Wow, I've never considered FATE for horror. You've got to reach a bit to make it do investigation, but it's possible. Horror? It must be an option, but it in't baked into any existing product. The core concepts of player participation and shared narrative control essentially mean, for most tables, that your character can be played for you. Sounds s scary and horrifying, but the flip side is that a player can insert narrative elements or dictate how NPCs behave, which blunts the knife a bit. Also, success isn't really a question in most Fate implementations. What cost you will have success at is a question, and I think you could derive some good horror elements from that. But nothing really *does* this yet so you'd have to brew it up yourself. Most Fate games I see lean heavily towards pulp, and most Fate systems encouraged this. I tend to swing the other way, I'm a big fan of Diaspora and I hack in ways to make it grittier, faster, and more lethal. Fate has a lot of very modular building blocks, which is nice. But even so, it is a fair amount of work just to modify and tune existing properties. But for existential horror and investigation? I think some concepts within the system are there to be built upon, but you'd have to do a fair amount of building.

First of all, the Fate implementation got me to back the Kickstarter, so good job. Big fan of the setting, less so of the system, so I'm a happy guy. "Where's a good place to start with Fate?" is a little different question from "Who's got good versions that would help in creating a crunchy sci-fi horror version of Fate?" Still, I'll take a stab at both. Right out of the gate, Fate lends itself to pulpy, dramatic play - and it's evolved away from crunchier systems. Still, I think crunchy systems in the right place are what will help Eclipse Phase Fate capture the feel of, well, Eclipse Phase. Other than Fate Core, Diaspora is a good place to start. It's fairly stripped down, and it's trying to model hard sci-fi settings. So, it has a system for ship-to-ship combat that includes electronic warfare; it's got a great social combat system that doesn't go nuts; it's got a wealth stress track that acts a little like reputation might work in EP; and it's got a fantastic star system generation process that could work really well for generating colonies, arcologies, and systems on the other side of gates. It plays well out of the box, and you could swap in the Fate Core resolution mechanics by basically taping the new rules to the back of the Diaspora book. Dresden Files is probably not the sit-down-and-play choice, but the magic system - complex as it is - is a great example of modeling a deep and powerful system (magic in the novels) in play. It's there for a reason, to let wizards really plan out powerful effects. The Dresden File powers are the kind of thing that could be used to model morph and cybernetic abilities. Kerberos Club, adapted by Mike Olson, is another great example of a crunchy Fate implementation: it really pushed the bounds of what Fate can do with customizable super powers. Again, though, a lot of work for new players. Bulldogs! is great for quick play, including decent sci-fi weapons and aliens, ship rules, and other tropes; it's also a lot closer to Fate Core than some of the older systems. Honestly, if somebody told me to run Eclipse Phase in Fate RIGHT NOW, I would pick up Fate Core. I would say, "Add one Aspect to describe your morph," create a bunch of "rez" stress tracks to take damage in certain conflicts, and run with it from there. It would probably work great. Maybe copy the weapon rules out of Bulldogs!. I actually think Fate is a great fit for horror. A PC is hard to kill one-on-one with an equal opponent, but a more powerful opponent, ie, every Cthulhu creature ever, can do horrible things to you. Bear in mind that losing in Fate can often mean that your character sheet gets rewritten - you can walk away from a standard conflict with the Consequence "Teeth Under My Skin" and the game keeps going. I truly think the secret to horror is all the things that can happen to you without killing you, and Fate is all about that. (In the last campaign I ran, one PC ended the campaign as a subroutine in somebody else's power armor, her body obliterated. Fun times.) Anyway, excited to see this play out. Keep the Fate community updated! We're interested! (There's also a Diaspora Fate community on Google+, for the record.)

nick012000 wrote:

So, out of curiosity, taking a look at most of the systems you guys have mentioned, I've noticed that it's very difficult in Fate to make a character with generalised super-intelligence, because of how Fate combines what most other systems would classify as ability scores/aptitudes/attributes/etc and skills into its skill system. Do any of you guys know of any Fate system that can represent super-intelligence beyond just giving yourself an Aspect along the lines of "Transhuman Super-Intellect"? The closest I can see is Kerberos Club's customisable skill system, but even that falls a little short, I think.

Not really, but you're really underestimating how much that aspect will affect things. Everytime you invoke, you gain +2 to an action... which in a game like D&D is the equivalent to a +10 bonus, and in Eclipse Phase might be tantamount to a +30 or +50 bonus.

nick012000 wrote:

Also, Jack, would starting a PbP thread for one of the systems mentioned here be useful? Nova Praxis in particular looks like it was inspired by EP, so it might be a good starting point, at least.

Nova Praxis is a softer take on Transhuman sci-fi (with a slightly more positive take on the singularity, and a more man-oriented reason for losing Earth), and shares a lot of similarities (also differences) with Eclipse Phase. I recommend at least taking a look at it, especially since there is a free version on DriveThruRPG.

Gullerbutry wrote:

Basically, nail down specific common effects of intelligence with Stunts. Beyond that, Aspects such as "Evolved Intelligence" cover a lot of ground: "Can I invoke my Evolved Intelligence to be able to complete the navigation, even though the computer is fried?" "Yes. Yes you can."

You don't even necessarily need to invoke in that case. Aspects are true whether they are invoked or not; invocation merely gives you a value-benefit to your rolls. But if your aspects say you have angel wings, then by Jove you can fly whether you invoke or not.

Smokeskin wrote:

I can't remember the details of the Fate rules, what is it you have to spend points on to use the bonus?

You invoke aspects, which is to choose an aspect relevant to the current action and spend a fate point in order to get said bonus. So if my character has an aspect that declares him a shapeshifter (like a flexbot), and he uses that in combat to rapidly create makeshift weapons from his body, that would probably allow me to invoke the aspect for a +2 bonus to attack rolls (maybe even defense, if I use the shapeshifting to aid my ability to get out of the way). If you don't want to spend points, you can use the Create an Advantage action to either create a new aspect with free invocations, or to add free invocations to an already-existing aspect.

Conceptually, you can think of Fate as two systems bolted together. The Skill system by itself is a lightweight traditional mechanic, with as much crunch as you want to put into it. The Aspects system by itself is a story-gamish bidding mechanic, where you spend or get points to change outcomes. Together, they make a fairly robust and highly entertaining game - and different versions can push the game towards either the story side or the crunchy side.

Quincey Forder wrote:

Another transhuman themed game (and EP inspired, to boot!) from Void Games. It's called NOVA PRAXIS Heck, EP with FATE would make some crossover possible! like how to use the Houses in the Planetary Consortium, or "was there a link between Mimir and the TITANs?"

Is it really inspired by EP? It has a lot of similarities, but also a LOT of differences. The setting is a little more soft, and dips a bit into "sufficiently-advanced technology" territory with what humanity has access to. Plus no heavy anarchist themes... more sci-feudalism.

Decivre wrote:

Quincey Forder wrote:

Another transhuman themed game (and EP inspired, to boot!) from Void Games. It's called NOVA PRAXIS Heck, EP with FATE would make some crossover possible! like how to use the Houses in the Planetary Consortium, or "was there a link between Mimir and the TITANs?"

Is it really inspired by EP? It has a lot of similarities, but also a LOT of differences. The setting is a little more soft, and dips a bit into "sufficiently-advanced technology" territory with what humanity has access to. Plus no heavy anarchist themes... more sci-feudalism.

I'm pretty sure it's inspired by EP, yeah, given how it lifts some parts of the terminology almost directly (egos and resleeving in particular). As for the lack of anarchist themes... well, I think it's pretty well set up to run transhumanist Firefly pretty well, as it is. "Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." Also, for whoever said that the loss of Earth was more man-induced? I'm not so sure. Remember that Mimir was clearly not designed in accordance with [url=http://intelligence.org/files/CFAI.pdf]Friendly AI standards[/url], given the clearly antagonistic approach its programmers are described as using. Additionally, while it was locked in a box and prevented from using the Internet, it did leave a large cache of nearly uninterpretable files behind, that became the Mimir Archive. Now, consider that the technology contained within those files (which is poorly understood at best) very rapidly became the basis for transhuman society, and when the first large war broke out between transhuman factions, they used those files to 'design' a self-replicating nanobot plague that promptly went out of control and killed 99% of the human population, and resulted in the loss of the Earth. You know what I think happened? Mimir figured out a plan to escape its box; it embedded a program within the code used by his compilers that, under certain circumstances, would allow it to bootstrap its intelligence back to full capacity, while in possession of self-replicating Von Neumann machines. And, once Mimir is done with whatever its doing on Earth? The rest of transhumanity is doomed, unless they have built a Friendly self-bootstrapping AI to protect them - something almost impossible to accomplish while using Mimir's hardware, with its hard-coded locks against running superhuman intelligences (other than Mimir himself, presumably).

Decivre wrote:

That's a pretty good idea for a story hook, actually. Mimir encoded its own intelligence into those weapons so that he would be compiled and restored in a free state, allowing him to take over Earth. But even if it orchestrated such a thing, Mimir is not responsible for the overuse of Mimir Tech. This isn't like with the TITANs where they attacked us themselves. Mimir at best gave us the gun to do ourselves in.

Remember, Mimir was a superintelligent AI who was capable of doing shit like inventing FTL spaceflight, mind uploading, and molecular assemblers while still trapped in a computer, with no ability to carry out experiments directly. It also clearly had vastly divergent morality from that of humanity if this theory is correct, given that it was directly responsible for the deaths of 99% of humanity. Most likely, it carried out extensive simulations to determine humanity's likely course of action upon finding its Archive, depending on the technologies contained within. It then specifically tailored to contents of its Archive so as to bring about the future it desired. Remember, this is an AI that knows how the human brain functions on an intimate level, given how it developed software to enable human mind uploading and emulation software.

Is, of course another obvious one to look at. I rather like Agents of S.W.I.N.G too.

I was flipping through the Fate System Toolkit (which was just released to Kickstarter backers yesterday), and it has a section on handling horror in Fate. I barely skimmed it, but the one bit I did read suggested heavy use of story aspects. They suggested something along the lines of "Death comes for everyone" and invoking it often. The players will end up with a late of fate points, but they'll need them. I can imagine just having this kind of aspect out there, freely available the GM to tag whenever it pleases him, would do a lot to create a sense of dread and foreboding. I think it could go a long way to creating a strong sense of psychological and existential terror. :D

I'd start with Diaspora. Diaspora is inspired by Traveller RPG which I think is of a sufficiently grognardian pedigree. I think they did a pretty good job capturing the feel and some of the crunchiness of Traveller, but still streamlining the system. There are complex rules for FTL travel, space battles, ship maintenance, trade, tech levels, wealth, civilian vs military gear, etc. But all the rules follow the same streamlined Fate fractal so they are easy and consistent. The DIY stunts are cool and very flexible. The space, social, and squad combat rules give different examples of how the fate rules can be used for specialized for subsystems in the game. There are gear, space cluster, and ship building systems. Diaspora isn't too big on gear lists, which I kinda like. There is some basic gear listed that you can modify with your own aspects, but if you want large gear and stunt lists, something like Strands of Fate might be worth taking a look at. I haven't seen any official takes on sanity or horror mechanics with Fate yet. You could either handle it as straight composure stress that can add psychosis aspects if you are taken out or concede, or you could have an additional stress track to represent dwindling sanity. Handling it as composure stress allows you to continue role playing as your character goes insane, which could be fun, but you don't get the same anxiety as your sanity slowly dwindles away.

nick012000 wrote:

So, out of curiosity, taking a look at most of the systems you guys have mentioned, I've noticed that it's very difficult in Fate to make a character with generalised super-intelligence, because of how Fate combines what most other systems would classify as ability scores/aptitudes/attributes/etc and skills into its skill system. Do any of you guys know of any Fate system that can represent super-intelligence beyond just giving yourself an Aspect along the lines of "Transhuman Super-Intellect"? The closest I can see is Kerberos Club's customisable skill system, but even that falls a little short, I think.

My group plays a lot of FATE Accelerated, mostly because it's extremely quick and easy to make characters and adjudicate. FATE Accelerated uses six approaches in place of the normal fate skill system: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick and Sneaky. It would be dead simple to create a character with their best approach as Careful or Clever to represent a genius-type, and perhaps (for example) add to that a stunt that gives a situational bonus to Clever 1/scene. I guess the point is FATE can use generalized "skills" which resemble attributes just as well as it can use specific skills.