Fate Core Update

This turned into a longer post than I originally expected, and so I'm going to leave it up. I'm making it a Friday post (it was originally scheduled for Thursday) as, well, that is our light day anyhow. Right? right!

I promise I won't do this more than 2 more times, but for those of you who are fond of kickstarter, or just looking for a kickstarter to get your feet wet with, you really should take a look at the Fate Core Kickstarter going on right now.



At present, you get a ridiculous amount of stuff for your money. For $10 you get Fate Core, a whole bunch of world/settings, a toolkit full of ways to handle a bunch of other specific things (like magic) and more. They're even doing a Shadow of the Century run (Spirit of the Century but set in the late 80s.)

For those worried about Evil Hat not delivering, I can tell you this. I have crowd funded (kickstarter and other things) 5 projects so far. Three of them have been done by Fred Hicks/Evil Hat. It's not an accident either that three of them are by Evil Hat. They do it right. You get regular updates in email (and via twitter if you follow @FredHicks ) and those updates don't stop when the project is funded. Fred keeps you in the loop of what is going on, where your product is, and when you can expect to be receiving it.

Examples? Here you go:

The first kickstarter I did with them was the Dinocalypse Now/fiction run. I've received my copy of Dinocalypse Now, have all the pdfs I was promised (that are made already) and recently was updated with the status on the two Khan books as well as where Chuck Wendig and other associated authors are with their own works. Updates aren't coming weekly anymore, but then again, the need for updates isn't there. However, any time I find myself wondering "what's going on with that? I paid money damnit!" I generally have an email from the kickstarter within a couple of days telling me what is going on with the whole thing.

The second kickstarter was for the Spirit of the Century board game. This was, iirc, expected/hoped to be delivered before christmas for backers. It hasn't arrived yet. But I have known that for a long time now. See, as soon as they hit delays and snags Evil Hat emailed the backers, explained the delay, the cause of the delay, their choice to resolve it, and why they made the choice they did. They've also been up front that this is a learning experience for them and been showing the lessons they've been learning while they went along.

Seriously, even if Evil Hat stopped making RPGs I'd keep buying their products based on the customer service and transparency alone. I may force one of my gaming groups to convert to Fate Core just so those players have reasons to go and buy more Evil Hat stuff. They're a damn good company and worthy of your trust on this.

So if you like RPGs, like stories, or just like setting stuff you can steal for your own game: consider buying into Fate Core.

Hell, I've liked what I've read so much I'm making my own game to be powered by it. (more on that later though.)