The Fate Random Event System

Hey everyone. I’ll be doing Fate Solo for my next game and I had the idea of working on a Random Event system to go along with Fate Solo. So, here’s a brief system for random event generation, if you’re a big fan of that.

The first step is triggering the event. A good rule of thumb is that if the dice faces all have +s, -s, or blanks, then a Random Event is triggered. The only exception is getting blanks when asking a question, as you instead get to choose what answer you want. When asking a question, roll your dice like usual. If all the faces are +s or –s, you get a random event. Simple as that.

Although, that’s just one way. Another way is to do a Scene Roll. Every new scene, roll 2dF. If the results are 2 +s, 2 –s, or 2 blanks, you get a random event. If you feel like this is happening too frequently, you can add an additional Fate die. I’ve did some calculations, and you’re bound to get a random event 30% of the time you do a scene roll with two Fate Dice.

The next step is determining what random event happens. Roll 4dF.

• The First Die represents PCs
• The Second Die represents NPCs
• The Third Die represents Threads

We’ll get to what the 4^th die represents later on. The pluses and minuses on the three die tell you if something positive or negative happens to the PC/NPC/Thread. For example, a + on the first Die means something positive happens to your PC while a – on the third dice means something negative happens during your current thread, or a thread of your choice. Blanks means nothing happens to that particular thing, so a blank on the second die would mean nothing happens to NPCs. An important thing to note is that you get to choose what happens on the three die.

To give you an extended example, let’s say I rolled 4 Fate Die. First Die’s a +, second die’s a blank, and third die’s a -. I can choose whether to pick a Positive PC event or a Negative Thread event. If that second Die had a -, I’d add a Negative NPC event to the choices. The incentive for selecting negatives is gaining a Fate Point.

Now we get to the last die. This determines whether something is created or destroyed. This can mean multiple things and you can choose what meaning is what. The general rule of thumb is that a + means that something is created (New PC/NPC/Thread) or is progressing positively (PC develops/NPC gains new asset/Moving towards a Thread) and a – means something is destroyed (The death of a PC/NPC or the closing of a Thread) or is put in peril (PC’s put in peril/NPC betrays/Moving away from a thread). A blank means nothing like that happens and instead it’s a positive or negative event.

So to break it down, let’s have an example. For the random event, I rolled a +, +, Blank, and –. What this means is that I choose between something positive happening to my PC or NPC, but have something devastating happen to them. I can choose whether or not they die or are just inconvenienced. For this case, let’s assume my character from the Kancolle game, the black market dealer, was trying to get away from the cops. I can pick the PC Positive die to make it so that he gets away, but runs into a trouble that’s bigger than the police, or I can pick the NPC Positive and have an informant who is a friend to him come save him, but wind up getting killed by the police.

This system encourages choice. Whereas most other Random Event systems tell you flat out if something good or bad happens, this system gives you a fair amount of choice and imagination as to what exactly the random event is. For added flavour, you can use icon-based dice (Story Cubes, Tangent Zero Dice, Mark’s Adventure Glyphs) to determine what happens.

And that’s the Fate Random Event System, or Fate/res. I hope you enjoy it.