Press The Beast

Thinking about Fate Points and Aspects

As I've said a few times, my RPG background was in FATE. Similar to Havoc, I've been exploring and reflecting on how I used to run games, and in preparation for my next campaign, called XANADU KNIGHTS, I've decided to use a system based on FATE, but with Fate Points and Aspects stripped out.

Then it occurred to me: instead of running a game based on FATE, why not just run FATE itself? I've had mostly positive experiences with the system, and can handle its quirks well. My initial draft of XANADU KNIGHTS is like FATE without FATE points, based on Weird Writer's similar project Lost Girls.

What is the problem with Fate points? Well, first they're the least cottonmouth thing imaginable. Secondly, people don't like 'em! Especially these days. For example, on June 8th, 2026 Havoc said:

every time i look back at fate i look at the Fate Points and get so mad i black out.

On January 1st, 2025 Havoc explained that Fate Points were his main issue with the game because:

it very quickly devolved into "yeah so i'll tag their aspect and add it to my attack action alright" "btw i'll spend a fate point here to add my [checks sheet] 'swordsman' aspect ig"

And these complaints come from a place of truth, yet in practice Fate Points aren't dissimilar to other RPG abstractions, save that agency is given to players in the form of a metacurrency.

For those unfamiliar, Fate Points can be used to:

An example may help illustrate: say Genifex the Red Tailor-Smith is battling three skeletons in a graveyard. We know that the area he's fighting in is cluttered with lopsided graves and, thus, he decides to use the grave to take cover and avoid the skeletal onslaught come his way. In another system this would likely be a passive bonus, in FATE the player has two choices:

FATE is often touted as simulating the "logic of fiction" rather than "the logic of worlds", but I think this is wrongheaded and can get in the way of the game. What is actually happening here is that the passive bonus of other RPGs, like FATE's father FUDGE, is moved over to an active bonus; when viewed in the right light, it's a fairly familiar kind of abstraction that serves to highlight the most critical moment in which Genifex the Red Tailor-Smith is using the environment best to his advantage. Furthermore, a good referee must keep in mind the "fictional truths" as they exist: it is perfectly within the referee's purview to declare that, for instance, fighting with a greatsword is impossible amidst the crowded graves, or that missile attacks from a certain angle are cut off, or what have you: FATE formalizes these as "permissions," but really it's the same as common sense rulings in OSR.

Sometimes in OD&D the line between what is worth modelling and what is not is fuzzy: should the graves provide a bonus to AC, to whom? FATE, in part, gives that decision to the players.

The specific quoted complaint from Havoc of:

"yeah so i'll tag their aspect and add it to my attack action alright"

Is an issue I've run into which can be curbed in a few ways. First is preventing multiple Aspects of a like kind from being invoked. I didn't know this when I ran FATE, but this is formalized in some specific games like Diaspora, as below, and I just sort of did it anyway. Diaspora limits Invocations to:

This limits the area for "abuse" of Character Aspects, which are what specifically often causes an issue, but obviously doesn't prevent what Havoc was talking about. Abuse in these cases are primarily from A) accepting the creation of Character Aspects that are too broad, and B) the referee being too generous in accepting Invocations where they are not applicable. In my upcoming XANADU KNIGHTS campaign, for example, if I were to run it with FATE and a player wants to use an aspect related to their knighthood to get a bonus on an attack, that wouldn't fly: everybody is a knight—there's nothing exceptional about it. Returning now to Genifex the Red Tailor-Smith, if he's in a campaign based primarily around fighting then something like "Ultimate Swordsman" is a terrible Aspect, because it could reasonably be Invoked any time blades come out; contrarily, "Demon Slayer of the Wastern Wets" is more appropriate because it specifies a specific target, or perhaps an aspect that implies a particular mode of blade-working would also be desirable.

In other contexts more general combat Aspects may be just fine: consider Goemon Ishikawa from Lupin, who certainly is some sort of "Ultimate Swordsman." If you were to make a Lupin-styled campaign, however, the average session loop would involve lots of planning, heisting, chases, etc; thus, combat itself is a specific enough domain for such a broad Aspect to be reasonable.

The final suggestion is to consider the abstraction at play: in order for Genifex the Red Tailor-Smith to spam his "Demon Slayer of the Wastern Wets" Aspect every time he fights demons, he must have dedicated a whole Character Aspect and then must spend a Fate Point for each Invocation. Aspects are a way of saying "this is who my guy is," like classes in D&D: thus, letting them use their abilities is not wrong per se. It is, in many ways, the same as the Fighters higher HP and Attack Bonus relative to others—"relative" being operative, if your FATE game is all Fighter-types then the means by which each character excels must differ to avoid dumb-fuckery.

The first solution usually offered is well-meaning: make sure players always describe how they are Invoking any given action. In practice, this can sometimes be tedious, and understanding how the abstraction of the fictional material ought to operate is more useful.

While many describe FATE point and Fate Point Economy to be the primary elements that distinguish FATE, I have not found that to be the case in practice. Instead, I've found the way in which Create an Advantage works compared to similar maneuvering rules in other RPGS, the Bronze Rule/Fate Fractal, and the ways in which Aspects promote hygiene in communicating game circumstances to be more significant.

As described earlier, Create an Advantage allows the character to make a roll, either opposed by another character or against a target number, to create an Aspect which they or an ally can Invoke for free. This is, in general, the key to defeating powerful opposition. What's unique about it is the ability to scale the context in a way that is less intuitive in other RPGs. Genifex the Red Tailor-Smith travels to a reclusive monastery to study a demon, Bulgrath Frogeater: he consults the tomes and interviews the monks, rolling Lore and invoking "Demon Slayer of the Wastern Wets" to improve odds. He discovers that Bulgrath is Weak to Salt, and because his roll was very high he gains two free Invocations when exploiting this weakness. While it is usually very easy to imagine Create an Advantage used during a conflict or tense moment, it is in this zoomed out context that it is more interesting: now when they meet Genifex may cover his sword and salt, and gain a massive +4 bonus on his first attack because of an Aspect created perhaps weeks ago in terms of game time.

Another example of this zoomed out context: Genifex must first sneak into Bulgrath's Cavern before facing him in battle. To help, Genifex uses his Investigate skill to locate a man within the cult, and then blackmail him by threatening to reveal this information. Now when sneaking into the compound, Genifex may save his free invocation on this created Aspect, "Blackmail on HuĂĽe", and use it to get out of a pinch: because the Aspect is broadly useful throughout the whole scene in which Genifex sneaks into the compound, the player can save their free Invocation of this Aspect until it is most relevant.

It's this "zoomed out advantage creation" that I've struggled to exactly replicate in writing up XANADU KNIGHTS without formalized Aspects or Fate Points.

In sum, Create an Advantage is a useful tool for the same reason FATE can sometimes be tedious—the same mechanisms for handling resolution at the level of an individual conflict can be applied to virtually any scale or time-frame. Taking the time to Create Advantages before a mission or engagement pays dividends, and this prep work tends is very easily rewarded by the Referee compared to other systems.

The Bronze Rule/Fate Fractal works similarly: any element in the game world can be modelled with Skills/Stress/Aspects/Stunts—as much or as little as is needed—and plugged into any part of the resolution process. This is the real strength of FATE; once mastered, it is a very powerful set of resolution tools because it is "universal" in a way that many universal resolution systems aren't. This is because everything operates on an equivalent numeric scale to represent the fiction. In D&D 5e, for example, attributes, spell slots and levels, and damage/hit points all operate on different number ranges: thus, you would not be able to say "add damage equal to the level of the spell" without translating that to something like "add 1d6 per spell level." In FATE there is nothing that doesn't operate on the same scale, meaning every part is interchangeable.

Perhaps most relevant is the transparency around Aspects. When you establish a scene, a conflict, a challenge, the referee is supposed to list the relevant Aspects which are most significant. If a village is attacked by demons and we establish that there are Panicking Crowds as a formal aspect, it reminds the referee to play up that element: Genifex the Red Tailor-Smith may not be able to reach his foes because he is being jostled on all sides, or perhaps he can not work his magic arts because the chaos prevents him from weave his iron-thread—hey may need to pass an Athletics check each round he is in the crowd to avoid taking 1 Stress from trampling, etc. Establishing Aspects indicates what is important to the scene and helps to structure clear communication between referee and player, the latter always knowing that they can interface with Aspects via Fate Points. Now... this is just good refereeing, but it's running FATE that gave me these habits and the structural quirks of Aspects helps to structure the conversation in ways that help to clarify circumstances and elevate the most important parts of a given scene.

Contrarily, FATE Points just work as a mode of abstraction similar to "+2 attack when flanking" familiar in RPGs and war games. There is nothing special about it save that it is active rather than passive, whether triggered through Fate Points or by Creating an Advantage, the player must do something to use the bonus points in question. The actual Fate Point economy is massively overstated as a key part of the game: I know this because I ran the game without the players gaining points when foes Invoked Fate Points against them, and it worked fine—the only way players gained Fate Points was through conceding combat or through self-compels (that is, doing something stupid related to their aspects); when I ran the game with the proper Fate Point economy it didn't work better per se, just differently—players had more FATE Points and thus were spending them on almost every round in a given conflict (Though I tend to run tough games, so they'd usually run out anyway). I found the former style, where players had less Fate Points available, somewhat more fun because they had to better marshal their resources, and they were more encouraged to Compel themselves into doing dumb shit.

The main thing is that, despite what I've heard people claim, nothing in the game broke down with less Fate Points running around. It just made them more similar to the usual Luck Point meta-currencies you find in other RPGs, and meant that I could challenge characters with simpler challenges.

The biggest issue with all of the above is the biggest issue with GURPS—FATE is really hard to explain, and players who don't get it struggle immensely with the concept of "spend point to gain a bonus, or spend a round maneuvering to get a bonus for free." Once it clicks, it clacks: but it can be a bit of a struggle to get there—you can tell there's an issue if, instead of playing the fiction, players are ruminating on what to spend their Fate Points on to net a bonus, rather than planning their actions in advance. Likewise, operating in both the zoomed out context and ordinary play-by-play context can be difficult to grasp. Following advice online, I used to encourage players to think of it as a "narrative game," when that isn't more or less true than other RPGs: the mechanisms, the rules through which you win and impose your desires on the game world, are merely different. The promises of modelling fiction, or that of a narrativist games, or whatever, are actually misleading and only made it more difficult for me to explain or properly run the game, and it's not even what I like about FATE.

In conclusion, I still don't know if I will use a more straight up iteration of FATE for XANADU KNIGHTS or run one with stripped out Aspects/Fate Points. FATE is a toolkit, so I'll be making some adjustments and employing some additional mechanics no matter what, the question here revolves around the use of Fate Points, Aspects, and the pros and cons of their loss.

Part of that depends on the will of my prospective players: in writing this, though, I've realized that we don't need to be afraid of Fate Points and Aspects anymore.

They're alright by me.