Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, John Rogers, and Ryan Macklin Play FATE CORE!

While the show Tabletop normally focuses on boardgames, it occasionally dips into tabletop roleplaying games. A couple of years ago, Will Wheaton and his friends played Green Ronin's Dragon AGE; and now they've turned their attention to Evil Hat's Fate Core. This episode of Tabletop features Felicia Day, screenwriter John Rogers, Will Wheaton, and GM (and co-designer of Fate) Ryan Macklin. Wheaton describes Fate as the gold standard of games which let the rules get out of the way so as to focus on the story.

[video=youtube;NOFXtAHg7vU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOFXtAHg7vU[/video]

 

[Brodie]

You really have to embrace the roleplay of the Aspects and the Fate Point system to get the most out of it, because its core mechanic is rather bland - roll four dice, add a modifier, and hope the other guy rolls worse, and do that every single time you do anything. But if you play up the Compels and the opportunities for teamwork, and the scene-building, it rises above that basic mechanic and gets a lot more interesting. It's just a bit of a leap for many players, and even GMs.

Funny thing is... With my group, one of the rules of the group is that everyone has to have a game to run. So, everyone is a GM. We meet every Sunday and vote in two people to GM for the day (sometimes we have a wildcard in the form of a board game or something), that way each GM for the day still gets a chance to be a GM. With this is mind, it seemed like Fate would be perfect. But so far they've each been a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to the idea of cooperatively creating the world, and that's the one thing I'm REALLY itching to do with Fate.

While I wouldn't completely say that Fate is simple, I think the rules are easy to grasp. Hell, it encourages creativity and I've enjoyed watching them make characters with shared history. But they always seem to have trouble accepting the... I guess you could call it 'freedom' the game gives the players. With my Dresden game, there were times I practically beat them over the head with how I used the rules so that they'd learn from example. I compelled the hell out of them, yet they hardly used compels as part of their arsenal. Sigh. I'm hoping with my heavy metal game they'll grasp it better.

 

[CapnZapp]

In the youtube still (first pic above), is that Day... or is it Elizabeth Marvel...?

 

[Henry]

And cue the crickets.

Actually, I tried to comment on the first day the adticle appeared, and the site told me that comments were not allowed for some reason, then followed by a 404 for a couple of hours, so I forgot about coming back.

In all, it was a fantastic vidcast, and a near-perfect dream-team lineup for FATE, IMO. It does prove to me again that FATE is one of those games that absolutely requires a very strong and creative GM, and at least one person with a knack for trope-phrases. Seemed like John was the one mainly coming up with the aspects/troubles/boosts, with Ryan a close second. i played in an Iron Edda game with Tracy Barnett last year, and he had an innate (or at least well-trained) knack for the tropes, which the table used like the proverbial rented mule. something like TVtropes.com would be a huge asset to first-timers at a FATE game if everyone is new to the system.

 

[Henry]

You really have to embrace the roleplay of the Aspects and the Fate Point system to get the most out of it, because its core mechanic is rather bland - roll four dice, add a modifier, and hope the other guy rolls worse, and do that every single time you do anything. But if you play up the Compels and the opportunities for teamwork, and the scene-building, it rises above that basic mechanic and gets a lot more interesting. It's just a bit of a leap for many players, and even GMs.

It does seem to require a lot of group trust on making cool scenes, and being OK with willingly making your character vulnerable, much like Fiasco or other... what is it called? "Story First" games? That moment with John's character coming back from the Hell-dimension, with the "special artifact"? The look on Wil's face was priceless, it looked like it was a top moment of the game.

 

[Brodie]

It certainly does require trust and willingness to make your character vulnerable. You also have to come up with aspects that you can use but that can also be used against you. I'm generally good with that as a player. As a GM, I don't allow my players to create the character on their own. I make character creation a full blown session and help guide it so no player comes to the game with a character that doesn't have any Aspects I can't invoke. I'm lenient and will allow one that seems to only benefit the character. I say 'seems to' because I'm creative.

 

[Von Ether]

Interesting note on Macklin's style. He seemed to do a sort of Mad Libs prompt to get his players on board. I tried the more RAW approach and most times my players seem a little lost at first then the get silly. Sort of like the newbie RPG player who is like, "I can do anything? Really? My character puts a lamp shade on his head and dances across the street! What do people do?"

 

[Morrus]

Actually, I tried to comment on the first day the adticle appeared, and the site told me that comments were not allowed for some reason, then followed by a 404 for a couple of hours, so I forgot about coming back.

Yeah, that was my fault. I managed to not realise I had comments turned off!

 

[GMMichael]

Interesting note on Macklin's style. He seemed to do a sort of Mad Libs prompt to get his players on board. I tried the more RAW approach and most times my players seem a little lost at first then the get silly. Sort of like the newbie RPG player who is like, "I can do anything? Really? My character puts a lamp shade on his head and dances across the street! What do people do?"

The Mad Libs approach is how I assume Fate normally works, and it was very interesting to see the similarities to Wil's GM style. Sometimes it makes me think the game should be called Meta instead, since the players spend a lot of time talking about the story instead of playing in the story.

Not that there's anything wrong with that... I suppose it can be played in a more traditional way as well. I bet it depends on the GM. Cheers to Morrus for getting us a link to one of my favorite actual-play video sources!

 

[MarkB]

The Mad Libs approach is how I assume Fate normally works, and it was very interesting to see the similarities to Wil's GM style. Sometimes it makes me think the game should be called Meta instead, since the players spend a lot of time talking about the story instead of playing in the story.

Not that there's anything wrong with that... I suppose it can be played in a more traditional way as well. I bet it depends on the GM.

The last Fate Core game I ran was a lot more traditional - I had a clear idea of the plot, setting and characters well in advance, and most of the players were more comfortable playing in traditional style than going crazy with fate points and aspects. It worked well, but I did feel like I was wasting some of the system's potential.

I'm planning on running a more freeform adventure in the near future.

 

[Aldarc]

You really have to embrace the roleplay of the Aspects and the Fate Point system to get the most out of it, because its core mechanic is rather bland - roll four dice, add a modifier, and hope the other guy rolls worse, and do that every single time you do anything. But if you play up the Compels and the opportunities for teamwork, and the scene-building, it rises above that basic mechanic and gets a lot more interesting. It's just a bit of a leap for many players, and even GMs.

There can be robustness in that blandness. We could, after all, reduce the core mechanic of D&D to "roll a d20, add a modifier, and hope you beat the difficulty, and do that every time you do anything."

It certainly does require trust and willingness to make your character vulnerable. You also have to come up with aspects that you can use but that can also be used against you. I'm generally good with that as a player. As a GM, I don't allow my players to create the character on their own. I make character creation a full blown session and help guide it so no player comes to the game with a character that doesn't have any Aspects I can't invoke. I'm lenient and will allow one that seems to only benefit the character. I say 'seems to' because I'm creative.

Are you making your character vulnerable or compelling? One of the problems that I have repeatedly faced in D&D (and traditional roleplaying games) is that in the player psychology of "beating the game," many characters are seemingly designed to be flawless, whether individually or in context to a team's build. This can be a problem in Fate, if players are overly protective of their characters to the point of making a Troubleless Trouble, but such troubles prevent players from re-generating fate points. But your point is well taken, and I agree about the importance of collaborative character creation.