Fate - Mechanics initial thoughts

[Brian Leybourne]

Hi all,

I'm back after a REALLY long absence. In fact, I don't think I've been on in a year (good to see you all at last years GenCon, by the way *grin*).

Have been uber-busy this year and had zero time for writing or game development, but I have this mechanic that's been festering in the back of my head for a while so I snatched some time out of my day to put it down on "paper". I would appreciate any thoughts and solutons to the issues I present at the end (apologies for the long and probably rambling description). It's just a mechanic at the moment, I don't yet know what genre or style of game it will end up in.

Fate
"In life, you have to play the hand that fate deals you"

Concept: I'm trying to blend random resolution with strategic selection. By randomly drawing cards but then getting to choose how to play those cards, I am trying to fulfil both sides of that. The GNS feel of the game will be somewhere between Sim and Narr, I think - probably leaning slightly more towards Sim.

Genre: I'm not entirely sure yet, but I suspect it's going to end up fantastic (although it could just as easily go futuristic). At this point, I'm really just developing the system and then I'll see where it "fits" thematically.

Attributes

Characters have 4 attributes, each of which is associated with a card suit (attributes don't have names yet, at the moment they're just so you know that the basic idea of each one is)

Brawn/Constitution/Strength/etc: Clubs
Agility/Nimbleness/Dexterity/etc: Spades
Intellect/Wit/Willpower/etc: Diamonds
Charisma/Charm/Ego/Self-assuredness/etc: Hearts

All attributes are ranked from 1-5. I'm not sure how they're chosen yet but I expect starting characters will have a low attribute of 2 and a high attribute of 3-4, probably in a spread of 2,3,3,3 or 2,2,3,4 or thereabouts. Characters wont want a 1 (as will be explained below) and can't start with a 5.

Skills

I don't know yet how skills will be decided or picked but they're be in 4 categories, each linked to an attribute and they'll be capped at the attribute, so if your Diamonds attribute is 3 then you can't buy any related skills to a higher level than 3.

Conflict Resolution

I'm still determining whether the GM uses cards at all of if only the players do. I quite like the idea of only the players having cards and thus all NPC's and obstacles simply have static scores that the players have to beat. In a combat sense, you must get over an opponents static defence to hit him, and you have to get over his static attack score to not get hit by him. I'm still considering this.

Anyway, however it's done, the GM assigns a difficulty (or determines it) but doesn't tell the player. The player must equal or exceed that difficulty number to succeed.

To do this, the player has a hand of cards. The minimum number of cards a player can hold is equal to his lowest attribute, while the most cards he can hold is equal to his lowest plus his highest attribute. I think players will start with min+1 cards. Note - every player has his own deck of cards, decks are never shuffled together, each players deck is unique to that player.

Bob has 4C, 2S, 3D and 2H. He can only ever have a minimum of 2 cards and a maximum of 6 cards in his hand. Bob starts with 3 cards.

Whenever a player attempts an action, he plays a card and adds his relevant skill to the total. After the action has completed, the player draws a new card so his hand size returns to the size it began at. Cards are valued at their face value (2-10) with J,Q,K all being worth 10, and Aces and Jokers are special (see below).

Bob is attempting to scale a wall. His climbing skill is 3. Bob lays down a card with a value of 7 and adds his climbing skill of 3 making his total 10. After the attempt has been resolved, Bob draws another card, returning his hand to the size it was before the action.

When they lay down cards, players have the option of laying a second card at the same time, and adding the values together. However, the second card played will not be replaced after the action so the characters current hand size will have gone down by 1. Players cannot do this if their hand size would be below their minimum after the redraw.

Bob has 3 cards in his hand and his minimum hand size is 2. Bob can play 2 cards on a single action (taking him down to 1) because he knows that he will redraw back to 2, which is his minimum hand size. If Bob only had 2 cards, he could not play both of them on a single action because the redraw would bring him back up to only 1 card, which is below his minimum hand size.

If a player chooses not to play a second card on an action, he may do so after he finds out if the action was successful or not (in an attempt to convert a failed action to a successful one) but can only do this if the second card is of the correct suit for the action being performed.

When attempting to climb the wall, Bob played a 7 and added his climbing skill making the total 10. If Bob had wanted to, he could have added any other card, perhaps a 6, before announcing the total (which would have now been 16). If Bob had not done this, and had stuck with the 10 but discovered that it had not been high enough, he could now add a second card from his hand but only if it was a Spade, as Spades match the action being performed (Climbing is a Spade attribute skill). The GM announces that 10 is a failure, so Bob adds a 6 of Spades and the total is now 16 (which he hopes is now high enough). Of course, Bob can only do this if he has enough cards that after the redraw he will be at his minimum hand size or above.

If a character plays a trump card for his first card on an action (I need a better name for this, but when I say "trump" I mean a card that is of the same suit as the skill being used) he gets to draw an extra card at the end of the round. Alternately, he can choose to "flip", which means to immediately draw a random card from his deck (not his hand) and add it to the first card. In this way, the character can increase his hand size by 1 (playing one card and drawing back 2) or play a second card on that action for free (either because he plays one card and draws back 1 but gets a free random "flip" card added to the action, or because he plays 2 cards and draws back 2 which is zero sum). This extra redraw only ever applies to the first card played, not to the second card, thus a player cannot play an off-trump card on an action, add a trump card either before or after resolution, and then get 2 cards back.

Because cards are redrawn at the very end of an action, a character who has played a trump cannot elect to draw instead of flip, and then play the card he has drawn as his second card - the second card would have had to come from his card as it is only after all resolution has ended that the player draws cards back to his hand.

While attempting to Climb, Bob plays a 7 of Spades and adds +3 for his climbing skill, making the total 10. Because Climbing is a Spade skill and he played a Spade, Bob can now choose to randomly flip a card from the deck and add it to the total, or instead draw 2 cards at the end of the action rather than the usual 1 (Bob cannot do this if it would take him above his maximum hand size, however). If Bob elects to not flip a card, he can add a second card from his hand before declaring his total, or add a second card after the resolution as long as it is another trump card. Even if he plays (or flips) a second trump card, Bob will still only draw 2 cards back at the end of the action.

Jokers
Jokers are worth 12 points, and always count as being a trump card

Aces
Aces are only worth 1 point, but when played as a first card they always count as a trump card regardless of their actual suit and they always generate a free flip as well as an extra card draw at the end of the round. An ace flip adds its value to the ace but doesn't count as an extra card. In effect, what the Ace actually does is draws a random card and changes it to a trump card while adding +1 to it. Thus if a player plays an ace he flips another card to add to the ace, and then because the ace+flip is considered a single trump card, he may then elect to flip a "second" card or draw an extra card at the end of the round.

If a character flips an ace at any stage, it is only worth 1 point and does not automatically generate another flip. Similarly, an ace played as a second card rather than a first card is only worth 1 point.

For Bob's climbing attempt, Bob plays an ace. It doesn't matter what suit the ace is - Bob flips a free card and that card is added to the ace and considered a trump (Spades in this case, because climbing is a Spades action). If Bob flips a 9 of clubs it is added to the ace and together they are considered a single 10 of Spades. Because Bob has "played a trump card" he can choose to now flip another card to add to the total or instead draw a second card at the end of the round. If he elects to draw instead of flip, Bob could still play a card from his hand onto the "ten of spades" - any card before declaring the total, or another Spade if he added it after being told the action had failed.

That's the nuts of the system. Players can predict what's coming up in their deck to an extent because they know what's gone before, but they never know when they'll be shuffling - at the start of the session the GM randomly picks a card for each player (from a separate deck), and as soon as they play that card their discard pile gets shuffled back into their play deck (they keep what's in their hands at the time) and then the GM determines another shuffle card randomly for that player.

My questions/problems are as follows:

1) How do I determine difficulty levels for actions? The average card (taking into account the variable value of Aces) is 7.27 and the average skill level will of course be 2.5, so the average score for a single card played (accepting Ace+Flip as a single card) is just under 10 (with a range of 2-17 depending on skill), but of course players can play a second card (which has a slightly lower average of 6.66) so if 2 cards are played the average score is about 16.5 with a range of 3-30 (30 is highly unlikely, and only possible if the player plays an ace, flips a joker (so that's 13) adds another joker for 12 more and has a skill of 5). As you can see, it makes things tricky, because I don't want to make actions too hard to succeed at with a single card nor too easy with 2 cards. Thoughts?

1b) Of course, players can't play second cards all the time, unless they're very lucky with having the correct suit for the action being attempted – the only way to increase your hand size is playing a trump card and not playing a second card on it, while playing a second card on a non-trump card reduces your hand size. This was very intentional in an attempt to make it available less often, but does it go far enough?

2) I'm toying with the idea of having each player select a special card at character creation (there would be 54 options, of course), and grant some kind of benefit whenever they play that card. The issue is that the benefit can't be based on the value of the card since that means that characters who pick a higher card are better off - playing a 9 is always nicer than playing a 2, so if your "benefit" card is a 2 you're a little worse off. Making your special card simply count as a trump or something like that is boring, and disadvantageous if the action you wan to use it on happens to match its suit anyway. I'm kind of stuck on this one.

3) Is this entire system just a stupid idea? Of course players are going to play the best cards they can on each action (or, more properly, the lowest card they think will succeed), so it means that nobody wants to play the 2's, 3's and 4's etc. Of course, they have to since if they don't they'll eventually end up with a hand full of low cards right when they need good cards, but I still need to make sure players can't just frivolously throw low cards on meaningless actions (by not calling for checks for anything unimportant). But aren't players going to hate the idea that at some point they have to play a low card knowing that they'll fail? It seems harsher than with dice where you accept the occasional bad roll as being fate, but when you have to make the choice to play the low card (even though it was the same fate that gave you that card) it seems worse?

3b) I guess a minor mitigation of 3) is that low cards aren't necessarily always bad since you can use them better when they are trumps. If I have a nine of clubs and a 4 of spades for a spades action, the 9 will only give me 9 but the 4 will give me 4 + a free flip (average of the flip is 7ish making an expected total of 11), or I can live with the 4 but my hand size increases by one. Hmm.. does that fix 3) or not?

4) As I mentioned earlier, I'm toying with the GM not having cards but using static values for NPC/opponent/task difficulties. On the other hand, the GM using cards evens out the probabilities a little, since even a bad card can be alright if the GM also pulls a bad card, and even a great card can surprise you by failing if the GM pulls out a better one. Does this put too much onus on the GM? I don't want him to have to keep track of 6 different hands of 3-5 cards each in a large melee, for example. One way around this would be to use a mook/hero concept ala 7th sea where groups of minor opponents share a hand of cards. Is this workable or is it still too much to ask of a GM?

4.5) What about unopposed tasks? Should players making unopposed checks like climbing. swimming, shooting or whatever be facing a set difficulty number based on how hard the GM perceives the action to be, or against a random card draw modified by the difficulty (perhaps +0 for easy up to +5 for really hard, mirroring the skill system)? I like the ease of the GM not using cards, but I like the smoother probabilities of the GM drawing.

5) I made the face cards all worth 10, firstly because it's easier than using 11,12, and 13 but also because it brings the average down by half a point. Is there something else nifty I can do with the face cards to differentiate them from just being 12 extra "10"'s in the deck?

Thanks guys,
Brian.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hey Brian.  Good to see you here, since I'm hardly ever at the TROS board any more.

Before addressing your questions, I just wanted to point out that you've more or less parallel-invented TSR's Saga system, which I always thought was a fun set of rules.  Yours is significantly different, but I thought you might like to check it out if only for compare/contrast purposes.

Regarding target numbers, my suggestion would be to take a reasoned best guess, whip up a chart, and then playtest the crap out of it.  A few sessions will undoubtedly start to tell you what needs adjusting.  That's the "fixed tn" option.  What about using opposed actions instead?  In my experience, opposed tests are much easier to adjudicate properly.  Sorcerer and its mechanical progeny (Donjon, etc) make excellent use of opposed resolution for all actions.

If you want players to do stuff other than always play their best card, then you need to give them some incentive.  What sort of player motivations are you interested in plugging into?

I think you're right to be concerned about GM brain-drain managing large groups of NPCs.  My main suggestion is don't make the GM do any math for npc-management.

Finally, I think that you might find it fruitful to consider other states than "in the deck" "in the hand" and "in the discard" for the cards themselves.  What about a face-up drafting pile?  That's just an initial thought -- but don't limit yourself to traditional places cards "should be".

I'm intrigued -- please keep this thread going!

[Brian Leybourne]

Hiya Darcy,

Yeah, I haven't been on the TROS forum almost as long as I wasn't on here. My inability to have any time for writing these days really soured things with the guys who bought TROS from Jake. Real shame.

Thanks for your comments. I have had a read through the Saga rules and they're disapointingly similar in places to Fate (almost the same 4 traits/attributes, very similar use of cards and "trumps", etc). On the other hand, there's only so many ways you can use cards as a die replacement so I guess it shouldn't be that surprising there are similarities (plus, I think my system is a little simpler while being no les "full", for a start you don't need a special deck of cards). I'll keep pecking away at Fate for at least the time being and see what pops out the other end; one day when I have writing/development time again I think it'll become an RPG as long as I can get the system nutted out.

One thing I really didn't like about Saga was the way it handles damage. Fate isn't going to be a combat oriented game anyway (or at least, I don't think so, I guess it could still surprise me, but after TROS I want to work on a game where that isn't a big factor) but it certainly seems to me that having low cads in your hand is already a disadvantage, so forcing players to discard point values of cards to represent damage as Saga does seems harsh - if we both take 9 points of damage, but I can discard a single "9" and you have to discard three "2"s and a "3" then you've been a lot more damaged (you've lost four cards to my one) and will take a lot longer to heal than me, from the same level of damage. In Fate, if it's an issue at all I think damage will be represented by the lowering of your maximum hand size - that way 2 players will be penalised to the same level by the same amount of damage although the one with the better attributes will be a little better off than the one with lower attributes, which makes sense to me. Over time and with greater and greater damage, your maximum hand size will eventually drop to the same as your minimum hand size, which kind of elegantly leaves you "critically injured" since you would then be unable to ever play a second card on any action (since you have no leeway on your hand size to increase or decrease it) and then if your max hand size reaches zero you're dead. Hmm, that was off the top of my head and I actually quite like it :-)

You're right that opposed task difficulty is simpler and easier to smooth out probabilities, I was trying to avoid the GM having to track lots of cards. As you say, it'll require playtesting (and I have no idea how I'll find the time for that) but I am definately leaning toward all actions being opposed.

I like your idea of different card states. I can imagine players playing cards in various states and forms in front of them, almost like CCG players (NOT that I want this to have any actual similarity to a CCG). That bears some thought - what kinds of actions or states might cards played in this fashion represent, and what am I trying to achieve with it? I'll take that and mull it over in the festering pit at the back of my head and see what grows out of it. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them.

Player motivations. You know, that's one of the hardest factors to determine, and it probably shouldn't be. I many ways I am going about this in the wrong direction - RPG design should probably be about determining what a game is all about on a fundamental level and then developing the game and mechanics around that. Instead, I'm starting at step 3 or 4 with the mechanics and looking to shoehorn a game into it at a later point. That's not necessarily any less valid, although it does make life a little more difficult. The more Sim I lean my game, the more the general player motivation leans towards "succeeding at actions I perform" which removes (or at least lessens) the applicable play involving voluntary playing of low cards. Maybe that's not a terrible thing - it's certainly the way most mainstream RPG's are structured (players hope for the best die roll, ergo players want to play the best cards). If I lean more towards Nar, perhaps awarding lower card plays with Author rights like Trollbabe (action success = GM narrates, but action failure = player narrates or something like that) than this could swing things the other way perhaps. I need to start thinking about the actual game behind the mechanics and see if that's where I want to go with this.

You've fuelled my thinking on this, which is great - thanks. Would still love to hear comments and/or thoughts (particularly on my questions from the end of my original post or ideas raised in this one) from others too!

Brian.

[Dan Svensson]

Just an idea i had when i read your stuff. Hopefully there is something you might use and it might be interesting reading nonetheless.
Instead of having set attributes the players construct a deck which emphasises their strengths and weaknesses.

*---
Quick example with numbers taken out of the blue : All characters get four 6's, six 5's, eight 4's, ten 3's, twelve 2's and fourteen 1's. Total  54 cards.

Each attribute/suit must have at least 8 cards in it(max number of cards in a suit will then of course be 30(average of 13,5 cards per suit)). Each attribute/suit must have at least one 1 and one 4 in it.

Now we will be constructing someone who has a strong physique and is likable maybe not the smartest and of average agilty.. lets call him Stronghandsomeanddim

Brawn/Constitution/Strength/etc: Clubs:   6 6 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 2 1    (14 cards) (total value of 51) (average value of 3.6428... )
Agility/Nimbleness/Dexterity/etc: Spades: 5 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 2  1 1 1 1 1    (14 cards) (total value of 31) (average value of 2.2142... )
Intellect/Wit/Willpower/etc: Diamonds:  4 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1     (13 cards) (total value of 24) (average value of 1.8461... )
Charisma/Charm/Ego/Self-assuredness/etc: Hearts: 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 1   (13 cards) (total value of 46) (average value of 3.5384... )
----*

*Trump suit is the attribute most suited to the action.

*You can use all the card on hand for an action but you dont refill you hand untill the action is resolved and cards which arent a trump suit count as a 1 regardless of the number on them. What prevents you from just using all your cards every time then? In the above example Mr. Stronghandsomeanddim might have a  4 of diamonds(intellect) which he might want to hang onto for that crosswordpuzzletrap later on(Not sure this is enough incentive though).

*Using cards from a trump earns you a free flip(Only one free flip per action). Remember the above rule that if the free flip card is out of suit it counts as having a value of one.

*The deck doesn't get reshuffled untill the hand cant be replenished from the deck or enough ingame time has passed to warrant a reshuffle(an undisturbed nights sleep?).

*The hand gets refilled after the action is complete.

*5 Cards in a hand. (If you spend all your cards in your hand on every action it will take 10 actions to use up the deck and get a reshuffle).

*Rewards might be doled out in the form of UberTrumps(jokers) that are shuffled into the deck. These cards presumably have a value between 3 and 6 and since they have no set suit they might be used as whatever suit the player prefers when playing the card. They can only be used once and are then handed back to the GM.
Blessings/boosts will give a temporary increase in handsize.

*Optional thingie. Once before you decide how many cards you are going to use in an action you can discard two cards and draw one new card to your hand(bringing your handsize to four for that action).

*Resolution might be as easy as stating what you want and if you succeed you do whatever you said... kill the dragon, fool the priests wife into meeting you in the forest at midnight, etc..  or it might be based on how much better your result is than the oppositions.

The cons are the you will probably need a shitload of cards and making up an NPC on the fly wont exactly be on the fly :( (but i guess it quicker than rolemaster)    Then again henchmen and such might only have decks of 30 cards and lower minimum number of cards to each suit and so on or you give them a static value(maybe add a random card draw to that?) that needs to be beaten.

[Brian Leybourne]

Hey Dan,

I quite like some of your ideas, but I don't see the core really being usable since, as you said, the group would not only need a lot of decks of cards (potentially several per player), but they would also all have to be exactly the same manufacturer and back design, and although I probably have ~20 decks of cards at home, they're all different designs and sizes (and I suspect the same is probably true of most folk).

However, I love your idea of the GM handing out special cards to add into a players deck as rewards. This has a similar feel to Deadlands where there was a big pot of poker chips in white, red and blue and the players would randomly draw 3 per session (blue being better than red, which was better than white) but the nifty thing was that certain extremely good play or extremely bad play could add a gold (good) or a black(bad) chip to the pot, and the player who drew that chip would be very happy or very unhappy (true story: in one game the players had managed to build up some serious bad karma over the course of 10 sessions or so and there were 3 black chips in the pot, along with the usual 50 white, 25 red and 10 blue. One player drew out his 3 chips for the session and got... yup, you guessed it... all three black chips. Heh).

Anyway, side notes aside, I like really that idea a lot, and it's started me thinking that maybe jokers are even better than the 12 points I suggested above (or maybe that's still good enough) but that they're not in a players deck normally, and he has to get them added in there through play rewards. Even if every player has a different backed deck or whatever, this still works, the GM just makes sure he rewards the player the correct joker for that deck.

Taking that thought further, it could even provide an answer to my question about what makes the Jacks, Queens and Kings special. Maybe each player only has a deck with Ace through 10 and removes the J,Q,K and Jokers. That gives a deck of 40 cards with an average card draw of, uh, 6.1 (the .1 taking into account the random value of an Ace) with a range of 2-10 (Well, it's possible to get an 11, but that's unlikely). A lower average makes difficulty numbers easier to calculate (even taking a possible second card into account) and then the Jacks, Queens and Kings could be reward cards or character "bonus" cards added into the deck as a reward mechanism etc (with the Jokers being very special rewards). This may even mean that leaving the face cards values as 10 would be good enough (since in a deck with 1-10, adding even one more 10 ups your average nicely) or perhaps might mean special things which could tie nicely into the theme of the game itself. Nifty idea, thanks!

Brian.

[Darcy Burgess]

Brian, I just had a quick little idea that might kill 2 birds with one stone:

Something different to do with Face Cards, and What to do with crap Cards

I'd argue for dropping the numerical value for Face cards altogether -- it skews the probability curve anyway.  Instead, map special draw/play abilities onto them.

For instance: say Jacks let you do a "random discard draw" -- when you play a Jack, you also discard X cards from your hand.  Your actual Play is derived from X cards drawn from the deck.  Only number cards matching the initial Jack's suit are considered.  Other cards are set aside.  Redraw X cards to your hand after resolution, which may include cards set aside.  (In other words, your hand size will drop by 1 after performing this trick, since the initiating Jack isn't replaced).

Another great avenue to exploit would be some sort of tie-in to in-game setting/mythology.  Kings might have particular significance one you work out your setting, for example.

[Dan Svensson]

Just adding to Darcy's post.
If you want more complexity. Different suit on the jack/queen/king might mean different things. Which will give you a possible 12 abiltycards (not counting aces). Then again 3 different abilities might be enough.

Maybe just a little variation is enough. Taking Darcy's example here. A Jack will allow you to redraw X cards to your hand and add 1(or some other number) to your final value  IF the suit of the Jack is relevant to the task. Jack of Clubs for strength tasks and so on.
Further complication might ensue if you play a Jack which is off suit and thus giving a penalty like raising the target number by 1 or more.

Some suggestions on what the different face cards might be.
* Redraw X cards/hand
* Reshuffle your deck
* Choose X cards from the discarded pile and shuffle them back into the deck
* Lower target number by X
* GM must reveal target number or an estimate(above ten)
* Increase/Decrease hand size by X
* Autosucced or add cool sideffectthingy to your action
* Stop the GM from refilling his hand (if you decide to go with the GM having cards as well)
* Peek at the GM's Cards/players cards

Bytheway anymore thought on what genre you are going to go with?

[Brian Leybourne]

I quite like both of your ideas, but I think I need to be careful that I don't map too many different odd abilities onto the face cards which are, after all, 3/13ths of the deck (or about 23%, so you'll expect to get one almost every 4th card) - too many and it would overbear the rest of the play.

I was thinking of combining this with Darcy's idea earlier of using cards in other ways. How about if when you get a face card you can play it on the table in front of you, and it provides some lasting benefit (maybe for one particular scene). These cards might be ones that get added to your deck as rewards as we discussed earlier, or are maybe even bought as character benefits.

Perhaps each suit provides a different benefit (add +x to all plays, lower TN's, draw an extra card per play, etc) which is achieved by playing a face card of that suit in front of you. However, only one of each suit can be in play at a time, and it can be overridden by a higher face card of the same suit. So if a character plays the Jack of Clubs he receives whatever benefit that grants for the remainder of the scene (or however long) No other character could play a Jack of Clubs, but they could play a Queen or a King of Clubs, which would force the discard of the Jack as well as then giving them the benefit. Kings are harder to come by because of course you can't be forced to discard them.

Hmm. I think I need to start thinking more about the actual game/genre as that may suggest some more towards this, but as a general concept what do you think? Any or all of Dan's suggestions could work as benefits for these card plays.

Brian.

[btrc]

I like the idea, it has some serious thought behind it. I won't repeat other's comments, but as a rules lawyer, min-maxer and borderline munchkin, what is in there to prevent players from deliberately setting themselves tasks that they don't care if they fail at?

That is, if I have some crap cards, find an excuse to do something requiring a card use, then dump the crap, have a harmless failure on the task, and slowly build my hand up to a full arsenal of 10's and Jokers?

Greg Porter

[trechriron]

One thing I noticed under the heading of conflict resolution - It really read as a task resolution vs. a conflict one.  Do you have a vision as to where you are leaning on this?  I think this could be a dandy FiTm resolution mechanic.

This has myriad possibilities. I think this could add inspiration to the outcome of a FiTm resolution, with the special cards adding variance outside the usual "margin of success or failure".

Example:  I choose the Ace of Diamonds as my special card.  I draw one and have it as a resource to play during a conflict.  When I do so, something special comes to bear on the outcome of that conflict (I get extra cookies, or the poker game has an extra big winning pot...)

You have a mechanic poised for great player control, with players controlling resources and choosing when/how to bring them to bear.

I would consider giving the GM a "counter deck" that represents the oppositional forces set against the protagonists.  You could have the GM draw against players and set certain "chosen" suits to offer different kinds of challenges depending on the choices (made by suit) during character creation.  This could be tied to particular conflicts, or have certain cards trigger certain types of challenges within a conflict (as far as the outcome is determined).

Example: that same player from above chooses an opposing Jack of Spades card, designating that as the characters "black day" draw. If the GM pulls that card during a conflict a pre-chosen "bad thing" comes to bear on the character.  You could attach rewards to how the player deals with the challenge presented by the draw.  I would suggest that "bad thing" be something the player chose during character creation...

Attaching a good card/bad card to something important to the player to explore in play could make for a great reinforcing reward mechanic directly tied to your resolution mechanic.

[Dan Svensson]

Greg I don't think it will be a problem but only playtesting will show in the end.

If the players don't care whether they fail or not why would one check to see if they succeed?

Some GM's wont be able to handle those calls and will lean on the system to keep the players in check. So here's 2 suggestions.
* When you loose a task you have to randomly discard a card from your hand and draw a new card. This can of course be exploited when you're sitting with all ones on your hand to quickly redraw and improve your hand but when you got some good cards and some bad cards. Do you want to risk it?

* Depending on how much you loose a task by there might be negative effects even to a trivial task. Lift a stone? Sprain your back. Make pancakes? Burn yourself on the stove. Look after the neighbours kids? They wander into the street and get run over. Write a letter to a friend? Accidentally use the poison ink you use when sending letters to your enemies.

I personally don't think it would be wrong of the players to get and hold on to the best cards for the goal the players have set for themselves. After all that goal is going to be something that  is difficult to achieve... I hope. After all adventurers dont stand around making pancakes all day
Basically the GM has to throw something that matters at the PC's at regular intervals but thats true of every RPG(in my experience) or else it gets abit boring.

---

Trentins post got me thinking about GM hands. IFyou decide to go with the GM having a deck of cards. How will you resolve situations with multiple NPC's? Will each NPC have his own hand or will they have one hand which gets it hand size increased by one for each extra NPC involved in the opposing action. How will this work with Multiple PC's against one big hand(multiple NPC's)? Will they each try to overcome what the GM plays and have different outcomes for each player or will they pool their resources like the NPC group does and win or fail like a group. What happens when you have 5 different factions all vying for the same goals but not cooperating? Five GM hands plus the hands of the players... lotsa cards there.

What about the important NPC's that the players face? Will they start with a randomly drawn hand or will they be allowed a certain number of redraws on their hand when they first draw their hand. After all the opposition is not idle just like the players they will try to get and hold on to those good cards or will they just start with a larger hand size depending on how good they are thus upping the chance of them gettting good cards?

What of static/inanimate/unthinking objects like doors, the sea, slippery walkway will they also have hands drawn for them?

Seems like alot of complication to me. I would keep the GM having cards thing to a minimum.

This brings up another question. If everything that the players go up against is represented by a targetnumber how will you resolve when two NPC's go up against each other and the outcome will affect the players but the players cant influence it? GM call, draw a card?
Or will it be made moot cuz the players have the 4 different powers(suits) of FATE at their beck and call and can subtly but effectively influence everything around them?


Brian I read your thing on letting cards stay in play and give benefits for the scene.
Personally I like the idea of having each special card that gives you a benefit also give you a drawback. Like playing a card that stays in play will decrease your handsize by one untill the card isnt in play anymore.
And some questions. Does the cards that stay in play apply for all players or only for the one who played it or can you choose to give the bonus to another player?
If it only applies to one player why would you want to replace another players bonuscard in play? They might throw a fit cuz the only thing that keept them out of harms way was that card.
Are players allowed to show their cards to the other players or hint about it? How much backstabbing will there be?


Some sort of genre would definitely help. I cant help thinking it should be big like Amber and Aria. Just my impression though.

[Brian Leybourne]

Wow, lots of great comments.

I'll get my flippant response out of the way first:

I think this could be a dandy FiTm resolution mechanic.

Given that the system is (presently, at least) called Fate, Fortune at the End (FatE) seems to make more sense than Fortune in the Middle, doesn't it? :-)

OK, back to being (slightly less un-) serious.

That is, if I have some crap cards, find an excuse to do something requiring a card use, then dump the crap, have a harmless failure on the task, and slowly build my hand up to a full arsenal of 10's and Jokers?

As Dan said, I don't really see this as being a big issue. It behooves the GM to ensure that players can't always toss low cards meaninglessly if that's the kind of game he wants to run (it's easy enough, just don't use cards for meaningless actions, or to slightly turn that around, only use cards when it's important and/or threatening to the player). Alternately, some GM's are quite happy with the players "stacking the deck" (literally in this case) as they approach the big bad of the week, so they have a fighting chance. Buffy used to get knocked around a lot by newly awoken vampires and weaker demons, but when she reached the end of the season big fight, she would alwasy kick some serious ass on an opponent 100 times nastier than those weaker guys. In effect, she had used her lower cards and taken a few hits along the way, so that when she finally faced the Master (/Angelus/Glory/Adam, etc) she had a hand full of tens, nines and jokers.

The form of resolution will help there as well (more on that in a sec). Basically, if this is task based resolution, then a hand full of great cards will only help you for the first couple of rounds in a big fight anyway, after which you've used them and are left with the random ones you have drawn in their place. If it's instead conflict based, you wont have as many opportunities along the way to stack the deck because every single play has mattered and thus not been a dump play to drop those low cards, so either way I can't see it being a big issue. Thanks for bringing it up though, since it made me think it through and realise that I don't see it as being an issue!

Uh, and yeah, playtest will show if this does break the system, but ATM I'm fairly confident it wont be an issue. I do quite like both of Dan's suggestions, especially a failure forcing a random discard/redraw - this actually serves as a balancer since if a player has all bad cards, they get to discard some of the bad ones and hope to get better stuff, but the more good cards to bad cards ratio they have, the less happy they are with failing a play.

One thing I noticed under the heading of conflict resolution - It really read as a task resolution vs. a conflict one.  Do you have a vision as to where you are leaning on this?

I'm still on the fence as to task- or conflict-based, as I think either would actually work pretty well (see my comment just above to Greg). I'm kind of leaning towards task based, although that's probably just because I like playing with cards and dice and whathaveyou and making the system task-based means you play more cards more often, which is part of the fun for me.

I'm still mulling genre as well, although at the moment it's quite fun developing the system (or at least the bones of it) without genre getting in the way, as it were. What we have so far is fairly generic and can later have elements of the game threaded into it (effects of special cards, et al).

This has myriad possibilities. I think this could add inspiration to the outcome of a FiTm resolution, with the special cards adding variance outside the usual "margin of success or failure".

Example:  I choose the Ace of Diamonds as my special card.  I draw one and have it as a resource to play during a conflict.  When I do so, something special comes to bear on the outcome of that conflict (I get extra cookies, or the poker game has an extra big winning pot...)

You have a mechanic poised for great player control, with players controlling resources and choosing when/how to bring them to bear.

Yes, that's kind of where I was going with my earlier comment about player special cards. The trick is determining what's not too overpowered and what's not too mundane :-) Also, if the system is task-based then special cards will come out a lot more commonly (since you'll cycle through your deck quicker) so they have to be less special or last for much shorter periods of time.

I would consider giving the GM a "counter deck" that represents the oppositional forces set against the protagonists.  You could have the GM draw against players and set certain "chosen" suits to offer different kinds of challenges depending on the choices (made by suit) during character creation.  This could be tied to particular conflicts, or have certain cards trigger certain types of challenges within a conflict (as far as the outcome is determined).

That was kid of where I was heading originally, but I want to keep the GM's card management fairly sinple (if he uses cards at all) so he's not overwhelmed. I'll keep it in the back of my head for now.

Trentins post got me thinking about GM hands. IFyou decide to go with the GM having a deck of cards. How will you resolve situations with multiple NPC's? Will each NPC have his own hand or will they have one hand which gets it hand size increased by one for each extra NPC involved in the opposing action. How will this work with Multiple PC's against one big hand(multiple NPC's)? Will they each try to overcome what the GM plays and have different outcomes for each player or will they pool their resources like the NPC group does and win or fail like a group. What happens when you have 5 different factions all vying for the same goals but not cooperating? Five GM hands plus the hands of the players... lotsa cards there.

Still thinking through GM cards. If opponents use cards, then I think the GM will have one deck and one hand for groups of mooks, with the hand getting larger depending on the number of members in the group, sounding kind of 7th seaish in some ways) and important (named) opponents would get their own hand, but probably all drawn from the same deck as the mook hands etc. This precludes the idea of NPC's using special cards but I quite like that as a player-only benefit and it still doesn't prevent "counter cards" (as per Terntin's suggestion) although it maybe makes them a little commonly occurring if the GM pulls lots of hands and redraws from the same deck. Hmm.. maybe the GM makes his deck for this by mixing 2 decks of cards, that immediately halves any special cards that can ome out if there are only one of each of those but 2 of every other card.

And then extra special NPC's (the big guy at the end, or whatever) may even have his own deck (prepared ahead of time) which the GM then pulls out during a conflict with that NPC. Hmm, that might work?

What of static/inanimate/unthinking objects like doors, the sea, slippery walkway will they also have hands drawn for them?

I'm leaning back towards cards for this kind of thing since it makes smoother probabilities, and also means that the players can sometimes get away with a low card. So I think static difficulty tasks like this will probably have a single card drawn and a modifier applied to it. The GM would draw this ahead of time so all payers have the same difficulty and also so the GM can let the players know the kind of difficulty they face.

E.G: Three companions are fleeing from something nasty and they come across a narrow bridge across a ravine, covered with ice and snow. The GM determines that this should be tricky to cross, so he applies a difficulty modifier of +3 to it and draws a card. Drawing a nine, he informs the players that it looks like a very difficult crossing (since he knows their difficulty with be 12) and explains how the rain and hail have formed a hard slippery ice shelf that is just starting to melt so it's wet - the players now choose their cards accordingly. If the GM draws a 2 instead, he describes an icy crossing that is so old and dry that it's started to crack and stones and pebles have lodged in the cracks making the crossing look a little safer, the players can now cloose slightly lower cards perhaps.

This brings up another question. If everything that the players go up against is represented by a targetnumber how will you resolve when two NPC's go up against each other and the outcome will affect the players but the players cant influence it? GM call, draw a card?
Or will it be made moot cuz the players have the 4 different powers(suits) of FATE at their beck and call and can subtly but effectively influence everything around them? ;)

I'm leaning towards cards (but not many) as I said above, but I really like the idea that players could influence NPC actions to benefit themselves, sounds like a perfect example of fate working (or not) for the players. Maybe the players can play cards on NPC (hell, maybe even on other PC's) actions, but only if it's trump for that action and it never generates a redraw, so players wont do it a lot since they want to keep their hand large, but it's a way of assisitng another player or influencing actions normally out of their control. What do you think? Of course, this would have to be blind (they could actually accidentally (or intentionally) make things worse for the NPC by playing a lower card than the one he had drawn. What do you think?

Addendum: Players can't play cards for an NPC they are presently conflicting against, it's too much power to be able to use a high card to attack an NPC and simultaneously play a low card for his defense :-).

Brian I read your thing on letting cards stay in play and give benefits for the scene.
Personally I like the idea of having each special card that gives you a benefit also give you a drawback. Like playing a card that stays in play will decrease your handsize by one untill the card isnt in play anymore.
And some questions. Does the cards that stay in play apply for all players or only for the one who played it or can you choose to give the bonus to another player?
If it only applies to one player why would you want to replace another players bonuscard in play? They might throw a fit cuz the only thing that keept them out of harms way was that card.
Are players allowed to show their cards to the other players or hint about it? How much backstabbing will there be? ;)

Yes, I want to avoid causing issues between players. I was thinking that a player who plays a Jack of Spades (or whatever) only gets the benefit himself and another player can't play that same card, but could play a Jack of Hearts and so on (usual RPG groups cluster around 4 players, so ith 4 suits that could work out well; players who have the same suited special cards have to hope they get the card out first). I'm thinking players can't force a discard of another player having that card in a lower rank, but can out trump NPC's (and vice versa). I'm not sure yet how this would work yet, however, I'm still thinking it through. After all the great suggestions I've had so far there's a lot running around in my head :-)

Some sort of genre would definitely help. I cant help thinking it should be big like Amber and Aria. Just my impression though.

That's funny, I was just thinking of Amber today, but on reflection I don't think it'l be anything so grandeoise. I have a lot of thoughts running through my head but have not nailed any of them down yet, I want to take my time over thinking of genre/style of game - this will *not* be a heartbreaker :-)

Brian.

[Brian Leybourne]

Hmm.. how about this for the face cards:

There are a number of special benefits for each attribute/suit that can be bought. Each one has three different levels of effect. Buying the first level lets you add a Jack of that suit to your deck, buying the next level replaces the jack with the queen, and finally the king. Although there will be many different, say, Intellect abilities that can be bought, a character can only ever choose one, and take it up through the three levels, but he can also have one special ability for each of the other three suits.

There is no concept of trumping other players etc, these are individual. NPC's can have them and some special NPC's might even get to start with them already in play etc.

So, for eample (totally off the top of my head) you may have one kind of like:

Fast Talker (Hearts; Spirit/Charasma/whatever I call it)
This card gets added to your play deck and may be played face up on the table from your hand. This is not an action and the card is not replaced (but max/min hand size doesn't change so you can re-increase your hand size as usual). The benefit granted lasts until your next reshuffle (the card is discarded and shuffled with everything else).
Jack: Add +2 to all action plays involving convincing someone of something ('aint I so eloquent? *grin*)
Queen: Add +4 to all action plays involving blah blah
King: You may add +6 OR a free flip to all action plays involving blah blah

A character with fast talker couldn't have another Hearts special ability but could have one from each of the other three suits, so at best he could end up with up to 4 cards in play in front of him. Different cards might be worth varying benefit, and may get discarded for varying reasons (really powerful ones might only last a certain number of turns or "uses", weaker ones might remain for an entire scene even if the hand is reshuffled, etc.

If one of these cards comes up as a flip, or if the player chooses to play it as an action instead of for it's special benefit, it counts as a 10 of it's own suit. Ooh.. another possibility is that a player could play one of these cards to force a discard of the same (or lower) card of an NPC (or another player if they are in conflict), so if you have the Queen of Clubs out and it's giving you some great ability, I could play my own Queen or King of Clubs (not Jack) and both would get discarded, I have to decide if the benefit I lose by discarding my card and not playing it on the table is better or worse than depriving you of yours.

Another example of a more powerful one (again off the top of my head)
Swift (Spades; Nimbleness/Agility/whatever)
This card is played from the hand onto the table. At the time it is played, flip a random card and place it beside it. The value of the flipped card is the number of actions this card may be used for, after which it is discarded (or when a shuffle comes up...). Each time it is used (successful or not) cover up one of the symbols on the flipped card with the face card, when they are all covered, discard both cards.
Jack: You may add +2 to all 2nd cards played as long as they are trump for that action.
Queen: You may add +4 to all 2nd cards played that are trump or +2 to non-trump 2nd cards.
King: As Queen, but you may also use up one "use" of this ability to view the top card of your play deck (i.e. the one you will next pick up or flip).

The examples are totally off the top of my head and probably crap, but you get the idea. These kinds of abilities can also be nicely tailored to the final game/genre as well.

Thoughts?

Brian.

[Dan Svensson]

I like it. Buuuut I would let the players have up to three abilties per suit(one for each face card). Also they cant buy the second one untill the first ability is at Queen level and they can't get the third ability untill the first one is at King level and the second at Queen level. The First ability can go to King level, the second can go to Queen level and the third can only go to Jack level.

Example: You might have the first abilty at King level and the second ability still at Jack level but you cant buy the third ability untill the second ability is raised to Queen level.

Maybe one ability is enough but I like the increased character options this gives.

[Brian Leybourne]

The only reason I didn't go with something like that was a concern over having too many face cards in the deck. If players can have 3 abilities per suit then they can (eventually) have all 12 face cards in their deck, which is a quarter of the deck. This means a lot of really high cards coming out all the time (the average card value goes up by 1.5).

Of course, it'll take them a long time to get to that and cost a lot of <whatever currency I use>, so that might not be an issue. I guess the only way to know is to playtest it both ways and see how it plays.

Hmm... another option is instead of capping the number of abilities at the suits, make a hard cap. You can have 6 character abilities total, say, so if you want JQK in 2 suits that's up to you, or if you want KKKKQQ then that's fine too, etc. This allows players who want to specialise in a certain aspect (e.g. all mental abilities, so lots of heart and diamond specials) to do so, and also Jack-of-all-trades characters are accommodated for too.

I think it might be time for a second draft of the base rules including everything we've talked about so far!

Brian.