The Dresden Files > DFRPG

Sell my group on the using the FATE system

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traeki:
Something that really surprised me was how effective the Setting Creation part of the DFRPG game was both for my group and for me as a GM.  One warning: it took us a LONG time.  I came down with pneumonia this past week, so I haven't had the energy to blog about it, but I plan to write-up my playtest experience sometime soon.

The summary, in any case is that we used the guidelines to create a San Francisco in which to game, and it was a HELL OF A LOT OF FUN.  It was also profoundly different from the GM-driven game experiences I've had in the past.  I was leading a giant brainstorm session.  And at the end of it, I have all this material for telling stories.  I don't have to come up with plot hooks, the players gave those to me themselves.  I'm still struggling with scenario creation because, frankly, I'm a pretty novice GM, and there's a lot to make sense of.  But what's great is that I know what ever I come up with my players will be invested in.  I'm using *their ideas*.

Now, will they be happy with the game system itself?  That remains to be seen.  But I will say that they seem really excited about getting together again this weekend for our first actual play session.

I personally think FATE is the coolest system I've had the pleasure to examine.  But it won't appeal to everyone, and in particular it is not a simulationist RPG.  The game is very deliberately skewed to make all the player characters cool, irrespective of their actual metaphysical capabilities.  And if you're a dyed-in-the-wool player of games like Hero or D&D, that's going to feel kind of weird, maybe even "unfair" or "broken".  But in exchange for those deliberate imbalances in _mechanism_ you get a very balanced and even-handed _story_.  And although it's got a sort of narrativist bent, FATE is nowhere near as freeform as something like PDQ, or Dogs in the Vineyard, so there's enough crunch for players of simulationist games to at least get a foothold. 

My advice is, don't try to sell your players on the system.  Run the setting creation, and that will sell them on the game.  Then you can just tell them "here's the rules", and they can either accept that, or they can reject it and lose all the awesomeness they just helped create.  They'll be at your beck and call, man.

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