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.

1.  At what point does magic become "undeniable"?  When it puts men on the moon?  When it systematically kills millions of people?  ::purses lips::  People are resolute ostriches, man.

2.  An artificer specializing in enchanted items would be extremely straightforward to create.  There's a stripped down kind of Thaumaturgy that's practically tailor-made for this purpose.

Note that ordering through Amazon won't get you the .pdf, so you'll be stuck waiting until June/July for your copy.

Man, the craftsmanship evident in the latest edition of D&D -- one which I've spent some time talking about with Mike Mearls, one of its architects -- is pretty choice.  Plenty of indies should be so lucky to produce a system like that.  I dunno that I buy it.

Seriously.  D&D 1-3 never really pulled me in much.  Growing up, I was a huge fan of lots of big RPGs, but TSR didn't do a lot for me.  Then I played a bunch of 4th Ed. at PAX this year and I was really impressed.  It's pretty much a board game, but it is a damned fine board game.  I don't know that I have the mettle to run a campaign, but I'd sure love to be a player in one, one of these days.

People gripe about it being WoW Lite, but frankly it's what I wish WoW actually was.  Getting to strategize about how to make the best use of the random little abilities on my sheet is a blast!  I had some ability as a druid that did a little damage and dragged the target one square towards me.  I used it to position enemies for massive team strikes, pulled enemies off ledges for fall damage, shifted enemies into hazard zones, it was awesome.  Good luck getting that same kind of joy from Judgement of Light, you know?

But when it's time to scratch the "RPG" itch, I'll take Aspects over Squares. 

Where ARE you buying your big-store RPG books?

From my friend's gamestore about half the time, and Amazon the other half.  If my friend's game store were in my town or I owned a car, I'd buy from them always, but waiting the 2 weeks or more between the occasions when I see him to get my hands on an exciting game is often a dealbreaker.

Fred hit the nail on the head, really -- the problems with the B&M model are real, and the changes are probably inevitable, but it's tragic to watch, and I do what I can to support it.

In any case, note that I said *list* price.  Even the discounted link you provided prices the two main books (ignoring the Monster Manual) at $40, which is not all that far shy of the $50 *list* price for DFRPG.

There's an outstanding discussion of this going on on Lenny Balsera's blog right now:

http://lcdarkwood.livejournal.com/3824.html

http://lcdarkwood.livejournal.com/3858.html

The comment threads have a lot of great discussion about this, so don't stop at the end of the posts.

For what it's worth, I think the key point is that in order for an aspect to be compelled in a way that should generate a fate point, it needs to have dramatic consequences.  So, for "HULK SMASH!", a good role-playing moment might involve you shattering through a door that could have been quietly picked.  A COMPEL would have you break through a door that could have been quietly picked, and smash an irreplaceable art installation, earning you the public emnity of the artist or owner.  Or maybe bring an enemy into the fight that wouldn't otherwise have been there in a more immediate sense.  Or maybe the NPC you came to talk to is knocked unconscious.

If you just knocked down the door, great, you're the Hulk.  But when you are in that position either you could hold up a fate point and say "So...I think the hulk might be smashy, here" or the GM could say the same to you.  If you both agree there's going to be a compel, you're agreeing that

a) You're going to get the fate point.

b) Your character will have cause to regret it.

but note that b) is not "YOU will have cause to regret it".  You'll have more adventure hooks and things to tie your character to the setting (a new nemesis/detractor, more bad guys to beat up, a challenging puzzle to solve).  And that's awesome.

I didn't really grok this as well until I read about damage in Truth & Justice.  In T&J, skills and aspects are sort of merged into these hybrid "quality" things.  And when you take damage, you temporarily lose value from your qualities themselves.  And whatever you choose to be the _first_ quality to drop for damage generates a Plot Hook.  So maybe you get kicked in the junk, so you drop your "Businessman" quality to Poor.  The GM immediately notes down something like "Meanwhile, across town, Spider-Lad's secretary is mugged on the way home from work!".  It's a little bit different, because it's not tied to the Fate-points in the same way, but it's therefore much clearer what's going on.  I recommend reading through that system if you're looking for some more ideas (the example of combat with Winter Hawk is worth the price of the pdf).  Note that this is specific to T&J, so you won't find it discussed in the PDQ core rules (shame, really).

Anyway, so Compels are sort of like that, but instead of triggering on your character taking damage, they trigger on your character making particular choices.

Hope that was more helpful than confusing.  =)

"Are the voices in my head bothering anybody else?"  Sometimes they just talk to you abo...what?  Shut up!  Hey, let him talk!

Wow.  I just realized you already posted essentially the same thing above -- what's weird is that's actually one of my personal catchphrases, so I wasn't stealing it from you!

"Jinx!"  You have an uncanny knack for precisely matching other behaviors -- but at exactly the same time.
Invoke: Break your fall by grabbing that same ledge.  Draw and shoot at exactly the same time.  Unnerve an opponent with uncannily irritating verbal mimicry.
Compel: Fall off that same cliff.  Irritate a new acquaintance.  Make the turn at exactly the same time as the car you're chasing, even though you haven't actually rounded the corner yet.