--Opening Narration, "The Outer Limits" (1963)
Mike and I have been corresponding about FATE implementations for some time. While Mike has a great ability to apply FATE across many genres, I've been focusing on one genre in particular: High Fantasy. Even more in particular: Old school AD&D.
Disclaimer: I don't consider myself a game designer. I consider myself primarily a Game Master / Dungeon Master. I never set out with the idea to create a FATE implementation. My goal was to have a set of rules that let my players and I make use of the FATE/SotC structure to "tell the stories we wanted to tell" in the Greyhawk universe that we remembered.
The more I looked for rules and ideas that people were already writing and sharing, the more I realized that just patching together articles was gonna get unuseable pretty fast.
I ended up deciding that the best way to go was to create a single, unified ruleset centered on Greyhawk (circa AD&D of the 70's - 80's) that my players and I wanted to use:
- Start with the SotC RAW ruleset as a baseline and framework.
- Translate the genre pieces within the SotC game into a High Fantasy genre (specifically Greyhawk).
- Add only those pieces that weren't part of SotC but were needed for Greyhawk (Magic, predominantly)
Add to that a secondary goal of trying to stay as close to SotC RAW as possible (meaning tinker only as much as necessary), and you've got my battle plan.
So that brings me to why I offered to post on Mike's blog:
- Mike has shared so much of his thinking with me, I felt it was time I started sharing back. Read Fred Hicks editorial on being "no silent fan" for further thoughts on this.
- Use SotB as a sounding board to see if my ideas can stand up to scrutiny outside my own playtest sessions.
So that's enough backstory. Since I don't know how long Mike's hiatus will be, I'm going to start right in next post on what seems to be the 800 pound gorilla of any Fantasy-FATE implementation...
Next up: Magic (or "Never insult a Wizard by calling him a Sorceror")
Oh and for reference purposes, the working title of my FATE implementation is... (Muppet Show drumroll...) "Spirit of Greyhawk" or SoG.
...Why is it that the FATE ruleset can bring out such creativity in people, except when it comes to naming their version of it?
PS: Hey Mike! What's the "usual way to undertake a serious conversion," anyway? ;)
2 comments:
"PS: Hey Mike! What's the "usual way to undertake a serious conversion," anyway? ;)"
Well, I meant your conversion specifically, not the conventions of conversions in general. SoG seems to me to be more about using SotC to play in Greyhawk rather than cramming a D20-shaped peg into a SotC-shaped hole.
The latter is what I've seen before -- stuff like "What's your Strength? 16? You have Good Might." That's fine, but I also think it's missing the point of what can be done with FATE.
Guilty as charged! That was the hope/goal of SoG.
More on that in the next post.
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