Grade the Fate/Fate Core System

[DammitVictor]

I am generally not well disposed to metanarrative and/or author stance games (like Fate Core or Cortex Prime) but one thing I really admire about them is their ability to make ephemeral qualities of PCs and NPCs-- like their motivations and beliefs-- mechanically relevant in game. It's not as difficult as it sounds to run these games in a more immersive, actor stance frame of mind, it just requires a bit of conscious player buy-in to play them that way-- and then they're wonderful for all sorts of "traditional" roleplaying scenarios.

Cortex Prime is my go-to system for Planescape.

I don't have as much experience with actual Fate Core, but Dresden Files Roleplaying Game is one of the top go-to games for my group, across multiple umpires. I generally prefer Cortex Prime because:

Also it can be useful for certain genres/settings to have two-axis abilities (not only two-column FATE, but mixing two separate measurement sets).

 

[PencilBoy99]

I cant imagine how I'd use cortex prime. It seems like before running any setting I'd need to build everything, playtest it, etc. Every npc / antagonists would be a custom thing I'd have to build.

 

[overgeeked]

I cant imagine how I'd use cortex prime. It seems like before running any setting I'd need to build everything, playtest it, etc. Every npc / antagonists would be a custom thing I'd have to build.

You definitely have to decide on what sets you're going to use before play, that's true. But it's nowhere near as involved as you seem to think. Between the Doom Pool and the Crisis Pool rules you basically don't need to stat any NPCs ever. And you don't really need to playtest anything. It's already been playtested for years (a decade+?).

 

[PencilBoy99]

You definitely have to decide on what sets you're going to use before play, that's true. But it's nowhere near as involved as you seem to think. Between the Doom Pool and the Crisis Pool rules you basically don't need to stat any NPCs ever. And you don't really need to playtest anything. It's already been playtested for years (a decade+?).

Ok maybe we should have a separate thread where we try out some samples.
I'm terrible with mechanics, but I can pretty easily see how I'd create most any game using Fate. I'm befuddled w/ Cortex.

 

[Kannik]

Ok maybe we should have a separate thread where we try out some samples.
I'm terrible with mechanics, but I can pretty easily see how I'd create most any game using Fate. I'm befuddled w/ Cortex.

I'll happily join in that. For me it didn't take too long to get into the groove of running Cortex for our campaigns and it has set the stage for many delightful and fantastic moments. (Moreso than my experience did with FATE, to keep this post on-topic to the thread.)

 

[Gradine]

I've found that it's too crunchy to be kind of story-first game it's trying to be, but it's also way too wibbly-wobbly for the kind of crunchy game it actually is.

I had one experience with FATE Accelerated and it was even poorer; in a poll strictly about FATE Accelerated my vote would probably be hatred.

 

[loverdrive]

I adore Fate. While there are many other games I would consider before it, Fate has a unique feature that no other system has: aspects can be anything. Including completely non-diegetic abstractions, that I find to be the best use of aspects by far.

If you use aspects to describe who the character is in-universe (*Detective down on his luck), Fate doesn't really provides anything that any other game couldn't, and you end up with a lot of overlap: what's the point of aspects when skills and stunts exist? They already describe character's capabilities mighty fine.

But if you use them to describe who the character is in the real world, why do they exist in the story, now you are cooking. *Love Interest of the Main Character is an awesome aspect that isn't reduntant with the rest of the character sheet, and provides tools that you would lack in any other game.

 

[JohnF]

I adore Fate. While there are many other games I would consider before it, Fate has a unique feature that no other system has: aspects can be anything. Including completely non-diegetic abstractions, that I find to be the best use of aspects by far.

If you use aspects to describe who the character is in-universe (*Detective down on his luck), Fate doesn't really provides anything that any other game couldn't, and you end up with a lot of overlap: what's the point of aspects when skills and stunts exist? They already describe character's capabilities mighty fine.

But if you use them to describe who the character is in the real world, why do they exist in the story, now you are cooking. *Love Interest of the Main Character is an awesome aspect that isn't reduntant with the rest of the character sheet, and provides tools that you would lack in any other game.

Perfectly stated, and I had to bold the brilliant parts!

Something that I've always loved about Fate is that, at the end of a session, a player can "Rewrite any one of your aspects, except your high concept." Seems bland on the surface, but, if players are fully engaged in driving the drama forward, they'll realize that making thoughtful tweaks to an aspect at the end of a session will give them exciting or intriguing NEW options for play in the next session.

For example, after everything that happened during a session, that PC with Love Interest of the Main Character might revise that aspect to Thinks They're Not the Only Love Interest of the Main Character, which opens up a host of new invoke, compel, and decision-making possibilities. And that truly, as @loverdrive stated it, gives a player tools - both inspirational and mechanical - that you don't really see anywhere else. When players get this, they love it!

I just wish Evil Hat had highlighted this so much more in their rules...

 

[Umbran]

... what's the point of aspects when skills and stunts exist? They already describe character's capabilities mighty fine.

One use is broad competency. This becomes more obvious in Fate Accelerated, that doesn't have skills, as such.

I play in a Fate Accelerated Space: 1889 game. My character has the High Concept: "Former Master Sergeant in Her Majesty's Service." You only get a few stunts, so you can't have one for each thing highly competent military personnel with a ton of experience in the field can do. But with this Aspect, I can get a bonus on anything you'd expect him to be good at - shooting, firing artillery pieces, driving vehicles, survival skills, field tactics and so on.

Another use is access to narrative, which, in Fate, matters, as you have to invoke that narrative to interact with things. My Master Sergeant can't invoke any supernatural narrative, as he's a very mundane character, by design. A "Fire Sorcerer of the 5th Circle" could invoke supernatural explanations for what they do.

Another related thing that an Aspect can get you that a skill or stunt can't is fictional positioning. My character's Trouble aspect is, "'Former' Master Sergeant in Her Majesty's Service" - while he says he is retired, nobody believes him - he is always assumed to be on some mysterious special detached mission or something, which gets him treated kind of like James Bond or something, for good or ill..

 

[Tonguez]

I discovered Fate around 2015, so around the same time. That is one of my biggest criticisms of Fate: the writing. Fate doesn't really do a good job of explaining what the game is about or how best to run or hack it. (I have a similar issue with Cortex Prime.) Fate Accelerated and the later Fate Condensed do a better job of explaining the core game play. The Book of Hanz is also nearly required reading for Fate.

Yeah I think I was lucky that I read the Book of Hanz and their Horror supplement before I started playing FATE Core itself, so my mind was a bit more tuned in to how to run things despite the Core book not being the best for explaining things. Then accelerated came out andits been an awesome ride.