Cool, thanks :)

Taking all of that on board

Ah, yeah. I put that up at 2am while I was sitting with my dad.

I'd wing it, with the assumption that you'll be the primary GM at least at first.

Have him be part of the world building "faces/place" stuff, and if he's excited by a face then he can play that guy. Otherwise/also, you might invite him to GM a single scene after you've run a few so everyone gets comfortable with the system.

We could do that. He's definitely not the shy type of person. He is the front and center story teller kind of dude of our group of friends

But he knew very quickly in Pathfinder that he didn't feel like that type of game. To give you some context: he was playing a barbarian, but he didn't use his power attack or anything of the like. He was the kind of player who wants to jump on the wolfs back and slap it on the butt with the flat side of his sword. Just to see if I'd allow it.

And I did, but I had to solve it through the rules, so it became combat maneuvers, which he then failed, and so he didn't succeed in his flashy attempt. He tried it multiple times and failed multiple times.

I know the failing didn't put him off, just the rules-first approach to his "crazy-but-it'd-be-kind-of-funny ideas".

Yeah, been there.

Whereas in Fate it's "Um... that sounds like an overcome roll with Provoke vs the wolf's Will."

That's why I wanna include him in Fate, because I think he'd feel more at home. And he'd definitely be suitable to be a GM. He just wants to see if Fate is "his kind of thing".

So I'm preparing the Fate game more for him than anyone else. I don't want him to get the wrong impression simply because I'm still learning how Fate works... It has to be perfect before he loses interest.

One of the awesome things about Fate, for me, is that while there are more and less elegant ways to model something with mechanics, it's hard to be wrong about the mechanics. So you don't have to spend a lot of time worrying about doing it right.

If you want to just have the barbarian spend a Fate point to say "Now I've got a wolf mount for the rest of this scene," that works too.

Yeah, in Pathfinder, specially the first couple of sessions when they tried to solve things in very unexpected ways, I had to crack the book more than I'd like. And it takes such a long time to resolve their actions. It's not our definition of fun

Or if he thinks Combat is more appropriate than Provoke for the roll.... sure, that could work, does everyone think that's okay?

Yes!

It's open for everyone to chime in and adjudicate it together :)

Or hey, if he still has an empty character aspect slot--now he's got a Loyal dire wolf mount.

It takes away the weight off my shoulders and it makes players feel like they have influence.

Players with agency are awesome.

This is why I'm super psyched to try Fate! I was really bummed that this player left Pathfinder, he was kind of the person that I wanted to play together with, since I know the other guys only through him

Also! I received my Fate dice in the mail yesterday :D

Yey!

Got the Centurion set

Very shiny. I've got those too.

they r purdy :3

Also, my player group is dominantly women. I need this dude to restore the balance :P

I've never really had an experience shift depending on the genders in my groups, except the one time some idiot tried to Play The Game instead of just asking a girl if she wanted to go out with him.

I want to play Legend of Zelda Fate badly, but most of those players don't have any affinity with that.

For some reason, the ladies in my group are all pretty scary...

Pretty reckless and outright gruesome at times :P

Two years ago I had to work really hard to convince two players who were dating to come to the game sessions at the same time, because they'd believed someone who told them that it was inevitably disruptive to the game.

heh. That's not a gender thing, that's just personalities.

It's hard to make useful generalisations about a group that comprises fully half of everyone ever.

I didn't intend to make generalizations though. It's just an unexpected observation; these women in my particular group are all CRAZY

But, were those dating players really disruptive though?

I can imagine it could be... depending how they act at the table?

Spsh, no. They're awesome to have at the same table.

if they are who I think you are talking about, yeah they are great

They'd just run into somebody who'd let one bad experience sour them on the whole concept, I think.

If Legend of Zelda falls through for my current player group, I will probably branch off another group that will include my fiance.

And, on top of that, my storyteller dude is the fiance of one of the ladies who is already playing with me. So it'd be 2 couples playing Fate :P

Also, the ladies are sisters :P

I think some people do run into favoritism concerning significant others, and when it does happen I can imagine it is a large problem

With these two people, they'd found that there was some potential for resentment when they played limited-resource games where one person's character getting a windfall meant another would be shafted.

But they love playing games like Fate where they can collaborate as players over having their characters compete.

Well, lets call my fiance Sara, and then we have Bob (ex-Pathfinder, storyteller dude) and Alice (Bob's fiance). Bob and Alice are total geeks, and avid gamers. Sara really is not, though she can geek out a little bit over Harry Potter or Twilight Saga...

I'm a total geek too... (obviously?)

I think Bob and Alice would even be gamer enough to be able to play competitively between each other. I don't know how well Sara and I would be able to pull that off.

Sara is the type of girl who does love to sit next to me as I play a console game, specially if it's puzzle-based, and maybe a little bit of action. Again: Legend of Zelda is a good example of what she enjoys watching. She gets into it, and she already understands the Hyrule universe pretty well (the Triforce, Ganondorf, Link, Zelda, the magic items, the recurring temple themes, etc.)

Oh, and if you do wind up having competitions or collaborations in-game between PCs, there's some fun stuff you can do with stunts.

@BESW Please. Do elaborate.

One of our players had a stunt where once per session he could shift his initiative order to "just before [his rival PC]'s initiative."

brb

Really, I'll be stalking this place for weeks until I'm married and I can finally kick-off this Fate thing. Before that, I want to learn everything I possibly can to make it as fun as possible for everyone.

One of the Atomic Robo RPG example PCs has this stunt: "Invoking an aspect belonging to or created by [colleague PC] gives you a +3 bonus instead of +2."

(And his colleague has the same stunt, for him.)

So they are constantly looking for ways to jive on other players' ideas. That's pretty dope.

Because you still have to come up with a reasonable explanation of why you should be able to use that Aspect.

yup!

Then there's stuff like "You may forfeit your turn to tell an ally to do something that’ll put them in harm’s way. If they obey, they get a +2 to do it."

I once saw a PC do something like that without the stunt: she used Create Advantage to tell everyone her strategy, placing the aspect I have a plan! on the scene with two free invokes.

Then she handed out the free invokes to people who were following the plan.

(It's a good way to model tactics and morale support in a combat scene.)

I really hope my players get the knack of Fate, because these are the kind of moments that I'm aspiring to.

The key is for them to say what they want to do without mechanics, and then you help them apply mechanics as needed.

I watched that Nerdarchy video you gave me yesterday.

@BESW I already enforced this in Pathfinder

It's also a good technique for, say, modelling how a D&D-style bard's "inspiration" works.

In the Nerdarchy video, I felt they weren't playing the game correctly. But not having played Fate myself, I'm not sure.

I didn't watch the video, so...

[scrolls up]

But there were moments where the GM would call for rolls and if they wanted to invoke an aspect.

So he went

Any particular timestamp I could look for?

shouldn't you be able to invoke after you rolled?

to improve the result?

Ah... yes. Yes a thousand times.

i think it's at the 1:05:00 mark but i will get you a link so you wont have to search for it

One thing my group is still struggling with, actually, is that you don't roll until you've established the stakes and the difficulty, and you don't invoke until after you've rolled and seen the result compared to the difficulty.

Invokes should never be spent pointlessly.

That means they've gotta come after you know if your raw roll succeeds or fails.

yeah, they apparently missed half the point

I am guessing they applied erroneous knowledge from other RPG's they played to Fate

Our group just gets excited and starts rolling prematurely.

46:26

relevant transcript "But if you don't take that Aspect, you might drown..... but you could make the roll, so good luck"

so he means that he has to decide to take the aspect before rolling, or he could "risk it"

Bah.

but i think it's the other way around in Fate, right? you apply the ellipses trick

they also do some other things like, he calls for everyone to make "checks" and sets "DCs". i think they are trying to stick with D&D terms too much to actually play Fate right

let me find that section

that is pretty bad honestly

@MarcDingena Exactly, you establish the stakes, roll, and then negotiate the narrative outcome of the roll (using cost, invokes, etc) based on its result.

if you aren't playing D&D anymore, maybe stop playing D&D

It's easy to fall into the old terminology. I still do it sometimes.

yeah, but they seem to be missing the entire point of the system

1:11:20

something bothered me about this part, but cant analyze, i have to leave for lunch

back in a bit

Ooh, yeah. lots going on there.

[watches all the way through for context of what the GM has in mind]

I am just kinda upset that they posted this playing it wrong, and now a bunch of peoples first exposure to the game is missing some key ideas about the system

that I have seen so fare at least

I don't really want to watch all of it though T.T

First, as you noticed, he doesn't say what kind of action they're rolling (it's probably overcome). That means they don't know if they have any stunts which apply.

Then he doesn't tell them the target difficulty.

So even if they do invoke after the roll (which one of them decides to) the players don't know if their raw roll is sufficient or how much they need to invoke to succeed.

This is typical "hide the mechanics so the GM can fudge them in favour of the story" tactics which D&D-style games --and Call of Cthulhu, for that matter-- often espouse as a virtuous philosophy.

But Fate needs a really good reason to hide mechanics from players. It's based on the philosophy that informed choices are more interesting and dramatic than blind guessing.

ah, but one of them does invoke after?

that is one less thing on the list at least

Yeah, one of them invokes for a re-roll.

but it is kinda pointless without knowing the DC

But before the roll, the GM prompted them to invoke, and so the same guy had invoked for +2 before he rolled.

also, if re roll is the only example that could be misconstrued

@BESW that is also pretty bad

Generally I think of my players as co-authors, and simultaneously as the audience that can see the bomb under the table.

A lot of our fun comes from gleefully nudging our characters toward bombs that the PCs don't know about.

Yeah, I normally refrain from any YouTube commenting, but I feel inclined to point out how bad this video actually paints the "Fate game" picture...

Eh, you should see some of the Fate junk on Reddit.

And to be fair, they're not presenting themselves as experts.

They did go and read the book on re-rolls and read aloud a lot of the bits about what they'd been doing wrong in other parts of the rolling process.

And it IS hard to shift from a D&D GM philosophy to a Fate philosophy. That GM was clearly used to making all the decisions and orchestrating all the reactions.

I was not dissimilar when I started running DFRPG.

Greener still pops up semi-regularly to say "BESW! I was re-reading X and we've been doing it all wrong!"

Yeah it bothers me that he has this sweet story set up for them, but none of the players actually have any agency in it. Nor does the GM seem to present the players with Aspects about that Scene as he keeps explaining what they are seeing and hearing. I imagine that if you as a GM set up a Scene like that one (1:11:20), you'd write a couple of Aspects and place them on the table.

I likely would--though not more than three, tops. One or two is sufficient, because of this secret:

Unless the Scene is nothing more than story fluff, with no actions for the players to take, but then why bother with the Scene at all. Just narrate it until you hit the next "decision point"

@BESW ok, I am glad they did that at least

Everything that's important has an aspect. The importance of a thing causes the aspect. So you can narrate dripping water and a foul stench, and the instant they become important as more than window dressing they get aspects.

The aspects the GM chooses to make explicit at the start of a scene are just the bits he thinks are important enough to highlight.

4d

Alright! :D

Nice.

Much better than what I roll with my actual dice...

seriously, it's like the plus sign is weighing them down or something :P

> "Shiny, and chrome!" Cross off all your open stress boxes, mental and physical. You gain the aspect Witness me! with a free invoke for every stress box you just crossed off. For the rest of the scene your defence rolls cannot benefit from invokes.

Let's see who can come up with the craziest stunts :P

There's a bit of an art to getting stunts to "feel" like they have the right amount of power.

You can do super-crazy stuff with stunts if you also place major limits on them--frequency is an obvious but boring limiter; resource expenditure (spend a Fate point, cross off a consequence slot) is common. ARRPG uses the concept of "costs:" basically a stunt can be offset by giving the PC the equivalent of a second Trouble aspect which can only be compelled, never invoked.

For example, normally armour:2 would be a single stunt'sworth of effect. But...

> Metal exoskeleton. Because I have metallic skin, I have armour:4 against physical attacks, but I am weak against electromagnetic forces.

> Were We Filming?: Once per session you can insist that a line said out-of-character by a player at the table was actually said by their character.

Oooooh chapeau! :D

More ordinarily, often a stunt can be "balanced" just by making it once-per-scene or once-per-session or costing a Fate point when you use it.

> The Bowler's Skull. Because my father's ghost haunts this bowling ball, I can use Physique at range in any zone the ball can fly to.

> Overprotective father. You can fill consequence slots with aspects representing tension in your relationship with your father, in order to get a bonus to a single roll using The Bowler's Skull equal to twice the consequence's stress rating OR to get a bonus equal to half the consequence's stress rating applied to all rolls with The Bowler's Skull this session.

I think this will be hard for all of us newbies at first. I can only hope we can come up with these crazy ideas ourselves one day :P

I found that ARRPG's discussion of stunts broke it down very nicely. Really helped me wrap my head around it.

But, like, that second Bowler stunt? I'm not really sanguine about the balance on that. I'd have to see it in play a few times.

The key is to have a narrative concept in mind for the stunt: what story is it telling?

"My bowling ball flies around and hits things really hard!"

Always be willing to revise things that don't work.

Especially in the first couple sessions, let people change aspects and stunts pretty much at-will so they don't feel pressure to get it right the first time.

License to Experiment is good.

Yeah I know this but it'll be an automatic tendency at the table because of the previous rules-first mindset.

I know it, but I will do it wrong anyways :P

Be at one with the oops.

Let the oops flow through you. Use the oops, Marc.

The oops surrounds us, binds us.

Seriously, the best way to learn Fate is to play it and then ask yourself and your group, "What will we change next time, and what will we do the same?"

I just want to play it now.

I mean

now

grmbl :(

It's a learning cycle I try to use in all my life: act according to a plan, reflect on the outcome, study anything you need in order to come up with a new plan based on what you learnt, and act on that to start the cycle again.

I'd offer, but your time zone is inconvenient.

very

I could walk you through a character-building exercise some time, if you want.

(I generally do not use the phase trio for my games' chargen.)

...I don't do expanded Faces & Places either.

I'm not done with reading the GM essential parts of the SRD yet.

I'm fairly confident that will answer many questions right off the bat, so won't need to bother your with them.

I've moved fairly significantly away from a lot of the actual process suggestions in Core, but the philosophies and concepts are still solid.

I came here because @BESW promised good talk and snacks?

I have my voucher.

Mostly, the Pressures, Faces, Places, and Phase Trio add together to be more up-front "Make major decisions now! You can do anything!" than my group's usually comfortable with. Choice paralysis ensues.

@sillyputty Marc's been asking excellent questions and I've been having Opinions!

How exciting! I will peruse (in the traditional sense of the word) the transcripts!

As opposed to the non-traditional sense of the word?

Formally, to examine closely. Informally, to observe superficially.

^That.

(Rarely, as intransitive, to wander.)

^Now he's just showing off. =P

(See also skim vs scan.)

right, i actually didn't know what the word meant, formally or informally :P i was just being a dick

I'm a massive word nerd.

How do I link specific parts of a chat discussion? Like, if I wanted to link my GM friend who is new to Fate to the start of this discussion with @BESW and @MarcDingena , how would I go about that?

Two ways.

You can link a specific item in the transcript or the live chat by hovering your cursor over the left side of the message, clicking the down caret, and clicking "permalink" to get that link.

Or, in the transcript, you can use the "bookmark a conversation" button to save a whole group of messages as a coherent thing you can link.

Thanks! Sent. I still feel as though my group struggles to "get" Fate. But there are improvements! Someone actually made a declaration the other day! Hooray!

If I declare a Story Detail, does that mean I'm mechanically creating an Aspect, or is it pure narrative? I mean, it costs a freakin' Fate Point...

If the GM sets up a Challenge, should each Overcome action be represented by an Aspect? When someone creates a Situation Aspect that's in your way of achieving success, that calls for an Overcome action. How would you use an Overcome action (mechanical) to overcome an Aspect-less obstacle (pure narrative)?

Fate SRD only describes Challenges for a single person, using multiple skills of that character. But take a look at the 'Zird the Arcance' example on that page. If he's with other PCs in that Scene, it makes no sense at all to let him to do the Challenge and the rest just sit there with a thumb up their butts. If you split the Overcome actions amongst the PCs, is it still a Challenge though?

@MarcDingena Probably both. You're spending a Fate point to automatically succeed at saying something useful is true. Aspects are the mechanical expression of things which are true and also important.

It can be confusing sometimes because the most obvious way to make a narrative detail important enough to have an aspect is the create advantage action. But that's creating advantage. IE, it's the free invoke which is the focus of the roll.

When you spend a Fate point to declare a story detail, you're trading "I might get a free invoke on an aspect" for "I'm guaranteed to get the thing I want."

"The thing I want" is often represented by an aspect, but it could be an event or something else which isn't really fitting to be represented by an aspect.

@MarcDingena Challenges can be spread across as many or as few characters as is appropriate.

@MarcDingena Overcome actions are for overcoming obstacles of any nature, including ignorance and stubbornness. One kind of obstacle is an obstructive aspect.

Remember, mechanics in Fate only exist to represent something about the narrative. Fate lets mechanics interface with narrative that hasn't been specifically mechanised.

@MarcDingena Declare a story detail costs a freakin' fate point because it lets you declare any freakin' detail you freakin' like even if your character has no freakin' way to do such a thing.

Like saying the General's daughter has gone missing, or that the store clerk has a deeply haunted past and used to be in jail, or that the pirate captain actually has a heart of gold, or that he stowed his treasure chest in {specific location}, even if your character has absolutely no way to know any of this stuff. (But you can use empathy for the heart of gold thing I guess!)

you could make rolls for any of those things

Whenever I'm watching a movie and the main character glances around the room and exactly the right thing is there--a knife, a ventilation grill, great big chains dangling from the ceiling--I think, "That was a Fate point well spent."

you would just have to figure out what to roll for it

@trogdor How could you make a roll that his daughter has gone missing?

contacts

mmmmm.... feasibly i guess

maybe you know the people who kidnapped her, or the people she was partying with before she mysteriously vanished

it isn't ever impossible to come up with something to roll, it just isn't always ideal

Contacts ("I heard something in the tavern last night, and now it makes sense"), Empathy ("Only desperate concern for a loved one could make the General behave this way"), Notice ("I see enough of the ransom note sticking out from under his desk blotter that I get the general idea").

that is part of the reason you can just spend a Fate point for it

yeah

so, given the right skills (if you want a reasonable chance of success) and the right narrative conditions and the right narrative permissions for your character, yeah, you could roll for mostly anything.

exactly

you need more reasons why you can't than reasons why you can, generally

if we want a coherent narrative then it's both, we have to be concerned about reasons why you can and reasons why you can't

like, why does Doctor Light know whoever the girl was partying with and why are they contacting him about it?

not entirely accurate, from my point of veiw

yes why you can't is a thing, but it is a thing less in line with Fate Philosophy than why you can

yes is better than no, at least more often

yes, given we have a reasonable narrative for it

it isn't about Dr Light specifically

yes, Dr Light knowing a bunch of party people is silly

I know, I'm using him as an example where "under what reasons can you do that?" becomes a pretty big question.

but him noticing something is not

sure

@trogdor <- i am absolutely only responding to this notion

it all revolves around the fact that Fate characters are proactive and skilled

and Fate Players are supposed to have agency

@doppelgreener mk

I think you're both saying the same thing, but from different directions.

what I meant by that is that there are a whole lot more options to get things done than you can shake a stick at

and for everything else there is Fate Points, which is all I am trying to say!

yes

Given the right situation and skill combination I could do absolutely anything to declare absolutely any detail, but that requires the right situation and skill combination, and I as a player am not always going to have those available. (Situation being where our narrative is, and also every relevant aspect established thus far.)

yeah, the real power in declarations is that it gives the player authorial agency detached from character agency.

Declarations let the player gain GM-level control over game reality for a moment.

Yes. Sometimes, the General is going to be in the field (not at his desk), well-established as having a level head right now, and I'm not playing a character with contacts, and the general is off in the distance. At that point, I could spend a fate point to declare a detail about his family / his HQ / something else is under threat, and then a second one to compel him that sudden news of this means he needs to leave or pull his forces out to deal with this new turn of affairs.

yeah

and all I really meant was that as long as a character has ONE skill they could roll to figure something out or declare something, they would be good to go

you need to lack ALL skills that could be applied before you can't do something

Whereas skill checks can give the player agency over things their character couldn't control, it's still a character-focused agency because the game-reality manipulation is observed through the character's actions.

It's... ooh.

that is what I meant by needing more reasons not to do something than to do somthing

Skill checks to create setting details are quantum subjective, while declarations are non-quantum objective.

You'll need to explain what quantum subjective means here.

When you create advantage to Notice something, or to remember something with Lore, it becomes reality because the character has become aware of it.

and if you spend FP it becomes reality regardless of notice

If I roll Notice to get the agency to declare what I see when I peek around the corner, the state of the world around the corner is simultaneously all possible states until my character looks.

yeah. this is a powerful thing that fate points can do that characters can never do (with all necessary disclaimers because I get this "never" isn't going to hold always).

When I finish the roll and my character looks around the corner, it collapses into a single observed state.

But with declarations my character doesn't have to look.

A declaration collapses the quantum wave without observation.

Well, it collapses it with your observation (as a player). Just doesn't mean the character's aware, and doesn't need to be aware.

Right. That's what it means to have GM-level agency.

For sure

For many games in the D&D tradition, player agency is quantised through the locus of the PC.

In Fate, skill rolls still use the locus of the PC as the nexus of player agency.

Declarations break the player's agency free of the PC's immediate locus of control, expanding their area of influence to encompass the entire game world.