(Splitting these as +Fred Hicks suggested the conversations would get crazy intertwined.  Apologies to those previously subbed to the last post).

I think compels pay the one(s) who is/are disadvantaged.  So a self-compel disadvantages me.  A compel of my aspects that disadvantages the rest of the group pays the rest of the group (but NOT me... I wasn't disadvantaged!).  Or maybe it pays everyone if we're all suffering for my aspect.

It doesn't matter to me who acts or doesn't act... it matters who is or isn't disadvantaged at a compel-worthy (not weak) level.

And if I screw up (compelling an aspect to make trouble for the group) and everyone else (or even everyone including me) gets paid...  Well, that's kind of an example of the "comic relief" character doing what they do.  They screw up and make trouble, but do so in a way that's in character for them so it pays into the narrative rather than just being bad luck.

Now, if group compels pay everyone a single point or a single point which anyone impacted can claim...  that's a "how much to you want to fuel the economy" question.  But how much/who needs to pay to veto (not that vetos come into play on self-compels...) should be in sync with who gets paid.  If only one person was getting a point, any one person can veto.  If Everyone was getting a point, either everyone needs to ante up to veto or (if it works in the narrative) each can veto out of being negatively impacted individually.

Still want to see +Leonard Balsera's take on this! :) 

I feel that awarding a Fate point to the other impacted party members has some merit:

"You are out on a mission with [problematic character] who has the Aspect [problematic trait], which becomes a problem when [problematic character does a problematic thing]. Damn your luck."

That said, depending on the table's chemistry/vibe, it may be best done as a soft compel.

I've generally gone by the "everyone gets a Fate Point that's borked over by this" approach.  I always target Fate Points at the characters impacted, rather than the characters that actually have the aspect.

I have a few issues with the "everyone can veto individually" approach, though that's how I initially started.

1) In some cases, it doesn't make much sense narratively.
2) It's forcing everyone to pay a Fate Point to get out of a complication that is in no way related to them, except by being in the same party as that other character.
3) It creates a weird situation where Player A can propose a Compel that might be reasonable, and then forces players B-D to pony up Fate Points.  As such, it can turn into a pretty heavy-handed way for a player to take control of a game, deliberately or not.  This can be handled by the GM saying "no Compel for you!", but then the GM is in a situation of rejecting things that the table may actually think are cool.

One thing I've considered is that the primary character involved in the Compel can veto the Compel as a whole (pay a FP or get a FP), and the rest of the characters can either accept the complications (and get a FP) or opt out at no cost.

This may also be more appropriately done at the social contract level, to be honest, and I may be looking for mechanics to make up the gap for differing expectations, which is usually a bad idea.

Vetoing isn't necessarily saying "the event doesn't happen".

It can also be saying "the event happens, but I am not disadvantaged by it because [blah]."

So maybe the group is ambushed by ninjas but I veto out to get a free Spotted The Ambush Coming aspect (with at least one invocation, because I paid a fate point for it... maybe two!).  Or I seeded a new plot idea where the ninjas don't want to hurt my PC for a reason I don't know yet, but might learn later.  Or any number of other things.

Or, yeah, this one might be "all veto or no one can" narratively.

GM plot infrastructure/improvisation could possibly carry the middle ground here.

In such a group compel, anyone who pays a Fate Point to veto/buy off the Compel can either be establishing how they helped mitigate the disaster ("luckily I happen to be paying off so-and-so"), while the ones who don't buy it off are marked by the GM for future misadventure relating to this, like they escaped the ramifications of the Group Compel, but they made some other misstep or called in a favor which will come up later.

I'd probably go for an edited compel.

"I'm a Hungry Creature of the Night, so it makes sense that I'd decide to eat the person we need to interrogate, damn my luck."

The party yowls about it. The compel's still happening ... but the results are what changes. In the above case, I actually eat the suspect. But when the PC group gets involved...

"I'm a Hungry Creature of the Night, so it makes sense that I'd decide to eat the person we need to interrogate, damn our luck."

Why'm I repeating the compel? Note the compel talks about my decision, not the consequences of the decision. It's behavioral. My PC descends upon the suspect. The other PCs get in my way. Maybe now I'm fighting my allies. Regardless you can be sure I scared the crap out of the person I was about to eat. Maybe he bolts while the rest of the party are putting the beatdown on me. Maybe he might've talked before, but now he's really clamming up, and something's going to have to be done first before the party can actually start the interrogation.

As far as FP awards go, I'm on the fence. This is the sort of situation that could turn into a lesson that "one loose cannon means everyone gets drenched in FPs" if everyone gets paid a FP every time one of the PCs does an in-character but, frankly, dickish move (that might also, I dunno, be a problem from a social contract angle). My gut-twinge around that angle on it has me wanting this to be a single FP moment, but one where the "dick" doesn't necessarily get the payout. Hence "damn our luck" and not "damn my".

Yeah, I'm aware that vetoing in this case means you're not impacted by it.

Sure, there are some cases where it's easy to justify not being impacted, but there's some instances where that's really hard to justify.  For instance, someone eating off the arms of a secretary in the building where the rest of the party is trying to meet up with someone.

I'm still not fond of the idea of one player being able to that heavy-handedly force Compels on others.  Part of the issue with the specific case may be that regardless of the Compel mechanic, this character wanted to do something that wouldn't just complicate what the party was doing, but would nearly sabotage it.

Again, this particular type of thing may be more of a social contract issue, and may be best handled as such, but in that case I wasn't particularly comfortable with forcing people to pony up a FP because one player decided to turn up his Trouble to 11.

To be clear - here's the specific instance that prompted this in a recent semi-one-shot:

The party wanted to get a job from a guy, or at least pretend to get a job.  They walk in the door.  The secretary says that they need help because of those "damn half-breeds" attacking.  One party member is a half-breed.  Other PC decides this means it's time to Compel his Bestial Killer on a Leash aspect and eat the guy's arms.

The specifics of this issue are where I have issues with forcing the compel on other characters, and even selectively opting out would be difficult.

But in a lot of ways, this is really an instance of "party decides to do X, party member decides to do the thing that would disrupt that the most", if you ignore the Compel mechanics at all.  And that's a social contract issue, generally.

Hell, if there'd been a real motivation for the character to do such, or even a reasonable amount of motivation (besides an insult), I don't think it would have been a problem.

That said, I do really like +Fred Hicks' suggestions, though it still has the impact of really screwing up player plans for no apparent reason.  Well, actually, there was a metagame reason - the player doing the self-Compel wanted a chase scene.

(BTW, since you're probably reading this, +John Jessop, I'm not trying to say you were doing anything wrong, just that there was probably a disconnect in the social contract/expectations)

Generally, I've played that compels on PCs' aspects go to the compelled PC's player, while compels on scene aspects go to all the players, regardless of who gets annoyed by the results. It's just tidier and reduces debate.

I'm also considering a house rule that scene aspect compels can't be refused unless everyone in the scene pays for it. That's a steep cost in a group of four or five, but it's really confusing when you compel Poorly Lit Alley and three players get fate points for being surprised by a tail, but one player refuses the compel and tells everyone else, "Hey, someone's tailing us."

A proper Compel has the consequences built into it - it can't be avoided narratively or through mechanics.  If one person buys it off in your example, he can say "Hey, someone's tailing us", but that won't occur fast enough to stop the ambush.

The mad-lib for Compels are:

"Because of aspect, it would make sense that I would action, causing complication.  Damn my luck"

"Because of aspect, it would make sense that event would occur, causing complication.  Damn my luck."

Since the complication is already specified as part of the Compel, it can't be avoided.  "Because it's a Poorly Lit Alley, it would make sense that we'd be ambushed" isn't a compel - it's missing the consequence.  Just adding "causing us to miss the first round of the Conflict" would make it a Compel, and would also neatly solve the issue of the 'early warning' - it just wasn't early enough, though the bought off player can still act in the first round.

Ah, yeah. Didn't have the mad lib in front of me. I think "can't be changed" is poisonous thinking, tho. If a compel is upsetting to the players, the complication absolutely should be what gets put on the table for surgery. Still needs to be a legit complication, but acting like somebody's bad choice of a complication is something nobody can wiggle out of without spending a precious resource feels like very bad table manners. :)

(EDIT: Put it another way, yes, a properly formed compel does have all that stuff and is locked in... but I wouldn't consider it locked in until after it gets some negotiation and vetting. When first stated, a compel is, I think, a rough draft, not the final draft.)

Another point... it isn't a single player or single player and GM decision that a compel is narratively appropriate to an aspect.  If the whole table (excepting the player and the GM) don't want this to happen, then it can become a "you can do this, but you won't get a fate point" situation.

The "...on a leash" in the aspect, IMO, is more than enough to allow them to yank back on the choke chain.

+Fred Hicks:  "but I wouldn't consider it locked in until after it gets some negotiation and vetting."

Absolutely, and if that wasn't clear in what I said, then that's totally my error.  My point is that once it's accepted, it's locked in, and you can't bypass the negative consequences.

"Still needs to be a legit complication, but acting like somebody's bad choice of a complication is something nobody can wiggle out of without spending a precious resource feels like very bad table manners. :)"

Yup.  The bigger problem was that I really couldn't think of any reasonable complication in that scenario that wasn't totally derailing of the rest of the plans.  I mean, you're basically going in for a job interview and a party member EATS THE STAFF.

+Jack Gulick: " If the whole table (excepting the player and the GM) don't want this to happen, then it can become a "you can do this, but you won't get a fate point" situation."

Basically, I ended up letting him compel himself into getting captured, and the rest of the party just used the chaos to slip inside.  I wasn't particularly fond of how that worked out, though, nor of the intermediate states to get there :)

In a way, treating it as a compel kind of helped there, because if he had just done it, I wouldn't have had the mechanical hook to let the rest of the party bypass the consequences.

Yes, I also like that result.  Very neat.  And if it took a little table work to get there...  Well, sometimes table work is needed.  And, in time, as the table comes to understand the aspects better and better (and that's an ongoing experience), it might even get more direct.

But I think the important thing is that self-compels are not a license to be a game-wrecking jerk and be rewarded for it.

Either you do something that advances the narrative (albeit not to your benefit) and get paid or you do something that derails the narrative and everyone agrees it's not a worthy compel and you don't get paid even if you suffer for it.

The table is empowered to enforce that.

Another thing - jumping straight to chewing off someone's arms might be a bit too hefty a leap for a compel. Why not have him get (and consequently act) angry? As opposed to homicidal. During a negotiation-type scene, having one visibly-incensed character would definitely be a problem, but not on the level of 'you murdered my employee!'.

Hypothetical: could you perhaps have spun the scene so that the bestial PC had a chance to be alone with the secretary, or finagle some other opportunity to escape immediate consequence? Like maybe the secretary gets called away from his desk, and then the bestial PC quietly stalks and kills the secretary offscreen, which would eventually come back to bite him: perhaps secret video surveillance would reveal it later and set up the employer to betray the group after providing them with the job they sought.

So, couple of vectors here.

First vector: 

"How do I use the compel rules to deal with trolls?" You don't. You deal with the troll. I recommend fire, cleansing fire.

Second vector:

Decision-based compels in a group setting.

First, let's use my actual mad lib, and not a paraphrase of it. 

"You have __ aspect in __ situation, so it makes sense that you’d decide to __. This goes wrong when __ happens."

So, the group's trying to get info at an office building, and they brought the werewolf guy who has Insatiable Hunger for Clerical Personnel with them.

The werewolf's like, "Oh, it's a secretary! I'm gonna eat 'em. It's a compel."

The rest of the group is like, "Seriously, what the fuck? We're doing an investigation here."

The werewolf's like, "What part of Insatiable is unclear to you all?"

So the GM is like, "Okay, you have _Insatiable Hunger for Clerical Personnel_ and you're in an office with a secretary, so it makes sense that you'd eat them. This goes wrong for you when..." and this is when the GM looks at the rest of the group, "...your friends beat the shit out of you, knock you unconscious, and leave you somewhere random without any of your stuff so they can get on with their lives?"

And everyone else is like, "Yeah, dude, seriously. We're trying to do an investigation here."

The werewolf's like, "I dig the angst of you people trying to protect you from me, and me from myself, in an aggressive way."

Werewolf gets a fate point. GM frames a new scene and is like, "So, there's a crime scene at this office building now, but you can still get access to the people..."

Like, the question you have to ask yourself at every turn is, "What really constitutes things going wrong for X? Who is okay with being affected by this compel?"

Because imagine that same group being like, "OMG hilarious, you just ate a secretary. We're so fucked." And then the GM's like, "So, this goes wrong when you all get arrested? Fate points for everyone?" And everyone's like, "Hilarious. Sure."

And I know I'm oversimplifying, because there's not an "everyone else" a lot of times. So imagine more talking and stuff there.

Also, remember that veto-ing out can also mean, should often mean, that you find an in-fiction way to avoid the complication. I added that in on page 71. The retroactive only thing is old Fate. This is new, shiny Fate. So you have a way to go in that case. Not just "this doesn't affect me," but, "I skillfully avoid being affected by this and accomplish my aims". 

So I guess, two techniques: as Jack said, pay out only those actually disadvantaged by the thing that goes wrong. Second, always err on the side of not pissing on anyone's fun.

Sorry for the paraphrase... at work :)

For the first vector - yeah.  Social contract stuff.

For the second vector - I like it.  Let him have the compel, but then change the complication to something more acceptable to the group.

I'm not sure what you mean by the 'retroactive-only' thing.  I generally do try to find the in-fiction way to avoid the complication, especially for compels handling multiple members.

Sorry for the paraphrase... at work :)

For the first vector - yeah.  Social contract stuff.

For the second vector - I like it.  Let him have the compel, but then change the complication to something more acceptable to the group.  I like that a lot.  I think the thing that I hadn't fully internalized was the decision being the key to the compel, that it doesn't necessarily mean you're successful at it.

I'm not sure what you mean by the 'retroactive-only' thing.  I generally do try to find the in-fiction way to avoid the complication, especially for compels handling multiple members.

I meant that in prior Fate games, we always said that buying out of a compel was a meta thing that made it never happen. We fixed that.

/sub

So, "You've got the Hunted by the Mob aspect, so it would make sense that they'd show up right now, making your life suck because they drag you into the car."  Given that, the previous advice was paying off the Compel resulted in the mob not showing up, while current advice is that the mob shows up, but you by paying off the Compel, you get to describe the neat way in which you avoid them?

More or less?

More or less. Is that an issue for your group?

Not at all.  I actually like that a lot more, as it's less necessarily "meta".

That's an interesting detail that I had missed. If people buy off a compel I just move on as if it never happened. This is much better because it gives the feeling of a disaster averted and a brief moment of narrative awesome in exchange for the price paid of a shiny fate point to avert the compel.

A recent example: The pirate ship's doctor who is afraid of blood nearly fainted. He was holding a bag of booty at the time so I offered as a compel that the bag hits the boat's gunwhale as he faints and spills open, revealing the treasure to a rival band of pirates. He paid it off so I just moved on. It would have been more fun if he'd had the presence of mind even as he fainted to hug the bag to his chest so it wasn't spilled. 

Thanks for pointing this out, +Leonard Balsera!

I'd let the players all vote on it. If the vote comes up as not allowing him to do what he wants to do, he still can- But he doesn't get the fate point from the compel.