Fate Core Beta Thread II - The Empire Strikes Back

[THX472]

1. When a custom stress track is added, I think a new consequence type for that stress track needs to appear in the consequences drop down.

2. Related to above, for skills that add to stress stacks like Will, Physique, etc. at certain levels, they also add an extra consequence of a specific type. I don't see where consequences are being limited to 1 mild, 1 moderate, 1 severe, 1 extreme, and extra typed consequences based on high skills. Seems like I can add as many as possible.

3. As kdama1 mentioned, I'd like to be able to add a Stunt that adds to a character's refresh, for the same reason. I am working on a Dresden user file as well, I am using Stunts for Powers, with a Tag group for Supernatural powers. In addition, some Dresden Files powers have a varying refresh cost, so it would be nice if it could be set to a player entered value. This could be handled with a Permanent Adjustment I guess

 

[Steev42]

I'd still like to customize stress tracks. In my (admittedly limited) experience with Fate, I've used custom tracks many times where the opponent may have, say, 2 2-point boxes, or no 1-point box, or something similar. If this can be done via code, that would be enough for me, though any way of getting a visual cue of how much each box represents would be awesome too.

 

[Xaratherus]

On the Personal tab, the Age field has a bottom limit of 15. I think this should be removed, or at least lowered quite a bit. It's not THAT uncommon to have child NPCs in a game.

 

[kodama1]

Need to change verbage in the Editor

Hi Lone Wolf,

I was just messing around with the "Additional Aspects" in the "Campaign" tab of the editor. I wanted to set it to 5 and figuring there are 3 to start with so I needed 2 more "Additional Aspects". I was wrong. When I applied it, it said I have 2 to start with and had overspent by 1. I reset it to "5" as needed and applied it and it worked how I wanted (mostly).

So my suggestion is either change the formula to be truly additional by adding it to the base (which is 3), or change the wording to "Aspects" or "Aspect Quantity" or something similar. Additional makes it sound like more than standard (3).

Second, the purpose for this was is I had selected "Fourth History Phase" and "Fifth History Phase" but it did not add the corresponding aspects. Once you add more history phases it should automatically add 1 more "Aspect" for each box checked.

Also (as this is not as big of a deal but seems like it should be doing it), when I select "Fourth History Phase" and "Fifth History Phase" the corresponding "Aspect Line" doesn't appear beside the 2 new added histories. I think it should.

It should also not allow you to add a "Fifth History Phase" unless "Fourth History Phase" is checked first.

Just my $0.02. Thanks for the beta!

-kodama1-

 

[kodama1]

Help guys,

So I go in to add a new Stress track and add "Social" in the editor, but before I even go apply it to my campaign I created I notice that the 2 regular stress tracks are missing which are Physical and Mental. Soooooo where did they go, and how can I get my new stress track added?

-kodama1-

 

[Aaron]

On the Personal tab, the Age field has a bottom limit of 15. I think this should be removed, or at least lowered quite a bit. It's not THAT uncommon to have child NPCs in a game.

Especially as sidekicks. Isn't that right, Boy Wonder?

 

[Manic Modron]

When advancing it doesn't seem possible to get a new Stunt that isn't once per scene or session. Custom Stunts in general could use more flexibility. Higher Refresh costs, Fate Point expenditures and so forth.

A FAE version where you can rename the approaches would be welcome. For example, Freeport's FATE setting has the traditional D&D attributes as Skills. Also, I would like to set up a Dark Heresy style game with the WH40K Characteristics as the base.

A campaign page would be very nice, especially if you could make a custom skill list and and custom stress tracks from that page that would affect everybody in the portfolio. Campaign stress tracks would be a nice option too. For instance in the above Dark Heresy game, I've been thinking of a special "Subtlety" track that shows how well (poorly) the group as a whole is keeping their head down.

 

[kodama1]

Weight limit

So I see the weight limit is set to 500 lbs. And thought that would be fine.

Then I created a Were-bear and found out that an average Kodiak Brown Bear is 700 lbs. (Who knew). So maybe up the weight quite a bit.

Also, even after putting in the correct refresh cost for stunts, the math isn't adding up. I have a base 6 refresh game going on, and have allowed up to 7 stunts in my campaign to start with (for pure humans). But the problem is after all my stunts are put in, my refresh should go down to 2 and it's at 4. So not sure if the game is giving the first few as freebies with no cost or what is going on but it's not adding up correctly.

Next, I'm sure there's a way to do this that I don't know about, but I add a stunt and everything looks great, except I need a field where I can have a user add text kind of like you have for the "Custom" stunt. But mine works like this...

Stunt (Power) "Inhuman Toughness" refresh cost 2. Requirement need to add "The Catch" (also a stunt the gives you back refresh but creates a loophole to the stunt). I have it set up that I can't take "Inhuman Toughness" without taking "The Catch" which is fine so far.

The character takes "The Catch" which forces them to pick something that bypasses their toughness. A.k.a. Werewolf toughness bypassed if hit with something made of silver. This gives a refresh of 1 or 2 back to the player but you also need a text field to type in what bypasses the toughness so they can type in "silver".

So it should look like the stunt "Custom" Where it says "Custom" and then has a text field next to it to type in the stunt. But mine would say "The Catch" and have a text field next to it to type the catch in (silver).

I tried to copy the Tags based off of "-Custom Stunt-" but the text I get supersedes mine with "Custom" instead of "The Catch". So I know I'm close but just missing something.

Help,

-kodama1-

 

[kodama1]

Found the solution to this question.

Help guys,

So I go in to add a new Stress track and add "Social" in the editor, but before I even go apply it to my campaign I created I notice that the 2 regular stress tracks are missing which are Physical and Mental. Soooooo where did they go, and how can I get my new stress track added?

-kodama1-

Got help from the guys at Lone Wolf.

Here's what to do...

In the editor of your campaign in the "Campaign tab", click on "Bootstraps".

Click "Click to add another bootstrap".

To re add Phystical you need a line that says...
"strPhys" in the text field next to choose.
To add Social you need a line that says...
"strSocial" in the text field next to choose.

You can also add as many new stress tracks you like there including new ones you created.

Thanks Lone Wolf and good luck everyone!

-kodama1-

 

[Viral Platypus]

Few things I noticed

Added a Stress Track that not every one will have, mainly one for additional stress for casting magic. When doing a printout, it still prints the stress track and a stress box for it, even though the character shouldn't have a stress box in that track.

When I created a campaign with a fourth history phase and 4 additional aspects, I set two tags and got it to display the fourth aspect, but it doesn't have the 'delete' button associated with the aspect. Not really a biggie, but all the other History aspects do have one and that one does not. I tried to find a tag to toggle for that but couldn't find it.

Someone posted how to change the names of the phases, but it didn't seem to actually work. I managed to get the default descriptive text for the phases to change. Does anyone know how to get the actual Phase names changed?

Also, in the advances, when you add in new aspects, if you later want to delete them, you have to go back and delete them in reverse order down the line. Aspects should be individually deletable as play changes them. I use aspects as 'treasure' and so, someone might use up an aspect later. Also, as play progresses the group may get an aspect that goes away when the current storyline finishes.

I'm not sure why stunts are handled like that as well. Most Stunts are independent. I guess, since you can swap them, it's not a problem, but I'm entering characters that have advanced a bit and I sometimes have to backtrack as I experiment.

 

[Shadowchaser]

Couple of tweaks to the current version of Fate Core that we're using that would be helpful.

Mostly, an "Extras" section that lets you add an extra, describe it, and enter how it works. Each Extra should also have a variable Refresh cost that you set. This you can kind of do with Stunts, but when you want to call out certain things as different it makes it very hard to do so. For example:

We're doing a Venture City Stories game. Powers are generally grouped together in a separate part of the character sheet from the other stunts, and their cost in Refresh varies tremendously. Currently, I have to do a lot of math for the software and add or subtract a given amount of Refresh from the character manually. I also have to enter all the information about a Power in the Notes tab.

Here's an example:

Custom Stunt: (Super-Speed)

Notes for stunt:
You can move Really Fast (tm). You get a +6 bonus to Athletics rolls involving moving quickly, and you can use Athletics to run up walls or across fluids. You also get a +2 to Fight rolls, provided you're up close and personal and you're fighting in a situation where superior speed would help you.

SFX:
Area Attack- Attack everyone else (foes and friends) in the same zone as your target using the attack value minus 2
Extra Movement- You can move up to two zones for free.
Lots of Actions- You can split your shifts into up to 3 different actions, adding +1 to each

Drawback: Burn-Out

Collateral Damage: If you're willing to tear up the streets with a huge shockwave, you can pretty much travel anywhere in the city in the span of a single exchange.

Cost: 5 Stunts

The reason I can't break those elements down is that (problem 2) the Stunts want to forcibly put everything in alphabetical order. So there's no way to organize things by calling them out in order unless you set aside a different place on your character sheet for Extras.

Extras can also be Vehicles (Like Mecha) or Sidekicks... things that we need to add for certain games.

The software is (as usual) proving super-useful in my current games, and I'm working around some of the limitations, but having a special area for Extras would go a long, long way towards making my life easier. Especially the user-controllable Refresh cost (a simple cost number with up and down arrows would be all I need).

 

[TCArknight]

When I created a campaign with a fourth history phase and 4 additional aspects, I set two tags and got it to display the fourth aspect, but it doesn't have the 'delete' button associated with the aspect. Not really a biggie, but all the other History aspects do have one and that one does not. I tried to find a tag to toggle for that but couldn't find it.

Someone posted how to change the names of the phases, but it didn't seem to actually work. I managed to get the default descriptive text for the phases to change. Does anyone know how to get the actual Phase names changed?

@VP: Here's how you can get it working (Although, I don't know about the delete button, as I'm in the same boat). This is based on my Dresden Files campaign data.

1) create a MyTags.1st file, and put this in it:

  <group id="Mechanics" name="Mechanics">
    <value id="HistRen"      name="History Rename"/>
  </group>

2) create a mechanic for your game.
a) add an eval script to the mechanic at Initialization/100 :

trustme

doneif (hero.tagis[Mechanics.HistRen] <> 0)

hero.child[eqHist1].field[UserName].text = "Background"
hero.child[eqHist2].field[UserName].text = "Rising Conflict"
hero.child[eqHist3].field[UserName].text = "The Story"
hero.child[eqHist4].field[UserName].text = "Guest Starring"
hero.child[eqHist5].field[UserName].text = "Guest Starring Redux"

perform hero.assign[Mechanics.HistRen]

b) bootstrap aspCustom thing to the mechanic with these tags: HistAspNum.4, portal.baAspect4, and thing.user_added

(I thought the user_added would provide the delete button, but no such luck. I'm wondering if it's a timing issue.)

I think that should be all you need to get the rename and an aspect for the 4th history phase. repeast the bootstrap and adjust the tags for 5.

 

[egg_green]

Hey, guys! Sorry I haven't been posting lately. My Fate group went on hiatus right at the time the beta came out :-(. We're starting up again this week, though, which will be awesome!

Several people asked for "Extras". For everyone who wanted Extras, it sounds like some of you meant that you wanted a table to which you could add anything you want, and track a numeric value along with it. Would that satisfy what you need, or would you need something more complex?

I think the minimum would be the ability to add a Name, a big box for Description, and a Cost. (Refresh is the obvious choice. Stunts would be nice to have as an option, but stunts and refresh are at least somewhat interchangeable, so having one or the other would work just as well.) Some people might want more complexity than that, but I think the above is flexible enough that it should meet the minimum for pretty much everybody.

Another common request was "The Fate Fractal - Using fate attributes to make sidekicks, vehicles, special weapons, and so forth". How exactly would this work?
[/LIST]

I'm envisioning this working similarly to how Familiars/Animal Companions/Mounts work in Pathfinder. You'd create your fractal-ized thing (is there a generic term for these?), which would add a new "character" to the portfolio with a link to switch back and forth.

I think the new "character" would have to be simpler than normal, since it might be just a set of aspects. However, it could be more complex than that, having its own stress, consequences, skills, or even stunts. If you really want to embrace the fractal part, it would have to be recursive, allowing the sub-character to have its own sub-sub-character!

I don't know if it would make sense for it to just be a full-blown character with some/all of the tabs being optional, or if it would be better to have some kind of variable-complexity options. The latter would be harder to implement, but might make things easier for people to build characters.

 

[egg_green]

I tried to edit the skill list for my campaign, and I went and checked all the skills I was intending to use. When I compiled the campaign, I ended up with duplicates of all the skills that are in the base skill list.

I'm concerned that a) this is confusing, and b) it seems to indicate that there is no way to easily hide skills for a given campaign.

Let me know if I'm just missing something; I don't have a ton of experience with the editor yet.

 

[bombaatu]

Suggestion

I don't know if this has already been suggested or not, but in the campaign tab of the editor, there should be a means to add a third field in with High Concept & Trouble - to hold (for instance) Race in a fantasy game or species in a sci-fi game.

Also a means to edit the text displayed in the character phases - both the phase name and the text displayed to the user.

Lastly, documentation on how to use the editor would not go amiss.

 

[MPHopcroft]

I can see a point at which it becomes clear that you can only do so much. Fate is so hackable, and so frequently hacked, that I can't think of very many actual campaigns that will be using a completely standard character sheet. For example. now that I've read the Fate Freeport Companion, which replaces the skills pyramid with "skills" based on the d20 stats, and character sheets that include both those and the FAE Approaches, it's obvious that a chargen program as hackable as Fate itself is not going to happen.

 

[Viral Platypus]

I can see a point at which it becomes clear that you can only do so much. Fate is so hackable, and so frequently hacked, that I can't think of very many actual campaigns that will be using a completely standard character sheet. For example. now that I've read the Fate Freeport Companion, which replaces the skills pyramid with "skills" based on the d20 stats, and character sheets that include both those and the FAE Approaches, it's obvious that a chargen program as hackable as Fate itself is not going to happen.

Yes, but to easily customize what's there is important.

1. Add and subtract aspects (mostly done) and rename the phases
2. Toggle skills and add new ones (done)
3. Toggle Stunts and add new ones (done)
4. Add/change Stress Tracks (done)
5. Set base Stunt and Fate Points (done)
6. Defining Extras (sort of done as stunts, but not fractally)

This is all done through the editor, but it would be nice if some of it could be done in Hero Lab for those who aren't proficient with such editing and are intimidate by it. Especially if you just want to make minor changes.

It would also be nice to be able to use the Fractal Concept and have 'children' of a character that can also have 'children'. So you can define items and followers and even places if you want.

 

[Viral Platypus]

Is there a relatively easy way to add in another High Concept and Trouble? I want to be able to add aspects for the group of characters in to each character and want them to have labels to distinguish them from regular aspects (group concept and group trouble). I'd also like them to appear at the top and keep them separate from the historical aspects.

Edit: Looks like I've 'added' it, but it won't display. Anyone know what the two eval scripts look like for the High concept and trouble? That's where I think my problem lies. I don't know what to put in for the eval scripts.

 

[Viral Platypus]

Is anyone using Realm Works and Fate Core together?

 

[Shadowchaser]

Hey guys, just wanted to chime in after having used the Fate Core stuff for a while now.

I'm finding the Extras panel INCREDIBLY useful, thanks for adding it! Overall, this has made compiling characters and prepping for games very streamlined and helpful. I really appreciate the hard work you've put into the ruleset.

I'd still like an "NPC Light" version of a character setup, something like the "Nameless NPCs" section (Page 214 and 215 of Fate Core System). It'd make setting up encounters or adding a "sidekick" style NPC to a player much easier, but overall things are working pretty well.