One of the things I really like about Fate as a rules system, is that is built in. Every character has a Trouble and other aspects. So if your trouble is like “Manners of a goat”, you can be like “Wouldn’t it be fun if I completely insulted the Baron at this dinner??” If everyone agrees, you get a fate point.

The DM can also “compel” you on aspects in a similar way.

One of my players has an outstanding bounty and there’s been a lot of “You know what this scene needs? Razor to show up.” compels.

I’m more of a Himedere, and it’s a lot of fun when the group is into it.

I did a really good dungeon with a puzzle once. Part of how it worked resulted in players unexpectedly getting split up and not being able to find their way back, while also being at risk of freezing to death. One of the players was like “I’ve never been so stressed in my life”, but like in a good way, and I took that as the highest praise. I was so proud of them when they figured out the dungeon

I had fun with my warlock familiar, Vincenzo. He had the “Vincenzo Special” where he’d invisibly fly up to someone in combat and rip one straight from the depths of hell to flavor his Help action. I’m still a little bit a teenage boy I guess.

For your example, I’d probably still ask if the players wanted me to let the dice decide or not before rolling. My players once had a clever idea of setting some poison traps and using earthbind to deal with a wyvern. The thing made all of its saves and nothing worked. I could’ve lied, but we’d already agreed to openly roll and abide by it. Would lying have made it better? Maybe. The game carried on and that arc had a thrilling climax later.

Alternatively, if we’d been playing a game that has a “succeed with a cost” / “fail forward” mechanic it could have been satisfying. D&D and close relatives are especially prone to disappointment because of how random and binary they tend to be.

Anyway. All of this I think it reveals a difference in how RPGs are enjoyed by different people.

On one hand, there’s going for immersion. The player wants to be in the world, be in the character, and feel everything there. It’s very zoomed in.

On the other, where I hang out, it’s more like a writer’s room. I’m interested in telling a cool story, but I’m not really pretending to “be” my character. My character doesn’t want a rival wizard to show up, but I as a player think that’s interesting (and maybe want the fate point, too) so I can suggest that my “Rivals in the Academy” trouble kicks in now. I enjoy when I can invoke an aspect and shift the result in my favor, or when I can propose a clever way I can get what I want at a cost.

Neither’s better or worse than the other, so long as everyone’s on the same page. It can be bad if half the table wants to go full immersion and just talk in character for two hours and the other half doesn’t.

I got down voted for saying this elsewhere, but to my mind there’s a huge difference between the GM unilaterally changing the rules, and the group deciding.

Scenario: the goblin rolls a crit that’ll kill the wizard. This is the first scene of the night.

Option A: GM decides in secret that’s no good and says it’s a regular hit.

Option B: GM says “I think it wouldn’t be fun for the wizard to just die now. How about he’s knocked out instead?”. The players can then decide if they want that or would prefer the death.

Some people might legitimately prefer A, but I don’t really want the GM to just decide stuff like that. I also make decisions based on the rules, and if they just change based on the GM’s whims that’s really frustrating and disorienting.

There’s also option C where this kind of thing is baked into the rules. And/or deciding in session 0 what rules you’re going to change.

Some games have this built in and you don’t have to fudge it.

Fate, my go to example, has important but simple rules around losing a conflict.

At any point before someone tries to take you out, you can concede. That’s a player action and not a character action. If you concede, you get a say in what happens to your character. That’s where you as a group say “maybe they stab me but leave me for dead in the confusion” or “maybe the orcs take me prisoner so you all can rescue me next week”. Whatever the group decides is cool goes, but you get a say. You make this call before the dice are rolled. You also get one or more fate points, which is nice.

If you instead push your luck and let them roll, and their attack is more than you can take, you’re done. The rest of the table decides what happens but you don’t get a say beyond what was agreed to in session 0.

This would also be pretty easy to import into DND or most other systems.

the problem with flubbing is the dishonesty and unilateralness. You can play a different system that doesn’t create the situation your players don’t like so easily.

Or honestly just import Fate points and “succeed at a cost” into dnd. The dice system still sucks but that would help tremendously.

Play a system that accounts for this.

Fate gives you fate points to spend when you do t like a roll. It also gives you “succeed at a cost” if your fate points are exhausted or not enough.

You can still just roll with it (pun intended) and die to a random goblin if that’s fun. But you also have agreed upon procedure for not doing that. “It looks like the goblin is going to gut me, but (slides fate point across the table) as it says on my sheet I’m a Battle Tested Bodyguard, so I twist at the last second and he misses (because the fate point bumps my defense roll high enough)”

This is pretty easy to import into DND, too, if you like the other parts of it

I think I played Ironsworn once. It was pretty okay. We played it GMless, if I’m thinking of the right game. I didn’t really like that group that much, but it was an okay time.

PbtA really rubs me the wrong way and I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe because the two times i’ve played it, I didn’t really like the person running it or how they ran it.

But strangely, I really like Fate. Maybe because it’s biased more towards success. When I played PbtA and BitD I always felt like my character was a fuckup.

I kind of like the idea of solarpunk and optimism, but I’m not sure about the system.

Using 2d10 instead of 1d20 is cool because, as they describe in the main book, that gets away from the “every outcome is equally likely” problem. So that’s cool.

But otherwise I think this is crunchier than I’m in the mood for. I’d just play Fate nowadays. That even has reasonably good rules for non-violent conflict.

But I appreciate the effort that went into this, and like that it’s not yet more grimdark fantasy or “absolute monarchy is totally cool” gristle.

Do I not know how to use the Internet? I’d expect links to stuff but I see none

Summons a surprisingly strong (ie: hard) familiar (ie: aid) in the form of a lemon.

Sort of a variation on this old joke: https://starecat.com/how-to-summon-demon-lemon-man-i-hate-cursive-wizard-fail/

Imho any game is either rules-heavy, and as such closer to reality with more defined rules for various situations, or it is rules-light, where GM-Interpretation is other needed to determine what to role. (Or somewhere in between)

I don’t think more rules necessarily mean more like reality. You can have a bunch of rules for grappling, and create a system that anyone who actually does hand-to-hand stuff would say is nonsense.

That said, I think a lot of people would enjoy lighter systems than d20. Maybe not the people who get a kick out of the “lonely fun” of reading about builds online, but the people who just show up to play and the people who are there for a story? They’d probably be happier in Fate.

This sounds accurate.

As someone who liked CofD 2e a lot, I’m bummed they didn’t continue with it. I also think the heavy meta narrative stuff was kind of bad, and I preferred not having a strong canon.

I should probably read the new new WoD rules to see if I like them, but I haven’t had the heart. I actually bought print editions of CofD stuff.

Not to be confused with its cousin, Mage: The Ascension. For complicated and stupid reasons, there’s both versions. Ascension was first, then there was a reboot of all the games. That gave us awakening. There was awakening 2nd edition. That’s my favorite. But then for some reason, another company went back and restarted publishing the old lines, and made new versions of them?

Not in masquerade/requiem, typically.

Are you thinking D&D vampires or Masquerade/Requiem vampires? Because it sounds like you’re thinking D&D.

What is casting a spell in debug mode?

Can you put a breakpoint in your spell? Picturing a devil having a smoke while the wizard puzzles over all the runes suspended in the air.

I’ve talked about how I really like Fate, and how if you have players like the one in this post it won’t really work. Fate requires players to engage with the game- think about how aspects apply, think about when declaring a story detail would be cool, and so on. If you just DND style phone it is, it’s not going to sing.

I imagine this kind of player would hate it.

And that’s fine. This guy found his niche and enjoy it. But wow I do not really want to play with him.

I still think about an eye opening experience I had at a bar. Was chatting to some dude and he mentioned he was playing DND. I asked what edition. He didn’t know. He didn’t even know there were other editions. I can’t even guarantee he was actually playing DND and not some other RPG.

There’s a whole lot of extremely… Casual? I guess casual is the word? Casual DND players.