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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: potestas on August 15, 2014, 09:54:03 PM
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I am begining to think that the game is well liked by those that prefer an open ended affair. Where the GM will say if you spend a fate point the ward will hold and you guys can escape. How strong the ward is or how many shifts you need is pointless since its going to hold, and nothing the enemy or you can do to bring it down because its part of the story. Those who prefere to know how and why something works and how to get around it via rules or power probably do not like the rules, well thats my guess. So whats your opinion. I am not saying its good or bad I am just trying to understand if I've grasped why Fate system is popular here.
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I think the answer is: it isn't so much open ended as it is collaborative. It gives players a chance to do a bit of storytelling through the creative use of Fate points. It makes their personalities, their backgrounds MATTER in game mechanics in a way that many other games are lacking.
Imagine if D&D had a system where you could use your alignment in order to influence your actions.
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I've actually been toying with the idea of using aspects in D&D.
Most modifiers give a +2/-2.
Myself and other people who've DM'd have used various Role playing points/Luck Points etc.. to let players save up to buy extra feats or buy skill points.
I think adding the aspect system would enrich the game.
I think of myself as a number-cruncher. But at certain points in a game you think, "this is taking forever" or "it might be more interesting if..." If the table is in then why not.
You used my example from the other thread out of context. I gave you 2 (extreme)ways of using sponsored debt and you used the 'hand-wavey' one as your example in this thread.
how many shifts you need is pointless since its going to hold, and nothing the enemy or you can do to bring it down because its part of the story.
And I take exception to this because it's not what I was saying. All I'm saying is in a given situation it might not matter. So why bother rolling? Instead of taking stress, take debt. It'll be more interesting later.
It's up to the group to decide. Judging how any given aspect is going to affect a combat or scene is left completely to the creativity of players/gm.
Is that "slippery with oil" going to add a +2 tag or is it going to end up with the whole building on fire?
Are you going to put the aspect "on fire" on a scene or are you going to have everyone resist environmental damage every turn. Usually that's up to the vision of the GM and how he wants to run the challenge.
If the GM thinks the Ward isn't going to do the trick, then maybe he runs it as another type of conflict. "you have 3 rounds before they break through. You have to get 10 zones away in order to escape" that set up a new conflict and sets up tension.
Or you could run it round-by-round, having them hammering away at the ward, calculating how much damage they take and do to the ward while the PC's try to escape.
That's what I like about FATE. So many ways to do the same thing. You can make it as free-form or as crunchy as you like.
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I've actually been toying with the idea of using aspects in D&D.
Most modifiers give a +2/-2.
Myself and other people who've DM'd have used various Role playing points/Luck Points etc.. to let players save up to buy extra feats or buy skill points.
I think adding the aspect system would enrich the game.
I think of myself as a number-cruncher. But at certain points in a game you think, "this is taking forever" or "it might be more interesting if..." If the table is in then why not.
You used my example from the other thread out of context. I gave you 2 (extreme)ways of using sponsored debt and you used the 'hand-wavey' one as your example in this thread.
And I take exception to this because it's not what I was saying. All I'm saying is in a given situation it might not matter. So why bother rolling? Instead of taking stress, take debt. It'll be more interesting later.
It's up to the group to decide. Judging how any given aspect is going to affect a combat or scene is left completely to the creativity of players/gm.
Is that "slippery with oil" going to add a +2 tag or is it going to end up with the whole building on fire?
Are you going to put the aspect "on fire" on a scene or are you going to have everyone resist environmental damage every turn. Usually that's up to the vision of the GM and how he wants to run the challenge.
If the GM thinks the Ward isn't going to do the trick, then maybe he runs it as another type of conflict. "you have 3 rounds before they break through. You have to get 10 zones away in order to escape" that set up a new conflict and sets up tension.
Or you could run it round-by-round, having them hammering away at the ward, calculating how much damage they take and do to the ward while the PC's try to escape.
That's what I like about FATE. So many ways to do the same thing. You can make it as free-form or as crunchy as you like.
i am sorry if you thought it was out of context, but its what made it all click for me, which is what lead to the question. It was a giant ah moment so i wanted to run with it but not in context of the other post sorry for the offense but it did enlighten me a bit. From my perspective it was an awsome revelation
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I absolutely adore fate, for reference of all th systems of played and its been alot in the 20 year or so ive been gaming, Fate is by far my favorite. It would go:
1. Fate
2. Cortex (Firefly/Spn era; i dislike Cortex plus)
3. White Wolf, probably. Though i LOVE the Mouse Guard rpg as well.
Why? I love rules light systems, i love the collaborative story building elements of rpgs, i love not needed to worry about stats and rules and mechanics. You'd prolly have guessed by the list above that i prefer rules light systems, I despise most d20 systems ive run since picking up fate and cortex. 3.5 was atrocious, 4E gets better, but is still pretty mechanical.
In fate you can simulate anything within reason easily and quickly with almost no need to look anything up, a few simple rules and you can run the whole thing and simulate everything in a pretty believable and manageable fashion.
A well-tested group that is intimately familiar with fate can get away with obscurring the system almost entirely to the background and relay most of the important information in an immersive way.
I'm not so good with the words, and im trying to make this quick but, all in all i love Fate for how rules light it is and how many options it provides to both GM and Players.
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I'm pretty oaky with it. I rather like how Zones are elastic so I don't have to pull out templates for spells and the like. Statting up monsters is relatively simple, combat really doesn't take that long. I'd spring for a cleaned up edition of the DFRPG but I'm content with it is as is.
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I agree pretty much 100% with Baron Hazard. But I will add that I love fact that FATE is so customizable. As much as a like storytelling and improv, both of which FATE is much better at than any other system I have played, I like designing characters even more.
In D&D 3.5, when you design a character, you are basically checking off a list of boxes with pre-built feats/spells/skills. Most groups would not let you make up your own feats or spells, largely because the balancing of the components on a character were so opaque (the difference between spell levels, especially in the middle, seems completely arbitrary, and feats vary wildly in power). Since there is no real mechanical impact of back-story or personality on the game, hardly anyone takes the time to make them. In the end, character creation is like building a puzzle, you try to fit the pre-existing pieces together so they work (and often there really is only 1 optimal way to do it). This is boring. Further, the combat takes forever and is very mechanical, and this makes it hard to tell the story.
In contrast, DFRPG forces you to create your own spells, encourages you to make your own stunts, and has no problem with creating new powers. Further, aspects for you to at least consider your character's story and personality, and give you a real game play incentive to go much deeper. The only real qualm I have is that some of the skills are much less useful than others, I normally fix this by just combining some of the redundant skills together and reducing the number of skill points (I have never had any of the problems with balance that others seems to complain about). Well, that and how Feeding Dependency or Demonic Co-pilot work.
The game play is also just more fun for me. If you really like mechanical simulations, where every action has a number and associated rule, then FATE isn't for you. But if you just want to tell a story with an element of randomness and suspense thrown in, FATE is your game.
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I like the Fate system because it's a lot like the tagline of the AMC network: Story Matters Here or Characters Matter Here. The game gives you an opportunity to make whatever you can say about your character, a location, or setting, your story -- it gives you the opportunity to make that actually matter when you're playing the game.
The system I am most familiar with is White Wolf's Mage: the Awakening. In that game, only dots on your character sheet make a difference. Dots on your sheet are supposed to reflect your character's experiences, but we all know that a PC is more than dots on a sheet. Dresden Files and Fate offer a way for the most important parts of the PC to matter and shine in the game. The numbers on your sheet are only part of the story.
A Fate game is encouraged to build itself around the characters at your table. The world, thus the story, does not exist independent of the PCs, but rather because of the PCs. I saw a contributor to the Fate G+ community liken it to the television show Fringe. The four principles of that show are the PCs are joined together from the very beginning as part of the world. There is a pattern of strange phenomena afflicting the world and terrorizing people: "I'm an anti-terrorism FBI Agent," "I'm a scientist driven insane by strange phenomena," "I'm the scientist's ne'er-do-well son, they need me to get him out of the mental institution," "Okay -- I'm also an FBI agent and it's my job to make sure the three of you have everything you need." You're encouraged to make a game like that.
Mage: the Awakening has an established setting and you are encouraged to design PCs that fit into this world. Everyone his shoehorned together whether they like it or not. It doesn't have to be this way. It can be be very Fate-like if you want it to be, but the game is not designed to do that from the beginning.
A Fate game is.
That's the main reason I like it.
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Funny you should mention Fringe. I always thought it was the best Mage: The Awakening campaign ever set to television. You just have to realize that most of the protagonists are in fact mages, whether or not they realize it. By the later seasons it's increasingly obvious (eg, the FBI agent's background....). All sorts of things in that show work pretty much exactly like they would in a Mage game, including different paradigms for different characters and the consensus reality being stressed by "magic" and hitting back.
This attitude might be because the longest running Mage game I played had a bunch of my friends as mid-20-somethings after college graduation literally awakening as mages..and by the time we had any power we had each evolved our own ideas of what magic was, independent of all the established power structures. I'm not sure I'd have the same impression of Fringe if my Mage game had involved all of us being brought up by, say, the Technocracy or Sons of the Ether.
But yes, Fringe works pretty well in Fate too. Most forms of public entertainment do, and it isn't an accident. Fate is written by a bunch of ex-Amber RPG players who were unsatisfied with how that system dealt with conflict. Amber was designed to simulate a science-fiction/fantasy story arc. These authors were fans of written stories, TV stories, movies, had been exposed to a lot of RPG and took a lot of good ideas from them. But it was deliberately based around the idea of the protagonist in a story, and having the game mechanics work the way stuff does in a story. A protagonist loses so that rising from the ashes is more dramatic. I can't think of the last story I read or saw where bad things and outright defeats didn't happen to the protagonists.
Stories generally aren't written like a d20 game, where the protagonists go from one encounter to another, of varying degrees of challenge but never really experiencing more than severe resource-depletion and needing to rest from time to time. D20, and 1st edition D&D before it came out of wargaming roots, where what is going on is the GM is presenting a challenge and the fun is overcoming the challenge, more like a CRPG than a novel. There are genre conventions (eg, Champions/Hero Games are organized in a similar way, except that the genre allows PCs to lose without getting killed, hence deathtraps and the like) but the basic pattern is similar. The GM isn't expected to present a challenge that the PC's are likely to lose most of the time. The roleplaying is both there to make you care more about the challenges and also to provide an extra layer of social complexity to some obstacles. But mostly it's to make you care.
Stories don't work like that, and it is a hard adjustment to people used to one style switching to the other.
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Obviously I like DFRPG a lot. I'm somewhat less fond of most other Fate games, though.
Anyway, I like the system for three main reasons.
The first is playability: it just works. Simple enough.
The second is conceptual flexibility: although it's intended as a ruleset for a specific setting, it works for all sorts of games. I've had a lot of luck building non-Dresden characters in DFRPG.
The third is mechanical flexibility: you can do a lot of interesting things with its mechanics. Two characters who are both focused on hurting people and breaking things can operate very differently from one another. And of course there's a lot of room for custom stunts and powers and other such things.
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I didn't say this before and I think it's important.
Fate and DFRPG is designed to tell a story using the rules of a game. World of Darkness, on the other hand, gives you a game and asks you to tell a story with it. It's a big difference in approach and how things work out in play. In the former, you are confined to your story, in the latter you are confined to your game.
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I am begining to think that the game is well liked by those that prefer an open ended affair. Where the GM will say if you spend a fate point the ward will hold and you guys can escape. How strong the ward is or how many shifts you need is pointless since its going to hold, and nothing the enemy or you can do to bring it down because its part of the story. Those who prefere to know how and why something works and how to get around it via rules or power probably do not like the rules, well thats my guess. So whats your opinion. I am not saying its good or bad I am just trying to understand if I've grasped why Fate system is popular here.
I'd phrase it a bit differently: the fate system is about the story, the narrative; those are the strong points of the system. Fate is NOT about the game-world, and being a mechanical simulation-engine for the world -- for ANY game-world -- is NOT a strong suit of the system.
You nailed it when you said, "... because its part of the story" (though IMHO you skipped over the key question, "is escaping-because-the-ward-delays-the-baddies the best story, here?") If the GM, or even one of the players, thinks more combat here -- or a chase-scene, or even a captured PC -- would Increase the Awesome(tm), then the GM should probably spend a FP to break the ward and bring the Awesome!
You nailed it again, I think, in saying Fate's less-good for "know(ing) how and why something works, and how to get around it via (the) rules" -- at least in the sense of knowing large statblocks, and how to overpower high-power opposition. Instead, the opposition is overcome via narrative, & issues of what makes for better stories, more-satisfying events in the characters lives (or deaths, maybe...). If the opposition seems too high-powered to overcome, it's the job of everyone at the table (GM included!) to figure out how to advance the game in exciting, dramatic, & player-satisfying ways... even though it likely means a fair bit of unhappiness for the characters...
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I like the Fate system specifically because the rules are loose and there explicitly to facilitate the story. One of the things that's kept me from playing "harder" game systems like DnD are things like how attacks of a given strength will kill you, while Fate gives you options and choice on both sides no matter what the dice say.
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The difference is deliberate. Without the chance of total failure in the D&D-derived RPGs, a lot of the spice of overcoming the challenges for the players is lost. Even when it is illusory (old school D&D didn't have namby-pamby challenge ratings :) and in some areas you didn't give a character anything much beyond a name in backstory until he'd got a few levels...more modern versions give the GM a lot more help for balancing opposition and some encourage secret cheating in player favor).
In any RPG where the fundamental approach is challenge-based satisfaction, you have to have threat of permanent loss, at some level.
The evolution of story-oriented games arrived later, and ironically some of them were seen as very lethal when they first started (Ars Magica is really the story of the Covenant, not its members, and you can have a huge body count without ending the story because of this, and Call of Cthulu assumes the players will eventually fail, but the fun is in watching the characters go through the cycles of discovery, denial, fear and either death or transformation into a monster...). Most of the difference wasn't mechanical, it was just how the GM was encouraged to set up stories. It wasn't really until diceless or nearly diceless games started to appear (Amber, Everway, similar) that people started putting in strong mechanics to back up the story itself, to give some narrative control to the player. Aside from Amber, my first exposure was the Feng Shui game, which was a simulation of Hong Kong action movies (a genre that consumed the American action movie style within a decade, because it was better....). That game had explicit mechanics for adding scene elements, it had skill trappings like you see in movies (an expert shooter will also be able to build/repair guns and know how to find a gunrunner), Ki points that could be used a lot like Fate Points and enemies that became harder to beat because of their narrative importance (named and mooks. We later added "nicknames" for opposition that earns a bit of sweat or needs full power effort from the character, but isn't a serious threat).
What makes Fate derived systems unusually robust in the storytelling form of RPG is the aspect invocation mechanic, providing a way to reward players who "take one for the story" and also as a giant signal to the GM on the sort of stories they want told. I've not done enough with Fate to know all the implications of this, but it does give the player a lot more narrative control over the story than is typical of most games, even those focused on story rather than challenge.
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I like the FATE-system as I like to have systems that don't get in the way of playing. FATE is also very customizable. My two favourite versions are Dresden Files RPG, and Atomic Robo (have only done a charavter in the latter though and not started playing it yet)
Sure, I like BRP for Call of Cthulhu, as it is rules-light enough to not be a burden, also liked Starw Wars Saga edition as it was very flexible in how you levelled up. Then we have some games where the system actually hinders the game. High-level D&D or Shadowrun are good examples of that, or Exalted 2nd ed which is broken even for a system by White Wolf.
One thing I like about most FATE-versions are that the characters already have a connection to each other, but that also makes it difficult to introduce new characters.
/Ulfgeir
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One thing I like about most FATE-versions are that the characters already have a connection to each other, but that also makes it difficult to introduce new characters.
/Ulfgeir
Huh. I find this the opposite. The new character has 5-7 aspects per existing PC to try to tie into, plus whatever aspects any NPCs especially close to the PCs might have. Just to pick on Harry's world for a minute, lets say somebody wants to join in about the 5th book.
You've got Michael Carpenter (Harry's had two of their kids and the wife introduced as characters, one a PC-level one)
Through Michael you've got the Catholic Church (Nickleheads, Knights of the Cross, Fordhill...any new person of faith could join here)
You've got Murphy - anyone supernatural associated with the CPD might join SI and get involved that way (this is how Butters got into the game, Murphy introduced him)
You've got the Alphas or their teacher (another wild critter might get sent to Chicago to learn of human ways, as the teacher did, maybe rooming with the Alphas for basic orientation, this could have been the way a Forest Person Scion PC might have ended up in Chicago perhaps, before Harry started the Bigfoot side jobs)
You've got Susan - which brings in other Red Court infected as she's got reasons to stay away, but maybe someone else wants to help Harry or get favors from him, or a new mortal reporter (like the one at Splattercon!!!)
You've got Marcone - so any kind of supernatural criminal or security expert might join the campaign from that end
You've got Thomas - somebody white court connected to keep an eye on him
etc etc. And we haven't even gotten to Harry's aspects - a Fey from Winter Court to badger him about joining Mab, a Pixie PC from the Za Lord's Guard, that little girl he rescued in the first adventure, grown up and starting to come into magic or with an item of power that the Ring of Love turned into, a new Warden to keep an eye on him after Morgan's prejudice became known to Anastasia, etc)
You only need one aspect-based hook, really. It's actually easier than joining a super-hero team or D&D adventurers. "We need a new wizard. The new PC wizard wanders by. You look trustworthy, want to join us?" (One thing I like about Pathfinder Society adventures is every PC is a member, and it gives them a reason to work together, even if they don't get along or have anything else in common. Aspects often work the same way)
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"We need a new wizard. The new PC wizard wanders by. You look trustworthy, want to join us?"
I notice your group has no wizard! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIaIdv79Xz4)
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Huh. I find this the opposite. The new character has 5-7 aspects per existing PC to try to tie into, plus whatever aspects any NPCs especially close to the PCs might have. Just to pick on Harry's world for a minute, lets say somebody wants to join in about the 5th book.
I see what you mean there, but I was thinking more in the line of how the group knew each other due to starring in each others first adventures.
/Ulfgeir
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To the OP: this is pretty on-topic for me right now. I just ran a giant DFRPG LARP at GenCon, and it was possibly the most successful game I've ever had, for a lot of reasons. Some of them have to do with the quality of players we had, but I suspect that a huge part of the success had to do with the system itself.
After running White Wolf LARPs (and tabletops) for years, the below were problems that constantly cropped up for me as a GM:
- Unbalanced attention to certain players: Everyone knows the stereotype (or at least, they'll now know the stereotype) that players are mostly interested in backstabbing each other physically and politically in Vampire: The Masquerade. Some will argue that players should know this will be the case walking into the game; that they shouldn't get huffy when their guy dies, because that's just how it works. But in practical reality, certain players are just better at backstabbing their buddies, and this eventually leads to a game where certain players constantly get the short end of the stick and are told to 'suck it up.' Even in a best-case scenario V:tM LARP, I almost always had some players walk away from the experience feeling angry, hurt, and ultimately overlooked.
- No incentive to roleplay: In D&D and, to a lesser extent, in White Wolf games, there is literally no benefit to playing out your character's flaws on a session-by-session basis. As such, it's arguable that whatever excruciatingly-detailed background you draw up for your character will actually be a mechanical drawback for you; the more you roleplay your flaws, the more NPCs and other PCs take advantage of them, and you get nothing in return. After a time, this lack of reward (and actual punishment) for playing your character as-written tends to push large groups ever-so-slowly into the mindset of avoiding real roleplay if it disadvantages them.
- No meta-game release valves: This is a complicated one, but bear with me. In a game like D&D or V:tM, you're generally encouraged not to metagame under any circumstances whatsoever. This leads to lack of communication and lots of player upsets that could easily be avoided. Your player characters might die without warning, when the entire group might have told you they prefer more choice in the matter. These player character deaths result in a few big problems: interesting storylines get cut short, the GM has to flail around a bit to figure out how to continue them or make them suddenly unnecessary, and sometimes the GM ends up designing the game such that no player character actually matters to the plot that much, so that if they die, the plot isn't lost. This leads to a story where your players feel less invested because they KNOW that their PC could be replaced with another PC, and the game would simply keep rolling along without incident. Another time that officially-sanctioned metagaming is useful is when two player characters get into a disagreement in-game; when the two players are encouraged to compromise with one another, the game runs more smoothly. V:tM doesn't have that, and neither does D&D. It's a player-eat-player world.
These are actually the biggest issues I've had in more than a decade of running LARPs. FATE solved all of them, with plenty of style to boot.
- Unbalanced attention to certain players: FATE is a collaborative game. Everyone contributes to the story, and there are metarules in place to make sure that major betrayals and PC death only happen when everyone is on-board and fully-informed about how it's going to go down. We've written hostile conflict into our characters in FATE, and it's actually been ENJOYABLE for once, instead of leading to inevitable player misery. Players also tend to each get their own moment in the limelight when we run FATE, though I couldn't tell you exactly which rule in the system contributes to this. It may just be a result of the holistic whole of the game system.
- No incentive to roleplay: In FATE, playing out a character flaw gets you a cookie. I mean a Fate Point. The basic fact of the matter is that we get WAY juicier conflict and complication out of FATE than we ever did out of White Wolf. In White Wolf, people cautiously weigh the advantages and disadvantages of every action, regardless of whether their character would actually do it or not. In FATE, our players throw caution to the wind for a Fate Point, and cheer each other on when they make huge errors in judgment based on their Aspects. Players don't get angry at each other for roleplaying their flaws; they say 'ah, I see, you needed another Fate Point. I will respond by doing something dumb based on one of MY Aspects, and make the situation even more tense. Let us enjoy this character stupidity to the fullest! Fate Points for all involved!'
- No meta-game release valves: Players negotiate out-of-character in FATE. In our most recent LARP, we wrote in an undercover FBI agent who had signed on with the Italian mob and discovered the supernatural through interaction with them. On night two, he was outed to his fellow mafia boys as an undercover FBI agent. In-character, the mob boss threatened to kill the agent if he ever showed his face again. Out-of-character, the two players negotiated how to reconcile their characters in an interesting way. 'I'll give you a Fate Point and tag your Aspect 'Loyal to the Family' if you accept my character's offer of continued help' said the player playing the FBI agent. 'I'll show up at the restaurant, knowing full well that you've already threatened to kill me, and remind you that we have a huge common enemy right now that both of us want taken care of. The Family will benefit if you trust me on this one.' The person playing the mob boss accepted the Fate Point, and the scene they role-played out afterward was pretty awesome. The ability to give each other Fate Points to resolve situations is not to be underestimated-- it mollifies players to know that they will get something concrete when they agree to help keep the story fun for everyone, and this idea that they should all work together to help each other have fun can become a pervasive, positive attitude throughout the rest of your game.
So, to be short: I've run a LOT of gaming systems over the course of my lifetime. FATE has beaten them all out, hands-down, for making things fun, equal, and positive for every player at the table.
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I'm personally not a fan of the FATE system, although it is the system that got me into RPGs (huzzah Dresden Files!). While it'll always have some loyalty from me (until I finally knuckle-down and figure out a Dresden Files magic system for Storyteller or a homebrew system my friends and I use), it doesn't match what I want out of a game.
First, I don't like the simplicity of the mechanics. To some extent I have the same issue with D&D; I personally prefer an Attribute+Skill system, as it seems more... Accurate, I guess? Your Endurance should be a mixture of your natural stamina and your training, your strength should have an impact on how much damage you do, etc. Not in the 'I invoke one of my Aspects for this benefit right now' sense, but the overall sense.
Second, I don't like how the stats and dice make some wonky probabilities. The books suggest that the difference between a +4 and a +5 would be minimal; it doesn't work out that way when the dice start rolling. Having a 1-3 die difference in another system isn't near as much of a be-all-end-all like a single level of difference in a skill can be in FATE.
Third, the system is too... Nice, I suppose. When certain things happen, certain events should occur, which FATE explicitly disagrees with. A lot of people around here have seen the arguments regarding things like high-value Weapons; should someone hit with a missile die? According to the system, not if the shooter doesn't want them to. Take-Outs, buying out of things with Fate Points, etc. aren't my kind of game.
Fourth, I'm not the biggest an of the abstractions used in the game as they stand. Resources, feats of strength, Zones, weapon damage, etc. It's all a bit too vague for me.
Finally, there's a number of little quirks in there that aggravate me. 'How is Resources a skill?' is the big one that just tweaks a nerve whenever I look at making a character.
Long-story-short, I enjoy a bit more crunch to my games. Give me d10s or d6s, let me do a little math, etc.
That said, I do enjoy some aspects of FATE. Aspects are a big yes, even if I'm not the biggest fan of Fate Points. They're great for character flavor. The Power/Stunt system is a good implementation as well.
As far as what you're saying, firegazer... This is just my opinion, but I wouldn't call those systemic problems. Those come across as people problems; some folks naturally hog attention, some folks see flaws as bad things, and some folks don't think figuring out how things will go down out-of-character is the right way to go.
I've played White Wolf for years (Exalted in particular), mostly on chats. Some people are indeed better at being jerks, and use that to take advantage of the people who aren't. Others are more verbose, or can simply get what they're trying to do out better or faster than others. In most games, somebody is going to get more attention than the others, because that person is able to acquire it somehow. I've seen it happen in FATE as much as in other systems.
Roleplay itself should be an (the?) incentive to roleplay, in my opinion. Why play a roleplaying game, otherwise? As far as Merits/Flaws go, it shouldn't just be doing it for the points and then never bringing it up again. You got the points, it should be coming up, especially if you're using the positives you purchased. In regards to getting your character taken advantage of due to how they're played; that's a part of the fun! The barbarian getting suckered into a fight they shouldn't have picked, the thief taking the valuable shiny that probably should have been left where it'd been found, etc. Out-of-character, you might go 'I know this is going to be bad', but rolling with it often makes for a better story.
Those release valves are just as possible in pretty much any system, although FATE does reward it with cookies. I'm honestly not the biggest fan of it anymore; I've been in a number of games where an utterly incompetent and idiotic person joined up, and continued going on because people were meta-gaming away any conflict between players. It wasn't something I could do anything about besides not play with the problem-players, which made it worse.
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As far as what you're saying, firegazer... This is just my opinion, but I wouldn't call those systemic problems. Those come across as people problems; some folks naturally hog attention, some folks see flaws as bad things, and some folks don't think figuring out how things will go down out-of-character is the right way to go.
You could add a lot of the useful out-of-character resolution rules to any game you wanted-- but most of them don't inherently have those rules, and a lot of them explicitly argue that you should *punish* players who step out of line using in-character punishments, rather than just... you know, talking to them about it reasonably. This is one of the main reasons I've seen LARPs fall apart, among others.
From a purely experimental standpoint, I can tell you this: using the exact same set of GMs and the exact same set of players each year, I have had 'okay, I guess that was fun' White Wolf games and 'my god that was the best thing I've ever played' Dresden games. Heck, we even played the game in the exact same conference room at the exact same hotel at the exact same convention. The use of FATE is literally the only thing we changed in this equation, which is why I strongly suspect that it's the game system at work.
This year, we had a lot of potentially bad situations based on player personality which normally would have blown up and made for bad feelings in a White Wolf game. Because we were using partially out-of-character resolution, though, everyone had fun with the situation instead. This part, I can tell you with 100% certainty-- I saw the situation brewing, and I saw when it was naturally and handily disarmed by the FATE rules in play, without any intervention on my part. That was... very, very cool to watch.
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My point was more along the lines of 'you don't need those as rules in the system', provided you're working with a solid, mature player-base (that's a very big caveat, I know ;) ). Personally, I do advocate in-character punishments for in-character stupidity- if being reasonable doesn't work first. My TT game has this kind of situation come up a few times; somebody decides to do something that isn't all that... Wise. We informally bring it up (without rules for it), point out the issues, and from there we've had it go two ways; either they agree after looking it over again (with other perspectives/character knowledge a player might not remember thrown in), or they still think their character would try that course of action and go through with it. Both responses have added more fun to the game. Though yes, it's not quite as useful in a 50+ person LARP setting (where you need a bit more structure for the disparate players).
Basically, I think out-of-character conflict resolution should be an informal, not-enforced/rewarded-by-the-rules thing. It's out-of-character.
Your LARP does sound quite awesome, by the way, and if I ever end up at GenCon I'll be sure to swing by for some shenanigans! The simplicity of FATE does seem like it'd be better for LARPing than White Wolf or other systems (like Shadowrun *shudder*. I love the game, but the rules are a little much for anything besides 4-7 people at a table and a couple charts).
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My point was more along the lines of 'you don't need those as rules in the system', provided you're working with a solid, mature player-base (that's a very big caveat, I know ;) ).
Yeah, when you're used to running large games, you start grasping for every little advantage the system can give you. Also, not being able to vet and choose your players has an effect on which way you go. We always have to plan for problem players that might walk into the game randomly with legitimate tickets in-hand. It takes an awful lot of bad behaviour to make it possible to kick those players out, and it always gets messy when it gets that far. I much prefer a system which naturally handles problem players and integrates them into the game in spite of a few asocial tendencies.
Basically, I think out-of-character conflict resolution should be an informal, not-enforced/rewarded-by-the-rules thing. It's out-of-character.
Strangely, I find the carrot part of Fate Points to be super-helpful. It's not a huge benefit-- what's one Fate Point going to get you?-- but it seems to be just enough to make players role-play more. Even veteran role-players with a preference for solid story and characterization start getting reserved about role-playing in systems where it's continually mechanically punished. I even catch myself doing it at times, and I absolutely LOATHE min-maxing. I'm also tickled by the idea of making your Aspects based on both your best and worst attributes, all in one. It took a while to get the hang of it, but once we started phrasing Aspects properly, the Fate Point economy's give-and-take got super-interesting.
Edit: To clarify a bit, since I rambled off-point some: small carrots seem to be the nudge our players need to tend toward peaceful OOC resolution rather than salted-earth policy. The reward part also trains them, in a sense, to be more likely to handle OOC conflicts maturely in OTHER games, even though the carrot isn't there anymore. Pavlov has struck again.
Your LARP does sound quite awesome, by the way, and if I ever end up at GenCon I'll be sure to swing by for some shenanigans! The simplicity of FATE does seem like it'd be better for LARPing than White Wolf or other systems (like Shadowrun *shudder*. I love the game, but the rules are a little much for anything besides 4-7 people at a table and a couple charts).
I actually had to swear off running giant LARPs for a few years, starting the next one. I've got too much on my plate for the moment to handle it properly. But a bunch of my assistant Storytellers and players have banded together to continue the tradition. If you're interested in jumping in, I can give you the info on the group.
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...should someone hit with a missile die? According to the system, not if the shooter doesn't want them to.
Not to be that guy, but it's not the shooter. It's the shooter's player. Also, if the shooter's player goes for a nonlethal take-out, the guy probably wasn't hit at all. That's true to life, in a strange way: plenty of people are nonlethally taken out with missiles in real life. They get stunned or terrified into submission when the blast lands nearby.
'How is Resources a skill?' is the big one that just tweaks a nerve whenever I look at making a character.
Yeah, skills isn't quite the right name for skills. Not sure what else to name them though.
As far as what you're saying, firegazer... This is just my opinion, but I wouldn't call those systemic problems.
If a problem appears in one system but not in another, it's a system problem. There are many systems where roleplaying your flaws is nearly synonymous with playing poorly.
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'How is Resources a skill?' is the big one that just tweaks a nerve whenever I look at making a character.
Yeah, skills isn't quite the right name for skills. Not sure what else to name them though.
I like "Approaches", as they call the "skills" in Fate Accelerated. Especially the resources skill makes much more sense in that light. It's not about how much money you have, it's about how well you can influence a scene by the use of your resources. Having loads of money is one way, but being especially good at bartering or anything like that can work just as well to describe how you solve a problem by use of the resources skill.
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I do have to say that I think the Fate systems have some issues at pickup-games for convention-type settings, with pregens.
I was pretty turned off by a game I played where I ended up with a character mostly because the others at the table had stronger preferences, I couldn't get the aspects to do anything interesting (because they weren't mine, I didn't know how they should be invoked or compelled, and ran myself out of fate points quickly on not especially interesting invocations, while getting none back) and you know...a character whose main skills are social and piloting is going to have a problem in a scenario where there's pretty much nobody to talk to and everything after the first scene goes underground.
It was a fairly perfect storm of problems, and it didn't help that it was a late game session where the table was fairly cranky. We took a break, I thought about things decided "screw it" and started just poking at the scenery to get something going. It started working to get me more engaged, and then some stuff happened where my "fear of flying" consequence taken in the first scene could be turned around, and a critical point I found a way to use my high concept in a pretty cool way. But....
Could have been completely miserable, instead of "kinda salvaged near the end" and mostly because I've been there, done that and decided I was part of the problem and shaped myself up halfway through the game.
When I ran a game, my players also struggled to use their aspects (and I'd not yet gotten better about putting good scene elements visible) as well, largely because *I* knew how to use them but *THEY* did not, and the aspects they were free to create were...I guess the word is shallow. They didn't have time to really pick something that was "Fuego" in the DFRPG terms.
I've not had this problem at all in my new game I'm running on these boards. I can leisurely look over character sheets to find the story behind each aspect, plus often hints about how the player expects compels and invocations to work, my NPCs have found both compels and invocations for their aspects naturally in play, etc.
Without the strong aspects, FAE and Fate Core just don't have a lot of crunch to them. The skill+stunt system is a framework around which you use aspects, plus something to fall back on when conserving fate points or trying to build a stack of them. DFRPG's a bit better in that respect, you can do quite a lot with supernatural powers and skills even if you never touch a fate point or a maneuver for advantage/declaration/etc, but without the compels and invocations, it's just another middle-of-the-road typical gaming engine - AND the abstractions get in the way of the crunch of what you can do without the aspect economy.
This is why I'm sold on the "build the campaign and characters together" idea with Fate...doing it in a hurry or with a character handed to you that you don't understand....just doesn't work well. It all goes two-dimensional and bland, at least for me, and while granted a small sample size, with others I've seen trying to play it in a con setting. (FAE isn't really any better, if anything aspects are even more important there. The primary benefit of FAE in a time-restricted setting is it takes less time to get used to the rest of the character, so you have more time to think about aspects)
Simulationist games also have a resource level. It's fairly strong in d20 systems with magic, or in D&D4 with its limited-uses-per-xxx stuff. Even an extremely "build-point" oriented game like Hero system has endurance, stun, body to provide a battery for the other powers and to determine when "taken out" is. It's just that the resources are usually trumped by build+action economy. (Most of the complaints about overpowered spellcasters in high level 3.x D&D is tied to the fact that their resources tend to trump dice, muck with action economy and render much of the build economy useless. OTOH, people not especially good at the "build" game consider this a feature - a 12th level cleric is of some value even if the player makes bad choices at each level-up)
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Yeah, skills isn't quite the right name for skills. Not sure what else to name them though.
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Some of them clearly ARE "skills" (in the traditional-RPG sense of the word).
Others... erm, well, uh... "Resources" is a classic example.
I think lumping things-that-are-not-the-same into the same level of game, same mechanical framework, character-building / character-advancing strategy, is one of the few things DFRPG (and Fate) got wrong.
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The only thing I really dislike about FATE is the way fate points can be used post-roll to reach a target for the same amount as they could beforehand. I prefer the Savage Worlds approach which gives you the full effect of a Bennie (Fate Point) before the roll, but lessens their use afterwards. So you could get +2 on a roll if you spent one beforehand, but would only be able to +1 afterwards.
I prefer that kind of system because I like my fights to have a definite impact. As it is if you've got 2/3 fate points spare you can invalidate pretty much any decent attack or all but guarantee yourself a oneshot on a bad guy after knowing how close you were to killing him in the first place. I love the consequence system as it is, but I do dislike how easy it is to go from almost got him! to I'll just drop a fate point and finish this guy off.
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regarding skills - in Fate, skills are just a trapping for getting something done. There is no difference mechanically between overcoming resistance of a witness to give information via bribing them, intimidating them, making friends with them or ripping it out of their mind with some kind of supernatural attack. One gripe with magic in DFRPG is how it pretty much replaces every skill with Lore, Conviction and Discipline, but that's the setting. Other Fate games tend to reduce magic or other super powers to a combination of aspects and a few relevant skills too, plus maybe some refresh spent for the extra trappings on those skills.
Resources indicates the "cash and equipment" way of doing things, that's all. It has reasonably broad trappings but they're also fairly severely limited by the need for money or gear to be relevant. It's a helper skill to skills like Shoot, Craft or Drive, which work with "stuff" just as Might is a helper skill to Fists or Weapons.
The original Fate game (Spirit of the Century) had guns, fists, weapons mechanically identical, because in the pulp genre, they pretty much were, except for range considerations (including "creasing the skull" to take out enemies with pistol or having no serious consequences to bonking people on the head with clubs as a tranquilizer).
DFRPG muddles that because in the Dresden setting, gear and powers MATTER. Resources sort of matter for gear, but in the end you have what you need with a little play (Kincaid provides an excuse for Murphy to have limited-use amounts of military gear, Dresden has his clown car and an office even when too poor to really afford them, Charity makes Armor-2 vs nearly everything clothing for the entire cast once Michael's secret kevlar-in-chainmail is revealed and they've made friends with her, etc. If you are built around Resources and Contacts (see Marcone) you are often more able to know stuff and exert force than even Dresden.
As for fate points....all "story" oriented games have some kind of mechanic like this, it's almost a marker of a "modern" game. What is going on is adding a resource-management economy onto the usual action economy and build-point economy.
DFRPG has a fairly simple action economy - exchange+supplemental, or scenes. There are some ways to juice it (minions, summons, traps like wards) but that's about it. Fate core's even easier, exchanges are about it, but they have more scope for a strong defense to put aspects on the scene.
DFRPG and fate has a rudimentary build-point economy. It is there to provide a way of stating "this is how my character does things when I'm not burning resources". That's your skills, stunts and in DFRPG, supernatural powers. If you want to accumulate resources you lean on these, but you accept that you are going to fail from compels as a way of getting fate points from time to time.
The fate economy is SUPPOSED to trump the build-point economy. That is in fact the marker of a story game. You express the importance of your actions to the story by spending the hoarded resource, indicating that the player considers it important for an action to succeed...spending resources gained by either numerous prior failures or by a deliberate decision to have fewer build points than others at your table (refresh). As I've mentioned before, Nobilis has an even stronger resource-economy, and Feng Shui, a fairly early story-oriented game, had a weaker form (it only affected die rolls and weakened as you used it) but it had an entire archetype oriented around this idea, the Everyman Hero's (he had a lot of it, and it didn't weaken with use until he ran out...this is your Jack Murphy kind of hero, with a terrible "build" compared to a lot of the other characters and was humiliated a lot but had the ability to throw Karma around like water when it mattered, to be the tipping point in the story.)
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I prefer that kind of system because I like my fights to have a definite impact. As it is if you've got 2/3 fate points spare you can invalidate pretty much any decent attack or all but guarantee yourself a oneshot on a bad guy after knowing how close you were to killing him in the first place. I love the consequence system as it is, but I do dislike how easy it is to go from almost got him! to I'll just drop a fate point and finish this guy off.
1. What you describe works pretty well to invalidate attacks, but only takes out the other guy if he's a mook. Spending fate to inflict a mild consequence instead of stress isn't usually that effective a use of an action+fate point, unless the invoke on that consequence tips things better than making use of other aspects on the scene. PC-level opposition is INCREDIBLY tough, if they use all of their consequences, you need an outcome in the mid-20s to take them out, and if they have fate points, that goes higher.
2. Therefore if you're spending fate points that way, it must be more important than it seems. In my relatively limited play with fate, I've seen it done to avoid high-stress attacks (yes, that's how Murphy can survive fights with things that can throw cars, it isn't just Fists) sure, but it's more commonly used to make sure some kind of aspect lands on the scene so an action isn't wasted. Only if taking out a mook is unusually important is a fate point going to be used for that purpose and in that case...do you really want a character with the competence levels of most Fate characters screwing up something like silencing the lookout WITHOUT an aspect-based compel involved?
In a simulationist game, of course. That "d20" or percentile die looms large compared to your skills at most levels of competence so the chance of failure is always something you build into a plan. In a story game, rolling poorly means burning a resource to get the desired outcome, or you attempt it deliberately finding it more entertaining to have the guard shout an alarm, and you get a fate point for whatever aspect (either on yourself or on the scene) explains how your uber-mercenary-dude failed at so elementary a task.
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Huh, I didn't get notified on this topic. It's certainly kept going, hasn't it?
We've run a number of pre-gen one-shots at GenCon-- both tabletop and LARP-- and the important part of writing up pre-gen characters is providing a short paragraph of explanation to go along with each Aspect. The DFRPG sheet has a place specifically for that paragraph-- the sheet should not be considered complete if you haven't filled it out, especially since FATE sheets are so short and simple in the first place.
Furthermore, if you're running a pre-gen one-shot in FATE, WHY IN GOD'S NAME would you not tailor it so that every pre-made PC has a useful skill for the one-shot when you had full control over both your player characters AND your one-shot ahead of time. That's just. I don't even. It's like writing up a group of all rogues for a D&D game and throwing them against all undead or oozes who are immune to sneak attacks.
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They used Spirit of the Century iconics. I guess they just assumed anyone who signed up was familiar with them and wanted to play one.
I probably could have figured out more to do if that flyboy was my character. By the last half hour I'd kind of gotten a handle on him, even invoked the high concept at a critical point. But yeah. The Codex Alera game I ran had pregens all suited to the situation but I did not really have the hang of aspects yet, so no, I didn't fill in all the invoke/compel details I had in mind, and my players had only one real Fate veteran, the rest were fans of the books but had varying degrees of RPG backgrounds.
So it is entirely possible my attitudes towared convention runs are based on a small sample size of not very well thought out pregens :)
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I will agree with one of the further up posters-- DFRPG specifically has some rough edges due to the sheer power of magic and the use of weapons and armour. Our games have generally run pretty brilliantly in spite of those edges, but I'm still looking forward to seeing if Dresden Lives! smooths some of them out.
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I will agree with one of the further up posters-- DFRPG specifically has some rough edges due to the sheer power of magic and the use of weapons and armour. Our games have generally run pretty brilliantly in spite of those edges, but I'm still looking forward to seeing if Dresden Lives! smooths some of them out.
I dont think its strong enough ingame, the books feature wizards and magic ascentral themes. The game attempts to recreate the books, magic and wizards should be an overpowering presence. I dont understand such comments in relation to that fact. If you play this game you should expect powerful magic why play otherwise.
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I dont think its strong enough ingame, the books feature wizards and magic ascentral themes. The game attempts to recreate the books, magic and wizards should be an overpowering presence. I dont understand such comments in relation to that fact. If you play this game you should expect powerful magic why play otherwise.
Because when every player character plays a Wizard, long-term games get boring. Because if Wizards are so awesome, you will always have people arguing over who gets to be 'the group Wizard' (and this does happen). Most of the other templates tend to balance out when we play, but I've found that as soon as you give a character either Evocation, Thaumaturgy, or both, they tend to really bulldoze through things compared to the other players, and that tends to disgruntle the people left in their dust.
A good way to balance magic would be to make it cost more than it does right now, honestly. Because as expensive as it is Refresh-wise, it's still incredibly powerful. That would leave magic just as powerful, but would make it appropriately expensive for that power. Another way to tone it down would be to remove the free specializations and focus item slots that come with those abilities and make people pay for them separately.
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Because when every player character plays a Wizard, long-term games get boring. Because if Wizards are so awesome, you will always have people arguing over who gets to be 'the group Wizard' (and this does happen). Most of the other templates tend to balance out when we play, but I've found that as soon as you give a character either Evocation, Thaumaturgy, or both, they tend to really bulldoze through things compared to the other players, and that tends to disgruntle the people left in their dust.
A good way to balance magic would be to make it cost more than it does right now, honestly. Because as expensive as it is Refresh-wise, it's still incredibly powerful. That would leave magic just as powerful, but would make it appropriately expensive for that power. Another way to tone it down would be to remove the free specializations and focus item slots that come with those abilities and make people pay for them separately.
Then you wouldn't be playing dresden files, you would be playing something else. Magic is that powerful, as JB describes it " as the fundamental forces of creation". I've always thought that the game severly understates the power of a wizard in the dresden files. If you uread the majority of my posts I whine about this constantly. When I picked up my copy of dresden it was to play a wizard like dresden, not his brother the vampire or a plain jane mortal like murphy. Plenty of games out there that already "balance" magic against other things, i've never been one to think that magic should ever be balanced otherwise its not magic its something else.
You could have your players play sorcerers or some one trick pony like Bender. Make sure your games stay at the low end. But expect them to get trounced should they go up against a white council wizard or "gasp" a warden. In the magical community and beyond the WC is supposed to be that bad ass. You really aren't meant to be able to fight against a preped wizard and that prep incudes the use of magic items; that is part and parcel of the wizard template. Magic items are what allow the wizard to be ready for anything, they allow him to focus on offense and leave the defence to a sheild ring or a coat with defensive ruins.
another thing you might do is have the wizard research new spells instead of make them up on the fly. I think this better reflects what Dresden wizards do anyway. Dresden only seems to know a few spells and he consistantly mentions not knowing how something is done but if he spends the time working on it he could do it. Rote spells is where id start each wizard can start with a defined spell per point in lore, but to learn a new spell tie it to a story or a exp cost say 2-3 points of refresh per spell.The power of the spell will always be tied to conviction and bonuses but at least he cant create the well of death with any element until he figures out how to do it first with each element. And you havent really done anything to the dresden motif, in the dresden world the older wizards have all the power and it explains why they spend most of their time researching and not doing what dresden does. You could do a lot with this storywise and control the power of you wizards. Instead of always increasing refinement to make stronger and stronger wizards they could increase their versitility with new spells. Dresden packs a mean punch but basically its a force missle a fire missile or now an ice missle. If you go through the books he really doesn't do a lot of different things just a few that hit really hard. I really don't think hes a very good wizard.
None of what i think matters its your game, but it is the Dresden universe and if i play in it I expect to be that badass out the box. It is a game about wizards and magic so magic and wizards are going to be front and center. Hope the idea helps
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Then you wouldn't be playing dresden files, you would be playing something else. Magic is that powerful, as JB describes it " as the fundamental forces of creation". I've always thought that the game severly understates the power of a wizard in the dresden files. If you uread the majority of my posts I whine about this constantly. When I picked up my copy of dresden it was to play a wizard like dresden, not his brother the vampire or a plain jane mortal like murphy. Plenty of games out there that already "balance" magic against other things, i've never been one to think that magic should ever be balanced otherwise its not magic its something else.
You're absolutely entitled to want to play a Wizard character. I'm not arguing that at all. What I'm saying is that OUT-OF-CHARACTER, Wizards just dominate in a way that isn't fair to people who DON'T want to play a Wizard. I know plenty of players who find the idea of a Changeling compelling and interesting, and that's great. They should be able to play in a game with someone who wants to play a Wizard without feeling constantly overshadowed. The way that happens has nothing to do with which group is more powerful in the game world ON AVERAGE, because PCs are, by definition, not average instances of their template. They are almost always more clever, more powerful, or more resourceful than their average counterpart.
Thus, an example of a balanced group who can all get the right amount of attention without undoing power-levels: a Warden, the son of the White King, and a mortal cop with so many Fate Points that she can get a major creature of faerie to back down just by threatening him. The son of the White King is EXPECTED to be awfully powerful for the White Court vampire template-- he's PC-level in this case. The cop in question is just the most awesome cop ever written-- she's PC-level. They all get their moments in the series, and you could probably argue that they all have the same number of Refresh Points and Skill Points. This is how a balanced tabletop should run: out-of-character, everyone is balanced, while in-character, their average templates could vary significantly.
If magic is really that powerful, then it should cost more out-of-character points to choose it, so that other PCs can compensate accordingly. My argument is thus: I don't WANT to nerf magic. I just want to make it cost the right amount of points for how powerful it already is, so other PCs can use those points for other things, and play more awesome pinnacle-versions of their own template.
I hope that clarifies my position a bit more. It's a difficult topic to make clear sometimes.
You could have your players play sorcerers or some one trick pony like Bender. Make sure your games stay at the low end. But expect them to get trounced should they go up against a white council wizard or "gasp" a warden. In the magical community and beyond the WC is supposed to be that bad ass. You really aren't meant to be able to fight against a preped wizard and that prep incudes the use of magic items; that is part and parcel of the wizard template. Magic items are what allow the wizard to be ready for anything, they allow him to focus on offense and leave the defence to a sheild ring or a coat with defensive ruins.
I've actually experimented quite a bit with many of these ideas already in my games, but I don't enjoy telling my players things like 'you can't play a Wizard.' That, too, can feel unfair to players, especially when there are ways to help everyone have fun while still making character choices they enjoy.
TL;DR version: Out-of-character, one PC should be just as powerful as another PC, no matter what template they are playing. In-character, you can explain this away in whatever manner you must in order to make it work. Increasing the cost of Wizard abilities keeps them just as powerful in-character, but makes them more expensive out-of-character, thus resolving this situation perfectly.
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There is also an element of system mastery - wizards or even anyone with evocation, thaum or sponsored magic have a lot more choices than everybody else. This can lead to paralysis in the hands of a player that doesn't know what to do with the choices, or it can lead to the "Doc Savage" syndrome, where one person is better at everything than his teammates, and only needs them because he can't be in two places at once.
The best limit on the latter problem is to just insist that players pick strong aspects that define their magic. Most of what keeps Harry from dominating everything is Not So Subtle but still Quick to Anger. He's an angry thug, and that tends to make him overlook most approaches with magic that don't involve bonking things on the head. Where he does anything subtle, it ties into the Wizard PI high concept - tracking spells and such.
With thematic magic it is easier in many ways, as the lower cost, no-refinement-except-with-items magic already draws boundaries around the awesome that other PCs can use to fit their concepts into and shine. But even the full-on generalist still has seven aspects. Magic is who you are, every aspect is going to draw lines around how you'll approach problems with magic and therefore should allow scope for other characters to shine. Magic doesn't entirey solve problems. It merely turns all skills into Lore, Discipline and Conviction if you've got the time and/or stress boxes to make it happen. That's a pretty big deal, but the genre pretty much establishes this as how things work.
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For me the toughest part of Fate to get people's heads around has been that, unlike most games, Fate isn't about building powerful stats. It's about building a powerful story.
I love that Fate allows the freedom to play with things on a narrative level, and that's how I regard skills. To me, skills are not a reflection of a character's literal ability, but rather of how much of the story they can steer with that ability. This is why I'm perfectly happy with my players using Minor Milestones to swap investigation and combat skills around regularly. Early on, the story is about the characters figuring out what's going on, so they do better at finding clues but take some licks if they get jumped. Meanwhile, towards the end when they've figured out who the bad guy is, the story shifts to be about them kicking ass, and they change their skills around to suit.
I do find that magic is a real spanner in the works when it comes to presenting the group with a challenge. But there are a couple of solutions to this.
1: My favourite is conflict groups. It's an easily-overlooked section, but the rules state that you separate out characters into groups for a conflict, and that "typically" this is simply "players vs villains", but it can easily be more refined than this, with certain PCs fighting certain opponents. This is great for making sure that wizards don't dominate the whole conflict, and allowing all players a chance to shine.
2: Compels. Using magic in a city? Compel for car alarms to go off or street lights to explode, drawing attention or injuring people. A villain bursts a fire hydrant to put the aspect "doused in running water" on a wizard, and uses the free compel to stop the wizard using magic. There are all sorts of fun ways to challenge spellcasters.
That said, arguably the biggest badass in our group is the Pure Mortal. He's gone toe to toe with a Kemmlerian necromancer. And won. Twice.
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For me the toughest part of Fate to get people's heads around has been that, unlike most games, Fate isn't about building powerful stats. It's about building a powerful story.
I love that Fate allows the freedom to play with things on a narrative level, and that's how I regard skills. To me, skills are not a reflection of a character's literal ability, but rather of how much of the story they can steer with that ability. This is why I'm perfectly happy with my players using Minor Milestones to swap investigation and combat skills around regularly. Early on, the story is about the characters figuring out what's going on, so they do better at finding clues but take some licks if they get jumped. Meanwhile, towards the end when they've figured out who the bad guy is, the story shifts to be about them kicking ass, and they change their skills around to suit.
I do find that magic is a real spanner in the works when it comes to presenting the group with a challenge. But there are a couple of solutions to this.
1: My favourite is conflict groups. It's an easily-overlooked section, but the rules state that you separate out characters into groups for a conflict, and that "typically" this is simply "players vs villains", but it can easily be more refined than this, with certain PCs fighting certain opponents. This is great for making sure that wizards don't dominate the whole conflict, and allowing all players a chance to shine.
2: Compels. Using magic in a city? Compel for car alarms to go off or street lights to explode, drawing attention or injuring people. A villain bursts a fire hydrant to put the aspect "doused in running water" on a wizard, and uses the free compel to stop the wizard using magic. There are all sorts of fun ways to challenge spellcasters.
That said, arguably the biggest badass in our group is the Pure Mortal. He's gone toe to toe with a Kemmlerian necromancer. And won. Twice.
thats been my most difficult thing too is getting passed the number crunching. I like to power game min max things to perfection its fun, not really needed at all here. Probably why I prefere die 20 or ars magica for my games with magic. Fate points area power all on their own level.
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The "min/max" in Fate is mostly choosing good aspects.
Good meaning "they steer the story to the kinds of conflicts, problems and awesomeness I want my character to be".
The skill/stunt framework in Fate Core is a skeleton, the aspects are are everything else. You need the skeleton, to flag your routine competence and favored approaches to problems.
DFRPG actually blurs the lines a bit because the supernatural powers are so strong that they overwhelm the mechanical advantage of using fate points for +2 or rerolls. They do not, however, provide a smidgeon of protection against compels, so you sometimes get situations where someone at Mab's level is discommoded by rolling a nail toward her.
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... I've always thought that the game severly understates the power of a wizard in the dresden files ...
Remember that Dresden *regularly* taps himself out, spends all he has. Sure, he flipped a car onto Cowl, but then he... uh... well, didn't have enough to keep going. It's that mortal-energy-limitation -- from the books -- that limits the power of wizards.
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Like: It's simple, flexible and narrative.
Dislike: Too primitive, sometimes awkward, undetailed.
As for me, the best system for urban-fantasy - Storytelling System versiin 2.0 (new World of Darkness Blood-and-Smoke).
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I've actually been toying with the idea of using aspects in D&D.
Most modifiers give a +2/-2.
Myself and other people who've DM'd have used various Role playing points/Luck Points etc.. to let players save up to buy extra feats or buy skill points.
I think adding the aspect system would enrich the game.
An interesting facet of 5th edition D&D is inspiration. Characters have two personality traits, one ideal, one bond, and one flaw. If you play out your personality traits, the DM award you with an inspiration point. This can be spent to roll and extra D20 on a roll and then take the highest. It has a low level fate point/aspects vibe. They even give advice that sounds like it came straight from FATE. An example is not to use the trait "I am smart" but rather "I've read every book in Candlekeep" becuase the latter says more about you.
I am getting ready to run a 5th edition campaign and am considering adding a more robust system that includes Declarations and such.
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I thought about declarations but skills can get pretty high at higher levels making some declarations auto-success...but if you set dc's too high, then low level characters can't add to scenes, which is boring. I'm not sure the best way to incorporate them.
although, When players tend to ask, "Is there any 'X' the room?" , I don't decide in my head 'yes or no there is(n't)' and then have them roll to notice it. I just set a dc and have them roll. If they succeed, it's there. In a sense, that's what a declaration is.
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Fate Core suggests that you set difficulties for their equivalent of Declaration based on how much it advances the story, ie "rule of cool".
If it's something you want on the scene the moment it's suggested you set the difficulty very low. If you could go either way, set it at 2-3. add +2 to the difficulty for things like "it's boring", "it isn't very likely". If a player really wants it there and his character's built for it, you can get the huge outcome and have a "Leverage" type flashback scenario where they perhaps earlier placed the thing on the scene, or got minions to do it or something.
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DFRPG already does that. It has a check list which increases/decreases difficulties of declarations depending on how it adds to the story. I don't remember which page.
And, that's fine on a +0 to +8 but, in D&D, at higher levels, when skills are hitting high twenties and low thirties, it's harder to balance.
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I greatly enjoy the FATE system, and it's perhaps my favorite system that I've ever come across for a couple reasons. (This is referencing the FATE core system in general as well as the DFRPG.)
1. The FATE system is rules-light, but offers a very large room for modular improvements. For people who prefer more "crunchy" systems, you can basically just insert a custom system into it with little to no fuss.
2. It allows players to come up with extremely narratively different ideas in conflicts, that I as a GM am more able to facilitate. For example, I had a group going through one of the pre-gen cases and he was a minor talent, but had little to no combat ability. They got into a physical conflict so he was unable to do much on his own, until he had the idea to use the car as a weapon. In more numbers heavy systems, I would've had to do massive amounts of mental calculations to figure out how much damage it could do to feel impactful but not be broken. In FATE I just say all right roll your Drive and it's a Weapon:4.
3. It allows for character archetypes and ideas that aren't strictly the most powerful in physical conflict. Pathfinder and D&D often have this problem where if people don't build powerful combat builds they won't be useful in the encounters. Now there can be instances where a GM can facilitate a game without this problem by having it be intrigue, but I personally don't have the skill nor the players to be inclined to do it. In FATE being a know-it-all about random topics can be used mechanically in combat to help your allies. This gives people who are not necessarily all about combat the ability to still function in physical conflict. In FATE it would be entirely possible to play a complete pacifist and still contribute in fights.
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I'm a big fan of the Fate system in general. I've played pen and paper RPGs for... Many, may years. The cooperative storytelling aspect fits my style of game well. It's probably second only to Deadlands(Classic) on my list of most loved game systems. I actually shamelessly borrow from the ideas of both of those games when I use either. The Fate chip rewards for Deadlands are a little easier for me to use even in Fate. So when I GM Fate I award fate points less for my compels than for playing your aspects in ways that enhance the stories in addition to the general self-compel type awards.
That said, with a poor GM it fails fast and hard. If your GM doesn't keep the Fate points rolling you can stagnate quickly.
My worst tabletop game was a Dresden Files game. The rare few compels that were offered were poorly thought out. We started with 8 refresh and my Camp Kaboom Warden got offered one compel in three sessions of play. When we tried skills every single one of our skill tests were put at our rank +1. When we tried to capture a rouge Wizard the GM conceded without giving anything up and auto-escaped. Even our supposedly helpful NPCs, the contacts we made up during city creation, forced us to wade through an actual minefield just to talk. Essentialy making everything that makes Fate a good system pointless and our characters incompetent.
Every system has trouble with bad GMs but the lack of hard and fast rules for everything (Like D&D) magnifies those issues. Kind of reminds me of seafood; Done well delicious. Done poorly terrible.
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I'm a big fan of the Fate system in general. I've played pen and paper RPGs for... Many, may years. The cooperative storytelling aspect fits my style of game well. It's probably second only to Deadlands(Classic) on my list of most loved game systems. I actually shamelessly borrow from the ideas of both of those games when I use either. The Fate chip rewards for Deadlands are a little easier for me to use even in Fate. So when I GM Fate I award fate points less for my compels than for playing your aspects in ways that enhance the stories in addition to the general self-compel type awards.
That said, with a poor GM it fails fast and hard. If your GM doesn't keep the Fate points rolling you can stagnate quickly.
My worst tabletop game was a Dresden Files game. The rare few compels that were offered were poorly thought out. We started with 8 refresh and my Camp Kaboom Warden got offered one compel in three sessions of play. When we tried skills every single one of our skill tests were put at our rank +1. When we tried to capture a rouge Wizard the GM conceded without giving anything up and auto-escaped. Even our supposedly helpful NPCs, the contacts we made up during city creation, forced us to wade through an actual minefield just to talk. Essentialy making everything that makes Fate a good system pointless and our characters incompetent.
Every system has trouble with bad GMs but the lack of hard and fast rules for everything (Like D&D) magnifies those issues. Kind of reminds me of seafood; Done well delicious. Done poorly terrible.
this is probably one of the best and most honest answers i;ve seen
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I've seen D&D games fail just as badly with a poor DM, so I'm not sure that reflects on the game, specifically. In fact, I've seen quite a few gaming system die with poor GM's. Maybe I'm unlucky that way.
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I've seen D&D games fail just as badly with a poor DM, so I'm not sure that reflects on the game, specifically. In fact, I've seen quite a few gaming system die with poor GM's. Maybe I'm unlucky that way.
Oh no doubt, but hey, if you play enough games you will get some bad ones. They are usually short distractions, even if the are sometimes more common than the good ones. A good tabletop game can keep entertaining you and your friends for months or years.
I just don't think Fate is a good starter game for GMing. It take a particular mindset to run this system that is both awesome and hard for some people to grasp. You can't be playing against your players and make it fun for them. (Your villains can and should.) The Dresden books make the cooperative aspect a big deal but not everyone gets that. I think most people need to run a bad game or two (or more) before they can run a good one. Fate is almost beautifully simple to run for an experienced GM, but that simplicity can bite you in the ass if you don't know what you are doing.
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The rule of thumb for a bad experience in 3.5 or Pathfinder Organized Play (eg, Living Greyhawk, Pathfinder Society) was you had to have two of three things true.
1. Bad gm
2. Bad module
3. Bad mix of players at the table
A fun group of players and a module that is well written can overcome a poorly prepared GM stumbling through the encounters and box-text descriptions because they'll chew on the scenery, make their own fun and nobody will suddenly die by a GM mistake in the combat encounters or have the adventure derail because the PCs are competent and the module's organized assuming at least some people will be running it cold.
A good gm and a good module can generally adapt it in minor ways on the fly to the foibles of dysfunctional, incompetent or contentious PCs and give a pretty good experience anyway, drawing them into the game.
A good GM and good players will have a pretty good game, no matter what the author of the module did, and I've seen some doozies there. My favorite anecdote along these lines had a fairly normal adventure start an encounter with the gm just going "sorry about this" and having the following monsters attack our river boat....
Flying awakened (intelligent) squid barbarians, juiced up on potions wielding multiple axes in their tentacles. The table was so busy busting up in laughter that they almost killed us all, because we just couldn't take it seriously. My wife's reaction when I told her later was "Squids are SALT-WATER critters!" (we'd seen enough goofy stuff that THIS was what offended her).
Mostly you get mediocre in two of the three, but one of them good, and that is also pretty fun. (and if the players are mediocre, well, you're part of the problem. Start injecting some fun!). As long as it isn't actively bad, most gaming is a bit like a good meal or sex. Even when it isn't great, it's pretty good.
Now in most games the GM is the author of the story, so a bad GM can kill a game pretty quick. Fate doesn't have the crutch of pre-planned modules, because it doesn't lend itself to that (it has scenes that after the initial hook are pretty much determined by player actions in the first scene - at best the GM has some milestones and stuff he kind of wants the PC's to interact with, but in the end they drive things much more than D&D/Pathfinder). This means the GM also has to be an author, and so do the players. If either side of this equation breaks down, Fate can be pretty stale. (see my other posts on the difficulties of running Fate in a convention setting, based on my anecdotal early experiences. It can be done, but it's harder if the GM is unprepared or inexperienced with the fate economy, or if the pregens are poorly thought out)
I was an experienced GM but not with fate when I ran a Codex Alera adaption for one guy good at Fate, one with passing experience and two newbies. We had fun because they were fans of the setting and I'm a decent GM, but I didn't give them enough aspects that fit the scenes well on the character sheet or in the scenes themselves, and we didn't use the fate economy very well (this adaption was like DFRPG though in that the non-fate add-ons were strong enough the flavor got through, even if the aspects were weak, which is probably why it worked)
I'm an experienced player, but had an inexperienced GM and a tired, cranky table using stock Spirit of the Century characters when I had a bad experience playing. I didn't understand my character, ran dry on fate points and got taken out in the firs encounter, got no help from anyone on the table using the aspect mechanics in terms of compels from GM and other players, was playing a social pilot in a scenario mostly underground and with nobody to talk to, so had little help from the skills part of my character sheet either.
I salvaged that game experience for myself on a break by just getting my head right and loosening up and looking for ways to chew on scenery to have some fun (which in Fate, tends to work well). In the climactic scene I used my "fear of flying" consequences from the first encounter to hose a bunch of flying enemy psychic things that had latched into my brain, and the "spirit of freedom" high concept to judo the BBEG who thought that me letting him into my head to do the fear thing would get me to become a thrall.
Running DFRPG here is really helping a lot to have this all sink in, although I'm not totally clear on the pacing of the fate economy. My players are mostly accumulating fate points while coping with various challenges, and we'll see how well I did when they reach the climax of this milestone - I've got that worked out, but I've got a lot less feel for how it'd go than in a normal game, given how compels and invocations can suddenly shift the situation. One really nice thing though is that the city building effort gave me a ton of stuff to work with when responding to their actions and looking for conflicts and challenges. The world building I usually have to do to GM my own scenario is mostly covered by the Dresden setting + city/character building, the rest fills in during play.
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I love Fate and DFRPG in general. I have been playing pen and paper RPGs for about 20 years and this is the first one I have truly fallen in love with. I have played several editions of D&D, Shadowrun, Gurps, Pathfinder, LOTR, Dark Heresy, Vampire the Masquerade, and so on.
It has enough crunch that rules lawyers and power gamers can shine, but, the built-in mechanics let a less combat oriented character really shine too. I love aspects and declarations. It rewards creativity and role playing. I just can't seem to get back into any other systems right now. I would love to introduce some of the other groups I play with to DFRPG. It is a blast.