Mass compels, Scene aspects etc...

[Taran]

I seem to remember a thread long ago, talking about whether you could initiate mass compels with scene aspects or by using spray attack maneuvers.  Whether doing so would cost one FP (for invoking a single aspect)or multiple (for affecting multiple people). 

Then there was the argument that you spend one FP to make the aspect 'important' and the GM takes over and compels everyone (thus footing the bill for all the FP's that need to be paid out)

This might be old news for most but I just found this little quote in YS pg 107 that I never noticed before:

Scene Compels
Scene aspects may imply some circumstances
that will befall any (or many) of the characters
in the scene—Everything Is Burning! is
a classic example and a frequent aspect in any
scene involving Harry Dresden. In such a case,
it’s entirely apropos to act as if that aspect is on
each character’s sheet and compel (see page 100)
the aspect for each of them, dishing fate points
all around and nicely covering the effects the
aspect has on the characters in the scene.
    Technically speaking, a player could try to use
a scene aspect to initiate a mass compel, but it’d
be a pretty expensive proposition—he’d have to
spend a fate point for every character he wants
to be affected by the compel.

[solbergb]

Yeah, the GM can do it (when I collapsed the entire Hollywood sign hill in my Live and Die in LA Game and caused a real earthquake with the citywide "Waiting for the Big One" aspect in response to a player using an "earth tremble" type spell that's what I was doing.  I guess I owed one PC caught in it a fate point, but everyone else affected was NPCs.  Everything else it did to the encounters going on was cosmetic and interesting, but not at the level of a compel.)

Had Ian (the player) attempted the same thing he'd have had to pay similar costs for a zone-wide maneuver (which lets you do a free tag on the entire zone), and he'd have to pay for the size of the entire city, which would be something only likely to be achieved with major ritual magic.  (as Cowl did when he hexed the entire city of Chicago).

One advantage of being the GM is you get as many fate points as you need to have something cool happen.  Players have a fair amount of narrative power, but not to that degree.   A player could invoke "Waiting for the Big One" to have a minor earthquake happen city-wide with a single fate point, but it would only have a significant effect on one visible character (where in my scene it endangered a dozen or so police officers and one PC).

If it's cool enough, of course, the GM can always step in with whatever fate is needed.  To some extent, so can sponsored magic, but that kind of debt is often career-ending, similar to a death curse.

[Taran]

I'm not a big fan of 'zone-wide' maneuvers.   I don't let wizards do them.  If they want a maneuver to hit multiple people they have 2 options:

Spray attack:  they can split the power of the maneuver between multiple enemies
Scene aspect:  usually easy to do, but they risk having the aspect used against them.

and he'd have to pay for the size of the entire city, which would be something only likely to be achieved with major ritual magic.  (as Cowl did when he hexed the entire city of Chicago).

That might have just been a city aspect.  I'm not sure how much complexity that would cost - it was a massive hex.  Maybe he created multiple tags...but those tags would have gone towards whatever he was trying to do....'sow the seeds of panic'  Which might simply have been a declaration to add a few points of complexity to his ritual.  Maybe it gave his minions a few free tags...but I don't think it would have given him city-wide compels. 

One advantage of being the GM is you get as many fate points as you need to have something cool happen.  Players have a fair amount of narrative power, but not to that degree.   A player could invoke "Waiting for the Big One" to have a minor earthquake happen city-wide with a single fate point, but it would only have a significant effect on one visible character (where in my scene it endangered a dozen or so police officers and one PC).

If it's cool enough, of course, the GM can always step in with whatever fate is needed.

As a city aspect, the GM uses it to compel the PC's but Cowl (or whatever enemy)doesn't know exactly what the PC's were doing, so I wouldn't say that he'd need to pay those FP's.  Although, I might let an enemy pay it forward,

"I'm creating city-wide panic.  Oh, and by the way, send some of that goodness to my nemesis"  *pays a FP*  That's just the GM deciding what the NPC is going to do with the FP's and making the PC's lives more complicated.

[Haru]

Scene aspect:  usually easy to do, but they risk having the aspect used against them.

"I called for fire and fire answered."

If a new aspect is (potentially) so powerful as to be a game changer, I like to use it as a plot device. Ok, you get to direct all those living plants around you to attack your opponents, but your spell goes haywire and attacks some of your allies as well, and now you have to save them from your own spell. (That happened.)
Just because the spell takes out the old opponents with one strike doesn't mean the conflict has to suddenly be over. Sometimes all this does is initiate a change of the scene into a completely new direction. And sometimes that might even be more dangerous.

This also keeps the number of aspects and fate points to keep track of to a minimum, and the less I have to keep track of, the happier I am.

[solbergb]

Yeah, actually that's what I did when I invoked the city aspect.

It started with a conflict between a character who got caught in the middle of an ambush meant for somebody else, but his action let me transform the conflict into a rescue of all the endangered people, something that drew in a PC who was about a mile and a half away, who then took an action that caused pre-existing (but unknown to her) scene elements to go off at the wrong time, totally changing the complexion of the conflict she was walking into.

I tend toward having a setting and dropping PCs in the middle and letting action run for quite a while just from natural consequences of their actions intersecting with the plans of everybody else.  Fate/DFRPG tends to lend itself to that pretty well from what I've seen so far.

On the whole, I like scene aspects pretty well for most things.   A zonewide maneuver might be more like the D&D Black Tentacles, or to pick a Dresden Files example, the despair maneuver done in the giant white court fight that incapacitated everybody, friend or foe, but had to be sustained.  (that was actually more like a zonewide mental grapple/block everything though...so maybe what we really have are zonewide blocks, not maneuvers?)

[bobjob]

[That happened.)

And it was AWESOME!