Fate Core 2: Electric Boogaloo

Following up on their amazingly successful Fate Core Kickstarter from a couple years back, on Monday the folks at Evil Hat debuted Fate More Part One: From Bits to Books. But don't let the title scare you - while the focus is indeed on printing paper editions of material already available digitally, like last time there's a $10 all-digital buy-in - and it's already worth it, as in less than two days not only has the original goal funded, but the first stretch goal as well:

Yep, a Majestic-12 sourcebook for the Atomic Robo RPG, based on the now-webcomic of the same name. Now, while MJ-12 are, in the comic, presented as the enemies of our favorite wise-cracking robot, this book sounds like it will present them from their own perspective, which should be pretty interesting, and useful. For example, I bet you could easily match it with the fluff from the Monster Hunter International game to do Fate of the Monster Control Bureau.

This revelation also goes to show that there'll be new material available through this Kickstarter in addition to the new printings, and indications are that, like the previous outing, the final results of this are going to be incredible. And of course, if you're new to the system the Fate Core book, as well as a bunch of others (including Spirit of the Century now, I see), are all PWYW on DriveThru.

BREAKING: As I typed this up, the next stretch goal for the Kickstarter was announced - a hardback version of Young Centurions, the nearly-released YA prequel to Spirit of the Century.

What did I tell you? Incredible.

Halftime Report

Well, not exactly half - of the two RPG Kickstarters I've been following lately, one of them is just over half finished, while the other will hit the halfway point later this week.

You thought this was going to be about football, didn't you? (Art by Aerion-the-Faithful)

Anyway, both of them have already hit their initial funding and are working on stretch goals, and both have initial $1 pledges that give access to playtest drafts, which I think bodes well for their future prospects.

Ending two weeks from today, Iron Edda: War of Metal and Bone is, briefly, a Norse Myth-themed mecha game, with Vikings in magically-animated Giant skeletons fighting Dwarves in more traditional giant fighting machines.

The interesting thing about this project is that, while the initial book is for Fate Core, the stretch goals are all adaptations of the general idea for different systems. The first one of these is Dungeon World, which at the time of this writing is only about $1500 away. At the current pace it's unlikely that any more will be unlocked, but the list is fairly ambitious, and props have to be given to the author for that.

The other project I'm currently looking at is TimeWatch, a GUMSHOE-based time travel game. Saying it like that makes it seem fairly pedestrian, but really in looking over the rules so far it's probably the most successful I've ever seem about making time-travel be integral to play, rather than just a premise explanation allowing for various settings to be used in conjunction with each other.

It does this, ironically enough, by abstracting some of the more mind-bending aspects of time-travel, giving each character a "Chronal Stability" stat that comes into play whenever something paradoxical happens. There's already some adventures and examples of play available giving a good overview of how this all works - those blogged by etheruk1 deserve a particular mention.

Potential TimeWatch PC.

And hey, part of the TimeWatch setting involves psychic velociraptors from a parallel timeline - Dr. Dinosaur would approve.

A Trio of Hypothetical FAE Campaigns

Although I'm a big fan of the Fate system, one thing about it I've never been able to properly visualized is how the advancement/character improvement mechanics are supposed to work. It is, of course, perfectly valid to play without having this feature, but I suspect there are a great many who are used to it.

Today, however, I came across not one, not two, but three different examples of how the process could work, using fictional characters as an example. Interestingly, all three use the Accelerated version of Fate, though the examples are applicable across all Fate variants.

First off, we have Luke Skywalker. Posted by Sketchpad, this example breaks each Star Wars movie into three parts, giving examples of various Milestones and even a Major Consequence (that hand-chopping thing). Also of interest to me was the last Stunt taken by Luke - "+2 when I forcefully defend myself from relatives" is, in terms of movie plot, useful exactly twice, one of which inspired Luke to take it. Presumably when the campaign continues this will get changed, but it's an interesting example of how fluid Stunts can be, as when as you read the rules they seem much more permanent.

The other two examples come from a newfound blog called Station53: the first is Batman, by Mike Lindsey, which uses Batman: Year One to show how Milestones can be used to tweak character concepts; and Conan by Reagan Taplin. This one is, in my opinion, the most impressive, as it uses all the Conan stories to build an ongoing picture of the Cimmerian's journey from thief to king. It's also kind of amusing to see the "Sneaky" and "Careful" approaches switching back and forth as one or the other become more important.

All three of these are well worth reading, as they make the prospect of a longer-term Fate campaign a much more graspable concept.

Sean-izaakse shows us the outcome when the latter two characters meet.

FATE of the Empire

Well, I promised to let you know when the non-Kickstarter versions of Fate Core and FAE* were available, and it seems that "when" is "now".

No gorillas, but that creature on the punk-witch's shoulder could be a tiny monkey.
Or a ferret, it's a bit hard to tell.

As promised, the PDFs are priced at "whatever you want" - the link above has links to download ZIP files of both games (in addition to various character sheets and other miscellany), free and clear. After that, this page explains how to use Paypal to donate your chosen price directly to Evil Hat. Or, if you prefer, the games are also listed at DriveThru - also pay-what-you-want, with suggested prices of $5 for Fate Core and $2.50 for FAE.

Coincidentally, I recently came across another Kickstarter project that uses Fate Core as the ruleset for a particular setting - in this case, the steampunk world of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novels by Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine. In particular, the novels follow the adventures of two agents of the titular Ministry, which protects the British Empire from the strange and bizarre - which, refreshingly, has here more of a mad science/conspiratorial slant to it than a supernatural one.

Unusually, The Ministry Initiative project is working on funding both an RPG and a fiction anthology, each available separately at different pledge levels (there are of course levels that combine the two). Time will tell if this approach was a good idea - with just over a week left, the project is only about half funded. Still, I thought the two two novels written thus far were pretty good, and the X-Files/Warehouse 13 type setup lends itself particularly well to tabletop gaming.

*That's short for Fate Accelerated Edition, folks!

FATE of the A-Team

So, the FATE Core Kickstarter ended late last month, easily hitting the last stretch goal and ensuring that the Fate Accelerated Edition of The Dresden Files will be added to Evil Hat's already crowded development queue. With nearly 14500% of the initial funding goal to play with, the only thing they need now is time.

While we're waiting, then, here's the rest of the A-Team, built using the Fate Core Preview. First off, it seems in my last post I left off Hannibal's Physical ([] []) and Mental ([] [] [] []) stress tracks, so there's that. Next, the rest of the team:

Lieutenant Templeton "Faceman" Peck

High Concept: Scrounges Anything Anywhere from Anyone
Trouble: Weary of the Mercenary Life
Aspects: Ladies' Man, Keeper of the Checkbook, You Just Hired The A-Team
Skills:
- Great (+4) Deceit
- Good (+3) Burglary, Rapport
- Fair (+2) Contacts, Resources, Shooting
- Average (+1) Athletics, Fighting, Investigation, Will
Stunts: Lies Upon Lies (Deceit), Best Foot Forward (Rapport),
Physical Stress [] []
Mental Stress [] [] []
Refresh: 2

Captain H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock

High Concept: The Best Chopper Pilot In Vietnam
Trouble: Home is the V.A. Pysch Ward.
Aspects:  Zany Fantasy Life, Improbable Linguistic Skills, You Just Hired The A-Team

Skills:

- Great (+4) Drive

- Good (+3) Will, Athletics

- Fair (+2) Deceit, Fighting, Shooting

- Average (+1) Burglary, Investigation, Physique, Stealth

Stunts: If It Has Wings I Can Fly It* (Drive)

Physical Stress [] [] [] 

Mental Stress [] [] [] [] 

Refresh: 3

The "Grappler" stunt in action.

Sergeant Bosco "B.A." Baracus

High Concept: Bare-Knuckled Mechanic

Trouble: Named for his Bad Attitude
Aspects: Hot Rod Panel Van, Scared to Fly, You Just Hired The A-Team
Skills:
- Great (+4) Physique
- Good (+3) Drive, Fighting
- Fair (+2) Crafts, Shooting, Intimidation
- Average (+1) Athletics, Notice, Rapport, Will,
Stunts: Pedal to the Metal (Drive), Grappler (Physique), Take the Blow (Physique)
Physical Stress [] [] [] []
Mental Stress [] [] []
Refresh: 1

One thing I hope you'll notice right away is that all four Team-mates share an Aspect, a trick I borrowed from The Dresden Files RPG to provide coherence mechanically. I'm pretty sure it was tagged several times during the run of the show itself, usually to convince reluctant team-mates to take a particular job. Another thing that all four team members have in common is that their "Shooting" skill is only at Fair - this, too, was intended to simulate the show.

Something that surprised me during the process was how non-restrictive the limited number of Aspects and Refresh was. Coming from Dresden and Spirit of the Century, five Aspects and three Refresh - even with one free stunt!- doesn't sound like a lot, but it turned out to be plenty. I suspect that genre has something to do with this - one of the reasons Dresden has such high Refresh rates is that all those nifty mystic powers are paid for with them. Something relatively lower-key, like The A-Team, can work with the lower rate.

Anyway, this was a fun exercise for trying out FATE Core. For an actual game I would expect the skill list and stunts to be more heavily customized (the most recent addition to my blogroll, Fate of the Drowning Woods by Murder of Crows, has been playing with this quite heavily recently - go check it out!), but keeping the A-Team (mostly) within the draft rules was an interesting challenge, nonetheless. And hey, even if you didn't get in on the Kickstarter, word is that the Fate Core book will be coming out as a pay-what-you-want-including-nothing PDF - I'll be sure and mention that when it gets released!

*New Drive Stunt, If It Has Wings I Can Fly It: +2 to Drive whenever the vehicle in question is capable of flight.

Spirit of the A-Team

It wouldn't be an Evil Hat Product without a gorilla on the cover.

Being a fan of Evil Hat Games, I've been following with some interest the Kickstarter for Fate Core, which updates the FATE system used in Spirit of the Century and The Dresden Files, and making it generic to boot. I've not mentioned it before because A) I did a lot of updates for the Monster Hunter International RPG Kickstarter, and B) it didn't really need the help, fully funding in a matter of minutes and then shooting through a mind-boggling array of amazing stretch goals.

I'm serious about the mind-blowing part. After the core rules, a rules toolkit and sample settings book (this last so huge it had to be split into two volumes) all funded, Evil Hat pretty much turned to prefunding their entire 2013 production line through stretch goals. As a result, said stretch goals now included a new version of Dresden, two FATE adaptations of other companies' settings (Freeport and The Day After Ragnarok, to be exact, both excellent choices), and a whole pile of stuff for SotC*.

One of these is actually a revival of a project I had thought long dead - Shadow of the Century, taking the hyper-pulp world of SotC and advancing the timeline to the 1980s. Several icons from that time and genre are referred to as inspirations, including one of my personal favorites: The A-Team.

Since it may be some time before even the backers get to see SHotC, I've decide to take the FATE Core  draft rules for a spin, and see about stating up The Team. First up is Hannibal:

Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith

High Concept: “I Love It When A Plan Comes Together!”
Trouble: Still Wanted By The Government
Aspects: Monster Movie Actor, Soldier of Fortune, You Just Hired The A-Team
Skills:
- Great (+4) Will
- Good (+3) Deceit, Fighting
- Fair (+2) Athletics, Shooting, Investigation
- Average (+1) Burglary, Drive, Intimidation, Stealth
Stunts: Mind Games (Deceit), Indomitable (Will)
Refresh: 2

For the purposes of testing the rules I used the stock skill list and example stunts from the draft, but of course with a bit of thought both could be tweaked to heighten the A-Team feel. Actually, I've just thought of a great custom stunt for Murdock, whom I'll be doing along with Face and B.A. in a couple days.

*Seriously, the $10 pledge level for this one is a crazy-good value - it includes a PDF of every stretch goal funded, and funding is currently at 10,500%. At this point, it's basically a subscription to Evil Hat's output for the rest of the year and beyond.

Fun with 4dF

Via Fred Hicks' blog Deadly Fredly comes this neat chart for using the standard FATE complement of four Fudge dice to determine "the mood of the room":

Not only is this interesting for the idea that the ratio of friends to enemies in a given location is something that can be tracked and accounted for, but the use of Fudge dice gives the chart some interesting characteristics.

For example, as with every such chart that uses more than one die, not every result is equally likely - note the probabilities helpfully provided for determining whether a given result is more or less likely. This could be useful for a "random encounters" sort of table, where you would expect to find fewer, say, Plutonium Dragons than Potted Plants.

Using Fudge dice, in particular, adds another layer of complexity in that results can be largely sorted into "positive", "negative" and "neutral" groups. A couple of ideas here might be "Fellow Travelers on the Road" (admittedly conceptually similar) or "Contents Discovered in Storage Crates".

Thanks again to Fred for sharing this idea!

BEHOLD!

Somewhat buried by the fallout from yesterday's news about some fantasy game, came an announcement earlier today simultaneously from Fred Hicks (of Evil Hat Productions, publishers of The Dresden Files RPG), Mike Olson (FATE blogger and contributor to that version of The Kerberos Club) and Brian Clevinger (writer of the comic series Atomic Robo) of, well, exactly what you'd expect those three to collaborate on:

A FATE-powered Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game.

This is, to put it mildly, really exciting news for me - I've just recently become a fan of Atomic Robo, and I'm quite the fan of the guys at Evil Hat. Putting the two together, it's like the proverbial chocolate and peanut butter.

For those of you unfamiliar with the premise of Atomic Robo, I shall elaborate: Atomic Robo is a humanoid robot created by Nikola Tesla in the 1920s, who goes on to a long a fruitful career battling Communists, Nazis, cyborgs, Nazi cyborgs, giant ants, Thomas Edison, government conspiracies, and pretty much any other pulpish, Weird Science menace that rears its head throughout the twentieth century - and beyond.

I can't believe I nearly forgot the psychotic hyper-intelligent velociraptor.

If your interest is at all piqued by this I highly recommend checking out the various free online comic stories, which give what I think is a good overview of the character - most especially the Free Comic Book Day 2009 installment, from which the above panel comes (as you might be able to tell from the title of this post, Dr. Dinosaur is easily a favorite character, surpassing perhaps even Robo himself).

I'll certainly be keeping a close watch on this game as it develops - besides the latest permutation of the FATE ruleset, the potential of an Our World - type guide to the world of Atomic Robo is particularly enticing.

Look! Content!

(With apologies to XKCD.)

Ahem. I've been playing around with the character generation rules in Evil Hat's Dresden Files RPG recently, testing some of the boundaries of who and what can be replicated. In doing so, I found that one particular power seemed to be absent. Naturally, I had to whip up a custom substitute:

Invisibility [-2 Refresh]

Description: You cannot be detected by sight. This ability is always in effect.

Skills Affected: Stealth

Effects: Your body is completely transparent and cannot be perceived by visual means. This does not extend to your clothes, undigested food, or other unabsorbed material, such as anything that might be splattered on you. +2 to Stealth against visual Perception rolls.

I drew from a couple different area of Your Story for this, especially the discussion of veils and the admittedly-similar Cloak of Shadows power (YS169). I bumped the Refresh cost up to reflect the more overwhelming potential, and I suspect you could bump it up even more by adding some variations - perhaps another point would be worth the ability to turn the invisibility on and off? I also tried a couple different ways of phrasing the restrictions on the increase to Stealth before settling on the above.

Anyway, I haven't tested this one out yet, but I thought I'd throw it out there as a preview of something I've (slowly) been working on. Perhaps when I get to the reason why I needed it, I'll work out an example of it in play . . .