What are /r/FATErpg's favorite Products & Services?

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https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/attach/49/49783_.pdf

You have to go to Antartica to shut down the Nazi's secret Ice base. They have been launching UFOs from there and some say they even are trying to build a rocket that goes to the moon.Its rumored that theres a gate to the elder gods on the lunar surface. madness. battle your way through nazis and try and stop the Rocket from reaching the moon's secret Elder Gods gateway.

For Fun, Werewolf Nazis, what happens when you put a Werewolf on the moon, Uberwolfen?

Just in case there's question around the ideas and content above, consider them all to fall under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International(CC BY-SA 4.0) license. You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

for any purpose, even commercially.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

The license is only included because I love seeing things shared, remixed, and improved. If you see an idea above that you think has merit and want to do something better with it than I have, go for it. Now you can do that without confusion as to content rights. :)

> How to deal with radiation? Rad Stress?

Rad Stress sounds perfect!

> How to make combat more lethal? No defending against guns? No stress boxes?

If you want to Make combat more dangerous, there are several ways to go about it. One of them is, of course, removing Stress entirely, possibly porting the Stress & Consequences system into a system of Conditions. But you could also try the following:

1. Include Weapon Ratings but neglect Armor!

2. Include Weapons that enforce a minimum Stress on a Successful Attack!

3. Or Weapons that also make it easier to hit!

4. Make weapons as lenses, or stunts that you can "put on", giving your characters special capabilities while they're using them.

5. Decrease the effectiveness of Consequences in soaking stress!

> In what area should I place the campaign?

Let the Fate Core Setting Creation handle this! It's mind-blowingly easy to make a playable setting in Fate Core, so you can just leave it to the players of your hack to create a setting that captures the feel and inter-faction intrigue of Fallout.

That's the thing about Fate, it can be run in different dials - no curtain, full curtain, or somewhere in between.

Talk to your players. Find out what sort of style they want. Maybe they want the full curtain/traditional GM experience. Maybe they want the fully shared agency.

I go for a middle ground; I'm running two games, both in the middle, but one a little closer to the traditional curtain way of playing and one closer to fully shared agency/no curtain.

When playing in person, I use dry erase index cards for aspects and the like. It's easy to modify them with free invokes, change wording of aspects as the characters learn more about them, etc. (I bought thesein late 2019 and they're awesome.)

It's "what do you do?" versus "how do you do it?" The choice of Fate Accelerated was to focus on the "how".

I assume this was purely done to accelerate character creation. Anyone can formulate the character they have in mind with just five "how"s in under two minutes. If you'd use "what"s, then you'd need 10-30 of them, let people pick from a menu because they can't have them all (which is going to take some people forever), and each of them would need explaining because they're not as intuitive.

Sneaky is the odd one out because it refers to an action. You can sneak but you can't quick. (Even American English isn't that flexible... yet.) If that's throwing you off then maybe try one of the many synonyms for sneaky.

Fate Core's skills lean towards the "what", though I dare say they care more about the outcome than the process (so maybe that's actually the "why".)

Your "approaches" (more like "action categories") are somewhere in between traditional RPG attributes (Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, etcetera) and skills. Also a valid way of modeling things.

Yes, Tiddlywiki is a system that uses a self-editing HTML file. For security reasons, this doesn't work too well from the filesystem. I personally get around this by using TiddlyDesktop

You can pick up a small bag of vase gems at your local hobby store for next to nothing as well (cheaper than the Amazon link).

I have a set of black gems and a set of red gems and they work fantastic. The weight and tactile feel of a vase gem seems perfect. I use the black for player invokes and red for GM invokes (placed on NPCs and the like).

Every time I have tried to get people to create characters in FATE, that takes a whole session because of questions and not being sure what they want to do. This time I would prefer pre-generated characters, and an adventure that will show off the versatility of FATE. I also would prefer not to have to make my own introductionary adventure, since I assume there's stuff out there. Also if one of them is pre-entered into roll20.net, it is an advantage since then I don't have to do this myself.

My daughter (age 9) and I have had fun playing Fate one-on-one. What worked well for us was emphasizing the story, so she would explain what she wanted to attempt and then we’d work together to decide on any applicable rule bits. I can also recommend leaving some aspects and skills open at the beginning and filling them in on the fly. That way the player has the opportunity to decide during play what they are particularly good at. One last item I’ll offer up is including an NPC companion to help offset the PC’s weaknesses a bit and to give them someone to chat with.

As a side note, while we haven’t discussed Fate yet, my daughter and I have recently begun a podcast you may find helpful about roleplaying with kids called Almost Bedtime Theater. It’s aimed at both adults and kids, with game reviews, actual play sessions, and general advice about running games. Thus far we’ve covered a couple games (The Story Game and Under the Floorboards) and some basic gaming concepts (setting expectations and using NPC companions). We’ve also started including some home-made game resources, like adventure content created with kids in mind.

Oh thank you I'll check it out.

BTW I think I found it based on show notes. It seems like the first mention of Fate is in episode 35

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9nZWVrbHlpbmMuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L2JydXRlLWZvcmNlL2ZlZWQv&episode=aHR0cHM6Ly9nZWVrbHlpbmMuY29tLz9wPTQ3NDk5

I would model it like this:

> Healing Powers (-1 Refresh):

> You may use your mystical or spiritual abilities to heal the wounded. To heal someone you must roll against their highest Physical Consequence (+6 for Severe, +4 for Moderate, +2 for Mild). If you succeed, starting with the lowest, you may reduce each of their Physical Consequences to the next open Consequence Slot and remove a Mild Consequence altogether. This ability only affects mundane Physical Consequences -- consequences of magical, mental, social, (un)holy nature cannot be healed with this power.

> You may use this ability any number of times per session, but for every time after the first in a session you must spend a Fate Point -- whether you succeed or not.

It's effectively the same, but it adds a bit of a limit to what can be affected with healing abilities and removes the number limit and replaces it with an increased cost.

Would you be okay if I made a PDF of this idea to add to my collection, provided of course I require all credit for the idea be given to you?

I currently run a game over Telegram, which is a messaging app. We don't schedule times to play though, people just respond when they can. So it is a very similar format. We use a google spreadsheet that contains character sheets and a gameplay sheet where things like current aspects, turn order, and such are displayed.

Fate works fine in this kind of format. One of my players didn't know the system going in, and didn't read any of the rulebook, so teaching it over text has been my biggest gripe. If your players are pumped about it and read the rules, you should be fine though.

Other than that, I really don't have anything negative to say about the experience. Its been really fun, and having time to think before you offer a compel or set the next scene really is a great way to learn to GM Fate.

In this vein, I'd really recommend this: https://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain-ebook/dp/B0099P9UI0/ref=sr\_1\_3?dchild=1&keywords=for+the+selling+author&qid=1624468420&sr=8-3

May I suggest something else? The Ultimate Micro-RPG book contains a RPG called Heartbeats which is designed to mimic medical drama shows like Grey's Anatomy. The intent was 3-5 players but you can totally play it with 2 and it is GMless, so you each get to play characters. The book is inexpensive and contains multiple other simple to learn RPGs to dip your toes in. It's available both digitally and as a physical book. I've had some great fun with it myself, hopefully you will too.

Here's an amazon link so you can quickly find the book: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Micro-RPG-Book-Tabletop-Games-ebook/dp/B084G9K578 And a short description of Heartbeats: https://rpggeek.com/rpg/68924/heartbeats You can also use RPGGeek to look at the descriptions of other games in the book :)

Have something to write on quick and throw on the table for on the fly Aspects, both those made via Create an Advantage as well as those that come to mind or make sense in the moment. I enjoy usingPVC ID Card blanks, which are $14 for x100

>and then we'll take our cut for... hosting a website I guess?"

You're paying for visibility on Patreon, Kickstarter, etc.. They do a lot of marketing to make sure they're the first place most people look. Itch.io is getting up there though.

That's neat. I like small niche experimental games, I guess. I'll give itch.io a peek. I didn't realize it had a community and stuff but now that I think about it, I do remember hearing a lot of people talk about making games for itch.io game jams.

Do RPG makers do game jams or is that purely a video game thing?

If we ever play regularly, maybe we can consider switching to a different virtual tabletop. As it is now, increasing the amount of work it would take for the players to try FATE out will only less the amount of players, and since roll20.net is our current platform it's what these need to be on.

While not an adventure, this comic explain the rules very easily. Start with that and build the adventure around the characters and setting your players want.

As for translation DeepL is a better autotranslater than Google Translate, though it has fewer languages.

Get in touch if you convert it to markdown! (Why not HTML? Because markdown is better at being a source for text than HTML.)

If you do a formatted PDF, I suggest that it get posted to DriveThru and Itch.io to make it more findable.

Fate Core is the most hackable of the Fate "distributions." If you're planning on customizing, read that and the Fate System Toolkit (the online version).

Afterwards, if you think that Strands of Fate works really well but needs some tweaking, the hacking principles that Fate Core builds up will be very helpful. Otherwise, you can always just tweak Core into a form that you enjoy.

One important thing to remember, though, is that in Fate the story drives the system as well as the gameplay. The reason why, say, in Atomic Robo they're unbound by the Skill Pyramid and have the opportunity for Superstunts is because it's a comic book world were one of the main characters is bulletproof.

I mention this because using Strands of Fate assumes that Strands of Fate fits your setting and story. If you're creating from the ground up, I would recommend using Core (/u/InFearn0 agrees :P) and getting inspiration from Strands of Fate heavily. Speaking of which, I wrote up a Handy Strandy Absorption Power a while back: Here she blows!

Disclaimer: I don't know much about Steven Universe.

Player Characters fusing with other Player Characters sounds problematic. I think it depends how often and in what context fusion happens, but I suppose you could have anybody involved in the fusion each contribute an aspect to the resulting entity. Then you maybe have the players' own aspects (only if they do not contradict the new shared ones) work at half effectiveness (+1 instead of +2).

You might look at some other systems (Everyone is John, for example) to see how they handle multiple players sharing one body. Perhaps there's a way the players involved can vye or bid for control.

But honestly, if you like the setting, and if fusion isn't something _everyone_ can do, I would opt for player-characters that can't or don't do it. Think of a Star Wars story where the players might see Jedi, but don't play as one. Or go the other way, and have players who control two characters each that fuse with one another. It sounds like a lot of work, but players stepping on eachother's turns in a non-competitive game doesn't feel like it will end well.

This is a realy interesting move for EH to make. Personally I love itch.io (although the quality of the games and so on can be mixed) so it'll be interesting to see how this works for them. I see that the majority of the titles are still "Pay What You Want" with a few exceptions (the new Space Toolkit | Prototype Edition and Shadow Of The Century being notable fixed-price titles.)

Quick clarification: all of the Worlds of Adventure from Evil Hat's Patreon will have an adventure included. Some of them will be a little more free form and experimental but there will be an adventure of some sort in each release.

Sorry for the delay, but getting to the core of polling the random values;

using (var client = new HttpClient()) { client.BaseAddress = new Uri("http://www.random.org/integers"); var response = client.GetAsync($"?num={rolls*4}&min=-1&max=1&col=1&base=10&format=plain&rnd=new").Result; rollString = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result; }

var rollInts = rollString .Split("\n", StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries) .Select(s => int.Parse(s)) .ToArray();

As you can see, this pulls from the random.org api, as suggested by /u/fieldworking. The reason I pull rolls*4 at once is because I'm doing some multithreading so rolling the dice is always pulling from memory.

I really like Random.org It uses recorded background noise as input, creating a truly random result. Go to http://www.random.org/integers/ and Generate 4 Integers with a result between -1 and 1.

I think fari.app is the best tool for this, so I use the Inline Webviewer to connect all the players to my fari session while still using the character sheets and tools in foundry vtt.

My personal preference is to use Foundry. I like it because I can self-host, and anyone who can write HTML, CSS, and Javascript can radically change how it works with scripting if they want to. I've written a Fate system in it that supports custom skills, tracks (that's a catch-all for stress, consequences, and conditions) and aspect lists.

It's not free, but once you've bought a licence you're set for the foreseeable future and have control over your own data.

https://foundryvtt.com/

Yeah, I agree. I don't own apple computers either, but I could make a web app that can be ported to the app store later. I'm currently looking at Onsen UI for the framework.

I guess my main conflict is do I want to write it for myself and make it easy, or for the community and make it accessible? I have to decide on what I want. I think making in for the community will look better on my resume and so I'm leaning towards that, but more work means I'm less likely to get it finished.

https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/ is in constant development, and one of the best world building fantasy browser-based map gens I've found. THey also have an integration with a city generator, and you can create some really detailed maps

This one is in development. The Kickstarter fell short, but it has moved to Patreon and is asking for support and feedback. The first post says content will begin appearing on Monday, April 6, 2015.

https://www.patreon.com/christiansenrc

Fate games have been moving to solve this in different ways.

Uprising has legit playbooks. Aspects are answers to specific questions that relate to the playbook of choice.

Shadow of the Century has Roles and each role has a list of stunts to choose from.

Dresden Files Accelerated has mantles, which are like roles on steroids.

For my own WIP Fate RPG, I'm toying with the idea of playbooks that have pregenerated Aspects. See the Pistoleer at https://www.notion.so/amazingrando/Pistoleer-Royal-Pride-of-Musketeers-Playbook-d8231bc7207741e7b90abfc830102d65.

Venture City is amazing - there is the SRD content as /u/cellarhades mentioned, but that is only the system for chargen and super powers (which, if you're wanting a very good system for powers to use for your own setting, that's exactly what you need.) However, if you're looking for a setting to go with it, you can get Venture City at DrivethruRPG or Amazon.

As has been said, let players write Aspects. If you need advice on who writes what, I always make players write their own Advantages, be it the ones they're creating or ones specifically targeting them, and people will get into this flow enough to volunteer for more global ones.

Aspects already require context; Warlock in a D&D style setting is very different from Warlock in The Dresden Files. As such, Aspects are really just memory cues, and it's perfectly valid to use shorthand or even images to convey different Aspects. While lots of GMs use colors to differentiate party Advantages from enemy Advantages from Boosts, color can be a big memory cue. I also promise you that players will be wowed with quick and accurate images just as much as witty phrasing, and this can even ease the burden of such wit for those that have trouble with phrasing.

As an alternative to index cards, also consider some dry-erase cards, which're actually just ID card blanks and take wet or dry erase with ease.

I bought a pack of dry erase cards from Amazon for £7. I have yet to actually use them in a game, but I've tested them out and they are a good size, wipe clean for re-use and would be great for a Fate game.

Touché. :D

Anyway, hopefully it'll be available through a vendor with a reasonable international shipping price. Local shops and Amazon Japan just aren't options as they tend to just import small quantities from the US and pass on the full shipping cost to the consumer. I mean, Dresden Files Accelerated is $45 and Blades in the Dark is close to $100. :0

I bought this set of Fate/Fudge dice from Amazon last week, made by "Wiz Dice." https://www.amazon.com/Fudge-Dice-Starter-Pack-Role-Playing/dp/B07DR9KDX2/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=1D2270QR9FP5J&keywords=fudge+dice&qid=1574267299&sprefix=fudge+dice%2Caps%2C231&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzTEFIWVhaNjAxNVBDJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMzQ5NTY0MlM1TUNJTjM4QUdDNyZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNjE2NzY0WEpRM0w2M1dTSVFDJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

I think the #1 most useful resource is the actions/results table. I use this one and I think it’s very clear and concise. Make it available for you as the GM, as well as for players who want to review it when figuring out their next action. I have it printed out for in-person games, and embedded in our Google Sheet when we play online.

If you can, get some good tactile chips to represent Fate Points. We started with some tiny cubes from a board game and it worked fine, but I had a friend 3D print some basic game chips and they make for a more fun experience in spending/dealing Fate Points. You could also get some from a craft store that’ll do the trick. In a similar vein, get some real Fate Dice if possible. Really make it fun when everybody has their own set and color, and complete the experience IMO. I got these dice which have 5 sets for pretty cheap on Amazon. Of course, you could just start out with just some D6 until you’re sure you enjoy the game.

I don’t think you really need a “GM screen” per say, as your rolls and much of everything else for you as a GM is public. However, if you come into sessions with notes for the adventure, you’ll want to keep those hidden somehow (obviously) to not spoil anything. I just keep mine in a doc on my Chromebook when we play in person.

Enjoy! I was in your position a couple months ago, I’ve now GMed 7 sessions and it’s been awesome! Best of luck!

For dry-erasable cards I plastify a page with 4 lines of "O O Free Invokes, 0 Costs 1 Fate Point to Invoke" and cut them into page-quarter strips.

For Fate Points, I use vase pebbles. Light, colourful, nigh indestructible.

https://www.amazon.com/FuturePlusX-Marbles-Premium-Aquarium-Pebbles/dp/B07DPMBGL2/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=vase+pebbles&qid=1571690489&sr=8-7

I use this dice cup. It will hold two sets (8) of the Evil Hat dice in the base without much wiggling. I have two cups and four sets of dice which is quite a bit to share and it keeps dice from exploding everywhere during rolls.

Most of the time I just use standard poker chips, but if I'm doing a special one-shot or mini-arc I'll use something different.

I plan to use these coins for an upcoming fantasy game.

We used these gears for a steampunk story arc.

I'm a big fan! Just make sure whatever you use isn't too small to get lost on top of the table easily. Some of those smaller gears would slide under character sheets from time to time.

This is what I do for aspects. I also bought one of these dry erase notebooks for whenever I need to draw out zones.

Going from D&D of any edition to Fate is a big conceptual jump. The game is much more of a collaboration, with both participants having explicit powers to modify the story (in the form of Fate Points) by compels or assertions of fact based on aspects.

Listening to what your players want to play by looking at their characters is a developed skill. Come to a game with a genre and situation in mind, but be aware of player aspects and flexible enough to create situations which play into or off of those aspects.

I think the most difficult thing for a GM to grok is that it's ok for players to fail. That failure is often more interesting than success and should never be a dead end. Pile on complications, tag and compel aspects, give them very challenging situations that can't be resolved by any one character working alone. Encourage teamwork.

On a practical note, index cards that you can write on with erasable marker are a great investment. Write tagable or one time aspects on them and throw them out onto the table. When they get used, the player hands them back to you and you can erase then reuse.

Not really. I do whatever seems to make the most sense at the time. Also keep in mind that basically all of this is what I do for all games, not just Fate.

I tend to use paper and Google Keep if I'm making research notes or have ideas I want to explore more later, and those are just whatever's in my head with no real organization at all.

Google Docs tend to be much more formatted/organized, e.g. house rules, character creation rules (if different from standard for the system), basic background information for the game, NPC backstories (which may never come up in play, at least directly), and other things that tend to be more long-form and permanent.

I like using paper for notes I think will be useful/relevant in a given session, and I prefer paper character sheets whenever possible. The additional tactility is something I enjoy, and I think it helps me keep the character in mind better.

A lot of people love using index cards for in-play Aspects (like situation aspects and that sort of thing). The Fate stuff I've done before was more fast-and-loose than that, and it didn't really seem necessary to write those aspects down because it was already clear from description alone what was going on. Writing that stuff down would have just slowed gameplay. I can definitely see other games/groups having the time to do that, though, and for that I think a Noteboard (cut up into its individual segments) would be really convenient and less wasteful than using up tons of index cards. Also I just really like dry-erase things.

Thanks! This is great!

I've been using this Noteboard Pocket-Size Dry Erase-Board.

It works well, but it's harder to prepare cards ahead of time, and when folded out, it takes a lot of space. Mapping on it is great.