Tag: 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…

Clues in Play – Part 1

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I’ve already written how part of what I’m working on with this game is integrating some board game elements into the actual gameplay. Probably the most obvious example of how the table will look different from many games is the inclusion of a lot of cards. Some of these cards are used for characters, locations, ancient tomes, or strange artifacts – but the majority of the cards in the game represent one of the most central gameplay elements of any investigative game: clues.

Clues – From the Players’ Perspective

As a player, the the primary goal in play is to discover clues. Eventually, these clues will point to the truth behind whatever mysterious events the investigators are looking into – and maybe even reveal a way for the investigators to make a difference in the world (temporary though such success might be). These clues are integral to investigative gameplay, but it’s not always as simple as just finding the clues.

Play enough mystery games, and you’ll probably see at least one of the following issues come up:

  • Players forget about some of the clues they already found.
  • Players find a clue, but don’t realize it’s a clue.
  • Players become convinced that some mundane detail is actually a vital clue.

I think I’ve briefly touched on these elsewhere, and I’ll probably go into them more in depth in the future. But for now, if you recognize any of these, you realize how they can create problems and potentially stall a mystery game.

The way I’m using cards with clues is fairly simple. Whenever an investigator discovers a clue during play, the Keeper gives them a card that shows a brief summary of that clue. Nothing complicated – just a short phrase that describes whatever the players know now that they didn’t before. The investigators find a bloody, mummified body in the basement, with bloody footprints leading away from it. The Keeper gives the players a couple of cards, one with the description of the body and one with a description of the footprints.

This effectively helps mitigate all three of the issues above. The players have a stack of all the clues they’ve found that they can review whenever they want. The players a clear about what information is actually a clue – after all they got a card if it was a clue – and this covers two out of the three.

So from the players’ point of view, clues are pretty simple: When they find clues, they get cards to keep track of them.

(For those familiar with Fate, clues are also Aspects – they describe the world as it is – and they can be used to have a mechanical effect within the system.)

Clues – From the Keeper’s (GM’s) Perspective

As usual for investigative games, things can be a little more complicated from the Keeper’s side of the table. If players can have a hard time keeping track of the clues they’ve found, the Keeper has to keep track of all the clues in the game – which clues have been found, which clues haven’t, where the remaining clues are, and how they might be found. If you’ve been a Keeper in these kinds of games, you also know that some clues are more important than others, more critical to the investigation. And since things don’t always go the way you expect, you may even have to alter some clues on the fly. (Okay, let’s be honest, if you’re the GM, the players will make certain things never go the way you expect.)

So the Keeper needs some tools to help manage all these clues (while they’re also keeping track of everything else going on). Recognizing that different clues play different roles in the game, sorting clues into different types can really help. There are two basic types of clues: core and supporting.

Core clues are those that are critical to the scenario. They are the clues that are necessary to the players figuring out how to bring the scenario to a successful resolution. Discovering all of the core clues will still leave a lot of unanswered questions, so the players may not understand what’s really going on, but they will have the bare minimum information necessary to figure out what they have to do to stop the cult, seal the gateway, defeat the creature… whatever has to be done to resolve whatever mystery or end whatever threat is at the heart of the investigation. Core clues also include information necessary for you to find other clues – such as a new location or character which possesses other clues.

Supporting clues are the other clues in the scenario which provide background and explanation. They help answer a lot of the other questions players may have about what’s going on, but they’re not indispensable the way core clues are. If the players don’t find a single supporting clue, they should still be able to “win” as long as they find all the core clues. It’s important to understand that supporting clues still won’t answer everything – after all, a cosmic horror game should always leave a little mystery.

Understanding which clues are core clues and which are supporting helps the Keeper run the game and keep it running smoothly. When the investigators go to a new location, you’ll know which clues there you need to make sure they find and which ones they can miss without bringing the game to a halt. When I write up a scene for a scenario, I include a quick list of all the clues up front so the Keeper can quickly identify which clues are available in the scene.

Due to whatever events lead up to the scenario, many clues will naturally be found at specific locations. The body and blood trail are found at the crime scene. The clues pointing to how the ancient artifact was stolen are found in and around the auction house vault. However, some clues could plausibly be found at different locations, and the Keeper can make adjustments to those clues based on the needs of the game. These kinds of clues are referred to as floating clues. They are core or supporting clues just like any other, but their location can vary.

So how do these different kinds of clues help the Keeper?

Finding Clues

Look around the web, and you can find a number of different ways to make sure play doesn’t stall because players can’t find clues. Examples includes never requiring rolls to find clues, spending points to find clues, and tripling the number of clues to increase the odds at least some of them are found. All of these have their merits, but they also rest on the assumption that all clues must be handled the same way. But that’s not true.

The point of distinguishing between different types of clues is to let the Keeper know what options are available for finding those clues. Since core clues are critical, you don’t want players to miss them because of a bad roll of the dice. Supporting clues, on the other hand, aren’t necessary to keeping the game moving forward, so you’ve got a few more options with them.

Finding Core Clues

Part of your job as Keeper is to make sure that, by the time a scene has drawn to a close, the players have found all the core clues available in the scene. Some clues are more or less just given to the investigators – a helpful NPC is sharing information or an obvious clue is out in the open. As long as the investigators are in a position to receive the clue or take some basic action to obtain it – like looking at the journal on the desk – they are given the clue. But which investigator gets the clue can vary, and the Keeper can use this to spread attention around between the PCs.

If it makes sense in the situation for a particular investigator to receive an obvious clue – one player describes their PC as leafing through the journal – then give that player the clue. If multiple investigators could notice the clue, then consider their skills. Figure out which skill would be most relevant to finding the clue and describe the investigator with the higher rank in that skill as finding the clue.

Other clues might require some effort or otherwise seem like their discovery is not a foregone conclusion. These are the ones that scream out for some kind of roll, and that’s okay. The roll provides dramatic tension, and let’s face it, finding important clues should be a tense moment in an investigative horror game. On the other hand, we’ve already established that the Keeper needs to ensure the players get the core clue. So the roll isn’t to determine if the investigators find the clue – it’s if they find it without complication.

Finding Supporting Clues

Supporting clues are easy. You have all the same options on the table as with core clues, but the investigators can also just fail a roll – or fail to even look – and just not find the clue.

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.

The Dark Texts – What You Need to Know

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I’ve reached a point where I feel comfortable posting some of the actual game text I’ve written in the hopes of getting some useful feedback. I’ve got a fair bit written, so there should be enough to get some first impressions and thoughts on presentation. I’ve updated the draft content posted to this point to using a knowledge base system, which should make it easier to read through.

For the time being I am calling this work-in-progress game of mine Our Terrible Fate. That may change down the road, but for now it will do.

There’s a lot of background and detailed explanation elsewhere on the site, but here is where I am going to post some of the actual draft text.

I’m always appreciative of feedback – be it criticism, comment, or questions. You can post feedback on the base113 Games subreddit.

Update: A PDF of the first chapter is now available as well. While there’s not much art, the layout should be much easier for many to read. Just click the link through to the draft text, and you should see a link to the PDF version along with an example image of the layout.

Available excerpts of this dark text currently include what is essentially the first chapter of the book, which will serve two purposes:

  • Giving a new player this chapter should tell them everything they need to know to begin play.
  • This chapter should introduce new Keepers to the game, give them an idea of how the game is run, and how running it may be somewhat different from other games.

Links to the current draft content and our subreddit (to post feedback) are provided below:

Delve into the Dark Texts

base113 Games subreddit

A Glimpse into Madness

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Work continues, and as usual, I’ve been bouncing back and forth between different parts of the project. The goal is still primarily to play with my family, but I always try to write as though someone else is going to see it, and I will almost certainly end up sharing this.

As a result, I’m having to consider writing this to cover a few different perspectives. There’s the common dichotomy of audiences that are familiar with RPGs and those that aren’t. There are many who would argue that there is no need to write for people new to such games – it’s not like anyone is going to pick this up off a shelf in a major bookstore. However, given the attention mythos games are getting these days, it’s not inconceivable that someone online might stumble upon this project. Plus, I want someone who is familiar with tabletop RPGs to be able to just share a copy with someone who is not – like me handing a copy to a member of my family – and have things make at least a little sense.

I’m focusing on two key chapters at the moment. What You Need to Know is intended to cover all the basics – introducing the basic concepts, the genre, and how the game is structured. Aspects are a key part of the Fate Core system, and they set it apart from virtually every other game out there – so the other chapter focuses on what they are and how they are used.

Keeping with the idea of writing as though someone else will see it, I cannot help but try and lay things out in at least a moderately acceptable fashion. Here are a couple of 2-page spreads in progress from the What You Need to Know chapter.

The comments in the sidebars will change and evolve as work progresses, and I will eventually end up inserting something in the blank space in the lower left of the second spread. If you have any feedback or questions about the layouts, please post them at r/base113Games.

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

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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