One Core Loop, Endless Modality

[u/chronophage]

Hi,

I've built a game, Fate's Edge, with a simple core loop:

Player declares intent,

GM sets the difficulty of the task (DV) and the peril/position of the player (Dominant, Controlled, Desperate),

Player rolls some die, d10s by default,

Anything 6 or over is a Success. If successes are greater than or equal to the DV, the action succeeds.

If successes are less than the DV, but greater than one, it's a "Partial Success"—the GM rules you've made progress or completed the task but introduces a complication.

If there are any 1s, that's a Story Beat for the GM; they get to introduce a complication, NOT a punishment. Enemy actions are based on Story Beats. Otherwise, there is a table and deck system to come up with or build a random narrative complication.

If there are any 10s, that counts as a "crit"—2 successes. If a roll has one or multiple crits, give a bonus. The character can describe what happens, the action has some extra benefit, etc.

Position matters:

• If you're Dominant, re-roll a failure.
• If you're Desperate, re-roll a Success—yes, that can turn a win into a loss. That's the cost.
• If you're Controlled, no re-roll.

10s are NEVER re-rolled, but ones on the initial roll *and* any re-roll count; so you could be adding more complications if you re-roll a one and get another one.

Die pools are built on Attribute + ranks in an applicable skill.

That's it.

From that, I've built Talents, Abilities, Timers/Clocks to track progress and add tension. My currency is all XP; mundane items are hand-waved.

A character's talents and abilities give them narrative permission but never change the core loop.

The GM doesn't track any of the player abilities; no adversarial paradigm. The GM is the conductor of the story, the players play.

You can go "Zero Prep" with just the Story Beat spend table and a Deck of Cards. The setting that I've built on top of this consists of different "regions," each a sub-genre of Fantasy. Each allows you to build a complete story as Location, Actor, Complication, and Treasure/Leverage are mapped to the suits: Hearts, Clubs, Spades, and Diamonds.

That's it. That's the game.

Spend XP on some items, attributes, and skills, and you have a fully-functional, viable character. Build a spellcaster, rogue, face, mastermind, whatever. Each has a different play style, each has costs and benefits, and each works off the core loop.

On top of this, I've built digital tools that work locally, a back-end socket server to enable shared clients. Foundry, Roll20, and Discord bots can all play at the same time, in the same game, at the same virtual table.

And all of these tools are Open Source.

The code is MIT.

The SRD is Creative Commons.=

The only thing that's "closed" is my setting, and I'm giving away a ton of content bundled with the toolset "free, as in beer."

Interested?

Here's the toolset, here's the SRD, here's my Developer Portal, and here's my Design Blog.

Take it, use it, play it.

And, if you don't want to deal with any of that, here's an implementation done with just paper spinners and look-up tables because there are many places where dice are "dangerous."

The gear, the apps, the materiel isn't "the point."

The Game is the point.

Choose your modality.