What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Aldarc]

OK, maybe I have never played a FATE-based game that really used that idea. I'm understanding from what I read that these are specific 'feats' which a player has to choose when building a character (and thus generally subject to the FUDGE-derived 'you can only have so much stuff' restrictions). So maybe your Samurai dude can spend a fate point to invoke 'great kaiai' and get some cool effect. This seems like a pretty small 'hole', and depending on how the character is implemented and what the player does with it, then it is likely to be as supportive of characterization as most anything else.

Stunts are mostly built around three ideas (though there are more):

(1) Add a New Action to a Skill: Use skill A instead of skill B under certain circumstances. e.g., "Backstab. You can use Stealth to make physical attacks, provided your target isn’t already aware of your presence."

(2) Add a Bonus to an Action: Usually a +2 bonus to skill action in certain circumstances (e.g., "Gain a +2 bonus to create an advantage using Lore, whenever the situation has specifically to do with the supernatural or occult.")

(3) Create a Rules Exception: You can "break" the rules. (e.g., Riposte. If you succeed with style on a Fight defense, you can choose to inflict a 2-shift hit rather than take a boost.)

Fate Point-powered stunts are rare. (Not even sure if they include an example in the book.) So almost the entirety of your fate points are spent engaging your aspects.

Right, because it helps with "here's how I like to solve problems", which actually makes it, in a weird way, most similar to 4e skill checks! Or for those GMs which are willing to entertain it, SC situations where the player introduces some twist in the plot to explain how he used skill X to do something (4e sadly hasn't a way to regulate this, though GMs can certainly figure something out, HoML fixed that).

As an aside: I find it fascinating that 4E was criticized for just being a tactical miniatures game without any real roleplaying, but it seems that on this forum that many of the people who extol the virtues of 4E the most are story now roleplayers.

My reading of FATE Core is that modifying story details DOES require an Aspect. This can be against your own characters aspects, or against an aspect of another character (NPC or PC) or an aspect of the scene, including one introduced in play.

Correct.

So really a good comparison would have to be a core system derived FROM d20 which adds in FATE-like mechanics and then uses variations on d20 plus that core for different genres. That also may exist, I don't know....

Possibly Aspects of Fantasy. It claims to offer...

* A streamlined version of the D20 system
* Rules for using aspects and fate points with characters, equipment, adventuring parties, and creatures
* Quick character creation rules with 8 races, 8 classes and a number of backgrounds and traits
* Rules for using fate points as a commodity to power traits and maneuvers
* Critical and fumble rules along with an easy to use skill system
* A D20 magic system that better integrates with aspects and fate points along with over 150+ spells
* Conversion information for using Aspects of Fantasy with your Pathfinder and D20 products, along with a dozen sample creatures to get you started

...but I have not looked into it in depth.

Well, not if they really played a FATE-based game much. They would almost immediately understand how it is the story-telling FATE point economy part of the game which drives things. If you played D&D for 10 years and then read FATE Core you might think of Aspects et al as just some minor subsystem, despite it taking up a good part of the rules, but you'd learn different after 1 day of playing SotC!

This has been my experience running Fate games.

Incidentally, Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Games re-posted an old blog post on Twitter. A wee bit:

Since we released Fate Acclerated, or FAE, I’ve seen the game really divide opinions. Some folks love it to pieces, others are really put off by it, and a few people get confused about whether or not it’s Fate Core or its own thing (as evidenced by the occasional “Fate Core versus Fate Accelerated” threads I’ve seen, as if that’s actually something that should be versus).

For the record (again), FAE is Fate Core. It’s got the dials cranked in deliberately different directions than Core’s given defaults (which are suited for the Hearts of Steel sample campaign used throughout Core’s examples). Those deliberately different directions are all about speed and supporting broad flexibility across multiple, sometimes disparate, sometimes super-similar, character types. It leaves off some of the more fiddly options for Core in the interests of brevity, and it does a bit more hand-holding as far as stunt construction goes, again with the focus on speed and ease. This gives us a very slim chassis that we can use as basis for a variety of stand-alone Fate products, at around 10k-12k words instead of Core’s 80-90k. All very intentional, and by themselves, I don’t think they’re much of a departure from Core. (That’s not to say they’re departure-free, just that the deviations are minor.)

But the rest discusses the use of Approaches rather than a typical skill list.

 

[Tony Vargas]

IMHO, putting on my AD&D player's cap for a minute, it is rarely a good idea to waste time in a combat situation 'setting up' anything. There's a great deal of value in doing that AHEAD of combat, but once you're in combat the business should be to follow the cardinal rule of Musashi, who said "Every movement of the sword should be a killing blow."

Musashi sounds like a powergamer. Seriously, though, the race to zero hps can factor in a wasted action of prep when pre-casting is not an option, as long as the result is likely to be dropping enemies faster/sooner, net of that action: so, when a single round nova is certain to result in no fatalities, mainly.

Besides, pre-combat prep counts: that's what was going on in the sneaking-through-the-pipes example - the character took Create an Advantage twice before initiating combat.

As an aside: I find it fascinating that 4E was criticized for just being a tactical miniatures game without any real roleplaying, but it seems that on this forum that many of the people who extol the virtues of 4E the most are story now roleplayers.

It wasn't just here. When 4e came out, I was in a GM's 'club' that ran various games at local conventions, with the aim of putting a greater variety of systems out there for people to try. The core members were very much of the storytelling Role-not-Roll persuasion, for them D&D was the poster boy for both RP-stultifying "Roll Playing" and for the lack of diversity they were struggling against. They played Storyteller games, and an obscure indie game, Storyboard. By the end of the 3.5 run, I'd talked them into letting me run a D&D game under their banner, that resulted in at least one other DM joining. 4e came out, and a while later, I'm invited to a playtest, it's my fellow DM running 4e with the core group, it was solid, the high point being a chase scene - something RPGs rarely do well - that was very successful.
But not only were these hardcore Role-not-Roll Players playing D&D, and enjoying it, rather than intellectually tolerating it for the sake of diversity as they had with my 3.5 playest a few years earlier, they were also talking about the regular 4e campaigns they had been playing, themselves.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Stunts are mostly built around three ideas (though there are more):

(1) Add a New Action to a Skill: Use skill A instead of skill B under certain circumstances. e.g., "Backstab. You can use Stealth to make physical attacks, provided your target isn’t already aware of your presence."

(2) Add a Bonus to an Action: Usually a +2 bonus to skill action in certain circumstances (e.g., "Gain a +2 bonus to create an advantage using Lore, whenever the situation has specifically to do with the supernatural or occult.")

(3) Create a Rules Exception: You can "break" the rules. (e.g., Riposte. If you succeed with style on a Fight defense, you can choose to inflict a 2-shift hit rather than take a boost.)

Fate Point-powered stunts are rare. (Not even sure if they include an example in the book.) So almost the entirety of your fate points are spent engaging your aspects.

OK, yeah, I had no recollection of ever seeing that kind of use of fate points in any game I ever played in. I can see how that might be a way to create some sort of a super power which is tied to a character's very nature or something, but it doesn't seem like it would make a lot of sense as a general mechanic in fate.

As an aside: this is one reason that I didn't just follow the FATE model closely in my own game. I wanted to emphasize the 'connectedness to the universal sources of power' which made characters 'Mythic'. Its story-driven, but it doesn't rely on an economy of plot coupons. They exist, and they're important, but mostly you use vitality to perform what fate would call stunts, so there's a separate Inspiration mechanism for when you want to do something like spend a plot coupon to add something to the narrative.

As an aside: I find it fascinating that 4E was criticized for just being a tactical miniatures game without any real roleplaying, but it seems that on this forum that many of the people who extol the virtues of 4E the most are story now roleplayers.

The analysis and commentary of the general D&D community of 4e was laughably bad to be generous. What it taught me was that largely even frequent posters with lots of play experience have very little concept of how the games they run actually 'tick'.

Possibly Aspects of Fantasy. It claims to offer...
...but I have not looked into it in depth.

Oh, now you may have given me a new reading assignment. When will I get to finish my game design work?!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Musashi sounds like a powergamer. Seriously, though, the race to zero hps can factor in a wasted action of prep when pre-casting is not an option, as long as the result is likely to be dropping enemies faster/sooner, net of that action: so, when a single round nova is certain to result in no fatalities, mainly.

Besides, pre-combat prep counts: that's what was going on in the sneaking-through-the-pipes example - the character took Create an Advantage twice before initiating combat.

Sure, IN THEORY. The problem is that 'real' situations aren't cut and dried. So when you start down that path you better be darn sure your assumptions are correct, because you're taking at least 2x more risk (expending 2 actions to achieve a result instead of one). Its very easy for the DM to pull a fast one or things to simply not be what you expect, or just the foo of a bad die roll that torpedoes your wonderful plan. The other issue is that AD&D encounter resolution can be FAST. It is, particularly at levels where this kind of cleverness might be feasible, quite common for round one to be the last real round of the fight. Most M.U. spells can easily gank opposing spell casters, and casters are what really matters in most cases. Even missile fire can usually gank a party's mage, so you often have just one shot, there is no round 2 for your plan to come off in because by the end of round one the critical questions at hand have all been answered. One side or the other has achieved spell-casting dominance and/or imposed crippling effects on the other, and its all downhill from there.

This was my speciality as a wizard player in AD&D, ending all doubt! Usually accomplished on round one and the art was more to do it with the appropriately valuable resource so you wouldn't be depleted before the end of the day's work. Thus "oh, its some orcs, yeah, Sleep!", "oh, its some ogres, lightning bolt!", "oh, its the evil high priest, Time Stop!"

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sure, IN THEORY. The problem is that 'real' situations aren't cut and dried. So when you start down that path you better be darn sure your assumptions are correct, because you're taking at least 2x more risk (expending 2 actions to achieve a result instead of one).

Sure, though that goes both ways, as your attempt to one-shot may fail miserably, and the combat go longer. ::shrug::

Either way, the spells existed that could be used - on-label or 'creatively' - to Create an Advantage for yourself/allies, be it in combat, or leading up to it.

For that matter, 'skilled play' was often about setting things up to your advantage - without benefit of any actions or points for that purpose.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, though that goes both ways, as your attempt to one-shot may fail miserably, and the combat go longer. ::shrug::

Either way, the spells existed that could be used - on-label or 'creatively' - to Create an Advantage for yourself/allies, be it in combat, or leading up to it.

For that matter, 'skilled play' was often about setting things up to your advantage - without benefit of any actions or points for that purpose.

Well, there are certain 'pathways' in the spell system to getting a good result. Haste for instance is one of the perennially strongest spells because it DOES work as a buff, even if cast after combat starts (because the one lost action is replaced instantly by several other characters getting multiple actions). This is kind of the 'exception which proves the rule' power.

The other pathways involve either strong control or 'indirect damage' tricks. Spells like Rock to Mud and Wall of Iron are classic examples which can cause lethal results but avoid both saving throws and magic resistance because TECHNICALLY they aren't attacks. Spells like Web, for a low level example, are milder forms of the same thing. One of the nice things about Lightning Bolt is how it can be used 'dual purpose' to either cause direct damage OR indirect damage (IE by blasting some structure which then collapses on the target). Druids tend to have a bunch of this kind of stuff, although it has built-in limitations that make them a little inferior to a wizard in AD&D.

This is also why some of the less exceptional seeming spells are actually VERY useful in some situations. The Monster Summoning series falls into this category. The creatures you summon are quite weak and often barely relevant in combat, BUT they get attacks which aren't subject to saves, and they can keep hacking until someone squishes them (bonus to action economy there). Plus they have open-ended non-combat uses, which is always a big plus.

My big nasty wizard's main spell selection strategy was actually NOT to use spell slots for direct attack spells (I did carry one or two of them for backup purposes). Instead I had items for doing the blasty stuff (Staff of Power, I love you). Slots were for all this kind of indirect/dual use/marginal utility stuff. The really oddball stuff you might use once in your career I copied onto scrolls.

Anyway, the definite rule was to act on round 1 to cast the 'finisher' for that battle and not to wait! Some tactics depend on the DM and how he interpreted certain rules though.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, there are certain 'pathways' in the spell system to getting a good result. Haste for instance is one of the perennially strongest spells because it DOES work as a buff, even if cast after combat starts (because the one lost action is replaced instantly by several other characters getting multiple actions). This is kind of the 'exception which proves the rule' power.

As long as your fellow party members don't mind getting older in a hurry...

Of course - typical Gygax - while the Haste spell write-up in the 1e PH notes that it ages the recipient, neither it nor the DMG specify by how much. The potion of haste, however, does specify aging of 1 year per use, so we took that to imply the spell does likewise.

This is also why some of the less exceptional seeming spells are actually VERY useful in some situations. The Monster Summoning series falls into this category. The creatures you summon are quite weak and often barely relevant in combat, BUT they get attacks which aren't subject to saves, and they can keep hacking until someone squishes them (bonus to action economy there). Plus they have open-ended non-combat uses, which is always a big plus.

My guess is that these days about 90-95% of the times I see a magic-user cast any Monster Summoning spell it's for a non-combat reason - usually glyph removal (by setting it off) or trap detection/removal (by setting them off) or some other similar situation where sacrificial schlubs can come in handy.

My big nasty wizard's main spell selection strategy was actually NOT to use spell slots for direct attack spells (I did carry one or two of them for backup purposes). Instead I had items for doing the blasty stuff (Staff of Power, I love you). Slots were for all this kind of indirect/dual use/marginal utility stuff. The really oddball stuff you might use once in your career I copied onto scrolls.

Hmmm...my MUs seem to often end up going the other way: the spells are for blasting and the devices are for the other stuff.

I try to avoid scrolls most of the time, as they're too easily dispelled or burnt or soaked or otherwise ruined.

Lanefan

 

[Imaro]

My reading of FATE Core is that modifying story details DOES require an Aspect. This can be against your own characters aspects, or against an aspect of another character (NPC or PC) or an aspect of the scene, including one introduced in play. Stunts I'm not so familiar with, but given that the build process heavily restricts their availability I'd consider them to be intermediate between an aspect (a rather narrow one) and something like a 4e power.

Ah, you are correct, my bad.

and my counterpoint is that this would be true only if a player has a very casual interest in that sort of thing and isn't interested in it being an important part of play. I'm not contradicting you, I'm simply pointing out that its a very limited thing and thus it will only satisfy few of the people would would want to play that way, and is a pretty limited/poor introduction to the whole concept for others.

I'll agree that this particular use of personality traits is limited in depth insofar as it's effects mechanically on the game go (and I think this would be a positive in the situation I presented where it is a single player in a group who enjoys this type of experience vs. the entire group)... but 5e gives other options that tie a character's personality traits as well as their ideal/flaw and bonds into the game with more mechanical heft. If a player and DM are looking for more heft then I would point them to the Personality Trait Proficiency optional rules which ties there proficiency bonus to their personality traits & their ideals, bonds and flaws. This would be more in line with a group whose main focus is on this type of game.

As I say, some. A limited amount. I didn't find them very satisfactory in my play of 5e. I had PIBFs on my main character, and a background. I certainly used them as a rough guide to play. We really didn't mess with alignment but it was roughly similar in impact to what alignment would be, but a little more specific. I did hanker for more, and at the same time the lack of attention on that system kind of made it fade from mind and we didn't really engage with Inspiration at all.

But if you wanted more why didn't you engage with it more? Did you need the game to force you to engage with something you were looking for? OAN I would suggest you try out the optional rules above, they may give you more focus and mechanical heft when it comes to these.

OK, you want to use d20 as your comparison? It has nothing in the way of story telling mechanics that I'm aware of (but I'm pretty ignorant of the details of d20). Obviously you can probably find ANYTHING somewhere in d20, but I would point out that such rules are CORE in FATE, so they pretty much always exist in all of FATE, just with variations. And my point stands, what FATE inherits from FUDGE (which includes skills, and stunts) it uses very differently. So really a good comparison would have to be a core system derived FROM d20 which adds in FATE-like mechanics and then uses variations on d20 plus that core for different genres. That also may exist, I don't know....

Well I actually think it's possible to get a close and similar experience with just the rules in the DMG... but I'm also getting the feel that if something is optional in 5e (though we are discussing numerous FATE options) it's auto-discarded by some of the posters in this discussion... irregardless of it's actual merits because... well... optional...

Well, not if they really played a FATE-based game much. They would almost immediately understand how it is the story-telling FATE point economy part of the game which drives things. If you played D&D for 10 years and then read FATE Core you might think of Aspects et al as just some minor subsystem, despite it taking up a good part of the rules, but you'd learn different after 1 day of playing SotC!

But I posted a game run by the co creator of the game... I wouldn't say this is an apt description of how that game went. Do you believe he was running FATE incorrectly? Me personally I'm not so sure. I ran FATE Kerberos club and it was pretty similar to how his game played out. Yes we used Aspects but we used our skills, stunts and superpowers more.

I would consider it to be similar to the BRP or GURPS core rules. A GM could make a bunch of decisions about which options to use, what elements to exclude, etc. and make a sort of vanilla skill-based game of genre X using BRP (for example). I would not call it a complete game on that basis alone. Its close, and might have the elements you need for a specific one-shot or something, but you WILL need genre-related rules and some thematic elements (think of CoC's sanity rules for example) to make it really work. Likewise with FATE Core. Its a bit looser system, but you will still need to make a bunch of decisions and add some elements to really make a decent game.

Well the video I posted was run using just FATE core...

Would you rather discuss one specific FATE-based system? There are 100's and I'm not sure which ones we would both be familiar with. I merely discussed FATE because it does have highly developed story-based mechanics and it provides at least a general sort of basis of other subsystems a game needs.

No I think FATE Core is fine since we all have access to the SRD online.

I don't know what to tell you really. When I've been in some of these games we were constantly playing off of aspects. I mean, skills (etc.) provided a part of the game, but it was the aspects that decided what you WANTED and thus what you would 'go for'. If you weren't engaging some sort of aspect in some fashion, usually one of your own, then all you had was basic checks with fixed skill bonuses. It gives you a 'how did I succeed on this' but not a WHY, or a 'what do I want to do' either. The game is also a scene-framed game in essence, so it can only move forward into engagement with Aspects, high concepts, troubles, etc. Skills come into play, but rarely, if ever IME, outside of the context of an aspect.

So we have an actual play... run by one of the designers which leans heavily on skills and less often on aspects... My takeaway from that is it shows that Aspects don't have to be as integral (though I do agree they are important) to the play of the game as they might seem to some...

My other takeaway is that a particular group can choose to make Aspects the focal point of play in the same way that a group playing 5e could make personality traits, ideals/flaws/bonds the focus of play.

Could you run a game, in the sense of "I can use the subsystems to adjudicate things which happen", yes. But you lack all but the most rudimentary trappings.


Actually I went back through my FATE 2.0 Core book and I have to say, it is a LOT more generic and less "playable off the shelf" than even I remembered. First of all it isn't ANY more specific than FUDGE, and uses basically just about the same mechanics. This means you don't have any definitive list of skills. Instead you have 3 possible types of skill system, broad, general, or specific, which you can flesh out. There are lists of skill names, as examples, for each of these three within categories. Before you could pick skills you would have to decide which of the three systems you were using, and make an actual definitive list of skills. Then you would have to describe them all (because there are no descriptions of what they cover in FATE 2.0).

Likewise you have aspects and extras. Aspects are generally assumed to be open-ended, but this is not strictly required. Still, you could assume so and play a game. Extras could be ignored, but otherwise they will have to be devised, and they're often the genre-defining parts of the game. They are not detailed except for a few examples.

Other subsystems are mentioned as possibilities, generally in chapter 9 under "magic". This could be reflavored to most anything though (psionics, tech, etc.). However there are simply many options provided, each of which would have to be fleshed out to be playable.

Now, maybe later versions of FATE are different. 'FATE 3' IS SotC, which is a complete game, but is a bit different, though it is essentially similar to FATE 2.0 from what I can see, except restricted to the pulp genre. The '4th Edition' Fate Core I haven't read, maybe it is more fleshed out. Looking at the SRD for that I guess it really depends on which things you consider to be part of 'Core', since the SRD encompasses 7 entire RPGs! If FATE 2.0 is marginally playable with some assumptions, then I guess you could say Fate Core plus the toolkits and SRD versions of the various RPGs is a lot more fully playable. Core by itself still seems to require some fleshing out though.

I'm still failing to see how FATE doesn't provide you with a complete game. Yes you have to make decisions around the rules and game setting...the same way a GM has to decide if Feats are available, multiclassing is allowed and if you're playing in the Forgotten Realms or somewhere else in D&D.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ah, you are correct, my bad.




I'll agree that this particular use of personality traits is limited in depth insofar as it's effects mechanically on the game go (and I think this would be a positive in the situation I presented where it is a single player in a group who enjoys this type of experience vs. the entire group)... but 5e gives other options that tie a character's personality traits as well as their ideal/flaw and bonds into the game with more mechanical heft. If a player and DM are looking for more heft then I would point them to the Personality Trait Proficiency optional rules which ties there proficiency bonus to their personality traits & their ideals, bonds and flaws. This would be more in line with a group whose main focus is on this type of game.




But if you wanted more why didn't you engage with it more? Did you need the game to force you to engage with something you were looking for? OAN I would suggest you try out the optional rules above, they may give you more focus and mechanical heft when it comes to these.



Well I actually think it's possible to get a close and similar experience with just the rules in the DMG... but I'm also getting the feel that if something is optional in 5e (though we are discussing numerous FATE options) it's auto-discarded by some of the posters in this discussion... irregardless of it's actual merits because... well... optional...



But I posted a game run by the co creator of the game... I wouldn't say this is an apt description of how that game went. Do you believe he was running FATE incorrectly? Me personally I'm not so sure. I ran FATE Kerberos club and it was pretty similar to how his game played out. Yes we used Aspects but we used our skills, stunts and superpowers more.



Well the video I posted was run using just FATE core...




No I think FATE Core is fine since we all have access to the SRD online.



So we have an actual play... run by one of the designers which leans heavily on skills and less often on aspects... My takeaway from that is it shows that Aspects don't have to be as integral (though I do agree they are important) to the play of the game as they might seem to some...

My other takeaway is that a particular group can choose to make Aspects the focal point of play in the same way that a group playing 5e could make personality traits, ideals/flaws/bonds the focus of play.




I'm still failing to see how FATE doesn't provide you with a complete game. Yes you have to make decisions around the rules and game setting...the same way a GM has to decide if Feats are available, multiclassing is allowed and if you're playing in the Forgotten Realms or somewhere else in D&D.

Gotta disagree a bit. You can skew 5e towards the play aesthetics Fate puts front arms center, but you can't get there (or really that close). Mechanics matter. The best you have is a 5e game that has a stronger focus on character cues, but nothing like Fate does.

 

[Imaro]

Gotta disagree a bit. You can skew 5e towards the play aesthetics Fate puts front arms center, but you can't get there (or really that close). Mechanics matter. The best you have is a 5e game that has a stronger focus on character cues, but nothing like Fate does.

Have you looked at the Personality Trait proficiency rules in the DMG? If so what do you think of them in contrast to FATE 's Aspect rules? Again I don't see it as exactly the same but it feels pretty close to me (from the player side, I'll readily admit 5e isn't built for something like aspects to define things outside of characters)... thought I wonder if keywords are similar in function...

EDIT: I'd also be interested in hearing your thoughts on the actual play video I linked too...