Devlog #3 - To the (approach) hell and back

Recently, I was revisiting the idea of having both skills and approaches in my game. I was very encouraged by the article in Fate Codex. When I last tried it, I gave it up because I couldn't find a combination of skill/approach levels that made sense. This time I've finally found one, but something else was the problem…

My idea was to have 9 skills with starting levels +3, +2 and +1 (one each) and 6 approaches with levels +2, +1 and +1. 9 skills times 6 approaches equals 54 cases, which made sense (3 cases per standard skill). I even managed to create a table of example uses of every skill with every approach. Furthermore, the number of skills levels the starting character has access to was roughly equal to the number of skill levels in Fate Core. It all went well until playtests happened…

Something was just wrong. I wanted to use the risk system I probably mentioned multiple times before, but as it sounded like a brilliant idea, it just didn't work in real games. I couldn't fit the best approach on multiple occasions and the players exploited this system (not necessarily willingly!) to always pick the highest approach possible, which I simply despise of!

Furthermore, I was thinking about sticking to only 9 skills, but meh … I discussed it in my previous post. It won't just work or require too much modification in the core system. I officially, and this time for real, give up. I'll stick to the original Fate Core skill layout, probably with some cosmetic modifications to support better the setting.

That took me some time. Maybe next progress will come a bit easier. :)