What do you think of FATE?

[Mighty_Chicken]

I'm planning to reunite my old gaming gang, and though I'd love to play D&D with a more hardcore group, it is too complicated and slow for men reaching their 30's with too little time to, well, do anything.

I'm reading Fate Core's ebook and it seems to me I could go straight to the fun part with it (roleplay, dramatic situations, fun stories). I like D&D's simulationism of fantasy, but I think all the rules get in the way of what my friends like the most.

So, what are your experiences with Fate? Do you miss anything from D&D when you play it? Does it work as intended?

[WbtE]

I doubt that FATE is going to fill the bill of "lighter D&D". Try Swords and Wizardry or one of the Microlites if you want fantasy dungeoncrashing without stacks of books.

[CombatOwl]

I'm planning to reunite my old gaming gang, and though I'd love to play D&D with a more hardcore group, it is too complicated and slow for men reaching their 30's with too little time to, well, do anything.

I'm reading Fate Core's ebook and it seems to me I could go straight to the fun part with it (roleplay, dramatic situations, fun stories). I like D&D's simulationism of fantasy, but I think all the rules get in the way of what my friends like the most.

I strongly, strongly suggest you use the Freeport Companion for Fate. It provides a lot of rules that make it more D&Dish.

So, what are your experiences with Fate? Do you miss anything from D&D when you play it? Does it work as intended?

Yes, it does, provided that the players can work their head around it. It usually takes then stumbling through a campaign to really get the idea.

[Zavoniki]

I have some serious issues with FATE Aspects. The fact that every Aspect is mechanically identical makes the game seem boring and dull. I've found that pretty much every other Rules Light generic system is better than FATE for doing anything in any genre due to making characters feel mechanically more distinct.

That's a pretty gamist difference however and despite the fact that I personally don't like FATE, I do think its quite a good system for those that just want a more narrativist approach to gaming.

[Kol Korran]

I have ambuiguous feelings towards FATE: My group have recently tried playing it, exactly due to the time constraints and D&D's rule complexity that you mention.

I made a log of my experiment (In my sig if interested. Warning- it's a long read), but here are the major points I came up with:
1) FATE's frame of mind isn't "D&D light", it's something different alltogether. D&D is a simulationist system, trying to give rules on how to do everything from a "realistic" point of view. FATE is a more narrative one, which tries to see what makes for a cooler story, reality be damned. This is a big point for FATE in my opinion, but it's also a sort of weakness. It makes it less a game of overcoming challenges, and more a game of telling a cool story. It's quite important to relay that to the group, and choose what fits your group better. Some like the challenge of overcoming mechanical obstacles, some want to make a story worth of a movie. You need to figure it out.

2) I HIGHLY (Can't recommend it enough) trying to play the game with people who know the right mind set. We didn't, and it gave rise to lots of issues and problems, the two main ones about the use of Compels (What is worthy compel? when is it too little? too much? Players became afraid of compels, while this is a force that drivesthe game in FATE really). The second one is the amount of added rules, in the forms of extras- what adds to the game, what makes it too complex?

3) FATE is immensely easy to prepare a session for, and it's fantastically easy to improvise with. I REALLY loved that about the system. You could create an NPC, a character or such to fit exactly what you want in about 1-2 minutes top, even on the fly. You can estimate the difficulty of a task within a few seconds, and not worry about checking rules, tables and such. This gave the party a lot of room to maneuver and try out crazy ideas, as well as keep up the flow of the game.

4) Some players however resented the relative lack of complexity. We played in a post apocalyptic setting, and some players were really interested in better gear and such. FATE simplifies the effect of gear greatly, and they resented this. We tried accommodating to it by creating a sort of an "equipment and weapons" extra, but it felt lacking. Also, if you're players like "Phat Lewts" Then this is not the game for it.

5) Conflicts: This became a major issue in my party. As one of my readers said it, conflict in a FATE game is largly a game of betting and "who's chicken". The party usually learns to stack up advantages or invokes on 1-2 characters that deals a massive effect against the enemy, and people just add up more and more on each side, till they areafraid to use fate points or can't create any more advantages.

This made most battles quite boring after a point. Note that I have very little experience in how to prepare cool battles in FATE, so theremight be quite a bit more to go into.

I did however loved social conflicts, especially the Contest mechanic, which gave a nice dramatic progression of the conflict. It's my favorite mechanic of the game which I incorporated to my D&D game.

6) Choices and possibility of Failure:While all RPGs are about choices, FATE and other narrative based RPGs are much more so. The game revolves about choosing between various choices, with no clear one, and giving up something to gain another. FATE is driven as much by failure to do taks as it is by succeeding in them. While in D&D the party "MUST" defeat the dragon, in FATE it's quite plausible for them to fail- it takes the story in a different way, and drives it. You need to make it clear to the palyers that failure IS a viable option at times. It's just another crossroad in the story. I love that, but it takes getting used to.

I think this covers my main issues. I would love to try FATE again (My group returned to playing Pathfinder for now), but hopefully with someone who understands it better, learn it from someone who knows how to THINK Fate.

Good luck to you!

[Black Jester]

Fate is the current candidate for the seasonal wave of hype that comes and goes and proclaims one system the greatest ever before those who fall for that hype actually play it for more than few sessions and are disappointed because the system cannot fulfill the exaggerated expections. Nothing new there, but Fate is a particularly overrated game in this context.

have played it more than once and this is about the nicest thing I can say about this game. I am not too willing to try out that experience again. It is also one of the few games (the Harry Dresden version, that is), that I sold again without any reluctance or hesitation (just if it hasn't been clear before: I am a bit of a system junkie and own about 40 to 50 different games, not counting various editions of the same game or different systems using the same setting).
Fate might very well be the most pretentious game I have ever suffered through, and the way the aspects work, benefitting mostly from vagueness and double-talk because it is only the quantity, not the quality of an aspect that counts… it is just a really odd (an bad) design decision. Adding the overtly abstract nature of the rules and the usual resulting disassociation of events through vague and unsupportive abstractive mechanics (you know, like darkness that only actually obfuscates vision if someone decides it does) just makes it a game a chore of aspect-heaping and distasteful haggling for resource points (which strictly speaking have no true equivalent within the actual setting, and therefore lack any right to exist except as ugly metagaming pollution).
In the consequence, you stop playing the game, you merely play the system - and for me, that is a one-way trip to the garbage bin.
I would strongly recommend to avoid Fate. In two years, only a few hardcore fans will continue to play it and the whole hype will probably have disappeared anyway.

[Actana]

I like Fate, though I've only ran a single around 30 hour game with it (in around 10 sessions). This was with the Spirit of the Century ruleset, which is an older and more unpolished version than the new Fate Core. We played a steampunk 1920s post WWI adventure game and by all accounts I'd call it a success. The game did suffer from people being new to the system though; while Fate may seem a simple game to play, aspects are a lot more difficult to run in practice than they sound. Combat in particular felt fairly unfulfilling overall, though I'd pin that on both the lack of experience with the system and the system itself partially, as SotC doesn't have that many optional rules in play for combat.

With Fate Core out, it does feel a far more streamlined and better version of the game, and I'd love to try it out sometimes. The only problem is getting people into the mindset that Fate requires. It's a highly different beast than any D&D and requires calibration of expectations even more than many other games. Aspects can be hard to wrap your head around if you come from a strictly gaming/simulationist background, and the fact that you actually need to talk to the other players when creating your character has single-handedly destroyed any and all attempts to run Fate since my first foray into the system.

There are some criticisms I could deal to it, but most are easy to houserule away, like the requirement of two character-tying aspects. Not a huge fan of that amount, as it does rather force characters into certain things. It's easy to just change though, and Fate does encourage that.

Overall, I'd like to play in a game with a more experienced Fate GM, to see how things work, especially on the aspects part. But, for now I'm just content trying to get yet another Fate game going. I wonder how people would react to a fantasy adventure type of game...

[erikun]

I've played Fate several times, and have enjoyed the game. I haven't played the newest Fate Core system yet, although it certainly looks good. Using Aspects to represent facets of a character that are both positive and negative are nice, as it gives mechanics that the players have control over for their important background events.

Fate is not a substitute for D&D, though. D&D is based on the idea of a DM throwing up a challenge (combat, trap, obstacle) and the party overcoming it. Fate is much more about the GM throwing up an situation and the party interacting with it. They could overcome it as in D&D, but they also have the option by default of working with it, or going around it, or most other things that the players can think of.

This different mindset is perhaps the biggest change in switching from D&D to Fate; if the players or GM think that the only solution is to fight off a challenge, then a lot of challenges will feel the same. Using Aspects requires a much more proactive approach from the players, meaning that some groups will ignore that aspect of the game in favor of just rolling the same attack every turn. And some people seem to prefer a system that sets out the skills available for players to choose from, rather than create a character's skills from nothing - Fate can do this (Dresden Files does) but it isn't the default.


If you're looking for another system similar to D&D but lighter, might I suggest looking into some of the retro-clones? These are systems based off the (simplier) earlier versions of D&D, although with more cleaned up mechanics. Trust me, an AD&D character sheet is a lot easier to manage than a D&D3e one! Plus, since they are generally quicker to setup and play, it wouldn't be so bad to spend just one session or two putting together characters and giving it a playthrough, to see how you like it.

[The Mormegil]

Great system if your party is in it with the right mindset. Horrible system otherwise. Objectively, it is worth a read just because the design ideas inside it pretty much revolutionize the standard RPG formula and may impact your DMing greatly.

The whole idea of making a game system that strongly rewards and encourages the behavior you want your players to have, instead of modeling it, is a powerful one. Of course, if that behavior is not what you want your characters to have... it falls flat. Also I kind of dislike the excessive simplicity of the battle system (it does get a bit boring after a while), which is why I'd recommend low focus on "fighting" (in general, conflicts) and more on moving the story forward.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I very much agree with everyone who's been talking about different mindsets. As Zavoniki pointed out, it's a narrativist system, rather than a gamist/simulationist one. The darkness isn't a constant issue, because it's usually not a constant issue in a book or movie-- hindrances appear once (the Tag) and then tend to remain as a sort of background coloration, because it's not exciting to keep harping on Jack Action's bullet wound. They'll only appear again at a particularly important moment (when you spend a Fate point)
Speaking personally, that bugged me. No so much that I hated the system or anything, environmental issues in particular I wound up houserulling to grant a repeatable "half-tag."

So... yes. FATE works as it intends, but its intention is pretty different from D&D-style games.

[Pluto!]

I've played Fate 3.0 (the minimalistic PDF that's basically just Fudge+Aspects+Pyramid), Spirit of the Century, Diaspora and Starblazer, and enjoyed all of them.

The game is not well-suited to the D&D design of "kill a thing, take its stuff, kill another thing, take its stuff..." In fact, the most compelling part I found of the later non-generic versions of the game was that they came packaged in books that promoted the particular flavor of hammy action that the system does manage relatively well.

What I didn't like about Starblazer and Spirit especially was that in fleshing out the specific flavor of the stories the games would support, the system, which I'd heard talked up for its lightness, started to get bogged down under add-on rules (the Stunts are what I'm thinking about especially, where the GM starts needing more rote system knowledge to play the "judge's" role). Diaspora mostly escaped this complaint because its subject matter and expectations didn't come with such rules-light expectations, and the core system got by because it was more or less what I'd expected.

[CombatOwl]

I have some serious issues with FATE Aspects. The fact that every Aspect is mechanically identical makes the game seem boring and dull.

Aspects are not, in fact, mechanically identical. They can't be used in all situations, and certainly different aspects are used for different sorts of compels and complications. The fact that they all can be used for a certain set of functions does not mean that they can all be used at the same time or for anything you do.

You're looking at this from the perspective of "oh, since it can be used to give a +2 bonus to any action it can be tagged during, it must be the same as all other aspects." But that's certainly not the case, since only some aspects can be tagged for any given action. "Bull In A China Shop" may be good for breaking down doors, but you're not going to be able to tag it for rewiring a security system. In fact, that will almost certainly be tagged by the GM to make such delicate work more difficult. That's very different from, say, "Part-Time Stage Magician" which would have utility in almost precisely the opposite situations.

That's setting aside the fact that the majority of what aspects do isn't mechanically defined at all. They're used for way more than the mechanical bonuses you can get by invoking them with fate points or free invocations.

I've found that pretty much every other Rules Light generic system is better than FATE for doing anything in any genre due to making characters feel mechanically more distinct.

Probably because you've been using aspects incorrectly.

[Zavoniki]

Aspects are not, in fact, mechanically identical. They can't be used in all situations, and certainly different aspects are used for different sorts of compels and complications. The fact that they all can be used for a certain set of functions does not mean that they can all be used at the same time or for anything you do.

You're looking at this from the perspective of "oh, since it can be used to give a +2 bonus to any action it can be tagged during, it must be the same as all other aspects." But that's certainly not the case, since only some aspects can be tagged for any given action. "Bull In A China Shop" may be good for breaking down doors, but you're not going to be able to tag it for rewiring a security system. In fact, that will almost certainly be tagged by the GM to make such delicate work more difficult. That's very different from, say, "Part-Time Stage Magician" which would have utility in almost precisely the opposite situations.

That's setting aside the fact that the majority of what aspects do isn't mechanically defined at all. They're used for way more than the mechanical bonuses you can get by invoking them with fate points or free invocations.



Probably because you've been using aspects incorrectly.

No I understand that Aspects cannot always be used, that is not the problem. The problem is WHEN you use an Aspect it will always have the same mechanical effect. That's really bad design and makes everything seem the same. I really like in theory what FATE is trying to do. I just don't like the execution. Honestly just adding something to differentiate aspects mechanically a little more would probably do it.

Comparing FATE to my personal gold standard of Generic Rules Light Systems, Cortex. Cortex can literally do almost every single thing FATE can do, but better. I vastly prefer its skill system, it has FATE Points in Plot Points(they even work the same way) and you have Traits(Positive/Negative) that work like Aspects, except they are mechanically distinct from each other due to being represented as a dice number. If you wanted Enviromental Aspects you could easily add that in and let people spend Plot Points to use them. Cortex also has working rules for gear and equipment. About the only thing FATE can do better is track someone's mental stress due to actually having mechanics for that and it doesn't seem like that would be too hard to house rule.

However, I didn't think of doing a lot of these things in Cortex until I had read FATE. I like what FATE is trying to do, I just don't like its execution.

[Airk]

No I understand that Aspects cannot always be used, that is not the problem. The problem is WHEN you use an Aspect it will always have the same mechanical effect. That's really bad design and makes everything seem the same. I really like in theory what FATE is trying to do. I just don't like the execution. Honestly just adding something to differentiate aspects mechanically a little more would probably do it.

It's not "bad" design, it's just design you don't agree with; Clearly, it works very nicely for some people.

That said, I'll just reiterate what most people have already said, and what some people can't wrap their heads around. It's NOT LIKE D&D. It's not a "challenge" game, where the objective is to overcome obstacles, it's an "interesting things" game, where you may well fail at some challenges, and that's fine. It doesn't have serious "Gear" and "levelling up" so people who want to see their character "improve" may be frustrated. People who like seeing their character's story evolve will not. (Did Indiana Jones "level up" between the first and third films? Was it ever important what he had in his backpack?)

I wouldn't precisely recommend it for people who WANT to play D&D. There are PLENTY of games that are basically "D&D with less rules" that you can play for that. On the other hand, if your old D&D games never quite scratched the itch you wanted them to, or if you'd rather not spend so much time fighting goblins to level up, or if you just want a different type of gaming experience, GO FOR IT, because it's a very interesting system for some purposes.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

D&D is based on the idea of a DM throwing up a challenge (combat, trap, obstacle) and the party overcoming it. Fate is much more about the GM throwing up an situation and the party interacting with it. They could overcome it as in D&D, but they also have the option by default of working with it, or going around it, or most other things that the players can think of.

It's NOT LIKE D&D. It's not a "challenge" game, where the objective is to overcome obstacles, it's an "interesting things" game, where you may well fail at some challenges, and that's fine.

So Fate is a game where you can fight creatures, avoid creatures, talk to creatures, or fail to do any of the above? Like, say, every RPG ever?

Fate and D&D are certainly different in many respects, but the idea that D&D is a linear series of fights in a dungeon thrown in front of you by a DM that you need to overcome while Fate is an open-ended sandbox that you can explore is completely mistaken. In fact, it's just as likely that a D&D game is run as a sandbox (see: hexcrawl games, modules like the Caves of Chaos, high-level PCs having the ability to be proactive about traveling around and changing the world, etc.) while a Fate game is run as a more linear plot due to the group wanting to do things that would make a good story and the Fate point economy letting the GM and players nudge things into line with that single narrative.

Neither approach is better than the other in either game. You can do a straightforward dungeon crawl or a political sandbox in either game, it's just a question of whether you accomplish them with lots of complex rules and mechanical variety or fewer streamlined rules and mechanical simplicity--and yes, you can "do D&D" in Fate with appropriate tweaking, though there are enough pseudo-D&D games out there that it wouldn't be my first choice to do so.

[Airk]

So Fate is a game where you can fight creatures, avoid creatures, talk to creatures, or fail to do any of the above? Like, say, every RPG ever?

Yeah, but how many D&D games actually involve LOSING fights? Be serious. And regardless, the decision motivators are completely different.

In a D&D game, players are going to decide to fight or not fight based on potential rewards, risks, resupply, who has how many spells left, or whatever. In a FATE game, whether the fight happens is going to be determined pretty much by whether it sounds interesting to fight this stuff. Risk/Reward basically doesn't enter into it.

D&D is a game about overcoming challenges. That's what it is. You get XP by killing/looting/defeating/completing quests. The incentive is to overcome things. That's not the incentive in FATE.

Fate and D&D are certainly different in many respects, but the idea that D&D is a linear series of fights in a dungeon thrown in front of you by a DM that you need to overcome while Fate is an open-ended sandbox that you can explore is completely mistaken.

Wow, you missed the point entirely.

In fact, it's just as likely that a D&D game is run as a sandbox (see: hexcrawl games, modules like the Caves of Chaos, high-level PCs having the ability to be proactive about traveling around and changing the world, etc.) while a Fate game is run as a more linear plot due to the group wanting to do things that would make a good story and the Fate point economy letting the GM and players nudge things into line with that single narrative.

The hex crawl is still about overcoming the challenges that you encounter in those squares, and that's still NOT what drives the 'linear' FATE story along.

FATE would be a stupid game to run a hex crawl in, IMHO.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Yeah, but how many D&D games actually involve LOSING fights? Be serious.

...if you've never lost a fight in your D&D games, your games are very different from any I've ever heard of.

The lethality of the low levels (1-6ish in AD&D, 1-3ish in 3e) is legendary, almost every player has their favorite TPK story or player death story ("Remember that time Dave decided to sneak up on the great wyrm red dragon as a 4th level thief?"), and every D&D forum has seen long threads about whether a DM should fudge rolls to save players from SoDs and such. And that's just talking about PCs losing by dying, when I could go on and on about pricesses that fail to be saved, monsters who make lucky saving throws and escape to wreak havoc elsewhere, parties who are knocked unconscious and captured, and so forth.

And regardless, the decision motivators are completely different.

In a D&D game, players are going to decide to fight or not fight based on potential rewards, risks, resupply, who has how many spells left, or whatever. In a FATE game, whether the fight happens is going to be determined pretty much by whether it sounds interesting to fight this stuff. Risk/Reward basically doesn't enter into it.

So in Fate, you've never decided on an in-game approach to take based on how many consequences each PC has, whether you can afford the hit to Resources that a bribe would require, whether you have the time to pull off a ritual in DFRPG, whether being taken out would prevent accomplishing your objectives in time, or anything similar? Or perhaps you've wanted to talk things out instead of fighting, but your GM has compelled your Scottish character's Dinnae Question Me Honor aspect when someone insulted him, and you have to weigh the pros and cons of fighting or paying a Fate point to avoid it?

I mean, seriously, claiming that risk/reward doesn't enter into a decision regarding combat in any system is kind of ridiculous.

D&D is a game about overcoming challenges. That's what it is. You get XP by killing/looting/defeating/completing quests. The incentive is to overcome things. That's not the incentive in FATE.

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten that you have no incentive in Fate to reveal significant plot details, defeat a major villain, shake up the campaign world, or do other quest-completion-like things. It's not like those are specific examples given in the Advancement chapter of the Fate Core book or anything.

Wow, you missed the point entirely.

Not at all. Erikun's exact words were:

Fate is much more about the GM throwing up an situation and the party interacting with it. They could overcome it as in D&D, but they also have the option by default of working with it, or going around it, or most other things that the players can think of.

If that's not a claim that D&D only involves overcoming DM-designated challenges while Fate (and not D&D) involves roleplaying and exploration, I don't know what it is.

The hex crawl is still about overcoming the challenges that you encounter in those squares, and that's still NOT what drives the 'linear' FATE story along.

FATE would be a stupid game to run a hex crawl in, IMHO.

I'm not sure you're very familiar with hexcrawls, because they're as much (or more) about exploring new places and getting along in the wilds while conserving and intelligently using resources than they are about walking into a hex, killing what's there, walking to the next one, killing what's there, and repeating ad infinitum.

Fate would be great for hexcrawls. Its stress tracks let you represent lack of sleep, enduring day-long treks in the hot sun, getting diseases from a fetid swamp, and so forth; it has very few combat-focused skills and plenty of mobility and roleplaying skills; Create Advantage and terrain aspects can liven up climbing very tall mountains, sneaking through goblin-infested mines, and other scenery-centric missions; and its lack of detail for gear means you can focus on the exploration and not on whether you brought two torches instead of three.


As I said before, Fate is not specifically tailored for a D&D style of play, nor is it the best system to use if you want to "play D&D" using another system. But a lot of wonderful benefits are being ascribed to Fate in this thread that literally every RPG does (like "allowing you to roleplay things out"), and some blatantly false things are being claimed about D&D and Fate (like "Fate doesn't incentivize you to overcome challenges" and "you don't lose fights in D&D"), and in a thread about whether Fate is usable for D&D-style games I think it's important that those misconceptions be cleared up.

[Rhynn]

I'm planning to reunite my old gaming gang, and though I'd love to play D&D with a more hardcore group, it is too complicated and slow for men reaching their 30's with too little time to, well, do anything.

Check out my sig for links to retroclones of D&D, including many free ones that cost nothing to try out! Most of them fit the bill for "lighter D&D" perfectly!

[Zavoniki]

It's not "bad" design, it's just design you don't agree with; Clearly, it works very nicely for some people.

That said, I'll just reiterate what most people have already said, and what some people can't wrap their heads around. It's NOT LIKE D&D. It's not a "challenge" game, where the objective is to overcome obstacles, it's an "interesting things" game, where you may well fail at some challenges, and that's fine. It doesn't have serious "Gear" and "levelling up" so people who want to see their character "improve" may be frustrated. People who like seeing their character's story evolve will not. (Did Indiana Jones "level up" between the first and third films? Was it ever important what he had in his backpack?)

I wouldn't precisely recommend it for people who WANT to play D&D. There are PLENTY of games that are basically "D&D with less rules" that you can play for that. On the other hand, if your old D&D games never quite scratched the itch you wanted them to, or if you'd rather not spend so much time fighting goblins to level up, or if you just want a different type of gaming experience, GO FOR IT, because it's a very interesting system for some purposes.

Yes it is bad design. Aspects are identical entities in terms of the mechanical effects they have which means that it is impossible for them to mechanically add anything to the narrative of a game because there is no difference between invoking Plot Magnet! and It's Rather Dark!. FATE is trying to be a narrativist system that keeps mechanical complexity low and trying to encourage better story telling through FATE points/Aspects. The problem here is two assumptions, one that mechanics and story telling take up the same space so if you want a lot of one you have to have little of the other, and two that FATE points/Aspects encourage better story telling.

For the first assumption, I think most people can see this is clearly wrong. Mechanics can get in the way of the story, but there is nothing inherent about mechanics or rules in general that makes people tell worse stories. I've been playing a lot of Wild Talents recently which can get quite mechanically complex when you start building super powers but this makes those powers unique and adds to the ability of both the player and the game master to tell an interesting story.

For the second, Fate Points and Aspects encourage people to use their Aspects as much as possible which encourages characters to be only about their Aspects which produces shallow characters that lack depth and complexity. They are defined by these few "talking points" and maybe their skills. It seems like FATE is trying to provide a framework to run freeform roleplaying but if that's the case why have mechanics at all? Just run a freeform game. If your going to have mechanics, at least have decent mechanics that do something not... whatever Aspects end up doing. I wish Aspects were better because in Theory they sound like a really cool idea.

My problem with FATE is that it is a bad Narrativist system and even worse at everything else. If you want to play a narrativist game, play a different system(Cortex off the top of my head, either Core or Plus) that has good narrativist mechanics that reward you for having a character and playing through a story. My other problem is that FATE is so close to actually being a great game. All it needs is something to make Aspects mechanically distinct from one another and it would be very good.

[NichG]

I have to concur on the aspects thing - as written, they actually have a tendency to reduce some interesting RP possibilities into a very bland mechanical effect.

I would advise basically throwing out the current mechanical system for tagging aspects and instead say 'When you tag an aspect, you gain the ability to take an action related to that aspect that has the corresponding, logical storyline consequences'. This requires a bit more work from the GM (they have to be ready to improvise 'what the logical storyline consequences' are, and they have to also make sure that players all take aspects that are reasonable and around the same degree as eachother).

So, for example, if there's a rockfall on the other side of a chasm and someone has the Aspect 'Student of the Great Wizard', tagging the aspect allows them to interact directly with the rocks on the other side of the chasm (e.g. through implied magic). If someone has the Aspect 'Never Sleeps' then tagging the aspect would let them, say, completely avoid the effects of a sedative dose. If someone has the Aspect 'A friend in every port' then they could tag the aspect to find a friend on the spot, regardless of circumstances.

Basically you really want to push the idea to the players that aspects are more than just 'I can sometimes get a +2 or reroll things'. It really isn't a system that is interesting if you focus on the mechanics, so you have to make sure everyone understands that there's more to focus on and that the things on their sheet have meaning beyond just determining bonuses on dice rolls.

[Zavoniki]

Well I guess the question then becomes why use FATE at all? If the mechanics aren't doing it then I might as well pick another system and play that. If its all up to DM fiat anyway... then that's not a system I want to play.

[Kalmageddon]

It seems like FATE is trying to provide a framework to run freeform roleplaying but if that's the case why have mechanics at all? Just run a freeform game. If your going to have mechanics, at least have decent mechanics that do something not... whatever Aspects end up doing.

Well I guess the question then becomes why use FATE at all? If the mechanics aren't doing it then I might as well pick another system and play that. If its all up to DM fiat anyway... then that's not a system I want to play.

See, that's exactly what I don't get about all these "rules lite" games, which FATE is a good example (but far from the worst) of.

All these systems do is giving technical terminology to things that a good roleplaying game should already have and calling it game mechanics.
I mean, take Aspects. These are not some revolutionary mechanics nobody has ever thought of, they are just characterization. Every character and setting should have characterization, it's not suddendly FATE's exclusive just because it happened to slap a capitalized name on it.
Second, Aspects as they are presented are fairly shallow and limitated game mechanics. A +2 bonus or a reroll, while certanly useful enough to justify working on your Aspects, are not interesting. At the same time, this greatly limits what Aspects can do, creating shallow characters that only have aspects that have some practical purpose, instead of minor psychological quirks and backstories that might never come up but that help immersion nonetheless.

Which brings us to the next point: why are people praising rules lite systems when playing freeform is an option? At the level of simplicity that FATE rules present (but again FATE is far from being the only example of this) you might just as well run only on a few gentlemen's agreement and the occasional dice roll.
I get the intention of FATE, it's nice that it tells you that the most important part is having fun and making some cool stories instead of "winning", but that's not what makes a system worthwile to me. I'm not buying rolplaying games on their "intention", I'm buying them because I think I can put my ideas into practice better through some intresting and balanced rules I couldn't come up with on the fly.
Otherwise what they are selling us is not a system, it's a guide, a set of guidelines that we might want to follow regardless of what system we are playing.

Just to give you an example, you could very easily slap the Aspect and Fate Points system of FATE in D&D and it would work just fine. An occasional +2 on a roll would not be much in D&D, but a reroll would. Just give an arbitrary number of FATE points instead of tiyng them to Stunts and you're all set.
Aspects are houserule-level of complexity, something anyone could come up with. In fact, mechanically, Aspects already have you doing all the work. All the Aspects system does is telling you "when it makes sense with your character's characterization you should be able to have a reroll or a bonus, provided you can't just spam it all the times. Ocasionally they might provide you with a challenge instead". Uh... Yeah, nice idea. But not really complex enough to warrant calling it a "system". It's basically trademarked common sense.
And yet, that's their gimmick, that's what they are pointing at to sell their product.

The only thing in FATE that approaches the level of complexity and thought I would expect from a ropleplaying game system are Stunts, which are basically circumstancial D&D-like feats, hardly an innovative concept.

[Knaight]

I like Fate, but it's not my favorite system by any stretch of the imagination - largely because I'm not a huge fan of aspects, partially because Fate is Fudge based and I just like Fudge better. In short, I think they went a little too far in getting rid of modifiers, and I find creating aspects for scenes tends to slow down the game, though character aspects are fine by me.

As far as rules light systems in general - I actually quite like them. Freeform is very much not my style, and having rules for task and conflict resolution, or turn order, or whatever else is something I find helps a game. If you really want built in tactical depth in combat or whatever (as opposed to emergent tactical depth from terrain not being a flat featureless field), a rules heavy system is necessary, but a light one works otherwise.

[Alroy_Kamenwati]

My group plays FATE as a regular group activity. Here is what I noticed.

FATE is really quick. You get a lot done in a small amount of time.

FATE has no real shopping. This simplifies the game, but takes out the enjoyment of shopping.

FATE has narrative combat. You're supposed to describe your actions in a cool way. I play a shooter, so this is hard, but describe the tactics.

FATE has really simple mechanics as it's base with some add ons adding complexity. This isn't a great thing though, I prefer more structure to my games.

Try Dungeon World for a simple D&D style game. It's got moderate rules, 1337 lootz, narrative combat and the like. But the classes are archetypes with specific rules and you'd have to make your own to be unique.

I hope I helped some

[Delwugor]

I'm a big fan of Fate and one of the reasons is obvious just by looking at character sheets.
My Pathfinder Inquistor character sheet is filled with endless numbers, for this and that and whatever. I use a spreadsheet to keep it all straight. This sheet screams this is a system where my character is just a series of numbers.
A Fate Core sheet is a series of statements that show what is important to my character and how he interacts within a game. There are some numbers for skills but everything else is geared towards what my character is all about.

So for Pathfinder my character interacts with a scene by numbers, I have alot of control over what he does but the numbers really control how the interaction works.
Since my Fate character is not a spreadsheet, who and what he is interacts directly with a scene. My character's High Concept of XenoArcheologist matters when attempting to run to the bridge before the ship explodes. He's had to do that many times in the past and is well experienced with get there or die.

Of course it's not that cut and dry and both numbers and character can have similar impact in the different systems. But it is designed into the Fate system where it has to be ruled upon in Pathfinder. (BTW the PF game is a blast and the flexible GMing helps bring more characterization into play)

Aspects are the most misunderstood and mis-played portion (dare I say aspect) of Fate. Yes mechanically speaking they just a +2 or reroll, but there is also the affect (narrative) portion that tends to be underused.
For example (contrived but relevant) take a scene Aspect of a zone with "Swampy mire". Now as in Pathfinder I can use it directly in Fate to slow advancing enemies or force them to Overcome Action to get through. OK that can be fun and interesting in any system but...
In Fate I can also do a Create Advantage and turn "Swampy Mire" into "Quicksand Pit" and lure the enemies through. The mooks end up getting caught by the quicksand but now the main NPC enemy faces me and my companions alone, with a loud racket of yells for help coming behind him.
To me that is a much more interesting interaction of "Swampy Mire" than a mere terrain slowing movement.
With a flexible GM this could be done in Pathfinder also but the point is that Fate directly lets me interject an Aspect into the narrative of the scene as my character sees fit.

Fate does require a different mindset in the players, concentration on the events (narrative) instead of the numbers (mechanical) when faced with a situation. I also think Fate works best with that are truly invested in the game and how they impact it, just sit back and following a scene doesn't work well.

[CombatOwl]

No I understand that Aspects cannot always be used, that is not the problem. The problem is WHEN you use an Aspect it will always have the same mechanical effect.

So what? When you use a skill point, it always has the same mechanical effect in D&D. When you spend CP in GURPS, it always has the same mechanical effect. If I add another dot in a skill in Storyteller, it has the same mechanical effect. Every time. That's what makes these collections of rules systems. The system defines what mechanical effects result a certain expenditure of resources in a predictable way.

If I'm playing D&D, and my character cast a fireball, it's always got the same predictable mechanical effect. <caster level> in d6s, up to 10. Is that a problem? I don't really think so.

These mechanical differences gain variety and differences in utility by being used in different circumstances. A skill point has a predictable effect, but if I put it into Bluff it isn't useful for Use Magic Device. If I put my points in Science! in GURPS, it has the same mechanical effect as if I had put it into Guns!, except I can only use it when doing science stuff--as opposed to gun stuff. In Fate, you are filling a finite number of Aspect slots--yes, all Aspects have the same root functions, but when those functions apply and what consequences follow from them differ greatly.

Are you suggesting that other games are boring because they attach certain class features to certain levels, or that those class features work the same every time you use them? Or that they treat every skill in the game with the exact same system? Do you levy the same criticism at every game system that treats broad classes of actions with the same mechanical treatment--like Savage Worlds, Cortex, D&D, GURPS, Storyteller, Palladium, etc?

I mean, you've got to define aspects as something. What should they be defined as doing if not the rather broad utility of being used to; gain a bonus on rolls, rerolling a test, providing allies a bonus, increasing the difficulty of resistance, initiating compels, and providing complications? What additional feature do you feel would "fix" the implementation of aspects? Or is it a matter of aspects being useful for too many different things that is the problem? There's an awful lot of things you can do with them, besides getting a +2 bonus, and their variety drives immense variation in utility for compulsions and compels--a major part of the game.

That's really bad design and makes everything seem the same.

It's no worse than any other system which defines character features mechanically.

I really like in theory what FATE is trying to do. I just don't like the execution. Honestly just adding something to differentiate aspects mechanically a little more would probably do it.

How do you differentiate them more than "completely different"? The Fate method of handling aspects can easily result in one character getting a +6 to some specific sort of action and another not only getting no benefit from his aspects, but actually taking a penalty to their attempt to do that same action. That's a pretty wide variation in utility. A pretty wide mechanical difference, as it were.

Setting aside the fact that at least half the point of aspects is for initiating compels and inspiring complications, which you haven't even touched on. When one set of aspects leads to a quick fate point economy and another set leads to fate point depletion, there's a fairly substantial difference in mechanical effect too. But you're not talking about that part either.

That's not even getting into the alternative uses for aspects discussed in the system toolkit.

Comparing FATE to my personal gold standard of Generic Rules Light Systems, Cortex. Cortex can literally do almost every single thing FATE can do, but better.

...What? You're criticizing fate aspects for being mechanically boring, but hold up a system where literally everything is done by attribute dice + skill dice + assets - complications? Literally, everything you do in Cortex is exactly the same mechanically. You don't even get choices like you do in Fate--whether to invoke an aspect or leave it be. You can't create assets on the fly in cortex, you can create aspects on the fly in fate (either by spending fate points or using a skill to do it).

I mean, I could see where you were going if you were pointing at GURPS and saying that Fate falls short of the mechanical rigor of a system that tries to define everything. There's a reasonable argument to be made that narrativist games like Fate are mechanically uninteresting because most actions work pretty much the same way. An argument mind you, not absolute truth. But Cortex? I don't get why you would insist that Fate's aspects are less mechanically interesting than assets and complications in Cortex. The fact that Fate aspects are simultaneously helpful and harmful alone makes them more mechanically interesting than traits in Cortex.

Cortex plays basically the same as Savage Worlds. The only major differences are the published settings, how you do initiative, and the fact that cortex has you rolling two dice and adding them, where Savage Worlds has you rolling two dice and taking the higher result. Savage Worlds is a bit more stingy with the bennies than Cortex is with plot points, but Savage Worlds is also more forgiving in general.

Neither of these play like Fate does, and aren't intended to. Fate is probably heavier on the narrativist end than any game with an actual system behind it.

I vastly prefer its skill system, it has FATE Points in Plot Points(they even work the same way) and you have Traits(Positive/Negative) that work like Aspects,

No they don't. They're added or subtracted from rolls. That's it. You don't get to choose when they're invoked, you don't get to create them when they're needed with skills, they don't drive compels or complications, you can't use them to increase other character's difficulties. You don't regenerate them in the same way either.

That's actually a rather notable point. Aspects don't just provide you with a bonus on some skill checks sometimes, they're also the means by which you acquire fate points.

John Smith
"Man With a Mission"
"Notable Enemies"
"License To Kill"
"Master Of Disguise"
"Strange Relationship With Destiny"

Not all of those aspects have the same mechanical purpose. Three of them are there for providing bonuses sometimes. One of them is there for basically the sole purpose of regaining fate points by offering easy fodder for compels and complications (Notable Enemies). Another is there because it's sometimes helpful, sometimes a way to get fate points (Strange Relationship With Destiny).

You don't get any of that with Cortex assets and complications. All Cortex gives you are things that either give a bonus or provide a penalty on a check--and never something that does both at different times. Unlike Cortex assets and complications, aspects are dual-faceted--sometimes a benefit, sometimes a hindrance. If you're "Brave Beyond Measure" that helps you when you need to stand your ground, but hurts you (by being fodder for compels) when you really ought to run. Cortex has nothing even approximating that dual-natured function of an aspect. Cortex doesn't even try to link game mechanics to narrative imperatives--that's beyond the scope of that system entirely.

Note also that Cortex's plot points may allow you to shape the direction of the story somewhat, but it doesn't do so in any mechanically definable way other than adjusting NPC behavior. Unlike Fate, where spending a fate point to define an aspect on a scene (or character) actually does result in a mechanical difference. Moreover, players are encouraged by the Cortex system not to use plot points to actually do anything unless they have to, because they get converted into character advancement later. Fate doesn't do that at all. Fate point collection isn't linked to character advancement at all, meaning that they get used a lot more often (and regenerated a lot more often). A good character in Fate will have a quick fate point economy; and therefore aspects that have a mechanical function other than providing you with bonuses.

Cortex also has working rules for gear and equipment.

So does Fate. The system doesn't presuppose what equipment model is best for how you play, leaving it up to the group to decide how they want to handle equipment. But it certainly does explain how to do so. It even provides complete systems for it. The fate books (Fate Core and the Fate System Toolkit) provide at least four ways.

1) It can be a prop with its own aspects and equipment stunts.
2) It can be defined as a character in its own right--everything in Fate can be built as a character if needed.
3) It can be built as an Extra.
4) It can be an aspect of a character or a scene.

You can pretty seamlessly mix all of those in the way that works best for the style of game you're playing. If you're playing a game about mecha pilots, you probably define those mecha as characters. If you're playing a game about mad scientists, you probably define your mad inventions as extras. If you're playing a game about fantasy adventurers questing for treasure, you probably define your gear as props with aspects and stunts. If you're playing a game where equipment doesn't matter very much, you probably just leave it to aspects of characters and scenes. You mix and match that as required to achieve the style of play your group is looking for. Unimportant equipment can lose a great deal of emphasis, essential gear can be defined in a manner as detailed as you would like. I mean, if you wanted to, you could just define every pieces of gear or equipment in the game with its own character sheets, with a special list of skills applicable to the weapon. That's an awful lot of work that most groups won't do, but the rules do support it. You can even give particular pieces of gear unique aspects relating to its history or personal significance, etc.

You actually have a very wide range of options on how to do equipment in Fate. There isn't a standard model for equipment, but there are quite a lot of examples of workable models for handling gear and equipment. Some very simple, some incredibly detailed. The System Toolkit in particular has a lengthy discussion on how to do different types of equipment.

About the only thing FATE can do better is track someone's mental stress due to actually having mechanics for that and it doesn't seem like that would be too hard to house rule.

Fate's method of doing equipment is probably better than any vaguely rules-light system I have ever seen, simply because it scales to any degree of detail. It's certainly better than D&D's method of "+1 Weapons." It's a hell of a lot more interesting to have;

King Harold's Sword (Weapon: 2)
"Symbol of Authority"
"Breaks Upon My Dishonor"
"Supernaturally Keen"
Rally The Troops: By holding this sword aloft, its legendary provenance may be used to inspire nearby troops. The wielder may use his Fight skill in place of Rapport to inspire soldiers in the same zone.

than to have;

+2 Longsword of King Harold

Wouldn't you agree? The first is an example of a special weapon in fate; its aspects give a clue to what it's useful for (and in what circumstances it might be a hindrance). Those aspects can be tagged like any other. Its stunt gives it something unusual that it can do, beyond that of a normal sword. Other than being "Supernaturally Keen", the fate version of that sword could fit just fine into a nonmagic fantasy setting and still be interesting and mechanically distinct from other swords of the same type. By contrast, the D&D version of that sword is quite boring and wouldn't work at all in any setting that didn't presuppose magic.

However, I didn't think of doing a lot of these things in Cortex until I had read FATE. I like what FATE is trying to do, I just don't like its execution.

My point is that you seem to be misunderstanding or ignoring wide swaths of its execution.

[NichG]

I would say Aspects are (trying to be) more than just 'characterization'. Aspects aren't just 'happy-go-lucky' or 'suffering from great loss in the past' or 'hates fish', they can also be concrete things 'Missing a leg', narrative things 'the guy who gets things done', or just weird random stuff 'Berlin 1942'. Not to mention aspects applied to scenes 'On fire', 'Dense smoke', etc.

The issue is that basically, Aspects are a great idea for a rules heavy game, but they're kind of underwhelming for a rules light game. The big insight in Aspects is a conceptual framework to treat everything like a label, and then allow those labels to be 'activated' at need - basically, they're taking a whole bunch of things which conceptually you might be tempted to created specific subsystems for and saying 'look, all of these things are basically modifiers on the basic situation, so lets just make a system where these modifiers can be activated in a consistent way and then do their thing'.

Its similar to 4e D&D's heavy use of descriptors. By specifying rules terms with a syntactic cue, the game system explicitly differentiates between those things that are merely window dressing and those things that have attached crunch. A room could be warm, but only if it is [Warm] can it interact with powers that cue off of the [Warm] descriptor. Aspects do the same thing, kinda - you could be a friendly person, but if you're a [Friendly] person, conceivably you have powers/interactions that are different because of it.

In FATE, though, these [Labels] don't have explicit rules for interactions (and they hardly could, since the system is trying to be open-ended enough that you can use a random phrase as an Aspect). Thats kind of where the Aspects fall flat - when it comes to narrative consequences, how do I know that me being a [Mover and shaker] would let me cause a building to fall down? Or is the GM going to interpret the narrative consequences of that differently, so I can get a bill pushed through congress but I can't do demolition. Or maybe I only ever get the +2 from it.

So I think if one made a version of FATE where there were a specific list of Aspects, both for characters and for scenes, that gave examples of how they interacted and also what sorts of narrative consequences - not mechanical ones - they could create, then that would be a 'rules medium' game where the Aspects would have a bit more bite. It'd also be a lot easier to shift that towards 'rules light' by encouraging off-the-cuff homebrew of new Aspects than to shift people out of the mindset of 'Aspects = +2 to roll or reroll and thats it' that the rules seem to encourage.

[Scow2]

The reason to prefer Lures Right games over Freeform is a pretty simple one: Freeform completely lacks mechanical tension or ways to arbitrate 'chance of failure' and 'chance of success' actions. Giving mechanical weight to characterization allows someone's characterization to actually matter: As FATE puts it, it's the difference between Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Chuck Norris, who all have same/comparable skill sets but different style.

[CombatOwl]

See, that's exactly what I don't get about all these "rules lite" games, which FATE is a good example (but far from the worst) of.

I'm not sure I would even call Fate "rules-light". Fate Accelerated Edition certainly is rules-light, being a complete usable system in 43 pages of a $5 book. But Fate Core weighs in at 302 pages for the core book and that really ought to include the 182 pages of the System Toolkit (which anyone wanting to run Fate ought to read). And yet with 484 pages of rules, a lot of players still don't even recognize that it has models for basic functions of a game like handling equipment and such. Not just one model for equipment, but multiple models for how to handle equipment. Models that can overlap. It's actually a pretty hefty system, but it's very internally consistent so it doesn't require hundreds of pages of specific exceptions like most rules-heavy systems do. It's not nearly so rules-heavy as something like D&D, Palladium, or GURPS... but it's certainly not on the level of genuine rules-light systems either. Fate is somewhere inbetween.

All these systems do is giving technical terminology to things that a good roleplaying game should already have and calling it game mechanics.
I mean, take Aspects. These are not some revolutionary mechanics nobody has ever thought of, they are just characterization. Every character and setting should have characterization, it's not suddendly FATE's exclusive just because it happened to slap a capitalized name on it.

Fate is pretty unusual for providing a mechanical characterization of abstract character qualities. Do you know of another system that does so well? Most of them rely on a merits/flaws system that aren't nearly so good at encapsulating what a quality actually means. A lot of systems have a merit that makes you brave, but very few systems simultaneously insist that bravery can be a problem too. That a quality is a quality for good or bad, and that the important facets of a character are always important to the direction of the story. Fate does that, but comparatively few other systems outside of the Fudge family can say the same.

From a system design standpoint, fate/fudge's aspects are an unusual innovation. Not because role-players weren't playing out these things, but because it actually provides mechanical support for that style of play. Not many game systems do so.

Second, Aspects as they are presented are fairly shallow and limitated game mechanics. A +2 bonus or a reroll, while certanly useful enough to justify working on your Aspects, are not interesting. At the same time, this greatly limits what Aspects can do, creating shallow characters that only have aspects that have some practical purpose, instead of minor psychological quirks and backstories that might never come up but that help immersion nonetheless.

And that description of aspects leaves out quite literally the majority of their function. Aspects can also be used to give other people a bonus, or to increase passive resistance. They can also be used to create aspects on a scene, or to arrive immediately on a scene, or any other declaration of detail on a scene. Aspects are also the means by which you acquire more fate points--you spend fate points on aspects and sometimes stunts, but you also regain fate points by having aspects compelled. Aspects also direct what sort of complications arise in a scene or over an adventure. Aspects can also be used to assure that a character always has a particular piece of equipment.

You actually want aspects that both help and hinder. Otherwise you run out of fate points. You need aspects that can not only be used to help you sometimes, but can also be used by the GM to compel an aspect. This is something that multiple people on this thread have completely ignored in favor of this notion that all they do is provide a +2 bonus. If that's how you're playing Fate, aspects must be pretty boring, but it's also not a fair characterization of how Fate actually works.

Which brings us to the next point: why are people praising rules lite systems when playing freeform is an option? At the level of simplicity that FATE rules present (but again FATE is far from being the only example of this) you might just as well run only on a few gentlemen's agreement and the occasional dice roll.

Fate's system has a simple premise, but it's actually fairly mechanically nuanced if your group bothers to set it up that way. The system supports a very wide range of play. Your group can play Fate with the mechanical complexity set on low, or you can play it with an immense amount of mechanical detail. That's why people use Fate--because they can use a system that's tuned to the level of complexity they want without having to relearn a whole new set of rules from the ground up. Some groups like something easy, some groups like something complex, some groups like something in between. Fate lets you run any of those--that's why it's got a lot of attention.

I get the intention of FATE, it's nice that it tells you that the most important part is having fun and making some cool stories instead of "winning", but that's not what makes a system worthwile to me. I'm not buying rolplaying games on their "intention", I'm buying them because I think I can put my ideas into practice better through some intresting and balanced rules I couldn't come up with on the fly.

Perhaps you should actually read Fate Core and the System Toolkit? A lot of people build opinions on its complexity by sitting a session with a GM who's not bothering with the bells and whistles (Fate is very much a modular game, the group picks which it wants to use). Some GMs don't bother to do much with aspects (leaving them as little more than a way to occasionally gain a bonus), some GMs actually follow the book's advice and build the game almost completely around them. It plays very differently in either case. Some GMs don't bother to use any equipment model, others will define everything. Most will be somewhere inbetween.

Otherwise what they are selling us is not a system, it's a guide, a set of guidelines that we might want to follow regardless of what system we are playing.

They have an actual system underneath all the advice. One that is very easy to learn, very internally consistant, and which allows for a lot more nuance than people give it credit for--if the fate point economy is quick.

Just to give you an example, you could very easily slap the Aspect and Fate Points system of FATE in D&D and it would work just fine. An occasional +2 on a roll would not be much in D&D, but a reroll would. Just give an arbitrary number of FATE points instead of tiyng them to Stunts and you're all set.

You'd have to do a hell of a lot more than that to move aspects and fate points to D&D, but yes you can house rule the hell out of D&D and cram them in.

Aspects are houserule-level of complexity, something anyone could come up with.

I guess, but D&D would be very difficult to run with aspects. "I declare that the Balor is missing his Vorpal Sword today," "You're being attacked by Solars tonight because the party cleric took "Hated By The Celestial Host"..."

D&D would be awfully cumbersome with aspects. You could do it, for sure, but I don't understand why you would.

In fact, mechanically, Aspects already have you doing all the work. All the Aspects system does is telling you "when it makes sense with your character's characterization you should be able to have a reroll or a bonus, provided you can't just spam it all the times. Ocasionally they might provide you with a challenge instead". Uh... Yeah, nice idea. But not really complex enough to warrant calling it a "system". It's basically trademarked common sense.

You seem to be quite literally neglecting to mention most of the functions of an aspect in Fate.

The only thing in FATE that approaches the level of complexity and thought I would expect from a ropleplaying game system are Stunts, which are basically circumstancial D&D-like feats, hardly an innovative concept.

That you get to define. That's a fairly notable difference.

In FATE, though, these [Labels] don't have explicit rules for interactions (and they hardly could, since the system is trying to be open-ended enough that you can use a random phrase as an Aspect). Thats kind of where the Aspects fall flat - when it comes to narrative consequences, how do I know that me being a [Mover and shaker] would let me cause a building to fall down? Or is the GM going to interpret the narrative consequences of that differently, so I can get a bill pushed through congress but I can't do demolition. Or maybe I only ever get the +2 from it.

Depending on how silly you want the game to be, it could be either. On a highly silly game based on wordplay, "mover and shaker" could mean that you could get a +2 on both attempts to cause an earthquake and attempts to get a bill through congress. Where it starts and ends is mainly a matter of group consensus, and discussion ahead of time about what it means with the GM.

It's why most Fate games have you describing the origin and definition of an aspect as a phase during creation. But yes, you could just do a comedy game based on clever wordplay with Fate.

[AMFV]

That you get to define. That's a fairly notable difference.

I'm pretty sure that the Oberoni Fallacy right there. Just because you can customize something in a game, doesn't mean that the game comes with that as a feature.

Edit: I've only briefly skimmed FATE, but it seemed to have many of the same problems as many such "lite" systems where the mechanics are almost irrelevant and I feel like I'd be better off playing a freeform game.