This week, Sam talks with wendi yu about the Fate Point economy, a meta currency system from Fate by Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue and published by Evil Hat. Some topics discussed include:
Getting into storygames
“Generic” RPGs
When crunch kills the vibe
The Hero’s Journey
The (lack of) difference between rules and flavor
Writing good aspects: it’s hard!
You can find wendi on Twitter @wen_di_yu, and you can buy here, there, be monsters! digitally on itch or physically from SoulMuppet.
You can find Sam @sdunnewold on Bluesky, Twitter, dice.camp, and itch.io, and by subscribing to the Dice Exploder newsletter.
You can find Fate at Evil Hat.
The Dice Exploder logo is by sporgory, and the theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
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Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and aspirate its chest cavity. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and my co-host this week is wendi yu.
Wendi fucking rocks. I first read her work as part of the like 200 games I read in a month while acting as a judge for the 2022 The Awards, and it was just unforgettable. _Here, there be monsters!_ The title alone would do it, but this thing is dripping with unforgettable art and prose and voice. Here's the opening line:
“I will say this as bluntly as I know how I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster.”
She's so unapologetically anti-capitalist, Brazilian, punk, and just gay as fuck. I don't love the ways marginalized people are in some ways expected and required to disclose themselves like this in their art. But this is a game that's so much about shouting your monstrousness from the rooftops. And to get a little personal, I see so much of my own beautiful, grotesque, beloved, and monstrous body in this game. It is not a text that you're gonna forget. So I was giddy to have wendi come co-host this episode with me.
Wendi brought in fate points and aspects from fate by Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks of Evil Hat. This surprised me at first. To me, Fate feels like the polar opposite of wendi's work: somewhat bland and voiceless, even if it's elegant and classic, and one of the most important games in my own growth through the hobby. I have such a love hate relationship with it. But it turns out, wendi does too. She talks about how Fate's influence still works its way into everything she makes, despite all the ways it's disappointed her.
I love these mixed bag episodes. They're so good.
This also marks the beginning of a strong theme that's gonna run through this season of Dice Exploder. The flavor of a game is just as much a mechanic, it's just as much a part of the game's design as any rule. So Hold that thought in your head maybe through these next few episodes.
With that, let's get to it. Here is wendi yu with the fate point economy.
Wendi welcome to Dice Exploder. Thanks for being here.
wendi: Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here.
Sam: Yeah. So what what have you brought for us today?
wendi: I have brought Fate and the Fate points and aspects mechanics.
Every character has aspects that are things that describe the character. Actually, everything in Fate can have aspects. Situations can have aspects, objects can have aspects. So the book gives the example "manners of a goat" or "smashing is always an option." I played for a long while a character that was a "kung fu wizard."
Sam: A great aspect. Yeah. I always likes to give "on fire" as an aspect to an object in a scene. Really classic.
wendi: It's a classic.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: Yeah, and Fate points are the economy of the system. Everything revolves around Fate points. And Fate Point is a token. You can use a Fate point when you invoke one of your aspects or a situation aspect, or an aspect of one object that is present at a scene to take control of the narrative. That's basically the premise.
For example, you have the aspect "always prepared." So I have this book here that teaches how to disarm a bomb and you pay a Fate point and you, "oh, I have this book here and I know how to disarm a bomb," and you get plus two or reroll on your roll to disarm the bomb. That's basically it.
Sam: Yeah. And so then compels work in kind of the other direction.
wendi: Yes, exactly. The compel is how you earn Fate points. Right? The compels are a way of losing control, quote unquote, over the narrative. The GM offers you Fate points, so you are compelled by your aspects, the things that define your character to do things that put you in a disadvantage in a way.
So if you're a "smart ass" maybe you try to prove you're smarter than the judge that's judging you and then you're in trouble, but you can't control yourself. You're compelled by your nature.
Sam: Yeah. So when the GM is like, Hey, you want to get yourself fucked up a little bit because one of your aspects, here's a Fate point for it. That's the compel. So why did you wanna bring on fate points and aspects and like the whole core loop here? Like what is it about fate that's interesting to you?
wendi: So first of all, Fate may be the game that I've played and ran the most in my, okay. There's been years since I've played and ran it, but, in my teenage years I've played it a lot. And it's one of my biggest influences still. I have a severe love and hate relationship with it. And a lot of my game design choices for my latest game in my biggest game came from like trying to make it work for me
Sam: yeah.
wendi: in a not love, hate relationship. It, it has influenced me a lot. I think
even the things I don't like have influenced me in a way.
Sam: Yeah. I have a really similar relationship with Fate where, you know, I, I grew up through high school not knowing there were role playing games other than Dungeons and Dragons basically. And then I like got to college and someone showed me Fiasco and I was like, oh my gosh, freeform role play like this is amazing. Like you don't have to just do Dungeons and Dragons, like you can do Coen brother movies. Like I'm in film school. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me.
and that investigating other games like that led me to Fate. And again, I like got to Fate and was like, my mind has been blown. You don't have to have all this like clunkiness around your system. You can really just have flavor, like the words that describe your character and the situation be the mechanics.
And that was so cool. That was such a, like revolutionary idea to me. And then the more I played it, the more I was like, I don't really like this and I'm not sure why. And I, and so I like left it behind. Yeah. And I, I, I think I understand why a lot better now, like 10 years after having left it behind.
But, let's start with all the stuff that we like about it first. I, I think it's, it's more interesting to do that. So what are, what are your, like favorite parts of the Fate system and aspects and Fate points?
wendi: Okay. First of all, I had a very similar experience to you. I started not by d and d, but Pathfinder and
Sam: That's just d and d, but like five years later, you know, like,
wendi: Yeah, Cthulhutech and then like Mechdome and all those crunchy, lots of number games. And then my friend brought us Fate and Fate has a really strong community in Brazil actually. Lots of translated content, lots of original content, and that, also blew my
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: And I think that freedom that it shows you can have is one of the best things about it. the thing about aspects about you can translate your character into those those phrases that described them and that are mechanically significant, that really, really interested me at the time. And I also spent a lot of time, like, I don't like it, but I'm not really sure why that doesn't really work for me. And that really intrigued me as well because it should work.
Sam: I know. I know. But yeah, like the, the thing you were describing just there of turning the phrases that are important about your character into mechanics is so interesting, right? Like I don't care about Dungeons and Dragons, two page long rules for polymorphing or like turning into a bear or like whatever thing it is that the druid can do.
But in Fate, when you can just write down animal shapeshifter, it's like you, you just like get all of that like in the one much more like evocative phrase and in this, this like wonderful, concise, provocative way.
wendi: It is much more interesting that your character can turn into a bear than the specifics of like, you can turn into a bear during three turns and then you have two roll plus 15 and
Sam: What, dice do you have to roll to turn into a bear? Like all of, I just want to be a bear. Just let me be a bear. And Fate is like, you are a bear now. Go wild.
wendi: Or that you have a cursed sword. That's an aspect. You have a cursed sword that says a lot. That can, that can be invoked and that can be compelled. That's mechanically significant. You know. That opened my mind a lot when I first found it to a whole lot of possibilities about role playing games.
And I think that's one of the best things about Fate because it was like an introduction to different possibilities
Sam: Yeah, it encourages you to think about what makes your person cool and interesting.
wendi: Yeah. And it's a game about cool and interesting,
people doing cool and interesting
things.
Sam: I mean, this is, this is something that's gonna come up a couple of times here and more and more as we get into what I don't like about Fate, but Fate is like ostensibly a generic system. Like it's, it's setting and genre agnostic ostensibly.
And you can see how that would be, right? Like you can easily imagine filling in a bunch of high fantasy Dungeons and Dragons equivalent kinds of stuff for your aspects. Or you can, like a thing I actually did was read the rule book for Shadowrun and say this is way too complicated, but the setting is great. Let's just play Fate, but do Shadowrun. And it was trivial to do that. It was so easy.
But then in practice it does have this cool and interesting people only at the center of it. And it has this sort of pulpy like, We are cool action people who can get the job done and rarely fail, even if sometimes we're getting compelled into tough situations. It has a, a mood to it still. Like it, feels high and not low in terms of fantasy, right? It feels yeah. It feels like it would be impossible for your characters to die unless you really, really tried hard to make that happen.
wendi: Yes, it's totally for poppy action-y games, and it's one of the things that started to dawn on me. One of my white whales was that I spent years, and that actually led to me creating my game system, was trying to adapt Mage the Ascension to Fate when I was a teenager. And that never happened because it just didn't fit
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: And in theory, it would work perfectly because Mage is a mess, but it's a beautiful mess. It's, it's beautiful. But yeah my group could never play it.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: and I wanted, I wanted us to play it, so I thought why not try and adapt it to Fate? And it, just didn't work because it just didn't fit.
Sam: Yeah. so what specifically about Mage The Ascension didn't feel like it fit or wasn't working?
wendi: First of all, I think in World of Darkness in general, as you said, Fate just much more high proficiency, high action low chance of failure. And I think in Mage your characters are much more low, low stakes sometimes, but also low proficiency in what you're doing. Low level, low skills, low understanding of the world around them.
Sam: Uhhuh.
wendi: They are messing with things they don't comprehend. They can die. And something didn't click between those two games
Sam: Yeah
wendi: And much of the here, there, be monsters started there when I was a teenager trying to make Mage the Ascension work with Fate and failing to do that because, yeah. Mage's characters are much more fallible, I think.
Sam: Yeah. So let's take the, the flip side of it. What do you think makes Fate good at the pulpy action thing. The breezy good, competent characters thing.
wendi: I think there's this power fantasy aspect of like, First of all, the rules are quite simple. In theory, they don't get, much in the way of just letting you be like a powerful necromancer kung fu wizard. Fate not only allows you to do that but encourages you to be a character like that.
Sam: to push that core concept of who you are because you can just write it down in such a simple way.
wendi: Yeah. And the fact that you can just spend a token for awesome scenes focused on your character, like having the spotlight for yourself. Also there's this mechanic where you can just create advantages and stack those advantages, and that gives you like this endorphine high, like when you're playing a card game and you just take the, the high cards and, and, things go to a climax. I think there's some mechanics in it that emphasize that rush of an action movie of things stacking up, you know?
Sam: Yeah. It, does. my friend who I played Fate with regularly, who liked it the least, always said that his problem with it was that It felt like on any given roll, you could find some aspects to invoke to get a bonus on the roll, and the bonus was high enough that that made it really hard to fail the roll.
And I totally agree with that. Basically, like I, think that is part of what makes it feel so pulpy and actiony. Like you can always basically just spend a Fate point and figure out how to succeed on a roll.
And I think my friend who didn't like it was sort of missing that yeah, you can always find an aspect to like bring into the roll, but the act of doing so and the describing of how you are bringing that aspect into the roll is the point. Fate is like, yeah, it's great if you wanna succeed on this roll as long as you are describing how like it plays into your character and how you are good at things in order to do that, because that's what we want you to do. We want you to talk about how your character looks cool and does the thing well. That's, that's like at the heart of the thing.
wendi: I think the point is like it's easy to succeed. But the point is it's fun to show us how you succeed.
Sam: Yeah, exactly.
wendi: But sometimes it is not that fun, especially with the meta economy and all that because we can get to that.
Sam: No. Well, let's get to it now. So keep going.
wendi: Yeah, because I think in the end it all starts revolving around the Fate points economy. You talked about the genericness of it, and I think that's one thing. Yes. Because I believe TTRPGs are as an art form, one of their specific ities is that mechanics exist to emphasize certain experiences, certain feelings, certain, you know. And so many times, Fate's experiences and Fate's mechanics feel kinda too generic, bland they can do just one thing well.
Sam: There it's kind of
formulaic.
wendi: Yeah, and they try to make that one thing universal, and that does not always work. For example, Call of Cthulhu.
Sam: yeah.
wendi: you may like it or not, but it certainly fits a specific theme, a specific gaming experience, a specific vibe or feelings. And I could, but I wouldn't want to start from that framework to make a game about hugs and a little creatures and friendship, you know? And that's, its deal. And it totally works for the specific thing that it's doing, right?
And I played actually a campaign of Achtung! Cthulhu that uses Fate.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
wendi: And it felt very Fate. It did not feel like a Cthulhu game at all. And it also felt very generic and poppy and sometimes very bland.
Sam: The way you're describing this has made me think of a really interesting comparison. So I wrote in my notes that I think one of the things the fate cycle does is it's really good at regulating that story rhythm of you get into trouble and then you get out of trouble and then you like deal with successive complications.
But you're right that the way fate does, it feels really generic. It feels to me almost like, like I'm a, screenwriter and.
A prob. Oh, there you go. Awesome. So you can, you can feel a lot of the time when writing a screenplay or reading screenplays or watching movies when someone has taken like the hero's journey and just filled in the generic beats. Like they're doing the thing, they're doing it pretty competently, but it just doesn't make you feel anything cuz you felt this story so many times before. You're not really changing anything. You're ending up with like boring Marvel movies for the hundredth time. You're ending up with this kind of flat story that, sure, it's a formula. It's a formula for a reason. It works pretty well, but where it takes you something that we've felt a hundred times before and that feels very repetitive and bland because it's, it's not new.
wendi: Exactly. And I think there's three things to unpack on what you said first. TTRPGs are not just stories, right? you're not reading a story, you're not watching a movie. You're, playing a game. You're having a group experience. You're, In there, you know. TTRPGs are its own medium. Second, not all stories follow that, that structure. And third stories are not just that structure, even the ones that follow that structure. So even if you follow that structure, there's still something missing and that's how you get boring, bland Marvel movies, for example. So,
Sam: yeah, Totally.
wendi: even in the past when they were still fun,
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
wendi: know, they still felt repetitive for a reason because they were following the same old formula. They worked for a while because they were still fresh for a while.
Sam: Yeah,
wendi: years later, not so much.
Sam: yeah.
Exactly.
wendi: A few campaigns later, Fate starts getting bland.
Sam: It's easy to really quickly eat up everything it has to offer. all the interestingness it has. Yeah.
wendi: Yes. But I do feel there's another thing that is quite connected to it. That is, it does not actually succeed in what it sets out to do, that is letting the narrative shine.
Sam: Mm-hmm. Totally.
wendi: it kind of bureaucratize it.
Sam: Hmm.
wendi: Because sometimes the mechanics try to structure the narrative, to allow you to focus on it, but actually they kinda outshine it. For example, the Fate point mechanics, to circle back to what we were talking earlier. I think in the end, the game becomes about hoarding Fate points use later or stacking situation aspects. Every conflict turns out being like creating opportunities and then stacking those situation aspects so you can have this huge bonus that you can then use to resolve the situation. And it all ends up revolving around the mechanics that should be there to structure the narrative and allow the narrative to shine.
So you know, is it about the narrative or is it about mechanics?
Sam: yeah, I think that's a big problem of the genericness of this system. Because it's generic, there are so many fewer ways for it to hook into the narrative. So the, the mechanics layer feels really separate from the flavor layer, even though it feels like aspects should make that not true. what you're saying is, is totally right.
the flavor, the story all kind of falls away when you're engaging with the mechanics in favor of just trying to win with the mechanics. Which is a pretty easy thing to do. You just do the same couple of like invoking aspects for bonuses, setting up advantages kinds of things, and that's how you solve every problem.
So anytime you, you get into a challenge where you're like engaging with the mechanics it, it's playing the same, not very interesting little board game again.
wendi: Exactly. And that's the opposite of what I think game mechanics should try to accomplish. They should be there to create a specific experience that you're trying to create.
System matters for a reason. You should think about how those mechanics relate to the specific game you're creating
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: I think that's completely tied to the genericness, but I think also that this idea of how they tied the "oh no, let's focus on the narrative" by creating this specific mechanics, I think, I think it failed to achieve what they were trying to do.
Sam: Yeah. So there's two main other things I want to talk about, and the first is that I think one of the big problems with Fate that we haven't talked about yet is just how hard it is to write aspects. My experience always sitting down at the table was that you really want these things to be double-edged.
Like you really want to be able to get compels out of them, and you want to get invokes out of them. And it's really easy to write just a positive aspect. You just like write down something you're really good at. And it's really easy to get a negative aspect, you just write down some sort of horrible flaw that you have.
And Fate actually encourages you to write down one of each of those I think. Like that your core concept of a character is generally just something you're pretty good at and you know, the manners of a goat, you can imagine how you might turn that one to your advantage in the right circumstances, but for the most part is just like that's there to compel you and get you in trouble.
But the rest of the aspects as you're filling them out, maybe it's just that I have very high standards for myself when I was, whenever I was writing these. But it, it always felt like you really, you wanna find that like magical, perfect aspect that is gonna be able to hit both of those things. And that is a really, it's like writing poetry. It's really hard to do, to write something pithy and double-edged in that way that describes who you are and what you want your character to be.
wendi: Yes. And then just a single phrase, it's really hard, but in a way it's also fun to come up with.
Sam: Yeah. And it's so satisfying when you find one too.
wendi: Yes, it's one of the things that I used to like the most actually about creating the character in Fate was coming up aspects, but it was also very hard.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: I think when you get rid of the need to having to think of compelling and invoking
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: it's, it all goes away. I think the main problem, it all circles back to the fate point economy,
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: You know because then you're free to just describe the things that are important to your character. Because one thing that I never quite understood is you have aspects in Fate, but then you have skills and then you have those stunts that in theory, they are kind of cool because they let you use skills in different ways, but both aspects and stunts most of the times they're just like plus two or a reroll.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: It's kind of disappointing in practice.
Sam: Yeah, yeah,
wendi: Lots of the freedom that you are promised are like in practice just a plus two or reroll.
Sam: Yeah. when there's so little actual core system, there's just not a lot of mechanics to play around with in stunts, which are basically special abilities, right, from a different game or custom moves. For the most part, all of them were trying to, all the pre-written ones anyway, were trying to tie back to that core loop. But because the only way to do that was you plus two on your roll or re-roll or whatever, do the thing that aspects were already doing, they, felt pretty samey.
wendi: Yeah, so in my system there's like the main resolution mechanic is you roll 2d6.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: When you have a tag that applies, and you can justify that in any way you want, you roll three to six take highest. And if a consequence gets in the way, you roll three to six, take lowest. If you have a tag and a consequence, they cancel each other out.
Sam: the classic advantage, disadvantage kind of system, right?
wendi: Yeah, and I think when you take the faith point economy out, you have a lot more freedom to actually think about the aspect as tags that define your character in a creative way. And you can go nuts.
Sam: Well, it, it feels like. By taking out the actual fate tokens, when you're thinking about a roll instead of starting with the token and saying I know I want plus two on this roll. How am I going to justify getting that plus two? You instead go to your fiction right away. You say, okay what else is true about this situation? What is true about me and how can I bring that into the scene instead of trying to like justify why you're getting a plus two on the roll.
wendi: Exactly, and that all goes back to that thing about the mechanics of Fate a lot of times they get in the way of the narrative because in the end it all, it's all about getting that plus two water stacking those advantages.
Sam: Yeah, The other really interesting thing to compare to Fate points to me is Belonging Outside Belonging games and like the Dream Askew, Dream Apart system in particular, because they also have this token economy that fits that the thing I was describing earlier really well, where like when you do something to put yourself in a bad situation, you get a token. And then you can spend the token to succeed on doing something to get you out of a bad situation.
But those games work super well for me, I think in part because they just say we don't need the dice roll. Like, you'll just succeed or you'll, you'll just fail. It's fine. Like, we don't need to worry about all this like dice nonsense that like Fate is pretending to have.
But even with that, it feels so much better and more specific and more flavorful to me than Fate ever did. And I think a big part of that is because Dream Askew and Dream Apart at least come with such beautiful, intricate settings that are not like most of what else I see out there. With Fate it's so easy to just end up playing Dungeons and Dragons with a different set of rules or to end up doing noir or, or cyberpunk or whatever, just straight down the middle. Or even Cthulhu kinds of stuff, like nicher genres straight down the middle. And these games that come in with like really specific, really unique settings, I think by themselves do a lot of work to help what otherwise could be a generic system by just being fucking weird and having great writing and having...
Like a, a theme on Dice Exploder season two a bunch here is gonna be how the flavor level of the game is a mechanic. Like the cover of the book is a mechanic. Like all the vibes of the game help you go in a cool new direction. And some of these games other than Fate that are not generic systems are so good at that and, shoring up the problems of Fate.
wendi: I think that's perfectly put. I don't believe there's any separation at all. Everything makes a game. You know, you're playing a game. There's no difference. Everything serves the same gaming experience. You're playing a single game, you're not playing mechanics and flavor quote, unquote. It's the same.
You don't have a mind and a body. You don't have a soul and a body. You know, you are, you. You're a singular being. It's not divided. Those, divisions are, are arbitrary.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: And I think those Belonging Outside Belonging games work exactly because what, what you said. First of all because of the specificness, the mechanics are thought of inside the whole experience of the game. There's this whole setting, this whole other host of mechanics that are serving the specific experience, specific theme that is supposed to be discussed. You know, a specific vibe, feelings that they want to arise in the players.
And the other thing is what we said before. The mechanics and the setting are one thing. They are not like, there's this generic system that's being applied to a setting. You know, they are thought as an organic whole.
I think that's the difference. You know, there's this Belonging Outside Belonging family of games that, okay, there's lots of game that use the same system, but each one of them is it's on unique game. You're not playing a BOB game with a different flavor. You're playing its own game. You're playing Wanderhome. You're playing Dream Askew.
Also what you have also said, it's not about earning a plus or a reroll, you just succeed. It's just, oh, okay. You get in trouble, you get out of trouble. It reminds me of the second edition of GUMSHOE where you have the pushes and you just succeed. You're, you're good at that thing and you just push yourself and you, you succeeded.
Sam: Why not?
Why? Why would you need to roll dice? You're just good at that.
wendi: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah,
wendi: You know, it's, and you mark that and you go on with your
Sam: a thing. I think the Dream Askew, Belonging Outside Belonging games do that's really smart as a, a way to become less generic is instead of describing your character and ways you might go about doing things, they describe on the playbooks specific things that you do to get tokens or to spend tokens.
So instead of saying, oh, I'm gonna get a bonus on this because I have the manners of a goat, like or I'm gonna fail at this because I'm impolite and don't know how to act in polite society, they're just like "you get a token if you go and fuck up because you're bad at being in polite society." I think that's a really smart way out of the, potential genericness of Fate.
wendi: Yeah. And or they ask you questions and they focus on how that character fits in a whole world of relationships with other characters and whole setting.
Sam: The other thing I wanna come back to is just. The writing in something like Dream Askew and also the writing in here, there, be monsters!, your game, because I think that the, quality of the writing here is also something that goes such a long way to making these games feel less generic than Fate.
Like in Fate, a lot of the times they'll... like, you just have to write your own aspects and so you, you are probably leaning more towards what is already working in your head, like the genre conventions that are already living in your head related to whatever this setting is.
But when you come into Dream Askew and it's, it's saying "choose to psychic gifts: shared dreams, memory harvesting, ghost echoes, unearthing" like I like, it's, it's, The text of the game itself is provoking you to go somewhere new.
and in here, there, be monsters! too. Like I pulled all, all of the potential character types read like this to me, but I pulled the rakshasi which says "You're a skilled warrior and illusionist with a feral feline head. But what everyone remembers first is that you are a man eater. So, are you?" And, and that like, I, I just have, I, I never would've gotten to that place by myself. You know? Like I, even if I, if I know the rakshasa from the Dungeons and Dragons third edition Monster Manual, like it is like a weird magic person with a tiger head. Cool uh, whatever. We're like moving on. But when, when you have a text like that, that is provoking the reader and the player to go somewhere new, that is so valuable for a really simple and Fate-like system.
wendi: Okay, so first of all, thank you very much. That's exactly what I was trying to do. Provoke the reader. I don't see myself precisely as a game designer. As I said, I started as a screenwriter. As things got bad here in Brazil I started branching out. But I, mostly I make things with words and images and sometimes those things are games.
And I was trying to explore a theme in here, there, be monsters!, the theme of monstrosity as marginalization and vice versa. And uh, I was trying to provoke the reader and the player and the Gm, you know, to ask themselves questions and I wasn't trying to say things, tell them how to play their characters. I trying to offer them options.
But I was very conscious that I had to offer them options when you, I, I, I wanted to give them freedom, but I wanted to give them choice. Because I think that's one of the problems with Fate. They give you a lot of freedom, but they don't give you a lot of choice. And that sometimes is a problem because you don't know what to do with, you don't know what to do with that. You don't have direction. And if you don't have direction, you don't, you dunno what to do. You just have a blank page. You just have a blank character sheet and how you're gonna feel it. Most of the book is questions and ideas.
So that was my main goal. Trying to provoke ideas and provoke thinking about how this experience of monstrosity, of feeling different from other people in any way, I think that's very specific and at the same time very universal in a specific way to each person. Even a white cis straight male can have experienced feeling weird and out of place and, you know like a monster sometimes. And I think in their own specific ways.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: And that's why I couldn't and I wouldn't ever dare to limit that experience. I try to raise questions.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: And I think that's something that when you try to go universal, you can sometimes miss. When you have a clear focus of what your game is about, you build everything around it. The text, the layout, the mechanics, the flavor quote unquote, the illustrations, the everything. Everything is a whole, you know. And I think that's something that is a difference between the belonging outside belonging games and Fate. And that's a difference also between my game and Fate. Even if it's clearly indebted to Fate.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. I think that provoking, that bringing some specificity is among the most valuable things that you can do both as a game designer and just as an artist at large. If you're making something generic, I can make that at home. Like I know the generic stuff. I'm culturally literate. I know how to do that at home. The thing that I'm missing is new specificity.
wendi: Exactly. If I don't have anything to say, why
Sam: Yeah,
wendi: would I say anything at all? Like even d and d is a specific.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: D and d tries to do something very specific, like, raw d and d.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: Okay. it branches out. It's used to do a lot of different stuff, but raw d and d is very specific. Right?
And when you play it on to do that specific thing, it shines at its something, right? I don't quite enjoy it as I used to anymore, but it has its qualities for the thing that it's trying to do with specific.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: The genericness is the problem. I think,
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: If I don't have anything to do, I, I don't,
Sam: What are we doing here then? Yeah,
wendi: Yeah! Exactly.
I think universal universality is impossible.
Sam: Totally.
wendi: Centrism is impossible. Right? You're just taking the side of blandness.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thing that I wrote about in one of my essays as a, judge for The Awards was how it has felt to me like the deeper I get into the RPG hobby is that the scarce resource of the hobby is not New systems and new games. It's new settings, it's new modules, it's new flavor. There's a lot of systems out there, and a lot of them are describing the same kinds of game and genre.
And that's great. I love that that exists. I love all kinds of bespoke games that come out that have systems that are really tailor made to whatever the thing is that they're doing too. But the last thing I need is another generic system without an idea inside of it of a cool story for me to tell or, or a cool world for me and my friends to go play around in.
That's, that's what I'm looking for in a game.
wendi: Yeah, I think that's, that's what games can do best.
Sam: Hmm.
wendi: That's where I am naive and, and uh all hopeful about the power of gaming and all that. They have this particular ability of letting you experience something in a peculiar way that no other medium has. And that's why, for example, there's so many trans people that play games. So many queer people that play games because, because they allow you to be someone that you're not.
Sam: To try a new Yeah.
wendi: Yeah exactly. Exactly. That's, that's so valuable. I think.
Sam: When I wanna try on a new identity, I don't need a new empty closet. I need a bunch of new identities to put into my existing closet that I can try on.
wendi: You need things that resonate with you.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: You don't need your own already existing assumptions. You need things that make you think. Or feel.
Sam: Yeah.
wendi: Or have fun at least. But, but that, resonate with you in some way. Not, something empty, that you bring your own stuff to feel.
That's what I think, at least. I'm not trying to be prescriptive, but I have strong opinions.
Sam: Yeah.
That feels like a great place to end to me. Do you have any final thoughts you wanna talk about with fate or anything else you wanna say final words?
wendi: I think Fate doesn't work for me anymore, but I still think it's worth a try.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
wendi: Especially if you're used to more traditional games. it's really worth a try. I think it's a worthwhile experience to at least play it once.
Sam: I feel like it is a fairly shallow experience, but that you can learn a lot while you have not gotten to the end of it.
wendi: Yeah. It says something that even if I don't like it, it has influenced me so much.
Sam: Totally, totally. I mean, it was my gateway to story games effectively. Like it's, it's a really interesting game.
wendi: Yeah,
Sam: Well, wendi, thanks for your coming on the show.
wendi: you for asking me here. It's been such a lovely conversation.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks again to wendi for being here. Before I go, I've got my own game about monstrous bodies that I wanna plug: This Heart Within Me Burns is a for the queen hack about a fantasy adventuring party where one of you has been cursed and you're all traveling to a place where hopefully they can get that curse removed. But, uh, good luck with that. There's a digital version on story synth.com, or you can find it on my itch page at sdunnewold. That's also where you can find me on Blue Sky Twitter and dice.camp.
Wendi can be found on Twitter at wen_di_yu, and you can buy _Here, There, Be Monsters!_ and the rest of her games on Itch at wendiy.itch.io or print copies at usa.soulmuppet-store.co.uk. There's a link in the show notes. I cannot recommend this game enough.
There's a Dice Exploder Discord. Come and talk about the show if you want to.
Our logo is designed by sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray.
And as always, thanks to you for listening. See you next time.
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