Phil Lewis mmmmostly.

I don’t want to get deeper into the nitty gritty because it’s been some years and the text isn’t fresh for me any more.

I seem to remember that you roll dice and THEN start diddling around with Aspects after the fact, yeah? Hence the lack of surprise, that you can pretty much win any roll as long as you’ve got the FP to spend and appropriate Aspects available? I’m looking quick-quick through the SRD to freshen up…

Yeah, that was it.

Okay, so: the thing that I can’t get past is that you’ve got this kind of …fortune in the middle thing happening, right? We talk a bit, we build up to a roll, here’s the random input, and then we start negotiating fictional inputs. That is not my jam, like, at all. I’ve had players wheedle and whine about applying Aspects, and since the random input has already happened, now it becomes Aspect grubbing vs. GM patience.

Compare to Burning Wheel or Cortex Plus: you add in all the shit that’s relevant to the roll, then you make the roll. Negotiation in the middle, fortune at the end. Win or lose, you build the various traits into the fiction. The traits were settled on before the roll, no Aspect grubbing. The fiction feels more, I don’t know, intact somehow.

I don’t know why it bugs me at the end! Maybe it’s because, before the dice come in, trait-grubbing (it happens!) is easier to say “no” to: the dice may yet overcome the GM’s “no.” But if you have to say “no” afterward, you may very well be directly determining the outcome.