Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, allow me to introduce to you, directly from Evil Hat Productions, something you will never see anywhere else. There are no hit points, no multi-sided dice, and no automatic bonuses for flanking. That’s right! We have here for you today the one, the only, Fate Combat rules!

And boy oh boy, are they different!

Introducing someone to Fate Core, or any branch of Fate, is considerably easier than getting them into some other RPGs out there. Especially people that have never played a tabletop RPG before. But times are changing. RPGs are getting more popular <insert happy dance>. And people that are coming to learn Fate are rarely blank slates. These are people that have learned to game with D&D, Pathfinder, Dragon AGE, and World of Darkness.

The Fate system is a mechanical balance of dice rolls and storytelling. A lot of those mechanics are very different than other game systems. That is great when you are playing the game, but it does make it hard to learn how to play when you expect something similar to the last RPG you learns. So today we are going to look at those comparative differences and hopefully make the switch a little easier.

We are actually using the Dresden Files for today’s example because it is still a very popular Fate system and because it covers a lot of things that Fate Core considers ‘extras’ but are still showing up in printed content. If you want to get into the Dresden Files RPG, it is a great setting for modern fantasy fun!

What Looks the Same

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