Conversation started Feb 11, 2014 at 9:08.
Zach
Zach
Feb 11, 2014 09:08
@BESW would it be fair to say that fate is a game that requires the group to work together to create a compelling adventure?
trogdor
trogdor
yeah
BESW
BESW
It's designed to work best that way, but it can just as easily support more traditional gm run scenarios.
Trogdor prefers it if I take over most of the world building, for example.
Zach
Zach
Ah, that would be the downside for my group. We enjoy exploring a world someone else has created. In many cases, our games tend to pit the GM against the players, in a manner of speaking.
BESW
BESW
He gives me general concepts like "magical ancient Egypt" and I spin a setting from that.
Ah, that would be a problem. Fate doesn't do GM vs players well.
Zach
Zach
Well... it's kind of an interesting balance. Our group almost treats the GM like a video game designer
BESW
BESW
Feb 11, 2014 09:12
Characters vs world, yes.
Zach
Zach
They are responsible for creating a world that we can play in, with challenging combats and unique plot concepts, but they are also responsible for not creating encounters that are just impossible for us to win
BESW
BESW
In Fate, losing encounters is expected. Losing doesn't mean death, just complication.
Zach
Zach
Well, for us, losing generally means death... mind, in general, that's been because one or two of the players always push it to that point
BESW
BESW
You lost what was at stake in the conflict, and now you have a new problem.
Yeah, PF is one of the "death s default" systems.
Zach
Zach
Well, it's not even that... in our group, either we could win the fight, and generally did, or we couldn't and the group treated it like something that was meant to be avoided
BESW
BESW
Feb 11, 2014 09:18
Fate prefers to make losing less final, and more part of the ongoing drama of the story being told. You know, the end of the second act in a film.
Zach
Zach
It's kind of aggravating to me, really... partly because I know that I was as much a part of the problem as was the rest of the group
BESW
BESW
We all have play histories that we look back on with chagrin, I think.
I'm awful about stealing the spotlight when I'm a player.
Always have been, still am.
Zach
Zach
Almost a self-creating issue, really. The group acted that way when it began, so when it first started and I was the DM that's how I had to make it work. The other players saw this, and expected it to work that way when they DMed, so they made games with that mind set, and in response I played to that game type
Honestly, the most fun I've ever had in that group was when the other rules-savy player I mentioned came up with what amounts to a survival-horror scenario, and actually pulled it off
BESW
BESW
Perhaps, but I've seen it in many, many groups over the years. (He said, as if he'd been playing for more than ten years.)
Survival horror in d20? I am very impressed. And curious!
Zach
Zach
Well, it started out with each of us having a level in an NPC class. At that point, the village we started in was attacked. The premise was basically "What if Resident Evil, but with magic?"
BESW
BESW
Feb 11, 2014 09:26
Cool.
Zach
Zach
Very
The interesting part was that the DM had expected us to strike out on our own, but we ended up recruiting the survivors of the village to go along with us
BESW
BESW
I've felt that d20 System is at a disadvantage in these kinds of games because it doesn't have incremental failure.
Like, HP loss doesn't impact your ability to act until it makes you utterly unable to act.
Zach
Zach
That's the most interesting part. Because we had a group to work with, we had incremental loss. If we failed to achieve a goal, there was a good chance that one of the weaker NPCs would die for it, negatively impacting the overall ability of the group
*one or more NPCs
BESW
BESW
So your choices the gm didn't anticipate actually helped enforce the atmosphere he was trying to create?
Zach
Zach
It did, to everyone's present surprise
*pleasant
BESW
BESW
Feb 11, 2014 09:30
Hmmm.
Zach
Zach
While the group proper was responsible for leading the larger group, and protecting them from major threats, we simply didn't have the necessary resources to successfully hold off the large hordes of undead the GM put us against.
BESW
BESW
Memo: in d20, "ablative NPCs" serve as incremental failure, with greater benefit to horror tone than isolation of PC-only group.
3
Trajan
Trajan
Hi !
BESW
BESW
Hey.
Zach
Zach
Originally, he has expected us to simply evade the hordes, and run from them. But with the larger group, we weren't able to do that, so we had to maintain the groups size in order to allow us to better protect it
BESW
BESW
Feb 11, 2014 09:33
That's good because d20 is all about combat as the primary mode of conflict.
A campaign that removes combat as the main mode of interacting with the world is missing a lot of what makes d20 successful.
Trajan
Trajan
ablative NPCs is quite like village-as-a-fractal HP. Very nice indeed.
Zach
Zach
One of the most interesting aspects was that many of the weaker NPCs were needed for non-combat issues. There were carpenters, smiths, and cooks among the villages, and because we were so low-level, we had to rely on their more min-maxed skills to do things like prepare the wagon the group used or to fix weapons damaged in combat, or even to just help the small amount of food we had last until we could find more
BESW
BESW
Yes, I'm making notes for Core games too.
Zach
Zach
*repair the wagon
However, not all of the NPCs were useless in combat. In fact, two of them were even better at it than us, being retired adventurers. We used them to help us take on even greater challenges, but their main loyalty was to the group, which meant we were forced to stay with the group if we wanted their help
BESW
BESW
That's a very interesting subversion of typical survival horror tropes.
Usually it's about isolation, or at the most small-group dynamics.
Zach
Zach
Feb 11, 2014 09:40
It was actually a lot of fun, and the way he used classic horror elements (ex, showing us that very large and very potent enemies are a potential threat, and that we could run into them at any time, in place of the unseen monster in most horror stories) meant that there were times I was legitimately afraid, both for my character and for the gorup
BESW
BESW
That shows some system savvy.
Zach
Zach
I admit readily, he is a much better DM than I.
BESW
BESW
D20 doesn't handle the unknown well.
Everything has stats, and trying to change that fundamental law of the world doesn't work well.
Zach
Zach
However, it took him a month of planning with a highschooler's typical schedule, along with additional planning between sessions, to make that game work
BESW
BESW
Contrast Call of Cthulhu, where often stats are totally beside the point.
Heh. I know that gm workload well.
Zach
Zach
Feb 11, 2014 09:43
Yea, he subverted the fact that bigger monsters would very much likely kill us if we ever came across them by simply giving us incentive beyond our own survival
because, honestly, what adventurer worries about that?
BESW
BESW
The systems I'm using now are much less prep heavy.
Zach
Zach
*incentive to avoid fighting them
 
Conversation ended Feb 11, 2014 at 9:44.