this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I ran FAE for maybe 6 sessions before throwing in the towel. The system is good, but I feel like it just doesn't have enough game to satisfy me on a personal level. The feel of running FAE is more collaborative story time than playing a game together. This is a feature and a bug of the game. How much it bothers you is very subjective. What I found to be the case with FAE is that my players defaulted to asking permission to do anything out of unfamiliarity and discomfort. After they got their footing and were able to move past this point, they still wanted to engage in discussions about the fiction for extended periods of time. To me, this lowered my enjoyment of the sessions a lot. For such a rules light system, we sure ended up talking about rules and what was possible a lot.
Can you give an example of what you mean by permission? I can definitely see how that might be a problem. In D&D you have very specific things you can do. Yes, you have leeway but generally it's pretty rigid. So like, what can't you do? Anything? Like if I'm a spell caster can I just cast any spell? I can understand trying to see where the proper balance is. Because you don't want to power game and just say you do stupid crazy over the top stuff.
Sure thing. Lets say we've got a player who is playing a priest. They have a character aspect: "Priest with six guns. On a mission from God." One of the foundational things about Fate is that a character is more likely to succeed to more involved that character's fiction is in whatever they are attempting to do, but the book doesn't do a good job laying this out to the reader. The players look at their sheets. They see a number of listed actions and approaches. Feeling a little lost, they say "Can I attack in a flashy way?" I think we can both agree that this kind of classic "Mother may I" just isn't interesting during play. We want our players to embrace the fiction and act in accordance with established aspects. But the above is fine, right? It's just the players feeling a little lost and generally being new, right?
I'd be ok with the above if that's where it ended for me. However, during play, I often felt like players would want to involve aspects (as they should). So they'll ask things like: "I would like to try to shoot the chandelier that's swinging on the ceiling down, hitting General Holtz and his men. I'm a priest with six guns. Do you think that this is ok? Oh, and I know it's swinging because Otto just used it to swing from one balcony to another, so could I use the Swinging aspect here somehow? Maybe God could come into picture here somehow." And now you've got to have a full conversation about the act of shooting down a chandelier whereas in other systems you could have just called for an attack roll against object AC with a harness value based on metal or something.
This is kinda what I mean by asking permission. There is a need to have a constant, evolving conversation about the fiction to make sure everyone understands what is happening. When there's uncertainty, the players default to asking clarifying questions and mostly ask permission to do things. I have personally found the need to constantly update this conversation to be a little annoying.