Category: Fate

Work Continues

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Work continues on Our Terrible Fate.  Here’s an overview of what I’ve been working on lately.

Sanity

I’ve got an outline of a sanity system.  That might sound like a small thing, but with the way it will integrate into the system, it doesn’t require a lot of additional detailed rules.  I think it will yield gameplay results similar to CoC, with characters occasionally going mad and turning on their compatriots or waking up in strange places covered in blood and strange markings.  At the same time, it should be less complicated – don’t need to make three rolls because you saw a monster and hopefully no flow charts required – by leaning into Fate a bit.

Underlying insanity is easily handled with consequences.  The Keeper can use these to justify certain events, like hallucinations or dreams, and can compel them when they really create problems.  And of course, players are encouraged to roleplay things like phobias, which can easily be used for self-compels to get some fate points.

Certain situations will automatically trigger a bout of madness, and the Keeper can offer a compel to trigger a bout as well.  One thing I’m considering is possible ways to incentivize players to really play into a bout when doing so would cause them to take action against the other investigators.  This is a common idea in CoC that produces some especially memorable moments in play, but it’s not really driven by the system.

Character Progression

Another area I’m tinkering with is character advancement and progression.  I’ve never been a big fan of the default character advancement in Fate.  It’s a little too removed from the fiction and gameplay, with progression essentially happening based on the end of a session or scenario.  It’s also easy for players to get into the habit of making choices in advancing their character that aren’t necessarily based on what their character has done to this point.

I’ve long been a fan of skill progression being tied to actual skill use, but that can sometimes involve a LOT of bookkeeping that bogs down play.  I also like the character advancement approach taken in Invisible Sun.  Basically, it lets the player choose a type of goal from among several categories, flesh it out with specifics, and then gradually complete steps in support of that goal  As they complete steps, they are able to make small advancements, with more significant advancement upon completion of the goal.  This also works well for goals outside of strict character advancement, such as gaining membership in a group, advancing in rank within an organization, developing relationships, etc.

I’d like to incorporate something like this along with guidelines for Keepers to integrate steps for these goals into existing scenarios.  I’m hoping this will not only provide a character advancement system that’s driven by the investigators’ actions, but also make it easy for Keepers to better tie scenarios into investigator backstories.

Scenario Rewrite

And the other major thing I’ve been working on is a draft of a scenario to use with the system.  Applying the system to actual situations while writing a scenario is a useful way to identify things that need more work prior to actual playtesting.  Plus I am putting a lot of effort into how scenarios are written and presented to the Keeper.  One key element of the game is the ability to play out any given situation using different methods, depending on the needs of the scenario and your table at that time.  This isn’t just about giving the Keeper a couple of different options and saying “pick one,” but also about explaining why one option might be preferable over another.

I’m also including a lot of guidance for building and maintaining tension and fear over the course of the scenario.  First at the beginning to give the Keeper an idea of where the climax is and how tension should (or can) flow during the game, and then with additional guidance in each scene.  More than once I’ve seen Keepers complain that their games like any real sense of fear, while they also spend 30+ minutes with their players acting out detailed conversations with a completely irrelevant NPC.

Rather than expend energy to develop a new scenario from scratch, I’m just re-writing a classic CoC scenario.  The NPCs and overall structure of the scenario is unchanged, but it’s being rewritten to use Our Terrible Fate and provide lots of additional guidance for the Keeper.  It’s also being setup with an eye towards making it easier to use at the table.  Layout that’s easy to follow, layers to support printing with less ink/toner, and space on the page the Keeper can use for note.

A New Tenant

Finally, a tackled one other project over the past few days.  It’s not directly tied to developing OTF, but I hope to use it as a prop in a future game.  But that’s a separate post…

Action Resolution – The Core Gameplay Loop

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One of the things I want to include in this project are rules and guidelines that actually teach players and Keepers how to play the game. That might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing to me how many professional tabletop roleplaying games out there don’t actually do this. You’ll probably find plenty of detailed, case-by-case rules and a hoard of great setting material. You might have a brief overview of roleplaying game concepts, but a lot of the details of how to really play the game are often summed up as “find someone that already knows how to play and learn from them.”

There are a few reasons I think this is a real problem within the tabletop gaming community in general, but one of the big reasons is that there are a lot of different styles of games and play at the table. When you don’t clearly describe the style of game you’re going for and align your rules to match, how do you expect players and GMs to play the game the way you intended?

So I plan to include reasonably comprehensive rules and guidance for both players and Keepers. And with that in mind, one of the most important parts of any roleplaying game is how to resolve the actions of the characters. Action resolution is the core gameplay loop, so it seems logical to focus on providing solid guidance for this first.

Note that while OTF borrows a lot from more narrative games, it still places the primary narrative responsibility (and authority) on the GM/Keeper. In other words, the Keeper is the one narrating the results most of the time. The reason for this is simple: It works best for an investigative horror game.

So here are draft versions of both an overview and a more detailed breakdown of Action Resolution in OTF. If you have comments or questions, please post them in this thread on our SubReddit.

Action Resolution Overview

I. Present the Situation

1. Keeper Sets the Scene (Describe the Scene and present Choices, Sources of Opposition, and Obstacles)

II. What Do You Do?

2. Players provide Intent and Approach.

III. Yes, No, or Roll?

3. Yes, No, or Maybe? – Are all possible outcomes interesting? Is this a possible branch in the story?

IV. Here’s How We’re Going to Play This Out…

4. Set the Stakes
5. Single Roll, Single Roll with Help, or Pacing Mechanism?
6. Obstacles and Opposition
7. Core Action and Skill(s)

V. Roll Some Dice

8. Roll Dice, Invoke Aspects, Use Boosts
9. Determine Outcome

VI. Here’s What Happened…

10. Narrate outcome. Apply changes to Aspects, free invokes, boosts, etc.
11. Scene Complete?

Action Resolution Breakdown

I. Present the Situation

1. Keeper Sets (or Resets) the Scene.

a. Keeper presents situation – a choice the Investigators must make or immediate problem to deal with.

b. Describe scene visually (Aspect), add a detail (Aspect), add goals and points of interest (Aspect), add exits, finish with any obvious Sources of Opposition or Obstacles.

c. Consider if the situation appears the same to all characters

i. Differences in Skills, Sanity, Mythos can all impact how Investigators perceive the world.

II. What Do You Do?

2. Players imagine their Investigators in that situation and decide how the character acts in response.

a. Investigators react to Sources of Opposition, attempt to overcome Obstacles, or make a Choice.

b. Keeper and players discuss the action until a clear Intent and Approach are identified.

c. Who is participating in the action? Who is taking the lead? What are other characters doing during the action?

III. Yes, No, or Roll?

3. Keeper determines if action succeeds, fails, or should be randomly determined

a. Keeper determines if the action is even possible.

i. Is the action possible within the fiction? Can the approach actually work?
If the answer to both questions is No, then the action fails; go to step 9. (Say No)

b. Keeper determines whether the outcome needs to be randomly determined.

i. Can the action plausibly fail? Does failure carry risk or cost? Is failure interesting?
If the answer to all questions is No, then the action succeeds; go to step 9. (Say Yes)

ii. [Possibly consider if possibility of failure is appropriate to pacing.]

c. If the action is possible, and the opposition or possibility of failure is interesting, then Roll.

IV. Here’s How We’re Going to Play This Out…

4. Set the Stakes

a. What are the possible outcomes? What interesting thing will happen if the action succeeds? What interesting thing will happen if the action fails?

b. Always consider Success at a Cost, especially if the action involves a Core Clue. Consider what kind of opposition is involved and how things could go badly.

c. Both the Keeper and the players should have a basic idea of the Stakes before moving on, but the precise details will be determined in Steps 9 & 10. Occasionally, the Keeper might leave the players in the dark about the Stakes for failure.

5. Keeper determines how to randomly determine the outcome.
(Single roll, Teamwork, or Pacing Mechanism?)

a. Emphasis and Pacing?

b. Single character or multiple characters working together?
If multiple characters, are they using the same Approach (same skills or different skills?) (Help vs. Challenge)

c. Opposition and Obstacles? What is the Opposition’s Intent? (Contest vs. Conflict)

6. Keeper sets Opposition/Difficulty

a. Active Opposition or passive Difficulty?

b. Set Opposition or Difficulty relative to Investigator skill?

c. Consider Aspects in play

7. Keeper determines which skill and core action are being used.

a. Keeper uses the Investigator’s Intent to determine which core action or pacing mechanism applies.

b. Sometimes the player is simply rolling to Oppose an action by an NPC or the environment.

c. Keeper uses the Investigator’s Approach to determine which skill applies to each roll.

V. Roll Some Dice

8. Dice are rolled or pacing mechanism is played out, Aspects are invoked, Boosts are used.

9. Keeper determines the mechanical Outcome of the roll or pacing mechanism (success, tie, failure, or success with style), and determines appropriate outcome (short-term) and repercussions (long-term), including any costs (success at minor/major cost).

a. If action is automatically successful (Step 3.b.) consider which Investigator succeeds based on skills.

VI. Here’s What Happened…

10. Keeper describes (narrates) the results of the action of the players, which results in a new situation. Make any appropriate changes to the Aspects in play, free invokes, boosts, etc.

11. Keeper determines if the Scene is complete.

a. If the Scene is not complete, reset the Scene (go to Step 1).

b. If the Scene is complete, Transition to next Scene.

Why Fate?

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Fate Dice and Fate Points

This post has been a long time coming… but it’s going to have to wait just a little while longer. First, I want to briefly re-look at why I’m not using Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu to play my games.

Call of Cthulhu

  • I previously mentioned that I don’t like percentile and roll-under systems – it’s just a personal preference.
  • Despite the updates over time, CoC is still rooted in a traditional Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system. Other than Sanity, there is very little alignment between the system and the style of story it’s trying to accomplish.
  • I prefer each roll of the dice to be interesting, so I don’t like systems that involve constant die-rolling – especially those that require multiple rolls to resolve a single action.
  • I want a system that supports and encourages the story, and stays out of the way the rest of the time. A game that has people developing complicated flow charts just to explain a basic mechanic (I’m looking at you Sanity mechanics) is not getting that done.
  • I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen new CoC GMs ask about a rule (and I don’t mean a weird edge case) and the bulk of the advice is to not worry about the specifics of the rules and just focus on what makes sense in the story. That’s great advice, but it suggests that a lot of the great stories told playing CoC happen in spite of the system, not because of it.

Trail of Cthulhu

  • I like that ToC directly tackles the issue of an investigation stalling because the players fail a die roll, but I don’t like the way it does it. Getting the vital clue automatically is fine, but it removes possibilities from the game. I like the idea of failing a roll to find a clue still resulting the players discovering the clue, but with an added complication. I think this approach still resolves the problem Gumshoe is trying to solve, but also creates new opportunities for interesting play.
  • I really don’t like the point spend system to obtain additional clues. I believe the best games encourage players to focus on what their PCs are actually doing, not on what skills they want to use. The point spend system appears to work against that idea.

Why Fate?

So that hits the highlights of why I’m not just playing CoC or ToC. Which leaves the question of why I’m using Fate Core. If you’re familiar with Fate, you’re probably thinking one of two things: “I like Fate, but I’m not sure it makes sense for an investigative horror game.” or “I can’t stand Fate; what are you thinking?”

I’ll address both of those ideas in more detail, but I think it’s important to understand that there is a difference between the rules of Fate Core and the way people play Fate Core. Put another way, some people play RPGs in a fairly typical style using the Fate system, while others view and play Fate as a somewhat different style of RPG all together. Neither is wrong, but these two different styles of playing Fate can lead to a fair degree of confusion when discussing the game.

System Gets Out of the Way

As I’ve mentioned, I prefer roleplaying games that emphasize actual roleplaying, which I loosely define as “making decisions and taking actions as though you were your character.”  In other words, the players (and the Keeper) act based on what their characters would do an any given situation, NOT based on the mechanical options granted to them by the system or other mechanical factors like which skill they want to use. Not only do I find this style of play much more enjoyable (assuming the Keeper is capable of effectively running this kind of game), but it is also easier to learn and teach to others.

Not only does Fate Core support this style of play, but it explicitly encourages it. The Golden Rule of Fate, often paraphrased as “Fiction First”, instructs players to “First, figure out what you want to do, then consult the rules to figure out how to handle it in the game.” This is arguably the central tenet of Fate, and as long as you stick to this concept you should end up playing a style of game along the lines of what I’m going for.

Elegant – Powerful Simplicity

Again, I like a system that let’s us focus on actually playing the game and pursuing the story. I want a system that’s easy to learn for the players and doesn’t require you to look up rules every time a new situation arises. If you need a flow chart for a core system of the game, that’s not good. With an eye towards keeping players focused on what’s going on in the story, I also prefer dice mechanics that are consistent, don’t require you to figure out what kind or how many dice to roll every time, and require a minimum of math.

Fate has a fairly small number of core elements that can be applied in different combinations. They can seem simple and minimalist at first, but once you start seeing how they can be used, it becomes more apparent that they can be used to handle virtually any situation. This approach emphasizes determining what’s actually important in the moment, as opposed to simply ‘in this situation, always follow this process’. This can actually be more challenging for Keeper’s to learn, compared to other system, but it also offers more possibilities and helps speed up gameplay. Ultimately, it can make things easier on everyone. It also encourages Keepers to understand why they are choosing to use a mechanic at any given time – rather than just blindly following a step-by-step process – and how those choices impact the game. This can ultimately help produce better Keepers and better games.

And if you’re rolling dice in Fate, you’re rolling four dice and adding a few numbers. You might make a decision about re-rolling or adding a couple more numbers, but that core mechanic doesn’t change. The basic process is consistent throughout the game.

Scalable

As you learn more about roleplaying game (and adventure) design you begin to see patterns in different areas of play. For example, using dice to resolve an action attempted by a character is serving the same purpose, regardless of who or what is attempting the action. The more you can utilize the same basic mechanics for similar circumstances, the easier the game is to learn. This also minimizes the amount of focus that everyone has to divert away from experiencing the story from the perspective of their character and towards the mechanics of the game (the cognitive load).

As an example, some games might have a whole separate additional system for resolving combat between military units on a battlefield. In some games, this uses a completely different ruleset from the core roleplaying game, which means you have to learn a whole new system for a situation that will only see limited use. In other games, this uses a ruleset closely mirrors the core game mechanics, which makes it quick and easy to learn. It also allows the players to better focus on why that battle is important to the story.

Fate uses the same basic mechanics regardless of the players involved. Resolving what happens when a single soldier fights an opponent on the battlefield uses the same process as two infantry units engaging in close quarter combat. The names of the skills being used might be different – just to help differentiate that these two operate on different levels of scale – but resolving these two actions is handled the same way. Indeed, virtually every element of Fate’s system can be applied the same way at any level of scale.

Simplifies the Narration

One thing I’ve never liked as a GM is blocks of text to be read aloud verbatim as part of a scenario. It always comes across as forced and artificial to me. Unfortunately, I’ve also sometimes not been so great at coming up with detailed narration on the spot. I’ve also noticed two trends in that occur sometimes in mystery games: First, if the narration doesn’t include something, the players assume it must not exist – which limits the options they feel are available to them. Second, if the narration does include something, the players assume it must be important. Don’t mention a painting on a wall if you don’t want the players to inspect every inch of it. This can create challenges for the GM or Keeper.

Fate uses Aspects – short descriptive phrases – to describe just about everything in the game. These Aspects are open-ended and allow everyone to make assumptions about the world. Describe a room as The History Professor’s Cluttered Basement Office, and everyone can reasonably assume it contains a desk, bookshelves, books, papers, and artifacts, as well it being dark and dreary. There’s no need to describe all of those things individually. This might seem odd at first to some veteran roleplayers, but it is incredibly freeing and effective in practice.

Adaptable

I’m a firm believer that the best games align their ruleset with the setting and themes of the game. So if I’m not going to build a game system from scratch, then I need to use a system that is already set up for investigative cosmic horror – or a system that can be easily modified. One thing the Fate is known for is how easily it can be hacked to suit a particular need. In fact, I would argue that Fate is actually more hackable than many players think. It has a reputation for producing a very particular style of play, but it’s capable of fostering other styles as well.

Wrap-Up

So that covers the highlights of why I’m using the Fate Core system, but if you’re concerned about how Fate can be used for investigative horror – or if you don’t like Fate – it probably doesn’t really address your concerns. Which is why my next post is going to discuss what I’m changing about Fate Core, and why…

A Light Dawns: An Epiphany about Fate Core’s Character Advancement

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Work continues on my efforts to create an adaptation of Fate Core to place investigative cosmic horror. One area of the rules that I remain a little unsure about is also one of the first pieces of Fate Core I originally wanted to change – character advancement. Ever since I first read through the rules for character advancement, something about it has bothered me, and today I read something that helped me realize why.

Fate Core’s character advancement revolves around the concept of milestones. The basic idea is that there are minor, significant, and major milestones that generally occur at the end of a session, scenario, or story arc. You can ‘spend’ a milestone to change or advance your character.

I understand that there’s a lot about this system that works really well – and is far better than  generic XP system – but there’s always been this inherent nagging feeling I’ve had that just turned me off from these milestones. Part of me simply thought a session is not a standard unit of measuring anything so why should it be used to pace character advancement? Turns out that’s really close to why this bothers me, but it’s not the whole thing.

I’ve also come across numerous examples online of this system not working the way I feel it should. Players using their milestones to change a character’s skills and stunts, not based on what has happened to the character recently, but based on what they thought would be more useful in upcoming play. To me, that is counter to focusing on the story – something Fate normally places a great emphasis on.

I’ve also seen some really great things happen with milestones, and I like how it helps to align how the characters change with how the world changes around them. So I’ve been tempted to just leave it alone and see what happens.

However, today I read something that helped me realize why I don’t feel right about milestones, courtesy of the Angry GM.

First, I read a couple of posts about types of scenes, the importance of pacing, and how these ideas interact to help bring about great, memorable, and fun stories. Then I came across this post about sessions. There’s a lot of great stuff here, especially in the context of the emphasis Fate places on the importance of the fiction – the story – itself. Then there’s where something clicked for me:

Anyway, in RPGs, we have this metagame concept of “the session.” You know, of course, that every week or every two weeks or whatever, we get together and play a chunk of the RPG game. Whatever game we can fit into three hours or four hours or five hours, that’s what we do. And we pick up next time where we left off last time.

The problem is that sessions don’t care about the story. They don’t care about the game. The narrative. They don’t care where arcs begin and end, where adventures begin and end. While RPGs are essentially episodic, the episodes have NOTHING to do with the narrative.

So sessions don’t generally have any connection whatsoever to the story. They are not connected to the fiction you are trying to create at the table. So then it hits me: By tying character advancement to sessions, you are inherently introducing a barrier between character advancement and the fiction.

It’s not just that a session isn’t a consistent way to measure time or experience – which is part of what initially bothered me – it’s that sessions are often disruptive to the pacing of the fiction, and by using them in advancement we are creating an additional obstacle to integrating character change and advancement naturally into the story.

So, how do I fix this in my game? I’m not sure yet, but I’m thinking it’s going to be through some combination of two basic ideas:

  1. Minimize or eliminate any reference to sessions in character advancement & change (probably from other system mechanics as well).
  2. Integrate sessions more fully into the pacing of the story and flow of the game.

I still want to provide a lot of guidance and tools for Keepers in the game, so the second option will probably work well with that, but I may tinker with the first option as well. Now that I finally have a little better grasp on what bothers me about milestones, it should be much easier to put together the kind of advancement system I want in the game.