Fate (role-playing game system)

Fate is a generic tabletop role-playing game system created by Leonard Balsera, Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue and published by Evil Hat Productions. Built on the earlier Fudge system, Fate carries no fixed setting or genre; groups can use it to run games of almost any kind by supplying their own world, characters and tone. Rather than a long list of fixed character statistics, Fate defines characters mainly through skills, on the working assumption that a character is average at anything not explicitly listed as a strength, and through Aspects, short freeform phrases a player can invoke for a bonus or that the game master can compel to create a complication. Players also choose Stunts, individual mechanical tricks that bend the normal rules in a character's favor. Actions in play reduce to four broad choices: attacking, defending, overcoming an obstacle, or creating an advantage, resolved with a roll of four Fudge dice. The system has gone through several editions since its 2003 debut, including the 2006 Spirit of the Century version and the 2013 Fate Core edition that remains the current standard reference for the line.