Mine was a battle against a rival gang (we are working with them for backstory reasons), they had a manticore and we are level 3 so it was intense. Most of us finished with 2 or so hp! But looking forward to finally be level 4 after a year.
@jjjalljs kinda exactly? “Hero” a-la Snow Crash obviously had a “best swordsman in the meta verse” aspect. But did he have to spend a fate point to win the swordfight when he was challenged in a bar early on?
In my game, my character was supposed to be talky-McTalk face, and I failed to talk my way into a bar because I wasn’t willing to spend a fate point to do so. I shouldnt have had to.
I made a mistake when I tried to run it for one group of setting the difficulties too high, which can give results like you experienced.
I also found that when it went well, the players pushed for more “this aspect gives me permission without even having to roll”. So if someone was playing “smooth talker” and the gm said to roll to get past a bouncer, the player might push back.
The time it went worst I think the players didn’t really offer any creative input. Failures just turned into “I give up” instead of like “what if I convince him to let us in by lying that I’m someone famous, and then the real person shows up?” or whatever. I think it’s hard for some players to zoom out from just their character and get more into the writer room space.
@jjjalljs I was focused more on the direct role-playing and less on the writers-room aspect… So by the time I was going “wait what?, I shouldnt need to roll?”, the RP had already gone off the rails because the GM declared the bouncer pulled out a magical face id thingy and declared some trivial lie of mine was false
I.e.: failure always unless I spent fate points
