Thank you very much for your responses thus far. They are much appreciated.
While writing this response, I decided that despite my small group, I cannot run this game for them. It is not a good fit and it would end in disaster. That being said, my group’s play style is not going to prevent me from picking up what is already turning out to be a labor of love. I am both a fan of FATE and Dresden. You’d have to lash me to the mainstay to stop me from getting a hold of these books. I WILL find a play group. It may take a while, but I will.
Anyway, just thought I would give you a bit more detail about my play group and “losers” and respond to a couple of the posts.
The Power Gamers in my group do not like setbacks of any kind. Disadvantages that complicate their character’s lives and “make things more interesting” make said characters “losers”. They’re losers because they have big, gaping flaws that allow the GM to exploit them and take control from their hands. Give them a problem to solve or a world to save, they’re fine. Kidnap their character’s sister – they’ve got a problem with that. That’s a setback that they can’t stand. Even if it makes things more interesting, they’ll hate you for it. They’ll sigh and trudge forward thinking that you’ve got a plotline all figured out and that the train on the GM Railroad Express starts here.
So they would hate Aspects. Pure and simple. Although they have never tried this or its sister games (SotC), my experience (over 10 years of weekly play) with them has given me enough info so I can make an educated guess as to what their reactions would be.
In previous games with Disadvantages (Disads give you points for Character creation), they don’t take ones like ENEMY or DEPENDENT because the GM can use it as a weakness. They take things like CURIOSITY which depends almost solely on the Player’s action. The Player decides to do something or react to something. Not the GM. Mind you, Curiosity, of course, could be “compelled” by telling the Player who is blatantly ignoring a clue that he must be “curious” but I’ve never had to before.
So pointing out that Aspects that create Flaws that would allow you to get more Fate Points (and thus more power) during the game wouldn’t help much. They don’t want to be compelled to do anything. In their opinion, GM’s should not have that kind of control over the PC’s. If they want to use their Aspects, they will use it their way. Not the GM’s.
They would be very wary about any of my suggestions for Aspects (what is HE up to?).
The Aspects they create will most certainly only be made to be as positive as possible. I will get a lot of “Strong as an Ox” Aspects – which are bordering on boring and hard to compel negatively.
If they actually took some of the suggestions for Aspects (which I love, by the way. Thank you), especially Aspects which at first blush, look very hard to compel in a negative manner, the first time I throw a Fate Point their way and compel their Aspect in such a negative manner, they will complain and say that is not what they thought or intended. They will feel cheated. Needless to say, unless they absolutely think the idea is a good one, they will reject the Fate Point. In the future, they will try and avoid any situation where I can compel that Aspect in the same or similar manner.
I can see myself becoming more and more frustrated as I try and make the game fun and interesting only to be stonewalled by the Power Gamers who refuse to allow any Aspect to be compelled.
I guess what I have concluded is (and I am sure this is obvious to most here), Dresden/Fate is NOT an RPG designed for Power Gamers. It is an RPG designed for Players to tell interesting stories (which I like to do).
They don’t want to play flawed ‘losers’ and I can’t see myself playing this game with them.
Sorry for the rant. I just had to explain a few things.
