GURPs vs FATE

[robertsconley]

I think I didn't communicate clearly enough.

Let's say I've got Sneaky McStabby (Fight +3, Sneak +4) against Bashy McBasher (Fight +4, Notice +0)

Straight up fighting Bashy is the worst thing Sneaky can do (Attack). What he should do is sneak around Bashy to get the upper hand, hoping Bashy doesn't notice him. (Mechanically, CaA)... and, I mean, this tracks, right? Bashy's a better fighter, why would he go toe to toe?

If we assume +0 rolls, on the first round, we might have something like this:

Bashy: "I attack!" 1 stress (+4 Fight vs +3 Fight)
Sneaky "I sneak into the shadows" successful CaA (+4 vs 0), in the shadows, two invokes (Margin of success >= 3)
Bashy: "I attack!" "You can't, he's in the shadows, you don't know where he is!" (Presumably he'd try something here, but we'll just skip for the sake of example)
Sneaky: "I jump out of the shadows and attack!" 3 stress cashing in both free invokes. (+3 fight +4 for the invokes for a total of +7 vs. Bashy's +4)

... stuff like that. Even if the hiding or other CaA is less complete of a removal, and Bashy gets in his second 1-stress hit, then Sneaky still, at the end of two rounds, has done 3 stress to Bashy's 2. But if you're smart, you're doing those CaAs in a way that limits Bashy's options in some way - either removing options entirely, or adding passive opposition to them.

That's how Fate solves that problem. If it's really just straight up attack rolls you're right and it would be pretty awful.

(Also note that I'm talking about what's happening primarily in in-world terms, rather than "engaging with aspects". If someone's a better fighter than you, don't try to fight them toe to toe. That seems pretty obvious)

My reply to you was about small numbers of rules. For example Sneaky will nearly always be successful in that entire sequence. If he can spend the stress.

What are the odds of succeeding with the CaA? 98.47% (Sneaky has to roll a -4 on the dice to fail)
What are the odds of succeeding with the attack? 85.87%
Total odds of the attack succeeding? 98.47% x 85.97% = 84.65%.
What the odds of the various outcomes?
Below is a chart where I map the results of the conflict roll between Sneaky and Bashy. You can see that there is a 58.44% chance of inflicting 3 shifts. Factoring in the odds of the CaA then Sneaky has a 57.54% of getting 3 shifts. This with your single exchange as outlined above. Hence my conclusion that succeeding on a CaA is a "I win" when the opponents are evenly matched.



Wrapping it up
RPGs are are circumstantial. If fights are few and far between, your players may not notice this. But it will be noticed under circumstance common to RPG campaigns which typical feature a fair amount of conflict resolution. Likewise your player do notice but like it. Which is also fine. It not a flaw of Fate if this is how people like a Fate campaign to play out.

 

[robertsconley]

robertsconley , a quick question as somebody who knows GURPS well. I've been playing around with it a bit and get the impression that the system (especially combat) becomes far heavier as you move into SciFi from say Fantasy or even Modern genres. It's mainly things like vehicle abilities, weapon mods, and stuff operating on separate timescales. Would this be fair?

Like much of GURPS it depends how far down the rabbit-hole you go. Vechiles-lite can be handled as a contest of skills with a bonus for having some better tech or engine. Or you can do the deep dive with all the details accounted for. GURPS fandom and authors are scarred by 3rd Edition's Vehicle so the approach has been considerably lighter in 4e.

As for guns, if you stick what in the core book it not super crunchy. But dive into High Tech or GURPS Gun-Fu then there going to a lot of details to sort through. Just keep in mind it all a toolkit. For example in the basic rules you can use the dodge defense. It explained you are dodging the aim not the bullet. But some people just hate it. So in the core and especially the supplements they give options to include if this a problem for you. Some reflect cinematic gunplay other reflect real life gunplay.

 

[robertsconley]

+1 is still fairly significant on 2D6, though

Good points in the your post. As for this this is why I prefer 3d6 overall.

 

[robertsconley]

That chart is really cool- going to have to keep a reference to it! I wonder how it would change if you were looking at systems (ignoring versions) instead of individual games for some of them.

That would be nice for that your best sources are the Orr Reports for Roll20 and the Fantasy Grounds. Even then they don't give absolute numbers.

 

[Séadna]

Thanks to both Roberts. I wouldn't use that depth in my own games, but when testing out the Alpha Centauri supplement (since I love the setting) it seemed to be a setting that really turned everything to eleven. It's hard Sci-Fi and uses detailed rules to emulate that, but most Hard Sci-Fi games are "near future" where as this goes to the far future, so it really had compounded detail.

 

[chuckdee]

Thanks to both Roberts. I wouldn't use that depth in my own games, but when testing out the Alpha Centauri supplement (since I love the setting) it seemed to be a setting that really turned everything to eleven. It's hard Sci-Fi and uses detailed rules to emulate that, but most Hard Sci-Fi games are "near future" where as this goes to the far future, so it really had compounded detail.

How does that compare to GURPS Transhuman Space? Because that one will really bake your noodle.

 

[robertsconley]

This is the reason I'm thinking about d6-d6. However, recently I've been thinking about dF+ based on the presentation in Operators. In this case, only + contribute to the roll and - represent complications. I liked it in practice, though their use of a reverse ladder of skills made me look at ways to change it.

Just keep in mind there only three result possible with a single fudge dice -, 0, +. If I purse my 4dF Majestic Fantasy RPG again it will be with 3d6 after my experience playing Fantasy AGE. AGE has it own issue but the idea of all attributes and skill levels as bonuses to a dice roll works for me. And playing AGE gave me a good look at using 3d6 outside of GURPS and I liked it just as much in AGE as in GURPS. So that what I will use.

 

[robertsconley]

Thanks to both Roberts. I wouldn't use that depth in my own games, but when testing out the Alpha Centauri supplement (since I love the setting) it seemed to be a setting that really turned everything to eleven. It's hard Sci-Fi and uses detailed rules to emulate that, but most Hard Sci-Fi games are "near future" where as this goes to the far future, so it really had compounded detail.

You may want to look at the various iterations of Cepheus. A Traveller clone that doesn't focus on the Third Imperum. So lots of options but I don't really many far future ones.

 

[robertsconley]

How does that compare to GURPS Transhuman Space? Because that one will really bake your noodle.

Oh my god, Transhuman Space bakes a lot of noodle. Not so much for mechanical complexity but just how weird the tech winds up being. In a nutshell Transhuman Space referee advice is not be strict on tracking point totals for characters. Because character can and will change form throughout the campaign through the use of clones, sleeving, bio-shells, and so forth and so on. It like Altered Carbon turned up a complete revolution of the dial.

 

[robiswrong]

My reply to you was about small numbers of rules. For example Sneaky will nearly always be successful in that entire sequence. If he can spend the stress.

Wrapping it up
RPGs are are circumstantial. If fights are few and far between, your players may not notice this. But it will be noticed under circumstance common to RPG campaigns which typical feature a fair amount of conflict resolution. Likewise your player do notice but like it. Which is also fine. It not a flaw of Fate if this is how people like a Fate campaign to play out.

I'm not honestly sure what your point is. I do not mean that with hostility - you seem to be reaching a conclusion, but I'm not sure what it is.

Like, you say "your players may notice this." I'm not sure what "this" is, beyond a lack of swinginess. It feels implied but not stated.

Here's what I feel like has been covered:

1. Fate is not swingy. We can expect the higher-skilled character to win most opposed rolls the vast majority of the time. No argument
2. CaA can offset that by allowing one of the other players to choose a better skill matchup, at the cost of time. No argument. (This is intended, an invoke isn't supposed to mean "it's slightly easier" it's supposed to change results one "step", from terrible failure to failure to tie to success to great success, possibly skipping ties). Note that this isn't that much of an "I win" button since it's done at a cost of turns... even in my example which was pretty slanted, if Bashy could see Sneaky on the second round, Sneaky only ended up dealing 1 more stress over the two rounds.
3. If you don't have a good "natural" skill matchup, CaA is a better strategy. 100% agreed.
4. This makes fights predictable.

I think #4 is really your point, and I disagree. It's true if you just look at it from a hard mathematical basis, for sure, but Fate doesn't just live there. So if you slip into the dark, you're now in the dark and people can't see you. Now people have to deal with that. If Bashy throws a touch over there to make it not dark, you're exposed and can be attacked. Trip somebody and they're on the ground and can't run. Climb on a ledge and there are things that both you and your opponents can no do or not do vs. you being on the ground. All of the things you do for Create Advantage have impacts on the world and environment that usually have to be dealt with, and that layer is where the core of the game really is - that jockeying back and forth.

If your preferred play style is really more about manipulating the math, then sure, Fate might be too coarse-grained for you to enjoy. But I normally run two or so Conflicts per session, and people don't seem bored by them.

Also, and this is probably not your preference, part of it comes down to how many Fate Points you're willing to pay, and how many Consequences you're willing to take. "Is this really worth it?" is something that Fate emphasizes.

Note also that I am not talking about any other games here - other games get interesting results in different ways, and I am in no way claiming this is the only thing that works or that games that do other types of things are bad, or that people that enjoy more of the mathematical manipulation stuff are having BadWrongFun.

Also I do think that taking mechanics at too fine of a detail level in white box scenarios is of limited use.... it's like pointing out that taking a step back while defending in GURPS is, mathematically, a great solution and may be overbalanced..... arguably true, but falls apart in situations where the environment is anything other than a flat landscape with no other opponents.

 

[Trippy]

No the problem is on you. You stated an obvious point that people get Fate. We all get that. The evidence is quite clear to anybody who follows anything in the hobby. We are not debating this. What was being discussed prior to you jumping was hobbyists who didn't understand Fate.

As for popularity, it doesn't take much for an RPG to be popular outside of any of the top 3 or 5. In this forum we all know about the icv2 rating, the orr group rating for Roll20, the Fantasy Ground popular games list and so on. And if they hit the top 5 then yes that system is doing well. And Fate has consistently bounced in and out of the icv2 top five over the years. And in fact #5 in the last icv2 report.

Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present

This is a compilation of the [URL='http://www.icv2.com']icv2.com[/URL] retailer surveys of Top Five Roleplaying Games. They are generally compiled quarterly (with some exceptions). ICv2 notes that "the chart [are] based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers." Also see...

www.enworld.org

But unless you are D&D or Pathfinder, your sales are peanuts even you are sitting at #3 as Cyberpunk was in the last ICV2. So you can be in the top 5 will most of the hobbyist considering your system confusing or hard to play. And as for Fate popularity it is a solid 2nd tier RPG beyond the1st tier of Pathfinder and D&D 5e. And been that way for years.

The sales are more than GURPS, which is now our main comparison on this thread.

The point being that claims of Fate being an overreach, and apparently the game known for players not being able 'to get’ is not supported by the sales or playing figures. It is a popular game that is well played in comparison to most others. Beyond this, it isn’t an obvious point for everybody - because they have continued to argue against it. Indeed in your own comment you simply assume that this game can sell while still being considered confusing or hard to play. Where is the evidence of this in real terms. One can only assume that the game is being understood and played enough that it is driving its own success.

 

[Trippy]

YOUR evidence amounts to YOUR anecdotal, unsupported claims. What ARE the "measurable sales figures," pray? Does FATE have as much as 5% of the market? (That would be huge, and damn near unprecedented within the last couple decades, for any RPG that isn't D&D/WoD/Pathfinder. That would also be a percentage of the market which, by the standards of any other business, would be considered abject failure.)

Yes, no kidding: there are people out there who buy the game. Yes, no kidding: there are people out there who play the game. So what? You can say the same thing of just about every game out there ... you could say as much about FATAL. Over the last twenty years, there've been any number of indies with fanboys proclaiming their impending supremacy, their "measurable sales figures," that they had avid players, sign up sheets at cons, and all manner of flagwaving. Feng Shui and Mouse Guard. Nobilis and Dogs In The Vineyard. Fuzion and FUDGE. In Nomine and Savage Worlds. Hell, back in the late 90s, WoD had gained a whole 25% of the market -- more than ANY non-D&D game had since the heyday of RuneQuest -- even managed to swing a network TV show, and a lot of smart people were confidently predicting D&D's downfall.

Something doesn't become a "fact" based on the vehemence with which you proclaim it. It becomes a fact with the hard evidence you use to back it up. So far, what you're hauling out are ... well, anecdotes.

Meaurable sales figures - that can be observed through retail figures which show that Fate sells more than GURPS, Savage Worlds, RuneQuest and a whole host of games that are nominally popular on this site for example. I don’t think FATAL even registers at all on any scale, so no, it doesn’t bear any comparison. The anecdotal aspects can also be referenced via the details of the conferences I have been to over the last few years who advertise their slots - about 90% of which can be accounted for by D&D5E, Fate and various versions of PbtA games. This is not just an anecdote, in the same way that the observation that D&D has never been more popular is not just an anecdote. It is an account of things that are observable and measurable.

 

[KrakaJak]

No argument. In terms of straight up stuff, Fate and dF is definitely coarse. A difference of +1 isn't marginally better, it's notably better. I think a +1 is close to about a +5 in a typical d20 game IIRC.

Yeah, I almost look at adjudicating Fate the same way as a diceless RPG (since the dice results trend toward +0). If you are at a disadvantage on paper, you need to change the situation, consider the fiction, or you will likely lose. You need to consider Fate holistically, and include the Fate economy, Aspects Stress, Consequences, taking yourself out, etc.

Fate's a paradigm shift from D&D, so trying to compare or equivocate their "combat mechanics" is like comparing Apples to Donuts. Physical combat induces Stress and Consequences, but so do horror checks, or a gnarly insult. The objective in D&D is to win the fight, the objective in Fate is to tell a story about a fight.


To use the example above:

I have Fight +4
I have the Aspect "The Greatest Fighter to Ever Live"

I'm in a close combat with an NPC with Fight +6
They have the Aspect "Afraid to Die"

In this fight I can use both my Aspect, and the NPCs Aspect to my advantage. After a couple turns Creating Advantages, I am looking at up to +8 or so (as needed) to boost my roll.

OR....the GM simply compels my "Greatest Fighter" Aspect: "You can easily dispatch this NPC, but you will kill them."

 

[robertsconley]

The sales are more than GURPS, which is now our main comparison on this thread.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anything below #2 is noise and flavor of the month. What more important that Fate places consistently high especially Fate Core. So good job to Evil Hat for that. As for GURPS it enjoys a solid release schedule and a variety of quality material. It primary issue has little to do the system but rather the fact the Munchkin being the beast that eat GURPS lunch. Like D&D versus the rest of industry, Munchkin not only keeps the lights on at SJ Game but allowed them to stuff like revive Ogre, Triplanetary, and The Fantasy Trip. Until Douglas Cole came onto the scene there was virtually nobody going rah rah for GURPS like Evil Hat does for Fate.

Ultimately it does not matter because what matter in the age of the Internet economy is sustainability. Is there enough revenue to keep product flowing and the system available in print and digital? In both cases the answer is yes. However unlike FATE, GURPS is still vulnerable. Without open content to foster a third party market, GURPS is subject what SJ Games can handle. Gaming Ballistic is a step in the right direction but largely a result of specific circumstance and Doug's attention to detail that made SJ Game comfortable in working with him.

The point being that claims of Fate being an overreach, and apparently the game known for players not being able 'to get’ is not supported by the sales or playing figures. It is a popular game that is well played in comparison to most others. Beyond this, it isn’t an obvious point for everybody - because they have continued to argue against it.

Well the thing is I don't make statement like that unless it people telling me. Either you believe me or not. And the feedback did not come from the confines of just gaming with friend but from my involvement in organized gaming and my promotion work over the past decade.

I suppose have to paint this picture for you because I obviously didn't explain it well in my previous post. Unless one does a rigorous study all we have is anecdotes even the sales data we currently have are just anecdotes. The best one we have are the VTT numbers but since they only tells us percentages in the end it amounts too.

That Nice¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So because of that and because we each have a social bubble around it is quite plausible that the hobbyist you encountered mostly grokked Fate. And thus I believe your anecdote concerning Fate. However it is also quite plausible that many other folks including myself have encountered hobbyists who did not grok Fate. That I hear more from the latter than I do from folks with your experience.

Now I understand you if you don't agree. But here the thing. It is what it is and whatever their ills and strengths both are living system with enthusiastic fanbases.

Is there any part of the above that none understandable. Do you "grok" the premise and see how I draw my conclusion? Do I have to use simpler words? More basic phrasing?

 

[robertsconley]

I'm not honestly sure what your point is. I do not mean that with hostility - you seem to be reaching a conclusion, but I'm not sure what it is.

The main feedback I got in the handful of session I ran with Fate (RAW) and later with the 4dF MW_RPG is that even a +1 bonus felt too generous for what they were doing. They did something like duck behind cover, got the bonus and when "wow that worked well." My admittingly deep dive into the mathematical rabbit-hole is about pinning that feeling to actual numbers.

ike, you say "your players may notice this." I'm not sure what "this" is, beyond a lack of swinginess. It feels implied but not stated.

I hope the above clarified the point.

4. This makes fights predictable.

I think #4 is really your point, and I disagree. It's true if you just look at it from a hard mathematical basis, for sure, but Fate doesn't just live there.

I perhaps should have stated this my experience and the feed back occurred during sessions with a lot of factors in play. Hope that clarifies it. I am just summing up rather than try to recreate a blow by blow.

The whole whitebox stuff is to figure out exactly why these feeling were occurring the part of the players when they don't when I use other skill based system of similar complexity. For example Fantasy AGE.

 

[CRKrueger]

 

[robiswrong]

The main feedback I got in the handful of session I ran with Fate (RAW) and later with the 4dF MW_RPG is that even a +1 bonus felt too generous for what they were doing. They did something like duck behind cover, got the bonus and when "wow that worked well." My admittingly deep dive into the mathematical rabbit-hole is about pinning that feeling to actual numbers.

That's fair.

The issue is that Fate doesn't do that. You don't get a +1 for being in cover. You can invoke an aspect for +2, but that's not really modeling "it's harder to hit because you're in cover."

What I would generally do for cover is to allow you to have passive opposition because of the cover. This could either replace you actively dodging the attack or, if the scenario is right, letting you take the better of teh defenses after you roll.

GM: "The Nazis shoot at you."
Player: "I'm Behind a Partial Wall, right? I'll just hide there and make myself as small as possible."
GM: "Cool, we'll call that +3 passive opposition".

Or

GM: "The Nazis shoot at you."
Player: "I'm Behind the Brush, right? I'm going to dodge as best as I can from behind here."
GM: "Cool, roll your Athletics to dodge, and if it's worse than +2, take that as passive opposition."

An invoke is more like:

GM: "The Nazis shoot at you."
Player: "I try to get out of the way of their gun.... ah, only rolled a total of +2"
GM: "They bear the guns down on you... they got a +4 total, the gun is getting you straight in its sights..."
Player: "Nope, I dodge down behind the Crumbled Wall just as the Nazis get me in their sights."

It's more of a chain of events rather than passively modifying difficulty. It's supposed to shift from failure to success, as it kind of models those things in movies where it looks like it's going to go the bad guys' way, but then something happens that's a callback to something we saw earlier (sometimes just seconds ago) and it shifts the flow of that back to the good guys' favor (or vice versa).

"You get a +1 bonus to your roll because it's slightly more difficult" doesn't really happen in Fate. And a big part of the reason is, as you've said, that even a +1 is a huge bonus. So all of those minor bonuses in D&D or whatever get pretty well ignored in Fate.

Honestly, stuff like this was a big part of what took me a while to internalize in Fate... like the way you'd do things in most systems just didn't work, because you had things that kinda looked the same, but worked differently, because they were actually there to model something pretty different. Wrapping my head around that took a while.

I hope the above clarified the point.

I perhaps should have stated this my experience and the feed back occurred during sessions with a lot of factors in play. Hope that clarifies it. I am just summing up rather than try to recreate a blow by blow.

The whole whitebox stuff is to figure out exactly why these feeling were occurring the part of the players when they don't when I use other skill based system of similar complexity. For example Fantasy AGE.

No, and that makes sense, especially when you're telling me the point you had issues with. Because you're right - adding a +1 in that case is, frankly, way too much. My "counter" in this case is that it's less of a problem with Fate's math being "bad", and more of an issue of using the wrong tool in Fate's toolbox to do the thing you wanted to.

Which is frankly understandable. You wanted a screwdriver. It's not your fault that the thing that looks a lot like a screwdriver is actually closer to a hammer in practice.

 

[Trippy]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anything below #2 is noise and flavor of the month. What more important that Fate places consistently high especially Fate Core. So good job to Evil Hat for that. As for GURPS it enjoys a solid release schedule and a variety of quality material. It primary issue has little to do the system but rather the fact the Munchkin being the beast that eat GURPS lunch. Like D&D versus the rest of industry, Munchkin not only keeps the lights on at SJ Game but allowed them to stuff like revive Ogre, Triplanetary, and The Fantasy Trip. Until Douglas Cole came onto the scene there was virtually nobody going rah rah for GURPS like Evil Hat does for Fate.

Ultimately it does not matter because what matter in the age of the Internet economy is sustainability. Is there enough revenue to keep product flowing and the system available in print and digital? In both cases the answer is yes. However unlike FATE, GURPS is still vulnerable. Without open content to foster a third party market, GURPS is subject what SJ Games can handle. Gaming Ballistic is a step in the right direction but largely a result of specific circumstance and Doug's attention to detail that made SJ Game comfortable in working with him.


Well the thing is I don't make statement like that unless it people telling me. Either you believe me or not. And the feedback did not come from the confines of just gaming with friend but from my involvement in organized gaming and my promotion work over the past decade.

I suppose have to paint this picture for you because I obviously didn't explain it well in my previous post. Unless one does a rigorous study all we have is anecdotes even the sales data we currently have are just anecdotes. The best one we have are the VTT numbers but since they only tells us percentages in the end it amounts too.

That Nice¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So because of that and because we each have a social bubble around it is quite plausible that the hobbyist you encountered mostly grokked Fate. And thus I believe your anecdote concerning Fate. However it is also quite plausible that many other folks including myself have encountered hobbyists who did not grok Fate. That I hear more from the latter than I do from folks with your experience.

Now I understand you if you don't agree. But here the thing. It is what it is and whatever their ills and strengths both are living system with enthusiastic fanbases.

Is there any part of the above that none understandable. Do you "grok" the premise and see how I draw my conclusion? Do I have to use simpler words? More basic phrasing?

I certainly accept that gamers have their own bubbles, and I don’t dismiss your own accounts. However, it is evident in various game shops and cons, not just around where I live, but everywhere I have travelled to in Europe and America since Fate was released, that it is a well stocked game. Moreso than GURPS these days and many other games that are popular on this site. And, to be clear, I’m only picking on GURPS because it became the game of comparison on this thread, rather than being an example of a game I find untenably complex myself. I’d make a better case for arguing about the Hero system, by preference because, for me that really is more complicated than it ought to be - although that is another argument.

The actual point here though, beyond sales figures and anecdotes, relates to the extension argument on from this that Fate is a special case of complexity because it is some entirely different category of game to GURPS. The argument is that its underlying conventions - the Aspects and the Fate economy - are a greater conceptual leap for gamers to get than other games. The reason why I don’t accept this is because, as much as anything else, this is just a matter of taste and many other games have other complexities that equally could create barriers of understanding. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence that not all gamers find Fate to have conceptual barriers that they don’t get.

Points-buying character generation, as per GURPS or Hero, is a conceptual leap for anybody who has only ever randomly generated characters before - and it does affect gameplay if you don’t know the effects of what it is you are spending points on. Diceless or freeform gaming like in Amber or Theatrix is a conceptual leap too, as are rolling against Personality traits in Pendragon when used for the first time in 1985, or if you are using Ars Magica’s Troupe style play for the first time. These are all things that could be things a new player, or one whose only previous experience is D&D, might not ‘get'. Yet, they are all still RPGs. What I don’t get is why people feel that Fate stands out as a completely different case, that should be classified as a different type of game because some gamers, and evidently not all, apparently don’t 'get it'.

 

[robiswrong]

The actual point here though, beyond sales figures and anecdotes, relates to the extension argument on from this that Fate is a special case of complexity because it is some entirely different category of game to GURPS. The argument is that its underlying conventions - the Aspects and the Fate economy - are a greater conceptual leap for gamers to get than other games. The reason why I don’t accept this is because, as much as anything else, this is just a matter of taste and many other games have other complexities that equally could create barriers of understanding. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence that not all gamers find Fate to have conceptual barriers that they don’t get.

Fate 100% has a rate of people bouncing off of it, just not "getting" it. This is well known in the Fate community.

I think this is a lot because there's a lot of things in Fate that look like other things, but don't act like them especially when you get into it. Worse, they look like the other things when you first read the rules, so the "not acting like" bit is surprising and can be a bit of a "shifted into reverse instead of third" kind of moment.

I also don't think it makes Fate some incredibly new and alien type of thing that's an RPG. I really think that's more a matter of Fate Points (and especially Declarations and to a lesser extent Compels) existing, and a lot of holdover baggage from the Forge Wars (though Fred has said he considers Fate to be a refutation of GNS).

I mean, yeah, there's some play style differences, but I don't see them as being any bigger than investigative game vs. sandbox vs. dungeon crawl vs. linear railroad, and we mostly accept that those are all "RPGs".

 

[CRKrueger]

That's fair.

The issue is that Fate doesn't do that. You don't get a +1 for being in cover. You can invoke an aspect for +2, but that's not really modeling "it's harder to hit because you're in cover."

What I would generally do for cover is to allow you to have passive opposition because of the cover. This could either replace you actively dodging the attack or, if the scenario is right, letting you take the better of teh defenses after you roll.

GM: "The Nazis shoot at you."
Player: "I'm Behind a Partial Wall, right? I'll just hide there and make myself as small as possible."
GM: "Cool, we'll call that +3 passive opposition".

Or

GM: "The Nazis shoot at you."
Player: "I'm Behind the Brush, right? I'm going to dodge as best as I can from behind here."
GM: "Cool, roll your Athletics to dodge, and if it's worse than +2, take that as passive opposition."

An invoke is more like:

GM: "The Nazis shoot at you."
Player: "I try to get out of the way of their gun.... ah, only rolled a total of +2"
GM: "They bear the guns down on you... they got a +4 total, the gun is getting you straight in its sights..."
Player: "Nope, I dodge down behind the Crumbled Wall just as the Nazis get me in their sights."

It's more of a chain of events rather than passively modifying difficulty. It's supposed to shift from failure to success, as it kind of models those things in movies where it looks like it's going to go the bad guys' way, but then something happens that's a callback to something we saw earlier (sometimes just seconds ago) and it shifts the flow of that back to the good guys' favor (or vice versa).

"You get a +1 bonus to your roll because it's slightly more difficult" doesn't really happen in Fate. And a big part of the reason is, as you've said, that even a +1 is a huge bonus. So all of those minor bonuses in D&D or whatever get pretty well ignored in Fate.

Honestly, stuff like this was a big part of what took me a while to internalize in Fate... like the way you'd do things in most systems just didn't work, because you had things that kinda looked the same, but worked differently, because they were actually there to model something pretty different. Wrapping my head around that took a while.


No, and that makes sense, especially when you're telling me the point you had issues with. Because you're right - adding a +1 in that case is, frankly, way too much. My "counter" in this case is that it's less of a problem with Fate's math being "bad", and more of an issue of using the wrong tool in Fate's toolbox to do the thing you wanted to.

Which is frankly understandable. You wanted a screwdriver. It's not your fault that the thing that looks a lot like a screwdriver is actually closer to a hammer in practice.

To be honest, it sounds like the guy who’s the #1 expert on Fate on this board just agreed with the idea that Fate does things differently, and that might be an additional step, or at least a bigger one to wrapping your head around it.

R robiswrong , do you think Fate is harder to grok than a more traditional system, like GURPS or Traveller?

Edit: I guess he already answered, and confirmed the “people don’t get it” exists and is a well-known phenomenon.

BTW, if you ever have time, I’d still to see a Rob Teaches Fate Thread.

 

[robiswrong]

To be honest, it sounds like the guy who’s the #1 expert on Fate on this board just agreed with the idea that Fate does things differently, and that might be an additional step, or at least a bigger one to wrapping your head around it.

R robiswrong , do you think Fate is harder to grok than a more traditional system, like GURPS or Traveller?

Edit: I guess he already answered, and confirmed the “people don’t get it” exists and is a well-known phenomenon.

BTW, if you ever have time, I’d still to see a Rob Teaches Fate Thread.

I'll think about starting one up.

I don't think that Fate is necessarily harder to grok. In my experience, the people that have a hard time grokking it are the old grognards (and I'm including myself in that list).

Newer players seem to get it pretty quickly. We can speculate on why, but that's my experience, and it seems pretty generally accepted as a fact.

 

[Trippy]

Fate 100% has a rate of people bouncing off of it, just not "getting" it. This is well known in the Fate community.

I think this is a lot because there's a lot of things in Fate that look like other things, but don't act like them especially when you get into it. Worse, they look like the other things when you first read the rules, so the "not acting like" bit is surprising and can be a bit of a "shifted into reverse instead of third" kind of moment.

I also don't think it makes Fate some incredibly new and alien type of thing that's an RPG. I really think that's more a matter of Fate Points (and especially Declarations and to a lesser extent Compels) existing, and a lot of holdover baggage from the Forge Wars (though Fred has said he considers Fate to be a refutation of GNS).

I mean, yeah, there's some play style differences, but I don't see them as being any bigger than investigative game vs. sandbox vs. dungeon crawl vs. linear railroad, and we mostly accept that those are all "RPGs".

This might certainly be the case - although just from personal experiences of playing it I find, for myself, that there is a lot of overstatement on this. I really don’t think these concepts are that hard to grasp. I also actually think that the Fate creators revel a bit in the perpetuated notion that Fate offers an entirely different experience as a marketing ploy - although whether they would admit this I dunno.

There were certainly a load of 'Forge Wars' elements that came into the promotion and marketing of Spirit of the Century when that first came out, although I think it had died down a fair bit by the time Fate Core was being crowdfunded. Beyond this I also think a lot of ideas that emerged from Fate are now so ensconced into standard RPG design that it blurs barriers further. Gareth Hanrahan, for example, spoke of how he directly took ideas from Fate and incorporated them into the design of Mongoose Traveller, while lots of games now regularly use meta currencies and dramatic editing - even D&D5E to a gentle degree (Inspiration).

 

[CRKrueger]

I'll think about starting one up.

I don't think that Fate is necessarily harder to grok. In my experience, the people that have a hard time grokking it are the old grognards (and I'm including myself in that list).

Newer players seem to get it pretty quickly. We can speculate on why, but that's my experience, and it seems pretty generally accepted as a fact.

Yeah I don’t think it’s “not an RPG” either, but it definitely is deserving of a subtype I think. So total RPG newbs might be fine (which is what some people are saying), yet people used to other RPGs can bounce right off of Fate (which other people are saying).

What say you about “tell me what you do” play? Do you take a total newb and leave the Fate point economy until they get the whole RPG bit, or do you introduce both types of play at once, or something in between?

 

[TristramEvans]

I've never liked the Argumet based on Popuarity for any reason, it just seems so meaningless to me.

Is Titantic the greatest fim ever made? Does McDonalds cook the best food? Is Walmart the be all and end all of shopping?

Sales figures aren't an argument, they are a hollow boast based on the lowest common denominator.

 

[robiswrong]

Yeah I don’t think it’s “not an RPG” either, but it definitely is deserving of a subtype I think. So total RPG newbs might be fine (which is what some people are saying), yet people used to other RPGs can bounce right off of Fate (which other people are saying).

What say you about “tell me what you do” play? Do you take a total newb and leave the Fate point economy until they get the whole RPG bit, or do you introduce both types of play at once, or something in between?

It starts with "tell me what you do". Like, literally, that's a rule, and it's the vast majority of the game.

I'll then prompt for invokes when appropriate. Hand out Fate Points for self-compels. Prompt for Concessions when it's appropriate, etc. Offer a Compel if it really pops up or hand a Fate Point for an unintentional self-Compel.

Again, 95% of my play with Fate really is "tell me what you do." I hate the term "Fate Point economy", absolutely don't believe you need to Compel every scene, and don't view it as the major point of play.

The interesting thing about Fate Points is that it acts as kind of like... almost a measure of willpower where you can influence where you do and don't succeed. If done well, you can't succeed anywhere, but can succeed where your character really digs in. I think if Fate Points flow too quickly you don't get that.

It also, as a GM, provides me some level of cover for putting the screws to people, since a) they signed up for it and b) I'm giving them something to sweeten the deal.

This might certainly be the case - although just from personal experiences of playing it I find, for myself, that there is a lot of overstatement on this. I really don’t think these concepts are that hard to grasp. I also actually think that the Fate creators revel a bit in the perpetuated notion that Fate offers an entirely different experience as a marketing ploy - although whether they would admit this I dunno.

Honestly I think it's more frustrating to them than anything.

I've never liked the Argumet based on Popuarity for any reason, it just seems so meaningless to me.

Is Titantic the greatest fim ever made? Does McDonalds cook the best food? Is Walmart the be all and end all of shopping?

Sales figures aren't an argument, they are a hollow boast based on the lowest common denominator.

I sorta agree, and sorta don't.

Something being more popular than another thing doesn't make it better. (Better has to be defined in terms of a particular set of needs anyway, so...)

That said, I think popular things have to have at least some level of quality. Part of that is broad appeal, sure, but there has to be broad appeal.

The inverse is where it's interesting, though, that I think you can't really say that unpopular things are bad, as there's any number of reasons they might be unpopular (bad advertising, more of a nice product, or actually being objectively bad).

So I do think D&D (for instance) must be at least a pretty good game, or it wouldn't have the popularity it does. Bill's Fantastic Fantasy which has sold zero copies might be terrible - or it might be utterly amazing. There's just no real way to tell based on sales.

Is Wal*Mart hte best store? Well, it does a damn good job of having a hell of a lot of things available, 24/7, at damn low prices. And that appeals to a lot of people. So it's really really good at doing that, and that's a thing that a lot of people are interested in.

Is it "better" than Bill's Billionaire Boutique? Well, probably not at having stuff for billionaires, but there's also a lot fewer of those out there. Comparing them isn't really fair, because they both do what they set out to do very, very well. But different people are interested in those things (or things that aren't either of them)

 

[Trippy]

Yeah I don’t think it’s “not an RPG” either, but it definitely is deserving of a subtype I think. So total RPG newbs might be fine (which is what some people are saying), yet people used to other RPGs can bounce right off of Fate (which other people are saying).

What say you about “tell me what you do” play? Do you take a total newb and leave the Fate point economy until they get the whole RPG bit, or do you introduce both types of play at once, or something in between?

You introduce it as the game flows - when situations arise in game play, you introduce game elements. It does help if you have experience around the table, but it isn’t any different to any other game in that respect and the core rules are not hard to reference, there are cheat sheets, etc.

Another game of comparison is Wraith:The Oblivion which actually set up multiple Shadow Guides for each PC, usually played by another player, and engaged in a meta currency of sorts where they attempted to tempt the PCs into self destructive choices. This was a radical departure from the normal RPG set up, but never considered as a new subtype.

 

[Trippy]

I've never liked the Argumet based on Popuarity for any reason, it just seems so meaningless to me.

Is Titantic the greatest fim ever made? Does McDonalds cook the best food? Is Walmart the be all and end all of shopping?

Sales figures aren't an argument, they are a hollow boast based on the lowest common denominator.

What the do is provide evidence that plenty of people 'get it’ though.

It’s not a question about quality. Its a question about whether the game is unusually incomprehensible to most gamers.

 

[CRKrueger]

It’s not a question about quality. Its a question about whether the game is unusually incomprehensible to most gamers.

To be fair, that’s a gross over exaggeration of what people were saying, so that’s not the question at all.

 

[TristramEvans]

What the do is provide evidence that plenty of people 'get it’ though.

It provides evidence that people "bought it" at least.

It’s not a question about quality. Its a question about whether the game is unusually incomprehensible to most gamers.

Why is that a question though? I mean, who asked it?

 

[chuckdee]

Yeah, I almost look at adjudicating Fate the same way as a diceless RPG (since the dice results trend toward +0). If you are at a disadvantage on paper, you need to change the situation, consider the fiction, or you will likely lose. You need to consider Fate holistically, and include the Fate economy, Aspects Stress, Consequences, taking yourself out, etc.

This might be one of the reasons that I lean towards that kind of thing- the other system that I play a lot of is Amber/Lords of Olympus/Lords of Gossamer and Shadow. But I've never looked at it that way. Thanks!

 

[robiswrong]

This might be one of the reasons that I lean towards that kind of thing- the other system that I play a lot of is Amber/Lords of Olympus/Lords of Gossamer and Shadow. But I've never looked at it that way. Thanks!

Fred was heavily influenced by Amber. Fate was originally designed to run Amber with a little more quantification and randomization.

CaA is basically "if you have a worse rating than your opponent, find a way to even the odds" mechanized.

 

[chuckdee]

I suppose have to paint this picture for you because I obviously didn't explain it well in my previous post. Unless one does a rigorous study all we have is anecdotes even the sales data we currently have are just anecdotes. The best one we have are the VTT numbers but since they only tells us percentages in the end it amounts too.
....

Is there any part of the above that none understandable. Do you "grok" the premise and see how I draw my conclusion? Do I have to use simpler words? More basic phrasing?

Such a well worded post tainted by what seems to be needless condescension. I struggled over liking that post.

 

[CRKrueger]

It also, as a GM, provides me some level of cover for putting the screws to people, since a) they signed up for it and b) I'm giving them something to sweeten the deal.

Why would you put the screws to them? What do you really mean by that?

For example, with setting verisimilitude as a goal of play, I know why I’m putting the screws to them...I’m really not. Sure, they may be in a tough spot, or a really competent enemy is out for blood, but that’s because of the PCs actions and the nature of the surroundings or the NPCs themselves. Absolute Bastards are going to fight like Absolute Bastards. Fighting on a rock outcropping surrounded by lava is going to present difficulties inherent to the nature of the situation.

Systems I prefer are Physics Engines, they attempt to model things for the purpose of verisimilitude.

Fate doesn’t seem to do that, so what’s the underlying rationale and goal? To me it seems like it’s a Narrative Engine, it’s there to let’s GM’s and PC’s influence what’s happening based on something other than the inherent nature of things, maybe Dramatic Importance or Emphasis? I haven’t played the game much, so putting my finger on exactly what’s going on hasn’t been a priority, but my gut and brain agree, something else is going on.

Help me Robiswrong, you’re my only hope.

 

[chuckdee]

Fred was heavily influenced by Amber. Fate was originally designed to run Amber with a little more quantification and randomization.

CaA is basically "if you have a worse rating than your opponent, find a way to even the odds" mechanized.

In one of the long running games that I participated in (the GM ran it every year at Dragon*Con and I was in it yearly until I moved away), he actually ran Amber in Fate. I'd wondered why it felt so natural.

 

[chuckdee]

BTW, if you ever have time, I’d still to see a Rob Teaches Fate Thread.

He's actually done a lot that has made it into an excellent book.

The Book of Hanz by amazingrando

The quintessential guide to running the Fate Roleplaying Game.

amazingrando.itch.io

Fate 100% has a rate of people bouncing off of it, just not "getting" it. This is well known in the Fate community.

I've never heard that before. I don't really go around a lot in 'communities' (this one, which is recent, G+, rpggeek and rpg.stackexchange have been my only exposures, and G+ wasn't that wide because of how much there was- I really miss G+), so I'll take your word for it. But when I first heard it, it was foreign to me.

 

[chuckdee]

Again, 95% of my play with Fate really is "tell me what you do." I hate the term "Fate Point economy", absolutely don't believe you need to Compel every scene, and don't view it as the major point of play.

The interesting thing about Fate Points is that it acts as kind of like... almost a measure of willpower where you can influence where you do and don't succeed. If done well, you can't succeed anywhere, but can succeed where your character really digs in. I think if Fate Points flow too quickly you don't get that.

It also, as a GM, provides me some level of cover for putting the screws to people, since a) they signed up for it and b) I'm giving them something to sweeten the deal.

So much of what you say resonates with my experience- and this is no exception. I'm looking forward to diving a bit further into that Book of Hanz.

 

[Trippy]

It provides evidence that people "bought it" at least.




Why is that a question though? I mean, who asked it?

Are you denying that people who are buying it are actually playing it now?!

The people on this thread who claimed that Fate requires more explanation to be able to play, was complicated to play or simply that Fate is a game notorious for gamers not being able to 'get it’, asked the question.

 

[Trippy]

To be fair, that’s a gross over exaggeration of what people were saying, so that’s not the question at all.

Well you can choose your own level of what ‘get it’ means, but what else is it supposed to imply?

 

[Trippy]

Fred was heavily influenced by Amber. Fate was originally designed to run Amber with a little more quantification and randomization.

CaA is basically "if you have a worse rating than your opponent, find a way to even the odds" mechanized.

This is something that I have always felt - if I were to run Fate by my own preference, I’d remove the dice from it. That is, you’d have a fixed outcome for skill use, but it would be modified through the Aspect economy alone. I think that this was the intent behind Nobilis previously, although that has a specific story background and level of play.

 

[CRKrueger]

He's actually done a lot that has made it into an excellent book.

The Book of Hanz by amazingrando

The quintessential guide to running the Fate Roleplaying Game.

amazingrando.itch.io

I've never heard that before. I don't really go around a lot in 'communities' (this one, which is recent, G+, rpggeek and rpg.stackexchange have been my only exposures, and G+ wasn't that wide because of how much there was- I really miss G+), so I'll take your word for it. But when I first heard it, it was foreign to me.

Yeah, I KS’d the book.