Your second version of the Vogon-like prose pretty much sums up how a lot of games with advantages and disadvantages wind up running. The players try to stick their advantages into everything they do, and the GM tries to do the same with their disadvantages. That's one of the reasons I'm skewing away from systems like that.

The shorthand I use is as follows: Aspects are true, but play (spending) determines if they matter.

Indeed, aspects on their own are not enough for a game. If you have rippling Barbarian Thews or whatever that is not enough to win the day. It is a combination of skills and stunts that do most of the work in  a series of rolls. It is only when you really care that your aspects are important. of course Rob and er-well Rob have the right of it, and said it better than I.

For those of you who'd prefer a more visual example instead of the Vogon prose, imagine a TV show where no matter what happened, the camera always took a few seconds to focus on the Nanoc's rippling muscles.

I have seen that show!

Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?

great movie

This was the number 1 sticking point I had, and my players had, about how Fate worked back when we played it the first time. With Core I started to "get it", but this article really sinks it in. Thank Robert!

I feel bad that it took me to the second one to get "Nanoc the IP-Friendly"

Having said all that, Aspects are True and the GM is welcome to incorporate Nanoc's mighty thews when he considers the difficulty of actions, whether the arm-cuffs the bad guy brought will fit him and so on. With the ice, it might make all movement a bit more difficult by setting passive difficulty to certain actions but it attains a moment of particular relevance  when it's invoked.

Totally agreed, +Richard Bellingham.  I was mainly trying to focus on the thing that's the typical hangup:  "Why do I have to spend a Fate Point to invoke my Rippling Barbarian Thews?  Do they not exist otherwise?"  Some variants have turned to things like 'persistent aspects' and 'corrected' this.  I wanted to point out how I see the internal logic of the Fate Core mechanics working in that regard.

Indeed, and it was a compelling post. I think it's just a minor addition to your point that aspects have relevance whenever their existence is remembered, whether that's as a passive factor to be considered or an invoked aspect.

And that's probably a great topic for another post :)  You don't mind if I steal borrow that, do you?

In writing endless repetition of the same elements (the mighty barbarian thews) might be dull. - But Fate is not about WRITING stories, it is just emulating some (and only a few) elements of story-writing. Fate is first and foremost a GAME.

So as a game there is the consideration of gameplay, what a player is allowed by the rules to do, what a player is encouraged to do more often compared to other things he might also be allowed to do in the game. And as a game there is the notion of SUCCESS.

And "succeed by failing" is pretty lame and unfulfilling for most gamers. Succeed by winning, succeed by coming out on top of the opposition, by overcoming challenges, by solving puzzles, by leading the player character to a larger than life kind of virtual life in the game world, that has definitely more appeal to gamers.

So, from the viewpoint of an aspiring author, it might be considered "dull" or "repetitive", if a player constantly employs the most effective game strategy to accumulate the largest possible bonus before (or after) rolling the dice. But from the viewpoint of a gamer this is the way to harvest success for the character AND to influence the story in the directest and most fulfilling way.

And - although the second text example shows, how repetitiously using the same Aspect might become a bit awkward from the viewpoint of literature critique - in actual play even using the same Aspect in each and every action of a character does NEVER occur in such a compressed, tight space of time as the text example suggests.

As a Fate player I don't consider myself as a "writer" of a story. Never. - I actually base my decisions about how I employ my character's abilities and my metagaming options as a player along dramatic goals I'd like to achieve. But I'd like to WIN, too! And if I'm able to beat my opposition in-game I have a great time, great fun, and I enjoy playing my character and influencing the story by succeeding (preferably with style).

So I'd actually like to squeeze out every last bit of character competency, of story-influencing power the character sheet allows. - And this includes using my Aspects as often as I please. - If I as a player have the opportunity to decide if and when to use an Aspect, and If I have the goal to create at the very least a story, that I find interesting - and probably my fellow players, too, then it is MY choice to use Aspects - even the same one - as I wish and as I am allowed by the rules.

What balances the possibility of this gaming strategy becoming a boring influence on the fellow players and therefore on the perception of the story by the majority of the group?

The Fate Point flow (economy is not a fitting word for what really happens around this metagaming resource flow).

A Fate player CAN NEVER "abuse" his Aspects! This is simply not possible. He spends Fate Points of which he doesn't have an endless supply. So every single spent Fate Point by default has to MATTER!

So any discussions at the gaming table whether a certain Aspect might not matter sufficiently to be used in an action are simply not necessary! - If I spend a Fate point, a rare(!) resource, it does matter. Always.

Fate points have to be earned, have to be accepted by accepting compels, generated by self-compels, etc. So there are the OTHER things that do matter in the game: the twists, the slings and arrows of fate that a character has to endure to be able to succeed (with style) in his endeavours.

And on a gamer's viewpoint, those complications are actively sought out, too! This is the metagaming part of Fate - entirely disjunct from the in-game story part. A gamer is encouraged or even forced (Compel) to generate or accept Fate points. This resouce is important.

So why not allow the players to reap their benefits from enduring the hardships of their characters by employing their Aspects as they wish?

As I've said: You simply cannot "abuse" the use of Aspects in Fate. And even spending three or four Fate points in three or four consecutive actions ends with the player's metagaming resource "on empty". So yes, those three actions seem a bit repetitive (as most action heroes actually use the very same tricks in nearly every action scene). But the story as a whole gets VERY different and interesting after this endulging in success, because the player will have to generate more Fate points - which is entirely "non-dull" as such.

Maybe I've never encountered the problem in any Fate/Fate Core game I've played. But I do NOT consider the stories we played at our gaming table or in our Hangout games "dull" at all.

I think perhaps you've misunderstood me, +Frank Falkenberg.  At no point have I ever recommended any limitation on aspect invocation besides that imposed by the availability of Fate points.

My point here is explaining what I see as the internal logic of why aspects require a fate point to invoke, rather than simply being invokable on-demand, regardless of fate point availability or usage.

Frank: I think you've slightly gone off on a tangent of Robert's point. He's not saying that players shouldn't repeatedly use their aspects, he's suggesting that every time they do it's a moment of significant screen time, made significant because of the expenditure of the fate point.

He used the literary example to show the feeling he thinks the Fate writers were going for and the reason why there are few concrete systems for the always-on nature of aspects.

Feel free to borrow it for another post, Robert. =)

I also used the literary (and given the 'quality' of the example, I hate using the word 'literary' here!) example becaue "Nanoc the IP-Friendly Barbarian" makes me giggle.

Well, that and while it's true that Fate is a game, it's a game that seems intended to flow in the way that a book, TV show or movie does rather than in the way a world-simulation might.

This works more for scene aspects than character aspects, but I've recently started viewing them as a Chekhov's Gun:  the gun is always there on the wall, but it's only particularly important to the scene when you spend a fate point and grab it.

/sub