A while back I thought to myself "I want to run a Planescape game, but I don't like any of the current iterations of D&D for it." So I adapted Spirit of the Century (a game using the FATE engine) to be more D&D-like, and called it Fatescape.
In case you too are thinking something similar, allow me to present Fatescape!
It's still a bit of a work in progress; still in need of a lot of playtesting. That link should always point to the most recent version, though.
Enjoy!
Many thanks! That was basically my thinking as well - I reckoned SotC would make a good system for Planescape, but in order for it to feel like Planescape it would have to have the right magic system, the right skills, etc. By the time I got most of the changes done I realised I'd done enough that I might as well overhaul the whole thing.
The playtest is currently ongoing, slowly; it's a play-by-post game. (I hope to convince my RL group to give it a try when our current game is over, though.)
Compared to Planescape-Planescape... so far it's got a more 'analogue' feel to it, which I think is down to the removal of classes. It's also a lot easier to track the special behaviour of the various planes with aspects and other rules than it is in either AD&D or later editions. Every scene that takes place in the Abyss, say, gains 'The Abyss' (or perhaps 'The Abyss! D=') as an aspect, which you can invoke and compel just like any other scene aspect.
As a GM I like that I don't have to think of everything beforehand. I can just sling half a dozen aspects on the scene and if something comes up like 'oh, I don't think that should work here' I can compel it. My current players don't quite have the hang of declaration skills, but I've had good results with similar things in other games.
There's a big ol' bestiary section I've got written up as well, but that needs some work. Essentially I treat racial descriptors - including things like 'Tanar'ri' or 'Archon' - as stunts, which grant a suite of relevant abilities.
Let me know how it goes, if you do something with it - more feedback is always useful.
Ta,
Chris
We would love to host a copy of the PDF under our Other Systems page here on Planewalker - that way we won't eat your bandwidth, and if something happens with your hosting a copy of the PDF will be on our server as well. Are you up for that?
I had a few questions for you (if you have time to answer them, of course):
[Every scene that takes place in the Abyss, say, gains 'The Abyss']
Have you defined more or less precisely this kind of aspects (i.e. what consequences they can have on the game/the characters/the environment etc.) or do you play it by ear?
Actually, I have always wondered about this kind of situational aspects un the Fate System. Sure, everybody understands things like "a cliff", "slippery ledge" or "rainy conditions". But what about "the abyss"?
More generally, there are many terms and notions in planescape that are not very explicit (the blood war, the dabus, the eternal boundary, etc. etc. etc.). How did you manage to convey such aspects to newcomers to the setting?
I'm not sure there is an answer to that, btw. It may have been one of the reasons Planescape was regarded as much too specific & obscure by lots of people. But the fact that the Fate system encourages players to "tag" those aspects of the setting makes the problem even more acute.
[As a GM I like that I don't have to think of everything beforehand.]
Agreed! This is the main problem I had with 3rd edition: planning an encounter takes forever if you want to take into account each and every feat/skill/power. And if you don't, the encounter can become dangerously unbalanced. What I love with Fate is that you can describe the creature, underscore a few words and get its main aspects. It's even easier with Strands of Fate because you don't even have skills to worry about - just abilities & aspects.
[I treat racial descriptors - including things like 'Tanar'ri' or 'Archon' - as stunts]
By the way, have you detailed the aspects/stunts for the "basic" Planescape races (barriaur, githzerai, aasimar, tiefling, genasi, modron)?
Cheers,
Griff
Hurm... I always wanted to create a Planescape live action role playing game (lets say a 3h. play in some RPG encounters). The idea was some dark plot in a social meeting, in Civic Festhall for example.
I'm not familiar with FATE, but it seems more plausible to adapt this to my needs than d20.
Sure! The only blip is that I'm constantly updating the pdf right now, so it might be a bit tricky to keep the Planewalker version up to date.
I also have a character sheet I made for the Planar Mage rules which I keep meaning to send you. (Getting my money's worth out of that copy of Indesign...)
I play it by ear. I prefer to keep things vague rather than nail down exactly what they mean because that way I'm less likely to miss things.
One of the iffy bits of FATE is when the GM and the players have different understandings of what aspects mean, and what they can do - it's something you kind of need to hash out during the game. The people I game with are largely familiar with Planescape so we all start with a shared understanding of what it means to be in the Abyss, or in Sigil, etc., which makes things simpler. I've not had to introduce the setting to new players.
That said, I can think of two ways to get the idea of planar aspects across to new players:
1. Don't use aspects like 'Elysium' when you can use 'Peaceful Fields of Elysium'. You can use those two aspects in the same way, but the second conveys more meaning than the first.
2. Use them yourself. If the scene is in The Abyss, invoke that aspect when an NPC does something in line with the plane, or to resist a PC action, and describe a general sense of the plane aiding or resisting their actions. Do it enough and players should get an idea of what it means to be in The Abyss - that it's a hostile place where violence and betrayal are the most effective solutions, because the nature of the plane supports them.
And you don't have to tag an aspect at all - if the players go off to the Abyss and spend all their time and fate points on their own aspects or other scene aspects (Pool of Acid, Twisted Rock Formations, etc.) then that's okay. The Abyss scene aspect can hang around in the background until you need it.
Something like The Blood War, for example, is technically an aspect that appears in every scene of every Planescape game - but it'll never be tagged unless you've got a ba'atezu and a tanar'ri in the same room, so you can safely ignore it until you need it.
Man, that's a lot of text. =/
Ugh, tell me about it. My rule of thumb is not to spend longer prepping for a session than I'm going to spend playing the session, which becomes difficult around level 6 in 3.x.
I sketched out aspects for aasimar, tiefling, and the law/chaos equivalents axiomatic and anarchic. Looking at it again, I think it needs some reworking; I'll have another look at the bestiary section this weekend and see if I can tidy it up a bit.
As a general rule of thumb, you can invoke a racial aspect to do things that that race are good at and it can be compelled to highlight weaknesses of that race. Racial aspects are best where races express tendencies but not absolutes (tieflings are fire-resistant) and racial stunts where races interact with the rules in a more concrete way (fire elementals are immune to fire).
It certainly is. The major innovation of the Fate System is the concept of "aspect" . Basically, each and every thing or people is defined by a series of aspects.
For example,
Han Solo: "can't resist a challenge", "ace pilot", "ladys' man", "I have a bad feeling about that".
His Falcon: "fastest ship in the universe", "piece of junk", "hit, run... and repair" etc.
The Asteroid field: "raining rocks", "screws detectors", "secret hideaway"
When a player wants to use an aspect to his advantage, he declares it (that's called "tagging an aspect") and spends a Fate point to gain a bonus.
When the GM wants to use an aspect against the character, he gives one fate point to the player. The player can refuse but has to give a fate point.
This part certainly could be used for a LARP.
The rest of Fate is close to Fudge: each skill is defined by an adjective (mediocre, average, fair, good etc.). The Fudge dice produce a result between -4 and +4. So if my skill is "average" and I get a +2, my result is "good".
There are variants:
- Spirit of the Century uses "stunts" (the equivalent of feats for d20) that give special advantages.
- Starblazer & Anglerre use d6 instead of Fudge dice
- Strands of Fate doesn't use skills but a bunch of abilities. In this system, a skill is basically an aspect that qualifies an ability.
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Griff
I think you are right. Actually it perfectly reflects the "cluelessness" that is so often alluded to in Planescape supplements. One more point in favour of Fatescape, methinks...
I should really frame that sentence and hang it over my desk 
I see the logic but I fear this would add too much complexity. I will probably use the kind of loose racial aspects you used in the Fatescape rules. For me the Fire genasi fire-resistance is an intrinsic part of his "Fire genasiness" (for lack of a better word).
Cheers,
Griff
For genasis, sure - the problem I hit is with things that are flat out immune. My go-to example being a fire elemental because you can't burn a fire elemental. Setting fire to fire is a bit meta, even for me.
If you try and do this with aspects, you run into the problem of 'what happens when you run out of fate points?' Then the elemental is fireproof until you run out of FPs, and after that burns normally. (A bit odd.)
I originally handled this with stunts - there's an 'elemental' stunt which wraps up all the immunities and powers that an elemental has, and that keep working whether it's got fate points or not. I'm going to have a look at that this weekend and see if I can come up with a better method, though.
Strands of fate uses Advantages instead of Stunts. They are not linked to specific skills and are divided in three tiers: Expert (cost 1 point, realistic), Heroic (2 points, action hero), Powers (cost varies, beyond human). In SoF, you would buy a "resistance power" or a "thermal vision" power. But this is not a simple solution either because it is based on a long list of specific powers.
I guess you could just state that some aspects are "persistant" and can always be tagged for free. This could be the case of a"immune to fire" aspect. Then again, you would have to break your racial aspect into an array of aspects... A bit less elegant, maybe, but this would guarantee a better balance between the races (your elemental would be compelled to buy certain aspects - including "immune to fire"- whereas a Human would be free to buy his at will as long as they are appropriate for Humans).
Okay, I finally had to register for this one.
If you ever want to gather up some players and run a playtest on IRC, MapTool and/or Skype, I'm game. I could crank out a FATE dice bot for IRC or a FATE roller macro for MapTool if you don't already have one.
I was working on a similar project for a while. I wanted something simpler than Legends of Anglerre for my home game. So I trimmed the fat off of Free FATE. Cutting whole swaths of the system out, I reduced it to only 14 pages. My goal was to fill it with flavorful skills, aspects, and stunts which would do the work of all the subsystems I cut out.
Races, classes, equipment, etc. are represented by packages of aspects, skills, and stunts which can be mixed and matched at-will.
Some of the descriptions are taken from the Pathfinder or 3.5 SRD. I plan on replacing them someday, but right now I'm focusing on the system's crunch.
Anyhow, here are the files. I hope you find them helpful, or at least entertaining. They are no where near finished.
The OpenText file:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7JwnQ_QQuopTWoyWTFqZEIwdk0
The PDF:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7JwnQ_QQuopTWoyWTFqZEIwdk0
Necroposting to mention that I updated Fatescape to build off the latest version of FATE Core.
http://potatocubed.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/fatescape.pdf
It's... pretty different to the last version.
Excellent!
I had just decided to work on a similar project (using "Strands of Fate" instead of SotC) and to develop a "fatescape" adventure for a coming convention!
I have always felt that Planescape could be freed by a system that would be both more narrative and less exclusively "fantasy oriented" (it's about the multiverse, after all, and there is much more to it than traditional fantasy). Still, I wanted to keep the d&disms that were part of Planescape's cosmogony (especially alignments that would easily become aspects and be used in favour or against the characters as they traveled through the Outer Planes).
I will look into your adaptation but am already impressed by the scope of it. Congratulations!
By the way, I see on the document that you did some playtest. How did it feel compared to "regular" planescape?
Cheers,
Griff
"The name of the game is roleplaying, not ruleplaying. Knowledge, logic, reason, and common sense serve better than a dozen rule books." Gary Gygax.