Feb 04, 2013 Justa random thought’One of the thin...
Just a random thought.
One of the things that I see in Fate a lot is that players try to weasel into using their best skills for anything and everything possible.
I used to think of this as min-maxy at best, outright munchkinism at worst. I now have changed my mind, and think of it as an outright good thing.
I'm seeing skills now less as discrete chunks of training, and more as "how does this character tend to solve problems?" So a character with Stealth as his top skill tends to solve problems using Stealth, and figure out how to use Stealth to solve problems whenever possible.
If you need information on someone, this leads to a variety of solutions. The Stealthy character will try to shadow him. The Rapport character will be friends. The character with Contacts will try to find out through social circles, and the Fighting character will beat it out of him. The Deceitful character will flat out lie.
In other words, once I started looking at skills through this lens, optimizing around using peak skills became a roleplaying advantage that became supported by mechanics.
I think I was slightly inspired to this by the description of skills in FAE, but I could be wrong on that. I'm also curious if others are in a similar place, or if I've just gone of the deep end again.
One of the things that I see in Fate a lot is that players try to weasel into using their best skills for anything and everything possible.
I used to think of this as min-maxy at best, outright munchkinism at worst. I now have changed my mind, and think of it as an outright good thing.
I'm seeing skills now less as discrete chunks of training, and more as "how does this character tend to solve problems?" So a character with Stealth as his top skill tends to solve problems using Stealth, and figure out how to use Stealth to solve problems whenever possible.
If you need information on someone, this leads to a variety of solutions. The Stealthy character will try to shadow him. The Rapport character will be friends. The character with Contacts will try to find out through social circles, and the Fighting character will beat it out of him. The Deceitful character will flat out lie.
In other words, once I started looking at skills through this lens, optimizing around using peak skills became a roleplaying advantage that became supported by mechanics.
I think I was slightly inspired to this by the description of skills in FAE, but I could be wrong on that. I'm also curious if others are in a similar place, or if I've just gone of the deep end again.
Shared to the community Fate Core - Public
At that point it kind of hit me that Dean was good at lying - and that was part of his character. If he didn't almost compulsively lie to solve problems, he wouldn't be Dean. Especially when it created problems.
I eventually realized that rather than fight it, I should set up situations where lying causes interesting complications even on success. I only had mixed success with this, due to some shortcomings in my scenario set-up, but I'm prepared for next time!
But, honestly, I find it a bit boring, when 3 out of 4 rolls a player makes for his character is using his +4 Skill.
Skill = style. Yes. But. - But doing nearly everything the same plain vanilla (for this character) way does not really make for an interesting story. Interesting stories come from the need to overcome challenges not being able to bring your A-game to bear, but having to use all your wits and resources to succeed.
So what is the solution to reduce the "I always roll my +4 Skill" monocultural mode of action and get more in the territory of challenging actions and witty, resourceful moves?