Fate scaling: Embracing the power of "No"

[mneme]

I've played a fair amount of Fate at this point -- plenty of games and playtests at Metatopia, playtesting various official fate versions from Kerberos Club Fate to Atomic Robo to Dresden Accelerated, and playing through entire campaigns of Dresden and Kerberos Club Fate.

In general, Fate's an amazing system within its idiom, which is an idiom I particularly like--one where narrative artifacts are front and center, but player vs player arguments are not. Instead of players arguing over who has the high ground (or the better argument), the Fate Point economy exists explicitly to moderate wins and losses -- take a narrative loss or accept a narrative complication, and you get Fate Points -- spend Fate Points and you get to make a narrative declaration, ignore a narrative complication, or receive a big bonus in a conflict. Nice and simple, and since it always ties back to the narrative through Aspects, the flow is directed into the overall story rather than just creating castles in the clouds that never connect back to what's really going on. But the biggest problem I've seen in a number of Fate hacks is scaling.

My favorite fictional scaling example done right is the 90s TV show Lois and Clark. In the show (which was groundbreaking in other ways as well), Lois was a normal human, albeit a smart one. And Clark was, well, Superman. You might think that Lois would be completely useless in this situation, with Superman able to do, well, anything -- but in fact, the show was nicely evenly matched in terms of screen times -- with Lois investigating crimes (and Superman) and psychologically facing down anyone from CEOs to Lex Luthor, while Clark would either investigate in his mild mannered reporter guise, or take on far larger foes as needed (like Lex Luthor) as Superman. Sure, Superman could do a lot more than Lois could -- but the narrative was balanced, because in general, Lois would have around the same outcome spread as Clark had, and thus the same amount of screen time and narrative weight (functionally, she was as important a character to the story as he was).

Scaling can be a big issue in other games, but I've certainly seen it mess up Fate games. In Kerberos Club Fate, being at a higher scale didn't just let you do narratively more impressive things (like lift 100 tons with your "physical force" facet rather than just a few hundred pounds). It -also- upgraded your dice, each point of relative scale (with 5 different scales available, mundane, extraordinary, supernatural, ascended, and godlike) turning one of your fate dice into a d6 -- an average of a 3.5 improvement in ability, and a frankly overpowering, if unreliable advantage. While you could have PCs of different scale, this ended up being a nightmare in practice, as drcpunk, our ever-suffering GM, had to make sure her foes could challenge the highest scale PCs -- but that meant that a foe designed to stress a higher scale PC would typically crush PCs designed to be more versatile; a realistic possibility, but also one that didn't reward creativity much unless the GM made sure to also give them an appropriate weakness (the game's anti-scale mechanic, but a very much optional one). This meant that even a moderate amount of experience would encourage players to break out of the box of mediocrity -- buying key abilities up to Ascended (where only one PC started) to stop being effectively second string PCs.

And because the higher scale classes (past Extraordinary) were designed to represent those with more than human abilities, this meant that when any PCs picked up a Supernatural or higher social ability, it would allow them to crush social challenges that by all rights should have been a real challenge--unless (as she had to), drcpunk put equivalent barriers in their way. In the end...scale was a -problem-. Having higher scale didn't just give you higher narrative scale -- it also gave you higher narrative weight (the power to succeed on your actions and have a greater effect on the narrative). Buy more scale and your screen time was worth more.

In the Dresden Accelerated playtest -- well, to start with, it bears repeating that this was an alpha playtest. I'm absolutely sure that they're going to change things and I entirely expect them to improve this for later iterations, not to mention the finished product. But in the meanwhile--there, the scaling system isn't a giant mechanical foot that crushes you if you aren't big enough to lift it (or that requires the GM to design a separate foot for every PC to make sure they all have the right size foot: note, if we ever have a sequel to our KCF game, there should be a giant mechanical foot as an NPC/villain/ally/whatever; that would be awesome!). Instead, when you act against something past your effective weight class (and here, at least, a weight class has limits on what it effects; if you are a troll it is defined in the weight class, not in the skills you choose to associate it with, that it helps you lift stuff, not win arguments (unless you can be very intimidating, but that's of limited use)), you discommoded in multiple ways, and if the difference is great enough you basically can't do anything useful. The problem -here- is first that you can be in a situation where you basically can't do anything at all (see "can't do anything useful"), and second that the standard method of overcoming a weight class difference is to team up or do a ritual -- both of which tend to seem overly mechanical and non-narrative. Much better (if more complicated) than Kerberos Club Fate -- but still not ideal.

The thing is, as far as I can tell, vanilla Fate (Fate Core or Fate Accelerated, certainly) already have a rule that handles difference in scale perfectly. I like to call it the power of "no."

Sure, Fate is generally a game of "yes." Once you're rolling dice, the GM is pretty much required to let your action succeed if you make the difficulty number, and while they can refuse any number of Aspect invokes if they don't make sense, it's only a jerk who won't help you find Aspects you -can- spend against if you're willing to spend the Fate Points -- as I mentioned above, the point of requiring Aspects for invokes isn't to limit you (that's what not having infinite Fate Points if for) -- it's to require that spends of Fate points point back to elements in the narrative rather than being disconnected from it. The GM doesn't even get to assign arbitrarily difficulties, for the most part, in most Fate games -- once you're rolling, they have to give you reasonable static opposition, or ideally have a NPC or PC in the scene oppose you, and they can't just throw in arbitrary bonuses (because narrative bonuses is what -their- fate points are for invoking).

However, the GM is under -no- obligation to let you roll for any given described action. If you say "I take over her mind" and you don't have mind control as an aspect of your character, the GM is going to tell you that you can't (possibly rudely) and to try an action that's possible instead. By the same token, if you aren't playing a character who can lift multiple tons, "I catch the building as it falls" just isn't going to be a possible action for you (even assuming you're using comics physics); if a building is falling on you, an Overcome Obstacle is going to be a lot more appropriate than a Create Advantage most of the time.

This is, frankly, a perfect way to handle scale. Sure, you're not at a mechanical disadvantage if you end up in a situation you couldn't reasonably take on head to head -- but you're going to have to pick actions that make sense in the narrative (if the GM is willing to embrace the power of 'no' and not let you ignore the narrative facts on the ground). If you -can- figure out something that makes a direct opposition plausible (switch the field to a social arena, or grab a power suit or bulldozer) then suddenly you can take actions that are now plausible even if they weren't before. And above all, it's simple.

Best of all, if a high scale character ends up facing a relatively minor situation, sure, the GM isn't going to present obstacles that don't make sense (the other side of the power of no is the power of "yes") -- no door forcing for Superman. But within those limits, the GM has an easy time coming up with plausible challenges for them, because they're following the same rules as anybody else.

And meanwhile, if Lois Lane ends up switching foes with Superman, the player isn't going to be facing a quick and ignominious loss (and a decision that it's time for Lois to pick up some superpowers). Instead, while the intrepid reporter is in a sticky situation, she's going to have plenty of wiggle room to decide on a valid course of action (perhaps hiding, or calling the authorities and hoping to out-wait the enemy, or the old standby of engaging in witty dialogue) without breaking idiom.

By using the existing rules of Fate -- including the rule that things have to make sense, it's possible -- and desirable -- to handle difference of scale in ways that make sense on a narrative level; both in how they affect things and when they stop mattering. Adding extra rules just to handle the issue, all too often, just gets in the way.