@rowan math is just programming in a really esoteric language with lots of unicode and magic numbers, almost nonexistent documentation, and every variable is one character long. so it’s like trying to decipher the average StackOverflow “managed to do it in one line” answer except there’s more than one line. how could something like that not be simple and easy to learn? (joking)

@ruwuby I am ngl even just seeing people play mid-level FFXIV content looks terrifying to me 😨 there is so much going on all the time just in terms of dodging alone - let alone having to use all of your abilities while doing the dodging

I bet it’s like playing a rhythm game while also playing a bullet hell

@fargate woah I love that - good on them!

also I can’t believe they had a VA-11 Hall-A crossover - that’s genuinely so cool lol

conspiracy theorist kas thinks that maybe TTRPG systems tend to go for the “there must be a specific rule for every type of action” approach because that makes it really easy to sell people expansion books that contain more rules for doing more things that the players want to be able to do

it’s way more profitable to sell someone three $60 books plus two $60 expansion books - instead of one tiny $8 book and maybe some dice

TL;DR: kas loves FATE and finds it elegant and beautiful because she thinks it solves almost every problem that other TTRPG systems have; and works for nearly all possible stories, characters, and genres; despite being an incredibly small and simple system that is extremely easy to learn

FATE is honestly such a genius TTRPG system in general. every other TTRPG system that I’ve read has basically had the philosophy of “every action that you can take in this world should have its own distinct rules that we write in the rulebook in advance. unfortunately we can’t think of every possible thing, so our system will have some blindspots, but hopefully we can give you enough rules to simulate a large amount of this world, and you can improvise the rest”

but this has a lot of problems:

1. combat in these systems tends to feel like a turn-based tactical RPG video game - sacrificing verisimilitude for well-balanced gameplay, which takes me out of the experience. also it can often drag on for way too long and just become tedious
2. these systems tend to be very restrictive. you’re only allowed to tell a story that fits a certain genre, with certain types of characters that fit certain parameters (like classes and races and choosing abilities from a list), and you pretty much can’t do anything that the rules didn’t account for at least indirectly
3. everyone at the table is generally expected to do a lot of math - especially at the very start when the players are making their characters
4. there are just too many rules to keep track of and when I’m playing I tend to think in terms of “am I allowed to do this? is there a rule for this in the book? will the rule give me a favorable outcome? what stats does the rule rely on? do I need something on my character sheet to be allowed to do this thing?” instead of what I want to think about which is: “how would my character respond to this situation?”
5. these systems - because they’re focused on simulating a world accurately - don’t really care if your character lives or dies which puts a lot of pressure on individual players to keep their characters alive, making every action feel risky and leading to paranoia and stress
6. these systems’ focus on simulating a world also gives a lot of power to the GM, which can lead to some pretty toxic power dynamics between the GM and the players

but FATE is able to completely bypass all of these problems because it realized that “wait a minute - when we’re playing a TTRPG our goal is not to accurately simulate a world. we’re trying to tell a story! and the scenes of a story only follow like 3 possible patterns: conflicts, contests, and overcoming obstacles. so we can literally just have 3 simple rules for resolving 3 different challenges that the characters can face, and that will work for literally every story possible!”

and the crazy thing is that FATE is right about that? you don’t need a massive rulebook that covers every possible situation - you can just have a tiny little $8 book that is like maybe 60 pages long which covers any story you could ever want to tell*. and by taking this approach FATE is able to address every single complaint I had above:

1. combat follows very simple rules which are designed to let the players or the GM gloss over the boring parts and get right to the interesting sections. FATE also has rules (invoking an aspect, compels, etc.) that are designed to help spice up any part of the story, too - so there are fewer boring parts in general
2. FATE lets you tell literally any story you want, and play as literally any character you want, and you don’t need any special rules to do that (unless you want them, because the system is designed to be extremely hackable so you can add whatever you want and it probably won’t break anything)
3. you barely have to do any math and the math you do end up doing is so simple that you’ll probably forget it’s even math
4. FATE’s rules are so simple, and follow the story’s logic so closely, that you can pretty much just ignore them and think in terms of how to respond to the situation in front of you - trusting that FATE’s rules will be fair and make sense in the current context (spoiler: they will)
5. FATE basically has an opt-in death system. the players have to want to sacrifice their character in a dramatic death scene - otherwise the GM couldn’t kill their characters even if they wanted to
6. FATE barely has a hierarchy of power at all. the GM is “the first among equals” - they’re basically just another player at the table except they’re playing as the world and all of the NPCs. their only special power is that they get to break ties when the players can’t agree on something

anyway idk I fucking love FATE. it is so dead simple and so elegant and so well-designed. it managed to solve the problem of “my friends and I want to roleplay and tell a story, but we want there to be mechanical opposition to our storytelling” in a way that fits into a tiny 60-page book and IMO does its job so much better than any massive TTRPG tome ever could

* okay this isn’t totally true. FATE gives players and characters a lot of freedom to do whatever they want, which I think is a huge advantage of FATE. but that also means that its design fundamentally undermines any kind of story that’s meant to make the players feel helpless, disempowered, or afraid. it also doesn’t do well with stories about characters that aren’t competent

@nycki I think that would add a lot to the tone of X-COM tbh. amazing idea

@lyrial woah I just looked into this a bit and honestly just the concept of a TTRPG that’s heavily inspired by JRPGs sounds really unique to me. thanks for the recommendation!

@passocacornio ooh - I really like that. I think “getting something wrong is how you learn” is a really nice lesson to bake into a game’s systems

I think FATE’s approach to {when to roll dice} might be my favorite advice for random chance in game design in general. like:

• if both the good and bad outcome are fun and interesting, then you should roll dice to see which one happens
• if only the good outcome is fun and interesting, then the good outcome should happen with no dice-roll needed
• if only the bad outcome is fun and interesting, then you should bribe the player(s) into getting the bad outcome

I think this also illustrates why {random chance to miss in games like X-COM} is so unfun (IMO): only the good outcome (hitting your target) is fun and interesting. missing is basically “nothing happens but you have to watch a little cutscene about it” which is pretty boring and a little frustrating tbh

I think if I were to design X-COM’s {random chance to hit} system, I would make it so that every miss also gives a positive buff or some kind of advantage. for example every time one of your soldiers misses, they permanently get better at aiming because they’re learning from their mistakes

Ubisoft Is Dead, Long Live Ubisoft? | Unpacked

here’s a really interesting video about how Ubisoft’s restructuring is not going to help, because none of the corpos at the top are taking accountability for their mistakes

“you can’t just make a fun combat loop and slap some procedural generation on top and call it a roguelike”

every roguelike on Steam: 🎵 how ‘bout I do, anyway? 🎵

pretty sure Dwarf Fortress is just The Sims as a roguelike

there should be a restaurant for autistic people where they give you a printed-out article to read about your food

(currently reading the Wikipedia article about Asiago cheese as I eat Asiago bagels)

@5225225 I love fiction that explores this concept - it’s one of my favorite things ever. Eclipse Phase and Ghost in the Shell are amazing for it - especially Eclipse Phase