It's a Simple LIttle System

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

I know that FATE isn't that complicated, but I find myself getting confused, what with skills, stunts, maneuvers, aspects... So, as far as I can tell:

Skill: You have it, you use it, you roll dice, you don't pay fate points.
Stunt: You have it, you use it, it lets you break the rules in some way, you don't pay fate points.
Assessment / Maneuver: You use Assessment to discover an aspect. Even if you just made it up on the spot, it was always there. You use Maneuver to make a new aspect, such as tossing sand in someone's face to make him temporarily blind. I forget the fate point cost here. Or does it cost a point? I think mnemex said it cost an action (if in combat), not a fate point.
Aspect: Along with the Fate point, the heart and soul of the game. Invoke your own to help you somehow, paying a fate point. Pay a fate point to Compel someone else's, and take a fate point if you're compelling your own. Tag is compelling someone else's if you're not the gm? Something like that.

I don't know why this is still confusing me. There aren't that many factors here.

Comments

[mneme]

Skill: you have it. You don't pay fate points.
Stunt: rules hack. You already paid for it. You don't pay a fate point to use it unless it says so (or gives you an extra benefit for having a fate point.
Aspect: an attribute of a scene or character (including yours). Can be compelled, tagged, or invoked (self-tagged).
Assessment/Maneuver: attempt to discover or add an aspect to the scene or a character. Costs an action (including a supplemental action). If successful, the first time you use the aspect within the same scene, its free.
Compel: Use someone's aspect to force someone to do something that may be against their interests.
Declaration: spend a fate point to declare something (must be agreed on by the GM; if not, you get the fate point back). If you have an aspect to funnel this through, you've got a little more lattitude, this is known as "tagging for effect".
Tag: exercise a fate point to affect a die roll(+2 or reroll per tag), after the dice are rolled. This can be your own aspect, or someone else's aspect, or the scene's aspect -- but if you tag someone's aspect against their own interest, they get a fate point (and if an NPC tags your aspect, you get a fate point).
Guessing Aspects: When tagging or compelling NPC or scene aspets, you can guess aspects instead of using an Assessment; you spend the fate point and try to tag/compell the aspect. If you're right, it works. If not, they can either let you lose a fate point, or can give it back to you and assign an aspect to you (of something like "thinks I'm made of pudding" if you tried to tag "Made of pudding") that they can get a free tag against.

Things you can spend fate points on:

Declarations (incl Tagging for effect).
Stunts that are powered with fate points.
Tagging aspects (+2 to a roll or reroll, post roll)
Compelling NPCs (must be agreed upon by the GM, and they can spend fate points to ignore. Dave's ignoring player-compels, as he doesn't like them).

Out of combat, there are simple actions (roll against target), and opposed actions (1. both roll 2. compare 3. loser can become winner by taggin (if so, goto 2)).
In combat, it's: on your turn, declare action: manuever/assessment or attack [usually] (with optional suplemental action); -1 to your action if you declare a supplemental action (which can't require a roll), also, at any time, free actions as reasonable (quick talking, noticing stuff that happens; defense rolls). If your action has extra, unneeded shifts (defeated your target, but would have done so with a lower roll; successful manuever/assessment, but didn't need all your dice), you can take an overflow action, which cannot be an attack (you don't get spin on this). I think you can overflow on a dodge, too, rather than get spin--"I dodge and RUN AWAY". Again, actions are either simple actions or opposed actions. Special actions include Block (stop someone from doing something until your next action; they must exceed the block to do it and the block subtracts from their success if there isn't another higher defense; a Border is a special block that affects movement), Grapple (special block that uses Might), Attack (attempt to do damage via social, mental, or physical. If it hits, does damage; if it inflicts consequences, you can tag them as if you'd manuevered them on)
Conflicts continue until one side has fled (not sure how that works, mechanically) or one side is eliminated by being Taken Out or conceding.