Tried out Fate Core RPG with students new to tabletop RPG's

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OgreBattle
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Tried out Fate Core RPG with students new to tabletop RPG's

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Same group as Munchausen. Had them do world creation (that's a nice part of Fate Core, didn't know it was formalized).

6 players with me as GM. 3 hour limit for the session.

They went with a 1900's magic is real setting in a city. Big conflict was "prevent WWIV", the issue was "stolen secret documents.

Game started with the President giving a talk at the harbor where a ship came back with a historic artifact, explosion and documents are stolen though the artifact is not taken.

Had players do an open ended "what do you do use your skills". Everyone gets one action for that round.
Some tried to save the president and help people from the explosion, others tried to see if there was anyone suspicious. I didn't follow Fate rules too closely and just ran it as a "Can they get enough +X bonuses towards different goals.

So "Save the President" required +X total to be achieved, "Find the suspicious person escaping with documents" required +X total to be achieved towards that goal. It's Fate Core so wasn't strict with how skills were used.

Also had an information gathering round where one guy used his super strong big muscles skill to woo the President's gay secretary into divulging info, another did a more traditional "roll investigate and investigate around".

The game slowed down when it got to combat with 6 players and 2-4 NPC's opposed roles where agile spies kept on dodging. Two rounds of that and I just discarded opposed rolls and had attacks as an Overcome action (vs Target number).

They fought in a warehouse, the zones were floor, 2nd floor, roof. I think making zones a vertical thing instead of "this side of the room and the other side of the room" is more fun. One of the players had played Pathfinder before and kept on asking for specific distance between his character and a gun that was dropped, it annoyed the other players that hadn't played a grid based tabletop RPG before.

I basically ran this game of Fate Core the way I've read about Hunter's Moon, Shinobigami, which have distinct phases and turn limits. I personally like writing detailed combat systems, but in practice with 6 players I think this abstract, set turns kinda play is the way forward for me.
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