FATE System

An offshot of the Fudge system, FATE is an open source RPG mechanic/generic system. Characters are described with Aspects, Skills and Stunts. Aspects are short descriptions of your character that give you a mechanical bonus when appropriate and can be anything from "Raised by Gypsies" to "Knight" or "You should all listen to me". The player can make Aspects up, to flesh out his character as he likes, without being limited to lists and the like. Skills are used in the traditional way, and the core rules suggest various ways to implement them, from lists to freeform application. Skills are limited to a Pyramid, ie. you must always have at least one more skill of a lower rank than the next up. So skills of ranks 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1 or 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 are ok, but 3, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1 are not. Stunts are narrow and use more powerful applications of skills.

The players use four six-sided dice, which are marked with two + signs, two - signs and two blank sides (basically a d3). When rolling, this produces results between 4 pluses and 4 minuses (ie. from -4 to +4), with a bell curve centered on a 0 (zero) result. The roll is then added to the Skill being used (along with any bonuses from Aspects or Stunts). Because of the average zero result, you know you will perform at your skill's rank most of the time, with decreasing deviations up or down.

The final result is then compared to The Ladder, a universal difficulty chart, which describes results numerically and verbally (for example: Average, Mediocre, Legendary...). Thus, it's easy to gather how well you did on your roll and what your odds are of performing the task at hand.

Editions

FATE is currently in its second edition, although Spirit of the Century already uses an early version of 3rd edition rules. After Evil Hat finishes their latest FATE game (Dresden Files RPG) which will use the 3rd edition rules, they will release a free, open source core manual for the third edition, as with previous editions released.