Evil Hat productions didn’t create Fate as part of a global plan for RPG world domination. In fact, Fate’s creation actually began in the car, on a road trip in 2000. Little did the authors know that they they would be kickstarting a revolution in gaming.
So what is Fate? Here’s a simple breakdown of the game mechanics from Wikipedia:
Fate is based on the FUDGE system, and uses FUDGE’s verbal scale and Fudge dice, but most versions of Fate eschew the use of mandatory traits such as Strength and Intelligence. Instead, it uses a long list of skills and assumes that every character is “mediocre” in all skills except those that the character is explicitly defined as being good at. Skills may perform one or more of the four actions: attacking, defending, overcoming obstacles (a catch-all for solving problems) or creating an advantage. Exceptional abilities are defined through the use of Stunts and Aspects.
An Aspect is a free form descriptor of something notable about either the character or the scene. A relevant aspect can be invoked to grant a bonus to a die roll (either adding +2, or allowed a re-roll of the dice); this usually costs the player or GM a fate point. Aspects may also be compelled to influence the setting by offering the person with the aspect a fate point (which they can refuse by spending one of their own) to put them at a disadvantage relevant to the aspect. An example given in the rule book refers to the GM invoking a player character’s Rivals in the College Arcane aspect to have said rivals attack them in the bath so they don’t have access to their equipment. Situational aspects describe the scene, and may be created and used by the GM, or by players using the create advantage action with a relevant skill.
Stunts are exceptional abilities that grant the character a specific mechanical benefit; these may be drawn from a pre-defined list of stunts included in the rules, or created following guidelines provided by the authors.[3] Aspects, on the other hand, are always defined by the player. For example, a player may choose to give their character an aspect of “Brawny” (or “Muscle Man” or “Wiry Strength”); during play, the player may invoke those aspects to gain a temporary bonus in a relevant situation. Aspects may also relate to a character’s possessions, e.g. the character Indiana Jones for example, might have the Aspect “Whip and Fedora”.
Fate doesn’t come with a default setting, but it works best with any premise where the characters are proactive, capable people leading dramatic lives. Here are 12 noteworthy games based on Fate, including the core system itself:
1. Fate Core
Grab your plasma rifles, spell components, and jetpacks! Name your game; Fate Core is the foundation that can make it happen. Fate Core is a flexible system that can support whatever worlds you dream up.
Have you always wanted to play a post-apocalyptic spaghetti western with tentacle monsters? Swords and sorcery in space? Wish there was a game based on your favorite series of books, film, or television, but it never happened? Fate Core is your answer.
Fate Core is a tabletop roleplaying game about proactive, capable people who lead dramatic lives. Create your characters and develop instant group dynamics with our unique phased char gen system. Use those characters as a springboard to storytelling in our GM world building chapters.
For the Fate-familiar, take advantage of the new and improved approaches to character actions, aspects, compels, and more. With Fate Core, your story is up to you. But whatever you choose, you can expect a fun storytelling experience full of twists…of fate.
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
2. Bulldogs! Fate Core Edition
All new! Bulldogs! has been updated to Fate Core, with a more streamlined advancement system, improved gear rules, and faster combat to make your battles in space even more interesting. Check out the new improved Bulldogs! and get on the job!
Bored with your dead-end job? Tired of your planet-bound life?
Is your bland home world too safe for you? Maybe you owe some money to the wrong people, or maybe the gun just somehow went off and now you have an urgent need of a change of scenery.
TransGalaxy PanGalactic Corporation does not care about your arrest record!
Join the Class D Freight division and in exchange for a simple five-year commitment, you can leave all your troubles behind.
They’ve got the ship. You’ve got a pulse. Welcome to Bulldogs!
Bulldogs! is a tabletop role-playing game of interstellar action adventure. Bulldogs! is about freebooting ruffians flying from planet to planet causing trouble.
Bulldogs! is sci-fi that kicks ass.
Grab your copy in Digital Format.
3. Dresden Files RPG
Dresden Files RPG: Your Story
Beneath the “normal” surface of the world are things and people which most of us don’t want to know about, and will do our best to forget about if we ever come near them. People won’t see what they don’t want to see.
But that’s most of us. And you-you’re not most of us.
What’s Your Story?
Whether you’re a champion of God, changeling, vampire, werewolf, wizard, or plain “vanilla” mortal human being, this volume of The Dresden Files RPG gives you all the rules you need to build characters and tell your own stories in the Dresdenverse. Inside, you’ll uncover the secrets of spellcasting, the extents of mortal and supernatural power, and the hidden occult reality of the unfamiliar…
Dresden Files RPG: Our World
We are wizards, cops, mechanics, werewolves, doctors, fairies, mobsters, reporters, holy warriors, and vampires.
We call upon the dark powers of the Nevernever-or the darkness in human nature.
We are the monsters living next door or lurking behind a friendly face.
This is the Dresdenverse.
This is Our World.
This volume of The Dresden Files RPG gives you extensive detail on the factions, creatures, foes, and allies of the Dresdenverse. You’ll find over 200 creatures and characters complete with all the information you’ll need to bring them into your own game.
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
4. Atomic Robo
Action! Science! Robots! Punching! More Science!
Are you ready for some two-fisted science adventure? Then it’s time for the Atomic Robo RPG! Have you ever wanted to face down global conspiracy as an immortal atomic robot or Carl Sagan? The Atomic Robo RPG makes it possible.
The Atomic Robo RPG brings you the most explosive Fate Core System experience yet. This is action science like you’ve never seen it before, coming straight at you from the pages of the popular Atomic Robo comics by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener. Play as an Action Scientist or immortal robot, super-spy or pulp adventurer—or something stranger still from the hidden corners of super-science!
This is multi-era, pick-up-and-play gaming at its best: get playing in ten minutes, or take your time and make the most of behind-the-scenes rules for added depth. Hop into your Tesladyne jet and travel the globe in one time period, or battle across the decades as a cast of scientifically talented adventurers. Face down demented dinosaurs, rogue government agents, and stolen Tesla-powered technologies!
Are you Action Scientist material? Grab your gear and get ready for full-contact, high-octane, explosive hypothesis testing!
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
5. Mindjammer
Grab your blaster, thoughtcast your orders to the starship sentience, and fire up the planing engines — come and defend the light of humanity’s greatest civilization as it spreads to the stars!
The ENnie Award-winning transhuman science-fiction RPG setting returns, in a new edition updated and massively expanded for the Fate Core rules. Mindjammer is an action-packed tabletop roleplaying game about heroic adventurers in the galaxy of the far future, filled with virtual realities, sentient starships, realistic aliens, and mysterious worlds. Using the popular and award-winning Fate Core rules, Mindjammer lets you play hardened mercs, cunning traders, steely-nerved pilots, intrigue-filled spies and culture agents, aliens, divergent hominids, artificial life forms, and even sentient starships.
500 pages containing all the rules needed to play, including:
- Full rules for starships, organisations, and culture operations
- Detailed character cultures, genotypes, and occupations — play a sentient starship!
- New and innovative rules for describing planets, star systems, and alien life
- Deep background material on the New Commonality of Humankind
- Rules for the Mindscape and virtual worlds
- Starmaps and planet descriptions, histories and background
- Hyper-advanced equipment, weaponry, enhancements, starships, and more.
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
6. Nova Praxis
In what might have been the end, the synthesis of biology and technology proved our salvation. Augmentation, ranging from basic genetic manipulation to Apotheosis, set us on the path of prosperity. But it also emphasized the importance of identity, individual humanity, and the purity of the species.Earth is lost to us, but even in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, we grow, evolve and even prosper. We have witnessed the death of our mother and the birth of a new era.
The loss of Earth and the resulting Exodus gave us an opportunity to start over with a clean slate. And we seized it.
Though the need for organization, stability and a reliable government was clear, the old ways were seen by most as archaic, clumsy and too prone to corruption.
It was time for a new way… a Nova Praxis.
Today, social networks allow the will of the people to be measured instantly, accurately and without the need for representation. The Coalition, guided by the collective voice of its people, has established new homes on worlds lit by new suns. Molecular assembly technology has made it possible for society to provide a quality of life never before imagined, at essentially no cost, to everyone. And we are virtually immortal.
But can this would-be Utopia last?
Corruption in the Coalition government fosters decay from within. The Houses, our benefactors and patrons, run shadowy networks of intrigue, espionage and assassination. Apostates, non-citizens, condemn those who would trade their privacy for the Coalition’s false security. Remnants of Earth’s old governments wage an unrelenting guerilla war on Coalition forces. Ideological extremists commit acts of terror using the latest horror to spring from a factory or test tube…
And the value of a human soul is weighed and measured in lines of code.
Nova Praxis is a post-singularity sci-fi setting that explores transhumanism and post-scarcity societies against a backdrop of action, adventure, conspiracy and intrigue.
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
7. Kerberos Club
Play the heroes and villains of a Strange century!
- Doctor Archibald Monroe, the erudite chemist and physician-chimpanzee.
- “Stony” Joe Smithson, the honest London boxer transformed into living rock.
- Maeve O’Connel, Queen of the Mudlarks, the eternal child touched by Faerie.
- The Lady Mirabel, who by darkness defends Whitechapel as the terrifying Night Hag.
- When the victims and enthusiasts of magic and bizarre science meet in an infamous club for “the Strange,” thrilling action is sure to follow!
The Kerberos Club (Fate Edition) is a complete roleplaying game for thrilling superheroic and steampunk action in Victorian London. It includes a treatment of Victorian society in its every particular, especially the incredible and sometimes awful changes that “the Strangeness” comes to wreak upon Queen and Country alike.
New Fate rules by Mike Olson expand character skills into the realms of the superhuman and the godlike, making them endlessly customizable to suit anything you can imagine.
The Kerberos Club (Fate Edition) gives players every tool they need to create new heroes and villains in a world beset by Strange mysteries and diabolical threats.
There is, after all, every good reason for the club’s motto: “MALUM NECESSARIUM.”
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
8. Age of Arthur
Britannia is a land of petty kings and warlords, squabbling in the void left after the withdrawal of Rome. The light of civilization is fading as a new Dark Age descends amidst the chaos of the rapacious Saxons.
It is a time of gods, old and new, and the awakening of ancient powers. Christian missionaries convert the people, whilst druids and bards weave the old magic of the British gods. Capricious Fae eye the land, veiled in the mists of their otherworldly kingdoms. Ancient monsters roam the spreading wilderness, prospering as the grip of humanity fails.
This is your land. Time is running out. Are you one of the heroes that will turn back the tide and save the people? Will you be counted in the battles to come?
Age of Arthur is a complete Roleplaying Game powered by the magic of Fate.
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
9. Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City
Overthrow oppression in Jadepunk! You are the Jianghu – a loose society of likeminded, yet quarrelsome, individuals and organizations. Using powerful Jadetech devices and martial arts techniques, you stand against oppression and injustice. Though you are few, the Council fears you, for you have the most powerful weapon in Kausao City – the hearts and minds of the people. Unite them, and they will fight with you.
Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City is a Fate Core roleplaying game about rebellious wuxia heroes in a fictional steampunk setting. Within its pages you will find:
- An original setting that fuses the themes of Western steampunk and Asian wuxia.
- The “Storytelling System” of creating character aspects that immerses them into the setting.
- A comprehensive Asset system that lets you make any kind of device, martial arts technique, or companion you can imagine.
- New dueling mechanics that use the contest system for fast and furious combat that won’t have the rest of your group sitting idly by.
- Streamlined rules for gamemasters that give them the power to create scenes on the fly with the use of the “Scene Fractal”.
- A new way of creating minor NPCs that takes no prep time. “Faces” give you everything you need to make an unimportant NPC feel alive and memorable.
What are you waiting for? The people call for warriors to champion them against the oppressive forces of the Council of Nine. Take up your Jadetech weapon, prime the engines on your airship, and lead the fight for justice!
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
10. Ehdrigohr
In Ehdrigohr, tribal people in a broken world strive to unify while struggling against the horrors that wait for the night to fall.
Ehdrigohr is a Fate Core based tabletop role-playing game. It is inspired from the mythology and lore of tribal peoples from across the world but has a particular foundation inspired from Lakotah stories and folklore.
In Ehdrigohr you play a character struggling to survive in a recovering world. It is a fantasy game of high heroics, powerful magic, and survival horror. Every night at sunset, overwhelming darkness threatens the people’s safety. The nine tribes must survive the terrible things that walk the land from sundown to sunrise. Magic is everywhere; with it, the people can bend reality to their will, or break it and unleash terrible things from the emptiness called the Twain.
There are multitudes of paths to greatness.
- A warrior, imbued with mystic martial arts who fights on The Line?
- A storyteller who keeps the peoples’ spirits up and empowers their hearts to fight another day.
- A wandering peacekeeper that ferrets out the infiltrators and hatemongers who work to break the nations.
- A reality weaving Way-walker who travels the wild places seeking the breaches where the creatures trapped in the Twain have broken through the pale into the world.
Ehdrigohr takes inspiration from the myths and folklore of tribal and indigenous cultures around the world, with particular inspiration from the Lakota people. In this human-centric world, each of Ehdrigohr’s cultures has its own magical flavor — not “primitive,” but interesting and unique paths to survival against the night’s ravenous hordes. There is high adventure, political intrigue, social play, secret societies, monster bashing, monster fleeing, and more.
Mechanically, Ehdrigohr relies on the Fate Core system to deliver its fun and focus on dramatic storytelling. The mechanics have been tailored to the ideals of the setting, though you can still expand on it with ideas from other FATE-based games out there in the market.
In addition to being a fun game and an interesting world to explore Ehdrigohr is also a game of allegories. It examines our relationships with each other and the powerful force that is depression and how it whittles away at us, sending terrible thoughts that come when we are in dark places, bring us shivers, and cause us to fade. We hope to inspire people to hold strong in the darkness and fight your way through to a new light.
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
11. Spirit of the Century
Spirit of the Century is a complete, stand-alone pulp role-playing game based on the award-winning Fate system (Indie RPG Awards include: Best Free Game of 2003, Best Support, and Andy’s Choice). Spirit features a heavily revised, revisited, and reimagined vision of Fate.
Character creation can be done as quickly as a few minutes, or expand to take up an evening; adventure design is a snap with three methods for creating relevant, flavorful, player-focused stories at a moment’s notice. Spirit’s mission is to deliver an evening of fun, a “pick-up” game that requires little preparation, but provides hours of entertainment.
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
12. FATE Freeport Companion
For over a decade, Freeport has stood as one of fantasy gaming’s most distinctive cities. Home to pirates, foul cults, terrifying monsters, vicious gangs, crime lords, and a whole host of corrupt politicians, Freeport is a dynamic setting, offering a unique blend of high adventure and cosmic horror. Inside these packed covers, you’ll find:
- Rules design by noted Fate authorities Brian Engard (Bulldogs!, Fate Core) and Clark Valentine (Dresden Files RPG, Leverage: The Roleplaying Game, Fate Accelerated).
- A new skill system for Fate that utilizes six base skills: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
- A brand-new magic system that melds classic fantasy RPG flavor with Fate rules.
- An all-new insanity and madness system to evoke the popular Lovecraftian overtones of the City of Adventure.
- Rules for using weapons, armor, magic items, and even firearms!
- Fate stats for Freeport monsters, including the freakish blemmyae and the dreaded burnlings.
- Details on the core races and how they fit in the city, as well as rules for implementing player character race in Fate.
- Statistics for over 75 key characters described in The Pirate’s Guide to Freeport including heroic allies such as Buster Wallace and K’Stallo and terrible villains including Red Alice, Prendag the High Death, and Kothar the Accursed.
- Fury in Freeport: A new adventure to help you launch a brand-new Freeport campaign!
The Fate Freeport Companion is your rules guide to exploring Green Ronin’s Freeport. Whether as a daring hero looking for adventure, or as a Gamemaster seeking new worlds to explore, this sourcebook is an indispensable accessory for fans of both Freeport and the Fate System!
Grab your copy in Print or Digital Format.
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