Systems I Love: Fate Core

This probably feels like it's been a long time coming, if you've read things here.  I gushed about Fate Core's Kickstarter.  And then the Fate Dice Kickstarter.  I made myself in Fate Core after I got the PDF.  I redesigned a past DnD character for a now upcoming Warcraft Fate Core Hack and updated my previous Fate Supernatural Hack and Fate Rifts Hack characters.  My group played a one-shot Fate Core Pacific Rim Hack.  I raved about my love for my Fate Dice.  I think it's no real secret that Fate is my favorite system right now and that Fate Core's release has been a big deal for me and my group.  But I've been slow to review it.

Yeah, no one has a better cover than this.

That's mostly because I've been waiting until we were actually playing Fate Core on a regular basis to do so.  We haven't gotten there yet, as Scion is still finishing up.  But we've begun work on our Warcraft game, which will be in Fate Core and now everyone is right in the midst of going through the book to build their characters (and Evil Hat started up the Evil Hat Street Team).  Which brings me to my first major point about the Fate Core book:  it is beautifully laid out.

I'm not sure this is a fact that will get enough attention.  Fate Core is perhaps the best laid out RPG book of all time and definitely the best laid out I own (so shoutout to Jeremy Keller for fantastic work).  This is for two main reasons.  First, the book is easy to flip through quickly to find material.  This is because sections of material are logically and simply named as well as laid out in the order in which players and GM's are most likely to need them.  Any number of RPGs miss this simple concept and their books become much more difficult to navigate.  In Fate Core, I know intuitively that character creation should come after game creation and am rewarded with the material I need in the order I would expect.

The second key factor to the layout is the fact that the table of contents and index strike a good balance between being highly informative and not overwhelming.  The table of contents in Fate Core has more information than most RPG books do; having subsections listed under the major chapters of the book.  For example Character Creation has the subsections Character Creation Is Play, Your Character Idea, The Phase Trio, Skills, Stunts and Refresh, Stress and Consequences, You're All Set! and Quick Character Creation.  That's a lot of information, but each subsection title is fairly self-explanatory and it really best serves people who are looking for specific information, which will include most players getting ready for a game.  The index, unlike most RPG books, is fairly light.  It feels to me as if it focuses on terms not already covered in the table of contents, meaning it works well as a quick reference to the more obscure terms and rules of the system.  This balance means that I am provided with a large amount of information in a rather digestible manner, which makes the book quick to navigate.

Secretly the best page in the book.

Another huge score for Fate Core is that it is easy to read.  The language is simple, which all too many RPGs forget is useful.  Because the book is conversational, and so many subsections exist, it's easy to read quickly and find appropriate stopping points.  Sometimes when a book becomes too conversational, it can become easy to have sentences that look like they're informative, but don't give quite enough  information.  Fate Core seems to have avoided this pitfall through strong editing and the rounds of community feedback on the book.  I have yet to come across a point in which I had to re-read a section over and over to be able to tell myself "I think I get this concept."  In fact, it's helped me clarify a few of those points on older editions of Fate, allowing me to "get" some things that I wasn't quite sure of in the Dresden Files RPG.  Similarly, there are loads of game play examples conveniently placed after the most complex or important concepts of the rules, which speeds along the comprehension process.

Imagery is also a big help in making Fate Core easy to read.  There are tons of pictures in the book, giving readers a place to take a break.  And there is excellent use of symbols to help players remember and define the four major types of dice rolling actions.  This means that they can be used to recall that information at any time during examples or later rules discussions.  While it seems like a little thing, this is HUGE and greatly helps to cut down on flipping back and forth between sections of the book.  And if players do need to flip back and forth, the symbols make it easy to spot places in which the information they're looking for might be located.

Seriously, RPG publishers, do this. It's ultra helpful.

Outside of Fate Core, I have never read an RPG book cover-to-cover in order.  Fate Core changed this by providing an easy way in which to find rules and stopping points as I read through the book.  I also think the ease of reading for the book really couples well with the flexibility and openness of the system itself.  This has given my group, and I would suspect others, an added sense of ability to take the system to do whatever setting we might want.  My group has already discussed a fairly large range of game settings in Fate Core (from sci-fi like Rifts, Pacific Rim, or Stargate to fantasy like Warcraft to modern fantasy like Supernatural or the zombie apocalypse).  None of these seem like a stretch because the rules are flexible and it is easy to quickly navigate the book for the tools to put them together.  That's tough to beat.

As for the rules, they're pretty much Fate as it's been for years.  Players get four dice with blank, plus, and minus sides to them.  When players take an action that needs resolution, they roll those dice, count up the plusses and minuses then combine those with their values in various skills.  If the GM or player compels or invokes aspects, there might be shifts in that final number.  If the final number surpasses the target for success, the player succeeds.  Simple stuff really.  The real punch of the system is its ability to do anything and give enough structure to it that there's order to play but flexibility to allow players and GM's to attempt whatever they want.  It's clear that tenet carried over from the rules to the rule book, and coupled with Evil Hat's willingness to get their player community involved, it produced a great way to get both experienced and new players playing.

Truth in advertising.

Dice Addict: Fate Dice

I've said before that I've got a dice addiction.  I like to have tons of options of dice when I game so that I can choose dice that fit my character, my mood, or the events of the game.  I'm also highly likely to abandon dice I feel are rolling worse than I'd like (which is, of course, silly statistically, but who cares).  So when Evil Hat launched a Fate Dice Kickstarter, I was on board pretty much immediately.  Fate/Fudge dice are kind of hard to come by and in even more difficult in terms of finding both a weight and a style I like.  It's pretty much "solid colors" or "too light."

Or at least it was.

Left to right: Atomic Robo, Centurion, Fate Core, and Winter Knight.

I knew this before I ever got them, but the Fate Dice are gorgeous.  I told a friend when I first got them (which was yesterday) that they're probably the best looking dice I own.  I'm sticking with that statement.  The themed color sets, coupled with all the work by  Evil Hat moving the molds so that gate marks wouldn't show, and the sheer variety of colors and styles makes these dice a step above and beyond the average set of dice.  A lot of love and work went into these dice and it really shows.

Out of the box! Atomic Robo, still my favorite!

Even better, to me, is the fact that this is only round one of the Fate Dice I will receive.  These first four sets include my two favorites (Atomic Robo and Dresden's Winter Knight), but there are still some really awesome color combinations coming, especially the Eldritch set.  So now to talk a bit about each set.

The Winter Knight set!

The Winter Knight set is awesome for its contrast.  The pictures just don't do justice to that orange fire die.  It really looks like fire and it works so well in opposition to the navy and silver die.  The translucent die sparkles and provides a nice balance between the two.  I'm fairly certain I'll reach for the navy and orange dice on a fairly regular basis.

Fate Core in the house!

The purple die from the Fate core set is really the marquee die for me here.  It has a lot more shine than can be seen in this picture and it's such a different color from anything else I own or is really out there.  The blue and green dice also let a lot of light through without looking washed out, which is really an achievement which makes me like these translucent dice a lot more than most of the translucent dice I've owned.

Centurions beyond Dicepocalypse!

I have a serious soft spot for the Centurion dice.  That gold is such a soft but bold color.  These dice theme well together, perhaps better than any of the other sets.  I think I'd be hard pressed to not use them together on a regular basis, because they just fit together so well.

For SCIENCE!  Atomic Robo!

The Atomic Robo dice are, by far, my favorite of all the Fate Dice sets, not only in this round of shipping but in the whole announced series.  Silver and blue together on a die, especially with the  blue being the highlight is a pretty direct way to my heart.  And a teal die on top of that is amazing.  Not to mention the green which pretty much screams "use me for science-y or arcane characters!"  This is easily going to be my go-to set.  If I had been pressed to only get one box, which I am thankful I wasn't, this would have been it.

Obligatory mountain'o'dice pic.

I want to say thanks again to Fred Hicks, Chris Hanrahan, and everyone else at Evil Hat for having run this campaign and deciding to fill the need for more good looking, well-weighted Fate/Fudge dice.  While some of my friends tease me about not needing this many dice (what do they know!), it makes me really, truly pleased to have the options to customize my dice to my characters and change them when the mood takes me.  I think the Fate community is pretty darn lucky to be involved with a company that's so responsive to our interests, needs, and artistic demands.

Kickstarting: Lords of Gossamer and Shadow

A couple of days ago, I read an excellent post by Rob Donaghue on Google+, talking about the Kickstarter for an RPG called Lords of Gossamer and Shadow. He described it as a successor to Amber Diceless RPG, which was intriguing to me.

I never played Amber Diceless, but I've heard lots about it and know, like Rob Donaghue said, that it has a strong community that has kept it afloat despite the licensing of the setting being muddy and no new official content being produced. I've also read the Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny on which Amber Diceless was based, and I loved those books. So I headed over to the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow Kickstarter page to check out the campaign.

I was impressed right away by the dedication and activity there as well as the amazing art that had already been commissioned for the book. I took the opportunity to jump in at the $30 pledge level, which is the first level at which I'd have a chance to get a physical copy of the book (side note: I love PDFs and ebooks, but I tend to need a physical copy of the book to really "get" the rules of an RPG). I got a nice personal welcome from Steve Russell, the leader of the project, which is an awesome touch.  A particularly nice feature of the campaign is that the hardcover book I order at the end of the campaign will be at cost, which is certainly not something that was required as part of the Kickstarter and is really looking out for the interests of backers.  Every step of my interaction with the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow Kickstarter has been positive and welcoming and that makes for a campaign well worth talking about.

On a side note, I think that The Chronicles of Amber novels are a must read for anyone who is into science fiction and fantasy.  Amber sets out a lot of concepts about multiverses and how magic can shape reality that have been emulated by other writers in the years since its writing.  It looks at magic in a fairly different way than most RPGs, in particular those who follow the Vancian model of memorization and recall.  Describing fully how they differs might stray into spoiler territory, so I'll just say you should read and find out!

TableTop Day Recap

On Saturday it was International TableTop Day (based on Geek and Sundry's show TableTop, hosted by Wil Wheaton), so I rolled on down to Santa Cruz to hang out with friends at Inklings Books and Things.  They held raffles for awesome loot, provided table space for various games, and helped a bunch of boardgamers hang out with friends and new acquaintances alike.

All the loot to be raffled...

I got lucky and won one of the first raffles, getting loot for Kaijudo, Spot It, Worra, The Resistance, and DnD!  An awesome way to get rolling.  I sat in on games of Zombicide (for three or four games) and Agricola and watched games of Evo and Roborally.  And all the while, Zombicide's Kickstarter was rolling through its second to last day and introducing awesome survivors based on Sean Connery, John Cleese, Tom Selleck, and Jack Nicholson as the 9 or 10 of us who were in on the Kickstarter kept one another updated.  Tons of fun.

In Zombicide, we play tested a scenario set up by my buddy Frost, in which we had to rescue trapped survivors from cars and escape the onrushing zombie horde.  We played the first couple rounds mostly with experienced Zombiciders.  Our first game out, we drew an Abomination on the second turn, which I tried to slow down (I was playing Nick, which gave me a little extra survivability).  Once the Abom was on the board, our downfall was inevitable.  We made it a little bit further in the second play through, getting what we needed to free the trapped survivors, but never quite reaching them.  We decided to take a break for a bit and come back to it later.

That meant it was time for Agricola!  I really enjoy Agricola when not playing with someone I know who seems to be able to optimize his actions without any effort and always wins.  Good guy, but man that's annoying!  Anyways, I got a great hand.  Lots of synergy between my occupations and minor improvements and I managed to steal first player right away and get rolling quickly.  We were introducing Frost to the game and he ended up with the Taster occupation which let him steal first player fairly effectively over and over!  It was a competitive game and I don't think anyone ever felt completely out of it, which made it even more fun than usual.

We had lunch, and spread out to other games.  I was feeling a bit of a headache coming on, so I spied on some games of Evo and watched my group reconvene to play RoboRally.  Both games looked pretty entertaining, though I think Evo is more my speed.  And it's got dinosaurs!  How can anyone say no to dinosaurs?

We finished the night out trying the Zombicide scenario again.  With some slight modifications and some luck, we got the first car open before an Abomination showed up and were able to hold on long enough to get the second car open.  We were mobbed at that point, but managed to kill enough zombies to clear a path and escape!  It was in doubt until the very last turn, which made the win extremely satisfying.  We also had three Zombicide newbies in the game and has been my experience, everyone who plays Zombicide gets hooked and declares they're going to buy the game.  That's a great sign.

All in all, International TableTop Day was great fun and I can't wait until next year when it all goes down again!

Kicking Dice

Sorry for the week of silence.  Work got crazy and I barely even had time to sleep last week.  But back to it with something short now!

As has been going on lately, I jumped on board another Kickstarter in the last week.  This time it was for Artisan Dice's metal polyhedrals.  At the moment, I'm just planning on getting a single D20 (though if I was given the option of getting fate dice, I'd be all over it).  While this Kickstarter isn't blowing stretch goals out of the water quite like some of the others, it's still rolling along well and got to it's first couple unlocked stretch goals in a timely fashion.

So far the one I'm most excited about is the Dragon's Breath option, which will make the steel D20 that I'm ordering have a blue-purple sheen.  There's still plenty of time left on this Kickstarter, too, so hopefully some more cool options will crop up.

Another Day, Another Kickstarter

Not long after I raved about the Fate Core Kickstarter, I was enticed to jump in on another Kickstarter that's currently ongoing: Zombicide Season 2.

I own the first season of Zombicide, but missed the Kickstarter for it and thus the exclusives (if anyone reads this and wants to spring for them for me, I won't argue! Just saying...).  This time around I had been waiting and ready, having seen the warning on Guillotine Games' facebook page that the Kickstarter was coming.  Apparently, I wasn't the only one waiting, because Zombicide Season 2 shot out of the gate, blowing past stretch goals faster than they could be revealed.  As I write this, the campaign sits at just under $860k in around about a week.  Amazing.

I'm pretty excited for Season 2 and the extras are awesome.  In case you don't know, Zombicide is a cooperative zombie survival boardgame.  Players work together to meet objectives and escape the zombie horde.  In my experience, it is very important for players to work together; when one person goes off aline it often ends in their untimely demise ir the group being left without resources they desperately need.  Worse, as players grow stronger, the amount of zombies spawning increases; if one person quickly outpaces the others, the whole group will be quickly overwhelmed.  Dice are rolled on either melee or ranged attacks and when successful, zombies die.  Players can also search for more useful gear if they choose.  Personally, this is my favorite type of game.  While I love lots of directly competative games (Bang, Catan, Fluxx, Risk, Agricola and so on), I feel like I do best when working with a team.  I instictively try to support other players and enjoy collaborative problem solving.  At the moment, this basically makes Zombicide my favorite game.

Season 2 of Zombicide is (so far!) introducing two new settings, two new types of zombies, a new type of character, and a new form of support for players.  The settings are a prison (possibly a reference to The Walking Dead, which I love) and a mall (Dawn of the Dead, of course!).  The new barricade and security door mechanics for these settings look cool as heck.  The new types of zombies are toxic zombies, who do blood splatter damage when melee attacked, and berserker zombies, who have to be melee attacked to be killed.  No doubt having both types present in a single game will be devastating   The new type of character is the zombivor, an undead hero trying to help the survivors; I'm not so sure on the concept, but I have no doubt it could be tweaked to something I like or simply omitted and the game played under season 1 rules.  The new type if support is dogs!  Survivors can now have pet dogs to back them up and help them search or do damage. As a side bonus, zombie dogs are also being released!

So far the Kickstarter exclusive survivors, who are typically homages, are shaping up  to be pretty awesome.  The first is Brad, who looks a bit like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.  Then there's Dakota, who bears a striking resemblance to Pamela Anderson in a prison jumpsuit.  Aunt Rose looks a bit like Betty White and Kirk has a certain resemblance to Steven Segal if you squint.  Emma Stone in her Zombieland incarnation is there, too.  But the current title holder for most awesome is Fred, who is quite clearly Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead!  Very, very cool as a follow up to last year's exclusives who were lookalikes for Samuel L Jackson, Uma Therman, Angelina Jolie, Chuck Norris, Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, Bruce Willis, Danny Trejo and Bruce Campbell as Ash from Evil Dead.  I can't wait to see who is next.  Also I desperately wish I had the not-Ash survivor Troy, because seriously, he's awesome.

All in all, I'm thoroughly caught up in the Zombicide Season 2 Kickstarter, and hopefully I've given you a bit of a picture of why you might want to be, too.

It's Fated

I feel like a good place to start off writing here is to talk about my experience with the Fate Core Kickstarter.  Simply put, it was awesome!

Okay, so I could end there, but you should know WHY it was awesome!  I've been a fan of Fate for a while.  I first played Fudge maybe four or five years ago with friends in an attempt to introduce them to the Rifts world.  It was fun for one game, but didn't really hold anyone's attention.  I liked the simple mechanics, though.  Skip ahead a couple years and the Dresden Files RPG was released by Evil Hat (publishers of Fate Core).  My buddy decided he was going to run it, and here were those funky dice from my long before Fudge game.

DFRPG runs on the preceding version of Fate to Fate Core.  Our game was tons of fun, even if the sudden disappearance of half our party (and the representatives of our in-game Russian mafia) disappeared. I liked the mechanics even better, even if there were some rough spots.  Fate was quickly my Sunday group's favorite system.  Between DFRPG and the upcoming release of Fate Core we've used the also excellent Strands of Fate/Strands of Power system.

But anyways, back to the Kickstarter!  I managed to hear about it within 24 hours of it going live, and being familiar with Evil Hat, jumped right in.  When I signed up, I was in for one book and there were maybe 5 or 6 stretch goals announced.

The game was funded, if I recall, about ten hours after I pledged.  Quickly, the stretch goals representing various settings based on Fate Core mechanics began to be left in the dust.  Even better, the Fate Core book was ready for download right away!  I could get into the system without waiting for publishing and shipping!

And them came some awesome stretch goals like The Deck of Fate (playing cards with Fate dice results doubling as fate points!) and Fate Accelerated (a stripped down version of the game designed for newbies!).  In that time period , the settings books began to be available, too.  I can tell you right now that I've read Kreigszepplin Valkyrie and Camelot Trigger cover to cover and I'm in love with those settings.  But even better was when all the settings became print books, which I was promptly able to buy in for.  Ditto a Fate Core toolkit book and Fate Accelerated got their own books.

In the end, I pledged $80 and paid an extra $20 for separate shipping and am pulling in 4 physical books, those same four books in PDF/ePub/mobi, a font, pdfs of at least 2 other upcoming Evil Hat books, sounds files and videos of Fred Hicks of Evil hats doing funny things, and pdfs and utilities pledged by other backers of Fate Core, which looks to be adding another half-dozen pdfs to my haul. Not te mention that further Fate projects have been funded because of this single Kickstarter.  All that while watching a rocketing ascent to over $433,000 of a stated $3,000 goal!  The folks over at Evil Hat seemed so genuinely excited and proud of their Kickstarter that it's hard not to be thrilled.  (And why would I not be?)  Truly, Fate Core's Kickstarter set an amazing standard for RPG Kickstarters to aspire to!