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Strands of Fate (1st Edition) |
$9.99 |
Average Rating:4.3 / 5 |
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Pros: Fills in gaps for FATE mechanics, inexpensive PDF, lots of content
Cons: Poor-quality writing, guy-oriented, heavy on SF theme
I bought Strands of FATE because I’m working on a Spirit of the Century campaign and I had some questions that weren’t covered in the SotC rulebook. I was glad to see that Strands of FATE includes ideas for the NPC fate point pool, called shots, and assisting another, all of which are MIA in the SotC rulebook. So Strands of FATE has been useful, and since the PDF is $9.99, I can’t complain about the price.
However, unlike the very enjoyable SotC rulebook, Strands of FATE isn’t a book I’ll go back and read for the fun of it. I’m sure the author and editors did their best, but the writing is pretty bad. A couple examples: “…try to consider […] how you could make the players’ misfortunes into something that keep the session’s energy up and holds the player’s interest.” “Players want their characters to feel cool or heroic, and if tripping over a bush stops them from getting to their friend in time to help him, he is only going to feel frustration.” (The friend is going to feel frustration?) For $9.99 maybe I shouldn’t expect too much… but still, the typos and weird syntax make reading Strands of FATE a total slog for me. (Best typo: “Monthly Heroine Shipment from South America.”)
Also, Strands of FATE is very guy-oriented, which is a vibe I’ve never gotten from SotC (despite its being set in the 1920s!). Unlike SotC and Dresden Files, which refer to the GM as “she,” Strands of FATE refers to the GM as “he.” And the players are also “he.” And a two-person tent is a “two-man tent.” And non-human races include “cat-man” and “dragon-man.” And Chapter 1 starts out, “Telling stories is a tradition we’ve shared since the earliest men learned to talk.”
To add to that, the female characters and NPCs are all SEXY!!! Isabella Montayn: “Absolutely Stunning.” Gabriella Cross: “Rude and Crude, but Sexy Enough to get Away with it.” Lily White: “Absolutely Gorgeous ‘Girl-Next-Door’.” What is this, Maxim? Does every female character have to be SEXY!!!? At least sex up the male characters too! Jacob Lawson: “Pouty Pretty-Boy with Abs of Steel!” Raniel the Earth Scorcher: “Burly Grizzly Bear… who Harbors a Scorching Passion!” Joking aside, Strands of FATE sends a message of “Hey female reader: You are not the target audience for this book.” It’s disappointing that Strands of FATE doesn’t follow in FATE’s footsteps in terms of trying to bring more women into gaming.
Lastly, while there is a LOT of content in this PDF (~490 pages), it feels like the SF elements got more love than the bits from other genres. Which is great if you’re running FATE for an SF campaign, but I’m not.
So overall an OK purchase, especially for the price, but not great.
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If this was anymore bang for the buck my head would explode.
No really if you haven't bought this do it, I have used it for several one shots, and converted a long standing ANIMA game to fate. I also have an Aberrant Fate game going. After that its on to a gritty low fantasy game I have in mind.
This plus strands of power IS your RPG tool box.
Buy it
Buy it now....
NO really buy it
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Great rules set! It turns the Fate System into a universal System. The writing is very clear and makes learning the system pretty easy. Unfortunatly this is marred by a hard to read font in the body text. If the body text was an easy to read Serif font, I would gladly give this 5 stars.
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Just got done reading this and must say that it inspired me to GM again. While I am somewhat familiar with FATE through thumbing through Spirit of the Century and Starblazers this book has been able to show me the core of FATE without the blinders of a setting getting in the way. I love the ladder-less approach to skills and think it helps system agnostic approach immensely. I now have so many ideas floating around in my head for settings now and hope to find a good group of players that can really take to the narrative part of the FATE Aspect system.
As a side note, the digest format looks great on a Nook Color.
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It's a solid, simple implementation of FATE... but it lacks some of the elements that I really found critical in having FATE as FATE. Not entirely my cup of tea, but well written and clearly presented,
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I am in love with Strands of Fate. Its game mechanics center around the story with a unique Fate point and Aspect mechanics. It is presented in a single book covering everything with an intuitive, simplistic system. With this book tucked under your arm, you can easily run scenarios with anything with any genre. One could even explore a 'Sliders' style alternate reality storyline and bounce the genre of your game with each session. You can easily cobble a zombie appocalypse, a techno-distopia, or a fantasy spell-slinger campaign all with only at most an hours worth of reading and jotting a few notes.
I have been roleplaying since the eighties and can say I have only noted a few giants in this realm. First there was D&D, then WoD blew that away, and now SoF has handed both of these industry giants their walking papers. The price listed for the digital copy is very fair especially once you note the size of this core rulebook at 461 well organized and tabled pages. Easily this is the highest quality download I have bought from RPG Now. I challenge you to find anything else on this or any other site which is as all inclusive, inexpensive, and creativity inspiring as this product. I just dont think such a unicorn exists.
Discover your destiny with Strands of Fate.
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Best Fate book to date hands down! Well Written, Organized and Explained. Takes the best features from every other book I have read and then gives it a twits to improve it. And if that wasn't enough it still contains the options of previous books just in case you prefer it that way.
Though Fate is story oriented and balance usually isn't an issue. This gives you all the tools to make your fate game more balanced through its awesome point buy approach. This is truly the next evolution of fate.
If you want to play Dresden, StarBlazer, Diaspora, Shadow of the Century or Legends of Angelerre, buying those books might be good, especially for all the source content, but even if you do, this book is a MUST. The ideas and option will improve any of those games.
HOWEVER if you are looking to convert a campaign, try a new system, make your own home brew campaign or simply have the best FATE book out there, there is nothing more to think a bout. This is it.
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An excellent, somewhat revamped version of FATE, SoF is especially good for groups that really like using Aspects to their full effect. I've been working on adapting/coverting my 4E D&D campaign over to FATE and SoF seems like a perfect match to retain the basic "structure" of D&D without all of its narrative restrictiveness. My one criticism of the book is that it's explanations can be a bit hard to follow at times so readers brand new to FATE may find it a big less accessible than games like the Dresden Files RPG. That said, it's well worth the money and I would recommend it to just about anyone.
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This is a well written and very clear version of the Fate RPG with lots of alternatives and many great ideas. Crunchier in places than Spirit of the Century, with many examples of important concepts.
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If this game had aspects they would be “scalable”, “multi-genre support”, “well-written”, “mulitfaceted”, “extensible” and most of all “comprehensive”
I've been reading this after buying the PDF about 3 days ago.
A little background - I've been looking for a system to run a Mage the Ascension style game that doesn't require constant creation of power lists for the spheres, and bending your mind to fit poorly devised metaphysics that make sense for mystics but not technological characters. I think I found it.
This year I purchased Spirit of the Century, and really enjoyed their innovative system. It has a lot of great ideas, but it was kind of a first run of the FATE system. It can be a little jargony, and it is meant to run pickup games, which is fine, but I think people might have problems developing it into a long-term campaign, or adapting it to other genres (to be fair, it wasn’t designed for this).
This product reminds me of when the Spycraft people took the d20 engine, rebuilt it for their own purposes into what I would argue was a better system.
Strands of Fate has taken the FATE system, stripped it down a bit, then rebuilt it to make more sense, with solider (though easy to use) rules. I am particularly impressed on how they use the “Fate Fractal” (the idea that as characters have properties, so do large organizations, starships, etc) to model characters, combat units, organizations, vehicles, hideouts, cities; you name it. They didn’t phone this in - they have specific (though elegant) rules for these different entities, and list properties for vehicles that allow you to model a mule with a cart to battling FTL starships with great ease.
The game allows you to create your campaign quite easily at different power and tech levels. The large page count might suggest to some people that it is a monsterously complex game. This is NOT true - it’s quite streamlined. Those pages belong to a lot of explanations of advantages, examples of combat (and a nice job on modeling mental and social conflicts, both with examples). It is impressive how each rule set has been made to follow similar mechanics, but can be added or removed from campaigns as needed. After all, cowboys don’t need rules for spaceships. Unless you always dreamed of that Silverhawks campaign, which this system would let you do.
They also give you some advice on constructing your own advantages, obviously they can’t create every superpower/kung-fu/western/victorian horror advantage ever, but definitely took a stab at it, and in a very intelligent way. For my Mage-like game I have the option of creating a technomancer that just has a power list he activates, OR has the ability to warp reality where he rolls against a target, OR uses rituals to cast. I also have the option of buying down any of these powers cost with weaknesses (like “requires internet access to cast”).
Creating my first character was quite easy, I came up with my concept, spent a number of points dictated by the desired campaign power level, picked a few appropriate advantages and was pretty much done. I think I spent more time kicking around cool names for aspects than working on system dictated characteristics. Character generation is fast, easy - perfect for people new to RPG’s, con games, and introducing people to the rules.
The only things I noticed about the product were a few minor spelling errors, and if you aren’t into a narrative-based system, you might not like the FATE system in general. The rules are slightly more crunchy than Spirit of the Century, but ultimately they drive to a FATE-point, call on the aspect to gain advantage or disadvantage model. I can’t really envision a day when FATE is as strategic as D&D 4e for example, but that’s kind of the point. So, if you enjoy strategic wargaming, this might not be for you. This creates stories you might see in a film or book, but in doing so leaves the big maps and hardcore strategy bits behind (which is not to say it is an unstructured system). I also thought the character sheet could use a little refinement - but that is a fairly minor quibble coming from a graphic designer.
I would give this my strongest possible recommendation for someone that wanted to get into the FATE system with the ability to play any genre. This is likely the only book you would need to run a long-lasting and varied game. I had never heard of Void Star before this product, and tend to be pretty stingy with my gaming dollar, but will be ordering this off Lulu soon-they really did a professional intelligent job on this product. Well done!
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STRANDS OF FATE (SoF)
Description -- SoF is a cinematic rule system for playing virtually any game world or genre you can imagine. I have got to say that I am thoroughly impressed with this rule book, and I look forward to playing many game sessions using these rules.
Easy Rules -- The presentation of the rules is simple yet detailed, easy yet complete. There are a lot of options presented within the 13+ chapters of information, giving you a very maliable rule set to play your games with. The author wastes no time in explaining what the game is and how to play it. The rules are based on the FATE system using FUDGE dice, but you are also given the option of rolling 2d6 of different colors, much like the GRIMM system by FFG.
- I would like to add my own thought here on how to make rolling 2d6 more like rolling four FUDGE Dice. What you do is you roll the different-colored d6s, counting any "6"s rolled as a 1. This increases the chance of rolling a 1 on either die, and makes a better bell curve for rolling a median number. Plus, it ensures that the roll total never goes beyond ±4, thereby imulating what a FUDGE roll can acheive.
Never the less, the rules as presented won't need so much tweeking, as they will facilitate modification easily.
This is a solid rule set for playing cinematic RPGs (personally, I think most RPGs are cinematic. As SoF says, it's more interesting to have something FANTASTIC happen than it is to have something REAL happen in game play.
Fun to Play -- By implementing my own rules for solo role-playing, I was able to graft SoF into my own way of playing. This is a factor not found in many RPGs: most of them are too hard to remember all those mechanics and roll all those dice. SoF is so versatile, you can roll first and ask questions later, meaning that there is not a lot of heavy math involved in finding out what happens. Plus the addition of the Spin mechanic really makes the game shine, because this means that players will become more involved in game play as they roll -- which takes pressure off of the Host or the GM who's running the show...
Yes, Virginia -- I do believe this game will be fun to play!
Layout and Design -- Someone was paying attention and actually gave a d@#n about what they were doing when they designed this book. It is not too garish, yet it is decorated in detail. Each page has a nice border to it (or you can read the Printer Friendly version included). There is some sporadic art found here and there within the book: not too much, not too little. The font is easy to read on the computer, which means it's easy to read when printed, too. Thank you, Void Star, for being one publisher who pays attention to detail! Good layout indeed.
Worth the money -- SoF is worth every penny as a PDF. The printed / published versions seem to be fairly priced, though $45 for a hard-back book at 6x9 format seems a little steep. However, Void Star gives you a discount for getting both PDF and Hard-back, so it's not a bad deal.
This is a very good system to have in your collection, if you like cinematic story-telling games. I recommend getting the PDF at least!
(I will get a soft cover later next month for myself!)
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I've been moving to Fudge as the rule system of choice, but found I had to retain things like Starmada and Budget Battlefield to cover the spectrum of gaming I like. The Fate variant seemed almost perfect. Then came Strands of Fate. It is perfect for me. It retains things like aspects "I Never Miss! (+2 to hit)", but is extended (fractally, as they say) to scale up to include units of NPCs, organizations, vehicles of any TechLevel, and entire empires if one chooses.
I've unsubscribed to many of my Yahoo groups and am now focused on Strands of Fate, converting/creating favorite characters, beasts, races, wizards, interstellar scout ships, and SteamPunk dirigibles to SoF.
Buy it. 470 pages in both screen and printer-friendly versions. I love it!
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I just got this PDF and quickly skimmed thru it.
After the first read, I am really impressed with this product. I liked the FATE system, but I always found it to be not too easy to fully understand. I had to go to Chronica Feudalis to understand the Aspects concept, then I came back to FATE and enjoyed it. Strands of FATE basically makes it easier to understand what FATE is and does a great job simplifying the whole thing.
In there, you get rules for a lot of genres. Fantasy. Modern. Sci-Fi. Even supers. And it looks like it can hold up.
It is different from FATE in many regards. Gone are the very numerous skills, replaced by 12 abilities (strength, willpower, etc). Those abilities are the basis for the rolls, augmented by certain Aspects that may sound like skills and are grouped under an ability (ex. "Axe maniac" under strength, or "Could sell a fridge to an Eskimo" under persuasion). This is one of many differences.
We'll see if it survives the playtest stage, but so far, I am impressed.
If you kinda like FATE but was unsure about the other games, this might be the books that makes you enjoy FATE. I know I will try a sci-fi game with this in my homebrew world...
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