Fate Guilt (n): A feeling of sadness, discontent or failure felt by a GM who after running a successful session of Fate realises he may not have used the toolset to its full potential.

Okay, so Fate Guilt isn't really a thing, but it should be given how often I've read accounts of GMs who felt they let the side down because they didn't use compels or consequences as much as they might have.

It is also utter nonsense.

Fate gives you a lot of tools that help support you in your job of running a good game. To what extent you use these tools depends on what happens in play, on the night.

There is no Platonic ideal number of compels per session for which you should be aiming. The system does not break that easily. The authors of Fate are very explicit how everything in Fate can be dialed up or down however it's message that often seems to get lost.

If the game is running smoothly you are doing your job. If you find that you suddenly need some extra mechanism to model a situation or accentuate the drama of the moment then you can draw from all the cool toys Fate provides you.

Or in simpler terms Fate's job is to support the service, the group's purpose is not to service Fate. Otherwise it's just the tail wagging the dog.

That said, I will agree that even just deciding what to dial up or down can be overhead. It's akin to the stress that comes form having too much choice. That's why with Bounty Hunters of the Atomic Wastelands I aimed to dial right down the baseline metagame element so that anyone can run BHAW without feeling Fate Guilt afterwards.

It's different the FFG Star Wars. The whole "Yes, but" and "No, and" style of action resolution part of the system balance and cannot really be dialed up or down. I found it to be pain and the after the while the GM was straining to add a spin to every single dice roll, so I understand entirely what you are saying.

I think it didn't help that I was using FATE Accelerated. There is just so little going on with it cut down that much that without compels/fate points moving around a lot, there just ISN'T MUCH THERE.

If I'd been using a more robust version of FATE it probably wouldn't have bothered me as much.

Well, apparently v2 of Fate is a lot less fate pointish.

I haven't gotten a chance to read it in depth, but it seems potentially more trad-like.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;805246I would never consider those narrative systems. When people talk about narrative systems, they mean games that have narrative MECHANICS.

Things like Fate Points, or the FFG Star Wars Threat/Advantage thing (which I still like, but is extra work), MHRP plot points. Stuff like that.

WoD, BRP, and Unisystem are all pretty trad.

Actually you are right. I think the books and the fluff in those books invite for playing more investigation and social interaction instead of more action focused games. But the systems itself are very traditional. I was wrong.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;805234I MISSED not having to think about meta-stuff. Not because it dragged me out of the immersion (because it never did), but because I would regularly forget to do it at all. I had run Fate the campaign before doing 5e, and I found I was a bit dissatisfied with how the game went. I felt like I was forgetting to compel, I was forgetting to award fate points, etc. And that is so much of that game.

OMG BRAIN DAMAGE

On a more serious note, this is sort of what happened to me when I ran FATE. I hated coming up with Consequences or handling things as scene Aspects (e.g. "the ship deck's On Fire, spend a Fate Point to brave the flames") and such.

So many games look good on paper and turn out not to jive with us in actual play. FATE was one of them for me.

Welcome back home. Hope you'll stick around.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;805234Anyone else feel this way, rather than the immersion ruining, it just makes you have to do more mental paperwork than you would like?

I have found myself returning to traditional style of RPGing in recent years and eshewing intrusive, complex or involved metagame mechanics. However, I still find simple, direct and fun metagame mechanics to be an excellent tool for that style. It helps me considerably as a GM to reduce prep and communicates player ideas to me without hassle.

TBH FATE is probably one of the most intrusive attempts to integrate metagame mechanics into a traditional style RPG IMO. However, I enjoy Dungeon World, Atlantis, and Mutant Year Zero as they are so hassle free in comparison. I also enjoyed D&D5e's personality traits and and Inspiration for the same reasons.

I don't get Fate or most narrative systems. They just leave me puzzled and frustrated.

Surely you could FATE up your 5e by treating Inspiration more like Fate points, including using compels.

I like narrative mechanics to 'sand down' the rough edges of trad games.

Rough edges being results or series of events that are dull, basically.

Quote from: Will;805376Rough edges being results or series of events that are dull, basically.

What are examples of dull events or dull series of events?

I fail to hit the ogre because I can't roll over a five the entire battle.

Whiff whiff whiff. And this doesn't lead to interesting tension, just the combat lasting an extra round or two.

I meet my nemesis, and it plays out like every other combat.

Quote from: Will;805413I fail to hit the ogre because I can't roll over a five the entire battle.

In which case the ogre probably hits you and you have to decide to do something different - like run away. Sounds more interesting than one more dead monster to me.

QuoteI meet my nemesis, and it plays out like every other combat.

You'll have to elaborate on this. Because if your nemesis is the ogre above, your inability to hit him sounds different than every other battle - unless you never roll over a five in any combat.

Will in the two examples above, it sounds like you have an idea for how the combat is supposed to play out regardless of the dice. Which is a problem if you are playing a game where how combat plays out is determined by die rolls. Here are three solutions that work for me (they may not work for you).

1. Embrace the Die Roll: Let go of my preconception of how combat is supposed to go. Instead try to enjoy how combat ends up going in play.

(a) If my character is whiffing, get into that. React in character. Yell, swear, and complain at fate or failure.

(b) Make up an interesting explanation for why my character keeps failing. In one Star Trek session my extremely competent Vulcan Science officer totally flubbed his sensor roll and couldn't detect anything on the planet. Without missing a beat I said, "Captain, some sort of energy distortion is interfering with our sensors." The other players and the GM liked that so the planet indeed had energy distortions that affected sensors. It isn't that my PC is incompetent, it is that the task is very difficult.

(c) Realize this scene ends up being about the other PCs not your PC. Let them have a chance to shine or to save your character. Action heroes in teams help each other out. Embrace the moment.

2. Bennies: Play a game like the old 007, WEG Star Wars, or Honor+Intrigue that includes limited resources to allow the PC to improve a die roll or even reroll when it really matters. If it is important to you that your PC succeeds now, then spend the resources to succeed (or to at least increase your chance to succeed). If it isn't important enough to spend resources on, then see 1. above.

3. If you can't live with failure, then don't roll the dice. Just what it says. Just narrate what happens without rolling the dice. To use the ogre example: if it is only a question of how long it takes the PC(s) to defeat the ogre, why bother rolling the dice at all? The GM can just say "you defeat the ogre." or let the PCs narrate how they succeed. Nothing in traditional RPGs requires that every damn thing be rolled out in detail unless it matters.

Quote from: Will;805413I fail to hit the ogre because I can't roll over a five the entire battle.

Whiff whiff whiff. And this doesn't lead to interesting tension, just the combat lasting an extra round or two.

I don't get why that isn't interesting... assuming the ogre is trying to kill you and not asleep on the floor. If its defeat isn't a foregone conclusion (in which case do as Bren says and just narrate it) then there's a race on to destroy each other and you are losing. I can see it might be hard to hit something with a long reach like that... difficult to get inside its defenses without getting mauled.
Maybe there's a way to use the environment to your advantage, make use of a narrow doorway the ogre can't fit through? Confuse it somehow?
I do like the added fun of something like Runequest's combat maneuvers or DCC's 'Mighty Deeds'... I don't think of those as 'narrative', but maybe they are.

I think the battle going badly against the Ogre can a lot of times be more interesting than it going well. Its your character struggling. Maybe the other party members have to bail you out. Maybe you have to start to consider retreat.

Not having anything to counteract that makes it MORE interesting. I don't know what is going to happen, and all I have control over is what my character ATTEMPTs to do to deal with it.

As for the other side, a fight with a nemesis can be all kinds of things, and still be interesting. People talk about how anticlimactic it is if they go down too easy, but I still remember the game where we found the "big bad guy" of what we were trying to stop, and my berserker character oneshotted him at the top of the initiative on the first round of combat. It was a system with hit locations, and I literally lopped his head off in the first 2 seconds of combat. (he had a shield up that would stop up to 100 points of damage (an absurd amount in the system) but if you did over 100 it all went through. I rolled psycho well and his head was gone). It was cool. Everyone remembers it.

Unpredictability and lack of control is kind of fun in and of itself.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;805421I think the battle going badly against the Ogre can a lot of times be more interesting than it going well. Its your character struggling. Maybe the other party members have to bail you out. Maybe you have to start to consider retreat.

Not having anything to counteract that makes it MORE interesting. I don't know what is going to happen, and all I have control over is what my character ATTEMPTs to do to deal with it.

As for the other side, a fight with a nemesis can be all kinds of things, and still be interesting. People talk about how anticlimactic it is if they go down too easy, but I still remember the game where we found the "big bad guy" of what we were trying to stop, and my berserker character oneshotted him at the top of the initiative on the first round of combat. It was a system with hit locations, and I literally lopped his head off in the first 2 seconds of combat. (he had a shield up that would stop up to 100 points of damage (an absurd amount in the system) but if you did over 100 it all went through. I rolled psycho well and his head was gone). It was cool. Everyone remembers it.

Unpredictability and lack of control is kind of fun in and of itself.

That outcome feels very Game of Thrones like.