Is it worth using FATE for a mystery/investigative scenario?
>>44016461
I don't see why not.
>>44016461
It could be cool in an Inspectres kind of way. There's no "investigation", players make up stuff as they go along. It's quite fdifferent from the standard investigation paradigm though.
>>44016461
Nothing wrong with it.
The only issue is would be if you're trying to run a tactical swat mission or some sort of realistic police procedure Forensic investigation. In which case you're be forced to make up a lot.
>>44016461
Just follow these steps:
1. Decide what happened and who did it. Just broad strokes. Establish a motive.
2. Establish the necessary roll to deduce the culprit. It should be a threshold of 8 or 9, something they can't reach.
3. When the players roll, they create a tag that can be used for whatever they want later.
4. They only really succeed when they can get a confession. They can only use evidence as tags to help in that conflict. Hard Mode: The lawyer is countering them socially.
There, it's now a police drama.
You should make some specific skills for this, though.
>>44017654
>>44016461
Adding to that. Whatever you don't do, don't make the players to roll to find vital plot important clues. A single failed spotcheck (or even just the players not putting two and two together) will bring the game to a screaming halt.
That's not to say that they shouldn't be allowed to fail, just that they should fail in an dramatically appropriate manner that keeps the story moving.
They always need to have a lead some where. If they miss a vital piece of evidence at the first murder scene, make sure you can keep throw more murders at them until they can work it out.
No player generated CAA actions. Instead a player states what kind of advantage he is looking for, and the GM explains the details according to his mystery.
>>44016461
Yes. Hell it's worth using FATE for anything. Don't let anyone convince you that it's too rules light. What FATE does is have a general main character sheet with stats, and then unlike other dumb systems which have a stat for every single little situation, have you adapt ANY situation to those stats/rules on a typical FATE character sheet. Simple yet with near infinite options.
>>44017497
>>44017654
>>44017850
>>44019016
Ok, thanks for your advices, but I still have some doubts. I usually play CoC investigative adventures and there:
1) my players very often should not know the result of their skill check, so I secretly roll for them;
2) there are a lot of private informations.
How should I deal with these issues in FATE?
>>44019769
Because in Fate players are able to participate in storytelling, one of its expectations is that players are able to separate their meta knowledge from character knowledge.
It would be very hard to make secret skill rolls anyway, because players have the capacity to use fate points to alter their results. (As it has been said elsewhere, Fate is not as interested in failure as it is in how much you are willing to sacrifice for heroism.)
>>44017850
>Whatever you don't do, don't make the players to roll to find vital plot important clues. A single failed spotcheck (or even just the players not putting two and two together) will bring the game to a screaming halt.
FATE words it thusly: Rolls should only be done when both success and failure are equally interesting possibilities to the story.
Not noticing the vital clue doesn't move the story along, it halts it, ergo it shouldn't be an option. Now if not noticing a clue leads to the next victim being murdered or whatever, that could justify rolling for it. Whatever you do, fall forwards, don't just stop.
You can't make secret rolls work very well in FATE because a major mechanic - hell, maybe the core mechanic - is roll manipulation using Fate Points and teamwork and Aspects and shit. You can't choose whether you want to buy a reroll if you don't know what the results or target are.
FATE puts the story first and then finds mechanics to justify it. This seems "backwards" if you're used to other systems, but I actually find it quite intuitive once you stop thinking in terms of "What do the mechanics or dice allow me to do?" and start thinking in terms of "What do I want to do/what is the player trying to do?" Rolls are just to see if they succeed or not.
>>44023647
Knowing your BBEG or whoever's rolls and the shifts between theirs and yours is absolutely necessary. FATE is unkind to those who don't like metagamers. I think you could do it with a lot of work and some decent players. Right now I'm in a Lumberjanes game, and a lot of what we're doing is investigating and noticing. I'd say it's going really well.
If you really despise the very notion of meta occurring in your very party... well.... you could always discuss Notice/Investigate results while pulling the player out of the main group.
>>44026514
FATE is only kind to metagaming in the sense that it assumes its players agree that the story should come first. It's not really a game meant for "winning" the game and if you don't understand that you'll always have a bad time with FATE. But it's great for natural roleplayers who find involved mechanics clunky.
>>44026553
Yeah. It's basically storytelling with dice and character sheets.
