It's Fated

I feel like a good place to start off writing here is to talk about my experience with the Fate Core Kickstarter.  Simply put, it was awesome!

Okay, so I could end there, but you should know WHY it was awesome!  I've been a fan of Fate for a while.  I first played Fudge maybe four or five years ago with friends in an attempt to introduce them to the Rifts world.  It was fun for one game, but didn't really hold anyone's attention.  I liked the simple mechanics, though.  Skip ahead a couple years and the Dresden Files RPG was released by Evil Hat (publishers of Fate Core).  My buddy decided he was going to run it, and here were those funky dice from my long before Fudge game.

DFRPG runs on the preceding version of Fate to Fate Core.  Our game was tons of fun, even if the sudden disappearance of half our party (and the representatives of our in-game Russian mafia) disappeared. I liked the mechanics even better, even if there were some rough spots.  Fate was quickly my Sunday group's favorite system.  Between DFRPG and the upcoming release of Fate Core we've used the also excellent Strands of Fate/Strands of Power system.

But anyways, back to the Kickstarter!  I managed to hear about it within 24 hours of it going live, and being familiar with Evil Hat, jumped right in.  When I signed up, I was in for one book and there were maybe 5 or 6 stretch goals announced.

The game was funded, if I recall, about ten hours after I pledged.  Quickly, the stretch goals representing various settings based on Fate Core mechanics began to be left in the dust.  Even better, the Fate Core book was ready for download right away!  I could get into the system without waiting for publishing and shipping!

And them came some awesome stretch goals like The Deck of Fate (playing cards with Fate dice results doubling as fate points!) and Fate Accelerated (a stripped down version of the game designed for newbies!).  In that time period , the settings books began to be available, too.  I can tell you right now that I've read Kreigszepplin Valkyrie and Camelot Trigger cover to cover and I'm in love with those settings.  But even better was when all the settings became print books, which I was promptly able to buy in for.  Ditto a Fate Core toolkit book and Fate Accelerated got their own books.

In the end, I pledged $80 and paid an extra $20 for separate shipping and am pulling in 4 physical books, those same four books in PDF/ePub/mobi, a font, pdfs of at least 2 other upcoming Evil Hat books, sounds files and videos of Fred Hicks of Evil hats doing funny things, and pdfs and utilities pledged by other backers of Fate Core, which looks to be adding another half-dozen pdfs to my haul. Not te mention that further Fate projects have been funded because of this single Kickstarter.  All that while watching a rocketing ascent to over $433,000 of a stated $3,000 goal!  The folks over at Evil Hat seemed so genuinely excited and proud of their Kickstarter that it's hard not to be thrilled.  (And why would I not be?)  Truly, Fate Core's Kickstarter set an amazing standard for RPG Kickstarters to aspire to!