Scene Aspects

[Brackenfur]

In people's experiences has it been found better to lay out the majority of scene aspects (leaving a few to none hidden), or describe the scene and let the players guess, infer, or create them in media res?
Thanks for the help!

[sinker]

I always do a little of both. I'll usually figure out what I think the scene looks like and show the players all the aspects that are immediately obvious, but if they ask about something I hadn't thought of I usually either decide what I think is cool, or call it a declaration and let em have whatever they were going for. In that way we usually start off with a few scene aspects and then gain a few more as the conflict progresses.

[noclue]

We generally write the most important scene aspects on a bunch of index cards and throw them into the middle of the table.

[Brackenfur]

Thats close to what I was planning on doing. I absolutely love the note card idea, stolen lol. Thank you both.

[siggelsworth]

Next week is our 1st FATE/DFRPG game, and I totally plan on throwing note cards out onto the table.

I've been thinking it would be interesting to, when a player tags/invokes one of the Aspects on those cards, place an off-colored poker chip (so as to not confuse it with Fate Point reserves) on it to give a feel as to what's being used throughout the course of the conflict.  I'm hoping this will be a lively way of reminding us newbies that there's something out there worth not forgetting about.  I may even use one color for the PCs and a different one for the opposition--just to visually represent who's working which angles to their advantage.

Has anybody else had any fun doing something like this?

[bibliophile20]

White chips for the PCs, Black for Allies, Red for Enemies.  The reaction to the stack of 25 red chips in the reserve pile was entertaining.

[AlexFallad]

White chips for the PCs, Black for Allies, Red for Enemies.  The reaction to the stack of 25 red chips in the reserve pile was entertaining.

That's...that's just...

[bibliophile20]

*evil grin*  Yeah.  It took them almost the entire session to realize that was my pile of extra chips to give to the baddies in the course of the game, not the pile for a baddie.  [innocently] I'm just putting out stacks of poker chips.  If you want to try to metagame, that's your own business.[/innocent]

[devonapple]

Slightly off-topic: I keep a pile of "Distraction chips" which go directly to the bad guys whenever I'm having trouble getting the table discussion back to the game.

The players can, conversely, compel them away from me when *I* am the one doing the distracting.

[LokiTM]

Brilliant meta-game dynamic!