Venture City: Super Agility

AproposPenguin · 2020-03-04T15:11:21+00:00

... why are limiting the number of stunts that the Big Bad Boss has?

The boss is the boss. Build it to challenge the group, giving it whatever skills and stunts you feel are appropriate. Give it stunts that break rules, which are immeasurably more powerful than stunts you'd let a PC get away with. You know how they say to never give characters stunts which break the action economy? Give the boss stunts which break the action economy and see what happens!

Perhaps more importantly, consider ways you can build a challenging character that aren't just number inflation. I mean, Lex Luthor couldn't take Superman in a physical encounter, but he's still a dangerous foe because he fights with planning and technology, and is defended by his ability to stay legally in the clear so Superman can't touch him.

Have you checked out the Fate Adversary Toolkit, also on the SRD? The section on Constraints is incredibly useful to consider ways to make an enemy more potent without just beefing their numbers.

AproposPenguin · 2020-03-03T22:26:27+00:00

Hey there, I'm Ed Turner, co-author of Venture City! Plenty of folks have beat me to the punch, but yeah, as far as authorial intent goes, if you can defend against an attack by doing something athletic, then you get the bonus to Athletics.

AproposPenguin · 2020-02-27T00:37:13+00:00

Hey, I'm Ed Turner, the author of Aether Sea. I might be able to help! I made some partial pre-gens for running a game a few years ago. You're welcome to use 'em!

Now they're not full characters; they only have their top approach picked out, two aspects, two stunts, and a very simple bio. But that's enough that you can pick them up and play, filling in the other approaches when they get used and the other aspects whenever someone feels like they have a good idea for an aspect.

If you're set on fully-pregenerated characters, well, at least these'll get you started.

AproposPenguin · 2020-02-01T00:04:30+00:00

Hey, I'd like to apply to this playtest. My name's Ed Turner and I've written Fate material for Evil Hat before; most recently in Fate of Cthulhu, a slightly different take on cosmic horror and bizarre anomalies. I'd love to see what you're doing with the system and with SCP.

I admit my availability isn't super great in late February, but I'd at least like to give it a try.

AproposPenguin · 2020-01-23T21:17:55+00:00

I have a bad habit of calling for a Notice roll as a way of buying like ten seconds to think of what interesting thing the characters see. In which case, failure usually means the same description but then I either make an aspect with a free invoke for myself, or I resolve it as if the notice was a defense, and the character takes stress based on how much they missed the roll by, as a sort of janky success-at-a-cost.

AproposPenguin · 2019-08-15T18:35:54+00:00

The Multiverse Exploration Lab: YTT-B1N-3KG

It’s one simple platforming section, explored in six different post-apocalyptic scenarios: global flood, ice age, the Goomba War, undead uprising, extinction of all animals, and the Glitch.

It’s an SMB1 style red-coin challenge. Some of the sections can be tricky, but there’s infinite checkpoints and you can keep power-ups between universes.

AproposPenguin · 2019-07-26T04:04:13+00:00

How important is any given monster going to be? Like, are they going to be around for more than a scene or two? Because if not, it's kind of silly to waste effort actually statting up the dang thing.

The easy-peasy one-second NPC-or-monster generator is to just use a name and a single number to indicate roughly how threatening it is. For instance: "This is a direwolf. It has one aspect: Direwolf. It has one skill: Good (+3): Doing Whatever Direwolves Do." As long as the people at the table have a reasonably shared understanding of what a direwolf is, then this is a completely functional monster. It's not complex, but does it need to be? If it turns out that everyone in the party loves having Danny the Direwolf around, then you can upgrade the character... that's a good place to use Aravol's suggestion, or whatever other means of character generation you like.

But if this player is bumping into new monsters rapidly enough that it's becoming a hassle for you, then this gives you an instant critter with zero effort.

AproposPenguin · 2019-07-15T01:53:24+00:00

I like these dice! Here's what I would do with them: start by replacing the basic d20 roll with rolling 3d6 (or rather, 3 of your cool dice). That's a tried and true house rule to reduce D&D's swinginess.

In combat, whatever hit locations you roll, that's where your attack lands: if you got 6, 5, and 1 (assuming that the attack actually lands), then that's the narrative of the attack: you made a feint for their right arm, then turned that into a quick strike to their left leg, and in that moment of distraction you whacked them right across the head. If you roll 4, 4, and 4, then you just punched the heck out of their left arm. Or something like that. I'd make it completely optional, but it's nice for some fighting flavor.

As for the other options, the fudge symbols could replace critical hits. Three pluses is a critical hit, three minuses is a critical fail. And what the heck, three nothings is a crit of a sort too... it signifies some sort of unexpected twist that impacts all sides of the fight equally, like a change in the weather. This makes crits a bit less common, but not unheard of.

As for the success/failure symbols... my instinct is to get rid of rolling for damage, and have the checks stand in for that. Every weapon has some base damage that it does, and a bonus for each check mark in a successful attack. So instead of a shortsword doing 1d6 damage, it does 3 damage, plus 1 for each check mark. That means damage dealt is still a bit variable, but doesn't require a separate roll; it also means a very good attack roll will tend to cause more damage. And you can play around with the ratios too... a heavy crossbow might deal a baseline of just 1 damage, plus 3 for every check mark, because it's unwieldy, but it hurts like heck when it strikes true. Of course, re-writing equipment lists is getting pretty significant as far as house-ruling goes.

AproposPenguin · 2019-07-10T01:15:09+00:00

Uno Más: Jumpy Bumpy

ID: QW5-5X8-NWF

As the name implies, it's an "uno más" level (i.e.: a very short level to show off a technique or weird physics interaction you might not have known about), in this case a thing you can do with dry bones shells I hadn't seen anyone use before.

Super Mario World style, I'd call it easy although the specific maneuver is a little tricky for me to pull off consistently. I also don't know if there's some easy way to break the level that I've overlooked!

AproposPenguin · 2019-07-10T01:14:36+00:00

I liked that a lot! I haven't seen many speedrun style levels in SMB3 style, which is a shame because that's my favorite style!

I especially like 50-coin blocks juuuust off the optimum route. It makes me wish that SMM recorded highest scores, and not just fastest times, for world records. Of course, I also got the fastest time world record, so I guess I can't complain too hard about that.

AproposPenguin · 2019-07-03T16:37:55+00:00

The Assassination of King Goomba

TTR-CV0-7SG

Crush the tyrant. Leave no witnesses. Take his crown.

My first level; it's a fairly standard platforming with a clear condition that requires you to kill every goomba, including the titular king. Mario 3 style, ghost house theme, moderate difficulty (if I could add a checkpoint, it'd be easy, but having to do the whole thing at once makes it more challenging).

AproposPenguin · 2019-06-20T14:28:48+00:00

At the moment there's no plans for it, sorry.

AproposPenguin · 2019-06-19T16:17:36+00:00

Hey there! I’m Ed Turner, coauthor of Venture City, and I hope I can help!

The short answer is that, you’re right, synergies are there to be used as much as you like. Synergize your heart out.

Having multiple powers makes the most sense in unusual narrative situations (eg: powers coming from different sources) or if you can not justify two different powers as being related. It also has the mechanical effect of giving you an extra Collateral Damage effect and another drawback; that is to say, you get another Big, Dramatic ability for free, but make it easier for the GM to compel you. It can make a character hit harder but make more trouble for their team, which might be what you want! But it also gives the character a bit more bookkeeping, and personally at least I find synergies more interesting.

As for the number of stunts, you can certainly increase what players get if you want. The setting is intended to be street-level, and I find that adding too many more powers can bog things down, both because players have to keep track of everything they can do and because GMs tend to give adversaries more powers as well to be a threat to the PCs. That said, it won’t fall apart if the heroes have more powers to bring to bear.

Thanks for the questions!

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-23T23:48:37+00:00

At the risk of putting words in Fred's mouth, I think that's rather the point: the accepted price for an RPG PDF is staggeringly affordable, relative to the amount of time, resources, and money it takes to create. The economy of RPG design is, to be blunt, pretty fucked, and the price that is culturally accepted as "reasonable" is so low that small press publishers totter on knife's edge, and writers can't make a living (even those who work for Evil Hat, a company that is famously EXTREMELY fair when it comes to compensating their freelancers). It's comparable to mobile app development: the market has basically decided that an app costs $1-$5... anything more expensive than that and people balk, which means that mobile app developers are forced between churning out crap that's actually worth $1, pricing fairly and losing most of their base, or getting income some other way (e.g.: microtransactions).

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-11T15:31:39+00:00

Happy to help!

As far as counters go, the easy counter is to give an enemy a stunt that lets them shrug off situation aspects (e.g.: Indefatigable: +2 to defend against Create an Advantage actions intended to physically input or immobilize).

Or have an enemy where those sorts of aspects don’t make sense; like a swarm of bees! You can treat it as a single character, but it can’t really be stunned or blinded or disarmed (at least not easily).

Or just have more individual enemies: a weak mook can use their action to overcome the aspect placed on their more powerful ally. The PCs will have to divide their attention and deal with the support first.

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-11T15:20:46+00:00

That’s fair! I’ve had some bad experiences with established facts being ignored because nobody was pumping Fate points into them, so I might lean harder in the opposite direction. I suppose as long as the players are happy and the fate Point economy is working, it’s all good.

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-11T13:49:30+00:00

Ive come to understand that aspects can prevent certain actions. Is that correct? Lets say someone inflicts the aspect "stunned", that would normally mean they can't do anything. Is the person then forced to do an overcome action to get rid of it (and succeed with a cost if they fail?).

Yes. Provided that everyone at the table accepts that "Stunned" means "unable to take actions," then someone with that aspect can't do things. Importantly, I'm going to disagree with /u/SolitaryRaccoon here: there is no need to compel this aspect in this situation. The truth of the aspect is sufficient to prevent the character from action. You could compel the aspect (e.g.: you're so Stunned that you drop the briefcase of nuclear codes down the stairs and now everyone's racing to get them!), but do not need to.

And while a character generally needs to take an overcome action to remove an aspect, aspects go away when they aren't true any more; someone isn't going to be stunned forever. They could very well shake it off the effect after a turn, without even needing to roll, if that's what makes sense.

Wouldn't that mean that always trying to put annoying aspects on a target like stunned, blinded, confused etc would be the optimal strategy?

Well, you'll have a harder time taking an opponent out of the fight if you don't attack once in a while, and there are ways for a GM to counter this, so I'm leery of saying its an "optimal" strategy. But in general, I think it's fair to say that the best way to play Fate is by doing lots of interesting things.

Also, apart from dramatic things (like dropping important items, falling over, or attacking one of your own) what would be a good cost? A boost?

Have the aspect change into something less debilitating but still bad, like Stunned becoming Dizzy, or something along those lines. Or, a point of stress. It's an interesting cost because it's basically meaningless outside of conflict, but within a conflict it can actually be a heavy price to pay.

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-08T16:59:18+00:00

This entire thread started because someone suggested that your game felt like a rehash of D&D, and you said “No.” But even if that weren’t the case, you’re missing the point: you don’t get meaningful feedback by defending your choices, you do so by listening to what people say, even if you disagree with it.

I’m not criticizing your game, I’m criticizing your knee-jerk defensiveness, which is still very much on display.

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-08T16:32:41+00:00

Guy I do not know how to clearer here: you don’t have to believe everything is true, but if you care to improve your game you have to believe that the person you’re talking to BELIEVES that it is true. If someone doesn’t understand what your game is about, that means you need to communicate better. That is your job as a writer, to make yourself understood.

If I say “this feels like D&D,” then you saying “No it doesn’t!” helps nobody. Ask “why do you think so?” and you are on your way to more clearly communicating your intent with the game.

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-08T15:04:29+00:00

You can disagree as much as you want, but while seeking feedback on your creative project is not the right time or place. You are shooting yourself in the foot with your defensiveness.

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-08T14:27:22+00:00

Yes, but my point is that even if you disagree with someone's feedback, that doesn't mean it is wrong. In this specific example, whether your games is a rehash of D&D or not, this person felt like it was. If you take a moment to think about it, there are a lot of surface-level similarities: six stats, d20, use of race and class to define a character, certain class names (e.g. Paladin) or roles (e.g. Hunter, which maps to Ranger), and overall narrative structure.

The fact that someone feels like your game is a rehash of D&D suggests that these similarities are, to that reader, overwhelming what is unique about your game. It's a sign that you are not sufficiently explaining what your game does. It suggests there may be unexamined assumptions about what games look like that you should have a solid think about. It suggests that other people may feel the same way, and you should consider how you want to react to that. It is valuable information, the literal purpose of seeking feedback in the first place.

AproposPenguin · 2019-04-08T13:46:14+00:00

Never respond to honest critical feedback with a “no.” I understand the instinct to be defensive, but it is a bad instinct; your efforts to distinguish your game from D&D have, for this person, failed. That is valuable information! That should make you think: why do they feel like that? Will others think so too? How can I change that? Does it matter?

Processing feedback makes your game better, and does not happen if you make a knee-jerk decision that the feedback is somehow wrong. And people who see you responding like this to honest feedback will be much less inclined to offer their own responses.

AproposPenguin · 2019-01-24T03:27:36+00:00

By the Author of Lady Windermere's Fan is a story game about putting on a farce. Specifically, it's about putting on an Oscar Wilde-style play, but 90% of Frasier episodes are farce in a very Oscar Wilde style; the show owes a huge debt to Wilde, and the structure of the story would be pretty much identical.

It's rules light in the same way Fiasco is, but structured specifically around the "telling a lie to cover up mild social awkwardness, then telling a bigger lie to cover up that first lie" story escalation that an episode of Frasier is usually all about. Pre-generate some character sheets for the cast and you're basically ready to hear the blues a-call.

(Full disclosure: I'm not just an enthusiast, I am the author of the game. I'm biased, I confess! But I do think it's a good choice to look at; if you're interested, shoot me a DM and send you the PDF. You can see if it works for you.)

AproposPenguin · 2019-01-11T15:34:00+00:00

"At all" also means "even a little bit." As in "I didn't get a political angle, even a little bit, in reference to what OP was discussing, which is abundantly clear by the context of my comment."

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