u/TheTryhardDM

I love Fate Core. I also love hacking TTRPG systems, especially for solo play. I built my ideal system by stitching together some others and thought I’d share it here where it might fit best.

It’s “almost-Fate-but-not.” It doesn’t use as much math, and it ditches opposed rolls. After rolls, you choose dice for different jobs rather than adding up results. It separates whether you succeed at your goal and whether you face a consequence.

I’m just sharing it for others to possibly enjoy. To be clear, I’m not looking for constructive feedback, just sharing.

This is heavily hacked from The Tears of a Machine SC by Russell Collins, which I highly recommend.

Here is the idea:

1. The max dice pool is 4dF.
2. You still get a list of skills. Each is ranked 0-3. The rank tells you how many dice you get when you use it.
3. You still get five Aspects. Each one contributes a die to your pool when it fits the action.
4. You can also use setting Aspects or other characters’ Aspects to add a die to your pool.
5. Roll your pool. Don’t add them. We’ll need to pick a Goal die and a Cost die in the next steps. You may spend a Fate point to reroll now.
6. Pick one die from the rolled results to determine if you achieved your goal or not.

Plus: You succeed. Additionally, you may create another Aspect for the scene or choose your Cost die. (More on that soon.)

Blank: You succeed.

Minus: You fail.

You may pay a Fate point to invoke an Aspect that was used on this roll and turn this die before applying the results, improving the result by one degree (Minus turns to Blank; Blank turns to Plus). Each Aspect can only be invoked once per roll.

7. Set the Goal die aside. From the remaining dice, the GM picks your Cost die (unless you picked a Plus for the Goal die, in which case you pick).

Plus: You suffer no consequences.

Blank: The GM gets to freely compel an Aspect or create a new Aspect.

Minus: Fill in the most minor consequence slot you have available (starting with mild slots, then moderate, then severe).

You may spend a Fate point to invoke an Aspect and turn this die, improving the result by one degree.

8. Apply the results and narrate!

9. For each leftover Plus die that was not selected as a Goal or Cost, gain 1 Fate point.

Other Rules
Solo Play: Episodes
In solo play, an episodic structure is encouraged. Each “episode” of the game tracks one short story, typically involving one crisis to solve as you try to protect someone/something from a threat. Plan for ten rolls to be made per episode.

The first 2-3 rolls should establish the Ward, which is who/what is worth protecting and why we care about this person/thing/place, while also foreshadowing the impending crisis. For added drama, consider what the PC wants to emotionally or socially achieve, and tie the Ward to this desire in some way.

The next 5-6 rolls should be the crisis, an action scene or multiple action scenes in which you protect the Ward and deal with the threats to it.

The remaining rolls should tie up loose ends of the episode’s emotional journey while letting the player try to clear consequences.

Gaining Fate Points
You gain Fate Points if the GM compels one of your Aspects, like in Fate Core.

Stunts
These are the same as in Fate Core, allowing skills to be used in new ways or allowing certain rules to be modified for you.

Consequences
You start with 1 Mild, 1 Moderate, and 1 Severe consequence slot. To clear a consequence, you must make the Goal of a roll to address the consequence in a narratively logical way. After you roll, the GM chooses the Goal die for this task, so expect to spend a Fate point to reroll or turn dice unless you roll well.

When a Mild consequence is successfully addressed, clear it immediately.

When a Moderate consequence is addressed successfully, revise the consequence to reflect recovery. This new Aspect still functions like other Aspects. It clears at the end of the episode.

A Severe consequence must be addressed successfully in two episodes, improving slowly this way. Revise it both times. It clears at the end of the episode in which it was addressed successfully the second time.

Leveling Up
Trade 10 Fate points to improve a Skill by 1 rank (3 ranks max) or to gain 1 Mild Consequence slot (3 slots max).

Edit: I think if your slots are full and you would gain another consequence, you are defeated but can concede like in Fate Core to maintain some autonomy over your fate.

I’m sure many of us see the similarities in these games. Just to name a few:
- A good dice curve
- Tags and Aspects are basically the same
- Fiction-first consequences
- Power and Shifts are basically the same

I’m sure there are more.

With how successful LITM has been, I’m kind of surprised Fate isn’t more widely played. There is so much similarity in the designs. Do you think it’s just that LITM uses 2d6? Is it the ready-to-play D&D-like examples and setting?

I’ve always found Fate to be difficult to get people interested in because aspects, to me, are quite loose and difficult for some people to latch onto, yet here this new game on the block is proving me wrong. I guess I’m just wondering what people’s thoughts are on the system similarities and differences. Cheers!

Would this alternative rule idea have negative effects I should watch out for: “Every moderate wound hinders tasks related to the wound. For example, a moderate hand injury hinders tasks that require you to use that hand.”

I’m the rare gamer who likes a death spiral, where every negative consequence makes the next related task harder. I feel like three moderate wounds being full before you are suddenly hindered on all actions is a design choice that makes all the minor and moderate wounds feel meaningless, kind of like how “only the last hit point matters.”

I’m really craving a game like Pirates of the Caribbean, and it seems like FATE is the answer. I’m looking for recommendations of supplements or just tips in general for setting aspects, alterations to skill lists, etc.

In particular, I like pulpy action: swinging from ropes, balancing on rigging, embarrassing (rather than killing) the stuffy enemies, escaping via window, sending cannonballs through walls, chases where we keep stealing the MacGuffin from each other, and so on.

Bonus points for setting supplements that are beautiful coastal paradises.

More bonus points for tips about having a character with illusion spells in FATE.

I’m making a campaign for either my players or some solo play about using only illusion abilities and social skills to solve the majority of problems. Violence would not be part of the game. Crafting Illusion would be the focus or maybe a free extra focus for PCs.

The setting would be a paradise-like coastal city where everyone knows illusions are rampant. Building a smuggling business would be the main focus, and because I don’t want a violent game, I think I might replace the harm slots (name?) with more like “social harm” or something like that. Suggestions are welcome!

I’m thinking the most desired currency is a substance that prolongs illusion duration and makes them affect more people. The wealthiest people would thereby be the most powerful illusionists if they wanted to use their resources. (This is definitely based on misinformation issues in the real world.)

Nollie Late Flip Backside Nosebluntslide. For some reason, late flips don’t seem to work well when jumping up onto higher surfaces.

It seems like this is the only ledge where I can do this trick (or any late flip to grind/slide on a higher surface). I suspect it’s because the game thinks that I’m just trying to nollie up and ride on the ledge. If it detect that I’m trying to grind/slide something, then the late flip command just makes my character shift around in the air to initiate different grinds/slides.

In most games, the main part I bounce off is spells in combat. I am having trouble learning what this part looks like in this game. If you’d be willing to help, what is an example, including negative consequences for the caster at some point, to help me understand?

Edit: I appreciate folks giving me abstract explanations and some details, but I need a specific, grounded gameplay example with a character and imagined roll results. I’m hitting a mental block. I’d also be able to learn from a time-stamp for an actual-play video.

I followed some of the recent interview about illusionism. But I guess I don’t get it.

The illusionist might claim we are attaching meaning to input, like redness being associated in our memories with a hot stovetop.

But what if I remove all memories of redness and then showed you redness? Does the illusionist say that what we call redness is only the brain classifying input in a certain way? But the input is still there, so…? Isn’t that input a quale?

He’s so good! Layered, vulnerable, volatile, believable. I can’t even consider him a minor character anymore. This guy might be the main character now that Cody doesn’t have compelling goals. What a seemingly unlikely star, weaving in and out of the best stories in WWE. From the Bloodline and Kevin Owens, to helping Cody finish the story, to overcoming Gunther at WM 40, to his current complex feelings toward Cody, I’ve gotten to the point where I just tune in for Sami.

I really enjoy how certain moves are just plain hard to counter or have weird timing.

I often find myself early-dodging the Sweet Chin Music only to be hit by it a second later. I love that. I’m usually shaking my head with a smile as I get pinned.

RKO hits me by surprise so often too, very fittingly.

The Cross Rhodes also has a seemingly smaller reversal window than other finishers, making Cody my hardest opponent usually. It elevates him well in the game to match the on-screen importance they give him.

As a kid, I was a dualist, believing (due to my previous religion) that I had a body and a soul. The soul was my consciousness, a choice-making thing piloting the brain.

As a college student, I became a physicalist, believing there was no soul because how could it interact with a physical body if it weren’t physical?

As a middle-aged person now, I’ve moved through philosophies fast.

I thought that Philipp Mainländer was correct, that reality was some god’s attempt to self-annihilate. What else could a god make a universe out of except themself, like an author making a story from their mind?

A year later, I became sort of an analytic idealist, believing the physical world must be like layers of dreams within dreams of at least one “greater” thing outside reality. All things, therefore, would be the way that mind-at-large’s thoughts look from across a dissociated boundary. I believed this mind-at-large was like a god trying to know itself by disassociating.

Six months later, panpsychism struck. I started to think about the difference between a rock being rained on and a human thinking about a rock being rained on. Both were just interacting with their environments, but the human had more complex interactions in their head. Evolution could explain that. In fact, consciousness might just be a really complex form of interactivity. The combination problem still seemed like a true problem, but eventually it made sense that one part of the brain would evolve to consider itself the central mind in control of the “self.”

But then I had circled back to physicalism, hadn’t I? If I defined interactivity as the building block of consciousness, I had actually mixed two enemies. Moreover, the way the physical world came to exist in the first place could still be seen as resulting from idealism.

To put it all together, maybe mind could beget dream-minds and dream-matter, which could beget “evolved” dream-creatures made of both, after enough time. And those dream-creatures might not even be able to know their “god” who was dreaming them up.

Sure, I’m blurring metaphysics and definitions, but that’s the point. I suspect we split hairs more than needed when it comes to consciousness.

What, if anything, has changed your mind about consciousness?

I really dig the vibe of exploring the wilds, communing with fickle nature spirits and spooky dead shades, crafting simple ritual talismans, using herbalism for medicinal brews, and generally being the unsettling but wise old mystic. If there is a pre-gen for this or if you have some suggestions for tags, I’d really appreciate your help. I can’t wrap my head fully around the nuances yet.

Where are the straight-leg jeans in this game? Call me outdated, but I don’t want baggy jeans or the kind that people wear to show off their socks.

I’m a big fan of Raven, the TTRPG inspired by Poe’s writings. I firmly believe it achieves its design goals while also solving a few of the problems in the hobby that get between the players and meaningful roleplay/story.

For example, I love that players only roll once per scene instead of having a bunch of little rolls, and I especially love that the negative consequences of rolls are written down as phrases instead of just making you lose hit points, gain stress points, etc.

Since I mostly just read game books, watch actual plays, and do solo journaling, I’d love to see more people play this one.

What other games deserve more love and attention? I’m especially interested in games like Raven (and Fate, to a degree) that replace “points as consequences” with “narrative consequences.”

Or, “Why is our hobby stuck in quantifying things that could be qualities?” Whether we use hit points, stat pools, clocks like in Blades in the Dark, or anything else that is a numerical representation of a concept, I feel like we are losing a chance to have much more interesting roleplay and narrative without them.

When I was a new player, I would have been even more drawn to tabletop games if I had started with a game where consequences were just phrases you’d write in slots to describe a lingering narrative consequence of a bad roll.

Apparently, I’m an outlier though. Folks like crunch. Still, I’m always baffled that a roleplaying community doesn’t gravitate more toward the semantic consequences rather than numerical ones.

I’ve reached the point where I can’t even play games with frequent numerical consequences, like when the rulebook says every hit point represents bruises and minor aches.

Does our hobby/culture value hit points mainly because of familiarity, speed, ease of play, the ability to choose whether to roleplay or not, something else? When you lose a hit point, do you feel like it’s more satisfying to adjust that number and imagine the bruises/cuts, or would it feel more satisfying to only write down the consequences that are more, well, consequential?

Every system has its place, but I am surprised at which system is still so dominant after all these years. No hate to those who enjoy the opposite of what I enjoy. Please no hate to me either lol.

I noticed Tower hasn’t fallen yet, and I have no head-canon for how XCV will face justice. So I’m asking this question (for a friend who traveled all the way to Sunya and found divinity from within themself).

To your cycle, friends!