Fate

While FATE is a power fantasy game like D&D, it is a narrative control system like Powered by the Apocalypse. Much PbtA and less like Shadowrun and D&D, there is a lack of emphasis on system mastery; the game is about the fiction, not the rules.

Remember that even though it looks like it sometimes, the FATE system is less about simulating the cause-and-effect of actions and more about spending resources to make the narrative go the way you want.

Fate requires some things from its players as much as its GM; Proactive & Competent Characters are the system’s foundation. Alongside this comes the fact that there is a Lack of Character Optimization.

Scenes in Fate games work best as a series of possible branches. They’re not challenges to be overcome.

Fate works best when the opportunity cost is shoved in the players’ faces. That’s a question that appears repeatedly in Fate— how much do you want this, and what are you willing to give up to get it? Do you spend Fate points to buy a victory, succeed at a cost, or accept Compels?

Focus on the cost of things over failures unless you are trying to redirect players.

Fate encourages three things above all else:

  1. Take risks. Get into trouble. It’s okay; you get to decide the consequences! Even if you can’t single-handedly slay the dragon, give it a go! You can get yourself out of trouble before things get terrible.
  2. Make use of the environment. When players attempt actions, aspects encourage them to consider what else in the scene can help.
  3. Let bad stuff happen to you. Embrace it. You get Fate points. I’m still not sure about this reward ratio, but there is an effort to encourage bad things.
    1. Fail forward. Tying into #3, this encourages a familiar literature arc where you advance the story early on (when you have few FP) by failing at what you set out to do, running into trouble, and then (when you have more FP) having a more dramatic success later that gets you your goal.
  4. Encourage complicated characters. Because you have a fixed number of character aspects, the game encourages you to make them dual nature and broadly interpreted, encouraging players to spend a lot of thought deciding their aspects and making them more interesting/applicable.

Aspects

keep them double-edged, say more than one thing, and keep phrasing simple

Game Aspects: Don’t forget to make the setting, tone, genre, and pivotal plot points aspects.

Compels

Event & Decision Based

Advantages

I often like to say that if you’ve got a Broken Leg…

  1. If that causes you to stumble at an inopportune time, that’s an invoke
  2. If that makes it so you can’t climb a ladder, that’s just narrative truth.
  3. If the thing you need is on a ladder, that’s a Compel
  4. If it makes it harder to get somewhere fast, that’s passive opposition.

Note that only the Invoke and Compel require a Fate Point.

Flow & Pacing Mechanisms, the 3 C’s

Conflicts, Contests, and Challenges

Use a Challenge when you don’t have active opposition over the entire Challenge.

If your opposition is active and indirect, choose a Contest. By indirect, I mean both sides aren’t engaged in mutual destruction.

If your opposition is active and direct, you use a Conflict. By direct, I mean that the goal of both parties is to get the other to back down in some way, either by getting knocked out and killed, surrendering, fleeing, etc.

Revised Bronze Rule, Aka Fate Fractal

It is easy to overcomplicate or create issues with the original Bronze Rule, so it was revised… twice.

In Fate, you can treat anything in the game world capable of taking action like it is a character. They can have aspects, skills/approaches, stunts, stress tracks, and consequences if needed. Everything else can have difficulty ratings, aspects, stunts, stress tracks, and consequences as needed, but only things that can take action can have skills or approaches.

When you’re applying the Bronze Rule, ask yourself two things:

  1. Is this thing capable of action against other characters, or does something else take action on its behalf?
  2. Does what I’m making need an added layer of complication by making aspects, skills, stunts, or whatever?

Before applying the Bronze rule, answer three questions about whatever narrative element you’re looking at:

  • Is it capable of its own actions?
    • Then it is an actor. It can have all that good stuff — aspects, skills/approaches, stress & consequences, etc. and take action.
  • If not capable of action, is it capable of resisting action?
    • Then it is an obstacle that can have aspects, a difficulty or set of difficulties, and possibly several victories needed to overcome it as a challenge.
  • If not capable of action, is it something that can be possessed?
    • Then it is a thing that can have aspects and may convey stunts and other rules to the wielder.

GM Prep

The Fate Mentality

  • Take inspiration from movies and TV, not from video games.
  • Begin with the fantastic moments you want to create, and then establish whatever facts about the world you need to get you there.

Prepping Fate

  1. You need a story problem that is urgent and catastrophic if ignored.
  2. Look at the PCs’ aspects and the game aspects, and see what problems those imply. Make them open-ended, like “aliens are attacking.”
  3. Think about what details you need to solve the problem, like “how many aliens, who is the leader, how are they invading, where and when?”
  4. Answering each of those questions is a problem in its own right, and each scene should answer one or two of these questions.
  5. Think of who would oppose the PCs and prepare them and their minions.

Running Fate

  • Think about scenes, and montage anything that doesn’t deserve to be a scene.
  • Each scene needs a story question to answer (that’s how you know when the scene is over) and a source of opposition (that’s how you give your problem agency and urgency).

FATE Session Zero/One-Shot

  • Session Zero
  • Fate Game Creation Worksheet
  • initial dials to set for the game
    • Setting: Define setting, tone, & genre as aspects.
    • Scale: how epic or personal it is.
    • Issues: Two issues (Current &&|| Impending). Both are aspects
    • Faces & Places: Make a few Antag & Protag NPCs and locations w/ aspects/issues.
    • Skills & Stunts: Home brew it some
  • Character Creation
    • Character creation is play!
    • High Concept, Trouble, then Name, in that order.
    • Phase one: Each Character describes their first or notable adventure
    • Phase Two: Each character describes how they crossed paths with another character
    • Phase Three: Each character describes how they crossed paths with somebody else
    • Make aspects out of all three phases.
    • Skills
    • Stunts
    • Refresh
    • Update Stress & Consequences: Will & Physique

FATE Session Flow

  • Be cinematic; Open with a cold open or the opening sequence.
  • Think about scenes, and montage anything that doesn’t deserve to be a scene.
  • Each scene needs a story question to answer (that’s how you know when the scene is over) and a source of opposition (that’s how you give your problem agency and urgency).
  • When you have about an hour left in your session, work towards a dramatic moment that can serve as a climax for the session.
  • End of Session Routine

End of Session Experience

fill this out someday, I really just read from the book every time