I have mentioned a few times in the podcast that I am playing Fate, and after the first couple of sessions, I wanted to write up my thoughts and impressions.
The group I'm playing with is a mix of players. Some have little or no experience with RPGs, some have a lot of experience with a few games (i.e. played a lot of Storytelling/World of Darkness), and some have dabbled, but I don't think any have played a Fate game before now. It was interesting introducing these folks to the system. Both experienced and inexperienced players took to the system fairly quickly. The mechanisms of the are simple and straight-forward, but the flexibility of Aspects give them a strong hand in driving the narrative forward. Aspects allow any player to use imagined information in the game to create concrete, mechanical effects; if they discover an opponent is weak in a particular way, there is a simple method of using that weakness in the rules... or, as they are discovering, to create a weakness and then use it.
Although they are still heavily reliant upon my recommendations when it comes to using Aspects and creating advantages (temporary aspects), and they haven't really engaged in any fights with lasting effects to see the utility in that, the players are starting to pick up on some of the tools that they have and how best to use them. The premise for the game helps to keep things simple. It's sort of a cross between Burn Notice and Firefly: space western with heists, cons, and super spies. That premise got the players all focused on creating very particular types of character Aspects, like what they are good at, what they are bad at, etc. I would really like to play a game where the PCs' Aspects are more like actionable goals or problematic relationship descriptions, where the players are not all working together, and the play of the game is more a map of conflicting and overlapping goals than a "here's a mission for you to complete" situation. The current game feels like a surface level concept, not delving too deep into the most dramatic ways Aspects can be used... but, that lack of depth may be good for helping to keep all of the players, new and old, coordinated and focused.
The action in the game is a lot of fun. For the last session, I set a problem in front of them. A strategically important planet was on the verge of handing itself over to the enemy Alaran Empire, but a civil war was causing problems with the president's control. The PCs were to take advantage of the scuffle, prevent unification of the different factions, and postpone the turnover indefinitely so that their United Federation would have a chance to come in. Basically, it was a massive destabilization mission, in which assassination was essentially off the table, because a martyr would serve as a unifying force. The players broke into three small groups and each took a different tactic. One group strove to break up the political marriage of the president with a princess of the ethnic minority behind the civil war, another sought to break up the cohesion of the rebellion by implicating its leadership in unacceptable war crimes, and the third conspired to make it appear that the Alaran Empire had installed secret agents who were making a mess of the world, turning public opinion against the turn-over.
The plots and plans intersected in different ways, and the players were really creative with their approaches and how they could work together. There was a bit of a problem on my end, though, which took away from the players' enjoyment. I ended up using a high-level resolution for employing dice; we would discuss what was happening in a scene and role-play it, maybe with a couple of very significant rolls, and then it would be over. So much was happening in the game, in so many different areas, that I needed to keep bouncing around to different players, and none of them got enough of the spotlight. It occurred to me that I've been playing a lot of games that sort of abstract scenes, arguments, and battles down to a couple of rolls, and that takes away from some of what makes Fate so good. If you focus on individual actions and goals within a large conflict, like a debate, there is a lot of fun back and forth of tagging Aspects, creating advantages, changing approaches... and lots of opportunity to play-act as your guy, which is fun. I'm going to go much more specific with the rolls next time, so that intense conflicts get all the focus they need.
One thing I will note, though, is that the problem may have stemmed from there being a few too many players. I prefer games I run to have four players: myself, and three others. That's the perfect number for me. Everyone gets a lot of "screentime," the story moves quickly, each person gets proportionally more input. With the seven players (including myself) of this Fate game, there just isn't time for any one player to be the focus, and it's incredibly easy to accidentally leave someone out. With so many ideas and plans being proposed, enacted, altered, and revised, there was very little time for any of them. I may also have put too much situation into the mission. There were three big factions, and several NPCs to connect various factions, so there was a lot to try and accomplish. Perhaps if I focus the mission down a bit, the players will be able to focus as well, and the game will be much tighter as a result.
Overall, though, the game has been fun. It's inspiring! I have a dozen ideas for missions that I think I could flesh out, and a dozen more ideas for campaigns using Fate... High fantasy adventure! Intensive space opera politics! Gritty superhero drama (i.e. Arrow, Daredevil)! The players have so far managed to avoid relying on the traditional "nuke 'em all from orbit" method of approaching problems in RPGs, which really speaks strongly to Fate's applicability to dramatic premises. I'll have to see what I can do with it next.
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