Fate has to be one of the most revolutionaly pencil-and-paper game engines to be developed over the past decade or so. It grew out of Fudge, with “Aspects” as a very elegant mechanic improving on what I felt were Fudge’s weaknesses. Games such as the two-fisted pulp action Spirit of the Century, the hard-SF space opera of Diaspora, and the licenced monster-mash urban fantasy of Dresden Files built on Fate’s core engine adding new mechanics and game tools to support many genres and styles of play. It developed the so-called “Fate Fractal”, in which everything from equipment to an entire nation can be modelled as a character. Fate Core aims to be an improved and streamlined core engine on which the next generation of Fate games can be built.

Pledge just a quid (although most people seem to have pledged far more than this) in order to get the finished printed book), and you can download the current laid-out version of the core rules. No art, and some details may be tweaked for the final release, but it’s a complete game.

If Fate is your sort of game, and you haven’t contributed yet, what are you waiting for?