There is a lot that I like about FATE. Evil Hat Productions has some of the best written RPG rulebooks in the industry, with very clearly written instructions, well thought-out and balanced game systems, and seriously excellent layout, typesetting, and indexing. I looked into FATE as I was in the market for a solid generic system to move our group to, as we bounce from setting to setting a lot, and FATE seems perfect for this, except for one thing... the use of the Fudge dice. It seems like it should be such a minor thing as the dice are easy enough (and inexpensive enough) to acquire, but its just a barrier our group couldn't get past the same way we could have if the game used our existing collection of standard d6's. So I'm rating FATE highly because it seems like a great generic game system... but I can't give it five stars because it's just not a system our group will ever actually use.

I really wanted to give this collection of tools a higher score, as I think there is a lot of great bits of information in here that is worth seeing, and it would be an excellent supplement to any weird urban setting like Eberron, Curse of Strahd or Blades in the Dark. I personally found the tool interface iteslf to be a bit clunky and so a lot of the information was not as accessible to me as I was looking for, but for someone more tech saavy than me, these could be a great addition to their game.

Blades in the Dark not only presents a unique take on roleplaying games in general, but it give us a setting with plenty of detail to get you started (while leaving plenty of blank space to invent your own games in). For groups moving from the more traditional wargame with story elements attached like Dungeons & Dragons, Blade's fiction-first take on things can take some getting used to, but it's well worth a bit of growing pains for the payoff. OUr group has been roleplaying together since the 1990s across dozens of systems, and Blades in the Dark has quickly grown become our favorite game.

Star Without Number is a masterclass in game design. It's elegantly simple, while still being deep enough to get into some richly complex role-playing stories. Check out this free version, and if you like what you see (and I think you will), spring for the full version... the real treasure is the world-building tools at the back of the book. Even if you never actually play Stars Without Number as it's own game, the system agnostic world-building tables and systems are easily adapted to whatever sci-fi game your want to play.