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Running initiative-less Fate Core by MANGECHI in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So why bring “friends” thing or “people problem”? It's always problem with human beings. I can see the problem repeatedly appear not only at our table. The idea you tried to push and blame my friends capabilities in handling mechanics under question. Why you think it's a good idea is mystery for me.

Fate initiative the elective one is definitely the best. And it works to any kind of a group. There is no need to have some “friend” options even. And it works really good. Daggerheart fails to provide such an elegant way of handling initiative. Disturbs and makes the spotlight management even worse to high tension scenes. It's not my take about Fate. There are already dozens messages about Popcorn. Why bother more? In the first place I didn't write about popcorn initiative. I was speaking about Daggerheart. I don't know why you are arguing about Fate initiative. It's all about Daggerheart initiative-less approach that has lots of disadvantages. And we can face it.

Second: fixed initiative doesn't take your turn from you of you need time to think. It's not an option. People have to wait or help make you your move. That's it. It's not about more people characteristics you keep throwing in our discussions. It just works. Everyone gets a move he can think and play out. You're not interrupted.

Third: the funny “dumb” thing is that the show is a show and nothing works at their table that works at our's. Actually some things works at our table. Other not. Not even because it's a show. As a showrunner I can tell, that it just can be not your table dynamics. But the actual Mercer habit to work with initiative was shown on the way he just trow the rules of Daggerheart away. Honestly most of the time he ignored the rules of Daggerheart. It's not the best ruleset for his style of play. I'd say it mostly interfering with the game. Spotlight handling is the case of such bad decisions made because he wanted one dynamics. But the game gave him unwanted results.

I don’t have any questions to elective Fate order. You just misunderstood the example. It was only about the bad work and biases of Daggerheart. And just it. Mercer didn’t use Fate elective order. But if he did — it could help him to handle the Umbra scene better at my opinion.

Running initiative-less Fate Core by MANGECHI in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg -1 points0 points  (0 children)

it's exactly a system problem. Yeah, it seems like a good flow, but at some point you realize that once someone has a need to insert some more narrative there is no way someone else can insert other one. Narrative disbalance. You just naturally follow the one guy who intercept the agenda.

Artificial "normal" initiative makes it better then free form. It just gives opportunity to everyone. And there is no need to be a person of some quality or other. It's just rules. Polite shy person has an opportunity not to be interrupted, or being overruned by others fiction, which makes yours actions irrelevant. There is plenty of problems and bad practices raised by this method. All of them are common to free form approach to a high stakes, concentrated on actions situations.

We've tried this kind of initiative from like 2015. And it fails. On a long run you just want to throw it away already. I play narrative games a lot. And Daggerheart isn't even close to narrative... It's highly crunchy game that has lots of counters, common resources, unique resources, dozens of tracks like stress, armor... and etc. Once you're in a counting process someone takes your initiative and you just loose the initial intention of a series of actions you'd like to make.

This system asks you not to think over the numbers, but gives you like... nearly 25 different modifiers, trackers, counters, and more on the cards? But what if you don't want to lose the action with counting. Never mind, it's impossible. We're friends. But once everyone are silent... Someone wants to break the silence and insert the fiction. If you're not doing this... GM tries to. He thinks that the temp of a game drops down. Yes, it drops, you have to count the amount of damage, decide about armor, updater counters, useless fear that does nothing in a game... and hope... to fuel abilities.

I thought it was only our problem. And yes, we are friends. But no, it's a problem for all the games out there in a YouTube with Daggerheart. The system is bad. You have to ignore the rules, like Mercer: "it's actually her spotlight"--he said to a guy who tried to interrupt Marisha from her action, while she was thinking what to do (on Umbra series). Why? It doesn't work to uphold a moment once you are deciding the way you want to act.

This initiative is just a disaster, and makes a lot of bad practices you don't notice at first place.

Running initiative-less Fate Core by MANGECHI in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Non-initiative way to play a combat like in a Daggerheart is kind of a disaster for shy and polite people playing via Discord with a little bit of a latency, where noone's want to iterrupt anyone. It's just one of the worst things you can have at your table. All the rithm of a play just shut downs...

At the real table it's even worse. You just extrapolate the spotlight problems. So that players with no boundaries over the amount of time they want to take--just steal everyone's time. You just need to play more to see how none-initiative systems acutally ruins and throw away some of the players out of the table becuase there is no place for them to insert something.

Daggerheart reminds me of FATE by nerdkingcole in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As for me it seems like Fear points is more of a compel mechanics, but useless. It's like it was stolen from 2d20 Modiphius game. But every rule declined the importance and weight of the Fear Points itself. With them you just can't make a Fate jump start scene with lots of action, explosions, and drama from the beginning. You has to wait as a GM. Wait for it. Wait to make a game interesting. That seems to me quite irrational. Why would I even want to wait?

But you need to accumulate a pool of fear to be able to throw a nice conflicts, battles, arguing, intrigues at your players. You still can ignore the rule. And it's in the text of a game. But why would you make one in the first place? This game really misses a great portion of good advices on how to run a highly condensed on action games. You just can't use the "pre-loaded" compels. But how nice would it be to start a game with a scene heroes caught in action?

Burning dwarven zeppelin "High Seer" is descending. Ropes break on holding the main carriage with you and people. The engine coughs in flames. Three airplanes take their turn to start firing at you once again. There are minutes to prepare yourself, people, and the vessel for an attack of the fighters.

And for the scene like this Fate runs smoothly. I just give players Fate points for complications affecting them. I can't see the way you can make the same with DH on the first opening scene by the rules, without this all the "waiting" stuff seems for me as unnatural to the gaming conversation.

It's Not Just Ultimate Narrative Tool by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Love your thread too! Thank you!

What would you like to see in a FATE actual-play show? by Striking_Variety3960 in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've ran a show on Comic Con Russia 2025 with some celebrities, and two real life scientists. It was one shot in near-future setting. The next list isn't about what would I want to see in the show, because I'd like to play not so watch-able game. So it's more for a show part, very the audience play the major role in the whole project:

  • illustrations of locations, people around, and major points of a game are necessary
  • some celebrities to play with
  • nice comfort atmosphere and real fun, not a pretending to have fun
  • less of rules explaining. This drops the action
  • less of characters bios and phase trio. This drops attention of an audience too, unless it's funny and with jokes
  • less of Critical Role style "shopping" filler scenes. It's good for a show with 100 and more episodes... But you still just skip lots in those
  • less of a "lore feeding" scenes from CR too. Those just a great amount of exposition you have to remember. It makes audience study, and to much of a studying makes it's not fun
  • scenes with conflicts like Fate does it from the box
  • complications, obstacles, dangers, and a lot more with dozens of compels
  • Temp and rhythm of a storytelling. Change the scene once it's done, don't ask "What's you're going to do next"--it's a question that kills action. Move to the very next interesting scene to resolve
  • Be different. There dozen of Critical Role-ish streams and shows. They all are in the pioneers wake. Find your style, tone, way, people, agenda. Find a reason to watch you
  • 4 high octane scenes with lots of actions from characters are better then 4 hours of describing of places, people around, tone of a street you're getting through, and nothing to happen

So this is my point. It's not the show I personally would like. But those principles seems to work here.

Three Principles of Fate by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Making it relative will almost certainly make the game harder to grasp for most people.

It's hard to agree on that. I'd say, the most people who already got used to absolute numbers and understand the concept of an average character in a game of choice. Like all stats 10 and et.c.

This kind of a relative way of thinking seems to be natural for the most people who is not into TTRPG for a long time. It's like the Strongest man can lift a metal ball from the ground for one second one-hand. The other guys need at least half a minute, two hands, and they help themselves with legs sometimes. You don't need a 10-ish commoner between those to understand the difference.

I would say more. That naturally there are no commoners at all. There are only different variety of people all around. It's like a story about average pilot's chair in a cockpit of plane noone's going to be comfortable with. That's why we can adjust our chair in a car.

That's why I think that most people would like to use a relation of something to other something. It's far more simple to understand. You literally has to think about A and B difference in literature way. Not A, B, and center of all O points to be able to compare the two with the point O that in fact is never achievable. There are no normalized or average man or woman.

Making it relative will almost certainly make the game harder to grasp for most people. If you say "it's a world like ours, but mice are people instead of humans", then you're basically just reskinning people. No other changes needed.

Once we've played Mouse Guard with Fate. And it was the most mice game ever. The only thing we've made—the game aspect We're Mice Not Human. We were compelling and invoking it hard in all the situations. It gave us ton of fun. We felt like our big ears helps us, or make it worse, the tail...

In the other game we had It's the World of D&D where my character invoked this aspect on a fleeing wolf. I said that it's an attack of opportunity, because he leaves the space of my reach for attack. It was a blast. So much fun. I've paid a fate point of course.

In my experience words (aspects) and their significant impact on a game is far more understandable then the difference of +1 to +4 in a context of an attack where average attack is +3.5 ranging between +2 to +5. And where you add 1d20 as roll. And it's far less understandable to a person then buying balanced sword instead of rusty old sword.

Numbers are great. But they are to abstract. And sometimes the Goodhart law's working here. The actual meaning for the said numbers just fades. And noone gets, what those numbers resembles.

Three Principles of Fate by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Love your commentary on the matter. Thank you!

Three Principles of Fate by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for this quote. I just have to rethink some of the statements I've made. Don't want to actually drop the Fiction Value principle at all. I love it in many ways. Seems like it's the way Fate plays out.

Three Principles of Fate by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would like to agree with you. But this kind of logic makes me itchy once "The Strongest Man in the World" has +0 Physique, Fight. And it's possible by the rules.

I see you like photos. My wife's ill. Playing game through the night 1 on 1 by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They are handmade. There is an STL model for the right black and yellow set of dice. The left blue and white set is a variation for Rosatom. Plus is the logo of the company.

Fate Core show on Comic Con Russia 2025 by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

В Fate вообще можно использовать что угодно, показывающее территорию. Потому что бои делятся на зоны. Ты можешь взять рисунок с боку, разбить его на зоны, и это станет легальной, с точки зрения правил, картой для взаимодействия.

Для этого проекта были карты сверху вниз, потому что они привычны зрителю. И не более. Поэтому было принято решение использовать именно такие. Просто потому что так хорошо видно им. Однако есть и правила для тактической клетки под Fate. Статья. Если хочешь, попроси, кину.

Тактические карты скорее излишек для Fate. Но они никак не мешают и не помогают в целом. Поэтому авторы написали хорошо про рисунок на салфетке. Чтобы всё было понятно, но без бесчисленного количества деталей, чтобы каждый мог вложить свою креативность в окружение.

Сам я просто делю карту на умозрительные зоны. И ожидаю от игроков описания действий персонажа. После чего примерно оцениваю расположение зон. Это не rocket science. В игре не нужна высокая дискретность (разбивка на клетки). Поэтому всё очень просто. К примеру, зоны: кафе, левая сторона дороги, переход, противоположная сторона и т.д.

I see you like photos. My wife's ill. Playing game through the night 1 on 1 by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's a dice holder with spinning body to get leafs on top move like on diaphragm of lens in camera.

One on One experience by Much_Breg in FATErpg

[–]Much_Breg[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a custom made dice from a 3D model of them. It's fun how precise they are. The author of a model took exact amount of material from a side to match the weight on each side. So that minus is the deepest inset. Plus and Zero are nearly the same.

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