Fate Accelerated and Old School Rulings

As I thought about what to write about today, I was mentally going through my old school RPG collection as well as some of my newer games like Fate as well as thinking about some some conversations in my gaming group of late.

One of the reasons that some of the older incarnations of D&D and their clones have a certain appeal to us is the flexibility they give you in what your characters can do. Newer versions of D&D introduce a lot of detail into your character with feats and skills. I've found they work well but have also seen cases where they can inhibit outside-the-box thinking. One of the challenges on the older school side is in making rulings - when a player has a rather off-the-wall solution, there's often nothing on the character sheet that would help you adjudicate resolution.

Interestingly, I'm finding in Fate Accelerated a nice compromise. In it, the players actions tend to fit in one of four categories (overcome, create an advantage, attack, defend) but it is up to the player each time to define how they do that action - using their approaches while taking into account the circumstances. For example, making a Forceful defense against a flamethrower is not something you'd often expect - however, with a veteran clone trooper taking a large table and interposing it between him and his attacker the action becomes much more reasonable.

I don't think I've found my "one true system" - I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. When the DCC version of Lankhmar comes out I'm pretty certain I'm going to want to play that for example. And I still want to try running a Hero System game at least once.