It's a framework to support play with the various versions of Fate 3.0. Players are able to do everything from the character sheet.
My personal preferred version of Fate is a hybrid of Starblazer Adventures and Diaspora, so that's my target for this framework. But I've tried to keep this generic enough to be usable with any iteration of Fate.
I also have a preference for frameworks that just reproduce the basic tasks that players would be doing sat round a physical table. So there won't be much in the way of extensive game automation or hardcoding of the game mechanics.
At the moment it supports both 4dF and 1d6-1d6 dice resolution, configurable by the GM. Initially it won't support the original Spirit Of The Century stress damage method (ticking single boxes at the result points level) since everyone including the SoTC creators has now moved on to stress-as-hit-points. If there's a great demand for the old method then I'll have a look at it.
On campaign load, select a token and hit F2 to load up the Token Sheet. Every game function can be carried out from there. If you are the owner of the token, or the GM, you will have full visibility and access to all of the token's game stats. If not you will only be able to see a very limited subset of stats (stress tracks and visible aspects i.e. consequences) and not be able to edit anything.
In the top right corner of the Token Sheet are three or four icons, they are..
The die : it will either show a Fudge dice or a random D6 value, depending on which roll mechanism has been selected for the campaign (see below). This will do a simple die roll, without modifying it by character skill. You shouldn't need to use this in play, but the option's there if you do.
The ladder : displays a pop-up dialog box showing the FATE ladder, just in case you need it as a reference.
The cog : changes the Token Sheet to the Weapons & Gear view (cog...gear... geddit?). In this view, the cog icon becomes a person icon, which switches back to the Token Sheet view.
The medal : only appears if you are connected as a GM. This launches the Compel dialog, which lets you pick from all the connected players. It then sends the selected player a chat message with two macrolinks, one to accept, one to refuse.
On the Token Sheet, everything should be pretty self explanatory. Clicking a Heading will edit that category, while clicking a smaller link will use that element in-game, e.g. clicking "Spend" under Fate Points spends a Fate point, clicking an Aspect name will use a Fate point to invoke an Aspect, clicking a skillname will make a roll based on that skill.
You can add or remove whole Stress Tracks by clicking the heading, or just apply individual bits of damage by clicking on the relevant track name. I've set the default Stress Tracks to be Health and Composure, since they seem to be the most commonly used for characters - if you want to change this (say to add a default "Wealth" track for Diaspora) then this can be done by setting the default Campaign Property.
Aspects are treated slightly differently depending on whether they are part of the character, or temporary Aspects applied by Maneuvers or taken as Consequences. Character Aspects can be edited by clicking on the Aspects heading. Individual temporary Aspects can be added or removed with the relevant macrolinks, the Add Temporary Aspect dialog asks you to specify whether the aspect is Fragile, Sticky or one of the defined Consequence types.
Temporary aspects are shown on the Token Sheet in italics and are also visible to non-owners in the Token Sheet and in the pop-up statsheet.
Skills are automatically sorted into descending rank order.
Stunts generally give fixed bonuses or advantages, so clicking on a stuntname will just bring up a window with the full stunt description, and gives the option of posting that to the chat window for the GM and other players to see.
Customising for your version of FATE
Eventually I'll put together a nice shiny HTML dialog to let you choose all the configurable options, but for now it's relatively simple to edit where the key settings are initialised in the onCampaignLoad macro.
Code: Select all
<!-- Define dice method -->
[H: setLibProperty("DiceMethod", "DeeEff@Lib:FATE", "Lib:FATE")] <br> <!-- Options here are "DeeEff" or "DeeSix"
[H: defineFunction("dice", getLibProperty("DiceMethod", "Lib:FATE"))]Code: Select all
<!-- Define Ladder -->
[H: setLibProperty("Ladder", "['Abysmal (-3)', 'Terrible (-2)', 'Poor (-1)', 'Mediocre (0)', 'Average (+1)', 'Fair (+2)', 'Good (+3)', 'Great (+4)', 'Superb (+5)', 'Fantastic (+6)', 'Epic (+7)', 'Legendary (+8)']", "Lib:FATE")]Code: Select all
<!-- Define Consequences -->
[H: setLibProperty("Consequences", "['Mild','Moderate','Severe']")]Code: Select all
<!-- Define Weapon Profile -->
[H: setLibProperty("WeaponProfile", "['Name', 'Rng', 'Dmg', 'Pen', 'Notes']")]The current version number is 0.95, so naturally there are a few bits of tidying up to be done and improvements to be made, but it's complete enough to run a game (I think).
Definite 'To-Do's
Dialog for all the customisation options.
Better GM Compel options (e.g. specifying which Aspect is being Compelled, Escalations, freely refusable Compels)
Totally reconfigurable FATE ladder
Add some drop-in resources (Teleports, handout handling, change token image etc)
Tentative 'To-Do's
Prettying up the Token Sheet
Rejig Aspect Handling so that character aspects can be made visible to non-owners.
GM spawnable Aspect Tokens, to be used to indicate scene Aspects, or similar abstracts.
Player Compel/Invoke other token's Aspects
Option for SOTC style stress damage (if I get any feedback requesting this, I'll shift it to the top of the list)
Initiative support (not sure how many variant initiative systems I'll have to do)
Way, way down the bottom of the list
Fate Ladder indicator that shows result of last skill roll/invoked Aspects etc.
Add explicit support for Strands of Fate (which is great, but so different from Vanilla fate I think it'll need a framework of its own)
Never gonna happen
Hardcoded reams of Aspect Names or Stunts
Automatic implementation of Stunt game mechanics
I've done basic testing of everything, but haven't tested anything live with real players yet (I'm running the first session on Tuesday 30/11 for my regular group) If you're a FATE player please have a look and let me know if there's anything glaringly obvious that needs fixing, or any other options that need to be added to support different iterations. I can't promise to implement any specific game mechanics or subsystems, but if there's a variant mechanic that you would **need** to play a particular iteration of FATE, then I promise to at least look into it.
