Switching from D&D 3.5 to Fate Core

[snailgosh]

My players and I are somewhat experienced in D&D 3.5 but are now considering to change things up a bit.
As indicated in the title we want to switch systems to Fate Core for our upcoming campaign, which I am going to run.

As neither me nor any of my players has any experience with Fate whatsoever I'm asking you folk if there is a certain style of running a game that caters especially well to Fate and what habits I need to drop, coming from a D&D background.

So far I only skimmed over the rulebook (going to read it in full of course), but what I noticed from a glance is that Fate seems to be much more permissive, as in if a player wants to do something you just assign the difficulty and roll with it, while in D&D you usually can't do stuff that's not explicitly listed on your sheet.
So I guess the ability to improvise and decide on the spot is key?

I'm eager to hear your advice. Feel free to post your own experiences playing Fate and what you liked/disliked.

Edit: A question that just occured to me: how does the Fate Point economy play out? How liberally are players supposed to spend them and how often are aspects to be compelled?

[neonchameleon]

Big jump there! But a fun one! Fate runs with larger than life pulp characters - Indiana Jones, Conan, any non-gritty action movie or action TV series you care to name although normally with an ensemble cast. And yes, Fate absolutely is much more permissive than D&D.

A key difference between Fate and D&D is that in Fate the players lose scenes fairly often because death isn't always on the line (and they get a nice stack of fate points when they conceed) so they end up captured James-Bond style and you aren't meant to fight to the death. It's little exaggeration to say that in the game of D&D you win or you die. (This will take them a bit to get used to).

How often to compel and how the fate point economy works is a table by table question and I can't say much more than that. The flow of fate points is essentially the throttle - open it when you want the game to go faster but remember that if they throw enough Fate points at the problem they can do anything, so don't give freebies. Also the big boss is stronger than they are but is normally going to have a stack of fate points dropped on them.

[snailgosh]

Your insight is much appreciated :)
Let's see how my players take to the "You're allowed to lose" mentality.

[Knaight]

The skill and stunt system is pretty traditional - assign a difficulty for a task, have the rolls play out, see which way it goes, and generally operate in a pretty normal fashion. Adapting to it should be fast - it's Aspects and the FP economy where things get weird. You'll want to get good at assigning scene aspects quickly (keeping in mind that they can be a lot more dull than character aspects), and you'll want to keep fate points flowing quickly to encourage players to do the same, with the relative magnitudes of these two rates creating the throttle effect.

*This takes some getting used to, and it's a large part of the reason that I never took to Fate.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Honestly, you can play Fate with just skills and stunts and starting Fate Points and it works just fine. Most sessions I've played have had a fairly slow Fate Point trickle and no real trouble on that front.

Aspects, and what you DO with them, does take a little getting used to. They tend to reward teamwork more than most systems-- everyone spends their turns creating Aspects, then the last player tags them all and blows the opposition out of the water.

[Zombimode]

They tend to reward teamwork more than most systems-- everyone spends their turns creating Aspects, then the last player tags them all and blows the opposition out of the water.

Wait wait wait, you can use more then one Aspect in one action getting the bonus from all of them?

[caden_varn]

My D&D group started a Fate game last year, with me running it. It was fun overall, but was quite a bit of a culture shock. We still haven't really gotten the full experience, as it were, in my opinion.

A lot will depend on how your group plays D&D, but assuming they are anything like mine (pretty typical of groups I've played with over the past 30-odd years)Main things I note are -

Getting good aspects is trickier than it might appear. They need to well enough defined for people (the player and GM at least) to understand what they mean and when they should come up, be wide enough to come up reasonably often (there is no point to an aspect that is never used) but not so wide that is comes up constantly. Still haven't got a good handle on this

Players need to remember their own aspects (and preferably others) and suggest when they would come into play. I ran a group of 4, and trying to keep 20 player aspects in mind on top of everything else is tricky to say the least...

Assuming you play core out of the box, the way money/treasure/equipment is handled can take some getting used to. It all pretty much comes down to the Resources skill - so what is the point of offering rewards to get people? Some players adapted to it better than others, but in retrospect I'd prefer to have gone for a game where gaining riches was not a real motivation, as I think it would have eased the transition. You can award temporary aspects with limited invocations to represent windfalls of cash though, which can help.

Speaking of that - Aspects again. Aspects on characters, on the scenery (and you DEFINITELY need these), on the world, temporary aspects caused by create advantage - so. many. aspects. to remember. Get a wipeable mat/sheet and pen to record them. Wipeable index cards for important NPCs are also useful. Hope your group is creative naming them (see above).

Fate is designed for proactive characters, and mostly the D&D games I've played in have been more reactive (if you play more sandboxy this may not be an issue). Make sure you & your players understand this, and design the world & characters with this in mind for best results. Weaving your groups troubles and other aspects into the story to give them a better motivation to get involved is helpful. The players having a good knowledge of the world, or involved in the world-building helps with this. One of the main problems we had was a pretty vague concept of the world, from the core book suggestion of doing the world-building in the first session. We needed longer and more of it to get a world we were comfortable we understood well enough to be proactive. This might work well with more experienced Fate groups, but did not work so well for mine.

Hope you have fun (we did, despite some issues) - let us know how it goes for you!


Wait wait wait, you can use more then one Aspect in one action getting the bonus from all of them?

Yup - you can also use the same aspect more than once if you have free invokes on it - you can spend the free invokes, and spend a fate point for an additional invoke. So you can get +6 from a single aspect if the initial Create Advantage goes well enough...

[Grod_The_Giant]

Assuming you play core out of the box, the way money/treasure/equipment is handled can take some getting used to. It all pretty much comes down to the Resources skill - so what is the point of offering rewards to get people? Some players adapted to it better than others, but in retrospect I'd prefer to have gone for a game where gaining riches was not a real motivation, as I think it would have eased the transition. You can award temporary aspects with limited invocations to represent windfalls of cash though, which can help.
If you want a game where acquiring wealth is a thing, I'd remove the skill altogether, or at least divorce it from the usual pyramid. It works alright for a more static game, where you can just say "I am rich" as a character trait, but not so much for one where you're supposed to be getting irregular windfalls as a result of in-game actions.

[caden_varn]

That is pretty much the conclusion I came to in hindsight. It's a wonderful thing :smallbiggrin:

[Beleriphon]

And that had nothing to do with nothing

[daniel_ream]

Fate is a narrative game, and D&D is a resource management game, 3.5 especially. I expect that's going to be the biggest hurdle. Fate requires and rewards a totally different set of skills.

[Knaight]

Honestly, you can play Fate with just skills and stunts and starting Fate Points and it works just fine. Most sessions I've played have had a fairly slow Fate Point trickle and no real trouble on that front.

You can, sure. At which point you're basically playing Fudge but with an inferior Trait Ladder, a different damage system, and no access to certain mechanics that got cut. That's not a bad thing (Fudge is my personal favorite game), but it's not how Fate is meant to be played and it's not where it really shines.

[snailgosh]

I'm glad I opened this topic. Lots of useful advice. You all have my sincere gratitude.
(Is it just me or does this sound awfully sarcastic, even though it isn't meant to?)



Hope you have fun (we did, despite some issues) - let us know how it goes for you!
The campaign won't start for another little while, but I'm both optimistic and enthused!

[Knaight]

Out of curiosity, have you looked at the Fate System Toolkit? I wouldn't reccomend using it just yet, as homebrew in a little known system is usually not a great idea, but I would recommend reading it. There's a lot of fairly concrete discussion on why the game is made the way it is and what the different things in the game do, and it's useful background information.

[Fri]

I have two basic advice would be.

1. Ask your players what they intend to do for their actions, then convert it into rules.

So for example, your player says "I'm going to vault over the barrel of oils." Ask them "What you intend that to do." If they say answer "It's to slow down the orcs pursuing me" then you can say "Alright, you're making <rain of barrels> in the road as advantage then. Roll <athletic> to see how big of advantage you're making."

But if they say "It's to intimidate the orcs with my athletic prowess." You can say "Alright, you're doing overcome action then. Roll <athletics> against the orcs' willpower (or whatever difficulty you're setting), if it's a success they'll be intimidated but if you fail they'll laugh at you instead .

It's just example. Basically just ask what's your player's intention for their actiosn.

2. Aspects exists even if not used as mechanical bonus.

So for example, if the orcs have <hand tied up> aspect, it makes sense if they can't pick up the golden idol, eventhough you're not using that aspect as any numerical bonus right now. This is a very important part that's often forgotten.

Also, I guess there's the third one. Remember the fractal of Fate. Basically, say there's fire in the warehouse. You could have it act as simple obstacle to be overcome. Or you could actually have it be an "enemy" to defeat and give it some "stress" boxes for your PC to beat.

[snailgosh]

Out of curiosity, have you looked at the Fate System Toolkit? I wouldn't reccomend using it just yet, as homebrew in a little known system is usually not a great idea, but I would recommend reading it. There's a lot of fairly concrete discussion on why the game is made the way it is and what the different things in the game do, and it's useful background information.
I will give it a look! Thank you.

[2D8HP]

I can't get to my copy of the FATE "corebook" (which I've just glanced a little at) without waking a baby up so I'll probably only be able to look at it after I get back from work in 14 hours or so, but from what I'm gleaning from this thread, FATE sounds like it plays a lot like a board or card game ("aspects" and "points" you play)?

Note: I have never played 3.5, only old D&D, 5e, and a bunch of non-D&D RPG's in the 1980's.
From what I can tell 3.5 seems to be more orientated towards keeping track of superpowers which isn't what I'm looking for either. Mostly I want to imagine seeing a world through Robin Hood and Sindbad-ish characters for awhile, without worrying about rules mechanics.

Mostly I want a GM to tell me what my PC perceives, I tell the GM what my PC tries to do, and then after some occasional dice rolling (for suspence and surprise) the GM tells me what's changed, etc, which is close to how I remember RPG's used to be played, but games don't seem to be played that way anymore.

Can FATE be played in what I'll label an "immersive" style, or is it as mechanics focused as this thread suggests?

[Knaight]

Mostly I want a GM to tell me what my PC perceives, I tell the GM what my PC tries to do, and then after some occasional dice rolling (for suspence and surprise) the GM tells me what's changed, etc, which is close to how I remember RPG's used to be played, but games don't seem to be played that way anymore.

Fate isn't ideal for this, complements of the fate point economy. There's plenty of options that fit this perfectly though - including Fudge, the game Fate spun out of and then gradually stopped acknowledging at all.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I can't get to my copy of the FATE "corebook" (which I've just glanced a little at) without waking a baby up so I'll probably only be able to look at it after I get back from work in 14 hours or so, but from what I'm gleaning from this thread, FATE sounds like it plays a lot like a board or card game ("aspects" and "points" you play)?
Not... really? The core (taken from Fudge) is fairly vanilla RPG mechanics-- you have a bunch of skills ranked from +0 to +4, and when you try to do something you roll dice (that give an average result of 0) and add your skill rank, and if you beat the DC/your foe's roll you succeed. Succeeding by more is better.

To that you add this stuff with Aspects and Fate Points. Rather than fiddle with a lot of situational rules, Fate just runs with "Aspects." An Aspect is basically something that's true about your character or the world-- I am a Legendary Swordsman, the room is currently Dark as Sin, the orcs are All Tied Up and can't come to the fight right now, that sort of thing. Your characters has some permanent ones, the GM invents some for the scenery... and you can create or "discover" them through in-game actions. Now, in addition to being generally true things, you can "Invoke" an Aspect to get a numerical bonus-- for free if you just created it, or for a unit of metagame currency if not. I sometimes like to explain Fate Points as a kind of narrative spotlight-- you're shining a light on the fact that you're a Legendary Swordsman to get a bonus to stab someone in the face. The GM can do the same thing, but because they're the GM they tend to do it in a negative fashion-- shining a light on the Legendary Swordsman bit to have you be recognized when you were trying to lay low, say, or to have a wannabe trying to make a name for herself pop up when you least want to deal with something like that.

It plays pretty normally, in my experience. The Fudge-based core is rock-solid, and "I have a few hero points to counteract luck when I really need it" is always a nice addition, in my mind. GM-based Compels might seem arbitrary at first, but it's really no different than the GM deciding to bring up a roleplaying bit to make trouble in any system-- here you just get a reward for your trouble, and the whole thing is nicely codified a bit. In that sense, perhaps it would fit your GM-heavy style well?

[erikun]

One thing that I will note, which doesn't seem to come up often. Fate Core tends to work best with very proactive players, ones who will say "I want to do X" with their characters or which actively start trying to work towards something, either a goal or a quest or accomplishing something in combat. It tends to not work so well with reactive players, or ones who wait for the GM to lay out plot hooks and then use a set expected skill when encountering a challenge. This seems to hold for both character creation and for interacting in the game. The player who comes to the table with a character idea in mind will have a very easy time making something in Fate, and the player considers a scene and comes up with an idea to do something in it will generally make some progress (even if not necessarily what they want). On the other hand, the player who wants to look over a class list or skill list, or the player who wants to stab the closest orc or use their most effective class abilities, are probably not going to enjoy it as much.

I should also note that games progress faster than you might expect from something like D&D. In a D&D game, it isn't unusual for several hours to only get a party through a couple of fights and partway through one floor of a dungeon, at least in my game sessions. In Fate Core, you can probably expect the party to run through negotiations, fight off some thieves trying to jump them, pick their way through the forest, delve into some ruins, fight the big climatic battle, and return home in roughly the same time. Part of the reason for this is that Fate doesn't emphasize battle quite as much, so their are less time-consuming fights. Part of this is because it is far easier to jump from one situation to the next without too much worry; enemy stat blocks are just a few lines of text, and tying up a grappled opponent (or catching and riding a wild horse, or whatever) is not any more complex than anything else.

Or perhaps it was just my group.

Skills behave much the way that you would expect them to: roll some die, add (or subtract) from the skill bonus, and check your result. One interesting aspect of Fate is that the dice average is +0, so you can use just the skill bonus as the result if you wanted. This is typically a good idea for rather passive challenges that come up in the story. The GM can choose when and where they want to be rolling dice, so you could have a GM which rolls for everything (which is fine), a GM who only rolls for "active" threads (which is fine), a GM who only rolls for the big suspenseful events (which is fine), and a GM who never rolls for anything (which is fine).

The way that combat is intended to work is for the players to spend several rounds creating advantages (generally applying their best skills, where they can) and then one player invoking multiple advantages at once for a large combat bonus. Creating an advantage can be carried over between rounds, and is far preferrable to just rolling until you hit a lucky strike... and is nearly required for stronger opponents. Your players might be frustrated if they don't understand how combat is intended to work yet. If you see them just continuing to roll against a brick wall, or burning through all their Fate Points invoking aspects for the one-time uses, then you might want to point that out to them. It might also be worthwhile to have NPC combatants use the same tricks (if in a limited fashion) to present a challenge and to show players how the game works.

Aspects are generally "true things" about a character. They can be permanent aspects (like Gunslinger), temporary aspects caused by skills (Lights Out, Slippery Floor), or even aspects caused by taking damage (Broken Arm). In general, aspects stick around until somebody does something to change them: the Lights Are Out until somebody in combat takes an action to turn them back on. Anybody (including NPCs and enemy characters) can spend a Fate Point to invoke an aspect, getting a +2 on that roll, or reroll the dice. An enemy might use Lights Out to get a +2 bonus to their defense, or reroll their defense, when being attacked by a PC. (The PC can also spend a Fate Point and use Lights Out for the same benefit, as long as it makes sense.)

In general, aspects are the important things about a scene or character. It probably helps to think about what is (or will be) relevant in a particular scene and then make sure to note it. It might help with sorting out the scene in your head and writing it down. It's also probably a good way to describe a character or place by making sure you mention the aspects in the description. If a NPC walks in the room with a Visible Limp, Smelling of Smoke, and a Suspicious Glare, then it gives a good description of them along with hinting to players what is important about the character (although not necessarily why).

Compelling an Aspect is the last thing to note, and it is basically identical to invoking. Typically it is the GM compelling an aspect on a character relevant to the scene. The options there involve: following along with the character aspect (against what might be in the interest of the players or party) in order to get a Fate Point, or spending a Fate Point to not go along with the compel. Note that players can prompt compels against themselves, although it is up to the GM if it is relevant enough to warrant a Fate Point. Invoking aspects on enemies (such as invoking the Broken Leg aspect of an enemy NPC) is functionally a compel against them, and involves the player giving up the Fate Point just like a normal invoke. I don't recall if enemies invoking negative aspects on players involves generating Fate Points, though: you'll need to double check the rulebook yourself.

[Kol Korran]

Quite some time ago my group tried mmaking this switch as well. If you check my extended sig, I wrote a fairly detailed gaming log about it. It.. didn't work out well for us... why? 3 main reasons I think:
1. None of us ever played it, or anything like it. A lot of the system takes getting used to, and is very open for interpertation... We messed with a lot of stuff, not really understanding it well.
2. It was quite difficult getting into the Fate mind set... That failures drive the game as much as successes, that the players have a much larger role in the scenes, and can crrarely stuff for them, the whole reckoned of aspects and compels, and more...
3. Tied to the previous point, a lot later I read an article about the 8 gaming aesthetics, and understood that d&d and Fate basically cater to different aesthetics, or gaming preferences. Fate focuses on expression, narrative and fantasy, While d&d focuses a lot on challenge (though not only). My players, though some have interest in Fate's aesthetics, also have a strong preference for challenge, which Fate provides less... one of my players likes time come and just kill monsters, an dead with builds and mechanics. He HATED Fate. We plan someday to perhaps play again, but a smaller group. He said he won't join. Make sure your players like theplaystyle.

Good luck!

[Quertus]

You can, sure. At which point you're basically playing Fudge but with an inferior Trait Ladder, a different damage system, and no access to certain mechanics that got cut. That's not a bad thing (Fudge is my personal favorite game), but it's not how Fate is meant to be played and it's not where it really shines.


Fate isn't ideal for this, complements of the fate point economy. There's plenty of options that fit this perfectly though - including Fudge, the game Fate spun out of and then gradually stopped acknowledging at all.

Would playing fudge first be a good way to learn fate?


I have two basic advice would be.

1. Ask your players what they intend to do for their actions, then convert it into rules.

So for example, your player says "I'm going to vault over the barrel of oils." Ask them "What you intend that to do." If they say answer "It's to slow down the orcs pursuing me" then you can say "Alright, you're making <rain of barrels> in the road as advantage then. Roll <athletic> to see how big of advantage you're making."

But if they say "It's to intimidate the orcs with my athletic prowess." You can say "Alright, you're doing overcome action then. Roll <athletics> against the orcs' willpower (or whatever difficulty you're setting), if it's a success they'll be intimidated but if you fail they'll laugh at you instead .

What if it's both? Or, more my style, what if it's to slow them down, to intimidate them, to provide cover vs ranged attacks, to force the group to scatter, to break line of sight in the hopes of throwing them off the track, to break the barrels for later use, and to hurt the orcs in the line of fire? How does fate handle something like this, where the same action logically has many effects?


Aspects are generally "true things" about a character. They can be permanent aspects (like Gunslinger), temporary aspects caused by skills (Lights Out, Slippery Floor), or even aspects caused by taking damage (Broken Arm). In general, aspects stick around until somebody does something to change them: the Lights Are Out until somebody in combat takes an action to turn them back on. Anybody (including NPCs and enemy characters) can spend a Fate Point to invoke an aspect, getting a +2 on that roll, or reroll the dice. An enemy might use Lights Out to get a +2 bonus to their defense, or reroll their defense, when being attacked by a PC. (The PC can also spend a Fate Point and use Lights Out for the same benefit, as long as it makes sense.)

It being dark... doesn't give anyone any bonuses to defense... unless they spend resources to make that so. That makes as little sense to me as, "the floor being made of fire doesn't deal anyone any damage unless someone takes an action to make that so". Can you explain how this makes any sense?


Compelling an Aspect is the last thing to note, and it is basically identical to invoking. Typically it is the GM compelling an aspect on a character relevant to the scene. The options there involve: following along with the character aspect (against what might be in the interest of the players or party) in order to get a Fate Point, or spending a Fate Point to not go along with the compel. Note that players can prompt compels against themselves, although it is up to the GM if it is relevant enough to warrant a Fate Point. Invoking aspects on enemies (such as invoking the Broken Leg aspect of an enemy NPC) is functionally a compel against them, and involves the player giving up the Fate Point just like a normal invoke. I don't recall if enemies invoking negative aspects on players involves generating Fate Points, though: you'll need to double check the rulebook yourself.

So, if a player of a character with a "vindictive" trait aspect declares that they are attacking the orc that hit them, is that a valid compel?

[Knaight]

Would playing fudge first be a good way to learn fate?

To an extent - it covers a lot of the material and gives you a grounding in the basics. With that said, the things that distinguish Fate from Fudge are also the things that are hardest to get used to, so it's kind of a moot point. On the other hand, looking at this thread it seems like Fudge might work just as well if the Fate specifics aren't the draw.


It being dark... doesn't give anyone any bonuses to defense... unless they spend resources to make that so. That makes as little sense to me as, "the floor being made of fire doesn't deal anyone any damage unless someone takes an action to make that so". Can you explain how this makes any sense?
Fate purging modifiers is one of the reasons I favor Fudge over Fate. With that said, the aspect means it's dark even if nobody is tagging it, and there are ways to represent it.


So, if a player of a character with a "vindictive" trait aspect declares that they are attacking the orc that hit them, is that a valid compel?
If you want to spend the fate point, sure. On a different note, the example aspects from this thread have mostly been pretty weak (mostly because people put a lot more effort in aspects for characters that they play than examples) - you'd generally want something a bit longer with a bit more zing to it than vindictive.

[Fri]

What if it's both? Or, more my style, what if it's to slow them down, to intimidate them, to provide cover vs ranged attacks, to force the group to scatter, to break line of sight in the hopes of throwing them off the track, to break the barrels for later use, and to hurt the orcs in the line of fire? How does fate handle something like this, where the same action logically has many effects?

That's why I ask you to ask their intention first. An action can have many result, but you should be able to figure what rule you need to use for that one action. Also, you really can't do ALL the things in one single action in any games right? If they want to do ALL the things with one action, I think it makes sense if you tell them to calm down, and pick one they want to happen first. Like, maybe it will hurt the Orcs for this round, and you roll to see the damage, and the next round you tell them to roll to see how big advantage this making.




It being dark... doesn't give anyone any bonuses to defense... unless they spend resources to make that so. That makes as little sense to me as, "the floor being made of fire doesn't deal anyone any damage unless someone takes an action to make that so". Can you explain how this makes any sense?
It doesn't makes sense. That's why I remind you that Aspects stay true even if it's not used as mechanical bonus. Situational aspect also might give active or passive opposition. For example, the room being dark makes people completely unable to see you is valid use of aspect. Feel free to give anyone damage every round if they're moving in a burning building as well until they manage to douse the fire.

http://www.faterpg.com/2013/richards-guide-to-blocks-and-obstacles-in-fate-core/
this is a really helpful article.



So, if a player of a character with a "vindictive" trait aspect declares that they are attacking the orc that hit them, is that a valid compel?

Aspect should be more descriptive and "bitey" that's true, something that should be able to be used to help and hinder, and also exclusive to the character. So, "Trained at Legrand Fencing Academy" is better aspect than "Good at Sword," but "Kicked Out Of Legrand Fencing Academy" would even be better. "Strange Luck" is a better aspect than "Lucky"

An example I like to use is James Bond. It's obvious that "Womanizer" is one of his aspect. When she meet an obvious femme fatale, eventhough it's obvious to the player to ignore her invitation to her room, he/the gm could compel the "womanizer" aspect to make him follow her. But also, he could use the aspect as mechanical bonus to charm the secret plan out of her.

[Max_Killjoy]

Quite some time ago my group tried mmaking this switch as well. If you check my extended sig, I wrote a fairly detailed gaming log about it. It.. didn't work out well for us... why? 3 main reasons I think:
1. None of us ever played it, or anything like it. A lot of the system takes getting used to, and is very open for interpertation... We messed with a lot of stuff, not really understanding it well.
2. It was quite difficult getting into the Fate mind set... That failures drive the game as much as successes, that the players have a much larger role in the scenes, and can crrarely stuff for them, the whole reckoned of aspects and compels, and more...
3. Tied to the previous point, a lot later I read an article about the 8 gaming aesthetics, and understood that d&d and Fate basically cater to different aesthetics, or gaming preferences. Fate focuses on expression, narrative and fantasy, While d&d focuses a lot on challenge (though not only). My players, though some have interest in Fate's aesthetics, also have a strong preference for challenge, which Fate provides less... one of my players likes time come and just kill monsters, an dead with builds and mechanics. He HATED Fate. We plan someday to perhaps play again, but a smaller group. He said he won't join. Make sure your players like the playstyle.

Good luck!

Do you have a link to that article?



I can't get to my copy of the FATE "corebook" (which I've just glanced a little at) without waking a baby up so I'll probably only be able to look at it after I get back from work in 14 hours or so, but from what I'm gleaning from this thread, FATE sounds like it plays a lot like a board or card game ("aspects" and "points" you play)?

Note: I have never played 3.5, only old D&D, 5e, and a bunch of non-D&D RPG's in the 1980's.
From what I can tell 3.5 seems to be more orientated towards keeping track of superpowers which isn't what I'm looking for either. Mostly I want to imagine seeing a world through Robin Hood and Sindbad-ish characters for awhile, without worrying about rules mechanics.

Mostly I want a GM to tell me what my PC perceives, I tell the GM what my PC tries to do, and then after some occasional dice rolling (for suspence and surprise) the GM tells me what's changed, etc, which is close to how I remember RPG's used to be played, but games don't seem to be played that way anymore.

Can FATE be played in what I'll label an "immersive" style, or is it as mechanics focused as this thread suggests?

From what I've seen, the two things that jump out immediately about FATE are:

1) your character does not possess "Strength X" or "Intelligence Y"... they're "Strong as an Ox" or whatever.
2) rolls aren't about what the character is trying to do, they're about what they character is trying to accomplish with the action(s)

[Fri]

Do you have a link to that article?




From what I've seen, the two things that jump out immediately about FATE are:

1) your character does not possess "Strength X" or "Intelligence Y"... they're "Strong as an Ax" or whatever.
2) rolls aren't about what the character is trying to do, they're about what they character is trying to accomplish with the action(s)

That's pretty summary. Though I'll add that you do have numerical skills, like "Athletic 4" or maybe your car has "Speed 4" but it's not meant to say that "Speed 4 means the car can move 250 mph" but it's just relatively, Speed 4 car can move faster than Speed 3 car, and can move even faster than Speed 2 car.

[Max_Killjoy]

That's pretty summary. Though I'll add that you do have numerical skills, like "Athletic 4" or maybe your car has "Speed 4" but it's not meant to say that "Speed 4 means the car can move 250 mph" but it's just relatively, Speed 4 car can move faster than Speed 3 car, and can move even faster than Speed 2 car.

Does this make it difficult to assign values sometimes?

[Fri]

Hm maybe, but I think values you assign in games are relative anyway, except maybe for weight lifting? Like, a DC 15 lock, what does that actually mean? You can assign a Difficulty 2 lock in Fate which means "professionals can pick this consistently" or Difficulty 4 lock which means "only the top level or lucky professionals can pick this lock regularly" or such.

Or say there's athletic challenge. If it's against another person it's just rolling against each others, and you can easily someone with Athletic 4 is better at running than someone with Athletic 2. But when there's athletic challenge, say vaulting over a river, the gm can say "most people can jump over this if they try, except if they're unlucky, so the difficulty value is 1,"

There's guides on assigning values in the toolkit, I think, I just arbitrarily put those numbers as example. Basically something like "assign difficulty X if you think the players should be able to do this consistently, assign difficulty X if you think they need to excert a lot of resources for it."

But the good thing is, the values can be relative to the game. Like, if it's a superhero games and everyone are superheroes, Athletic 1 might be Batman and athletic 4 might be Superman. So you set up a scene where the PC have to chase a running car, and set it as difficulty 2. But if it's a game about ordinary school students, a scene where PC have to chase a running car might be difficulty 4.

[Quertus]

If you want to spend the fate point, sure. On a different note, the example aspects from this thread have mostly been pretty weak (mostly because people put a lot more effort in aspects for characters that they play than examples) - you'd generally want something a bit longer with a bit more zing to it than vindictive.

... One of the things I like about even basic role-playing in combat is, when you've adventured with the same group long enough, you can predict what your teammates will do - one will go after the biggest one, one will attack whoever damaged them, one will attack whoever is most wounded, etc. I was hoping fate acknowledged and rewarded this characterization.


That's why I ask you to ask their intention first. An action can have many result, but you should be able to figure what rule you need to use for that one action. Also, you really can't do ALL the things in one single action in any games right? If they want to do ALL the things with one action, I think it makes sense if you tell them to calm down, and pick one they want to happen first. Like, maybe it will hurt the Orcs for this round, and you roll to see the damage, and the next round you tell them to roll to see how big advantage this making.

I do it all the time in D&D. I cast fireball. Yes, it deals damage. It's also rather frightening; sometimes, foes will flee. It also tends to cause enemies to spread out, because, you know, not doing so is dumb. If I'm in a world where it sets things on fire, I can also get some secondary effects, like smoke for concealment. I pick my spells, not just for their obvious effects, but for how they effect opponent psychology and deployment. I'm a war mage - casting fireball is me being passive-aggressive.

And, perhaps less effectively, I do so in other systems, as well, so long as I have a good GM.

But, really, in what system wouldn't dropping a bunch of barrels of oil on a pack of orcs heads not a) damage the orcs, b) cause them to scatter / break formation, c) leave barrels on the floor (which might be useful for cover etc); d) leave oil on the floor, and possibly e) make them consider reconsidering their current course of action? :smallconfused:

[Fri]

Yes, they all can happen in the same time, but the mechanical effect might not happen at the same time for the purpose of the game. Like, if you shoot 3.5 fireball to the orcs, there's no mechanical effect that make them scatter. the mechanical effect is the damage. It's up to the GM if he want to make the orcs scatter, though you might argue to him it makes sense. In Fate, if say you cast a fireball, it might damage, scatter the orcs, intimidate them, and make cover to your allies at the same time. But for all of them happening in mechanical term at the same time, might not happen.

What happen might be, you cast fireball, aiming for damage. You say to the GM "I think they should be scattered from fear now" And he says "makes sense," and the orc scatters to cover. Then at the next round you say "I want to intimidate them to surrender now, I think that fireball should give me bonus for that intimidation." The GM might say, "Alright, there's a "big intimidating crater" aspect on the field, roll Intimidation to see how big is that aspect. You rolled, and you rolled -1, so you fail to make the <big intimidating crater> aspect. No aspect was made. Next round the orcs start firing arrows at you, and you say "I'll use the smoke from the crater and my Tactic 4 skill to make "Smoke Cover" aspect. You roll good, and the GM says "Your allies got 2 free use of "Smoke Cover aspect" from your good tactical insight.

The GM say for example, "nah, no need to roll, the fireball really intimidates them" as well. Or the GM could say after the first fireball "the orcs are really disciplined, they won't scatter from one measly fireball" and you then say "alright, this round I'll turn that crater into a "scattering obstacle" aspect then, while in 3.5, there's nothing in the rule to turn that fireball to scatter the orcs, the only thing you can do is telling the GM "it makes sense for the orcs to scatter after the fireball."

You could also might have a personal Stunt for your character "Intimidating Fireball" which says, "Whenever a fireball attack kills a mook in a group, you can pay a fate point to give the rest of the mook "intimidated" aspect"to turn it into your special attack that happens automatically, for example.

If a GM is someone who will make enemies scatter without any mechanical reason after a fireball in 3.5, there's no reason to not think he will make enemies scatter without any mechanical reason after a fireball in Fate. It's a game with friends after all. But if he's a GM who have his orcs won't scatter because in his setting orcs are disciplined fearless creature, Fate just give you a tool to force the orcs to scatter with your fireball. (Though he might give impossible difficulty for it? But in that case, the problem is not in the system anymore).

[Kol Korran]

Do you have a link to that article?
Yeah. I think Gaming for Fun, by the Angry DM (http://angrydm.com/2014/01/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/) explains it nicely (it also has a link to the original article, but he explains it better, I think).
It's not the end-all in gaming theory, and I think there are more than just 8 aesthetics, but it does help think about things differently. As a DM, it helped me a LOT.

[snailgosh]

If you check my extended sig, I wrote a fairly detailed gaming log about it. It.. didn't work out well for us...[...]

Good luck!

Thank you. I will give it a read. I'm sure I can learn from your example.

[Quertus]

Yes, they all can happen in the same time, but the mechanical effect might not happen at the same time for the purpose of the game. Like, if you shoot 3.5 fireball to the orcs, there's no mechanical effect that make them scatter. the mechanical effect is the damage. It's up to the GM if he want to make the orcs scatter, though you might argue to him it makes sense. In Fate, if say you cast a fireball, it might damage, scatter the orcs, intimidate them, and make cover to your allies at the same time. But for all of them happening in mechanical term at the same time, might not happen.

What happen might be, you cast fireball, aiming for damage. You say to the GM "I think they should be scattered from fear now" And he says "makes sense," and the orc scatters to cover. Then at the next round you say "I want to intimidate them to surrender now, I think that fireball should give me bonus for that intimidation." The GM might say, "Alright, there's a "big intimidating crater" aspect on the field, roll Intimidation to see how big is that aspect. You rolled, and you rolled -1, so you fail to make the <big intimidating crater> aspect. No aspect was made. Next round the orcs start firing arrows at you, and you say "I'll use the smoke from the crater and my Tactic 4 skill to make "Smoke Cover" aspect. You roll good, and the GM says "Your allies got 2 free use of "Smoke Cover aspect" from your good tactical insight.

The GM say for example, "nah, no need to roll, the fireball really intimidates them" as well. Or the GM could say after the first fireball "the orcs are really disciplined, they won't scatter from one measly fireball" and you then say "alright, this round I'll turn that crater into a "scattering obstacle" aspect then, while in 3.5, there's nothing in the rule to turn that fireball to scatter the orcs, the only thing you can do is telling the GM "it makes sense for the orcs to scatter after the fireball."

You could also might have a personal Stunt for your character "Intimidating Fireball" which says, "Whenever a fireball attack kills a mook in a group, you can pay a fate point to give the rest of the mook "intimidated" aspect"to turn it into your special attack that happens automatically, for example.

If a GM is someone who will make enemies scatter without any mechanical reason after a fireball in 3.5, there's no reason to not think he will make enemies scatter without any mechanical reason after a fireball in Fate. It's a game with friends after all. But if he's a GM who have his orcs won't scatter because in his setting orcs are disciplined fearless creature, Fate just give you a tool to force the orcs to scatter with your fireball. (Though he might give impossible difficulty for it? But in that case, the problem is not in the system anymore).

I don't suggest to the GM that the monsters scatter - that's just the logical consequence of lobbing a fireball / grenade / chunk of Gondor's wall into their midst. And, no, it doesn't always happen... which means more damage from the next fireball / grenade / chunk of Gondor's wall! :smallwink:

Fireball rarely intimidates creatures into fleeing / surrendering by itself, so it sounds like it's more effective in that regard in fate, which is cool.

There are rules built in to let you have personal stunts to have the multi-effects I'd want and am used to? Cool. It sounds like, if I ever played fate, I'd need a GM who would let me buy stunts on the fly (like the old marvel superheroes game), so that the game made sense to me.

So, to sum up, fate is cool, because it lets you exploit all of these logical consequences, but can be less cool than having a GM who includes those logical consequences naturally, as it takes multiple actions to accomplish the same thing. But, fate includes rules to handle such multi-purpose actions. Did I get that right?

Or... I didn't completely understand one bit - does it go against fate for those effects to just happen anyway, if the GM is used to "logical consequences"; ie, if you topple barrels of oil to damage the orcs, could the GM just choose to add "random barrels" and "oil" as aspects to the terrain, and "covered in oil" and "momentarily out of formation" as aspects to the orcs?

[Fri]

Or... I didn't completely understand one bit - does it go against fate for those effects to just happen anyway, if the GM is used to "logical consequences"; ie, if you topple barrels of oil to damage the orcs, could the GM just choose to add "random barrels" and "oil" as aspects to the terrain, and "covered in oil" and "momentarily out of formation" as aspects to the orcs?

Nah. Basically the action "roll to make advantage" is to make something that people can use freely, without paying anything. If you roll good, you might even get two free use. But the gm can totally make some aspects on his own, and mention it to you. Once again, something that lots of people (even me, honestly) always forget is that aspects stay true even if not used mechanically. A floor slick with oil will always slick with oil even if nobody uses it mechanically. But you won't be able to use it mechanically for free without the "roll to make advantage" action. You have to use a Fate Point if you want to use those aspects as mechanical advantage (that is to reroll or bonus for your skill roll).

If there's one part that I think kinda very arbitrary for me, I'll honestly say it's this one (that is aspect stays true even if unused, but how much of it?). But that article I linked last time helped explained it to me, that's why I linked it.


So, to sum up, fate is cool, because it lets you exploit all of these logical consequences, but can be less cool than having a GM who includes those logical consequences naturally, as it takes multiple actions to accomplish the same thing. But, fate includes rules to handle such multi-purpose actions. Did I get that right?

I pretty much agree with this. Cool GM trumps any rule, and can make any system works.

[erikun]

It being dark... doesn't give anyone any bonuses to defense... unless they spend resources to make that so. That makes as little sense to me as, "the floor being made of fire doesn't deal anyone any damage unless someone takes an action to make that so". Can you explain how this makes any sense?
Darkness aspect means that it is dark. It means that, if someone tries to read a paper, they will fail - because it is too dark to to see what is on the paper.

However, when it comes to a bonus on a roll, they need to spend the Fate Point in order to get the benefit. +2 is actually fairly significant in Fate Core, and so spending the Fate Point involves (or could involve) actually putting some focus into taking advantage of the situation. Rather than just trying to stab the opponent in the dark, the character is intentionally being sneaky with what they are doing (pulling out a hidden blade) or using some stealth to come in at an unexpected angle.

Note that if the player actually took a turn to Create An Advantage with turning out the lights, then they (or a teammate) can invoke the Darkness aspect for free, once. The character could flip out the lights, then use the bonus for jumping the enemy. The Darkness aspect could also have other uses: a character might use it to create the advantage of Hiding In Shadows, basically gaining some stealth that they wouldn't have if it was an open lit area.


Yes, the situation is rather gamey in that sense. You are either creating situations for that +2 bonus or spending points to take advantage of existing situations. I'm not sure that I would necessarily call it any gamier than some other systems (D&D flanking, or bonuses against tripped opponents, are just as gamey at times) but it is part of the Fate Core-specific gaminess that you probably want to be aware of.


As for your Floor Is On Fire aspect, it would deal damage to anyone standing in the fire. Much like how the Darkness aspect prevents characters from doing things that they can do in full light (reading), or allows characters to do things that they could not do in full light (hide in shadows). What invoking the Floor Is On Fire aspect means is that somebody is specifically getting a bonus on a roll, or giving a penalty on a roll. An archer might invoke the Floor Is On Fire aspect to make it easier to hit a target, because they are too busy scrambling around to properly avoid arrows. An opponent might invoke the Floor Is On Fire aspect to make it more difficult for a PC to get to higher ground, off the floor, because it is difficult for the character to remain calm and collected and climb a ladder while their hair and clothing is still on fire.

A player could even argue that they could involve Floor Is On Fire for a BONUS to getting out, because being on fire is a great motivation to get to a place not on fire.


So, if a player of a character with a "vindictive" trait aspect declares that they are attacking the orc that hit them, is that a valid compel?
This would be a situation of a standard on invoking the aspect. The player invokes their Vindictive aspect, and gains a bonus to attack against the orc.

An example of a compel would be the party was having a diplomatic meeting with the orcs, and the orcs casually mention about how easy it was to butching some nearby elven village. At this point, the GM might compel the Vindictive player: does the PC lash out at the orc in anger (gaining a Fate Point for accepting the compel), or does the PC grit their teeth and restrain themselves (spending a Fate Point to remain in control)?

[daniel_ream]

Darkness aspect means that it is dark. It means that, if someone tries to read a paper, they will fail - because it is too dark to to see what is on the paper.

However, when it comes to a bonus on a roll, they need to spend the Fate Point in order to get the benefit.

The thing to remember is that Fate is designed to emulate drama, like TV and film and literature, not realistic conflict simulation like wargames.

Here's an example that might help: the movie Die Hard.

In that movie, unusual for its time, the hero John McClane gets the ever-loving **** kicked out of him over the course of the film. In particular, he ends up walking around in bare feet cut to ribbons by broken glass most of the movie.

But here's the thing: that doesn't actually affect him all that much unless the director decides to make it the focus of a scene. Sure, he limps, he tracks blood behind him, but when the bullets start flying he can run just as fast, rappel off of a building with a firehose just as well, shoot just as accurately as if there were nothing wrong with his feet. There are also scenes where he's badly disabled by his foot injuries, but he's right back into the action when the next scene demands it.

In Fate, then, this is the GM compelling the "Feet Cut to Ribbons" Aspect (a Consequence, more likely) on John McClane when that seems like a good dramatic beat. When it's not, the GM doesn't bother and McClane isn't affected mechanically by it.

[Max_Killjoy]

The thing to remember is that Fate is designed to emulate drama, like TV and film and literature, not realistic conflict simulation like wargames.

Here's an example that might help: the movie Die Hard.

In that movie, unusual for its time, the hero John McClane gets the ever-loving **** kicked out of him over the course of the film. In particular, he ends up walking around in bare feet cut to ribbons by broken glass most of the movie.

But here's the thing: that doesn't actually affect him all that much unless the director decides to make it the focus of a scene. Sure, he limps, he tracks blood behind him, but when the bullets start flying he can run just as fast, rappel off of a building with a firehose just as well, shoot just as accurately as if there were nothing wrong with his feet. There are also scenes where he's badly disabled by his foot injuries, but he's right back into the action when the next scene demands it.

In Fate, then, this is the GM compelling the "Feet Cut to Ribbons" Aspect (a Consequence, more likely) on John McClane when that seems like a good dramatic beat. When it's not, the GM doesn't bother and McClane isn't affected mechanically by it.


The part you emphasized with italics is exactly why I don't consider Die Hard anything more than cheesy action, a popcorn movie with some good quips.

[Cluedrew]

The thing to remember is that Fate is designed to emulate drama, like TV and film and literature, not realistic conflict simulation like wargames.Realistic might not be the right word. They* definitely use a more in world/physical based logic to do it, but you don't have to look to closely to see that it is often cartoonish. And I don't mean that is the sense of silly, but in that they leave out extra details to focus on important features. Some also break from reality quite sharply as well, but not all.

* Or at least every war game I have ever played.

[Knaight]

... One of the things I like about even basic role-playing in combat is, when you've adventured with the same group long enough, you can predict what your teammates will do - one will go after the biggest one, one will attack whoever damaged them, one will attack whoever is most wounded, etc. I was hoping fate acknowledged and rewarded this characterization.

It does. I'm just saying that "Vindictive" specifically is a bit weak - something like "Ever-growing collection of grudges" is a bit stronger, as is something like "Nobody strikes the great [PC name] and lives!". Good aspects generally do multiple things.

[daniel_ream]

The part you emphasized with italics is exactly why I don't consider Die Hard anything more than cheesy action, a popcorn movie with some good quips.

Nobody considers Die Hard anything more than a cheesy action popcorn movie with some good quips. What's your point?

[Quertus]

It does. I'm just saying that "Vindictive" specifically is a bit weak - something like "Ever-growing collection of grudges" is a bit stronger, as is something like "Nobody strikes the great [PC name] and lives!". Good aspects generally do multiple things.

Ok, I'm confused. In what way is "Nobody strikes the great [PC name] and lives!" (or the other one) stronger than "vindictive"? It feels less generally applicable, and more likely to make a caricature rather than a character, than "vindictive", at least to me. Heck, while I may simplify it to "vindictive", I'd likely want to write out paragraphs detailing exactly what that means, how the character will likely react to what stimulus, etc, to make it a character rather than a caricature.


Realistic might not be the right word. They* definitely use a more in world/physical based logic to do it, but you don't have to look to closely to see that it is often cartoonish. And I don't mean that is the sense of silly, but in that they leave out extra details to focus on important features. Some also break from reality quite sharply as well, but not all.

* Or at least every war game I have ever played.

Hmmm... Interesting point. When I'm just reading / watching a story, I think I may accept a higher level of cartoonishness than when I have to put myself into the headspace of the character to make decisions for them.


Darkness aspect means that it is dark. It means that, if someone tries to read a paper, they will fail - because it is too dark to to see what is on the paper.

However, when it comes to a bonus on a roll, they need to spend the Fate Point in order to get the benefit. +2 is actually fairly significant in Fate Core,

Maybe it's just because I've never tried to fight someone when it was too dark to read, but how can darkness which just says "nope" to reading do nothing to combat?

So, to try to answer my own question, I guess it can, if you paint in broad strokes, instead of getting caught up in the fine-tipped brushes. I'd need to practice that to play fate, I guess.

However, I have played hide & seek in the dark. How would darkness not give a huge (+2?) advantage to the characters trying to hide?

Or, to continue to try to wrap my head around this, suppose a group of soldiers with silenced weapons and low-light / thermal goggles decide to randomly & stealthily murder a group of children playing hide and seek at night in the woods. Or, make it a single soldier, to remove the action economy advantage. Shouldn't the soldier be finding and killing kids much faster than the seeker, even though he didn't create the darkness aspect?


Note that if the player actually took a turn to Create An Advantage with turning out the lights, then they (or a teammate) can invoke the Darkness aspect for free, once. The character could flip out the lights, then use the bonus for jumping the enemy.

Because I turned out the lights myself, we can use that to surprise the opponents more easily than if the lights had been off in the first place? That hurts my head.

... Is a soldier who fires from cover any more likely to survive a firefight than one who just stands out in the open in fate? Or did they just waste actions giving themselves the "cover" aspect, which does nothing unless invoked?

And I'm hoping all my questions are germane to the OP 's question, as I'm coming at this from a very wargaming perspective.

[Fri]

... Is a soldier who fires from cover any more likely to survive a firefight than one who just stands out in the open in fate? Or did they just waste actions giving themselves the "cover" aspect, which does nothing unless invoked?

And I'm hoping all my questions are germane to the OP 's question, as I'm coming at this from a very wargaming perspective.

Don't worry, this was/is exactly the questions I have in my head as well.

On the "cover" aspect, it's exactly explained in the article I linked. This is the most relevant (but not the only relevant) part.



Situation Aspects can be used as a passive Defence

It’s implicit in the previous notes on aspects as opposition but I’ve separated out to highlight it as an important concept: Characters can create advantages with situation aspects to obtain a passive defence against certain kinds of action as long as this is internally consistent with the fiction.

Example: You’re a stealthy but not particularly athletic character who has ended up in a gunfight in a packed warehouse. Rather than trying to dodge the gunfire you decide to take cover behind some packing crates. You roll Stealth to create advantage on the “Piles of packing crates” to establish that you are now tucked behind cover, making it harder to shoot you. Mechanically the GM decides that the gunman needs to beat a passive difficulty of Good to hit you through the crate. Because you succeeded on your create advantage action you not only established your position behind the crates in the narrative but also gained a free invocation which you can use to make the passive opposition to shooting you Superb for one exchange.

Mostly after reading things, the only advice I gave to myself is "just think whatever rule seems makes sense, and most likely it's actually covered somewhere but I missed it[/quote]

[Kiero]

Something that bears voicing is that you don't have to use Aspects for everything in Fate. That's a pitfall people new to the system often struggle with. There are still perfectly valid and serviceable mechanics covering stuff like darkness, without turning them into something that has to be gamed or tied into the FP economy. There's a comfortable middle that can be reached where you use Aspects for the charater motivations/beliefs/special stuff element, while keeping the world's physics simple and fixed.

[erikun]

Maybe it's just because I've never tried to fight someone when it was too dark to read, but how can darkness which just says "nope" to reading do nothing to combat?

So, to try to answer my own question, I guess it can, if you paint in broad strokes, instead of getting caught up in the fine-tipped brushes. I'd need to practice that to play fate, I guess.
Fair enough. It is a bit of a strange concept, which not everyone understands at first - or at all, in some cases. It's is part of the reason that some people don't like the system. Not the only reason, of course, but certainly is a break point for some players.


However, I have played hide & seek in the dark. How would darkness not give a huge (+2?) advantage to the characters trying to hide?
Consider it the difference between just fighting in a dark room, and intentionally trying to hide or sneak up on someone in a dark room. In a standard fight, the low lights and darkness would not make much of a difference: you're just swinging at the big shadowy figure hitting you rather than the big guy hitting you, and Fate doesn't make a big enough distinction to highlight the details between armor types to make much of a difference.

On the other hand, spending a Fate point for the bonus would be like intentionally ducking behind a crate and then kneeling down among some stuff on the ground, or perhaps shoving something over between you and the enemy. In normal lighting, this would be a momentary distraction or not effective at all. But in the shadows, with the lights off, your opponent might lose track of you entirely and you could hit them with their defenses completely down.

Please note that "areas" in Fate are a lot more open than they would be in D&D. A character is not limited to a 5x5 sqaure of terrain. A Fate "area" can be someplace like a living room, an office hallway, or the seating area of a stadium. In a large location, like the stadium, it could be broken up into multiple areas. (north seating area and south seating area. Or perhaps Section A, and Section B, and so on.) Movement around a single area doesn't cost anything. Movement between areas spends your movement, generally because of distance (north seating to south seating) or because there is some obstacle in the way that you need to transverse across.


For a comparison of skill levels that the +2 would give you: starting players begin the game with a single +4 skill they are an expert in, two +3 skills they are very good in, and a bunch of +2 skills that they are reasonably competent in. That +2 is taking someone reasonably competent in sword fighting, someone who is fairly familiar with how to hold and swing around a sword, and giving them an attack on par with an expert with years of focus in swordfighting. Or giving someone with no experience at all with holding a sword, and giving them an attack as good as someone completely competent with the weapon. It is a fairly significant bonus, and far greater than the +2 flanking bonus you might expect from D&D.



Or, to continue to try to wrap my head around this, suppose a group of soldiers with silenced weapons and low-light / thermal goggles decide to randomly & stealthily murder a group of children playing hide and seek at night in the woods. Or, make it a single soldier, to remove the action economy advantage. Shouldn't the soldier be finding and killing kids much faster than the seeker, even though he didn't create the darkness aspect?
Your soldier likely has Notice with at least +3 bonus, especially if they are someone specifically trained to go out and locate people. Children are going to have +0 or even -1 bonuses, possibly +1 with Stealth if it is the one skill they are good at. (That's a 93%+ chance of success if we aren't rolling for the child, right there. About the same if we are.) Thermal Goggles aspect is going to negate the Darkness aspect, and will even grant the soldier another +2 on top of that if they decided to spend a Fate Point. The kids likely have a +0 in Notice, and so finding other kids with around a 38% chance of success.


Because I turned out the lights myself, we can use that to surprise the opponents more easily than if the lights had been off in the first place? That hurts my head.
If you turned out the lights, that would mean you expected it to happen and (supposedly) had some sort of plan in your head. So, you too a look over the terrain, shut off the lights, then crouched behind a good ambush spot.

Note that, if the free invoke doesn't make sense, the GM could not approve of its use. If one character suddenly ran over and shut off the lights, the GM might say that their allies can't invoke the Darkness aspect for free. Or, the GM might say that the character can't shut off all the lights, then move into a new room they've not visited and invoke the aspect for free because they aren't familiar with the room's layout. I would point out that it is generally easier and better to just give the player the free invoke, though. Invoking an aspect has a broad possible meaning, anything from planning to just plain dumb luck. And just because the GM doesn't think a particular idea would work in a particular situation, does not mean the free aspect invoke couldn't apply for different reasons.


... Is a soldier who fires from cover any more likely to survive a firefight than one who just stands out in the open in fate? Or did they just waste actions giving themselves the "cover" aspect, which does nothing unless invoked?
Depends on the situation. Is this some sort of cover which can stop the firearms used? If so, then you are using Create An Advantage to generate a new aspect on the scene. Bulletproof Cover in this case would probably be used in this case to break the location up into two areas, and make it impossible to damage anyone with gunfire between the two if they keep their heads down. Please note that an enemy could simply move around the cover if there isn't anything stopping them from doing so, but the truth of the aspect still takes place: Bulletproof Cover is bulletproof, and so you can't shoot through it. Only people popping up their heads (for firing back, to see what is happening) are vulnerable to being hit.

If I wanted a scene for a firefight with multiple sources of cover, then I probably would just divide the location up into multiple zones with cover between each.

Also note that, with cover, you could at least invoke the cover aspect in order to prevent damage. Or even prevent detection when moving around. You couldn't do that if standing out in the open.


And I'm hoping all my questions are germane to the OP 's question, as I'm coming at this from a very wargaming perspective.
Fate Core is not much of a wargame, and not that good at emulating wargaming, so you will probably find a number of things not working out the same way as you might expect.

[Max_Killjoy]

Something that bears voicing is that you don't have to use Aspects for everything in Fate. That's a pitfall people new to the system often struggle with. There are still perfectly valid and serviceable mechanics covering stuff like darkness, without turning them into something that has to be gamed or tied into the FP economy. There's a comfortable middle that can be reached where you use Aspects for the charater motivations/beliefs/special stuff element, while keeping the world's physics simple and fixed.


Interesting.

To me, if the room is dark, that has certain affects, and having to spend metagame currency to "invoke" those effects seems... odd.

[Kiero]

Fate Core is not much of a wargame, and not that good at emulating wargaming, so you will probably find a number of things not working out the same way as you might expect.

Having seen Diaspora (http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/)at work, I beg to differ.

[Cluedrew]

To me, if the room is dark, that has certain affects, and having to spend metagame currency to "invoke" those effects seems... odd.Well it is an abstraction and hence not perfect in many places. Still it does make a certain amount of sense that one must try to take advantage of those things. In the darkness example one does not have to be able to see every detail to see where your opponents center of mass and strike towards it. So you have to do something more than that to take advantage of it. That action, takes energy, time, resources and/or luck and for simplicity all that is rolled into the FATE point.

FATE points make more sense to me when they are referring to things like reputation and contacts, which you can't call on all the time and so shouldn't be some continuous stream of bonuses. And really I think that was what the FATE aspects where tuned towards, high level/abstract irregular features of a character. I am the Champion of My Tribe, so I get a bonus when haggling for arms with them because they know I'm probably going to take it and defend them with it. (Making some assumptions about how the areas economy works here.) But if you though your weight around people might stop being nice around, or maybe they cannot afford to give a discount at all or maybe something else, so it is limited. Stretching it out to cover the more 'wargame' aspects is, of course, a stretch.

I think they decided to go with the idea anyways because it is good enough and it keeps the game simple. Of course if anyone doesn't think that is a good trade off... maybe FATE isn't going to be the system for you.

[snailgosh]

Interesting.

To me, if the room is dark, that has certain affects, and having to spend metagame currency to "invoke" those effects seems... odd.

If you are familiar with DnD 3.5 you could compare the various luck feats with the invoking of aspects. A situational bonus to a roll deemed worthy enough by you.

The difference being you have to plausibly explain how the invoked aspect is relevant enough to grant that bonus.

At first I had to wrap my head around the fact that aspects are things that are true about the world - whether invoked or not - but the article about passive opposition linked earlier greatly helped me understand better.

The darkness aspect for example makes it sucky for everyone trying to fight. No matter who turned the light off, everyone is affected.
You can spend a Fate Point and tell a little story about why you aren't as affected or why it sucks even harder for your enemy and give yourself (or your friend) that juicy +2.

I see the free invoke mainly as a reason to motivate people to create aspects, meaning to actively try to form the scene.
It also helps to tell stories about setting up tactics or manouvres of sorts, by creating a free-evokable aspect with your first action and executing the plan, with a bonus, in the second one.

Btw, John McLanes feet don't necessarily mean "Schrödinger's pain".
If you don't like how they possibly only hurt when you look at them (you throw a compel John's way), you could rule his "Feet cut to ribbons" aspect provides passive opposition to athletics.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Passive opposition goes a long way towards making environmental aspects *make sense*. I just wish it was in the official rules somewhere-- or if it is (and some quick searching of the SRD doesn't turn up anything beyond "spend Fate points to boost/create passive opposition"), that it's emphasized more. Because the book certainly doesn't do enough to make you understand the "Aspects are true" side of things.

That's kind of the problem with Fate Core. It's a decent framework, but half the time you wind up having to make up new rules wholesale just to make it work.

[Quertus]

The darkness aspect for example makes it sucky for everyone trying to fight. No matter who turned the light off, everyone is affected.


What if it doesn't apply to everyone? What if one of the people involved has night vision / thermal vision goggles, etc? If no-one is suffering a penalty for the darkness, does that sighted individual get a free "everyone else is having trouble" +2 bonus to all rolls?

This is part of what I was trying to ask with my earlier example.


If you turned out the lights, that would mean you expected it to happen and (supposedly) had some sort of plan in your head. So, you too a look over the terrain, shut off the lights, then crouched behind a good ambush spot.

I was more thinking, "an ambush in the creepy forest at night is more likely to succeed than one on the featureless plain in broad daylight". Or "I can hide in the dark building more easily than in the floodlights". I assume I'm not playing as God, so I didn't create the forest, or the nighttime aspect, and I'm not the one who turned out the lights in the abandoned building, but darn if they don't still sound helpful.


To me, if the room is dark, that has certain affects, and having to spend metagame currency to "invoke" those effects seems... odd.


FATE points make more sense to me when they are referring to things like reputation and contacts, which you can't call on all the time and so shouldn't be some continuous stream of bonuses. And really I think that was what the FATE aspects where tuned towards, high level/abstract irregular features of a character. I am the Champion of My Tribe, so I get a bonus when haggling for arms with them because they know I'm probably going to take it and defend them with it. (Making some assumptions about how the areas economy works here.) But if you though your weight around people might stop being nice around, or maybe they cannot afford to give a discount at all or maybe something else, so it is limited. Stretching it out to cover the more 'wargame' aspects is, of course, a stretch.

I seem to recall an example from another thread, which went something like spending a fate point to invoke the "rival group" aspect of the people you're negotiating with to get a +2 bonus to the roll.

Now, most games I'm used to playing, I can have my character point out that he can bring his idea to the competition without having to have first had my gun jam at an inopportune time, or letting the GM take away authorship of my character to turn them into a caricature.

So, to me, it's exactly the same kind of thing, in combat or out.

Where (I think) fate has the advantage here is that you get to know what will happen, whereas, in most games IME, you have no way of knowing how the person you're talking to will respond to that threat. Whereas in fate, you know his response: it's to give you a flat +2 bonus to the roll.


Fate Core is not much of a wargame, and not that good at emulating wargaming, so you will probably find a number of things not working out the same way as you might expect.

This may be the most important part of the thread.

So, what are each good and bad at? What are their stats? Here's my uninformed guesses:

D&D is better suited to be a war game.

Fate is much faster than D&D.

Fate has much easier to learn / much more consistent rules?

D&D has... less?... cognitive demand, especially on the GM, than all those aspects that you have to keep track of?

Both are about equally suited to role-playing (no rules, negatives of alignment vs compels).

Fate has fewer "fiddly bits" / D&D has more "fiddly bits".

D&D has defined, named archetypes, so saying you're a "ranger" means something; fate lets you roll your own.

Did I get that right? What else have I missed?

[Knaight]

D&D has... less?... cognitive demand, especially on the GM, than all those aspects that you have to keep track of?

No way, no how. I don't like Fate and the cognitive demand of Aspects is a large part of it, but it's nothing compared to dealing with the sheer number of statistics flying around in D&D.

[Quertus]

No way, no how. I don't like Fate and the cognitive demand of Aspects is a large part of it, but it's nothing compared to dealing with the sheer number of statistics flying around in D&D.

Ah... Different types of cognitive demand. Well, I think - I haven't played fate.

D&D mostly just has math. There's very little reason in D&D to ever find yourself in an "oops, I should have" scenario (although I had one DM comment how we should have heard a particular waterfall half an hour ago. It became a running gag).

But, in fate, it was commented that you have to constantly keep track of all the aspects of all the PCs, the environment, etc.

I don't know about you, but I don't keep track of much of anything in D&D. Name, AC, and a picture would be nice, so between that and social skills, I know how people will react to you. And that's just a table I reference when people try to attack or react to a given character, not something constantly eating my (terribly limited) headspace.

[snailgosh]

What if it doesn't apply to everyone? What if one of the people involved has night vision / thermal vision goggles, etc? If no-one is suffering a penalty for the darkness, does that sighted individual get a free "everyone else is having trouble" +2 bonus to all rolls?

This is part of what I was trying to ask with my earlier example.

Well if someone had a way to not be affected by the darkness, they simply won't get the associated penalty.

Additionally it provides a straightforward justification to invoke the darkness aspect against someone who is affected.

[Cluedrew]

Now, most games I'm used to playing, I can have my character point out that he can bring his idea to the competition without having to have first had my gun jam at an inopportune time, or letting the GM take away authorship of my character to turn them into a caricature.I haven't played much (any) FATE, but I have read the rulebook, but I don't think this actually holds.

Create Advantage can give you free invocations on a situational aspect without costing FATE points. Now your character has to actually do something to do it, and there is a chance of failure (dependant on how outland the idea is) but I wouldn't be surprised if that came up more than FATE points for these things.

You can veto compels if they don't make sense (would reduce your character to a caricature) or buy out of them if they do make sense but you don't want it to happen anyways. So really it the GM doesn't get to control your character, more they can pitch ways for you to mess up and give you bonuses to take them.

[Quertus]

I haven't played much (any) FATE, but I have read the rulebook, but I don't think this actually holds.

Create Advantage can give you free invocations on a situational aspect without costing FATE points. Now your character has to actually do something to do it, and there is a chance of failure (dependant on how outland the idea is) but I wouldn't be surprised if that came up more than FATE points for these things.

You can veto compels if they don't make sense (would reduce your character to a caricature) or buy out of them if they do make sense but you don't want it to happen anyways. So really it the GM doesn't get to control your character, more they can pitch ways for you to mess up and give you bonuses to take them.

Wha.... I'm not creating the competition, I'm using that existing fact / aspect to attempt to give myself an advantage in negotiations. Which, in fate, taking advantage of a pre-existing aspect costs a fate point. Right?

[SpoonR]

tl;dr Fate runs on chekhov's gun & player input, d&d runs on HP and "x times per day"


Wha.... I'm not creating the competition, I'm using that existing fact / aspect to attempt to give myself an advantage in negotiations. Which, in fate, taking advantage of a pre-existing aspect costs a fate point. Right?

Ognar the Barbarian tells the weaponmaker "You know, I could just walk over to Randolph's place and ask him to forge me a sword. I'm sure he would give me a discount if I told him the ridiculous price you charge."

In D&D, the GM can do
a. The smith shrugs. "You get what you pay for." No effect, or the GM gives a penalty to your Haggle check
b. The smith stammers and asks you to wait. You get a bonus
c. When you mention the name, the smith punches you.
d. Smith shrugs, but the GM spontaneously decides that the two are secretly cooperating and pricefixing.
e. Smith shrugs, no effect.
The player can suggest, but has no control over what happens.

In Fate (note: I only have Dresden fate), first off, the DM might not know about the competition before the player mention it (aka creating in-universe facts. Sure Randolph existed before, and lived in the village etc etc but no one at the table knew about it before) Players can have an active role in making the details of the world. Or, the PCs have used Randolph before, so the player is trying to bring in an existing "aspect". Aspect in quotes because the DM might not have listed the aspect in his notes - she wrote down "cunning forgeries" and "dim flickering lights" because this smith was going to try & con the PC into buying a fake Masamune. All those real-world details could be made aspects, but they don't matter until they're used.

Anyway, one way or another there is "Randolph the competition" aspect. The player can roll Intimidate as part of creating the aspect and get a free use. OR, the player can spend a FP to invoke it. Either way, the player is saying "this is important to the story"
Without invoking the aspect, the smith shrugs and ignores the empty threat.
Player invoke means it works, PC gets a bonus to the haggling
the GM can compel the aspect, the PC gets a FP in exchange for the smith becoming more hostile and raising prices.

I would describe FATE as mechanically supporting "the story" or "the narrative". Fate points & aspects are ways of saying the story happens one way instead of another. Mechanically, d&d is more supporting a physics model
D&D: a 5th level wizard might survive a 100' fall because GM rolls all 1s on 10d6, and wiz has 12 hp. If you are disarmed, then the weapon lands there, etc.
Fate: wizard survives, but gains the "landed on my spellcasting arm" aspect because that is more interesting than "wizard dies". If you are disarmed but draw a backup dagger, exactly where the weapon landed doesn't matter unless you make it matter (run & grab it, trick the opponent into stepping on sharp edge)

Some of the examples from this thread
Fireball. D&D says "fireball does 10d6 damage to creatures and any objects the DM says might be damageable". There is no smoke, no crater, no intimidation, unless the DM says so.
Fate. What is your first & most important goal for the fireball? Cause damage? Make an impromptu flashbang so the orcs can't fight as well? Slow the orcs down so they can't follow you? That is what will happen right away, doing multiple things could be a higher diffiulty, GM negotiation, or whatever is reasonable.

Dark, but not pitch black (pitch black, how are you knowing where to swing your sword?)
d&d, everyone has -5 to attack rolls unless they have lowlight- or dark-vision
fate, one side adapts to the dark faster (free invoke). After that, everyone adapts their fighting style to darkness and it doesn't matter unless someone specifically uses the darkness to do something. Range can't see well enough to shoot arrows across the room, but he can see well enough to smite orcs with his twin swords. Another way to adapt is the kenpachi strategy - wait to attack until you can feel their attack touching you & counterattack. For even more fun, when they attack grab'em. Now you REALLY know where they are.


The "one free invoke" is unrealistic and arbitrary. So is "you can only use fireball as many times as you 3rd level spell slots, then you need to sleep overnight". If you need justification, the simplest one is that Fate doesn't use a tactical map but assumes everyone will adapt to combat conditions (you hide behind a rock wall. their shot misses (free invoke). So they move to where they have a clear shot through that gap in the rocks (aspect not invoked). So you move to a different part of the all where they can't shoot you anymore (fate point, or roll to get a new free invoke))
And/or the moviemaking justification. "The hero is now hidden from the camera. So the director has the hero come out of cover and do something interesting"
And/or skip the boring bits. "Okay, y'all are behind rocks, shooting at each other and either missing or hit the rocks. Lets skip ahead to where someone gets a hit"


Re tracking aspects. The players are supposed to track their free invokes, you only really need to remember aspects that are being used repeatedly, and I have a laptop and can super-fast type in a two-word aspect. I honestly do not understand why you need multiple 3x5 levels of detail and difficulty?

[erikun]

So, what are each good and bad at? What are their stats? Here's my uninformed guesses:

D&D is better suited to be a war game.
I wouldn't exactly say "war game", but WotC D&D has a much higher focus on the map, exact positioning, and movement rules. In D&D, your character is located 15' from the north wall, 10' from the east wall, and will be moving 20' south within this 6-second timeframe, plotting out this exact path which will provoke an attack of opportunity from the single enemy. In Fate, your character is located in the north half of the cavern, can interact with anyone there, and may need to overcome an obstacle to get to the southern half of the cavern. (some sort of natural division)


Fate is much faster than D&D.
Yes and no. Combat can be reasonably fast in Fate. Characters have fewer health levels (and so can take fewer hits) before they start taking penalties, and can only take so many penalties before they are elimiated entirely. Combat is a lot simpler, without large spell lists and without complex movement options. And, while a group COULD get unlucky and end up in a combat loop where nobody can hurt anybody, the rounds typically are shorter so everything progresses faster.

On the other hand, Fate has social combat for when you want to pick a fight with words, and that can turn into its own combat. Also, most D&D skills are just one roll and resolve (or make the same roll repeatedly until success) while Fate can involve using other skills to support the roll, and reasons for those rolls to apply.

So Fate is (generally) much faster in combat than D&D, especially if you are talking about a slow D&D party. I've typically had Fate games progress at a much faster pace than any D&D games. But you also spend more time in Fate with the non-combat situations, and some things which are just a single roll can turn into combat scenarios in Fate.


Fate has much easier to learn / much more consistent rules?
Yes. There are a set number of skills and around four possible actions for each skill. The trick in Fate is understanding how to frame what someone is trying to do in the language of one of the skills. Is the character trying to overcome an obstacle? Trying to defend themselves from some effect? Trying to generate something which would be an Aspect?

However, creating an aspect with Shoot is the same method as creating an aspect with Athletics; it is just determining how that ruleset would apply to what you are doing in the game.


D&D has... less?... cognitive demand, especially on the GM, than all those aspects that you have to keep track of?
D&D definitely has more memorization of the ruleset and specific situations. Fate has a lighter ruleset, and the application is either broad (you can use a skill to create an aspect) or open for interpretation (sure, I suppose you gunslinger could put out a cigarette with a bullet).

Fate generally relies on more on-the-fly decision making in regards to skill use and application. The above would need to be a GM decision based on the tone of the game: is in appropriate for people to be doing that in this setting, and story genre? Or, for another example: if a PC intentionally misses a kick to knock over a bunch of crates to knock down an opponent, how would that work? Using Fight to create an advantage? Athletics to create an advantage? Physique? Perhaps using Fight, Athletics, or Physique as a direct attack? All are potentially correct answers, but it's up to the GM (and, in part, the player) to determine which is most appropriate for the situation.


But, in fate, it was commented that you have to constantly keep track of all the aspects of all the PCs, the environment, etc.
No, not really. In general, each character is going to have 2-3 Aspects and the terrain is going to have 3-4. Grunt enemies are likely to go down before developing any, and only important NPCs are going to have 2-3 Aspects on their own. There are some temporary aspects, such as injuries, but those tend to go away soon or just involve generating penalties for Fate Points.


Both are about equally suited to role-playing (no rules, negatives of alignment vs compels).
If by "role-playing" you mean the point where you set aside the character sheets and just interact for roleplay, then sure. Both work equally well. I mean, Aspects could be used for specific roleplay situations ("I have the Always Wary aspect so I'm going to be seeing if I can spot an ambush.") but alignments could be used in similar situations.


Fate has fewer "fiddly bits" / D&D has more "fiddly bits".
Yes, D&D is certainly more fiddly with specific rules for niche/certain situations. There are no or few specific rules requires for mounted combat or grappling an enemy, for example.


D&D has defined, named archetypes, so saying you're a "ranger" means something; fate lets you roll your own.
Well, there are skills, which behave the same in both systems. And the GM could create specific Aspects for their game which behave in much the same way. (although that might be a FUDGE thing, it's been awhile)

But you are correct. There is no "Ranger" class or "Dwarf" race, or anything equivalent in the base Fate rules.

[Max_Killjoy]

D&D doesn't really support a "physics model", either. It supports a "game engine as game engine" model.

[Cluedrew]

Wha.... I'm not creating the competition, I'm using that existing fact / aspect to attempt to give myself an advantage in negotiations. Which, in fate, taking advantage of a pre-existing aspect costs a fate point. Right?I've got the rules right here, short version is: Create an Advantage can be used with "any aspect you have access to" and does not require a FATE point to use. So it seems to be in the clear to me.

To Max_Killjoy: I doubt anyone would describe D&D as a physics model, but it does work a lot with the in-world effects of actions and that build towards a final outcome. Compared to that FATE jumps to the outcome it wants and then fills in the details of how the story-world got there. Does that make sense?

[Max_Killjoy]

To Max_Killjoy: I doubt anyone would describe D&D as a physics model, but it does work a lot with the in-world effects of actions and that build towards a final outcome. Compared to that FATE jumps to the outcome it wants and then fills in the details of how the story-world got there. Does that make sense?


This is what I was responding to.



I would describe FATE as mechanically supporting "the story" or "the narrative". Fate points & aspects are ways of saying the story happens one way instead of another. Mechanically, d&d is more supporting a physics model


While its presumptions are based somewhat on fiction that Gygax, etc, found compelling, the core of D&D from then until present has been utterly, thoroughly "gamist" in nature. It's the rules that matter first, and so there's always a disconnect between the game-as-game, and the setting (Tippyverse and the like aside, of course).

However, if the distinction SpoonR was making was the one you're making, of "order of operations" (cause-then-effect, vs cause derived from desired effect), I can see it being called a "physics-like model".

[SpoonR]

D&D doesn't really support a "physics model", either. It supports a "game engine as game engine" model.

Depending on your exact definition, I think we're in agreement. I would use "simulation" or "physics engine" because of D&D rules breadth (old-school 20-entry weather table, speed & terrain, falling damage scaling, various attempts at modeling real-life hazards of caves and mines a la dungeoneering guide, weapon ranges & targeting). Limited depth though, for ex no hit location or critical hit to spleen rules. (trying to not mention GNS cause that would probably derail. Difficult)

I think Fate's most story or writing "very unrealistic but impossible to do a story without" is Conceding, especially the lethal/nonlethal decision. The battle loser concedes and dictates the outcome (with some rules & lot of table input to keep it reasonable). Outcome can explicitly include surviving an encounter with someone out to kill you (surviving might be of the Batman crawls into Batmobile & hits the home button, spends the next weeks or months recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, or the Byakuya "he'll die in minutes anyway so just ignore him")

Personally, I'm confused by how to discuss the GM improv aspect of all this. Older-than-me-school D&D where combat was sort of failing, a switch from 'declare what you do, GM declares outcome' to 'dice decide whether you live or die'. My initial D&D experiences where the rules are exactly and only what you can do, with occasional Dragon magazine articles about doing stuff not covered by rules (dead minotaur + paint = intimidate), to Fate where most of the improvising is part of "roll Conviction to create XYZ aspect" but GM decides if something even needs a roll.

[Seto]

Quertus, correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be bringing to FATE the D&D assumption that who is/what happens to your character should be under your exclusive control, and everything else under the GM's (you mentioned that you're not playing God, and you're afraid that the GM will make a caricature of your character). While it's true to a large extent, it seems that FATE is designed to accommodate collectively-driven storytelling a lot more than D&D. Everyone has a part in both world-building and character creation, which means that, as a player, you may well create a country or a sect (granted, that's before playing), and your character's backstory aspects will be created by the other players. As for actual play, even if you're the final judge of what your character does (provided you have FATE points), anyone can suggest relevant compels. I don't remember whether or not players can spend FATE points to flat-out create environment in-game (in your example, "here's a fate point, there's a forest here now"), but GMs are certainly encouraged to build on the player's ideas and suggestions.
D&D tends to reward meta-game (even if it's not the intent and good players try to avoid it). FATE actively encourages meta-narrative.

[Max_Killjoy]

Quertus, correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be bringing to FATE the D&D assumption that who is/what happens to your character should be under your exclusive control, and everything else under the GM's (you mentioned that you're not playing God, and you're afraid that the GM will make a caricature of your character). While it's true to a large extent, it seems that FATE is designed to accommodate collectively-driven storytelling a lot more than D&D. Everyone has a part in both world-building and character creation, which means that, as a player, you may well create a country or a sect (granted, that's before playing), and your character's backstory aspects will be created by the other players. As for actual play, even if you're the final judge of what your character does (provided you have FATE points), anyone can suggest relevant compels. I don't remember whether or not players can spend FATE points to flat-out create environment in-game (in your example, "here's a fate point, there's a forest here now"), but GMs are certainly encouraged to build on the player's ideas and suggestions.
D&D tends to reward meta-game (even if it's not the intent and good players try to avoid it). FATE actively encourages meta-narrative.

1) I'd say that's it's hardly fair or accurate to describe "who is/what happens to your character should be under your exclusive control, and everything else under the GM's" as a "D&D assumption". It's a very broadly held understanding of how that works, and really has nothing in particular to do with D&D.

2) My opinions on some other elements of FATE have softened considerably due to clarifications in this thread. However, another player having any actual control over my character's backstory or build would be a complete showstopper. During play, my suggestion to other players trying to insert compels on my character would be "kindly butt out, please".

3) I have no issues with the GM building on the players ideas and suggestions, before or after the campaign begins, and I generally consider it a good practice.

4) IMO, meta is meta, not a fan of it either way.

[Cluedrew]

To Max_Killjoy: By "D&D Assumption" people usually (when I have seen it used) mean "it is found in D&D" and not "it is unique to D&D".

I still can't wrap my head around why you don't want others input in your character. Even if there isn't a hard rule for it I would hope that you can at least trust your fellows to not do something against your character concept if you explain why it doesn't work.

[Max_Killjoy]

To Max_Killjoy: By "D&D Assumption" people usually (when I have seen it used) mean "it is found in D&D" and not "it is unique to D&D".


IMO, it's a really bad phrasing, then, that at face value means "an assumption that comes from D&D".




I still can't wrap my head around why you don't want others input in your character. Even if there isn't a hard rule for it I would hope that you can at least trust your fellows to not do something against your character concept if you explain why it doesn't work.


Suggestions during creation, are fine, as long as the other players are clear that it's just suggestions. Even then, more than a few players can't seem to get past the notion of "You're playing an X, so you should do A, B, and C!" and take offense when you decline to follow their advise, even if you politely explain that you are not playing "an X", you're playing a specific individual character.

But that's not what the post I was responding to would appear to be describing: "and your character's backstory aspects will be created by the other players", "even if you're the final judge of what your character does (provided you have FATE points), anyone can suggest relevant compels."

No player should have to repeatedly explain to the other players why their suggestions aren't fitting, or justify rejecting what someone else wants your character to decide or do.

And in many games, backstory contains information that the other players shouldn't have until it's revealed in-game, in-character. Allowing other players to impose backstory on your character ruins that, and it ruins learning things about those their characters in turn.


That said, from what's been posted in this thread, it sounds like FATE could be used as a far more conventional system, without things like cross-character backstory, players getting input into the decisions and actions of each other's characters, meta-game/meta-narrative control of the "setting physics", etc.

This is the statement that gives me the greatest sense that FATE could be used for something that I'd enjoy, but it does run counter to other statements in this thread:



Something that bears voicing is that you don't have to use Aspects for everything in Fate. That's a pitfall people new to the system often struggle with. There are still perfectly valid and serviceable mechanics covering stuff like darkness, without turning them into something that has to be gamed or tied into the FP economy. There's a comfortable middle that can be reached where you use Aspects for the charater motivations/beliefs/special stuff element, while keeping the world's physics simple and fixed.



On the flip side, tell me what you find interesting / enjoyable about the idea of allowing players to influence each other's character creation in concrete, systemized ways.

[Seto]

On the flip side, tell me what you find interesting / enjoyable about the idea of allowing players to influence each other's character creation in concrete, systemized ways.

The experience I've had with D&D 3.5 - I'm using this example because it's most familiar to me - is that, since character creation has so many options and allows for such customization, people tend to build their character - numbers, backstory and all - on their own and then come to the first session with it. Since they spent so much time on character creation, they feel very protective of their PC and are understandably averse to making changes (such as important connections with the other PCs). The result is that we have to clear the hurdle of PCs awkwardly meeting, and pretend that them working together is not arbitrary. Even if I as a DM provide good reason (generally, uniting them through danger or a common goal), party dynamics are... rough around the edges, because characters were not created with the purpose of being a narratively interesting ensemble. (And I'm a fan of those, like the ensembles we get in Whedon shows for example). This happens even if there's a session zero, and no matter how much I beg them to work together and with me before and during creation to have a cohesive and interesting group.

With FATE, the "build" is very much simplified, which means that character creation is more adaptable and easier to figure out during a chat with the group. And actually having intraparty history and dynamics built into the system, right from the get-go, is both interesting and enjoyable to me, whether I'm a GM or a player.
I acknowledge that it doesn't theoretically need to be systemized, but having it systemized ensures it will happen, and I'm grateful to the system for emphasizing ensemble dynamics in this way. It's consistent with the narratively-focused FATE, and it admittedly caters to my personal gaming preferences.

I'll add one thing: for this to work (or any collective game, really), FATE assumes that the players are friends, can communicate reasonably, and all try to have fun together. Of course nobody should be stuck with an inconsistent character or an abhorrent backstory. If you detest something another player came up with for your backstory, they should agree to change it. Of course a douchebag who exploits the system to say "haha, now your character has chlamydia" should not have their way (or even be here, really). But if everyone plays the same game, I find it to be an enriching experience. (Also, they're the backstory aspects, not your current personality, which you still get to decide).

[Cluedrew]

To Max_Killjoy: I never have found it confusing, nor seen anyone else confuse it. Although you might be the only person I know for whom the distinction is particularly important.

Anyways, pros of influence of others on my character:
Generation of new ideas, very few great things where made by one person.
Buy-in, I care about the other characters more if I (even in some small way) contributed to the character.
An extra point of communication. Cuts off people from creating characters in isolation.
Unpredictability, actually can be a pro or a con depending on my mood.
Or rather I hope. Haven't actually tried it yet. I will agree it is the part of FATE I am the least comfortable with, but on the whole I am hopeful. Still haven't gotten to play it.

Other than that... you can't learn out of character knowledge in backstory creation, as the other player's character was there for the bit they add. Which does imply you have met 2-4 other people in the group already. But if you want to avoid "strangers meet in a tavern", that can be a pro in its own right. The rest is probably just a matter of good, descriptive aspects.

Swordsaged by Seto, who also raised some good points.

[Fri]

Having your character creation together is really optional for me. I rarely use that particular rule or even the specific "type of aspects" in Fate's rulebook character building part, because it's just a and too limiting. And I completely understand if it bothers some people. Usually at most on character aspects I'll just say "have 5 aspects, they should be about these"

But basically I think it's gamification on how you're supposed to have discuss what you're going to make character together so you're just a bunch of random completely unrelated characters meeting in a tavern. It's too often a character appear with an iga ninja in a roman empire campaign or whatnot.

But in general, yeah, I usually never bother with that.


D&D doesn't really support a "physics model", either. It supports a "game engine as game engine" model.

This is a very good sentence. All game systems are not actually physics model and that's why tippyverse or commoner railgun is just thought exercise and if you actually think to make it into a setting you're completely missing the point.

People in dnd world don't actually move in 5 feet squares or take turn punching each others in a fight. It's just simplification in game model, like how countries don't actually have solid colored borders in real life and it's just that way to simply it in Risk or Civilization. Another example is in exalted. "One mote (mp)" might not actually be the smallest quantification of magical energy in the setting. Motes can power magic items, and you might not have to have magical lamp that eat one mote per hour or whatever. But for simplification purpose in game, one mote is the smallest amount of mp you can use when playing it. Things like that.

[kyoryu]

My general advice on figuring out Fate (and basically my documentation of wrapping my noggin around it) is in the "Book of Hanz" here:

http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core-downloads/

[kyoryu]

By the way, for the Darkness argument...

Darkness can totally have an impact without spending a Fate point. In addition to making some things just flat out impossible, it can also justify passive opposition.

Generally passive opposition works with active opposition in a "best of" situation, rather than an additive situation. So if the darkness would give you a passive opposition of +2, then any defense roll of less than that gets boosted to +2.

It's one of those things that's implied rather than spelled out.

[Kiero]

That said, from what's been posted in this thread, it sounds like FATE could be used as a far more conventional system, without things like cross-character backstory, players getting input into the decisions and actions of each other's characters, meta-game/meta-narrative control of the "setting physics", etc.

Firstly, FATE is derived from FUDGE, which is a largely traditional system. Two of the three pillars of the game; Skills, Stunts and Aspects; are also pretty regular in how they work. Far too often, people who espouse FATE forget the other two in their design to push Aspects for everything, even to the detriment of Skills and Stunts. This was much clearer in FATE 3.0 (SotC, Dresden Files, Diaspora, etc), but seems to have been blurred in FATE Core.


This is the statement that gives me the greatest sense that FATE could be used for something that I'd enjoy, but it does run counter to other statements in this thread:

On the flip side, tell me what you find interesting / enjoyable about the idea of allowing players to influence each other's character creation in concrete, systemized ways.

It makes for much more cohesive groups and more interesting characters. Interconnections between characters enrich the game and improve everyone enjoyment, this ensures they're more than throwaways given little meaningful thought. It also allows the group to sidestep tiresome unconnected loners with no real reason to be in a group with the other PCs. Or starting out with a collection of strangers and trying to contrive a reason, in-game, as to why they're together.

As far as I'm concerned, even if we don't use a formal system for it, group character creation is mandatory if I'm playing. People creating loner oddballs in isolation to each other, or concepts that are totally mismatched or intrinsically contradictory is not a recipe for a fun, long-term game.

[Max_Killjoy]

Firstly, FATE is derived from FUDGE, which is a largely traditional system. Two of the three pillars of the game; Skills, Stunts and Aspects; are also pretty regular in how they work. Far too often, people who espouse FATE forget the other two in their design to push Aspects for everything, even to the detriment of Skills and Stunts. This was much clearer in FATE 3.0 (SotC, Dresden Files, Diaspora, etc), but seems to have been blurred in FATE Core.


Yeah... sometimes reading FATE "testimonials" can give one the impression that there's nothing to the system but Aspects and the horse-trading of Fate Points.




It makes for much more cohesive groups and more interesting characters. Interconnections between characters enrich the game and improve everyone enjoyment, this ensures they're more than throwaways given little meaningful thought. It also allows the group to sidestep tiresome unconnected loners with no real reason to be in a group with the other PCs. Or starting out with a collection of strangers and trying to contrive a reason, in-game, as to why they're together.

As far as I'm concerned, even if we don't use a formal system for it, group character creation is mandatory if I'm playing. People creating loner oddballs in isolation to each other, or concepts that are totally mismatched or intrinsically contradictory is not a recipe for a fun, long-term game.


I can't really argue with that. I think what crosses the line for me is when it turns to literally... handing the backstory over to another players and saying "OK, now you get to add something". I don't like the default presumption that the characters all know each other, any more than I like the default assumption that they're complete strangers.

Ugh... I'm suffering from flu brain, please be patient, I'm trying to not rant or ramble, and be coherent.

[Quertus]

Quertus, correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be bringing to FATE the D&D assumption that who is/what happens to your character should be under your exclusive control, and everything else under the GM's (you mentioned that you're not playing God, and you're afraid that the

You're not wrong. Although I meant God more literally, as in "He who created Day and Night" in the universe in question. If I am playing God, then, yes, I created the Night aspect; otherwise, no, I did not.


1) I'd say that's it's hardly fair or accurate to describe "who is/what happens to your character should be under your exclusive control, and everything else under the GM's" as a "D&D assumption". It's a very broadly held understanding of how that works, and really has nothing in particular to do with D&D.

I believe, based on the thread title, and the fact that I mentioned upthread that I'm trying to discuss this from as much a D&D / wargame PoV as possible, that the comment, directed at me, was not in any way unjustified.


I still can't wrap my head around why you don't want others input in your character. Even if there isn't a hard rule for it I would hope that you can at least trust your fellows to not do something against your character concept if you explain why it doesn't work.

You know, I could write far too many words about this, and lose the forest for the trees. Lemme cut to the chase. Try role-playing as you. Then try role-playing as you, but as a 12-year-old girl with herpes, who has never been taught to read, much less seen a role-playing game. How much of your history, your personality, your... you... just isn't compatible with that?

I have to make decisions as this character - that's the role-playing part of RPG. I need to understand them - their history, their motivation, their goals. I can't do that from random gibberish, and, even if I could, it wouldn't be the character I want to play.

That's why I don't want others' input into my character.


The experience I've had with D&D 3.5 - I'm using this example because it's most familiar to me - is that, since character creation has so many options and allows for such customization, people tend to build their character - numbers, backstory and all - on their own and then come to the first session with it. Since they spent so much time on character creation, they feel very protective of their PC and are understandably averse to making changes (such as important connections with the other PCs). The result is that we have to clear the hurdle of PCs awkwardly meeting, and pretend that them working together is not arbitrary. Even if I as a DM provide good reason (generally, uniting them through danger or a common goal), party dynamics are... rough around the edges, because characters were not created with the purpose of being a narratively interesting ensemble. (And I'm a fan of those, like the ensembles we get in Whedon shows for example). This happens even if there's a session zero, and no matter how much I beg them to work together and with me before and during creation to have a cohesive and interesting group.

With FATE, the "build" is very much simplified, which means that character creation is more adaptable and easier to figure out during a chat with the group. And actually having intraparty history and dynamics built into the system, right from the get-go, is both interesting and enjoyable to me, whether I'm a GM or a player.
I acknowledge that it doesn't theoretically need to be systemized, but having it systemized ensures it will happen, and I'm grateful to the system for emphasizing ensemble dynamics in this way. It's consistent with the narratively-focused FATE, and it admittedly caters to my personal gaming preferences.

I'll add one thing: for this to work (or any collective game, really), FATE assumes that the players are friends, can communicate reasonably, and all try to have fun together. Of course nobody should be stuck with an inconsistent character or an abhorrent backstory. If you detest something another player came up with for your backstory, they should agree to change it. Of course a douchebag who exploits the system to say "haha, now your character has chlamydia" should not have their way (or even be here, really). But if everyone plays the same game, I find it to be an enriching experience. (Also, they're the backstory aspects, not your current personality, which you still get to decide).

Give me amnesia, and how similar will the person you find be to the one who posts here as "Quertus"? Not terribly, I'd hazard a guess, because most of my decisions are informed by my history.

I can't speak for how most humans operate, but me? I'm a learning machine. My history, and what I've taken away from it, is who I am. Change my history, and you change who I am.

I run my characters much the same way.

I'm accustomed to the notion of the drop-in game. I find the experience of running a single charter under 20+ different GMs much richer than any single GM could ever deliver. So, yeah, I'm invested in my character, absolutely not interested in changing their history for this one game, and I'd appreciate the ability to put more thought put into why and how we work together than ack, danger. That's likely to get as many people trying to kill each other as you see in the pilot episode of Firefly. How many main characters got shot / killed / KO'd / had a gun pointed at by the other characters? :smalltongue:

I'm not interested in playing an archetype or a caricature, I want to play a character. And I'm interested in how this diverse group of characters will interact organically, rather than acting out scripts in a play. No matter how good said play may be.


It makes for much more cohesive groups and more interesting characters. Interconnections between characters enrich the game and improve everyone enjoyment, this ensures they're more than throwaways given little meaningful thought. It also allows the group to sidestep tiresome unconnected loners with no real reason to be in a group with the other PCs. Or starting out with a collection of strangers and trying to contrive a reason, in-game, as to why they're together.

As far as I'm concerned, even if we don't use a formal system for it, group character creation is mandatory if I'm playing. People creating loner oddballs in isolation to each other, or concepts that are totally mismatched or intrinsically contradictory is not a recipe for a fun, long-term game.

How to explain... Hmmm... Much like I don't want to be crowned king after clearing out rats from the sewers, I want to earn my relationships with other characters.

Much like backstory just isn't the same as actual time spent in game, I want the much richer, fuller version of relationships which develop through play, not the "backstory" version.

[Gravitron5000]

You know, I could write far too many words about this, and lose the forest for the trees. Lemme cut to the chase. Try role-playing as you. Then try role-playing as you, but as a 12-year-old girl with herpes, who has never been taught to read, much less seen a role-playing game. How much of your history, your personality, your... you... just isn't compatible with that?

I have to make decisions as this character - that's the role-playing part of RPG. I need to understand them - their history, their motivation, their goals. I can't do that from random gibberish, and, even if I could, it wouldn't be the character I want to play.

That's why I don't want others' input into my character.

The backstory method described in Fate does not allow other players to force aspects on your character, so you should never get anywhere near this level of extreme deviation in character using it. Rather, it allows you to further characterize your own character by determining how they fit in with other character's backstory.

When you create your backstory event, you frame the situation from which you add an aspect to your character. When the other characters tie themselves to that situation, they create aspects on their own characters that relate to characterization reasons that tie themselves to your situation. This adds definition to their characters and doesn't really affect yours other than linking your character's history together in some way.

When you tie yourself to someone else's backstory event, you add an aspect to your character with relation to how you affected the situation, which is still under your control, not theirs.

No part of this allows other people to add anything to your character, so unless you decide that the 12 year old illiterate you with herpes is the way you wanted to take your character, I don't see how that could happen.


I'm accustomed to the notion of the drop-in game. I find the experience of running a single charter under 20+ different GMs much richer than any single GM could ever deliver. So, yeah, I'm invested in my character, absolutely not interested in changing their history for this one game, and I'd appreciate the ability to put more thought put into why and how we work together than ack, danger. That's likely to get as many people trying to kill each other as you see in the pilot episode of Firefly. How many main characters got shot / killed / KO'd / had a gun pointed at by the other characters? :smalltongue:

As a GM, I would be wary on taking a character from another game into mine. I've ran into to many balance issues and characters that do not fit in the setting to allow this without reservations.


Much like backstory just isn't the same as actual time spent in game, I want the much richer, fuller version of relationships which develop through play, not the "backstory" version.

And there is nothing stopping this level of development in a game that has some level of initial backstory tying characters together and to the setting.

[Seto]

Give me amnesia, and how similar will the person you find be to the one who posts here as "Quertus"? Not terribly, I'd hazard a guess, because most of my decisions are informed by my history.

I can't speak for how most humans operate, but me? I'm a learning machine. My history, and what I've taken away from it, is who I am. Change my history, and you change who I am.That's fair, I agree. In fact, the function of a good backstory for me is to justify who your character is. In that sense, any backstory input from other players is indeed meaningful to your final character. What I meant is that you first get to broadly define the current character you want to play, and any subsequent backstory input should fit in that general picture.


I run my characters much the same way.

I'm accustomed to the notion of the drop-in game. I find the experience of running a single charter under 20+ different GMs much richer than any single GM could ever deliver. So, yeah, I'm invested in my character, absolutely not interested in changing their history for this one game, and I'd appreciate the ability to put more thought put into why and how we work together than ack, danger. That's likely to get as many people trying to kill each other as you see in the pilot episode of Firefly. How many main characters got shot / killed / KO'd / had a gun pointed at by the other characters? :smalltongue:
On the contrary, I'm the kind of guy who prefers tailor-made characters for each new game. Partly due to your earlier point about how game history defines your character, and I coudn't bring the same character to several different worlds, it just would seem wrong to me (now, several variations on the same character concept? Absolutely). Partly due to the fact that I just enjoy trying out different roleplaying concepts, and thus generally relish the opportunity to create new characters (which doesn't mean I'm not invested in the ones that I do play). I even enjoy well-written pregens, which is not everyone's thing.


I'm not interested in playing an archetype or a caricature, I want to play a character. And I'm interested in how this diverse group of characters will interact organically, rather than acting out scripts in a play. No matter how good said play may be.

How to explain... Hmmm... Much like I don't want to be crowned king after clearing out rats from the sewers, I want to earn my relationships with other characters.

Much like backstory just isn't the same as actual time spent in game, I want the much richer, fuller version of relationships which develop through play, not the "backstory" version.
While I understand your sentiment, my own experience tells me that organic rp/scripted rp is a false dichotomy. I find roleplaying thrives best when you combine flexibility and spontaneity with a general "scripted" direction. I wouldn't compare it to acting out a script, but rather writing one. Role-playing doesn't have to be only reactive - having an idea of where you want to take your character can go a long way towards role-playing organically. If you have an innocent character and want to explore the loss of their illusions through experiencing cruelty, for example, you could arrange with the DM to give you such opportunities. Relationships between PCs are no different. I'm a fan of working together OOC on a meta-level to create a collective IC story. I find it doesn't hinder organic roleplay, but gives it the frame necessary to develop. Of course the planning should be very broad ("we're gonna be rivals and it will develop into honest friendship"), because you need to stay flexible and open to opportunities that arise naturally from the game. Basically, you should have plans, and they should not be set in stone. You should know where you wanna go, but not how exactly you'll get there. That's what works best for me anyway.

I mostly addressed the "in-game script part", but the backstory part works much the same. It doesn't replace in-game interaction, it provides building blocks for it.

[SpoonR]

Yeah... sometimes reading FATE "testimonials" can give one the impression that there's nothing to the system but Aspects and the horse-trading of Fate Points.

I can't really argue with that. I think what crosses the line for me is when it turns to literally... handing the backstory over to another players and saying "OK, now you get to add something". I don't like the default presumption that the characters all know each other, any more than I like the default assumption that they're complete strangers.

Eww. To me testimonials means "long on IMO, short on facts or even actual play details". I try to not write those.

Now, keeping in mind I only know Dresden Fate (which I guess is Fate 3.0)
Stunts are effective but utilitarian, so MOST of them are boring. "+2 in a specific situation". One book example is +2 driving when you're taking shortcuts on our home turf. A more interesting one is (approximately) "you're a {some sort of good holy person} and people are like 'no way would I punch a Rabbi'! "

Other categories can exist. Dresden has actual superhuman powers. Most or all don't require rolls, fate points, or such, they just work. My favorite is "Dude! You're Dead" - you are a walking corpse, and scare "normal" people, cause walking corpse. From what I've heard thirdhand, these 'addons' are specific to a setting, and there's a toolkit to make your own for your setting.

Some descriptions of Fate core backstory in this thread would turn me off too. The DresdenFate version is: you start a story of one of your earlier adventures. Someone else writes in how they helped (or opposed) you. One rule is basically "write what you(PC2) did, not how PC1 responded". There's a couple ways to finish, one is PC1 writes a conclusion/wrapup. Mechanically, you still pick your own Aspect. You don't have to know everyone. Ideally it sets up a "A knows B and D, not C. B knows A and C, not D." six degrees of separation

Why I like: example from Shadowrun. You have contacts. By default contacts are always NPCs. Possibly no one has an NPC in common. Unless you explicitly somehow make the ultra-rich ex-corporate mage PC and the unemployed veteran PC know each other, they don't. So when a Fixer needs to get a crew together, no one has a reason to trust anyone else, so how exactly do they do a good heist? I've been in games that almost went there, but I think the GM required everoyone have the fixer as one contact.

So the Dresden version makes people familiar enough to get along, lets everyone show what their character would do in a couple situations, but does not control your character. A good base to build the "richer, fuller version of relationships" Ultimately, it is just another variation of 'how do yall know each other?'

[Quertus]

The backstory method described in Fate does not allow other players to force aspects on your character, so you should never get anywhere near this level of extreme deviation in character using it. Rather, it allows you to further characterize your own character by determining how they fit in with other character's backstory.

When you create your backstory event, you frame the situation from which you add an aspect to your character. When the other characters tie themselves to that situation, they create aspects on their own characters that relate to characterization reasons that tie themselves to your situation. This adds definition to their characters and doesn't really affect yours other than linking your character's history together in some way.

When you tie yourself to someone else's backstory event, you add an aspect to your character with relation to how you affected the situation, which is still under your control, not theirs.

No part of this allows other people to add anything to your character, so unless you decide that the 12 year old illiterate you with herpes is the way you wanted to take your character, I don't see how that could happen.

Let's see if I understand you.

So, let's say part of my backstory is that... I thought the dojo would be a good place to do drugs, and I accidentally burned down the dojo while high as a kite.

One of the players could say (and I'm totally misquoting a friend of mine here), "yeah, I was totally there, drinking all the coke, snorting all the whiskey, and shooting all the pot with you".

And another could say, "I remember that night. I was taking a walk, when I noticed the dojo on fire. I thought I saw people inside, and rushed in to try to get them out. And that's how I got this scar."

Is that more how it's supposed to go?


As a GM, I would be wary on taking a character from another game into mine. I've ran into to many balance issues and characters that do not fit in the setting to allow this without reservations.

... On a board that largely focuses on D&D 3.x, you're gonna cite "existing character" for game balance issues?

I've seen a lot of game balance issues in my day, but "existing character" falls way down the list of causes after Mary Sue, random chance, build skill, inherent system imbalance, DM favoritism, blatant bullying, less blatant bullying, player skills, challenge/build mismatch, and even by design.

But having reservations is completely fair.

Personally, I enjoy exploring the setting as someone "not from around here". But, until 3.x and warforged, I never tried to play a robot in D&D, until WotC legitimized it. Despite the number of robots I'd fought in D&D games in earlier editions.

So, just as fact is stranger than fiction, WotC RAW is stranger than any PC character / setting disconnect I've ever witnessed.


And there is nothing stopping this level of development in a game that has some level of initial backstory tying characters together and to the setting.

Well, most players I know are too lazy to reinvent the wheel, if you know what I mean. Once they've checked this off their list, "party has reason to be together, check", they'll not only never look at it again, they'll be actively against wasting time yakking about it. For a certain (common in my circles) mindset, dealing with it in the backstory makes it dealt with, and discourages evolving social dynamics.

But, yeah, if your players aren't like that, I'd certainly hope this would be the case

[Knaight]

Yeah... sometimes reading FATE "testimonials" can give one the impression that there's nothing to the system but Aspects and the horse-trading of Fate Points.

It's because it's what stands out. As was mentioned before, Fate is descended from Fudge, which is pretty traditional. Just how traditional isn't mentioned - Fudge was written by a GURPS writer as effectively a more rules light, even more generic version of GURPS. One of my favorite mechanics in it involves a straight up logarithmic scale (which gets around a problem a lot of systems have where once things get too small or too flimsy the quantization of mechanics start causing major problems, e.g. HP and damage systems in GURPS). Aspects are what makes Fate different, and while a lot of the crunchier aspects of Fudge were cut, at least temporarily, the system is two generations removed from GURPS.


Let's see if I understand you.

So, let's say part of my backstory is that... I thought the dojo would be a good place to do drugs, and I accidentally burned down the dojo while high as a kite.

One of the players could say (and I'm totally misquoting a friend of mine here), "yeah, I was totally there, drinking all the coke, snorting all the whiskey, and shooting all the pot with you".

And another could say, "I remember that night. I was taking a walk, when I noticed the dojo on fire. I thought I saw people inside, and rushed in to try to get them out. And that's how I got this scar."

Is that more how it's supposed to go?
Usually it's only two characters at once, and it's generally a bit broader (e.g. if you're playing pulp adventurers as in SotC you have likely interacted with them on a previous adventure).

[kyoryu]

Yeah... sometimes reading FATE "testimonials" can give one the impression that there's nothing to the system but Aspects and the horse-trading of Fate Points.

Believe it or not, as a Fate fan, this is something i actively try to combat. I don't personally think the game plays best when Fate Points are flying around like crazy.



I think Fate's most story or writing "very unrealistic but impossible to do a story without" is Conceding, especially the lethal/nonlethal decision. The battle loser concedes and dictates the outcome (with some rules & lot of table input to keep it reasonable). Outcome can explicitly include surviving an encounter with someone out to kill you (surviving might be of the Batman crawls into Batmobile & hits the home button, spends the next weeks or months recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, or the Byakuya "he'll die in minutes anyway so just ignore him")

That's... not entirely correct.

First, the presumption is that most fights/conflicts in Fate aren't about killing the other side. Let's take getting into a castle as an example. Ultimately, the PCs don't want the guards dead - they want in the castle. Similarly, the guards don't want the PCs dead - they want them out of the castle. Neither side would necessarily *mind* that, but it's not the default assumption.

Secondly, a Concession isn't about losing. It's mostly about *retreating*. Losing is being Taken Out, and means you lose, straight up, and the guy that took you out gets to decide what happens to you, up to and including death. By Conceding, you back out *before* that happens, and so lose what the fight is *about* (you don't get to go into the castle), while retaining some control over what happens to you *personally*. But whatever the fight was about, you lose, and what happens to you cannot include you winning that. This makes Concessions in the cases where, really, it *is* about killing the other character kind of difficult :)

So, for the Batman example, crawling away with multiple gunshots is an option - it just presumes that the Joker (or whomever) is actually interested in doing something else - launching his laughing gas missile or whatever. So Batman, beat and bloodied, retreats and drives off, while Joker finishes what he was trying to do in the first place.

Third, the other side has to agree to the Concession. It's not an automatic thing that can't be vetoed.


The backstory method described in Fate does not allow other players to force aspects on your character, so you should never get anywhere near this level of extreme deviation in character using it. Rather, it allows you to further characterize your own character by determining how they fit in with other character's backstory.

Indeed. When a character inserts themself in your story, *they* get the aspect, not you. It's when you insert yourself in *their* stories that *you* gain the aspect. At no point does another player get to tell you who your character is.

[Cluedrew]

You know, I could write far too many words about this, and lose the forest for the trees. Lemme cut to the chase. Try role-playing as you. Then try role-playing as you, but as a 12-year-old girl with herpes, who has never been taught to read, much less seen a role-playing game. How much of your history, your personality, your... you... just isn't compatible with that?I find this particular example just a little bit unsettling. ... Mind you I have a few ideas about what me as that child would look like. Still, I usually actively try to stop playing myself a lot of the time. Myself is not the goal most of the time.


I have to make decisions as this character - that's the role-playing part of RPG. I need to understand them - their history, their motivation, their goals. I can't do that from random gibberish, and, even if I could, it wouldn't be the character I want to play.Um... unless you are stating that this will lead to the creation of random gibberish, I don't understand what you are saying them. There history, motivation and goals are still there. And if not you get to create them yourself as you wanted to in the first place.

To clarify I don't have any strong arguments for group character creation, I'm just confused by some of the arguments against it.

[Quertus]

While I understand your sentiment, my own experience tells me that organic rp/scripted rp is a false dichotomy. I find roleplaying thrives best when you combine flexibility and spontaneity with a general "scripted" direction. I wouldn't compare it to acting out a script, but rather writing one. Role-playing doesn't have to be only reactive - having an idea of where you want to take your character can go a long way towards role-playing organically. If you have an innocent character and want to explore the loss of their illusions through experiencing cruelty, for example, you could arrange with the DM to give you such opportunities. Relationships between PCs are no different. I'm a fan of working together OOC on a meta-level to create a collective IC story. I find it doesn't hinder organic roleplay, but gives it the frame necessary to develop. Of course the planning should be very broad ("we're gonna be rivals and it will develop into honest friendship"), because you need to stay flexible and open to opportunities that arise naturally from the game. Basically, you should have plans, and they should not be set in stone. You should know where you wanna go, but not how exactly you'll get there. That's what works best for me anyway.

In a thread I created a while back, I discussed how I've always had epicly bad luck asking GMs to include something specific in the campaign. So I can't imagine this working for me. If I'd want to run "loss of innocence", I'd build an innocent PC, and keep running them under different GMs until one happened to provide the correct trigger.

Fortunately for me, I rarely want to run any particular story. If I want to run something particular, I usually only care about running a particular character. Otherwise, just a character I understand and care about.

And... just as I don't get a sense of accomplishment for being crowned king after clearing the sewers of rats, I don't get a sense of accomplishment for following some pre-scripted character path. I want to earn my accomplishments. I want to come by them honest.

To each their own, of course, but that's my motivation.

[Quertus]

I find this particular example just a little bit unsettling. ... Mind you I have a few ideas about what me as that child would look like. Still, I usually actively try to stop playing myself a lot of the time. Myself is not the goal most of the time.

Um... unless you are stating that this will lead to the creation of random gibberish, I don't understand what you are saying them. There history, motivation and goals are still there. And if not you get to create them yourself as you wanted to in the first place.

To clarify I don't have any strong arguments for group character creation, I'm just confused by some of the arguments against it.

Well, what I am arguing against here is obviously not the way fate handles group character creation, so it's a moot point for this thread.

Let's go meta for a minute.

Let's pretend you are a character, and have a player.

I say "you", because, presumably, for any given reader, "you" is the individual you have the most knowledge about, experience with, understanding of. So "you" is the one for whom this explanation makes the most (non)sense.

Anyway, suppose your player was trying to create you. With full authorship, creating you in this world, you'd successfully look like, well, you. You'd have your history, your friends, your personality. You'd be the "you" that they were trying to build.

But now take some of that authorship out of your player's hands.

In my example, some other players, random tables, the GM, whatever, dictated certain characteristics. Would you be the same person, making the same posts on this board? Lemme answer that: no.

Now, for the fate example, all it says is, whichever random X of us are PCs in your game, you need to know and have interacted with Y of us IRL.

Still might be difficult to fit into your backstory, and still make you "you", but hardly as onerous as what I was picturing based on other games I've played.

[kyoryu]

To clarify I don't have any strong arguments for group character creation, I'm just confused by some of the arguments against it.

It's a very mild requirement. "At some point in your life, you interacted with this character. You can choose how you interacted with them. Other characters interacted with you, and they can choose how they interacted with you."

Honestly, if you can't handle that level of input, I think that an RPG is going to be difficult in general.

In order to solve temporal problems, I usually frame this as "okay, think of this game like a TV show. These things we're talking about? They're the first six episodes. Go." So they end up being fairly recent, and also talk about how y'all met.

The benefits? It helps to get everyone on the same page about what style of game you're going for, and with most of the characters knowing each other, you don't get the "meet in a bar" or "why are these people working together" bits. It's also pretty fun.

[Max_Killjoy]

To Max_Killjoy: I never have found it confusing, nor seen anyone else confuse it. Although you might be the only person I know for whom the distinction is particularly important.




I believe, based on the thread title, and the fact that I mentioned upthread that I'm trying to discuss this from as much a D&D / wargame PoV as possible, that the comment, directed at me, was not in any way unjustified.


I may also be a bit too hairtrigger after the whole "your ideas all come from D&D" thing. :smalleek:

[Fri]

Let's see if I understand you.

So, let's say part of my backstory is that... I thought the dojo would be a good place to do drugs, and I accidentally burned down the dojo while high as a kite.

One of the players could say (and I'm totally misquoting a friend of mine here), "yeah, I was totally there, drinking all the coke, snorting all the whiskey, and shooting all the pot with you".

And another could say, "I remember that night. I was taking a walk, when I noticed the dojo on fire. I thought I saw people inside, and rushed in to try to get them out. And that's how I got this scar."

Is that more how it's supposed to go?


I find this great. and will now use this as example if I ever use the "generating character together" method, thank you. Now THIS is how you make an interwoven backstory.

[Gravitron5000]

Let's see if I understand you.

So, let's say part of my backstory is that... I thought the dojo would be a good place to do drugs, and I accidentally burned down the dojo while high as a kite.

One of the players could say (and I'm totally misquoting a friend of mine here), "yeah, I was totally there, drinking all the coke, snorting all the whiskey, and shooting all the pot with you".

And another could say, "I remember that night. I was taking a walk, when I noticed the dojo on fire. I thought I saw people inside, and rushed in to try to get them out. And that's how I got this scar."

Is that more how it's supposed to go?

Pretty much.

From the above, you could say that you Owe A Debt To The Dojo, the first player could be a Misguided Party Animal, and the second player might believe that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, if that is the way they want to characterize their characters.



... On a board that largely focuses on D&D 3.x, you're gonna cite "existing character" for game balance issues?


In the context of the above, I've mostly DM'd old school games, so that's where my reservations come from. Dang You Monty Haul!!! Dang You To HECK!!!