The Strands of Fate guy and some other guy are producing a new version of Strands of Fate. Strands of Fate 2! They need people to playtest it. if you playtest you get a PDF and stuff. Here's the link (http://www.voidstarstudios.com/strands-2e-beta-test-form/).
I have no relation to this project other than wanting a new version.
(fixed link I think)
So...what is Strands of Fate?
Its a Fate variant with more crunchy bits, more structure around Aspects, and stuff like that. Like Fate for more traditional gamers.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;958820Its a Fate variant with more crunchy bits, more structure around Aspects, and stuff like that. Like Fate for more traditional gamers.
Basically this.
To add, it did a few things that I really liked which made traditional Fate much better compared to the previous versions I'd seen before. It presented a generic universal system not tied to any one setting, so it offered lots of optional rules like powers or abilities almost like Feats that could be gained that were tiered to suit different levels of play. It used attributes rather than skills, and its character generation process did a much better process of guiding players on coming up with Aspects. But perhaps the most important thing that it did was introduce persistent Aspects. In previous Fate games, Aspects came with one free use (or tag) but then had to be paid for with a Fate point if people wanted to use them again. So if you took out the lights to sneak past the guards, that would only help you with one roll for free. But with SoF, that wasn't a problem anymore.
Looks like beta testing is closed.
The link in the OP is broken, but the form is still there - link (http://www.voidstarstudios.com/strands-2e-beta-test-form/)
I signed up and have reviewed the first couple of drafts. There's still a lot of material to be worked on so I would have thought new beta testers would be appreciated.
Strands of Fate was definitely one of the most mechanically defined versions of Fate 3 and gave you more to work with than other Fate instances. Fate Core went lighter again, so SoF is now quite a divergent arm of the game family. It (SoF) has been described as the result of Fate and GURPS having a baby. The extra crunch is mostly in character definition, with there being explicit powers and abilities defined. The game play is (at it's core) a little more crunchy that regular Fate as there are different 'degrees' of consequences, including ones which always have an effect (for example - darkness). But there aren't endless lists of specific modifiers for different types of action or activity.
It could have been big, but fell between two stools so neither people into more 'simulationist' nor people in to 'narrative' games have adopted it as their preferred choice. And the release of Fate Core shortly after pulled the main Fate community even further away from crunch. The new edition of SoF seems to be more it's own thing.
If you go to voidstarstudios.com, you'll see that they've just reopened the beta test for new participants.