@trogdor Probably. I suppose it's one of those "if we'd thought about it we wouldn't have designed it this way, but it's not worth time going back to fix it" things.
@nitsua60 I mean, it's not like I think it needs to be hidden from the mod in question In literally every case but,... When it does that's a problem I guess?
To be fair though, overall bad behavior from a mod is supposed to be handled an entirely different way anyway
I guess
But I hang out here, where all the mods I see are cool
FWIW, in the stackoverflow meta thread, one of the diamond mod's comments said something along the lines of 'you can stop flagging my comment now' prior to editing that bit away.
We occasionally get an SO power user hit RPGSE and get pretty frustrated pretty fast. (TBH, we're definitely on the "strict" end of applying the practices of SE.) When I read a meta like that I have to remind myself "as repugnant as I find much of this, that's how this person might feel coming to RPG."
People have complained about Mxy In The past but I think a lot of that might have been miscommunication and or especially anger over some of that Raw-vs-Rai stuff
@trogdor There are those who will say that's because overzealous moderation has driven away/quashed objection. I don't have an opinion on how much truth that holds for how many, though.
I just mean, even if you did, and you weren't busy enough as it is
It's still not like you can
Mods is still people
And that can have a bad side too but it still has a good side
And it's definitely not to say my experience is at all the same as everyone else's, that's gonna vary hardcore from person to person
But every interaction I've had with a mod has been positive
Maybe a couple neutral ones too
But not many
My first ever post on the site SSD did a magical edit on my answer that made it look extremely professional rather than the grody run on ultra paragraphs I always use
I think my first interaction with SSD was when I made an edit to a post (something small, like taking "DND5e" off the end of the title) and left a welcoming comment, got the comment "&%*($)^%& YOU!!!!!!!!!!" in response, and within a minute SSD had destroyed the user and left a comment "you don't get to treat people that way here. Goodbye."
I'm up for GSS. There seems to be some hesitation re: the competitive nature of Uranium Chef. I'm looking into ways to hack it into a more cooperative game.
@Makoto Something you wouldn't be putting up with if the Mods had used an Answer for their response like they are supposed to, instead of using comments. ;) — Xirema22 hours ago
I would be totally up to try Uranium Chef, it's Fate but it's still new to me and that's half the fun
But I bet dollars to donuts you can take some time to get more comfortable to run it and will get another chance to run it at a time when you have,... Done that
And meantime if there is interest in GSS I adore that game and would love to run it a second time
@trogdor So I've read the book, read some forums, and watched some gameplay recordings. I think I get the idea, but I'm still very fuzzy regarding how FATE is played.
I'm not exclusively used to D&D, but I am mostly used to comparatively structured systems
e.g. There's still 9999+ different ways to play D&D, but if I took notes across multiple groups and DMs, I can probably figure out the underlying patterns and flow of the game
That's exactly the hang up to expect in my experience
Every group is likely to have different problems, but handling the Fate point economy and frequency of compels between players seem to be big ones in practice
That was my experience as well. My group wanted to branch out after getting bored of the D&D system.
We tried Edge of Empire (good), Shadowrun (less good), Dice with Number (immature), and Dark Heresy (i wasn't playing) before eventually coming back to 5e
we decided that the mechanics were detracting from the story we wanted to tell and it was easier to switch to a system we all knew well and just house rule the bits we don't like
@MikeQ I'm waiting on my current campaign to end before trying something new. In too many games at the momemt. A couple of my players are starting a Cthulhu game. Fate, DW and Pathfinder 2E are all potential options for the next campaign though
Sure some systems are objectively worse than others, but for the most part, folks' experiences vary by group style and the system-narrative combination
For me I enjoy traditional fantasy rpgs. D&D and pathfinder are the perfect genre
but 5e is too simplified with too few customisation options. And pathfinder is too complex for some of my players
I'm hoping PF2 will be the right balance but am willing to try others.
One of the groups I play in likes cyberpunk type worlds. Hence why we tried shadowrun
but frankly the system is terrible. So many dice and silly mechanics. A simple combat could last multiple 6 hours session. so we got sick of that pretty quick
I actually really like the Edge of the Empire system, but we played to too high a level and it becomes very unbalenced
My next campaign that I run will be a political fantasy world where the players are a group of covert operatives for one of the lords. It's kind of a prequel to the current campaign.
Technically you can make whatever concept you like but some options are just sub-par or not available
Things like, my barbarian player in pathfinder wanted to be dumb but with street smarts. In 5e that's pretty hard to balance because she didn't want particularly high wisdom. In pathfinder we make it work but investing ranks in to the particular skill.
5e's your bad or your great at things kinda bugs me. I'd like it to be more of a scale of ability.
one of the games I play in went too far the other way and it meant that those that invested in charisma basically lost out because you could just RP it anyway with low stats
Alternatively @linksassin if you're expecting many different types of scenarios in your campaign, then perhaps Fate could work because the mechanics are flexible. Just note you can't rely on the mechanics to dictate balance.
i.e. Unlike D&Dish games, Fate doesn't have the mechanics as a safety net
I'll give fate and DW a look and see what my players are interested in. Though it's probably a while away since they are only at level 5 of a level 20 campaign that started 2 years ago
Depending on how the Fate game's set up, it doesn't restrict players to any sort of preset progression. Instead they write their characters from scratch, and continuously decide if and how their characters develop.
One of my favorite characters was a scientist who turned himself sort of into a swamp thing
He had skills in being able to come up with gadgets or fix problems with science, but could also do plant things and warp his body into shapes he needed and such
Plus, while playing him I got to play a villain who had temporarily gotten rid of him to take his place and spy on the party
In DND this would have been a problem for the party to fix
And everyone else would probably have to be in the dark about it
@linksassin Fate takes a very different approach to TTRPGs. The mechanics exist to move the story in certain directions, rather than define or quantify how certain actions work in specific circumstances.
And apparently in between Fate sessions, players can adjust their character stats to an extent, so it (theoretically) rewards build strategy, without punishing suboptimal builds in the long term.
Right. A character could knock over some environmental object to create an advantage for an ally. That's tactics, sorta. But it's not as precise or granular as D&D. Probably won't be doing as much geometry or bookkeeping.
I'd say it's closer to the simpler end - It doesn't require system mastery, and the fundamental rules can be explained to players in only a few minutes
There's the fact that the Fate points must flow, and also that everyone has about as much power to decide what's going on in the world as everyone else
Though that's supposed to mostly work via consensus
Like the example of when I was playing that Villan spying on the party
Everyone was in on that, and perpetuating it
It was probably my favorite set of Fate sessions, when that was going on
@linksassin I haven't played Fate much, specifically, but the most obvious I've come to find most RPG systems are able to provide a full-bodied adventure over the course of three hours, which feels nigh-impossible in DnD.
@trogdor I'm curious how that should go in practice. I'm currently both playing in a campaign and GMing another one, and my impression is that the mantra of the FP flowing at a grate rate doesn't line up with the rate at which events in a session occur (which means that in practice, a player maybe spends 4 FP per milestone out of a Refresh of 3, on average).
Disclaimer: as a GM, I run a text game, which is a bit slower than face-to-face gaming, so a minor milestone corresponds to two three-hour sessions. As a player, I'm in 5-hour-ish sessions face to face.
@vicky_molokh I had the same experience in my attempts. I think it's something many groups have to ease into, since people are usually used to conserving resources for "bad days ahead"
Given that experience, I feel that the frantic pace of spend spend spend compel compel compel that seems to be praised in theoretical discussions would result in rushing through a lot of RP, planning and investigation, and result in a much more 'zoomed out' experience, more like a wargame than an RPG.
Of course, I haven't seen the frantic pace in action, so maybe I'm wrong!
@vicky_molokh @kviiri what I mean is, at least in my experience, that not everyone gets compelled maybe as often as they should in all our games
and that's not all on the GM
that's what part of the problem we had was, the GM was trying to compel everyone and not all the other players were,... participating in that part of the game
for me it's not so much meant to be a frantic pace, but even a small trickle is hard if only one person is trying to do it
Also, IME (both as a GM and player) there's an average of 1-2 compels per minor milestone (total, not per player), because more would either not make sense, or disrupt the scenes/story/etc. and/or because there aren't more logical opportunities for them.
Personally, problems I have with the system are: 1. Aspect Permissions. This is an extremely vague thing that the system absolutely doesn't help me deal with. 2. *Most* canonical Stunts are IME not worth their price in Refresh, a few are too good, and there are generally very few helpful guidelines to making my own in a balanced way. 3. The system puts so much weight into in-fiction truths, yet absolutely doesn't help figuring them out. E.g. when worldbuilding, in GURPS you can ask the system to help you out, and you'll get a plausible-ish planet; in FATE, you have to be an astrophysicist a…
This ties in with the statement I made earlier about DnD being slow --- of course, that's not a problem for all groups, but IME it's far more common for DnD groups to say "we care about the story more, not really the mechanics" than the other way 'round, which suggests to me there's plenty of market for systems where the mechanics allow the story to develop more in each session.
@vicky_molokh For me, the chief difficulty is modeling stuff. I know a cool thing I want to define mechanically, but should it be a stunt, or aspect, or a skill, or something else?
@vicky_molokh That room was made when Fate Core/Accelerated were in beta and the Fate conversation was overwhelming the main chat so it was moved over. Rooms get unfrozen by diamond moderators; our own Nits and Greener are happy to do so.
@kviiri The cool thing about Fate is that any of those works, but over time you get a sense of which is gonna work better for you.
My rule of the thumb is that an always-true thing which can be good or bad is an aspect; a sometimes-true thing that can be good or bad is a skill; and a thing that's always good is a stunt.
Stunts vs. Skills: If it's something everyone can try, use a skill, else lean towards Stunt. If it's a subset of a Skill-thing everyone can do, but some people are better at specifically it, it's a Stunt.
@vicky_molokh FAE uses the skill mechanic, it just modifies the narrative thing a skill asks ("how are you doing the thing?" rather than "what thing are you doing?"). So yes, a Rocketeer-like system. Specifically I think I'd like to try the Fate of the TMNT.
Personally, I never understood why people see FAE's ways of doing things as an upside. The skill set is actually one of the primary attractors of Core for me - it's a list that is short enough to not be tedious, a closed set (within a given campaign) that results in retention of PC competence over any breadth of topics the campaign wants to tackle, and it allows characterisation of PCs.
Then I realized I'd been doing a lot of things "wrong" and it still worked fine.
For me, FAE is great for specific kinds of storytelling. I like to call it "easy TV."
If you've got a big burly guy, he's equally good at intimidating and breaking and lifting. He's Forceful.
If you've got a smart gal, she's good at crosswords and biology and computers. She's Careful.
"What are you good at?" skills are often a very bad way to model certain kinds of story structures.
"How do you do things?" approaches work a lot better for many TV-style story paradigms.
(Also, the Core skill list is woefully inadequate for many kinds of stories even if skills are the right sort of thing. Check out how many "Does a social thing" skills there are compared to the "Does a fighting thing" skills; it's imbalanced in favor of a certain kind of play.)
(The more a category of action is broken into individual units that require separate investment of character resources, the more that category of action is considered important.)
I'm going to weigh in with my total lack of experience (as is my wont) - Indiana Jones doesn't really have any specific skills. (I mean, action heroing, I guess?) But he does have ways he does things - sometimes Forcefully, sometimes Cleverly, almost never Carefully.
And personally, I find that the time spent in thinking about skills doesn't pay off in the fun skills add to my games.
I found that for NPCs I liked making ranked aspects, which led to my thinking about skill-less Fate as a viable option.
@Miniman Exactly.
(Re: stunt balance, it's really not too important. Stunts are balanced by a lot of subjective qualities and ultimately you just fiddle with 'em until they get the game effect you want. One thing I've found is that stunts can be much more powerful if using them is dramatic and a central part of your campaign's aesthetic, because you want people to use those stunts and it's good for everyone when they're used.)
The only reason stunts need balance is to control spotlighting and agency so nobody gets left out. I love stunts that actively promote spotlight sharing.
For example, [Captain's Fancy Valentine Sweetheart](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X26x25RppjRtfEA_rGL0guIO_iXY7fxIZ7DSyDvUcWE/edit) has 'Sapients Helping Sapients.' When I invoke an aspect to help a non-human sapients' roll, I grant a +3 bonus instead of +2.
This encourages Sweetheart to cede the spotlight to other players without becoming irrelephant to the scene.
Tegan's "coordinate a plan" stunt let her sit in the back of a massive conflict and create free invokes on I have a good plan!, which she could hand out to any teammate who was acting in accordance with that plan.
I guess this is a good time to mention the conversations saved in the Fate chat room, including a lot of beta-testing of Fate Core.
@BESW Maybe I have different story goals. I wouldn't be comfortable flattening the distinctions of, say, the Bones cast or the Blacklist cast into Approaches.
@BESW The Core skill is good enough a starting point IME. That being said, how skills are split is certainly a major decision with some long-reaching consequences. Finer-grained splitting produces better characterisation and more fiddliness during chargen, while coarser-grained produces greater efficiency in the skill's field and easier chargen. But with fighting skills vs. other skills there's another nuance:
And keep in mind, I spent a year or so happily playing in a Fate system that makes Core's skill complexity look like approaches by comparison. I'm not anti-skills, I've just found that they don't usually to add value to the kinds of games I play.
The number of rolls needed to conclude the outcome. This puts skills at odds with Aspects. Combat skills, taking easily 8+ rolls per conclusion, are better pumped through raw skill levels, while other skills can more often get by on a single roll, or maybe 3-5 for Contests, which makes Aspect Invocations more efficient.
@BESW Most of the cast is Clever, but they differ in what things they're trained in and apply their cleverness to.
@BESW IME competence imbalance tends to lead to narrative imbalance. I've seen it happen in a plethora of systems. My jury is still out on whether that happens in Core, but I'm leaning towards it being a plausible risk.
That's not the impression I got. Or rather, my impression that quick improvisation is only a small subset of Clever, accounting for 25% to 35%.
> A Clever action requires that you think fast, solve problems, or account for complex variables. Finding the weakness in an enemy swordsman’s style. Finding the weak point in a fortress wall. Fixing a computer.
Aside from thinking fast, it notes things like problem-solving ability, and accounting for complex variables. Two very forensic things.
Complex variables are a component of it, yeah. But compare to "A Careful action is when you pay close attention to detail and take your time to do the job right." which is exactly what Bones excels at.
@BESW I thought her story arc is about how the nail that is unlike the others get hammered the strongest, and how over the long term, resisting social norms is futile.
To take another example: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all have basically the same skills. They're differentiated by how they use those skills: Raph is Forceful, Donnie's Clever, Mikey's Flashy, Leo's Careful.
Anyway, from what I remember (it's been a while), all of the cast is either Clever by my understanding or Careful by yours - they spend hours solving complex cerebral problems, applying logic and honed training to things, except there's some distinction in which things they're trained in - some with more computer knowledge, some with more bone knowledge, some are more general-purpose coroners etc.
To me, defining people by approaches they take rather than what they're good at seems odd, uninformative, and making everyone more samey/cardboard in many contexts.
If yes, then that looks good enough to make me comfortable trying as a player. (I'm willing to try FAE one day even though it would not be comfortable for me.)
(Another thing that FAE makes me uncomfortable about is bigger emphasis on Aspect Permissions and on adjusting difficulties through fiat for the same action.)
Oh, I tried reading some Cortex not long ago. Was not impressed by the dice engine, but many other concepts looked good. (Unless I'm confusing it with the Solar system, which I also skimmed recently.)
Oh yeah, I don't assume that one swing maps to one roll, of course. I got that FATE is more abstract than that.
OTOH, I've had some unease myself, and seen players uneasy, with the need to specify action type when making an exchange, because it cannot be unambiguously derived from the in-fiction description alone.
@BESW It's just a case I repeatedly had discussions where I ask 'But how do I differentiate X and Y in FAE if PCs have the same Approaches' and get 'use more Aspect permissions!' as an answer.
Yes, it's barely a system at all except for the fate point economy.
It's more like a toolbox.
I've found it to be very immersive in the sense that I've had a strong sense of the characters, who they are, how they respond to problems, and I care about them.
Which on one hand can produce mechanical transparancy if players decide to talk about mechanics directly, but can be unwieldy when players maintain immersion and hide all the mechanics inside the box.
But if immersion means going long periods without thinking about the mechanics, or being able to treat the mechanics as if they were physical laws of the game world... noooope, Fate has no interest in that.
