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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: tetrasodium on November 04, 2012, 06:12:54 PM
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I like the element system, admittedly, some of the thaumaturgy options feel a bit out of place as anything other than specializations. Some of my players have had trouble grasping the conceptual nature of the elements goes beyond refluffed magic missile/scorching ray/fireball/etc & I decided to put together something explaining the elements in a way that fits standard fantasy rpg tropes a little better (i.e. d&d). In the process, Spirit gets refluffed into divine casting with most of the laws of magic being more strict towards it to simulate the fact that divine casters need to behave themselves more than arcane ones to appease their god. I figured others might like it, find it useful, or be interested in shooting holes/support at it :). on those last two, please do as it's intended for newbies who need help acclimating to non-vancian casting. =)
Keeping with the traditional fantasy trope of arcane magic being different from divine magic with both overlapping & different capabilities, there will be some immediately obvious changes like “force” from both Spirit, fire, and possibly others at times. The arcane elements of fire, earth, water, and air definitely expand quite a bit once expanded into their conceptual nature beyond the pure element itself to the point where there is quite a bit of overlap & is now no longer a reason to have out of place thaumaturgy trappings like necromancy & summoning as something other than specializations . Each of the arcane elements has the ability to draw on aspects of necromancy & mind magic through various means with various degrees of law violation risks. Spirit by comparison has access to all of them (with guaranteed violations) in addition to a proper method of resurrection. Because of the consequence nono involved with mind magic (see the third law below) it’s always a dangerous road to tread more than simply stepping up to the very edge with “ally of X” temp aspect type charm & weak minor “detect thoughts” type spells I feel that Spirit’s tight fusing with the laws of magic and the extra leeway it gets in other areas like healing, raise dead, the creation of fire/water, etc things fit well with the typical schism between arcane & divine casters where they heavily overlap, but divine casters can do a few extra things denied to arcane casters with the string of needing to appease their god.
Just about (if not every) element has some way of doing some healing of certain types of consequences (or at least starting that process), but Spirit has the typical divine caster-like ability to directly heal mental/physical injuries. The “healing” does as good job of further differentiating Spirit/divineoff in its own little niche while avoiding “aww crap, I didn’t wanna have to play the cleric/healer” even though there are plenty of other ways to start the healing process in FATE making it a silly thing already. Players who want to play a healer still have something special over arcane casters able to start healing sometimes.
With regards to scrying , I’ve made a few minor assumptions regarding the planar cosmology of the fantasy setting in general since it would be I,possible to do otherwise given all the possibilities. Those assumptions are that each arcane element has a plane of existence of its own & spirit is able to reach any plane inhabited by beings with spirits of their own (even if that spirit is their form like many outsiders frequently in fantasy settings.) Nasty things can be out there if you dig too deeply with extraplanar sources, but minor scrying through them is relatively safe. This again gives everyone a little something to everyone that fits with their element. Elementals embody both the element and the conceptual aspects of an element to varying degrees & are mostly rather “neutral” in nature. In exchange for spirit’s ability to reach any plane, it has the side effect of making the caster directly reachable by more things while digging. The combination of narrow & broad contact with the planes gives arcane casters an edge in their specific types of scrying & makes divine casters hesitant to abuse their options.
Laws of Magic: While the Laws of magic are great for balancing magic to an extent, the permanence that goes with them outright destroys many traditional spells like polymorph & the like. I’ve chosen to reshuffle the laws of magic into traditional fantasy style in a way that includes both the “undead are abominations” as well as the “Divine casters can fall out of favor with their god & must take care with their spell casting.” themes. This is done by saying most arcane spells are temporary unless the element & method used would be permanent due to properties of the element. For example,using earth’s control over stability & grounding to break down & reshape a mind with earth’s stability keeping it that way permanently is bad; but using water’s control over change to accomplish the same thing is fine because water is loath to take on a stable form & will revert to normal soon after the caster quits applying shifts to persistence.
• First Law: Never take a life… Let’s face it, killing people & things is pretty common in fantasy settings. This is very important for Divine casters of “spirit” spells because they risk tainting their soul & angering their god. For the other arcane elements?... not so much unless it’s being done in an “Evil” way or just for cruelty/fun. I think keeping this vague & semi-ambiguous results in both divine casters being nervous about keeping their god happy with their actions & wanting to act as a moral compass to the group rather than risk it. That ambiguity also neatly divides arcane & divine casting while allowing for grey areas that divide “magic is a tool” & “that mage has gone dark!”
• Second Law: This is usually the purview of arcane casters. Water governs change & is anything but stable. Use water to change another & it goes away on its own, no harm done. Use earth to break down the stable form & mold a new one…, or fire to burn the current one away & encourage new growth in a different form like some kind of supernatural cancerous uber stem cell treatment though… bad arcane caster! Now Spirit deals with the soul itself & quite easily stomps all over this law. The desire to keep spirit/divine casters concerned about being “good” makes this even more important for them ;).
• Third Law: Never invade the thoughts of another. Spirit is pretty boned here as well, but Arcane casting is usually going to be safe as long as they do not need to inflict mental consequences on an unwilling victims part of the activity. Reading thoughts actively skimming across someone’s mind is fine, as would something like using earth to permanently destabilize traumatic memories & form them into something stable in a patient wanting help from the caster is just peachy. Using Air to give you the freedom needed to carefully climb inside the thoughts of a sick refugee in order to figure out what they are fleeing from & offer help (likewise with spirit on those last two). The ambiguity & ability for the gm to just say “he tries to fight you & takes a minor consequence” even if it was just a 1 shift spell makes mind magic something that arcane casters will be wary of using with gamebreaking consequences lest they go capital E “Evil” & be forced to take lawbreaker stunts.
• Fourth Law: Never Enthrall Another. This is another one where Divine casters get bones when using Spirit & arcane casters get a mere warning. Arcane spells like the traditional staple “Charm Person” that makes someone think you are an ally are fine if it’s just doing things like adding a temporary aspect kept active with shifts of persistence along the lines of “allies with X” & leaves them to muddle through the confusion of why their allies are suddenly fighting each other to the death. Arcane spells like “Dominate” where you force an opponent to obey your will however are a nono if they require a consequence, which it probably will… using dominate on the waitress to place your order when she would doso anyways seems kindda silly, I’m sure there would be a circumstance where it’s ok with the GM though.
• Fifth Law: Never reach beyond the borders of life. Finally we reach a law where arcane folks get bones outright & divine spirit casters get a pass! Raise/resurrect dead type spells are pretty normal for divine casters in fantasy settings, the arcane equivalent typically involves things like creating undead & arcane raise dead type spells are bad because the undead abominations draw life from others or come back pet cemetery type wrong depending on your GM. Animate dead type spells where you use a temporarily animated zombie or somethingis probably fine provided the spell is structured in a way that it only lasts about as long as shifts are pumped into persistence.
• Sixth Law: Never swim against the currents of time. This one is a nobrainer as it has horrible universe breaking consequences. Spells like haste where you perceive/experience time faster are fine. Much more however is almost certain to result in an angry GM & a player with a lawbreaker stunt ;)
• Seventh Law: Never seek knowledge from beyond the Outer Gates. Summoning up/questioning things from the plane of insanity/chaos is probably a bad idea for anyone. Casters should be extra careful with this kinda thing, the planar cosmology in your game is important to this one being relevant or not.
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Elements
The elements are pretty simple, however on top of being just an element, they are also concepts those elements embody. This list Writeup is not intended to be exhaustive, just a general thing. The original DFRPG elements are outlined on YS253. Much like the lightning example on YS254, elements have a great deal of overlap. If an element can bolster something, it can weaken or redirect it as well most likely. In some cases, this can be bad for the caster as one element may have other aspects that lead to such a use being either temporary (& easily usable as a result) or permanent (& possibly a laws violation).
• Water: I’m starting with water as it easily sets the stage for a number of things in the other elements. The core description for water is that it embodies Entropy , along with Change, and is responsible for things like erosion, decay, disrupting, dissolving, disintegrating, etc.
o Polymorph effects: water embodies change among other things. As a result of this aspect it has, you can use it to change the form of someone (or something). Since water is fluidic & lacks a stable form of its own, This change will typically only last as long as you continue to pump shifts into persistence when the target of your spell begins to swiftly return to its normal form.
o Decay/dissolve/etc [iffy]: There are lots of things you can do with this, few of them good. Disintegration type spells are an obvious attack spell, but dispersing/decaying/eroding the mind, thoughts, or structure of an opponent/victim is probably bad & likely to risk law violations as situations dictate
o Force Effects: A jet of high pressure: water can topple structures or slice into the flesh of a victim in its way, if you compress water under the pressure of about 10,000 times that of ouratmosphere, it will even solidify at room temp. by using various methods, you could make force effects with water, but doing so for armor/shield effects would probably be a whole lot more complicated than relying on a screen of magic enhanced with its ability to erode, decay, & degrade things It could also be used to degrade/decay/disperse kinetic force
o Charm Spells[Iffy]: Spirit may be the magic of the mind, but water is the magic if change & can be used to do things like change the mind of an opponent into believing you are an ally. See the laws above for more details, but this relies on water’s lack of stable structure in order to protect the caster from law violations by quickly allowing the victim to revert back to a normal mental state once your spell ends. If they took consequences in their attempts to resist your spell however, you are looking at a law violation.
o Mind Mucking [Evil][iffy]: This is pretty similar to fire’s ability to do this. Unlike the earlier mentioned ability to temporarily change the thoughts &memories of a subject/opponent. By using some of water’s other aspects, an arcane caster could erode, degrade, & decay the thoughts & memories of a subject. Doing this to active thoughts might just cause a moment of confusion, but doing this to memories is almost certainly going to be a bad thing
o Raise/Animate Dead & other Necromancy[Evil]: By using the element of water , an arcane caster could pour waters of life into the dead.
Since water is not consuming, it’s more likely to make an intelligent lich type of abomination than a dumb but useful zombie. The end result is still an abomination that sucks life from the world around it to continue it’ existence if the spell is not structured in a way that allows it to disperse after you quit powering it with shifts of persistence. Choosing to do it in a “good enough” manner in order to create a dumb zombie is always an option
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o Waterbreathing: By taking advantage of water’s ability to change things, you could do things like change an ally to be able to breathe through a pair of gills while you power the spell with persistence.
o Abjuration type effects: If water can change things, it can change a friend to make them temporarily stronger, smarter, focused etc while you pump shifts into persistence to maintaining the temporary aspect you gave them. Granted someone with a high might, scholarship, discipline, etc may need more shifts pumped into this due to the difficulty involved. Suddenly giving a frog into Einstein levels of scholarship might be doable for a while, but more is not always better, too much of a good thing can be distracting or cause problems with coordination & planning. Be careful with just extending these effects across entire zones of allies.
o Curse effects: You may be asking how water can curse someone, but if you can use it to change someone to be someone smarter, stronger, or more athletic, you can use it to change them to be dumber, weaker, less coordinated, etc & rely on the same lack of stability in water to protect you from law violations once your spell wears off. You can get slapped down hard with lawbreaker penalties if you inflict consequences as a direct part of the spell (dumb as a post consequence is bad, mentally headache, blurred vision, & bleeding from the ears will clear up fine.)
o Cats grace & freedom of movement: By enhancing the fluidity in an ally, you can do things like bestow an aspect to grant them the fluidity to move without impedance, or to move more fluidly, yes change could cover some of this, but different methods become important in different situations.
o Reduced/Zero Gravity: Use Water’s ability to erode & disperse things to erode & disperse gravity someplace desirable. It might not be as good as reverse gravity, but it might let you carry that house in a pinch
o Healing: You could use water to change a wound into something less wounded, but the effect would likely be temporary & difficult unless some other method is used to maintain the spell. It would be great to change a slashed wrist/throat into an unslashed one long enough to buy time for a divine (or mundane) healer to address the problem as you slowly release the spell.
o Shadow/Darkness: By eroding, decaying and/or degrading light itself, the element of water is able to create areas of shadow & darkness
o Scrying With Water: Water Elementals are often selfish & vain. Their mood & temperament ranges from calm, friendly, & complacent to indifferent brutality.
Water is capable of reflecting things back at a viewer & ripples with the presence of sound. Since most living creatures (especially civilized ones) tend to need water to some extent, they are often able to peer through & listen to things going on around another body /container of water & is great for making assessments/declarations like “I know where/when the BBEG’s ritual is going down” or helping to find a trail to their a supplier/henchmen.
• Air: Air is the element of motion & freedom, it’s also vital in most spoken communication & life requires it
o Freedom of movement: No it won’t let you move through anything & avoid being grappled like the D&D version. These kinds of effects can give you a defense, armor, or shield against anything that would impede movement given the right situation.
This could likewise be twisted into hold person type effects by removing the freedom of motion in an opponent Too much of a good thing can be bad however as blood needs to move within the body for your victim to live, paralyzed while suffering from a massive heart attack might be a rather horrific death that taints the caster who caused it.
o Telepathy & detect thoughts[IFFY]: The transmission of & eavesdropping on thoughts is a staple of many fantasy settings. By using the fact that air is vital to spoken communication, you can provide the freedom to enter or listen in on another’s thoughts.
o Bending & manipulation of light: Light passes through the air, & light is covers movement. You might not easily be doing any cool illusions with it, but a telescope & giant “ant” melting magnifying glass probably aren’t too tough ;).
o Force Effects: While not quite the same as Spirit’s control over force, a sufficiently dense &compressed area of air or wind could provide you with a similar effect
By Extension, there are a great many nasty things that can be done with a highly compressed blade of air, or a pocket of vacuum
o Flight & feather fall: There are a great many ways you could swing these as coming from air, everything from reducing your motion towards the ground to gusts of wind to lift, condensed sheets of air to carry you, along with all sorts of other possibilities & combinations. Needless to say, sustained flight probably is not that easy…. It might be a lot easier than landing though, that goes double if someone else threw you into the air & let you fall on your own, unprepared;).
o Veils & invisibility type effects: Being responsible for things like motion & having light transmit through air gives you a nice way to use air for bending light around you sort of like a magically created mesh of fiberoptics that bend the light around you.
o Raise/Animate Dead & other Necromancy[Evil]: By using the element of air, an arcane caster could breathe life into the dead.
Since air is not consuming, it’s more likely to make an intelligent lich type of abomination than a dumb but useful zombie. The end result is still an abomination that sucks life from the world around it to continue it’ existence if the spell is not structured in a way that allows it to disperse after you quit powering it with shifts of persistence. Choosing to do it in a “good enough” manner in order to create a dumb zombie is always an option
o Transmutation effects: Granted you probably won’t be using Air to turn your friend into a giant like water & some other elements can, but you might be able to transmute the air in order to purify it for breathing, or foul it to make breathing more difficult. You could also do things like separate out only the explosive oxygen & compress it into a bomb ready for a spark.
Healing: Air might be a poor choice for most healing, but a broken arm/leg could be started towards full mobility by reducing the freedom & motion in the broken section of bone & enhancing it in the limb itself the motion I the limb
o Slow/Haste: By lowering or raising the movement in an opponent/ally, you can provide them with an aspect that slows or hastens their ability to move & react to things
o Lightning: Lightning can fit under either air, or Earth depending on how a given caster views magic.
Revive/Animate Dead: By imparting a body (or piece of one) with an arcane spark of life, a caster could bring it back as an undead abomination. Because lightning is both capable of consuming things in fire & providing its own power to things, this sort of revival/animation could go towards both the [iffy] stupid animated corps type of zombie or [evil] creation of a lich depending on the caster’s intent & desire when casting the spell. See the animate/raise dead entries under fire& air for more details on those particular undead variants
o Water Breathing: There is oxygen in water, by using air magic, you could theoretically forcibly collect the air in it into a breathable form or provide a bubble of breathable air that refreshes itself from the oxygen in the water.
o Shield & armor effects: If air can be compressed into a blade or wind can be used to lift you into the air,
o Sound: Sound travels as a vibration through the air, by using air magic, a caster could do things like dampen sounds for stealth & privacy. It could even do things like create phantom sounds & “throw”/redirect actual or phantom sounds
o Scrying With Air: Air elementals tend to be whimsical & easily distracted at one end, all the way to cruel & savage depending on their mood and temperament.
Air’s temperament, ease of losing interest, & the general obviousness of a gust of wind wailing its way through one’s livingspace tends to make air elementals something typically a poor choice for scrying, they are usually able to move fast though & sometimes able to be n multiple places at once to allow for a “whispering wind” type effect where a brief message, & sometimes conversation can be had across distances of a few miles with only minor delays while the elemental remains interested in helping
On a not related note, air magic can bend light as explained in other parts of air’s writeup, by doing so, an aeromancer can always have ready access to a telescope, pair of binoculars, or magnifying “glass”
• Fire: On the surface, Fire is an element that’s stuck with mere destructive uses, but it’s aspects are so much more First we start with consumption & destruction, but life, courage, & rage can be life a fire as well
o Force Effects: This is a different sort of force than the compressed air that air & water would use, but an explosion creates quite a bit of force, a directed explosion sends it right where it needs to go ;). Good for armor & shields if incinerating attacks is not going to be helpful.
o Breathable Air: Ok, It’s not as useful as water & Air’s contributions here, but fire can split the air out of a watersource, & with some difficulty carefully burn off the hydrogen without burning off the oxygen (or blowing yourself up!) Having a bowl/canteen of water pumping out oxygen while trapped in a vault or something could be mighty useful though!
o Burn/incinerate stuff: This is the obvious usage for fire, but it could be used for any situation where you might want to burn or incinerate stuff. Granted ASir & spirit can focus light into a laser-like beam of burning death, but fire can go whole hog & just explode with a nice ball of burning death.
o Mind mucking: [evil][Iffy] Fire can make changes to the mind of a victim, but unlike water & air, those changes will rarely escape a law violation due to how they work. Water lets you do things like temporarily add/change things in the mind of someone & air gives you the freedom to listen & move within their thoughts & memories; But fire allows you to burn away the thoughts & memories of your victim in a way far more destructive & potentially damaging than water’s ability to erode & disperse those memories. Even if the subject of this sort of magic wants you to do this, it might still be iffy depending on the situation & whims of the GM. Caster beware.
o Raise/Animate Dead[Evil]: Fires of life, by infusing the fire of life into a the dead, you can revive/animate them.
o Since fire is a destructive force that consumes, you are likely to wind up with a horrible abomination hellbent on sustaining itself with the life of anything around it in a way that borders on hatred for the living.
o Healing: You may be wondering how fire could heal without even being iffy. It’s actually pretty reasonable though. A bleeding wound can be sealed & disinfected with fire to allow it time to heal cleanly without infection & prevent the patient from bleeding out. On top of that, your body will use fire to fight off various sorts of infections & illnesses by causing a fever or localized warmth to help in fighting off infection. By using fire, you could even supercharge the body’s attempts, just be careful not to kill the patient in the process.
o Regrowth: While revive/animate dead is a bad idea, by lending fire’s strength of life to the patient’s own, you can help it to regrow damaged or missing body parts while it’s still alive. Since you are only providing a sustaining encouraging scaffold for the body to repair itself, this manages to neatly avoi8d diving into tainting necromancy by the slimmest of margins.
o Scrying with fire: Fire elementals are likely to lash out if they feel slighted or abused
You wouldn’t think that a fire elemental would be much help when scrying, but fire creates light & is used for seeing in the dark. As a result of that, a fire elemental could peek out from the elemental plane of fire through a candle or torch. Because everyone likes to see, a setting not using electric style lighting everywhere allows fire to assess things like “I’ve got a good idea who’s in there” or “the sacrifice is still alive & safe in a cell”
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o Earth: This leads us to our last Arcane element. In some ways, earth is also the most dangerous element to have since stability is one of its aspects & it’s spells are not as likely to erode & disperse themselves leading to law violations for a careless (or evil) arcane caster. The key aspects to earth are: Stability, Gravity, & Grounding. While the stability aspect tends to make earth spells lack the tendency of self dispersal, consumption, & decay that air, water, & fire spells have. In the case of a shelter, this can be useful through the night, but in the case of mind magic & transmutation, this can be a horrible thing
o Transmutation: Earth Has a whole lot more transmutation stuff than you would expect, it’s control over stability, gravity, and grounding allows you to do things like tear down walls and stable forms and reshape the earth, or the mind/body itself into new forms of stability.
o Shelter: You could go simple & make a dome with (or without) a door out of shaped stone or hardened mud to give yourself a place to hide & shelter in. Sometimes however, more extreme cases will call for things like hollowing out a cave in a Cliffside, or even sinking your dome beneath the ground. If you choose to hide below ground, be sure to use some other spell to provide a fresh supply of air if you intend to be staying long
o Polymorph[Evil]: By removing the stability in the structure of your victim, you can encourage the body to take on a new stable form using Earth’s other aspects. Unfortunately this sort of thing is every bit as evil & lawbreaking as the magic described in the third law’s warnings about transforming another.
o Mind Mucking:[Evil] This is every bit as evil as fire’s version of this example. Except instead of incinerating & consuming memories, you are tearing away stability of the mind & trying to builds a new stable form
o Permanency[IFFY][evil]: Earth’s control over stability could allow an arcane caster to make a spell (or other effect) into something permanent. This activity in itself is not evil or law breaking, but nothing comes free, something needs to have its stability torn down & shaped into a new stable form to power the permanent effect, this might be a character’s aspect, it might be some vampire type need instilled in an object. Whatever the case, It’s probably not always a good thing & always subject to the whims of the GM.
o Healing: Earth has domain over stability & can be used to restore an unstable injury like insanity, broken bones, bleeding wounds, etc to their normal stable state with some difficulty. It’s not enough to instantly heal a patient, but it will is enough to help put them back into a state of better functionality while they continue healing towards a full recovery & get the consequence slot back
o This sort of spell could even result in a retroactive penalty. Using the vampire effect mentioned, an enchanted sword designed to symbiotically feed off the blood, or life force, of its user is probably not going to cause any real problems. If the user turns out to be a bloodthirsty murderous monster who figures out he can (super)charge the sword by torturing & slaying innocents by the dozen, if the caster who made the effect permanent chooses not to take action & allows this to continue, the caster is well on his way to piling up multiple flavors of law violations.
o Lightning: Lightning can come from either air or earth for perceptual & scientific reasons that could vary from caster to caster
Revive/Animate Dead: By imparting a body (or piece of one) with an arcane spark of life, a caster could bring it back as an undead abomination. Because lightning is both capable of consuming things in fire & providing its own power to things, this sort of revival/animation could go towards both the [iffy] stupid animated corps type of zombie or [evil] creation of a lich depending on the caster’s intent & desire when casting the spell. See the animate/raise dead entries under fire& air for more details on those particular undead variants
o Gravity & (Instability): The earth element has control over gravity. & stability, a number of unpleasant effects can be created by this
Gravity: Singularity, crushing fist, reverse gravity. Most of them are straight up mean & often poorly defended against
• Singularity/White Hole: By creating a highly condensed ball of gravity, an arcane caster can create a miniature black hole capable of immense devastation given enough shifts of power. The lesser known theoretical counterpart of a black hole is the white hole, a white hole is practically an explosion ejecting everything sucked into a black hole (possibly even one located elsewhere)
• Reverse Gravity: If earth lets you play with gravity, it also lets you do things like reverse or redirect gravity. “Up is now down & down is now up” can be rather difficult to defend against, as can be the ground when down becomes down again.
• Redirect Gravity: Let’s say you have a few zones of baddies that you want to trap, or crush, by taking the gravity in an area larger than the one the baddies are in, you could immobilize or crush them under their own weight
• Flight: Calling this flight is almost a stretch; it is however, probably one of the more stable ways to fly. Use Earth to lessen or reverse gravity beneath you & follow up with magnetism to push/pull yourself through the sky towards your destination
• Instability: all of the other gravity effects, and more, can reject (or redirect) the stability aspect of earth magic in order to cause chaos. Let’s say you have a zone (or more) of ground with gravity about to be multiplied, subtract stability to give you tentacles of black & white holes attracting, repelling, & feeding off each other around the unlucky opponents in that zone
o Scrying With Earth: Earth elementals tend to be slow & difficult to convince into taking or changing action. Their temperament is often so passive that they often border on near slumber.
Earth is an incredibly useful element to scry with due to an earth elemental’s ability to “see” the general structure of a cave or stone building. Its usefulness often fails by the wayside somewhat when trying to identify creatures within that structure as they tend to not be so savvy at understanding biological creatures that live “on” the earth’s surface, even if that sureface is a cave floor/roof. It might not see much difference between a huge patch of ivy & a cavern filled with sleeping bats as a simple example. It’s great for making assessments like “I know the general layout”
• Spirit: If you’ve been reading along, you almost certainly noticed that much of what was normally found under spirit has variants under the other arcane elements as conceptual aspects of the elements are drawn out. Spirit is not abandoned however; it gets stuff from the other elements as it dives into conceptual aspects ;) A “divine” spirit caster needs to be especially aware of & wary of the laws of magic in order to avoid tainting their soul & invoking the wrath of whatever deity they gain power from (if any)
o Raise/animate dead[EVIL]: All of the arcane methods of creating undead abominations (earth, water, & Air) are possible by tearing a/the spirit from the afterlife & forcibly imprisoning it in a corpse with the same results as if an arcane caster had used fire, air, water, or earth to accomplish the deed.
Resurrect Dead: [Iffy]By dealing directly with the spirit realm, a divine/spirit caster can gently open a passage for the departed’s soul to return through & gently knit the thing back in place in the original body where it can be properly repaired to a state where it can power itself through normal biological processes like eating food & living life. Assuming the subject is willing, this is probably not an evil deed worthy of violating one of the laws of magic. You should talk to your GM about this sort of thing before simply trying it, there may be strings placed on the resurrected soul/body & the spell itself might require extremely difficult to aquire components.
o Mind magic[Evil][Iffy]: All the methods of mind magic described in fire & earth are available to water by directly manipulating the mind/soul itself rather than metaphorically doing so with an element’s arcane aspects. Since Spirit lacks water’s habit of rejecting stability within it’s own form, Spirit cannot gently change the mind of an opponent/subject on a temporary basis.. Without Air’s familiar transmission allowing communication, spirit lacks Air’s potentially harmless method of listening in or its ability to freely move though the thoughts of another.
o Force Effects: Spirit is able to directly shape the soul into a tangible force & do every force effect described in the Arcane elements without a need for analogies.
o Polymorph: [EVIL] Spirit/Divine Polymorph is actually worse than earth’s. Like Earth’s polymorph it’s not going to simply go away & revert to normal on its own. Unlike the other elements capable of polymorph-like effects, Spirit/divine polymorph changes both the soul & body directly while the caster is in direct contact with it without a shield of metaphors
o Fire: Fire is able to interact with life because life & the soul is like a fire. Spirit by extension is able to create fire & fiery explosions, it is not however able to make use of fire’s secondary aspects without great difficulty. Spirit’s fires still burn, they just lack the ability to use consumption & destruction metaphorically (& probably has no need)
o Water: Spirit can use the same water of life analogy that allows water to do some of what it does. As a result, it is capable of creating jets & blades of water even while it’s unable to access water’s metaphorical aspects like decay/dispersal/etc using that metaphor.
o Abjuration: Spirit is able to directly touch the soul of another; as a result spells like heroism/Bolster courage & those that bestow other positive emotions on willing targets can be used without risk of a law violation. Intent matters Forcing one person to love someone they did not, or have so much courage that they run off to their (pointless) death for selfish purposes are two examples of positive emotions being bolstered in a way that would result in one or more law violations depending on the whims of your GM.
o Healing: There is no d&d style “poof you are perfect” style healing in fate given how consequences work. Spirit is directly capable of healing nearly any physical or mental consequence into something else that allows the injured party to function more normally while recovery completes. It is also able to use the life force of the injured themselves to support the magic while they heal in a symbiotic non-parasitic manner (of course parasitic is an option with law violation risks). Doing so results in the same sort of risk of being slapped by someone else’s law violation that permanency under earth magic has.
Depending on your game, your GM may choose to allow you to step down the level of a consequence while healing a subject, doing so will almost certainly be incredibly difficult however.
o Curses: Much Like all of the other elements, anything Spirit can give, it can redirect or work or take, you could easily use spirit to cause terror, cowardice, or drain life directly from an opponent: Doing so will likely result in a law violation of some form, inducing a negative emotion on the min d of another is easily a violation of third/fourth law (if not both). Stealing life from an opponent, could easily be considered to be reaching beyond the borders of life
o Veils: There is a section of YS that outlines rules related to veils.
o Scrying with Spirit: There is no such thing as a spirit/force elemental, but spirit can contact all the other elementals as well as various extraplanar representatives. Players should have an idea of what they are trying to contact ahead of time & speak with the GM or expect these other creatures to be rather unpleasant compared to the elementals. This sort of contact with non-elemental beings comes with added risks due to the fact that things you are not trying to contact can use the link you bear towards extraplanar beings to crawl out at/through
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It's not intended to be an exhaustive tome of magic style listing, I think/hope you guys agree that it's a good intro that provides experienced d&d type players a warm & familiar pool to jump into & does a good job of both protecting the game from horrible uses of magic to make casters think before they break out book of vile darkness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Vile_Darkness) style spells without making arcane casters afraid to even consider many of the standard fantasy type spells like detect thoughts, charm & polymorph or making those spells extremely powerful and turning them into mindrape/baleful polymorph+permanence all the time. "Divine" spirit casters get the "I can start healing for realz yo!" stuff along with some of the usual overlap into arcane casting while arcane gets some minor themantically appropriate methods of starting to heal some types of consequences based on the element in use along with a strong dose of "arcane casters tampering with life create undead abominations" with the different elements creating different sorts of abominations and that those abominations are sometimes reasonably kinda ok. Both spirit/divine & the arcane elements can claim that the other side of the fence just doesn't understand how things really work on some level where each can mimic certain raw elements of the other even while the metaphorical conceptual aspects are out of reach leading to accomplishing certain things differently even if the end result is nearly the same & just situationally more/less helpful.
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I am very confused. What is this?
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I am very confused.
You're not the only one.
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I understand. I just cant see the point.
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I am very confused. What is this?
:'(
I thought it was pretty well explained, it's the elements described in yourstory re-described with a standard fantasy rpg (d&d/Pathfinder/etc) style filter maybe I'm not understanding your question or something? It came about out of frustration running an "open game"* at a FLGS where the majority of my players had trouble adjusting to both the dresdenverse (few of them had read the books). That lack of understanding was made worse when they would get into the magic system & find themselves at a loss for anything familiar. I wound up eventually sliding the game towards a fantasy/eberron-like setting & a lot of the regular players seemed to start having an easier time of it. The redescribed elements are really pretty much the original elements described differently with more in the way of example/guidance aimed at a fantasy style setting. Maybe that helps?... If not, can you guys give a bit more explaination on your confusion?
* Open game means that anyone who shows up can play
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The issue I'm having is that you wrote this huge long thing to make stuff "easier" and yet what you have done is change a system that the people who you are writing this for have not read and dont understand, in order to make it that way.
It seems like a waste when the FATE system is designed for imagination and if they dont understand the magic system, further defining what the types of spells can be done doesn't help people understand the magic system I feel. Also you have redefined spirit to be clerical type spells when there is another section that defines that itself.
I'm not trying to be mean but it seems like a waste.
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The issue I'm having is that you wrote this huge long thing to make stuff "easier" and yet what you have done is change a system that the people who you are writing this for have not read and dont understand, in order to make it that way.
It seems like a waste when the FATE system is designed for imagination and if they dont understand the magic system, further defining what the types of spells can be done doesn't help people understand the magic system I feel. Also you have redefined spirit to be clerical type spells when there is another section that defines that itself.
I'm not trying to be mean but it seems like a waste.
You aren't being mean, I posted my first draft here hoping for honest feedback :). the examples are just that though, a large part of why I included them was because I was tired of "I call up X shifts of Y against that guy." By having general examples I can give with a charactersheet, I'm saved from the inevitable "yea whatever that"* & a bunch of heads hitting the table in frustration.
The folks who don't understand it will usually fall into one of two groups:
- They are new to rpg's in general & know nothing about the dresdenverse setting leading to lots of "yea that I guess" with a character that effectively might as well be "man 1"
- a player who is familiar with some flavor of d&d/pathfinder/shadowrun & needs more help than I can give without turning the session into "and today, the GM teaches some guy, that may or not be back next session, how to play & about the setting"
Since it's easier to just stick things into a standard fantasy setting, I might as well explain magic in a way that better fits the setting & lacks all the dresdenverse "baggage" that doesn't really fit well in a d&d type of fantasy setting.
I had originally considered dropping spirit altogether, but when I dove deeper into the elements, I noticed that a lot of what spirit has can be done through other elements & it felt out of place. It was not until a day or so after doing quick 1 page writeups on the individual elements that the spirit=divine caster with a code more strict than arcane to worry about. After I made that decision, I went back & quickly threw together this rough draft :)
* Usually in reply to about 5-6 different off the cuff examples from myself and a regular or two trying to help.
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I usually just make pre-gen characters and have the rotes written out. I briefly explain how they work before-hand.
Then they can use their rotes or they can use those same spells and pump more power into them.
I'm also always sure to make one of the rotes is a maneuver-type spell, to give them an idea of how they work and how they can "invoke" it. It's worked fairly well so far. As they get used to the system, they can go away from their rotes and start inventing stuff.
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I dunno about anybody else, but I'm having a lot of trouble working out which parts are explanation and which parts are house rules. It's probably the root of my confusion.
Also the Law stuff makes me nervous. Using the Laws as a balancing factor really isn't a good idea.
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I dunno about anybody else, but I'm having a lot of trouble working out which parts are explanation and which parts are house rules. It's probably the root of my confusion.
Also the Law stuff makes me nervous. Using the Laws as a balancing factor really isn't a good idea.
Thanks for the feedback :). I originally set out to redescribe the elements as written with a d&d/fantasy style slant, all of the example stuff is just a very liberal reading of the elements put to words. That's mostly the case with spirit if you just call it divine instead of spirit save for the fifth law pass it gets*.
Part of why I kinda came down hard on spirit is because on some levels I would rather people avoid it because most of the spirit casters I've had went out of their way to play a pokemon* style character that never gets involved in anything & completely shuts down if "I summon N shifts for a tracking spell"runs into a hiccup that requires more work than "and it takes you to the current bigbad" even if it takes them someplace like the bigbad's locked after hours corporate headquarters where he had been doing badwrongstuff.
The laws being loosen/tightened I'm not entirely certain about, but the laws of magic are very dresdenverse specific & have led to an awful lot of confusion . It's not really intended as a balancing factor, just I've seen too many casters played by people freaking terrified of possibly maybe breaking a law & never really liked the fact that second through fourth law violating spells get a free pass on even pretending to require shifts towards persistence to maintain. The laws aren't intended to serve as a balancing factor any more than they did originally, it's much easier & more useful during the game's progress to just rely on "actions have consequences" type sticks
* "Pikachu I choose you!... tracking spell, force bolt, oh something wasn't 1000% effective & you are going to sit there and sulk in silence now until a fight starts when you "I summon N shifts of power for a force bolt".
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Ok, the confusion is lifting a bit. And if I see this correctly, you are doing the dfrpg magic system a disservice by this.
What I mean by that is this: almost every other magic system starts out with the spell. If you want to hurt your enemy, you cast a magic missile type spell, if you want to keep yourself safe, you do a shield spell, and so forth. And those spells always work the same way, inside and out.
Fate works from intent first, and the form the spell takes comes second.
For example, the fireball.
I can throw a fireball at someone to try and hurt him. That is probably the most often used case.
But I can also barrage someone with fireballs without actually hitting him, just forcing him to keep his head down.
Or I can throw a fireball at the stack of wooden crates, so they catch on fire.
In my experience, players who say "yeah whatever, that" are going to say that ten sessions in, if you took an hour each session to explain things to them. Taran has got the best idea, I think. Give them some rotes to start with and if they want to expand on their own accords, they can, otherwise they have their assortment of spells and you call it a day.
And I think an actual spell list might help more here, especially if it includes a few unusual spells with good descriptions of what they do. I understand your reluctance to do so, and I think I get what you intended to do with this list, but for one, it is a lot to read and two, it is still confusing as hell. You can take typical spells and convert them into dfrpg spells, that would probably make it easier to follow what things can do.
Mostly though, it might be best to try to get people to say "I will cast a spell that greases up the sideway to stop him from following us", instead of "I call up X shifts of Y against that guy.". I think that's the core of the issue, mostly. The mechanical side can be figured out after that, but that's something many people focus on, including me in the beginning. And that just isn't what fate is about, it's the story of the spell, not the numbers that are important. I know that's very fuzzy and vague, but still, that is the key to this problem, I believe.
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* "Pikachu I choose you!... tracking spell, force bolt, oh something wasn't 1000% effective & you are going to sit there and sulk in silence now until a fight starts when you "I summon N shifts of power for a force bolt".
You can't track or summon with spirit evocations.
PS: I don't really like the whole "FATE is about story" thing.
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You could work a little bit on clarity, but who couldn't?
I come from a d&d background though and can't say I've had much trouble with the transition. The level of creativity you can employ can be a little intimidating at first, but to get a grasp on it I think Taran had a good suggestion with pregen characters who have rotes already. If you don't want to do all the work yourself then just discuss with your player what he wants to do and work out some rotes from that. If he's unsatisfied and knows why you can make more changes or new rotes. Keep in mind that any element can achieve any action if you can think of a justification and the table agrees and finally the GM is willing to hand wave, so trying to do a bunch to redefine them for "typical d&d" isn't necessarily doing the elements any real justice.
Changing the Laws is fine if you don't plan on playing a Dresden game but want to keep the mechanics. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. If you are playing Dresden then talk with your group to let them know there are gray areas and they can explore them. If they wanted they could probably go and ask a friendlier Warden, "So, if I tried X...is that bad?" Sure it might put them under some minute scrutiny for a while or instigate a social conflict, but hey now you've got a story! Personally, I like trying to think of where the grey areas are and whether it's worthwhile to exploit them.
If you want there to be divine magic Hellfire and Soulfire and any other sponsored magic already have you covered. It's magic with the string attached that you have to keep your god happy. There's also the Faith powers.
As for actions having consequences? Just compel.
Out of curiosity Sanctaphrax, what is it about then?
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You can't track or summon with spirit evocations.
PS: I don't really like the whole "FATE is about story" thing.
I know with the track/summon, but having the elements for evocation & then thaumaturgy being this other set of things entirely caused a lot of confusion when they looked at the elements, said "so it could do a a spell like like..." confusion when the answer was "well technically, not really that's a special thaumaturgy option... no... it's neither an element or specailization kinda thing, thaumaturgy has different rules from evocation"
with regards to FATE is about story thing, I agree somewhat because "story" is just a poor choice of wording, but it needs more than d20 "I summon X shifts of Y" and "what do I find out with [insert skill] [insert effort]?" from playersI'd rather see players getting involved & trying to creatively justify how [insert element their character is heavily involved in] could provide them with a thaumaturgic spell of X functionality than the "x shift tracking/summoning/etc spell" the division seems to have been causing
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I kinda have to agree with Mrm a little here. From what I have done in the system thus far is define story, advance story, even create story, and I'm a PC not a GM. This system allows for story to grow and shape itself off of a colaboration. I dont see how (in at least this version of FATE) it is not about the story.
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Out of curiosity Sanctaphrax, what is it about then?
If I answered that, I'd be doing what I dislike.
Saying what a game is about, in my experience, is generally a way to tell people who play differently that they're doing it wrong.
What attracted me to DFRPG is the excellent mechanical structure and the possibility of truly perfect balance through the use of Aspects.
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What I meant by story in this occasion is, that you try to get the player to say what he wants his character to do instead of what kind of numbers he wants to push around the table. Yes, both numbers and narrative are equally important, but if you can get yourself to think about the spell as part of the narrative instead of a bunch of numbers, you will be much more creative when coming up with a new way of employing them. Once you get the hang of the rules, you can come up with both parts simultaneously, but until then, I think the GM can pick up the slack on the mechanical side better than on the narrative side.
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If I answered that, I'd be doing what I dislike.
Saying what a game is about, in my experience, is generally a way to tell people who play differently that they're doing it wrong.
What attracted me to DFRPG is the excellent mechanical structure and the possibility of truly perfect balance through the use of Aspects.
Agreed, but I'd like to extend on this with my own thoughts. I suspect we might be in agreement on them, & they might be helpful with regards to some of the confusion on the "fate is not about story" & my belief that "story" is a poor choice of words.
I'm sure that at least a significant percentage of the folks here have at least heard of the [=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Testurl]Bartle test[/url] where players are divided into some mix of explorer, Socializer, Achiever, & Killer. It may have been originally designed toward splayers of MUD's & MMO's, but both of those are descendents of pen & paper RPG's making it still apply to different player playstyles. By using the word choice of "story", you somewhat imply that FATE should be slanted heavily towards some of those with some of the other playstyles being an odd fit when that is not the case.
To use a real world example, few would claim that a live radio broadcast of a sporting event is a "story", in the technical sense it both is & is not. With fate, you can have:
- A: A player rather far into the socializer slant that wants to roleplay & doesn't think anyone should bother with dice, maneuvers, aspects, etc because it "gets in the way of story." He gets annoyed when people inject nonsense like combat into his "story" & retreats into a portable hole when it starts if at all possible
- B: A player who wants to explore the world & doesn't give a fig about "story." Things like aspects/maneuvers/etc just get in the way of doing that. He too doesn't care about one of the other aspects & retreats into his portable hole/pokeball when that thing comes up in game
- C: A player who doesn't give a fig about A or B & just wants to kill shit & break things. Since this player is uninterested in the exploring/socializing aspects & has been told "FATE is about story", they play a character that effectively lives in a portable hole until there is combat rather than "ruining" the game for the other's
- D: A player who wants to achieve something with their character who wants to collect things (or whatever). He's been told that "FATE is about story" and sees that enchanted items cost refresh, since C is playing a blind deaf mute outside of combat and A/B are off doing their own things that kind of exclude him as well, he too leans towards mute/uncertain about involvement without ever realizing that some of those cool toys & things he wants to achieve can be obtained through involvement & assessing/declaring a hanging light into the ballroom so he can swing from it shooting "monsters" along the waylooking badass in the spotlight. Because he's been beat over the head previously in other systems for being a "spotlight hog", he never gets comfortable enough to go about really inserting himself into A, B, & C's areas in ways that direct the spotlight towards him & really shake things up due to the fact that such things would "break" thew game using many other more rigid systems. He also kinda lives in a portable hole not wanting to "hog the spotlight" & break the game, but he occasionally springs out into action pokemon style..
In reality, almost nobody is 100% slanted towards any one thing, but people usually lean towards 1-2 things more than the others. The problem with all the portable hole/pokeball dwelling characters is that the sudden appearance of a few characters that were all but ignored & trying to be deaf mutes really causes problems. It causes even more problems if they have spotty/random attendance because they figure their interest won't come up much this week & nothing is lost for them since it's "probably just going to be a minor milestone I don't need" instead of an experience accumulation.
I might not know a thing about, or be interested in boxing... but this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzWynvBLJ4I) randomly selected muhammed Ali fight i just listened to is a pretty damned cool "story" that FATE could handle easily even though almost nobody would call it a "story" (being at work, I can't exactly go hunting for one with a more active announcer)
Haru's comment about getting players to say what their character is doing is relevant to this whole thread. The original reframing I did in the first three posts was designed to help players accomplish just that by explaining something alien to them in terms that are more familiar to them & make it easier for them to think about how to do more than push numbers around the table.
The one in 5 or so (if that) players I have sit down that are familiar with the dresdenverse are usually so paralyzed by the thought of conflicting with the cannon in the books that they are afraid to step out of their portable hole very often, "when do we meet Harry/Marcone/etc, or can I play Harry?" is usally more of a problem for them. Woe to the GM who gets one of them as an A or B type player as the only other player with a C or D type player's first session. By describing things in a more typical fantasy style, both sides of that coin are (hopefully )less afraid of taking the reins & doing more narrating than "pushing numbers around", the game can be more healthy.
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Fate is about story, because the mechanics are designed to improve the narrative, as opposed to create a very realistic simulation(like gurps) or a game entirely separate from the plot(4e). Aspects change the story, they don't just affect the combat or even rolls at all. Fate Points, the taken out rules, and declarations share narrative control between the player and GM. There are probably more examples, but that's good enough. The game is very much about story, but you can use it however you feel. Much like any game. You may be better served finding a different game, but it can still be used for dungeon crawling or railroads. That's just not what it's meant for.
As to the OP, I think your addressing the wrong problem. If you have players who are new to Dresden and Fate, giving them a wizard is almost guaranteed to cause issues. Wizards are the advanced class. If you're running open gaming, run it like a con game. Create a couple pre-gens(already suggested I believe), know their abilities inside and out. If you do make a caster, make it a focused practitioner, write down his rotes and one or two rituals he might know.
Then write a module design specifically around those characters and the abilities you wrote up. Come up with situations where each character has the optimum solution you can think of, as part of their package. Don't put down any power or skill you haven't written part of the adventure for.
Then run it. Dresden, while technically rules lite, is a system as complex as Gurps or Hero, and requires almost if not as much time learning to master. It has easy options though, so if you're running for newbs, use the easy option
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@Haru: That's true in every game.
@tetrasodium: I still can't work out what it is that you are saying. Sorry.
@Addicted2aa: You are incorrect. Aspects do affect combat, quite heavily. And sharing narrative control does not make a game "about story".
My impression, from your post, is that you're using "about story" as some kind of short-hand for narrative mechanics. This isn't correct, please don't do it.
PS: DFRPG is by a wide margin the best game I know of for a dungeon crawl.
PPS: You're providing a pretty good example of what I mean when I talk about insults.
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@Haru: That's true in every game.
Yes, but it goes double for a game like Fate. In other games, the description is built into the spell itself. A magic missile or a ray of confusion looks the same no matter who casts it. That's not true in Fate, where a spell is mechanically only a description of "I throw X shifts of Y at him". And to get out of that trap, I think it helps if you start to think of spells as a narrative tool first, and add the mechanics later.
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@Addicted2aa: You are incorrect. Aspects do affect combat, quite heavily. And sharing narrative control does not make a game "about story".
My impression, from your post, is that you're using "about story" as some kind of short-hand for narrative mechanics. This isn't correct, please don't do it.
PS: DFRPG is by a wide margin the best game I know of for a dungeon crawl.
PPS: You're providing a pretty good example of what I mean when I talk about insults.
I never said they don't affect combat, I said they do more than that.
I still don't understand why you find that insulting.
I'm not using about story as a short hand, I'm saying the heavy presence of narrative control, plus the heavy reminders about keeping a good story in mind strongly indicates the game is in fact about story.
If you think fate is the best for a dungeon crawl, use it for that. I personally think Dungeon World would create a better feel for the shared experience and if you wanted the original feel I'd guess one of OSR's is better.
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Yes, but it goes double for a game like Fate. In other games, the description is built into the spell itself. A magic missile or a ray of confusion looks the same no matter who casts it. That's not true in Fate, where a spell is mechanically only a description of "I throw X shifts of Y at him". And to get out of that trap, I think it helps if you start to think of spells as a narrative tool first, and add the mechanics later.
- I'm going to give an example that fuses this with my "story is the wrong word"bit above where I talk about the different types of players having trouble & talking past each other to the detriment of the game as a direct result of that word choice with Sanctaphrax's ~"FATE is great for a dungeon crawl, but story can go cry pound" recent idea.
- For simplicity's sake "you're all in a bar and you all know the drill...
- Players (killer, explorer, & maybe achiever) don't care about "story", so mostly of the stare at the gm/socializer while waiting in relative silence zoned out until something happens that they care about
- GM tries to wake up players hiding in portable holes in the socializer's back pocket on the way to the crawl & isn't sure there will be enough time to finish it, so he throws in a random encounter
- socializer & explorer don't really care &phone it in with X shifts of Y if need be until things progress
- GM Sighs inwardly because the "random encounter" wasn't so random & was brutally obvious that it could have been tied/linked to things socializer & explorerer had both shown interest in... but being that "fate is about story" they were phoning in the combat & never considered assessing or declaring the ambush starting in the trees as being linked to the things like "you notice the corpses have medallions/tattoos linking them to the [secret society of badstuff], "the GM eventually just declares himself out of frustration
- killer immediately tunes out because the Society of Badstuff (SoB) is story & he just wants to kill shit & break things, he never realizes that he could do things like assess or declare a fight into the socializer's talky talky "nonsense", or the explorer's upcoming dungeon crawl
- dungeon crawl begins, the GM describes the entrance/a room/whatever & socializer/killer sit silently half paying attention, explorerer sets about exploring, nobody does things like assess/declare a prison guard/prisoner that they could fight/socialize with while the explorer explores because they are trying to patiently endure the bone that the GM is throwing at the explorer
- so on & so forth, around & around they go through the vicious cycle of merely enduring
I never said they don't affect combat, I said they do more than that.
I still don't understand why you find that insulting.
I'm not using about story as a short hand, I'm saying the heavy presence of narrative control, plus the heavy reminders about keeping a good story in mind strongly indicates the game is in fact about story.
If you think fate is the best for a dungeon crawl, use it for that. I personally think Dungeon World would create a better feel for the shared experience and if you wanted the original feel I'd guess one of OSR's is better.
This exchange between Addicted2aa & sajnctaphrax is so perfect for my point that it almost falls into what looks to be an inadvertent devil's advocate situation. One of you is arguing that it's great for a dungeon crawl & it's not about story, the other is arguing that it's a poor choice for a dungeon crawl compared to other systems designed for that due to the fact that "FATE is about story." You two are talking past each other while circling my point about story being the wrong word. I'm guessing Addicted2aa leans towards some mix of Socializer/explorer(?) & Sanctaphrax explorer/killer(?), but neither of you are seeing that you are saying the same thing! Fate is not about story, it's about everything & nothing at the same time. If the players want to explore & socialize their way through a plot... GREAT![/i Doso. If they want to dungeon crawl, kill shit & break things, do that too/instead! By saying "FATE is about story," both of you are illustrating a player patiently waiting fir that other player's bone to finish instead of assessing/declaring a link to the thing you want to see in what you saw as just a bone that you didn't want to ruin/intrude on.
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Correction, I'm not saying Fate is bad for dungeon crawling. I'm saying there are likely better options.
Also to address your point, I've heard there was a study asking why people play rpg's and anecdotally seen, that people play RPG's because there is a story. So even your explorer, killer, and archivist, still care about their being a story, but they want other things out of the narrative than just "plot". What that division does it highlight what they look for outside of the plot, or what direction they want the plot to take them. Personally, for RPG theory I prefer using the GNS model, Gamist, Narrativist, and Simulationist(Think I'm spelling these wrong). For one thing, it includes GM's in the break down better than that model and for another it also breaks down types of games.
Narrativists are interested in character and plot first and foremost. Simulationists are interested in mimicking the real world(or a specific genre) to the best of their ability. Gamists are interested in "winning." FATE by itself is mainly a Narrativists game, with the mechanics designed to bring out interesting conditions, tension, drama, and emotional moments.
DFRPG is a bit Narrativist and a bit Simulationist, with it trying to simulate the Dresden novels.
Neither of them are particularly Gamist in design, though conflicts definitely follow a traditional Gamist model.
That said, the mechanics are perfectly sound for a Dungeon Crawl, with a strong Gamist twist, and could possibly even work to create a Simulationist game in almost any genre, including reality. That's because it's a really well defined and flexible game.
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I never said they don't affect combat, I said they do more than that.
Indeed, I transposed "just" and "don't" while reading. My apologies.
I'm not using about story as a short hand, I'm saying the heavy presence of narrative control, plus the heavy reminders about keeping a good story in mind strongly indicates the game is in fact about story.
The latter does, to a point.
But narrative control actually works well for a game that's entirely about numbers because it lets numbers do absolutely everything.
If you think fate is the best for a dungeon crawl, use it for that. I personally think Dungeon World would create a better feel for the shared experience and if you wanted the original feel I'd guess one of OSR's is better.
I've never played or read Dungeon World, but DFRPG does compare favourably to every game that I have played or read. Which is a decent number, including one and a half versions of D&D.
Yes, but it goes double for a game like Fate. In other games, the description is built into the spell itself. A magic missile or a ray of confusion looks the same no matter who casts it.
That's not really true. D&D players re-skin all the time.
In any case, players who don't know the rules always have to fall back on narrative.
...Sanctaphrax's ~"FATE is great for a dungeon crawl, but story can go cry pound" recent idea.
Not what I said. You can totally do stories in FATE, I just don't think it's the super-special central pillar of the game.
...Sanctaphrax explorer/killer(?),...
Nope. Those category systems don't work well for me, because I mostly like rules for their own sake. My favourite things about RPGs actually don't happen during play.
I mean, I like playing too. But I'm more of a reader/tinkerer than a player.
neither of you are seeing that you are saying the same thing! Fate is not about story, it's about everything & nothing at the same time.
We are not saying the same thing.
But I agree about the everything and nothing bit.
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Have you tried the OSR games? Also what is it that you look for in a dungeon crawl?
Almost forgot, Sancta, why is it insulting to say that fate isn't about dungeon crawls?
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No. I intend to eventually though.
Rules that let you resolve standard dungeon challenges in an interesting and satisfying way. It's important that those challenges never become trivial or completely bypass-able.
Because inevitably, whatever games people like are "about" whatever playstyles those people like. Saying "D&D4 is not about story, D&D3.5 is" is usually a way for 3.5 players to express their contempt for 4e. And because it tells people that their fun is badwrong or that they're foolishly using the wrong game.
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..why is it insulting to say that fate isn't about dungeon crawls?
Objectively it's not. It may be inferred as insulting if you tie the concept discussed to your identity (http://paulgraham.com/identity.html)...but, objectively, it's just an opinion.
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No. I intend to eventually though.
Rules that let you resolve standard dungeon challenges in an interesting and satisfying way. It's important that those challenges never become trivial or completely bypass-able.
Because inevitably, whatever games people like are "about" whatever playstyles those people like. Saying "D&D4 is not about story, D&D3.5 is" is usually a way for 3.5 players to express their contempt for 4e. And because it tells people that their fun is badwrong or that they're foolishly using the wrong game.
Well then Fate may actually be your Dungeon Crawl System.
There's no such thing as bad fun. That said, certain games are better at certain tasks. That doesn't mean you can't use one game for something it isn't optimal for. In fact you should most of the time, because going through the massive amount of games trying to find the best one for your group and playstyle for each type of game you want would be virtually impossible. But games are about certain "themes" and "concepts" in the same way poems and story are. They are good at some subset of actions and not as good at others. Looking at games as tools, use the analogy of a hammer and screw. You can use a hammer to bang in a screw, but you've lost the benefit of the screw, and it didn't work that well as a nail most likely.
You can use most games to do whatever you want but there may be a better game for that objective. Sometimes you will end up with a hammer and screw combo, which works but not well or elegantly. Sometimes you end up with a screwdriver and screw combo, which works better, but still not as well as the screw and power drill combo. You're not wrong as long as you achieve your objective.
In RPG's the main objective is usually fun, so if that's being had, you aren't doing it wrong. There may be better tools that allow you to get more out of the experience though. That doesn't make you foolish for not using them. There are many reasons why switching tools is not worth the time or effort.
As to you're comment about people using adjectives like story games to shit on other games, I can't say I've experience that. When I say 4e isn't about story(the thing I prefer in games) Dread is, I'm not saying 4e is bad, I'm saying it doesn't give that experience. I actually love 4e and would play the crap out of it. I also say 4e isn't about "realistic simulation", GURPS. I hate Realistic Simulation in my games. But from what I've played and read of Gurps, it does a really good job of it.
Objectively it's not. It may be inferred as insulting if you tie the concept discussed to your identity (http://paulgraham.com/identity.html)...but, objectively, it's just an opinion.
Objectively, it's just an opinion.... Something about that phrase...
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Huh, this is bringing back memories of a similar argument between UmbraLux and I.
The thing about the "X game is for Y" statement is that the speaker's opinions pretty much always shine through clearly. Plus it's usually just not correct factually. So it's hard to see a reason for saying it beyond just slagging games and people that you don't like.
It's a bit different when people say that it's hard to do Y in game X. Though the statements are pretty similar in their literal meaning, they're used totally differently. And people who say the latter thing generally provide actual reasons.
PS: Looks like an interesting essay. Thanks for linking it.
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The thing about the "X game is for Y" statement is that the speaker's opinions pretty much always shine through clearly. Plus it's usually just not correct factually. So it's hard to see a reason for saying it beyond just slagging games and people that you don't like.
I guess. I mean people's opinion shines through during literary and film analysis, but that doesn't mean that all of it is worthless or meant to insult. If you read The Raven, because you think it's got a really cool talking raven, and I say "the poem isn't really about that, the raven never really speaks, it's the man's despair racked brain that is conjuring the word and possibly even conjuring the raven. You'd be better served reading The Lion the witch and Wardrobe if you like talking animals." I'm not insulting you for liking talking animals. I'm saying that the fiction you've picked isn't the best representation of it. I'm also not insulting you for liking the Raven, I'm just saying that's not what the Raven is intended for in Poem. It's the same thing with games.
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I guess. I mean people's opinion shines through during literary and film analysis, but that doesn't mean that all of it is worthless or meant to insult. If you read The Raven, because you think it's got a really cool talking raven, and I say "the poem isn't really about that, the raven never really speaks, it's the man's despair racked brain that is conjuring the word and possibly even conjuring the raven. You'd be better served reading The Lion the witch and Wardrobe if you like talking animals." I'm not insulting you for liking talking animals. I'm saying that the fiction you've picked isn't the best representation of it. I'm also not insulting you for liking the Raven, I'm just saying that's not what the Raven is intended for in Poem. It's the same thing with games.
and I'm metaphorically saying that the "FATE is about [despair/story]" wording is a poor word choice because players who prefer [poems/games] that lean towards heavy [exploration/killing/achievement/talking animals] are directed towards a faulty assumption since killing/exploring/ achievement is not normally thought of as "story".
Think about it Sanctaphrax, presumably, you like to achieve something through that tinkering you mention, does that achievement typically lean towards a game of combat, exploration, or both? It doesn't matter where you fall on the scale, it's just a handy yardstick GM's can use to make assessments about what types of gameplay that their players like (or players that their GM likes to run) :). A person can change over time & from game/system/group to game/system/group
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PS: Looks like an interesting essay. Thanks for linking it.
I like Paul Graham. He usually has something interesting to say. :)
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My opinion: Every RPG is "about story" to one degree or another. Some games use mechanics which simulate* actions and results within the game world. Others use mechanics which allow direct manipulation of the narrative* - shares authorial power to one degree or another. FATE does some of both but tends to lean towards the latter unless you really de-emphasize aspect creation and use.
* I really wish GNS hadn't ruined some words for describing games. I'm using the dictionary definition - not GNS'. If it matters, that's my default.
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If you read The Raven, because you think it's got a really cool talking raven, and I say "the poem isn't really about that, the raven never really speaks, it's the man's despair racked brain that is conjuring the word and possibly even conjuring the raven. You'd be better served reading The Lion the witch and Wardrobe if you like talking animals."
That sounds like either an insult or close-mindedness, to me.
I think the "talking" raven is cool. If you disagree, that's your problem. And your attempt to convince me to read something else is obviously foolish, because I've already stated I like this.
So why say it?
Seems to me that you either have no respect for my taste or just can't comprehend that my reading of the poem differs from yours.
(No idea how this relates to the actual poem, haven't read it in years.)
Think about it Sanctaphrax, presumably, you like to achieve something through that tinkering you mention, does that achievement typically lean towards a game of combat, exploration, or both?
Neither. It mostly tends towards making sure that rules work properly.
I like Paul Graham. He usually has something interesting to say. :)
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My opinion: Every RPG is "about story" to one degree or another. Some games use mechanics which simulate* actions and results within the game world. Others use mechanics which allow direct manipulation of the narrative* - shares authorial power to one degree or another. FATE does some of both but tends to lean towards the latter unless you really de-emphasize aspect creation and use.
* I really wish GNS hadn't ruined some words for describing games. I'm using the dictionary definition - not GNS'. If it matters, that's my default.
Not going to argue this again.
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* I really wish GNS hadn't ruined some words for describing games. I'm using the dictionary definition - not GNS'. If it matters, that's my default.
GNS?
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Neither. It mostly tends towards making sure that rules work properly.
*sigh* I'm not sure how you can deny that being an achievement without redefining one or more words. For "the rules to work properly" to still apply to an RPG, it has to apply to either killing stuff, exploring stuff, socializing, or another achievement. If it does not, then the only possibility is that you are no longer participating in a RPG or are redefining one of more words to something wildly different from their meaning.
I also find it bizzare how you keep going out of your way to find insult where there clearly is not one. Is english not your first language? If that were the case, it could explain both points if there is simply some mistranslation going on.
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My opinion: Every RPG is "about story" to one degree or another. Some games use mechanics which simulate* actions and results within the game world. Others use mechanics which allow direct manipulation of the narrative* - shares authorial power to one degree or another. FATE does some of both but tends to lean towards the latter unless you really de-emphasize aspect creation and use.
* I really wish GNS hadn't ruined some words for describing games. I'm using the dictionary definition - not GNS'. If it matters, that's my default.
I agree 100% with the bolded. Also, I don't think people will assume GNS unless you use ists on Narrative and Simulation. Not that there is really that big of a difference. Fate is very narrative leaning, but DFRPG, is also meant as a simulation of a particular narrative, hence why I put it more simulationist.
That sounds like either an insult or close-mindedness, to me.
I think the "talking" raven is cool. If you disagree, that's your problem. And your attempt to convince me to read something else is obviously foolish, because I've already stated I like this.
So why say it?
Seems to me that you either have no respect for my taste or just can't comprehend that my reading of the poem differs from yours.
(No idea how this relates to the actual poem, haven't read it in years.)
It's neither an insult or close minded. It's worth noting here, that the poem is very much not about a talking raven. The Raven probably doesn't talk at all, and may not even be real, depending on your reading of the poem. The poem is about a man driven mad by despair, and the raven is a metaphor for his internal monologue. I may also find the Raven cool, but the talking Raven is not the point of the poem, and there's thousands of essays and literary theory backing up that position. You are entitled to thinking it'a about a cool talking Raven, it the same way some one is entitled to believe the earth is flat. I can show you evidence that it isn't, but you don't have to believe my evidence.
Now if you didn't believe an obvious scientific fact, I would might begin insulting you lightheartedly, but for literature and RPG's where the right answer is much harder to determine, might not exist, and really isn't that worthwhile besides on a theoretical level. Yes there is a correct way to read and interpret the raven, but it's such a good poem, who cares if you skip over the metaphor? It works really well as a literal story too. It also works really well if you just listen to how the words flow together. Same with Fate, There is probably a more correct way to interpret the rule and play the game. But it doesn't invalidate any other way of playing it.
Also, it's always worth showing people new things that you think they'll enjoy. Especially if you think they will enjoy it more than the thing they currently enjoy. You may be wrong, but if you're right, you just did them a favor. Yay you.
GNS?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory)
*sigh* I'm not sure how you can deny that being an achievement without redefining one or more words. For "the rules to work properly" to still apply to an RPG, it has to apply to either killing stuff, exploring stuff, socializing, or another achievement. If it does not, then the only possibility is that you are no longer participating in a RPG or are redefining one of more words to something wildly different from their meaning.
OR it has to apply to all of them. OR none of them. Fiasco has almost no rules involving achievement. You could say that the dice passed out at the end of each scene are kinda of achievement based, but not within the model you've put forth.
For the record, outside of D&D, what RPG's have you played? I haven't really been following the thread, but it seems like you're coming to FATE and RPG's in general with a very have D&D leaning. Perhaps even a 3.5/4e/Pathfinder leaning. Not that that's bad, but it does provide a limited perspective in what RPG's can do.
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OR it has to apply to all of them. OR none of them. Fiasco has almost no rules involving achievement. You could say that the dice passed out at the end of each scene are kinda of achievement based, but not within the model you've put forth.
All of them, sure... none of them would be pretty tough without it no longer being an acheivement. I've never played fiasco, but I've read the back of the book blurb on a few fiasco modules(?) in the past & all of them seem to be about some fiasco has happened to your (not so) carefully laid plan & you have to survive/get away/escape/etc while hopefully salvaging as much as possible. It's pretty tough for it to still be an rpg, without those goals being accomplished through some mix of the four things or roping chess/checkrs/etc in with "rpg's" ... but even those technically fall within the three categories beyond achievement in an extremely technical sense.
For the record, outside of D&D, what RPG's have you played? I haven't really been following the thread, but it seems like you're coming to FATE and RPG's in general with a very have D&D leaning. Perhaps even a 3.5/4e/Pathfinder leaning. Not that that's bad, but it does provide a limited perspective in what RPG's can do.
Well, d&d/pathfinder of different flavors is obvious, but the heavy slant of them is due to the fact that most of my lost confused/lost players are familiar with those or one or more computer rpg's that often either copy, or heavily borrow from the d&d/pathfinder style of magic when creating their magic system.
Other RPG's though, shadowrun, rifts, a d6 based starwars game, mage, vtm, & I'm probably leaving out a bunch of random "oh that looks cool... and there is an empty seat" con games & such.
When you look at a player who tells you he's lost & say "well the setting is pretty much the normal world with supernatural stuff going on in the background that people ignore/rationalize away/etc like if you saw someone throwing fire at a guy who threw a car at him on your way to work, you might tell everyone you think you saw a cool looking action movie being filmed on your way in & forget about it when the movie never comes out... really... that didn't help? at all? Can you give, me a bit more detail on what confuses you?.. ok well... are you familiar with, or ever seen, the old tv dresden files show? [no], that show GRIMM on tv now? [no] uhh... Buffy/Angel? [no] Charmed? [no] Supernatural? [no] True blood, uhh... any other show where something supernatural exists in the modern day real world? [like what ?] Harry freaking potter?! interview with a vampire? Twilight? ANYTHING?! [maybe I'm not really cut out for RPG's, I was hoping it would be more like insert crpg setting]". Yes I had almost that exact conversation once, this person once told me they had never heard of "Han solo (you know, the space ship pilot who owns the miullenium falcon & wookie friend chewie in starwars?)" So yes, the original intent was to provide a touchstone of familiarality to people like that & nearing that, d&d/Pathfinder provides that.
As to the GNS, thanks for the link I don't think I've seen it acronymizd vbefpre & was thinking it was someone's initials :). I agree that it would solve certain problems if different word choices were made for it's categories
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Fiasco is not about success or even survival. It's about failure. Spectacular, amazing, beautifully ironic failure. The point isn't getting your character out of trouble, it's about getting the entire table into trouble. Play it, it's amazing.
If you want to make this familiar to D&D players, my best advice is to tell them, "Forget everything you know about RPG's, cause this is nothing like that" :)
JK.
Kinda. Fate doesn't follow the traditional model, and I think trying to make it familiar does it a disservice. It's taken me close to 6 months to break my players out thinking of the game in the traditional model. GM has control over the world, Players have their characters. Trying to make it more D&D like I would think only hurts that process.
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I was a DnD guy. I think that introducing Addicted to gaming was my best decision. While I didnt innitially introduce him, I asked if he wanted to join my game since he hadnt played in a while. Since then I have played maybe 10 different RPG styles that I otherwise would never have heard of if he didnt find them.
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If you want to make this familiar to D&D players, my best advice is to tell them, "Forget everything you know about RPG's, cause this is nothing like that" :)
JK.
Kinda. Fate doesn't follow the traditional model, and I think trying to make it familiar does it a disservice. It's taken me close to 6 months to break my players out thinking of the game in the traditional model. GM has control over the world, Players have their characters. Trying to make it more D&D like I would think only hurts that process.
yea I tried that, at one point I has 3-4 mostly regular players for about 5-6 months I guess it was & figured doing a city/character creation thing was a good idea, everyone agreed & we scheduled it for the next week's game session for it. one player really had it clicking by then & was going to make a WCV/FBI agent, his phase3 was about him hunting down & trying to stop a weapons smuggling ring that happened to be RCV . Two other Players were going for a minor talent/biker adrenaline junky & a pure mortal "Monster Hunter", lets call them Joe & Steve. Joe & steve kinda seized up & were having trouble with a phase3 idea of their own, & eventyually joe the biker's player says "This doesn't make sense, I dont understand how any of us could possibly get involved with each other, I mean I can't see my biker/adrenaline junky having anything to do with weapons smuggling vampires, & that doesn't seem like something his monster hunter would even care about" to which the monster hunter pipes up with "yea I dopn't think I would either, can we just have three phase 3's?" at this point however... only the WCV even had a phase3! Joe & steve were pretty heavily stuck with deer in the headlights through the whole thing. A fourth player wanted to play a demon possessed cop but had no input on what wouldgo in the city except for "maybe some really bad criminal type 'royalty type rich folks'">"ok great, what are they rich from & what bad stuff are the involved with?">"*deer headlights* uhh nothing really just bad/mean, the kind of folks who would throw a plate of food at a waiter because the eggs were cooked wrong, these folks would probably really have it in for my character too">"uhhh... okay?... why do they have it in for your character? Maybe we can involve them somehow with his RCV weapon smugglers">"no I don't think so, & don't really like that idea">"So um... What do you like, because you guys are way beyond the 'someone was rude to someone in a restaurant' end of the power scale & I can't imagine how rude people involved in nothing & doing nothing could be involved in the game" Lets call him Mike.
For the first three months, mike's regular & reliable contribution was to stomp on the breaks & call the police to hand everything over to with an attempt to wash the group's hands of the whole matter with everything as soon as anything even a little bit possibly illegal, even when it was obvious the cops would have no chance & get slaughtered... again. When your players are pretty much operating on "I roll contacts X">"um... for? What are you trying to accomplish?">"I dunno, you're the gm, what does contacts X give me? What do I find out?">" huh?! about?... you've been showing up for like 6 months now, are you sure you read the book? did you at least skim the bits on aspects/assessments/maneuvers/playing the game?" there needs to be a change somewhere to keep things running, doubly so when attendance becomes intermittent & random
At least a D&d/typical fantasy setting might be familiar enough to get more participation
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Sounds like you have player problems, not game problems. I suggest the link in my sig for all types of handy advice. Also check out Happy Jacks, RPPR, Gnome Stew, Postcards from the Dungeon, and any Kicked in The Dicebag episode that has Chad on it.
For this specific example, I have a few questions. the 3-4 players, had they played anything besides D&D? Your earlier post leads me to, no. Which D&D have they played? Have they ever GM'd?
City creation. Well that has it's own pitfalls. I haven't done it enough to really have good advice for traditional players, especially, the munchkin types.
Phase 3 bit with Joe and Steve, even though this game has built in character ties, Designing characters that work together is still crucial, especially with a players from a D&D style background. Group Template (http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/wp-content/uploads/resources/2_GroupTemplate.pdf) and group template questionaire (http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/wp-content/uploads/resources/2_GroupTemplateQuestionnaire.pdf) are two great tools for this.
Also, if they can't figure it out, help em. Well, Joe, you don't know how you got in the Monster hunting buisness? How about your brother was killed? And guess who your brother was? A member of Steve's Bike Club. Viola, connection.
For the stuff during the game, never assume you're players are going to read the book. Instead, listen to what they want to do, and tell them how to do it, explaining the mechanics as you go. If they don't try to learn, get better players.
For Mike calling the cops every time, you pull him aside and ask him why he's doing it. If it's an in character reason, tell him his character probably shouldn't be a PC then and he should make a character that will actually do something interesting.
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I think calling in the cops all the time is plenty interesting. If cops keep getting killed off left and right because of an anonymous tipper trying to use them to deal with the supernatural then an investigation will inevitably be launched. Cops will become a lot more circumspect about responding to outside info, survivors will start picking up Lore and maybe minor powers.
Eventually someone is going to find out what this PC is doing, and there will be serious consequences.
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That's would work, but generally if you're dragging a character into the plot, it's not going to end well. at least in my experience.
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Technically he dragged himself. One of the beautiful things about life is actions have consequences.
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You think like I do. I'm going to have fun with your character in our game.
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Technically he dragged himself. One of the beautiful things about life is actions have consequences.
I tried that too but it made things more of a hassle. He tried to flash his badge once & get past security of a paranoid rich & powerful fifth law violator CEO of a company using undead labor in a private sweatshop type thing. The when that attempt failed to get the players interested in doing anything about the obvious threads (like a fog& motion detector filled hallway that reeked of death& ex special forces type security staff among other things), I decided to have the guy call the mayor & things to call down heat on mike the cop. He kept telling me that he wanted to "get back" at the guy for that & I kept telling him to do something about it, involve him in something, or make an assessment/declaration that leads towards that path with nothing coming from itr yet again whenever he brought it up
That's would work, but generally if you're dragging a character into the plot, it's not going to end well. at least in my experience.
This. It's even worse when you drag them into the plot & they bend over backwards trying to avoid it. I tried Q&A stuff with the folks. "Mike" with the cop's character wanted to marry his character's do nothing involved in nothing girlfriend & her parent's (*who also were rich & did nothing like). Figuring "ok, I'll have her finsd something/get kidnapped" one of the other players could get involved in due to it being more their area & ask for HIS help in fixing it. In both cases, he went out of his way to be uninvolved wanting to "tank"but doing nothing to put himself in harm's way between the occasional foe & the group. After her bringing a problem to him failed so miserably, I tried kidnapping her & things went even worse with the player getting really upset that I would abuse his character's girlfriend by having her get kidnapped (& locked in a lab by RCV to research something, nothing horrible & traumatic). He started showing up irregularly after that & I eventually got fed up one day after not seeing him a few weeks combined with no answer to phone/text/email in that time & said to the group "ok I'm not sure if mike's coming back,. lets just say his character... " and was about to say something to the extend of " fulfill all his dreams & runs off to vegas to live happily with his girl after marrying her there" but one of the other players interrupted me first with "sneaks off to hide & calls the cops?... oh yea that too cool"
I had another player who wound up getting an awesome job about 4 hours away, but prior to that she was very into the core setting & wanted her character to be involved in all sorts of things, but wanted it to be secret from the other players & never did anything to involve it unless I beat her over the head with it.
A few of the players had played D&D/Pathfinder, lots played MTG, or would say things like "um... like finalfantasy/wow?" when I asked if they had played other rpg's. Since D&D was pretty common & in those who had not, at least they admitted to being familiar with traditional fantasy settings, but not any modern urban ones, I figure at least a semi-standard fantasy setting will help allow new folks to be more comfortable & involved from the getgo
I agree that player problems were the biggest problem & that redefining the elements might not be the best solution though, conversation has been helpful in a lot of areas :)
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If setting is an issue, set the game in the never never.
Other than that, It sounds like typical frustration with new players. IF the game is still running try and focus on one element of mechanics per week. Master that element. Bring it up as often as possible. Then if the players are getting it, move on. If not, repeat the next week.
Also I have no idea about refining the elements. Those first few posts were impossible to read.
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If setting is an issue, set the game in the never never.
Other than that, It sounds like typical frustration with new players. IF the game is still running try and focus on one element of mechanics per week. Master that element. Bring it up as often as possible. Then if the players are getting it, move on. If not, repeat the next week.
Also I have no idea about refining the elements. Those first few posts were impossible to read.
Yea I was trying that for months but rotating attendance & a steady stream of occasional newbies that would shpow for a game or four made it difficult. One game I drove down there & nobody showed, I told the FLGS that I was going to take a few weeks off & picj things up in november/december figuring that d&Dsetting might help & allow for easily doing things like "oh most of my regulars are noshow today & I have N newbies just showing up, you're all in a bar and... [insert eventual dungeon crawl or whatever]" without resulting in problems if one of them seems to get it & assesses/declares complexity into the plot & only plays like one moire game before leaving things with a mess nobody cares about.
Edit: but yea, just setting it as a piece of the nevernever might work better :)
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Mike? Have you ever read Something*Positive?
I think one of your biggest problems though is a lack of regular attendees and your influx of newbies. Without a constant group of players it's going to be hard to develop a group of players who understand and enjoy what they're playing. You could set up qualifiers for playing if you can pull it off without seeming elitist. Do you let people who aren't playing sit in on the session to see how things are done? An audience could be really cool, especially if you were able to get some low key participation, like Aspect suggestions, maybe an audience pool of Fate points for making compels against their least favorite players or villains and making declarations for those they're rooting for. Keep the pool small to cut down on idiocy by making them think about what to spend the Fate points on, but it could help with getting the audience and players to understand how the system works.
I dunno, just random rambling over here.
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It really sounds like your problem is that at least one of your players doesn't actually want to play.
And I dunno if I'd say DFRPG is nothing like D&D. It's a lot more similar to D&D than, say, Nobilis.
And for what it's worth, GNS theory has deep flaws. It's actually a pretty good example of what I mean when I say that trying to classify games tends to be insulting (http://It's actually a pretty good example of what I mean when I say that trying to classify games tends to be insulting).
It's neither an insult or close minded. It's worth noting here, that the poem is very much not about a talking raven. The Raven probably doesn't talk at all, and may not even be real, depending on your reading of the poem. The poem is about a man driven mad by despair, and the raven is a metaphor for his internal monologue. I may also find the Raven cool, but the talking Raven is not the point of the poem, and there's thousands of essays and literary theory backing up that position. You are entitled to thinking it'a about a cool talking Raven, it the same way some one is entitled to believe the earth is flat. I can show you evidence that it isn't, but you don't have to believe my evidence.
Now if you didn't believe an obvious scientific fact, I would might begin insulting you lightheartedly, but for literature and RPG's where the right answer is much harder to determine, might not exist, and really isn't that worthwhile besides on a theoretical level. Yes there is a correct way to read and interpret the raven, but it's such a good poem, who cares if you skip over the metaphor? It works really well as a literal story too. It also works really well if you just listen to how the words flow together. Same with Fate, There is probably a more correct way to interpret the rule and play the game. But it doesn't invalidate any other way of playing it.
You're making a pretty basic error, here. And that's to assume that subjective interpretation like literary research is the same as objective observation like scientific research.
The author is dead. Metaphorically and in this case literally. If he had some intrinsic truth in mind that went beyond what he wrote, it's gone. All we have is the text, and any interpretation compatible with that text is valid.
Saying that only the prevailing literary theories are true is just awful, and kind of elitist to boot. There is nothing wrong with not agreeing with the common consensus.
If a scientist were to discover solid evidence that the earth was flat, they'd be obligated to take the possibility seriously. That's what science is about; changing your mind when new evidence shows up.
Of course, they won't discover that evidence because it doesn't exist because the earth is vaguely ellipsoid.
Similarly, nobody is going to interpret The Raven as a story about a shark-girl who fights aliens. But if they can back up a "talking raven" interpretation then that's just fine. Because The Raven might actually be about a talking raven. The text supports that interpretation.
Also, it's always worth showing people new things that you think they'll enjoy. Especially if you think they will enjoy it more than the thing they currently enjoy. You may be wrong, but if you're right, you just did them a favor. Yay you.
Recommending something is one thing. Recommending something instead of another thing is something else. The latter involves telling people that they won't or shouldn't like whatever that other thing. Which is pretty arrogant, if they've told you that they do like it.
*sigh* I'm not sure how you can deny that being an achievement without redefining one or more words. For "the rules to work properly" to still apply to an RPG, it has to apply to either killing stuff, exploring stuff, socializing, or another achievement. If it does not, then the only possibility is that you are no longer participating in a RPG or are redefining one of more words to something wildly different from their meaning.
It's possible that I'm misunderstanding the model here. So, please give me a hand here.
Which one of your profiles would be interested in considering the relative merits of 4dF vs d6-d6?
See, it seems to me that your model is mostly about playing games. But honestly, I play games as a side activity for my real hobby of reading and writing them. I like playing, but I can't fit myself into a play-centric category.
I also find it bizzare how you keep going out of your way to find insult where there clearly is not one. Is english not your first language? If that were the case, it could explain both points if there is simply some mistranslation going on.
No, there clearly is one.
Insults don't have to be intentional to be there. For example, asking somebody if English is there first language (it is mine) involves telling them that they don't speak/write/understand very well.
I'm not terribly offended, honestly; little insults are a part of everyday life and I've used a few in this thread myself partially by accident. It's not always avoidable...there's really no non-insulting way to tell someone you think they're offended over nothing.
But the "we're real roleplayers, not like those awful D&D rollplayers" thing has been bothering me over and over again for years and I've gotten pretty sensitive to it.
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It really sounds like your problem is that at least one of your players doesn't actually want to play.
I've repeatedly considered it before yes, but it seemed rather odd considering he kept showing up by choice from the getgo & continued doing so for several months.
It's possible that I'm misunderstanding the model here. So, please give me a hand here.
Which one of your profiles would be interested in considering the relative merits of 4dF vs d6-d6?
See, it seems to me that your model is mostly about playing games. But honestly, I play games as a side activity for my real hobby of reading and writing them. I like playing, but I can't fit myself into a play-centric category.
It's possible that I'm misunderstanding the model here. So, please give me a hand here.
Which one of your profiles would be interested in considering the relative merits of 4dF vs d6-d6?
See, it seems to me that your model is mostly about playing games. But honestly, I play games as a side activity for my real hobby of reading and writing them. I like playing, but I can't fit myself into a play-centric category.
First, It's not my model. I don't think the problem is that you are misunderstanding it so much as the fact that you all but admit that you seem to have some bizzare notion that you don't don't play rpg's when you participate in them as a player or GM. Like your 4df/d6 question, you are trying to split hairs too far for it to remain applicable even the GNS example fails for you to apply given how far you are trying to split those hairs sanctaphrax. The problem is not that they are inapplicable so much as the fact that you are going out of your way to avoid it. You are ignoring the fact that it's about things that types of players enjoy doing in an RPG when playing them and saying that it fails because you don't play RPG's. My mom might not play RPG's either, but I'm pretty sure I could call her up and say "Hey mom, if you had to play in a game where you could do things like... would you rather be doing things such as..." and get an answer of some form
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Oh, I do play RPGs.
But mostly because I like reading and writing them. Not because of any particular part of the play experience.
See, that 4dF vs d6-d6 question is genuinely interesting to me. Stuff like that is the reason I show up to the table.
This tends to give playstyle models a lot of trouble.
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Oh, I do play RPGs.
But mostly because I like reading and writing them. Not because of any particular part of the play experience.
See, that 4dF vs d6-d6 question is genuinely interesting to me. Stuff like that is the reason I show up to the table.
This tends to give playstyle models a lot of trouble.
It's not playstyle model trying to sum up a game like GNS, , it's psychology model generalizing what a player enjoys about a plsaying an rpg. You are just refusing to acknowledge that an rpg pretty much boils down to certain general types of things you could do & trying to redefine certain words. But since you are still trying to claim that you break the mold & there is some fifth thing you cannot put to words that applkies to you & don't understand the concept the (very old) bartle scale represents, just take the damned test, here's one phrased for mmo with a handy self scoring thing
http://www.gamerdna.com/rails/quizzes/take/bartle-test-of-gamer-psychology
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I'm not sure if I totally understand what you're saying, but...why the anger?
I tried taking the test, but I didn't have a good answer for most of the questions. They were all binary choices, and often both of them were wrong.
For example:
Another player has killed you. Do you want to:
Plot your revenge
or
Find out why, and try to convince them not to do it again
I'd just say "that sucks" and keep playing.
(I picked that one because I think I'm probably in the majority there.)
I don't think I'm some kind of special mold breaker here. I think it's just a crummy test, with categories that simply don't cover everyone.
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I'm not sure if I totally understand what you're saying, but...why the anger?
I tried taking the test, but I didn't have a good answer for most of the questions. They were all binary choices, and often both of them were wrong.
For example:
I'd just say "that sucks" and keep playing.
(I picked that one because I think I'm probably in the majority there.)
I don't think I'm some kind of special mold breaker here. I think it's just a crummy test, with categories that simply don't cover everyone.
Well too bad, you've said "I don't understand" several times through this thread and failed to explain what it is you don't understand. It is not communicating when you just repeatedly say you "don't understand" or "aren't getting it" without explaining what you don't understand.
- The Questions are all multiple choice, often binary: It gives a grouping of percentages that summarize where you as a player of RPG's fall on a 4 axis scale. You may not add a fifth axis, subtract an axis, apply it to a game like craps/checkers/chess/etc/writing a novel... because then you are not "playing an RPG"! I'm not sure where your confusion lies because you've again failed to state what you don't understand & instead chose to post a number of facts with nothing about what you fail to understand.
- You'd say that sucks & keep playing: You wouldn't even attempt to find out why they were able to, or decided kill you. Kinda hard to keep playing if you don't know why you were just killed. If you were just killed because "rocks fall/lightning strikes, you die" you might want to consider why the GM decided on that particular course of action or where your character went/what they did to cause the other player to kill you. I think you are definitely in the minority in that you would make no attempt to find out why you were killed by another player in an RPG. It's rather rare to have one player in an RPG kill your player character without having done something exceedingly annoying/stupid, the same holds true with most tabletop RPG's *calling warhammer an RPG is a pretty huge stretch)
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Not going to argue this again.
Nothing after the section 'break' (-----) was directed towards your quote.
And for what it's worth, GNS theory has deep flaws.
True...but then it was never really a Theory. Not in any scientific sense at least. At best it's a classification system but it fails there because it redefines terms in a verbosely obtuse manner and attempted to make each category exclusive.
It's actually a pretty good example of what I mean when I say that trying to classify games tends to be insulting.
Sigh, people can certainly be insulting and many of the GNS flame wars certainly were. But there's nothing inherently insulting about studying and classifying an activity. And we humans study ourselves so much there are a few dozen such fields of specialty. ;)
That's about all I have to say on GNS though - I've little interest in reopening decade old flame wars. My only current irritation is the need to be careful with the terms it used, they can be loaded.
For more rigorous studies check out the IJRP (http://marinkacopier.nl/ijrp/?page_id=208).
I think we've gotten pretty far off subject though.
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@Tetrasodium: Do you need / want all of the detailed options in your elemental descriptions? I find it easier to simply state "The Element of Fire can do anything you can reasonably describe as being caused by fire." The only element which may need more description than that is Spirit. And that's probably more about defining just what Spirit is...
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Sanctaphrax does fall outside of the "normal" range of what is interesting to players about games. As such he does fall into a fifth category that the test doesn't encompass. It's not a flaw on Sanctaphrax's case then, it's a flawin the test for not having a broad enough set of parameters. He seems to enjoy games more on a meta level, so trying to pigeonhole him with a particular playstyle archetype just isn't going to work.
Also, I'm kind of on the same page as Sanctaphrax on that example question. I would want to know why I died on a meta level, in other words as a player, but it wouldn't really be necessary to plot revenge, or to keep it from happening again, I'll just reroll. My next character is not going to care because he's probably not going to have any relation to my former character at all. If he did then depending on the character either option would be valid for me depending on the kind of character I wanted to play.
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@Tetrasodium: Do you need / want all of the detailed options in your elemental descriptions? I find it easier to simply state "The Element of Fire can do anything you can reasonably describe as being caused by fire." The only element which may need more description than that is Spirit. And that's probably more about defining just what Spirit is...
Probably not really, no, most of it was just for example purposes that might have gone too far :)
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Well too bad, you've said "I don't understand" several times through this thread and failed to explain what it is you don't understand. It is not communicating when you just repeatedly say you "don't understand" or "aren't getting it" without explaining what you don't understand.
True enough. Sorry 'bout that.
The issue was that I didn't understand enough to know exactly where my confusion was from. I was just generally befuddled.
Fortunately, I think most of my confusion has been resolved now. Later replies have been illuminating.
Just one question: were you trying to tell me that I shouldn't be questioning the validity of this scale?
- The Questions are all multiple choice, often binary: It gives a grouping of percentages that summarize where you as a player of RPG's fall on a 4 axis scale. You may not add a fifth axis, subtract an axis, apply it to a game like craps/checkers/chess/etc/writing a novel... because then you are not "playing an RPG"! I'm not sure where your confusion lies because you've again failed to state what you don't understand & instead chose to post a number of facts with nothing about what you fail to understand.
Not so. The test is clearly designed for MMORPGs, and I think it'd fail for a great number of tabletop RPG players. The questions say very little about collaborative storytelling, and they often talk about showing off your general awesomeness to the other players in the game. Which doesn't work so well in a tabletop game where there are only three or so other players and the game isn't very competitive.
You'd say that sucks & keep playing: You wouldn't even attempt to find out why they were able to, or decided kill you. Kinda hard to keep playing if you don't know why you were just killed. If you were just killed because "rocks fall/lightning strikes, you die" you might want to consider why the GM decided on that particular course of action or where your character went/what they did to cause the other player to kill you. I think you are definitely in the minority in that you would make no attempt to find out why you were killed by another player in an RPG. It's rather rare to have one player in an RPG kill your player character without having done something exceedingly annoying/stupid, the same holds true with most tabletop RPG's *calling warhammer an RPG is a pretty huge stretch)[/li][/list]
Well, in MMORPGs (I hear) people kill each other all the time. I was trying to answer from that perspective.
On the tabletop, it really depends. If the killing was the result of an in-character conflict with no bad blood between players, my answer stands. Otherwise it's time for an out-of-game conversation and maybe somebody leaving the group.
True...but then it was never really a Theory. Not in any scientific sense at least. At best it's a classification system but it fails there because it redefines terms in a verbosely obtuse manner and attempted to make each category exclusive.
...
Sigh, people can certainly be insulting and many of the GNS flame wars certainly were. But there's nothing inherently insulting about studying and classifying an activity. And we humans study ourselves so much there are a few dozen such fields of specialty. ;)
People tried to present it as a theory, and for much of its existence it was mainly a club used to beat people in flame wars.
That's because classification makes a good insult. GNS was used for insults because that's generally the point when you label people.
I'll check out the link though.
Sanctaphrax does fall outside of the "normal" range of what is interesting to players about games.
I don't think I'm that unusual...I think many many people would fall outside of that test's categories.
At least for RPGs. MMO people might be different, I know little about MMOs.[/list]
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Fair enough. Even if you were though my point that its not a bad thing stands. ::)
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mmorpg mmorpg mmorpg mmo mmo mmorpg[/list]
ahem... in reverse chronological order...
It's not playstyle model trying to sum up a game like GNS, , it's psychology model generalizing what a player enjoys about a plsaying an rpg. You are just refusing to acknowledge that an rpg pretty much boils down to certain general types of things you could do & trying to redefine certain words. But since you are still trying to claim that you break the mold & there is some fifth thing you cannot put to words that applkies to you & don't understand the concept the (very old) bartle scale represents, just take the damned test, here's one phrased for mmo with a handy self scoring thing
http://www.gamerdna.com/rails/quizzes/take/bartle-test-of-gamer-psychology
and...
Agreed [With regards to the FATE is about story phrase being problematic], but I'd like to extend on this with my own thoughts. I suspect we might be in agreement on them, & they might be helpful with regards to some of the confusion on the "fate is not about story" & my belief that "story" is a poor choice of words.
I'm sure that at least a significant percentage of the folks here have at least heard of the [=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Testurl]Bartle test[/url] where players [not game designers, not novelists]are divided into some mix of explorer, Socializer, Achiever, & Killer. It may have been originally designed toward splayers of MUD's & MMO's, but both of those are descendents of pen & paper RPG's making it still apply to different player playstyles. By using the word choice of "story", you somewhat imply that FATE should be slanted heavily towards some of those with some of the other playstyles being an odd fit when that is not the case.
To use a real world example, few would claim that a live radio broadcast of a sporting event is a "story", in the technical sense it both is & is not. With fate, you can have:
- A: A player rather far into the socializer slant that wants to roleplay & doesn't think anyone should bother with dice, maneuvers, aspects, etc because it "gets in the way of story." He gets annoyed when people inject nonsense like combat into his "story" & retreats into a portable hole when it starts if at all possible
- B: A player who wants to explore the world & doesn't give a fig about "story." Things like aspects/maneuvers/etc just get in the way of doing that. He too doesn't care about one of the other aspects & retreats into his portable hole/pokeball when that thing comes up in game
- C: A player who doesn't give a fig about A or B & just wants to kill shit & break things. Since this player is uninterested in the exploring/socializing aspects & has been told "FATE is about story", they play a character that effectively lives in a portable hole until there is combat rather than "ruining" the game for the other's
- D: A player who wants to achieve something with their character who wants to collect things (or whatever). He's been told that "FATE is about story" and sees that enchanted items cost refresh, since C is playing a blind deaf mute outside of combat and A/B are off doing their own things that kind of exclude him as well, he too leans towards mute/uncertain about involvement without ever realizing that some of those cool toys & things he wants to achieve can be obtained through involvement & assessing/declaring a hanging light into the ballroom so he can swing from it shooting "monsters" along the waylooking badass in the spotlight. Because he's been beat over the head previously in other systems for being a "spotlight hog", he never gets comfortable enough to go about really inserting himself into A, B, & C's areas in ways that direct the spotlight towards him & really shake things up due to the fact that such things would "break" thew game using many other more rigid systems. He also kinda lives in a portable hole not wanting to "hog the spotlight" & break the game, but he occasionally springs out into action pokemon style..
In reality, almost nobody is 100% slanted towards any one thing, but people usually lean towards 1-2 things more than the others. The problem with all the portable hole/pokeball dwelling characters is that the sudden appearance of a few characters that were all but ignored & trying to be deaf mutes really causes problems. It causes even more problems if they have spotty/random attendance because they figure their interest won't come up much this week & nothing is lost for them since it's "probably just going to be a minor milestone I don't need" instead of an experience accumulation.
I might not know a thing about, or be interested in boxing... but this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzWynvBLJ4I) randomly selected muhammed Ali fight i just listened to is a pretty damned cool "story" that FATE could handle easily even though almost nobody would call it a "story" (being at work, I can't exactly go hunting for one with a more active announcer)
Haru's comment about getting players to say what their character is doing is relevant to this whole thread. The original reframing I did in the first three posts was designed to help players accomplish just that by explaining something alien to them in terms that are more familiar to them & make it easier for them to think about how to do more than push numbers around the table.
The one in 5 or so (if that) players I have sit down that are familiar with the dresdenverse are usually so paralyzed by the thought of conflicting with the cannon in the books that they are afraid to step out of their portable hole very often, "when do we meet Harry/Marcone/etc, or can I play Harry?" is usally more of a problem for them. Woe to the GM who gets one of them as an A or B type player as the only other player with a C or D type player's first session. By describing things in a more typical fantasy style, both sides of that coin are (hopefully )less afraid of taking the reins & doing more narrating than "pushing numbers around", the game can be more healthy.
In short, you redefined & ignored the context of so many words for so long that you skipped right past the planet the point was on.
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Sanctaphrax does fall outside of the "normal" range of what is interesting to players about games. As such he does fall into a fifth category that the test doesn't encompass. It's not a flaw on Sanctaphrax's case then, it's a flawin the test for not having a broad enough set of parameters. He seems to enjoy games more on a meta level, so trying to pigeonhole him with a particular playstyle archetype just isn't going to work.
Also, I'm kind of on the same page as Sanctaphrax on that example question. I would want to know why I died on a meta level, in other words as a player, but it wouldn't really be necessary to plot revenge, or to keep it from happening again, I'll just reroll. My next character is not going to care because he's probably not going to have any relation to my former character at all. If he did then depending on the character either option would be valid for me depending on the kind of character I wanted to play.
I disagree I will say this again, hopefully for the last time this time. The scoring is about what sorts of activities you like your character to do. What pray tell do you believe you can do with your character in the game that involves "some meta level" that does not either involve socializing, killing, exploring, or achieving things? Be specific, because there has been a lot of "I enjoy them for other reasons" while giving no detail about what it is that is enjoyed doing instead. The closest to come was tweaking the rules (unquestionably an achievement or form of exploration)or writing a story... but, since any story pretty much needs to involve one or more of those four things, be specific as to what kind of story fits into none of those groupings at all? writing a story & mucking with the rules on a meta level ate not activities done in the game unless you redefine rpg, or what constitutes a character activity*.
* honestly at this point, it seems like the "confusion" over what constitutes an activity you do with your character in the game is bordering on willful blindness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willful_blindness)
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@Tetrasodium: Do you need / want all of the detailed options in your elemental descriptions? I find it easier to simply state "The Element of Fire can do anything you can reasonably describe as being caused by fire." The only element which may need more description than that is Spirit. And that's probably more about defining just what Spirit is...
No, don't really need them. Spirit is the odd man out & that was part of why I plugged it as "divine" a day or so after I wrote up descriptions for the four elements minus the scrying & such.
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That particular kind of achievement, story and rule tweaking are meta in themselves since the characters are not aware of the rules and mechanics and can't be aware of too much of the the over-arching plot in order to keep belief suspended. As such those two activities don't fall into a character play style archetype that the quiz is trying to define players as having.
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That particular kind of achievement, story and rule tweaking are meta in themselves since the characters are not aware of the rules and mechanics and can't be aware of too much of the the over-arching plot in order to keep belief suspended. As such those two activities don't fall into a character play style archetype that the quiz is trying to define players as having.
Correct! That is not a point that should have been this hard to make that it required pages of debate
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My bad, I thought you wanted Sanctaphrax to take the quiz to find out what kind of player he is when he's said that for him at least the play is not necessarily the main point of the game. As such he falls outside of the range of the test's categories, so there isn't really much point in him taking it. His main point so far, and the one that seemed to lead to you wanting him to take the test is that he dislikes attempts to pigeonhole people with questionnaires and fixed play styles because it can lead to stereotyping and elitism which can damage enjoyment of any game.
The stereotype that seems to be going on here is that you think your players can't grasp the concept or rules of the DFRPG unless you change the format of the game by rendering it more like d&d. Trying to create a long list of possible elemental spell effects, changing the fundamental nature of Spirit (narratively) by making it divine, and rewriting the laws of magic in order to make them less intimidating for your players to explore. Sanctaphrax has said this is unnecessary and coming from a d&d background myself I agree.
You wanted honest feedback on whether or not what you were doing was good. I don't think it's bad. I just don't think its necessary. It's not really Dresden Files anymore, which is fine if you intend to use the rules and not the setting. If you do intend to use the setting though I wouldn't change anything.
In particular I wouldn't change the nature of the element of Spirit to being from a Divine source, Sponsored Magics already have you covered there. Also, I wouldn't change the Laws. They are supposed to be intimidating and most practitioners prefer to stay on the very right side of them. If your players also want to stay on the far right side of them in order to avoid breaking them that's fine. If you want to show them that there are grey areas and not all of them are bad then using in game examples of grey areas should be enough to pique their interest. If not, then maybe you should let it drop for now.
I've also noticed, from what I can gather from your anecdotes, that if there is a problem with your players it's less an understanding of the rules and more a lack of investment in the game. Trying to figure out why that is should probably be your first priority. If part of the problem is spotty attendance and an influx of newbies then you may have to recap rules frequently be patient about it and try to help a few of the players who are interested and attend most regularly to get a firm grasp on the rules. In time those players can hopefully provide a strong core so the game doesn't choke and they may be able to also help lighten the burden of enlightening newbies.
I want to be clear I'm not saying this because I don't think you know already, but because it's what I've thought might help, it's my honest feedback. This thread seems to have devolved significantly from its original intent, it might help to try and refocus back to the beginning.
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My bad, I thought you wanted Sanctaphrax to take the quiz to find out what kind of player he is when he's said that for him at least the play is not necessarily the main point of the game. As such he falls outside of the range of the test's categories, so there isn't really much point in him taking it. His main point so far, and the one that seemed to lead to you wanting him to take the test is that he dislikes attempts to pigeonhole people with questionnaires and fixed play styles because it can lead to stereotyping and elitism which can damage enjoyment of any game.
don't really care, he was just claiming confusion with no explasion on what confused him. Suggesting he take the test was simply because it's hard to be confused by a multiple choice questionnaire that gives you a range of percentages for the different playstyle categories based on your answetrs to various activity examples that could take place using ones character & desires/reactions to events :)
The stereotype that seems to be going on here is that you think your players can't grasp the concept or rules of the DFRPG unless you change the format of the game by rendering it more like d&d. Trying to create a long list of possible elemental spell effects, changing the fundamental nature of Spirit (narratively) by making it divine, and rewriting the laws of magic in order to make them less intimidating for your players to explore. Sanctaphrax has said this is unnecessary and coming from a d&d background myself I agree.
Yea, that's not to say that I intend/want to make it into d&d, just crib from some of it's settings as a numvber of players showed & admitted having trouble trying to carry over concepts that seemed clear in standard fantasy rpg's into the dresdenverse's real world with other stuff beneath the surface. I was (I think) always able to ask a few questions to help them find a real world/dresdenverse analog to them, but they still admitted difficulty & uncertainty about bringing in things that might clash with the dresdenverse. Since people familiar with the dresdenverse were an extreme minority, it's easier to just say the game it s in one of those distant levels of the nevernever like the one harry & bob talked about a blue spiderman existing in _(one of the side jobs stories perhaps?)_ given that pretty much anything from dresdenverse will fit in fine with a more standard fantasy setting like a modern eberron(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/Eberron?from=Main.Eberron) with its religious pantheon that is both highly simplified over standard d&d's and inclusive of all those nobody gods that always needed looking up.
You wanted honest feedback on whether or not what you were doing was good. I don't think it's bad. I just don't think its necessary. It's not really Dresden Files anymore, which is fine if you intend to use the rules and not the setting. If you do intend to use the setting though I wouldn't change anything.
I like the rules & love the books, but the setting is not all that important :) You are right that the refluff in the first couple posts is probably unnecessary.
I've also noticed, from what I can gather from your anecdotes, that if there is a problem with your players it's less an understanding of the rules and more a lack of investment in the game. Trying to figure out why that is should probably be your first priority. If part of the problem is spotty attendance and an influx of newbies then you may have to recap rules frequently be patient about it and try to help a few of the players who are interested and attend most regularly to get a firm grasp on the rules. In time those players can hopefully provide a strong core so the game doesn't choke and they may be able to also help lighten the burden of enlightening newbies.
Yea I ran the game for several months (close to a year) with a core group of 4 regulars often showing up in 2-3's with the two most uninvolved/uninvested players having the best attendance to a nearly flawless record. (the others were due to work/school/ride troubles). The work one got an awesome joblike 4 hours away & the school one graduated when the rest of the group disintegrated & I decided to some time off when the last one quit showing up & regularly one week no newbies showed either
I want to be clear I'm not saying this because I don't think you know already, but because it's what I've thought might help, it's my honest feedback. This thread seems to have devolved significantly from its original intent, it might help to try and refocus back to the beginning.
No, believe me I've considered a lot of this & tried to squeeze blood from that stone with some of the players always getting how much they really enjoy it & love the game *this particular example from the "mike" player described a while back. Sometimes just hearing what you already know/suspect is useful when that knowledge/suspicion doesn't make much sense , but hearing it is good :)
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I disagree I will say this again, hopefully for the last time this time. The scoring is about what sorts of activities you like your character to do. What pray tell do you believe you can do with your character in the game that involves "some meta level" that does not either involve socializing, killing, exploring, or achieving things? Be specific, because there has been a lot of "I enjoy them for other reasons" while giving no detail about what it is that is enjoyed doing instead. The closest to come was tweaking the rules (unquestionably an achievement or form of exploration)or writing a story... but, since any story pretty much needs to involve one or more of those four things, be specific as to what kind of story fits into none of those groupings at all? writing a story & mucking with the rules on a meta level ate not activities done in the game unless you redefine rpg, or what constitutes a character activity*.
* honestly at this point, it seems like the "confusion" over what constitutes an activity you do with your character in the game is bordering on willful blindness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willful_blindness)
Kindly don't accuse me of arguing in bad faith. I've put a fair bit of work into hacking through the confusing writing in your posts, I'd rather not be told that my befuddlement is imaginary.
It's been possible I've been barking up the wrong tree this whole time, but if so it certainly was not intentional.
What I've been trying to say is that what I do with my character really isn't that important to me. My interest in RPGs has rather little to do with actually playing them.
(I don't think that this is weird: the internet is littered with people who care more about theory than play.)
And when I say that the test does not apply well to tabletop games, it's not because I don't understand you. It's because I don't agree with you.
The test you gave to me was fairly worthless because it forced me to lie and used my lies to classify me. Its classifications are therefore extremely suspect.
As for your contention that anything you can do with your character in-game can be categorized in one of the 4 classes you gave, I put to you that every human action is an attempt to achieve something. So the categories by their names are uselessly broad.
But when you look at what the categories are actually meant to be about, according to Wikipedia, they become a lot more narrow. Seems that Achievers are mostly about showing off, that clubs are mostly about competition, and that Socializers are about socializing with other players, not other characters. (Explorers really are about exploring though.)
When you look at the real meanings of the categories, plenty of what you can do in a tabletop game falls outside of their bounds. First and foremost, there's pretending to be your character.
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When you look at the real meanings of the categories, plenty of what you can do in a tabletop game falls outside of their bounds. First and foremost, there's pretending to be your character.
not this nonsense again it seems that what I kindly called as just possibly being "willful blindness" earlier was too mild. It is also blindingly obvious that you are not reading the thread. A failure to read the thread & what is being said in even recent posts seems to be the source of all your confusion.
I disagree I will say this again, hopefully for the last time this time. The scoring is about what sorts of activities you like your character to do. What pray tell do you believe you can do with your character in the game that involves "some meta level" that does not either involve socializing, killing, exploring, or achieving things? Be specific, because there has been a lot of "I enjoy them for other reasons" while giving no detail about what it is that is enjoyed doing instead. The closest to come was tweaking the rules (unquestionably an achievement or form of exploration)or writing a story... but, since any story pretty much needs to involve one or more of those four things, be specific as to what kind of story fits into none of those groupings at all? writing a story & mucking with the rules on a meta level ate not activities done in the game unless you redefine rpg, or what constitutes a character activity*.
* honestly at this point, it seems like the "confusion" over what constitutes an activity you do with your character in the game is bordering on willful blindness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willful_blindness)
That particular kind of achievement, story and rule tweaking are meta in themselves since the characters are not aware of the rules and mechanics and can't be aware of too much of the the over-arching plot in order to keep belief suspended. As such those two activities don't fall into a character play style archetype that the quiz is trying to define players as having.
Correct! That is not a point that should have been this hard to make that it required pages of debate
Since you again failed to be specific in what you can do with your character in the game that involves "some meta level" that does not either involve socializing, killing, exploring, or achieving things. You have shown no interest in clearing up your confusion again. So I'm not sure if you expect a serious answer, or are judt going for a higher postcount.
oops I had a quoyte from mrdubois in there 2x. That's beem fixed
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I think you're misusing my quotes when you try to use them to support your position tetrasodium.
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I think you're misusing my quotes when you try to use them to support your position tetrasodium.
Yea I double quoted you by mistake & went back to fix that :). I only quoted you because you agreed that sort of gameplay he enjoys is too far abstracted into a distant meta level to be considered something at the player enjoys doing these kinds of things with their character in the game layer. Frankly I don't care what Sanctaphrax has to say on the subject of the Bartle scale while trying to boost his postcount. The bartle scale only came up when he stated PS: I don't really like the whole "FATE is about story" thing.
I tried to offer it as a suggestion explaining part of what he might have been trying to get at after you yourself tried to ask him what it was about then (to which he refused as well.
Frankly, Despite hiss repeated claims of "confusion", Sanctaphrax has shown an extreme disinterest in clearing up any confusion by answering direct questions, following the thread, or anything else that could help with the misunderstanding I've point blank asked repeatedly what specifically he enjoys doing in the game with his character(s) with no response aside from perhaps "writing a story" or "tinkering with the rules to make a better game." Of course neither of those things involve the character due to an apparent deliberate misinterpretation.
I no longer care if Sanctaphrax agrees, understands, is confused, or is suffering from befuddlement as this whole ridiculous nonsense postcount++ path of confusion he is showing has been a waste of time that simply drives the thread further and further from its original intend with no end in sight.
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If I answered that, I'd be doing what I dislike.
Saying what a game is about, in my experience, is generally a way to tell people who play differently that they're doing it wrong.
What attracted me to DFRPG is the excellent mechanical structure and the possibility of truly perfect balance through the use of Aspects.
Actually he did answer, it was just a refusal to attempt to pigeonhole the game or its players. It may have not been the kind of answer you were looking for though. I didn't expect it, but I found it acceptable.
I kind of doubt I would do well with the Bartle Test either. I'm less apt to tinker with rules than Sanctaphrax but generally my biggest kick out of a game is to make characters and settings.
Also, you're overall tone is becoming less reasonable and more insulting, while I haven't seen anything derogatory from Sanctaphrax. This invalidates your arguments on an emotional level. First rule of debate, if you lose your temper you lose. Also, this is a forum for recreational activity and discussion, there's absolutely no point in taking any if it seriously.
It's already been stated the confusion is now cleared away, so that should no longer be a focal point of discussion, neither should any further debate trying to figure out what kind of player Sanctaphrax is because that's a question that has also been answered. Maybe you should backup and try to find a real point of disagreement. I think though that this has mostly moved away from the point of the original discussion by delving into whether or not people are playing right, defining words correctly, and etc. Which is completely unnecessary for deciding if your original posts are a valuable tool to players coming from a d&d background.
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not this nonsense again it seems that what I kindly called as just possibly being "willful blindness" earlier was too mild. It is also blindingly obvious that you are not reading the thread. A failure to read the thread & what is being said in even recent posts seems to be the source of all your confusion.
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Since you again failed to be specific in what you can do with your character in the game that involves "some meta level" that does not either involve socializing, killing, exploring, or achieving things. You have shown no interest in clearing up your confusion again. So I'm not sure if you expect a serious answer, or are judt going for a higher postcount.
I am reading the thread, tetrasodium. I might be missing something, though.
My point is not that there's something I do in games that doesn't involve any of the categories.
My point is that classifying me as any of the categories would be wrong because none of them encompasses what I like about gaming, and that the test is grievously flawed when applied to tabletop gamers.
Read: there is nothing in particular that I enjoy doing with my character in-game. Pretty much every in-character aspect of the game is moderately fun for me.
(Though I feel I should point out that the Socializer category is mostly not about things you do with your character in the game, so far as I can tell.)
My confusion has for the most part cleared up, as I said. I asked one direct question, though, which I haven't seen an answer to. Here, I'll dig up a quote for you.
Fortunately, I think most of my confusion has been resolved now. Later replies have been illuminating.
Just one question: were you trying to tell me that I shouldn't be questioning the validity of this scale?
And if I was going for a higher post count, don't you think my posts would be shorter? I could divide this one into three, no problem.
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I'll just list a few things here that came up when I was reading some (not all, because it's long and I'm lazy) of this thread.
- There is no wrong way to play as long as everybody is having fun.
- As to System X is for Game Type Y: I agree, to an extent, if only because mechanics (in my mind) have to absolutely support the feel of the game you are trying to run. Running an all vampire based game in D&D 3.5 is likely to be tedious and not fun, but you can do it. There are however better alternatives for that particular theme of gaming. This is why FATE is so amazing, it has a very adaptable chassis.
- If you feel that the Laws of Magic are too scary in the DFRPG game system then I recommend keeping the Laws intact but altering the mechanics by which those laws are levied against players. This is a much better solution, I think. It keeps the integrity of the setting while allowing your players more leeway.
- I dont think I would be able to take that test either. I dont particularly enjoy one type of thing or another in games, what I enjoy is my character. That is to say, who my character is becomes the primary concern/activity/goal, what he or she can do and how well he or she can do it is just there to justify why my character is whoever he or she is.
- I hope your efforts to give examples of the various elements of magic are useful but I also don't think it is necessary.. I agree about the not sticking spirit under divine (again, Sponsored Magic covers this, you dont need to have evocation or thaumaturgy, you can just have sponsored magic and be "a cleric of ?????") for a few reasons. Mainly because it implies that "arcanists" cant deal with issues that tie strongly into spirit magic which is just nonsense since spirit magic covers such mundane (heh, mundane magic?) things as veils (invisibility) and Magic Missile type effects.
- I agree that it sounds like some of your players just aren't into the whole Tabletop RPG experience, you might give the worst offenders a chance to read some of the books. It will likely help out on multiple fronts (a good grounding in the setting, the way magic works, the morality, and if they dont want to read it you know they truly aren't interested.)
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Out of curiosity tetrasodium...how many of your players expressed an interest in the books or had already read a few of them before signing on to play? As far as My campaign is going, I set it in Northern Indiana/southern Michigan and told all my players they were going to play mortals, told them they were going to play with -8 refresh (Chest-deep) and that they were going to be residents of the region, so only a couple large towns and lots of smaller ones. Two wizards, one werebear and one righteous believer playing bodyguard to the two wizards...and everyone (ALL former D&D players) are having a blast. I think its your players, you might be giving them too many options. That said, -8 refresh lets you take some kewl powers without going crazy with backgrounds.
P.S. How many players does your group average?
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and personally, if you're having trouble trying to justify bringing the group together, have them start off at the strip mall or other public place late at night and then have things go Kablooey--hexenwulfen, wyldfae, a crazed sorceror's experiment gone wrong--and then each player will be trying to do something, if only survive. They'll all hae a common thread or reason to come together and stay together.
Finally, use the story cards. Everyone should want to part of someone else's story, and that one was rather fun for us.