Feb 15, 2015 Fate Core Thought of the Day The Fate...
Fate Core Thought of the Day: The Fate Point Economy
I may ruffle some feathers with this one. (Also, if you feel like I'm calling you out, I'm not. This is something I've had in mind for a while).
One of the most common criticisms I hear about Fate is that it's all about the meta and the "Fate Point Economy". While understanding the flow of points in your game is important, for some reason, with some people, this idea has taken a life of its own.
The version I'm talking about is this idea that a Fate game is all about the Fate Points flying madly and furiously, and if players don't have a bucket of chips in front of them at all times to Invoke and Compel, you're doing it wrong.
Screw that.
(See, I told you I'd ruffle some feathers here. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion. I'm going to tell you how I like to do things. I'm not saying any other way is BadWrongFun, but I am going to tell you how and why this idea is incompatible with the way that I like to run Fate).
See, to me, Fate is best when it's the Game of Hard Choices. I like my players to fail at least one scene a game. Preferably more. I like tough choices, hard compromises, and ugly sacrifices. I tell my players before they start playing with me that they'll likely fail at things, because many of them aren't used to it. (I also tell them that failure usually means complications, not "game ends", to help soften that). When I introduce people to Fate, a tough encounter that they likely won't win is usually going to be on the menu, to help drive that home as well as teach Concessions.
But, yeah, Hard Choices. And Fate Points are the currency of Hard Choices.
How much do you really want to win this fight? Is it that important that you take out this particular set of bad guys? Really? How important is it, really, that you convince the King to go along with your plan? Not getting captured here, how important is it, really? Or helping the wanted person get away? Or getting the bomb? Or stopping the ritual? Or....
Because, as I like to say, a Fate character can do anything, but they can't do everything. With Fate Points, you can pretty much get a success anywhere you want it. But doing so means you're setting yourself up for failure elsewhere. So, do you really want it? How important is it?
And that's the problem with the hyper-speed "Fate Point Economy." If Fate Points are flowing like mad, then there's no trade-off. Of course you spend the Fate Point. Why wouldn't you? You'll just get another pile in a few minutes. Instead of being the currency of Hard Choices, they become the currency of Always Winning. And, to me, always winning is boring. We don't read books where the hero stomps his way to the antagonist just taking out everyone in his path without worry or concern. That'd be boring.
Another point - Fate Points should be dramatic. These are the times in the movie where we focus in on the hero, where he has the flashback to his family, where he thinks he's down but finds some inner reserve or pulls out a trick to overcome adversity anyway. If you spend Fate Points like mad, you reduce their dramatic effect. And that's boring. It's fun, in a way, I guess. Kind of like playing a first person shooter with all the cheats on, but it kinda robs the game of the full experience.
Now, there is a simple way I look at the Fate Point economy. And I do use it as a tool to determine if I"m throwing appropriate opposition against my players.
If a session ends, and they have a ton of FP, they should have lost ground in the narrative (and that's cool).
If a session ends, and they're dry of FP (and have even burned some stockpiled ones), then they should have gained good ground in the narrative.
If these things aren't true, then the difficulty of opposition I'm throwing against the players is off, and needs to be adjusted. That's about as deeply as I look into the "Fate Point Economy".
I may ruffle some feathers with this one. (Also, if you feel like I'm calling you out, I'm not. This is something I've had in mind for a while).
One of the most common criticisms I hear about Fate is that it's all about the meta and the "Fate Point Economy". While understanding the flow of points in your game is important, for some reason, with some people, this idea has taken a life of its own.
The version I'm talking about is this idea that a Fate game is all about the Fate Points flying madly and furiously, and if players don't have a bucket of chips in front of them at all times to Invoke and Compel, you're doing it wrong.
Screw that.
(See, I told you I'd ruffle some feathers here. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion. I'm going to tell you how I like to do things. I'm not saying any other way is BadWrongFun, but I am going to tell you how and why this idea is incompatible with the way that I like to run Fate).
See, to me, Fate is best when it's the Game of Hard Choices. I like my players to fail at least one scene a game. Preferably more. I like tough choices, hard compromises, and ugly sacrifices. I tell my players before they start playing with me that they'll likely fail at things, because many of them aren't used to it. (I also tell them that failure usually means complications, not "game ends", to help soften that). When I introduce people to Fate, a tough encounter that they likely won't win is usually going to be on the menu, to help drive that home as well as teach Concessions.
But, yeah, Hard Choices. And Fate Points are the currency of Hard Choices.
How much do you really want to win this fight? Is it that important that you take out this particular set of bad guys? Really? How important is it, really, that you convince the King to go along with your plan? Not getting captured here, how important is it, really? Or helping the wanted person get away? Or getting the bomb? Or stopping the ritual? Or....
Because, as I like to say, a Fate character can do anything, but they can't do everything. With Fate Points, you can pretty much get a success anywhere you want it. But doing so means you're setting yourself up for failure elsewhere. So, do you really want it? How important is it?
And that's the problem with the hyper-speed "Fate Point Economy." If Fate Points are flowing like mad, then there's no trade-off. Of course you spend the Fate Point. Why wouldn't you? You'll just get another pile in a few minutes. Instead of being the currency of Hard Choices, they become the currency of Always Winning. And, to me, always winning is boring. We don't read books where the hero stomps his way to the antagonist just taking out everyone in his path without worry or concern. That'd be boring.
Another point - Fate Points should be dramatic. These are the times in the movie where we focus in on the hero, where he has the flashback to his family, where he thinks he's down but finds some inner reserve or pulls out a trick to overcome adversity anyway. If you spend Fate Points like mad, you reduce their dramatic effect. And that's boring. It's fun, in a way, I guess. Kind of like playing a first person shooter with all the cheats on, but it kinda robs the game of the full experience.
Now, there is a simple way I look at the Fate Point economy. And I do use it as a tool to determine if I"m throwing appropriate opposition against my players.
If a session ends, and they have a ton of FP, they should have lost ground in the narrative (and that's cool).
If a session ends, and they're dry of FP (and have even burned some stockpiled ones), then they should have gained good ground in the narrative.
If these things aren't true, then the difficulty of opposition I'm throwing against the players is off, and needs to be adjusted. That's about as deeply as I look into the "Fate Point Economy".
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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.
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.
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 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.