How important are fatigue rules?

[philosophyguy]

As a GM, I feel like fatigue is far less relevant than most other attributes. I can't think of a situation in which fatigue has been important in contributing to the story (disclaimer: I haven't played/GMed any games in which magic was important yet).

Experienced GMs and players: when do you use fatigue rules? How do you use them to build the gaming experience? When do you decide that they're not worth the complications?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by philosophyguy

Experienced GMs and players: when do you use fatigue rules? How do you use them to build the gaming experience? When do you decide that they're not worth the complications?

There are genres and character types where they will not come up very often. When they don't come up you just let them not come up. A conscious decision to ignore them ahs nev er been necessary in my experience.

[Dustin]

Unless you're using Fatigue for magic/chi/psi, in combat it might only come up if you're using Extra Effort in combat, where it becomes an important depletable resource. (We typically restrict Extra Effort in combat to characters with access to esoteric abilities via Weapon Master, TBAM, Gunslinger, etc.)

Outside of combat, it can be important when representing environmental effects that 10 minutes of ordinary rest don't help with, like dehydration or cold. But you're right in thinking that many situations where you could ding the PCs a Fatigue point or two, it's not worth bothering.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

First and foremost for me, fatigue powers both magic and extra effort. They're both important to me because I tend to run at-least-somewhat-and-usually-very-cinematic fantasy, so everybody carries out tiring feats on the battlefield.

Fatigue can be useful when handling long-term efforts like chasing or running away from things. It puts limits on how far you can run before you drop, which can lead to desperate decisions (run as far as we can, stop to rest and hope for the best, or turn and fight now while we still have the strength?).

[ULFGARD]

Most of the time, they don't do much other than affect spell casting in fantasy games. I have both ran and played in games or adventures within ongoing campaigns where fatigue rules became extremely important. They usually involve long and grueling tasks such as moving cross country as rapidly as possible, or fighting a series of short engagements in rapid succession.

[GM Joe]

Just thinking about them makes me tired.

[Kromm]

If you see FP as the barrier to failure in the face of cold, heat, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, overexertion, and so on, their importance is directly proportional to how often your favorite genre has the protagonists falling to such dangers or being deemed heroic for having braved them. If blizzards, forced marches, and half-rations are nothing but window dressing, you'll find tracking FP to be an annoyance. If such ordeals are as important to heroism as chases and fights and arriving in the nick of time, you'll want to track FP.

If you see FP as "hero fuel" for extra effort in combat and similar cinematic rules (e.g., TV Action Violence, p. B417), then you'll want to track them even if you ignore FP for hazards and overexertion. They take on the character of "action points" in other games. In effect, every hero has a higher level of ability not marked on her or his character sheet, which kicks in for a brief instant when spending FP. Not using such rules and tracking the FP they cost removes a fun dimension from the game . . . and I'll reiterate that you can have that dimension while totally ignoring FP lost to environmental hazards and physical deprivation.

And if you have superhuman abilities that cost FP – be those magic spells, advantages such as Healing, cinematic skills like Power Blow, or simply ordinary powers that have access to the stunt rules in GURPS Powers – you must track FP even if you do not use them for either of the above purposes.

It's quite possible to have a low-grit, low-cinematics, no-powers campaign where you don't need FP to demonstrate heroism through perseverance or physical deeds, and where nobody has special abilities that drain FP. The character of the game will inevitably be a little mundane and somewhat cerebral, more like a soap opera or a police procedural where nobody does anything more strenuous than point a gun and say, "You're under arrest." But that's an entirely valid kind of story.

[D10]

There have been many situations that came up in the games I have played and GMed where fatigue was important, from taking FP damage after a long battle where players used tons of FP to power extra efforts in defenses, to the after effects of great haste and your usual sleep problems, diseases, hot weather, etc.

[Kale]

Re: Kromm's comments, I tend to use them as Hero Fuel. The other guy in my group who tends to GM as well also does this. We have a fantasy game with developing high magic and the +2 to defenses for Feverish Defense has saved our PCs a few times. A particularly tense moment was a fight after a long hard march that cost us a few fatigue. It was rough on us for the fight as we had gotten used to being able to spend fatigue like water for most fights (our PCs tended to finish fights quickly) and our Mage was in a hard spot. I think we had only a few points left each by the end of it, and it was a good tense fight for it.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by philosophyguy

As a GM, I feel like fatigue is far less relevant than most other attributes. I can't think of a situation in which fatigue has been important in contributing to the story (disclaimer: I haven't played/GMed any games in which magic was important yet).

Experienced GMs and players: when do you use fatigue rules? How do you use them to build the gaming experience? When do you decide that they're not worth the complications?

They were so vitally important to Cherry Blossom Rain, my martial arts/samurai campaign, that I broke them down into even finer detail with the Last Gasp. Powers cost fatigue, powers provided inner fatigue (Chi energy reserves). The ability to carefully control your breath was absolutely vital and this represented that well. This was a system where I wanted the players to feel the strain on their muscles with every swing, every sweet breath of oxygen, the beads of sweat on their brows as blades clashed.

In the Andromeda Incident in G-Verse, a military sci-fi game, fatigue also featured strongly, but in an entirely different context. Here, fatigue was a resource to spend, along with food and bullets, in achieving objectives. It didn't matter moment-by-moment, but rather hour-by-hour. In one rather memorable battle, the aliens ambushed the heroes in the middle of the wilderness, leaving them stranded near the edge of their own territory, destroyed their transport vehicles, and then hightailed it. The aliens, descending from a pouncer species, just assumed that lacking vehicles, our heroes would never be able to counter attack in any sort of timely fashion, and that they would probably retreat to their base, which was the intention of the aliens. Instead, our heroes put on their big-boy pants and marched all across that wilderness, making considerable distance overnight, and hitting several installations at the crack of dawn and then mounting a quick, last-second offensive at the core installation while running on nothing but stims. It cost them a lot, but the benefit of surprise was priceless.

In my Cabal game, I honestly didn't care about fatigue (what use has a gentleman antiquarian sitting in his overstuff chair, reading ancient aramaic by his fireplace while sipping a glass of scotch, of the fatigue rules? If he has spent even one, he says "Oh my, I think perhaps I should lie down now.") except in the context of existing spells and the scale of power someone could reach. I seriously considering using straight-up Path Magic, and I probably would if it didn't involve as much conversion as it did (most of the existing spirits/monsters of Cabal, from 3e, make heavy use of existing spells). Beyond the scope of magic, it mattered not one whit. A cabalist does not hike, he drives. A cabalist does not fight, he unleashes a death spell, or a demon who does the killing for him. A cabalist does not stay up late into the wee hours finishing his alchemical potions, he has minions he hired to do that for him. A cabalist is far more worried about dusty tomes, forgotten ruins and who is currently pulling the strings at his local municipality than he is in fatigue rules.

So whether you use fatigue, and in what context, heavily depends on the sort of game you're running, and what you want those fatigue rules to do. By and large, they're a form of resource management that represent how physically taxed your character is. If the sense of exhaustion paired with careful, strategic use of resources doesn't interest you, don't bother with them.