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6:07 AM
@BESW On further thought, the whole "televised semi-reality show" is essential, so it doesn't work in D&D-esque settings. Perhaps some modern Dresdenish modern magic setting could suffice.
 
A Dragons of the Cuyahoga-esque setting might be fun.
 
@MikeQ I'm not familiar with the adventure you are talking about but I can think of a few ways to make a televised show work in a D&D setting
Personally I had an arena fighting competition displayed on giant scrying mirrors. Probably won't work for you but could be fun.
 
Mechanically, sure. But there's sort of an... anachronistic, or maybe thematic, dissonance
 
You could also have the "viewers" be gods or celestials of some kind that can watch.
@MikeQ Yeah fair enough, I didn't seriously think it was a good idea just something that can be done.
 
Understood. I actually considered something like that for a while (involving fey circles and a network of scrying sensors) but it involves way too much explaining. This particular FATE module kind of assumes the participants understand the beats of televised reality shows, and can simply jump in.
 
6:13 AM
Interesting, are we talking hunger games style show?
 
As written in the book, it's like Iron Chef or Chopped, but in a cartoony space alien sci-fi setting.
Players are competitors, and the cameras want to capture drama in order to boost ratings.
 
Okay now you have me intrigued. Chopped is great. That sounds really cool
 
BESW mentioned it a while ago and I've been fixated ever since. I plan to run it for some chatizens eventually. I'll keep you in the loop.
 
Sounds cool, I'm in australia (yay for timezones) and don't have a lot of spare time so I can't commit to playing but would be interested if it worked out.
 
No worries. I (almost) exclusively do one-shot games.
 
6:24 AM
I also haven't played fate before but am happy to learn.
 
In my experience Fate's pretty easy to pick up, especially as a player.
Though for people who've only ever played D&D-likes before, I do like to do a quick palette cleanse with Roll For Shoes first.
 
I've seriously played Edge of Empire and Shadowrun as well as goblin quest on occasion. Our D&D is pretty story focused so I'm not too concerned about picking the system up.
Roll for Shoes sounds great. I might start mixing that up with Goblin Quest as my intro to rpgs for new players.
 
6:41 AM
I like to use RFS and Lady Blackbird, depending on time and inclination.
Lady Blackbird is amazing for convention games.
 
I like goblin quest for the sandboxiness. Players have to come up with the goals and quests themselves. You can even run it without a GM if you want to. Plus since each player gets 5 goblins they learn not to worry about death so much.
Similar to RFS you get bonuses to rolls where you invoke character background or something. So it encourages creative thinking of how to connect them.
 
LB is good because it gives structure and character guidance but provides very open-ended play in terms of how to achieve those ends--and the opportunity to disavow them and take the game in your own direction.
(And "death" is always "presumed dead.")
It's my experience that if you start people off with too many open-ended choices they tend to freeze up.
Choices within a clearly defined box, however, can be great.
That's why RFS and LB make such good contrasting choices.
 
6:56 AM
@MikeQ Wait, she was swashbuckly-roguish? That's not how I remember her.
 
7:09 AM
@vicky_molokh Wesley, not Buttercup :P
unrelated:
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Nova Drift is out in Early Access! Get it on Steam or itch.io for just $15. It's well worth it. It's very addictively fun, and the devs are very responsive to feedback. :)
 
7:31 AM
> Born with my foot on the pedal. You automatically succeed at any Drive action that is reasonably possible; you may roll Drive to achieve vehicular feats which should be impossible.
Hmm. Needs a weakness.
 
7:54 AM
I declare the Discount Magical Item Extravaganza open
> Bag of Bolding. A magical bag that gradually grows any ink inside it, causing text on books and scrolls inside to become bold. Repeated exposure will render the text completely inscrutable as the letters start to lose their features.
 
8:07 AM
@BESW For the auto-success part of the Stunt, I suggest being limited to active opposition 2 and less. For the 'can try impossible stuff', this is very subjective and personally I'd be uncomfortable playing or GMing with such a Stunt without additional structure/definition, but I'm the sort of person who needs more structure in general.
 
@vicky_molokh it's a vernacular implementation of Atomic Robo's "absolutely better than a human" stunt form.
 
Absolutely better in Active Oppositions is pretty easy to visualise. But how far does 'the impossible becomes possible' extends can be harder for visualise. Because surely it's not meant to be totally unlimited. At least for someone like me.
 
You automatically succeed at any overcome action with a given skill which a human could reasonably do, and have permission to roll that skill for things a human could never do; at the cost of having an extra thing you can be compelled by. EG, a robot might be absolutely stronger than a human (Physique) but weak against magnets.
 
Also, I always had problem understanding the part about weak against magnets. Which one of the two is it:
1. The super-benefit is inapplicable against magnets?
2. Physique auto-fails against magnets?
3. Magnets have permission to also have such an absolute superiority Stunt?
The comic seems to imply 3, but I'm not sure that's the intent of the rules.
 
The GM can compel you to have bad things happen because of magnets even if there's not an aspect in the scene to tag.
 
8:13 AM
Ah.
Not a direction I was thinking. Possibly due to me generally avoiding the Compels-that-are-stronger-than-Invocations.
 
 
Are you definitely intent on keeping the superiority-against-mundane-difficulties and the can-roll-against-impossible-stuff in the same Stunt? / Do you need both benefits?
@BESW I seem to have misremembered the way it went / forgot about the Compel.
Though the Compel seems to be using an already applicable Aspect, judging by context.
I must be forgetting something else.
@BESW Overconfidence seems like a natural fit for being able to do the impossible and being awesome at the mundane, but may be too far on the cliché side depending on preferences.
 
9:10 AM
2
Q: Can "Reverse Gravity" affect spells?

DMs Popped CherrySince Reverse Gravity is a concentration spell, what would happen if someone casts it, and then an enemy casts meteor swarm on the area in which reverse gravity is in place? Now, meteor swarm is described as instantaneous, but still specifies it's blazing orbs of fire plummeting to the ground, a...

 
 
4 hours later…
12:43 PM
4
Q: Does the Vanguard Style bonus stack with itself?

RopheThe Vanguard Style feat states : While using this style, when an adjacent ally is required to make a Reflex saving throw, you can expend a use of an attack of opportunity to attempt the aid another action to improve your ally’s Reflex save. Your ally gains a +2 bonus to all Reflex saves while...

 
1:30 PM
So, my day just took a distinct turn for the worse. Was planning a trip to Iceland with my wife, booked flights around a month ago. Trip was in 2ish weeks. The airline we booked on just went under. All flights canceled. No refunds.
(apologies for the venting)
 
1:46 PM
@Rubiksmoose Oh I just heard about that
That's awful
You know that they were planning this ahead of time too, so they probably knew they wouldnt make your flight and they let you book anyway
Will you be able to find an alternate flight?
 
Not at a reasonable price at this point it seems.
And with the money for the trip already gone I don't know if I could even justify anouther purchase of tickets at the same price.
 
Did you pay by credit card? You might be able to get a refund via that
 
@SirCinnamon Right? Oh and the company still hasn't sent out any kind of message to people yet. We're getting all of our information from one notice posted in the banner of the Wow site and twitter and 3rd party news.
@SirCinnamon alas, debit card.
 
Dang that's tragic, hopefully theres some recourse at some point
 
Thanks. I appreciate it.
 
2:14 PM
@Rubiksmoose That is BS. Directives know if the company is going down and if they decided to keep looking as if everything was OK that's fraud. It's soooooooooooo much BS, they know that people won't do anything about it. If you hear word of a communal demand join the effort.
 
@Rubiksmoose it's worth seeing if the trip was protected by a national scheme
 
(sorry I feel very strongly with this practices, it irks me a lot)
 
For example in the UK this exists: nidirect.gov.uk/articles/…
(hence the phrase ATOL protected)
If it was an Icelandic airline it's probably worth looking into the Islandic protection schemes to see if there is any recourse there
 
2:38 PM
Is there a way I can get my account here disconnected from my Facebook that I used to create it? I'd prefer to just use my email to log in going forward.
Nevermind. Should've done a google search before asking. meta.stackoverflow.com/a/295140
 
3:00 PM
@BESW "but at a cost" doesn't work it for you? I mean, the easiest thing to do is to toss a signature compel to, for example, have the entire car fall apart and catch fire after you drift through an inferno, accelerate up a tunnel wall, jump a 30-foot gap, and then screech to a halt, step out, and dramatically slam the door.
Not so much "you can do things that would wreck a car" as "you can wreck a car and keep driving anyway", sort of thing?
 
@illustro thanks! I'll definitely check into it.
(sorry I had a meeting)
@Helwar oh definitely I'll be keeping my ear out
 
Do it, I can't stand that BS, they do it because they feel noone will be able to make them pay
 
Oh the'll pay, but you know the only ones who will get paid, if anyone are shareholders or whoever.
 
3:18 PM
6
Q: Can a caster that cast polymorph on itself end it at any point for any reason?

Carl BozemanI was playing a moon druid and polymorphed myself into a trex, causing my Int to became 2 and my Wis 12. I realized my targets had immunity to non magical dmg which is all a trex can do so I wanted to stop concentration. I made the check to determine my current form could not affect the creature...

 
Looking at this question: +1 instead of double roll for advantage, does anyone have any links to interviews with 5e designers regarding why they designed the Advantage/Disadvantage system the way they did? My Google-fu is failing me right now.
 
@Xirema I can't remember ever seeing anything like that. Even in the old archived developer posts for 5e.
 
not backed up, but iirc it was a speed / bean counting issue
they wanted something speedy, significant, and simple
 
I'm not necessarily looking for justification for the Advantage/Disadvantage system itself so much as I'm looking at the broader justification for the "Bounded Accuracy" concept, where the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanics were intended to slot into that system as a solution to avoid a thousand buff spells turning a character into a literal god.
 
@Xirema they did think of static additions for Advantage/Disadvantage (see passive checks mechanics)
Which are wildly out of line with the idea of +1 suggested in that question
 
3:35 PM
again, no source, but I thought it was because they didn't like that moderate ACs/saves didn't matter at high levels.

Either you had an AC of 50, or you might as well have an AC of 10.

I'll see if I can find anything
 
@Xirema try looking through stuff here
I think I have looked through there for this exact content before, but you're welcome to look again.
 
blocked by work. dang it. I can browse reddit, but not sageadvice and D&D forums
 
huh, doesn't the fact that its a webarchive mean that they are blocking the archive domain and not the content?
 
likely both
 
interesting
 
3:45 PM
Somebody at corporate must have a hateboner for RPGs
I can basically get to any unofficial wiki, and GitP
lmao I can't even get to MythWeavers
 
I don't think I can either :(
Thank goodness for SE not being blocked though...
I used to be able to even get to dndbeyond and such a while back. Then one day it was just blocked lol
 
well... SE is kinda integral to engineering
it'd be more of a pain than it's worth to block the substacks
 
@Rubiksmoose Oh nuts :( condolences for that
 
@kviiri Thanks :(
 
I hope you get refunded eventually. That does happen or so I hear
 
3:59 PM
I'm going to do a long shot and see if my credit union can do anything for me about the charge (I'm really not hopeful)
But yeah, that would do a lot to make things a bit better. Anything back really.
 
Yea :(
 
@Rubiksmoose that suuuuuucks
 
Iceland is beautiful, or so my brother tells me. I hope you can find the time and money to try again
 
Me too, we really were quite excited to go.
 
A Credit Card SHOULD be able to refund the money for services not rendered; I can only assume a Credit Union has the same powers.
 
4:01 PM
hah! let's hope eh?
 
Let's!
 
Crit Hope check!
 
It really just sucks super hard to lose **both** the money and the vacation.
At least if I had the money we could plan something else with the same budget (but perhaps not the same scope)
:) Well I'll actually wander over there now I think (luckily it is mere yards from my workplace). Better to smash my hope now then to let it linger.
1d20
 
hmmm not great. wait this univcerse does seem much more like it is powered by the apocalypse so...
2d6
 
4:04 PM
 
@Rubiksmoose That roll might be good enough with some decent modifiers.
 
Hey that is a partial success. I'll take that. If they give me guff I'll just tell them they have to give me the money back but they can give me a downside later.
@Xirema let's just say my CHA is not at it best right now lol
 
@Rubiksmoose Just tell them you rolled a nat 20, but you'll have to roll Bluff too.
 
darn, maybe I can get advantage on the roll.
 
do you have inspiration?
 
4:16 PM
3
Q: +1 instead of double roll for advantage

Dnial KhastalaniI've been playing Open Legend RPG and I love that the Advantage in that game can be stacked. I love it when players try to strategize and stack as much advantage as possible. I want to do this in D&D but triple advantage doesn't really differ much from normal advantage. So, I was thinking of giv...

 
@HotRPGQuestions It seems like almost every question we get hits HNQ...
 
@GreySage 3 votes man, it's EXPLODING
 
@GreySage Nah, just the D&D questions. ^_^
 
@GreySage Or at least all the questions that don't get negative votes.
 
(Well, primarily. Not exclusively.)
 
4:31 PM
I am curious how frequently other stacks notice this. Do we just have an especially high level of user engagement relative to our userbase size, or is this just the normal trend for Stack Exchange sites?
 
^good question
I agree that the hot algorithm seems really trigger happy.
Back from credit union btw. I filed a form and it sounds like they will investigate and we might get our money back? People at the desk didn't seem to know what happens after the form. I suspect it depends on actually reclaiming the money from the company which seems unlikely at this point.
 
5:07 PM
@vicky_molokh Say, while you're here, I think we're getting crossed up on question and answer, again.
 
user15026
@Rubiksmoose Here's hoping you get something back. What a mess of a situation.
 
@Ash Thanks! I'm actually trying to not be too hopeful, because I don't think my chances are too high of getting results, but I'll happily eat those words if I get it back.
 
user15026
nods Makes sense.
 
@Rubiksmoose good luck! I wonder if they'll be a class action suit against "scam-air"
 
@goodguy5 I do wonder, if something like that will happen
 
5:14 PM
@Rubiksmoose I was about to make something like this comment myself and I do agree with what you are saying but could you maybe tone it down a bit? Hopefully to avoid an argument.
 
1
Q: What is the purpose of the Potent Cantrip ability?

Wes F.The Potent Cantrip, as I read it, only effects evocation cantrips that require a saving throw. There are none in of these in the basic rule book. Is this a typo?

 
Oh nevermind you already changed it
 
@Sdjz hmmmm... I guess I could. I kind of already changed it to read a bit hotter actually.
 
@Rubiksmoose Yeah it's fine now, I think
 
ok, thanks for letting me know though. Sincerely appreciate it.
 
5:20 PM
@Glazius I'm back. Catching up. But probably.
 
@BESW sounds like great players
 
@vicky_molokh I think it would help to know if the little example of play I put in involves the use of aspect permission as you understand the term.
 
@Shalvenay I have been participating in the 5e forums at GiTP for a few years, some useful stuff there.
@Helwar Yay! Hope that you all have a blast with that.
@Helwar survival is good expertise to have
 
@KorvinStarmast just so you know my response to your comment was directed at OP since I'm sure you understand this already.
 
The piloting one does, *sort of*, with the implication that others can't normally pilot a vehicle at all. The others seemed like steps far away to the side. I can think of a few things that I've seen handled as aspect permissions:
knowing a language, being able to make a roll that others may not do at all (a door is locked; humans must roll Burglary to overcome the lock, but Cameron may opt to roll Physique to break the wall instead); Cameron doesn't need oxygen etc.
 
5:32 PM
(either way, it is best that we not suggest that people change questions in ways that invalidate answers)
 
@Rubiksmoose yeah, got it. :)
 
@vicky_molokh Oh! No, I meant uprooting the gate to McKimson Park. Does that involve what you would consider to be the use of aspect permissions?
 
@Glazius Hmm. That does too. Sorry for not mentioning it at first notice.
 
5:53 PM
@vicky_molokh Okay. So what more I need is... some rules text justifying why the GM wouldn't let any of the kids on bikes lift the gate to McKimson Park?
 
@Glazius Rules or other root source that seems to have been so influential that a large part of the fandom seems to be treating it as an innate or almost innate part of the system.
Because as is, it looks like a huge leap from the scripture to the practice, but the practice seems rather uniform, and I wonder where that uniformity is coming from.
 
6:13 PM
3
Q: How do spells that require an ability check vs spell save DC work?

TanstaaflSome spells for a wizard state that they need an ability check vs spell save DC (SSDC). I'm not understanding how this is supposed to work. If the spell says a creature can see through the effect if it passes an Int vs the SSDC, how does that work? A d20 is rolled by DM and the Int mod (if any)...

 
@vicky_molokh As far as your understanding goes, either the kids on bikes should be able to roll to lift the gate or Artie shouldn't?
 
@Glazius It's a bit more nuanced than that, but assuming no Stunts, no Invocations, and no Compels, that seems like the logical way to do it based on my reading of the corebook and some other books, FATE essentially being a low-granularity system.
I know my view does not match the way the fandom sees things, though I also know I'm not alone in my views of what looks like the logical reading either.
 
@vicky_molokh Your choice of words here suggests that you already know the answer :) There's a text, and there's an interpretive community around the text. The community has a shared understanding of what certain terms and concepts mean.
 
6:28 PM
@vicky_molokh Hm. Okay. Well, bad news, I can't dig up anything, but I can try to better connect the stuff that's already there.
 
@MarkWells What I'm asking is where the shared interpretation is coming from. Because it's one of the things: (1) people en masse treat apocryphal things as gospel or (2) I'm actually missing the basis of this sharing understanding that makes most people make the jump from A to Z in the same way.
 
Like, with your kids-on-bikes scenario, my initial reaction is that you're missing what an Aspect is. Aspects define a character's place in the story. Artie is the Strongest Man In The World, so if any feats of strength are to be done, Artie is the one to do them.
But that doesn't answer your question about where I'm getting that idea of what an Aspect is.
I think I got it from Spirit of the Century, which had a high ratio of examples to rules text.
 
@MarkWells Rather, I'm puzzled by where the broadening of the mechanical effects of Aspects is coming from, with the examples being a case of an Aspect stepping on the toes of Stunts at a minimum.
@MarkWells Ah, now that makes sense: it's a work that had big influence, but one that I haven't been exposed to, being essentially a Core arrival.
 
I can't speak for where the rest of the community got it
but I do think it's basically impossible to grasp what FATE is trying to do without a well-developed example
 
7:05 PM
Yeah, it's kind of a lesser Borgstromantic problem.
 
While examples are great when demonstrating specific things, with FATE I'm getting an impression that 90%+ of times when people dive into discussing an example, this turns into a stovepipe kind of thing which gives near-zero help with the general principle.
It's as if I ask what's a forest, people keep insisting that I must see the trees, and after having seen a hundred trees I still have no idea what a forest is like.
It's quite an odd experience, similar to miscommunication despite trying to tackle the matter from different directions.
 
And yet, it's quite difficult to talk about ways you might interact with a forest without mentioning any trees.
 
@vicky_molokh I think you're not seeing it because you're looking for the forest in some place other than the trees.
 
@MarkWells Maybe.
But it's more of a 'OK, so I've seen a hundred trees, now what makes a set of trees into a forest?', and the communication stops there somehow.
This is metaphorical of course.
 
7:28 PM
It might help to dial back the meta. If you're trying to broaden from example cases to the general principle, then talk about more example cases.
 
1
Q: Should Questions be edited to fix a mistake after it's been addressed in an answer?

NautArchOn this question the querent made an error in the spellcasting ability used. It was unclear whether or not it was intentional, but an answer addressed it. Can/Should we edit the question to 'fix' the mistake that's been addressed in an answer after the querent confirmed it was a typo?

 
@MarkWells I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I'm trying to get the general principle, and I keep getting told to learn the exceptions instead, but it seems that the exceptions never end and the general principles never begin (regarding various topics I have pursued; less so the system as a whole).
I think I found a better example. It feels like asking to learn baduk and chess, and being given highly specific combinations that assume intuitive understanding of the basics. And I keep asking for the basics and am given more combinations but very rarely the pieces of the basics that the combinations depend on.
 
7:46 PM
Which general principle are you trying to get to?
 
@vicky_molokh Well, you're asking grandmasters how they think, and grandmasters think in piece combinations.
I'd like to apologize, I'm at work right now and I can chat on my phone but not update the answer much.
 
@Glazius Don't worry about it, nothing to apologise for.
@Glazius That may be an interesting distinction. I'm asking how to walk the path of the grandmaster step by step, such as asking what the legal moves are and what the win conditions are (metaphorically speaking), but those seem to be either assumed to be already known, or handwaved with non-answers like 'whatever you think is a winning strategy' (not here, thankfully).
 
But I do have an idea of something to link that might? help?
 
I'd suggest the Spirit of the Century SRD (faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html), which despite having most of the examples stripped out still gets the point across.
 
8:14 PM
@Glazius I'm trying to think about how Fate might handle car wizards--think the later Fast and Furious movies, where you're effectively immortal while controlling a moving vehicle and winning a big race that was the entire plot of an earlier movie is something that happens behind a smash cut.
Or should I just be content with Katanas & Trenchcoats' expansion for car wizards.
 
@BESW How many meaningful characters in the Fast & Furious movies are not car wizards, and how much screentime do they have?
 
@Rubiksmoose got a little news on that airline: recent events include
- 11 A320/A321s in the fleet. - One reposessed in Montreal, One repossesed in Miami
- One in Ljubljana for maintenance, One held at Keflavik by Isavia as collateral for a debt (apparently legal, even though it's only leased by WOW). The creditors have descended on them and are seizing assets.
 
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/459-everything-you-need-to-know-about-acquisitions
The new (official!) Acquisitions Incorporated book 8 organizational roles (that come with associated traits, a new race called the Verdan, and a level 1-6 adventure.
 
hope that there is money somewhere to be gotten back.
 
Like, are you intending to have a party of Car Wizard, gun'sbraster, and cyber-dwarf, or make a game about Car Wizards?
 
8:20 PM
Pretty much everybody important in F&F is a car wizard, or learning to be one.
 
0
Q: Add a horizontal scrollbar to MathJax formula blocks

doppelgreenerMathJax formula blocks (i.e. $$these$$, not single-dollar-sign $inline$ mathjax) sometimes get wide, especially when they're arrays. Wide formulae don't play nicely with the responsive design though and instead overflow into the sidebar if the window is narrow enough. Could MathJax formula...

 
@BESW Okay, so if you're making an F&F game and not a general action pastiche, it's not special that anybody's super good at cars, so that shouldn't be a stunt but a skill or skills.
 
@Glazius What differentiates one Car Wizard from another? Because that's going to define the skill space.
 
@MarkWells That's a great question, and since it's a mechanically-oriented one (at least implicitly), it would probably depend on what aspects (lowercase) there are to a car chase in the current implementation of the game.
Out of the box the system doesn't offer much tactical detail for chases, so any of that has to come from homebrew (unless I'm missing a dedicated fine-grained supplement!).
 
Car wizards tend to not be differentiated by driving skills/specialties; they're differentiated by out-of-car skills and by driving styles (cautious, creative, reckless, etc)
 
8:32 PM
Well, I was going to suggest looking at Tachyon Squadron and making a Car Wizard slant on the skill pyramid.
 
(With the arguable exception of Tokyo Drift, but that's less "some car wizards learn this one skill" and more "learning this skill makes you a car wizard.")
 
@BESW Can they have a "Fast" skill and a "Furious" skill? :)
 
(the proto-slant was Drift, Redline, Gap, and Handbrake, so)
 
@MarkWells That'd be a Lasers & Feelings hack, which might be interesting but would need a "Family" mechanic as well.
 
@BESW Obviously that's your laser feelings. Tell the GM how you connect with another PC and ask one question.
 
8:54 PM
Grant Howitt wrote The Rapid and the Righteous, which I'd like to try some time but on paper doesn't seem to quite capture the tone I'd go for--I'm still trying to figure out what's missing/different.
 
9:04 PM
@BESW Starting with anything lower than a 3 in a stat is going to make the game very stop-start and make it very difficult to actually get momentum and imrpove
But if you do not give each stat at least 1 point, you will be unable to succeed in that stat (you will roll 0d6)
So that part's just broken
I'd have the stats start at 2 2 1 in any order you choose, and give you 3 points to distribute
Or start at 1's and give you 5 points to distribute, but you can't give more than 3 to a given stat at this stage.
So that's your choice of +3 +2, or +3 +1 +1, or +2 +2 +1.
 
I suspect part of the challenge is that the F&F films have some of the most aggressive genre/tone drift of any modern film franchise.
Any ruleset will either dramatically fail to fit some of the films, or it'll be so generic and bland there's no point in using the ruleset.
 
@BESW That aspect makes it a better fit for a system with D&D-like progression. At level 1 you're racing tuned-up Honda Civics; at level 10 you're figuring out how to drift a nuclear submarine.
 
[scribbles notes] "Nuclear... drift..."
 
Level 20: Multi Track Drifting?
 
(yes, that is the subtitle of F&F 10 :) )
 
9:13 PM
("Nuclear Drift" would also be a good name for a band. Maybe a Fallout Boy wannabe.)
 
Too many riots over people saying "noo-clee-urr"
 
Or if you're using FATE, some stunts that unlock as you progress that let you use your basic drive/fight/wrench skills ("wrench" is the one that Rapid & Righteous missed) in increasingly inappropriate situations. Like a stunt that makes anything with wheels count as a car.
 
@MarkWells It's not used much in modern Fate, but pre-Core versions of Fate often had gated stunt progressions, like D&D's feat trees.
 
@BESW SOTC is what I was thinking of here, and had several stunts of the form "you can substitute this skill for other skills"
 
Yeah, Core has that formula too.
 
9:17 PM
like "substitute Gambling for Deceit, as long as what you're doing is 'bluffing'"
 
Hmm. That would be a great use of significant/major milestones for someone like me who doesn't like numerical progression.
Whenever you hit a major milestone, unlock a new skill you can take stunts to use inappropriately; whenever you hit a significant milestone, you can take a new "inappropriate" stunt for a skill you've already unlocked.
Or something like that. I still don't have the hang of the narrative beats on higher milestones because I don't like their default implementation.
 
9:41 PM
@BESW I am finding those here and there post-Core, but usually I see them as suffering even more from what 80%+ Stunts seem to suffer from: in the long term, Refresh is just better. Except with Stunt trees it's felt even stronger because you can't just pick and choose freely, you often have to take a very underwhelming Stunt to get the one you deem worthy.
(When I say Refresh is better, I imply that one already has the right set of Aspects that allows appropriate Invocations in most cases where a Stunt would be beneficial, and the unreliability of Stunts due to the unreliability of situations means that 1 extra FP is roughly worth a Stunt that comes up 2-3 times per session whether it makes a difference or no.)
 
I've removed Refresh from most of my games, in favor of a number of fate points at the start of each adventure and a set number of stunt slots; if you want more stunts, the GM gets an extra fate point in the NPC pool for each one.
 
@vicky_molokh Engaging in "how many FP is this worth" theorycrafting in FATE is missing the point. If you have the "Anything with wheels counts as a car" Stunt, it's supposed to signal to the GM to give you lots of things with wheels that you can street-race like a boss.
 
You can remove everything except the fate point economy and aspects from Fate and still have it be recognizably Fate.
 
@KorvinStarmast oh wow. Things...are not great it seems.
 
@Rubiksmoose Sorry to hear about your holiday mishap. :'(
That sucks.
 
9:53 PM
Yes, our condolences. Though I'm confused what World of Warcraft has to do with it.
 
@MarkWells You say it's missing the point, and yet in my experience as a player, a poor choice of Stunts leads to less moments of awesomeness and loss of narrative balance. A GM engaging in fiatty micromanagement can to some extent mitigate that, but (a) it tends to become more and more contrived as the number of such gifts crop up throughout the campaign and (b) there's a limit to how much a GM will be able and/or willing to engage in such constant micromanagement.
 
@BESW en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOW_air (unless it was a joke, then ignore me)
 
There's two sides of a coin to the matter of Stunt-building. There's the subtle nudges from the GM, but there's also the matter of choosing the ones that would be useful.
> players, when you’re build-
ing stunts that give an action
bonus, look out for situations
that seem like they’d only
come up rarely in play.
> if you don’t think you’ll
use the stunt at least twice in
most of your game sessions,
change the condition associ-
ated with the bonus.
 
I usually encourage players to leave at least half of their aspect and stunt slots (and skill ranks) blank during chargen, to be filled in during play.
 
That [the quotes I brought up] is the other side of the coin.
@BESW That's partially useful. As a GM, I just play very fast and loose with Stunt-swapping between sessions. If people need more than one swap, that's not a problem. The campaign is conducive to that - it makes narrative sense to swap multiple Stunts when swapping bodies.
 
10:00 PM
@Xirema It took me a bit to get around to it, but here is the anydice for your Half-Advantage. (check the At Least Graph, seems pretty middling to me): anydice.com/program/14437
 
As a player, I felt an urge to pester the GM with requests to swap Stunts almost every session until relatively recently, and even that's mostly because I settled on an 'insurance-like' approach to Stunts: I retained the ones which I'd regret getting caught without when I need them.
Nowadays I'm thinking of the Skills-Aspects-Stunts triad, Stunts are the most disappointing in terms of design and worked examples. From my PoV. I may be wrong, but that's the impressions I have from my actual play experience.
 
Mmm. It sounds like your playstyle doesn't really mesh with stunts as presented, though I couldn't say exactly why except that stunts are tied into the fate point economy in ways which probably don't work as well when we devalue compels.
 
Regarding Compels, this is something both I as a GM, I as a player, my GM, my co-players, and probably half the players in the game I GM, are still learning.
I think both campaigns average 1-2 Compels (total, not per player) per Minor Milestone.
 
But, again, it's possible to have something recognizably Fate without stunts or skills.
 
I do think of trying to push more Compels, but worry about overdoing it and resulting in Compels that look narratively forced (I have an example from a film in mind, but fear it may result in a derail).
 
10:11 PM
I've also seen point-free drifts which are kind of interesting but probably not my cup of tea.
 
Oh, I really like the skills. Both the Core list (with which I play), and the Transhumanity's Fate list (with which I GM) [except maybe Academics is missing for completeness' sake].
 
Stunts are definitely the least essential of the Skills-Aspects-Stunts triad, yes
 
Things that drew me to FATE:
- Invocations of Aspects are self-balancing; if an Aspect is useful often, it eats more FP.
- Skill breadth is just about right for my tastes; I consider 15-30 to be the ideal total skill number.
- The dice/number/difficulty mechanics are decent; not sure I'd call them stellar, but I find them convenient and workable.
 
It might also be interesting to try a drift where stunts are only for "break a rule" effects.
 
Those are probably some of the most interesting Stunts.
 
10:15 PM
@BESW Save Game comes pretty close.
But I don't think I've run any games that make people choose between stunts and refresh since Robo popped up.
 
10:33 PM
@Glazius Hard same.
 
yeah if you are going to go about that kind of thing I definitely prefer the way Robo handles it
 
I love shifting it toward the NPC pool so that getting more stunts means you're more awesome... and face more difficult challenges.
Refresh forced an internal balance which made PCs feel constrained in ways that just didn't seem to fit the aesthetic of most Fate games.
 
yeah
 
@BESW I have a series of issues with such a direct causal relationship (and I've seen players with an even stronger aversion to it). I'm about to log off soon, but my issues can be roughly summarised as:
- It's a zero sum game anyway (the party doesn't become more awesome when viewed through the lens of the story and its opposition);
- The causal relationship is immersion-straining, forcing an even stronger omniscient-author-stance than the system does normally;
- Tragedy of the commons (one PC gets the benefit, but the cost is shared by everyone).
I am considering just giving more Stunts in general to everyone (without ramping up the opposition) since they're on the underwhelming side and people only start with three, which can be not enough for characterisation.
I'm off. Good luck everyone.
 
10:56 PM
That third thing is a concern of mine too.
In Atomic Robo's comic narrative it's fine: everyone's happy Robo's there. They don't see it as "because Robo is there, things are more difficult", they see it as "wow, things are difficult, it's such a relief Robo is here to help us with it." But at the roleplaying game table it means one player did a bunch of things that make their character awesome, but I have to deal with the consequences when it results in my far-less-awesome character getting invoked against more when I try to do things.
 
@doppelgreener One stunt that probably provides an FP-equivalent effect at least once an adventure and sometimes up to multiple times per scene, vs one FP per adventure.
But yes, if one player stacks a lot more stunts than everyone else that's potentially a problem... but not one Fate cares about fixing mechanically, talk with your table about whether there needs to be a stunt ceiling.
 
@BESW Sure! For that character getting to do more awesome things. I still see that additional fate point being used against someone else making them less awesome and their character being more awesome. Meanwhile I'm trying not to do this as well because I don't want the GM to have a dozen fate points at their disposal.
There's a number of small feel-bads in there that add up to one bigger feel-bad.
 
I can see that? As a GM I always need to throw the extra FP at the beefed-up PC.
 
It's something I worry about more than it probably happens in practice.
 
That... seems to be common in my Fate experience.
 
11:05 PM
But it's there and means there's a character building option that can be awesome, but if other people are using it too much I don't feel I am able to use it, which feels bad and breeds some low-level resentment. If everyone feels they should avoid it, it might as well not exist. If everyone uses it just a little bit, everything is OK.
 
....I wanna drift Fate stunt templates toward cooperative forms.
 
But the mechanic exists without accounting for this dynamic it creates, and I feel it is an aspect of poor design that it leaves the group to encounter, identify, and resolve this potential trap socially without the mechanic itself or its text doing anything to help with that.
 
True.
There are several places where Fate's replaced Rule 0 with an assumption of healthy self-aware table dynamics.
 
I agree. I think it's very reasonable to expect healthy self-awareness and willingness to discuss things. But I feel this particular mechanic asks for too much of that, as in, it takes a lot of self-awareness to notice it and more than the usual amount of bravery to bring it up.
 
yeah.
 
11:10 PM
Because the lens on it is "Hey I want your character to be less awesome because I don't like that."
 
I feel like an other-player-facing stunt drift would compensate for a lot of issues, that one included.
 
@BESW I agree! If their make-them-more-awesome-than-usual stunts would also help make me more awesome, I'd feel a lot better about that.
And not in the sense that bulletproof means they can defend me from bullets: that helps me, but it is them being more awesome. They're bulletproof! Instead something like...
> Telekinetic boost. Once per scene you can add your Telekinesis skill to an Acrobatics roll someone else is making.
Whoosh! Look at that awesome leap my character just did.
 
Certainly seems like an interesting fix to the problem
 
11:32 PM
Remember Sweetheart's stunt?
> Sapients Helping Sapients. When I invoke an aspect to help a non-human sapients’ roll, I grant a +3 bonus instead of +2.
Or Tegan's?
> Because I have leadership training, I get +2 when Flashily creating aspects to coordinate a plan.
The Hearts of Wulin cover art is complete! This stunning piece is by talented Filipina-American artist, @blue_troller Hearts of Wulin is coming to you from @edige23 and Agatha from @aznsrepresent. The Kickstarter campaign and quickstart rules will be in early May!
James Mendez Hodes' "The Fortune Cookie Incident" has been updated with additional clarification and links AND an audio/video version of the article.
3
 
@DavidCoffron Yeah, that tracks with my results.
 
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