Word. Another +1.

Yep. The "if your players are out of fate points, you're doing it wrong" thing should be a nuanced statement. It's more, "if your players are out of fate points and you're not giving them some interesting/tough/investing opportunities to earn them back with compels, you're doing it wrong" and that can be hard to finesse.

SOTC's implementation with its 10 FP (and a few other features) was definitely a case of the dials being cranked too far into the oversupplied situation. Lessons were learned and FP supplies have been tighter in the stuff we've done since.

/sub

I don't see anything controversial about any of this. It's how I run things anyway.

In some Fate "dialects" it is much more common to have a very strong flow of Fate points to and from the players. Handing them out for any somewhat entertaining contribution to the game leads to an (over)abundance of Fate points.

In Fate Core I find the flow of Fate points much slower, each and every spent and gained (by Compels or Concessions) Fate points has more "weight".

I have played with GMs who were used to giving out Fate points quite often during a session. Playing Fate Core in such a game makes nearly every action a PC might attempt successful, makes it very hard for the GM to challenge the players, to offer decent "resistance" in the enfolding story, that the players can feel that they actually accomplished something against all the odds.

Fate Core puts more weight onto each Fate point and makes them a scarce resource, where you will get into the habit of accepting complications (succes with costs or simple failures), because these are, what makes any story more interesting.

For Fate experienced gamers, who are used to the stronger Fate point flow from other Fate dialects, Fate Core requires a change of habits.

But there is one thing that you actually lose by using the weak flow of Fate points in Fate Core: instant, haptic positive feedback. - Throwing a player, who contributes some entertaining bit to the game, a Fate points is an instant, non-verbal positive feedback, that helps to encourage player contribution. And that is one of the goals a stronger Fate point flow tries to achieve.

Arguably such a kind of feedback is not necessary. It helps getting some players to become more actively engaged in the game, though. - Not every player is a highly engaged, highly dramaturgy oriented, proactive, extroverted storyteller.

In my Fate Core games with new players (new to Fate Core, or even new to Pen&Paper RPGs altogether) I sometimes missed this kind of encouraging haptic feedback.

All the plusses.

/sub

📌

I might be splitting hairs but a robust fate economy does not mean your players end up with "buckets of points" sitting in front them. That only happens if the flow goes one way. You can still get that feel of hard choices and have a robust chip economy. You just crank the relative difficulty up on everything.

I would only do this after clearing it with the players. I'd say something along the lines that this game is going to have a more skin of your teeth feel and that you'll likely need to spend points for just about anything but the most mundane of challenges. In return you offer them plenty opportunities to earn points back through compels which in themselves can add to that challenge mentality.

My 2 cents anyway.

I knew I'd ruffle someone's feathers :)

I think what's happening is that there's a disconnect in our goals in gaming. I like gaming best when it's full of tension, hard choices, etc. By your post, and the fact hat you think running a game like that requires talking with the players first, I'd say those aren't the primary reasons you game.

And that's cool.

But spending a Fate Point or not just isn't an important decision when you know you're going to get a bunch more by the end of the scene or game. There's little opportunity cost involved. So, yeah, you can boost the opposition to counter handing out more Fate Points. But that just means that you have to spend Fate Points in very scene, again, reducing the import of that decision. It can become more about managing the "flow" of Fate Points, and that's just way too meta for me. Sure, the Fate Points flying around can give everyone more chances to invoke and look awesome, but then again, at some level doesn't that mean that each of those points is less awesome in a way?

I mean, as far as differing expectations, I'll put it this way. In almost every game I run, the PCs will "lose" at least one scene. How often do your players "lose" scenes? It's common in a lot of games for that to be uncommon, and I'd hazard a guess that your games fall in that group.

Which again is okay. We just have different things we look for in our games.

+Robert Hanz
"Which again is okay. We just have different things we look for in our games." I don't know about others, but I want different things from different settings, genres, groups, etc. I use the various dials, including the fate point economy, to tweak that. I definitely want a cyberpunk or noir game to be full of tension and hard choices; but maybe I want a different game to be over-the-top and zany.

Oh, agreed, but for me there's very few games where I want to always win.

I also think that Fate is a very good hard choices game. I don't know if it's my first choice for other types of games, like strong tactical games.

That's a good general point. It's my impression that RPG players are very used to wining all the time, so even failing at an occasional roll is an opportunity to pout. This is even games when it's clear nothing actually bad happens. I'm not sure why this is but I've seen more of it the older I get. I love the arc of players getting beat up and then winning in the end, which is actually the way a lot of the great movies we're trying to emulate work, but players in general don't like that. Or they don't like it when I do it.

I've had the exact issue with Savage Worlds Bennies. If you hand out too many, nothing is a challenge and players spend them like crazy. 

So you really didn't ruffle my feathers until you implied that making sure your players want to play the same game as you was antithetical to your gaming style. Maybe I'm misreading but you've strongly implied that for your "hard choices" style a part of it is screwing with the players NOT their characters because otherwise why wouldn't you want their consent? 

As for players losing, It happens all the time depending on your definition of losing. Even with an active FATE point economy the players can't predict when they get more points or how much they'll need and when. Also I control the difficulty so...

Frankly you hard choices sounds a little simplistic if it comes down to a mechanics decision and not say an RP decision ala save the girl or stop the villain but you can't do both.

Look I'm all for diversity of style. My initial point was that you can get exactly what you claimed to want with an active economy not just by putting the brakes on point distribution. Your approach was not wrong but it had assumptions in it that I found to be inaccurate.

I very much agree with what you say +Robert Hanz. The thing we keep hearing as a common experience from fate games is the lack of compelling. To me, that's evidence that most Fate games don't run a high velocity economy at all.

The spending and getting of Fate tokens is a key mechanic of Fate and if a game is going on with no compels and no invokes, then there's a major feature of Fate not being used, so the question I would have is: "why is this game using Fate, if you're not using a major feature of the game?"

Rolling 4 x (d3-2) against a difficulty number is not an incredibly exciting mechanic

Tough choices are great, and as well as restricting Fate point generation, you can also make the Fate points come at a cost with tough compels. 

I'm sure the intention here is not to discourage GMs from compelling players. Tough compels can be a great way of draining Fate from players.

I may be late in the party (and didn't do my homework by reading above comments) but one way to make sure PCs do use their Fate Points like mad is set very high difficult tasks.

Your average PC will have max +4 on his top skill. Average on dice is 0. Should you set the difficulty to 7 or 8, you make sure your players will need FP (or create advantages). If it's a single check, it's not that critical but if it's a contest or challenge, then it needs usually at least 3-4 checks against that same difficulty. Tension will rise. FP will burn thus you make sure players NEED to compel to get those needed FP in order to succeed.

If it weren't for the fact that I like my nice shiny metal fate point counters, I'd drop points from the game entirely and use free invocations and success-at-cost mechanics as the only methods of buying success.

Actually, something that I think ought to be mentioned as a dial is when to keep point use low and when to go gonzo - for instance, sword-and-sorcery or horror games benefit from making just one point feel significant, whereas a shounen fighting game should ideally involve furious bidding wars (possibly on every exchange).

I've noticed this general problem with any game that uses a benny like mechanic. If you give too many the game becomes comically overpowered, player's feel entitled, people actually don't end up enjoying themselves after the first few times. It's not a bad thing but just something I need to remember.

I know this is politically incorrect to say, but being an advocate for and to some extent immersed in your character is very natural for RPG's and to some extent what they are designed to do (even if people want to make them do something else). This means that what is optimum from that perspective (i want as many bennies, fate chips, inspiration points) might not be optimum from another perspective. 

It's indeed a metagaming mechanic but it does, when used properly, empower the narrative!

I love e'm, and bolt em on to every game, I just need to remind myself to manage them well. Manged well, you can't beat a mechanic like this, particularly with Fate where it's tied to compels (vs Savage Worlds bennies that come from nowhere). 

+Fred Hicks:  _" It's more, "if your players are out of fate points and you're not giving them some interesting/tough/investing opportunities to earn them back with compels, you're doing it wrong" and that can be hard to finesse."_

That's how I read it.

+Jesse Hudzik:  Well, actually I didn't say that I wouldn't talk to my players, or that it was antithetical of anything.  In the OP, I explicitly talk about talking to my players.

My statement was that your strong reaction to the idea, and the degree to which you seemed to think the talk was necessary, says something (not negative) about your goals and desires for the game, and what you consider to be 'normal' play, and what you consider to be 'abnormal' play.

+Addramyr Palinor: "I may be late in the party (and didn't do my homework by reading above comments) but one way to make sure PCs do use their Fate Points like mad is set very high difficult tasks."

Yup, I even brought that up in a comment.  The only issue with doing that is now you're in the position where you have to think about "the Fate Point economy" even more to make sure people have enough Fate Points.  And even then it's fairly zero-sum.

+Frank Hampshire: "The spending and getting of Fate tokens is a key mechanic of Fate and if a game is going on with no compels and no invokes, then there's a major feature of Fate not being used, so the question I would have is: "why is this game using Fate, if you're not using a major feature of the game?"

There's a difference between 'not using' (Compels) and the frequency of use.

Death is a mechanic in Fate (as part of being Taken Out).  Is a game where characters don't die somehow defective for not using that?

"Rolling 4 x (d3-2) against a difficulty number is not an incredibly exciting mechanic"

Nope!  It's not!  Frankly, neither is adding +2 to that number.  The interesting thing in Fate isn't the mechanics, it's what happens in the fiction.

"I'm sure the intention here is not to discourage GMs from compelling players."

You're painting things in a very binary way here, or at least it seems that way.  I see probably 1-3 Compels per game.  From surveys I've done here, that's fairly typical.  I've talked to some people that seem to think if you're not doing three Compels a scene, you're "doing it wrong", because you have to keep the "Fate Point Economy" flowing, or the game falls apart.

It doesn't.  It works fine with a lower rate of Compels, that are done at dramatically relevant (and important!) points in the game.  You can run at a much higher rate of Compels/etc., but it's not necessary.

The only way you fail at Fate is each day you actually DON'T play it :P

I sat down last night to go over a game I'm running this Friday and I was trying to put myself in my players shoes. I realized that I was trying to "see how hard it is to win" to see if my players would enjoy it. This article has helped me realize I was asking the wrong question ... it's not about "winning" it's about telling and participating in an awesome story. Thanks for the great article +Robert Hanz 

Awesome, +Sterling Heibeck!

I've said elsewhere that I think the core of Fate is really "at what cost do you succeed?"  Mechanically, it seems to push more in the direction of that type of dilemna, rather than success/failure being the result of tactical acumen or charop.  I think that's a very interesting way to play, personally.