One of my greatest struggles as a player is trying to make that mental transition out of GM mode. Oh its easy enough to tell myself that I am running a character and not a world, and it is a lot of fun building a character with skill points and stunts and such. But that is surface level transition. Players and GMs are different at their very core, and not making that complete transition results in a very sad game.
Rather than outline a debate about differences or list a pros and cons survey, I thought it would be more helpful (and fun) to go through the Fate Core character creation process and highlight important notes as they come up in the discussion. Note that I am going through the process in general, rather than actually making a character.
If you are a natural at making/running a player character, then reading this article will probably inspire internal dialogue along the lines of “I already knew that” and “Actually, I have more fun when I…” and so on. Believe it or not, this process does not come naturally to the rest of us.
And here we… go!