Pilgrims of the Flying Temple Playtest

Way back in the early eighties, my cousins, my sister, and my brother were playing Dungeons and Dragons, and they let six year old me play.  It has stuck with me as one of my most cherished childhood memories.

Fast forward to yesterday.  The Evil Hat people are playtesting a Fate Accelerated Edition version of Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.  My kids love the Skylanders video games, and the setting is kind of the same, so I thought there was a good chance that they'd catch on.

I still have that old wooden d20 from that game of Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, so I really wanted to have some props to help the kids get into the game.  First, I made a "racetrack" of the Fate Ladder to help them understand how Fate dice work.  It worked and it's been popular on the Google+ community page. I assume I'll be revisiting this again in the future.

I didn't follow the playtest completely.  First of all, this was the kids first time roleplaying, and the first time in this setting.  So we started with the whale letter from the original Do.  I even made the letters.

We had 4 Pilgrims.

There was Pilgrim Tangled Taffy, a clumsy kid that ate some magical candy that gave him stretchy limbs.

My wife played Pilgrim Distracted Dolphin, a sailor girl that carried a ton of flotsam trinkets from a hundred worlds.

My eldest boy played Pilgrim Molasses Brick, who sends all this time building gadgets with his constructive block toys.

And I had a GMNPC named Pilgrim Sticky Fingers, who was a reformed street thief that I mostly used to give hints.

This first letter was a quick one.  The pilgrims got the whale to vomit up the planet by swinging on his uvula and then stuck around to clean all the ambergris off of Melanie's house.  Everyone had a good time, and we played a second letter, where a team had to rescue a goblin survivor of a roving band of murder hobos.

This session was great.  The team helped the goblin turn her world into a theme park, which was a huge success.  Distracted Dolphin made a fish taco stand, Molasses Brick made a brick roller coaster, Tangled Taffy hung decorations from the trees, and Sticky Fingers *ahem* collected the admissions money. Okay, he gave it back. We all added to the quick map to show how the new park was going to look.

By the end of the letter, there had still only had one fight, in which they all defended themselves from a hungry troll.  Two whole adventures, with all sorts of action and adventure, without a single attack roll made by the party.

THEN . . . the pilgrims returned home to find that the Flying Temple had disappeared.  It blew the little one's mind.  They found the giant dragon egg in its place. After hatched, he coughed up a letter - just like Spike from My Little Pony! - and they couldn't wait to play the next game.  And that cliffhanger is where we ended.

Fate Core Tri-Core Skill Hack

Here’s a hack for the skill system that I’ve been working on that’s similar in approach to Atomic Robo’s Skill Modes.

I noticed Fate Core has 18 default skills, and they seem to fit fairly well into 3 groups of six.

First, there are the social skills, which I call the Dramatic group:
Provoke, Rapport, Empathy, Deceive, Contacts, and Will.

The physical skills are also easily grouped into the Action group:
Athletics, Physique, Fight, Shoot, Drive, and Notice.

This leaves six skills that are more knowledge and technical in nature, named the Intrigue group:
Stealth, Investigate, Burglary, Resources, Lore, and Crafts.

Now a regular starting character in Fate Core has a skill pyramid of one +4, two +3, three +2, and four +1 skills.  That’s 20 points worth of skills.

However, what if assigned skills using those three groups instead? Divided into three different skill columns of: six skills at +2, six skills at +1, and six skills at 0. Note that the point difference between this and a traditional skill pyramid is only two points.

This would be great for NPCs because you could just note if a character is going to be known for their physical, social, or technical area of expertise and be done with it.

However, one big problem is that using the traditional skill pyramids has characters with an apex skill of +4, whereas this approach tops out at +2.  This is where you could bring in that 2 point difference by letting a character have specialized skills. Simply add those 2 extra points anywhere you want to individualize someone.

Or another approach that’s interesting is to allow refocusing skills.  Refocusing is when a character takes a -1 Weakness in one skill to get a bonus +1 in another. This could be maxed out at +2 to a single skill, but the negative 2 points can be spread between two different skills.  What makes this approach interesting is that you can use these mechanical choices to create a narrative in the fiction.  In fact, I personally would only allow a refocus with a permission aspect.

For example, suppose you have a 2 characters that have +2 Action, and +1 Intrigue.

The first refocuses a -1 resources into a +1 shooting.  This could represent someone that spends all their income on buying the best equipment.

This would be noted as:
+2 Action (+1 Shoot)
+1 Intrigue (-1 Resources)
Permission Aspect: Lemme show ya the new scope I got

The second refocuses a -1 notice into a +1 shooting. This could represent someone that concentrates on reacting without hesitation.
This would be noted as:
+2 Action (+1 Shoot, -1 Notice)
+1 Intrigue
Permission Aspect: Shoot first, ask questions later

Another benefit to this skill hack is that by using this format you still have a balanced skill pyramid, and every choice could help you define your character.  It also helps characters make more sense because it’s difficult in this system to have a high rating without having a similar rating in related skills.  In other words, there won’t be a swordsman with a “fight +4” and “physique 0” and “Athletics 0”.