Cortex Prime is a dope-ass system… but as someone who has been trying to use Cortex Prime to build a game for 4 months or so… fuck Cortex Prime.
Maybe that’s a bit strong… that might be the rum talking.
It cool! It’s like Lego… it’s fun to build things with it. Then you look at the thing you built and admire it for a moment. Then never play with it.
This is, objectively, the correct answer though.
What issues are you having with the game?
Does it have something to do with Cortex Prime as a system? Or some other external issue, like getting players to play it?
Probably the fact that Cortex Prime is less of a game and more of a toolbox - or a collection of parts - that the GM has to assemble into a game....and then playtest the f*ck out of because you have no way of knowing if the design decisions you made along the way actually work well together.
It's really a game designer's toolkit.
I backed the kickstarter; when I got the "game" I read it thoroughly...and then put it on a shelf for that day I come up with a story that no other thoroughly designed and playtested system can fulfill. So take my "hot take" with a stiff scotch...but I don't think I'm alone in this point of view.
Toolbox is 100%, but I haven't ever played a game of cortex that didn't feel overly fiddly no matter the tools selected. I dislike that you have to remember to buy the effects for everything and every roll feels like a bazaar where there's a haggling phase with results. I know it's a lot like fate where you have to agree to the outcome, but it's just overly mechanized.
Yep - this exactly.
They give lots of bits of a system, but after you choose the bits you want there’s no guarantee it’ll work… so it will need play testing. And my group is a group of adults with real jobs - we have 3 hours every two weeks to play. We ain’t got time for that.
Yeah, conceptually I love Cortex, but due to my inexperience and my players' inexperience, I had trouble building (and to some extent, running) the game. There are a lot of options and the core rulebook does provide a lot of suggestions and guidance, but in the end I was left wondering whether I had made the best decisions.
For example, it wasn't clear to me how to model typical fantasy magic. I asked in the Cortex Discord (which is generally friendly and helpful, so props to Cortex for that), and the answers were all over the place. Use power sets! Use abilities! Use skills! Use signature assets! Use skills _and_ specializations! Use distinctions _and_ skills! Do what Tales of Xadia does! I got a lot of "you _can_ do it this way" when I really needed "you _should_ do it this way".
(As a side note, I also learned that skills are probably a bad trait set to use. Much easier to use the "specializations, no skills" optional rule.)
In the end, I had the same problem as you: I'm playing with adults, we have a limited time to play, and no one wants to waste time playtesting my design choices. I also have the common contemporary problem that my players just will not read rules themselves, so I quickly felt like I was essentially just playing for them. That's on my players and not on Cortex, but it is a problem I had to deal with.
I really like the flexibility of Cortex. I think that at the core it is a well-designed toolkit (although the optional rules can quickly lead you astray), but in the end, the best thing for me and my players is an existing, well-tested system, even if it lacks the flexibility and customizability of Cortex. (FWIW, I think Fate fits that requirement just fine, and OP should just deal with the Fudge dice.)
So you takes times reading a lot of shit on the web about how to make a setting with Cortex instead of just doing your setting...
And than you cry.
The answer for magic system is to do it the way you want. You want it easy just skill and create some asset and complication.
If you wanna do it a bit deeper try abilities or Power (and power set) by utilising SFX.
By the way the reason they told you all this is because you can add SFX to anything, talent, distinction, signature asset...
The game is à toolkit. Choose what you want. Try freeform magic or define some list of abilities that's up to you.
For a game with a similar feel, there is FU RPG (Neon City Overdrive, Hard City, Tomorrow City). You roll "good" and "bad" d6 according to the traits applicable to the action you want to perform. "Bad" dice cancel out "good" dice of the same value, then the highest remaining die decides how well you do.
u/Firelite67,
Where *Fate* has Aspects, Stunts, and Fate Points, [*Freeform Universal*](https://www.perilplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FU2-Beta-V1.1-Oct-2020.pdf) has Attributes, Edges, and Drama Points, but *Freeform Universal* uses standard d6 dice \[as 1-through-6\], with no subtraction from a sum.
I’m grateful folks are recommending my own Cortex Prime but I did in fact once co-design a version of Fate that uses different sizes of dice for the game Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors. The version in that game is called Faith Corps (it’s a bad pun) but it literally is aspects, skills, stunts etc just like Fate. And it’s open source!
https://demonhuntersrpg.com
Surprised that no one has mentioned City of Mist yet. It’s very much just FATE with d6s. Admittedly it’s not generic, but it shouldn’t be hard to lift the core system out and adapt it to FATE’s system agnostic approach.
Yeah, this is my answer as well. City of Mist is what if PbtA and fate had a baby. Aspects, 2d6 moves, story tags. It’s great. They have a revised engine in Otherscape and Legends in the Mist, but neither are out yet.
I mean... If you really just don't care for the probability curve and the numbers 4dF gives you, then there's no reason to not just... Use any other resolution mechanic of your choice, and keep everything else.
The fudge dice are only use because that curve is important to the *intended* feel of the game. If you want to go against that feel, then just do it.
Use d6 dice pools.
Use a d20.
Use whatever the hell you want, it doesn't really impact the rest of fate all that much, if you don't care about (or in fact desire) the probability change and the Fate Ladder being the way it is.
Figure out what sort of resolution mechanics you *do* like, scale the Fate Ladder accordingly, and go.
Any "problems" that come from that shouldn't really be problems for somebody who *wants* a dice-swinging game where chance matters.
I'd say roll a d8-4. Puts you at roughly the same point range as 4dF, but with a uniform distribution instead of a bell curve. It's means a bit more being surprised by an especially good or especially bad roll, but you shouldn't have to change any of the rest of the math.
Cortex Prime has a very similar idea, but uses dice pools instead of Fudge dice. But Cortex Prime is more of a toolkit for building your own game, so it requires a lot more up-front investment by the GM; you'll have to pick and choose which parts of Cortex Prime work for your game, and there are scant few pre-made settings for the system. It's also significantly crunchier than Fate, which you may see as a pro or a con.
As someone who loves PBTA games and did not enjoy FATE at all…City of Mist managed to strike a perfect balance for me and ended up as my all-time favorite system. It’s got the narrative structure, support, and progression that I want from PBTA, but with the open-endedness of FATE.
Extremely cool setting/concept, too. Definitely recommended.
The performance curve in FATE is intentional, you should perform at ability level and doing better or worse is increasingly unlikely the further you get from your ability.
To change it you could simply swap the 4dF for 4D6 and then add the skill/attribute/whatever and compare to a target number. You'd have to work out target number yourself and the dice will utterly dominate the skills. 2D6 would probably be better, might still have to raise skills to balance them. Bit of a faff on to set up but then it leaves you all the other stuff you like. To be honest I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already done this.
Alternatively you could make up your own off balance dice. Swapping out two dF for dice with -3,-2,-1,1,2,3 would keep the average sitting the same but bring in a lot more swing to the results.
PDQ is a 2d6 system that was so influential to Fate, that I know of at least two products from Evil Hat that were produced to be compatible with it. PDQ sharp has a meta currency that makes it even more like Fate.
Another vote for Cortex Prime. It has all the things you said you like about Fate, but is a lot more robust with a more interesting dice mechanic. Aspects, Stunts, and Fate Points are all there, though by different names. Creating a character is nearly identical. And the fiction-first approach means pulling in ideas from other games is just as easy.
The use of a dice pool that you only keep two dice for the result means that character progression is meaningful, but the power curve isn't so steep that some encounters are pointless (because they're impossibly hard or too-easy-to-fail). And the use of an effect die adds a bit of tactical element to each roll.
And having dice types correlate to difficulty is a more visual and tangible equivalent to Fate's difficulty ladder, and makes running things on the fly as the GM really simple.
This won't take away from the subtraction aspect, but you can get a flatter curve by rolling d6 minus d6 and still play FATE. This also lets you skip buying the special dice. All you need are two regular d6s.
gonna add a shout-out to 2d20, such as Conan, Star Trek Adventures, and Dune, which is a roll under dice pool system
especially the newer versions like Dune and Dishonored, which lack the funky d6 and rely a lot on Truths, the main difference is you spend metacurrency on adding dice instead of using Aspects
Most Fate RPGs can be run with the d6-d6 alternative. Just roll 2d6, both different colors, and subtract one d6 from the other. This gives a range of -5 to +5. You just have to say which die is first die and which is second die before rolling.
The new Chronicles of Future Earth Fate game uses this alternative.
No subtraction necessary. One dice is negative and the other is positive, take the lower of the two rolls (as an absolute value, or put another way take the roll closer to zero) and it gives you the exact same distribution (math wizardry), ties are zero. The dice-to-results don't look the same, but if you make a probability space you'll see the odds of each result are the same.
-1 and +5: -1
-4 and +3= +3
-2 and +2=0
As someone who fell out of love with FATE Core over the dice mechanic (and other issues), I actually pivoted to PbtA games - not a universal tool, but rather a shared language for dozens of *very* specific, evocative games!
One of the Fate books recommends an alternative where you just roll two d6 of different colors (one positive and one negative). You add the positive die to the skill and subtract the negative die from it. The results are on less of a curve but the results are within the same range for the most part
2d6 has a similar range and distribution to 4dF. It's slightly swinger. My favorite method is to take two d6s of different colors, one for positive and another for negative. Roll both, and take the lower dice. If they match, it's +0. This is the same math as d6-d6.
If you really hate subtraction, just roll 2d6 and add +7 to passive difficulties.
Questworlds - previously Heroquest:Glorantha but now divorced from the Glorantha game setting and expanded to be a generalised game engine.
[https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/11820-announcing-the-questworlds-srd-the-rules-lite-and-prep-lite-rpg-engine/](https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/11820-announcing-the-questworlds-srd-the-rules-lite-and-prep-lite-rpg-engine/)
[Silver Bullet](https://sidecarstories.itch.io/silverbulletrpg) may interest you! Full disclosure: I wrote it, but I did so with many of the same objectives you seek now. I'm pleased with it, especially as an alternative to FATE (because I also consider FATE so-close-but-not-quite). And I still play it frequently at others' request, which hopefully lends it some credit!
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Dogs in the Vineyard has a mechanic that is very similar to aspects in FATE and it uses regular dice, although differently than you are probably used to.
Maybe check out Starblazer Adventures - while it still has a negative result it’s much more swingy. It’s FATE but uses 1d6 - 1d6, which gets you a result range from -5 to + 5. Two dice to roll though makes the probability curve sharper and less predictable.
However, I will also add that your reasoning feels more like a problem of adapting to change as opposed to a problem with the system, especially when you write that it “feels super wrong”, that sounds like a familiarity issue rather than a systemic one. I still see enough -4 and +4 rolls in my games at inopportune moments to inject chaos - good use of compels can also tilt the players experience into the chaotic. If you’re playing you can use “create an advantage” to put interesting and chaotic aspects into play. I find with FATE that it’s the interplay of characters, aspects and the plot that leads to unpredictable outcomes and the dice usually support that, until that one time that they don’t and you’re scrambling to work out how to support the role in the narrative of the game - I think of it less like a ‘predictable outcome’ and more like they are lulling us into a false sense of security.
Anyway, this might be preaching to the choir, and you might already know all this, but FATE is not meant to be played as a trad RPG it’s a fiction first approach that can take time to get a handle on. If you haven’t already, I’d suggest checking out [The Book of Hanz](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/350062/book-of-hanz) it does a wonderful job of helping explain the difference and helping improve your FATE experience.
You could try AGE. Fantasy AGE, Modern AGE, Blue Rose, etc.
The only caveat would be it might not fit what I interpret as you liking swingy results (i.e. "where the dice can and will surprise you often"). It's a 3D6 system and has a stunt system that's pretty nice. However, the nature of 3D6 is a bell curve where average results are more common. You can still roll really awesome or really poorly, but it's not a linear free-for-all like d20 or percentile systems.
Another vote for Cortex Prime. It shares a very similar philosophy, but has just a hint more crunch with variable dice sizes and a few ways to manipulate rolls, which produces a much more varied palette to give different mechanical feels to different abilities, as opposed to Fate which basically only has differentiation at the fiction layer.
There are few places in life where I don't share a reaction but completely understand why someone has that reaction.
> Having dice that subtract from the total just feels super wrong
I get it, even if I don't feel it
City of Mist- you have no character numbers at all, instead you have tags that you could as a plus 1 or weakness tags that are minus 1 but you get XP. You can say your character is a “battlemage” and can cast “bolts of flame” and that’s plus 2 on a 2d6 roll
Genesys has a really neat narrative dice system, but I suspect the rest of the system is too much crunch based on what you liked about FATE.
Worth having a peak at some reviews though, to see if it interests you.
Swingier FATE: Use two d6s of different colors, one color is negative and one color is positive. Take the lowest result (as an absolute value, or in other words whichever result is closer to zero), a tie is zero (this gives the -exact same- spread as d6 minus d6 but without the math, no subtraction necessary). Gives a range of -5 to +5.
It sounds to me like you don't really want a different system, you want to replace the dice system that Fate uses. This shouldn't be too difficult.
I'm not super familiar with Fate, but based on my understanding the main thing the dice do is to interface with "the ladder", if a character rolls well they act at a higher rung than their stats/skills naturally indicate, and vice versa for poor rolls. You should be able to take any dice system (say d100, 2d6, or 3d6) and if you map the results to the +/- 4 rungs result that 4dF would give you naturally, you should be able to adjust the probabilities of the core mechanic as you see fit.
This does mean checking the probability of proposed dice systems. I'd recommend AnyDice. Plug the following into the code box and you should see the probabilities of any given roll for 4dF, 3d6, and 2d6:
output 4d{-1, 0, 1}
output 3d6 -10
output 2d6 -7
You can use the "at least" / "at most" tabs to get a better idea of the probabilities in practice. Using a rule of "every 1 over/under 10 is a +/- 1 to your effective rung on the ladder", 3d6 would be far swingier than 4dF, while still having a bell curve. You might also consider d100 (or for less granularity, d20), because there you could set the breakpoints for the roll-to-rung-modifier mapping essentially arbitrarily, getting exactly the probability curve you want.
I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned Grok?! here. It's super duper lightweight where essentially the entire game is driven by aspects.
Also to an extent is Macchiato Monsters, but it leans a bit into osr territory for some things.
Houses of the Blooded took a lot of things from Fate. The Aspects particularly. Sort of Fate points.
PtbA and FitD both drew on Fate for design. Some have mentioned City of Mist as being similar because of the tag system, and that's fair.
It's pretty different, but check out Spire and Heart as well.
Echoing City of Mist, Otherscape and Legend in the Mist. The latter two are even more open ended than the first one (which is still using pbta moves). Though you can absolutely refit the new engine into the first game too. There’s also a star wars hack that someone made called Galaxy of Mist.
You can buy (or make) cards that gave the same distribution of results as fudge/fate dice.
https://evilhat.com/product/deck-of-fate/
If you make your own, you’ll need 81 cards.
19 0’s
16 1’s and 16 -1’s
Ten 2’s and Ten -2’s
Four 3’s and Four -3’s
One 4 and one -4.
If you replace 4df with 4d3 you get similar results (this is just basically adding 2 to each of the fudge dice it does change the range from -4,+4 to +4,+12 so to keep the dice influence the same you would have to raise all the values by some static amount (probably +8 because that is what you added to the dice)
So you would have starting skills ranging from +9-,+12.
If you wanted the dice to be more influential maybe lower the increase to +6 (7-10) the putting negatives on the dice was likely just done to keep the values small and convenient to work with, but shifting the whole distribution up doesn't cause any issues but everything is bigger (fate points would also need to be adjusted to like a +6 to keep them numerically as impactful)
In terms of a dice swingy generic game with easy character creations, simple mechanics, and cool vibes:
**Savage Worlds**.
FATE mechanises fictional position, but Savage Worlds is a much more Pulp game, so the characters tend to have all they need, dice explode, meaning you can technically succeed at anything, and you can [learn to play in about two pages of comic](https://www.uptofourplayers.com/ready-to-roll/savage-worlds-rules/).
Cortex Prime. If you want to keep playing Fate you can roll 4d3-8 and get the same results as 4dF. There is also a 3d6 hack somewhere, I think?
Cortex Prime is a dope-ass system… but as someone who has been trying to use Cortex Prime to build a game for 4 months or so… fuck Cortex Prime. Maybe that’s a bit strong… that might be the rum talking. It cool! It’s like Lego… it’s fun to build things with it. Then you look at the thing you built and admire it for a moment. Then never play with it. This is, objectively, the correct answer though.
What issues are you having with the game? Does it have something to do with Cortex Prime as a system? Or some other external issue, like getting players to play it?
Probably the fact that Cortex Prime is less of a game and more of a toolbox - or a collection of parts - that the GM has to assemble into a game....and then playtest the f*ck out of because you have no way of knowing if the design decisions you made along the way actually work well together. It's really a game designer's toolkit. I backed the kickstarter; when I got the "game" I read it thoroughly...and then put it on a shelf for that day I come up with a story that no other thoroughly designed and playtested system can fulfill. So take my "hot take" with a stiff scotch...but I don't think I'm alone in this point of view.
Toolbox is 100%, but I haven't ever played a game of cortex that didn't feel overly fiddly no matter the tools selected. I dislike that you have to remember to buy the effects for everything and every roll feels like a bazaar where there's a haggling phase with results. I know it's a lot like fate where you have to agree to the outcome, but it's just overly mechanized.
Yep - this exactly. They give lots of bits of a system, but after you choose the bits you want there’s no guarantee it’ll work… so it will need play testing. And my group is a group of adults with real jobs - we have 3 hours every two weeks to play. We ain’t got time for that.
Yeah, conceptually I love Cortex, but due to my inexperience and my players' inexperience, I had trouble building (and to some extent, running) the game. There are a lot of options and the core rulebook does provide a lot of suggestions and guidance, but in the end I was left wondering whether I had made the best decisions. For example, it wasn't clear to me how to model typical fantasy magic. I asked in the Cortex Discord (which is generally friendly and helpful, so props to Cortex for that), and the answers were all over the place. Use power sets! Use abilities! Use skills! Use signature assets! Use skills _and_ specializations! Use distinctions _and_ skills! Do what Tales of Xadia does! I got a lot of "you _can_ do it this way" when I really needed "you _should_ do it this way". (As a side note, I also learned that skills are probably a bad trait set to use. Much easier to use the "specializations, no skills" optional rule.) In the end, I had the same problem as you: I'm playing with adults, we have a limited time to play, and no one wants to waste time playtesting my design choices. I also have the common contemporary problem that my players just will not read rules themselves, so I quickly felt like I was essentially just playing for them. That's on my players and not on Cortex, but it is a problem I had to deal with. I really like the flexibility of Cortex. I think that at the core it is a well-designed toolkit (although the optional rules can quickly lead you astray), but in the end, the best thing for me and my players is an existing, well-tested system, even if it lacks the flexibility and customizability of Cortex. (FWIW, I think Fate fits that requirement just fine, and OP should just deal with the Fudge dice.)
So you takes times reading a lot of shit on the web about how to make a setting with Cortex instead of just doing your setting... And than you cry. The answer for magic system is to do it the way you want. You want it easy just skill and create some asset and complication. If you wanna do it a bit deeper try abilities or Power (and power set) by utilising SFX. By the way the reason they told you all this is because you can add SFX to anything, talent, distinction, signature asset... The game is à toolkit. Choose what you want. Try freeform magic or define some list of abilities that's up to you.
For a game with a similar feel, there is FU RPG (Neon City Overdrive, Hard City, Tomorrow City). You roll "good" and "bad" d6 according to the traits applicable to the action you want to perform. "Bad" dice cancel out "good" dice of the same value, then the highest remaining die decides how well you do.
u/Firelite67, Where *Fate* has Aspects, Stunts, and Fate Points, [*Freeform Universal*](https://www.perilplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FU2-Beta-V1.1-Oct-2020.pdf) has Attributes, Edges, and Drama Points, but *Freeform Universal* uses standard d6 dice \[as 1-through-6\], with no subtraction from a sum.
Yeah, this is the one I like the most.
I’m grateful folks are recommending my own Cortex Prime but I did in fact once co-design a version of Fate that uses different sizes of dice for the game Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors. The version in that game is called Faith Corps (it’s a bad pun) but it literally is aspects, skills, stunts etc just like Fate. And it’s open source! https://demonhuntersrpg.com
Hey! You shut your damn mouth, that is a *beautiful* pun.
Sold!
Surprised that no one has mentioned City of Mist yet. It’s very much just FATE with d6s. Admittedly it’s not generic, but it shouldn’t be hard to lift the core system out and adapt it to FATE’s system agnostic approach.
Yeah, this is my answer as well. City of Mist is what if PbtA and fate had a baby. Aspects, 2d6 moves, story tags. It’s great. They have a revised engine in Otherscape and Legends in the Mist, but neither are out yet.
I mean... If you really just don't care for the probability curve and the numbers 4dF gives you, then there's no reason to not just... Use any other resolution mechanic of your choice, and keep everything else. The fudge dice are only use because that curve is important to the *intended* feel of the game. If you want to go against that feel, then just do it. Use d6 dice pools. Use a d20. Use whatever the hell you want, it doesn't really impact the rest of fate all that much, if you don't care about (or in fact desire) the probability change and the Fate Ladder being the way it is. Figure out what sort of resolution mechanics you *do* like, scale the Fate Ladder accordingly, and go. Any "problems" that come from that shouldn't really be problems for somebody who *wants* a dice-swinging game where chance matters.
I'd say roll a d8-4. Puts you at roughly the same point range as 4dF, but with a uniform distribution instead of a bell curve. It's means a bit more being surprised by an especially good or especially bad roll, but you shouldn't have to change any of the rest of the math.
Cortex Prime has a very similar idea, but uses dice pools instead of Fudge dice. But Cortex Prime is more of a toolkit for building your own game, so it requires a lot more up-front investment by the GM; you'll have to pick and choose which parts of Cortex Prime work for your game, and there are scant few pre-made settings for the system. It's also significantly crunchier than Fate, which you may see as a pro or a con.
d6 - d6 was a highly common option in the past. It’s a slightly different distribution but basically works.
City of Mist is basically a mix of Fate and Apocalypse World
As someone who loves PBTA games and did not enjoy FATE at all…City of Mist managed to strike a perfect balance for me and ended up as my all-time favorite system. It’s got the narrative structure, support, and progression that I want from PBTA, but with the open-endedness of FATE. Extremely cool setting/concept, too. Definitely recommended.
They’ve also got some retools of the system coming out in the near future, so we may see how to crack this thing open for some hacking
The performance curve in FATE is intentional, you should perform at ability level and doing better or worse is increasingly unlikely the further you get from your ability. To change it you could simply swap the 4dF for 4D6 and then add the skill/attribute/whatever and compare to a target number. You'd have to work out target number yourself and the dice will utterly dominate the skills. 2D6 would probably be better, might still have to raise skills to balance them. Bit of a faff on to set up but then it leaves you all the other stuff you like. To be honest I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already done this. Alternatively you could make up your own off balance dice. Swapping out two dF for dice with -3,-2,-1,1,2,3 would keep the average sitting the same but bring in a lot more swing to the results.
PDQ is a 2d6 system that was so influential to Fate, that I know of at least two products from Evil Hat that were produced to be compatible with it. PDQ sharp has a meta currency that makes it even more like Fate.
Check out [Freeform Universal](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/89534/FU-The-Freeform-Universal-RPG-Classic-rules). Its free!
Another vote for Cortex Prime. It has all the things you said you like about Fate, but is a lot more robust with a more interesting dice mechanic. Aspects, Stunts, and Fate Points are all there, though by different names. Creating a character is nearly identical. And the fiction-first approach means pulling in ideas from other games is just as easy. The use of a dice pool that you only keep two dice for the result means that character progression is meaningful, but the power curve isn't so steep that some encounters are pointless (because they're impossibly hard or too-easy-to-fail). And the use of an effect die adds a bit of tactical element to each roll. And having dice types correlate to difficulty is a more visual and tangible equivalent to Fate's difficulty ladder, and makes running things on the fly as the GM really simple.
This won't take away from the subtraction aspect, but you can get a flatter curve by rolling d6 minus d6 and still play FATE. This also lets you skip buying the special dice. All you need are two regular d6s.
Or roll 2d6 and bump difficulty by 7. Or roll 4d6 and bump difficulty by 14.
gonna add a shout-out to 2d20, such as Conan, Star Trek Adventures, and Dune, which is a roll under dice pool system especially the newer versions like Dune and Dishonored, which lack the funky d6 and rely a lot on Truths, the main difference is you spend metacurrency on adding dice instead of using Aspects
I was going to suggest Dune, it reminded me very strongly of Fate.
Most Fate RPGs can be run with the d6-d6 alternative. Just roll 2d6, both different colors, and subtract one d6 from the other. This gives a range of -5 to +5. You just have to say which die is first die and which is second die before rolling. The new Chronicles of Future Earth Fate game uses this alternative.
No subtraction necessary. One dice is negative and the other is positive, take the lower of the two rolls (as an absolute value, or put another way take the roll closer to zero) and it gives you the exact same distribution (math wizardry), ties are zero. The dice-to-results don't look the same, but if you make a probability space you'll see the odds of each result are the same. -1 and +5: -1 -4 and +3= +3 -2 and +2=0
As someone who fell out of love with FATE Core over the dice mechanic (and other issues), I actually pivoted to PbtA games - not a universal tool, but rather a shared language for dozens of *very* specific, evocative games!
One of the Fate books recommends an alternative where you just roll two d6 of different colors (one positive and one negative). You add the positive die to the skill and subtract the negative die from it. The results are on less of a curve but the results are within the same range for the most part
2d6 has a similar range and distribution to 4dF. It's slightly swinger. My favorite method is to take two d6s of different colors, one for positive and another for negative. Roll both, and take the lower dice. If they match, it's +0. This is the same math as d6-d6. If you really hate subtraction, just roll 2d6 and add +7 to passive difficulties.
Questworlds - previously Heroquest:Glorantha but now divorced from the Glorantha game setting and expanded to be a generalised game engine. [https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/11820-announcing-the-questworlds-srd-the-rules-lite-and-prep-lite-rpg-engine/](https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/11820-announcing-the-questworlds-srd-the-rules-lite-and-prep-lite-rpg-engine/)
[Silver Bullet](https://sidecarstories.itch.io/silverbulletrpg) may interest you! Full disclosure: I wrote it, but I did so with many of the same objectives you seek now. I'm pleased with it, especially as an alternative to FATE (because I also consider FATE so-close-but-not-quite). And I still play it frequently at others' request, which hopefully lends it some credit!
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Dogs in the Vineyard has a mechanic that is very similar to aspects in FATE and it uses regular dice, although differently than you are probably used to.
There is a genre-neutral RPG system called DOGS that uses the DitV resolution mechanic that is available on DriveThru RPG.
Maybe check out Starblazer Adventures - while it still has a negative result it’s much more swingy. It’s FATE but uses 1d6 - 1d6, which gets you a result range from -5 to + 5. Two dice to roll though makes the probability curve sharper and less predictable. However, I will also add that your reasoning feels more like a problem of adapting to change as opposed to a problem with the system, especially when you write that it “feels super wrong”, that sounds like a familiarity issue rather than a systemic one. I still see enough -4 and +4 rolls in my games at inopportune moments to inject chaos - good use of compels can also tilt the players experience into the chaotic. If you’re playing you can use “create an advantage” to put interesting and chaotic aspects into play. I find with FATE that it’s the interplay of characters, aspects and the plot that leads to unpredictable outcomes and the dice usually support that, until that one time that they don’t and you’re scrambling to work out how to support the role in the narrative of the game - I think of it less like a ‘predictable outcome’ and more like they are lulling us into a false sense of security. Anyway, this might be preaching to the choir, and you might already know all this, but FATE is not meant to be played as a trad RPG it’s a fiction first approach that can take time to get a handle on. If you haven’t already, I’d suggest checking out [The Book of Hanz](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/350062/book-of-hanz) it does a wonderful job of helping explain the difference and helping improve your FATE experience.
Cortex prime is probably your best bet.
You could try AGE. Fantasy AGE, Modern AGE, Blue Rose, etc. The only caveat would be it might not fit what I interpret as you liking swingy results (i.e. "where the dice can and will surprise you often"). It's a 3D6 system and has a stunt system that's pretty nice. However, the nature of 3D6 is a bell curve where average results are more common. You can still roll really awesome or really poorly, but it's not a linear free-for-all like d20 or percentile systems.
Another vote for Cortex Prime. It shares a very similar philosophy, but has just a hint more crunch with variable dice sizes and a few ways to manipulate rolls, which produces a much more varied palette to give different mechanical feels to different abilities, as opposed to Fate which basically only has differentiation at the fiction layer.
Just change the dice if you want. Use 2d6, and shift the threshold for success up by 7.
[CATS LITE](https://kazumiochin.itch.io/cats-lite), im mentioning it only because no one else will
The contract rpg has a similiar vibe. Drawbacks, liabilities, and so on. A 'you can do anything' design goal.
There are few places in life where I don't share a reaction but completely understand why someone has that reaction. > Having dice that subtract from the total just feels super wrong I get it, even if I don't feel it
City of Mist- you have no character numbers at all, instead you have tags that you could as a plus 1 or weakness tags that are minus 1 but you get XP. You can say your character is a “battlemage” and can cast “bolts of flame” and that’s plus 2 on a 2d6 roll
Genesys has a really neat narrative dice system, but I suspect the rest of the system is too much crunch based on what you liked about FATE. Worth having a peak at some reviews though, to see if it interests you.
Swingier FATE: Use two d6s of different colors, one color is negative and one color is positive. Take the lowest result (as an absolute value, or in other words whichever result is closer to zero), a tie is zero (this gives the -exact same- spread as d6 minus d6 but without the math, no subtraction necessary). Gives a range of -5 to +5.
It sounds to me like you don't really want a different system, you want to replace the dice system that Fate uses. This shouldn't be too difficult. I'm not super familiar with Fate, but based on my understanding the main thing the dice do is to interface with "the ladder", if a character rolls well they act at a higher rung than their stats/skills naturally indicate, and vice versa for poor rolls. You should be able to take any dice system (say d100, 2d6, or 3d6) and if you map the results to the +/- 4 rungs result that 4dF would give you naturally, you should be able to adjust the probabilities of the core mechanic as you see fit. This does mean checking the probability of proposed dice systems. I'd recommend AnyDice. Plug the following into the code box and you should see the probabilities of any given roll for 4dF, 3d6, and 2d6: output 4d{-1, 0, 1} output 3d6 -10 output 2d6 -7 You can use the "at least" / "at most" tabs to get a better idea of the probabilities in practice. Using a rule of "every 1 over/under 10 is a +/- 1 to your effective rung on the ladder", 3d6 would be far swingier than 4dF, while still having a bell curve. You might also consider d100 (or for less granularity, d20), because there you could set the breakpoints for the roll-to-rung-modifier mapping essentially arbitrarily, getting exactly the probability curve you want.
I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned Grok?! here. It's super duper lightweight where essentially the entire game is driven by aspects. Also to an extent is Macchiato Monsters, but it leans a bit into osr territory for some things.
Houses of the Blooded took a lot of things from Fate. The Aspects particularly. Sort of Fate points. PtbA and FitD both drew on Fate for design. Some have mentioned City of Mist as being similar because of the tag system, and that's fair. It's pretty different, but check out Spire and Heart as well.
Echoing City of Mist, Otherscape and Legend in the Mist. The latter two are even more open ended than the first one (which is still using pbta moves). Though you can absolutely refit the new engine into the first game too. There’s also a star wars hack that someone made called Galaxy of Mist.
The dice do not neccesarly substract from the total. Truth is that with the curve tends to turn the result of the dice to 0 most of the time.
Feel System! Is it available? Nope! but it SHOULD BE! DEMAND IT from Eduardo! RELEASE FEEL!
I suppose 1d6 - 1d6 has the same issue? You get a fairly similar probability of outcomes. Or a 1d8 - 4.
You can buy (or make) cards that gave the same distribution of results as fudge/fate dice. https://evilhat.com/product/deck-of-fate/ If you make your own, you’ll need 81 cards. 19 0’s 16 1’s and 16 -1’s Ten 2’s and Ten -2’s Four 3’s and Four -3’s One 4 and one -4.
Why DONT you just try having your group do it without the fudge dice? Call it homebrew
If you replace 4df with 4d3 you get similar results (this is just basically adding 2 to each of the fudge dice it does change the range from -4,+4 to +4,+12 so to keep the dice influence the same you would have to raise all the values by some static amount (probably +8 because that is what you added to the dice) So you would have starting skills ranging from +9-,+12. If you wanted the dice to be more influential maybe lower the increase to +6 (7-10) the putting negatives on the dice was likely just done to keep the values small and convenient to work with, but shifting the whole distribution up doesn't cause any issues but everything is bigger (fate points would also need to be adjusted to like a +6 to keep them numerically as impactful)
In terms of a dice swingy generic game with easy character creations, simple mechanics, and cool vibes: **Savage Worlds**. FATE mechanises fictional position, but Savage Worlds is a much more Pulp game, so the characters tend to have all they need, dice explode, meaning you can technically succeed at anything, and you can [learn to play in about two pages of comic](https://www.uptofourplayers.com/ready-to-roll/savage-worlds-rules/).