Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6703713" data-attributes="member: 177">Disastrously bad, or just disastrous?  In any given version of D&D, when you lose all your hit points, there's a further mechanic that tells you the character's ultimate fate.  These mechanic are actually pretty dissociated, in that they deal with the game-rule concepts of hit points, ability scores, and saving throws, rather than anything in the game world.  But, really, the player has no further choices to make in these mechanics anyway, and the basic determiner of whether a mechanic is dis- or a- is upon what the player decisions are made, so the question is largely moot.In FATE, if you get Taken Out, you lose all narrative control of your character.  Like in D&D death, no further choices on your part, so again whether the mechanics is dis- or a- is largely moot.  But, the end result is not determined by an impersonal mechanic, but by a *person*.Lots of people just don't like that loss of control.  They see being at the mercy of a die mechanic as more palatable than being in the hands of a person.  A *person* having power over your personal avatar (and thus, in a way, you) is not attractive to many.In addition, we can view D&D death mechanics as a simulation.   Narration of death in D&D is typically, "You lie there for a while, and then pass away," because that's the what the mechanics have happen.  As a narrative, it is uninteresting, even trivial.  FATE death is not a mechanical simulation - the mechanic takes you to the point of loss of narrative control, loss of agency, and no farther.  Mechanics do not actually cover death in FATE, be it in physical combat or social conflict.See, there we are.  Not comfortable with someone else determining things.We could word it differently, if you like, and leave it vague, and say that wherever the character goes is irrelevant.  They've been left in a state where they are no longer able to impact events in a meaningful way, and end up friendless, alone, with a dagger in the back.  Or, just so stunned by the realization of how much they've just lost in the conflict that they are quietly shuffled away and silenced forever by a bodyguard.This is not a case of negating player choice - the player *had* no further choice, any more than the player whose character reached zero hit points had further choice.  Agency was lost *before* death, not as a result of death.Nope.  But, in a FATE conflict, it is *not* true that all conflicts end with someone Taken Out.  FATE conflict has what, in the live-action world, we'd call a "free escape" - one side or the other can choose to Concede, which does *not* put them at the mercy of their opponent.  For named characters (PC or NPC) Conceding is far more common than getting Taken Out.  And, even when you are Taken Out, actual Death is less common than having something else happen.Oh, I didn't know that.  It isn't a simulation of the real world.  If it is a simulation of anything, it is of pulp or action-adventure narrative.  It is exactly the same as FATE's combat engine.  As noted, FATE's combat engine doesn't actual handle death, either.  FATE is not "typical".  Nor does it try to be typical, or claim to be typical.  If that's not for you, that's okay.That's correct - the *engine* doesn't tell you.  The rest of the rulebook makes an attempt to do so in bits separate from the actual game engine.Maybe not for you, but for many players this solves a problem - in D&D, played as written, death can often be anticlimactic.  FATE allows the GM, without breaking any rules, to make sure that death only happens when it would be dramatically appropriate.  The purpose is mostly to allow the GM to do something *other* than kill the character who was Taken Out.This isn't good for all possible players.  As one example, some folks want life or death to be a measure of success at game-rule-play and manipulation.  FATE will probably be phenomenally unsatisfying for these players.  I remind you - as far as I am concerned, the major determiner for dis- or as- sociated mechanic is upon what criteria the player makes decisions.  If they make decisions based on in-game reality, it is associated, if they make a choice based on metagame elements, it is dissociated.  We are talking about what happens when the player *has no decisions*.  This is, again as noted, like D&D death, which actually happens after the character has no choices (but is determined by game-rule, dissociated stuff, too).  It is a portion of the game that chugs along without player input.</blockquote>

Verification