Fudge Forum

[Tyberious Funk]

I posed this to the official Fate list, but I see there is a bit of Fate action here on the forums so I might get a response here too.

I'm thinking of running a Firefly/Serenity game using Fate. For those
of you not familiar with the official Serenity game, which I believe
is based on Sovereign Stone, it has an interesting approach to skills.

Firstly, skills are rated according to which dice you role when using
them. So the progression goes something like d2, d4, d6, d8, d10,
d12. The skill list is quite broad, with 22 different skills and
these skills can only be raised to d6 (ie, three levels). If you want
to raise them any higher, they split off into specialities, with each
general skill having 3-5 specialities. For example, you could take
the piloting skill up to d6. If you wanted to get any higher, you'd
have to take one of the specialisations like Navigation (which would
start out at d. For all piloting tasks, you'd be d6, except
Navigation which would be d8. You could then progress Navigation even
further and/or you could take other specialisations such as
Astrogation.

This approach to skills has already had some support in the broader
Fudge community. It works nicely for systems with fairly chunky skill
progression, and, IMHO, I think it is a reasonable representation of
real life.

I am not sure how it would work in Fate though - in particular, the
impact on the skill pyramid. How do you treat general skills versus
specialist skills? A player with a general skill that decides to pick
up a specialisation in effect will suddely have two skills. The
general skill and the derivative specialisation. If they then took
another specialisation, suddenly the character would look top-heavy in
terms of their pyramid.

Any thoughts?

For that matter, does anyone just throw out the pyramid altogether?
When I introduced Fate to a group a few weeks ago, one of the members
grumbled that the pyramid was just a silly mechanism to stop munchkins
(in a way, I suppose he's right). Do others do anything different?

[mitchw]

I think that the skill 'tree' approach used in Serenity has the same effect as the skill pyramid - it forces the players to have a good, broad base before taking the higher skills.

So, I would use one or the other and not try to use both.

Mitch

[Emryys]

I'm a Serenity/Firefly and Fudge fan, so let us know how this goes... and post rules/goodies
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[Tyberious Funk]

Well, I decided to go the simple path. I'm just using the core Fate rules and I quickly worked up a short list of skills by pinching stuff from F10. At this stage, the game is only a one-shot, so I didn't want too many headaches. The intro material can be found here.

Depending on how well the game goes, I might post some Actual Play material later.

[Emryys]

Looks pretty cool

I noticed the ship: Cayuga Class Light Transport
You have stats for it... have you made rules for their use?

P.S. On the Ship page, the title says"Feetrader The Ship"
You may or may not wish to edit
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[Tyberious Funk]

[Steelhand]

[Tyberious Funk]

[Steelhand]

[raconteurx]