All Fate

I haven't written much lately. Honestly, it's because life has been a little shitty. I actually do plan on writing a blog on it, but not quite yet. Instead, I'm going to dodge the issue and talk about Fate.

For those of you not in the know, Fate is a role-playing game that has been around for many years. It recently made a big splash on the RPG scene with the release of Fate Core, the game's latest iteration. Not only did Core streamline, re-organize, and otherwise sex up the system, it also released genre-neutral, or "generic" as we call it. That means anything you can dream of...the wild west, vampire romances, space operas...can be done with Fate Core. Not only that, the Fate Core .pdf file was released as "Pay What You Want," meaning you could download the file for free if you wanted, read it, and pay a few bucks later, if so inclined.

In my blog entry "One Game to Rule Them All," I listed several criteria for which "my perfect RPG" would have. Fate Core has all of them, except one: my concern about the game's learning curve. Since then, I've discovered several iterations for Fate that could provide on-ramps to the system proper. For my RPG newbies, I've got Fate Accelerated, which strips and distills Fate Core to a lean, mean, 50-page storytelling game machine. For my veterans, I've got Strands of Fate, a more tactical implementation that feels much more like a traditional RPG than it's parent system. In addition to that, I have brilliant licensed games like The Dresden Files, and genre-specific implementations like Nova Praxis, Legends of Anglerre, or Bulldogs. All of these books are excellent, in print, and very easy to find and discuss.

So that's it, then. Fate is my one RPG to rule them all.

Does that mean I'll stop playing other RPGs? Of course not. But it does mean that my neutral, my true-north in RPGs, is Fate. Does this mean I think Fate is the perfect RPG for everyone? Not at all. But for my playstyle, the kind of things I like to do with an RPG, Fate is the closest possible thing.

So, if you sit down to an Eddie Gibbs-fueled role-playing game, be ready for Fate! Also, zombies.