I have a hypothesis: People like rolling for damage. Not necessarily everyone, certainly, but for a certain category of player, there is something neat and appropriate that damage output is not merely varied by success, but also by means. They want the difference between a dagger and a rocket launcher that is no mere number, but rather something meaty and gamey, like a d4 vs 3d12.

I have no idea if there’s any real instinct for this, or if it’s just a behavior that’s been wired in by exposure to D&D, but for a lot of players (myself included) there is something compelling about damage with a degree of variability.

Now, it would be EASY to add this kind of damage to Fate. Multiply the stress pool times 5. Consequences ablate 10 points per tick. Damage is by weapon, tool or situation and is ranked in die tie, ascending as d1, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20[1]. The die sized rolled is based on the type of attack (bigger equaling more dangerous) and the number of dice rolled equals the margin of success.

Bam, done. Tweak the exact numbers to taste[2].

There is absolutely a kind of player who would DELIGHT in their pistol being d6, their rifle d8 and their grenade a d12. It would introduce all kinds of fun options (Stunt: Anything’s a weapon – if you hold it in your hands, your damage die can’t be smaller than a d6) and even other upgrades. Whose to say you can’t have a +1 sword which does d8+1 per margin of success. Lots you can do.

I admit, while I dig the sentiment, I’d balk at this. I think I’d hesitate to being in all the other dice. Not that I dislike them – I love them in other games – but I like the simplicity of the fate kit as it stands, and I would hate to bulk it up more than necessary.

If really pressed, I suppose I could add a d6 based damage system. Could simplify the previous damage system so it’s all d6’s, where weapons add extra dice (rather than flat modifiers). Easy peasy, but maybe a little dull.

If I were feeling fiddly, I’d do this: every weapon rolls a certain number of d6s (let’s say, 1–20). That is how many dice you roll for damage, and your margin of success is the number of dice you keep. This has a curiously limiting effect on the rocket launchers of the world – they’ll roll lots of dice, but unless it’s a solid hit, that only helps so much. Of course, from a cinematic perspective, that’s probably just about right.[3]

Of course, that still requires going outside the fate kit, if only a little.

The real temptation is to use Tally Dice. Tally dice are an idea born from the fact that fate dice are, effectively, d3s, but they’re hard to read that way unless you want to do some quick math (and slow rolling is bad rolling). It just involves looking at Fate dice a little bit differently, and if you do it, it becomes easy to read it as follows:

Some of you may have already seen the pattern, but this trick is this: don’t think of the lines as plusses and minuses, think of them as tally marks. A minus is one mark, a plus is two marks (think of it as an X), a blank is none. No math required, just a slightly different perspective.

Now, here’s the fun thing – since it’s got an average result of 1, it can be seamlessly inserted into vanilla fate if you want. Simply roll a number of tally dice (dT) equal to the margin of success. On average, the outcome will be the same, but there’s a bit more swinginess. For example, if I beat a goblin by 2, I roll 2dT and roll -+, for 3 damage!. Of course, it does not get you the other part of damage systems (reflection off weapon size), but it would not take a lot to combine this idea with the previous one and come up with swords that are more dangerous than daggers.

If that’s your thing.

Two-column Fae (or Fate) is a term I mention from time to time and other people have used it in their hacks, but I was thinking of a particular thing to be done with it today, and it occurred to me that i have no explanation of the foundations of those idea, so this is where I’m going to lay that out.

Two Column Fate basically uses two lists of skills, approaches or similar. When it comes time to make a roll, the character takes one from column A and one from Column B, totals them up and makes the roll[1]. Structurally, this is very similar to a classic “Stat + Skill” model, and it could be used for that, but the real utility of this model is to handle much more interesting cases.

There are a few mechanical benefits to this – notably it can bring the intuitive simplicity of Fae in line with the numbers you see in Fate. But the biggest virtue of this system is that it allows for the two columns to have drastically different origins (both thematically and mechanically) which allows for a wide range of interesting mechanical effects.

Consider a few examples –

The other thing that excites me about this is that you can treat the columns as  interchangeable elements. If you want to run a mech game, you can swap out one of the columns for the mech stats column when you’re in your mech. Different character classes might use a different second column. One column might be fixed, and the other on change over the course of play. It’s a huge avenue of responsive rules and customization[2].

So, putting a pin in it, so I can save the explanation in future conversations.

Since I’m watching a game at Dreamation, I’ll take the opportunity to share some half-formed ideas.

I am pondering what happens with a smaller dice set in Fate. Specifically, I am pondering reducing the roll to 2df, with the dice having specific meanings – one die will be the character and how well he performs and the other will be the world, the way the situation goes. The dice will be different colors, of course, so their influence on the narrative will be quite obvious.

This thinking came out of some thoughts about taking Fate diceless, something that’s pretty easy to do if you are already comfortable with diceless play, but which introduces some challenges if you don’t. The smaller dice spread moves some of the priority back to skills/approaches and aspects, but there’s also a bit of a shift in what the dice mean in this regard.

See, I am intrigued by the idea of the dice being separated from the ladder. That is, a –2 on the dice could mean things went pretty badly but the outcome is still based on the core value comparison. There are some problems with this – flat diceless resolution produces a bit too much predictability when using the Fate spread, and that can be pretty unsatisfying. This could be addressed by allowing aspects to be applied to resolution OR the roll as two separate things, but that is probably a bit too fiddly.

I’m also pondering another random thought too – what happens if you move Fate resolution downstream, and make aspects situation changers? That is, in a conflicted roll, suppose that no aspects are applied before the roll, and the roll stands in fiction, but does not yet have any consequence except in description – no stress is inflicted, no aspects are created, but the flow of action is considered to still be in flux. When I use an aspect, that is me taking an action that corresponds with the aspect (parrying, diving out of the way, counterattacking and so on). When both sides are done invoking aspects, then that’s the end of the conflict, resolved according to the final array of outcomes.

There’s an immediate problem with this in that it breaks down in multi-character scenes, but I think that’s addressable. In a duel situation, my fear would be that it would be too predictable, so I’d be inclined to make it all rerolls instead of bonuses, but that might be too fiddly.

I feel like there’s a space of play that both of these ideas touch upon, and I don’t yet have a firm grip on it, but this is how I circle in on these things.

So Randy made a fascinating comment on twitter about Gods stealing power form each other in FAE. From what I infer, he’s using a trick I like for magic in FAE, adding an extra approach (“Mantle”) which can be used to make people more super[1]. I’m going to call them blessings, just so I don’t steal Randy’s very cool term (and so I don’t presume on what he’s doing) but the idea is pretty straightforward.

The idea of power theft is super cool, but it lead to my thinking about a slightly tangential issue, that of secrecy and prominence. That is, what if there’s a limited pool of power, and its effectiveness diminishes as it gets spread around.

So, for example, the STRENGTH OF HERCULES might be available to anyone who invokes a particular ancient ritual. For the first person who does it, it’s a +3 extra approach (blessing). But if a second person does it, then now they both have it, but only at +2. A third person? +1’s all around. And as soon as a 4th person[2] does it, then the power is too thinly distributed to help much.

What I really like about this mechanic is that it makes power a huge driver of play in the setting. Powers are now secrets with genuine value. If you have one, you want to protect it. If you don’t have one, then you want to find them. And between is a balancing act of power vs. secrecy (and assassination of anyone who knows your secret).

This can get tweaked farther with other rules, especially surrounding how you get and lose these blessings. Ideally, you want to keep some key vulnerability in play when you have a blessing, like a totem or geas which means there is always some risk to your power beyond keeping your lips sealed.

This would work very well for a modern game, since this idea really goes hand in hand with secret wars and conspiracies. There might be powers and supernatural stuff, but its very nature makes it tenuous and difficult to prove substantially.

Anyway, just a random idea, but I figured I’d throw it out there.

Two FATE terms I’ve used in conversation recently, which I should write down somewhere.

Chain Aspects – Aspects which, when used, turn into another aspect. Super useful for certain types of powers or any situation where there is a setup component rather than jumping right to the end.

Hook Aspects – These aren’t aspects at all, at least in a sense. A hook aspect is a blank aspect slot on a character sheet, and it’s filled in at the beginning of the session. Depending on the game, there might be existing hooks written into the adventure for players to pick up, or it might just be what the character wants today. These are especially useful for pickup play since they make the question of why a character is hooked into an adventure a shared one rather than a pure GM responsibility.

A couple of resources that came up in conversations on twitter

• Corey Reid’s Prepare an Awesome DINO-PIRATES Game writeup is applicable to many other games as a solid, fast way to build an adventures.
• Similarly, Quinn Murphy’s Sand & Steam Adventure Template is another set of guidelines for whipping up a solid adventure.
• And simply because it’s in the same mindspace, I point to my own Two Guys With Swords

These are three different methods to create a compelling and engaging adventure with little prep and – importantly – without having a pre-written adventure on hand. I love this kind of stuff, and I think it’s directly and practically useful at the table.

It’s also on my mind because I’ve been thinking a bit about what a published adventure for a FAE game would look like. To understand why this is such an interesting challenge, consider converting any classic D&D module or module series[1] to FAE. It reduces the bulk of the dungeon rooms drastically and pulls out the blatant GM forces, laying bare the bones of the actual adventure. Some hold up, others do not.

Now, there’s a case to be made that a good FAE adventure could be little more than the expression of one of those templates I listed above. I think that could work, certainly. It’s all that’s needed in the strictest sense. But I feel like that’s missing something. There were elements of fiction to classic adventures which made them compelling – often more compelling than the actual adventure component itself was. But I have not yet put my finger on how to express that without just effectively handing the GM a short story.

Which might not be a terrible solution. But I’ll noodle around until I think of something else.