Category Archives: Fate

Fate is a roleplaying game system that provides a flexible rules frameset that emphasizes story relevance over rigid verisimilitude.

Lieutenant Mike O'neal

Lieutenant Mike O’neal works for the US government. Officially, he’s a former Navy man attached to the Department of the Treasury. In reality, he travels the country investigating crimes the nature of which must not become public knowledge.

Aspects

  • The things I do for my country…
  • Determined
  • Studied under Sifu Wong
  • Flashbacks of unspeakable terror
  • The world may be doomed
  • Money for a rainy day
  • Calm, cool, and collected
  • Brawler

Top Skills

  • Mysteries
  • Fists, Investigation
  • Athletics, Rapport
  • Academics, Alertness, Resources

Stunts

  • Rare Artifact
  • Secrets of the Arcane
  • Focused Sense – Smell
  • Impossible Detail
  • Martial Arts

*edit: Lt. Johnson only has five aspects and three skills listed as he’s a seed character for an upcoming one-off SotC adventure.

*edit: Updated Aspects and Skills to reflect the fill-ins from two sessions of play. O’neal ended up saving the day through the cunning use of a scene declaration and the aid of his Rare Artifact.

Spirit of the Century

Spirit of the Century

The flagship game book for FATE 3.0 by Evil Hat Games, Spirit of the Century is 420 pages of the action, adventure, and damn-the-details Science that we associate with early 20th century pulp writing. Clearly not an endeavor that takes itself too seriously, the authors mold the inherent flexibility of the FATE rule system to suit the over-the-top attitude of the genre.

The character generation system encourages players to treat their creations like the heroes from the works of Edgar Ruce Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and the like. Player characters are assumed to be exceptional, but benefit through the FATE rules by having some exploitable aspects that make the GM’s life easier.

The particulars of the rules set aside the tedious record-keeping that bogs down so many RPGs, with broadly-applicable aspects and skill, built-in mechanisms to allow players to introduce convenient circumstances into the adventure though declarations of facts, and a system of character stunts that allow several of the rules to be bent in specific ways. This is where the underlying FATE system really shines: by focusing the amorphous multi-purpose FATE system into a single genre of death-defying bravado, two-fisted action and mad science, you can hang a very flexible game around a strong skeleton.
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IKFATE and wikis

Manning the trenches

A while ago I installed a copy of Mediawiki for giggles. I wasn’t dead-set on what I wanted to do with it, so I figured I’d put some old Iron Kingdoms web forum content into it. The Privateer Press server has had issues in the past with its search tool, so having a bunch of info at my fingertips on a server that isn’t likely to be bogged down seemed like a reasonably-good idea. Problem: I didn’t populate it in an automated fashion and copying & pasting hundreds of forum posts is tedious. Horribly tedious. I’ll have to muster an army of wikimonkeys to get that task completed, or get an awful lot better at HTTP scripting.

Enter the Spirit of the Century SRD, a website containing the OGL information from Evil Hat Productions’ new RPG. Since it’s open content, I can wrench on it just like the FATE 2.0 rules, but secure in the knowledge that I’m dealing with something that isn’t about to be made horribly outdated by FATE 3.0. What a great chance to kickstart a stalled Iron Kingdoms conversion while brushing up on my wiki-editing skills. I haven’t gotten very far into things just yet, as there is a lot of 1920’s pulp fiction baggage built into the pre-set skills, stunts, and such, which will take some time to properly remove.

So if you’re interested in an Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game that isn’t caught up in the sacred cows and proud nails of the d20 game system, come on down to the Gobbernomicon and chip in a bit. The Resources, Gadgets & Gizmos, and Character Ideas articles are in particularly dire need, though any constructive input is appreciated.

*Edit March 6, 2007: Hey neat, somebody else has been working on an IK conversation of Spirit of the Century, here.