Pathfinder 1E Wizkids should take the Pathfinder 1.0 ruleset and publish their own RPG.

[Lanefan]

I hear my name being taken in vain...

And I think that a fairly good way to highlight how people cannot do everything with Fate is to summon @Lanefan, with whom I had many prior discussions about how the Fate system is not conducive for telling the same stories he prefers. Fate is not designed for many of the things that Lanefan wants out of his game. Fate is not designed for zero-to-hero narratives. It's not designed for exploration and dungeon crawls. It's not a game about rewarding good tactical play, players engaging an in-universe resource management minigame, or solving puzzles. And sort of the action declarations that a player can make or encouraged to make will differ between games. (@Lanefan has expressed similar issues and reservations with games like Dungeon World and Blades in the Dark.) You really can't use Fate to run D&D style fantasy, though there are supplements that try, including the nearly ubiquitous Freeport conversion.

About all I can say to this is that if Fate can't do all the things @Aldarc says here it can't do (an assertion I have to take on faith as I'm not all that familiar with the Fate system) then it's probably not a game I'd be interested in playing.

That said, in a hypothetical situation where Fate (or any other single system, for that matter) was the only game system available, a dedicated GM could and would houserule and kitbash and squash that system into providing whatever game experience was desired. Sure they system might fight back for a while, but IME GMs always win those battles in the end.

My experiences are circumstantial and anecedotal. I can freely admit that. But through those experiences I have often found myself repeatedly engaging with people who wanted to create/convert/adapt something for 5e that required changing 5e to do something cumbersomely that it was not really well designed to do and where other pre-existing systems tended to do better at that very thing they expressed wanting their 5e game to do.

I don't think there would be much opposition to the idea that if someone, for example, wanted to run a game that simulates an investigative Cthulhu story for 5e, many on this forum would probably first propose that they consider using CoC rather than adopt that for 5e.

Perhaps...but the flip side is that it's almost always far easier, both for GM and players, to adapt or modify a system you already know than to learn a whole new one.

Cheaper, too.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That said, in a hypothetical situation where Fate (or any other single system, for that matter) was the only game system available, a dedicated GM could and would houserule and kitbash and squash that system into providing whatever game experience was desired. Sure they system might fight back for a while, but IME GMs always win those battles in the end.

The question, at that point, would be whether the ruleset you ended up with still had any resemblance to the game you started with. I know that if I tried tweaking FATE until it was playable, I would have to remove all of the core mechanics in order to do so; and I don't know that anyone could say that it was still FATE at that point.

You could argue that the rules don't matter, because the GM is going to house rule it all anyway. But if the rules really didn't matter, then you wouldn't need to house rule anything, because the rules in the book would have been sufficient.

Fortunately, there could never be any such thing as an "only game system available," because any halfway-decent GM can crank out a new system as need be.

 

[Campbell]

If you need to cordon off D&D and CoC as "bad examples" to make a point about RPGs "in general," that's a bit strange.

But that misses the point that CoC, the oldest and most successful horror RPG of all time, is based on BRP, which is Runequest, which is a homebrew mod for OD&D.

It is not that they are bad examples in isolation. The comparison is a bad one because they are so broadly similar in terms of the division of player and GM roles, GMing ethos and technique, resolution systems, and even scenario design that they are pretty much the same game. The differences are largely at the poetry layer (setting) which is the easiest part of the game to change. They are also broadly designed to have as little impact on the fiction as possible.

I think they are great examples of how a game can be designed to cultivate a particular play experience. It is just largely the same experience. Many mainstream games are pretty much the same game with a different coat of paint. It's a solid design. It's just the same one.

 

[eyeheartawk]

...snip

But that misses the point that CoC, the oldest and most successful horror RPG of all time, is based on BRP, which is Runequest, which is a homebrew mod for OD&D.

This is the first time I've heard someone describe Runequest as an OD&D mod. Other than the fact that they are both fantasy roleplaying games they share almost nothing in common mechanically or in their settings.

 

[Parmandur]

This is the first time I've heard someone describe Runequest as an OD&D mod. Other than the fact that they are both fantasy roleplaying games they share almost nothing in common mechanically or in their settings.

I wasn't even being figurative, RuneQuest started out as "The Perrin Conventions" which were widely shared houserules to OD&D that Steve Perrin came up with: The Perrin Conventions

 

[Parmandur]

It is not that they are bad examples in isolation. The comparison is a bad one because they are so broadly similar in terms of the division of player and GM roles, GMing ethos and technique, resolution systems, and even scenario design that they are pretty much the same game. The differences are largely at the poetry layer (setting) which is the easiest part of the game to change. They are also broadly designed to have as little impact on the fiction as possible.

I think they are great examples of how a game can be designed to cultivate a particular play experience. It is just largely the same experience. Many mainstream games are pretty much the same game with a different coat of paint. It's a solid design. It's just the same one.

I gotcha.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I wasn't even being figurative, RuneQuest started out as "The Perrin Conventions" which were widely shared houserules to OD&D that Steve Perrin came up with: The Perrin Conventions

I'm aware of The Perrin Conventions, but The Perrin Conventions are not Runequest. The Perrin Conventions informed D&D play on the west coast in the formative days. 1st Edition, or any edition, Runequest is nothing like OD&D.

The fact that OD&D was a shared experience for all of the early developers has more to do with the fact that it was the the only game in town. By this logic Tunnels and Trolls is also OD&D with house rules. It doesn't hold up.

Not to say that those didn't exist, Arduin would be a good example of this.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm aware of The Perrin Conventions, but The Perrin Conventions are not Runequest. The Perrin Conventions informed D&D play in the west coast in the formative days. 1st Edition, or any edition, Runequest is nothing like OD&D.

The fact that OD&D was a shared experience for all of the early developers has more to do with the fact that it was the the only game in town. By this logic Tunnels and Trolls is also OD&D with house rules. It doesn't hold up.

Not to say that those didn't exist, Arduin would be a good example of this.

Tunnels & Trolls is based less on the rules of OD&D than Runequest, but it is also the same thing at work.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Tunnels & Trolls is based less on the rules of OD&D than Runequest, but it is also the same thing at work.

I disagree? I mean, just go read Runequest and show me where it's just "Homebrew OD&D".

Not that it matters, really. From what I can tell reading this thread your position is that:

System Doesn't Matter
5e Rules can handle everything
Even if the system did matter, everything is just house ruled D&D anyways
and System Doesn't Matter

 

[Parmandur]

I disagree? I mean, just go read Runequest and show me where it's just "Homebrew OD&D".

Not that it matters, really. From what I tell reading this thread your position is that:

System Doesn't Matter
5e Rules can handle everything
Even if the system did matter, everything is just house ruled D&D anyways
and System Doesn't Matter

Yup!

I didn't say it was "just" homebrewed OD&D, but that is the essential identity beyond any accidents of system.