What are the advantages of Fate Core over Spirit of the Century?

[Tengu_temp]

See title. I'm asking because, from a brief glance at Fate Core, it seems to be pretty much the same thing, just with less stuff - fewer skills, fewer stunts. Are there any reasons I should read the whole thick book back-to-back and look for positive differences, rather than just stick to the game I know?

[The Rose Dragon]

Well, for starters, FATE Core is freely available as a PDF. For another, it is more of a book for modifying FATE to fit your own settings, by creating your own skills and stunts, than a game meant to be played by as-is. I suppose you can still play with what little is available in the book, but for actual pulp games, Spirit of the Century is clearly the superior choice. The biggest advantage is when you don't want to play a pulp game, but can't afford a genre-specific book.

[Grinner]

FATE Core is a generic system. Spirit of the Century is a pulp game.

FATE Core seems much cleaner than Spirit of the Century. More elegant, really. The basic elements are the same: Skills, Stunts, and Aspects. FATE Core avoids the long list of skills and skill usages, however. Instead, each skill can do one of four things: Overcome, Create Advantage, Attack, and Defend. If you can describe something using one of these four actions and a skill, you can make it happen.

Edit: Also, the main FATE Core book is a *lot* longer than it needs to be. I'd recommend downloading FATE Accelerated first.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I don't care, as long as it's not another Dresden Files game, in the Dresden Files setting. :smallfurious:

[Tengu_temp]

Hmm. From what I've been told so far, there really is no advantage for me in switching to Fate Core. I'd use it to play the same kind of games I play with SotC anyway - not exactly pulp in the strict definition, but modern-setting games that are very close to pulp in spirit.

SotC is available for free too, by the way - it's an SRD so some stuff is missing, but it's still everything you need to play and run the game.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

In my opinion, Core is a significantly better game. It finally has its sights set on what it wants to do, so it's distilled down the core engine into a four-action system. It's a lot more cohesive than SotC, and it also lays the game out in the most lucid manner possible.

[Kiero]

SotC's method of handling Stress is objectively awful. Even the people at Evil Hat disavow it.

[kyoryu]

Yeah, Evil Hat have pretty much said that with SotC, they went way overboard on both the length of stress tracks, and the way that they handle Consequences.

Fate Core is... cleaner. The distillation of things into the four actions is just elegant. There's actually an advancement system now! It's still Fate - it's not a revolutionary change like D&D3 to 4, but it's Fate with seven years of lessons.

It's not really incompatible with SotC either. I'd probably take a look at it, and just use some of the cleaned up systems with SotC.

Candidates for inclusion would be:

1) Default stress track lengths
2) Consequences
3) The four actions
4) Simplification of stunt trees
5) Default number and utility of stunts
6) Default number of fate points and aspects
7) Conflict/Contest/Challenge systems as appropriate

[Need_A_Life]

Updated, rebalanced rules.
Still dirt-cheap.
General utility rather than designed specifically for pulp adventures.
Design notes telling you what changes you might make to get a given effect and its further implications.