Fate Cheat Sheet - Evil Hat Productions (Page 3 of 4) in pdf

VETERANS’ GUIDE

This is a new version of Fate, which we developed to update and streamline the

system. Here’s a guide to the major changes to the system from previous versions like

Spirit of the Century and The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game.

Game and Character Creation

• Game creation is a variant of Dresden’s city creation, but very pared down. At

minimum, you only make two aspects called issues to define your game, with the

option to drill down if you want to add aspects to faces and locations.

• There are fewer aspects in this edition than other Fate games. We cut down the

number of phases to three—a significant adventure, and two guest appearances.

We found that it’s easier to come up with five good aspects than seven or ten.

And because there are game aspects and you can make situation aspects, you

shouldn’t be short of things to invoke or compel!

• If your game is going to use a lot of extras, or you have specific elements in your

game that you want every character to describe with aspects (such as species

or nationality), you can raise the number of aspect slots. We don’t recommend

going higher than seven character aspects—after that, we’ve noticed that many

of them don’t tend to pull their weight in play.

• If you’ve played The Dresden Files RPG, you know that we use skill columns for

that instead of the pyramid. In this build of Fate, we wanted character creation

to be as quick and accessible as possible, so we went with a Great (+4) pyramid

as standard. If you want to use the columns, go ahead—you get 20 skill points.

The skill column didn’t completely go away. It’s just reserved for advancement

(p. 258).

• 3 refresh, and 3 free stunts. Stress boxes work exactly like The Dresden Files RPG.

Aspects

• In other Fate games, free invocations were called “tagging.” We thought this was

one bit of jargon too many. You can still call it that if you want—whatever helps

you and your table understand the rule.

• You might have seen player-driven compels referred to as “invoking for effect.”

We thought it was clearer to just call it a compel, no matter who initiates it.

• Free invocations now stack with a regular one or stack together with other free

invocations on the same aspect. Further, an aspect can hold more than one free

invoke at a time.

• Invoking an aspect attached to another character gives them a fate point at the

end of the scene.

• Compels are subdivided into two specific types: decisions and events. This isn’t

a change in how compels work, so much as a clarification, but it’s worth noting.

• Scene aspects have been renamed to situation aspects, to clear up some confusion

over how flexibly they can be applied.

Fate Cheat Sheet - Evil Hat Productions Page 3