Third Life Thoughts - Fate of Skills

So Cam Banks was having a conversation on twitter about Fate and it hit a lot of points that I've been thinking about in regards to Fate, and in particular the Skills of Fate.

I personally think that Fate is a great game, I just also think that the definitions of the skills is probably the worst thing about it. Attack, Defend, Overcome an obstacle, Create an advantage seem perfectly fine but then you get into "well, this skill doesn't defend, or that skill doesn't attack" and it gets into a bit of a chart to remind you what can and can't be used in certain ways.

It's a big part of what makes the system go clunk for me. Attack and Defend are easily defined. Create an advantage makes sense too. Overcome an obstacle just seems to be the kind of "well, if it isn't one of those other three things then ..." use for skills.

When it comes time to Third Life, I want to change that up. The idea behind what I want to do is that the core of any skill is change. You want to create a type of change to the environment or situation. I was going to use to the word change, but something that Rob Donoghue said made me change that. It's all about the push, how are you pushing on the situation?

Right now the break down is here are your skills, or we may use FAE and go with aspects who knows, and how do you want to push.

Is it a Physical Push?
Is it a Social Push?
Is it an Emotional Push?

What is the result? Does it create a new aspect? Does it get rid of an aspect? Does it reveal something in the scene that was already there? Does it create stress?

The answer to that is, whatever works best.

Anyway, bare bones thoughts on my monster game.

Hitting the corners - Making your best pitch

Ha! Sportsball references! ^_^

Anyway, I was at the local monthly board game designer meetup and we got to talking and one of the things we talked about was how to pitch your game. I'm not going to go into all the details of the pitch but one of the things that struck me was that someone said that he felt like a pitch is misrepresenting your game.

I disagree. I think a bad bitch misrepresents your game.

Also, if you lie in your pitch you're fucked. Honestly and truly.

What a good pitch does is take the essence of your game down to a solid nugget of awesomeness. What is the thing that your game does that makes it a special snowflake among all the other snowflakes. It's important because it's how you get people interested in your game, you're giving them a reason to care about your game.

Once you get people hooked on the awesome premise of your game, you can go into more detail. This doesn't mean that you will now explain the rules of your game. This is where you can talk about the awesome things in your game that make your pitch true. Each one of these should be it's own pitch, you don't have to go into the nitty gritty details of the how it's awesome, just mention why it's awesome.

Then, if they're interested in the game and ready to play the game then you can go into the nitty gritty details of how everything works.

Before then? Don't bother because you'll lose them.