[RPG]: FATE: Fantastic Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment. Fudge Edition, reviewed by tetsujin28 (4/5)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10206.phtml

tetsujin28's Summary:

Quite simply the best implementation of the Fudge system I've seen. A generic system that never feels \"generic\".

Go to the full review for more information.

Post originally by Fred Hicks at 2004-03-29 12:38:17
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Thanks a bunch for reviewing our game, Tetsujin28. Warms the cockles.

Best,

Fred

Post originally by tetsujin28 at 2004-03-29 12:48:00
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You're welcome! To be honest, I still can't believe that a game this good is still _free_. And I'll definitely buy a print edition when it comes out.

Post originally by Fred Hicks at 2004-03-29 13:22:15
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Some annotations for the article.

WebTroll

WebTroll! How do you not know the wonders of WebTroll? Check out his excellent work regularly over at Gaming Guardians (http://www.gamingguardians.com/).

The cover is composed of a series of commissioned works we had him do for the Fate Amber game I ran that was our proving-ground for "beta" Fate, Born to be Kings (http://www.iago.net/amber/kings). We'd love to get more art from him someday, but I think he stopped doing commissions some time back. Very sad.

A shout out to the Troll, regardless!

Extras

Extras _are_ confusingly worded. We're very sorry for that, and are working on getting that (and many other things) fixed in the new edition.

The gig is this: You buy Extras with skill pts (say, Magic Sword: Keen-edged [], Elf-Forged [][], 3 skill pts).

You can additionally take the item the Extra represents as an Aspect, in order to get some additional oomph out of it, and to make the Extra a crucial part of your character's story.

( That's the summary version of it, put as simply as I can manage while at work. )

Superpowers

We continue to try to figure out a good way to make this work with Fate, but honestly, so much of what we do is fast and loose, and with our general feeling about the Fudge Scale mechanic -- almost necessary in most Fudge implementations of Supers -- being "let's avoid that like the plague", it's pretty tough to nail that part down. So at present, the party line is "Fate isn't the best fit for Supers" (and honestly, Silver Age Sentinels does the job to _my_ satisfaction, at the least).

That said, we do want to take some time to think about building monsters and strange special abilities and so forth in future material for Fate, so we may hit upon something there that lets you put the "monster" back into PCs, and thus, voilla, superpowers. But that's fairly far down the road.

Licensing Nitpick

"NB: With the new acquiring of the Fudge License by Grey Ghost Press, the developers of Fate have decided that a non-Fudge edition is no longer a pressing concern. So we may soon see Fate in a print copy."

We'll probably get the non-Fudge edition out, since it's what we're working with, but we'll be able to more closely couple the system with Fudge support than we had been thinking up to recently.

Also, Grey Ghost Games didn't acquire the Fudge license, per se -- they acquired the full copyright. And they're talking about taking Fudge OGL. It's big news, and it's going to be big for Fate.

Want to discuss any of the above? Join us over on the FateRPG group on Yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FateRPG).

Post originally by tetsujin28 at 2004-03-29 14:30:50
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Thanks for all the cool insights!

Yahoo hates me, for some reason. I have a feeling in some antedeluvian I must have had an account there with some old email address or another.

Post originally by tetsujin28 at 2004-03-29 14:30:58
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Thanks for all the cool insights!

Yahoo hates me, for some reason. I have a feeling in some antedeluvian age I must have had an account there with some old email address or another.

Post originally by tetsujin28 at 2004-03-29 14:33:51
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If you buy extras with skill points, how exactly do they work? If, as in your example, you purchase a sword with Keen Edged [] and Elf-Forged [][], are these aspects, or skills?

Post originally by Tancred at 2004-03-29 17:11:28
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Fred Hicks wrote:
-------------------------------
That said, we do want to take some time to think about building monsters and strange special abilities and so forth in future material for Fate, so we may hit upon something there that lets you put the "monster" back into PCs, and thus, voilla, superpowers. But that's fairly far down the road.

Bugger! That's the only area of Fate I found problematic, since the scale rules from vanilla Fudge don't mesh so well with Fate. I'd love to see a few options for handling this or example monsters laid out in the next edition of Fate.

My only other (small) issue is that in the current edition of Fate combat examples only deal with melee situations, nothing for handling missile weapons. Given that the conflict-resolution nature of the scene or exchange-based combat system is a little different in feel from most RPGs I found this a little tricky to get my head round at first. A few examples tailored to this sphere of combat in the next edition of Fate would really help to clarify things I think.

But these are quibbes: Fate is a really excellent system and the combination of aspects and fate points really make the game stand out IMO.

Nice review BTW tetsujin28!

Adrian.

Post originally by Fred Hicks at 2004-03-29 22:16:56
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As quoted, that's a 3 skill point item. The Extra boxes get treated as lightweight aspects, if it suits the GM. The basic idea is that you check them off to achieve an appropriate advantage or effect -- it's a very loose, very open-to-interpretation mechanic as things stand.

Post originally by A. Asohan at 2004-03-29 23:05:30
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Nice review, but could you explain how the Challenge Ladder works, in a bit more detail?

Asohan