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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7342730" data-attributes="member: 4937">[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]: Lol.  So now the shoe is on the other foot and someone has hung a kick me sign on your preferred system.   It's OK.  If FATE is right for you, go for it.  But I do wish you could see my problems with it.I suppose, but it's certainly not a mana point system (compare Diablo I with Diablo III).No, stop that.  Vancian magic may in your mind be primarily about power tiers, but that's not even a particularly important part of Vancian as far as I'm concerned.   The most important aspects of Vancian is that it enforces diversity by making you commit to spells or else forgo them (you have more slots to fill than you have spells), and that it compartmentalizes magic into very predictable narrative packets.   That is to say, Vancian is not a free form system where you have as a player a lot of ability to create and shape the effect that you want, but consequently you also have a reliable understanding of what is going to happen.I think most groups probably are 4-5 players, though I prefer D&D at 6 players personally.   One of the least discussed aspects of table top gaming is how the number of players at the table limits the sorts of play you can support.   Indy games frequently prioritize narratives about the internal mental exploration of character (the character's character, as it were), but that sort of play is really only fun when there are at most 3 players and is honestly probably best with just one player and one GM.   You can't do that when you have 12 players competing for spot light because the players who don't have the spot light on them get bored, or worse try to steal spotlight.  I totally agree it's not universally shared, but to really address this in depth I'd have to have the FATE book in front of me and be able to quote it extensively.  I've several times been in discussion on EnWorld with FATE proponents who defended FATE as being one thing, when the rulebook itself repeatedly reinforces that it is about the opposite.    No, you don't.   Or if you do, you aren't playing FATE.   In particular, FATE cannot provide players with a contract about reality of the world you are in.  It's literally designed not to do that and discusses how bad such a contract would be for the game.  The contract that FATE tries to make with the player is that they can be involved in the creation of the narrative.   Nor can the results of success or failure be predicted.  FATE does not even try to offer that as part of its social contract.   Instead, FATE offers a contract that revolves around Rule of Cool, that whatever happens should not be predictable but that it should be fun.   The GM, and indeed the players, are given wide leeway to interpret what failure and success mean, and it's done on purpose.   That's not bad, but it doesn't fulfill my aesthetic of play.   For me, that sounds about as fun as a root canal.Consider a game like "Star Wars: Edge of the Empire"Almost nothing about that game is part of my preferred aesthetic of play.  When someone says of a game, "In practice, this system offers tremendous flexibility to allow the players to participate in the storytelling process, rather than just waiting for the GM to respond after a die roll. The players talk together about how to interpret a roll of the dice, and shape the results to make the most exciting story.", whether I'm thinking of that from my perspective as a player or my perspective as a GM, that sounds about as fun as rolling around in a bed of tacks.  I see what it is going for, but the last thing I want as a player is "talking together about how to interpret the roll of the dice" or as a GM being asked to "shape the results to make the most exciting story".   If that is what the game prioritizes, that it doesn't meet the above list - and in most cases the rules of the game will say that they don't.</blockquote>

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