[FATE-based games] How many Aspects is too many?

[Poppyseed45]

Hello all, first real post for the forum here (though I'm on the big purple rather a lot).

Anyway, I'm running a Burning Wheel game now that'll probably end in a few months as we near the climax, and I've a thought to run...something...with Strands of Fate. At it's base, like many FATE games, Strands wants us to have like ten Aspects.

I saw an earlier thread here where a poster (Kiero) showed various Strands characters with the full ten Aspects they should have in a low/no magic historical game.

My question is - is ten Aspects a lot? I have some experience with FATE as a GM (I've run SOTC, Diaspora, and Strands, all for mini-campaigns) and had groups of 2 or 3 players, so didn't really pay attention at the time. It's been a few years now, and I'm wondering, is 10 too many? Not enough?

Strands itself suggests going down to six Aspects. And I've heard the new FATE core now recommends five, if I remember correctly?

So folks? Thoughts?

[The Dark Fiddler]

Fate Core does, indeed, cut it down to five Aspects. They go into a bit of their reasoning in the rulebook, and it's pretty much just "10 Aspects was way too many to keep track of." I've found, in the one or two times my group has played Fate, five is still a bit much to think of when making a character, sometimes. That said, I think the high concept, the trouble, and then three extras is a pretty solid place to be.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Definitely, cut down the Aspects, for two reasons. One: if you have that many, it's impossible to keep track of them, and gets overwhelming. Two: if you have that many, it's trivially easy to find an Aspect to apply to any given situation, and so Aspects don't really shape the flow of gameplay.

Bonus reason: it makes compels very hard to handle, because they're coming from so many places.

[Airk]

Definitely. Ten is too many.

Aspects are the "core characteristics" of your character. What kind of nutso character has ten defining elements?

Imagine a Burning Wheel character with ten Beliefs. It's not quite that stupid, but it's close.

[Cristo Meyers]

4th person saying 10 is too many. We play the Dresden Files RPG, which uses 7, and even that's pushing it. It's a little easier to keep track of, sure, but we still had problems with things like overlapping aspects. If we had it to do over I can definitely see cutting it down further to 5.