Evil Hat Productions have made a streamlined and updated version of their Fate Core System available. It’s not quite a whole new version of the RPG system, though, and Evil Hat suggests calling it Fate 4.5.
Fate Condensed uses one-point stress boxes, a refinement on the system before designed to reduce player confusion and makes a change to the default initiative system.
There are also tweaks to advancement rules that remove some milestones, changes to active opposition and eight pages of optional rules designed to make it easier to build your variant of choice.
Fate Condensed is also part of an open game license which includes the text of the book. The goal here is to empower creators to make Powered by Fate RPGs in such a way that the rules can be restated without a large word-count.
Fate of Cthulhu Kickstarter backers have been among the first to get the new rules, as it was part of some pledge levels, but Evil Hat has now made the rules available at DriveThruRPG at a pay-what-you-want level (suggested price $4) and at Itch.io
Early reviews are positive, with Redditor NataiX writing;
Again, outstanding work by everyone involved! This will probably be my go-to version of Fate moving forward.
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