First, here’s an important qualifier. I like 4e a lot. I think the combat is a ton of fun, and it’s full of good ideas, so please do not take what is about to follow as a broad criticism of 4e. It’s not. It’s a solution to a problem I wrestle with at my own […]
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Leveling Up To 1
There was a great discussion on twitter yesterday about what might go into a hypothetical RPG for new players based on changing 4e or Pathfinder. Lots of good ideas, but it also reminded me of another idea that I’ve been sitting on for a while, one that puts 4e through a lens of Harry Potter […]
More Fun With Trappings, Skills, and Stunts
On a previous post, I talked a bit about how stunts, skills, and trappings were abstractions that had far more in common than is perhaps apparent on the page. Let’s dig into that some more. A review: a trapping gives you access to one of the basic Fate game moves under a certain narrative context. […]
Keeping Tempo in 4e
I often feel that the places that 4e falls down are often a result of false starts. The game may have the core of a good idea, but fail to pursue it far enough. One of the best examples of this is tempo – the pace of encounters. Historically, D&D has had a problem with […]
Breaking the Mould
There is no reason that 4e character classes could not be designed radically differently. WOTC has a clear template for them (a flawed one) and there’s a knee-jerk instinct to follow that same pattern, but I don’t think anything makes that necessary. I’d suggest that all that is really required for a functional 4e class […]
Fiction, Fairness and 4e
In my discussion of the role of skills in spotlighting character awesomeness in 4e (or more precisely, the lack of this) the counterpoint of solving the problem in the fiction of the game was raised and I think this merited some attention. There are a lot of issues with games – not just 4e but […]
Interchangeability and 4e
I had a good twitter discussion yesterday about the structure of adventures that lead to me chewing on what it would take to do a breakdown of a fantasy adventure (a quest, at the suggestion of gamefiend) similar to the one in SOTC. This lead to some paper brainstorming, which in turn lead to my […]
5 Rounds of Nerdy Math
Someone made an assertion online that a 4e fight is designed to last 5 rounds. That’s an interesting assertion, and I’ve had people express that it both sounds too long and too short. If it’s true, it’s a very interesting point that allows you to crunch the numbers a bit harder, but it’s unsourced, so […]
Fate and Its Branches
As is the nature of any open system, Fate has grown a number of branches over the years. Honestly, not even I have managed to keep track of them all. I’d like to change that, at least a little, and make sure we catalog them reasonably well here at the site. I’m starting with this […]
Stress, Consequences, and the Fractal
Today I’m going to dig deeper into the notion of stress and consequences in Fate, and talk about how the principle of the Fate Fractal can be applied to complicate the model (in a good way). A Few Words About Stress When it comes down to it, consequences are the real meat of the system, […]