
 
one of BESW's earliest sessions of Fate was: a clown and a mime are in a bar, when a circus-folk hitman walks in.
that one was an experiment just to play around with the pieces.
if you're playing Fate, definitely treat its mechanics like a box of lego, and take a bit to figure out how the lego is meant to go together
 
:))) and he played by himself with a clown, a mime and a hitman?
 
oh, no! he had two of his players there.
i think he played the hitman, and his players were the mime and the clown.
 
4:54 PM
Sorry I was so slow to answer, guys, but I was packing my stuff and I really have to go for now, I've been delaying it for about an hour or so
Thank you very much, again! Have a good day/night, guys :D
 
thank you :) have fun!
 
 
5 hours later…
9:35 PM
My players seem fond to completely changing their characters at the end of each story arc, I.E. every time they beat someone recognizable as "the guy who caused all the ruckus in this area"
 
10:34 PM
...so while I was asleep, my Twitter feed got a live-tweeting of The Muppet Treasure Island and a live-sketching of Eurovision.
(And, of course, the Doctor Who Official twitter account cluttered everything up with repetitious attempts to cash in on trending hashtags.)
 
10:51 PM
@BESW -- fun link
 
11:15 PM
@kyoryu Hi!
 
11:42 PM
@BESW -- on that topic -- I find it interesting how the ships in EVE break down by both class and role
 
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