Fate is based on FUDGE. One of the peculiarities of FUDGE is that Attributes and Skill are not linked.*  In vanilla FUDGe you buy both Attributes and Skills but they don't affect each other. So functionally, in play Skills and Attributes work the same way and can overlap in awkward, inelegant ways.

As a result, in one of my first homebrew FUDGE games I did away with Attributes altogether. I just had a list of Skills (as well as the standard Gifts and Flaws) and by and large that worked okay. However what you lost was that "at a glance" picture of the character that Attributes can provide.

Fate also get's rid of Attributes and has a Skill only system. The "at a glance" picture of the character how is dealt with by Aspects. And I'd argue that is their primary function.

Making this Aspects mechanically significant seems to have been an after thought. In version 2.0 of Fate they had tick boxes/reroll for Aspects. In version 3.0 they took the old FUDGE points and used Aspects as a means to channel them. So to get the most out of a Fate point, you need to tap an Aspect.

The difference is purely cosmetic. In my experience at least it seems to be quite rare not to be able to find a suitable Aspect to tap whenever you want to spend that Fate points. So really in end what you have are Aspects that help capture the "character at a glance" and the old FUDGE point mechanic doing the actual work in the background.

This is of course an oversimplification.There is a lot more to Aspects and in a roleplaying game cosmetic differences do actually matter. But I think it is interesting to think of Aspects simply as something put in place because ultimately FUDGE never could handle traditional Attributes that well.


* According to the original FUDGE rules, the decision to decouple Attributes and SKills was to allow for more flexible character design. Still you can also see that, due to the granularity and plain English features of the FUDGE ladder, it is actually rather hard to have Skills that build on Attributes.

The problem with aspects is that they force a certain way of playing the character. They have to be used which means that certain behaviours are needed and the player is then routed to playing that way.

Fate makes Immersive Baby Jesus cry.

I've only run it once, but that limited experience seems to mirror Soylent Green's impressions. Aspects feel the same as attributes, advantages and disadvantages from several other games.

Then again, immersion is not a primary goal for us, and more the byproduct of a certain style of GMing (which we enjoy), so YMMV. And like I said, it's a limited experience.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;383490The problem with aspects is that they force a certain way of playing the character. They have to be used which means that certain behaviours are needed and the player is then routed to playing that way.

I haven't found this to be the case in my Starblazer game. Its almost the reverse, the character's concept and history was chosen, and the player then picked aspects that reflected that; so there's really no sense of obligation, as this is how the player planned to run the character in the first place.
Also, Aspects can be changed very easily in the game, so its hardly like the character is stuck with the aspects they initially chose.

If anything, I'd agree more with Soylent Green's point, that there are enough aspects that you can usually find something to invoke a Fate Point if you want to, and that basically changes aspects into friendly roleplay/descriptive reminders.

I haven't seen it have any negative effect in Immersion at all, just the opposite in some ways; it helps immersion the same way (or better) than Pendragon's traits do.

RPGPundit

Yeah, I'm not sure what's so restricting about playing your character the way you want to play your character. And as Pundit said, if you don't like it, you can change it or swap it out at the end of a session. Sorted.

The only thing I don't like about Aspects is paying a Fate point to refuse compels -- it's the first rule I threw out on its ear when I started playing FATE.

I was thinking, if you really don't feel like being restricted by your aspects, then you can just make your aspects like this:

• I do whatever the **** I want
• Nobody puts baby in the corner
• I could go nuts at anytime!
• I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
• You're not the boss of me
• Shot an innkeeper in Blackmoor just to watch him die
• Wildly unpredictable
• Loose cannonn
• MAVERICK I'M TIRED OF CLEANING UP YOUR DEAD BODIES

Problem solved!

Quote from: Insufficient Metal;383555Yeah, I'm not sure what's so restricting about playing your character the way you want to play your character. And as Pundit said, if you don't like it, you can change it or swap it out at the end of a session. Sorted.

The only thing I don't like about Aspects is paying a Fate point to refuse compels -- it's the first rule I threw out on its ear when I started playing FATE.

What I like about "compels" is that its a very clever way to avoid the old player-tactic of trying to make disadvantages be advantageous, a common tactic of min-maxers and power-gamers.  In Starblazer, any aspect can be invoked positively or negatively (by the GM), meaning that you don't have the artificial distinction of having special "disadvantages that give you extra points that you can then rules-lawyer or weasel your way around so that they don't actually disadvantage you in any way".  Its also interesting, because often the player accepting a compel will allow for unexpected roleplay opportunities, particularly when they find themselves short on Fate Points (you get one for taking the compel, or you can spend one to avoid the compel; making an interesting mechanic).

RPGPundit

I'd happily read SbA if I could afford a 600 page doorstop i'll probably never finish. It's just too big.

But when we start discussing the whole compel/tagging thing, as clever as it is (and I don't deny it is, or that it's an interesting idea, just that it's popularity is getting ridiculously exaggerated), you step into a metagame that i fear takes me out of the roleplay.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;383704I'd happily read SbA if I could afford a 600 page doorstop i'll probably never finish. It's just too big.

SBA is fairly modular and you don't really have to read everything.

As soon as you grok the basics of the FATE engine (character creation, conflicts, stress track, Aspects, Skills and Stunts), you can get a game off the ground, and introduce the bells and whistles (organizations, aliens, collaborative setting building, etc.) progressively.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;383704But when we start discussing the whole compel/tagging thing, as clever as it is (and I don't deny it is, or that it's an interesting idea, just that it's popularity is getting ridiculously exaggerated), you step into a metagame that i fear takes me out of the roleplay.

Breaking immersion is #1 complaint I see with FATE. It's never been a problem with us, but our experience with FATE is limited. I don't really have a fix for that. Any takers?

Quote from: The Butcher;383715Breaking immersion is #1 complaint I see with FATE. It's never been a problem with us, but our experience with FATE is limited. I don't really have a fix for that. Any takers?

Off the top of my head:

Remove mechanics from aspects and make them general descriptors. No invokes, compels or tags.

Fate points give a flat +2 bonus. Give a few away (or none) and no more for a gritty game, or hand out lots and give more for making people laugh or doing something cool around the table for a pulp or high-powered game.

Change the "needs Fate point to power" rules for Stunts to "can use X times per game." Or, for appropriate Stunts, have it cause stress (to represent fatigue).

For gritty games, Consequences no longer cause taggable aspects, but instead cause a -1 penalty per consequence. By the time you're Severely hurt you'll be nearly useless in combat. For pulp / heroic games, everyone can keep fighting at full strength till they're burger.

If combat gets too long without any bonuses, reduce everyone's stress track to three instead of five. Diaspora already does this. For longer combat and high survivability, use SotC's roll-up method.

Remove social combat entirely. Empathy is now Sense Motive, Resolve is now Willpower, Rapport is now more like Charisma. Intimidation rolls can be used in combat to gain a temporary bonus.

How's that?

Quote from: Insufficient Metal;383752hange the "needs Fate point to power" rules for Stunts to "can use X times per game."

For me, 'X times' powers are just as bad as FP powered ones when it comes to immersion.

Quote from: The Butcher;383715Breaking immersion is #1 complaint I see with FATE. It's never been a problem with us, but our experience with FATE is limited. I don't really have a fix for that. Any takers?

A) Use it with a game that some metagame makes sense (for the genre.)

Noir Detective: "Dames, its always the dames that bring me into messes..." (tag fate aspect.

Superhero: "I'm the best there is at what I do, Bub!" (tag Fate Aspect)

Build the aspects towards things the characters would say, do or notice in characters. Wolverines ominous "Snikt" heralding his soon to be violent self (intimidation bonus? Warning to foes? either way, it works for a aspect)


B) Make them all about. Things you'd do anyway. That is--not so much compels/bonuses, but qurks. "Always smokes when nervous" can be a tell tale give away--but also a good way to explain why your PC has a lighter on a spaceflight.


The problem is that to me they're not any less invasive than hitpoints/health tracking, or calculating difficulties for me. I accept those things as a matter of consequence of gaming. So like them fate aspects fade away quickly. I understand others haven't so they might try the above.

Also, stop thinking about them and start using them. Get a physical object and use it, mechanical "pick up and hand the GM" don't think about it. Just "I sneak in the dark, smoke filled room" Since the GM said it was dark and smoke filled that's an aspect, so just focus on the mechanical act of using what he said rather than on the technical act of thinking about it--just pick up and spend.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;383704But when we start discussing the whole compel/tagging thing, as clever as it is (and I don't deny it is, or that it's an interesting idea, just that it's popularity is getting ridiculously exaggerated), you step into a metagame that i fear takes me out of the roleplay.

That's certainly been my feeling about it as I've been reading my way through 'Diaspora'.
I see 'Aspects' as a variation on dis/advantages... which are NOT top of my list of favorite game mechanics to begin with... and even though I might develop them in light of my character concept it doesn't mean the guy next to me at the table is going to approach it that way.
He can ruin my immersion with his 'rules mastery' just as quickly.

Because of that Fate/Fudge seems like it very much depends on having the right group... and could easily crash with the wrong one. 'Powergamer' and 'big personality' types seem like they could easily end up stomping all over the 'casual' guys play... even more than they normally do. The same when you get to some of the 'players have the power' bits of the game... all that stuff about the consensus of 'the table'.
I'm sure some folks are in tight groups of close friends who they trust... but, if you're not that confident of everyone's creativity or cooperative nature I can see problems coming up fast.

Rather than try to make it less metagamey I'd say just own it and admit it's for a group that wants a more 'gamey' sort of game.

Might as well tack this on here as my understanding of Aspects is still shaky (not really clear how they can always be both negative and positive).

I'm trying to devise a post apocalyptic ruleset where characters will have these sorts of attributes, including what I hope to be 'legends' (such as 'hero of the battle of Vault 101' for example). These would replace traditional xp points and levelling to convey the wandering hero aspect of the genre.

I'm also thinking of a double point system, as opposed to a singular system like Fate points. You would gain what I call Rads (or Radiation points) for resisting the negative part of aspects. You also have Experience points which replace the positive uses of Fate points.