Coming up with ten Aspects can be a chore.

Seven is much easier, and five is easier still.

Five to seven is the ideal, in my experience.

If you don't have a clear idea of your character they can be difficult also making them useful can be tough if you're GM isn't 100% locked in on the style of the game. I still have difficulty with High Concept and Trouble (which are both aspects).

It can be daunting, but I find that they seem to come in bunches for me. I'll go blank for a while and then get a few good ones all at once.

I also have had some good fortune kicking aspect ideas around with the GM and the other players.

I do think that 5 is a good number and 10 is just so hard to keep track of.

At this moment i just played FAE, so 5 is a number i'm used. I don't know what will happen in games of 8 or 10 Aspects, but probably will be very fun. XD

Yo! I've been around here since the beginning, but haven't said much.

Dresden Files, as I recall, used 7. It was still a lot, and you /had/ to come up with everything before play. Along with City Creation, which took our group three sessions to complete. It was not a fun process getting it all together, and it's really where many games I've seen just crumble.

Fully requiring a completed character before game play is kinda silly. That's a suggestion, not a necessity to play. Both Fate Core and FAE can handle players with a High Concept, Trouble, peak skills (one +4 and two +3, or just a +3 Approach), and maybe a Stunt if you have a really good idea for one. You shouldn't have to fill out everything if you aren't ready. Finishing the character organically during play is very rewarding, and really helps players fit together.

Ten aspects is a /lot/, and I've seen a lot of old Fate games where only four or five of those aspects ever see the light of play. Plus it can be really hard to think up neat phrases and such to fill that many spots before really getting to know the character and how they interact with everyone else.

In my games, I just dropped Phases outright and have people bring in concepts and flesh out their history together in play.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:36, Thu 26 June 2014.

I like that idea, reminds me of my old storyteller, he would do just that, give flaws/merits based on game play. One guy got an automatic success to perception rolls involving hearing because he got 4-5 rolls with more successes then dice(Cwod btw)

I think the drop from 10 to 5 Aspects has helped -- not just in character generation, but in play. The GM has to *remember* (or reference) all those aspects once the game is underway, and 10 per PC is pretty daunting. I'd found that many of them just didn't get invoked or compelled that much. Five can be a *little* limiting (I'm in an Atomic Robo game that's starting up, and I've got five -without- any that connect me to other PCs, and those are important... so I'm hoping six or seven will be okay with the GM.)

And I too think they should be able to be defined in-play. That's sort of the whole point if you're going to get going quickly -- Fate *isn't* fast to generate characters if you're going to take the time to define everything up-front, determine every PC-to-PC relationship, etc. I think  we've all seen a lot of PbP games die during chargen as a result.

10 is doable if guided correctly, though I agree that five is better.

SotC handled it well with chopping it up in parts of backstory generation, where you had to pick two aspects per phase. It's like doing the phase trio, but with each connection to another PC there were two aspects.

Hey guys, anyone know of a Cthulhu setting using Fate?

Or better yet, are there any FAE or FATE Core Cthulhu games here on Rpol?

Worlds of Cthulhu, (which I do not think has come yet). Present Day Cthulhu. Cthulhu in Space and a conversion of Achtung! Cthulhu. .All but the first one found by going to RPGNow.com and entering +Fate and +Cthulhu.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:50, Sat 28 June 2014.

So, who here have played an ERP using Fate? Playing or not, how do you see the game being used?

What is an ERP?

In reply to Frili (msg # 62):

It's a RP with Erotic elements. You know, when people need to drive their minds to other places and do things that they find amusing or "kinky" (I don't use this word, is too silly). I was here thinking: all the ERPs I've seen, a few use a game system and increment the erotic scenes into a big and interesting narrative, as others just are two people exchanging actions one at another.
Obviously, I have played and GMed some, but it is always interesting to talk about it to other people; some game ideas spark from random talk.

Feel free to discuss, but do remember this isn't a mature or adult forum so please do keep it PG. Thanks.

In reply to Cripple X (msg # 64):

I know. XD
But when I think that I can get into a good and long game with really imprevisible twists... and playing in a group with more than two people, counting me out.

Ah. You learn something new every day. I'm not into those kinds of games, so I can't help you there.

I'm not sure how play goes in an ERP, but my guess would be that Fate would work pretty well.  Better than systems I've played like D20 or WoD, anyway.

Since Aspects are so flexible, I always imagine Fate aspects working in any setting.  Aspects like Sexy Battle Scar and A True Gentleman seem more useful than Charisma 17, Acrobatics +9.

I would imagine there are systems made for ERP that probably fit better, but things like Aspects always seem great for any system/setting I've played in.

In reply to CoyotesGrin (msg # 67):

A good number of those games give me chills in the spine, as they appears be done by people:
1 - don't have anything but bad ideas of how their game works;
2 - don't take their goal (a ttrpg with sex) seriously.

If you never have played or heard of ERP before: think HBO's Game of Thrones, but with subtle differences regarding what happens onscreen because players and GM input.

---

That aside: how one coul insert Metroid-like weapons and skills in FAE? Extras with Stunts?

"Players should use photo-realistic images for their character portraits. Drawings, cartoons, animation, etc. are not permitted,"

This kind of thing makes my interest die at the same moment.

Well, it tends to break my immersion in a RPOL game if one player uses a photo to represent them and the other a line drawing. Makes it hard for me to imagine them together.

I mostly don't even pay attention to the portraits that much. Mostly because I often describe my characters in such detail that finding a portrait is kind of a lost cause.

Hm. I've yet to find a game system that really does it for me when I wanna play a Metroid-style RPG. Lemme see what I can cook up with FAE. The problem is starting expectations. Let's use Samus herself, maybe using Zero Mission (the current earliest canon we have for her abilities) as a benchmark.

So we're looking at a character with a power suit. We'll say the suit itself is an aspect giving permission to make ranged attacks and survive in harsh environments and such. Nothing special, just allowing actions. Then you set up your Approaches however you feel are appropriate to the character. If you want to include the idea of the Zero Suit, where you go from being powerful to being quick, make a Stunt: "Because I wear a Power Suit, when it gets compelled and lost I can swap my Forceful and Quick approaches."

For the suit steadily getting better, you'd start getting extra Aspects added onto it as you adventure. "High Jump Boots," "Ice Beam," "Varia Suit." They'd give you specific permissions, and you could invoke and possibly compel them like normal aspects for added benefit. But they're always true until they're gone. Just say they stick around until the end of the adventure, when you have to start from scratch again.

How's that look for starters?

The nice thing about the Fate fractal is that you can fully flesh out important game entities.  So, each suit could have its own complete set of aspects, including a Trouble aspect if there are down-sides to each one.

The characters' main concepts would give them access to the suits they could justify.

True, but atmo was asking specifically about Fate Accelerated, and I try to keep FAE as bare bones as possible for ease of use. In a full Fate Core game, I'd probably stat it out like Camelot Trigger's Armours, using Head, Body, Back, Arms, and Legs as spaces to place Systems which provide special bonuses. Maybe leave them blank to start and allow one mod per slot, gained through story. It'd take away some of the versatility of picking them at character creation, since you'd probably be stuck with whatever was available, but it'd add that neat element of exploration.

FAE is the best choice to this kind of game because the action is what people wants, not "power suit micro manageament game". They want to kill aliens, pick power-ups and upgrades and flee from an exploding planet/station to never came back again.