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Welcome to FATE: After the Collapse

15:06, 28th March 2024 (GMT+0)

FATE: After the Collapse

This is my own variation of the FATE system.  It is a spin-off from Spirit of the Century, rather than the newer Fate Core or Fate Accelerated.  More about what I've changed at the end, but first the setting.

Introduction to the World


After the Collapse is a role-playing game based on the FATE role-playing game system. It is based in our own world, not quite a century ahead of the current day.  Because of a limited nuclear war in the Middle East, petroleum products have become nearly unavailable, leading to a complete collapse of modern civilization.  Transportation, heating, industrial fertilizer, lubricants -- all the items derived from petroleum and all have become scarce or non-existent in most of the world, and those areas that still have access to oil are keeping it for themselves.

Most of civilization has returned to an agrarian life, but the presence of high tech tools and weapons make for a completely different, often more brutal, twist on that society from what existed in the past.  This is the world much like those in the movies Mad Max or The Book of Eli, David Brin's The Postman (and the movie made from it), and similar works. It is about the gritty survival of normal humans in a darker and more dangerous version of our world.

The setting is meant to be hard science fiction, which is to say that the people who populate the world are the same sorts of people that populate ours, with the same sets of abilities. They have just found themselves in a much harsher world with few of the amenities that we depend on. The system does not allow for zombies, mutants with super powers, extra-terrestrials, or any other paranormal creatures or abilities. There are excellent and fun games out there which support such things -- this is not one of them. The technology available is a logical extension of what is likely to be invented in the next 50 years, and assumes some fairly predictable advances in electronics, communications, pharmaceuticals, medicine, transportation, robotics, energy weapons.

The technology improvements do NOT include significant advances in what are called today alternative power sources like solar and wind power. This lack can be rationalized a number of ways, but it is fundamental to the game world that society has collapsed due to the scarcity of power. While there might be small groups within the world that are thriving due to their improvements in solar power, for instance, they are jealously guarding their secrets, and the rest of the world is struggling without the energy sources that we take for granted today.

The former United States has split into six different regions, with diverse governments and social structures.  Do you come from the Badlands, where society broke down so far that local warlords rule and cannibalism is not uncommon?  Or are you from the Texas Republic run by oil barons, the United Northwest with its solar and wind power, New Ellay (what's left of southern California), The Confederate States of America where the KKK has made a resurgence, or the oppressive Theocracy that still calls itself the United States of America?

Unique Aspects of this version of FATE