Quote from: Tommy Brownell;459653My apologies, by "their" I meant Vigilance Press' WWII line. They range from team books to minimodules. Honestly, I think Vigilance Press is the best thing to happen to ICONS...(Radioactive Ape Designs might give them a run for their money if the rest of their space line would come out).

Here are a bunch of their products I reviewed...they have released several more since, I'm just way behind.

Vigilance Press has done some cool stuff of ICONS, but I have you actually read the adventures Adamant has published? There is some really good stuff there and "Sins of the Past" is just sensational.

I'm not usually a fan of canned adventures but, along Pendragon, ICONS is one of the few games in which the published scenarios really make the game shine.

Yes, I have compared ICONS to Pendragon. Do I have to turn in my roleplayer card now?

I have a less than orthodox take on Aspects. I see Aspects primarily as character descriptors, kind of like the portrait you might draw on the character sheet or the character quote in the old Star Wars game.  

As such what is important that the Aspect accurately communicates the character.  It's mechanical applicability is of secondary importance. If I am running a Fate game I would not want for a player to sacrifice the descriptor function of Aspects for more tactical and generally useful Aspects. That to me sounds like the tail wagging the dog.

Of course for this to work as GM you have to be very relaxed about how you enforce Aspect use. If you are going to be strict about when a player can spend Fate Points based on their Aspects, the players are naturally going think tactically when they choose their Aspects.

Like I said, a little unorthodox. But I do think there is method to the madness.

For one thing, what I have noticed in actual play is that in the heat of the moment the whole "how does my Aspect apply" is the first thing that gets dropped. It's fine in the slow scenes, but when a character is trying to disarm the bomb and all the players around the table really want to know is whether their character will live or die, suddenly the whole "Can I invoke the Aspect Army Brat for a+2?" seems a whole less interesting. I'm sure this isn't universally true, but I've seen it plenty.

Also if you take a historic look at the evolution of Fate, the Aspect as character descriptor approach makes a lot of sense.

Fate is based on Fudge. One of the perceived problem areas of Fudge were Attributes. As a primarily skilled based system, Attributes didn't really seems t have much of a mechanical function. They did not add you your skills, make buying skills any cheaper or serve as a default for missing skills. You can run Fudge just with skills (as I did with Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wastelands)  but you lose the "character at a glance" picture that Attributes provide.

When Fate 2.0 came out it introduced Aspects as Attribute replacements. Aspects gave you a character at a glance tool and because they were free-form they only really focused the mind on the things that were really important. Unless your strength, intelligence or dexterity is out of the ordinary (for good or bad) why bother even mentioning it?  

Also note that in Fate 2.0 Aspects were not tied as closely to Fate Points. The notion that you need to invoke an Aspect to spend a Fate Point is a comparatively new addition to the Fate. This if nothing else says to me that the character descriptor purpose of Aspects came first, the mechanic use of Aspect was almost an afterthought.    

Okay, maybe not, but that's the way I see it.

Quote from: Soylent Green;459724I have a less than orthodox take on Aspects. I see Aspects primarily as character descriptors, kind of like the portrait you might draw on the character sheet or the character quote in the old Star Wars game.  

As such what is important that the Aspect accurately communicates the character.  It's mechanical applicability is of secondary importance. If I am running a Fate game I would not want for a player to sacrifice the descriptor function of Aspects for more tactical and generally useful Aspects. That to me sounds like the tail wagging the dog.

Of course for this to work as GM you have to be very relaxed about how you enforce Aspect use. If you are going to be strict about when a player can spend Fate Points based on their Aspects, the players are naturally going think tactically when they choose their Aspects.

Like I said, a little unorthodox. But I do think there is method to the madness.

I don't think it's all that unorthadox. Given the role of aspects in compelling and invoking, I think they are the players' method of communicating the type of character you want to play, the type of challenges they want to face, etc.

It's unorthodox because in my view it totally okay to have an Aspect which doesn't ever get invoked. As long as it's something important to the character it should be an Aspect whether it's useful or not. Or, in other words, not everything is a bloody conflict.

Update on my FATE stance: I'm seriously considering giving SBA another try.

I'm in the middle of Revelation Space right now -- a book I picked up mostly because of Eclipse Phase -- and much as I'm dying to try EP, I don't think it was ever meant apprehend the huge scale of a Revelation Space [strike]ripoff[/strike] inspired campaign, which is something I'd love to try. Hell, this is precisely what I wanted to do when I first picked up the book: hard SF, only with very, very big stakes and balls-out, high-octane action.

Truth is, there are not a lot of traditional RPGs out there that scale well into planetary or transplanetary-level hijinks. Because FATE is so abstract, scaling becomes relatively simple.

Re: Butcher

Is Diaspora too hard for it?  I thought Starblazer was more pulpy?

Quote from: Peregrin;459769Re: Butcher

Is Diaspora too hard for it?  I thought Starblazer was more pulpy?

Two reasons:

1. SBA is all I've got and Diaspora looks cute, but I'm not willing to spend more money on a system I'm still recalcitrant on. Also, the Diaspora SRD is (was?) free on the net, so I'm vaguely aware of their changes to the system, all of which are very clever and, except of the symmetrization of compels, put a lot of imaginative firepower in the GM's hand, but do nothing to address my #1 issue with the system -- abstraction. If I can get past the immersion-break factor, then yes, I'll consider picking up Diaspora (I particulalrly like their rules for tech, cluster generation and "social combat" -- the latter being something I'm not usually enthused about).

2. SBA's focus on pulpy/soft SF is for the most part restricted to the art and the general tone of the book.

3. SBA has detailed rules for scaling conflicts and organizations from a small town to a vast stellar empire, which are important for a lot of authors which are typically considered "hard SF" (Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stross, off the top of my head) whose plots often center on technologies and ideas which can tear planets apart and reshape galaxy-spanning civilizations. Diaspora is definitely geared towards a Traveller-like, old school SF scale -- you can wreck a planetary polity apart with some old-fashioned cleverness, military or otherwise; but city-sized starships bearing planet-busting weaponry are a no-no.

Gotcha.

I think SBA is cool, but the organization gave me problems the last time I tried to read through it -- it was the first FATE game I bought so I really didn't understand the system at the time.  I'll have to re-read it now that I've scoured FATE threads and actual plays.

But yeah, Diaspora is definitely a lot more focused, so I can see why it not might work for those specific authors.

I feel like most of the FATE implementations are just way too big.  I got Spirit of the Century which was billed as a "pick-up" game and was like "What do you mean 400+ pages?"  

We played Dresden Files and didn't like the metagame aspect to it.  I'm a sim and immersion guy at heart and it's just too much worrying over the rules and narration from an out-of-character perspective.

We've taken just the Aspects and grafted them onto some of our Pathfinder games and that works better.

Quote from: RPGPundit;459651I don't see that as the GM's responsibility.  Its up to the player to come up with occasions to make use of an aspect; its the GM's job to decide if the use he wants to apply is permitted or not.

Actually, the GM has a profound responsibility in DFRPG to offer Compels of a character's Aspects. This is true in SotC as well, but DFRPG is a lower FP game, so it's less forgiving in this regard. The comment above about Fate point fishing being required in Dresden Files is only true if the GM is not making with the Compels. Players can lobby for self-compels (i.e. FP fishing) but technically they don't actually Compel Aspects. That's the GM's role.

Quote from: mxyzplk;459833I feel like most of the FATE implementations are just way too big.  I got Spirit of the Century which was billed as a "pick-up" game and was like "What do you mean 400+ pages?"  

Well, they are digest size pages and a big chunk of that is stunt descriptions. But, you're right that it's not small. By pick-up game they mean that it's built for running games with little prep and not that it is rules light.

Quote from: Soylent Green;459721Vigilance Press has done some cool stuff of ICONS, but I have you actually read the adventures Adamant has published? There is some really good stuff there and "Sins of the Past" is just sensational.

I'm not usually a fan of canned adventures but, along Pendragon, ICONS is one of the few games in which the published scenarios really make the game shine.

Yes, I have compared ICONS to Pendragon. Do I have to turn in my roleplayer card now?

I have...honestly, I'm not a big fan. I have all of them except for the new Lovecraftian adventure. Admittedly, I haven't ran of them...but nothing about them has inspired me to want to, either.

Quote from: The ButcherDiaspora is definitely geared towards a Traveller-like, old school SF scale -- you can wreck a planetary polity apart with some old-fashioned cleverness, military or otherwise; but city-sized starships bearing planet-busting weaponry are a no-no.

Just an aside, but I think a Traveller starship could be a planet-busting weapon. Weeks of acceleration at full gees build up considerable kinetic energy! High Guard doesn't give ship mass, but one can come up with estimates (and MegaTraveller and The New Era probably give masses, but I'm not sure).

The Third Imperium disapproves, though, of smashing planets and blowing up suns (and even of nuclear bombardment and biological warfare, for that matter). I'm guessing the K'kree might gladly do unto others if they thought they could get away with it. The Ancients were pretty extravagant in genocide.

Quote from: Phillip;459879Just an aside, but I think a Traveller starship could be a planet-busting weapon. Weeks of acceleration at full gees build up considerable kinetic energy! High Guard doesn't give ship mass, but one can come up with estimates (and MegaTraveller and The New Era probably give masses, but I'm not sure).

Excellent point. Even at speeds several orders of magnitude inferior to c, a spaceship with a few tons and enough acceleration, can definitely lay waste to a civilization and wreak havoc with a planetary ecosystem. Assuming, of course, the absence of orbital defence systems or a space fleet of its own, which can scramble in time to intercept and destroy your personal remake of Armageddon.

But as you yourself point out, I assume the Imperium (and other large interstellar polities) will take a rather dim view of such antics, to put it lightly.

FATE as a concept changed the way I gamed, but that has more to do with the way I was introduced to it and the fact that its approach was something I hadn't seen before.  Now a bit older and wiser, I can comment.

FATE is an excellent system for pickup play and certain types of games, typically on the "larger than life but mostly still human" scale.  I've tried using it beyond this range, and it never did well for me.  Some of the larger games (SotC and DFRPG) were interesting but were too damn bulky for a player to really appreciate the system's strong points.  That and FATE wasn't built with the probability spread or mechanical depth for intricate systems like detailed magic and combat.

So yeah.  Powerful people, but very mortal.  Focus on the story more than the details.  Within that range, it's excellent.  Fails very quickly outside that range.

Quote from: mxyzplk;459833I feel like most of the FATE implementations are just way too big.  I got Spirit of the Century which was billed as a "pick-up" game and was like "What do you mean 400+ pages?"  

This was a central point of my critique of the game in my review.

RPGPundit