My God what an effort in futility this is.

I think this is the only part of what you had to say that I agree with. What point is there in posting this? You've managed to somehow determine that the system sucks without even playing the updated version of it. That's like saying "ADnD sucked, so 4 will be crap."

Wait until you actually play the game before making judgements on it... or better yet, don't. I honestly don't want you representing FATE players. Play something else instead. I hear DnD is safe and comfortable for people who don't like change or innovation. It'd be great for you and you'd fit right in.

Iago already showed you the door, if you haven't left yet I'll be glad to hold it open for you.

So you're still using the basic pyramid, just with more points given per phase?

I guess I'll have to dig back into the pyramid setup and see if I can make it work for my players. I think one of my big problems has been my habit (from my old WoD days) of handing out experience points on a per-game basis, which really makes modifying a pyramid into a pain. I think I'll shelve that in lieu of a more "level" like payoff where they get an aspect and the skill points all at once, and adapt the flexible pyramid system from the "pyramid reloaded" doc you put up for 2.0. Let things decrease as well as increase and let people swap things out that they don't end up using.

Thanks for the help.

I think one of the biggest things here is flexibility. It's been said a few times already in this thread and in my experience it routinely separates the games I enjoyed from the games I did not, on both sides of the table.

I have actually introduced a thing where I spontaneously hand out XP (A free skill point or a few FATE points usually) to any player who completely throws me off with the creativity of their solutions. The other DMs I play with have picked it up too. Last time I recieved one was in a DnD game where I used an unconcious (but not yet dead) beholder as an antimagic gun. (The big eye still works until it actually dies!) Completely broke the encounter, but the DM was totally cool with it and had some badguys retreat because their magic didn't work.



I'm a very character driven writer, so my method usually involved writing the campaign as if my NPCs were PC. What is their longterm plan? what do they have to do to pull it off? what are the environments they'll be doing them in? What's their timetable? Who is the most critical in various areas?

Then when the players stumble into it I have solid objectives for my NPCs regardless of how the characters may interfere with their plots. It gives both sides of the encounter equal narrative momentum and importance, without making the game into a railroad.

Example:The NPCs really want to assemble the Seven Shards of the Heavens to summon an outer god. The shards are in various temples scattered around the world undeground, except for one which is the Louvre as part of a larger scupture. They plan to gather the seven seperately, ending with the Louvre one since it's actually harder to find the current location of than the ones still in the temples.

This is a nice broad storyline that would work equally well as a PC based adventure, which in my mind is the hallmark of a convincing evil scheme.

If for example, the players get to a shard first, or show up at the same time, we now have an encounter between those NPCs and the players. Perhaps the NPCs now attack the players at their home base to recover the shard, or try and trick them into using it as part of their ritual. Maybe the players don't even take interest in this plotline! That's cool, it'll still happen and they'll have to deal with the summoning ritual directly later which is a pretty cool adventure/encounter on its own. Or maybe they NEVER get involved, and some other group of heroes deals with it, or the Gods get summoned and start their dominion over the earth. Look ma, new BBEGs!

I played in a game where this was done rather expertly in that there was a civil war brewing between two factions (I think it was some halflings and some humans) and he was trying to get us involved in it. We didn't bite, and went off questing after a magic gem. When we got back the war had broken out, and we had to help settle it before we could recieve our reward for getting the gem. Good times and really helped create the feeling of a real world.

~nodnod~ I did something similar in a starwars game once. It was based off FATE 1.0, and a "force user" had aspects (that would currently be called "stunts") that allowed access to certain areas of the Force. (like mind control and such) but the actual SKILLS behind the force were "power" "control" and "empathy" of which the most relevant was used on any given roll. Helping someone else jump with the force was power more than empathy, but using the force to speed them up in combat was empathy, whereas flying your weapon over to protect them was control. Was pretty interesting gameplay and to date the most successful game I have ever run.

I definitely liked the "slowing people down" aspect of the pyramid system, but I ran into quite a few players who couldn't wrap their heads around balancing their pyramids. It really detracted from the game experience for them, and they started wishing they could "just level their character up like in DnD"... which scared me silly cause I hate DnD. I came up with a nice alternative that creates almost the same mechanic, but also makes room for *slightly* more specialized characters that don't have quite as wide a base. In a single sentence: "You must wait a number of phases equal to a skill's level before you may raise that skill again, and you may not raise a skill more than once in the same phase"

This means that you can relatively quickly raise your skills to "good", taking the same skill two phases in a row, but after that, you must wait at least a phase before raising it higher, (so your character could achieve a "great" on their 4th phase) and two phases after that, and so on. End result: nothing above a "great" at the start of a typical 5-phase character creation, and only a couple skills that the character has been practicing their entire life qualify. More importantly to my problem, the advancement of a given skill is no longer inherently tied to the levels of all the other skills, resulting in significantly less "bookkeeping" when it comes time to advance a character. I do miss the "how does basketweaving help my swordplay" explanation, but my players seem to enjoy it quite a bit more.

As far as staying true to the system, in my experience the skill-lists that result are almost always pyramids or lower tiered "mesas" anyways, but every now and then you get a fairly specialized character with only 6 or 7 skills that are all in the good/great area. A classic specialist who has their own unique gameplay challenges to deal with, which I think actually adds to the game by allowing characters with relatively broad/narrow skillsets to exist, and creating less "overlap" between character's skills so that each player feels like they're more unique.

This was kinda based off the idea that when you first start learning a skill in real life, you make progress quickly because there is so much to learn, and just getting all the basics down will significantly improve your results in that area. But as you become more proficient, raising yourself above that level takes more time and dedication, teachers become harder to find, and a lot of time you have to start inventing your own methods or techniques, resulting in longer time between discrete improvements.

Thoughts as to how this would work for a magic advancement system?

You would definitely be setting yourself up to write a lot about the world. You'd have to come up with a specific vision of that future and communicate it clearly to your players. Perhaps the magical world flowed over into the realm of the mundies (to use Fable-speak) and we're now talking post-apocolyptic version of the dresdenverse. Maybe the Vampires won and dominated society. Perhaps the mundies found out and started exterminating magical creatures a la the Technocracy from WoD?

That last one could make for some awesome dresden fights. How does magic fight lasers? What would a teleporter into the Nevernever look like? You could even take a CoC type approach if you start incorporating regular humans into things. A wetworks squad assigned to the Nevernever would make a badass player party.

Yeah, Agreed. Just knowing that this thing is almost done is thrilling news. I've been waiting for this game ever since.... well... honestly, It's probably been what I was waiting for ever since my first game of WoD Mage, but I'll say since I read my first DF book four years ago.

And the elemental IS going to be made out of local water. Unfortunately it's lake water, from a large frozen lake... that I plan to have the players standing on when it strikes. I'm a mean, mean GM sometimes. :3 And no, it won't have the same volume as the lake. That'd be just a bit too ridiculous for me. I'd probably class it as "large" in DnD terms, but being able to crack the ice and appear from anywhere will suck, in addition to the fact that water at that temp can kill a person in about 3-4 minutes after exposure. I think they're also planning to park their car on the ice, which is where they keep a lot of their gear. Should suck quite a bit to be them this week. ~evil GM laugh~