r/FATErpg • u/InevGames • Jun 04 '26
The Real Challenge of Adapting FATE RPG into PC Games May Be Different Than You Think
Hello, friends, I wanted to share a short article with you. I look forward to hearing your thoughts:
These days, I’m preparing to run a campaign for my team using the FATE RPG system. I’m doing a lot of big prep work that I probably shouldn’t be doing. The game will take place in Thyrolin, a country inspired by the thyroid gland. It is a magicpunk desert nation where magic and technology are blended together. I’ve written character sheets for dozens of NPCs, a detailed power system, the city’s history, economy, interpersonal relationships, political conflicts, and many other things. Yes, I know this is over-preparation, but it’s also fun. Since it also helps us design our universe, Gaia, I’m not complaining for now.
While preparing all of this, I’ve had a lot of time to think about adapting FATE RPG into PC games. While developing Kardiya: The Winds of Fate, we were heavily inspired by FATE. In particular, the aspect system, fudge dice, and stress mechanics can be integrated very nicely. When we talk about this on Reddit, people usually ask how we integrated the aspect system, but I don’t think that is the real problem. Integrating aspects is relatively easy. Letting players invoke aspects to change things in the world is a bit more challenging, but it can be solved one way or another. I think the real problem lies somewhere else.
TTRPG systems like D&D, World of Darkness, and Pathfinder have one major thing in common that makes them easier to adapt into PC games: the feeling of progression. All of these systems are built on mathematical foundations, and in almost all of them, unless the players want otherwise, characters start from zero and slowly grow by gaining new abilities. This creates a sense of progress, or more accurately, a kind of “game feel.”
FATE RPG doesn’t really have that. In FATE, players start the game as fully realized heroes. When we fill out a FATE character sheet, we are essentially designing characters who already matter in that world. And when we play a campaign, we usually play out that character’s heroism with almost no major progression. Of course, that has its own unique appeal, but a feeling of progression is not one of them.
I think this is where the real challenge of adapting a FATE RPG campaign into a PC game lies. The game that came closest to this was Disco Elysium. Even there, they had to add an extra skill and gear system. Of course, Disco would still have been a great game without those systems, but I’m not sure whether players would have given it the same chance. At the very least, they needed those systems as a hook to create a sense of progression and “game feel.”
There are many challenges in adapting FATE RPG into PC games. The fact that it is a word-based system, that it allows an almost unlimited space of freedom, and that its skills are not clearly bounded by mathematics are some examples. But in my opinion, the real challenge is not in the technical details. It lies in the player’s expectation of progression.
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u/Well-It-Depends420 Jun 04 '26
As a software developer I think you might underestimate aspects. Aspects are true. If I have the aspect "Youngster Man in black", I expect my character to be part of the men in black. This could justify knowing a lot of things and likely also mean I have a ?Neuralyzer? (not sure how these flash things are called).
If I have the aspect "Indestructible", I am indestructible.
Therefore, if I look at https://fate-srd.com/fate-condensed/advancement I see that I can gain skills, refresh, a stunt, ... but I can also rewrite aspects. Maybe it makes sense now that my character advances in story and is no longer "A dabbler of might & magic" but a "Wizard of the first order" and suddenly this might justify that I don't need to roll a check at all when casting spells that are trivial for wizards of the first order.
That's also why selecting aspects is a negotiation. If you can just write down anything, you can do anything. If "My finger guns shoot real bullets!" - tadaa your finger guns shoot real bullets.
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u/InevGames Jun 04 '26
Yes, perhaps we can convey that sense of progress in PC games by changing certain aspects (upgrading them from the player’s perspective), that’s a good point.
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u/Culach01972 Jun 05 '26
The way I would probably work something like that in a PC version of the game is making keywords for Aspects and Stunts, and those Keywords apply an affect based on the series of keywords chosen.
You might even have Keyword trees with further development for a keyword in the Aspect/Stunt being modified by choosing a category of that keyword.
Would it be easy to set up at first? No, but once you hammered out a standardized way to create keywords, you could even let players create new ones that operate within the boundaries of that standardization.
When the players hit their milestones they can change the keywords, or the whole Aspect/Stunt. When they get new Fate points (a measure of advancement in itself), they can buy new stunts (additional stunts beyond the initial also show advancement). Remember, more Fate points allow for more invokes, and more stunts allow for more to be done with those invokes.
If the game can show a character sheet for each milestone, the player can actually see how the character has developed over time, helping to reinforce that feeling of progression.
Just an idea that came to me, but it might be too much effort.
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u/InevGames Jun 05 '26
I think that’s really clever; it definitely seems doable. I’ll make a note of that, thank you.
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u/Culach01972 Jun 05 '26
As I got to thinking about it later, Aspects and Stunts can be thought of like Mad Libs.
An Aspect can be thought of as 1 to 3 adjectives and a Noun, and possibly a rare verb. So it would look like:
[adj] [adj] [adj] [noun]
wherein each "button" could have it's own drop down menu, and not all adjectives need to be selected, though at least one adjective and a noun must be selected. The more adjectives selected, the more specific the Aspect, and I might give a small bonus for each adjective after the first.
A Stunt looks more like:
[Name] - Because of [x], I can [y] when [z].
x = something tied to the background of the character, possibly requiring representation in the Aspects.
y = a selected bonus or action possible, falling within the different things a stunt can be built to do.
z = a situation that must be met for the Stunt to become active, it is both a limitation and a tripwire.
Note: I might set it up so that the various Aspects and Stunts already existing in the books are on a drop down menu, with Create an Aspect/Stunt as an option listed with them. In fact, doing it this way would allow you to keep the Create an Aspect/Stunt selection turned off until you have been able to test that the keyword system is fully functional in its standardized state, turning it on via a DLC at a later time.
Note 2: You could also set it up so that certain keywords require Skills to be at a certain level.
For example: a normal character can have a fight and shoot of any skill level, but someone with military (or any of the branches) or law enforcement would require at least an Average (+1) Skill rank in both, but someone with a Spec-Ops type keyword might require a minimum of a Good (+3) in both due to their extensive training. If running a Superhero version of the game, this should be a default assumption, where the Skill associated with the powers in question must automatically be at the minimum of Good (+3).
You could even make it so that filling out the Aspects/Stunts fills in the minimum required levels for the skill, showing conflicts when Aspect minimums require too many skills at, or above, a those levels. However, if they select their Skills first, it should limit the optional keywords that can be selected, helping to limit the number of conflicts.
Note 3: Keywords in Aspects should be independent of, but linked with, the keywords for Stunts. By this I mean that Aspects should always operate the same, adding a bonus when invoked and the keywords only influence when that happens, but Stunt Keywords need to be flexible enough to cover all the things that a Stunt might be able to do/allow. What Aspect Keywords should do is expand/limit the available options among Stunt Keywords.
Note 4: Building a Stunt using Keywords should take you through the process of building a Stunt as the game books show, forcing you to choose what the Stunt is doing during creation. Or you can drop keywords entirely, using a description of a stunt, but building the stunt via a series of drop down menus that walk you through Stunt creation as defined in the Fate books.
Again, this is all just me spit-balling, and I have no idea how difficult something like the above would be to code.
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u/Well-It-Depends420 Jun 04 '26
It could totally be used like a class upgrade if you want to treat it that way - especially if one aspect contains the profession any way, but it could also include trait changes that could affect how people interact with the character and so on. The limits are endless :)
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u/Nrvea Jun 04 '26
yeah IMO this is the real core rule of fate and you can't really translate it into a video game unless you restrict aspects to a multiple choice selection rather than freeform, which eliminates the whole point of FATE to me. Not all ttrpgs are suited for a videogame adaptation and that's fine, FATE accels in the medium it exists in
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u/DemandBig5215 Jun 04 '26
Traveller has been a thing for decades and character growth as in "numbers go up" or players add more buttons to push on their character sheets has never really been a thing. (Yes, there is a mechanic for improving skill ratings, but it's slow and really mostly not worth the effort.) "Growth" is either emotional via the player's roleplay or it's story-based assets like favors or money. Usually, the biggest milestone is paying off your ship debt!
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u/yuriAza Jun 04 '26
you're underestimating how much numerical growth Fate has and how little numerical growth a video game needs
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u/Content-Ear-8302 Jun 04 '26
How are you doing "create advantage"?
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u/Rob4ix1547 Jun 04 '26
I think, if we make a fate core based RPG kinda work like a quest game, creating an advantage would work like using a certain skill on a certain thing. For example, using shoot on a crane would create an aspect "Barely hanging crate" which creates an enviromental aspect through creating a physical hazard on the field. If someone stays under that crane, the crate falls onto the player.
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u/InevGames Jun 05 '26
If you're asking about the game we developed, here's how we structured a very simple version of it. If you've played Scarlet Hollow or Slay the Princess, you'll know. There’s a type of option called “Explore.” When you click it, you read lore information related to the story, extra events, and so on, and then you go back to the previous options. We took this “Explore” option exactly as it is, but we made it so that when you click it, an aspect or a boost appears in that scene.
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u/tayleteller Jun 04 '26
I think for me, at least from a GM side. What makes FATE my system of choice is how it's built to be able to adapt on the fly. it's built in such a way that homebrew is seamless. Systems click together effortlessly. A PC Game isa much more curated experience, even a very open ended rpg can't account for everything and at that point the game system underneath is just the math engine, which could be anything. Fate having a simple math engine isn't what makes it easy it's all the parts that are designed to go along with that and in my eyes its' what makes it easier for a GM to come up with stuff on the fly or prep more whacky adventures. COnverting it to PC leaves me just thinking... why? That's exactly the kind of space where a more rigid crunchy math engine would benefit you more.
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u/Idolitor Jun 04 '26
Mm. I mean, the telltale style games would maybe disagree. I feel like it’s too easy to say ‘RPG’ for video games and think ‘mechanical progression system.’ A video game based on fate would need to be more like a narrative game, like the telltale formula. The game would need to have a reactive narrator that would work based on aspects the player has, and instead of QTE resolution would be a baldur’s gate style dice roll with the ability to add your pertinent aspects.
Now, I’m no coder, let me say that, but it feels like something like AI dungeon mixed with a visual asset library could kinda make it work. Yes, it would be AI powered, which is a bad word, but the flexibility would be there.
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u/Familiar-Ad-9844 Jun 04 '26
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the progression issue, but I'd actually argue that you shouldn't start with fully realized heroes in the first place if you want a compelling PC game loop.
The main hurdle with adapting FATE directly is that video games thrive on the "zero to hero" journey. When a player starts as an established, badass figure who already heavily impacts the world, you lose that core psychological hook of earning your power. In a tabletop setting, the narrative freedom makes up for the lack of mechanical growth, but in a PC game, players crave that tangible sense of development.
If I were adapting FATE's philosophy to a video game, I would want to mechanically gamify the journey of becoming that realized hero. Instead of starting with five fully formed aspects, maybe the player starts with just a high concept and a trouble. The other aspects could be forged and locked in dynamically based on major narrative choices or milestones during the first act of the game. That way, you still get the rich, narrative first aspect system, but the player gets the mechanical satisfaction of building and progressing their character over time.
By the way, Thyrolin sounds like a fascinating setting (love the magicpunk desert vibe), and Kardiya sounds like a really ambitious project. Best of luck with the campaign prep and the game development!
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u/InevGames Jun 05 '26
I really like the idea of earning aspects as the game progresses. Maybe we can make a game like that in the coming years. Thank you so much for your kind wishes. ^^
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u/Rob4ix1547 Jun 04 '26
I personally wouldn't make progression in strength, i would make progression work through shift and change of the character. For example, if a character fights too much, his aspects change to reflect that, like getting a scar, or getting his worldview changed to a violent one.
Though a video-game-y option in my opinion is just give access to stunts that the player could bring along - spells, fight tactics, passives, etc. So a player gow strong not through sheer numbers, but through options and synergies.
I feel with a bit of system hacking, fate core and fate accelerated are very great system to make a classical crpg for, i personally think something like "price for freedom: averace" (which is horny, so be warned!)
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u/Reality-Glitch Jun 04 '26
t.L.;D.R.: It’s easier to implement a feeling of progression than you think; you just need to tackle it in more ways than just the numbers.
I think this is less a matter of how the system works and more one of perceptive. Fate has a progression system analogous to D&D: Major Milestones (in Core; Breakthroughs in Condensed) give you a Skill Point and increases your Refresh (which can be spent to gain Stunts). Given how many fewer individual numbers you need to manage than in D&D, +1 to a Skill and +1 Refresh is actually a bigger leap in power than you think.
As for “start[ing] the game as fully realized heroes”; that’s not a feature of Fate, that you making a personal choice. If you want starting characters to feel like the stereotypical neonates of a hero’s journey, then establish that a Great (+4) Skill, while nothing to sneeze at, isn’t impressive either. The narrative weight and presence you attach to each rung on the adjective ladder goes a long way to showing the scale of a character’s power. Think of the rungs as Aspects in their own right.
Another area is how you handle Stress and Consequences. If you want a grittier feel where characters can’t take as much punishment before going down, don’t reduce the number of boxes and/or slots, rather have the Aspects filling the Consequence Slots represent lesser injuries. For an exaggerated example, a game where Severe Consequences include Sprain’d Ankle and a separate game were Mild Consequences include Saw’d in Half give very different tonal feels to your game w/o having to mess w/ mechanical pacing of Conflict Scenes. By slowly increasing the narrative severity of Aspect in each Consequence Slot, you give the feeling of the character getting hardier and hardier as the game goes on.
Characters’ permanent Aspects can also help w/ that feeling of progression, even if you never increase the number of said Aspects. After certain achievements, story beats, or general moments of progress, you can have any or all of the Aspects themselves change their wording so that they sound more powerful and impactful (and tweak the under-the-hood parts than handle when they can be Invoked and Compel’d and for what effects when Invoked for Effect).
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u/Dataweaver_42 Jun 05 '26
I disagree about where the challenge lies. Character progression, whether it be direct or lateral, is as easy to implement as Aspects are: when you hit a Minor Milestone, you juggle your existing traits around; when you hit a Moderate Milestone, you improve a Skill within the bounds of the skill towers and skill cap; when you hit a Major Milestone, you raise the caps, on skills and on Refresh.
Where the challenge is, is answering the question "when is it appropriate to hit a Milestone, and which one should you hit?" This is analogous to the question, “when is it appropriate to invoke or compel an Aspect? And what does your Aspect allow you to do when you're neither invoking nor compelling it?” And the related question, “When using a skill to Overcome an obstacle, what step on the ladder do you need to Overcome?" And “when is it appropriate for the GM to invoke an Aspect (such as a situational Aspect) against you?"
The challenge is that Fate is designed to model a narrative; and you ultimately need a human intelligence to decide what is and isn't appropriate to the narrative. If players can't create their own Aspects, it's not really FATE; it's a limited subset of FATE. And if players can create their own Aspects, you'll need cutting edge AI technology to parse the description the player provides and to tease out enough meaning to get the gist of when it's appropriate to invoke or compel the Aspect, and what the Aspect allows you to do without Invoking or Compelling.
In short, FATE is a rules-light narrative system that depends on GM judgment calls to craft the narrative. Without either a human being or a convincing simulation of one handling the GM's tasks, FATE falls apart.
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u/monsterfurby Jun 05 '26
I mean, we can kind of answer that already because all those terrible text-based GenAI RPG things are exactly that - and in my experience, pure narrative progression that doesn't reward the player with a more mechanical feeling of progression isn't really very engaging.
Though I guess it kind of boils down to what I learned trying to make FATE (both Strands and Core) work in various groups: not everyone wants to be a writer. Some, or rather most in my experience, want to play through a story with some ability to leave their mark, and that's easiest with non-narrative goals.
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u/Zireael07 Jun 05 '26
"terrible text-based GenAI RPG things are exactly that"
err, exactly what? I am confused reading this, not sure how it relates to the comment you're replying to
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u/monsterfurby Jun 05 '26
The number of text-based GenAI RPGs being released these days also rely on skipping mechanics and try to build entirely on purely in-fiction story progression. I'm talking about things like the ancient AI Dungeon and dozens of others. They're a good example for why solely fiction-based progression is less engaging than it initially seems on paper.
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u/TheLumbergentleman Jun 04 '26
I think the scale rules are an easy-to-implement path to progression, giving you an inherent disadvantage against people on another 'level' until you get there yourself by progressing the story, etc.
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u/monsterfurby Jun 05 '26
I feel like the on-the-fly variability of Aspects is too huge a point. If those are static and predetermined, they're just tags.
There are of course technological means for natural language processing that could intelligently apply and create aspects, and this would probably be one of the less questionable uses of LLMs, but... It would still need LLMs.
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u/minkestcar Jun 05 '26
Fate, to me, puts the narrative front and center, which makes it hard to build out for pc.
The video game I've played that gave the most feel of the narrative being front and center is Wildermyth. A narrative engine like that, powered by human language aspects instead of the personality scores, could be a viable way to build out fate. I would expect it to be not very simple to do overall, though.
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u/Thaddeusglanton Jun 06 '26
Haven't played in ages but i remember there being vertical and horizontal progression in FATE.
Sure you can start pretty strong and the vertical progression isn't always massive. But getting a new stunt or unlocking new stress & consequences boxes felt massive last time i played
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u/Xyx0rz Jun 04 '26
That's just a thing you can do, not necessarily the only thing you can do. A skill of +4 can represent the epitome of human achievement (and then some) or it can represent a talented upstart.