[Fate Accelerated] Paired Approaches

About a month ago, when Rob Donoghue was posting about his Fate Accelerated hack he's dubbed FAE 2 (in which you apply two approaches to a roll instead of one), I started thinking about the possibilities of paired approaches in terms of mechanical hooks, because that's the kind of person I am.

Anyway, the thing that struck me was how each approach just intuitively pairs better with some approaches than others. To me, at least. Like, it makes sense that you could try to be both Careful and Sneaky at the same time -- the latter seems to require the former, even -- whereas a Careful-and-Quick combo seems like a harder sell. I'm not saying you can't be both Careful and Quick; it's just not as easy as being, say, Flashy and Quick.

So I made this:

Haven't you read The Kerberos Club (Fate Edition)? I love diagrams!

When you combine related approaches (connected by a solid line), you get a +1 to your roll.

When you combine opposed approaches (unconnected by any line), you get a -1 to your roll.

Otherwise, just add the two approaches and roll.

In this variant, you'd have two approaches at +0, two at +1, and two at +2. That may be too generous. I'm not sure. Maybe three at +1 instead. Details.

(Notice how they ended up in alphabetical order if you go counter-clockwise. Coincidence? Probably, yeah.)

I'm also interested in the idea that the GM would pick one of your approaches for a given task and you'd pick the other. Maybe not all the time, but the option's there.

For example, let's say you're fleeing from eighty-five beholders and there's a locked door in your way! This is terrible. The GM says, "Whatever you're gonna do, you better do it Quick." You have Careful and Clever +2, Sneaky and Quick +0, and Forceful and Flashy +1.

• You could be Forceful and break down the door, which would give you a +2 (+1 from Forceful, and another +1 because Forceful and Quick are related). 
• You could be Clever and try to pick the lock at a +1 (+2 from Clever, but -1 because it's not easy being Quick and Clever). 
• You could be Sneaky and just try to hide, for a +0 (Quick and Sneaky are both +0 for you, and they're neither related nor opposed, so it's just the sum of those two approaches).
• Etc.

One stunt that immediately suggests itself is improving the relationship between two unrelated approaches. Maybe you're better at being Quick and Clever than most when you're responding to an insult, or at being Forceful and Careful when using explosives. In fact, if the character sheet shows the approaches as in the graphic above, you could even just draw new dotted or solid lines to reflect this. You get the idea.

[Thrilling Fate!] First Thrilling Playtest (and News)

I got my first chance to playtest Thrilling Fate with a Sparks Nevada scenario last weekend in San Diego. The PCs were Sparks, Croach, the Red Plains Rider, and Cactoid Jim, and though they were played by four players who had zero familiarity with the source material, there were nonetheless some moments that felt like they could've come right out of a Thrilling Adventure Hour show.

So yeah, I'm making some changes, but on the whole I'd say it went quite well! Of course, the players were all friends who were already well-acquainted with Fate, and had played various hacks of mine before, so I may have had a best-case player group there, but whatever. The fact that I'm making changes is at least indicative of a productive playtest.

One kinda weird thing that came up while playing was how liberating it is to just roll dice. Y'know, without worrying about what skill to use. Because Thrilling Fate doesn't have skills. So after the roll, if you didn't like your result, you might do something about it, but until then there's literally nothing else to think about other than "Let's see who wins." It just felt great to say, "This thing is happening, everyone roll dice."

Now, I realize that when I say that, your reaction is probably something along the lines of, "Hey, that doesn't sound like a great or innovative thing you're talking about there, and also I really do like to make interesting choices about my character when I roll dice for a thing," and I understand that. What's neat is how the exhaust-an-aspect mechanic puts that choice entirely in the realm of the fiction, without anything as abstract as even a broadly defined skill, like Athletics, getting in the way. I dunno. I'm probably not explaining it well. But the difference between "I dodge because I have +3 Athletics" and "I dodge because I'm a Quick-Thinking Man of Action" was definitely felt at the table.

As for news, I've been given the go-ahead to post about this: Next month, I'll be running a Sparks Nevada game for TAH co-creators/writers Ben Acker and Ben Blacker and whatever Workjuice Players they can muster, mostly likely including Sparks stars Marc Evan Jackson and Mark Gagliardi -- and, if I'm very lucky, Hal Lublin will be there to narrate (I don't know what that'd mean in this context, but whatever, there's no way I'd pass that up). Plus, I believe it'll be audio and/or video recorded for your online listening and/or viewing pleasure at some point. No pressure, right?

I am super-psyched about this, as you might guess, and also probably more nervous than is required. But then again, I'm kind of in awe of everyone who makes TAH happen, I love it so damn much, and the prospect of getting to run a game for them, any game, is awesome, let alone a thing I've made for a thing they've made. They're pretty excited for it too, though, so maybe we can all just be giddy about it together.

[Zombies] More Zombies!

WERE YOU AWARE that this past Wednesday was the 75th anniversary of the Mercury Theatre on the Air's War of the Worlds broadcast? That's just one of many date-relevant facts I would've told you if I'd managed to get this posted before Halloween!

Anyway.

So when a zombie bites you, it's bad. We all know this. Any consequence from a Teeth attack will eventually result in the victim becoming a zombie, no two ways about it. It'll worsen from scene to scene, moving from mild to moderate to severe, until the victim is taken out... by becoming a zombie.

There's only one way to "treat" a Bitten consequence, and that's amputation. It's not the hardest surgery in the world, but man, you gotta do it fast. Regardless of the severity of the consequence, the difficulty to treat it is +6, and doing so gives you a severe consequence appropriate to the amputation. (I recommend Dis-Armed. I use it every chance I get.)

If that first attempt fails, no further attempts can be made. You are doomed. And if that Bitten consequence was already severe, then... see the previous sentence.

This is pretty rough, but a zombie can't actually make a Teeth attack without first invoking an aspect. It doesn't get the usual bonus or reroll for invoking this aspect -- all it gets is the opportunity to bite. We used to call this "invoking for effect." The idea is that it'd create an advantage with Claws, like Grabbed, then bite with its next action. Or the victim might be Surrounded, or maybe that Sprained Ankle slows them down. You get the idea.

Miscellany:

• I had this idea that zombies would only roll 2dF. They're reliable, predictable, and experience neither highs nor lows. But I'm uncertain about this one.
• Mobs are important to zombies and their particular brand of horror. Even though they take consequences individually, I'd still mob 'em up whenever possible. So they attack you en masse, but you attack them one-on-one.
• There've been quite a few scenes in The Walking Dead of people just head-stabbing helpless zombies through a chain-link fence. As always, if there's no interesting failure result, don't roll for it; it's just narrative color. "So you're out on fence duty, braining walkers with a crowbar, when all of a sudden...."
• If you need zombies to use a Physique-type overcome action, you could use Body. Or you could use nothing, and rely solely on mob-based gang-up bonuses. This is pretty cool, I think, because it means you can pretty easily keep one zombie at bay with a closed and locked door, but a pile of them will break through, given time.
• Brains. BRAAAIIINS.

[Zombies] Zombies!

I thought up some mechanics for zombies a while ago -- almost two years ago, according to Google Docs -- so I figured I'd post about it on account of it almost being Halloween and all. I'm talking about aim-for-the-head, brain-eating shamblers here, so don't try to apply these to, I dunno, voodoo zombies or 28 Days Later zombies or whatever.

So first of all, zombies don't have the same skills PCs do. Instead, their skills represent body parts: Claws (attack, create advantage), Legs (overcome, create advantage), Teeth (attack), Body (defend), and Head (defend).

The typical zombie might rank them like this:
Fantastic (+6) Head*
Great (+4) Body
Good (+3) Teeth
Fair (+2) Claws
Average (+1) Legs
*I'm fully aware of how dirty this sounds and regret nothing.

When you attack a zombie, you choose how it defends -- Body or Head.

A successful attack on the Body deals a consequence. Zombies don't have stress tracks, but they do have two mild consequences (or Arms consequences) and one moderate consequence (or Legs consequence). When a zombie's taken two Arms consequences, it loses its Claws skill. When it's taken a Legs consequence, it loses its Legs skill. But a consequence is the best you can do when you attack the Body. Well, you can get a boost if you tie or succeed with style, but the point is, even if the zombie's taken all three consequences, even if it's lost its arms and legs, it's still alive.

So, my God, how do you stop it? A successful attack on the Head takes the zombie out. (I'd fluff a tie against the Head as blowing its jaw off or something, thus the boost, but leaving the brain intact. Related: I'd also severely limit, or even eliminate, Weapon ratings, because all it takes is one shift on a headshot to take out a zombie. Like, shotguns and katanas are Weapon:1, but almost everything else is Weapon:0, and I don't mean Wolverine.)

Putting those two things together, obviously no one's going to attack a zombie's Body if it already has three consequences (or even two or probably one), but that's how these things usually work, isn't it? And mechanically, there's no reason to go for the Body once it's taken a consequence, because you can invoke it for free to cancel out the Head's higher skill rating.

It might seem odd for zombies to have a Great (+4) skill for defense, but it's not that they're so great at dodging or anything. On the contrary, they're easy to hit. They're just not necessarily easy to damage in a substantial way. So that's how I'd color that in play. Most failed attacks against their Body are actually going to be "narrative hits," in that I'd describe them as on-target but mostly harmless.

Next time: BRAAAIIINNNSSS...!

[Atomic Robo] Character Creation Example

A couple days ago, ARRPG layoutist Adam Jury sent me a two isolated pages to review, and after I did that reviewing, it occurred to me that they'd make a pretty good preview snippet for a preview-hungry public. They're not the most art-intensive two pages in the book, but they do a good job of showing you one or two ways in which we're swiping elements of the medium (of comics) for our own gamey purposes.

So here it is: an example of E-Z No-Math Character Creation. Enjoy!

[Fate Core] Fate Core Day at Villainous Lair

This Saturday, October 26th, is Fate Core Day at Villainous Lair Gaming! Games start at 1:00 pm.

I do not know what my game will be. All I know is that it'll use Fate Core.

Let me be clear here: This isn't some kind of stunt. I really don't know. I've been busy with other things and haven't had much time to figure out a gimmick for this one, and usually, my one-shots are highly gimmick-based. Part of the problem is that I want to run something as close to RAW as possible to give people a good idea of what Fate Core (as written) is like, but RAW isn't really... something I do with Fate.

Now, if I were going to do my usual -- that is, a hack -- I have all kinds of ideas. I need to playtest my Sparks Nevada hack. I need to playtest my latest Fate supers hack. I have really weird ideas for a Fate/Rolemaster crossover. And of course, I could run Atomic Robo!

So... any ideas? I'm open to suggestions.

Oh, and if you're in the area, you should obviously come out and play!

[Atomic Robo] "It's In Layout!"

"It's in layout!"

That's been my stock answer for the past few months whenever someone's asked me what's up with Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game. And it's the truth, and it's been the truth, but honestly, that's all I knew until... well. Suffice it to say, there's a little more to it than that, and I think it's high time you fine people who've been waiting so patiently for its release (I am one of you, BTW) were let in on some of the details. Fortunately, Fred Hicks agrees, so we actually get to open up a bit about it.

Now, Fred wrote this and posted it on the Evil Hat website, but I'm going to repost it here because it's, uh, just, like, a lot easier than paraphrasing it all.

So, we've been saying that the Atomic Robo RPG is in layout for a while now, and that's still true. The reality runs a little more complicated than that once you get into the details, though!  

The editing and layout process has been intricate. We're looking to present a number of our examples visually, sourcing them straight from the events of the comics, and that can be slow going. We've had to rework chunks of text, a little bit here, a little bit there, over the course of it all, in order to make sure it all fit best with the layout.  

Probably our biggest speed-bump, however, has been imposed upon us by life. Our editor/layoutist found that the freelancing lifestyle wasn't paying the bills on its lonesome and, completely understandably, got himself a job to address that concern. This involved a move to a different state (time consuming), and then a focus on that new job that's kept him busy a good 72 hours a week. Due to the aforementioned intricacies of the layout, the layout wasn't done in time for these events to befall him, but it all added up to there being no more time to work on the book except for a few hours squeezed in every Sunday.  

We recognized this as unsustainable, and brought in a replacement layoutist, the incredibly talented Adam Jury. Adam has been vigorously coming to terms with the layout files as they stand (which is always rough; it seems no two layout folks do things the same way, so it's akin to getting tossed into a foreign country and asked to speak the language with no prior experience), and he's moving it forward as quickly as he can. 

The bottom line is that with the speed bumps we've had, and the spin-up time necessary to bring on new talent, we're likely to miss the end of year/Novemberish publication date that was our goal, and instead launch in early 2014. 

This isn't all bad, though. The fourth quarter of the year (October through December) is usually a very weak time for a company to launch a new game. Sales tend to be down significantly across the board. We believe a launch in early 2014 is going to give us a much stronger performance for the Atomic Robo Roleplaying Game than we would get if the time fairy waved his magic wand and made the book suddenly ready to publish in 2013. Ultimately this will all make for a stronger, better game without all that much more waiting (December's coming up fast)! 

Thanks to everyone for their time, talent, and patience in bringing the Atomic Robo RPG to fruition. We're past the rockiest part of the road, and just need time to cross the remaining distance.

So the bad news is, obviously, that the release date has been pushed back to 2014. None of us is happy about that, and I'm especially bummed about it, but it is what it is. The good news is that forward progress is still being made. Things are happening. I'm helping Adam source more art from the comics and I feel privileged to work with him, so despite the delays, the old cliche of "but the book will be better off for it!" is absolutely true.

Anyway, there you have it. It's in layout!