Reading

I knuckled down and finished chapter 4 before midnight. I think I'll have to read it again before I GM a game but for now I'm happy to be back on track to finishing the book before Thursday.

The next chapter is Skills and Stunts. It should be a lot easier as far as mechanics go.

Aspect Invocation = the cool

I got to page 70 today, I'll have to do better each day if I want to finish inside my one week goal. I am a slow reader and I had a bit of difficulty with the material today.

Today the idea of aspect invocation refused to resolve itself in my brain. I reread almost the whole first half of chapter 4 and I think I finally got it. Invocation of aspects allows a player to get a bonus on a conflict resolution roll but the thing that was confusing me was how this allows for the maintenance of suspense and tension.

Compelling aspects is how.

Compelling is the GM's way of getting the players to do things that he wants for the story. He offers FATE points as bribes for characters to invoke their aspects in a way that benefits the story and maintains suspense and tension. This antagonist relationship between the story and the characters creates a situation where it is in the players best interest to help the GM tell a story. Maybe not the story either of them envisioned, but a fun, suspenseful, and exciting one.

This is not to say its a perfect mechanic. It puts a lot of pressure on the GM to think on his feet and not rely on notes and maps that keep the players in line with the story he is trying to tell. As a long time GM I can say that it is very frustrating when a group of players do something outside the scope of the game you designed. Especially if you put your heart and soul into designing an element of the game that the PCs don't even look at for more than a second or two and then go on a quest to discover the meaning of a random encounter that had no purpose in your game but to put a bit of action in a session. And frustrated GM's do foolish things. This detracts form the fun of a game profoundly.

In a game Like FATE the players and the GM know that each has a bit of control of the others actions. Invocations and compels allow a kind of direct communication that in other games is oblique at best. The GM can point to aspects of his design that he wants the PCs to look at more closely and the players can tell him what they want expansion on.

I have always wanted to play a game like this and I think my gaming group has too.