Fate Part 1. Why Fate?

I will be blogging about different parts of Fate over the next months. I will try to do about one a week (if possible).  Over the next months, I also plan to try to get as many of the fate games as possible. There are a few of them out there now, and I look forward reviewing all of them.

So, I guess the way to start this off is to ask the question, why Fate? Actually, someone else had sent me an email on Google+ asking that question, so it seemed like a great place to start.

My friends and I had been gaming for a while. But the only game we ever seemed to play was Dungeons and Dragons, which was ok for a while. We played 2nd edition, and it has always had a soft spot in my heart, because it was the first game that I ever played and you never truly forget your first, right? But one of the problems with 2nd edition is when we brought new gamers into our group via our book club; it was a very difficult game to explain how to play. Just start with Thac0 and watch their eyes glaze over.

So, over time, I started getting burned out of the game. Tired of just running around killing everything. I had not ever played an “Indie” game before, and we even tried to mix it up a little by playing Vampire: Dark Ages and then later Shadowrun. Which I am not a huge fan of either of those games, especially the later.

Then I joined a group in NYC called www.nerdnyc.com an online community where people meet others that like the same things and you get together and actually do them. Shocking, I know. Now a lot the people on there are D&D fans (which is fine), but it is a very diverse group of people.

So, through them, I found out about a small gaming convention taking place in NYC, and I went. At the con, I stumbled into a game called Spirit of the Century. I had never heard of the game before, and sat down to play it. It was so much different from what I was used too, and it took a bit fore me to get used to the fact that I wasn’t really combat oriented. The use of aspects, instead of your typical attributes was confusing at first. But after playing it for a few minutes, I loved it. It didn’t hurt that SotC is a pulp game, and I love pulp.

So after that, I immediately went online, found their webpage, and learned about other games they had made. Then something crazy happened. I found out they were making a Dresden Files Rpg.  What? At this time, my friends Chris and Amy had already gotten me addicted to Jim Butchers Dresden Files, and I was really excited about this.

The first thing I did was sign up to be one of their play testers and was approved. I cannot even explain how excited I was to hear back from Fred Hicks on this. I created a group on Livejournal so people could talk about the playtest experience and even got my own group to help with it.

At this point, I was hooked on the Fate system. I loved how simple it is for new gamers to actually pick up and play, and there is something awesome about when a player actually gets how the aspects work. You can see the light bulb go off when they truly get it. But the system allows you so much control as a player, which is nice to be able to push the game in the direction you actually want it to go. Not to mention, it is more about role-playing than combat.

The funny part of all this is as much of a fan as I am of the system, I have played SotC four times, and I have yet to play Dfrpg. I am hoping that will change cuz when I start our Dfrpg game up again, someone is going to rotate in, so I can actually play.  I have also recently started reading Diaspora and it is very interesting and very well written.