Fate/Last Chance - a tabletop roleplaying system

[gears]

Developed and tested over the last year to find the right way to organically create Fate stories at the table, Fate/Last Chance is a lightweight d10 dice pool game where the power scale starts off the charts and only gets higher, where sweeping cinematics and singing character moments triumph over all else. These rules are a framework for “wouldn’t it be cool if” and “check out what my character can do” stories, straddling the line between a traditional TTRPG and a collaborative narrative system. It's a love letter to power scales, playing action figures with your OCs, 「corner brackets,」 and a world where "a lance that reverses causality to always have hit your opponent before they hit you" makes sense.

The unique 「Break Board」 challenge system is built from the ground up to reflect the kind of fight where strikes fell buildings and leave city-sized craters, from which the target gets up, wipes the blood and dust off of their forehead, and chants a magic-laced verse before shouting the name of their most powerful ability at the top of their lungs and returning the favor. It supports larger-than-life combat by putting the emphasis on the ebb and flow of advantage and the constantly rising scale of power. With the Overseer running phase transformations and dramatic comebacks via the Break Board, the players can focus on coming up with the next awe-inspiring moves they’ll use in the ever-escalating conflict. Whether you team up to win a Holy Grail War, to resolve Singularities, or because you’ve been thrown summoning catalyst–first into any other sort of adventure that can only be solved by manifesting a flying fortress and raining the lightning of creation and damnation upon the problem, this high-speed and power scale–avaricious tabletop system will bring your friendship-forming, ability name–shouting adventure to life.

Check it out if you're interested on itch.io!

[TrueMrMultiverse]

Glad to see this on the forums themselves, your work on this was pretty good!

more narrative focused than what I'm used to but can see myself using this system.

[Draconic]

This looks incredibly interesting. Oh, there's more behind a link. I'll check that out, then.

[Bugs]

Good stuff, might try and get a friend group to play this. Thanks for all the hard work!

[Ratman]

Well, this is very Storyteller, though also very light. Only one attribute that can be arguably considered social and all.

The Break Board does a pretty good job representing combat in the series. I'd be afraid that the players will only rely on their strongest stats in this unless you specifically force them to roll a particular parameter every time, and the system doesn't really have enough granularity to go into any detail on NPs and such. It's probably great for a short play-by-post game like what you'd see here, though.

[gears]

One can only do so much to prevent minmaxxing, unfortunately. In my experience running (and now playing!) the game, though, the groups I've been with do what's interesting and fun for the story, even if that means taking a losing bet. If everyone comes to the table with a storytelling attitude, then the mechanics bring it all to life!

You can also always put the pressure on your players and force them into situations where they can't necessarily use their best stats – when a Break Board adversary has the Edge, the Overseer gets to declare their move first, meaning you define the terms of engagement for that attack. If the players stack the odds in their favor, so can you.

Regarding highly mechanical or unique NPs, this is where I think the Break Board's "abstraction" of combat damage comes in handy. If someone writes and pulls off a very specific Noble Phantasm, let the story follow through logically. Success or failure will determine who is running out of steam and who can press the advantage, but that's all it does – it's up to the Overseer and the table to determine what those changes to the Break Board mean. I'm not sure what kinds of Noble Phantasms you're specifically unsure about, but as an example, take an "information gathering" type NP, something that doesn't engage in combat altogether: when that NP is rolled against an opponent, that roll shouldn't necessarily reflect "do you gather information" (unless perhaps that opponent attempts to resist information gathering via something like Presence Concealment), but instead "what does the information you gather, if any, do to change the tides of battle." A success could mean you find an opponent's weak spot, push them back, or find a way to negate an effect they have, and in the same move potentially exploit that information, or at least make an opening to do so immediately. Think broadly and things should work out okay! Of course, some things might just not work. If you've got specific examples in mind, I'm always happy to think them through and make necessary changes to make them work c: