Fate is one of my favorite RPG rulesets. It encourages player agency, and is really easy to pick up. And Condensed is a no-nonsense reference. If you're new to Fate, this is the only book you need, really.

The gold standard for clear, concise game writing. It really lets the system shine. Also a great place to start if you've never played an RPG before.

FATE is definitely amognst my favorite games, probably top three. While a FAE fangoy, I had yo take a small atep back: I love the depth and structural granularity of Condensed, to the point it mad me re evaluate my opinion on the only true Fate version (there's only one Fate). Condensed is a brilliant build, takes the most out of EH experiences and design, with smart solution to some of the problems you might step onto going straiht core.

Ths might reliably be the ultimate Fate build.

The perfect blend of Fate Core and Fate Accelerated. Slim, cheap and yet greatly customizable and clearly explained in few concise pages. I especially loved they got rid of the multi value stress boxes, which I frankly always found tactically useless and always counter-intuitive to explain.

An incredible necessary re-write of the Core Rules. If you ever wanted to love FATE but the reading of the original rules was just too much, THIS will get you into it and never let you go!

I read this one after reading Fate Core so.

I liked a bit more the reading of this Fate book, the rules are much better explained than Fate Core and the book is less big to read (60 pages only).

The issue is I don't thinks this book is useable if you want to use the thing called Extras in Fate Core because they aren't present here. If you create a setting which does not need extra, it"s fine but if that's not the case, well there are no explanations on how you deal with it. If you never read Fate Core before, you don't even know that you lack tools to improve your Fate Experience.

Still the book has plenty of optional rules so...I think you better with Fate Condensed than Fate Core.

Absolutely love how easy Fate Condensed makes it to wrap your head around the system. As someone coming from more rules heavy systems, and greatly looking forward to more narrative based systems, as great as Fate Core was, Fate Condensed distills it all into a very easy to understand formatting, while updating the rules, and making it ultra presentable. Highly recommended, especially if you're a new GM and need to quickly get players to understand the system.

Remember trying to teach Fate Core to new players, skimming past page after page of fluff to get to the next game mechanic that actually mattered? Remember searching for a rule over and over only to find that you are looking for the same 5-10 pages each time? This book is what Fate Core should have always been. No fluff, straightforward and elegant.

To me, this isn't Fate Condensed as much as Fate Core is now Fate Bloated.

Oh, and they fixed stress tracks so I can stop re-explaining the same rule every time a player takes damage and starts to mark the track off incorrectly. That alone justifies this entire release!

This is a great version of FATE. I think they cleaned up FATE CORE and made it a bit more accessable for people unfamilar with FATE games. I am not a big fan of a lot of settings, but the core system has been a favorate at my table; you can do any genre and any style of game with this system.

I wish they had better and more unique settings, but a clever GM can easily make their own with this book. Very constomizable, very personal. It ticks all the boxes it sets out to do.

Condensed is a great quick start as well as a great evolution of a the FATE CORE book. I wish they would have made some thing more concrete, but this is it is a catch 22 of the more concrete it is the more setting specific it is. This is a generic system guild, so it tries to be as generic as it can be to allow the most types of play; I cannot knock it for that reason.

Highly concentrated updated Fate rules - a Mephisto review

After Fate Core and Fate Accelerated, Fate Condensed has now been released - a new edition based on Fate Core, but integrating rule changes and enhancements from various sourcebooks back into the rule book. However, this does not make Fate Condensed more comprehensive than Fate Core, because the other approach of this book is to concentrate the 300 pages of Fate Core rules on 20% of the page number. In a sense, this set of rules is an edition 4.5 of Fate.

Due to the small number of pages very compact, the set of rules also starts directly without much introduction and quickly works its way through the basic principles of Fate. It explains the dice system, the results of the dice rolls, the different types of tests and then, of course, the aspects and Fate points. After that, it continues with more specific rule concepts: teamwork, challenges, competitions, conflicts, character development and game mastering. So the book arrives at the optional rules after just over 40 pages - and here you will find adaptations from previous supplements such as states, extreme consequences, etc.

But even in the core of the rules, some changes have been made. For example, the damage system, which up to now has worked with differently weighted damage boxes, is simplified.

What I really liked about Fate Condensed is the fact that the ruleset manages to summarize the Fate rules (and not the stripped-down rules of Fate Accelerated) compactly on about 60 pages. The rule changes and also the optional rules are an excellent addition that can improve the game flow. For players and gamemasters who already have some experience with Fate, Fate Condensed is a great set of rules, also for looking up things quickly. However, Fate newbies will probably miss the examples and explanations in this concentrate and will have a much harder start in this compact form. But those who have already gained first Fate experiences with Fate Accelerated, for example, will find Fate Condensed a very good way to expand to the more extensive Fate rule base. The fact that the book is on the pay-what-you-want makes it an extremely attractive expansion for Fate fans.

(Björn Lippold)

I like the way Fate Condensed is presented.

That said, I still find the Challenge/Contest/Conflict distinction overly fussy; you almost need a flowchart to figure out which resolution mechanism and restrictions apply. They're all really the same thing: A) The PCs are trying to achieve a near-term goal. B) You don't want to reduce the whole thing to a single roll of the dice. C) You want a way to treat the series of rolls as a unified whole. In writing terms, it's one beat (and perhaps a whole scene). You're managing the conflict that makes up the beat.

For me, it's all a Contest. Whoever has the best result in the round -- no matter which action they took -- scores a victory (or two) toward whatever goal they're pursuing. The third victory achieves the goal. If you're trying to escape the erupting volcano, you're free and clear at the third victory, or it has cut off your intended escape path at its third victory. If the storm is trying to capsize your boat, it capsizes your boat at the third victory, or you're safe if you get your third. If you're trying to catch the bandits before they cross the border, you catch up with them at your third victory, or they cross the border at their third victory. If the dynamite "wants" to explode, it blows up on its third victory, or (if you're trying to flee the mine before the dynamite blows) you're safely out of the mine on your third victory.

The intermediate victories also mean something in world. Intermediate victories for PCs fleeing the mine could mean they reach certain waypoints. If the dynamite explodes on its third victory, you know how far the PCs got based on their scores. Or you could leave the victories undefined until they happen, but they still mean something in world. PCs trying to sneak across the compound might have a mishap each time the guards score a victory, but you don't decide what those mishaps will be until they happen.

Sometimes I'll decide that ties go to the environment (instead of making the environment a participant in the contest). Suppose "the yacht you’re searching is careening through Hong Kong harbor while a monsoon rages outside and the boat’s library is on fire." Maybe the contest is the PCs' search vs the raging fire. PC victories give partial or secondary discoveries until they find what they're seeking. The fire consumes more of the yacht each time it scores, forcing the PCs to abandon ship if it reaches three victories. If the PCs and the fire tie, I could give the monsoon a victory. If the monsoon reaches three victories, the yacht capsizes. Intermediate victories by the monsoon would be grim reminders that the ship is in danger, such as severe roll, pitch, or yaw.

I've started applying Fate Contests to non-Fate systems. In one RPG system, we had a habit of letting battles take far too long. The Fate Contest structure now keeps those battles crisp and focused. The best result of the round scores a victory. When one side reaches its third victory, the fight is over and the winning side achieves its goal.

I'm not docking Fate Condensed a star over the Challenge/Contest/Conflict problem, however. :-) I see it as a missed opportunity instead of a flaw in Fate Condensed in particular.

I 100% love this very short formulation of Fate. It keeps basically all the central rules we know and love, adds some gear from the Adversary and Horror toolkits that help make the Big Bads work better, the optional rules are all the best options that have been tried since the original book came out, and even the character sheet has been made cleaner. I still recommend the Fate Core book as a source of great GM advice and an extended discussion of Extras, but in a mere 50-ish pages Fate Condensed gives you some really impressive tools to get your game going.

I appreciated this as a timely update and streamlining to FATE Core. I've been running a lot of FATE this last year, and a number of the clarifications in Condensed were really on-point. It's made me even more excited about digging deeper into FATE as my go-to system. Well done, guys.

If you're a FATE fan, this is worth the purchase. If you're new to FATE but want something a bit more meaty than Accelerated (which I also love), this is a great entry point.

So very well written and to the point, at this point there are no excuses left to get into Fate if you're interested in narrative RPGs at all. The rule alterations all make sense. The rules are clearly worded, very short, to the point. It's a great read for Fate Core veterans as a refresher too.

A story-driven RPG so advanced, it's actually simple. This is Fate the way it should be played. (In fact, this is almost exactly the way I've been playing Fate all along.)

This streamlined, slimmed-down version incorporates refinements to the system that originally appeared in other Fate products and blog posts over the years since Fate Core was published. The entire system has been distilled down to its essential basics, and the end result is powerful.

While experienced Fate players may not 100% agree with all of the design changes--the overly simplified Stress track is a particularly thorny issue--this is a must-have for every Fate player and fan.

Get it, read it, play it. You'll love it.

Very much hoping there will be a paperback version. If it comes out, consider buying a few copies to pass around to new players.