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.
