As I'm reading through the rules, I notice that the creators recommend that the GM actually tell his players what the difficulty of their proposed action should be.  Example: Jason's wants his character to climb a fence and the GM tells him, "If you roll fair or better, you'll make it."  Not a smooth example, I know, but my point is, does this help or hinder your sessions?

For me, when I'm playing in a game, I enjoy it the most when mechanics aren't quoted.  If I'm going to try to climb a fence, I don't want to know what my difficulty is until after I succeed.  In fact, as a GM it bothers me when players want to know information in mechanical terms rather than in-game terms because it turns the game into a complicated math exercise.

Does anyone else agree?  Does anyone disagree?  Obviously, as the GM, I don't have to run the game the way the book "says" I should, at least as far as announcing difficulties to my group, I was just wondering if anyone has dealt with a GM who took those rules to the extreme in a way that limited enjoyment for the group.

So, I've been reading through the rules for FATE 2.0 and Spirit of the Century (the first FATE 3.0 installment) and I have a question about skills.

In SotC, any skill that has not been "purchased" by skill points apparently defaults to Mediocre (or 0 modifier), and then if a skill point has been spent, it goes up to Average (or +1).  My question is, why bother putting -1 or -2 on the skill ladder?

Let me expand my thought for you with an example.  If I have a character who has never trained with a gun, then I am Mediocre with that skill.  But I want to shoot someone.  For the purpose playing the game, I as a player, or even a GM, don't need to know that if I roll enough "-" on my dice to take me below zero, I fail.  The negative part of the ladder doesn't seem to be important as a STARTING point, or even a point of reference for my skills.

So, why is the negative side of the ladder even mentioned?  I haven't read anything that answers that question in the SotC book, and I can't find anything in FATE 2.0, either.

I was also wondering about Stress for the characters.  I haven't seen Stress mentioned anywhere in the character creation chapters of either system book, and to me, that seems like it would be really important information to have in that chapter.  I understand that this isn't a number crunching system, but all of my players, when I GM, are going to need that information in that chapter, since they won't be reading through the entire book before they begin playing.  Is that something that you plan on adding to the Character Creation chapter in DFRPG?

In my opinion, the CC Chapter would be able to stand alone as a pamphlet (without listing skills, of course) that any player could read through and create their PC on their own without having to read the rule book until they get to the gaming location where I have a copy available for them.  (And let's face it, not everyone can afford to buy a copy of the book, which is why I'm going to buy three).