I was completely surprised and impressed with how my group took to the initiativeless combat in Dungeon World and have been thinking of porting it over to Fate as some of my group aren’t keen on the static initiative system there. Before playing this game I was thinking of having the players roll Fate Dice + Skill for initiative to vary the flow up a bit, but DW seems more elegant.
Have any of you used DW’s lack of initiative mechanic in any games and specifically in Fate?
I use it with Numenera and it works out nicely.
I’ve never used static initiative with Fate and it’s never been an issue.
As someone fairly new to Fate I stuck with the default from the books, but given how customisable it is, I was wondering after DW if the best option might be no option.
If you don’t static, what’s your default mode of initiative? Is it like DW or something else?
Depends on the group. Sometimes I sort of “free for all” it.
Other times I use Marvel Heroic. There, the players decide who goes first and then that person chooses who goes next. They can choose another player or an NPC…whatever makes sense.
I’ve also used Edge of the Empire as it sort of bridges the gap. Everyone rolls initiative (Named NPCs roll for themselves, mobs roll as groups) and secure initiative slots. Then the players decide who takes which slots.
I’ve used Marvel Heroic in Fate, and that worked out really well. To add a little spin to it though, the players didn’t choose who went first explicitly, often there was just a clear person who had the initiative. That worked really well, and I think the DW lack of system would also work well, depending on the group.
I think it does depend very much on the group, I quite like it, but some groups i’ve used it with prefer a more standard initiative system.
The players don’t usually choose who goes first in the Marvel Heroic action sequence either. I find it hard to use any other initiative system now.
Thanks Cam, I thought I’d just missed something there.
I actually tried a mini-campaign of fate accelerated as a break from DW this summer. As GM, my mind was still settled to DW’s mechanics and rythm, and I found that fate lacks a very significant feature that has a very large impact on the narrative flow of DW and its initiative-less system: that when you roll dice, even on a failure, something happens. In fate not always but more often then not a failure is just “nothing happens” (especially in conflicts and with attack actions), and while it’s easily house-ruleble to mimic the dw’s gm moves, it’s kind of unsettling without a clear initiative order that already gives significance to failure in the form of a lost turn.
Alessandro Gianni: That’s odd because the core rules of Fate give you a choice when you fail a roll of either failing or succeeding at a cost (as per the core rules on the four main actions in the FC rulebook), I rarely have a Fate game where failure just means ‘nothing happens.’
the attack action does nothing when you fail. the overcome an obstacle action does what you said: the player decides what happens between “nothing” and “succeed but…” the create an advantage does the same but only when creating new aspects. I’m not saying it’s bad or whatever, but it’s the first obstacle I encountered when running FAE with the dw’s mindset.
Alessandro Gianni : I just find it a bit strange since the “Four Outcomes” page in Fate clearly points out what tie-ing and failing a dice roll mean for all actions:
“Fail
If you roll lower than your opposition, you fail.
This means one of several things: you don’t get what you want, you get what you want at a serious cost, or you suffer some negative mechanical consequence. Sometimes, it means more than one of those. It’s the GM’s
job to determine an appropriate cost. (See the box on this page.)
Tie
If you roll the same as your opposition, you tie. This means you get what you want, but at a minor cost, or you get a lesser version of that you wanted.”
All of which clearly indicates that failing only means ‘nothing happens’ if that’s what the GM and the player decide; the outcomes above are for all actions within the Fate system.
I asked RPGnet about using DW style initiative with Fate, and the strong consensus was that it worked fine as long as you made sure people knew that was how it would be when they made characters (so they don’t think they’re buying higher initiative order with Notice, for example).