Fate Accelerated and Monday at the Grocery

Fate Accelerated 

Unabridged Post on my Tabletop blog

Evil Hat Productions are old hat at doing genre specific versions of Fate.  Their releases garner almost universal acclaim and they have even got awarded top honors a few times for new RPG.  I initially was very skeptical of these honors, because I had a prejudice against Fate.  I wondered if what amounted to "setting" or "campaign" books should be considered different games altogether.  I still haven't shaken that thought, but it might be due to my ignorance of the system.  Lately they have gotten away from Genre or licensed property games and have been trying to produce universal "works for everything" systems.

So I came across this dilemma.  I love 3x D&D and I love Savage Worlds, but if I was ever going to make a Harry Potter Universe game for my girlfriend, it would require SOOO much work and research into the spells.  Then, at the end of the day, the game would not feel like Harry Potter because they don't care about how many times you can cast a spell, or knowing specifically the distances and all that.  The game SYSTEM would care, but the characters should not.  Then I read about Fate Accelerated's stat system.

Fate's stat system is a system of "approaches" instead of physical/mental attributes.  They describe how your character approaches a problem or situation.  Instead of muscle and wisdom, your approaches are: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky.  That's your stats and basically your "skills" all in one go.  In my example, you do not make a huge list of spells you know; you simply say "I use my exspeloramus(spelling, I know) spell to cleverly knock the wand from their hand".  The GM can argue that's force, but in the end the group settles the discussion and there ya go.

My girlfriend said its like playing a dream where all the players are lucid dreamers.  Since I'm a lucid dreamer, I think this analogy fits really well.  Fate works in that the players get an amount of "GM power" when doing a "scene".  They can introduce their own problems or pieces to what is going on.  They can put keys under doormats, they can hide clues in drawers.  The GM has to keep on her/his feet.  Its really cool, and you can check it out here.

FATE Accelerated Official  (Its free)


March 3 '14

Really, I haven't had a sweet tooth since getting out of my teens.  When it came time to reduce things, sweets was something I was willing to give up.  Turns out I probably overdid my rejection of sweets, and now I'm forced to have a tiny something sweet at about 5 o'clock each day or face black splotches and nearly passing out.  Now the hardest place for me to make a decision is the imported sweets area of Walmart.  I only get one thing a day, so I like to try and make it count.  Plus... since a box lasts like 2-3 weeks of whatever I get, it has to be something I won't get sick of.  All these wonderful jaffas from England, shortbreads from Scotland, and wafers from Italy.  Last time I ended up just getting a variety pack of mini-candy bars from M&M/Mars.  I just don't know if I can commit to 3 weeks of shortbread lol.

Grocery day, so it pretty much dominates my day's discussion.  I realized that I do not think of chocolate bunnies and Easter Baskets when discussion of Easter activities come up.  When I go down the "Easter" aisle, its actually the grilling aisle.  See, I'm the cook for the family festivities on Easter.  Last year I did over 30 hamburgers, I think it was 110 hotdogs, and some chicken.  All that got ate quickly.  We're lucky people bring side dishes.  The ironic(is it ironic, I'm sure a smart ass will correct me) is that by the end of cooking all day long on the grill, I've inhaled so much smoke that the thought of hamburgers or hotdogs churns my stomach.  At least that's my hypothesis.  At other grill get-togethers that aren't quite as long, I am fine, I have a burger or chicken.  Not Easter.  Last year my girlfriend found my cure; chicken salad.  I did not eat it like a man that isn't hungry after grilling, I devoured like 4 sandwiches loaded with it.  It was like a glass of ice water on a summer day.

Currents:

Reading: Elantris(gotta get this thing done)
Videogames: Grandia and Flower
Listening to:  ACDC Let there be Rock
Playing: Back in Black
Watching: too much to read/play to be bothered watching a movie