Speaking broadly, there are two basic types of RPG players, there are the roll-players, and then the role-players.

False dichotomy alert!

Your enjoyment of assuming a role and playing a game are not a zero sum total. They are merely two measures of things you could enjoy about getting together to play an RPG. The false dichotomy doesn't even account for other gaming agendas.

This particular notion really needs to die in a fire. It's not a useful rubric for ascertaining what things people might like about a game, and it far too easily becomes a judgmental bitch-fest. It has no value except as a tool with which to disparage the play styles of others.

The big thing to keep in mind about Fate is that it's not actually terribly out there in terms of game design.

The most basic thing is that you roll your dice, add your trait, then compare that to a difficulty or resisted roll. Everything builds on that. Which is RPG technology straight out of the 70s. (I'm not saying that's bad, mind you.)

Stunts are also pretty easy and well established. They're like feats from D&D. They're also sort of like Merits from oWoD. They give you a bit of a bonus in some way. Very easy.

Powers are just super-Stunts. Don't bother with how you get at the exact point total until later, once you're comfortable with the system. Just accept that they're super-Stunts conceptually. Easy as pie.

Now Aspects. Ooh, big and scary, they are! OK. Not really. They're just things about a character, place, or thing that is narratively true and is given mechanical heft. That's it. You know those yellow pages in the back you mentioned? You know the right hand one that has a little box titled, "Using Aspects"? That's most of your rules.

I mean, there are more rules to Aspects, but those are your basic ones. Those are like learning how to roll to see if you fix your car before learning to roll out a fight. So you learn those few rules (including perhaps a look at the beginning of the Aspects chapter for more clarity) and work with them for a bit. Then you add rules once you're comfortable with those basic ones.

Don't worry about the story aspect (pun!) of the game. That part will take care of itself. Do the char-gen and city setup stuff. Then start the game like you would any other RPG you've ever played. Do Aspect stuff when it seems appropriate, and remind your players to do the same.

Don't concern yourself with aggressively framing scenes or any of the stuff that the story-games crowd is concerned about. If you don't know what this means, then you're frankly better off than if you did know and were paranoid that you were screwing up.

In short: Play the game and have fun. Let the rest sort itself out.

I thought of that whilst I posted it.

 I was referring to a "mirror match" or a fight between people with exactly the same skills and weapons etc.

Both ends of the spectrum ARE mirror matches as I've presented them.

Offensive guy A has a peak Guns score, some Stunts related wholly to attacking, a rocket launcher, no defensive skills that work against a rocket launcher, and no applicable Powers. Offensive guy B has the exact same stats. This is a mirror match, so you can run them off the same character sheet with the exception of tracking expendable resources.

Defensive guy A has a peak Athletics score; Speed, Toughness, and Recovery Powers; and no offensive ability to speak of (be it skill or weapons). Defensive guy B is again exactly the same. Again, you can run it off of the same character sheet except for expendable resources.

Both are mirror matches, because both fights are someone against their clone, with the same equipment. Just being a mirror match doesn't make the mirrored character well balanced, though. And my point was that where they sit on the offensive-defensive spectrum has a lot of influence on how long the fight lasts.

Purely offensive characters, for example, will run each other out of stress really quickly, as quickly as the system handles such things in fact. I mean, you can get higher than weapon:5-ish, but the other guy isn't rolling his +0 defensive skill against your +5 offensive skill in the other configurations.

One outcome would be each dealing weapon damage to the other until one falls down. but here is where inhuman toughness alone = win and is that unfair to be a tiebreaker.

Uh, sorry, man. That's not unfair. Well, I mean it's unfair, but not the way you seem to be saying it.

See, your setup up until now was two dudes that were more or less equally matched. Same skill ratings, same number of stress boxes available, same fate point pool, etc. I'm assuming the point of this exercise was how to make two totally equal characters fighting without fate points more interesting, so I further assume that the characters are more or less clones in terms of stats so that they're truly even matches.

Now, if you take two evenly matched dudes and give one a 2 Refresh defensive power, the one with the power has armour:1 and 2 more stress boxes. So of course that's a tie breaker. He's basically reduced the other guy from weapon:2 to weapon: 1 while giving himself 2 more stress boxes, which is a pretty substantial advantage. Of course Toughness guy is more likely to win now.

Either both of those guys are specced for defense, or they're both rolling well for defense/poorly for offense.

If they're pretty well balanced in terms of offense and defense, it seems odd that they keep missing each other. Ties after all go to the attacker. So if they're fairly matched but both missing, something odd is going on in terms of dice probabilities.

Someone else suggested taking a, "You're a worthy opponent. Come! Let us drink as [men/ women/ intersexed individuals/ asexual individuals/ sapient conglomerates] do!" approach. Unless the two have a real hate-on for each other, this is a great way to change gears. An appreciative audience can fill the same role if this makes sense.

There's a section saying that a hypothetical mental armour would not prevent the mental stress portion of magic.  I don't have my book in front of me to see how that would apply to backlash.

Aha! Page 250, in the side notes. In Billy's voice, "Armor just doesn't help against stress you inflict on yourself."

Your actions build the power. Your choice causes them to become Backlash. So in a very real sense, you're inflicting that stress on yourself. At least, that's my interpretation.

Good call.

Wizards in the Dresden-verse were more obvious in the dark ages. When wizards are around, fires burn strange colours, milk sours, and other typical "witch signs." And people don't particularly like wizards, because they can do and know strange things no one else can. That's the balance: Not being able to deal with normal people for long without them wanting to burn you or run away.

I find myself agreeing with what a lot of other people are saying: An old WoD style merit/ flaw system is a poor fit for Fate.

Merits are served by a combination of Aspects, Stunts, and powers. All advantageous uses require fate points, either by reducing your available pool or by costing a per instance expenditure.

Flaws are served mostly by Aspects, but also by some of the things that complicate powers that other folks have mentioned (human form, etc). These give the player of the disadvantaged character fate points. This can be direct (your Aspect is a problem, so you get a fate point bribe) or indirect (your power is harder to use, so it's less expensive, so you have more available Refresh).

So, all of the things which in oWoD would be merits and flaws are tied directly into a fate point economy. Adding a secondary system that does much the same, but which doesn't interact with fate points would be adding needless redundancy for no real gain.