FATE, Fantastic Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment, is a generic role-playing game. Fate is currently based on the FUDGE gaming system. It has no fixed setting, traits, or genre and is almost entirely customizable. However, it is designed to offer the least possible obstruction to role-playing by assuming that players do not want to make large amounts of dice rolls.

Fate was written by Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue. In the 2003 Indie RPG Awards, it received third place for Best Indie RPG and first place for Best Free Game of the Year. Fate gained a large number of adherents both for its high level of support, which is unusual for a free game, and for the numerous innovative gaming mechanics.

While Fate using FUDGE's verbal scale and four three-sided dice, it breaks from practically every other role-playing game by doing away with mandatory traits such as Strength and Intelligence, and substantially reworking the "experience point" mechanic. It instead assumes that every character is "average" and allows exceptionalism to be defined through an Aspect system. A player may choose, for example, to choose to take an Aspect in Brawny (or Muscle Man or Wiry Strength) and choose to spend Aspects to gain a temporary bonus in a relevant situation. Aspects may also be taken in possessions, e.g. the character Indiana Jones might have the Aspect "Whip and Fedora". The fact that Aspects can be anything integral to the character allows for a degree of melding of mechanics and role-playing difficult in most other gaming systems.

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 recently. Fate has an associated Yahoo! Group to discuss the gaming system and share settings and conversions of other role-playing games.

External Links

The FATE Role-Playing Game (http://www.faterpg.com/)