So, before I talk about Dresden Files RPG, I think I should take a look at FATE, on which DF RPG is based to see how well the foundation is implemented.
FATE System is a generic TRPG based on FUDGE System. It can be downloaded for free here: http://www.faterpg.com/resources/
The system sits right in the middle of conflict/task resolution mechanics divide, with the level of abstraction set on the blurry line between “accomplish your goals” and “do a thing.” As such, mechanics can be roughly divided into two parts: skills and aspects (tied closely to Fate points) mechanics.
Skills are what you would expect from them if you have any familiarity with TRPGs: they represent characters’ abilities to overcome challenges of specific type, be it to deceive other people, climb a wall or pierce someone with a sword. They range from 0 to 8, with 4 being the cap at character generation. 0 is Mediocre. Technically, skills can be lesser than that, but PCs are assumed to be at least Mediocre in skills they can use. Skills that require training (Academics and such) are simply not available for use unless you take them.
It’s interesting to note that FATE doesn’t have any kind of primary attributes common in other TRPGs. Skills are the foundation of the character, which indicates a goal-oriented design. The game isn’t very interested in modelling character realistically, but rather in what character can actually do.
The core game provides a list of default skills as well as advice on creating your own skills, depending on setting and game focus.
On top of skills there are stunts, various tricks unique to each character that change how skills work for them. Stunts give situational bonuses (like a bonus to Athletics when you are in a chase around rooftops), allow you to use one skill in place of another under certain circumstances (like using Athletics in place of Fight as long as you fight unarmed, in case you wanted to play Jackie Chan) or otherwise give you an advantage (like using Athletic to move two zones instead of one per turn).
By default you have three free stunts and can buy up to two more, but doing so decreases the number of Fate points you have at the start. Fate points are primary used to invoke aspects, so the result here is that the more you can do with your skills, the less you can do with your aspects. There is a mechanic to compensate for it, though it’s still an interesting example of balance between mechanical and narrative elements of the game.
All in all, this section is pretty simple and mostly intuitive for people with any knowledge of TRPGs. The game text itself does an adequate job of coaching new players through it. The only possible difficulty I see is stunts. The game assumes players would create most of them themselves, which can be difficult for someone without prior experience with the game. Still, there are enough examples and general advice that it shouldn’t be a big issue.
Now, aspects and Fate points. In earlier editions of FATE, Fate points could be used as a direct meta-game result to gain +1 bonus on a roll for every point spent. It was removed from the current edition. Now the only use of Fate points not related to dealing with aspects is powering especially potent stunts (such stunts are pretty rare, though, so the rule doesn’t come into play often).
So, what is an aspect? An aspect is a short descriptive phrase related to a character or environment that can be narratively important and affect the outcome of various actions. Swordsman* is an aspect, Unwavering Faith is an aspect, Cool Car** is an aspect. Basically, imagine yourself describing a character from a story you like to someone who’s never read it.*** Most of the things you say about that character can be turned into aspects.
*Though not very good as it too closely matches Fight skill and doesn’t say much about the character beyond mastery of swords. Royal Guard or Trained by [Famous Swordsman] would be better.
**Also not very good as it says little about the character, but acceptable. Important possessions can be aspects as long as they embody some important emotional connection of the character.
***Taylor Hebert has deep Trust Issues, in particular she doesn’t like
authority and thinks She Can Do Better Being In Charge, which often
results in her maneuvering herself into position where people can’t or won’t refuse her. In other words, she’s often Manipulative and Intimidating, especially after she’s learned the Value of Fear. She has a lot of Suppressed Anger, which she tries to not show in her everyday life and channels into her fights. She is very good at Self-Rationalization, retroactively justifying her actions as good and necessary to herself and others. She Thinks Fast on Her Feet in conflicts, coming up with good plans on
the fly, which allows her to shoot above her weight class.Her powers allowed her to craft a rather Villainous-Looking Costume.
It’s the same for environment. Pitch-Black Darkness is an aspect,
Everything Is on Fire is an aspect, etc. Even abstract things like
Gloomy Atmosphere can serve as aspects.
Basically, as long as something is important narratively to your game, you can make an aspect out of it.
Player characters by default have five aspects: high concept, trouble, first adventure and two crossing paths aspects. High concept is the general description of the character: Wizard for Hire, Holy Inquisitor, Rebellious Youth, etc. Trouble is some sort of conflict, be it internal one to the character (All-Consuming Greed) or external (Enemy of the State). Once these two aspects are defined, players are supposed to come up with their first short adventure (one for each) and define an aspect related to it. Then each player would pass notes about his or her adventure to another player, who would add a guest appearance of their characters in it. There would be two guest appearance in each adventure, each of which would be used as an inspiration for an aspect.
Other editions of the game also included a few free aspects that can be defined however you wanted, and normally FATE-based games would define what kind of aspects you’d get at the start based on setting and genre.
Aspects can be Invoked and Compelled.
Invoking an aspect means it helps you to overcome a current challenge somehow and grants a mechanical bonus for skill roll. For example, I can invoke Unwavering Faith aspect to resist demonic temptation. My aspects can also be Invoked against me. For example, someone who knows I’m proud of my Cool Car can compliment it before trying to sell me on some idea. Doing that grants me a Fate point.
In contrast with invocation, Compelling aspects produces purely narrative effects. Any aspect can be Compelled to produce events related to it or provoke specific behavior in characters. For example, the GM may Compel me to follow my teacher’s code of honor via Trained by [Famous Swordsman]* even if it’s not the best idea at the time. Or the GM can Compel my Cool Car and declare someone stole it, provoking a conflict.
*Provided I do respect said teacher, which would be defined during character creation. If I’m a rebellious disciple instead, the GM may compel me to do something based on that. Prove I’m better than my teacher, do the opposite of what he’d do, etc.
I can either accept the Compel, which gives me a Fate point, or reject it, in which case I would need to spend a Fate point.
I can self-compel for free, and other players can compel my character for one Fate point, though event-based Compels can be vetoed by the GM.
Environmental aspects can be compelled, too. For example, the GM may propose that due to Everything being on Fire, our enemies managed to escape in the commotion. Every character affected by such a Compel would receive a Fate point.
In Core, Compels always create some kind of complication for the compelled characters. Other versions sometimes include an Invoking for Effect action, which is basically a Compel beneficial to the character. For example, I may be able to Invoke for Effect my Trained by [Famous Swordsman] aspects and proclaim that my teacher appears to save the day as long as it makes sense in the context. Core doesn’t allow players to do that anymore. Instead, there is an option to spend a Fate point to add some narrative detail related to an aspect, though it’s rather weirdly undefined in scope of possible effects.
Aspects serve to frame the story and its conflicts. Players would naturally want to get into situations where their aspects would help them, while the GM is given an opportunity to create troubles into which players would walk willingly. By picking Trained by [Famous Swordsman], Unwavering Faith and Cool Car, I indicate I want a game to contain sword fights, demonic temptations or something similar and car chases. The GM would want to frame a story around my relationship with my teacher, questions of faith and… ah… car-related troubles (OK, that’s really not a good aspect as it lacks compelling Compels).
When the game is working correctly, I would constantly gain Fate points from troubles I walked into due to following my aspects, and would spend these points on solve problems that caused me with my skills. It’s a welcome refresh from point-buy systems used by older games like GURPS, Exalted, WoD and such, where there is always a temptation to get some disadvantages that simply won’t come into play (rare allergies and phobias are big on this) and avoid situations where other disadvantages would be relevant. FATE System rewards players for getting into troubles for the sake of role-playing.
It also presents an interesting balancing mechanic. While it’s possible to construct an aspect that would be mostly beneficial to you and aspect that would be mostly troublesome, it’s OK. Beneficial aspect won’t get you Fate points, limiting your ability to Invoke it, and troublesome aspect would provide a steady supply of them, allowing you to use other aspects more freely.
As such, players have freedom to define their aspects based on what they want to play rather than what would be most beneficial to them.
Still, it’s better when aspects can be used for both good and bad, and the game emphasizes this point at length, providing advice for creating good aspects.
There is a downside to it, however. Aspects matter only when they are actively used, which can create situations where an aspect logically should come into play but didn’t. It’s especially prominent in combat where you are likely to perform a number of similar actions some of which would be enhanced by your aspects while others won’t. For example, I may Invoke Trained by [Famous Swordsman] on my first attack, but not on second since I ran out of Fate points.
Normally it’s not a big issue. You can assume that such aspects are in effect, and if your roll is successful, that was thanks to your aspects, and if it wasn’t, then it wasn’t enough or outside factors interferred. Still, for some it may stretch the suspension of disbelieve and damage immersion.
Aspects can also be created, destroyed, discovered and “discovered” during the game via skill use. I can light a fire in a dark room, eliminating Pitch-Black Darkness aspect. I can grapple someone, giving them Grappled aspect (the best grappling mechanic). I can engage in small talk with someone, fishing for some information I can use against them, and discover Self-Loathing. The game assume the GM knows NPCs’ aspects, but it also recommend leaving some of them blank, so when players search for something applicable to the current situation, they would find it on successful roll even if such an aspect didn’t exist before, hence “discovering.”
Aspects created by characters’ actions are usually temporary, and some may even last for a single action. The reason for creating them is not to simply enhance the game, there is an advantage in it. While normally Invoking an aspect costs a Fate point, newly created aspects can be Invoked once (or sometimes twice) for free, encouraging players to actively engage with their surroundings and be creative for their own benefit. And, of course, afterwards such situational aspects may stick around as long as it makes sense for them to persist, so they can be Invoked and Compelled by anyone as usual, potentially creating more complications for players and feeding into the trouble-reward-resolution system.
Now that I’ve defined the game elements, let’s talk about how they look in motion.
The basic resolution mechanic of FATE is a roll of four fudge dice* against a static number in case of passive opposition or another roll in case of active opposition**.
*Fudge dice is a six-sided dice with two sides marked
with “-“, two sides with “0” and two sides with “+”. As such, it can
decrease the result by 1, increase it by 1 or not change it at all. Four
dice give a rather steep probability curve, ensuring very rare
extremes. Mostly, you’ll get -1, 0 and 1 results on them. Naturally,
normal six-sided dice can be used in place of fudge ones if you take 1-2
to count as “-” and so on.
**Passive
opposition is mostly reserved for inanimate objects, like a steep wall
you need to climb and such, while active opposition is mostly reserved
for characters, well, actively opposing you. It’s not an iron-clad rule, however. Some
inanimate objects, like an automatic machine gun, would provide an
active opposition, while some characters may provide only passive one,
like if you engage in a small talk with unsuspecting NPCs in hopes of
fishing some useful information with probing questions.
It lean towards task resolution at its core. The simplest situation requiring a skill roll would be a simple task like picking a lock. There is, however, a degree of abstraction allowing the GM to define the scope of the task.
Normally, as long as the source of tension is the same and the situation requires only one skill, it’s considered a single task. For example, sneaking past one guard and sneaking past all guards on your way somewhere aren’t too different as long as guards are minor NPCs with undefined personalities and little difference between them. So, it’s easier and usually more fun to just roll once for sneaking past them than to roll each time you see a new guard. However, an appearance of important villain would introduce a new source of tension. Even if character’s goal stays the same, a new roll may be required.
Likewise, if after sneaking past some guards a character faces a trap, that would require a different skill and a different roll. Specifically, it transforms a simple task into a challenge.
Challenge is a situation requiring a use of multiple skills to resolve. For example, stealing an artifact from a treasury chamber would require sneaking past guards, disarming traps, picking a lock and recognizing the right artifact. Each of these tasks would require a different skill (well, except disarming traps and picking a lock, they are both Burglary, but the source of tension and possible consequences are different).
In such a situation, a separate roll is made for each task (possibly with additional rolls to create an aspect relevant to each task which can be used for character’s advantage – it’s basically a free action, though a failure would create a complication and possibly require more rolls to resolve or increase the difficulty of other rolls). The outcome is not defined before all rolls are made and their successes and failures are evaluated by the GM. Afterwards, the GM constructs an outcome most fitting for the results. The timing of actions, their affect on each other and such are left abstract, to be determined depending on the needs of the game and what would be most interesting. Likewise, it’s typically a good advice not to define surroundings too much, so players can “discover” a convenient deep shadow or a lazy guard half-asleep on the job.
Challenge assumes passive opposition (though, as I said, “passivity” is a rather fluid thing in this game). For when a character directly competes with another character but they don’t want to harm each other directly, there is contest. A chase is a contest, an argument is a contest, etc. Characters act towards mutually exclusive goals that won’t be resolved in a single action, but they don’t attack.
Contest is resolved as a series of single actions against active opposition. These actions are called exchanges. Whoever wins thee exchanges first wins the contest. Creating an aspect to help you in a current exchange is, again, a free action, but failure concedes the current exchange. It’s pretty simple and straightorward.
(While the core system doesn’t include it, some games propose changing the number of needed victories for players and their opponents to reflect a difference in position. For example, an opponent far away may need two victories to escape while players would need three to catch up. Trying to convince thugs to spare you would require only one failure for them to grow bored and attack and five victories to convince them. And so on.)
Finally, there is conflict. Conflict is a situation where both characters want to actively harm each other and beat another into submission or death. Conflicts can be physical and mental, though, as I said, they are about harming other character. A dispute, even heated one, is not a conflict. A violent argument where insults fly and the goal is to reduce the opponents to tears is. An interrogation where the goal is to break the opponent is. And so is Cthulhu invading your mind.
Sometimes it can be tricky to distinguish between the two, though there are rules for turning contests into conflicts and vice versa, so it’s not a big issue.
By contrast, physical conflict is simply a fight, familiar to all.
Conflicts are more formally defined than other situations. Players have less freedom to define their surroundings, and they only have one action per turn, so they can’t constantly create advantages. Still, there is a certain level of abstraction even there. For example, the surroundings are divided into zones, each roughly a size of a parking lot. Within a zone, characters’ movements and positions aren’t tracked. Each character can attack any character within the same zone, move freely around, etc. The surroundings are defined in general terms, like “a lot of heavy crates around,” but specific details are typically left vague. That is done so players can still create new aspects when they want without thinking too much over whether or not this bookshelf would be able to block a door or not.
Attacks inflict stress on characters, which is basically an effort required to avoid any consequences: twisting your body just right to avoid a blow, ignoring an insult, etc. Each character has two stress boxes for each type of conflict by default (the number can be increased by purchasing certain skills). When an attack against a character succeeds, a players checks the box numbered the same as the difference between attack and defense rolls. So, if my opponent rolled 6 on attack, and I rolled 4 on defense, the difference would be 2, so I check my second box, leaving first one free. Should the same result happen again, I would need to check my third box (if I have any) since my second is checked already.
When the stress dealt by an attack exceeds the number of boxes, or if the relevant box is checked already, a player can take a consequence or the character would be taken out. Consequences are basically temporary aspects that go away after successful treatment (a skill roll) and enough time (scene, session, scenario, depending on severity). Each type of consequence (minor, moderate and severe) can negate a certain amount of stress from the current attack. Previously dealt stress can’t be negated and disappears on its own only after the conclusion of the conflict.
Consequences give an opponent a free invocation, like any created aspect. They are also negative, reflecting harm done to your character (wounds, shaken psyche, etc), and as such typically hinder characters more than help them, even though they can be Invoked as normal, provided the right opportunity.
Oh, and there is also extreme consequence, which permanently replaces one of your aspects (high concept can’t be altered like that, though) and can be taken very rarely. It represents some kind of last-ditch save, a desperate attempt to avoid certain doom.
Characters have only one consequence of each type, and they are shared between conflict types, so running out of them is a real concern, especially when you don’t have an opportunity or skills to treat them.
As such, sometimes it’s more prudent to simply concede conflict. Conceding is admitting a failure: your opponents get what they want, you lose. However, you get some consolation prizes: you preserve whatever consequences remain clear, you get a fate point, plus another fate point for each consequence you took during the conflict and, most importantly, you get to narrate your fate. While the narration still must be about you losing and your opponents winning, the exact details are up to you. It’s the difference between being captured and being mistakenly left for dead, or being dead and disappearing, “his body was never found.” If you are taken out instead because you ran out of stress and consequences or because you are unwilling to take a serious consequence, your opponent gets to narrate, which would probably be more problematic for you.
Once again, FATE provides an incentive to get into troubles. It’s a good mechanic for setting up early conflicts with reoccuring villain who would win first few fights before PCs grow up enough to take the villain down. And, of course, it works in another direction, too: a GM conceding a conflict makes the fight easier for PCs and allows the GM to preserve lives of villains should they have a role to play later. Just make sure to arrange conflicts somewhere where a villain can logically disappear, you know PCs would want to find the body. Relevant to DF, it’s a good mechanic for noir genre: get beaten up enough, and you’ll accumulate enough Fate points to brute-force the mystery.
It’s also interesting to note that FATE rejects insta-kills. It’s pretty much impossible to burn through stress and consequences in one hit unless a character is badly wounded already, so all conflicts take at least a few turns. Overall, i would say it’s a good decision. Insta-kills are often boring, turning what is supposed to be an epic battle into an initiative roll, so avoiding them is wise. It does mean that the design of power should reflect it: it’s better to avoid powers like petrifying gaze, which rather imply an ability to take people out of conflict instantly.
Related to it, characters don’t die unless their players or opponents (GM or other players) want them to die. They are knocked out, captured, left for dead, etc. Almost always it’s possible to come up with some fate other than death to reflect their loss, and the game suggest you do that as sudden character death rarely leads to interesting game.
That’s about it in regards to resolution mechanics.
The game also includes advice on creating extras: magic systems, superpowers, organizations (if you want to track actions of an organization as a single entity), big vehicles (ships, mechas, spaceships, etc.), super-technology, special gear, etc. For the most part, it revolves around modifying skills and introducing new aspects. For example, a simplest magic system would be a modified Lore skill, which allows you to perform rituals to overcome tasks considered appropriate for magic by your group, create aspects by changing the environment, attack and defend directly with and against magic. The simplest superpower would be a stunt taking your skill beyond normal limits (and costing more refresh* than usual).
*Refresh is a number of starting Fate points. If you have more Fate points than your refresh by the end of a session, they are lost. If you have less, you gain missing ones.
I would say I don’t like much the proposed weapon ratings. Basically, they add extra shifts (difference between attack and defense rolls), making fights that much more lethal and stress that much less important. It’s an optional rule, though, and personally I would reserve it for very special weapons only if I were to use it at all.
Otherwise, the rules are fine if lacking in “wow” factor. If such things are central to your game, you may want to modify rules in their favor more than examples do.
There is also general advice on how to run the game, how to construct a setting, possible issues, etc. I didn’t look too closely, but it seems solid enough, though I’m not sure how an inexperienced GM would handle it.
Overall, FATE is a pretty solid versatile reasonably simple game open to modification and fit for many game styles. It’s a good system for inexperienced players, though probably not as much for inexperienced GMs simply because it’s generic, and defined setting really helps with creating your first scenario. For more experienced groups, there is plenty of opportunities to adjust the game more to your liking. The rules are transparent enough that they can be modified without much fear of breaking the game.
And, hey, it’s free, so check it out.