Fate Accelerated Edition: Five Reasons to Buy

I’ve passed on picking up the Fate tabletop role-playing system because it seemed so damn complicated. Their genre-specific supplements had solid and clever core mechanics, but everything else was exception based. Constant page flipping and the tracking of special one-off rules seemed antithetical to its extremely narrative, brainstorm rewarding base. It wasn’t until I picked up the Fate Accelerated Edition that I really gave Fate the look it deserved. Turns out it’s exactly what I want: those narrative mechanics wrapped up in a slick and easy to learn package. You should purchase, download, and read FAE as soon as possible, and here’s five reasons why:

1. The fate point feedback loop. Don’t let the page count fool you, Fate Accelerated Edition’s streamlined gameplay still provides the fate-point-feedback-loop that’s the bread and butter of Fate systems. Characters, objects, scenes, and situations have “aspects” which are words or phrases that describe them. (For example, your character might have the “uncontrollable barbarian rage” aspect, and after you topple a candelabra into some curtains the room you’re in might gain the “on fire” aspect.)  Players spend fate points to invoke the aspects around them to help their characters accomplish goals and they will earn fate points back by using the aspects to introduce twist and complications in the story. It’s a swinging pendulum that promises players will dream up their own complications and have the resources necessary to be badass enough to get out of trouble. This “adjectives as mechanics” approach brings fluffy narrative and crunchy die rolling closer together than ever.

2. Skills as approaches. While you will most likely be swinging from ropes, piloting star ships, and swinging greatswords in your FAE games, there is no skill list. Instead, you have a list of six “approaches” rated from +0 to +7: careful, clever, flashy, forceful, quick, and sneaky. When it’s dramatically appropriate to roll some dice, you roll 4 fate dice and add your character’s bonus from the most appropriate approach determined by how you narrated your action. The genius of this blew my mind the first time I read it.

3. Adaptability without being bland. A lot of genre-less games feel vanilla, providing a basic toolbox that rarely goes beyond shooting guns, swinging swords, and perhaps having a supernatural power or two. However, “adjectives as mechanics” swoops in again to be a brilliant solution to the usual blandness. You could play a gritty noir crime drama, a high flying sky pirate game, or even a fantasy dungeon crawler because FAE’s aspects and approaches allow the humans at the table to clearly communicate and reinforce their own expectations. Hicks describes Fate as a “fiction simulator”, one powered by the players, which couldn’t be more accurate.

4. Universal conflict resolution. Mouse Guard proved to me that universal conflict resolution systems are amazing. While I’m a huge fan of hit points and attack bonuses, I can’t help but appreciate the utility and consistency of systems that handle conflicts abstractly. FAE lays out all actions into four categories that interact together, and all negative consequences are treated like new negative aspects. This allows you to use the same set of rules to resolve both a starship dogfight and a debate between nobles. And, of course, everything ties back into invoking aspects, using die rolls creating new aspects on the fly, and fun narration to bring in your character’s most advantageous approach bonus.

5. You pay what you want. No, seriously, you pay what you want. Fred Hicks must be trying to pay off some sort of past life indiscretion because he’s made both the Accelerated Edition and the Core game available in PDF for whatever you want to pay. That includes zero dollars, the links for the PDFs are right there for you to use, but don’t be a dick. Toss Hicks the dollars he deserves and go get it!