Fate Condensed Changelog 2020.02.21

page 12:



Second bullet

Original:

If you’re inclined towards a unified track, add a couple more boxes to make up for it.

New:

If you’re inclined towards a unified track, add three more boxes to make up for it, and use the higher of Physique or Will to lengthen it as indicated.

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Appended the following to the end of the third bullet, mainly to highlight the numerics of the different methods. Condensed's method offers more consistent stress absorption than Core's does, but veteran Fate players may miss the higher effective totals, which is the intent of offering this option.

Added:

(With the older style, a [1][2] track absorbs 2 to 3 stress, [1][2][3] = 3 to 6, [1][2][3][4] = 4 to 10.)

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Page 15:

Original -

When you invoke an aspect, you can either gain a +2 bonus to your roll or reroll all four dice. You can invoke multiple aspects on the same roll, each adding +2 or rerolling, but you cannot invoke the same aspect multiple times on the same roll.

New -

Each time you invoke an aspect, you can either gain a +2 bonus to your roll or reroll all four dice, or you can add 2 to the difficulty of someone else’s roll, if justifiable. You can invoke multiple aspects on the same roll, but you can’t invoke the same aspect multiple times on the same roll.

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For space concerns, "Ethan is not an adept" now uses "isn't" but the example starter is otherwise unchanged.

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Page 21:

Original -

Because it’s a reaction, you’re almost always facing an opposing roll rather than a static difficulty. Your enemy makes their roll, and you immediately roll to defend against it, so long as you are the target or can justify your ability to oppose it. Some aspects may provide justification.

New -

Because it’s a reaction, you’re often facing an opposing roll rather than a set difficulty. Your enemy rolls, and you immediately roll to defend, as long as you’re the target or can justify your opposition (which often makes you the target). Aspects or stunts may provide justification.

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Page 28:

The original version of this paragraph made it appear as though challenges, contests, and conflicts are each whole-scene types, rather than tools that can be used inside of a scene. A lightweight rewrite is done here to make it a bit more clear.

Original -

Many times, you will be able to resolve an action with a single roll of the dice—do you crack the safe, avoid security, or convince the reporter to give you their notes? Other times you’ll face extended engagements that take many rolls to resolve. These are called scenes, which have three types: challenges, contests, and conflicts. Each does things a little differently, depending on the goal of the engagement and the opposition involved.

New -

Many times during a scene, you will be able to resolve an action with a single roll of the dice—do you crack the safe, avoid security, or convince the reporter to give you their notes? Other times you’ll face extended engagements that take many rolls to resolve. For those cases, we offer three resolution tools: challenges, contests, and conflicts. Each does things a little differently, depending on the goal of the engagement and the opposition involved.

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Page 32:

Deleting unnecessary intro sentence "Characters can help each other out on actions." (The header is Teamwork; the nature of teamwork is implicit.)

Original -

There are two ways to help in Fate—combining the same skill from multiple characters together for a bonus on a single roll, and stacking free invokes by creating advantages to set up a team member for success.

New -

There are three ways to help in Fate—combine the same skill from multiple characters for a bonus on a single roll, stack free invokes by creating advantages to set up a team member for success, and invoke aspects on an ally’s behalf.

Original -

Creating an advantage, meanwhile, allows a character with any relevant skill to use their action to convey a free invoke to an ally making a subsequent roll.

New -

Otherwise, if it’s clear you can help, you can create an advantage on your turn and pass the free invokes to an ally for their later use. Outside of your turn, you may invoke an aspect to add a bonus to someone else’s roll.

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Page 52:

Added a new section talking about options for handling multiple targets: shift splitting, whole-zone attacks, and targeting the scene.

Ways to Handle Multiple Targets

Inevitably, someone at your table will want to affect multiple targets at once. If it’s allowed, here are some methods you can use.

If you wish to be selective about your targets, you may split shifts. Roll your skill, and if the resulting total is positive, you can split that total up however you like among the targets, who each get to defend against the shifts you assigned to them. You must assign at least one shift to a target, or you didn’t target them at all.

Example: Sophie faces a trio of goons and wants to strike at all three in a flurry of thrusts with her rapier. Thanks to an invoke and a good roll, her Fight roll comes in at Epic (+7). She assigns a Good (+3) attack to the one that looks the most veteran, and Fair (+2) to each of the other two, for a total of seven shifts. They each then roll to defend.

In some special circumstances, as with an explosion or similar, you may make a zone attack against everyone in one zone, friend and foe alike. Here, you don’t split shifts; every target must defend against your total roll. The circumstances and method must be right for doing this; often the GM will require you to invoke an aspect or use a stunt to gain permission.

If you wish to create an advantage affecting a whole zone or group, target the scene instead: place a single aspect on the zone or the scene itself rather than placing separate aspects on each of the targets. This has the added advantage of reducing overall book-keeping. If someone insists on creating a separate aspect on each target, they should be constrained to the shift splitting method.

With any of these methods, all of the targets should occupy the same zone. The GM may allow the occasional exception due to method and circumstance.

Only one action type should be used—such as attacking several targets in one blow, solving two problems at once with overcome, or swaying the minds of a few key NPCs with create an advantage. A GM might allow two different action types under special circumstances, but those actions should make sense for the skill used by both.

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Page 54:

New section talking about versions of Fate, because people keep wanting it to be a this-or-that thing instead of recognizing it's all Fate Core. :)

What Version Is This?

Since late 2012, there has been only one version of Fate from Evil Hat: Fate Core System, the fourth edition of the system.

Ah, but what about Fate Accelerated, the perspicacious Fate afficionado might ask? Thing is, that’s Fate Core too—it’s the same system, just with different dial settings (i.e., configuration options/flavors) for stress tracks, the skill list, stunts, and NPC design. Any apparent differences in the core functions of the system are due to accidents of parallel development and can be considered unintentional—with apologies to the rules lawyers out there! If a conflict between the designs exists, Fate Core System is the authority.

These two perspectives on Fate Core come together here, in Fate Condensed—very literally, in fact. Condensed began as the Accelerated text, minus all of the Accelerated dial settings, replaced by Core’s. From that starting-point we applied eight years of community-play experience to refine and clarify. That effort produced some minor differences as noted on page 3, but whether you choose to play with them or without, the system is still Fate Core at the end of the day. We feel Condensed is an improvement for sure, but there are no edition wars to be had here (and please don’t try to start one). It’s all Fate Core.

What Came Before

Fate started as a hack of the Fudge system circa 2000, a culmination of a few fevered conversations Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue had about what they might do to run another Amber game. The versions that arose between then and 2005 were free, digital, and released to the Fudge community online to a surprisingly enthusiastic reception. These spanned from “Fate Zero” up to Fate 2.0.

Then, Jim Butcher offered them a chance to create an RPG based on the Dresden Files, triggering the establishment of Evil Hat as a company and a new take on the Fate system, first seen in Spirit of the Century (2006) and eventually The Dresden Files RPG (2010). The version of Fate found in both those (and thanks to open licensing, a number of others) was Fate 3.0.

The effort to extract the system (by Leonard Balsera and Ryan Macklin) to present it on its own led to many improvements, and that gave us Fate Core.

Licensing

In one form or another, Fate has always been open-licensable. You can find details about licensing Fate for your projects at http://www.faterpg.com/licensing

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"Other Kinds of Aspects" has been moved out of the optional rules chapter at page 49 and placed at the end of the Aspects chapter itself on page 27. This has also made room to add zone aspects to the list given.

Moved: Other Kinds of Aspects from page 49 to page 27.

Added:

Zone aspects: You can attach situation aspects to a particular place on the map represented by a zone (page XX). This can add extra dynamism to your group’s interactions with the map. A GM can encourage this by making an “up for grabs” free invoke available on a zone aspect at the start of the scene, drawing characters (player and non-player alike) to leverage that aspect as part of their early strategy.

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Connective tissue for the above:

Zone aspects already existed on page 30, but more briefly than the description given above, so "As mentioned on page XX, " has been appended to the start of the Zone Aspects paragraph on page 30.

Page 23's first sentence now starts:

There’s an endless variety of aspects (see page XX for others),

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Page 49 -

Added in Time Shifts section, filling the space vacated by Other Kinds of Aspects.

Added:

Time Shifts

When determining how long it takes characters to do something, you may want to use a more systematic approach to decide the impacts of success, failure, and “at a cost” options. How much longer or faster? Let the shifts decide, using these guidelines.

First, decide how long the task takes with a simple success. Use an approximate quantity plus a unit of time: “a few days,” “half a minute,” “several weeks,” and so on. Approximate quantities for use include: half, about one, a few, or several of a given unit of time.

Then look at how many shifts the roll exceeds or misses the target by. Each shift is worth one quantity-step from wherever your starting point is.

So if your starting point is “a few hours,” then one shift faster jumps the quantity down to “about one hour,” two shifts down to “half an hour.” Going faster than “half” drops the unit down to the next smaller (hours to minutes, etc) and quantity up to “several”, so three shifts faster would be “several minutes.”

In the case of slower, it’s the same process in the opposite direction: one shift slower is “several hours,” two is “half a day”, three is “about one day”.

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A blank page has been added between page 54 and the character sheet, bringing the total page count to a print-friendly multiple of 8. We'll use this blank page for an index or quick reference once we're confident we're done revising. Want to weigh in on index vs. rules summary? Respond here before the end of February 2020: https://forms.gle/S3hM8HQrrGuWXsbJ6

Also added some art (from various prior works) to fill the occasional bit of white space.