The Fate RPG Is Still Worth Playing
Fate Core is a tabletop roleplaying game first published by Evil Hat in 2013. Despite being over 10 years old, it remains one of my favorite RPG systems of all time. Fate offers me things that no other system does and I want to share what makes it so great.
On of the most important things about Fate to me is that it uses toolkit-first design. Fate gives you some simple tools that you can use to create any idea you can imagine. There's no need to dig through thousands of pages across multiple books in hopes of finding a character build option that can be used to create the idea you have. It's a universal system, allowing you to play in any kind of setting, or even mix multiple settings together.
In Fate, creating homebrew is often as simple as describing it. Does a player want to make a character who is a *Magical Kitsune Spirit* who is the *Secret Protector of Pollenborrow?* Or an *Owlbear Sorcerer?* Do you as the GM want to create a custom monster that is a *Magically Levitating Amorphous Blob of Harvested Organs*? Well, we're already done! That was all it took to make our homebrew! Really!
Fate uses a mechanic that's referred to as *aspects*; a short phrase that describes something about the in-game fiction of the world. It's the heart of the system. There are rules around how these can be created and used to help keep things balanced, but really, creating something is often as straightforward as describing it.
*If you can describe it, you can make it.*
You might want to use other parts of the system like skills and stunts to better flesh out the concepts, but being a toolkit-first system, you're given everything you need to do this. In a way, the system is a language for describing a fictional world.
Aspects are always true. This means if something has an aspect, it's always part of the fiction. Maybe the game is going to have a race of human-sized anthropomorphic bumblebee people. The group should discuss together what that means. What do they tend to look like? Do they have wings and can fly? Do they have stingers? Do they wear clothes? The group gets to decide what are the best answers for their game. Now when a character has *Bumblekin* in their aspect, everyone knows what that means. They can fly because they're a Bumblekin and Bumblekin can fly; not because they took the Wings perk to the third level and then put 40 build points into their *Flying (Wings)* skill.
With the system being based mainly around the fiction, it's incredibly easy to incorporate material from *any* RPG system or media. When you're familiar enough with the system, you can even do this at *the speed of improv.* Heck, you could literally sit down with blank character sheets and start playing immediately if everyone knows the rules well enough.
Fate is not crunchy. It's mechanics are pretty straightforwards. But the rules are in no way incomplete. The system gives you broad tools that can be applied to a variety of circumstances, rather than needing a specific rule for everything that could happen. This makes the system much more prepared for handling the unexpected, and gives GMs the tools to handle that instead of relying on improvising rules in the moment. It also makes it easier to learn.
In Fate, anything a character could do that interacts with the rules are divided into the four actions. (You can of course do other things in game which don't require rules.) Overcome, which is what most systems might call a check; you use to it overcome some adversary, like climbing up a wall. Attack, for when you want to harm another character (could be more than combat; socially, economically, etc). Defend is to resist an attack or provide active opposition. And this last one is something I now feel is missing from every other RPG; *Create an Advantage*.
Create an Advantage is used when a character attempts to add something to the fiction. Mechanically, this creates a new aspect that is beneficial to them. For example, the rogue wants to hide to get a good ambush spot on their target. They roll their Stealth skill to Create an Advantage. If they succeed, they might get to create a new aspect like *Well Hidden Within the Undergrowth* and get a couple free bonuses to their rolls involving that.
Most systems handle this with GM fiat where the GM decides on the fly how much of a benefit the character gets from an action. Or, the game has a bunch of hyper-specific rules to handle every possible circumstance that the character might do and what the benefit from it should be. Fate neatly wraps all these possibilities up into one simple mechanic that drives innovative play and roleplaying in a rewarding way.
This is one of those mechanics that makes players go "Wait, you can *do* that!?" It opens up so many possibilities to what you can do. The fighter can get into a *Defensive Position* to protect an ally from harm. You can plant *Seeds of Doubt* in the king's mind about if he should continue with his plans to wipe out the nearby dwarven settlement. You can spread a *Rumor GeoCorp Is Building Secret Superweapons*. The hacker can infiltrate the enemy computer systems and plant a *Devastating Virus* to slow them down. You can spin the orc's helmet around so they have their *Helmet On Backwards*.
All of this can be done on the fly without needing a specific feat or putting the pressure on the GM to figure out how to make a ruling for it. Both the players and the GM have a clear understanding of how these things will play out, improving player agency and connecting gameplay to the fiction. Gameplay is led by what happens in the fiction rather than restricted by the game rules.
Fate uses degrees of success to determine the outcome of dice rolls. Even further on top of that, you're given some freedom to better pick what's good for the moment. There's not just critical success or failure. If a roll is failed, the character could also succeed at a cost. The adventure doesn't have to end due to a poor roll. This is often called *fail forward.*
For example, our character, trapped on an island with dinosaurs, is being chased by a t-rex. In an attempt to escape, they sprint full tilt to leap across a chasm, hoping the distance will be too much for their pursuer to want to follow. They roll to jump and... fail. In many systems, this would mean the character fails to make it across, falls into the chasm, and dies from fall damage. Game over. With success at cost, we could instead say they just barely make it across, slamming into the edge on the opposite side, hanging off. In the jolt of the collision, the gun they had slung over their shoulder slips. They can't grab it in time, instead grabbing onto a root to keep themselves from falling, letting the gun drop into the chasm below. They're able to pull themselves up to safety, but now surviving will be made harder without a weapon to defend themselves against the island's other dinosaurs.
Another example, the players fail their roll to discover an important clue in a mystery. The GM could instead say they find it, but introduce a complication on top of it. Perhaps the clue is old, meaning they'll need to do more legwork to catch up to the criminal. Maybe the police arrive then and make it more difficult to continue investigating.
There's no such thing as 'critical hit-point failure' in Fate. When characters are hurt, they actually get hurt. When they take enough damage, a new aspect is created called a *Consequence*. Maybe they got nicked by a blade and now have *Blood In Their Eyes*, making it harder to see who they're fighting. Maybe the alien that snuck on board their ship caught them off guard with a surprise attack, but they get away with a *Sprained Ankle,* which will make running away harder in the future.
The final point I'm going to touch on is if any of this sounds interesting to you and you'd like to try it out then you absolutely can because the system is *free!* Both in price and the licensing of the content. You can download the full PDF for free at the following link, or check out the Fate SRD to read it online.
Fate Core System download (choose the Digital PDF option)
And it being licensed under Creative Commons, means it's free from all the OGL issues. You can create and distribute derivative content without any worries. This is what the TTRPG community needs in order to thrive.
I really hope more people will try out Fate. It has removed a lot of the the friction of having fun playing RPGs for me, and I hope it will improve other's gaming experience too.
/gemlog/