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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7977498" data-attributes="member: 16814">Not to convince you to go back and try Fate, and you setting issues are very valid, but I'd like to try, one more time, to discuss how compelling a trouble isn't taking control over character, or even really meddling with character.Firstly, troubles are things the player should be picking because they want those things to be a large part of their character.  They should be themes the player wants to see in play.  So, invoking those themes isn't meddling, it's engaging the player's desires.  If this isn't working, then there's a disconnect on the player side about understanding the goals of play in Fate.  I mean, if you're okay using the Fear spell against D&D characters, that's a far more invasive usurpation of character because it's unasked for and assigns a trait hostilely compared to a Fate Trouble that the play chooses to evoke their character.Secondly, compelling a Trouble doesn't force a line of action.  You don't make the character do what you want them to.  Invocations of aspects are, in all cases, now a requirement of the action declaration, not a limitation to a specific action.  For instance, if you have the Trouble, "if it's not nailed down...," implying you tend to steal things lying around, and the GM compels that Trouble in a room full of treasures, then you, as a player, now have the option to be paid to engage this character trait you chose or, if you think it's important enough not to, pay to not engage that element.  If you accept the compel, the GM should not be telling you what you do at all -- that's still up to you to form an action declaration.  That declaration has to involve you taking something, but how you do that, what you take, and any other particulars are up to you, not the GM.  You, as the player, have accepted a Fate point to engage in an aspect of your character that you selected, that's all.  The GM isn't meddling in your character, it's all your choice.The kind of authority over characters the GM has in these games is being able to narrate failures freely, including describing character actions.  The GM has wide latitude in failure narration.  However, that's still tightly bound by the principles of the game -- the GM should be a fan of the characters, so failure narration must still be true to the characters and not an opportunity to describe incompetence or slapstick.  Also, this authority only exists after the players have declared and action and then failed -- the GM has no way to force this authority.So, the only time the GM has authority over characters in a PbtA or Blades game (they are different systems, if closely related) is after the player has declared an action and gotten an outright failure, and then only within the scope of the situation and the scope of the character with an eye towards being a fan of the character.  It's very limited, and tightly constrained authority.  I don't even have anything like a Fate compel to push on the PCs.  In Blades, the closest thing is offering a Devil's Bargain, which is an offer to accept a complication in exchange for an extra die on a roll (or similar benefit), but there's no cost to refusing an offered Bargain and anyone can offer a Bargain, not just the GM.  In other words, there's very little of the kind of usurpation of character actions that you seem to be concerned with, here.  If a character tries something and fails, it's natural for the GM to be able to describe that failure, which might include some brief narration of what the character does to earn that failure, yes?  Say, if you were trying to sneak across a courtyard while a guard's back was turned, and chose to do so quickly, meaning the GM set the position of the task to Desperate (very risky) and the effect to normal (you get what you want) and you roll and fail (highest die is 3 or less), then the GM can describe how your character starts off in a silent sprint, but halfway across the courtyard their dagger jostles out of their gear and clatters to the ground and now they're halfway across the courtyard having made a racket, what do you do now?  That's the kind of character control you get in Blades.Now, that said, you should, as GM, absolutely be throwing up situations where a player's vice or trauma are invoked by the situation, so they have every opportunity to choose to indulge in them.  This does earn the PC an XP at the end of the session, but there's no cost if they chose to not engage, other than not marking XP.  PbtA and Blades are full of these kinds of pushes.</blockquote>

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