Fate Core?

[S Ferguson]

Depends on whether you want the Bennies tool, which handles "poker chips" and mimics FATE's tokens quite well; or EoE's "up front" chits. I suppose that it depends on whether or not you want public vs. private token passing. Personally, IMO compels are best left as a narrative device. Just mentioning a compel is enough to whet players appetite. It's definitely something Valerian could look into on a ruleset update.


Cheers,
SF

[Michael Hopcroft]

There's now a blank skills extension that blank out the default core skills and allow you to enter ones of your own. This can be used to do Fate Accelerated type games. I do plan on converting the SRD documents for the Toolkit and Fate Accelerated at some point.

The skills are in a data_common.lua file in the scripts folder. The majority of the other ruleset text is in the strings folder, with the exception of the condition cycler labels, which are in the campaign/record_char_listitem.xml file, in the char_consequence list item definition. I couldn't get the label and value to work from the text strings or as a default cycler.

There's an example of an extension to Fate Core in my rulesets folder (see the signature), where I've begun a community version for Age of Arthur. This has the alternate form of stress counting (marking each box off as you take damage like an ammo counter). I do plan on converting the Dresden Files ruleset to an extension of Fate Core at some stage, but this works also in its current form so it's not necessarily a top priority.

In time, I will get to improvements in the ruleset and I'll be taking these comments in to account when I do.

Pardon my technical cluelessness, but can you make altered copies of the gameset in FG while leaving the original intact? This would strike me as an extremely useful ability for Fate games in particular. each fate game or setting has its own special rules (and I can easily imaging GMs picking and choosing them for their individual games) but you'd still want the base set in place as a template if nothing else. (I can't help but wonder if anyone actually uses Fate Core as written -- assuming, given the flexibility of the system, that a "standard" game even exists.)

By the way, will there ever be enough interest that Fate gets its own category on the BBS?

[S Ferguson]

Pardon my technical cluelessness, but can you make altered copies of the gameset in FG while leaving the original intact? This would strike me as an extremely useful ability for Fate games in particular. each fate game or setting has its own special rules (and I can easily imaging GMs picking and choosing them for their individual games) but you'd still want the base set in place as a template if nothing else. (I can't help but wonder if anyone actually uses Fate Core as written -- assuming, given the flexibility of the system, that a "standard" game even exists.)

By the way, will there ever be enough interest that Fate gets its own category on the BBS?

You can alter the base ruleset without altering the main rulesets through the use of extensions. They\re basically files that overwrite certain portions of the ruleset. I'm one of the few that uses FATE Core largely as written, but with a few hacks from the Toolkit and whatever setting rules exist. Otherwise it's straight FATE as written.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it's own forum column though....

Cheers,
SF

[Blacky]

One can also create a child ruleset, basically automatically importing all of the Fate Core ruleset (they way it already import the CoreRPG ruleset), and only enter your modifications.

However, both have issues. A child ruleset might not be officially compatible with an Extension, and depending on the level of the child's coder an update to Fate Core might break it.

An Extension might have trouble with other Extensions, if both redraw an icon, which one is right? Or how to handle i18n?

I guess it's a matter of preference.

[Blacky]

I suppose that it depends on whether or not you want public vs. private token passing. Personally, IMO compels are best left as a narrative device.

Public vs private is an issue in every FG ruleset unfortunately. I tend to personally prefer to have as much as private as possible, I like rpg rules, they help me, but I don't want to continuously flaunt them in front of everyone at the table with rolls, display PC skill level and such to every player, etc.

Officially, Fate is much more open. In theory, every player could/should know the sheet of every other PC, even Aspects that their character don't know about this other player's character. On the other hand, not every Aspect is public.

As far as narrative device, I wasn't asking some something cold like “Compel yes/no” in text. Ideally (cf my first post about it) something that is a narrative tool, a way to convey the theatrics of a Fate Point hanged over the player head on a real-life gaming table.

In any cases, imho, the various little things (i18n, PC sheet, etc.) should come first, then the Aspects handling and Free Invokes. Those are much more important.

[damned]

Extension is the safest way to go if you want to continue to leverage off the base ruleset and automagically get the improvements that Valarian is making.

[S Ferguson]

Public vs private is an issue in every FG ruleset unfortunately. I tend to personally prefer to have as much as private as possible, I like rpg rules, they help me, but I don't want to continuously flaunt them in front of everyone at the table with rolls, display PC skill level and such to every player, etc.

Officially, Fate is much more open. In theory, every player could/should know the sheet of every other PC, even Aspects that their character don't know about this other player's character. On the other hand, not every Aspect is public.

As far as narrative device, I wasn't asking some something cold like “Compel yes/no” in text. Ideally (cf my first post about it) something that is a narrative tool, a way to convey the theatrics of a Fate Point hanged over the player head on a real-life gaming table.

In any cases, imho, the various little things (i18n, PC sheet, etc.) should come first, then the Aspects handling and Free Invokes. Those are much more important.

I agree with your prioritizing although the character sheet is fairly functional so I'd focus more on Aspects and Invokes (perhaps a "landscape" character sheet could be worked on in the future...)

I agree that FATE is fairly "open" as far as systems go (public gaming in fact!); and I wasn't insinuating a binary answer to your question. The Public vs. private reference was taken from the EoE (which as far as I know has open token trading) to private passing (like the bennies in SW) - I just think that there's no real way of dangling a carrot virtually without resorting to typing and even that is sometimes all too obvious (but see below).

I do however also believe that FATE is and always will be a character-driven set of rules that bears no impact on what the players know about each others characters - in fact character generation relies on this (the "aspects with everyone else's character tying them together as a group" gimmick). As the examples in the Core Rulebook show - knowing the aspects of another players character is almost essential to the proactive state of the game. In fact I can't think of a private aspect off hand, that would be written as an aspect. Has A Deep Dark Secret is enough for people to play with without revealing what the secret actually is; although it would most probably come out in play. It makes an excellent aspect though, and it keeps the essential information (the "secret") private.

But I digress. Digitally (in est in FG) there really isn't a fair middle ground between public and private. I'd make a simple suggestion of a hotkey whisper to each character in the game dealing with common compels (take your pick from the aspects) as a short-cut around this. I usually make open "voiced" compels: "Are you certain you want to do that?" The player responds "No I'm harboring a great secret so I can't show off too much in the bar." It's simple and keeps the players on their respective toes. I guess I use voice most often, rather than text, but the hotkey whispers help. It's how you would play it around the table (with "note-passing"). So it works for me. In a game where the number of aspects are high, this isn't the solution; but for standard FATE it's more than adequate depending on the number of players. It should be noted that in FATE is usually only run with 3-4 characters - I find after this number your bookkeeping goes through the roof. Some are very good at handling large parties. I'm not one of those people.

EDIT: I suppose it's the way you play the game.

Cheers,
SF

[Blacky]

Yup as I said in vanilla Fate Core, it's all very public. But Fate call for hacks, modifications, house rules, so to keep with the spirit of the game if some room can be made on that…

As for secret aspects, well technically it's not secret but "undiscovered yet". A new NPC, an unknown place, a just-met organization, etc. Sometime some of the aspects are obvious (he's in a wheelchair, the building was baldy burned recently) but some if not most of the time it's not (until discovered).

There's also all the yet-to-be-created aspects, boost, consequences.

I'm not talking about the dangling carrot (much better name) feature here anymore, but about the Aspect handling by the ruleset. But as I said, there's already some of that built in FG : npc/notes/images/etc can be shared or not, and items have the "partial knowledge (magic identification) code.

[Blacky]

I wrote that in this bug report, but since it's not a healing matter but an improvement, I move it here:

Since this is Fate we're talking about, there's the matter of the rule data, dials and variables. I think we would all benefit from moving all dials, numbers and such to a specific fate_data.xml (or whatever) file, akin to the string process.

For example, a script called to display the Stress used for a Mild consequence would not output "-2" but would look for the consequence_mild_stress_value string in fate_data.xml. And so on.

By doing that (for example while parsing the code for hardcoded strings to move to the i18n process), you would greatly lower the entry barrier for modding, hacking, and creating new campaigns and house rules.

From the top of my head, this would include: consequences stress value, default number of stress box (for each track), once it's scripted the Ladder value of an Invoke and FP values of Invokes and Compels, the default level of skills (vanilla is 0 but -1 or -2 are common hacks)…

[Michael Hopcroft]

I wonder how one actually makes an extension (I imagine some heavy programming is involved). I would like to see these extensions, but stating that causes the underlying assumption that I wuld know how to make them and I don't.

Still, I could easily see myself wanting to play Freeport, Tianxia (over-the-top wuxia), day after Ragnarok, or (once I have a copy) Atomic Robo. I own several other flavors of Fate (the two Bundles of Holding were very helpful on that front) but those are the ones that stand out.