Kristine:
Um, long post is long. Sorry about the length, I hope you'll find it informative.
I agree with you that a good deal of trust is needed between players and GMs in Fate games but I just don't see how it needs MORE trust than other RPGs. If anything a lot of things that cause friction between players and GMs in a lot of RPGs don't exist or don't figure as prominently in Fate as in other RPGs. For example:
A. Its really really really hard to create an overpowered Fate character (at least in previous incarnations of the game, I can't speak for Dresden File specifics). Although its a good idea for GMs to go over aspects with the players the GM can leave the players to pick any skills or stunts they want without worrying about creating an overpowered munchkin character.
B. If a GM wants the players to do certain things they can use the carrot of Fate points. This works a lot better than having to rely on a stick like in other games. You can also screw a character over while having the player be HAPPY about it instead of annoyed (since they would often get Fate points out of it). For example in a lot of other games if a female client is trying to screw over a PC they'll do all they can to avoid it, but a Harry Dresden PC would walk right into it with a smile on their face since you're giving them Fate points because of their "chivalrous sucker" aspect or what have you.
C. Situational modifiers are much much simplier in Fate. I'm sure you've had people try to whine for additional +1's in other games ("do I get a +1 if the sun is in their eyes" "but this is my home town I should get a bonus to tracking here" "you said his armor was damaged, do I get a bonus to hit because of the holes in it" etc. etc. etc.). Fate gets rid of the headache of dealing with this sort of thing since ALL of the above are probably Aspects that can be tagged and thus follow the exact same rules, which makes things sooooooooo much simplier for the GM.
D. For me at least I've seen soooooooo much more RPing in Fate than in other RPGs I've played since your character's personality is represented mechanically in a cool way. Seriously, when my group switched from d20 to Fate it was like flipping a switch with the RP, the difference was shocking. This isn't to say that you can't have awesome RP with any game system, but Fate facilitates it very well.
Seriously, there are things that Fate doesn't do so well (realism, tactical combat, army-level stuff, MacGyvering, that relies on player intead of character cleverness, bean-counting economics, having games in which the player/GM divide is very black and white etc. etc.) but most of the issues you're bringing up aren't what I've seen in the games I've played or heard talked about.
it's the vagueness of the system that makes trust that much more important.
I just don't find Fate to be that vague personally. In most cases your character will be going up against another character of some sort so there's no vagueness there and with stuff vs. the environment Fate is about at the same level of most RPGs (there's perfectly good guidelines for what the difficulty of various things are just as in any other RPG). In many ways Fate is LESS vague than other systems since a lot of things that you have to hand-wave or ignore in other systems since there aren't rules for them (how does trying to hit the zombie of my beloved wife with a grenade affect my accuracy, how does having the sun in my eyes affect my ability to block a sword swing, how does having the flagstones in one part of the floor be sworn smooth and the flagstones in another part of the floor be tough affect my ability to tumble across them (yes there are rules that cover this in 3.5ed D&D but I've never seen anyone use them), how does the rain affect my ability to jump-start the car, etc. etc.) are all covered by the rules of the Aspect system so a lot of the vagueness gets blasted away.
there will be a set system of things I can consider at risk and a set of things I can assume are will be a given
You have a point here. In Fate just about anything can be an aspect so you don't have any idea which sorts of things you'll have to deal with ahead of time. However aspects all follow the same rules so this isn't an issue for me. In fact, I think its awesome. I can have a game in which having my hands tied up can make me lose circulation in my hands and thus make it harder to draw my sword without having to make up stuff or look up any rules, I just follow the same Aspect rules as always.
the hard and fast rules will usually prevail.
The problem with this is that:
A. There are plenty of things in every RPG that there are no hard and fast rules for.
B. In a lot of RPGs that try to have a set system for a lot of things will make your brain will crawl out your ears if you try to keep track of all of them (in 3.5ed D&D there's a series of specific rules for different kinds of floors, does anyone ever use them?).
In the fate system, if you have a Tin God GM or a power mad player arguments could last forever as there are no hard and fast rules
Like I said above, the aspect rules cover most of these things. Also in a lot of games the GM rules by force (making callings about what happens) while Fate GMs rule by bribery (with Fate points) within a set system.
Played correctly by people who are not trying to 'Rule The Game'
Fate is a pretty hard game to rule. The rules just don't break that easily.
(The overcontrolling GM wants the party to fight his new monster that the party knows they will loose to)
As Mouse explains, this just isn't how Fate plays. I'll leave it to him to explain most of it, I'll just add a few details:)
The power player
Hard to make a power player in Fate.
Player:I shouldn't have to role to draw my gun, I've done that a million times.
GM:Yes, but you've been tied up for 2 days.
Player: Well, I'm sure they untied me to go to the bathroom and such and I was working blood back into my hands when I heard the shooting start.
No vagueness here, the GM is tagging an aspect of "numb hands" that has been placed on the PC.
What is 'appropriate' to one person is not necessarily the same to the next person.
For me at least the Fate point/Aspect rules are a lot like MSG. They don't have any flavor or enforce any kind of appropriateness by themselves, but they strengthen any kind of flavor that the players and the GM try to put into the game. Basically whatever is the idea of "appropriate" that the people choosing the aspects want, that's what you'll get. Of course in Fate its important to get everyone on the same page when creating aspects, but the only time you'll have a big problem with this is when people around the gaming table have very different visions of what they want out of a campaign, in which case its best of hash that out during character creation than during play.
The same thing can be taken advantage of in most D20s (breaking the system) but you have to know the rules very well and be willing to break them to be able to take advantage of the loopholes.
I don't want to side-track this into a D&D discussion but all you need to do is play a druid to break d20 into little pieces. There's a 101 ways to make a character that will overshadow the other players in 3.5ed D&D while doing the same thing in Fate is very very very hard. For example if you want a character who is good at hitting something with a sword here's how you'd go about it in Fate and d20:
Fate: put your highest skill into weapons, choose an aspect of "I solve all my problems with my sword" or something like that and take a few random weapons stunts and you're good to go. Stunts are the only part with any complication at all (and Fate can be played very well without them, I did that for one campaign myself) and I haven't seen any Stunt combos that are overpowered since there just aren't that many of them.
D20: ok first of all give up on sword and shield, that's a sucker's game and only fight with two weapons if you have a chance to add additional damage each time you hit, in other words a flanking rogue or a scout who has taken one level in the barbarian alternative class that gives you pounce at level 1 instead of fast movement. So you're probably going to want a two-handed weapon, now how do you make yourself good at that? First of all forget the weapon focus/specialization feat line for now, those benefits don't scale. What you want is some way of polymorphing you into a wartroll or whatnot and then you want to focus all of your feats on upping your ability to charge, for example Power Attack, Leap Attack and Shock Trooper will be your bread and butter since that way you can do a full power attack with each charge without reducing your chance to hit and do extra damage as well. On the other hand you can go with a cleric and rely on self-buffs to bring on the damage (still taking power attack and some other charge-related feats if you can, definitely go human to make your feats go farther). If you use the Divine Metamagic feat out of the Complete Divine book you can use your turning undead uses (get night sticks to get more turn undead uses) to power your metamagic thereby letting you either cast your buffs quickened or extend their durations to cover the whole day.
Basically Fate character creation is transparent. If you want to fight well you get a high weapons skill and that's most of what it takes. d20 chracter creation is very much not transparent. In many cases taking a feat to turn undead more often will do a LOT more to improve your ability to hit things with a big sword than any of the Core combat feats (turn undead -> better metamagic via divine metamagic -> better buffs -> better at hitting things with a sword). I love futzing around with d20 character creation as a mental exercise (for example: how do I make a high charisma half orc non-caster not suck?) but it has holes you could drive a truck through.
players who have found that one spell/skill/trick of the rules, that makes their character almost unbeatable
Much harder to do in Fate than in d20, the rules about how you assign your skills make it hard to over-specialize and the bonuses you can get from stunts usually aren't too big and are much harder to stack.
I don't know too many players who would turn down an opportunity to cleverly outsmart their GM or a GM who hasn't gotten annoyed by players who go away from the story they had taken hours planning.
Of course, killer GMs and munchkin players are a problem in ANY game, but in my experience they're LESS of an issue in Fate, not more.
a GM who hasn't gotten annoyed by players who go away from the story they had taken hours planning.
In my experience trying to plan a story is an exercise in frustration for a GM. What I usually like planning is interesting characters and places for the PCs to get mixed up in and let things play out. Of course each GM has their own preferences. For example in the Fate campaign I'm running now (somewhat inspired by the Vorkosigan books) the PCs are interstellar agents for the Martian government and are arriving at a space station. For this adventure a foreign agent (and master of disguise) is attempting to set up the PCs and factions within his own government in order to further his own ends. Here's his plan:
A. Hack into the space stations customs computers so if the PCs try to leave the space station they get red flagged.
B. Send a clone of a rival agent of his government (that he's murdered) with an important artifact to attempt to steal the PCs' space ship. The agent will attempt to set things up so that the PCs kill the clone and get the artifact.
C. Disguise himself and try to set up a meeting with the PCs in a certain bar.
D. Hire some random thugs to go and rough up the PCs.
E. Disguise himself as a bar tender and get the PCs to rough him up to "let spill" who the thugs are. He'll tell them that the safe house of his home country's spy service is the HQ of the thugs, so the PCs will create a diplomatic incident by accident.
F. Try to manipulate the PCs into trying to break into the safe house in such a way that both the local spy chief and the Martian government come out of the affair with the faces covered in egg and the agent ends up looking like a hero for capturing the PCs.
Will this plan work? Probably not. I don't plan for it to. I expect the PCs to do something bizarre to foil it (probably by accident) but I don't see how they can run away from SOME element of this story
As the story goes I'll let the PCs do what they want but nudge things towards interesting confrontations.
So when something like that goes wrong you can either get a FP for next time or pay one to avoid it?
Right and when something random is helping one side or another (sun in someone’s eyes, etc.) they can spend a Fate point to “tag” that aspect and have it help them (generally by giving them a +2).
Fate rules are somewhat abstract, but they’re not really very vague.
