Fate (role-playing game system)
Fate is a generic role-playing game system based on the Fudge gaming system. It has no fixed setting, traits, or genre and is customizable. It is designed to offer minimal obstruction to role-playing by assuming players want to make fewer dice rolls.
Designers
2003 (1.0-2.0), 2006 (3.0/Spirit of the Century), 2013 (4.0)
Tabletop role-playing game, Universal setting
Fate was written by Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue; the 1st edition was published in early 2003,[1] and the latest version (4th edition) was published successfully through crowd sourcing Kickstarter in 2013.
Publication history and versions[edit]
FATE versus Fate (naming conventions)[edit]
When the system was originally published FATE was considered an acronym for "Fudge Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment", then for 2nd edition, "Fantastic Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment". Most recently FATE has been simplified to just be Fate and is no longer an acronym.[4]
Fate OGL resources[edit]
While there has been concern that Fudge would restrict its "open" license and thus force Fate to change to a different underlying mechanic, such fears have subsided once Fudge itself was released under the Open Gaming License. Fate has an associated Yahoo! Group to discuss the gaming system and share settings and conversions of other role-playing games.
Fate 3rd Edition[edit]
The 3rd edition of Fate was no longer a generic RPG like the first two versions, but set in the pulp genre. It is called Spirit of the Century and was nominated in 2007 for an ENnie award for Best Rules.[5] The 3rd edition rules also are used for the Dresden Files role-playing game.[6] The System Reference Documents for Spirit of the Century[7] and Diaspora[8] are also currently available. Several other role-playing games are built on the game mechanics of Fate 3.0.
Fate Core (4th edition) and Fate Accelerated Edition (FAE)[edit]
A new (4th) edition called Fate Core (again a generic version) was published in 2013, funded by a successful crowdfunding campaign, and released under two free content licenses: CC BY 3.0 and the Open gaming license. To release the new version of Fate, Evil Hat Productions ran a Kickstarter campaign that initially asked for $3,000. At the end of the campaign they raised $433,365 and expanded the product line significantly, adding two world books and a system toolkit.[9]
As a result of another crowd funding effort, Evil Hat Productions released Fate Accelerated, a streamlined version of the rules based on the same core mechanic intended to get players into the game faster. One notable difference is that skills are replaced with six "approaches" to solving problems - Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, and Sneaky. The approaches can each use all four skill actions. Evil Hat also released Fate Condensed, a condensed version of Fate Core with minor rule changes.
This list includes implementations of the Fate system as well as RPGs explicitly inspired by it.[10]
In the 2003 Indie RPG Awards, Fate won a number of awards:[13]
The Fate roleplaying game has resulted in winning the following ENNIES awards: