Off the Shelf: FATE

I still love this game, mostly because of the dice. This is also still a better pick-up-and-play narrative package that is far easier to get into than many of today's overly complicated narrative swamp games that end up coming off like 5E with pools and special dice tacked on. I could have to sort through 400-500 pages of a full-sized game with multiple volumes and a few hundred pages of who-cares character options, or play an easy-to-teach single-book narrative powerhouse game like FATE.

I know Accelerated is out there, but I like Core better, even with the streamlining and improvements of the latter. I feel too much was taken out of Accelerated, and I prefer the classic, expansive, full-featured game toolkit over the Lite framework version. I can do more with Core; it slots into any setting quickly, and it gets the job done. Yes, it is an older game, but that doesn't make it any less powerful or flexible.

Accelerated stripped too much out, and I appreciate Core's "game building" toolkit approach. This works, and I don't need the changes in the smaller book. Sure, Accelerated is a tiny book and very easy to hand out to new players, but the OG Core book is my jam and the one I started with. Plus, I like Core's traditional Skills approach over Accelerated's generic (and too easy to cheese) Approaches system.

In Accelerated, I can pick a high "Flashy" and "Flashy" the entire adventure by overusing the Approach. In Core, I am using traditional skills (the book's list or my own list), and "what can be done with what" is far better defined and clearer. New players will "lean on Flashy" in Accelerated far too much, but they will understand the uses for Core's Stealth and Lore skills easily. Defined choices with clear uses are easier for me, and the players I play with, than catch-all approaches.

Core is the book for me.

Accelerated is too simple and vague, to the point of being the harder game to play.

One thing my brother and I did with this game was binge a TV show and play through the episodes with FATE. We didn't need the fully realized, hour-plus character designs of GURPS, the pool-based power frameworks of Cypher, or any other generic system. FATE described any television show character quickly and cleanly, and you could start playing in five minutes.

Best of all, you could turn any "episode situation" into an aspect for the game, such as "Sienfield gets an important package for another apartment," and run with it. Kramer could have a "winning lottery ticket he is always losing," and that plays into the episode, too. The game is a collection of dice rolls, creating aspects, invoking them, managing your fate points, and laughing your way through a situation. We laughed for hours playing this, and it got sillier and sillier as the night went on. This does everything from Seinfeld, Scooby-Doo, Baywatch, Looney Tunes, CHIPs, A-Team, or any other episodic situation  TV show quickly and cleanly, with minimal fuss.

FATE has a wide dramatic range, too, from slapstick silly to gritty and serious. It can get deadly and grim, like The Walking Dead. It can do romantic comedies better than any system I've seen, and it isn't even a "romance game" filled with that typical heartsy AI art you see in many 5E crowdfunding books these days. You could run "Anchorman: The Roleplaying Game" with this system more easily than with any generic system, and the rules work and create chaos on their own. You could even do something as silly as "KISS: The RPG" and simulate your favorite 80s rock band through medieval adventures, doing things no other game could easily manage.

FATE does superheroes, too. Video games. Lara Croft. Ratchet and Clank. Sonic. Mario. Link. Double Dragon or Streets of Rage. TMNT or Thundercats. Transformers or GI JOE. All with minimal fuss and effort. And if you know the characters or have a guide, anything converts easily, and you don't need a huge character guide to convert a character into the system.

Even classic movies are easily played with FATE. The Maltese Falcon. American Graffiti. Star Wars. Jaws. ET. Indiana Jones. The Thing. Star Trek. Blade Runner. Books, too. Dune. LotR. John Carter. Conan. For some of these films and novels, FATE does a better job, faster, and easier than the "official RPG" for the game. For movies and books without a game, FATE does them very well.

While the collector in me would love a "Jaws 5E" game with a few hundred pages of authentic 1970s New England oil-painting art, what am I doing here? Why am I wasting my money? Just to have something I will likely never play? Why do I need a hundred pages of subclass options for sheriffs, marine biologists, and fishermen again? Honestly? I would rather have the New England art book and no dated and little-tested 5E rules that will likely never be used at a table.

Oh, and martial classes in Jaws 5E still suck; play a caster.

In FATE, you write down aspects, which combine character concept, trouble, and history. You pick skills. You pick a few signature stunts. If you know your characters, like a GI JOE character, then this stuff is trivially easy. It is less of a character sheet and more of a description and collection of signature style moves and phrases. Snake Eyes? Silent but Deadly. There we go, no need for an expensive VTT character creation tool or looking up the feat in a 600-page rulebook, or waiting for the inevitable hundred-dollar minimum crowdfunding expansion to get the character you want.

You just have it.

A one-book game.

Four dice.

GURPS forces you to design the power or know the skill and advantage lists. Cypher forces you to search the archetypes. In 5E, you need to read a few hundred pages of subclasses to see if the designers gave you something you can use, or wait like a good consumer for the next book. In FATE? You just say it and write it down. I'm done with this designer hubris junk! I can do better, and FATE gives me the tools if I have an imagination to use them.

Sometimes I am in the mood for that level of depth. If I am digging in and savoring a simulation-heavy, survive-this-system, it is going to be GURPS. But for a one-book toolkit game? Something pick-up-and-play with cool dice?

FATE still has it.