A Double Whammy of Fate

So. Lots of stuff going on. Eventful!

Here's the news: What with one thing and another, Fred Hicks asked if I'd be willing to help Lenny Balsera (along with Bulldogs! co-author Brian Engard) with the development of Fate Core. Uh, yes. Obviously. I want to go to there.

Initially the idea was that I'd let up on Atomic Robo for a few weeks and get back to it in a big way after GenCon. This would've pushed ARRPG back about a month, but whatever -- as long the delay wasn't going to stem directly from me, I was fine with it.

But it became clear pretty quickly that the changes in Fate Core that'd prompted Fred to reach out to Brian and me in the first place are simply too significant for ARRPG, in its current state, to escape unscathed. If I were to leave ARRPG as-is, the GenCon playtests would be... less than productive. They'd still be good for buzz and hype and all that, but the playtesters probably wouldn't be contributing to its development. And that's not really an option, from my perspective.

What to do? We can't cancel those playtests. I don't want playtests that aren't actually playtests. Nope. The only way out is through.

To that end, I'm now going to be working on both projects simultaneously, incorporating as many of the changes to Fate Core as possible into ARRPG before getting on that plane to Indy. If you playtest ARRPG at GenCon, know that you'll also be among the first, for all intents and purposes, to playtest Fate Core. 

You're probably asking, "What are these changes to Fate Core that are affecting Robo so significantly?" No? You weren't asking that? Well, I'll just proceed as if you were. I'm not going to go into that here, because both games are still in development, but I will say that Lenny's taking a really cool, inspired new direction with Fate I really like. And if I like it, it's gotta be good, right? 

To paraphrase Philip J. Fry, "Don't you worry about Fate Core. Let me worry about blank."

Anyway. I'm still figuring out just how much ARRPG's going to feel all this. I suspect it might not require a ground-up redesign of some fundamental subsystems. I also suspect I may be wrong about that. But whatever -- it's all good. I'm up for it. My duties on Fate Core involve writing/re-writing about half the book, so rest assured I'll be at the epicenter of this thing from start to finish.

TL;DR: I'm also working on Fate Core now in addition to Atomic Robo. It's going to be awesome. See you at GenCon.

In the meantime, go back Race To Adventure!