Fantasy Craft Play Experiences

[Celebrim]

Does anyone have play experience with Fantasy Craft?

The game looks much more like what I thought 4e would look like than what it actually looks like, but I have several misgivings about its apparant complete lack of concern with play balance and an even bigger misgiving over its core mechanic of 'critical success/fumble on a skill role'.

What is meant by a critical success on an attack is fairly direct. What is meant by a critical success on a fumble of an attack is much more difficult to put your finger on, forcing me when I added fumbles to 3.X to create a table to help with arbitrating them.

However, by comparison to attacks, what is meant by a critical success or failure of a skill check is far more abstract and uncertain. What I'm afraid of is essentially that in order to make a skill success 'better than succeeding' is that it will tend to trample on RPing, exploration, and other interaction - effectively short cutting one or more scenes. So, how are you handling 'better than succeeding' on skill checks generally? I can think of specific examples where you could pile on success - critical success in negotaiting, you not only get a good price, but the noble offers his daughter's hand in marriage sort of thing - but in general I'm having real trouble getting my head around what better than success means.

Does the game handle this by virtue of player choice, or is there something else I'm missing?

 

[Psion]

Does anyone have play experience with Fantasy Craft?

A bit.

The game looks much more like what I thought 4e would look like than what it actually looks like, but I have several misgivings about its apparant complete lack of concern with play balance

Complete lack of play balance? I'm not sure we are even on the same wavelength here. I consider Fantasy Craft to be superior to many or most of its contemporaries when it comes to what I would call Play Balance[TM].

and an even bigger misgiving over its core mechanic of 'critical success/fumble on a skill role'.

What is meant by a critical success on an attack is fairly direct. What is meant by a critical success on a fumble of an attack is much more difficult to put your finger on, forcing me when I added fumbles to 3.X to create a table to help with arbitrating them.

However, by comparison to attacks, what is meant by a critical success or failure of a skill check is far more abstract and uncertain.

In Spycraft 2.0, they were much more strictly codified, which was better for someone who wants a "cut and dried answer", but in some cases the spelled out effects didn't apply well to the situation at hand well, and it did tend to create more lookups. I think this is why they went a bit more free-form with the fumble effects in Fantasy Craft.

What I'm afraid of is essentially that in order to make a skill success 'better than succeeding' is that it will tend to trample on RPing, exploration, and other interaction - effectively short cutting one or more scenes.

I've never seen it do so. To do that, I think you'd have to afford result far in excess of what's expected of the rules. A crit in combat will automatically take out a minion, but a special NPC is less certain. If you look at the complex task rules, a critical success grants you an additional success; it doesn't blow the whole challenge away. Nothing here on the order of bypassing a scene.

Though the critical/fumble results aren't as strictly codified at in SC2.0, if you thumb through the lore chapter, there are plenty of examples for recommended crit and fumble results, none of which are as game breaking as you suggest. It can certainly make some encounters easier (or harder).

Keep in mind that unlike 3.5, crits (similarly, fumbles) aren't confirmed with a roll, but by spending action dice. So if the situation does not lend itself to an apparent extraordinary (or sucky) result, you can choose not to spend it (or in the case of a player, the gm can tell the player it's not worth wasting the dice). But in situations where an unfortunate incident can add a bit of stress and flavor to the game, thats when to plop down the action dice.

Finally regarding roleplaying, I find that the convention rewarding roleplay on the spot with action dice (which can in turn be used to confirm crits) encourages roleplaying, if anything.

 

[Celebrim]

Complete lack of play balance? I'm not sure we are even on the same wavelength here. I consider Fantasy Craft to be superior to many or most of its contemporaries when it comes to what I would call Play Balance[TM].

Well, in the sense that if you run a skill heavy, intrigue, political game, then every class has an area of play in which they can shine, then I would agree. And there are several other ways I can see that balance is easy to achieve with scalable NPC's and very little reliance on gear.

However, if you run a typical adventuring campaign it seemed to me that the majority of classes were just 'skill monkeys' of various sorts, whether literal 'skill money', or 'style/panache monkey', or 'gear monkey', or 'luck monkey'. While such a class could contribute to combat to one degree or the other, it seemed like it would be very easy to be outshined even in something that was far from pure hack-n-slash. My experience with RPGs is that there is only so much combat prowess you can sacrifice for out of combat prowess because combat is such a blunt hammer and effectual last argument for overcoming obstacles.

Is it not as bad as it looks, and if so, can you provide some examples from play?

In Spycraft 2.0, they were much more strictly codified, which was better for someone who wants a "cut and dried answer", but in some cases the spelled out effects didn't apply well to the situation at hand well, and it did tend to create more lookups. I think this is why they went a bit more free-form with the fumble effects in Fantasy Craft.

I pretty much figured that a table can't cut it for such a broad and general case; the problem I foresee is that I'm not sure I'm that good at improv, and even if I was, I'm not sure that it would contribute to 'fun'.

I've never seen it do so. To do that, I think you'd have to afford result far in excess of what's expected of the rules.

It's the example in the rules (stealth, IRC) that I'm thinking of where the rules provided a list of suggestions for increasingly 'critically successful' results. All the suggestions violated my standards of good referee narration (see the thread on 'boxed texts' in General).

Does anyone know when a 'dead tree' edition is expected?

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Well, in the sense that if you run a skill heavy, intrigue, political game, then every class has an area of play in which they can shine, then I would agree. And there are several other ways I can see that balance is easy to achieve with scalable NPC's and very little great reliance.

However, if you run a typical adventuring campaign it seemed to me that the majority of classes were just 'skill monkeys' of various sorts, whether literal 'skill money', or 'style/panache monkey', or 'gear monkey', or 'luck monkey'. While such a class could contribute to combat to one degree or the other, it seemed like it would be very easy to be outshined even in something that was far from pure hack-n-slash. My experience with RPGs is that there is only so much combat prowess you can sacrifice for out of combat prowess because combat is such a blunt hammer and effectual last argument for overcoming obstacles.

You're right about how much combat prowess you can sacrifice, but the opposite of that is trying not to sacrifice it somehow and ending up with either a bunch of classes that aren't really so different because there's only so much you can differentiate them while still allowing some customization or niche-ing flexibility out to get separation at the expense of difference between members of a class.

So long as a game takes the side of separating what can be used in combat from what can't (like d20 games seem to do) then that game has to make a choice how much to support each. FantasyCraft at least gives you enough support of skills that you can try to base a game around them rather than combat.

Does anyone know when a 'dead tree' edition is expected?

Already exists.

 

[Celebrim]

You're right about how much combat prowess you can sacrifice, but the opposite of that is trying not to sacrifice it somehow and ending up with either a bunch of classes that aren't really so different because there's only so much you can differentiate them while still allowing some customization or niche-ing flexibility out to get separation at the expense of difference between members of a class.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Preaching to the choir here. I'm one of the original 4e skeptics, but I didn't come here to start an edition war. All I'm saying is at times I felt FantasyCraft had overcompensated for certain other systems deficiencies. (It also borrowed some of the ones that annoy me, but in easily correctable ways.)

Already exists.

Cool. I think I'll pick it up. At the very least, its a very thought provoking set of rules.

 

[Psion]

Well, in the sense that if you run a skill heavy, intrigue, political game, then every class has an area of play in which they can shine, then I would agree. And there are several other ways I can see that balance is easy to achieve with scalable NPC's and very little great reliance.

However, if you run a typical adventuring campaign it seemed to me that the majority of classes were just 'skill monkeys' of various sorts, whether literal 'skill money', or 'style/panache monkey', or 'gear monkey', or 'luck monkey'.

I see. We do seem to be on a very different wavelength here. What you call good PLAY BALANCE, I call bad PLAY BALANCE. FC gives you several arenas in which players can strut their stuff, but no player is strictly excluded from all arenas.

For example, you call most of the classes skill monkeys, but if you take a look at the combat actions available, you should quickly come to understand that does not exclude them from being meaningful in combat; many maneuvers link directly to skills. Your burglar can trip; your courtier can intimidate or distract, etc.

And on the other hand, even the least skillful classes still get a base of 4 sp/level and access to two origin skills of their choice in order to choose how they want to participate outside of combat. So I have to deal with less instances of the yawning fighter player outside of combat.

YMMV, but I consider this to be a far superior solution to "balancing around combat and all other balancing consideration is secondary", which to me leads to bland gaming and bored fighters when non-combat time arrives.

If you want a campaign in which you know that combat will be primary, it seems the thing to do is have the players all take classes with the Combatant role.

It's the example in the rules (stealth, IRC) that I'm thinking of where the rules provided a list of suggestions for increasingly 'critically successful' results.

Here's the hide crit results text from sneak:

With a critical success, the character fades completely into
the background — the error ranges of Notice and Search checks
to detect him increase by 2 per action die spent. With a critical
failure, every observer who might notice the character does
— likely at an inopportune moment — and the character may
not escape detection again until he moves out of the observer’s
sight and earshot.​

If that's what you are referring to, I'm having a problem relating to your objection. It doesn't give the player the scene on a silver platter, but it does make it easier for him to do the job. (shrug)

Does anyone know when a 'dead tree' edition is expected?

*taps on his hard copy* Already is.

I really don't have much more to add regarding the skill crits/fumble discussion other than to say look at some of the other examples.

 

[Celebrim]

I see. We do seem to be on a very different wavelength here. What you call good PLAY BALANCE, I call bad PLAY BALANCE. FC gives you several arenas in which players can strut their stuff, but no player is strictly excluded from all arenas.

I think we are on more the same wavelength than you seem to think.

For example, you call most of the classes skill monkeys, but if you take a look at the combat actions available, you should quickly come to understand that does not exclude them from being meaningful in combat; many maneuvers link directly to skills. Your burglar can trip; your courtier can intimidate or distract, etc.

Sure. And the courtier can summon a horde of followers, or decide to win any single skill contest, gains some bonus AD he can hand out, and a few other combat useful things I don't remember. And with some stretching you could link an NPC experts skills to combat actions in 3.X as well. For example, you could use bluff to fient, escape artist to get out of grapples, and balance could with a feat be used to defend against trips and is generally useful fighting in rough terrain. And so forth.

What I'm saying is that all and all, it didn't seem like the courtier gained as much in combat as a combatant class gave up outside of it. Or in other words, the courtier's edge over a combatant class outside of combat, didn't seem to make up for its deficiency in it unless you ran a game were combat as a whole was no more important to the game than any single skill. That seems unlikely in most peoples games, even the one where my character only got in a fight on average every four sessions or so.

And on the other hand, even the least skillful classes still get a base of 4 sp/level and access to two origin skills of their choice in order to choose how they want to participate outside of combat. So I have to deal with less instances of the yawning fighter player outside of combat.

Which is fine, except that it didn't seem to me on first glance as easy for a Courtier to pick up a +20 BAB, as it did for any other class to pick up Persuade or Intimidate (or whatever).

YMMV, but I consider this to be a far superior solution to "balancing around combat and all other balancing consideration is secondary", which to me leads to bland gaming and bored fighters when non-combat time arrives.

My experience playing many kinds of RPGS (horror, fantasy, sci-fi) in many different systems, is that while its perfectly fine to have some characters where 'combat' is a secondary consideration, in the long run it can't be too secondary of a consideration for any character. Even in a point based game which is heavy in investigation, you can't spend all of your points on things irrelevant to combat. If you are playing a class based game, that means IMO that every class has to pick up some 'unnecessary' combat baggage as part of their basic build because the option to play a non-combatant just doesn't really work for 90% of games. Brute force is a highly effective argument that just tends to invalidate everything else in a conflict situation. Thus, it's very hard to do anything except melodrama where it doesn't matter whether you can fight.

'Combatant' has to be everyone's minimum 'secondary' role IMO. It's not clear to me that the designers of FantasyCraft thought so.

I'll get my hardcopy and come back with more specific objections and questions.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

'Combatant' has to be everyone's minimum 'secondary' role IMO. It's not clear to me that the designers of FantasyCraft thought so.

That's probably because FantasyCraft is coming out of Spycraft. Or you could call it MissionSpecialistcraft.

I never played Spycraft, never even read the book, but if it's trying to emulate spy movies I think it's built with the premise that not everyone contributes at the exact same spacetime coordinates. Your Hacker guy doesn't contribute in the current fight against the evil mastermind because that's not his time, or, ideally, he's trying to shut down the mastermind's system while the fighter guys are fighting.

Translated to Fantasycraft that means the "skill monkey" classes aren't supposed to be contributing to a fight that's not their time. The Courtier is for Social time, the Explorer is for Find Clue time, and the Keeper is for Fix-it-Build-it time.

For some people that system works, they're fine with it. For others they want everyone to be built to somehow contribute to all, or a sub-set of, situations even if it's not all equal. For those people FantasyCraft might not be the right system.

 

[Celebrim]

Translated to Fantasycraft that means the "skill monkey" classes aren't supposed to be contributing to a fight that's not their time. The Courtier is for Social time, the Explorer is for Find Clue time, and the Keeper is for Fix-it-Build-it time.

Which is exactly the opposite of what Psion claimed, and more in line with what I feared from what I was reading.

 

[Psion]

'Combatant' has to be everyone's minimum 'secondary' role IMO. It's not clear to me that the designers of FantasyCraft thought so.

Hmmm. I consider it to be so... at least if you want to. There are plenty of ways to spin a non-combatant-primary classes to have some pretty neat combat tricks, like choosing feats or origins to shore up their combat role. And, as I said before, certain skills parley into some effective combat tactics.

Translated to Fantasycraft that means the "skill monkey" classes aren't supposed to be contributing to a fight that's not their time. The Courtier is for Social time, the Explorer is for Find Clue time, and the Keeper is for Fix-it-Build-it time.

Which is exactly the opposite of what Psion claimed, and more in line with what I feared from what I was reading.

Well, that would be because I sort of disagree with Moonpaw. The default standard NPC mob is equal to the party size. So while the combatant classes are going to be the major players in combat, even a combat-secondary class is more than a match for a standard npc unless they deliberately eschewed any options that gave them combat ability.

And to be fair, I've seen that in Spycraft. The most min-maxed character was a faceman with all the trappings to max out her impress skill and things she could do with it, but her combat proficiencies were sort narrow. She was decent with a pistol, and that was about it.

But still, the way that any hit can take a standard NPC down, she still got her licks in against those.