Also @Magician, some follow-up stuff I didn't mention.

The idea that a combat must only conclude once stress and consequences have been exercised is not only antithetical to the idea of doing cool stuff then letting the combat end, it's also antithetical to the idea of narrative-driven play. (I commented on that bit though: stress tracks and consequences are never an in-fiction objective, because they don't exist in-fiction unless you're playing some kind of self-aware video game world.)

Enemies can be taken out much sooner, or even taken out quite quickly. Either way is fine. If it isn't, this is a way to learn and adjust your ability to right-size encounters. The important part is what's happening in the narrative, mechanics are secondary to that.

You've described to us a poor experience you've had based on a fight which wasn't fun. However you also appear (appear! maybe I'm mistaken) to have, because of it, decided very far-reaching things about the combat system, and took me to task very much over my thoughts on it (which is fine, but still that resulted in a lot of discussion and inquiry), because of one encounter which was not well handled.

I am totally on board with that the encounter was run badly but I think some of the sweeping decisions you've made about how Fate combat needs to run because of that experience aren't decisions that will result in fun play, or shouldn't be extrapolated from that one incident like that.

e.g. my views on whether combat needs to wait for consequences and stress tracks to get utilised is already pretty clear, and we've agreed that combat can simply stop, etc

e.g. dissatisfaction with conflicts being boring because they might turn into just filling stress boxes, and pondering that conflicts should be about doing cool stuff, while simultaneously insisting combats should not end until stress and consequences are very well used and being taken out is a legitimate threat. These assertions are antithetical, and insisting all the stress and consequences get used is a great way to make a fight drag out and become boring that needs to end earlier.

Now, you can have both. The way to do both is that you manage to right-size the encounter: your NPCs have stress boxes and consequences (if either are applicable! mooks don't have consequences, the wussiest ones don't even have stress boxes) such that the conflict is drawing to a narrative conclusion around the same time it's drawing to a mechanical conclusion. That's not always an easy task though, and narrative should be guiding when the conflict structure's over for whatever reason.

It's not just one bad encounter. His concerns share a lot of overlap with issues I have with the Fate conflict system and the role of stress in narrative.

However, I think you're both coming at this from nearly opposite ends of the analytic spectrum and I don't know if you can have a coherent discourse that way.

We probably are.

@BESW I have concerns with it too.

There's a lot of confusion over the nature of conflicts (at one point I think I saw "the point of conflict is to defeat the opposition"), and a lot of indefinite pronouns (I can't keep track of when "you" means the GM, the player, the PC, the NPC, or a participant in the discussion)...

...but underlying that is a clear paradigm conflict over the role of a system at the table which you've both already recognised but not, I think, considered as fundamental a difference as I'm seeing it to be.

It is a fairly fundamental difference.

It is definitely an enormous difference in how we perceive the role of combat and our relationship to it.

//still waking up//

You're not having a discussion about conflicts. You're having a discussion around the kind of relationship Fate wants to have with the freeform/mechanics divide and what kind of commitment it expects a group to have when the group chooses a mechanic to represent a narrative element.

I thought we were having that as well, eventually.

Not just combat. Any scene. When I engage the rules for a specific scene, they tell me how it goes and how, generally, it ends. If it's a challenge, I need to get 3 successes.

And sure, things could change, a bomb could explode, whatever. But for the most part, once we're in a challenge, we're going for 3 successes.

Oh, that's another thing. You're confusing contest and challenge.

Could be! Too much terminology in too many games, and I haven't actually looked at Fate in a bit.

Challenges don't care at all about an arbitrary quantity of successes.

Contests do.

Actually, wait, am I? Contest is with opposition. I was talking about Challenge, just was mistaken about how many successes it requires. Not always 3, but a number defined at the start.

> GMs, after the rolls have been made, you’ll consider the successes, failures, and costs of each action as you interpret how the scene proceeds.

You start out by determining a number of rolls to be made, but the result is interpreted without formula.

Yes, and things could change, I keep agreeing with that. But the expectation is that they won't stray too far. I think even the example backs that up.

This is where we get into statements that I can't understand without asking for unpacking of the whole phrase. What are these "things" specifically? What "change" are you talking about? I didn't think I was saying anything about change.

That's why I'm trying not to actually offer opinions about the topics under discussion.

The circumstances, the narrative, could change so much that the set up Challenge or a part of it becomes irrelevant.

I'm very very confused by a discussion that keeps making intuitive leaps of subject I'm unable to follow.

Or we could go into a Conflict as a result of one of the checks, and that'll somehow resolve another one of the tasks.

@BESW Earlier we were talking about Conflicts being able to end without the condition of "one side has conceded or been taken out" being met. For example: two characters may be fighting to impress someone, in the second round of combat that someone gets up and leaves, they're gone now, you have no more reason to fight, you stop.

Magician seemed to be suggesting they had to end that way or the rules were bad, at some point in the discussion.

@Magician Our group has never used a Contest (X successes) and decided to have it end prematurely. I don't intend what I'm saying about Conflicts to also apply to Contests. (Could, though, yeah.)

Yes, I recognize we've only talked about Conflicts.

@doppelgreener Oh, right. Is that the bit where you said "The rules don't say you can't"? Because that's about where I started hoping this conflict would find a way to end.

@BESW Probably about then, yes. That wasn't the sentiment I expressed though.

(Or like, not in the XKCD "can't eat your dog" sense. Specifically, the rules say I can disengage - the golden and silver rules say so.)

Yes, but in a discussion about the rules, invoking "the rules say I can ignore the rules" is... well, it's a shut-down tactic.

I have to point out, in this case, it's not just a rule 0 thing.

> You may find yourself in a conflict scene where the participants are no longer interested in or willing to harm one another, because of some change in the circumstances. If that happens, and there’s still more to resolve, you can transition straight into a contest or challenge as you need. In that case, hold off on awarding the end-of-conflict fate points and whatnot until you’ve also resolved the contest or challenge.

That's right in the chapter on conflicts.

Aye. But it's an edge case that doesn't dismiss or invalidate any criticism of take-out-and-concession mechanics.

...And besides, that's not what was being brought up anyway.

So far as I can tell, the objection wasn't to switching from one scene-resolution mechanic to another.

It was to switching from one scene-resolution mechanic to none at all.

The Fate equivalent of using Diplomacy to end a D&D 4e fight mid-punch.

@BESW Ahh, I see what you're saying. That's true, a shift into no mechanic is not discussed.

I may have misinterpreted Doppel's example; it sounded to me like mechanics would be involved there, in someone getting up and leaving.

If I'm spending my turns in a conflict inflicting stress on a tough enemy, and then someone else walks up and uses Provoke to place Scared on him, and then spends a Fate point to compel Scared to make him surrender... what just happened?

(I have a lunch meeting! Back in a while.)

@BESW Thank you. Yes, this was one of the main points.

"Create Advantage" and "compel" aren't resolution mechanics.

I realize I've meandered all over the place.

And yes, the fiction works. Yes, the metal rules say we can do it.

But it's about as fun and honest as walking up to a party of 3.5 ninja/monk multiclassers with a tricked-out druid.

The resolution mechanic chosen by the group tells us that, in order to play out that fiction, the PC should place Scared on the target, and then use a Provoke attack with the free invoke and the Fate point to pump it up, inflicting stress to take the enemy out.

Same story, but working within the group consensus about how the narrative and mechanics interact in that scene.

However, that's two turns instead of one. And no guarantee of success. It draws things out, and if the conflict is getting boring, that's bad.

I'm not sure why that wouldn't count as the enemy conceding if they're accepting a compel on Scared and surrendering, but I can tell the example's not about that. That is a valid concern.

So here's the trouble I have: conflicts drag.

Not always, but often enough that it's on my mind every time we enter one.

We don't have a lot of experience with conflicts because when I'm GM I've stopped prompting them unless it's really obvious that's what the scene needs, instead calling for contests or simple opposed rolls.

When a conflict drags, we start looking for outs.

Personally, this is why as a GM I've taken to making NPCs with "riders on attacks" stunts and having them attack all the time.

And my PC? Well, she's got +7 to Combat attacks and weapon:4. Guess why?

@BESW Ouch.

Here's a thought. Conflict is about as zoomed-in as Fate gets. By doing invoke-to-give-up, you're jumping up an abstraction level.

@Pixie Concession gives you a Fate point for each consequence you've taken during the conflict. If Scared were a consequence, I'd be a lot more sanguine about it.

I don't have a lot of experience with conflicts 'cause, well, I don't have a lot of Fate play under my belt. In the time I have played, I haven't run into conflicts that dragged -- but I acknowledge that it's something I have less experience with. I've noted already that if conflicts are dragging even when opponents are sized correctly, that is a problem.

Mmm. That's another thing: "sized correctly" has a lot of Fate-irrelephant baggage.

If the PCs walk into the dragon's lair, there's a dragon-sized threat in there.

A "narrative" fight could be resolved with a single invocation of an aspect, why not. Or a single Overcome roll. There are guards at the door, we don't actually care about them, we move on to more interesting things, cool.

Concession, and the idea that being taken out means "more drama" rather than "death," make this okay.

@Magician Yup. Absolutely, and I do this all the time.

Summoning the conflict rules for a scene should mean we think it's interesting enough to zoom in on.

That's the right-sizing.

But if we do decide to zoom in, to deal with each blow and each insult, then resolving this scene by mechanics of a "previous tier" of abstraction is... almost cheating.

It's not about sizing threats to make conflicts interesting, it's about choosing "conflict" as the resolution model when the stakes are interesting.

"I roll to stab the evil wizard". "I roll to save the universe".

Which, if that's the level of abstraction we operate on, is perfectly fine.

Aye.

It's a matter of group consensus, really.

Being in a conflict means we've agreed to use conflict-level mechanics.

Which includes conflict-specific resolution conditions.

If we agree that it should switch up, that's fine.

But we must agree, and switch.

[sigh] I'm gonna go have lunch too. ttfn.

@BESW Thing is, I, a player, don't want to be the one to say "no, we've been fighting this thing for half an hour now, lets keep pounding on it until it gives up." That's a bad position to be placed in. And it doesn't make sense. We want to win the fight. I thought we were working on that. If I thought we could zoom out and invoke an aspect to make the enemy give up, I'd be doing that.

So it's got to be a very significant change to the circumstances that would allow us to zoom out. It can't just be usage of run of the mill mechanics like CA and invoke.

Beaten Up is a great aspect, solves every fight ever.

@BESW What I'm saying here is that if threats are built to the levels the story requires them to have, and the players know what they're going up against, and the conflict still drags on longer than it stays interesting, that is the problem. People need to expect that a fight with a dragon-sized threat is going to play out differently than, say, a kobold-sized threat and take this into account.

A fight with some random kobold might be interesting for a short while, but probably not if the fight keeps going and going, and really, why should you (as a highly competent adventurer) expect that it would be that difficult or complex? If this fight with the random kobold has to drag, no matter if you've faithfully represented them in the mechanics, that's an issue with the rules.

I haven't encountered that, but I'm acknowledging that it's a thing that could happen. If conflicts don't stay interesting as long as it takes you to engage with your opponent (who should ideally be more interesting to engage with the more game-important they are), that's a flaw with conflicts.

[catches up]

@BESW Not what I was saying at all. Wasn't clear at the time, so if it got taken that way, fine.

Later discussion clarified what I meant by that, and it's not "ignore the rules, do whatever".

Seriously if I get one more statement interpreted as "we can do whatever, ignore the rules!" I'm gonna reach a point where I flip my keyboard, give up and leave.

I use the rules. And they say I can do that.

So, no, screw that, legitimately annoyed I am getting taken that way.

But, I relate to Fate very differently than one relates to, say, D&D. In Fate, exiting Combat rules is fine. In D&D, exiting combat rules seems like a problem.

@BESW Our conflicts have dragged. I agree. I have developed thoughts about combat and how it should be run. If we actually get a combat happening during the Dwarf session, this will be another time I experiment with doing something completely different to how we usually approach it.

See e.g. "hey maybe our sessions shouldn't have an end goal, just a situation to resolve with no solution presented or even known." Great success! I wonder if my thoughts on combat will work out as well.

@BESW This is a crap compel and I'd wave it away or suggest different results (like, change the conflict into a contest). Does not have sufficient justification, probably wouldn't even be able to work out that way to begin with. Someone doesn't just surrender because they're scared, and you haven't made them sufficiently scared.

@BESW The objection was to transitioning out of combat through any means other than taken-out or concession. I picked examples that legitimately loaned themselves to that, whether it meant transitioning to different structures, or not. I offered leaping out of a window and starting a rooftop chase. That might be a contest, I didn't say so because it didn't matter much at the time.

I also offered "the reason to fight at all just disappears, and the people decide to stop" as a circumstance that might just end all mechanical engagement altogether. In a case like that, maybe I don't want a conflict or a challenge. I just want to stop, shake hands with the dude and invite him to a meal someplace. Silver rule says that no, I am not forced into a contest or something. I can just stop.

Going to see if this does something:

Oh cool, horizontal dashes trigger a message break. That does work.

@doppelgreener Point of order. We should all get a chance to clarify and elaborate on our position. You repeatedly point out I've misunderstood you, yet continue arguing against a position we've established I don't hold.

Now, behind all of this, yes we meandered. But the driving point I had been responding to the whole time was: "conflicts are boring and also you absolutely must play them out and use up consequences and stress and they must end via someone conceding or being taken out and that's exactly how all of this must be done or the rules aren't very good."

To that driving point, that's not how the rules operate and my whole side of the discussion was pulling at that.

@Magician Was, past tense, yesterday, before we got all this clear.

I understand your position better, I understand those were not your exact thoughts, I've been talking as if we're all clear on that 'cause I thought we were.

And I've been saying "was" to describe what was happening at that time, I get things are different now.

@doppelgreener No. You misunderstood my position as much I misunderstood yours. Who's miscommunicating here is unimportant. My position hasn't changed. My explanation of it and your understanding of it has.

So no, the objection wasn't to "transitioning out of combat through any means other than taken-out or concession".

So, this message again. All I have for your position is the words you say.

And we'd clarified on that for a while now.

You said that, which expressed a pretty clear position. Then you later expressed something else, which conflicted with that position. It was clear something had changed and at that point you were saying different things.

Here, addendum: "But if that's the way it usually goes, the rules for combat are not very good, are they."

I'm not holding you to those words at all!

I get that whatever's happened, your thoughts OR your words have changed. Ok! But the ONLY part of your position that I can receive are your words, I cannot understand your brain directly (I am not a mind flayer or intellect devourer). So if your words are changing, your position, as far as my perception goes, is changing. Or at least the position you're expressing.

(* I may be an intellect devourer)

We've established there are misunderstandings. We've eventually established what my position is. It has not changed.

Ok!

So, I get it, I get we misunderstood each other, I get there's mismatches. But if we're having a retrospective about what was happening 1/3 into the conversation yesterday afternoon, and we are, I'm going to be talking about what was presently the case 1/3 into the conversation yesterday afternoon, which includes what I thought your position was at the time, what you were saying, what was going on for me, and so on.

I get that is not aligned to what's presently the case.

It's not meant to be, it's meant to be aligned to what was the case then.

I have spoken such because, again, I figured everyone else would be pretty clear on that as well.

Let's just drop the initial argument. There's little value in it, as we've both opposed positions the other side didn't actually hold.

Yeah, I'm only bringing it up because we were engaging in retrospective.

I was more or less justifying what had happened.

@Magician and yes I know that happened a lot, and I'd be happy to drop it

TBH this entire discussion went way differently to what I expected, way bigger than what I was imagining, I did not expect we'd butt heads the way we ended up doing, and by the time I realised we were doing that it was way too late for me to know how to resolve it.

And it went much more tensely than what I was expecting, and I am, to be very honest, completely sick of it and the very high tension that's coming with it, and completely [censored] sick of my words being taken to mean a suggestion to ignore the rules and do whatever, and of Oberoni, and stuff along those lines. I would be delighted to discuss conflict and other mechanics... just not in this same discussion. This one's over and I'm done with it.

I would also be delighted to talk about the way I relate to the rules such that I have the engagement/disengagement position I have, the one that has been read by you and now also BESW as "ignore the rules, do whatever".

Just not in this conversation.

@doppelgreener It's also the second time I've engaged with the chat in any meaningful way in the last couple of months, and the second time we've had a somewhat heated argument. I'm not sure what's causing that.

@Magician What was the first?

BSG

Oh, right.

So. Two separate factors: BSG I came off as defending the plot from assault and, little did I realise, accidentally presented myself as effectively a person going "Show me what you've got! I'll take it!".

Fate... not so sure. I had some commentary to offer. I was trying to offer my insights, I'd forgotten how much of a gulf there was between my present thoughts and the broader RPG community and even other Fate groups, because I've been very insular in just having those thoughts privately or only with my RPG group (@BESW and @trogdor mainly) or @Pixie who's playing Fate already.

the summoning is complete

From my perspective somewhere along the way I was taken to task for them, and the conversation for me took a really ugly turn when I was saying X, and you were insisting I was saying literally Y, and then further you summarised my position was one of "don't care about the rules, have fun instead" when I highly value the rules. I did not like either of those moments in the conversation, but I only got actually upset at the first point.

I did not take the first occasion well, but the second I could actually handle calmly and discuss what was going on for me.

I'm not saying "it's your fault!" but, y'know, the stuff other people do is always more obvious to us than the stuff we do. I'm not sure what I did or could have done differently.

So I know a couple of bits that were unpleasant for me. Um. Probably it would've been much different if I'd had more awareness of how to say my thoughts around other people than those I'd been saying them to all along.

@doppelgreener Yeah. It's hard not to conclude that it's my fault, and not to decide it'd be better for everyone involved if I withdrew from here entirely.

@Magician I'm not concluding that!!

I know. I am :P

Sheesh. I like your company. :(

Well, for one thing, you keep talking like Magician hasn't been playing Fate. (see comment about talking with Pixie above)

That's gotta put some hackles up.

He has!!

I know. I know you know that.

But you keep talking about his positions like he's just had one or two sessions of experience instead of entire campaigns.

If there was that going on, sure. But I was also, at the time, reading dissatisfaction with combat dragging out, simultaneous with thoughts of how combat should only end when stress boxes and consequences are very well used, which did make me think "hm, this is being approached kinda D&D-ishly".

and pointing out "yeah, you handle this differently".

Pretty much I accept that at this point I was doing an awful, terrible, crap job of trying to show Magician this new way I've been seeing fate that's working out super well and helping me run fun sessions and about which I am fairly excited and yet I have no idea who shares how much of this view of things and at the time entirely forgot what wildly different perspectives might exist.

@BESW (Also I only know of Magician doing one campaign, which featured, um, WOMBAT robots I think)

(and I know it took way past my first "campaign"'s worth of fate to know any damn thing about the system)

That's true, there was only one campaign. You likely have more experience with Fate than I do.

But even though "your way" of playing Fate is more fun, to you, that doesn't make that the right way of playing Fate. And a lot of your arguments read as "you're doing it wrong, all your problems will disappear if only you'd play the game entirely differently".

Which is just not useful.

@doppelgreener Do you remember "the gremlin"?

@BESW Yeah.

Yes, if one tries to play a simulationist game of 4e they'll have a bad time. The system is just not made for that. I'm not sold on the idea that Fate doesn't support my playstyle, even if there are issues I encounter in it.

Maybe not completely, so if there's some aspect of it I was channelling, please mention that part.

@Magician OK, understood. Thanks, you're right I was doing that. I didn't think it was so drastic, but I'll take your word as truth that it was.

@BESW I don't think this was the gremlin, because I was focusing on its narrative-ness when it felt entirely appropriate. The issue inherently involved narrative. But, I do think I was approaching it very poorly from this "you're playing wrong" perspective.

[shrug] The whole thing's a hot mess I can't understand when I read through it.

But I got some pretty didactic vibes.

"Didactic Vibes" would make a great band name.

I thought I was just teaching, but fine.

Magician had legitimate complaints that I thought I had useful ways to resolve.

Granted that all went to crap and I have responsibility for that and I am disappointed in that it did.

So far as I can tell, he was analysing the system design and you were responding with system-implementation solutions.

If that's the case that would've definitely contributed to all the talking past each other that was going on.

(or not quite talking past each other, but we were definitely failing to meet at some common point of communication that would've allowed proper exchange of ideas)

@Mag Hey, I apologise for approaching you with the "you're doing it wrong!!" stick.

@BESW Thanks for pointing this out. How did you identify this though? Clearly at the time I didn't have the ability to recognise it, and I'd like to be able to.

I know you, and I know him. I've talked with both of you at length about similar sets of game systems, both from a design perspective and a play perspective. "System design" and "system implementation" are the broad lenses through which you each look at almost any topic like this.

Heck, I've seen the same perspective clash come between the two of you before.

Somehow though I definitely recognised it as system implementation.

Maybe another way to put it is (very broadly), Magician sees mechanics as tools for creating environments while you see mechanics as tools to use within an environment.

@BESW that would explain our differing expectations on what the conflict system should do, and whether it has any role in generating excitement

So when he says, "Hm, conflicts are creating an atmosphere at my table that doesn't seem fun," your response is going to be "Here's how I changed the atmosphere so conflicts are more fun."

Which is, you know, really really close to saying "There's not a problem with the rules, there's a problem with your attitude." And that, in turn, is really REALLY close to the Oberoni Fallacy.

Not what you meant to imply, I know, but it's right there anyway.

So, how did I know what was going on? I've listened to both of you for a very long time and I did my best to listen yesterday and today despite it quickly devolving into incoherent ranting.

Well, thanks for doing so.

Might be when I'm focusing on big stuff at work I should recognise when a talk is getting big and back out, so that I can have it when I can relax and listen and take my time and devote more mental resources to it.

mmm.

[sigh] Parrish is only just barely starting to come together.

Usually it takes at least a week to get a Fate PC into a shape I'm happy with.

Hmm. What's Parrish's Throne of Comfort?

Is that literally or metaphorically a seat?

Veil, country, job, team's life.

Hokay, Parrish-as-Immortal is done.

[looks at] Well, that helped a little.

I wouldn't have thought of the Awesome Guitar otherwise, at least.

And a couple of Edges make for decent stunt inspiration.

Great! :)