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I am currently preparing a campaign (using Strands of Fate, but this is a pertinent question for all systems that use the FATE core mechanics) that will have players jointly leading a faction as well as playing several characters each, troupe-play style.

The result of this is that a session will likely be split, time-wise, between three characters, with an additional jointly played "character" for the faction.

This leads to the question: Are fate points meant to be owned by the player or by the character?

In other words: do I give each character their complement of fate points despite these being concentrated on a much shorter part of the episode, or do I give each player a session's worth of fate points?

This is mostly a question about whether the rules say that FP are owned by player or character, but any source from ANY fate-based rulebook would be useful.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Good question. But regardless of what the rule turns out to be, you can still adjust it as necessary for your game's best operation. \$\endgroup\$
    – SevenSidedDie
    Mar 17, 2015 at 17:29

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Fate Core's basic mechanics base the fate points you receive on the "Refresh" value of the character, which is in turn based on the number of stunts the character has. So it makes sense to assume that the fate points, according to the rules as written, belong to the character.

Many Fate games do follow this pattern.

That being said, I have been running my own Cyberpunk Fate(before core) hack since 2011, which explicitly states that fate points belong to the player and not the character. This has interesting implications that let the players have some effect in scenes where their characters aren't present. The players seem to be more invested in the story rather than their characters. So far, I believe this to be an improved experience over the default rule, in terms of overall engagement and fun.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Many thanks for the response - it appears that FP can be easily transferred to the "player" level rather than the "character" level. We ran an initial test yesterday, and this seems to work quite well. With Fate relying on somewhat of a division between character and player, I'm surprised they made FP character-specific. \$\endgroup\$
    – monsterfurby
    Mar 19, 2015 at 10:36

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