Fate Core Beta Thread

[sak0232]

Another suggestion: an option to print out just the aspects of the PCs and NPCs for the Narrator to refer to...

[sak0232]

Update: I was able to get around the Lock/Unlock advancement problems by using the "permanent adjustments" in the Personal Tab.
Which makes me wonder, do we need both?

[sak0232]

Hi anyone who can help:

I'm messing around with the custom output, but I do not know the xsl tags for aspects, stunts, etc.

When I look at the XML file, I see that only skills are "pushed," but nothing else.
Am I just a n00b?

[MPHopcroft]

Here's the character concept I came up with for my first effort (and also a test of the Text Output system). for non-D&D players, the Hexblade is a much-maligned variant class in 3.5 who combines magic, combat skills, and probability manipulation -- the class has story potential but is very poorly designed (and, unfortunately, Closed Content):

Name: Gorian Kell
Age: 30

Aspects: High Concept: Fugitive Hexblade, Trouble: I dare trust nobody, Don't Make Me Admit I Give a Damn, My Powers Don't Work on Everybody, Nobody can Capture Me

Skills: Lore (+4); Deceive (+3); Fight (+3); Notice (+2); Shoot (+2); Stealth (+2); Burglary (+1); Contacts (+1); Investigate (+1); Resources (+1)

Stunts: Backup Weapon, Mind Games, Turn Your Luck Against You

===== Histories =====
1. The Wrong Assassin: A hexblade killed the King a year ago. As soon as they figured out I was one of the Hexbaldes it was assumed I did it. I didn't. I wanted to, but I didn't. How I escaped the kingdom is an epic tale in itself....
2. The Revenger Foiled: I thought I'd made a clean getaway, but I soon found a girl trying to fight off a group of bandits by herself. I killed the bandits, but then she pulled a flintlock pistol on me and told me she was the King's daughter out for revenge. I used my powers to make the gun misfire and went looking for slavers to sell her to. But it didn't work out that way and now I'm stuck with her hanging around, waiting for an opportunity to strike. I really should kill her, or sell her out, or something, but I just can't do it.
3. Knight in Armor: The Princess is pretty, I'll give her that. And soon a band of knights from her kingdom showed up to rescue her and kill me. I killed all the knights but one -- a knight who seemed to be resistant to my fortune powers. I couldn't let him report our wherabouts, so I put him to work and told him I'd slit his throat if he shirked the tasks I gave him.

It's been some time now. I haven't had to slit his throat yet, and to my amazement he has actually fought by my side against threats to all of us. I don't know why the guy doesn't simply try to run away, or to cut my throat in my sleep. That's what I would do....

Hero Lab and the Hero Lab logo are Registered Trademarks of LWD Technology, Inc. Free download at http://www.wolflair.com
Fate Core System © 2013-2014 by Evil Hat Productions, LLC.

[JazzIsBlues]

I'm using the Fate Core Beta Test pack to make the characters and npcs for my game for OrcCon 2014 called, "Blood Trails." So far making the characters has been very smooth sailing, and the character sheets while spartan and plane are very clear and easy to read with one caveat.

The way skills are presented is a little hard to follow on the character sheet if you're used to seeing the layout on the standard Fate Core character sheet. It's not a big issue, but one of the comments a play tester made to me was that it was a little less appealing.

Also, stunts could use to have a mechanical explanation attached to them if one exists.

Just my first impressions, so far very impressed and pleased with what I'm seeing.

JiB

[Sketchpad]

Originally Posted by JazzIsBlues

Also, stunts could use to have a mechanical explanation attached to them if one exists.

They export with explanations on the character sheet. Check the print preview, they should be on the second page.

[TheGM]

Thank you for letting me join the betatest! My gaming group had it’s “FATE-Babylon 5” kickoff session last weekend, so I have actual stuff to test with.
So here are the things that came to my attention after playing with it for a few minutes that would allow me to fully use HeroLab in my Fate campaign. Apologies if someone already brought up that topic.

1. We need a campaign editor!
When reading through the FATE Core rules I came to the conclusion that there will only me a small percentage of campaigns that are run by “vanilla” Fate. My campaign adds 10 new skills and renames half of the existing skills. I also have one more average and fair skills in the pyramid. Not to mention that bulk load of stunts.
HeroLab should offer a way that we can create our own campaigns like the three that are provided with the datafile. Otherwise it is quite useless for anything than vanilla Fate. The editor should allow the modification of existing stuff and the addition of new custom skills, stunts and campaign setting parameters. (like SkillCap, number of aspects, Pyramid or Column,…)

2. Extras from the char sheet is missing
Where can I add the “Extras”?

3. Condition Aspects from the char sheet are missing
Where can I add the Conditions?

4. Where can I add custom “skills” to the campaign/character?
Sometimes you want to add a skill that’s not on the list. I guess that this point would be covered by the fate fractal.

5. How can I break the columns when advancing a character?

6. Advancing by Milestones
It would be great if the journal would track the milestones. Those milestones should then activate the possible advances.

7. NPC Creation
The NPC Hero Type is only useful for the main NPC’s. And even then the “crosing paths” aspects are not needed. What about the minor and named NPC’s as shown in the rulebook. Those have less aspects, no skill tree,… And lets not forget “the mob”

8. “Fate Fractals” is missing
The ability to define everything as a “character” is also one of the core concepts. Without it I will have to use a text editor to keep track of those.

[Zedwimer]

I just installed the beta test pack yesterday and I've been entering all of the characters from the Star Trek game I just started recently. I was able to pretty much build all of the characters without any major hitches, but there are some things that I really wish I could tweak in Hero Lab or in how it prints out characters.

1) I wish the option to rename skills and stunts was working. I'm using all but two of the standard skills in the game, but I've renamed a number of them (for example, Engineering for Crafts, Piloting for Drive, etc.). Likewise, it would be nice to be able to rename some of the stunts. At least I can easily create custom stunts though, that's one workaround that works well.

2) There should be a way to toggle on/off the addition of stunt descriptions to the character sheet and stat block outputs. In fact, stunt descriptions should be "on" by default... especially given how common custom stunts are.

3) It would be nice if you could toggle between the Ladder names or values (or both) in the skill section. For example, being able to switch between "Athletics (+3)" and "Good Athletics (+3)" and "Good Athletics" or something like that. And have the ability to print it the way you want it to as well, of course.

4) I -strongly- support the suggestion of creating a custom campaign wizard or interface. The current way to do it through the editor looks clunky at best (and from what other people are posting, it sounds like it doesn't actually work at the moment). As others have mentioned, most people will be running custom Fate games, so the ability to easily and readily customize your campaign, complete with its own issues/aspects, custom skill list, custom stunt list, NPCs, etc. seems like a must to me. Hopefully this is high on Lone Wolf's "to-do" list.

I agree with a lot of the other suggestions I've seen here (such as Extras / Fate Fractals) but I haven't personally run into needing them yet.

Despite all of my requests & gripes above, I really do love what I see so far, and it IS very useable in its current form. After all, I did get all four characters fully entered and they technically useable as-is. I look forward to seeing how this develops.

[Territan]

Hello folks.

I'm trying to do a bit of hackery on the Fate Core template, in order to shoehorn in a campaign that I'm running. It seemed like an ideal use-case, since it's already a way in which I'd be using it if I had it previously.

It calls for, among other things, a higher refresh rate, more stunts to start with, and an optional aspect which not everybody needs to use to reflect cyberware effects. I got the campaign set up with the additional stunts and refresh, but I'm still trying to puzzle out how to add in an optional aspect.

While looking for that, I stumbled upon the canonical list of Things, and I notice there are some repeats on the list of source things. I wanted to make sure these were intentional. Some I could see being different facets of the same grande Thing, but some were close enough together I wanted to make sure they weren't mistakes.

• Animal Companion (cmpAnimCom & stAnimComp)
• Best Foot Forward (stBestFoot & stBestForw)
• Big Sucker (cmpBigSuck & stBigSucke)
• Companion (compCustom & compSpecif)
• Danger Sense (stDanSNot & stDangSens)
• Gambling Buddy (cmpGambBud & stGambBudd)
• Independant (cmpIndepen & impIndepen) (which should be Independent)
• Lieutenant (cmpLieuten & stLieutena)
• Mental (strMental & typMental)
• Money Talks (stMonTalk & stMoneTalk)
• Physical (strPhys & typPhysic)
• Skill Ranks (adjSklRank & resSkillRn)
• Spirit Companion (cmpSpiComp & stSpirComp)
• Sucker (cmpSucker & stSucker)
• Talk the Talk (stTalkBurg & stTalkTalk)
• Weight of Reputation (stWeigRepu & stWeighRep)

[DarkChilde]

I've started a campaign in the editor.



All I've done after creating this campaign is:
Hit Save
Hit Test Now
Ctrl-R to reload the data files.

Enable Debugging is checked.
None of the changes are showing up (i.e., Refresh <> 10, no extra phases)
What did I not do?

(sorry the image is so big, I tried to resize it and it became unreadable.)