FATE RPG: Impressions, analysis, merits and flaws thereof etc.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Fate points are a narrative control currency spent by players, in contrast to a kind of power pool for the characters employed by the characters themselves (like FP or ER). Their purpose is to allocate spotlight time and allow a group to share the author control that normally belongs to just one person.

But that part is basic to RPGs as such. When I run GURPS, or BESM, I have four to six co-authors. I come up with the situation, but the players tell the story. Of course that's true to varying degrees in different campaigns; when I ran Manse, for example, in fact most of the storylines for the first two years came directly from bits of backstory three of my players had invented for their characters' houses: the girl from the House of Truth who had fallen in love with her mother's secret lover, the young man from the House of Life who wasn't aware that one of his mothers had borne a not fully human child of unknown parentage, and the elder from the House of Light who was concealing the fact that his father had not passed on a fully accurate version of his house's part in the great annual ritual cycle that kept the Manse safe.

I do see the distinction between in-game capabilities and player-level narrative control. It occurs to me, though, that my two FUDGE campaigns have treated FUDGE points somewhat more like the former. The Discworld campaign was in a setting that explicitly has narrative causality; that is, control of the narrative is something that characters on the Disc can have, and struggle for, and that can explicitly cause things in the fictional world. And in Gods and Monsters, I was consciously emulating Planetary (first among several sources), which is also founded on that kind of metafictional sensibility; I didn't push it to the foreground as much as Ellis did, but for example one of my running jokes was, "This is a world where Adolph Hitler is real, but his creator, Leni Riefenstahl, never existed."

The thing that seems a possible pitfall to me in this sort of thing is having the narrative control points become the currency of a struggle between the players for who gets to shape the narrative, with victory going not to the one who tells the best story but to the one who has or spends the most points. I don't think I've had that specific problem (I've had a couple of conflicts of that nature, but not mediated by drama points), but there may be some risk of it in treating narrative points as an impersonal currency. On the other hand, my own players seem to collaborate in shaping an entertaining narrative whether or not they're spending narrative points to do so. And I think a collaborative approach to drama is the ideal spirit in which to approach this sort of thing.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

that part is basic to RPGs as such.

But being basic to RPGs doesn't stop RPGs from having rules. Almost all RPGs have a system of combat rules, even though fighting is basic to most RPGs.

a possible pitfall to me in this sort of thing is having the narrative control points become the currency of a struggle between the players

Quite true. Too much inter-player rivalry will spoil a game, rules or no rules. It's the narrative version of the problem player who insists on making characters that want to fight or betray the other PCs, or simply wants all the GM's attention and to be the center of every scene.

Groups of really good players, as yours seem to be, don't need any rules to guide them or arbitrate disagreements. The more common solution to the problem, once the rules fail, is to appoint a GM as arbiter, which also comes with the responsibility for generating the story and making sure all the players get some spotlight time. I think Fate is trying to level the field a bit and hand the players more responsibility.

The Discworld campaign was in a setting that explicitly has narrative causality; that is, control of the narrative is something that characters on the Disc can have

Does that make the meta-currency un-meta or meta-meta? Once we start down the recursive rabbit hole of meta-levels, things are bound to get strange.

I was once in a D&D game where the GM got tired of the ridiculously powerful characters, and tried to teach a lesson by putting the characters into a dimension where they could literally have or do anything they wanted. Complete wish fulfillment. The intent was to demonstrate how boring that would be, and similarly highlight how boring the original game was, because the characters had no challenges (at least in the GM's opinion). But, we hit upon the scheme of having our characters use dice to decide the results of actions all in accordance with the D&D rules. So we were basically right back where we started -- though the characters were even more powerful, as they always had that meta-ability in their back pocket any time they didn't want to play the game.

That game didn't go on long enough to run into the problem of arbitrating disagreements over what should happen, with no rules and a GM who wouldn't have been interested in making things run smoothly.

victory going not to the one who tells the best story but to the one who has or spends the most points

That's going to be a problem for any system that tries to rate "the best story" with an objective system of points.

Though I don't think Fate is that ambitious. It seems to me to be intended more as a method to insure spotlight rotation than to guarantee the best or even a great story. Everyone runs out of Fate points at some point, and has to cede the spotlight to another player. Of course, that player may not be the best storyteller at the table, but that's not a reason to shut them out.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Does that make the meta-currency un-meta or meta-meta? Once we start down the recursive rabbit hole of meta-levels, things are bound to get strange.

Ah. A philosophical question.

If the object being emulated includes a meta-level, then you can work on the meta-level within the emulation of the object. But at the same time, the emulation within the object can be distinguished from the emulation that creates the object. For example, Granny Weatherwax may gain victories by exerting the power of narrative causality, but Terry Pratchett is still writing the book and deciding what exercise of narrative causality is appropriate.

I think that having a meta-level inside the object is in fact the definition of consciousness.

[kracht]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Spending Fate points isn't a matter of making aspects true or not true (Armin's complaint, and kracht's); that's a simulationist view, as though Fate points were mana points the characters use to cast spells. But Fate is narrative. Fate points don't make things true or untrue in the world; that'st he simulationist concern. They make aspects relevant or irrelevant to the story at hand.

Definitely. It just may take a while to get used to it. And in this light the concession mechanics makes perfect sense.

[Armin]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Spending Fate points isn't a matter of making aspects true or not true (Armin's complaint, and kracht's); that's a simulationist view, as though Fate points were mana points the characters use to cast spells.

That wasn't actually my complaint at all. I apologize if what I wrote missed my actual point.

My complaint is this: if an aspect is relevant, and it makes sense that it should be applicable in the situation, you are still out of luck if you don't have any Fate points.

Now, I've just spent a ridiculously long time writing and rewriting this post, just to delete it all anyway. I'll just write this instead:

The quest for Fate points changes play, and in my case, removes fun from the game. In my group, we're playing a game, we're not improvisational actors. For most of my players, searching for ways to earn Fate points changes how they play from 'in the flow' to 'disruptive,' and I don't like that.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Armin

The quest for Fate points changes play, and in my case, removes fun from the game. In my group, we're playing a game, we're not improvisational actors. For most of my players, searching for ways to earn Fate points changes how they play from 'in the flow' to 'disruptive,' and I don't like that.

Speaking more generally, games that explicitly offer players control of a scene (i.e. the player can describe, perhaps with limitations, the actions of characters other than his own) tend to throw me out of what I might loosely call the method-actor mindset, the one in which I'm acting as a channel between my simulation of the character's mind and the real speech which makes the game happen, and into the playwright/editor mindset in which I, Roger, am thinking about what I as a player want to get out of this scene. To me, that's taking away the most enjoyable thing about being a player.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Armin

My complaint is this: if an aspect is relevant, and it makes sense that it should be applicable in the situation, you are still out of luck if you don't have any Fate points.

I see. That could certainly happen as a consequence of the spotlight-time-sharing mechanism. But then, if a character is out of Fate points, it means they were being especially effective and getting more attention earlier. The player could suggest a compel to gain a point so that they could then use that advantage, keeping things even. It's also possible for another player to spend the Fate point and pass the invocation to the player without points. (And if players would consider that ridiculous and only want to spend points on themselves, well, that tends to argue for a need for a spotlight-sharing mechanism in the first place.)

Originally Posted by RogerBW

tend to throw me out of what I might loosely call the method-actor mindset, the one in which I'm acting as a channel between my simulation of the character's mind and the real speech which makes the game happen

This is my biggest fear about the system, though not so much for describing other characters as even describing my own.

In all those "introduction to roleplaying" sections in all those manuals, they always tell you how you're supposed to be pretending to be your character, acting as they would act and saying what they would say. But Fate seems like it's always going to yank you back to the meta level and interrupt, if not destroy, that immersion. Consider this example from the Fate Core book:

In a session of Hearts of Steel, Landon comes back to his home village of Vinfeld, only to fid that it has been sacked by barbarians and that his mentor, Old Finn, has been kidnapped.

Amanda tells him that the other villagers are overjoyed that he’s come back, and in a scene where he talks to the village elders, she also says that they want him to stay and help with rebuilding the town.

Lenny looks at some of the aspects on Landon’s sheet: Disciple of the Ivory Shroud, I Owe Old Finn Everything, The Manners of a Goat, and Smashing is Always an Option. His read of those aspects is that they show Landon as being very straightforward (to the point of rudeness), aggressive, inclined to solve problems through violence, and very loyal to those he considers his own. Because of his aspects, there’s not a prayer’s chance in hell Landon’s going to stay and help the town when Finn might still be alive. And not only that, he’s going to tell the elders exactly how he feels about the fact that they didn’t send a rescue party after Old Finn themselves. Probably he uses words like “spineless” and “worthless.” You know, words that really make people sympathize with you.

Amanda says that he enrages the elders so much that they’re pondering banishing him from town for his insolence. She holds up a fate point and grins, indicating a compel—his manners are going to get him kicked out of Vinfeld.

Lenny takes it, accepting that complication. “Screw them anyway,” he says. “I’ll rescue Finn without their help.”

The only roleplaying going on here in the the last paragraph, in the quotes.

Up through the first half of para 3, the text is describing the process -- naturally meta because it's a rulebook describing the example.

But in the last half of para 3 and in para 4, two players are deciding how the scene with the elders will go. They're not playing the scene; they're having a high-level abstract discussion about the outcome, describing how their characters would be acting if they actually were roleplaying that scene instead of talking about how it should go. And once they've agreed how the scene should go and what the result will be -- well, it's almost pointless to actually go back and try to play it in character, to the foreordained conclusion. So now the players have done a fine job defining a narrative, but they seem to have missed out on the roleplaying part.

Maybe this is just a consequence of having to write a rulebook, and the players really were supposed to be roleplaying that scene, and it's a wordcount concern to describe than to record the process. Or maybe the designers actually did intend for the action to take place on the meta level. Reading the books (Core and Dresden Files) doesn't give me a clear sense of how to maintain that immersion, or even if you're supposed to.

Anyone know of any good examples of play sessions posted on YouTube? It would be nice to see the system in action with people that know how to work it.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Maybe this is just a consequence of having to write a rulebook, and the players really were supposed to be roleplaying that scene, and it's a wordcount concern to describe than to record the process. Or maybe the designers actually did intend for the action to take place on the meta level. Reading the books (Core and Dresden Files) doesn't give me a clear sense of how to maintain that immersion, or even if you're supposed to.

Certainly there are other games which do explicitly require this sort of thing: negotiate the stakes, determine who wins, and then role-play the scene. (For example I think Hillfolk does something similar.)

For me, the editorial/authorial mode is mostly useful to maintain a specific narrative structure - rather than allowing the story to emerge organically from the microdecisions that constitute normal play. For some people and some groups that maintenance can be a good thing, even if it's not for me. Trying to put it in value-neutral terms, it's the choice between playing a story like that great book or film or whatnot, or playing a story that might be good or bad but will certainly be original.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Certainly there are other games which do explicitly require this sort of thing: negotiate the stakes, determine who wins, and then role-play the scene. (For example I think Hillfolk does something similar.)

Hero Wars had a structure where you first play out an interaction—which could be anything from a duel with two-handed axes to a diplomatic negotiation—using a completely abstract system, determine who wins, and THEN go back and decide what sort of fight or dialogue or other interaction gave rise to the victory. Maybe I lack imagination, but I could never see how you could get interesting dialogue out of that. It seems like making limestone soup with just the limestone and the water.

[kracht]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Trying to put it in value-neutral terms, it's the choice between playing a story like that great book or film or whatnot, or playing a story that might be good or bad but will certainly be original.

I agree! Fate seems to rely quite a bit (for Aspects, invocations etc.) on genre conventions or plain cliches. So much that I sometimes joke that it actually is "tvtropes: the RPG".

But again: it might be cool for people who want that kind of game (I would call it "cinematic", but not in the usual sense).