For those of you are familiar with FATE. Has anyone had any issue with players trying to continual rely on or two aspects or does anyone have any house rules about how many time you can invoke an aspect during a scene?
I have yet to run this system, but I am planning on doing so in a couple of weeks, and it seems like this could be an issue (probably not so much for my group) with the system.
For those of you are familiar with FATE. Has anyone had any issue with players trying to continual rely on or two aspects or does anyone have any house rules about how many time you can invoke an aspect during a scene?
I have yet to run this system, but I am planning on doing so in a couple of weeks, and it seems like this could be an issue (probably not so much for my group) with the system.
this was a slight problem at first, because this was a different type of game for most of the players. I would suggest running a short 2-3 adventure trial game before getting into the meat of the game. Maybe don't assign all the aspects to begin with. We tried out just coming up with the defining aspect, and adding the others as the game progressed. Really didn't have a big effect on the game since optimization isn't a big deal in this game. Also allow the PC's to switch things out a bit.
After they get the flavor of playing with both invoking, and tagging aspects they'll be much better at coming up with creative aspects. Our resident min/max player struggled mightily at first, due to running out of Fate points. He made all his aspects mostly positive, and there wasn't a lot of flex room to invoke. The second time around he "got it" and though he might be hesitant to admit it I believe he really enjoyed it after he grasped how the game was different.
Even if they do tend to rely on an aspect or two, that's fine as well. Fate points are a limited resource that you have control of...And if a player is "Big, Smelly, Hairy Barbarian Chieftain" he probably should be invoking that often :-).
I'm particularly a fan of only starting with about 3 aspects and adding more during play. Dresden Files has some good methods of helping people come up with 6-7 useful ones right off the bat though.
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The Fate Point economy will hopefully regulate this to some degree (though if you're paying STrands of FATE with persistant aspects you lose that safety net).
But I sort of know what you mean - best to encourage strongly focused aspects that someone would really struggle to invoke in loads of different situations. Anything too broad should be vetoed.
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Is there a good site to access that sort of explains FATE as a system to Noobs?
You can check out faterpg.com and there are SRDs for Spirit of the Century and Diapora, but I put together a 48 page pdf that tries to encapsulate the core of the FATE system - its called Free FATE and can be downloaded from here:
I apologize if this comes off as dismissive. That is not my intent.
Everyone plays to their strengths. In every game, players are going to rely on their best ability/skill/attack. Perhaps I am reading too much in your original post and this was not meant so much as a perceived flaw with Fate as just a general issue that happens to occur in Fate as well.
A Fate specific solution could be to encourage more creative tagging. Talk to your players before hand and set expectations. Then reward (fate points) behavior you want repeated.