Monele and Leonard discuss Aspects, Free Tags, and Fiction on the FATE Mailing list. Throughout, Monele is in italics, while Leonard is plaintext.
Given that my experience with RPGs so far has been more with simulations, there’s one thing I can’t wrap my mind around : permanent (sticky) aspects only being free once.
Is it purely because of balance or is there a logical explanation behind it?
A basic example would be : you managed to use your Rapport to get someone drunk. To me, it would make sense that from that point, anyone interacting with this drunk person would have it easy when it comes to deceiving, fighting and stealing from him (among other things)… Yet, as I understand it, the rules state that you can only have a +2 bonus (or reroll) free once, and then have to pay for this effect through Fate points. But unless you make an action that shakes this person up (replacing the Drunk aspect with a fragile Not Quite There Yet aspect for example), shouldn’t he/she stay drunk for quite some time?
To explain my point of view, I’ll say that I consider Fate points as something you pay to have your character do something exceptional or escape the will of Lady Luck. Thus, having to pay a Fate point to keep taking advantage of a drunk person seems… not that exceptional 🙂
Have I misunderstood the concept of the Fate points?
– Moni
The answer is: yes. 🙂 Though for the record, I think “balance” is one of those four-letter words when it get applies to games (like “realism”), so I’m going to stay away from using it myself and try to remain in the realm of the concrete.
The free tag rule is really more an exception than it is a rule. The rule is, “It costs you one fate point to invoke/tag an aspect.” The exception is, “If you bring the aspect into play via maneuver, consequence, declaration, or assessment, your first use of it is free.”
Normally speaking, *all* aspects are subject to selective emphasis as people want to spend fate points on them, regardless of their source. If your character has [Strongest Man in the World], that doesn’t give you a constant advantage when you’re in a fight – you have to spend the fate point to create a moment in the fiction where that feature is emphasized.
I think this very sentence might be what made it “click” for me. So, basically, Skills are really what determines everyday talents of the character, while Aspects are keys to unlocking a character’s superb when it most counts.
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than this since Aspects can also be keys to unlocking a character’s bad knee-jerk reactions at the worst of times. But it could be summed up as “keys to drama”, whether it’s positive or negative.
It works the same whether the aspect is yours or it comes from a maneuver or whatever else. So that part of it is just basic, systemic symmetry.
There’s something else going on here, however.
So, if you go and look at what conflicts look like in any adventure fiction, movies or books or whatever, they usually have a certain kind of dynamism to them. Heroes don’t calmly sit behind one large piece of cover and calmly pick away adversaries – no, they stop behind this table and cap someone, then run behind the bar in time to avoid more fire and cap someone else, etc etc.
Situational elements aren’t constant, because that makes for a less dynamic scene. The author doesn’t want to describe three pages of, “Jack, nestled behind the armoire, shoots yet another guy.” So Jack bounces around the scene, even though that might not really make sense to do in “real life” or whatever.
The same is true of a Fate game. A scene where you get a guy drunk and then continue to just get him more drunk is more boring than a scene where you get him drunk, get him talking about family stuff so he’s emotionally vulnerable, and convince him that you’re his best friend. In the game, the second route is therefore deliberately more cost-effective, because each of those things could be an attack or maneuver that gets you a free tag.
Does that help?
-L