Porting Deadlands to FATE

Matt Miller

Bought Fate Core, thinking about porting an AEG setting (Deadlands, 7th Sea, L5R) to it. All systems share what I'll call the 'Roll then Keep' mechanic; roll X dice, keep (and sum) the y highest dice. My memory of playing it was that it was...clumsy. Mentally, you have to perform a sort operations, which involves !(x-1) comparisons, and then sum three or four dice. So making a simple roll takes quite a bit of mental math.

Complicating this, 10's explode. While doing so makes it theoretically possible to reach much higher target numbers, the chances are small. Ie, reaching 30, on a d10 is a 1/1000 chance. 

The 'Keep' system does a lot of unintuitive things to mean and variance. 10k10 is the same as 10d10. But 5k10 generates a distribution where a normal roll is 8±2, rather than 5.5±4.5. Higher mean and smaller variance. Translating the difference between steps is thus difficult. Is 6k4 better than 5k5? Not intuitive. Presenting such information requires a table.

Rob Hicks

Several worlds desperately need functional systems. Top of my list for doing so would be shadowrun. Cyberpunk fantasy. Suuuuuper tasty.