Is FATE actually any good? I'm looking at the rules, and it just doesn't look any good

>Narrativism is a style of play where the focus is on making choices that create compelling human drama.
That definition is broad enough to be meaningless. There is not a single rpg on the market where you don't make choices that result in drama for the characters.

The core concept of narrativism is that the players take a step back and follow the story, the narrative, their characters go through. That's why the rules of narrative games try to emulate a genre by aiming to generate situations where genre tropes arise naturally.

>It's not, but Fate also isn't really a narrativist game; it's built almost entirely around actualizing character concepts, which in GNS classification would place it primarily as a simulationist game

What?
No.

GNS theory was an idiotic revision of the Threefold Model/GDS, which had game, drama(or story), and simulation. The GNS terms remain popular, despite the theory (that designers should avoid balancing those components) and definitions Edwards used falling out of favor. In fact, Edwards's definition of "Gamist" was largely "Games I don't like."

Fate is decisively about telling a story. Almost all of its mechanics revolve around that.

While simulationism doesn't have to represent "our" reality, games that fall in that category have many dedicated rules to fleshing out how the phsyics of the world work and what can be expected if players make certain actions. Many mech/future games fall into this category, despite portraying fictional worlds.

Fate has almost no simulationist mechanics.

>That's why the rules of narrative games try to emulate a genre
Genre emulation is simulationism.

If you don't like GNS, then stop using the terms. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean you can wildly make up bullshit about what it means, and frankly that leads me to believe that you never really understood it in the first place. Gamism in the Big Model was all about demonstrating player skill, and Simulationism very explicitly included "High Concept" simulationism that had nothing to do with physics modeling.

Even then, Fate is absolutely not about telling stories, it's about savoring the experience of the fictional world, which is precisely the definition that the Big Model applied to Simulationism. Fate is all about making characters who actually succeed at the things they are designed to do, it's a totally character driven game. Even outside of Edwards's definitions, its system of defining everything through aspects falls strictly within a broader conception of "Simulationism," one that constructs a world ontologically rather than physically.

>weird dice and awkward math
You'll get over it pretty quickly.

>players are encouraged to work against their characters
>Core of the game is heavily dependent on meta-currency
This is the central caveat of FATE.

Approach it like a munchkin - the best aspects are memorable (so the GM remembers to invoke them) widely applicable (so you can burn fate points) and mixed bags (to generate fate points). Then approach it like someone who cares about drama and story, and realize the munchkin is trying to make exactly the same kind of aspects as you are. It does a great job of unifying the roleplaying and game.

So, give it a chance. But yeah, it's not for everybody. If it's not what you're into RPGs for then this is really going to be the wrong one for you.

>no clue how combat is supposed to be fun
I only played the first FATE game, Spirit Of The Century, and combat was way too slow (low damage compared to health). The next game (Dresden Files) made that a lot better. But I don't know what mechanics ended up in the core rules.

I think you might need one of the spinoff games to make combat any fun.

Personally I've found that porting aspects into other games works better than FATE's rules.

>Genre emulation is simulationism.
That...doesn't make any sense. That is just a completely nonsensical thing to say. You are using some very weird definitions to these commonly used words, user.

Never played it, but my brother has been playing it for a while and always tell me about it. Sounds a really cool system, but in my mind, seems like the DM must be really good in order to pull it off.

I was in a JoJo campaign recently and it did well to deliver on the things that other systems would have lost in the detail or would have required adn that was good.

However towards the end I realised that a system that was billed to me on not holding you back from being creative with it mechanics rightly or wrongly I don't know if that's the party line but that was my experience was doing the opposite. Because of the gap between +0 or+1 and +3 or +4 was significant I wasn't trying to find a creative solution to a problem, I was just trying to find the one that let me roll my best skill.

Even working with your definitions of narrativism and immersion, I'm notsure I understand how its impossible for someone to do both? Like, do you have problems distinguishing what other people will do, might feel, etc. from what they're expected to do, or what you are doing? Its just thinking about an event from different perspectives. Which you do in pretty much any rpg. Or life.

Start with Accelerated for one. Ignore the word ladder, focus on the numbers. Compels are for when the game is stuck and something needs to happen, moreso than actively courting failure. The meta currency is not nearly as big a deal as they try to sell you on; good Stunt choice and having a high skill/approach is better than a fate point 9/10 times. Combat isn't very fun unless you use the Contest or Challenge rules, though.

You can't really run Fate wrong, it's either structured freeform or a super light GURPS-ish generic system, depending on how you like things.

The creativity is on justifying your good stat, but the designers think that creativity should be in finding ways *not* to use your best stat. In order to do this, they come up with fudging the check numbers for how fitting the approach is. It's a house rule that the Fate design people use a lot, but isn't legit codified because that would take effort.

I think the idea, when used for invokes, is in the Toolkit.

>Even then, Fate is absolutely not about telling stories, it's about savoring the experience of the fictional world

Here's something from the opening lines of Fate.
>here’s the basic idea: you and a bunch of friends get together to tell an interactive story about a group of characters you make up.

That's their mission statement and purpose, their fifty character blurb. Do you want to try rephrasing your statement, or do you want to give up with this nonsense that Fate is not a narrativist when it's one of the primary examples of one?

And, the GNS theory is outdated and generally reviled as simplistic, even if the terms it used remain popular. It's much easier to say that a game's mechanics are "gamist" than to say its mechanics are designed for a fluid and tactical experience that values ease of use rather how accurately it can recreate scenarios. While GNS theory is largely dead and was never all that popular to begin with, the terms are good even if Edward's definitions were counerintuitive and contradicted pervious models.

>its system of defining everything through aspects falls strictly within a broader conception of "Simulationism,"

Far from it. Defining everything through incredibly loose aspects is just a shortcoming of the system's simplicity and narrative structure, and reduces complex ideas into "what might be relevant to the plot."

Its ok for a spur of the moment one shot and I'd say thats about this and proprietary dice even make that less convenient.

I have a lot of fun with fate. It is a bit narrativist with that meta-currency, but you can't say that Edge, Action Points, or Spell Slots aren't meta-currency either.

Combat is pretty fun, especially when you get into the whole stunting aspect of things. Another character using their immense strength to apply a 'Fastball Special' aspect to your smaller, dagger-wielding character, which boosts your 'jump attack' stunt to allow you to do a lot more damage.

Not to mention that there are different 'types' of combat. Even a debate or argument with someone can be modelled using that same combat system.

It works with pretty much anything, and it's pretty singularly amazing for evangelion games, too. Way better than AdEva's crunchy combat rules in a setting where the combat is anything BUT crunchy or granular, and the various Children's problems and issues can be modelled amazingly as aspects. Even the city/geofront itself could have stress tracks, which take damage when the players wreck a ton of buildings or whatever.

Fudg

>Fudg
I meant to say; Fudge dice are pretty shit though.

It's not simple if you play it like D&D
It becomes an outright nightmare

Contrary to popular belief, narrativism and simulationism very much don't directly correspond to having more or fewer rules. Fate is actually a grand example for a narrativist game which is relatively rules heavy, compared to, say, Kill Puppies For Satan, whose rules fit on a napkin but is still considered simulationist because none of them touches upon an out of game-reality concept.

A better example of this is the difference between the New World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness. Faggots always liked claiming World of Darkness was "narrativist" like it's a synonym for "good", but the truth was that until very recently it simply wasn't. If you read the NWoD core book you'll find out at virtually no point do players have any interaction with the story or "game" that isn't, within the game's setting, through their characters. Even the benny system isn't called "story points" or "drama points" or something, it's explicitly "willpower" which reflects a quality within the setting (the bonus is the result of adrenaline and focus, and the fact that it's replenished by acting in accordance with the character's personality isn't because it "encourages roleplay" but because behaving like this "reinforces their inner self" or something).

Chronicles of Darkness, meanwhile, revolves heavily around the players directly interacting with the GM and other players over game mechanics (unsurprising, since it was heavily influenced by Fate and Apocalypse World, which are proudly narrativist and gamist, respectively).

what you mean by immersion is actually called simulationism

I don't know. I joined a FATE game at my university only to find out that the GMs are running a homebrew system that's even worse.

For example, allow me to introduce you to their stress box system (Scratched, Clipped, Hurt, Injured, Taken-out), otherwise known as the SCHIT system. You have a number of Clipped, Hurt, and Injured boxes determined by the GM's best judgement. You mark off a box depending on how much you fail a defense roll by, so failure by 1 is a Clipped, 2 is a Hurt, and 4 is an Injured. If you don't have any certain box left, you mark up the next highest. 6 is a Taken-out, which means you're knocked-out for the rest of the session. Additionally, you take a cumulative penalty to all your rolls equal to the number of boxes you have marked. I was supposed to be the tank, the only character with a defense skill and more than a couple of each box. and it never mattered because I would just mark off one or two boxes before I was immediately Taken-out.

The thing they did was have a free-form skill list. They told me to pick any skill and the GMs would use their best judgement to veto it or not, without any feedback on what skills are acceptable or not, so it was guess and check and trial and error with character creation. Apparently First-Aid is right out, but the other guy with Jack-of-All-Trades is just fine.

Just do like a normal person and play FUDGE. I've been participating in an Avatar: The Last Airbender themed FUDGE game for the past four months and it's one of the best I've ever had in my life (though admittedly owning mostly to the GM's immense skill and less to the system. But it doesn't get in the way!)

not him but you're wrong. in non-genre simulation you are trying to simulation reality. the goal is to be realistic. in genre simulation, the goal is to reflect the physics of a given genre, in FATE's case largely pulp fiction stories. narrativism, in contrast, isnt concerned with replicating a given genre faithfully. it doesn't care so much about genre - the same basic fantasy plot could be retold as western or sci-fi or film noir story. In genre simulation you are playing up to existing genre-specific themes. In narrativism, you are CREATING themes.

>Narrativism relies on outlining (or developing) character motives, placing characters into situations where those motives conflict and making their decisions the driving force.

Got very little to do with that. GNS categorization is almost 100% about what mechanics are trying to accomplish. If the purpose of a mechanic is to ensure events happen as they "would" in the game's setting (doesn't matter if it's reality, the 31st century or fucking Alice's Wonderland), it's simulationist. If the purpose of a mechanic is to "tell the most interesting story", it's narrativist. If it's to "make the game the most interesting", it's gamist. You ever read a section in a rulebook that said something like "We know that's not realistic, but it makes combat run smoother?" That's a gamist statement (conversely, if it were to say something like "we know it's not realistic, but it increases the player's control over the story", it's probably narrativistic).

Replace "interesting" with "enjoyable" for gamist mechanics. Your own example shows this, many gamist mechanics are ones that sacrifice realism (or drama for that matter) for the sake of having things run more smoothly, be more balanced, or otherwise make the game operate better *as a game*.

well, the delineation of genre simulation and narrativism is exactly as described. see
>indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html
under the section Say It Yourself

Better than GURPS.
Just communicate with your players. If you can't, pick other players.

That actually sounds like it was from FATE 2.0, the version before FATE Core. I always liked that one.