Trying to figure out the Fate system

[supermonkeyjoe]

I'm going to be running a one-shot/short game with a variety of characters with very disparate abilities and I think the Fate system will work out best, trouble is I've never played it and I'm currently trying to work out the system.

Does anyone know of any good transcripts or recordings of an actual game so I can see how it progresses?

I think my problem is I understand the individual parts of the rules just not how they flow together.

[Airk]

I don't "know of any" but plugging "Fate RPG" into a Youtube search seems to turn up plenty.

The system really isn't that complex, and the number of parts that have to 'fit together' isn't very high, so you're probably okay just muddling through.

[Hopeless]

Try RPG Podcast (http://rpgpodcasts.com/) there's a Dresden Files actual play game (http://rpgpodcasts.com/podcasts/show/KnightsoftheNightActualPlayPodcast) which uses the Fate system if that helps.

[Need_A_Life]

Does anyone know of any good transcripts or recordings of an actual game so I can see how it progresses?
http://kotnpodcast.blogspot.dk/p/dresden-rpg.html

My personal tip: Learn the "Fate Fractal"; that building on fire might be an aspect, a character, a skill or anything else, depending on the situation and your campaign.

I've had burning buildings noted as a situational aspect "Fire!!!" or as:

Burning Building
Aspects: "There are people trapped inside!" "Poorly Maintained Building"
Skills:
Choking smoke +3 (Resist: Endurance; blocks sight)
Flame +2 (Resist: Endurance; inflicts stress)
Collapsing floor +4 (Resist: Athletics; if hit, move to appropriate zone)

... and that building was a nice way to spice up a chase scene with the "holy man" of the group being compelled (mechanically and consistent with previous behaviour) to stop and help people out, "The Flash" - the guy who realized that dodging bullets was a thing and made athletics his top skill - compelling the building to drop him down a floor where he could get his breath back.

Much more fun than "remember, guys, the building is on fire," I essentially made the building a third party in their chase, one that wanted to - and could - hurt each of them, even if the guy they were chasing had nothing going for him (well, compared to the people he was up against).

[neonchameleon]

I'm going to be running a one-shot/short game with a variety of characters with very disparate abilities and I think the Fate system will work out best, trouble is I've never played it and I'm currently trying to work out the system.

Does anyone know of any good transcripts or recordings of an actual game so I can see how it progresses?

I think my problem is I understand the individual parts of the rules just not how they flow together.

Which version of Fate do you have? Because Fate Core and FAE are significantly easier than older versions.

[Terraoblivion]

Now all of that doesn't touch on the bigger question...How the hell having multiple compels per character per session as part of the Fate point economy works without the game essentially just being the compels. I recognize that the examples in Fate Core are way too goddamn big for what compels usually are, but as long as they're a thing at all that seems like it'd be monstrously time consuming and probably make the game seem more like some kind of comedy of errors than what it's meant to be. I realize this isn't the idea and that the game is playable, but I'd be damned if I can figure it out on my own. My only guess is that Fate is meant to be played at what I consider an absurd, breakneck pace, but that doesn't seem like the case from what I've heard about people playing it.

[Beleriphon]

Now all of that doesn't touch on the bigger question...How the hell having multiple compels per character per session as part of the Fate point economy works without the game essentially just being the compels. I recognize that the examples in Fate Core are way too goddamn big for what compels usually are, but as long as they're a thing at all that seems like it'd be monstrously time consuming and probably make the game seem more like some kind of comedy of errors than what it's meant to be. I realize this isn't the idea and that the game is playable, but I'd be damned if I can figure it out on my own. My only guess is that Fate is meant to be played at what I consider an absurd, breakneck pace, but that doesn't seem like the case from what I've heard about people playing it.

You seem to have the gist of it, but the comedy of errors is more about using the compels appropriately rather than as an absurd stand in for doing something. Also, the compels should be used multiple times per character. Most of them time as GM you should be using compels to constantly push the character forwards, or MAKE them choose what to do. The important thing is that you're forcing the players to make choices during the game, or deal with new situations. FATE tends to work best, at least from my perspective, at the speed of action/adventure movies. Compels in Die Hard involve getting the aspect No Shoes when a room is Full of Broken Glass.

[neonchameleon]

Now all of that doesn't touch on the bigger question...How the hell having multiple compels per character per session as part of the Fate point economy works without the game essentially just being the compels. I recognize that the examples in Fate Core are way too goddamn big for what compels usually are, but as long as they're a thing at all that seems like it'd be monstrously time consuming and probably make the game seem more like some kind of comedy of errors than what it's meant to be. I realize this isn't the idea and that the game is playable, but I'd be damned if I can figure it out on my own. My only guess is that Fate is meant to be played at what I consider an absurd, breakneck pace, but that doesn't seem like the case from what I've heard about people playing it.

Compels should more or less drop out of the Fate Point economy to be honest. Offering a scene-setting compel is saying "I have this really cool idea for a scene that's going to put you in a spot. Do you dare take it?" And it's more or less neutral to the economy because you are offering them a bargain that's going to be tough to get out of, possibly having them spend the fate point. In other words offering the scene setting compel is for when you want to be a rat bastard DM. But the game works happily if you never do this.

[neonchameleon]

You seem to have the gist of it, but the comedy of errors is more about using the compels appropriately rather than as an absurd stand in for doing something. Also, the compels should be used multiple times per character. Most of them time as GM you should be using compels to constantly push the character forwards, or MAKE them choose what to do. The important thing is that you're forcing the players to make choices during the game, or deal with new situations. FATE tends to work best, at least from my perspective, at the speed of action/adventure movies. Compels in Die Hard involve getting the aspect No Shoes when a room is Full of Broken Glass.

The breakneck pace is right on - but I'm not sure I'd call that a Compel so much as someone using the No Shoes aspect to Create an Advantage "Floor covered in broken glass" which they invoked rather than offered the compel for.

[Terraoblivion]

Okay, apparently I did understand compels correctly and it makes it clear that I should just ignore the system in the future. I really don't like action movie or comic book pacing, it's far too myopically focused on keeping the action going at the expense of everything else. Also, I'm not sure I believe that compels exist outside the Fate point economy when Fate Core specifically says that they are and are very important to make to keep Fate points coming.

[neonchameleon]

Okay, apparently I did understand compels correctly and it makes it clear that I should just ignore the system in the future. I really don't like action movie or comic book pacing, it's far too myopically focused on keeping the action going at the expense of everything else. Also, I'm not sure I believe that compels exist outside the Fate point economy when Fate Core specifically says that they are and are very important to make to keep Fate points coming.

Not outside the economy, but they cancel out. Compels both make sure the Fate Points keep coming and the bad situations they lead to make sure they keep getting spent.

Edit: Basically they keep the game in high gear rather than low gear. It's a matter of keeping the money in circulation rather than increasing the actual wealth.

[CombatOwl]

Okay, apparently I did understand compels correctly and it makes it clear that I should just ignore the system in the future. I really don't like action movie or comic book pacing, it's far too myopically focused on keeping the action going at the expense of everything else. Also, I'm not sure I believe that compels exist outside the Fate point economy when Fate Core specifically says that they are and are very important to make to keep Fate points coming.

Word of caution here: if you don't use compels or are too stingy with them, the players start hoarding fate points. Skills and stunts become super important--which might be a bad thing if players are discontent with the lack of variety in skill functionality. If you don't like fast pacing, Fate is probably a bad choice for a system. It's really heavily built on the assumption that players will focus on what's important and actually get things done. It's meant to keep the pace fast. Things happen, characters react, which cause more things to happen. How comedic or extreme those events are is a matter of genre and style, not a consequence of compels. Compels can be low key or absurd, or anywhere in between.

Honestly I'd suggest playing it as written and intended, then hack it once you understand how it works. Pacing would, I think, be a very hard thing to work out without compels.

[Terraoblivion]

Honestly I'd suggest playing it as written and intended, then hack it once you understand how it works. Pacing would, I think, be a very hard thing to work out without compels.

Which is why I concluded that I can safely ignore it from now on. :smalltongue:

Only focusing on the important stuff is about as exciting to me as unsweetened porridge, it's all the detours, the breaks to focus on characters, the conversations going nowhere in particularly and so on that makes a game interesting to me. Not constant action and plot advancement.

[Eisenheim]

it's all the detours, the breaks to focus on characters, the conversations going nowhere in particularly and so on that makes a game interesting to me. Not constant action and plot advancement.

There really is nothing about fate that pushes you away from that. I play at a fate table once a week, most of our sessions see only one or two compels, often just to set up an interesting scenario, and we have tons of those interesting detours and character interaction moments. Compel's, at least in my experience, don't detract from those things at all, they just provide another tool for building a complex and engaging narrative, and for getting players back to action if things start to bog down and become boring.

[Airk]

Which is why I concluded that I can safely ignore it from now on. :smalltongue:

Only focusing on the important stuff is about as exciting to me as unsweetened porridge, it's all the detours, the breaks to focus on characters, the conversations going nowhere in particularly and so on that makes a game interesting to me. Not constant action and plot advancement.

See, you're totally confused about what Fate thinks is the 'important stuff'. "Important Stuff" for Fate is "Stuff that the characters want or do." Compels seem like the obvious EXAMPLE - a character who drops everything to chase after a pretty face, or who just can't ignore the opportunity to read the forbidden tome are perfect examples of compels, which are, precisely, focusing on characters, and taking detours. Actually, I'm a little mystified as to how you feel compels could lead to anything ELSE. o.o

[Eisenheim]

compel's can also directly generate action that focuses on the problems and concerns of the players entirely aside from the main narrative of the adventure. In my last session, the GM compelled by character's "The Devil's Lucky Sixgun" aspect to have the gun unexpectedly go off while someone else was handling it. I made the check to catch the hammer before anyone was hurt, but if I hadn't, it would have played out an extended scene focused entirely on my character's aspect rather than the main narrative of the adventure.

Later in that same session, one of the party members was loading people into a truck to save them from a herd of stampeding cattle, and he wanted to make sure a particular NPC was safe first of all. The DM compelled his "By the Skin of My Teeth" aspect to inject a little more tension into the scene by forcing him to save that character last of all.

The other important thing about compels is that they actually offer a choice. Players are not required to accept compels they are offered. In the core book, the choice is either to accept the compel and take the fate point, or to pay one of your own fate points to avoid it. My GM uses what I think is an excellent house-rule of making the initial refusal free. That is: he offers you a fate point for accepting a compel, you can either take the fate point and the compelled action, or you can refuse the, without spending any resources. If he really wants to compel you, he will offer 2 fate points after the initial refusal, at which point you can either take 2 fate points and the compel or pay one of your own fate points to refuse, and so on. This changes the economy just a little bit and makes compels feel a lot less coercive as player. They really are just a tool to help you and GM build a compelling narrative for your character.

[Terraoblivion]

See, you're totally confused about what Fate thinks is the 'important stuff'. "Important Stuff" for Fate is "Stuff that the characters want or do." Compels seem like the obvious EXAMPLE - a character who drops everything to chase after a pretty face, or who just can't ignore the opportunity to read the forbidden tome are perfect examples of compels, which are, precisely, focusing on characters, and taking detours. Actually, I'm a little mystified as to how you feel compels could lead to anything ELSE. o.o

And those are pushing action. They're about stuff happening, they're about forcing events along. Not necessarily towards a specific endpoint, but they're still about making sure stuff happens. Look at the difference between, say, an action movie and an atmospheric piece. Compels mean that stuff has to keep happening and if you need to use them to keep fate points flowing, it means a lot of stuff is happening. Which means less time to dwell on the details of each unless you change the pacing to have a session in system terms take multiple sessions in real time.

Really, I do understand it, you're the one who doesn't understand where I'm coming from. I'm coming from a position of really liking detail and texture and that's where the meat of the game is, not in the big events. It's my preference in media as well. It's one of the reasons why I vastly prefer reading manga to American comics, they spend far more time on establishing shots, panels without action to take a beat and let the atmosphere sink in and have conversations that stretch over a far higher number of lines and have things build much more gradually over a much larger number of conversations. At least outside of shounen. American fiction is extremely focused on what happens and how it happens and ignoring everything that isn't stuff happening and between what people here have said, what Fate Core explains about the goals of the game and what a reading of the compel rules suggest it seems that that is the kind of pacing the game goes for.

Basically there's too much of a focus on stuff happening and not enough on atmosphere, subtle nuances of characterization that don't really have any major stuff happening and amusing but ultimately irrelevant and unthreatening events. I really only care about stuff happening if it has thematic weight or is important and thematic weight and importance is created by all the nuance when stuff isn't happening.

[Airk]

And those are pushing action. They're about stuff happening, they're about forcing events along. Not necessarily towards a specific endpoint, but they're still about making sure stuff happens. Look at the difference between, say, an action movie and an atmospheric piece. Compels mean that stuff has to keep happening and if you need to use them to keep fate points flowing, it means a lot of stuff is happening. Which means less time to dwell on the details of each unless you change the pacing to have a session in system terms take multiple sessions in real time.

If by "action" you mean "conversation and decisions" then... I guess so?


Really, I do understand it, you're the one who doesn't understand where I'm coming from.

I think this is mostly because you keep using words in ways that don't make any sense to me. Like "action" above. And "Big events" below. You keep coming in here and saying "I don't want plants! I like trees and bushes!" and everyone is scratching their heads and saying "But...those ARE plants."


I'm coming from a position of really liking detail and texture and that's where the meat of the game is, not in the big events.

But...nothing about Compels means they are "big events". In fact, most of the time, they should be the opposite, IMHO.


Basically there's too much of a focus on stuff happening and not enough on atmosphere, subtle nuances of characterization that don't really have any major stuff happening and amusing but ultimately irrelevant and unthreatening events. I really only care about stuff happening if it has thematic weight or is important and thematic weight and importance is created by all the nuance when stuff isn't happening.

See, I can see there being room for criticism saying that the game doesn't leave enough room for nuance of atmosphere and setting, but the rest still seems completely wrong. Most compels are absolutely "unthreatening" events.

What is a game system you feel -supports- your style of play? Because right now, I don't think anyone in this thread understands what you are looking for.

[Terraoblivion]

I'm not looking for a system. I was reading one, found that I probably didn't like it but there was one bit that I wasn't clear on, so I asked for clarification and I got it and concluded that I was right in thinking it wasn't the system for me. That's really all there is to it. Which is fine, a system not being for me doesn't mean it's inherently bad.

And really, the issue isn't that the system doesn't actively promote slowing down, but rather that it actively encourages speeding up and glossing over details. Which just isn't to my taste.

[Airk]

I'm not looking for a system. I was reading one, found that I probably didn't like it but there was one bit that I wasn't clear on, so I asked for clarification and I got it and concluded that I was right in thinking it wasn't the system for me. That's really all there is to it. Which is fine, a system not being for me doesn't mean it's inherently bad.

This is sortof beside the point; I don't really care whether you are "looking" for a system or something. Clearly, you want to talk about Fate, and the way you keep explaining yourself doesn't make it sound like you understand it.



And really, the issue isn't that the system doesn't actively promote slowing down, but rather that it actively encourages speeding up and glossing over details. Which just isn't to my taste.

But it DOESN'T. It encourages DIGGING DOWN on details.

[Terraoblivion]

But it DOESN'T. It encourages DIGGING DOWN on details.

Either we mean something radically different when we talk about details, the book is lying or you don't play like the book suggests you're supposed to play. Because I really don't see anything in the examples, how they suggest playing or what most people here have said that suggests anything of the sort. The book constantly stresses having "interesting" things happening constantly, that it is meant to emulate action and action/adventure movies, the examples constantly gloss over long exchanges of conversation or actions in a couple of sentences and have exactly zero examples of in-character speech and so on. Nothing in it suggests paying close attention to exact wording in conversations or giving any attention to downtime where interesting things aren't happening, it pretty explicitly says the direct opposite. For that matter, defining what's important to a character as a list of five descriptive phrases isn't exactly an approach the encourages detail. You say it encourages a focus on detail, tell me how exactly it does it and where the book says it. Because I'm really not seeing it. Or you could just accept that I don't agree with you on the system instead of trying to persuade me otherwise. I wanted a specific thing clarified because I thought it wasn't to my taste, what people said confirmed my impression and therefor I concluded the system wasn't for me and explained that. I didn't want a long discussion nor do I have any interest in making others stop playing Fate.

Also, please stop basically accusing me of what Communists used to call false consciousness, it's pretty rude. I'm perfectly capable of judging what I like and I don't like and people don't necessarily like the same things.

[Eisenheim]

Terraoblivion, I've posted several examples of how the fate game I play in regularly runs, with a focus on compels, as that was the original topic of the thread, and I feel like I have shown how they allow for a focus on what I think of as detail and character. I certainly feel that fate has in now way hindered meaningful character interactions and development at the table, which, IMO is largely dependent on the players and GM, system aside, and I also think, and could speak to if you are interested, the way that fate's aspects encourage a decision making style of role-play and character before mechanics, which, for me, leads to better immersion and investment than any system I have played.

One of the things that I, and I think Airk, have been trying to speak to is that fate does not mechanically force you into any particular play-style. Most of the examples in the core rules are of one particular game with a particular style, but you don't have use fate for anyhing remotely like that. A glance at the fate worlds books if you have access to them will certainly illustrate the wide variety of things the system can accomplish.

I think that fate is an incredibly versatile system that allows for engaging, character driven role-playing in almost any style and setting, and I would be very interested to hear from you what mechanics you have found in any system that better support the kind of role-playing you prefer, as I am having a little trouble understanding exactly how fate's mechanics clash with it.

[Terraoblivion]

Honestly, I'd prefer to just drop it. I'm willing to accept that maybe the book is just selling the system short and presenting it in a far more confined manner than necessarily, in which case I really wonder why they did that, but that's obviously not something anybody here can answer.

[obryn]

Either we mean something radically different when we talk about details, the book is lying or you don't play like the book suggests you're supposed to play. Because I really don't see anything in the examples, how they suggest playing or what most people here have said that suggests anything of the sort. The book constantly stresses having "interesting" things happening constantly, that it is meant to emulate action and action/adventure movies, the examples constantly gloss over long exchanges of conversation or actions in a couple of sentences and have exactly zero examples of in-character speech and so on. Nothing in it suggests paying close attention to exact wording in conversations or giving any attention to downtime where interesting things aren't happening, it pretty explicitly says the direct opposite.
I think the bolded part is the disconnect, here, and why you folks are talking past each other. Fate can scale upwards and downwards, and if relaxing in these long exchanges is what's interesting for your game, it can work, with the expected and necessary degree of tweaking it takes to make Fate work for anything else. This tweaking is part of why I consider Fate more a toolkit for making games than a game itself, though I'm sure others will disagree with me. :smallsmile:

More to the point, though, what systems, would you say, accomplish what you're looking for?

[Terraoblivion]

More to the point, though, what systems, would you say, accomplish what you're looking for?

Only system I have experience with that explicitly focuses on and encourages that is Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, which is basically purely about creating stories centering on the emotional life and development of the characters. The bigger sticking point was that the book seemed to suggest that Fate is actively hostile to it, rather than that it doesn't support it as such. Any system without mechanics addressing pacing can easily accommodate it as long as the entire group is on board with it, even if it will effectively be outside the system when it happens. A lot of systems that do have rules for pacing also pace mechanical interactions, rather than the overall narrative. Don't Rest Your Head is mechanically speaking almost purely a method of pacing, creating a downward spiral and putting a timer on achieving your goals, but its pacing centers on rolls rather than on time.

[obryn]

Only system I have experience with that explicitly focuses on and encourages that is Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, which is basically purely about creating stories centering on the emotional life and development of the characters.
Ah! Well, those are all excellent games, too! No reason to tweak Fate to this if you have something that doesn't need tweaked at all.

[Terraoblivion]

And you can get it in most systems simply by the group being fine with it and running freeform for those parts. Most systems have no real pacing methods built into them, after all. You just won't get mechanical support.

[CombatOwl]

Which is why I concluded that I can safely ignore it from now on. :smalltongue:

Only focusing on the important stuff is about as exciting to me as unsweetened porridge, it's all the detours, the breaks to focus on characters, the conversations going nowhere in particularly and so on that makes a game interesting to me. Not constant action and plot advancement.

If you want to avoid the worst fate-point-economy issues that follow from that, I strongly, strongly suggest an intermission mid-way through long sessions during which all fate points are refreshed. Though even then, players have a ridiculously strong tendency to keep a death grip on fate points "in case they need them later" when there aren't enough compels being offered.

[Airk]

Either we mean something radically different when we talk about details, the book is lying or you don't play like the book suggests you're supposed to play. Because I really don't see anything in the examples, how they suggest playing or what most people here have said that suggests anything of the sort. The book constantly stresses having "interesting" things happening constantly, that it is meant to emulate action and action/adventure movies, the examples constantly gloss over long exchanges of conversation or actions in a couple of sentences and have exactly zero examples of in-character speech and so on. Nothing in it suggests paying close attention to exact wording in conversations or giving any attention to downtime where interesting things aren't happening, it pretty explicitly says the direct opposite. For that matter, defining what's important to a character as a list of five descriptive phrases isn't exactly an approach the encourages detail. You say it encourages a focus on detail, tell me how exactly it does it and where the book says it. Because I'm really not seeing it. Or you could just accept that I don't agree with you on the system instead of trying to persuade me otherwise. I wanted a specific thing clarified because I thought it wasn't to my taste, what people said confirmed my impression and therefor I concluded the system wasn't for me and explained that. I didn't want a long discussion nor do I have any interest in making others stop playing Fate.

I'm going from Fate Accelerated here, but the whole POINT of Fate is that the game is about what you write on the character sheets. If you have characters whose defining aspects are things like "Bad Ass Kung Fu Monk" "I'm a goddamn Ninja" and "Fastest draw in the west" you're going to get a very different game from the one where your aspects are more like "Mecha Pilot with daddy issues", "Introspective psychic" and "Samurai who has vowed to never kill again". You see where I'm going with this?

The types of things you can be "compelled" into are what YOU decide you want the game to be about. It doesn't get any easier. You basically take a piece of paper and write down what kind of game you want, and then Fate goes "Okay, let's play a game where those are the sorts of things that happen!"



Also, please stop basically accusing me of what Communists used to call false consciousness, it's pretty rude. I'm perfectly capable of judging what I like and I don't like and people don't necessarily like the same things.

I'm just accusing you of not understanding what the game does. :P

[Knaight]

I'm going from Fate Accelerated here, but the whole POINT of Fate is that the game is about what you write on the character sheets. If you have characters whose defining aspects are things like "Bad Ass Kung Fu Monk" "I'm a goddamn Ninja" and "Fastest draw in the west" you're going to get a very different game from the one where your aspects are more like "Mecha Pilot with daddy issues", "Introspective psychic" and "Samurai who has vowed to never kill again". You see where I'm going with this?

On top of that, I'd also say that the point of the aspects is to put the focus on the characters, and thus their interactions regarding who they are and not just what they do. To use an example from a Dresden files game, one of the more memorable scenes was just the characters talking in a diner. Much of the conversation wasn't all that relevant to anything 'plot', some of it was. Aspects still came into it to some extent, just because the process of making them had generated interactions between the characters. For instance, one of the aspects of my character was "homeless alchemist with a debt". This was relevant to such mundane things as who was paying for what part of the meal, as it sure as heck wasn't going to be him.

[Terraoblivion]

I'm going from Fate Accelerated here, but the whole POINT of Fate is that the game is about what you write on the character sheets. If you have characters whose defining aspects are things like "Bad Ass Kung Fu Monk" "I'm a goddamn Ninja" and "Fastest draw in the west" you're going to get a very different game from the one where your aspects are more like "Mecha Pilot with daddy issues", "Introspective psychic" and "Samurai who has vowed to never kill again". You see where I'm going with this?

I might point out that it might not be a good idea to make examples of the narrative range of the game by moving from broad action and action/adventure stories, to somewhat more serious action and action/adventure stories. :smallwink:

Anyway, the fundamental disconnect between us is that it appears that we're talking about different things. You're talking about what the story is about, while I'm focusing on how it is told. My issues center on pacing and how much time is spent on conflict, in the broad literary sense, and how much is spent establishing character, atmosphere and character relationships. It appears that if you want any conflict at all, you need Fate points, you get most Fate points from compels which spurs conflict and this encourages a pacing centering on conflict rather than more static periods or periods where the progression is extremely low key. While I wouldn't want to play a game with a constant pacing like K-On, I do appreciate periods with a pacing like that where the focus is on low impact, low conflict character interaction that through volume define character relations. This seems hard to get to play nice with compels unless you segregate it by sessions, but that seems like it could lead to choppy pacing.

Another way to put it is that it's what Knaight is talking about, I just don't see Fate encouraging it more than most other systems. It's more about having a vivid image of the character and a willingness to get in character than about what is on the sheet and in most systems it happens outside interaction with the mechanics. My issue is that due to how central the Fate point economy is, it's harder to do it in Fate than in systems with the pacing less based around OOC time.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Another way to put it is that it's what Knaight is talking about, I just don't see Fate encouraging it more than most other systems. It's more about having a vivid image of the character and a willingness to get in character than about what is on the sheet and in most systems it happens outside interaction with the mechanics. My issue is that due to how central the Fate point economy is, it's harder to do it in Fate than in systems with the pacing less based around OOC time.
In my experience, Fate is unusually good about encouraging that sort of thing-- the very process of coming up with Aspects for your character forces everyone to put a lot more thought into their motives and personalities than in many other games. (The mechanics also encourage roleplaying-- my last Fate GM was fond of tossing out points for "self-compels.") Though you hardly need a steady flow of Fate points for "normal" gameplay-- characters are pretty competent with just skills and stunts. Fate points are only needed for particularly difficult, high-stakes encounters.

[Airk]

I might point out that it might not be a good idea to make examples of the narrative range of the game by moving from broad action and action/adventure stories, to somewhat more serious action and action/adventure stories. :smallwink:

Sorry; I was having a hard time coming up with precise tropey-aspects at the time. I suppose you could go with "Broody Victorian landowner" if you want.



Anyway, the fundamental disconnect between us is that it appears that we're talking about different things. You're talking about what the story is about, while I'm focusing on how it is told.

I was talking about what the story was about because that appeared to be what you were complaining about.


My issues center on pacing and how much time is spent on conflict, in the broad literary sense, and how much is spent establishing character, atmosphere and character relationships. It appears that if you want any conflict at all, you need Fate points,

Huh? From whence does this idea come? While Fate points may be used in conflict, they can also COME from conflict, and they certainly aren't required to start it. o.o


you get most Fate points from compels which spurs conflict

This part of this sentence seems completely at odds with the previous part of this sentence.


and this encourages a pacing centering on conflict rather than more static periods or periods where the progression is extremely low key. While I wouldn't want to play a game with a constant pacing like K-On, I do appreciate periods with a pacing like that where the focus is on low impact, low conflict character interaction that through volume define character relations. This seems hard to get to play nice with compels unless you segregate it by sessions, but that seems like it could lead to choppy pacing.

I don't know; I think pacing is pacing; A compel could lead to a long and introspective session where other characters help the 'compelee' with their issue, or it could lead to a fast and furious escalation of hijinx and action that lasts for 5 minutes and then is swept under the rug as the party moves on to something; It's all about how often they happen and what they create, and both of those are completely controlled by the people playing the game and have no system ties at all. The mechanic itself doesn't drive the story in any particular direction, or at any particular pace. It seems like you are concerned that players will be "needing" Fate points and therefore you'll "need" to have lots of compels, thereby forcing a pace that you don't want, but that's backwards - the only reason characters/players would "need" lots of Fate points is if you are setting a fast paced game in which they constantly need to be doing things that are Important. If you play a slower paced game, players don't 'need' to get lots of Fate points, and you're free to chew the scenery surrounding a single compel for an entire session if you want.



Another way to put it is that it's what Knaight is talking about, I just don't see Fate encouraging it more than most other systems. It's more about having a vivid image of the character and a willingness to get in character than about what is on the sheet and in most systems it happens outside interaction with the mechanics.

It mystifies me that you don't think it's easier to have a vivid image and get into character when your character is defined as:
Victorian Gentleman
Brooding
Daddy Issues

Rather than:
Strength 11
Dexterity 13
Constitution 7
Intelligence 15
Wisdom 9
Charisma 16
Hitpoints 7

When the only things on the sheet have everything to do with mechanics and NOTHING to do with character, you literally have to do ALL the work. The game does nothing for you. A game which instead contains some actual elements of character within the game helps you move beyond the mechanics more easily.



My issue is that due to how central the Fate point economy is, it's harder to do it in Fate than in systems with the pacing less based around OOC time.

I fail to see any reason that there should be a connection between the Fate point economy and OOC time, and honestly, I'm not even sure how you arrive at this conclusion. See my previous points regarding pacing setting the speed of the 'economy' not the other way around.

[Terraoblivion]

Huh? From whence does this idea come? While Fate points may be used in conflict, they can also COME from conflict, and they certainly aren't required to start it. o.o
You need Fate points when you're using your skills and you're using skills when there's conflict. Why would you roll when there's nothing at stake? And if there was nothing at stake, why would you invoke a compel to improve your chances of success? That's what I mean by saying you need Fate points for conflict. You only need them when there is conflict.


It seems like you are concerned that players will be "needing" Fate points and therefore you'll "need" to have lots of compels, thereby forcing a pace that you don't want, but that's backwards - the only reason characters/players would "need" lots of Fate points is if you are setting a fast paced game in which they constantly need to be doing things that are Important. If you play a slower paced game, players don't 'need' to get lots of Fate points, and you're free to chew the scenery surrounding a single compel for an entire session if you want.

That's what I meant with segregating sessions. If you're going to have conflict in a session, you need Fate points to really do anything should it involve skills. To get a decent amount of Fate points, you need compels. This would suggest that either the game would need a steady stream of compels in case something happens or have sessions where nothing happens, it would be hard to organically flow between the two in a given session.


It mystifies me that you don't think it's easier to have a vivid image and get into character when your character is defined as:
Victorian Gentleman
Brooding
Daddy Issues

Rather than:
Strength 11
Dexterity 13
Constitution 7
Intelligence 15
Wisdom 9
Charisma 16
Hitpoints 7

When the only things on the sheet have everything to do with mechanics and NOTHING to do with character, you literally have to do ALL the work. The game does nothing for you. A game which instead contains some actual elements of character within the game helps you move beyond the mechanics more easily.

Well, sure, Fate encourages more than a raw D&D sheet that omits mentioning race and class. That's a pretty low bar, those three aspects don't really define much more than "dwarf fighter" and probably less than "dwarf wizard". Five aspects doesn't really define more than, let's say, Kakita Family, Daidoji Iron Warrior, Black Sheep and Driven: Restore my branch of the family. Or Doctor, 2 points of status in The Southern Dragon Pirate Clan, 2 points of ties to former life as a merchant and 1 point rivalry with an NPC. Really, ties to the world and traits defining who you are are a basic point of just about any system with a definite setting and something a lot of generic system includes ways to handle as well. Beyond that there is the whole thing with spending time creating a character. I don't know about you, but I've literally never seen people just show up, make a sheet and start, nor have I seen people who only made the mechanics without also creating a personality and place in society. Basically, five aspects is the start of where defining a character is for me, not something more than I and everyone I've gamed with have always done, even for the most generic D&D dungeon crawl. You're presenting really basic characterization as something big and impressive and if you didn't get to be in groups that gave that much characterization before, I feel sorry for you because that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.


I fail to see any reason that there should be a connection between the Fate point economy and OOC time, and honestly, I'm not even sure how you arrive at this conclusion. See my previous points regarding pacing setting the speed of the 'economy' not the other way around.

Refresh is based around sessions, which is an OOC unit of time. You have, let's say, five hours of time. In that time you have 1-3 Fate point plus what you get from compels. That means that the pacing provided by the Fate point economy, an economy that several people have stressed the need for, centers around OOC time, not something inherent to the game. Which is to say individual sessions. I can think of hacks to get around that, such as declaring it a new session based around IC events rather than the end of your time playing together on a given day, but the book centers the economy that ties into the pace on OOC time.

[Knaight]

Another way to put it is that it's what Knaight is talking about, I just don't see Fate encouraging it more than most other systems. It's more about having a vivid image of the character and a willingness to get in character than about what is on the sheet and in most systems it happens outside interaction with the mechanics. My issue is that due to how central the Fate point economy is, it's harder to do it in Fate than in systems with the pacing less based around OOC time.

It does help that the structure of creation explicitly involves creating characters together, explicitly sets them up to already have history, etc. Plus, the very importance of Aspects makes people take time phrasing them, and helps clarify the character, along with helping the other players understand who that character is, and thus helping them interact with them in interesting ways.

As for aspects I'd consider Airk's list of

Victorian Gentleman
Brooding
Daddy Issues

to be, frankly, boring. A lot of this is because coming up with example aspects detached from a character tends to produce more boring ones. Another part is that stunts also help defining the character, and they aren't there. So, I present an alternate list
Isaiah Williams

Homeless Alchemist With A Debt
Never Knows When To Stop
Street Student
If They Can't Find Me, They Can't Hurt Me
What Did I Ever Do To You?
Magical Pharmacist
It Can't Be Real, It Can't!

Some of these don't make a lot of sense out of context. Still, it gets some idea of who the character is, why they have enemies, how they deal with it, etc. It alludes to the missing memories in the character (as far as they now know, they're just a chemist, not an alchemist). It is certainly a fair amount more defining than Dwarf Wizard.

Then there are the stunts, which are more there regarding what the character can do.

Ritual (Alchemy)
Chemist: Gives a +1 to all scholarship rolls involving chemistry.
Analytical Alchemist: Gain a +2 to all Lore rolls involving identifying others' alchemy.
Hardness of Poverty: Gain 2 Mild Consequences when resisting the dangers of homelessness.

The notable thing here is that I could just make these, instead of picking them from a list. It is thus quite open in making characters, and can also help in the actual characterization. Though, on account of Dresden Files pickiness with magic, both Ritual (Alchemy) and Magical Pharmacist were kind of wasted on fulfilling requirements.

I'm actually not a big Fate fan, but I do think the system is well suited to character moments, precisely because of how it ties things together and helps explain them. I'm just not that big on the aspect economy in play, though I do quite like stunts.

[Airk]

You need Fate points when you're using your skills and you're using skills when there's conflict. Why would you roll when there's nothing at stake? And if there was nothing at stake, why would you invoke a compel to improve your chances of success? That's what I mean by saying you need Fate points for conflict. You only need them when there is conflict.

HUH? No, you don't NEED Fate points when you're using your skills? This is like saying "You need an action point to get into combat". Also, you don't "invoke compels to improve your chances of success" either - a compel is something that has to happen BEFORE you are thinking about your chances of success. Maybe you're just getting your terms wrong? Yes, you only "need" Fate points when there is conflict, but you don't need them for there to BE conflict.



That's what I meant with segregating sessions. If you're going to have conflict in a session, you need Fate points to really do anything should it involve skills.

No you DO NOT. I'm sorry, this assumption is completely incorrect.


To get a decent amount of Fate points, you need compels.

Why do we need a "decent" amount of Fate points? You can make them as scarce or as plentiful as you want. This is like saying "To get a decent amount of XP, you need to have X battles every session!" It's COMPLETELY dependent on what kind of game you want to run.


This would suggest that either the game would need a steady stream of compels in case something happens or have sessions where nothing happens, it would be hard to organically flow between the two in a given session.

This might be correct if your baseline assumption had any basis in reality.


Beyond that there is the whole thing with spending time creating a character. I don't know about you, but I've literally never seen people just show up, make a sheet and start, nor have I seen people who only made the mechanics without also creating a personality and place in society.

Really? I see both all the time.



Basically, five aspects is the start of where defining a character is for me, not something more than I and everyone I've gamed with have always done, even for the most generic D&D dungeon crawl. You're presenting really basic characterization as something big and impressive and if you didn't get to be in groups that gave that much characterization before, I feel sorry for you because that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun.

No, I'm presenting "basic characterization" as "Hey look, this system actually HAS it."; I've played in plenty of games that do, but in many of them, we had to make that stuff up with the system saying "Well, have fun guys, you've got stats!"



Refresh is based around sessions, which is an OOC unit of time. You have, let's say, five hours of time. In that time you have 1-3 Fate point plus what you get from compels. That means that the pacing provided by the Fate point economy, an economy that several people have stressed the need for, centers around OOC time, not something inherent to the game. Which is to say individual sessions. I can think of hacks to get around that, such as declaring it a new session based around IC events rather than the end of your time playing together on a given day, but the book centers the economy that ties into the pace on OOC time.

This must be more fancy "Fate Core" stuff again and I reiterate that I haven't read those rules. All FAE has is "milestones" which allow you to do a modest amount of character "adjustment" (I'd hesitate to even call it "advancement"); Either way though, you are blowing this COMPLETELY out of proportion. You don't like the pace. So now "refresh" just happens when you say it does. Problem solved? For someone who seems to be talking about how EASY it is to just make up tons and tons of background info on characters, you seem mysteriously challenged by giving a system the tiniest poke to make it line up with the kind of game you want to run. This barely even qualifies as a house rule. It's more like "how much XP do you give out"?

And yeah, sorry, Knaight, I suck at on-the-fly examples. :P

[Terraoblivion]

The character creation is actually my least favorite part of the system, though that's basically purely a matter of taste and personal hang-ups. Trying to create a character like that would me panic at least a little bit and I would end up with a character I hated partly due to the discomfort involved in creating it and partly due to the amount of thought, tweaking and starting over from scratch as I approach the magical moment where everything clicks and the character fits together and makes me excited to play them. The only time I've successfully created a character I wanted to play with any kind of structured method was when I decided to roll on the Mekton Zeta lifepath as a challenge to myself in creating something coherent from what I rolled. Anything else is far more in line with stereotypical absentminded academics and flighty artists than with anything planned. And if I'm not excited going in, I'm half-assing it in play and grow more and more frustrated with both myself and the character.

Also, I'll admit that I find it a bit silly that a system that openly states it wants to emulate action and action/adventure movies has a default character creation that doesn't allow for making Luke Skywalker, John McClane or Harry Potter. Just kind of an amusing quirk of the thing.

And looking at your list of aspects, Knaight, they're indeed a lot better as expected for some coming from a real character, but they're still only a skeleton to start from or a distillation of a character to hit the right number. If they were all you had they wouldn't really encourage more than playing a fairly broad archetype and hopefully filling it out over time. Trying to port a character from another system to Fate to see how it worked, I also ran into the problem that I couldn't really pin her down to a list of descriptive phrases. No matter how I phrased them I ended up either ignoring something that felt very important or overemphasizing something that was important, but also somewhat amorphous in how I'd been playing her. None of this was tied to the mechanics of the original system either, it was the focus and distillation of her background and personality that proved tricky.

And Airk, you need Fate points to do anything with skills other than roll and see what you get. Any actual choice or real interaction with them uses Fate points and just going with pure randomness is, well, not terribly interesting for anybody involved. Especially in a system that doesn't have a whole lot of tactical choices in the mechanics other than influencing rolls. I should perhaps have clarified and said that for any conflict using skills to interact with the system in an interesting way you need Fate points. Is it clearer now? Because, really, if all you're doing is making rolls using broad skills where you can't affect the outcome, I don't see the point of having a system at all. All it seems to add compared to freeform is the risk of things being anticlimactic in some way or another, which isn't a positive in my book. Fate points is where meaningful engagement with the system is, Fate points come from Refresh and compels, so if you want meaningful engagement with the system you either need a steady stream of compels or, like you suggest, upping the rate at which Refresh is handed out.

Also, the overwhelming majority of systems I've played over the last decade has had basic characterization in the mechanics. It's really, really common to systems that have a default setting and were released after Vampire: The Masquerade and I imagine that I'm not alone in having played a broader range of setting specific systems than generic ones recently. Generic systems also often includes it, though more frequently as an optional add-on or hidden among advantages and disadvantages than in the core mechanics.

And, yes, I've literally never seen people who just made a sheet and started and who literally refused to create characterization in advance. I've seen people fail to act on the characterization they made in advance or act on it in a very flat, token fashion, but I've never seen them not at least make it. I've also never seen that thing where people just show up with a finished sheet without having had any communication with the rest of the group and expect to start. I've never even seen it where there has been some characterization, but the GM didn't see the finished sheet until right before starting. All three of these things are bizarre things I read about online and which leaves me baffled by their very existence.

[Airk]

The character creation is actually my least favorite part of the system, though that's basically purely a matter of taste and personal hang-ups. Trying to create a character like that would me panic at least a little bit and I would end up with a character I hated partly due to the discomfort involved in creating it and partly due to the amount of thought, tweaking and starting over from scratch as I approach the magical moment where everything clicks and the character fits together and makes me excited to play them.

While I'm not really following exactly what you are saying the problem is (it makes it sound like character creation is TOO freeform? but what's causing 'discomfort'? And why does that mean you need to interate on the idea more than you would in another system?) this is certainly something I can't argue with. If you can't deal with how the system works in that regard, you can't deal with it, and that's that.


The only time I've successfully created a character I wanted to play with any kind of structured method

Wait wait, hold on? Fate chargen counts as a 'structured method'? In that case, what DOESN'T? o.o



Also, I'll admit that I find it a bit silly that a system that openly states it wants to emulate action and action/adventure movies has a default character creation that doesn't allow for making Luke Skywalker, John McClane or Harry Potter. Just kind of an amusing quirk of the thing.

Buh...what? How does Fate not allow these characters? :smallconfused:



Trying to port a character from another system to Fate to see how it worked, I also ran into the problem that I couldn't really pin her down to a list of descriptive phrases. No matter how I phrased them I ended up either ignoring something that felt very important or overemphasizing something that was important, but also somewhat amorphous in how I'd been playing her. None of this was tied to the mechanics of the original system either, it was the focus and distillation of her background and personality that proved tricky.

This seems like a very strange issue.



And Airk, you need Fate points to do anything with skills other than roll and see what you get. Any actual choice or real interaction with them uses Fate points and just going with pure randomness is, well, not terribly interesting for anybody involved. Especially in a system that doesn't have a whole lot of tactical choices in the mechanics other than influencing rolls.

Uh, I guess? Except that this is how I perceive most systems. You have a skill, and you roll it, and what you get is what you get? Sure, some games have elaborate tactical choices for a very small subset of actions (usually: fighting) but outside of that? How is this different from any other game except that you HAVE the option of Fate points, which most games don't?



I should perhaps have clarified and said that for any conflict using skills to interact with the system in an interesting way you need Fate points. Is it clearer now? Because, really, if all you're doing is making rolls using broad skills where you can't affect the outcome, I don't see the point of having a system at all. All it seems to add compared to freeform is the risk of things being anticlimactic in some way or another, which isn't a positive in my book. Fate points is where meaningful engagement with the system is, Fate points come from Refresh and compels, so if you want meaningful engagement with the system you either need a steady stream of compels or, like you suggest, upping the rate at which Refresh is handed out.

I still don't really agree with your assessment. It seems to me that Fate points are supposed to be used in "Wow, this is something that is extra important to my character!" stuff, not everytime you roll. I mean, think of it this way: If you're expected to have and use Fate points anytime you call for a roll, why even have Fate points? Because you're not making a decision at all. The only way Fate points become worth having in the system at all is if you DON'T use them all the time.



Also, the overwhelming majority of systems I've played over the last decade has had basic characterization in the mechanics.

Please cite some, because I'm having a LOT of trouble coming up with games that meet the criteria you seem to think of as the norm, and I have a pretty wide experience with games.



It's really, really common to systems that have a default setting and were released after Vampire: The Masquerade and I imagine that I'm not alone in having played a broader range of setting specific systems than generic ones recently. Generic systems also often includes it, though more frequently as an optional add-on or hidden among advantages and disadvantages than in the core mechanics.

I'm usually not a fan of 'older' setting-specific systems, because in general I found them to be too much like generic systems with a setting grafted on awkwardly. So yeah, I'd love to hear some examples of what you find to be GOOD systems - I feel like I asked for this once already, and I don't remember getting a response.



And, yes, I've literally never seen people who just made a sheet and started and who literally refused to create characterization in advance. I've seen people fail to act on the characterization they made in advance or act on it in a very flat, token fashion, but I've never seen them not at least make it. I've also never seen that thing where people just show up with a finished sheet without having had any communication with the rest of the group and expect to start. I've never even seen it where there has been some characterization, but the GM didn't see the finished sheet until right before starting. All three of these things are bizarre things I read about online and which leaves me baffled by their very existence.

How do you people ever do a pick up game? How do you have SO MUCH free time that you can spend weeks (not like literally weeks of time spent doing nothing but, but still, 'working' at the idea over weeks at a time) just making a character?

[Terraoblivion]

I don't know FAE, but in Fate Core character creation calls for describing your character's first adventure and then two cooperative stories about how you met two other characters. You can obviously skip this and just choose aspects, skills and stunts, but going by the one in the book you're expected to be an established adventurer/hero/whatever you want to call it and you have to work through a pretty specific process and order to get your character. With my strange, scattered approach to character creation being forced into a specific order and being incapable of changing it due to forcing others to change their ideas, having to follow that order would be rather uncomfortable for me. And those characters can't be made because they haven't had adventures before. Luke Skywalker is just an ordinary farmboy, Harry Potter learns that he's a wizard as the start of the story and John McClane is an ordinary cop before the first movie. A strict reading would also mean that Obi-Wan is the only main character of A New Hope you can make and only on a technicality by counting Leia as a baby as good enough for ties.

And most systems does indeed have tactical systems that create a challenge. I'm not hugely fond of emphasizing rolls in situations that don't have choices because they're uninteresting, binary pass-fail checks that you can't influence. In short, they're boring and can easily end up just being a roadblock if the GM wasn't careful. They aren't the system presenting interesting choices through its existence, nor do they really serve to guide plot. But if you don't have enough Fate points to be able to occasionally waste them or use them on a roll that isn't extremely obviously highly impossible, then all that's left of the system is these binary pass-fail checks and that's just not interesting.

And I don't think every roll should have Fate points spent on it, but you still need to have enough that you'll occasionally spend them and have a reasonable basis for judging whether you should use one for a given roll. It's not so much the spending of a Fate point that creates something interesting, as it is having the choice of doing so. And as such the ideal amount is limited enough that you can't always use them, but plentiful enough that you don't need to save them for that one, single supremely important roll and will never consider using them the rest of the time. Compels are the default mechanic to create that balance, which in turn suggests a pacing of a certain amount of conflict in any given session.

For basic characterization in systems...Clan, family and school in Legend of the Five Rings; loresheets in Weapons of the Gods and Legends of the Wulin; motivation, intimacies, caste and virtues in Exalted; the various splats in different WoD lines along with things like nature and demeanor or virtue and vice along with breaking points in the GMC version; basically every single bit of information you put down in Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. A whole host of systems also have them among advantages and disadvantage or merits and flaws or whatever it calls these things. I'm not saying all of these are good, I absolutely hate pre-GMC virtues and vices for example, but I'm saying they're there and in many cases very basic to the operation of the system.

For good systems, I'd say the ones above not made by White Wolf, though God-Machine Chronicles improves a lot on both the mechanics and the representation of basic characterization in the rules. I'd list more if my mind doesn't have a habit of blanking when I'm asked to provide examples of something.

And we find the time by making use of one of two simple solutions. Announcing that we plan to run something in advance and making characters while what we're doing wraps up or simply waiting on starting until everyone is ready. These days I mostly play with people I talk to regularly either way, so it's not terribly hard to get communication done. Also, roleplaying is basically my primary hobby so rather than replacing games with a new one, I usually add to my line-up when I think I have the time. It's much the same for most of the people I play with. And, well, a lot of the time working on an idea is while I'm doing stuff like showering or shopping and thinking over it there. Not like I need much thought for those things anyway.

[Airk]

I don't know FAE, but in Fate Core character creation calls for describing your character's first adventure and then two cooperative stories about how you met two other characters. You can obviously skip this and just choose aspects, skills and stunts, but going by the one in the book you're expected to be an established adventurer/hero/whatever you want to call it and you have to work through a pretty specific process and order to get your character. With my strange, scattered approach to character creation being forced into a specific order and being incapable of changing it due to forcing others to change their ideas, having to follow that order would be rather uncomfortable for me. And those characters can't be made because they haven't had adventures before. Luke Skywalker is just an ordinary farmboy, Harry Potter learns that he's a wizard as the start of the story and John McClane is an ordinary cop before the first movie. A strict reading would also mean that Obi-Wan is the only main character of A New Hope you can make and only on a technicality by counting Leia as a baby as good enough for ties.

Oh, so they kept that goofy feature from older Fate. I see. FAE doesn't do that. But it's not technically accurate to say you "can't" make those characters. You just make "Empire Strikes Back" Luke, etc. (Honestly? I think Empire Luke is a lot more interesting) And frankly, I'm ALL FOR building in a requirement to have some connection to other characters, because otherwise you either waste a ton of time trying to herd cats or play the meta-game "Well, I guess I trust you because you are a PC." Unless "We're not going to be any sort of team/friends/cohesive group" is baked into the game in some way (Monsterhearts is the major one that leaps to mind) you pretty much need to have this.



And most systems does indeed have tactical systems that create a challenge. I'm not hugely fond of emphasizing rolls in situations that don't have choices because they're uninteresting, binary pass-fail checks that you can't influence.

But you can ALWAYS influence rolls; You already have influenced them. You put those points/dice/dots/whatever in that skill. It's almost absurd to never roll it unless you're making some other crazy choices. Why would you ever bother having skills/stats/a resolution mechanic at all otherwise? And they certainly don't need to be binary pass/fail OR boring - that's all in the design of the event. The fact that you don't get to game the system by maneuvering for a bunch of advantages does not make them less interesting or important to the story.


In short, they're boring and can easily end up just being a roadblock if the GM wasn't careful.

So can things where there ARE tactical decisions. Bad GMing is bad GMing, regardless. I don't think it's fair, useful or appropriate to hold up the equivalent of "You know, if you do your best to run a bad game, you can totally do it in this system" as a flaw.


They aren't the system presenting interesting choices through its existence, nor do they really serve to guide plot.

I completely disagree; A simple pass/fail of "do you ride to town in time to warn them of the oncoming attack" guides plot. And the outcome is certainly interesting either way. And it allows people who thought "Gee, I might want to make a character who rides really well." to shine. Or maybe, since some characters are better at certain things than others, you might take a shortcut through the forest instead of riding your horse. Or use your wacky-inventor skills to launch a hang glider to get there in time. And none of those NEED to have a Fate point involved to be 'interesting' or non-binary (You reach town in time, but your horse (or maybe the horse you 'borrowed') is now lame). If all decisions come down to "Do I want to spend some of my magic beans to succeed or not" then you're right back to "Why have a system at all?" even if you are asking that question every time.


But if you don't have enough Fate points to be able to occasionally waste them or use them on a roll that isn't extremely obviously highly impossible, then all that's left of the system is these binary pass-fail checks and that's just not interesting.

I am mystified by your assertion that someone spending a Fate point to have a better chance of success magically transforms a dice test from "binary pass/fail and boring" to interesting. Indeed, I think I can say with 100% objectivity that nothing about spending a fate point modifies the binary pass/fail nature of the challenge. If it was beforehand, it will still be, and if it wasn't beforehand, it won't be even if you don't spend any.



And I don't think every roll should have Fate points spent on it, but you still need to have enough that you'll occasionally spend them and have a reasonable basis for judging whether you should use one for a given roll.

So you should have SOME. I hardly think that anything we have discussed so far indicates that characters will have none, do you?


It's not so much the spending of a Fate point that creates something interesting, as it is having the choice of doing so.

Yes, I said this already, when you appeared to be asserting that you needed them all the time. I would actually suggest that having relative FEW points makes the decision to spend/not spend MORE meaningful, because you're not thinking "meh, whatever, I'll get three more compels in the next scene anyway."



And as such the ideal amount is limited enough that you can't always use them, but plentiful enough that you don't need to save them for that one, single supremely important roll and will never consider using them the rest of the time.

That's the other thing about Fate points. Hoarding them is not a good idea, because it's extremely unlikely that you'll be able to spend more than a couple on any given roll anyway; They're not "hand in this chit for extra dice". They are fuel for other system mechanics that in and of themselves have requirements for activation. So even if you wanted to throw them all at your one big roll, unless you can somehow invoke all your aspects and whatnot, you're really not spending that many.


Compels are the default mechanic to create that balance, which in turn suggests a pacing of a certain amount of conflict in any given session.

Yes, it assumes a NON ZERO amount of conflict. And you yourself have stated that you're not interested in playing games with essentially zero conflict.



For basic characterization in systems...Clan, family and school in Legend of the Five Rings;

Super barebones minimal, IMHO. Barely better than nothing. Actually, not even better than nothing in many cases.


loresheets in Weapons of the Gods and Legends of the Wulin;

Haven't played these, will take your word for it.


motivation, intimacies, caste and virtues in Exalted;

Ugh, Exalted. >.> Also, aren't caste and virtues basically "class" and "what toys do you want"?



the various splats in different WoD lines along with things like nature and demeanor or virtue and vice along with breaking points in the GMC version;

I haven't played WoD since oWoD, but this stuff was all but irrelevant there. Maybe they've improved it since, but I don't really think anything you can layer on top of 'storyteller' is going to do a good job of reining in how dubious that system is.



basically every single bit of information you put down in Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

Okay, so we've found ONE game, that technically isn't even DONE yet, that does better?



A whole host of systems also have them among advantages and disadvantage or merits and flaws or whatever it calls these things. I'm not saying all of these are good, I absolutely hate pre-GMC virtues and vices for example, but I'm saying they're there and in many cases very basic to the operation of the system.

These are garbage; They basically just boil down to ways to get special bonuses and/or more points and end up just being people trying to game the system to get as many points as possible without paying any meaningful price. They can support roleplaying in the somewhat unlikely event that they actually align with how someone wants to play their character, but usually disads in point buy systems (which seem to be the only systems that have them) are written to be as annoying as possible to try to curb the people who are trying to suck in every point they can get.



For good systems, I'd say the ones above not made by White Wolf, though God-Machine Chronicles improves a lot on both the mechanics and the representation of basic characterization in the rules. I'd list more if my mind doesn't have a habit of blanking when I'm asked to provide examples of something.

So basically Chuubo's?



And we find the time by making use of one of two simple solutions. Announcing that we plan to run something in advance and making characters while what we're doing wraps up or simply waiting on starting until everyone is ready.

We do this too, but it doesn't really help. People are busy during non-game time. They might manage to come to the first session with a vague notion, but that's all I ever see.



These days I mostly play with people I talk to regularly either way, so it's not terribly hard to get communication done. Also, roleplaying is basically my primary hobby so rather than replacing games with a new one, I usually add to my line-up when I think I have the time. It's much the same for most of the people I play with. And, well, a lot of the time working on an idea is while I'm doing stuff like showering or shopping and thinking over it there. Not like I need much thought for those things anyway.

And thinking about it too much apparently makes you panic?

[supermonkeyjoe]

Regarding the not able to create Luke Skywalker example, the way I understand it is the game starts with all of the characters knowing each other right? so Luke and ben had a prior adventure on Tatooine, Han and Chewie know each other from whatever they did prior to the films, the droids go way back and everyone has the prior adventure escaping the Mos Eisley cantina and the game starts as they come out of hyperspace to the remains of Alderaan.

[kyoryu]

My only guess is that Fate is meant to be played at what I consider an absurd, breakneck pace, but that doesn't seem like the case from what I've heard about people playing it.

It depends on how you use compels, as has been stated before. I prefer a light touch.

There's nothing saying that "if players are talking, drop a compel to ramp up the action!"


it's all the detours, the breaks to focus on characters, the conversations going nowhere in particularly and so on that makes a game interesting to me. Not constant action and plot advancement.

Then have scenes where you do that. Fate's pretty neutral on such things - you bring the mechanics in where there's some kind of conflict, and if there's no conflict, then what do you really need mechanics for?

Fate can actually model some of those types of scenes well. For instance, the "rousing speech" type of scene is easily modeled as a Create Advantage attempt.


It appears that if you want any conflict at all, you need Fate points, you get most Fate points from compels which spurs conflict and this encourages a pacing centering on conflict rather than more static periods or periods where the progression is extremely low key.

There are several sources of Fate Points:

1) Refresh - points you get at the start of a session
2) Hostile invokes - if someone invokes your aspect against you, you get a Fate Point
3) Compels - as described
4) Fate Points received for conceding in a Conflict.

In my experience, the majority of Fate Points come from Refresh and Conceding. I probably average 1-3 compels in a four hour game - hardly enough to keep the action going at a 'breakneck pace'.

Also, you *do not* need Fate Points in a conflict. They're helpful, yes, but having to make hard choices about where you spend them is a big part of the game. In most scenes, a player might spend one or two points, at most.


This seems hard to get to play nice with compels unless you segregate it by sessions, but that seems like it could lead to choppy pacing.

Compels are utterly at the discretion of the GM. Scenes like you're describing can be modeled mechanically via Create Advantage actions, but there's basically nothing in the system that *promotes* that type of pacing.


My issue is that due to how central the Fate point economy is, it's harder to do it in Fate than in systems with the pacing less based around OOC time.

In practice, I don't find it to be an issue. When people want to have more introspective scenes, they do. There's admittedly no mechanics to support that, though.

On reading, many people seem to gravitate to the Fate Point economy as being "the game". In play, I don't find it to be the central point of the game. It's a spice, not the main course.

[neonchameleon]

The character creation is actually my least favorite part of the system, though that's basically purely a matter of taste and personal hang-ups. Trying to create a character like that would me panic at least a little bit and I would end up with a character I hated partly due to the discomfort involved in creating it and partly due to the amount of thought, tweaking and starting over from scratch as I approach the magical moment where everything clicks and the character fits together and makes me excited to play them. The only time I've successfully created a character I wanted to play with any kind of structured method was when I decided to roll on the Mekton Zeta lifepath as a challenge to myself in creating something coherent from what I rolled. Anything else is far more in line with stereotypical absentminded academics and flighty artists than with anything planned. And if I'm not excited going in, I'm half-assing it in play and grow more and more frustrated with both myself and the character.

Also, I'll admit that I find it a bit silly that a system that openly states it wants to emulate action and action/adventure movies has a default character creation that doesn't allow for making Luke Skywalker, John McClane or Harry Potter. Just kind of an amusing quirk of the thing.

There are almost no generic systems that can deal with Harry Potter - British Boarding School combined with magic is an incredibly rare genre, and one in which magic is pretty terribly defined. You can't go for a list of spells because there are a lot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spells_in_Harry_Potter), and I see absolutely nothing that makes Harry Potter impractical as long as you restrict it to the last 6.8 books - after the Mountain Troll. (I would of course prefer a specialised system for Harry Potter like Broomstix (which seems to have disappeared) or my own Houses and Wands (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1avqZm0uZXEVLLki7OfvveyxEF4awjWSQ_62aABPO3Ko/edit))

Luke Skywalker? Try this Fate Accelerated write-up (http://mdpaste.appspot.com/p/agdtZHBhc3Rlcg0LEgVQYXN0ZRjZ6xgM).

John McClane? The only Die Hard I've seen had him working solo. Specialist RPG field - and there is nothing saying you have to keep the interwoven backstories.


Trying to port a character from another system to Fate to see how it worked

I've never found two systems you could port characters between without things clunking - and frequently not two editions of the same game. Porting between systems is effectively a crossover.


And Airk, you need Fate points to do anything with skills other than roll and see what you get.

Strictly and absolutely false. You're treating Fate as if it only has the Attack and Defend actions - the one you need to look at is Create An Advantage. Which firstly allows you to bring in peripheral skills by what you are trying to do - so what you are trying to do is absolutely important, as is the way you are doing it (one reason FAE works well), and once you've created advantages you have aspects with free invokes. Which is the equivalent of generating a Fate Point for yourself that can only be used via this action.


Fate points is where meaningful engagement with the system is, Fate points come from Refresh and compels, so if you want meaningful engagement with the system you either need a steady stream of compels or, like you suggest, upping the rate at which Refresh is handed out.

Same mistake as before. Fate Points aren't where meaningful interaction with the system is. Working out how to play to your strengths (high skill plus stunt - or exploiting permission aspects) is one. Invoking is a second. What Fate Points do is give you free invokes - but they are hardly the only way of acquiring them. The Create an Advantage action is far the more common way.


And, yes, I've literally never seen people who just made a sheet and started and who literally refused to create characterization in advance.

Trenchcoat Ninja, Kender, and Loner Thief. There are characterisations you just don't want.


I don't know FAE, but in Fate Core character creation calls for describing your character's first adventure and then two cooperative stories about how you met two other characters.

Fate Accelerated Edition cuts that one. From memory I don't think that Atomic Robo has it either.


And those characters can't be made because they haven't had adventures before. Luke Skywalker is just an ordinary farmboy, Harry Potter learns that he's a wizard as the start of the story and John McClane is an ordinary cop before the first movie. A strict reading would also mean that Obi-Wan is the only main character of A New Hope you can make and only on a technicality by counting Leia as a baby as good enough for ties.

OK. So you are claiming that "an ordinary cop" has by definition never had adventures or done anything else notable before? Right. Now we've established that John McClane has never walked into an armed situation, found a murderer, had a partner that got into trouble, or tried to interfere in a domestic, what next? Hell, I'm an ordinary office worker - and I've been kidnapped in the past.


And most systems does indeed have tactical systems that create a challenge. I'm not hugely fond of emphasizing rolls in situations that don't have choices because they're uninteresting, binary pass-fail checks that you can't influence. In short, they're boring and can easily end up just being a roadblock if the GM wasn't careful. They aren't the system presenting interesting choices through its existence, nor do they really serve to guide plot. But if you don't have enough Fate points to be able to occasionally waste them or use them on a roll that isn't extremely obviously highly impossible, then all that's left of the system is these binary pass-fail checks and that's just not interesting.

You know, you really need to re-read Fate. (Go with Accelerated, not Core I'd suggest) This claim, like your claim about Fate Points is just a way of saying "The Create an Advantage action does not exist".

[erikun]

I find it odd to imply that you can't use Fate points unless you are in combat, or some sort of direct conflict with another character. Fate points can be used to invoke/compel any aspect (ANY aspect!) relevant to the situation to bring it into effect. Some good examples of using Fate points during downtime might be that when searching for magical regants, invoking the aspect Luck of the Leprechaun to just happen to run across the right ones quickly or find the rare ones you need. Or a character might invoke their Valet for Every Party aspect as an excuse to be present at a fancy party and overhear some gossip. Or on the compelling side of things, the aspect Creaking Pile of Bolts on a car might be compelled to make travelling to another town more difficult.

For a more in-depth example, consider a situation where the PCs need to leave a town soon to complete a timed mission of some sort, but are prevented from doing so for a week. They have the option of simply waiting the week (certainly failing) or trying some sort of stealth mission to leave immediately. The players also have the option of using a skill (specifically Contacts) to try to generate an aspect to aid them - a specific use of the Create an Advantage action for the skill. Success would tell them that the mayor has the aspect Swayed by Good Wine and can get them out of town by the evening, while failure would tell them that the mayor could get them out but does not generate the aspect. Spending a Fate point to invoke Swayed by Good Wine would allow the party to have a friendly chat with the mayor and be on their way by the next day.

We have a situation where there are a lot of options for the players, with several places they could spend Fate points (rolling on Contacts, swaying the mayor) but this is certainly not a combat situation. The PCs certainly could turn it into a combat situation if they wanted to, although that would be independent of the mechanics mentioned above. Heck, compelling an aspect could be what placed the party in the situation in the first place: a Smuggler for the Red Rum Pirates could've led to suspicion on the party which delayed their departure, as could some sort of rival aspect.


Also, I'll admit that I find it a bit silly that a system that openly states it wants to emulate action and action/adventure movies has a default character creation that doesn't allow for making Luke Skywalker, John McClane or Harry Potter. Just kind of an amusing quirk of the thing.
It is a concession of the system that independent untrained loners are not produced well within in: the goal is to produce characters which have a connection or reason for being together. Alternatively, it can produce characters have just a short time of introduction and reason to stick together. I see no reason why it couldn't produce Harry, Ron, and Hermione after the trainride to Hogwarts. It's a similar situation for other characters, assuming you don't want to simply ignore that step in creating related aspects.

It also feels a bit like a weak comparison, as well. In how many RPGs do games start off with everyone watching a single PC's backstory and playing through their own solo campaign, until they meet up with the group and never go into any of the other characters' backstories? Not many, and reasons why the writing for Harry Potter made him a relatable protagonist would work equally as well with a single PC in a larger group game.

[Eric Tolle]

From my personal experience running and playing Fate, all I can say is Terraoblivian must be posting from some bizarre alternate universe, one where the Fate designers all have goatees. I mean, it's even impossible to even discuss his points, because his view of Fate is so far from my reality. All I can really do is suggest looking at some actual play reports. Maybe. I'm honestly not sure that'll help.

As for my actual play: the last game I ran was at Westercon, where I did a deliberately unplanned game. For the players who showed up first, I asked what they wanted- they wanted a science fiction scenario. Ok said I, and then I asked them for three things: a high concept, a trouble, and one skill. I got a space marine about to explode, the alien energy eater following him, a thief pretending to be a bartender, etc..

So I had them wake up in a giant spaceship where the crew and passengers had disappeared, and they started interacting, and quickly found out that the ship had a) been taken over by pirates, and b) was heading toward a planet at about 25% lightspeed. I played things fairly casually, as people decided they wanted to do things, or decided they had a characteristic, they took skills, aspects or stunts. Likewise, when it came to using skills I remembered the primary rule- FIRST the player decides what they're going to do, THEN we decide the effect, whether attack, defense, creating an advantage, whatever. So, "I'm going to hide in the ducting of the ceiling and ambush the pirates" turned into "You got Stealth? You wasn't too but Stealth? OK, mark down your new level of Stealth. Roll, and that is an advantage for your attack." And so on.

Likewise, compels were mostly situational, based on the Aspects described. There were a couple times when I described a scene, and someone said to the effect that it would be neat if they had an aspect that could be compelled- so they got an aspect and a Fate point.. Fate points certainly weren't used all the time, being reserved for special actions or those rolls that really needed to be made. Like when the marine decided to go critical when facing the entire lot of pirates, and his alien "buddy" spent Fate points to snack on all that yummy raw energy. Compels weren't used to guide the plot or force the action. Yes there was a fate point economy, but the overriding question in everything compels was "would this be interesting to do now?

I tend to run my games in a free-flowing, improvisational style that would have your average Pathfinder player throwing fits of "Page 237, paragraph 8, line 4, you are totally ignoring the ruuuuule!". Fate works well with this style. If someone in the game wanted to change something that didn't fit their character, I'd be inclined to let them.

Now, as for "impossible" characters:

Luke Skywalker
High Concept: Farmboy with Dreams
Trouble: Uncle Won't Let Me Attend the Academy

Skills: Driver/Pilot (Great), Crafts (Good)

Note that Luke's attributes change a lot. His Trouble really quickly changes to "Hunted by the Empire", he picks up the Jedi stunt, he changes his High Concept every movie...hell let's face it, he's the guy who shows up every game with his new character sheet, and the GM just sighs and thinks ""Hot for Princess"? Bet that's gonna change next game..."

Han by contrast it's easy:

High Concept: Cynical Smuggler Pilot
Trouble: Jabba Wants His Money

Skills: Pilot (Great), Shoot (Good), Athletics (Good)

John Maclean...you mean the presidential candidate? No wait, you mean that guy from the 80s action movie. Well, thus is a bit harder since I'm not really into that movie. I'm going to assume the Ref simply told him he was on his way back top sign the divorce papers. So...

High Concept: Badass Cop having a Bad Day
Trouble: In Spite of Everything, I Still Love My Wife

Skills: Physique (Great), Shoot (Good), Athletics (Good)

Abd that's it-game on!

[kyoryu]

Honestly, terraoblivion, if you're actually interested in the system, I'd suggest that you stop reading the book, and just find a game to play in.

I'm running a short arc to introduce some people via Hangouts, at 7pm PST on Thursdays for a few weeks. If you're interested, PM me.

[Delwugor]

From my personal experience running and playing Fate, all I can say is Terraoblivian must be posting from some bizarre alternate universe, one where the Fate designers all have goatees. I mean, it's even impossible to even discuss his points, because his view of Fate is so far from my reality. All I can really do is suggest looking at some actual play reports. Maybe. I'm honestly not sure that'll help.
What I have noticed here and other places is that people tend to read and interpret Fate Core rules as that of a regular rpg.

The Golden Rule is what I really think gets missed Decide what you’re trying to accomplish first, then consult the rules to help you do it. So instead of looking at my sheet to see what my character can do well in a situation, I do something that makes sense (or not) narratively and then let the rules and rolls decide the outcome. If need and if it makes narrative sense I can invoke an aspect or even compel one to add drama.

The other thing I notice is that first time Fate players overestimate the amount that character Aspects and Compels enter into play. Personally I've found that Create Advantage/Obstacle and Scene Aspects have a bigger role in play and lead to more interesting outcomes. Play also tends to be more situational and fluid when approaching from that aspect (ahem) of the game.