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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6106082" data-attributes="member: 177">The feel of fate is a little difficult to describe, in large part because it is more in the GM and players' hands than in many games.  He mentioned the Aspects - those descriptive phrases are the source of bonuses and penalties for your skill checks.  If a character is trying to barrel down a hall filled with enemies, he may invoke his "Built like a tank" Aspect to get a bonus on the roll, for example.  And the bonus is definitely a meaningful thing.  So, the players have great incentive to try to invoke the Aspects of themselves, their opponents, and the area a great deal.  The GM, in turn, is invoking the very same things to create bonuses of the NPCs, or create complications.  The result is a story that focuses on the phrases you use to describe the people, places, and things.  Whatever you choose to call out as description becomes the focus of the action.  If the room is a "warehouse full of boxes", the players are going to try to *use* those boxes to advantage, because that description is also the mechanical hook they have on play in that room.  If the Aspects you create follow a theme, so will the story.  The aspects of the characters themselves are the ones that persist from place to place, encounter to encounter, so they'll be the ones invoked most.  So, basically, FATE ends up feeling like a story about how the characters' traits drive them through the world.  For example, my Dresden Files character has the aspects, "Too clever by half" and "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave..."  So, the story is in part about being inextricably entangled in things, trying to scheme and plot your way out... though often with Wile E Coyote results, because these themes are getting repeatedly invoked, both for and against me.</blockquote>

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