Ryan sits down with Leonard Balsera of Evil Hat Productions and talks about a design concept central to the FATE -- the system used by Spirit of the Century and the upcoming Dresden Files RPG -- called the Fractal. They talk about this concept that treats elements larger and smaller than characters, like planets & possessions, the same way as characters are treated mechanically. Leonard also gives us a bit of an update on the Dresden Files RPG.
Loved this show, Ryan and Lenny. I had a brief chance to talk to Lenny at Gen Con and the man sapped my energy with his enthusiasm (I think that's how he does it, he draws it from other people around him). It was neat getting to hear a different voice out of Evil Hat as well.
As for the fractal, I had heard of the concept from Fred some time ago, but this discussion was brilliant in how it explained it very well. And I wholly agree with the comment about minimalistic game design: I sometimes look at some games and wonder, why did they go through all this trouble if X with Y adaptation would have worked just fine?!
This conversation reminded me of an article/product I wrote back in 2003-04 for d20, a way to do Organizations in the game. I basically stated them as characters, with ability scores, skills and feats (many of the latter two being the same, the application on a larger scale being the difference). I even toyed with the idea of giving Organizations levels and Prestige Classes as well, but I never got to it. I eventually shelved the article for reasons I cannot remember and then I lost it in a hard disk crash, and I've never gone back to it. Even though d20 is certainly a lot more fiddly than FATE, the fractal idea works on it as well (a lot better than in GURPS, based on your comments), because d20 is very much centered around a central mechanic (the d20 mechanic) and a central conceit of how things progress (levels), and that can be applied to pretty much any thing, with some minor adjustments.
Heck, this show made want to go back to that article and to that idea, especially as I ponder the future of my company in a D&D 4th Edition environment as of next year.