TRPG General Chat

trogdor

00:00

@doppelgreener either way, I saw a white guy with "sunglasses at night" syndrom

doppelgreener

@trogdor he is a white guy with "sunglasses at night indoors" syndrome.

trogdor

lol

it has progressed

doppelgreener

he probably insists on seeing movies in 3D, so that he can wear the dark polarized glasses

Miniman

00:32

@nitsua60 Interestingly, all of the telekinetic spells are in transmutation - there might be a history there.

nitsua60

00:53

@Miniman I guess the old 1e/2e idea of "alteration" as the school, rather than "transmutation" makes a little more sense... "transmutation" feels really specific to a change in substance, as opposed to the change in state or location that the alteration spells often accomplish. (Levitate, knock, and magic mouth, "darkness*, irritation, shatter, fly, haste, Leomund's tiny hut, ... all alterations.)

(2ePHB p.238 has a nice list by school)

BESW

@nitsua60 I'm reminded of the third-least-stupid idea in Battlefield Earth, which is vehicles that 'fly' by performing thousands of micro-teleportations in rapid succession for the entire 'flight.'

nitsua60

@BESW I've not (yet) seen it. Which, given my disturbing-to-those-close-to-me near-obsession with a certain let's-go-ahead-and-say-"religion," is kinda surprising.

BESW

@nitsua60 Oh, I'm talking about the book. The film is watchable only as an exercise in fractal failure.

They leave out anything from the book which might have made it even "fun" bad. Like the race of shark lawyer aliens.

Then again, they leave out most of the book's dogmatic rhetoric too.

trogdor

lol, micro teleportation

that sounds like a really inefficient use of power at the very least

BESW

"Least stupid" is a low bar for that novel, and that particular bit isn't the least stupid thing in it.

nitsua60

01:07

@BESW a bit late, but "Third Least-Stupid" would be a good name for a lot of things.

3

BESW

You're not wrong.

BESW

02:09

@JacquelineEvans Hi! You'll need 20+ rep on any SE site to type in chat, but you're welcome to hang out until then.

BESW

08:34

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doppelgreener

11:40

@BESW was there anything ever said about why they didn't just perform one big teleportation, or did that go unexplained and un-lampshaded? (given the material, doesn't seem like an unrealistic chance)

BESW

@doppelgreener I don't recall.

doppelgreener

@BESW Shark lawyers. Slightly more subtle than shark investors.

BESW

An entire race of shark-people whose culture is dedicated to being the lawyers for the bad guys.

doppelgreener

@BESW that's quite the specific setup.

BESW

The film is only the first... almost half of the novel.

And even then it's seriously cut down. The novel is crammed to the gills with insanity.

doppelgreener

11:46

Dan and I watched a few minutes of Battlefield: Earth at some point. We talked about it, at some point I shared what you'd said about dutch angles, and then at each cut we started saying whether it was a dutch angle or not. that sounded like this: "dutch angle... dutch angle... dutch angle... flat, no wait, dutch angle.... flat angle - really? oh wow, look at that. dutch angle..."

BESW

It's much, much worse than the "soft focus on a woman" game with original Star Trek episodes.

doppelgreener

this situation is not one i'm aware of

BESW

Mmm. For a very long time, there was a common strategy to use soft focus on women, especially in romantic scenes but also just generally.

doppelgreener

what's "soft focus on women" mean?

BESW

Sometimes that mean actually defocusing the camera, but there were also soft filters and sometimes smearing something like vaseline on the lens.

doppelgreener

11:53

ohhh, i think i know what you mean now.

keeping the camera lens slightly out of focus on the women, especially to give them a sort of glowy radiant look if they're in bright light?

BESW

Among other things, it gave the woman a slight aura and helped obscure any wrinkles or other blemishes.

Yes.

doppelgreener

i wonder what kind of responses that garnered in the 60's.

BESW

Here, have a trope page.

doppelgreener

that technique was used in The Princess Bride during the dream sequences, I'm sure of it.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Not just the dream sequences, I'm sure of it.

doppelgreener

12:00

@Miniman Yeah, maybe a number of other scenes too.

Buttercup's deliberately romanticized in that film.

nitsua60

14:26

@BESW @Shalvenay question asked

nitsua60

14:49

Confirmed: GM has more power than Vice Principal or Blockbuster Store Manager.

doppelgreener

15:52

@nitsua60 Denied: GM must still answer to Vice Principle or Blockbuster Store Manager per source cited, unless of course suitable bargains and contracts are struck.

Joshua Aslan Smith

lol

@nitsua60 regarding your DW levelup question, I think that while DW is certainly inspired by D&D and has things like gold and hit points and whatnot that I would not use D&D and the like as a rules inspiration for DW.

doppelgreener

I agree with that. As far as I know, Dungeon World was made to feel like D&D, not play like D&D.

e.g. as expressed by SSD over why Ability Scores exist in DW:

16

A: What are ability scores (not modifiers) used for?

There are a very few things actual scores are used for… but they're nothing that needs scores from a design perspective, since they could instead be based on the modifier, right? The reality is that they exist only as a nod to, or (depending on how you look at it) a holdover from D&D itself. Why...

Dungeon World isn't "play D&D but in a different system", it's "play the kind of fantasy adventure you'd play in D&D, in a system that feels sorta like you're still doing D&D, but one that's probably more fun for doing that fantasy adventure."

(I haven't actually played Dungeon World, but this is what I've gathered from osmosis.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

16:08

@doppelgreener just wrote it up as another answer for that question

the first guy summed up the DW rules angle pretty well, but I could philosophise about it

@doppelgreener your description is pretty spot on

D&D without all the problems of D&D

nitsua60

@doppelgreener (crap--read too fast. Probably another Good Reason To Kill....)

@JoshuaAslanSmith It came up because when the question was asked my immediate thought was "why wouldn't you be able to?" But I figured if my player was wondering, perhaps others inculcated in D&D traditions might wonder, too. I like your answer, for its treatment of the larger issue (draw things from D&D without being D&D).

Joshua Aslan Smith

Yeah I can totally understand that

my like first dozen sessions playing DW over a few months I kept defaulting into 4e mode for stuff

calling out moves I was doing

pre-emptively rolling dice without being told by the GM

had to unlearn a lot of stuff and focus on the fiction but it was great

nitsua60

16:25

@JoshuaAslanSmith ditto on a lot of fronts

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 [nervous sweating]

nitsua60

@doppelgreener Just don't throw away my Legos, man =|

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 Whoa now, I don't think even someone who's Classic Disney Evil would throw away someone's lego. You can keep those.

Joshua Aslan Smith

yeah, im picturing a set of built sets on display on shelves

doppelgreener

On a more serious topic though, I've seen a video of a teenage kid begging his dad not to destroy his collection of video games - while his dad's climbing up onto his lawnmower-tractor-thing. He starts it up and in a matter of seconds the whole pile of games is driven across and turned to shrapnel. That kid, man. That was an upset, unhappy kid.

Joshua Aslan Smith

16:34

reasons to PC game, digital distribution means your vidja game collection cannot be destroyed

nitsua60

@doppelgreener Now, I don't have a teenager (yet), but my first reaction is... by the time this is happening so many other things have gone wrong in the relationship that I'm just cringing.

But check back with me in ten years, when I've got three of them =\

(and take the keys to my tractor)

doppelgreener

16:50

@nitsua60 I think so too, tbh

I don't think there's a situation where it's healthy to take something your kid's really into and destroy it.

Well, unless they are doing themselves major harm and desperately need intervention so they can function at all.

What you really need to be able to do is talk to them, set up structure that promotes positive activities and de-emphasizes unproductive ones, and reach a point where either having the problem stuff isn't a problem anymore or where they're okay with parting with it because they recognise it's a problem having that stuff.

If you don't have the parent/child relationship at a point where you can engage with them over that stuff, something's definitely gone seriously wrong somewhere.

and really, having a healthy relationship with their parents is so important for a kid it's probably something that'll make them happier overall -- and you'll be able to better appreciate what they're doing and it might not be a problem after all, or they might not seek out problematic behaviours anymore. if neither are the case, at least you're in a better point to talk with them about those behaviours.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 in regards to your comment here:

I'm not sure why if leveling up would take X time-units, then leveling twice would take 2X time-units rather than the 2X+1 time-units that I'd have assumed--perhaps I'm missing something? For instance, I would have assumed that leveling from L3 to L5 would take [(7+3)+(7+4)]=21 hours, not 2*(7+3)=20. Am I missing something? — nitsua60 41 mins ago

mainly this bit:

> I would have assumed that leveling from L3 to L5 would take [(7+3)+(7+4)]=21 hours

I do not think the phrase in the move about downtime is trying to set a specific amount of downtime, unless there's something outside that phrase about downtime that reinforces that it's doing that.

nitsua60

Weird--I read it as setting exactly the amount of downtime needed. It says it right there: downtime >=7+current level.

doppelgreener

I think the phrase "When you have downtime (hours or days) and XP equal to (or greater than) your current level + 7 ..." is not trying to say "When you have [downtime (hours or days) and XP] equal to (or greater than) your current level + 7 ..." as you appear to be reading it. I think it is saying "When you have downtime (hours or days) and [XP equal to (or greater than) your current level + 7] ...".

2

nitsua60

ooooooohhhhh!!!
Okay, I can see that.

"When you've got hours or days, and you have XP>=7+current level..."

doppelgreener

After all, the phrase "when you have downtime equal to your current level + 7" makes no sense. The parenthetical is just suggesting downtime for leveling tends to be in measured in hours or days: it doesn't take months/years (like some stuff from its D&D ancestry), and it isn't "took a few minutes to pump weights at the campfire".

And if we must pay attention to the parenthetical, "when you have hours/days equal to your current level +7" is a phrase so unspecific and vague (so i can take fourteen hours or two weeks?), the apparent exactness of the numerical comparison seems pointless.

@nitsua60 Yeah, so I'm pretty confident that's what the authors are going for.

I get the feeling the amount of time might happily vary between levels too. The new wizard might decide he wants a few days at the academy to reach level 2, but the master wizard might just want to spend a few hours in the archives of the temple you all just raided.

doppelgreener

17:16

(pardon if that analysis was overdoing it, felt like being thorough for the chat record. i could virtually feel the ping with a "but you ignored the parenthetical!" already.)

user61230

Hi, it's your dad calling. It's raining fire again. ...yeah. Yeah, your mom and I are safe. We got the -- huh? Oh, no, there's only a little fire so far. We got the new fire retardant. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we haven't -- we haven't been given an evacuation order yet. ...huh? Oh, yeah, we've got the radio on. Yeah. No. No, hey, don't worry. We'll be fine. We're following firestorm safety guidelines. Yeah. Love you. See ya.

doppelgreener

@Emrakul well at least they're following the safety guidelines

CBredlow

17:55

Does anyone here publish to dmsguild?

Joshua Aslan Smith

18:22

@doppelgreener how dare you make my sentences sound less like an epistolary by Paul.

thank you for the edit in all seriousness

doppelgreener

19:20

@JoshuaAslanSmith you're welcome and my apologies. [edits out remaining grammar in @JoshuaAslanSmith's posts]

doppelgreener

20:38

VTC far too broad, 1 more VTC needed

Joshua Aslan Smith

@doppelgreener ask and ye shall receive

doppelgreener

21:03

@JoshuaAslanSmith thank ye

I have just invited to chat the user who's been asking a few new-to-Fate questions, in case he wants to talk or ask non-main-site-worthy questions. Please do ask us to move to Fate chat if the Fate chatter becomes a bit overwhelming, and do keep an eye out for questions that would be great asked on main site! (If we've already answered them here, even so!)

Joshua Aslan Smith

Thumbs up

BESW

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Miniman

21:29

Oh boy. Using a bounty on their own question in order to ask a completely different question is a new one.

doppelgreener

@Miniman I've flagged it for moderator attention.

Miniman

@doppelgreener That's a good way to go - I've been trying to write a comment, but I'm having trouble expressing it.

doppelgreener

protip: moderators can refund bounties.

A. McCurran

22:03

@doppelgreener This thing you've all stopped talking about hours ago is exactly what I was going to comment when I realised I should come here to check if you guys had sorted it out already. I'm glad I checked.

BESW

[wave] Hi!

A. McCurran

Hello!

BESW

VTC rec question.

doppelgreener

@A.McCurran Glad you found it. :) Probably should've linked that back in comments come to think of it.

lightlazer

Hello

BESW

22:09

Hi! Thanks for joining us.

I do think Masters of Umdaar is a good choice for introduction to Fate.

lightlazer

thanks for your great answers, I am the one bombarding the site with fate questions ^_^

BESW

But are you aware that there is already a Fate version of Eclipse Phase?

lightlazer

yes, I have been reading transhumanity's fate

BESW

Excellent.

lightlazer

nevertheless, as Fate difers a lot from our previous games, my idea was to set a more "conventional" scenario

BESW

22:11

I... haven't actually read it myself yet, it's not something that grabs me though I may harvest mechanics from it.

Yeah, hm.

My group moved from D&D 3/5 and 4e to Fate pretty abruptly, but our first session was a single practice scene that I asked them to help me set up.

The 'zeroth session' stuff in Fate is very important, as it helps set the collaborative tone for the system.

For a quick and dirty introduction, I gave them aspects with blanks, like Gunslinging ____ and Martial ____ for them to fill in, and they chose ranks for their skills as they used each one.

The "half-made character" is a tool I've used to great success with quick-start Fate games since then. It's modeled in adventure modules like Aeon Wave, and I made my own Doctor Who FAE PCs on that principle.

lightlazer

the issue is scheduling game sessions, we may have 2 or 3 every month, so we are always trying to squeeze every session to the fullest, and I know the 0th session is important, but again, it feels like I can have it in our first hour or so, as what we usually do is email suggested PCs and the introductory story so we can show up with our homework done and start playing right away

doppelgreener

Heads up, your first Fate game might seem a bit weird. There's a bunch of mistakes it seems people are prone to making when transitioning from D&D to Fate -- over-focusing on combat and skills, assuming all combat needs to be resolved using the Conflict scene framework, etc.

BESW

So long as the collaboration is happening and everyone is contributing to the extent they desire, it's not crucial that it happens physically at the table.

doppelgreener

A thing I and some friends found was that Fate also doesn't drive your game like D&D does. D&D is usually mechanically pushing the game forward and strongly suggesting what you should do next (generally: if you're not in a fight, find some quests, adventure, or get into a fight; if you are in a fight, follow the combat steps). Fate doesn't have that motor going, since it's mainly there to assist a player-driven story. You'll be the ones driving and defining the story.

The mechanics of Fate will just be there to help resolve certain situations when they need help resolving.

It might be helpful to approach Fate as definitely being unlike other games, and not go for a "conventional" scenario in terms of what D&D and Pathfinder would consider "conventional". Talk with your friends about whether there's a scenario they'd like to play out even if it was freeform without any rules, and then add in Fate to assist you mechanically at points where you need mechanics to resolve things.

BESW

That said, don't worry too much about "doing it right." Fate's very flexible and will bend to your group, and after the session the group can do a post-mortem on what worked and what to change next time.

doppelgreener

22:19

[secret to doppelgreener appearing to type freakishly fast: sometimes doppelgreener actually has a message on clipboard it didn't seem opportune to send, then suddenly it does]

@BESW Yeah. :)

lightlazer

I understand that more or less, but I worry about preparing a story with several scenes and then, because of the unpredictable nature of a fate session, throwing away half of my story

BESW

I try not to prep scenes for Fate games.

doppelgreener

Same. ^

BESW

I prep characters and pressures, and play to find out what happens when the PCs run into those characters and push against those pressures.

lightlazer

okay xD so what is the GM's role before the first ever session? or should everything begin with a 0th session and have absolutely nothing prepared?

BESW

22:22

Because Fate PCs follow the triune qualities of Competence, Proactivity, and Drama, about the only scene the GM can be sure of controlling at all is the first one.

doppelgreener

I prep by figuring out who the primary characters are who'll show up in that session or surrounding sessions. I think about who the antagonist(s) are, who their friends are, who their employees/comrades/lackeys/(whatever's applicable) are. I think about their motivations, their desires and needs, their character flaws, etc. I think about scenes that might happen and roughly how they might happen, but all of this is mainly to just help me improvise.

BESW

Before the zeroth session, think about what ideas you want to suggest--the GM is co-conspirator and co-collaborator in Fate, working with the players to make dramatic and interesting things happen to the characters, so your ideas are just as important in session zero.

If there's something you're really attached to, that's okay--other players may have things they're attached to, too.

If you know your players, you can anticipate some of the things they'll like and how you can be a fan of those ideas.

(I add dragons, or at least something reptilian, to almost every game @trogdor is in, because I know it makes him happy.)

lightlazer

ok. got it

BESW

(And if at all possible I make sure there's a playable reptilian option.)

lightlazer

so it seems fate is not very suitable for one-shot games, right? it seems to shine when collaboratively creating a whole setting and adventures

BESW

22:26

It's been my experience that Fate is... harder to play in one-shots, unless you're using at least some pre-made material.

For example, if the whole group agrees on a pre-made setting like Masters of Umdaar or Doctor Who, that makes the zeroth session work a lot faster.

lightlazer

pre-made material and example adventures was what I was looking for for getting an idea about how a fate game flows

BESW

I've found that all Fate games benefit from starting with a half-empty character sheet that you fill in during play, but it's especially good for one-shots because it cuts down on prep time at the table.

You've found the Worlds of Adventure for Fate, and I can't recommend those enough. There's transcripts of our FAE playtesting games here if you want to see some people fumble through learning the system in a chat game.

doppelgreener

When I ran a session about a (previously-met) velociraptor advisor, I prepped these things:

- what's this velociraptor advisor like? what's her personality like, especially now that her sister's dead (the PCs having indirectly caused her demise several days earlier)?
- she's totally got her sister's Strange Artifact and combined it with her own Strange Artifact! what's that like?
- what kinds of creatures are in her amy right now? (I decided: various kinds of lizards, from chameleon-types to big lizard grunts)

BESW

(Scroll to the bottom for the "EF" conversations.)

lightlazer

that sounds a lot of fun xD

I feel I may need to improvise a lot too, but don't want to pause the game for too long

BESW

22:32

One of the cool things about Fate is that it gives 'permission' to the GM to invite collaboration.

If I'm having trouble coming up with something on the spot, I'll ask my players "I can't decide between these two options, what do you think?" or "I'm having trouble coming up with something really cool here, did you have something in mind?"

And the mechanics reinforce this, as some of your answers have mentioned.

Invite players to spend Fate points to declare that something's true, and then you can use that as a seed to build on.

Or if someone rolls to notice a thing, ask them to tell the group what they see.

(Often that works best with a leading question like "Who is hiding in the shadows?" or "Why is the guard nervous?")

lightlazer

so the player himself comes up with whatever he finds, be it a trap or a hidden treasure chest

BESW

Absolutely. Sharing that narrative control is part of the game. Fate points and successful rolls are the system's way of letting the player grab control over what's true, not just over what their character is doing.

lightlazer

how can I deal with players coming up with situations that are always (willingly or unwillingly) beneficial to their characters?

BESW

But it's totally okay for the GM to cede that control if it'd be cool to do so.

@lightlazer If they're declaring something beneficial is true, that's gonna cost a Fate point.

lightlazer

coming from a D&D background the idea that their PCs must win is powerful...

BESW

22:38

The fate point economy is very important--it's probably the only part of the system I don't feel comfortable fudging with.

The basic concept is that players earn fate points when they let things complicate their characters' lives, and they spend fate points to simplify or remove complications.

This creates a cycle of crisis and victory in the play, where every problem comes with tools to help solve it.

...and every triumph means spending that resource so you're vulnerable to the next challenge.

This helps break people out of the "my character must always win" paradigm, because it bribes us to fail with the promise of future awesome.

lightlazer

yes, the fate economy is underscored as very important in the rules

BESW

In my Doctor Who game, a player was ready to spend his giant stack of fate points to prevent his PC from getting mind controlled--but when I offered him another fate point to just let it happen, and promised him he'd have fun with it, he happily changed his mind.

I used that to feed him free invokes over the next two scenes, and then gave the PC an order to betray the party. He spent all his resources to make it happen, and it was an awesome, memorable scene.

It would not have been cool if the players hadn't been co-conspirators, watching the drama build in ways their characters were ignorant of.

So yeah, feel free to encourage players to spend fate points to make beneficial stuff be true.

It's awesome, and we're fans of the characters being awesome.

Sooner or later they'll start seeking out awesome complications too, in order to regain fate points. If they don't seem to realise this is a possibility, remind them of it by offering awesome compels when you see a good opportunity.

doppelgreener

@lightlazer Fate is about competent, proactive characters leading dramatic lives. That's a three-pillar foundation (competent, proactive, dramatic). Fate is all about the drama, and losing and facing complications in that system is actually pretty fun - mostly because I get compensation for compels, self-compels, my own aspects getting used against me as an invoke, and if I'm in a conflict scene I get at least one fate point for conceding.

Heck I've had conversations with BESW that generally go along the lines of "I don't think my character's life is going badly enough for them, how can we work together to make everything worse for them?"

BESW

Now, this dovetails into your questions about prep:

I like to start an adventure with a simple, straightfoward problem with an obvious solution, and prepare interesting compels to make the situation more and more complicated as the session progresses.

This is how we started with investigating a power fluctuation in Hollywood, and concluded one session later with all LA blacked out and William Shatner leaving the Solar System on a psychic projection of the Enterprise.

doppelgreener

@BESW I still remember that scene. Jeez that was fun when he was ordered to turn on us, and he folllowed through with panache.

BESW

22:52

@doppelgreener It helped that the Nestene Consciousness had ordered Leela to kill the one PC in the party who couldn't actually die, but would just regenerate with one of his aspects changed. That made the stakes important without forcing one player to win and another to lose.

lightlazer

lol, fate sessions seem a wonderful place to create stories for fantasy novels

BESW

Fate's definitely tapping into certain narrative concepts--the crisis/victory cycle in particular.

I consider it in many ways a manifesto describing the qualities which create a particular kind of fun story.

doppelgreener

@lightlazer Part of the reason the players must always win in D&D is that it sucks to lose. When you lose, well, that's all that happens - you lose stuff, people die, you're set several squares back in your goals, things suck, people are unhappy. A pretty great DM might be able to spin it positively or make good things happen as a result. In Fate, losing is often in itself an awesome reward, even if there's no positive spin on it.

I had a character dragged under the surface of a desert made of glass while she was engangled to the side of a sandworm. I have various ways to handle this situation and the damage it's demanding my character inflicted, and I chose one of the worst options available because it was fun.

BESW

@trogdor's character was once taken out in a big fight with a shapeshifting villain, so the fallout was that he got to play the villain pretending to be his character for the rest of the adventure.

doppelgreener

I could've had her make it out of there with a bit of a scratch that would've been over soon -- a mild consequence -- but instead I gave her a medium consequence representing some pretty severe wounds she had to address quickly with first aid once free, and would be dealing with for a while. I chose that option because it generated drama and fun, and because it felt like it'd cheap things out to choose a mild consequence.

BESW

22:56

It was hilarious, since his character had been in the middle of some simmering drama with @doppelgreener's character, and the villain had to deal with that.

lightlazer

hilarious xD

BESW

(This was in Masters of Umdaar, as was the last example @doppelgreener just mentioned.)

lightlazer

do you have games where characters are plotting against each other too?

doppelgreener

Hmm, not yet.

BESW

Not a lot, because of the nature of our group, but character conflict is definitely a thing.

doppelgreener

23:00

Oh, there was that Dresden Files Accelerated game we played though! That almost had us plot against each other.

BESW

Oh, yeah, that was kinda fun. Half the party was wanted by the magic cops for totally different things, so there was a lot of blame-shifting going around when a magic cop showed up in our town.

Once Greener's character was so mad at her father figure (played by Trogdor) that she blew up and got into a shouting match with him in the middle of a scene about sneaking up on an evil overlord's castle.

...that ended with most of them getting captured.

lightlazer

xD

BESW

(And fate points were distributed all around.)

doppelgreener

the "sneaking" part doesn't work so well when you get into a shouting match with your dad (who is, at that point, a Classic Disney Evil villainess shapeshifted into your dad and pretending to be your dad and struggling to figure out what a dad ought to do in this situation)

BESW

Not that her real dad was a whole lot better at being a dad, which is why the charade lasted as long as it did.

In fact, the villainess was probably doing a better job at being a dad in that situation, because she assumed he wasn't totally dysfunctional at it.

doppelgreener

23:04

Villainess dad best dad.

BESW

So, back to prep and improvisation: that scene we're describing wasn't planned. At all.

doppelgreener

Not by me either!

BESW

It was the natural fallout of several different things that'd happened over the last several sessions.

trogdor

@BESW hehehehe

BESW

Greener's character had previously solved a problem "at cost," where the cost was reliving all the traumatic moments of her life over and over and over again, so she was kinda raw on the subject of her childhood and her relationship with her dad.

Trogdor's character had been replaced by a villainess when he lost a totally unrelated conflict in the following session.

And then the session after that we chose to go to a different enemy's castle in order to do a thing only vaguely related to either of those events.

trogdor

23:08

@doppelgreener yeah that was a really weird set of circumstances

doppelgreener

(my character was a plant lady. trogdor's character was the scientist who created her for selfish experimental reasons; he wanted to make sure plant people were possible. in her early childhood, it turned out, there were a lot of not-all-that-compassionate trials carried out to check whether my character would be "viable" as a living, sentient organism, plausibly with her life or wellbeing on the line if she wasn't up to scratch. she'd forgotten most of that.)

BESW

Then through roleplaying, we got to the point where someone said "It'd make sense if this escalated at the worst possible time, and I'll pay Doppelgreener a fate point to see it happen."

lightlazer

nice, I hope to get to that kind of situations where my players are engaged more in the story than roleplaying or powerplaying their characters

BESW

Powerplaying in Fate... doesn't really work. If you have players who want to powerplay, Fate will not be fun for them.

But if you have players who want to try other play styles and need a bit of help, Fate can be useful.

Jan 15 at 20:58, by MadMAxJr

This line here: Worrying about character optimization - In Fate, it is usually better to make interesting choices in character creation than optimal ones.

lightlazer

Well, one of the experienced guys is a bit of a powerplayer, but he is also engaged in roleplaying so I hope to please him too

A. McCurran

23:15

@BESW Why is it better?

trogdor

and just to be clear, Dopplegreener was the one who decided those trials happened

I had not previously established those

BESW

Jan 15 at 20:59, by BESW

It can take a while for people to figure it out, but interesting choices are optimal in Fate.

Building a Fate character for mechanical optimisation is an exercise in futility. Build a character whose bits and pieces you're interested in using, and which mesh interestingly with the other PCs and the setting, and you've got a build where all the bits will get used.

Fate lets concepts like "tiers" of power drop to the wayside unless you're using a system like DFRPG that conspicuously adds them back in. In our Atomic Robo-inspired game we had two plant monsters, a psychic FBI agent, a self-made Jedi, a Thundercat, and... an information technology expert. They were all able to hold their own and be competent but challenged in the same scenarios.

A. McCurran

I had a feeling that was the case, but figured I should ask because I know nothing about the system.

Also the implication that "optimal" choices weren't the best to make felt weird.

doppelgreener

It comes down to this: Fate's about telling super awesome interesting dramatic stories about your characters who are super cool and push past so much adversity to succeed.

BESW

Mechanically, every PC has the same resources. The only difference is how they're framed to give narrative permission to use them.

doppelgreener

23:22

D&D's about killing the dudes, taking their loot, and using it to kill more dudes for their loot and so on.

In D&D, an optimal choice is the one that helps you kill the dudes and take their loot. That means big numbers and insta-kill spells and so on.

A. McCurran

Hm, sounds kinda like Tavern Tales.

Or what Tavern Tales was trying to be.

doppelgreener

In Fate, an optimal choice is the one that leads to super awesome interesting dramatic stories about your characters, and puts them through challenges so they can win out over adversity.

lightlazer

gotta go guys, thanks for all your help, see you around!

BESW

ttfn

doppelgreener

That makes "my character's got unresolved major emotional issues with her dad" an optimal choice.

@lightlazer Bye!

trogdor

23:28

yeah, D&D is definitely not optomized for that being a huge important wrinkle in the story

unless your dad is literally the villian, at which point most of the mechanics for dealing with it are still "kill his minions" (maybe even him too, XD)

doppelgreener

@trogdor i'm totally interested in exploring stuff along these lines with Cassandra and her villain dad (and mom, and family...) one day. :D

trogdor

well, the difference is, in Fate you can more easily decide that other things can be done around that drama

in D&D there are not as many options

doppelgreener

yeah. :D

trogdor

I by no means mean that Fate doesn't let you do the same thing, just that it gives extra things you can do more easily

I mean, even D&D would let you banter with the villain, but mechanically it has way more support for fighting it out

doppelgreener

23:44

fate's just a game that lets the GM say "okay so who wants their character's life to be totally awful for a while?" and the players will go "oh! oh! me! no me! me! pick me!"

in D&D the players would go "uhhhhhh... what? who? why? why are you offering this again? is there a saving throw i need to make to stop this?"

Shalvenay

hey there @doppelgreener

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay Hi!

How've the dungeon world games been going?

Shalvenay

rather well now that we're finally beginning to get the hang of the system

doppelgreener

wonderful :)

Shalvenay

although all this Fate talk makes me wonder what you think would work well for me systems-wise in the sense that my ideal system would basically let me and the other folks @ my table define reality instead of trying to impose its own

Fate seems close but I found myself abusing the absolute crap out of it in the sense that things like the crisis/victory cycle and the Fate point economy attached to it had no home when I last tried to work with the system

doppelgreener

23:59

fate survives and fails by the narrative, and makes very little attempt to enforce the narrative, nor difficulties, nor what's going too far or not going far enough.

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