In my continuing quest to understand FATE without actually reading the system (>.>) I wanted to do something that the Legend folks did with me, where I describe a scene or, in this case, link a video
And then ask how it might have been modeled at a FATE table
@doppelgreener I'm perfectly aware of its existence, yes.
In any event, since the video will be posted and kept here when BESW returns
Presume that the first two characters you see and their team (that is, the fox-girl, the knight, the guy with the shotgun, the cat-man, and the man with the lantern) are the PCs
Running through the woods: Overcome actions to move more than one zone per turn. Probably one of them sacrifices her turn to give the other a +1 on the roll and they move together.
Then they have a quick chase Contest: opposed Overcome checks to represent movement through the forest. First group to win three checks wins.
Paladin is using skills/approaches to plough through obstacles, while Ninja and Catwoman are making rolls for more nimble "parkour"-like Overcome actions.
Right. The GM narrates the obstacle or terrain and they choose how they'll roll to move through/around it.
Paladin stops to attack Ninja: that's the Create an Advantage action, trying to slow her down and give them a free invoke against her.
Then it turns out Ninja has another character on her side in the contest!
...wait, no.
Probably Ninja rolls the winning Overcome check, which means she decides the outcome of the chase.
She says "I led them right into my trap," and the next conflict is on.
But because she won the chase, she gets to have Axeman join this time: she wasn't running away, she was running toward.
Now I'm confused about the two dudes and which is which in some of the upcoming scenes.
[watches again]
Okay, Axeman rolls Create an Advantage vs Paladin and gets style. He places Disarmed on her, and uses the style bonus to slide her one zone use a stunt that lets him place the resultant boost on someone else, knocking Catwoman Prone.
@BESW the entire video is probably worth assuming that there are 5 players each with a character, some of which only become active later, and there are 5 NPCs, same again.
or 10 player characters.
or, forgetting players/GM, just... 10 characters, whose controllers appear to have them enter the action at different points for whatever reason.
Axeman uses the free invoke on Prone to attack Catwoman (because boosts fade faster than full situations aspects), and Paladin defends in her place. She rolls amazingly poorly, and takes the attack.
Normally Paladin really shouldn't have died so quickly, but I have a theory.
If you fail Overcome actions, you can choose to instead succeed at cost.
Running in full armour through the woods, Paladin got a lot of failures and voluntarily took stress as cost in order to keep up.
@BESW Or, he has an aspect which lets him justify providing active opposition. I can't remember what happens in the video that you're describing, but it could be: "I have a net gun out, so I'm going to oppose her attempt to disappear by attempting to snatch her up with a net!"
@Lord_Gareth Yeah, so he's dumped basically ALL his stunts and Refresh and aspects into that bad boy.
That means he gets bonuses to rolls with it; it has a weapon rating (bonus stress if he hits with an attack); he can spend Fate points to justify having the exact right Wacky Ammo loaded; and he's added all the trappings to the Shoot skill.
Meanwhile, Bête finds someone tasty. I got nothin', it's offscreen.
Lamplighter uses Create Advantage to give his attacks fire, to justify setting things On fire if he gets style.
Axeman and Lamplighter exchange Attack/Defend with little productivity.
Probably Lamplighter loses some stress? Looks like it.
Catgirl is trying to create an advantage on herself, probably I have cover, but Poison Ivy is opposing it with a plant-related skill.
Catgirl, irked at being denied her usual duck-and-scream strategy, throws a glowstick at Poison Ivy (umm, either Shoot with a magical flavour, or she's got a custom casting skill--maybe a custom trapping of Will?).
Ivy uses her plant skill to defend, but fails miserably and Catwoman describes it as ripping through the summoned plants and boomeranging for a double-whammy hit on Ivy.
NPCs usually don't take a lot of consequences unless they're going to be major recurring characters.
So yeah, the GM gave up on her as a bad job.
Then... Ninja and Bête in the trees. This could be any number of different mechanics...
I think they're doing opposed checks to drop each other out of the trees. Probably a contest, mechanically like the chase scene: a series of opposed Overcome checks, first to three successes wins and pushes the other out of the trees.
In the DFRPG book Your Story, under "Enchanted Items" it states that:
Subsequent enchanted item slots allow you to:
Create a new enchanted item with a new effect
Add +1 to the strength of the default effect on an existing enchanted item
Add 2 to the uses per session for an existing enchanted ...
Okay, so the Titan enters by using Create an Advantage to get a free invoke on one of its own character aspects. Probably something like Intimidating hulk.
I think it succeeded with style and got two free invokes.
Ahah! Catwoman was far away. She uses Overcome to move a few zones so she's in range with her glowstick attack.
But moving more than one zone isn't a free action, so that's her turn.
Hunter uses his turn to Create Advantage: Exploding Ammo.
Titan makes an AoE attack: -2 penalty to attack, but everyone in his zone has to defend against it.
Guess who's in his zone? Catwoman gets taken out by Titan's AoE before her turn comes around again; the glowstick attack prep is purely narrative, as in "I was just about to!"
Going with the "Hunter spent all his resources on tricking out his gun" theme, let's say part of his Gun extra is that he can create aspects on it to override specific resistances and armours.
Exploding ammo overrides Titan's armor:2 vs physical attacks.
Hunter uses Shoot to attack Titan.
Titan takes stress. Titan dislikes taking stress.
Titan uses Create Advantage to place Broken gun on Hunter.
I strongly suspect Titan has a stunt which lets him deal two hits of automatic stress when he gets style on Create Advantage, instead of getting a boost.
Hunter, already having taken stress in the fight, takes a consequence.
@doppelgreener Right, that.
....Then Hunter spends ALL his Fate points on... I'm not really sure what skill that'd be. Something like Mechanics, with an unusual justification for using it to attack.
IE: Catwoman is generally more comfortable in non-conflict scenes, and when faced with conflict prefers to turn it into a contest to reposition the fight to her advantage.
In this case, however, Axeman wins the chase contest and narrates it as her coming to a cliff.
Remember those Fate points Paladin picked up for conceding in a conflict where she'd taken consequences?
Spend one to be in the right place at the right time.
Then she rolls big on an attack: perhaps she'd spent some of the previous time off-screen using create advantage actions to prep for it and get free invokes?
Or perhaps she has a once/session autowin stunt; it's not exactly clear if that's an attack, or a defence action.
I wouldn't be surprised if she has a stunt/extra that says 1/session she can defend on behalf of someone she can see, and any shifts of success on the roll are dealt as damage to the attacker.
Then Catwoman uses her glowstick skill to create an advantage to knock Axeman off his feet. It's only a tie against his Athletics or Physique defence roll, so she just gets an Off balance boost.
But she quickly hands the free invoke from that boost to Bête, who was using his 1/session invisibility stunt to get close.
Bête fumbles the roll and doesn't do much, but he probably deals a little bit of stress to Axeman.
Axeman, poor fool, spends his last Fate points on a quick one-two knockout against Bête because he thinks Bête is the biggest threat.
Then someone says to Catwoman's player "You've been taking a lot of compels on that Don't fight when you can't win trouble. That's a massive pile of Fate points you've got!"
Catwoman uses her glowstick skill to attack Axeman. He's out of Fate points, and she's been taking compels all session to run instead of stand her ground. She tosses handfuls of Fate points at him, and he goes down like a sack of bricks.
I had to invent a lot of stunts and extras on the fly to accommodate stuff that wasn't easy to model using default actions, but Fate is all about stunts and extras breaking the usual rules--especially in settings like this.
@Lord_Gareth It's just an idea.
I have players who like crunch, and players who don't. Fate lets each player customise crunch for his own character.
Someone like Catwoman probably has more Fate points at her disposal for generic use, while Hunter has a lot of power poured into one particular action context.
So while he has a TON of utility using the Shoot skill, Broken gun nixed his utility hard and he had to create creative and self-destructive to compensate against something that, with his gun, he could probably have take out.
By contrast, Catwoman didn't seem to have a lot of always-on bonuses and extra abilities.
Kitwoman had good stunts for her playstyle, and instead of spending Refresh on stunts, she kept it for Fate points so when it counted she could boost any roll she needed to (instead of having only certain rolls auto-boosted).
Refresh is the major chargen resource: you start with three Refresh and three stunt slots.
If you want more than three stunts, or to build extras, you need to spend Refresh to do so.
But for every point of Refresh you don't spend, you start the session with a Fate point.
I suspect that LoL game was high-powered, starting with four or five Refresh for chargen.
If they all had their stunts and extras defined beforehand, it'd be easier than if they were creating things on the fly.
So assuming pregens or established (not-first-session) characters... complicated to track all the temporary aspects and free invokes being thrown around, but with good tracking protocols (index cards, portable white board, etc), it'd be a ton of fun.
I had trouble tracking initiative in the video and eventually just gave up, but at the table that'd be more obvious.
G'night!
@Lord_Gareth I've never run that many equally-story-important NPCs on the table at one time in Fate, because normally they'd be more than just combat fodder and tracking the story between them all (and doing the voices) would be too hard for me to do well.
@doppelgreener It occurs to me that modelling PCs from LoL/WoW/TF2 characters might be a good way to experiment with the hack-and-slash Fate concept.
These may also be invokable/compellable: "Because you have Fearlessness, of course you'll accept the challenge."
@BESW Yes :)
Build of an Ox
It might be useful to give the players certain staple names, like this:
You are a warrior. This means you are: - huge and imposing - incredibly strong, with impressive muscles - frightening - used to solving problems with your fists or weaponry
Pick 3 of these, describe each in one or two words, and assign it as an approach.
Oh right. Pick a skill package, assign scores to skills accordingly.
A Warrior is +3 Fighting, +1 Defending. A paladin is +3 Defending, +1 Healing. A cleric is +3 Healing, +1 Fighting. A barbarian is +3 Fighting, +1 Frightening.
And a Pyromancer is +3 Burninating, +1 Frightening.
and they all get the skills in those packages, or can come up with their own thing.
This ought to work really well. It allows for a hack-and-slash feel, whilst also breaking free from classes -- is the above a druid or a ranger? -- yet allowing you to keep the feel of them, because you make up your own basically.
@BESW [slides up close, raises an eyebrow] Would theeeeeyyy...?
The difference is small and you could say you're either with either set! :)
though we could nevertheless package up a couple of classes: RANGER: Wilderness +3, Caster +2, Rough and Tumble +1 DRUID: Caster +3, Wilderness +2, Leader +1
If we have someone pick three modes (for a +3, +2, and +1), then a skill in all three modes is going to wind up at +3 +1 +1 = +5. If they pick four, they can get up to a +6.
This means if we make a skill common among modes, it's going to easily end up at +5, even perhaps just by coincidence. Likewise if we make it only appear in one or two modes, it's going to be at +3 or +4 maximum.
Yes. Something tells me... - there should be a maximum of a dozen modes, so as to allow the party to diversify, but not be so erratic that they each excel in mutually exclusive scenarios (like, the scenario where nobody can accompany the rogue because they'll just knock over the weapon rack.) - most skills will be in 2-3 modes. - if it's in 3 or more, that's a sign we either want someone to get up to +5 in it, or that it's a staple thing most people should be good at, or we're not making enough diversity available.
There will be 12 modes: Rough & Tumble, Sneaky, Caster, Wilderness, others. Each mode has one offensive approach: Blades, Burninate, Shoot. (Each of those will be in 4 modes?) Each mode has or two unique approaches, which it and only it can do. Each mode has one or two approaches shared by 1-2 other modes.
That ensures some viability, and consistency between skills. It also makes it likely someone will be good at attacking.
also ensures some overlap so people can specialise
It was a good read, seemed intuitive. It was nice to see that you only had trouble coming up with mechanics when there was more than one valid case and there were questions of use/efficiency rather than 'Does this even exist?'. Was unreasonably happy about, "he succeeds with style, so he says, it was a smoke bomb!"
That actually kinda reminded me of a thing from an interactive webcomic, where the party Spy had an ability called "I'm holding the detonator" that let her blow up a creature she'd touched recently
It was something like "Once per session I can spend a Fate point to blow up an unnamed NPC I've previously dealt at least one stress with a physical attack this session."
"Smoke bomb" was super-obvious. The smoke lasted such a short time, it basically had to be a boost.
So after the sheriff was beaten black and blue (took a mild consequence Lost my badge and a medium consequence Beating of a lifetime, as well as crossing off his highest stress box), he conceded the fight. The outlaw got the office, and the sheriff got to limp away. Well, get dragged away.
And he got two Fate points, one for each consequence he took during the conflict.
(And at the start of the conflict I'd bribed him with a Fate point to say the Deputy wasn't around to help.)
Towers fight back, but only target you IF: you're the only target in range (so you attack them with NPC minions in tow to prevent this) and/or you dealt damage to a champion allied to the tower while in its range
Which means that until/unless you get really tough, fighting a guy under his tower means you're getting your ass beat 2 ways
Nexuses are the game condition. They also don't fight back, but they have 2 towers in front of them that are only vulnerable if at least 1 of the team's 3 inhibs is down
> Bronze Rule of Fate: You can treat everything like a character.
It's also called the Fate Fractal: player characters have maximum mechanical complexity. For everything else in the world, use portions of PC complexity from none to full, as needed for the story, to represent the interaction of those elements with the players.
It might be somewhat interesting to get something together to model a League game in FATE, provided we displayed the backside of the lore. Or the former lore, but
Since LoL champions have well-defined, agreed-upon powers (I assume), it'd be easy to give Kitwoman the skill Glowstick +4 and have its scope be readily apparent.
Wars between two ancient enemies threaten to tear the world apart with the might of the magics used and the taint left behind. To counter this, a powerful third party proposes and enforces an alternate: the Institute of War. Conflicts are resolved through limited matches between champions that represent their nations, with the victor in the match gaining whatever political or temporal concession was in dispute
(For the record, it's almost 1am and the only reason I'm up is that I just helped my dad out of bed for the third time in an hour and a half, and I'm waiting to see if he needs help getting back in.)
I wasnt surprised to see leona (despite being a big leona player) but it makes sense from a marketing perspective since she is clothed head to toe and off sets the general comic book style design most of the other female champs have
In the DFRPG book Your Story, under "Enchanted Items" it states that:
Subsequent enchanted item slots allow you to:
Create a new enchanted item with a new effect
Add +1 to the strength of the default effect on an existing enchanted item
Add 2 to the uses per session for an existing enchanted ...
