Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, John Rogers, and Ryan Macklin Play FATE CORE!

While the show Tabletop normally focuses on boardgames, it occasionally dips into tabletop roleplaying games. A couple of years ago, Will Wheaton and his friends played Green Ronin's Dragon AGE; and now they've turned their attention to Evil Hat's Fate Core. This episode of Tabletop features Felicia Day, screenwriter John Rogers, Will Wheaton, and GM (and co-designer of Fate) Ryan Macklin. Wheaton describes Fate as the gold standard of games which let the rules get out of the way so as to focus on the story.

[video=youtube;NOFXtAHg7vU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOFXtAHg7vU[/video]

 

[thzero]

And cue the crickets.

 

[Ratskinner]

And cue the crickets.

Well it's not exactly controversial.

 

[Celebrim]

Well it's not exactly controversial.

I can provide that if it would help.

 

[Brodie]

I've been big on Fate Core for quite a while (I ended up backing the Kickstarter when I was looking for more material for a Dresden Files game I was going to run). The only bad thing I can say about this episode is that I'm not lucky enough to play with an RPG group that embraces storytelling as much as the group in the video. My group likes crunchy rules should combat arises.

 

[Ratskinner]

I've been big on Fate Core for quite a while (I ended up backing the Kickstarter when I was looking for more material for a Dresden Files game I was going to run). The only bad thing I can say about this episode is that I'm not lucky enough to play with an RPG group that embraces storytelling as much as the group in the video. My group likes crunchy rules should combat arises.

That's a huge problem, IME, when introducing Fate to experienced groups.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Brodie]

That's a huge problem, IME, when introducing Fate to experienced groups.

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True enough. What bugs me is that my group LIKES story. They just don't embrace the mechanics of Fate as much as they could. I've played it twice (someone else in the group ran it) and I've run Dresden Files (original, not Accelerated). Running it is how I realized they don't embrace the mechanics as much as they could. I'll be running a homebrewed setting soon enough and it's one they'll hopefully get into, since it'll be focused more on fun than seriousness.

 

[BrockBallingdark]

That's a huge problem, IME, when introducing Fate to experienced groups.

Yup, only one guy grasped Fate Core at my table and he's the super combat/let's kill a guy! The rest can't get into world building or creating Aspects. It's a shame, I had a blast playing a few Fate games at Gen Con a couple of years back.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The Fate system does take some getting used to. When we did a Dresden Files RPG campaign, we were pretty terrible at first, before we got the hang of the whole Aspect mechanic and whatnot. We felt more like the comic relief than the plucky supernatural investigators we were supposed to be.

 

[MarkB]

You really have to embrace the roleplay of the Aspects and the Fate Point system to get the most out of it, because its core mechanic is rather bland - roll four dice, add a modifier, and hope the other guy rolls worse, and do that every single time you do anything. But if you play up the Compels and the opportunities for teamwork, and the scene-building, it rises above that basic mechanic and gets a lot more interesting. It's just a bit of a leap for many players, and even GMs.