Assessments and declarations

[Taran]

I've been wondering something lately regarding discovering aspects using an assessment action.

If I want to discover something about a scene, it seems almosly always better to use a declaration - especially in combat.

I see the uses of assesments for discovering peoples aspects(mostly because it's an opposed check), but otherwise, do they get used very often?

Using the YS trope of the fire and the water bucket, it seems a waste of an action to "search" for a bucket of water when you can use a free action to declare one.  Especially since you can waste your action searching for something that isn't there.

What are people's experiences of this?

[Haru]

As far as I see the main difference is that Assessments are there to discover existing facts (character aspects as well as those already established by another player [mostly by the GM, probably]), Declarations are there to create new ones.

If the aspect you want to declare is unusual or unfitting for the scene you're in, the roll to declare it might be quite high. Why would there be a bucket of water in a lawyers office? Well, roll a 10 and tell us (or don't even roll, if the group decides it doesn't make sense).
And even if you can declare something, it might not be automatically accessible. For example, instead of a bucket of water in the office, you declare that way down the hall from the lawyers office is a janitors closet, and there is a bucket with water that the cleaning crew didn't empty. You as a player have declared that, but your character would still have to find that bucket, so you do an alertness roll and describe how your character hectically runs down the hall to find a bathroom or something and ends up in the janitors closet.

And declarations might be resisted as well. If you want to declare that the nameless mercenary has a "trick knee", he should be able to resist that. Since nobody really thought about the mercenary's knee up to this point, he doesn't have an aspect for that. It is a new fact, a declaration, not an assessment about a character aspect. But since you are targeting a character, he would get to roll against it.

In the end, I think declarations are mostly there to remove the typical "Is there a...? Or maybe a...? Or does he have...?" questions from players. Instead, they can say "There is a ... that I can use to...!" and just go ahead and use it, if the . Assessments ARE the typical "Is there a...?" question.


Though I have one question myself: What skill do you roll for most of the declarations like "bucket of water" and the likes? I usually roll alertness as in the "Let's see if you see it", but that seems rather weird. It kind of feels like it might be better to treat this as a "create a fact" thing and spend a fate point.

[Taran]

Yeah, I get the whole "create a new aspects" vs "discover a new aspect" but I guess what I'm saying is why try to discover anything when you can just create it?

Though I have one question myself: What skill do you roll for most of the declarations like "bucket of water" and the likes? I usually roll alertness as in the "Let's see if you see it", but that seems rather weird. It kind of feels like it might be better to treat this as a "create a fact" thing and spend a fate point.

It really depends what I'm looking for and where I am.

Outdoors is mostly survival - in fact survival has a trapping dedicated to it.
Indoors is usually awareness...maybe investigation (I agree with the weirdness. the "let's see if I see it" seems more like an assessment than a declaration)
Lore and scholarship are for things like, "I learned that in school!"

[Haru]

Yeah, I get the whole "create a new aspects" vs "discover a new aspect" but I guess what I'm saying is why try to discover anything when you can just create it?

Well, I think some things just are there, maybe just from setting the scene or things like that, and they have pretty much been established, so you only need to roll to get a tag on it, i.e. discover them. But yeah, declarations will usually happen far more often than assessments, if the players know how to use them.

[OwleIsohos]

I think the book itself addresses this in a sidebar.  Basically, they admit that declarations are much easier than assessments and explain that the reason they're so much easier is because they encourage the players to fill in details of the scene rather than always asking the GM to make up aspects.

[EdgeOfDreams]

The one advantage of Assessments, at least in my mind, is that the player doesn't have to know what they're looking for.

For example, as a GM, I would allow a player to do an Assessment with the generic question, "Is there something in this room I can use to put out a fire?", and the answer could be "No," or "Yes, there's a <fire extinguisher/bucket of water/pile of sand/sprinkler system/magical fireproof blanket> in the corner," based on what I had already put in the scene or felt inspired to put there by their question. On the other hand, if the player wants to Declare "I find something to put out the fire," I would require them to specify what tool exactly they are Declaring, and judge the difficulty of the roll based on how likely that thing is.

[Lavecki121]

I like that. Though I tend to reward creativity as opposed to making it less likely. For instance I found this bottle of water and this big blanket. Cool that soandso dificult. If they succeed yea they have water and a blanket that they found. If they fail yea that bottle of water is actually 150 proof vodka and that blanket was a hobo's who is now mad that you went through his stuff. Basically they still found the thing they wanted, but it complicates them more than they thought it would