WARNING: Much bitching and moaning ahead…

WARNING: Much bitching and moaning ahead…

WARNING: Much bitching and moaning ahead…

I ran a Fate Freeport game last night, but with a Sword and Sorcery theme. I used the World of Xoth and one of the published adventures in The Spider God’s Bride. I had 4 players on Google Hangouts, using Roll20 to write down Aspects and such.

The tone was perfect for Swords and Sorcery. I credit Xoth for that, as well as the wonderful creativity of my players, who know the genre front and back. Our touchstones for tone were; the Ancient World, Conan, Spartacus (Starz series), Imaro and Tarzan….

Running the game, however, proved no easy task.

It must be said that Fate Freeport is, IMHO, a better version of Fate Accelerated. Instead of the approaches or skills, one uses the classic D&D stats: Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Cha. This cleverly capitalizes on the deeply ingrained D&D knowledge we possess, so we always knew what to roll for each action.

The problem was the overwhelming amount of Aspects that I as the GM had to keep track of. 3 scene aspects to start, plus each action, be it an attack or create advantage, usually generated 1 aspect with at least 1 tag on it. If two free tags were created, that only increased the bookeeping. After a single round of combat (each player acted once, plus the bad guys), you wound up with the original 3 scene aspects, plus as much as 4 new aspects. 

Add to that the convoluted math. +2 for the skill, -2 on the dice, plus tag a boost from somewhere, compared to your roll of +1, plus skill of +3, plus +2 from a stunt, plus a tag from another boost, so you succeed with style, that creates a new aspect with 2 free tags….

I swear it was like running freakin’ Mathfinder, only the combat felt much more exciting, with interesting descriptions, grappling, jumping, throwing nets and stuff you generally do not do in Pathfinder or D&D because the mechanics clearly do not support it. 

Having said that, combat still lasted about an hour… 

I dunno. It was fun, but maybe I just need either to play it and not run it, or just look for a lighter, or more Story Game focused system. Maybe if the math could be more automated… I need to play around with Roll20 and write some better macros. 

TL;DR –  Fun session of Fate Swords and Sorcery, but too much math and Aspects makes even a lite version of Fate still a chore too run. I’m either using the wrong system for me, or I need to get better at it. 

10 thoughts on “WARNING: Much bitching and moaning ahead…”

  1. This is why I try to foist any of the PbtA style games on people.  Combat should be descriptive, fast, and free-flowing, and should not require most the session to handle.  

  2. This is why I try to foist any of the PbtA style games on people.  Combat should be descriptive, fast, and free-flowing, and should not require most the session to handle.  

  3. Thanks, Ferrell. My experience with DW is limited. I’ve only played a few times. Still have not wrapped my brain around it. It may be my trad player background, but I find myself trying to work the mechanics. I need more experience on it. Maybe even need to run it, to grok it better…

  4. Thanks, Ferrell. My experience with DW is limited. I’ve only played a few times. Still have not wrapped my brain around it. It may be my trad player background, but I find myself trying to work the mechanics. I need more experience on it. Maybe even need to run it, to grok it better…

  5. It’s hard to wrap your head around the concept of “wait, I just… say what I want to do?”  GMing it, the hardest part of it honestly was trying to figure out what to make a roll, and if more than one was necessary.  Honesty, for any action, I’d say break it down into “how many times could something go terribly wrong but still make for a good event in a movie script?” and go from there.  I’m sure Jason Cordova and Scott Owen have their own spin, and can add some advice on that if you ever wanted to pick a brain.

  6. It’s hard to wrap your head around the concept of “wait, I just… say what I want to do?”  GMing it, the hardest part of it honestly was trying to figure out what to make a roll, and if more than one was necessary.  Honesty, for any action, I’d say break it down into “how many times could something go terribly wrong but still make for a good event in a movie script?” and go from there.  I’m sure Jason Cordova and Scott Owen have their own spin, and can add some advice on that if you ever wanted to pick a brain.

  7. I won’t start opining on PbtA just yet (we could be here all day), but I will echo the sentiment that Fate is really tough to run. Like, I really want to love it, but it’s just too much work for the payoff. 

  8. I won’t start opining on PbtA just yet (we could be here all day), but I will echo the sentiment that Fate is really tough to run. Like, I really want to love it, but it’s just too much work for the payoff. 

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