Present, very specifically, your situation (like the physical constraints of your gaming landscape, how many aspects you need to deal with at once, and how often they change).
For example, I have three players in my living room and two Skyping in on my TV. That'll change my needs significantly compared to someone doing a fully online or fully physical game.
The thing is, I haven't actually played Fate yet, but I'm really ramping up to it. I know premature optimization is the root of all evil, but I have some players that need to be hooked on the first session or they will be gone forever. So I want to make sure the whole Aspects-on-the-table thing is clear to everyone. What type of aspect it is (color code it?). Who has free invokes on it? What is the Aspect attached to? Things like that
@Pixie Thanks, will read it before I go ahead with posting a question.
@BESW I think this question and its answers might help me enough to not ask my question at all. Let me assess how much of a match it is with my situation.
Also, this SE is definitely my favorite, most upkept, most friendly and most personable Stack I've been on.
We get a not-insignificant number of protests that our upkeep makes us unfriendly, so it's good to hear from the other side of the user experience sometimes.
And you've got badges which say you're part of the solution, so thanks very much for your contributions in editing, voting, reviewing, and so forth.
We do have an advantage in the number of active citizens; it's enough that response times are good, but not so much that each item gets pushed off the main page before it gets attention.
Not that I would leave! But, for example, I could probably answer questions on English Language a lot more often than I can answer them here. It is just... a lot more frustrating an experience sometimes, heh.
I sometimes do that; I notice the "hot network questions" when I'm done reading answers and I hop over to the "other side", create an account (which is poop easy since I link everything to my Google account) and answer something there.
I've got I think 26 stacks where I have an account, but most don't really see any action...
I don't know how these stacks are run in the background, administator-wise. There seem to be some design differences between the stack sites. I like how Overflow has a different "My Profile" page, where it marks your progress towards new badges and reputation unlocks. Can we get that here?
@BESW I've actually already read your question and its answers a while ago (I've been systematically crawling through Fate-tagged questions over the last few weeks).
I think my problem is that I have an idea in my head of how I'd like to solve the poker chip and aspect notes on my table, and kind of want some verification from this community, but I know that those are the bad kind of questions to ask...
It's amazing how much you can learn from just reading Q&A. I mean I've yet to finish the entire SRD, and I'm still waiting for my hardcopies to arrive, but reading questions here has already answered so many things for me.
Mostly since Fate rules seem so much more freeform (from what I'm used to: Pathfinder), that I often think of edge cases, most which are covered on this site. It's a great read :)
I'm also a big sucker for Legend of Zelda, and there was a question about throwing clay jars that sucked me into learning about the Fate system. It's funny how that works sometimes.
Now that I'm here in chat... is there a way to "pull" someone into a chat room? I started a room with D7, from his user page in the chat overview page... but I don't know if they get notified about it...
Okay. I need some clarification on D7's answer and I didn't want to pollute the comments any further than what it already is... I missed him by 6 minutes or something... so I hope he gets inboxed about the chat room...
This answer pretty much nails it, and sets up the basic premises of how I'd like to organize it too. But, (and this is my pre-optimization kicking in, feel free to burn it down) I think I need it more granular than that.
For example, I feel the urge to differentiate between the types of Aspects. There are Aspects that are attached to characters, others to the scene / situation. Some aren't even attached to anything (or kind-of attached to the Game aka "Game Aspects"). I think if I just write everything on a sticky note, the table gets cluthered quickly...
When I was really organised and didn't have online players, I used different colours of index card.
All the aspects on one zone went on one index card, and all the zone index cards were one colour (and we could arrange them on the table to indicate how they connected physically).
Boosts could get put on sticky notes and slapped onto the appropriate index card (a zone, or a player's sheet) and then removed later.
With digital players, we mostly just keep a Drive document open and write aspects in it with parentheticals indicating important info like who/what the aspect is on, or how many invokes it has.
@MarcDingena it does. Also, strictly speaking you have tested the join feature and created a new room in the process. It is also possible to invite someone to an existing room.
Sorry, colleague walked over to my desk... I was typing this: So I was thinking about color-coding the notes. Scene and Game Aspects white, Character aspects Yellow (are usually double-edged), Advantages green, boosts blue (or any other color than the ones already used, since boosts are so temporary, need to be able to identify them before they fade away)
This is what our session tracking sheet looks like right now. It's got the remains of a session two weeks ago where a couple PCs (Stellata and Vogue) appealed to their mission supervisor to get a third PC (Myka) un-grounded so she could leave the lab and go on a field mission (via a time portal in her lab which leads to a tropical island three weeks in the past).
So to avoid stocking your Fate "bank" with different types of points, specifically those you're not allowed to use yet, I think using different color poker chips would help too.
The chips in the bag are the bottomless compel pool, the chips in front of the GM are the NPC pool, the chips in front of the player are the PC's pool, and the only thing you have any trouble at all with is where to put the chips that the PC can't use 'til the end of the scene.
If you have any little cups capable of holding your chips but not so big as to get in the way, you could give each player one of those as well. Chips that can't be used yet can stay in the cup.
Those in front of everyone are theirs of course, but if the GM invokes a characters aspect against them, they should receive a frozen point. So the GMs chip goes into the white bowl and the player receives a point from the blue bowl. Then after the scene, blue tokens are traded for white tokens.
I think I'll try the color coded chips. Can let you know how that went. It removes extra props from the table. And even if they start doing chip tricks you are always reminded that chips was frozen until next scene, etc.
Yeah the problem is, I'm preparing for my wedding and all my games are on hold at the moment.... It's a real problem for me because I want to play badly.
@Pixie So, now it is 1/3 Twily, 1/3 Fluttershy and 1/3 Derpy? You know that this really put you at risk of ending up on a shelf surrounded by other plushes if you ever find yourself near a brony convention?
Not that I will need it anytime soon, but how do you arrange this digitally. You mentioned Google Docs... Is that all you're using? Does Roll20 support Fate mechanics?
Access denied to " campaigncoins.com/coins/fate/" according to: - Ericsson Code of Business and Ethics and Conduct and - Monitoring the usage of systems and services
That is why I was here all night again. I was going to go to bed earlier... really. >_> But then I discovered someone had put my freshly washed good comforter with things that were not clean, and I had to wash it all over again. Drying it takes 2-4 cycles. TwT
One of my friends is leaving next week (CJ Boy), and we haven't seen him for a long time, so he's coming over to hang out and play Betrayal at the House on the Hill this Saturday.
I'm not judging, I just don't understand. Although I only know those ponies from way, way back. This looks like it's been drawn recently. You know in terms of art style.
It's well-crafted (good writing, good art, good acting, etc), it's sincere, and by not talking down to kids it manages to also speak to topics which adults generally don't feel comfortable addressing directly.
Most adults who like the current show "Friendship is Magic" don't find that their appreciation casts backwards to any of the earlier franchise iterations.
@BESW I can't talk about the actual stories because I never managed to view a single episode, but I must say that the pre g4 art style for me is a big no.
Lauren Faust is very good at what she does. The show definitely has its flaws, but it is generally well written. It was an honest-to-goodness attempt to craft a quality cartoon. Aimed at girls, on top of that, while actually daring to step outside the cookie cutter mold that American female-targeted cartoons tend to fall in.
(I also collect toys. I actually immensely prefer the old toys and, sometimes, the art style to the new ones. But there is no question that the new cartoon series is far better than any predecessor. :P)
What would seem embarrassingly obvious and trivial to discuss in a show with live-people actors can be addressed seriously when candy-coloured ponies are doing the talking--and that lets the show address very grown-up ideas about identity, community, and relationships in direct, earnest ways which would feel awkward or forced in the mouths of humans.
That it's actually managed to do this, without (much) condescension, on a pretty regular basis, in a show for a franchise that a few years earlier thought "hee hee boys and dresses" was sufficient for its target demographic, is mind-blowing.
The adult fan base has been called part of the "new sincerity" movement, and while I'm not sure that's accurate, it comes close to the truth.
Also, there is another thing I think.... the authors are a big group of "nerds" that in total disregard to the supposed age target group love to disseminate the shows with reference that only people over 20-25 would get.
(But really, the craft is a major draw. Many adult fans were first attracted by the high-quality animation and musical production values. It also has some of the biggest voice actors in American childrens' cartoon television.)
@SPArchaeologist That's not new or unique: good shows and films for kids have known for decades that they need to add in stuff for the parents.
GOOD productions know that they can also do that through the main story and characters rather than throwing the parents little pop culture references, which is where FIM succeeded so spectacularly that non-parent adults started watching.
@BESW I think that mlp is on a total different level with some of the less know stuff.... the final sequence from the Canterlot Wedding is a direct scene by scene replica of the ending of Star Wars episode 3.
Most American (and, really, many western) female-targeted cartoons can be summarized thusly: "Somewhat outcast girl in high school becomes a cheerleader and butts heads with a popular girl who is either outright evil or cluelessly snobbish. Rival is probably an obstacle to a super-cute popular boy. Competition ensues." (Variant: girls form a band instead of being cheerleaders, or do both.)
@Pixie Yup. Astonishment at adults enjoying MLP:FIM is more an indictment of other programming for young girls than of the out-of-demographic FIM fans. Older folks enjoying programming for young male demographics is ordinary and unremarked-upon; the difference is, sadly, that shows for little girls don't usually get an equal amount of effort put into them.
@SPArchaeologist I'd be really fine with Flash if he were --even subtextually-- a way for Twilight to work out her infatuation with her brother and move on to other stallions.
The thing is, not all of the shows in that mold are bad, and girls do like them, sometimes. But the fact that almost every American female-targeted cartoon can be summed up as such, vs the diversity of male-targeted cartoons in similar age demographics, is indicative of a rather large problem.
> A Naco is a combination of nachos and a taco served at Bueno Nacho. It is created by taking nacho chips and cheese, mixing them with the fillings of a taco, placing it all in a tortilla, and lifting up the sides to form the bag-like shape.
@BESW I would be fine with him if he manages to resolve the EG3 problem with the one-that-is-a-spoiler-but-Hasbro-released-as-a-toy-two-months-before-the-premiere-because-they-are-stupid
@Pixie Quick summary: EG has the precise setting that you described before - school, "rival cheerleader", school dance party night and manage to have Twily looking at the standard guitar player boy. Just what FiM was not supposed to be about.
I... kinda liked it, actually. Obviously the whole Equestria Girls tropefest of high school clichés was necessary or the execs would never have let the film get made. So the writers ran with it and wrapped the whole problematic narrative in an alternate-reality dimension where the characters were forced to conform to tropes in order to achieve their real meaningful goals.
All the "gotta be prom queen" nonsense, the cheerleading and all of that, was presented as a set of ultimately meaningless hoops they were forced to jump through to accomplish what really mattered.
FiM is (sadly) unique among American female-targeted cartoons in its strong focus on female friendship rather than female competition, its ability to explore a wide range of problems and situations, and its cast full of competent, diverse women. And it does this while still embracing the fact that it is a feminine series whose primary demographic is little girls.
Twilight didn't give two bits about the dance crown; she was fighting for the magical talisman which gave her power to defend her friends and symbolised her responsibility to the ponies of Equestria.
@BESW I may still give it a chance someday, but from everything I've seen of it, I'm just not entirely convinced. Working in those constraints doesn't mean it's automatically bad, by any means. I don't fault people who enjoy it. It's still part of a phenomenon that irks me, though, applied to one of the very few exceptions to the phenomenon, so I may never get past that.
I can't condemn it too much either, but at the end of the day I am vexed by the fact that it is associated with a show I like 10 times more than I could ever like it
@BESW I seem to recall that someone pointed out some flowers in a vase in the library seem to disappear after the night...
@BESW the real question though is how Celestia managed to have a girl that shouldn't show up in the school list of enrolled students compete for the crown.
