Good alternatives to FATE?

[Anlashok]

Short background: Our old GM was really hooked on the FATE system but he's moving to another state. Because of that though, we're kind of sick of FATE and are looking to try something new, but I don't really know what my options are.

Don't really have anything against FATE. Except maybe that opposed rolls were too swingy at times and jockeying fore fate points can feel a bit gamist. By and large though we liked the system, we're just looking for other options.

Can be a little crunchier than FATE, but one of our players refuses to touch anything as rules heavy as... say.. D&D NEXT or above.

Would also like anything suggested to be relatively setting neutral, as we have two people who want to start GMing on two separate days, one running high fantasy and the other cyberpunk. So ideally something that could accommodate both.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

[SouthpawSoldier]

5e rules heavy? One of the reasons I love it so much is much it reminds me of FATE.

Setting neutral makes it tricky. If that wasn't an issue, I'd suggest CORTEX+, used for Firefly RPG. Very narrative by design.

[Rakaydos]

Coming from FATE, I suggest giving Star Wars: Edge of Empire, Age of Rebelion, or the soon to be released Force and Destiny a shot.

In addition to having a party pool of narrative control (Destiny points), you have unexpected degrees of unintended consiquences built into the custom dice.

If you jump and fail, with advantages, perhaps you stop just short because you didnt feel you could make it. Or perhaps you are now hanging from your fingertips on the other side, but need to make another check to pull yourself up. or you're still catching your breath, recovering from the last encounter, narratively having not even attempted the jump yet.

The dice say what kind of degree of effects there are, but it's on the players and gamemaster to decide what the effect is. most of the people who hate the system had GMs who overused the same effect (IE: dropping a weapon, again and again) instead of letting imagination run free. (perhaps missing the target, instead hitting a nearby fuel line and having a gushing fuel-air flamethrowier sweeping across the battlefield)

[Eisenheim]

you could also consider grabbing a crunchier fate implementation. Jadepunk and atomic robo have good deal of gear mechanics off of fate core, and bulldogs is a relatively crunchy older fate game.

If you're looking primarily for narrative style games, I've heard good things about REIGN, and Dogs in the Vineyard is interesting.

[Friv]

I'd say give one of the Cortex Plus games a try. Firefly adapts to just about any science fiction setting, Leverage handles most types of action-spy stuff, Smallville does soap opera, and Marvel Heroic Roleplay covers most comic books or mythic heroes.

[Knaight]

Cortex+ isn't a bad option, and it's essentially setting neutral (though embedded in setting books overall). There's Fudge, which is one of the major sources for Fate but doesn't use aspects and similar and shies away from modifiers and numbers a lot less.

There's also the ORE system. REIGN was mentioned (and it's one implemenation of it), Nemesis is another, between the two both fantasy and cyberpunk are included - it's arguably heavier than 5e though. There's Open d6, though that also approaches the mechanical complexity threshold.

Then there's Savage Worlds. I'm not a fan, but it's light, it's fast, and it fits your criteria and is worth looking into.

[kyoryu]

Cortex+

One of the Powered by the Apocalypse games might work, if there's one matching what you're playing.

[Anonymouswizard]

Short background: Our old GM was really hooked on the FATE system but he's moving to another state. Because of that though, we're kind of sick of FATE and are looking to try something new, but I don't really know what my options are.

Don't really have anything against FATE. Except maybe that opposed rolls were too swingy at times and jockeying fore fate points can feel a bit gamist. By and large though we liked the system, we're just looking for other options.

Can be a little crunchier than FATE, but one of our players refuses to touch anything as rules heavy as... say.. D&D NEXT or above.

Would also like anything suggested to be relatively setting neutral, as we have two people who want to start GMing on two separate days, one running high fantasy and the other cyberpunk. So ideally something that could accommodate both.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Ouch, I'm going to mention from the start that you've basically struck out about 90% of my library, because I like my systems like my roast potatoes (with good crunch and fluff). A couple of rough ideas:

Savage Worlds is fairly rules-light, as well as being fast and (IMO) fun, and although it bills itself as generic it's fairly solidly action heroes, which is fine for a lot of games but is why I don't run it. Edges are about as complex as feats but strictly optional on a character by character basis, although in my opinion a character without a small number of edges (I'd say up to 3 at character creation than up to one per rank, I haven't played enough to be sure) is slightly behind where they should be, especially if trying to build a fast character (the only way to boost your average initiative is with a couple of edges, which can be really good at it). It handles both cyberpunk and fantasy as well as it handles anything.

I haven't played Cortex+, but it looks like a decent bet.
A word of advice, if you stagger the beginning dates of your campaigns enough, two separate systems shouldn't be too hard. I only say this because I've yet to find a system that can run both high fantasy and cyberpunk well (I haven't been able to get a group willing to try Fate yet).

For fantasy
If you can find it, the old BECMI or Rules Cyclopaedia edition of D&D is rules light for anybody but the Dungeon Master, although I've only been in front of the screen. It has most of the problems of AD&D but the smaller number of rules means that they are less prevalent. It is so much simpler than 5e.

The only other fantasy games I've played apart from D&D have been Savage worlds or Urban Fantasy games, but I'll give a rundown of the latter.

Old World of Darkness is clunky, and I only play it because I like the clunky. It can in theory be simple, but almost certainly an avoid for your group, if only because it is a .

New World of Darkness is significantly simpler and less clunky, and if the merits aren't too much of a problem for your 'rules light' player then it's definitely a good system. It's more 'streamlined rules heavy' than 'rules light' though, so it might be a difficult pass.

Unknown Armies is a great system, but if you aren't playing it in the default setting you are losing out on a lot of what makes it great. Obsession and Triggers are easy to grasp and have simple bonuses, and once you've realised that you can take anything as a skill if you and the GM can agree on the stat. The magic is great, and even Adept's rules-heavy magic uses a rules light system.

I've got nothing good to say about Unisystem, the GM I played All Flesh Must Be Eaten under completely ignored my character's investigation focus in favour of just killing zombies (ironically, everyone I've told the story to agrees that my researcher was a great character concept for the genre). If you want to know if it would be a good idea, ask somebody else.

Out of the ones that I've listed, I'd suggest Savage Worlds or BEMI/RC D&D.

Cyberpunk
Avoid Shadowrun. Don't be like me, just wandering in and expecting to find a system of about nWoD level just because you flicked through the book in the store and saw the basics of the system. The level of crunch is at least on the D&D 3.5 level.

From what I've seen Cyberpunk 2020 might be a better system, but it's still likely rules heavier than D&D 5e. To be fair, I'm not sure if I've even heard of a rules light cyberpunk system, augmentation and netrunning are just great fodder for rules heavy systems. I think the lightest I've actually seen is Eclipse Phase, which is the heaviest RPG I've bought since Shadowrun (which managed to top Dark Heresy as the crunchiest game I've bought since D&D 4e).

[goto124]

jockeying fore fate points can feel a bit gamist.

May I ask, how it usually went and why it felt gamist? Something like Fate points is usually very un-gamist.


Avoid Shadowrun.

According to players on these forums:

'Okay guy, roll... 20d6'
*fills large salad bowl with dice*
*empties bowl*
kwakwakwaKKKKRRRRRRSSSSSSHHHHHHH!!!!
*everyone begins searching for dice on the floors, kitchen, hallway, dining room...*

[Anlashok]

May I ask, how it usually went and why it felt gamist? Something like Fate points is usually very un-gamist.
I saw a large chunk of each session being devoted to figuring out how to turn any given situation into a compel or other reason to gain fate points and then arguing and lawyering over whether an aspect is invokable in a given situation or not.

[SouthpawSoldier]

I saw a large chunk of each session being devoted to figuring out how to turn any given situation into a compel or other reason to gain fate points and then arguing and lawyering over whether an aspect is invokable in a given situation or not.

I thought avoiding this was the whole point of FATE and narrative systems?

[goto124]

Look hard enough, and you can rules-lawyer in any system.

[Anonymouswizard]

According to players on these forums:

'Okay guy, roll... 20d6'
*fills large salad bowl with dice*
*empties bowl*
kwakwakwaKKKKRRRRRRSSSSSSHHHHHHH!!!!
*everyone begins searching for dice on the floors, kitchen, hallway, dining room...*

It's more:
For normal tasks you'll be rolling 10-12d6 in your specialty area, and if you do increase a your skill you can top out at 6 attribute+12 skill+4 augmentation=22 dice for a human, other metatypes (especially Orks and Trolls) can end up with higher dice pools, and initiation allows adepts to have no theoretical limit.

Options are well balanced, but in an annoying way. Tech-based characters rain supreme until they hit their cap, and then start to become jacks in their chosen area. Adepts advance slower but overtake techs in the long run. Technomancers just suck if they don't use Sprites, due to having lower logic and a matrix attribute spread generally lower than a mid-level deck (probably slaved to a commlink so firewall can be dumped).

There are so many subsystems, with the main 4 being combat, matrix, rigging, and magic. Of these combat is the easiest to learn and magic and rigging the hardest.

Attacks consist of 4 dice rolls:
Attack, probably with around 12 dice at character creation.
Defend, which is about 10 dice.
Damage, which is rolling weapon damage+net attack successes. This could in theory be 20 odd dice.
Soak, which for Orks and Trolls is likely in the 20s after augmentations.
And most combat characters are making 2-3 attacks per round.

Initiative dice reign supreme. Who cares if I have 4 less strength than you, if I can hit you three times a round instead of 1/2?

[Sith_Happens]

And most combat characters are making 23 attacks per round.

Uh, is there supposed to be a hyphen here?:smalleek:

[Anonymouswizard]

Uh, is there supposed to be a hyphen here?:smalleek:

Sir, I am sorry for the typo, you can now remove the frightened status.

[kyoryu]

I saw a large chunk of each session being devoted to figuring out how to turn any given situation into a compel or other reason to gain fate points and then arguing and lawyering over whether an aspect is invokable in a given situation or not.


Look hard enough, and you can rules-lawyer in any system.

Pretty much this.

As far as arguing over whether an aspect is invokable, I have a simple test - "narrate it." Add something to the narration that uses the aspect and advances your cause. Because we've got Fate Points as a primary limiter, that's strict enough for me.

"I can't fail in front of _The One I Love_! I look over at her, and redouble my efforts to punch this guy in the face!" Perfect.

This works better than "Um, of course being an _Accountant_ works when swordfighting. Um, because doing math has shown me how to balance things?" Because then you end up having the player try to say stuff like "Um, as his sword comes down at me, I think about how I discovered a discrepancy in... yeah, okay, I'm reaching here."

For compels, the first trick is to make sure your Compels have teeth, especially when players have a lot of FP anyway. The general response you should get from a Compel is the "you jackass" look, not "woohoo, free FP!" If players offer weaksauce compels, offer them hard ones instead.

And if people *still* insist on constantly Compelling, do what you do with every other disruptive behavior and ask them to knock it off.

[Knaight]

There are so many subsystems, with the main 4 being combat, matrix, rigging, and magic. Of these combat is the easiest to learn and magic and rigging the hardest.

Attacks consist of 4 dice rolls:
Attack, probably with around 12 dice at character creation.
Defend, which is about 10 dice.
Damage, which is rolling weapon damage+net attack successes. This could in theory be 20 odd dice.
Soak, which for Orks and Trolls is likely in the 20s after augmentations.
And most combat characters are making 2-3 attacks per round.

Initiative dice reign supreme. Who cares if I have 4 less strength than you, if I can hit you three times a round instead of 1/2?
That 2-3 does have some glaring exceptions - Street Samurai can get stupidly high numbers of attacks, and then there's what in-combat rigging can turn into for some Shadowrun editions. Shadowrun has some very interesting mechanics in it (e.g. glitches), but it's easily one of the heaviest games in the entire industry.

[Maglubiyet]

Savage Worlds is something different, flexible, easy-to-learn, and, as someone pointed out, rules light. You can put together a decent campaign using only the $10 deluxe edition...no need for a gazillion splatbooks.

Bennies are pretty similar to Fate points, though, so if you're sick of that aspect (Aspect, get it?...hahaha) then maybe it's not for you.

[Anonymouswizard]

That 2-3 does have some glaring exceptions - Street Samurai can get stupidly high numbers of attacks, and then there's what in-combat rigging can turn into for some Shadowrun editions. Shadowrun has some very interesting mechanics in it (e.g. glitches), but it's easily one of the heaviest games in the entire industry.

Let's see, using 5e, 6 Reaction+6 Intuition+3 wired reflexes+3 reaction enhancers gives 18+4d6 initiative, or an average of 32 initiative, for an average 4 attacks a turn, but even with alphaware you've basically eaten your essence. I prefer to settle for about 13+3d6 because I don't know how to twink.

And I ban combat drones right off the bat, because I do not want to deal with 6+ attacks per turn.

Shadowrun requires some fighting from the GM's side, but ends up not too heavy in practice. I'd say only as complex as D&D 3.P if the players don't optimise.

[mig el pig]

I've also had mixed experiences with Shadowrun. It's main advantage is also one of it's biggest disadvantages. The Rules allow for quite a few options and one short-lived shadowrun campaign I played descended in a, eventualy, heated 2-3hour discussion about buying an armored van between 2 players and the GM. Leaving another player and me sitting their for nearly 3 hours. (for the record I don't even remember if we finaly managed to buy a van or not.) On the other hand I had a great time with another GM and it remains a setting that intrigues me.

Numenera might be an option?

It's an easy and fluid system that can work for high fantasy and cyberpunk with the proper flavoring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoPhzCqKTYs&list=PL-oTJHKXHicQKR94ZrVu4xxl4vUdqIKOQ is a podcast of a 3/4 session scenario. Start at 19.45 to get to character creation and explenaton about the system.