Tag: fate core

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.

Styles of Fate

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The Authorship Spectrum

Before I get into what changes I’m making to Fate Core’s rules as written, I think it’s important to look at how I apply those rules to get the style of game I’m going for. The is because I have come to recognize that there are a lot of different styles of gameplay that emerge from Fate’s default rules. I think this is part of the reason that Fate has been so successful – it can accommodate very different game styles without requiring an actual alteration of the rules – you just have to apply the existing rules differently. However, this can also make exposing new players to the game a bit challenging.

There are lot of ways to describe and categorize tabletop roleplaying games, but one key idea that I have found that plays a role in how people approach Fate is the question of authorship. When it comes to authorship, you can think of all games as existing somewhere along a spectrum.

At one end of the spectrum, you have what I think of as the traditional or GM-led style of play, which is characterized by the GM having control over and knowledge of the game world that the players do not. Players only have information which their characters have, and they are only able to influence the game world through the actions of their characters. The GM controls all elements of the game world and possesses knowledge of the game world that is secret until the players uncover it through the actions of their characters. At the most extreme edge of this spectrum you also have GM railroading, where the players only control the moment-to-moment actions of their characters and have little to no say in where the party of PCs goes and what approaches they can take.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have what I tend to describe as a shared authorship style of play. This style is characterized by both the players and the GM being able to control elements of the game world on an equal footing and everyone having access to all information about the game world and the characters that reside within it. There are very few differences between the players and the GM in this style of game, and everyone has to actively distinguish between what they know about the game world and what their characters know.

Default Fate

I’d say that the default rules for Fate fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, though exactly where depends on how you interpret and apply some of the rules in Fate Core. This is most evident in how tables utilize the rules for Game Creation. Some groups start from scratch and create a new game world and setting, create characters and game aspects, create issues and some NPCs, and get straight to playing the game – using only the aspects they’ve created to drive play (more shared authorship). Other groups identify key aspects and issues and create characters during session zero, then take a break so the GM can prep everything else before the next session (more GM-led).

Games that make more use of secret or hidden aspects naturally tend more towards the GM-led end of the spectrum. There is also a lot of flexibility built-in to what players can do with the Create an Advantage action. While this action allows characters to change the circumstances around them to provide some sort of benefit, that still leaves some wiggle room. Some groups allow the CA action to alter those circumstances in ways that go beyond what the characters themselves can directly accomplish – for example, introducing a door to exit to a building or declaring that the ground ahead is a marsh in order to slow a fleeing enemy. This application of the CA action enables players to alter the game world beyond their characters – very shared authorship.

Using aspects and fate points to declare a story detail does not have a lot of defined limitations in the default rules, which provides a lot of potential for your players to influence the game world. Compels can be primarily viewed as a tool of the GM, with players occasionally compelling one another’s PCs if there is conflict within the party, but some groups also allow players to make broader use of compels – including compelling NPCs.

Terrible Fate Default

Since my goal is to play scenarios from Call of Cthulhu and other mythos games, my implementation of Fate will be focused on investigative horror gameplay. This means the game will tend more towards the GM-led end of the spectrum. The GM will have a great deal of information not initially available to the players, and the players will primarily interact with the game world through the actions of their characters. Players will be able to exercise limited narrative authority over the game world, but the limits of that authority will be narrowly defined. The GM will have broad authority over the world – and even some authority over the actions of PCs via compels and similar mechanics – while the players will determine where their PCs go and what they do when they get there. In other words, Our Terrible Fate will probably more closely resemble a traditional tabletop RPG than it will a freeform story game.

Why Fate? – Choosing a System – Part 4

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Why Fate?

Chances are that if you’re reading this (and especially if you’ve read any of my previous posts), you are probably asking at least one of three questions:

  • What’s Fate?
  • I don’t like Fate, why are you using it for a mythos game?
  • I like Fate, but why are you using it for a mythos game?

Again, my overall goal is to be able to use scenarios from existing mythos games like Call of Cthulhu and play with my family.  Understand that Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, and others are in many ways intended to tell stories like those portrayed in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and other mythos authors.  Unlike like many other traditional RPGs, Fate is specifically designed to simulate fiction – books, television, movies.  So if I focus on trying to tell the kinds of stories you see in that fiction – and the kinds of stories told playing these other games – then using Fate to tell stories in the Lovecraft mythos isn’t really all that strange of an idea.

If you’re familiar with Fate, chances are that you’ve read somewhere that it isn’t all the great a system for horror or investigation – which again raises questions about why I would use this system.  While the prevailing attitude towards using Fate for horror has long been that there are better options, there are enough great ideas out there about how to use Fate to run really good horror games that a whole book was released on the subject – The Fate Horror Toolkit.

Update:  It’s also worth noting that another relevant development has arrived on the scene since I wrote the initial draft of this post – it’s even a mythos game!  Fate of Cthulhu is currently on Kickstarter, and it’s coming from Evil Hat, the creators of Fate.  It’s not clear at this point precisely how much investigative horror will play into this game, since it’s billed as “Terminator-style action and adventure” meets the Mythos.  I’m fairly confident that this won’t check all the boxes for what I want to play, so I’m continuing with my efforts, but I’m definitely eager to see what they’ve come up with.  If nothing else it demonstrates clearly that Fate can handle gaming in the mythos, and I’m proud to be a backer of the Kickstarter.

It’s possible that Fate might not work that well for investigative gameplay, and that this ultimately won’t work.  I’m willing to try it any way.  At this point, I actually think that has more to do with how some players approach investigative games than any inherent misalignment between the genre and the system.  The more I explore some of the great ideas on the net about how to build and play investigative scenarios, the more I think that Fate should work just fine.

Narrative First

One idea that’s important to me playing with my family is that we are able to simply go with what makes sense in the story.  I don’t want to have to look up situation-specific rules, and I don’t want players making decisions based solely on stats.  I want to be able to ask what they want to do in the given situation, and be able to easily play out their actions.  I also want a system that rewards planning ahead and considering the consequences of your action, as that’s going to be an important concept in our games.

The Golden Rule of Fate is this:  Decide what you’re trying to accomplish first, then consult the rules to help you do it.  This is often paraphrased as “Fiction First” and has a few implications.  The first is that you should always start with what a character would do in a particular situation.  This should hardly be unusual in a roleplaying game, but in practice with a lot of other games, players get in the habit of taking action based on numbers and what their characters are most likely to succeed at – rather than on how their characters would typically react.  Another consequence of this rule (and its corollary – the Silver Rule) is that what makes logical sense take priority over other rules.  Needless to say this all lines up very well with my desire to focus on what makes logical sense in the story.

Player Choices

Somewhere along the line in the last few years of reading about designing and gamemastering RPGs, I recall reading that the best games involve challenging and interesting choices.  In fact, something I try to consciously assess when I’m considering options for how to apply or tailor a mechanic is to ask if the mechanic forces the player to make an interesting choice.

Fate Core is all about the players making choices.  Deciding whether to concede a conflict early and cut your losses or to press on to achieve your goal despite the toll it will take.  Deciding whether to take your chances on an even-odds roll or expend precious resources to increase your chances of a successful roll.  Spending points to avoid a problematic turn of events or welcoming a new complication in exchange for points you can use later.  All of these are common choices Fate players have to make numerous times in the course of play.

It’s often said that players in Fate can accomplish just about anything if they are willing to pay the price.  A major Fate player and contributor, Rob Hanz, phrased this as “How much do you want this, and what are you willing to give up to get it?” in his well-known collection of musing on Fate, titled the Book of Hanz.  Not only is that very much in line with what I’m going for, it can also make for some excellent stories of dangerous knowledge and tragedy as investigators try to avert disaster in the mythos.

PC Freedom, GM Toolbox

Many games offer a veritable laundry list of options for PCs – how to do X, how to do Y, how to do Z – just about anything a player can think of to try has a rule.  There’s just two problems with that:  First, that’s a lot of rules to remember or look up, so players rarely remember what they have at their disposal.  Second, if there’s not a rule for something, you’re often out of luck.  Fate has a small list of basic actions, but when coupled with the rest of the system they can be leveraged effectively to handle anything the players come up with.

On the other side of the table, the same actions give the GM a comparable array of options.  By default, Fate Core provides GMs with easy ways to present key issues within the game world, simple methods to both quickly generate simple mob-like NPCs and detail more central characters, and plenty of ways to model just about anything the players can imagine.  While Fate Core by default is very setting-agnostic, there are a myriad of mechanics in toolkits available from Evil Hat that provide ways to tailor the system for specific settings and themes.  Throw in more ideas shared by a vibrant community, including those in the Fate Codex e-zine, and there is a massive library of ideas and tools for the GM.

Powerful Flexibility

Part of the reason I believe Fate has been so successful is its flexibility.  The rules as written (often abbreviated as RAW) are powerful enough to handle whatever you throw at them, without being overly complex.  However, a lot of the text can be interpreted in a few different ways, depending on your context and what you’re aiming to get out of the game.  In some games, this openness to differences in interpretation and application could hobble use and acceptance of the system, but this has actually worked to Fate’s advantage.  New players can face some challenges getting comfortable with the system, but that’s usually due to preconceptions from previous RPG experience or issues of interpretation that can easily be addressed when going for a particular style of gameplay in a specific setting.

The other benefit of this flexibility is that there is almost always more than one way to handle any given narrative situation within the system.  This fact enables players and the GM to adopt the approach they find most appealing in light of their preferred play style.  It also makes it easier to stay consistent and keep the variety of different mechanics to a minimum.

Scale is also handled extremely well in Fate, so it can handle interactions between two competing galactic empires as easily as it can between two characters.  The core techniques and mechanics used to represent a character are the same as those used to represent an organization or a location, so you don’t have to learn a whole new approach to scenario prep or play just because characters are affecting things on a larger scale.  The GM can represent a nation-spanning fanatical cult as easily as a single NPC.

Descriptive Aspects

This might seem a bit odd at first, but one element of being a GM that I have long had issues with is describing locations and scenes, especially with investigative games.  I’ve never liked reading scene descriptions in published scenarios, partly because such descriptions usually only exist for certain scenes, and I’m not great at improvising detailed descriptions.  The biggest issue I’ve seen with this in investigative games is that on more than one occasion, I’ve seen players do one of two things:

  1. Completely miss a big hint that was in the description that should have helped point them in the right direction to move the story forward.
  2. Seize upon a mundane detail that was included only for fluff or color, convinced that it is the key to figuring out the mystery.

This plays a big part in how I’m handling clues in the game, but in a more general way I’ve also seen it impact other styles of games.  I don’t like the idea of a GM spending time creating colorful details (which can admittedly aid in immersion), only to have those details ultimately send the players down a rabbit hole and grind the game to a halt.  I also don’t like the idea of a game devoid of atmosphere, where the players feel like they can only make use of the specific details the GM spoon feeds them.

If there is one word that best defines how Fate differs from other system, it’s this: aspects.  At its simplest, an aspect is a short phrase that describes some element of the game world.  Aspects are used to describe important elements of characters, locations, items… everything.  They have mechanical effects on the game, and their importance is determined by how much they are used in play – in other words, it’s up to the players and the GM how much of an impact any particular aspect has on the story.

Aspects provide an advantage when it comes to describing scenes because the system explicitly allows you to make assumptions about a location because of its aspects.  So if a location has an aspect Archaeology Professor’s Artifact-Laden and Disheveled Office, everyone can assume that a lot of things are naturally present in the office – a desk, shelves, lots of books, maps, papers everywhere, journals and notebooks, and plenty of artifacts – and everyone has enough information to have a shared mental image of the scene.  It’s not necessary to detail everything in the office up front.  If it’s logical that something would be present, it is.  And the GM can still provide more detail in response to the PC’s actions.

Hackable

As a final point on why I’m going with Fate as a starting point, as a system it is eminently hackable.  By default, it’s flexibility naturally lends the game to be tailored to your table.  Leveraging the many options and ideas available only expands the ways you can customize the system.  Even more than that, the system has a lot of give to it.  While it is obviously important to understand how changes to one mechanic can affect other parts of the system, Fate is very forgiving.  You can make quite a few changes – even to the point of significantly altering how the game plays from one scene to another – without the system falling apart.

Wrapping Up

This has already taken far longer to finish and post than it should have, but I should mention that there is already a mythos Fate game on the market.  Modiphius released a Fate Core version of Achthung! Cthulhu, which is essentially a pulpy mashup of WWII and the mythos.  Rather than an investigative game involving ordinary people, as is common in mythos games, stories in Acthung! Cthulhu revolve around soldiers and spies in military operations during the war.  It is hyper-focused on that setting, so using it for other types of mythos games would require some adaptation.  It also does not include much in the way of rules – it is meant to be used in conjunction with the Fate Core rulebook.  There are a few rules provided to incorporate horror and mythos elements into the system – and I’m certainly going to look at using them where I can – but it doesn’t offer much in the way of using Fate for investigative gameplay or provide guidance for how to really play Fate in a way that aligns with a mythos theme and setting.

One Among Many: Choosing a System – Part 3

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In Part 2 I looked at some of the big name mythos roleplaying games out there and briefly discussed a few reasons I’m not just playing them. Of course, those are not the only mythos RPGs available – it’s actually a very good time to be alive if you’re into mythos gaming. However, most smaller or indie roleplaying games these days tend to focus on minimal rules and/or a very shared authorship/narrativist style of game. That’s not what I’m after. It’s quite possible there’s a mythos RPG out there that’s actually fairly close to my personal preferences when it comes to system and setting, but I haven’t come across it. More importantly, I’m after something more than just a roleplaying game.

Why not just add components and a few custom rules to one of these games?

The next question that arises is why I don’t just add a few house rules and some play aids or props to one of these games. In actuality, I am going to end up just adapting an existing roleplaying system, but I’m envisioning something more than just playing a roleplaying game with a few house rules. Now, I do want to be able to play mythos scenarios using a typical roleplaying approach, but I don’t want that to be my only option. I want to be able to speed up or simplify play as necessary, and I want to be able to slow things down and delve into the details when it suits my purpose. And I want to make those adjustments on the fly, as things develop at the table. I also want to incorporate other gameplay elements that might seem downright foreign to a traditional RPG but nevertheless can bring something to the experience.

Over the years I have learned that when it comes to any situation or event in a tabletop game, there are always a variety of ways you can handle that event mechanically. Each approach brings with it a set of advantages and disadvantages when it comes to simplicity, detail, ease, time, etc. It all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and what’s going to work best at your table. Now there are certainly systems out there that provide a wealth of options for dealing with any situation that may arise in play, but many of them do so by having an increasingly large assortment of rules that are intended to encompass different circumstances. Especially when it comes to playing with my family, I prefer a system that can be used to support a wide variety of in-game events and actions without having to resort to dozens of individual situation-specific rules – a system whose basic mechanics can be applied flexibly and powerfully enough to provide a fine level of detail without being cumbersome.

After working on my previous project I believe I came across such a system in Fate Core.

What? Not that system!

While my overriding goal is to play this game with my family, I have a natural tendency to write and develop for a wider audience. In other words, I’d love to be able to share what I come up with with others. One of my biggest concerns with all of this so far is the possible reaction to my using Fate Core. So let me say this: This will not be Fate Core as you know it!

Actually, I’m not sure whether to expect a stronger reaction from people that are opposed to all Fate systems or from members of the Fate community. One group may just declare “It’s got Fate in it. I’m not going anywhere near it!” and the other may jump to “That’s not Fate! You’re doing it wrong!” Oh well. I’ve got my reasons – and they’re coming in Part 4.

One Among Many: Choosing a System – Part 2

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Choosing a System – Part 2

This series of posts discusses some of the existing games set in the Cthulhu Mythos that are currently popular and why I’m not just playing one of these games.

In Part 1, I looked at two major board/card games, Mansions of Madness and Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Both of these games place a large emphasis on meta gaming over making story- or character-based decisions. Both also suffer from a lack of player options due to the lack of a GM. There’s a lot to learn from these games, but they just don’t offer the gameplay I’m looking for.

So now let’s look at those mythos games that have a GM and place a higher priority on story- and character-driven decision-making: Roleplaying games. In other words…

Why not just play an existing roleplaying game?

To some extent, what I ultimately want to do is play a roleplaying game like Call of Cthulhu, but some changes are necessary to be able to play with my family in a way we’ll all enjoy. And I think some of these changes can actually provide a novel way of dealing with some of the challenges that frequently come up in investigative roleplaying games.

First, I should provide a little background. While I’ve played a few different RPGs over the past 20+ years, I’ve also studied a great many more to varying degrees while I worked on my last project. Most recently, the two systems I have focused on most over the past few years are Burning Wheel and Fate Core. I’ll talk more about these two systems and how they factor into my plans later, but for now I’m going to focus on three of the most popular Cthulhu Mythos roleplaying games currently on the market.

CoC 7th Ed (Image taken from the Chaosium website)

Let’s start with the granddaddy of mythos gaming: Call of Cthulhu (CoC).

Thousands of players have shared stories of great/horrific times they’ve had playing this game. A big part of my goal is to be able to have similar experiences with my family and make use of the decades of content available for this game. CoC essentially created the standards by which most mythos games are judged. The integration of sanity and madness into RPGs largely started with this game, and it will be a big inspiration for me moving forward. I backed the 7th Edition Kickstarter and would be happy to own just about anything released for this game. That said, there are a few things about the system that I’m just not a fan of.

First of all, at its core CoC really just uses a standard, traditional RPG system (Basic Roleplaying, BRP). The elements of the system that actually reinforce mythos or investigation themes are just bolted on. Sanity has been continuously refined over the years and is fairly well developed at this point, but there is very little to this system that actually relates to investigative gameplay. In fact, about the only element of the system that specifically relates to investigating some sort of mystery is the Idea roll. And to be honest, I hate the Idea roll.

On its face, the Idea roll is a fairly good… idea. It was created to solve a problem that can come up in lots of RPGs and can be especially prevalent in investigative games: For whatever reason, the players can’t figure out what to do next to advance the story. So they roll some dice to get a hint from the GM (or Keeper, if you prefer). It’s really not a bad solution, but it’s just not a solution I like. To me, it feels like a band-aid slapped on a hole – one that shouldn’t exist or at least should be subjected to better treatment.

So this is one reason I don’t want to play CoC as written: The one element of the system that is really tied to an investigative game is a mechanic I don’t personally like. The other big reasons are also ultimately an issue of personal preference: I don’t like the dice or the basic mechanics.

As I have played and studied games over the years, I have learned a few things about what I like and what I don’t. I don’t like systems that use lots of different size of dice (d4, d6, d10, etc.). I don’t like percentile dice. I don’t like roll-under systems. I’m not really sure why, as rationally I see some value in a percentile mechanic being easy to explain, but I’m just not a fan of these types of systems.

I’m also actively trying to minimize the recordkeeping and math the players have to deal with. This is partly because I know many players – and especially my kids – don’t want to deal with this. It’s also because I have a tendency to put together things that others feel are too complex, so I’m continuously trying to guard against that. I’m honestly not too sure how successful I’ll be on that front, but one look at a CoC character sheet with fractional values is a turn off.

Another thing that initially concerned me about CoC was the setting – specifically the time period. While there is a wealth of content out there covering decades, even centuries, the bulk of CoC is centered in the 1920s. As I have written elsewhere, the big reason I stopped working on my last project was that the setting was so foreign that my family – especially my kids – would have a hard time playing in it. When I decided to pivot to a mythos game, I decided to stick with a modern setting so my kids would be able to easily find their footing. However, having already run a test game set in the 20s (the Peru Prologue for Masks of Nyarlathotep), I’m thinking that this won’t be much of an issue. The setting is still familiar, and the other elements I’m introducing to the gameplay help ensure the players don’t ever feel lost.

ToC (Image taken from the Pelgrane website)

Next up is a game that retooled the basic CoC concepts and integrated them into a system specifically designed for investigative roleplaying: Trail of Cthulhu (ToC).

In my view, there are three major advantages of ToC when compared to CoC. First, clues and investigation are built into the system from the ground up. Second, sanity and horror are further refined to better portray the nuances that exist in mythos fiction. Third, the game offers adjustments to players and GMs depending on whether they want to play a more action-driven, pulpy game or a more classic, purist game.

Bottom line: There is a lot to learn from ToC’s approach, and I expect to lean heavily on it. However, there is one major element of it that I just don’t like. The system resolves the problem of “what if the players roll badly and don’t find the clue?” by making discovering clues nearly automatic. As long as the character is in the right place and is using the right skill, the clue will be found. It builds on this by also incorporating a spend mechanic that allows a player to spend points to uncover additional clues or information. This is where the game loses me.

There are two reasons for this. First, it smacks of encouraging a meta approach to the game. It becomes less about what the character would do in that situation and more about how many points you have available. I’ve seen players complain that the game just becomes an exercise in traveling to a location and reciting a list of skills. That’s something a GM should be able to overcome, but the fact that the system can effectively encourage this line of thought is a problem. Second, this approach robs the GM and players of an opportunity created by failed rolls. One longstanding challenge of many, more traditional RPG systems is what happens when the characters need something to advance the story but fail the roll that was to provide them with it. This automatic-success, point-spend system resolves that issue, but there is a way I find far more interesting.

As seen in games like Burning Wheel and Fate, a failed roll could mean that the character does not get what he was after – but it can also mean the character gets what he wanted with some sort of additional complication or twist. Not only does this ensure the story always advances in some way, it also creates great opportunities to take the story in a new direction. For me, there’s just too much potential to ignore. So I know that many players have had success with ToC’s mechanics, but they’re not for me.

Delta Green (Image taken from the Delta Green website)

When I decided to start working on a mythos game set in the modern day, I naturally took a hard look at another major mythos roleplaying game: Delta Green (DG).

Of course, DG also uses a percentile system, so that was an immediate issue for me. One element the system really has going for it is the integration of investigators’ ties to the outside world – their family, friends, and colleagues. This is one of the most commonly cited parts of the system that make it stand out, and an idea I may end up borrowing from.

Ultimately, a major reason I decided to not just play DG was the setting. To me, it feels like a pulp version of the Cthulhu Mythos (or maybe the first Hellboy movie) married to the X-Files. Now don’t get me wrong, that sounds awesome and is something I’d like to play. I could probably get my wife excited about a game like that. I may end up exploring this setting further, but for my immediate goals it just places too much emphasis on the government conspiracy angle. A common element to cosmic horror investigative roleplaying is that the player characters are everyday people. That’s an element I want to keep, at least as a starting point, so a game that starts from the assumption that the characters are government agents isn’t quite what I’m looking for.

Wrapping Up

So that covers some of the reasons why I’m not just going to play one of these RPGs, but there are other reasons too – reasons not tied to the specific system used by a particular game, but that are generally common to roleplaying games across the board. I’ll explore those more in the next post, which will hopefully shed more light on why what I’m envisioning is a little different.

One Among Many: Choosing a System

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Choosing a System – Part 1

This series of posts is going to discuss some of the existing games set in the Cthulhu Mythos that are currently popular and why I’m not just playing one of these games. To be fair, I actually am playing some of them and have great opinion of the others, but they just don’t fit what I want to play with my family – at least not on their own. I also touched on some of this in my last post (Background and Early Concept), but this will explore the issues in a bit more detail. Beware that this point could conceivably contain some minor spoilers related to some of these games.

Of course, there are numerous mythos-themed games on the market right now. Specifically, I’m looking to play a game that embraces the cosmic horror of Lovecraft’s mythos, as well as the investigative gameplay suggested in numerous mythos fiction and brought to gaming most notably through Call of Cthulhu. With this in mind, quite a few games are ruled out, particularly those where players take the role of cults, Great Old Ones, etc.

Roleplaying, Board, and Card Games

The mythos games I actually play most often are those produced by Fantasy Flight Games, specifically Mansions of Madness (MoM) and Arkham Horror: The Card Game (AHTCG). I’ve played the original Arkham Horror board game (and have the latest edition preordered). I’ve also played both editions of MoM, and while I mainly play the second edition these days, I expect to draw some inspiration from the first edition as well. Needless to say, Fantasy Flight Games has made a fair amount of money off me.

Likely the biggest reason that I play these games more often than others is that they can actually be played solo. This is a huge advantage in making these games accessible for easy play, but it also results in some drawbacks which I’ll come back to in a moment.

As with most of FFG’s games set in the mythos, both of these games derive their difficulty from a combination of time pressure and trying to make the most efficient use of available character actions. While this works to help realize the overwhelming odds the character’s face, it also results in every game feeling similar in many ways. It also strongly encourages a very meta-based approach to playing the game, which tends to discourage any roleplaying or attachment to characters. It also makes the game much less accessible to the people that are less avid gamers.

Mansions of Madness (image taken from the FFG website)

Between these two games, Mansions of Madness is the most detailed. Each scenario includes rooms or buildings the investigators can explore in detail, there are detailed clues that must be pieced together, and it is probably the closest board games currently get to a Call of Cthulhu type of investigation. However, the fact that each scenario is limited to a single location is a major drawback. There is one level of detail, and the level of complexity that can exist within a single location is very limited. There is no campaign of any kind, nor any character development. While it might be theoretically possible to link related scenarios together, each occurring at a separate location, this has not been implemented and would also create some other issues.

Mansions of Madness also tends to be fairly straightforward in the win-or-lose department – even to the point that it sometimes departs from what would make sense in a mythos story. For example, I played a scenario in which the investigators had to locate some information and then escape town by boat. This is generally considered one of the most challenging scenarios in the base game and involves exploring an area around the docks to find what you need while evading wave after wave of enemies. I played using three investigators, and managed to get two of them and the information to the boat. I had used one investigator to lure the enemies away and create an opening to the boat for the others. Due to some poor in-game text it was not obvious that I had to get everyone out, so the remaining investigator was not in a good spot. Nevertheless, I managed to get him to the docks, which were now surrounded. Using a lantern he started a fire that cleared the docks of enemies so the others could escape, but died in the process. Now in terms of mythos fiction, this would probably be considered a “good” ending – one character sacrifices himself to save the others and ensure they escape with information necessary to save the world – but in MoM this was just ruled a loss.

In MoM, there are standard actions that are always available to characters, and occasionally some scenario-specific actions, but the players are always limited to just a handful of predetermined actions. I also decided to try playing a scenario using my work-in-progress system in place of the basic mechanics to see if it would work. While successful, this experiment also made me realize something else about the game: It involves a LOT of rolling. Once each scenario gets to a certain point, you’re making a minimum of 1-2 rolls per investigator every turn. Once I realized this, I felt like this was just rolling because the system said so, not because of anything that happened in the fiction. The game does a fair job of providing flavor text to justify the rolls, but once you notice this issue, it’s hard to ignore.

Finally, the game is actually very atmospheric. Employing a modular board composed of individual rooms, streets, and other locations, lots of different types of environments can be created. The required app provides sound effects and visuals which work well. Most importantly, the fact that the board is revealed a little at a time does a great job of adding to the suspense and mystery of the game.

Arkham Horror TCG (image taken from the FFG website)

Arkham Horror: The Card Game handles some things better than MoM, but that comes with some tradeoffs. Rather than a modular board, AHTCG uses cards to represent locations (as well as most other things). This use of cards allows for a much broader variety of locations in terms of scale. In one scenario, each location could be a single room in a house. In another, each location could be a different building or area in a town, or even an alien environment on the other side of a strange gateway. This gives the game significantly more flexibility compared to MoM and is one of its biggest strengths.

The other nice thing about AHTCG is that it is designed from the beginning to support campaign play. The players’ actions in one scenario can actually have an impact in later scenarios, eventually building to a conclusion at the end of the campaign. There is also a degree of character customization and development. There’s a lot of potential here, and some interesting story lines can be experienced, but there is a downside that prevents the game from delivering the kind of investigative experience I’m looking for: A decided lack of detail.

Similar to MoM, players are limited to a fairly standard set of predetermined actions. More actions can open up through development, but their abstract nature means they are usually chosen for their mechanical affect on the meta side of the game, rather than for any roleplay-based reason. Far more problematic is that both typical character actions and clues are even more abstract. Exploring a location to obtain clues doesn’t get any more detailed than that. There is no mention of what the character is doing at the location, nor is there any mention as to what the clues are – they’re just tokens. The game ends up boiling down to acquiring clue tokens in order to advance a deck to progress the story before something bad happens. Since there is no detail to the clues, there is very little sense of mystery or investigation.

The game also employs a set of tokens in a cup or bag instead of the usual dice. While this does allow probabilities and effects to be altered from one scenario to the next, I personally don’t like token-based systems. They just don’t feel as random/balanced, and I seem to get the same tokens repeatedly. It may just be a psychological thing, but it’s a big turn off for me.

Ultimately, both of these games in their current forms suffer from a shared limitation: Players choice is severely limited. The game and setting cannot adapt to whatever ideas the players may come up with, so players are forced to stick to a narrow set of options. Essentially, it is railroading to its fullest. Without a GM or similar role, there just isn’t much of an alternative. The lack of a GM opens up some doors in terms of solo play, but in my opinion it’s just not a good trade.

There’s a lot of good ideas in these games – as well as a few others – that I plan to steal borrow, but on their own they just don’t provide enough of what I’m looking for.

Why not just play an existing roleplaying game?

This got a bit long, so I decided to split this up into a series of posts. In the next post, I’ll look at some of the main mythos roleplaying games.

Inspiration

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Before I start posting details about my mythos gaming project, I’m just going to post a quick list of the various games and products that are serving as inspiration and sources for the game:

  • Call of Cthulhu (all editions)
  • Trail of Cthulhu
  • Delta Green
  • Achtung! Cthulhu
  • Fate Core
  • The Fate Horror Toolkit
  • Mansions of Madness (both editions)
  • Arkham Horror: The Card Game
  • Gloomhaven