How do environmental conditions and scene aspects stack in FATE?

Question

How do aspects and environmental conditions stack?

An example probably is useful for discussion. In the, Spirit of the Century rulebook (FATE), it gives the Darkness aspect as an example of a scene aspect you can tag to improve your sneaking roll. However, when you look at the rules for the stealth skill, it states that if a room is dark you get +2 on your stealth roll, and pitch dark gives you +4.

It seems any dark room will have the darkness aspect. Does that mean when in dark places, a character being stealthy can get an additional +2 in addition to the normal bonus? This seems weird because the character is (narratively) gaining a bonus for the same thing twice.

Answer 1

Yes you would definitely get the extra bonus if you spend the fate point to invoke the aspect. It may* represent your character's extra effort in making the darkness work to his advantage, above the natural effect it provides.

_{* That being said, I must say I don't like the idea of "situational modifiers" in a FATE game. The way I understand it, in FATE, skill rolls are the story facilitators, not situation simulators. The +2 bonus they get from aspect invocations isn't really an accurate representation of the advantage the aspect provides. Rather, it is a bonus provided for telling a story more in sync with the scene and characters at hand. I think the "situational modifier" paradigm with predetermined bonus numbers doesn't mesh well with that.}