I have heard this multiple times, and I’ve never really understood it. Note: I have only played Mindjammer Fate (which I think was FC), and only for 2 sessions. So my Fate experience is very minimal.
I own both books however, and have read FAE and skimmed Core. Besides Core being “bigger”, what is the in-play experience difference?
Thanks in advance…
The big difference between Fate Core and Fate Accelerated is that Core uses a list of 18 default skills (what you do) and Accelerated uses a list of six approaches (how you do it). This also affects how stunts are written since Accelerated doesn’t use skills, but stunts essentially work the same. There are some minor differences involving stress tracks and consequences. You can easily pull things from Core into Accelerated though. And vice versa - lots of Fate Core players import the Mooks and Groups of Mooks rules from Fate Accelerated into their games.
I really like the Fate build in Fate Freeport which is essentially D&D converted to Fate Core. Instead of the default list of 18 skills though, it uses six skills each named after one of the traditional six D&D ability scores. It’s a nice middle ground between Core and Accelerated.
As for actual play, there really isn’t much difference at all between Core and Accelerated. Accelerated is a nice choice when the PCs are going to have very similar roles like a police procedural for example; instead of everyone having the same or similar skill lists, they can each approach a task in different ways: one cop will Carefully interrogate a suspect, another will do so Forcefully, a third might do so Cleverly.
The default assumptions of Fate Core is that characters have various skills at certain levels. You’ll probably have different skills for different games, but they’re going to be pretty much the usual style of stuff – “Hacking” or “Piloting” or “Rhetoric” or “Shaolin Kung-fu”. Whatever. Skills. You know 'em. You’ve played a bunch of games that use them.
Fate Accelerated dispenses with skills entirely. Instead, characters have a short list of Approaches that they use, that answer the question not of “what are you doing?” (“I’m hacking the system!” “I’m punching the bear!”) but instead “How are you doing it?” – “How are you hacking the system?” “Well, honestly, there isn’t time for a lot of futzing around; I’m just going to brute force this. I don’t care if I leave a trail or what.” (Forcefully) or “How are you punching the bear?” “I don’t want to get into a bear hug or anything nasty, so I’m darting in and out, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!” (Quickly) etc.
It turns a lot of traditional assumptions sideways and makes for a very interesting game.
@Airk and @jaerdaph that totally helped me differentiate between the two.
Now to actually try to run something in FAE (it sounds like it would be more along the lines of what I like to play these days).
Thanks.
I’m not familiar with Fate but this is super interesting. Isn’t it the same idea, or similar, to how states work in The Veil (“I’m doing this angrily!” “I’m doing this confidently!”)? And, now I come to think of it, it also lines up with what I think is a reasonable interpretation of stats in Apocalypse World.
It’s not dissimilar to how things work in The Veil, though FAE Approaches are pretty static, whereas my impression of The Veil (Disclaimer: I haven’t read it) is that since your stats are kinda your emotional state (Kinda like Masks?) they change with some frequency?
FAE, being a little more action-move-like, is more interested in “This guy is the Careful guy. He likes to do things methodically, and gets flustered and does badly if forced to do something Quickly. But this is the Forceful woman; She knows how to push through opposition and doesn’t back down, but she tends to be loud and unsubtle, so she does badly in situations where being Sneaky is called for.” archetyping.
My understanding is that your states are constant. They describe how well you deal with each emotional state. You choose which one to use when you roll, but that doesn’t change them. (Exception: it’s possible to use one emotional state so much that it spikes, and then you get a penalty.)
This is just like Apocalypse World and some other PbtA games, then… Your ‘hard’ is not a measure of physical toughness or anything like that, but more a measure of what kind of role you play in the story, and how you tend to deal with situations.
Ah, okay, so a little less like Masks then. Pretty close, but not quite the same, obviously.
The difference – a rather crucial one to me – between this method and Apocalypse World is that in AW, each rating is tied to specific actions. Barring playbook specific moves, you don’t get to Attack Someone with +Cool; This is not the case in Fate Accelerated – Forceful hacking can totally be a thing. As a result, it feels more like “people try to do things the ways they are good at” instead of AW’s “people try to do the things they are good at.”
Does Fate Accelerated ever run into the problem where a player just spams the same approach for everything because it is their best one? Or is there a bit of table discussion (or even rules discussion) about some approaches almost never being valid in certain circumstances (forcefully sneaking perhaps??)
In my experience, people definitely ANGLE towards their best approaches, and that’s sortof the point. I don’t remember the rules saying anything about certain approaches being verboten for particular circumstances, but certainly a bunch of them do seem obvious – forceful pairs poorly with subterfuge actions and careful pairs poorly with time sensitive situations. Clever can be more tricky to rein in. But really, at the end of the day, if people can frame an action in a way that’s within striking distance of an approach, I’d let them do it.
This is a fiction first system, so you don’t get to say “I’m doing this cleverly” you have to describe what you’re doing and then pivot back to picking the approach that makes sense.
To add to what @Airk said, by choosing one aspect, e.g. ,Forceful you are in effect NOT being Sneaky. That should allow the DM (Dramatic Manager) to reign in spamming because always being loud & Forceful is going to cause so many problems.
Presumably people often have a best and a good approach at least, so that they will have a choice of a couple of approaches for most situations? I’ll have to take a look at the FAE system resource document and read up what that says.
Cheers
You get a +3, two +2s, two +1s and a 0, so yes. 
Like it’s been mentioned before, you go with the Approach that best makes narrative sense according to the fiction the players are presenting. However sometimes more than one Approach can be argued to be triggered by the fiction. For example say I’m trying to blind a foe by throwing dirt in their eyes. We can argue that the best approach is Sneaky but one can make a case for Quick, Clever, Forceful, Careful, or even Flashy.
This is why I tell players that some Approaches may have a lower difficulty than others because they make more narrative sense in the story. Maybe your foe is a supernaturally fast creature so Quick might be an Overcome of +6 while Sneaky would be a +4 difficulty, or your foe can read minds making the Sneaky approach impossible because they know what trick you’re trying to pull.
I always try to tell my players the difficulty of an Overcome or Create Advantage action ahead of time so they can make an informed decision. I tell them that sometimes your character knows that what they’re trying to do is almost impossible so step back maybe Create some Advantages and try again when things are stacked in their favor.
I read the fate core rulebook and have started a somewhat rules light fate game.
The aspects and fate points seems interesting. Somewhat reminiscent of burning wheel, in a good way. Curious to see how it plays out, but I like systems that use mechanics to encourage the group to play into the drama they’ve decided matters to their character.
Something I hated from the book though was how they recommended setting the values for skill challenges. They actively recommended against trying to be objective, and more aim for how hard you want it to be…I hate this! Pragmatically I get it, but then like…why bother with the skill pyramid at all if the GM is encouraged to be like “hrm, this should be a player skill-2 type challenge…” I think being aware of how skillful they are in crafting encounters etc is obviously good, but always anchoring off of their skills in that way really rubbed me the wrong way.
These days I find myself with little patience for skill systems I guess. I think this is an area where PbtA shines in comparison.
Huh, that’s super weird. I’ve never actually read Fate Core, but accelerated basically just says this for difficulties:
Low difficulties are best when you want to give the PCs a chance to show off and be awesome. Difficulties near their approach ratings are best when you want to provide tension but not overwhelm them. High difficulties are best when you want to emphasize how dire or unusual the circumstances are and make them pull out all the stops.
Along with a sidebar about how different approaches might have different difficulties and some rules of thumb like “If you can think of at least one reason why the task is tough, pick Fair (+2)”.
More proof that Fate Accelerated is the best Fate game, I guess. 