New edition of FATE is out.  It is interesting to me, but a bit meta for me to get my head around.  Interested in hearing your experiences with the system (either new or old).

Mods - plz move if FATE is considered a storygame.

I'd like to add a question to the above: Can FATE do sandbox and hexcrawl style play?

As a person who plays FATE Core (the new edition) I can say it can handle hex crawl pretty well if you create a formula for it.

1 zone = 6 spaces -or- inches = 30 feet (other words average human speed so adjust it to fit what game your playing)

Example:  Stars Without Numbers
1 zone = 4 spaces = 20 feet  (so if you really want to you can spend your turn to move 2 zones instead of one if you want to)

To figure out range for weapons that uses feet for range you just divide the sum by 5.  That should give you the amount of spaces.  From there divide it by 6 (4 for stars without numbers) to figure out how many zones it takes.

Don't know if that is what you mean by hexcrawl, but at least you can move around the board and have a idea on what your doing in terms of DnD movement.  Along with weapon range of course.  Then again your better off ditching zones for just how many feet you can travel and keep normal weapon range.

Sandbox now that is tricky.  In the big picture of things like the entire setting, then no.  If your talking about individual places, then yes.  You just have to make the graphs and what result you get with your dice rolls.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;723761New edition of FATE is out.  It is interesting to me, but a bit meta for me to get my head around.  Interested in hearing your experiences with the system (either new or old).

If you are finding Fate Core hard to get your head around may I suggest you take a look at Bounty Hunters of the Atomic Wastelands. It's a free download, just click on the picture.

With BHAW I went for a really simplified version of Fate. I like Fate but the full game has a lot of moving parts some of which can be conceptually challenging or even a bit intimidating at first. I wanted BHAW to be something really accessible, the sort of game you can just pick and play and get right first time even when drunk.

Fate Accelerated is the official version of Fate. It's is really streamlined and elegant beyond words, but you still have to make all the mental leaps Core requires.

I'm rather fond of it. I've played more Fate Accelerated Edition, but I like Fate core, in fact I will be using it for something publishable at some point.

Yes, you could do a hexcrawl with it--as long as you set up the rules of the world via FATE (which is true of any game) but you'll need to use genre elements for example.

I really liked Fate 2nd Edition. Never been able to get into any iteration of 3rd Ive come across-the meta's been tirned up to 11and the "fate point economy" just isnt somethibg I want to deal with during a game. I liked the initial idea behind aspects, but theyve been taken in a direction that I find bothersome as a GM. No idea if the new FATE Core addresses any of that.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;723766I'd like to add a question to the above: Can FATE do sandbox and hexcrawl style play?

Yes.

Quote from: Soylent Green;723794Fate Accelerated is the official version of Fate. It's is really streamlined and elegant beyond words, but you still have to make all the mental leaps Core requires.

Fate Accelerated is a stripped down version of Fate Core, both of which are official. I suggest looking at this for a good rundown of the differences.

As for experiences, Fate Core is the version of Fate that really "clicked" for me and it's changed a lot of things about how I tackle running games and dealing with game elements. I, personally, don't see it as any more "meta" than any other game out there - it just does the same things in slightly different ways. In particular, some people struggle to grok aspects. To me, every game uses aspects because aspects are just language and you need language to play games. There's fundamentally no difference in my mind between a door that has the aspect Iron Reinforced and one that has +10 structure points because of its iron reinforcement. In both cases, something needs to be done to get through the door that is above and beyond a door that isn't reinforced. The difference is in how aspects in FC are implemented and applied versus more "traditional systems".

I highly recommend trying the system out "as is" before mucking around with it.

I am not a fan of it myself. I find that it is full of contradictions that aren't immediately apparent. This conflict can quickly lead to a difficult game play.

The main conflicts are over the fact that it is both rules light and rules crunchy and also incorporates traditional style play and heavy meta-gaming. These conflict are aggravated as they are often in implementation at the same time (rather than being separated into distinct phases of the game).

I also find that its toolkit approach is more work than its worth in requiring a lot of matters to be constructed and defined up front.

Its biggest virtue IMO is its popularity. Given its many parts, some of it will work for most players on some level, even though those parts have little overlap. Also, it is a rules designers dream, which makes it popular with rules designers and gamers, given many gamers also consider themselves amateur rules designers.

FWIW there are other implementations of FATE that address some of the above, such as Awesome Adventures and FATE Accelerated that at least remove the rules crunchy conflict.

Quote from: Rivetgeek;723824Yes.



Fate Accelerated is a stripped down version of Fate Core, both of which are official. I suggest looking at this for a good rundown of the differences.

Official stripped down version of Fate is what I meant to say. Funny how one small omitted word makes all the difference :-)

Quote from: Skywalker;723825I am not a fan of it myself. I find that it is full of contradictions that aren't immediately apparent. This conflict can quickly lead to a difficult game play.

The main conflicts are over the fact that it is both rules light and rules crunchy and also incorporates traditional style play and heavy meta-gaming. These conflict are aggravated as they are often in implementation at the same time (rather than being separated into distinct phases of the game).

I also find that its toolkit approach is more work than its worth in requiring a lot of matters to be constructed and defined up front.

Its biggest virtue IMO is its popularity. Given its many parts, some of it will work for most players on some level, even though those parts have little overlap. Also, it is a rules designers dream, which makes it popular with rules designers and gamers, given many gamers also consider themselves amateur rules designers.

FWIW there are other implementations of FATE that address some of the above, such as Awesome Adventures and FATE Accelerated that at least remove the rules crunchy conflict.

Fate Core and the Toolkit book help out a lot.

I like Fate, though it is heavily abstracted, and I can understand it's a very hit or miss system. So far I had one great session with it, and one horrible one - depends if the players can buy into the abstraction of mechanics, and ideas that conflicts emerge due to story/"fate - point economy" reasons sometimes, rather than logic.

Quote from: Snowman0147;723830Fate Core and the Toolkit book help out a lot.

Not in my experience. In fact, other than Dresden Files, I find Fate Core and its related products to be my least favourite iteration of FATE I have encountered so far. I prefer Strands of Fate, Bulldogs, Kerberos Club, Awesome Adventures, FAE, Spirit of the Century, Starblazers and Legends of Angelerre, if FATE was to be chosen TBH YMMV.

Quote from: Rincewind1;723834I like Fate, though it is heavily abstracted, and I can understand it's a very hit or miss system. So far I had one great session with it, and one horrible one - depends if the players can buy into the abstraction of mechanics, and ideas that conflicts emerge due to story/"fate - point economy" reasons sometimes, rather than logic.

I would actually back that up and add that FATE is clearly in the realm of movie logic over real world logic.  If you try to shove in real world logic into FATE, then you pretty much failed.  Same can be said for abstractions.  This is a game where you just make stuff up and go with it.  Though I do have some cool ideas with it.

Though I did do some math in how to use your milestones as xp.

4 minor milestones = 1 significant milestone
4 significant milestones = 1 major milestone
16 minor milestones = 1 major milestone

I only did that because character growth is slow and eventually your going to be fine with all the skills you have.  Not to mention with the ladder system your going to max out your skill set pretty quickly.  So you might as well stack them to have major milestones so it won't drag on forever.  Think major milestones as a level up.

For those that hate fate fuel economy I go with this.  Give each player ten stunt points with the option to trade those in to get more refresh.  So a person who hates the economy can increase his starting refresh of 3 to 10 while still getting the normal three stunts.  Yeah sure they won't have kick ass abilities that the other will have, but then again they won't have to worry about the fate economy which is a power on to itself.  They be sitting pretty while the other guys be giving into compulsions in order to have fate points.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;723761New edition of FATE is out.  It is interesting to me, but a bit meta for me to get my head around.  Interested in hearing your experiences with the system (either new or old).

My impression is that for a one off adventure Fate is mediocre. Those who have read my Scourge of Demon Wolf know that while I have opportunities for combat and treasure the adventure itself revolves round roleplaying with NPCs and this was no exception.

It involved the rescue of a kidnapped Baron's daughter by a coven of warlocks. Involves the party entering the warlocks three level cliff side dwelling. Inside there are slaves, visiting orc chieftain, a pair of summoned captive demons, a talking dragon skull, the warlocks, and a bunch of captured children.

The magic system was basically using the Lore skills to perform one of the four basic Fate actions with the condition that anything beyond a single target or a single area would be very difficult to accomplish. Other than the I encouraged the mage character to make up his spells.

Combat was relatively quick one of the faster method of resolving combat I have used. The make up your own spells didn't get out of hand. The use of aspects and stunts was constrained by the pool of fate points. For this game the characters had 3 fate points.

Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of opportunities to earn fate points. In the post game discussion it was agree that we could have tried but it would been forced and probably some thing that was silly and very improbable.

We all felt that Fate was better suited for a regular campaign than a one off adventure. That if we to use Fate 'as is' we would flesh out a lot of things especially the magic system. As it was it felt like to much like metagaming. We plan to look at Legend of Angleterre and see how that holds up.

We all liked the use of Fudge Dice and how it added on top of a skill. How opposed rolls were handled. I mention that I am in the midst of making a rule system using Fudge as the foundation.  We also talked about the Fate jargon that littered the rule book.

I am still leaning more towards Fudge and a traditional approach but I am glad I got to run a Fate session..

Were you using stunts that go against the grain of the skills they belong to, or were they powerful stunts?  I am just asking cause stunts don't normally eat up fate points.