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[Brentai]

All this talk of D&D 3.5 and buying monsters and THAC0 is making me want to play FFAGS again.

What do you think?

[Kazz]

I created it, and I don't even know what FFAGS is.

[Guild]

Wasn't it something like this:

Using 10pt font, create rules for a pen and paper game. The rules for the game must be less than 1000 characters long.

And then we all wrote stuff down like so:

Rumblestumble RPG

Chargen: Players describe their characters in 20 words or less. The GM then chooses three HERO STATS to assign the player's character and the players assign each of them one of the following numbers (2,3,4).

The HERO STATS:

STRength
DEXterity
CONstitution
INTelligence
WISdom
CHArisma
MAGic

Any stat to which a character has no number assigned is 1 by default.

Rules: Players describe actions they wish to take. Any time the GM feels the actions described involve some form of chance he assigns the action a DIFFICULTY and a HERO STAT CATEGORY (STR CON DEX INT WIS CHA MAG). Things that are impossible to fail at are DIFFICULTY 0 while things that are very very VERY hard to do are DIFFICULTY 6. No action is harder than 6. The DM rolls a number of d4 equal to the DIFFICULTY and the player rolls a number of d6 equal to his ranks in the assigned HERO STAT CATEGORY. If the GM's roll is higher the attempt fails. If the player's roll is higher the attempt succeeds. Ties go to the player. Players can temporarily add 1 to their stat by spending 1 HERO POINT before the roll but after the DIFFICULTY is announced. No stat can be increased by more than 1 in this manner. All players have a number of HERO POINTS equal to their level. Players level up (refreshing their HERO POINTS) whenever the GM feels they deserve it.

[Kazz]

Something like that.

Brentai's system was what we used most often, despite the fact that we had to teach it every time we used it and often messed it up along the way anyway.

You had to name the action, the GM would give you a die roll, then you'd have to spend points and roll under the amount you spent on the die the GM chose.  The back-and-forth communication took a long time and running out of points meant you couldn't do anything until the GM arbitrarily granted you more... rendering them meaningless.

But it was still neat.

I'll try to come up with something.

[Brentai]

The basic gist, without rewriting the whole (one page) rulebook:

STEP 1: You come up with a character concept.  The GM gives you points.

EX: You are Mario, the GM gives you 100 JUMPING and 50 FIRE FLOWER.

STEP 2: You play.  Whenever you do something that requires a roll, the GM decides which points you would have to spend and the difficulty of the roll in number of dice.  i.e. 1d2 (coin flip) is an extremely easy action, whereas 5d20 is something rather difficult.  The player then spends whatever amount of points he chooses, and if the roll is less than the amount the player spent, the action is successful.

EX: You try to jump over Bowser.  The GM considers this a 6d20 roll for JUMPING (I guess he's Sunshine scale Bowser, whatever).  You spend 60 points.  The roll is 52, so you succeed, and now have 40 JUMPING.

STEP 3: The GM arbitrarily rewards extra points whenever he pleases.  The GM can never take points away.

EX: The GM is impressed by your jumping, and rewards you 80 JUMPING and 10 DOING THE PRINCESS points, so you now have 120 JUMPING, 50 FIRE FLOWER and 10 DOING THE PRINCESS.

STEP 4: Repeat.

The actual flow of the game is radically different from GM to GM, as each one will invariably come up with his own subtle rules for gameplay.  I, for example, tended to break the quest up into "chapters" and refresh everybody's points after each one.  I also allowed a lot of auto-success roles (i.e. spending 20 points on a 1d20 roll) and let players do whatever they liked as long as they could justify it (my favorite: Napolean using his powers of dictation to declare a state of Deus Ex Machina, which in effect summoned a bear).  Kazz did... something else.

And that's how you play FFAGS.

[Detonator]

If FFAGS games are springing up, then I'll have to start hanging out in IRC again.

[Brentai]

Seems like they aren't.   

[MadMAxJr]

That would require Brentai to start hanging out in IRC again.

[Brentai]

Hello, we are going to try FFAGS2 / FFAGS Core / Whatever you people started calling it on the forum.

The rules are incredibly simple and, fortunately, Detonator seems to have them saved for posterity.

The theme for this game is medieval fantasy.  I'm on the fence as to whether or not to attempt to play it straight just to see if we can, especially since I had to look up how to spell "medieval".

If you wish to play, please reply with your character name and a short description.

Specifics on how exactly we're going to do this will be given when I think of them.

[Guild]

Gawain Larch is a fantastic archer. In fact, he once shot the wings off a fly. It wasn't on purpose, but he loudly proclaimed that it was at the solstice festival earlier that year.

Gawain's father thinks his son is wasting his time with archery when he should be helping with the family fletcher's shop, but nag and preach though he might, the wool-headed boy still dreams of valiant adventure in faraway lands. He wants to slay a dragon. He wants to rescue a princess. Most of all he wants fame, glory and the respect of the community. A knighting might even be in order, if you were to ask him directly after a night at the tavern.

Gawain is, in short, a naive dolt who will do ANYTHING if the words "adventure" "princess" or "treasure" are tossed into his ears. The kid who bought magic beans has nothing on this eager beaver. His quiver overstuffed, Gawain is off to find his fortune in a world he's ill-equipped to meet.

[Kazz]

Mr. Sheep is a sheep.  He is afraid of the sunrise.  He is afraid of dogs.  He is afraid of people.  He loves to eat, but sometimes, he is afraid of grass.  He likes to follow other sheep.  He likes being followed by other sheep.  He is most comfortable when in the center of a herd of a thousand other sheep just like himself.  He has pretty nice horns, but he doesn't know about them because he can't see them, and if he did see them he would be terrified.

[Brentai]

Will start the game sometime tomorrow with however many players decide to jump in (yes, even if it's just Guild and Kazz... 'cause that would be hilarious).  Players can join or quit at any time they please; I'll write their characters in and out of the story as needed.  This is going to be very freeform.

I'll update fairly often and players can perform actions at pretty much any time; I'll run the all the necessary back-and-forth communication in parallel so it's partly on you guys to coordinate so you don't end up tripping over each other.

If that's confusing, well, we'll take it slow at first and it should become much more obvious after a fight drinking contest or two.

[Guild]

So this will be play-by-post?

[Brentai]

Si, senor.

[Guild]

[Kazz]

If we're really running the classic system on the board, here's the hurdle I see.  FFAGS requires an extra step of communication for every action:

Player: I want to perform an action.
GM: That action is xDy difficulty.
Player: I spend Z thus-and-such points.  (Add a step if the GM says that this is inapplicable.)  I roll the dice.
GM: You succeed or fail.
Player: I'm having a tremendous amount of fun.

If we're going to run this on the board, let's just ditch the system and let Brentai assign us varying levels of competence in whatever areas he makes up, then let him resolve our actions according to whatever method strikes his whimsy.  It will be less solid and less strategic and less fair, but I'm completely sure that none of us care about that as long as things are breezy and fun.  FFAGS was never intended to be anything more than a loose logic system for shared storytelling anyway.

[Brentai]

Well I think the fact that everyone gets to act at once instead of the GM just sort of getting to you when he can will make it feel more fluid (as fluid as a play-by-post game is ever going to be).  I'd just like to try it out and see if it happens to work okay.  FFAGS is totally experimental, after all.

[Kazz]

Well, okay, but what is your plan for resolving actions?

[Guild]

Difficulty of receiving an answer: 2d10

[Kazz]

I'll spend 10 nitpicker points.