Having a baller time in my post-modern dimensional hopping low-fantasy mystery campaign using Fate. You just won't see that many adjectives in another system!
Love Fate myself, and is my "default" game to run for my group of friends. I tuned it for running a pulp adventure style game, and have yet to be disappointed with it. My favorite part of Fate is the skill roll mechanic results being centered around 0, so you know the competent character is more likely to get a competent result. Rather than other games where the die roll determines it mostly by luck.
I'm not too fond of the need to optimize problem-solving strategies in compliance with PC's strengths or weaknesses. It often prompts mental gymnastics (which are very well portrayed in Risus), such as making clerics be familiar with magic (which makes magic more generic and homogeneous in-game). I'd prefer to do what my character would do (no, not **that** way) and for mechanics to take care of everything else: it's not like I solve everything with maths in reality, just because I'm good at it, and I really like it staying that way. Naturally, cooperative action leads to some degree of specialization, but I really like when the system has enough counterbalances to relieve me of thinking about making everything pleasingly internally realistic: I enjoy systems with minutiae that is not going to affect the gameplay directly (possibly), but that has severe indirect effects. The consequence of this approach is usually a group of well-rounded PCs. Unfortunately these things are usually poorly handled in these games by design (and don't get me wrong, it really livens up the pace), but I'd really like to know _*what you think about this*:_ surely the players wouldn't know where the black dragon would reside, but if I knew, what it's life cycle is, based on it's habitat, I could've sprinkled in some biological details, which my players may find delighting, and a setting-book paired with a specialized (unique, fine-tuned) system for that might be quite beneficial.
Apologies but I'm not entirely sure I followed your point all the way through. I think at a certain point of balancing a game it becomes the GM just telling the players things and the players all rolling the same dice checks over and over and it's a lot easier to accidentally slip into that monotony than people realise, and for me that's where a game falls apart. If there's a correct answer that I am trying to figure out I might as well be playing a video game.
I really like Fate for a low maths game. I just wonder if PCs are more overpowered than would be typical in a game like CoC. If so, does that remove some of the helplessness that comes with horror? (I've never run the probabilities, but I feel like my players succeed at higher rates in Fate.)
Players are definitely intended to be superheroes which detracts from horror, same reason horror doesn't really work in D&D even if the characters are a little squishier. However you can still lean into the tenants of horror and I think a big one is the idea that there is something that doesn't "play by the rules", a threat that cannot be destroyed by the mechanical means available to the players. A little meta but I think it works.
For me FATE is not narrative enough, Fiasco fits more my taste. Mostly for two reasons, Fiasco is GM-less and it has no skills to roll. Sure, I like the random element of dice, but I hate that too many games only apply that to the character competences. Even the supposedly narrative dice in FFG games still just do that. In the end that is why I design my own system, which I categorise more as a role-playing experience than as a game.
I get that, I have seen the blend confuse players used to mechanical systems, resulting in them scowering the rules of what each skill can do to find the correct one to use whilst I try to explain that's not really in the spirit of the game even though it is technically in the mechanics.
Finally! I'm glad you got off the fence and can admit you really like Fate.
Having a baller time in my post-modern dimensional hopping low-fantasy mystery campaign using Fate. You just won't see that many adjectives in another system!
Love Fate myself, and is my "default" game to run for my group of friends. I tuned it for running a pulp adventure style game, and have yet to be disappointed with it. My favorite part of Fate is the skill roll mechanic results being centered around 0, so you know the competent character is more likely to get a competent result. Rather than other games where the die roll determines it mostly by luck.
Yeah I like that players can't simply try their luck because the odds feel more against them and a bad result will have a bad effect.
I'm not too fond of the need to optimize problem-solving strategies in compliance with PC's strengths or weaknesses. It often prompts mental gymnastics (which are very well portrayed in Risus), such as making clerics be familiar with magic (which makes magic more generic and homogeneous in-game). I'd prefer to do what my character would do (no, not **that** way) and for mechanics to take care of everything else: it's not like I solve everything with maths in reality, just because I'm good at it, and I really like it staying that way.
Naturally, cooperative action leads to some degree of specialization, but I really like when the system has enough counterbalances to relieve me of thinking about making everything pleasingly internally realistic: I enjoy systems with minutiae that is not going to affect the gameplay directly (possibly), but that has severe indirect effects. The consequence of this approach is usually a group of well-rounded PCs.
Unfortunately these things are usually poorly handled in these games by design (and don't get me wrong, it really livens up the pace), but I'd really like to know _*what you think about this*:_ surely the players wouldn't know where the black dragon would reside, but if I knew, what it's life cycle is, based on it's habitat, I could've sprinkled in some biological details, which my players may find delighting, and a setting-book paired with a specialized (unique, fine-tuned) system for that might be quite beneficial.
Apologies but I'm not entirely sure I followed your point all the way through. I think at a certain point of balancing a game it becomes the GM just telling the players things and the players all rolling the same dice checks over and over and it's a lot easier to accidentally slip into that monotony than people realise, and for me that's where a game falls apart. If there's a correct answer that I am trying to figure out I might as well be playing a video game.
I really like Fate for a low maths game. I just wonder if PCs are more overpowered than would be typical in a game like CoC. If so, does that remove some of the helplessness that comes with horror? (I've never run the probabilities, but I feel like my players succeed at higher rates in Fate.)
Players are definitely intended to be superheroes which detracts from horror, same reason horror doesn't really work in D&D even if the characters are a little squishier. However you can still lean into the tenants of horror and I think a big one is the idea that there is something that doesn't "play by the rules", a threat that cannot be destroyed by the mechanical means available to the players. A little meta but I think it works.
For me FATE is not narrative enough, Fiasco fits more my taste. Mostly for two reasons, Fiasco is GM-less and it has no skills to roll. Sure, I like the random element of dice, but I hate that too many games only apply that to the character competences. Even the supposedly narrative dice in FFG games still just do that. In the end that is why I design my own system, which I categorise more as a role-playing experience than as a game.
I get that, I have seen the blend confuse players used to mechanical systems, resulting in them scowering the rules of what each skill can do to find the correct one to use whilst I try to explain that's not really in the spirit of the game even though it is technically in the mechanics.