FATE: House Rules

The Game System

We use the Fate Condensed rules, developed by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. The rules are free to use and available at https://fate-srd.com/fate-condensed. The focus of this game world and all the campaigns here are on cooperative storytelling over the traditional RPG elements.

Player Options

As we use Fate Condensed here there are very few restrictions on what you can play. In order to be successful you should choose something with as many of the following characteristics as possible.

1. Interested in investigating the supernatural. Most of the scenarios will be focused on learning the secrets of The Nether.
2. Cooperative and teamwork oriented. Lone wolf characters are interesting, but generally perform poorly in adventuring groups.
3. Useful expertise, make sure you can contribute to the group.
4. Ability to interact with the Sleepers. Most of the world is asleep and you will spend most of your time among them. A mischievous Imp might seem like a fun character, but you will likely be excluded from a large portion of the session because you can't show yourself in public.
5. Useful troubles to help drive your personal story. The best kinds of troubles allow your fellow players to assist you with them.

Character Creation

We use the standard character creation rules from Fate Core. We are currently developing the world and the lore so at least for the moment, anything goes.
We have an altered Skills List.
In addition to the Fate SRD, we recommend you use https://fari.games/en/resources/fari-rpgs/fate-stunts to assist you in defining and building your stunts.
We have decided to use the basics of the magic system in High Fantasy Magic, outlined here Magic.

Optional Rules

Scale

Due to the inclusion of Super technologies and supernatural forces we are using the rules for Scale

Weapon & Armor Ratings

We use rules for FATE: Resources & Equipment these are based off of Weapons and Armor Ratings.

House Rules

Critical Success and Failure

Any roll where all the dice are positive or negative is always a success or a failure regardless of the total.
Critical Successes count as succeeding with style.
Critical Failures cannot be rerolled with Fate Points and may be overcome only by accepting a consequence.

Fickle Fate

On our world luck is almost tangible and Fate seeks a cosmic balance. We have altered the rules for Fate Points. All players start with their normal refresh in Fate (plus any extra from previous sessions). But the GM starts with none. Each time a player uses one of their Fate it flips over to the Bad Luck/Dark Fate side. Which the GM may then use against the player which flips it back again and so on as the cycle repeats. The GM still has unlimited Fate for compels and awards.

Hit Points

Stress boxes are not assigned a value, instead each character counts the total number of stress they have and treats that total as a hit points. This has the effect of letting a character take a larger number of small hits, without reducing the deadliness of large attacks.

Joker's Wild

Draw playing cards for initiative. Highest card goes first or holds an action. Ties go simultaneously.
Joker's are special may go whenever they like, even interrupting another character. They also gain a +2 to all rolls for this round. In addition all the players gain a fate point and the cards are reshuffled before the next round.
A player may spend a Fate to draw a new card at the beginning of any turn.

Maximum Effort!

Inflict consequences on yourself to gain a bonus to the roll equal to the consequence taken.

Creativity Rewards

Players can earn additional Fate points by contributing to world building as below:

• One Fate for creating a journal entry related to this world.
• One Fate for creating a new location or NPC related to the current story.
• One Fate for adding a goal or troubling situation for The Crew to handle.
• Two Fate for completing a World Anvil writing prompt.