Notes from the Lab

drcpunk and I have a running dialogue regarding how many Fate Points PCs should have in her Kerberos Club Fate game, and really, in Fate campaigns in general. It goes something like this:

DrC: Do you think you guys have too many fate points?
Mne: Nah. I think we're fine.
DrC: Are you sure? I mean, you have 20 points now, and got 5 the last session; I don't think I can throw a challenge against you you can't simply blow away.
Mne: Sure, but I only had 3 three sessions ago. Remember? I had so few Fate Points that I got FPs back from Refresh. That's never happened to me! (It did, and it hadn't. That was weird! But I'd spent a bunch at one point).
DrC: Are you sure you're not getting FPs too fast, then? You guys don't take consequences often enough*!

...And so on. But here's the thing: I don't think players should be worrying about how many Fate Points they have -- I just don't think that should be a thing. Yes, sure, you want the Fate Point economy to mean you have points leaving the game as well as just accumulating -- but it should be an "easy come, easy go" -- where it's more likely that you're staring at the situation trying to find more Aspects that you can justify helping you than that you're down to your last Fate Point and thinking you're out of luck.

As for why, well...

There's a guy named Shamus Young. He's the guy who did the DM of the Rings series. But he mostly now writes (and does a video series with some other folks: Spoiler Warning) about video games.

One thing that's been a running theme in recent Shamus writing is scorn heaped upon games, particularly MMOs, that fail to keep your eyes on the center of the screen. The thing is, when you're playing an MMO, there are a lot of things to keep track of. There are your powers -- usually on cooldown, so you're going to want to watch them and figure out when to use them again, like a complicated tactical rhythm game. There are the little icons saying what status effects you and whatever creature you've targeted are, and how much life you have left. If you're grouped, there are little pop-ups with your party members, telling you whether they're alive and how many hit points they have, what status effect -they- are on, and so on, and often there's an overhead map showing you where you are and where your friends are (and probably some other details too). And so on, and so forth.

The thing is, the game really needs to be structures such that you're only looking at that other stuff rarely, if at all -- instead, you want to be looking at the center of the screen--where the action, the story, and all of the interesting stuff is. That means having mechanics that display status effects by showing them visually on characters (or if they're on you, on your character or as a screen effect) rather than simply expecting you to be checking the status icons; it means showing how hurt you are and your opponents are by having wounds or at least having your screen start turning red once you get into the danger zone, and so on. It also means having the action matter -- the difference between a game like the soon to be resting in peace City of Heroes and a more modern MMO like Guild Wars 2 is that in GW2, when you knock a guy down while he's in the middle of launching an attack, the attack stops happening; when you put a wall between you and an attack he just launched, the attack bounces off the wall, and so on -- the environment and your situational awareness -matters-.

Getting back to fate, then -- I don't want how many Fate Points you have left to matter. Sure, it's an issue; I want some motivation for you to screw your character over by taking compels you really shouldn't (and as a player, I want a reward that matters when I decide to go alone into a dark alley or slap my good friend in the face). But if you're playing correctly and willing to have your character get into the sort of trouble that RPG characters should get into, I don't want you looking at the situation and thinking you might not have enough Fate Points -- that's not what it's about (exception: If it's early in the story block, I could see having you look and say you don't have enough FPs and want to lose to get more, to reflect the fact that's it's early enough in the story for things to mostly be going wrong. But that's a complicated feature -- and anyway, usually the players can tell). Instead, if things are going badly, I want it to be hunting around for more Aspects to -spend- Fate Points through -- for more aspects of the situation -- the thing in the middle of the screen -- that can favor your character.

This -does- mean I think that in some situations, the GM should get more Fate Points -- or make a stronger opponent -- than the games default to when they assume the players are making starting characters rather than gaining experience and holding onto large stockpile of points. But a limitation on Fate Points simply shouldn't be a factor -- because that's not in the middle of the screen!

(*): We don't, in fact, take enough consequences -- which is true, and is a problem, but IMO isn't really about how many fate points we have, and isn't entirely germane to this essay--let's just say that the problem there, IMO, is that the game doesn't reward you enough for accepting consequences, which since it's a voluntary action, it bloody well should. And that's with Kerberos Fate rewarding you with a Refresh if you take, and then clear an Extereme consequence--though that's a start.  I think I'd start with saying that you get a fate point for every consequence you end a conflict with -- win or lose -- because functionally you've handed thaose fate points out to your opposition, so you should get to use them too.