(Keep in mind, I haven't read Core cover to cover yet and I have little experience in FATE games of any kind yet. I just do a lot of work ahead of time.)
> GMs, if you don’t want players to choose between having extras and having the normal stuff available to a starting character, feel free to raise the number of slots all PCs get at character creation to accommodate extras—just make sure that each PC gets the same amount of additional slots.
> A cost is how you pay for the extra, and it comes out of the resources available on your character sheet, whether that’s a skill point, a refresh point, or an aspect slot.
> A permission is the narrative justification that allows you to take an extra in the first place. For the most part, you establish permission to take an extra with one of your character’s aspects...
You don't lose an aspect by adjusting it to qualify as a Permission.
Do Kehrseite-Schlich-Kennen get anything special, like how in DFRPG if you forsake the ability to take supernatural features you get bonus Fate points?
In the "share" dialogue box, click the "change" link in the "who has access" section.
At the bottom there's an "Access" section with a drop-down menu that probably says "can view."
Change that to "can comment" and save the changes.
I suggest that "Wesen Pseud-Science" be made a stunt-activated trapping of "Wesen Lore," but I may not be considering something.
Or rather, that it's a regular trapping of Lore but needs a stunt for the higher effects of it? Most Wesen seem to know the basics.
(On a side note, Grimm potion-making is an excellent example of DFRPG's thaumaturgic casting mechanics in action.)
(They all work together to maneuver to place aspects on the ritual: Monroe uses Scholarship to place Did the Research, Nick goes off to fight something so he can place The Right Ingredient, Rosalee provides a workshop and often some kind of Ritually Prepared aspect.)
(Then Rosalee rolls Lore --or Pseudo-science-- and everyone tosses their free invokes in as needed.)
I was really thinking about Wesen Lore as the type of things in Aunt Marie's trailer: the nature of Wesen, their weakness and the like, plus history ...
> This trapping is at the core of stunts that extend the Deceit skill to do things like stage magic or pick-pocketing. Without such stunts, you may attempt those sorts of things but only in the simplest fashion possible and against markedly increased difficulties (typically at least two or more steps harder).
@C.Ross Compare DFRPG's vast number of Scholarship trappings.
Scholarship runs from Computer Use to Languages, with side stops at Medical Attention and Lab Work.
(All without stunts)
Perhaps you should have the Trailer be more of a Scholarship type thing, as it's much less about ritual and psueudoscience and much more about observed behaviors and stabbings.
[shrug] Might be barking up the entirely wrong tree.
> The Lore skill is about knowledge and education. As with some other skills, it’s called Lore because that fits the particular flavor of our examples—other games might call it Scholarship, or Academics, or something like that.
> If your game has a reason to prioritize different fields of knowledge as being separate from one another, you might have several skills that follow the same basic template.
Lore vs Scholarship. Make it so, Mister Data.
Author/artist Ursula Vernon, on worldbuilding and the difference between interactive and non-interactive worlds: Worldbuilding and the Okapi’s Butt
> And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. - Matthew 16:18 (English Standard Version)
I've got a FAE module I'm building; a DFRPG campaign I'm starting up; a university literary magazine to design; a trilingual social studies book that's insanely past its due date; my duties as study circle coordinator, ABM assistant, and NSA member; all my domestic junk; and I'm going to Israel at the end of next month. [falls over]
@LitheOhm I have no love for platformers or shooters of any kind, with a tiny handful of exceptions. Arkham Asylum is one of them, despite its horrendous design choice to make most boss fights use a camera style that wasn't used anywhere else in the game. Artificial difficulty is lazy and insulting.
Can someone tell me why this: stackoverflow.com/questions/549/… is ok on stackoverflow but I could see that kind of question asked here closed in less than an hour
I'm no expert, but I believe each SE site has a different set of guidelines and standards based on its topics; some sites need to accomodate certain kinds of questions or answers because their subject matter requires it, while other sites need to crack down on exactly the same behavior because it isn't helpful to their subject matter.
Playing RPGs doesn't require the same rigor or unmoveable framework/context as programming, so where a "how to accomplish this programming task" question can be answered objectively, "how to accomplish this RPG task" is usually a very subjective question.
Maybe RPG is more of an art than a science..but I firmly believe some questions here would benefit from being a little more broad since most of the time answers can apply to variants of a question
I haven't been able to put it into an answer format yet, but my suggestion to your question about surprise elements in a campaign would be to let the players walk away.
Yes, there are clockwork things in the world, and yes, this adventure features them. But if the group doesn't find them interesting, there are other things in the world.
It's generally bad form to define an entire campaign without telling the players up front. But surprise elements within a broader campaign, which can be given greater or lesser focus depending on player response, is fine.
Also, I've found that players are often very willing, if approached collaboratively, to have their PCs stumble around cluelessly if the players are in on it.
If you think of the players as participants and audience members, rather than characters in the story, you'll see parallels like how in TV shows and movies often the audience will be shown the villain's plans long before the heroes even know there is a villain.
When I was preparing an undead campaign for 4E all my players created divine characters specialized in exterminating undeads. Their character wouldn't be expecting a rising..but they..the players did
Mm. I'd call them on that, but I'd make sure to remember that it's also an indication of how they expect me to behave.
If they think that the only way to have fun (or to survive) a campaign is to have characters designed to the hilt for effectiveness, that reflects on me: Have I been giving them the impression that I won't scale difficulties to their characters' ability?
If they think I'm going to throw the same zombie encounter at them regardless of their builds, that's a social issue: an issue of trust in the group that needs to be addressed out of the game.
I GMed a game of super heroes and they were all optimized for it..they created THE dream team of super heroes...no flaws..except mind control. Nobody was immune to that..so when a super villain came into play they were angry at me for "exploiting their weaknesses"
@MrJinPengyou The Same Page Tool might help you work with your group to identify points of diversion and bring the group closer together.
It's important to remember that the only way to play an RPG wrong is if people aren't safe and happy (in that order), and that GMs don't get to be the Fun Police.
I adapt my GM style to the group as much as possible. If it becomes clear that I am unable to work with the group to find a playstyle suitable for everything (including myself), then it's time for someone else to step up as GM or for the group to split up and find more like-minded players.
@Jonn_Underwood I ran with a largely unchanging core group in 3.5 for about three years. Then I ran with a much smaller and entirely unchanging but totally different group for a year, after which for a few years the core group grew a tiny bit but we got about a dozen other people coming and going irregularly.
It's amazing how the entire group dynamic can change just by adding a single new player and not losing anyone.
@MrJinPengyou Hope it helps. Take care.
Right now I've got the second-smallest group I've ever run: one and a half players.
Just fell "through" the world, found himself in a place and time of my choosing (foreshadowing something later in the plot, or a major-event location they'd already been to) for a few seconds, and whenever the player returned the PC would pop back in--having been gone for only a few seconds from his perspective.
You're talking about in-game ideology and out-of-game mechanics, and it's up to individual groups how strongly mechanics are tied to the flavor/fluff of the game.
The 3.5 alignment axis is stifling, silly, and causes more problems than it could ever solve because it's a mechanic that players try to treat as an ideology.
"Good" and "Evil" in 3.5 aren't philosophies or attitudes: they're discrete measurable forces with the power to create planes, grant spells, and serve as qualifiers and conditions for actual in-game effects.
There's a level 1 spell that'll tell the difference between "I save babies for Pelor" and "I eat babies for Pelor," so no--it's not a GM decision. It's embedded deeply in the game mechanics.
Which would be easier to swallow (class restrictions, spell restrictions, clerics granted spells by the Force of Law Itself, the whole thing) if the material trying to define the alignments wasn't so awfully mixed up and contradictory even in the same books.
@Azrael GOOD!!!! There is a blog by Chris Perkins (one of the leading editors of WOTC) and in one of his articles he asks what is dumber allowing a chaotic good paladin (which pre-4e is impossible)or to allow half dwarf half elves called dwelfs.
Ok so, an evil city with an evil ruler, that allows the worship of Asmodeus? Or a city dedicated to the infernal realms of Asmodeus as a whole society (similar to how the drow worship lolth?)
@Jonn_Underwood the city is just ruled by an evil King. And most of the nobles there are evil too, they seek power and they oppress the peasants to conquer what they want.
@Azrael As for a more ordinary story for a Pelorian Blackguard, as Sage says once you've been given your divine powers they aren't contingent on good behavior.
Which is why paladins tend to have to go through rigorous training and tests before they're invested with power....
The most common way would not be apostasy, but heretism.
That is, he wouldn't renounce belief in Pelor, but would believe that he had understanding of Pelor's teachings that others don't want to recognize, and this understanding justifies his unusual behavior.
It's usually a symptom of ego, born out of sincere worship.
Last time they traveled to Geistigar, they visited a tavern, owned by two orcs named Drump and Scrump. lol They're brothers, while Drump is good, Scrump is selfish and unaligned. The PCs liked them.
My first session of my last campaign (which ended terribly due to trolls) the pcs invaded an Orc filled dungeon searching for some kidnapped merchants, they never found them, but they met an Old Orc who was the groups chef
The pcs befriended the chef and convinced him to poison the rest of the group of orcs when they came to eat
They want hostages, prisoners to interrogate, slaves, or at the very least they want to keep their food fresh before they eat it. Think Luke and the wampa.
D&D does a very poor job of reminding GMs that defeat does not have to equal death.
But yeah, one of the very first things I learned as a GM was that not only is trying to kill the PCs so easy as to be pointless... it's also not necessary.
My players are overly heroic (thoughtless) to the point that it's hard to keep them alive past level 5, the highest I've ever gotten them was level 12.
I shall read it.
That is hilarious.
That sounds like something one of my players would do.
Well it's pretty late Im gonna go. Thanks for the laugh!
Yeah, thats true. I was looking for something like a Runic Fullblade, since my prefered enhancements in weapons are Frost and Jagged. I'd like to show the DM how is it. Because he asked last time to describe our character's weapons.
It's generally considered good form to link to the image's page, rather than the image itself. Makes it easier for the artist to get credit for their work, and hotlinking is rude.
It's generally good to not bypass a site's ability to record pageviews (because their profits are usually directly based on that), and anyone trying to track down where your image or info came from will be happier if you give a full page link.
Digger has got to be one of my favorite graphic novels of all time, and she's got a lot of worldbuilding gems stuck away in her blog and the blurbs on her art.
Her specialty is putting Ordinary People in Weird Circumstances and having them react in Reasonable Ways.
