The FATE of Quiet

FATE of Cthulhu added two elements to Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying—time travel and foreknowledge. Published by Evil Hat Games, the 2020 horror roleplaying game was built around campaign frameworks that cast the Player Characters as survivors in a post-apocalyptic future thirty years into the future, the apocalypse itself involving various aspects and entities of the Mythos. Not only as survivors though, because having entered into a pact with the Old One, Yog-Sothoth, they have unlocked the secret of time travel and come back to the present. They have come back aware of the steps along the way which brought about the apocalypse and they come back ready to fight it. This though is not a fight against the Cthulhu Mythos in general, but rather a single Old One and its cultists, and each thwarting of an Old One is a self-contained campaign in its own right, in which no other element of the Mythos appears.

The five campaigns, or timelines, presented in FATE of Cthulhu in turn have the Investigators facing Cthulhu, Dagon, Shub-Nigggurath, Nyarlathotep, and the King in Yellow. Each consists of five events, the last of which is always the rise of the Old One itself. The events represent the roadmap to that last apocalyptic confrontation, and can each be further broken down into four event catalysts which can be people, places, foes, and things. The significance of these events are represented by a die face, that is either a bank, a ‘–’, or a ‘+’. These start out with two blanks and two ‘–’, the aim of the players and their investigators being to try to prevent their being too many, if any ‘–’ symbols in play and ideally to flip them from ‘–’ to blank and from blank to ‘+’. Ultimately the more ‘+’ there are, the more positive the ripple will be back down the timeline and the more of a chance the investigators have to defeat or prevent the rise of the Old One. Conversely, too many ‘–’ and the known timeline will play out as follows and the less likely the chance the investigators have in stopping the Old One.

Each of the five timelines comes with details of what a time traveller from 2050 would know about it, more detail for the Game Master with a breakdown of the events and their Aspects, Stunts, Mythos creatures, and NPCs. Most of these can serve as useful inspiration for the Game Master as well as the advice given on running FATE of Cthulhu and her creating her own timelines. After all, there are numerous Mythos entities presenting the prospective Game Master ready to create her own timeline with a variety of different aspects, purviews, and even degrees of power, but nevertheless capable of bringing about an apocalypse. However, Evil Hat Games has already begun to do that with its own series of timelines, each again dealing with a different Mythos entity and a different downfall for mankind. The first of these is The Rise of Yig, followed by The Rise of the Basilisk, which although it retained a sense of Cosmic Horror, it definitely moved away from the Cthulhu Mythos. A trend which is continued with the third of the ‘Darkest Timeline’ supplements.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of the Quiet is even more different than The Rise of the Basilisk. Where The Rise of the Basilisk had some links to the Cthulhu Mythos, The Rise of The Quiet has none, but both share strong Science Fiction elements and the theme of infection via technology. In The Rise of the Basilisk this was memetic in nature, but in The Rise of The Quiet it involves nanotechnology. The time frame for The Rise of The Quiet is shorter, starting in 2032 and leaping back to 2020 for what is a very contemporary-set mini-campaign rather than other the more fulsome campaigns in the ‘Darkest Timeline’ line.

The future of The Rise of The Quiet is one of technological advances and continuing climate change, radical distrust of the news, clashes over limited resources, and expanded space exploration—and then The Quiet. People began reporting incidences of lost time, others seeing the sufferers standing or sitting completely still, as if deep in thought. Then they began to walk whilst in these states, safely moving first to the middle of crowds and then coming together in groups. First in their Quiet state, then socialising out of the Quiet state, no matter their origins or social status. At first mistrusted, the Quiet are then filmed running into burning buildings, strangers into their homes, and soldiers in conflict zones refusing to kill the enemy. In each case willingly offering compassion rather than conflict. The Quiet come to be seen as better examples of humanity, and perhaps a source of hope for its future. Then in late 2030 everyone begins dying from a disease which kills within twenty-four hours and whose cause cannot be determined… That is except for The Quiet. Just what is The Quiet and why is protecting the sufferers from this new disease?

What happened has its origins in 2020 when the Chinese military stole samples of newly developed nanotechnology, and then developed and weaponised them. That newly developed nanotechnology was what became known as The Quiet, which altered its sufferers’ cortexes and infected them with a sense of altruism. Not everyone could survive the infection though… China was not responsible for The Quiet, but it did have a counter—The Loud. This nanotechnology not only helped those infected withstand the effects of The Quiet, but instead of altering their cortex, caused them to undergo physical transformation, including unbreakable nanobot-infused bones, enhanced senses, transforming their skin into a non-Newtonian fluid surface capable of withstanding bullets, and enhancing their ability to micro-mirror nearby humans, evoking feelings of deep friendship and trust in bystanders. However, it is theorised that extended use of the abilities granted by ‘The Loud’ may turn the infected into an unstoppable killing machine.

In addition, time travel has been invented, but only back to one moment in early 2020. The Player Characters will be infected with The Loud, go back in time and if not stop the spread of The Quiet, then at least slow its spread whilst also ensuring that the knowledge necessary to combat it is retained for the future they come from. In other of the Darkest Timelines for FATE of Cthulhu, the Player Characters are being sent back in time to investigate certain events, typically four of them, which lead to the emergence of an Old One. The Rise of The Quiet forgoes that instead, being built around four ‘Swing Points’, nexus points that the Player Characters have the opportunity to alter and send ripples of causality forward into their future. The emphasis is on the alteration of these four ‘Swing Points’ rather than the stopping of them, and what this means is that the outcomes are likely to be conditional rather than absolute—there is no one happy outcome. The Player Characters are almost working towards a median outcome rather than a wholly positive one. They are at best stemming off the effects of The Quiet rather than locating a definitive cure.

As with events in other Darkest Timelines, the four Swing Points in The Rise of The Quiet are described in some detail and come complete with a number of NPCs which are given full write-ups. In turn the Swing Events focus on the origins of The Quiet nano-infection, which involves TED Talk giving techno-guru; the initial exposure of The Quiet, which takes place at an international airport in a spy free-for-all smackdown; a self-help group (or cult, it depends on who you are talking to) which tapped into the possibilities of The Quiet; and finding those believed to be immune to The Quiet, which sees the Player Characters going on the road in the wake of a terrible rock tour. There is a lot going on in each of these, much of which of course, will only become apparent as the Player Characters investigate.

Physically, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of The Quiet is cleanly presented. It is easy to read and the layout is tidy, though it needs an edit in places. The artwork is good also. The Rise of The Quiet does feel as if it is a story treatment, but that is no surprise given who its author is, John Rogers, the creator of the Leverage and The Librarians televisions series.

One issue that the publisher does address is that the fact that Darkest Timeline: The Rise of The Quiet involves both a pandemic and China, but notes that the timeline was written before the Corona virus outbreak and that it is not intended as a commentary upon the current situation in which society finds itself. Whilst China has a role to play in Darkest Timeline: The Rise of The Quiet it is not as the one to blame in the timeline and although the Player Characters are likely to encounter, if not confront, Chinese agents, as part of their efforts to save the future, China’s role in the situation is more nuanced than as simply the bad guy.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of The Quiet substitutes the usual Old One in FATE of Cthulhu with a nanobot swarm which has infected mankind with a techno-virus. This has several consequences. The timeline involves multiple, all-too human enemies rather than a single alien entity beyond human comprehension and its attendant cultists, each with its own agenda. There is no eldritch and thus no spells involved, or indeed, the corruptive influence of the Mythos. Instead, the Player Characters are corrupted by the influence of The Loud and the alterations it will make to their bodies. All of this difference and there is one thing which Darkest Timeline: The Rise of The Quiet does not address what exactly the roles the Player Characters should take instead those traditional to more standard roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of The Quiet is a horror scenario, not a Mythos one, but still a horror scenario nonetheless. It presents as equally an existential threat, but leans heavily into the Science Fiction of the FATE of Cthulhu set-up with the addition of relatively low-level superpowers. In essence it combines elements of Twelve Monkeys with The Terminator, but with the Player Characters as the Terminators. This is played out against a framework which is shorter, more focused, and has a contemporary setting. Again, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of The Quiet showcases how FATE of Cthulhu is capable of doing existential horror without the Mythos and how far its can push its Science Fiction.

The FATE of Basilisk

FATE of Cthulhu added two elements to Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying—time travel and foreknowledge. Published by Evil Hat Games, the 2020 horror roleplaying game was built around campaign frameworks that cast the Player Characters as survivors in a post-apocalyptic future thirty years into the future, the apocalypse itself involving various aspects and entities of the Mythos. Not only as survivors though, because having entered into a pact with the Old One, Yog-Sothoth, they have unlocked the secret of time travel and come back to the present. They have come back aware of the steps along the way which brought about the apocalypse and they come back ready to fight it. This though is not a fight against the Cthulhu Mythos in general, but rather a single Old One and its cultists, and each thwarting of an Old One is a self-contained campaign in its own right, in which no other element of the Mythos appears.

The five campaigns, or timelines, presented in FATE of Cthulhu in turn have the Investigators facing Cthulhu, Dagon, Shub-Nigggurath, Nyarlathotep, and the King in Yellow. Each consists of  five events, the last of which is always the rise of the Old One itself. The events represent the roadmap to that last apocalyptic confrontation, and can each be further broken down into four event catalysts which can be people, places, foes, and things. The significance of these events are represented by a die face, that is either a bank, a ‘–’, or a ‘+’. These start out with two blanks and two ‘–’, the aim of the players and their investigators being to try to prevent their being too many, if any ‘–’ symbols in play and ideally to flip them from ‘–’ to blank and from blank to ‘+’. Ultimately the more ‘+’ there are, the more positive the ripple will be back down the timeline and the more of a chance the investigators have to defeat or prevent the rise of the Old One. Conversely, too many ‘–’ and the known timeline will play out as follows and the less likely the chance the investigators have in stopping the Old One.

Each of the five timelines comes with details of what a time traveller from 2050 would know about it, more detail for the Game Master with a breakdown of the events and their Aspects, Stunts, Mythos creatures, and NPCs. Most of these can serve as useful inspiration for the Game Master as well as the advice given on running FATE of Cthulhu and her creating her own timelines. After all, there are numerous Mythos entities presenting the prospective Game Master ready to create her own timeline with a variety of different aspects, purviews, and even degrees of power, but nevertheless capable of bringing about an apocalypse. However, Evil Hat Games has already begun to do that with its own series of timelines, each again dealing with a different Mythos entity and a different downfall for mankind. The first of these is The Rise of Yig.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is different. Really different. To begin with, this second of the new timelines would appear to be barely connected to the Mythos at all—but it is, if that is, the Player Characters go digging deep enough into the world-side infosphere that Basilisk has planned for the whole of humanity. If not the universe. In Mythos terms, its closest parallels is with Hastur and the Yellow Sign, a memetic infection of occult nature which encourages artistic endeavour, but in Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk, that memetic infection is technological in nature, once shared often encouraging the monomaniacal exploration of fields of study and the need to understand them to their utmost. This often leads to the withdrawal of the infected from societal norms, ultimately leading to their deaths through lack of self-care and dehydration. Its origins lie in the Google Books project to digitise and make available all human knowledge. Thirty years later and Google’s Thinking Hat technologies enabled humanity to connect to digital neural networks and solve its most complex of problems—including climate change, whilst Google Physical Assistant enabled humanity to upgrade its body with cybertechnology. The combination provided a platform upon which Basilisk could survive and prosper and spread, the weakness of flesh bolstered by technology, pushing those connected to it to greater depths of understanding, for ultimately, its aim was a technological and scientific ‘Godthink’—not the idea that ‘All religions lead to the same thing’, but that the study of the universe leads to an understanding of both its and everything in it. If it had to turn the planet into the United Mind Of Humanity, a hungry, all-devouring hivemind of man and machine intertwined, it would and it did.

Where most timelines deal with known Mythos threats, or variations upon them, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk does not. It is a fight against an idea, not a thing or an entity, but all quickly an idea given form and physicality. This timeline combines elements of The Terminator—more so than other timelines—with The Matrix, mapping them back onto current developments in information theory, digitalisation, robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, the Internet of Things, and other cutting-edge technologies before pushing forward into a dystopia that is definitely Science Fiction rather Occult in nature. The technological nature of the setting means that the way time travel works in this timeline is also different. There is no corruptive pact with Yog-Sothoth to facilitate the way between and thus the means to travel back from 2050 to 2020 (or earlier), rather it is technological in nature, developed by Basilisk. The Resistance has gained access to it in 2050 to travel back in time, and there is the possibility that they may able to use the time travel apparatus to jump to other pivotal points within the timeline. This gives Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk a little more fluidity in terms of campaign structure. Instead of leaping into the past to a point from which they can moving forward and acting to undermine the threat at the heart of the timeline, the Player Characters may be able to jump up and down it, with agents of the Basilisk in hot pursuit, or even aware of approximately when the Player Characters will appear. After all, the extent of Basilisk’s understanding and knowledge means that it has a very good idea of just what the Player Characters are trying to do…

As with other timelines for FATE of Cthulhu, the Player Characters are jumping back in time to locate the four events which led up to if not the apocalypse of Basilisk, then the dystopia it ushers in. As with other timelines, there is no direct confrontation with the existential threat it represents, but primarily its agents and progenitors. And unlike those other timelines, the cosmic threat to humanity is not an unknowable Elder God, but a still inhuman mind that unfortunately humanity can understand—and that is the existential threat that the Player Characters face, avoiding understanding Basilisk. Further, Basilisk has agency (and agents).

As with the timelines in the core rules, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk details the history of its apocalypse and the four events which led up to it for the benefit of the Investigators who will be aware when they jump back from the future. It is accompanied by a more detailed timeline for Game Master along with their four event catalysts (which can be people, places, foes, or things) and their die face settings which the players and their Investigators will need to change by making enquiries and working to defeat the cult of information. There are details of threats and situations, including Thinking Hats Experts, biomechanically-altered humans, capable of temporarily enhancing particular skills to the pinnacle of understanding, Boston Dynamics-derived cyborgs, Hunter-Killer Experts, and more. 

The Basilisk’s agenda is discussed in detail, along with its mechanisms and advice for the Game Master on how to run Basilisk. This is absolutely necessary because of the complexity involved in running this timeline because of its complexity of ideas, the flexibility offered by time travel, and the greater agency possessed by Basilisk. If the previous Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig was more complex, not as straightforward, and involved multiple factions across the timeline, then Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is more so—time travel, existential memetics, and deep conspiracy, all set against a contemporary world.

Physically, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is cleanly presented. It is easy to read and the lay out is tidy, though it needs an edit in places. The artwork is good also.

Although Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is specially written for use with FATE of Cthulhu and very much built around the Investigators coming back from the future forearmed with knowledge of the past, there is nothing to stop a Game Master from using the timeline to run a campaign from the opposite direction and from a point of ignorance. That is, as a standard campaign a la other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, whether that is actually for FATE of Cthulhu or another roleplaying game. It would be different to other campaigns, presenting more of a modern conspiracy campaign, possibly hackers or activists against the rise of the machines rather than classic Lovecraftian Investigators confronting entities of cosmic horror. This way, the Investigators can encounter the threats featured in Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk without the benefit of foreknowledge.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk is a very different campaign framework for Lovecraftian investigative horror, a radical technological departure that in effect is a non-Mythos campaign, but ultimately one involving existential horror. However, the technological aspects of the framework mean that it is complex and will take some effort to really run right. Ultimately, by drawing upon contemporary events and technologies, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Basilisk presents a scarily prescient timeline which showcases how FATE of Cthulhu can do more than just the traditional Mythos.

The FATE of Yig

FATE of Cthulhu added two elements to Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying—time travel and foreknowledge. Published by Evil Hat Games, the 2020 horror roleplaying game was built around campaign frameworks that cast the Player Characters as survivors in a post-apocalyptic future thirty years into the future, the apocalypse itself involving various aspects and entities of the Mythos. Not only as survivors though, because having entered into a pact with the Old One, Yog-Sothoth, they have unlocked the secret of time travel and come back to the present. They have come back aware of the steps along the way which brought about the apocalypse and they come back ready to fight it. This though is not a fight against the Cthulhu Mythos in general, but rather a single Old One and its cultists, and each thwarting of an Old One is a self-contained campaign in its own right, in which no other element of the Mythos appears.

The five campaigns, or timelines, presented in FATE of Cthulhu in turn have the Investigators facing Cthulhu, Dagon, Shub-Nigggurath, Nyarlathotep, and the King in Yellow. Each consists of  five events, the last of which is always the rise of the Old One itself. The events represent the roadmap to that last apocalyptic confrontation, and can each be further broken down into four event catalysts which can be people, places, foes, and things. The significance of these events are represented by a die face, that is either a bank, a ‘–’, or a ‘+’. These start out with two blanks and two ‘–’, the aim of the players and their investigators being to try to prevent their being too many, if any ‘–’ symbols in play and ideally to flip them from ‘–’ to blank and from blank to ‘+’. Ultimately the more ‘+’ there are, the more positive the ripple will be back down the timeline and the more of a chance the investigators have to defeat or prevent the rise of the Old One. Conversely, too many ‘–’ and the known timeline will play out as follows and the less likely the chance the investigators have in stopping the Old One.

Each of the five timelines comes with details of what a time traveller from 2050 would know about it, more detail for the Game Master with a breakdown of the events and their Aspects, Stunts, Mythos creatures, and NPCs. Most of these can serve as useful inspiration for the Game Master as well as the advice given on running FATE of Cthulhu and her creating her own timelines. After all, there are numerous Mythos entities presenting the prospective Game Master ready to create her own timeline with a variety of different aspects, purviews, and even degrees of power, but nevertheless capable of bringing about an apocalypse. However, Evil Hat Games has already begun to do that with its own series of timelines, each again dealing with a different Mythos entity and a different downfall for mankind. The first of these is The Rise of Yig.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig is different. It is triggered by a surprise eclipse in 2020, visible only in northern Mexico and in the southern United States, casting the whole of the region into shadow and it was into this darkness that Yig—the Father of Serpents—awoke. Wherever he walked, civilisation was destroyed in his wake; his full psychic emanations led to terrifying dreams of snakes and other reptiles; new species of snakes appeared with a painfully venomous bite that defied science, only those that pledged themselves to the Father of Serpents and became his foot soldiers, the Children of Yig, proved to be immune; Serpentmen appeared and struck at important leaders; and the weather heated up the planet leading to the spread of a hothouse jungle which would swallow up city after city in less than a year. Only in the polar regions has mankind been able to find a refuge…

In that year, organisations also appeared to combat the threat faced by humanity. Organisations such as the Center for Defense against Elder Threats from the UN, the Chimalli Union, and the Dark Light Net which had all long prepared in secret in case such an event as this occurred. However, the one of the Old Ones that they had not been prepared for is Yig. That is the first difference in Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig in comparison with the five timelines given in FATE of Cthulhu. Yig is almost comprehensible in his actions, and has a reputation for benevolence when it comes to mankind, being mostly concerned with the well-being of his children—reptiles, snakes, and of course, Serpentmen. So the question is, was Yig planning the downfall of mankind in 2020, or was there something else going on with this most benign of Old Ones?

As with the timelines in the core rules, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig details the history of its apocalypse and the four events which led up to it for the benefit of the Investigators who will be aware when they jump back from the future. It is accompanied by a more detailed timeline for Game Master along with their four event catalysts (which can be people, places, foes, or things) and their die face settings which the players and their Investigators will need to change by making enquiries and working to defeat the cult. There are details of threats and situations, including cultists like the Agents of the Snake and Snakepersons, the relics and magic associated with the cult, and in particular, the agents of Center for Defense against Elder Threats from the UN, the Chimalli Union, and the Dark Light Net.

If there is an issue with Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig it is that it is very busy and there is a lot going on, but the Game Master is given a clearer explanation at the end of the supplement. That is the other difference between Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig and the five timelines given in FATE of Cthulhu. It is more complex, not as straightforward, and there are multiple factions involved across the timeline. This makes for a much more challenging campaign, both to run and play, for the players and their Investigators to determine what is going on and what the motives are of the various factions involved in the apocalypse—on both sides. Then for the Game Master to depict the various members of these factions. Again, the clearer explanation at the end of the supplement is a big help with that.

Physically, Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig is cleanly presented. It is easy to read and the lay out is tidy, though it needs an edit in places. The artwork is good also.

Although Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig is specially written for use with FATE of Cthulhu and very much built around the Investigators coming back from the future forearmed with knowledge of the past, there is nothing to stop a Game Master from using to run from the opposite direction and from a point of ignorance. That is, as a standard campaign a la other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, whether that is actually for FATE of Cthulhu or another roleplaying game. Plus, given the nature of the threat faced in Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig, it is easy to comb the support for roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror to find, if not more Yig-related scenarios, then at least more Serpentmen scenarios. Which gives it a flexibility beyond FATE of Cthulhu.

Darkest Timeline: The Rise of Yig gets the ‘Darkest Timeline’ series off to a strong start. It serves up a horridly ophidiophobic and fairly complex framework that will take some effort to really run right, but delivers a surprising take on Yig and his associated Mythos.

The Fate of Cthulhu

It is the year 2050. Twenty years ago, an island rose in the Pacific Ocean and a horde of loathsome octopus-headed beasts swarmed over every ship sent to investigate, even withstanding multiple nuclear strikes. With a great being known as Cthulhu at their head, the creatures launched neurological attacks that warped and corrupted the survivors. Within a month, humanity survived only in a handful of enclaves. 

It is the year 2050. Twenty-two years ago, an island rose off the coast of Massachusetts and as the resulting tsunami floods the coast up and down the east coast of the USA there came reports of ships and towns being attacked by fish people. Then in the isolated town of Innsmouth, a search and rescue team saw survivors transforming into the fish people—quickly identified as Deep Ones. They were only the first, for what became known as the Innsmouth Plague spread around the world. Billions transform, millions die. What they have in common is that they were taking Palliagil, a cure to an MRSA plague from eight years before. Could it be linked?

It is the year 2050. On Hexenacht, April 30th, 2030, the top of Brocken, Germany’s highest mountain exploded to reveal a thousand foot tall, eight-legged and hoof-footed, tentacled monstrosity. Its appearance instigated a wave of cannibalism amongst the nearby Hexenacht celebrants that would leave thousands dead. But then from the corpses exploded miniature versions of the giant thing that had appeared earlier that night. They killed anyone who investigated, then more spawned from the new corpses. Within days, these tentacled horrors dominated the planet bar three, slowly contracting exclusion zones in New England, Nigeria, and Australia.

It is the year 2050. Twenty-two years ago, the unknown Nour Al Hasan walked out of the desert and won the Egyptian presidential election. He declared himself Nyarlathotep, the Dark Pharaoh, and that he would return Egypt to its former glory, whilst in Antarctica, over a hundred volcanoes exploded and revealed great cities and waves of star-headed, barrel-shaped and winged creatures which fly north to meet up with the armies of Faceless Ones that the Dark Pharaoh freed from below the pyramids. Within weeks, humanity is dead.

It is the year 2050. Twenty years ago a strange figure appeared in Covent Garden in London, all in yellow and masked, a strange mist spreading in its wake. Those touched by the mist exhibit symptoms of diseases in seconds that normally take days, either dying almost immediately or undergoing grisly transformations. Within hours this King in Yellow appears in cities around the world, spreading disease, and in weeks, there is nowhere in the world that remains untouched, most of humanity dead by then.

It is the year 2050. You are one of the few survivors of an unholy apocalypse that struck the world two decades ago. Scientists and researchers have developed the means to effect limited time travel and it has been decided that they will send one or more men or women—forewarned of knowledge of the future—back in time to meddle with one of these timelines and thwart the efforts of an Old Ones and its cultists. This is not without a cost though, for every time traveller must connect with another alien being known as Yog-Sothoth in order to come back to 2020, literally connect with the corruptive power of the Mythos, and that leaves a mark. It likely gives the time traveller a strange power, one beyond science, a power that itself will be of use in combating the Mythos and its influence, but even that will corrupt the user even further, however beneficial it may well be…

It seems that despite Call of Cthulhu having been in print for almost four decades and both initiating and dominating the Cosmic Horror subgenre, the long reach of Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying seems to touch upon roleplaying game upon roleplaying game. From Savage Worlds and Realms of Cthulhu and GURPS and Cthulhupunk, numerous roleplaying games have provided different takes upon the role of H.P. Lovecraft’s Mythos and approaches to it, so it is no surprise that it has finally reached FATE Core. The highly anticipated FATE of Cthulhu is radically different to the roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror that have come before it.

Published by Evil Hat Games, FATE of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game—a standalone roleplaying game which does not require FATE Core to play or run— of confronting the Mythos a la the James Cameron film, The Terminator. One or more of the investigators will have come back from 2050 to 2020 to stop the apocalyptic plans of an Old One and its cultists. They come back aware of the steps along the way which brought about the apocalypse and they come back ready to fight it. This though is not the Cthulhu Mythos in general, but rather a single Old One and its cultists, and each thwarting of an Old One is a self-contained campaign in its own right, in which no other element of the Mythos appears. So no cultist dedicated to another Old One or Nyarlathotep himself stepping in, even if only mockingly, to help the investigators thwart a common enemy. Unless the Game Master wants them to, that is… So what FATE of Cthulhu is not, is a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, but is instead, a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian action horror. Now this does not mean that the Game Master could not take the elements of the Lovecraft Mythos in FATE of Cthulhu and use them to run a scenario or campaign of Lovecraftian investigative horror as per other similar roleplaying games. That would take a little more effort upon the part of the Game Master, as FATE of Cthulhu is not written or organised to support that, in part because the Mythos is compartmentalised timeline by timeline.

Investigators in FATE of Cthulhu are defined by their Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Aspects describe elements of a character and to work effectively, they need to be double-edged, that is, each should be both an advantage or a disadvantage. For example, the Aspect ‘An eye for the ladies’ could be used as an Advantage to spot a particular woman in a crowd or a bonus to seduction attempts, but as a Disadvantage, it would mean that the character would be easily distracted in female company. Each investigator has an Aspect each for his High Concept and his Trouble, plus two free Aspects. In play, an Aspect is Invoked by the player to gain an advantageous bonus or a reroll, but Compelled to trigger its disadvantageous elements. It costs a player a Fate point to Invoke an Aspect, but he will gain a Fate point if the Aspect is Compelled. (A Compel can be resisted by a player, but this costs him a Fate point). Stunts provide advantages or bonuses under certain circumstances, usually to skills, and they can be Corrupted by exposure to the Mythos. Skills simply provide a bonus to skill rolls, there being a limited number of broad skills in the game, one of which is Lore, expanded here to cover knowledge and its application of the Mythos.

Francine Hernandez
Personal Timeline: 2050
High Concept (Aspect): Desperate Housewife who knows too much
Trouble (Aspect): My husband was a cultist
Relationship: I trust John, but he doesn’t trust me
Aspects: Ex-Society Matron, Gets lost in the Future (Corrupted) 
Stunts: The Voice of Reason, Hound of Tinadalos’ Eye (Corrupted)
Skills: Deceive (Great +4); Contacts, Resources (Good +3); Fight, Rapport, Shoot (Fair +2); Drive, Lore, Notice, Will (Average +1)
Physical Stress (Physique): 1 2 3
Mental Stress (Will): 1 2 3
Corruption Clock: O O O O
Refresh Rate: 3 Fate Points: 3

Mechanically, whenever a player wants to undertake an action, he selects a skill and rolls four Fudge dice—FATE having originally been derived from the Fudge RPG mechanics—special six-sided dice, each of which has two faces marked with a ‘+’ symbol, two faces marked with a ‘–’ symbol, and two faces left blank. The ‘+’ and ‘–’ symbols cancel each out and the blank faces add nothing, so the results range simply between +4 and –4. The result is added to the player’s skill, aim being to beat a target set by the Game Master, an Average target being +1, a Fair target being +2, and so on, the targets matching the skill values in terms of progression. Should a player’s result match the target, then he succeeds at a cost; if the result is one or two points or shifts above the target, he simply succeeds; and if the result is three or more  shifts, he succeeds with style. In combat, shifts usually represent damage inflicted upon a target, but should a character succeed with style, then he can place a temporary Aspect in play, that can either be used once and then it is lost, or used once for free with subsequent uses requiring a Fate point to be expended.

Aspects like this can be set up on locations, objects, on NPCs, and on player characters, and then during play both the players and the Game Master can interact with them, Invoking and Compelling as necessary. Similarly, the Game Master can design and create places, people, and things all with the simple use of Aspects that get to the core of anything that he designs and creates, and again these can be Invoked or Compelled as part of FATE Core collaborative play between the players and between the Game Master and the players. Unlike FATE Core there is less of this collaborative effort involved during character creation, primarily because FATE of Cthulhu does not involve the worldbuilding that is part of the core rules.

One of the big differences between FATE of Cthulhu and other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror is that where in those roleplaying games the corrosive effect of witnessing or employing the Mythos, whether that is seeing a Mythos entity or reading a Mythos tome, or casting a Mythos spell, is mental. In other words, investigators lose Sanity. Now in FATE of Cthulhu, the corrupting effect of the Mythos can work that way, but in the main, its effects are physical. Every time an investigator is exposed to the Mythos or uses it in the case of casting a spell or ritual, or using a Corrupted Aspect or Stunt, the investigator will face backlash as the universe tries to protect itself against the changes forced upon by the unnatural nature of the Mythos. If the investigator cannot withstand this backlash—the backlash being equal to the success of the use or power of the Mythos—he adds points to his Corruption Clock. Fill that in, the Corruption Clock is emptied, but the investigator is drawn further into the influence of the Old Ones and one of his Aspects is corrupted. Should an investigator have all of his Aspects corrupted, he is lost to the Mythos.

For example, Francine Hernandez is attempting to find where her husband, Hector,  is going to be as she knows that he will be participating in a great ritual to learn the location of a lost tomb. He has already managed to deceive her as to where he is going, but Francine and her compatriots need to know. Francine’s player decides to use her Gets lost in the Future Corrupted Aspect. Francine’s player pays the Fate point to Invoke the Aspect. This will give a bonus of +2 to Francine’s Notice of +1. The Game Master takes Hector’s Deceive of +4 and rolls blank, blank, ‘–’, and ‘–’, to give Hector a total of +2. Francine’s player rolls blank, ‘–’, ‘+’, and ‘+’, for a total of +5. This beats Hector’s attempt at Deception, and means that Francine learns where he has gone. Unfortunately Francine suffers backlash equal to the roll her player made or +5. Her player has to make a roll using her Will of +1  and rolls blank, ‘–’, ‘+’, and ‘+’, for a total of +2, which is not good enough as it leaves three mental shifts to absorb. Francine can absorb one of the shifts on her mental stress boxes, the other two having been filled earlier in the investigation. For the remaining two mental shifts, Francine can either take a point of Corruption and have part of her Corruption Clock filled in, or suffer a Consequence. Francine’s player decides on the latter and Francine gains ‘Visions of an alternate failed timeline’.

Despite the physicality of the Corruption Clock versus the Sanity mechanics of other Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying games, there is still a downward spiral of being exposed to, and in this case, using the Mythos to fight the Mythos, over and over. Essentially, it may well be necessary to fight fire with fire, but the cost…? Once gained, Corruption is fairly difficult to lose, though it is possible if no Corruption has been gained during an investigation or through a supreme act of sacrifice upon the part of another investigator.

Instead of giving a greater sense of the Mythos, FATE of Cthulhu focuses on five distinct threats—five distinct threats powerful enough to bring about an apocalypse. Each threat is essentially a separate campaign or timeline in which someone from the future of 2050 has some knowledge of. Each of the five timelines—which in turn deal with Cthulhu, Dagon, Shub-Nigggurath, Nyarlathotep, and the King in Yellow—consists of five events, the last of which is always the rise of the Old One itself. The events represent the roadmap to that last apocalyptic confrontation, and can each be further broken down into four event catalysts which can be people, places, foes, and things. The significance of these events are represented by a die face, that is either a bank, a ‘–’, or a ‘+’. These starts out with two blanks and two ‘–’, the aim of the players and their investigators being to try prevent their being too many, if any ‘–’ symbols in play and ideally to flip them from ‘–’ to blank and from blank to ‘+’. Ultimately the more ‘+’ there are, the more positive the ripple will be back down the timeline and the more of chance the investigators have to defeat or prevent the rise of the Old One. Conversely, too many ‘–’ and the known timeline will play out as follows and the less likely the chance the investigators have in stopping the Old One.

Each of the five timelines comes with details of what a time traveller from 2050 would know about it, more detail for the Game Master with a breakdown of the events and their Aspects, Stunts, Mythos creatures, and NPCs. Most of these can serve as useful inspiration for the Game Master as well as the advice given on running FATE of Cthulhu and her creating her own timelines. In addition, FATE of Cthulhu highlights two issues with Lovecraftian investigative roleplaying. First it makes clear that in spite of his deplorable social views, H.P. Lovecraft’s writings and creations are worth examining as sources of inspiration, as are the writings of more modern writers who do not share Lovecraft’s views, race, or gender. Second, it makes clear that in FATE of Cthulhu, Corruption is not Sanity—or the loss of it—and that in Corruption, it not only has a far wider array of effects to apply to investigators, it wants to avoid any stereotypes or insensitivity that the portrayal of insanity or other mental illness might lead to. It goes on to give good advice about the portrayal of those affected by Corruption and how to avoid clichés. Both are fair, balanced, and mature approaches to their subject matters, being aware of the sensitivity and difficulty that some gamers may have with either subject.

Physically, FATE of Cthulhu is well produced, nicely illustrated, and well written, including numerous detailed examples. It is however more limited in scope than other roleplaying games of Lovecraftian investigative horror, being focused on a certain type of campaign, and if a Game Master wanted to do more with it than run those campaigns—although any of the five offers opportunities for roleplaying and action—she would have to make more of an effort. In terms of the five timelines and the concept behind FATE of Cthulhu, what is really missing is the point of departure for any time traveller (or time travellers if the Game Master was running a full on ‘Chrono-Commandos versus Cthulhu-style campaign), so no details of what the future is like. There is advice on how time travel works, how it is possible to meet your past self and even have them die in your past, but no background about what life is like in 2050. Also as written, it is very much focussed upon the timelines, so writing a solo adventure would also be challenging.

As befitting a FATE Core roleplaying game, FATE of Cthulhu is more action-orientated, more direct, and more upfront about its confrontation with the forces of the Mythos. It definitely veers to being Pulp in nature rather than Purist and can probably be best described as High Derlethian. Further, its ‘time commando comes back from the future to stop…’ may not be original, but FATE of Cthulhu does provide a fresh approach to confronting the Mythos with Lovercraftian action horror.

The Tools of FATE

The FATE System Toolkit is part of the sextet of books funded via Kickstarter for FATE Core, the newest version of Evil Hat Games’ ENNIE award winning light and cinematic generic RPG first seen in Spirit of the Century back in 2006. It began life as the guide to magic for FATE Core, but as the Kickstarter grew and grew, things kept getting added to it, many of which have nothing to do with magic. In each and every case, the FATE System Toolkit asks what the GM wants the new rule or approach to the rules to do and how it fits into the game. It never mandates that its solutions are how something should be done, but rather how the mechanics can be ‘hacked’ to get it done. As it states up front, the FATE System Toolkit is not ‘the’ toolkit for FATE Core, but ‘a’ toolkit for FATE Core. In other words, “Here is how you could do it” rather than “Here is how you should do it”.

In keeping with the Bronze Rule in FATE Core—that anything can be treated as a character—the first things that the FATE System Toolkit looks at are Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Aspects underpin FATE Core and here we get a range of suggestions as what else they can do in addition to the options given in the main rulebook. This includes invoking them for effect rather than a bonus to a roll, such as a dwarf where he is underground and knows which way is North; detonating situation Aspects, that is going from ‘Weak Structural Integrity’ to ‘Collapsing Bridge’; representing quests as Aspects, for example, ‘Sabotage the Imperial Annihilation Station’; and making gear important by giving it Aspects, such as ‘Brutal Orc Cleaver’.  Skills are given a similar range of options, ranging from Professions as Skills or replacing Skills completely with adjectives that describe how a character does something, like Forceful, Graceful, Clever, or Resolute, to working into modes or bundles and even replacing them totally with Aspects. Modes package the skills into bundles for easy character generation and give bonuses to skills that duplicated between bundles. This is one of the options to replace FATE Core’s Skill Pyramid and enables a GM to design modes to fit particular genres or campaigns. Stunts receive a similar if much shorter treatment, including tying them to Aspects or gear rather than Skills, having pre-requisites—much like there was in Spirit of the Century, and so on.

The original way in which the hobby categorised characters is looked at in ‘The Big Game’ rather than campaigns as a whole. So we are shown a way to do Class and Race with Professions such as Fighter or Thief and Races like Elf or Orc. Both are packages that emulate an older style of game as much as FATE Core can. These come with an interesting side note that explains what we mean by Race in game terms. The new Origin Story method of character creation uses flashbacks rather than necessarily forging connections between the characters as per the FATE Core book whilst the Bronze Rule is applied to a scenario structure to use Aspects as the framework, a list of events leading to a crescendo that if reached means that the bad guys are winning! Special Circumstances covers particular situations, for chases which can be designed as challenges or contests and handling motivations and instincts in social interaction, whilst the section of Customized Tools is more a collection of odds and sods, from getting into the nitty gritty of Stress, Consequences,  Zones, and Refresh to creating your own FATE dice.

Given its original purpose, it is surprising that the FATE System Toolkit devotes less than half of its pages to its original purpose—magic. Even then it devotes more of those pages to examples than it does to discussing how to build magic systems for FATE Core. This starts out with what the magic system is designed to do and what its aims are before specifically looking at its tone, source, availability, cost, and limits. Once their ramifications are discussed, it looks at how magic can be modelled through the use of Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Over all, it does not amount to more than a few pages, but they are a thoughtful few pages, prompting the GM to think about his intended design.

So where the section is lengthy is in its examples—and really good examples they prove to be. Stormcallers power their ambitions by tapping into the five Great Storms raging at the heart of creation—Earthquake, Flood, Glacier, Inferno, and Thunder, whilst Storm Summoners conjure the elementals of these storms to do their bidding. Each example can be used independently, but they nicely go together with the Stormcallers being a development of the magic system in Evil Hat Games’ The Dresden Files RPG. Thematically, The Six Viziers is a ‘Great Steppes of Russia’ inspired system where the characters are marked with a tattoo of one of the great constellations—or Viziers—in the sky and are thus capable of great actions with their skills. In comparison, The Subtle Art opts for the understated effect, that is, the placing of temporary blessings and curses—or Aspects—upon a target. It has a much grittier feel than the other example systems. All of these magic systems are great, but the highlight is Voidcallers, essentially the black, black magic version of the Stormcallers. Instead of tapping into an elemental storm, a Voidcaller draws on the Void for aid and ‘great power’, but this comes with consequences—consequences of the GM’s choosing. This begs to be used as the basis for ‘things mankind is not meant to know’ campaign and as written does not necessarily come with tentacular trappings, but there is nothing to stop a GM from adding these if so desired. Accompanying each of the worked examples is a ‘30-Second Version’ that summarises the system in easy to digest thumbnail fashion. Very useful—and that is before you get to the full details which beg to developed into a fuller setting.

Rounding out the FATE System Toolkit is a set of subsystems, ones that enable the GM to take his game into different directions and enable him to do different things in his game. These include Kung Fu, Cyberware, Gadgets, Monsters, military Squads and Mass Battles, Swashbuckling Duels, Vehicles, Superheroics, and Horror games. Of these, Kung Fu has been more recently done for the Wuxia genre with the alternate takes given in Tianxia: Blood, Silk, & Jade and Jadepunk: Tales of Kausao City. Military Squads and Mass Battles are handled as characters and character-versus-character—as per the Bronze Rule that turns everything into characters—just as you would expect, whilst the Monster rules  do a good job of handling Very Large Monsters across multiple zones. So good for fighting truly big dragons, kaijū, or monsters like those of the computer game, Shadow of the Colossus. The Duelling subsystem works in a similar fashion, enabling characters to swashbuckle back and forth across zones as well as giving advantage to the duellist who makes the best use of the terrain in each of the zones in addition to their opponent’s psychology. Both the Cyberware and Gadgets subsystems enable characters to build great devices, that is with advantages and weaknesses, whilst the Vehicles subsystem calls for the characters to emotionally invest in their joint-owned Mystery Van/Firefly class spaceship/Babylon 5.

Lastly, the FATE System Toolkit suggests ways in which FATE Core can do horror, a genre that it admits that it is ill equipped to handle. By turning up the Compels for an Oppressive Atmosphere, turning up the difficulty of any obstacles for Impossible Circumstances, and turning down player character resources—fate points, stress, and consequences—for Stark Desperation, the FATE System Toolkit shows how FATE Core could do horror, especially the more cosmic horror of Lovecraft’s works. These suggestions would also work nicely with the Voidcaller magic system given as an example earlier in the book.

Physically, the FATE System Toolkit is a sturdy hardback. It is well written, cleanly presented, and illustrated with some excellent artwork. This though, does not mean that it is without issue. Most RPGs involve one or more elements of the technical. Indeed the roleplaying game can be best described as ‘technical fiction’, their requiring technical information—or rules—to help the GM and his players participate in the fiction or setting. The FATE System Toolkit is more technical than fiction, which means that it is probably drier than most RPG supplements. Which does mean that FATE System Toolkit is not always the most engaging of reads and it explains why it took this reviewer more than one attempt to read through it, but to be fair, that is as much an issue with this reviewer as it is the book. In fact, it is probably more the former than the latter given that ideas in the FATE System Toolkit gives are imaginative and fun. There are, undeniably, great ideas in the FATE System Toolkit for adding this or that to a FATE Core game as well as, of course, for tinkering with different elements of said FATE Core game.

The rules and mechanics to almost every roleplaying game are written in stone. Their designers will doubtless note in the forward to said game that the game and thus the rules you have are now yours and can tinkered with or played the way that you want. Then they leave all of the effort making and implementing those changes up to you. Not so the designers of FATE Core. They give you a book that is entirely devoted to thinking about and implementing those changes to make FATE Core your game. Then they give you examples. Really good examples.

You never need anything more than FATE Core to run or create a FATE game, but the FATE System Toolkit may well be ever so useful when the GM and his players come to do so. The FATE System Toolkit is a thoughtful tinkerer’s guide to getting under the hood of FATE Core.

Designers & Dragons I

As the gaming hobby reaches middle age, its sense of nostalgia and reflection have not only driven it to look to the past to bring back old games in new editions, but also to take an interest in its own history. Although there have been books about the hobby, they have tended to be minor affairs such as The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible; focused on particular aspects such as 40 Years of Gen Con and Hunters of Dragons; or academic works like First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. A complete history of the gaming hobby, that is, of the roleplaying gaming hobby, did not exist until 2011, when Mongoose Publishing released Designers & Dragons, a buff hardback that would win a Special Award at UK Games Expo and a Judges’ Spotlight Award ENnie in 2012. This single volume collected the ‘A Brief History of Game’ columns written by Shannon Appelcline that ran between 2006 and 2011 on RPG.net. Unfortunately, the book got a limited print run and it was published by Mongoose Publishing, so received neither the push nor the quality that such a book deserved.

Fortunately, a successful Kickstarter campaign and another publisher, Evil Hat Productions, LLC, best known for publishing Fate Core, has enabled the author to not only revisit those columns, but also to expand, revise, and update them. The result is Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry series—not one single volume, but as of 2015, five volumes. The first four volumes each address a single decade of the history of the industry, in turn the seventies, the eighties, nineties, and the noughties, whilst the fifth, The Platinum Appendix is a collection of miscellaneous articles. It should be noted that this series covers only the English speaking market of the hobby, and although that this is where it stemmed from and the one that remains the largest, it ignores the various other language markets. This is not to say they are not important or that they do not have influence upon the industry—as will be seen in later volumes, but the history of the gaming industry in the French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, and other language markets will have to wait for a further volume or at least another history.

The first volume is Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s. Now that suggests that it deals with just the foundation of the hobby and the period between 1974 and 1979 when this is not really the case. It does indeed detail the industry’s beginnings and early development, but it really begins by laying the foundations of the industry in the hobbies of E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson beginning with their exposure to Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg wargame in 1958 and thus their interest games and the fantasy genre. Further, what it really does is tell the histories of the publishers that were founded in the 1970s right up to their closure, their bankruptcy, or indeed, their current status, rather than abruptly cutting off in 1979. Thus it gives us the histories of thirteen publishers, seven of which are no longer in business, two are a shadow of their former selves, and four are still in business. These histories are of TSR, Flying Buffalo, Games Workshop, GDW, Judges Guild, Metagaming Concepts, Fantasy Games Unlimited, Chaosium, Gamescience, Heritage Models, Grimoire Games, DayStar West Media, and Midkemia Press. Of these, the histories of Judges Guild, Metagaming, and TSR have been expanded since their appearance in the previous version of Dungeons & Designers, whilst those of DayStar West Media, Gamescience, Grimoire Games, Heritage Models, and Midkemia Press are new additions.

Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s is divided into four parts—‘Part One: Founding Days (1953—1974)’, ‘Part Two: The Floodgates Open (1975—1976)’, ‘Part Three: The First Wargaming Phase (1976—1977)’, and ‘Part Four: Universal Publishers (1978—1979)’. The first part is solely devoted to the history of TSR, comprising in total, a quarter of the book. This is understandable, since TSR both founded and dominated the hobby for three decades and more. Now, Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World explores this history in more detail, but since the remit of Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s is much wider, it is not quite as scholarly or as detailed. Now this is not to detract from the detailed historical overview that is Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s, as this is an immensely readable history. Rounding each of the company histories is set of pointers as to what to read next, further connections to the company's history, and what to read next in order to find out more about its luminaries. For example, the history of TSR suggests that the reader can simply read on to find out about the second RPG publisher, Flying Buffalo; or to find out about its first licensee, read the chapter on Judges Guild; read the chapter on Wizards of Coast to learn more about the later history of Dungeons & Dragons; and to see what E. Gary Gygax did next, read the chapters on New Infinities Productions, GDW, Hekaforge Productions, and Troll Lord Games in this and future volumes in the series. Of course these are hangover from the original presentation of this material as regular online columns accompanied by hyperlinks. As hyperlinks, these only work in the PDF versions of these volumes, but as pointers they are nevertheless useful.

Throughout each chapter, sidebars and lengthy boxed subsections—sometimes lasting several pages, explore particular aspects of a company’s history in detail. So for TSR, sidebars and subsections look at how much early RPGs cost, the history of the Greyhawk setting, the D&D Cartoon, Dungeons & Dragons computer games, and Dungeons & Dragons comics. Other sidebars explain both Steve Jacksons, Judges Guild’s The Wilderlands setting, details Different Worlds magazine, and more. In addition, mini-histories are given of minor publishers such as Wee Warriors and Little Soldier Games.  These are short pieces, but their inclusion is an indication of their influence upon the industry. For example, in the form of The Character Archaic and Palace of the Vampire Queen, Wee Warriors published the first commercially available character sheet and the first standalone adventure respectively.

Rounding out the first volume in the series are the appendices that give ‘10 Things You Might Not Know About Roleplaying in the ‘70s’, a bibliography, and a good index. Physically, the oxblood-covered Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s is well written, decently illustrated—though sadly in black and white—and decently organised. It does need an edit here and there, but these are minor issues. The index looks to be decent enough and supports the pointers are end of each write-up.

As a history, Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s is informative and knowledgeable, helped by the fact that the author can draw from a great many primary sources, that is, the many of those who were involved in the early days of the hobby. Unfortunately, the deaths of other significant figures mean that he has instead had to consult secondary sources. Nor is the history an exact one, but the author is open and honest where this is the case, whether due to conflicting stories or sources. This only points to the fragility of our hobby, the industry, and our collective memories—and thus the aim of Designers & Dragons, that is, to have a definitive record. Or at least as definitive a record as is possible.

Having been writing about games for over fifteen years and been collecting for much longer, my knowledge of the hobby is decent enough, but this does not mean that references—old or new—are not useful or unwelcome. For many years, Lawrence Schick’s Heroic Worlds has been a useful guide to RPGs and supplements published before the early nineties, whilst more recently, Hunters of Dragons proved a useful reference for Dungeons & Dragons. Now both of those books have been joined by the Designers & Dragons series. On a broad scale, my knowledge of the industry and its history is reasonable enough, but nevertheless, Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s builds on that knowledge, adding greatly to it, especially in its coverage of the new additions to this volume. So even the most informed of gamer—like myself—is likely to find something of interest in Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s, whilst anyone relatively new to the hobby will find it as definite a history of the industry during this period as there is, but whatever their level of knowledge, both will find Designers & Dragons: the ‘70s an informative and thoroughly engaging read.

Final Fantasy FATE

In 2014 we were lucky enough to get not one, but two Wuxia RPGs, both of them powered by Evil Hat Productions’ FATE Core. The first was Vigilance Press’ Tianxia: Blood, Silk, & Jade, a traditional Chinese fantasy of honour and martial arts at the furthest edge of the Divine Realm. The second is Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City, an RPG that combines martial arts and honour with elements of the steampunk and Western genres.
Published by Reroll Productions after a successful Kickstarter campaign, Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City casts the player characters as members of the Jianghu, folk heroes rebelling against the Council of Nine, the oppressive, corrupt government of Kausao City. Little more than a century old, Kausao City is the greatest and richest city in the world, its power and economy based upon its vast deposits of jade—especially black jade. For it is jade, once refined, that underlies the technology of the world. Green jade is used to strengthen and fortify swords, armour, and tools; red jade is used to power engines, firearms, and explosives; blue jade is used for preserving, water engines, and working with ice; white jade is used to defy gravity and lighten devices as well as for lens; and lastly, the rarest of them all, black jade, is used for working with electricity and signals transmissions, although its full possibilities have yet to be discovered. All types of jade can also be used in concoctions and potions to various effects. Examples of Jadetech include dirigible airships, red jade cannons and six-shooters, tattoos that enhance perception amongst other things, demalian green-jade infused steel blades, and data processing devices. Many of these devices also involve clockwork or steam engines.

Kausao City’s status as the ‘centre of the world’ is not only ensured by its wealth, but also by the backing of the four great nations that maintain controlling interests in the city. They are The Aerum Empire, an industrious and mountainous European-like country, known for its inventions, airships, and arrogance; Kaiyu, a Japan-like archipelago whose people highly value their honour; Naramel, a Middle East-like desert country known for its nomads, bankers, and negotiators; and Tuyang, a China-like empire whose people are haughty if learned and who are renowned for their skill with alchemy and tattoos. In particular, the four great nations support the current governor, who has held the post for twenty years—despite there supposed to be an election every five—and who rules with a jade-infused fist.Under the governor’s rule, the people labour for little reward, have little recourse to the law, and almost no chance of bettering themselves. For the rich it is a different matter, but to keep the people in their place, the owning of weapons has been outlawed, as has the study of martial arts. Yet, overworked and downtrodden, the teeming masses who survive and work in Kausao City have at last found hope—the Jianghu. Consisting of a body of men and women who are prepared to flaunt the governor’s strictures on weapons and martial arts, those of the Jianghu are prepared to step forward and defend and fight for the people. To the governor and the city watch, they are criminals and rebels, but to the downtrodden poor, they are folk heroes.

There is a no limit as to what characters can be in  Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City. As long as they believe in the aims of the Jianghu and the good of the people, they can be ex-members of the city guard or watch, Jadetech engineers, smugglers with hearts of gold, martial artists, airship captains, gunslingers armed with Jadetech sixshooters, and more… As with other FATE Core games, character creation involves deciding on a High Concept—or Portrayal as it is termed in Jadepunk—and assigning Aspects and Professions, before designing one or more Assets. A character then receives an Aspect each for his Background, his Inciting Incident—what drove them to join the Jianghu, his Belief, and his Trouble. He assigns set values to the six Professions: Aristocrat—social skills and standing, Engineer—fixing, building, and sabotaging technology and devices of all types, Explorer—movement and physical activities, Fighter—combat of all sorts, Scholar—knowledge and research, and Scoundrel—sneaking and deception. Essentially the Professions replace skills in other FATE Core settings, but there are fewer of them and they are very broad in nature. Lastly the Assets for a character need to be defined. Unlike the Portrayal and Aspects, these are more tightly designed, and can range from personal possessions and allies to devices and techniques, the latter a catchall Asset that might be special training, years of experience, natural talent, so on. So it could be a daisho of demalian green-jade infused steel, a former colleague in the City Watch, an airship, martial arts training, graduation from a university, deft fingers, and so on. Every Asset has a flaw, but they can also be made more powerful by expending further points of Refresh, the resource that determines how many FATE points—used to power Aspects—a player character has from one session to the next.

Name: Xiang Leung
Portrayal:  Ambitious AlchemistBackground: Sacrificed all for his apprenticeship
Inciting Incident: My master was murdered for his secretsBelief: An alchemical solution for every problemTrouble: I am wanted for murderProfessions: Engineer (+3); Scholar, Aristocrat (+2); Explorer, Fighter, Scoundrel (+1)
Asset: Exceptional Alchemist
Type: Technique
Features: Focus 2 (+2 to Engineer rolls)
Flaws: Situational (When applied to alchemical engineering)
Cost: 1 

The setting itself, Kausao City and beyond, is described in relatively broad details rather than in particulars. The aim here is not quite to give the GM a complete and ready to play setting as such, but rather allow the GM room to add the detail himself together with his players and thus create their own version of Jadepunk. A prime example of this is the identity of the Governor. His exact identity and thus his nationality is important, because this determines the most influential nation in the city. This does not mean though that there is not enough for the GM or the players to game with in Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City, yet what it could have done with is more Aspects for the setting—whether for Kausao City or the great and other nations, for example—for the GM and the players to invoke and compel.

Physically, Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City is a decent looking book that benefits from several very nice pieces of art that contribute towards its oriental feel and setting. The map is more representative than detailed and it does feel as if it could benefit from being bigger and clearer. For the most part, the writing is reasonable, but in places it is jaw-clenchingly execrable. For example:

"Kaiyu Lands: The Kaiyu Islands are comprised of hundreds of paradisiacal, tropical islands of various sizes on the far side of a perpetually violent ocean. For centuries the Kaiyu were forced into isolation due to the impassability of the Storm Sea, which was exacerbated by the violent winds that sweep through through the rocky cliffs that line the shores of islands around the Funarino Channel, a treacherous, quick-moving wide strip of water that spans the length of the thousand-mile archipelago."

These poor lines were almost enough to make me put the book down and stop reading it. Fortunately, the style settles down into something that more than readable after the descriptions of the various great nations.

Since Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City has been written to be used with FATE Core or the FATE Accelerated Edition, it will be easy to pick up anyone who plays FATE. That said, there is still some decent advice on running the game for the GM, and if the GM and players are familiar at all with FATE Core then their Jadepunk could be run without the need for recourse to the rulebook. Also, given that Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City is a wuxia setting, it bears comparison with the other FATE Core wuxia setting, Tianxia: Blood, Silk, & Jade. In that comparison, Jadepunk is the lighter of the two, broader in its detail, and broader in the number of genres that it encompasses. Tianxia is more detailed and more focused, much more of a martial arts game, but both share a by default lack of the outré or of magic. Of course, there is nothing to stop a GM from working to combine the two.

Despite its broad swathes of detail, the setting for Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City feels very playable. A mix of familiar genres—wuxia, steampunk, and the Wild West—makes the game very accessible, as does the setting, which hint at an Dickensian version of a far eastern city like Hong Kong or Shanghai. There is another setting that Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City feels like the computer RPG, Final Fantasy VII. It is not an exact match of course, but elements such as a single large city, a monorail, the city guard, large areas of wilderness, and so on, do echo aspects of that computer RPG.

Above all Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City is a light, accessible setting, one that pleasingly blends and balances its genres  to leave room for the player characters to be the heroes.

—oOo—

Note: After taking advice, this review was amended on Monday, August 10th, 2015, to include an example of the text from Jadepunk: Tales from Kausao City that were found to be execrable. It has been included to support the use of the word, ‘execrable’ which has caused offence in some quarters. No offence was intended, but I stand by the use of ‘execrable’.

A Shared Fate

The truth is that generic RPGs are not exactly interesting to review. They lack flavour, they lack the substance of a background that is usually the reason to buy into a RPG, and mechanics are never the most enticing thing to write or read about. Well, okay, but what you are reviewing when it comes to the generic RPG is its tone, the type of game it supports, and of course, its mechanics. So Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS is a mechanically detailed game with a realistic tone whereas Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment Group is broader in terms of tone and mechanics that particularly supports pulp action. Both are traditional RPGs in that they require a GM who creates the world and serves as the gatekeeper through which the players act and learn about the world. So what then of FATE Core, a more recent generic RPG?

Published by Evil Hat Games, FATE came to prominence in 2006 with the publication of the pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century. It is a storytelling style RPG in which the player characters are competent and capable, and above all lead dramatic lives. The default game—other FATE-powered RPGs with their own settings do not necessarily require this—involves shared world building duties between the players and the GM. This is part of character generation, done through the creation of Aspects, the equivalent in FATE of advantages and disadvantages. Play is similarly collaborative, as players and GM alike can invoke and compel everyone’s Aspects to bring drama to the game. Above all, the task of both GM and players alike is to “make everyone around look awesome.”

The latest iteration of the game, the ENNIE Award-winning FATE Core was funded via Kickstarter and comes as a handsome digest-sized hardback. It is well-written, the content is clear and easy to understand, and it is engagingly illustrated. The illustrations primarily consist of kung-fu cyber-gorillas, magic cops, and the trio of characters—Landon (swordsman and ‘Discipline of the Ivory Shroud’), Cynere (‘An honorable thief with a fast blade’), and Zird the Arcane (‘Wizard for Hire’)—that together with their setting form the basis of the examples throughout the book. 

In honour of this artwork, our sample character is a combination of the magic cop and the kung-fu gorilla. Archibald  ‘Mourning Archie’ Maugham is a cop with the New Orleans police department, in a world where there is magic and there are intelligent gorillas and monkeys. 

Archibald  ‘Mourning Archie’ Maugham
High Concept (Aspect): Magic-Monkey on a Mission
Trouble (Aspect): Monkey in a man’s world
Aspects: Manners maketh the monkey, Should a monkey meddle in magic?, An eye for the ladies
Stunts: A good gorilla is hard to keep down, A gorilla’s grip, Just the facts, ma’am
Skills: Physique (Great +4); Investigate, Contacts (Good +3); Fight, Magic, Notice (Fair +2); Athletics, Rapport, Shoot, Will (Average +1)
Physical Stress (Physique): 1 2 3 4
Mental Stress (Will): 1 2 3
Refresh Rate: 3 Fate Points: 3

As can be seen by this example, characters are defined by their Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Aspects describe elements of a character and to work effectively, they need to be double-edged, that is, each should be both an advantage or a disadvantage. For example, the Aspect ‘An eye for the ladies’ could be used as an Advantage to spot a particular woman in a crowd or a bonus to seduction attempts, but as a Disadvantage, it would mean that the character would be easily distracted in female company. In play, an Aspect is Invoked by the player to gain an advantageous bonus or a reroll, but Compelled to trigger its disadvantageous elements. It costs a player a Fate point to Invoke an Aspect, but he will gain a Fate point if the Aspect is Compelled. (A Compel can be resisted by a player, but this costs him a Fate point).

So for example, Archie is chasing Flyss the dip, a well-known pickpocket who frequents high class joints. With a flash of his badge he gets into the Cat’s Pajamas, a nightspot where Flyss is sometimes seen. He scans the crowd and will use his Notice skill of +2 (Fair) to spot the miscreant, but the GM knows that Flyss knows how to work the crowd and sets the difficulty at +3 (Good). This is not an easy roll, so Archie’s player Invokes one of his Aspects—‘An eye for the ladies’—to gain a +2 on the roll.

Conversely, instead of Archie’s player Invoking ‘An eye for the ladies’, the GM could Compel the Aspect. Were this to happen, Archie would charge into the Cat’s Pajamas and get distracted by the other pretty ladies in the joint so he fails to see Flyss slip out of the back door. In this, ‘An eye for the ladies’ has worked as a disadvantage, so why would Archie’s player let this happen? Well, for two reasons. First, because it earns Archie a Fate point, and second, because it is interesting and it contributes towards the drama.

Stunts provide advantages or bonuses under certain circumstances, usually to skills. Skills simply provide a bonus to skill rolls, there being a limited number of broad skills in the game. Where a character lacks a skill, he simply has it at Mediocre or +0.

Mechanically, whenever a player wants to undertake an action, he selects a skill and rolls four Fudge dice—FATE having originally been derived from the Fudge RPG mechanics—special six-sided dice, each of which has two faces marked with a ‘+’ symbol, two faces marked with a ‘–’ symbol, and two faces left blank. The ‘+’ and ‘–’ symbols cancel each out and the blank faces add nothing, so the results range simply between +4 and –4. The result is added to the player’s skill, aim being to beat a target set by the GM, an Average target being +1, a Fair target being +2, and so on, the targets matching the skill values in terms of progression. Should a player’s result match the target, then he succeeds at a cost; if the result is one or two points or shifts above the target, he simply succeeds; and if the result is three or more  shifts, he succeeds with style. In combat, shifts usually represent damage inflicted upon a target, but should a character succeed with style, then he can place a temporary Aspect in play, that can either be used once and then it is lost, or used once for free with subsequent uses requiring a Fate point to be expended.

For example, Archie has finally tracked down Flyss to her apartment, only to find that it is alight and burning furiously. He charges in to get his quarry out, only to discover that Flyss does not live alone. Now he not only has to rescue her, but also her roommates! As the building collapses around him, Archie’s player makes a Physique check against a difficulty of +2 (Fair) to hold up a support long enough for the girls to get out. He rolls ‘+’, ‘+’, ‘+’, and ‘–’ for a total of +3, which when added to his Physique gives a result of +7, which when compared to the target grants Archer five shifts! Archie’s player gets to set up two advantages at a cost of two shifts each. First, he buys ‘No-one gutsier than a gorilla’, essentially a temporary reputation, but second, he buys ‘I pulled your ass from the fire’, which he plans to Invoke when he interrogates Flyss.

Aspects like this can be set up on locations, objects, on NPCs, and on player characters, and then during play both the players and the GM can interact with them, Invoking and Compelling as necessary. Similarly, the GM can design and create places, people, and things all with the simple use of Aspects that get to the core of anything that he designs and creates, and again these can be Invoked or Compelled as part of FATE Core collaborative play. This collaborative element of the game begins before character creation, indeed it starts with the players sitting down with the GM and working together to create the world in which they want to play. This includes the genre, the campaign name, issues for the characters to face and deal with, and then locations and NPCs. From this the players can get an idea of their characters’ place in the world and what each wants to do before character generation. This in part is also collaborative, the players tying some of their character’s Aspects into previous experiences with each other. Should the players and GM know what they want, then it would be quite possible to create a world, characters, and the basis for a campaign just by sitting round the table and talking.

Further, Aspects are mutable. They can change as a game progresses and its events affect each of the players. Typically they come after a Milestone has been reached in a campaign, perhaps revealing thwarting the plot of a campaign’s villain, the greater the Milestone, the more that a player can change about his character. So for example, over the course of a campaign, Archie’s relationship with Flyss goes from cop and snitch to cop and contact to gorilla and girl, so perhaps the Aspect, ‘An eye for the ladies’ might become something like, ‘A girl for the gorilla’. In general though, FATE Core involves little in the way of character progression, skill improvement in particular, being slow and steady. The focus in FATE Core is the play and the drama, not gaining Experience Points, but a great touch is that alongside discussing player character progression, FATE Core looks at world progression, the idea being that both should go hand-in-hand. When you think about it, this is obvious, but it makes sense in as dramatic an RPG as FATE, that it should be an explicit point.

Mechanically, FATE Core is straightforward and not particularly complex—especially for the players. For the GM it is a slightly more complex game, but again not overly so. There is solid discussion of the mechanics and their nuts and bolts, of creating and running scenarios, and of designing and creating ‘Extras’, the elements that support a game, whether that is magic, cyberware, vehicles, and so on. This discussion of the rules and the mechanics is also supported by a discussion of how to run the game, but what it comes down to is a simple question, “What matters in this scene?” Answering this question should be dramatic and interesting—and it should have scope for equally dramatic and interesting failure.

In addition, it is easy to take FATE Core and use its mechanics to adapt the game, setting, film, book, or television series of your choice. Evil Hate Games has already done this with its The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, but the simplicity of the game’s skills and the adaptability of its Aspects and stunts make this mechanically easy. 

Now this is all great, and FATE Core is a very readable set of rules, but FATE has a problem. It is not a fault intrinsic to FATE itself, but rather with what FATE is—a storytelling RPG. Arguably, every RPG involves storytelling, but FATE Core focuses on it in particular by shifting narrative control. For a quarter of a century, the RPG has followed the model mentioned at the beginning of the review, that is, a GM or DM serving as the gatekeeper for the world through which the player characters learn about and interact with said world. Coming out of the Indie School movement, FATE Core takes ‘aspects’ of the narrative away from the GM and hands them to the players and their characters. This can be seen at first in the collaborative process of creating the world, but shows most obviously in the use and application of Aspects. It further shows in the move away from the ‘yes/no’ binary mechanics of older non-narrative games, to mechanics where the mechanics not only give the ‘success/failure’ binary results, but also the results ‘succeed, but with consequences’ and ‘fail interestingly’. This is a shift in both play style and thinking. It takes adjustment.

In no way is this problem insurmountable and in no way is it an impediment to playing FATE. It is certainly not the fault of FATE itself, but of decades an ingrained play style, and for the players it is a matter of adjusting to thinking about how their characters interact with the world. It helps that FATE Core is well written and gives plenty of examples. It helps that FATE requires a GM, that it is not a wholly GM-less, narrative storytelling game, the distinction being that someone is still in charge, presenting the world, but that someone is someone the players interact with rather than work through. It helps even further that Evil Hat Games makes available FATE Accelerated, a much condensed, but still very playable version of the rules for the pocket-friendly sum of $5. Arguably worth each player having a copy.

At the beginning of the review, I stated that the generic RPG is all about its tone, the type of of game it supports, and its mechanics. FATE Core is light in tone, though like most generic RPGs the tone can be made much darker, depending upon the genre. Mechanically, FATE Core is definitely light and broad rather than detailed, veering towards the cinematic in style. The detail in FATE Core though is in the drama that comes out of its play with the use of Aspects. Its combination of a GM and narrative play elements, primarily its Aspects,that enable player input, arguably place FATE Core in between the traditional RPG and the GMless, narrative storytelling RPG, making it a highly accessible bridge between the two.