Fate chat and game room

trogdor

05:00

hmm

does it count if I roll melee to SEE what is actually behind the door?

BESW

I'm.... not sure. Group?

Smurfton

How do you melee with your eyes?

trogdor

it's probably the best shot I have

I don't

I melee AND THEN eyes

BESW

I think he's imagining, like, punching a hole in the door.

Miniman

So you're just gonna smash open the door? Sounds good

Magician

05:02

I can see sticking a sword in and prying it open, but that's Athletics

Smurfton

Well, You've Smashed Skulls Thicker Than This Door. Guaranteed victory right there.

BESW

If the group allows you to fist the door, I'll allow it.

Miniman

"If it won’t burn, smash it"

trogdor

@Magician I am talking more, smashing a hole in it

BESW

Like, proving it's flimsy enough to be smashed down easily.

Magician

05:03

@trogdor Still not skill at arms, just brute strength.

trogdor

@Magician I am literally taking a hammer to it like an attack

Smurfton

It's a blunt weapon.

trogdor

it's melee not skill at arms

Miniman

@trogdor Also, you've got 2 aspects on it

Smurfton

In D&D, stone has 8 damage resistance. Should work out.

(I think it's 8 anyway)

Magician

05:04

@trogdor I'd say it's either Athletics or Physique (which we don't seem to have).

BESW

Toughness is Physique re-skinned.

trogdor

I'm not trying to tear down the whole thing

BESW

May I suggest...

trogdor

I am literally swinging a hammer to make a hole to look through

BESW

The hypothesis is basically the solution to the problem.

trogdor

05:06

so,......

BESW

The problem is "can't get through the door."

You've got movable statues that are made for ramming things.

trogdor

mk

BESW

Will the group allow rolling Melee if he uses a statue as a battering ram?

trogdor

seems fair

Smurfton

@BESW Are you trying to say that melee with the statues is a good idea? How would that include the vines?

Miniman

05:08

Ofc

Smurfton

fair.

BESW

@Smurfton That's on him to do. I have some ideas how I'd do it.

So, roll for it @trogdor.

Magician

I don't think the skill fits, but lets move on with it, and see if it actually matters at all, after the roll.

trogdor

4d

Dice Service

•

BESW

05:09

Kove gets +5 Tact (don't mind me)
Calariel gets +8 (wilderness) Lore
Abraxis gets +6 Melee
Thrumin gets +5 (architecture) Mechanics

trogdor

uh

Adeptus

So the facts are: Incredibly Strong Vines, The Statues Are Movable, The Statues Are Great For Ramming Things, and I've Smashed Skulls Thicker Than This Door?

trogdor

pretty sure 8

BESW

@trogdor That stunt is +2 on the Attack action, not the Create Advantage action.

trogdor

ah ok

but free invoke

BESW

05:10

Yup.

trogdor

so 8 anyway

Smurfton

Isn't that an attack?

Not going to argue it, but that's how it feels to me.

BESW

@Smurfton Narratively, kinda-sorta-yeah. But mechanically attack is a separate kind of thing for a different situation.

trogdor

I can go with it

BESW

The mechanical action here is Create Advantage: he's going to place an aspect on the scene which represents the puzzle's solution or understanding.

trogdor

05:11

it's not exactly a weapon

BESW

Calariel and Abraxis are tied; the book doesn't actually say what to do when that happens in the hypothesis round.

Magician

I'll happily invoke Sturdy Vines to solve that :P

Smurfton

Need to go for dinner within half an hour, before everything closes.

BESW

Okay, so Calariel wins with +10. Correct?

Lay a solution on us, Calariel.

> The hypothesis becomes an aspect (replacing all situation aspects created during the brainstorm, as it’s an amalgam of them) with a number of invokes determined by the number of victories the brainstorm produced (in this case, one).

trogdor

I think I will invoke

BESW

05:13

Oh ho. Pushing for the continued tie?

trogdor

Smoldering rage in my stomache

BESW

Calariel, do you have a counter-invoke?

Magician

Sure, why not. Ramming Statues fits into my plan.

Smurfton

I'm tempted to invoke and use all my fate on this.

Nevermind.

BESW

Calariel is at +12 (wilderness) Lore focusing on the vines and ramming statues.
Abraxis is at +10 Melee focusing on the thin door and his smouldering rage.

trogdor

05:15

mk

can't invoke anymore

so I am done

Magician

Question, does it actually matter who got how many victories before?

BESW

No.

Victories are totalled to determine how many free invokes are placed on the hypothesis aspect.

Magician

I see. So, I'm making a plan and putting it into an aspect?

BESW

This is where the process seems to deviate most from ARRPG's version, I think.

It may be reasonable for you to create an aspect representing the puzzle's nature or representing the enacted solution.

Magician

Ok, I'm going to voice my plan, and then we can figure out if we get an aspect that helps us enact it, or what.

BESW

05:18

Good.

Magician

The statues can be moved around. Maybe they had to stand in a particular configuration for the door to open, we don't know. We do know they're not firmly attached to the ground. If others can leverage them off of the ground, I'll cast a spell to cause the vines to contract rapidly. Timed correctly, it'll turn the statues into projectiles, flung at relatively thin doors by vine-ballistae.

Miniman

@Magician Great plan! Except for the booby trap

Magician

Well, people who tilt the statues can deal with those :D

Smurfton

Doesn't the plan have to reference everything?

trogdor

It does in ARRPG

Miniman

05:22

@Smurfton It referenced all of the facts

BESW

Technically the booby traps aren't a "fact." They're a side effect, a cost of establishing a fact with a tie.

Adeptus

@Miniman Do the characters know about the booby trap? Did they detect it while discovering the statues are movable? Or will they only discover it when they trigger it?

Miniman

@Adeptus No idea

BESW

I think the aspect Improvising Vine Ballistae with one free invoke would work well, and the booby traps will be their own amusing complication: they don't invalidate the plan.

Magician

@BESW It is just one free invoke from 4 victories we had?

BESW

05:24

Yup.

0 to 2 victories is a failure; 3 victories is success but no invoke; 4-5 is one free invoke; 6+ is two free invokes.

Smurfton

And on failure, we just look for another way in?

Magician

Hrm. So, would enacting the solution with the help of this aspect be the next scene? Because it kinda feels like it shouldn't be. Solution has been found.

BESW

On a failure I'd place an aspect representing your inability to figure it out.

And that's the conclusion of the brainstorm! All the established fact and cost aspects go away, but their narrative potency remains.

You've found the solution, and it's now up to the GM to decide if enacting it is interesting enough to call for more rolls (it might be, because booby traps).

Miniman

So at the conclusion of the brainstorm normal play recommences?

BESW

Or if knowing the solution is enough to cut to the next scene.

Right.

In some cases, brainstorming happens at the same time as other things.

Magician

05:27

I think in general, finding the solution to a puzzle and solving it is one and the same. But yeah, booby traps.

Well, I think this worked rather well.

Smurfton

Hello, @Emrakul .

BESW

For example, if you'd still been having to fight the enemies in the jungle!

user61230

Hello, @Smurfton!

Adeptus

@Magician I was thinking similar but more mundane - use the vines to swing the statues from, like a medieval battering ram

BESW

Then at the start of the brainstorm each PC would have had to choose whether to participate in the conflict, or in the brainstorm.

Magician

05:28

@Adeptus So many fate points spent! :D

Smurfton

@Adeptus : same.

BESW

(So some of you fight off the enemies to buy time while the others figure out how to open the door.)

Magician

It's curious that the initial high roll hurt us.

BESW

Yeah, that was interesting.

Smurfton

I hereby volunteer to tank the traps if necessary.

Magician

05:30

Thanks to fellow party members for participating!

Miniman

Incidentally, @BESW, how similar is this to actual FATE play?

BESW

@Magician I'd probably just make it a teamwork Overcome check, with success at cost if it rolled low, the cost being booby trap complications.

Smurfton

You're welcome!

What had been taken from D&D? are those 4e skills?

BESW

@Miniman It was a bit more... stilted... because we were focused on just one kind of mechanic in an unusually structured format.

Magician

@BESW Perhaps, cap the next difficulty at what it would have taken to succeed with style. So +6.

BESW

05:31

@Smurfton Just the idea that players will encounter traps and puzzles they have to think their way through, and trying to see if this particular mechanic works for that kind of encounter in Fate.

The skills are also inspired by D&D-style hack and slash games.

Magician

And that idea is not 4e-centric at all, but endemic to D&D in general.

BESW

In most D&D games, a puzzle of this sort would've been designed by the GM to have a set of expected solutions, and a good GM would've also been willing to roll with unexpectedly creative solutions.

But the GM would've been the one in charge of whether the statues moved, and how strong the vines were, and if the door was thin or thick.

Miniman

So is it meant to be a competitive process, or is that just a side-effect?

Smurfton

@BESW makes sense. If Fate isn't for that kind of encounter, what is it usually deciding??

BESW

@Miniman It's definitely competitive; brainstorming is designed originally to represent Action Scientists with competing theories about how the Weird Thing works.

trogdor

05:34

So I guess we are done then?

BESW

@trogdor Eeyup. Thanks everybody!

trogdor

mk

cool

BESW

@Smurfton Fate can accommodate most any setting or genre provided the PCs are competent, dramatic, and proactive, and the group is more interested in story logic than realism.

Miniman

Thanks BESW, was interesting.

trogdor

I think the idea of initial high rolls hurting you might be an unintended side effect of the intended difficulty scaling

BESW

05:36

The idea of players establishing truths about the scene is deeply ingrained in the Fate mechanics, but the brainstorm mechanic is an unusually structured form of it.

trogdor

it's supposed to get harder to do

Smurfton

Definitely looking into FATE after this.

Magician

@Smurfton One of us. One of us.

BESW

A loving cup!

trogdor

gooble goble gooble goble

XD

Smurfton

05:37

Is it all caps, or normal capitalization, then?

BESW

@Smurfton It used to be all caps, now it's normal.

Magician

@trogdor Yeah, but I reckon it should have become +6 after the first success with style, not +9 - that was an increase in difficulty with no benefit.

trogdor

you can just normally capitilize it

@Magician yeah

Magician

It's also pay-what-you-want and free online.

BESW

The Fate tag wiki has links and info about the different versions of the system--some of them free--and so forth.

Smurfton

05:37

@trogdor That's no fun!

BESW

(And at the bottom is a link to an article about the capitalisation.)

trogdor

@Smurfton you can say FATE if you want

Smurfton

Well, I'm off to dinner, then.

Night!

BESW

ttfn

Magician

G'night!

trogdor

05:40

night

BESW

I'd just like to mention how awesome it is that Fate can so easily accommodate people with no prior experience in it.

Magician

Yeah, that was very smooth.

BESW

I felt no trepidation having half the players be totally new to the system.

trogdor

my character would probably have worked out a little better fighting stuff while everyone else brainstormed

but it was still fun

BESW

Yeah, I did want to see how it would work out with characters not really built for that sort of problem-solving.

On a more brainstorm-specific note, I'm glad to see a new non-conflict multi-roll mechanic that doesn't rely on Overcome.

Something I noticed: Brainstorming is one of the first times in my experience with Fate that uneven skill ranks really made problems.

Magician

05:45

@BESW Speaking of those, challenge doesn't work for me.

@BESW Because we were competing with one another, not with arbitrary difficulties set by a sympathetic GM.

BESW

Heh.

Miniman

Also, penalties for over-success was a bit weird.

BESW

That was bizarre. I agree that a with-style cap is appropriate.

Magician

It's a curious thing, yeah. We're pursuing meta-actions, only tenuously tied to our skills. Declaring truths relating to something our characters know how to do. But seeing as it's effectively a competition for authorial authority, perhaps looking at the character sheet is not even appropriate.

As in, set the initial difficulty to 0, ignore skills, only use aspects because aspects are interesting.

As long as we're discovering existing aspects.

BESW

That might have to do with the fact we were using a pre-alpha-test set of skills.

But yeah, it had a kind of Penny for My Thoughts vibe to it.

Also! [flash of understanding]

Magician

05:51

On the other hand, seeing as this is puzzle solution rather than the original brainstorming, it is perhaps fitting to actively create new aspects-facts

BESW

This is why ARRPG made it impossible to have less than a +3 in Notice, and you have to work hard to get that.

Magician

huh

Yeah, Notice would definitely go well with this.

trogdor

@BESW Well, technically you could make weird modes without it

BESW

Hush, Weird Modes make everything uncertain.

(Presumably if you have a Weird Mode without Notice, you have something to make up for it that you can use to contribute in brainstorms.)

Smurfton

For the tie hypothesis, you could have a reroll and only those who tied could win, or each only gets to make half the plan?

BESW

05:56

Either of those could work.

A thought: What if Abraxis had declined to compel himself into the brainstorm, and instead used Intimidate to place aspects on the group to motivate them?

Not contributing facts or a hypothosis, but making others better able to do so?

Smurfton

Neat.

Magician

Yeah, that'd work.

trogdor

@BESW I sort of felt like that might have been a good idea

Smurfton

As an aside, doesn't intimidate make people dislike you automatically when you next leave the room or on the next day?

In d&d, at least.

BESW

That's a common rule in D&D editions, yes.

In Fate, it'd be based on the narrative.

I think Abraxis uses it more in the "scary captain of the platoon" fashion when he's dealing with his own group.

"I roll Intimidate to place Get with the program on Kove. He can use the free invoke on it if his next roll is in line with the others' actions instead of doing his own thing."

doppelgreener

06:02

In Fate, Intimidate is not a skill that has specific mechanical effects like that. Rather, it's: "I am performing an action in the narrative. This action is worth rolling for, because it is sufficiently dramatic / failure will be interesting / the degree of success is important. That action seems like it's best represented by how Intimidating my character can be. So I will use Intimidate for my roll to see how well I did."

(e.g. your character might be good at Lore or Tact but that's not the best skill relevant to the action you're taking in this circumstance)

BESW

That's one reason brainstorm felt weird to us: rolling a skill and then defining its story meaning isn't something Fate usually does.

Smurfton

how does it usually work?

BESW

I feel like maybe at an IRL table, defining the skill we roll would more naturally be accompanied by a brief explanation of how it's going to be used.

@Smurfton In Fate, you first describe the action you're going to attempt.

If only success or only failure would be interesting/dramatic, then the interesting/dramatic one happens.

(If failure would stop the story, you shouldn't fail!)

But if both success and failure would be cool to see, then you figure out what mechanic or set of mechanics to use to determine it.

A single roll, or a full-on conflict with attacking and defending and moving and so forth, or anywhere in between.

It's always "narrative first, then apply mechanics when they'd make it more interesting."

The version of Fate with brainstorming, Atomic Robo RPG, is unusually heavy with its mechanics.

doppelgreener

> Me: I'm going to charge that guy over the balcony. That's definitely Forceful. Is that Create an Advantage, or an attack?
GM: I think it might be an Overcome roll, actually, to break through the balcony edge and knock your opponent outside.
Me: Ok, I don't have any stunts for that. So that's Forceful +3... [rolls, gets + + - +] I get 5. What's he get?
GM: He got only a 1 to Quickly defend against that, trying to get out of the way. This isn't going to go well for him.
Me: I'm going to charge that sucker right out of the building, and knock him into the dirt below.

BESW

By contrast, a system like D&D 3.5 expects you to roll dice for most every action you take regardless of whether failure would be interesting; it defines your possible actions by the mechanics available to you rather than defining mechanics available to you by your possible actions; and it usually has only one level of action: turns in a series of rounds of combat.

doppelgreener

06:10

(at least I think I remember that action having been an Overcome)

BESW

That was definitely opposed Overcome actions.

Magician

@BESW As I said before, I think in this case you need to have an idea, and roll appropriate skill for it, but maybe not necessarily declare what the idea was. You might even be pushing the same idea each round, until you actually get a chance to make it a fact. Stating it over and over would just make it repetitive.

doppelgreener

(or it was a Quick overcome, I can't remember)

BESW

The four basic actions in Fate are Create Advantage (interact with aspects by creating, removing, and manipulating them); Overcome (oppose something that's in the way of doing what you want); Attack (cause harm to someone in order to remove them from a conflict entirely); and Defend (prevent someone from doing harm to you).

@Magician Fair enough.

doppelgreener

> Defend: Use the defend action to avoid an attack or prevent someone from creating an advantage against you.

BESW

06:14

@doppelgreener Defend gets... weird... depending on exactly which iteration of Fate you look at.

doppelgreener

people either do not get a leg up on you, or do not hurt you, if you defend well

BESW

In some, there's a fifth poorly defined pseudo-action called "oppose."

I'm not sure why.

doppelgreener

@BESW well in others there's the idea that you gotta invoke an aspect for it to be true, so maybe it was just some terrible idea dreampt up by someone who didn't know what they were doing and everyone else just copied it

BESW

Heh.

Maybe that's one of the things I like about ARRPG: it's doing what DFRPG wanted to do, but they had to strip Fate down to its core components and rebuild before they understood the system well enough to make it effectively crunchy without all the unnecessary dangly bits.

Smurfton

Well explained!

doppelgreener

06:20

So, one thing I noticed: physical interaction in this puzzle was difficult to work out how to handle on the parts of the participants.

BESW

How to fiddle with the puzzle to learn about it without solving it yet.

That may simply have been my fault for not explaining the narrative restraints of the exercise properly.

Magician

Yeah, it's important to remember it's all about figuring out the solution to the puzzle. So one could, for instance, use Athletics to rock the statues to make sure they're movable.

doppelgreener

The factss were created with Tact, Mechanics, Lore and Intimidate. Tact was probably improper because it was Noticing stuff. Intimidate was challenging. But Lore and Mechanics were easy enough.

I can imagine Faith going equally easily, it can probably be used for knowledge.

BESW

@doppelgreener Factsss, my precious!

doppelgreener

I'm gonna leave that typo there now :)

Sssssslip of the tongue

Toughness could have been used to interact with the heavy statues. Melee could have been used to break stuff, cause damage, and so on, and learn from that. Athletics could've been used to go climbing all over the joint.

Faith is a weird skill to me, and in ways I like it and in ways it seems like something about it isn't being handled as well as it could be for some reason.

BESW

06:28

Faith could easily be subsumed into trappings of Lore and Will.

Smurfton

did two of us have+6 in mechanics?

When using it with the bonus thing.

BESW

Thrumin and Calariel had easily applicable +6s.

doppelgreener

Here's what it looks like to me:
- It's Will.
- It also implies Religious belief, but not so firmly it can't be shrugged off into something more earthly.
- It also represents automatic Rapport with your colleagues, i.e. the fact you have faith in them.
- It's a Magic skill, but by a different name.
- It's a Lore skill, but specialised.

Nevertheless I enjoy the fact there exists a Magic+Lore skill by a different name.

It makes me wonder if you stumbled onto something interesting: a Magic skill can equally be defined as, say, Faith, or Arcana, or Shamanism. This ought to also grant you specialised knowledge over that domain, and key into things you might do: smite zombies, summon firestorms, shapeshift into a dire bear.

This feels right somehow.

BESW

So you're thinking... make Lore into the H&S equivalent of ARRPG's Science?

A skill group?

Magician

That requires well-defined magic "domains" to work.

doppelgreener

06:35

@BESW I need to research this; I can do that in a couple of hours.

Smurfton

Kind of like how in Paranoia, the skills intentionally overlap?

Magician

As in, Shamanism deals with spirits, Arcana deals with elements, Faith deals with... souls & healing & stuff because we need it to be different from Arcana somehow but not really.

BESW

I'd probably put Faith as dealing with guidance.

Smurfton

If you can convince the gm that the skill applies here, it does.

doppelgreener

@Magician Yes, like that. The players are given the freedom to come up with their own brands of magic, but it would be a good idea to supply a few.

BESW

06:36

Faith is the "I just know what to do" skill in my head.

doppelgreener

@BESW Yeah, Faith is also about divine inspiration.

And they can overlap: you can light zombies on fire with the might of the sun god, or enthusiastic pyromancy. You can have visions through divination, or through contact with a higher power.

STT LCU

good morning

doppelgreener

@STTLCU Morning

Smurfton

paranoia had the rule book specifically say the whole overlapping thing, though.

Morning.

Magician

And now I have to run. Have a good night!

doppelgreener

06:40

@BESW And it might be that Lore simply gets shoved out of the domains of magic the players have created. Lore implies studying history and worldly knowledge, and not necessarily the mystical arts.

BESW

This has a lot to do with how sharply we want to define magic.

Is it the result of applied knowledge? Or can it also be unconscious, instinctive, untrained, unknown?

Remember Cat's PC in the Enchanted Forest game, who didn't really have control over her shadow magic.

doppelgreener

@BESW Yeah, it can and should be those things sometimes.

I guess in that case, Shadow Magic doesn't imply any knowledge due to the narrative. But that knowledge might develop, due to the unique perspective that person has.

Likewise there can be brands of magic from even the well-educated that don't imply knowing anything: necromancy might mean you know a lot about the undead, or you might not have any idea about anatomy but you know how to make it move.

@BESW This is beginning to make me think that Magic ought to be the equivalent of Science, a create-your-own of what your magic means to you.

BESW

"I don't do bodies, man, I just cram the souls back into 'em."

doppelgreener

If that comes with Knowledge, your Magic mode comes with Lore. If that comes with brute force (think druid), Melee and Toughness are in there.

@BESW Haha yes.

And your Magic mode comes with a skill defining the name, brand, or nature of your magic. Faith, Arcana, Cryomancy, Shadowdancing, Necromancy, and so on all work.

Some modes, like Devout or Caster, are pre-prepped Magic modes.

(I need to read about Science later to make sure I understand it correctly, but at the moment as I understand it, it's a mode you pick to fill in with other junk, including something describing a field of study you're an expert in.)

STT LCU

how can I determine how much skill improvements a weird mode can get?

in the pre-made examples some of them have some specialize bonus, other focus bonuses, and so on, while other modes have none

BESW

06:50

You look at the cost of the skills in the mode (based on their trappings).

If you want the mode to be worth more points than its skills bring, you add skill improvements (which also cost skill points).

STT LCU

each improvement costs 1 point?

BESW

Not really. Look at the table on page 34.

STT LCU

ok, let me open the pdf

ok, +1 to focus from trained, +2 to specialized to focused (the +3 from trained to specialized is simple math)

got it

BESW

If you look at the table on page 32 you'll see the Standard modes cost 9 points apiece. Stick in that budget range for a Weird mode and you're golden.

STT LCU

07:13

ok. Stunts/mega stunts aren't involved in the cost of a mode, which is calculated only by skills and their improvements. Am I correct?

BESW

Right. The stunts associated with modes are just samples, suggestions of the kind of stunt you might find useful if you have that mode.

Skills and stunts run on separate budgets; their only mechanical interconnection is that you can't use megastunts to exceed the five-stunt-limit unless you have a Weird Mode.

STT LCU

why mega-stunts are reserved to weird modes? I don't see why, with some common sense, you can't get them on standard modes too.

BESW

I think there are two reasons.

Narratively, it's an important distinction between normal people and people who have been... touched by science.

It reinforces the importance and power of science in the Atomic Robo universe by making it unusual.

STT LCU

i don't think that "soldier" or "reporter" are such different than standard mode in that regard though

BESW

Yes, but notice that you don't just need a Weird Mode to get a megastunt.

You also need an aspect justifying it, and reporters usually don't.

Mechanically, it keeps things simpler by limiting the contexts in which Weirdness becomes normal, because megastunts are complicated: they slow down the speed with which you can start play, and they increase the bookkeeping during play.

One of the big sells for ARRPG is the fast-start play.

STT LCU

07:30

Ok then. If my players pick one really weird mode (robot or psycokinetic for example) I'll introduce them to mega stunts, otherwise I'll postpone them

BESW

Yeah. Like every other mechanic in Fate, the mechanics of megastunts should rise out of a narrative need for them.

If you don't need a mechanic, it'll just get in the way.

STT LCU

07:45

I guess that one of my players is going to play the ship's AI (which will have a robotic body for convenience). If he's going to be "weaker" in comparison to other player, I'll have some narrative scenes where he'll be upgraded and "learn" mega stunts. I guess it's the fastest option to start moving on and at the same time give game opportunities

BESW

08:17

Remember, the fast game startup expects you to start without all your aspects and stunts and skill improvements in place.

You choose them as you "discover" your character through play.

STT LCU

i knew about aspects and stunts delay, but not that we can/should delay skill improvements too!

BESW

See the Atomic Robo and Dr. Dinosaur text boxes on page 35.

STT LCU

BEHOLD THE DRAMATIC REVEAL!

lol

BESW

It's my favourite way to run PCs. I picked it up from the Aeon Wave adventure.

STT LCU

08:38

It helps to build relevant and useful stunts

BESW

09:14

@doppelgreener I need to actually sketch out the trappings of those skills and assign points to them.

STT LCU

with trappings you mean catch/costs, right?

BESW

No. ARRPG calls them "applications" (page 61).

It's the contexts in which you can use a skill, and that's how you figure out how many points the skill is worth.

STT LCU

ah, ok

BESW

For the proof-of-concept pass, I was using actions in place of applications: 1 point for each of the four actions you can use the skill in.

But that was... messy... and I think before we use the skills again I need to shore them up.

It means I can balance the modes more effectively too.

doppelgreener

09:33

@BESW What are trappings? The situations you can use them in?

BESW

Aye. Read just above.

For example, Athletics can probably use the Defend action to oppose the Attack action and the Create Advantage action. That's two applications of Defend.

Read this article.

doppelgreener

[reads]

BESW

[listens to Greener's brain re-arranging its furniture]

doppelgreener

Speaking of, something that I didn't like about the aspects-only method just clicked into words: consider how much time might be taken each time a discussion comes up over whether an aspect can be invoked, now multiply that by five for every action someone takes, over simply "which skill is this?", plus various after-the-fact feelings over whether that aspect should really have been applied.

BESW

Yup.

doppelgreener

09:47

Then, also, look back on your experience of players' abilities to create aspects which are actually regularly relevant to the game: there's very often at least one aspect that rarely sees use.

BESW

Notice that I only put three aspects on each of the brainstorm PCs.

doppelgreener

Yeah, that was good.

BESW

Partly that's because I didn't want to spend more time, but I also thought it'd get in the way rather than help.

doppelgreener

Yeah, aspect 4 and 5 are often challenging.

This is why I like Mode aspects so much.

BESW

I actually had five aspects for each of them at one point.

doppelgreener

09:49

They create the constraint that heightens creativity.

BESW

@doppelgreener "The Constraint that Heightens Creativity" would be a good name for a band.

doppelgreener

@BESW Often when you say this I find it amusing and clever and insightful, today I find it all of those things and resonating. I agree sincerely.

BESW

@doppelgreener "All of Those Things and Resonating" would also be a good name for a band.

[grin]

doppelgreener

@BESW that would be one of those strange incomprehensible indie band names

BESW

@doppelgreener They'd probably do lots of acoustic covers of 1950s love songs.

Also I think you read waaaay too much into my flippant Dave Barry running gag.

But I'm glad you get something from it.

doppelgreener

10:07

@BESW If this is a reference I don't know what it refers to, but I just know you pick out amusing phrases for band names.

but that one was different. :D ^

BESW

The humour columnist Dave Barry had a decades-long running gag where any time he'd use a particularly bizarre phrase in one of his articles, he'd note that it would make a good name for a band.

doppelgreener

@BESW Haha, cool. 8)

And okay! I have read the article. (That took a while! On account of eating and doing some other things too!)

doppelgreener

10:20

@BESW I think I may need to disappear for movie night in half an hour or less... but I shall do some reading about science modes in ARRPG.

BESW

Aight. It's not a perfect fit, but it may get you thinking in a good direction.

What movie?

doppelgreener

Not sure! Probably episodes of Firefly.

BESW

Shiny.

doppelgreener

23:15

@BESW @trogdor I've just done some reading & skimming of the atomic robo book. I think I get the picture of science & weird modes, and I'd like to check that I do.

trogdor

mk

I will attempt to act like I know what I am talking about

doppelgreener

Excellent

Science is a mode that implicitly gives you knowledge of every single science (and, well, probably every area of knowledge) at its rating. You can pick areas of knowledge to focus or specialise your character in.

trogdor

yep

doppelgreener

Weird modes are just: "put your own stuff in here." Weird just means non-standard, or custom, or player-created.

trogdor

yeah

you don't have to be a robot or a mutant plant monster or a dr dinosaur

doppelgreener

23:19

also this means it takes a Weird mode to be able to use a special skill such as Tooth and Claw

@trogdor yeah, that explains why Reporter is a Weird mode, despite the fact that Reporters aren't... y'know... robots or monsters or mutant plants or dinosaurs or made of ectoplasm or so on

they're just Not One Of The Four Standard Modes

trogdor

yeah exactly

so you could make a mega stunt for reporters as long as it is something you could justify a reporter would be able to do

doppelgreener

XD

now I see why Jenkins has access to mega-stunts

Jenkins has the Jenkins mode XD

(also the Survivor mode!)

trogdor

yeah

BESW

Note: the Jenkins and Survival modes are necessary, but not sufficient, for him to have megastunts. A character needs a Weird Mode and a justifying aspect in order to have megastunts, and the megastunts should logically follow from both.

His "Ex-Seal Beret Delta" megastunt, all 4 stuntsworth of it, is justified by having the Jenkins mode and the Tesladyne's One-Man Army aspect.

His two-stunts-worth of "Hard To Kill" is probably justified by the Survivor mode and the The Vampire Dimension Couldn't Kill Me aspect.

And so forth.

And a note on "Weird:" It means "The default options don't work for my character concept, so here's what I did instead."

doppelgreener

23:35

Is there a reason why I need weird modes to have mega-stunts?

It seems strange that I cannot build a megastunted megascientist based off Science, Action and Intrigue

I must apparently create my own special mode somewhere in there

Maybe it is a learning tool: doing it that way removes it from the purview of people just interested in making quick, standard characters. It also means you're only going to dive into the matter of meta-stunts if you're also confident enough in the system to make your own Weird mode.

BESW

23:55

That's definitely part of it.

Also, it puts the emphasis on a certain kind of gameplay by gating access to other sorts of characters.

And it keeps things fast and simple: Weird Stuff is just plain more bookkeeping, but gamers almost always want to use all the options available to them.

The gate keeps the game from getting overcomplex without first confirming narrative need.

doppelgreener

Yeah. It reinforces that atomic robo is about action, intrigue, banter and science, and definitely gives the impression that other stuff is tangential and should remain connected to those themes.

BESW

That is: The megastunt prerequisites are basically saying, "Tell me what it is about your Weird Scientist that you can't cover with the default options."

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