I like Fudge more than Fate myself. Although I do like the idea behind Aspects just not the metagamey fate economy.

I am in the middle of developing a fantasy ruleset using Fudge/Fate
http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/MajesticRealmsRPG_Fudge_Rev%2016.zip

Basically I use Aspect where other systems use Advantage and Disadvantages. It is not fine grained but rather a package of benefits and complications. The exact mix depend on what the aspect represents.

Quote from: robiswrong;769068I'm a fan.

You might recognize me as Kyoryu on TBP.

Also, I'm in Bellevue, right next to the MS campus, so getting together would be feasible.

I, er, should point out that my cp is about 10 years out of date and I now live in Monroe, which is 45-60 mins from Bellevue. But still.

Quote from: Will;768956Being cheap and a fan of system light games, I've been really into Fate (and FAE) lately.

Any fans here? Board seems heavily dominated by D&D...

(I like D&D, though currently pretty happy with PF)

I'm interested in Fate but I haven't had time to check it out. And, I have to admit, I lost a bit of interest when I discovered that poker chips (or beads, or whatever) are a primary component.

Still, the books look interesting. I'll read through a few when I have time.

Well, Fate points come and go. So you need something for that. I dunno, I use chits and beads and stuff for other games and their resources, so it doesn't seem that unusual to me.

Another option would be marking a piece of cardboard and sliding a colorful paperclip?

Quote from: Will;769091Well, Fate points come and go. So you need something for that. I dunno, I use chits and beads and stuff for other games and their resources, so it doesn't seem that unusual to me.

Another option would be marking a piece of cardboard and sliding a colorful paperclip?

Don't worry, it's a wholly irrational dislike on my part, and I know it.

The books have gotten enough positive commentary that I'm willing to set aside my instant bias.

Edit: Wasn't there a well-reviewed cyberpunk book for Fate? Or am I thinking of another game line?

I've found FATE and FAE interesting, but I think I'd need to actually DM some games to really get a feel for it, even more than simply being a player in one.

I dunno...

One nice thing is that you can get Fate Core free, so ... that's one less barrier.

I have FAE and never got to try it. I might like it better than FATE Core. I really wanted to like ICONS though, and found it kinda ehhh, so hopefully I have better luck with FAE.

Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;768997ICONS is about as "Fatey" as I get. I like the simplified version of aspects that ICONS has, where they're limited to character traits that can be used for a "Determination" economy, but I think FATE itself takes the aspects idea way too far.

I guess I liked FATE 2 better than the current version. But I also guess that I liked FUDGE better than FATE 2...

The only version of FATE that I played was Diaspora, and it cured me of metagamey aspects.

I like some games better that came out of the FATE/storygame community, such as Lady Blackbird, in the same way as I like some games better that came out of the d20 community such as Microlite 20 and the OSR clones.

I'm waiting for my copy of Atomic Robo to get a campaign started. I've been reading the PDF a lot and I just love the game as much as I love the comic. I don't think I'd use that system for another game though.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;769129The only version of FATE that I played was Diaspora, and it cured me of metagamey aspects.

How so?

I love reading Fate, but have yet to have it work out as well in play as more "traditional" games. We ran a game using Diaspora as a base but found the system in general hard to grok. The mini-games for that version didn't help either. It's a system that promises the world but delivers a confusing experience despite the cool ideas.

The way fans promote it is needlessly exclusionary as well. They've created this false binary of wrongbad "antagonistic" GMing and fluffy "cooperative" gaming. I've done collaborative setting-creation but prefer to create the world and characters myself. I don't really like "declarations" or sharing details the characters wouldn't know. Anathema to that crowd. I've even used a GM screen before. EEGADS!

Beyond some of its more annoying fans and underneath the (for me) fun-destroying mechanics, there's a solid core of ideas there. It can be a struggle to get there, though.

Yeah, I'm tinkering with a Diaspora-inspired game. I'm hoping to explain Aspects a lot more simply... I've seen some great explanations and approaches, but most of the books I've read are murk.

FATE 3.0 was a system I wanted to like, but ended up leaving a bad taste in the mouths of my group. We'd toyed with SotC hacks a number of times for short games, and they were serviceable enough, but things broke down when we played DFRPG. Partly it was the game conforming to the genre (really, I think the Dresdenverse works better as a backdrop for a series of books than an RPG), but it was equally problems with the system.

Such as:

• The vagaries of the Fate Point economy just didn't work for us. Maybe we're broadly too traditional in our collective tastes, but it felt too often like you had to trawl for Compels to ensure you had FPs to use later on, rather than them "driving the story" or some such.
• Furthermore, it seemed most tasks came down to whether or not you were willing to throw a load of FPs at them in order to guarantee a win.
• Refresh didn't work as a balancing mechanic. I remain completely unconvinced by it to this day. Far too often the powers were more useful than the FPs, or having them meant you needed them less.
• The Skill pyramid/column just seemed arbitrary and neither realistic nor well-balanced as a means of allocating competence.
• Opposed rolls made anything involving opposition ridiculously swingy. We fixed that by having only the players roll (so just 4dF of variance, rather than 8dF) so that at least competence mattered, but it seemed like a kludge.

FAE doesn't really address any of those, so we're done with FATE.

I found Fate inspired me to want to play diceless again, and if that's the case there are better systems out there to do it in.

In all seriousness, the part I like least about Fate, and FAE was no exempt, was the Stunts. Fiddly, annoying to keep track of, and reminds you that this game is nothing but a 1-5 scale with bonus stacking.

I do like the Fudge Dice - that's a neat mechanic (rolling 4 dice with the expected value being your own existing score).

Never mind the frustration my players expressed at being expected to essentially co-GM the game. They wanted me to GM for a reason. This all being said, I would run it tomorrow if my group wanted to play it, but I would certainly not be running it the way the book suggested.

Rename Aspects to Concepts, eliminate the Trouble Aspect.
Change Stunts to Feats, since that's what they are, and I don't have to worry about copyrights.
Eliminate the stupid Skill pyramid!
Expand the range of compotency from 1-5 to 1-8 or something... give the characters some more room for granularity.

Actually, to be completely fair, a lot of these options exist in the Fate Toolkit, so if you have any interest in the game I'd recommend checking out Fate Core and the Fate Toolkit.

I could grumble about my misgivings with Fred Hicks (his attitude in the G+ group has stunk at times)... but he's allowed to be a jerk. He's a game designer, not a spokesman.