FATE and the Duelist
Jun. 7th, 2014 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesSo, continuing on my rewatch of Utena, I can't help think FATE (particularly the quick version FATE Accelerated Edition) would make a great game system for a game like Utena, because Utena's duels make no sense in terms of actual skill, but perfect sense in terms of psychological or ideological battles that happen to involve swords and roses.
Basically FATE allows for 'skills' that either are real skills for realistic games, or are more like FATE Accelerated's approaches: (careful, clever, flashy, forceful, quick, and sneaky). Both systems also have 'Aspects' which are general traits that can either help or hurt you. For instance, 'Issues with a Sibling' is an important trait to your character, your opponent can use it to her advantage provided it's known about IC and there's a justification as to how that can hinder you in this circumstance. Or you can explain how that makes you better able to fight this duel for a bonus to the roll. So, overall you can ending up with a conflict that's really about the presence/absence of miracles or reclaiming one's sense of self after a devastating blow than 'who is better at swords?'.
(You can put those 'skills are skills' rules back into place and have a GM that doesn't use things like the weird symbolic secret forest dueling arena and end up with a game where a duel really only answers 'who is better at swords'.)
(Of course, now I'm thinking of the descriptions I've read of WoW's Sidereal Exalted where some character abilities involve weaponizing concepts, so you could literally turn 'belief in miracles' into a weapon.)
Basically FATE allows for 'skills' that either are real skills for realistic games, or are more like FATE Accelerated's approaches: (careful, clever, flashy, forceful, quick, and sneaky). Both systems also have 'Aspects' which are general traits that can either help or hurt you. For instance, 'Issues with a Sibling' is an important trait to your character, your opponent can use it to her advantage provided it's known about IC and there's a justification as to how that can hinder you in this circumstance. Or you can explain how that makes you better able to fight this duel for a bonus to the roll. So, overall you can ending up with a conflict that's really about the presence/absence of miracles or reclaiming one's sense of self after a devastating blow than 'who is better at swords?'.
(You can put those 'skills are skills' rules back into place and have a GM that doesn't use things like the weird symbolic secret forest dueling arena and end up with a game where a duel really only answers 'who is better at swords'.)
(Of course, now I'm thinking of the descriptions I've read of WoW's Sidereal Exalted where some character abilities involve weaponizing concepts, so you could literally turn 'belief in miracles' into a weapon.)
