What You Need to Play

Not much is required to play the game beyond this book, a vivid imagination, and a willingness to have fun. Compared to board games, Our Terrible Fate does not have a lot of must-have components that you need to go out and buy. On the other hand, compared to other tabletop roleplaying games, Our Terrible Fate does benefit from some additional components, such as cards and tokens. Fortunately, you can easily make these at home. Here is a list of recommended components for your game.

People

Not really a component per se, but you need two to five people to play the game. As already explained, one of you will be the Keeper, and everyone else is a player.

Fate Dice

Arguably the only other component you need to buy. Fate dice are a special kind of six-sided dice that are marked on two sides with a plus symbol (), two with a minus symbol (), and two sides are blank (). You can often find these dice from many hobby and game stores under their original name, Fudge dice. Fate dice can be purchased at your friendly local game shop or online. You will need a minimum of four dice, but preferably a set of four dice per person.

Character Sheets

Each player gets a sheet to record key information about his or her investigator – stuff like the investigator’s name, background, skills, aspects, and so on. You can use the character sheet provided with this book, make up your own, or just use a blank sheet of paper. The Keeper should also have a means to note key information about the various non-player characters in the game, but these rarely require the same level of detail as the investigators.

Tokens for Fate Points

Poker chips, glass beads, or anything similar will work. You’ll want to have at least thirty or more of these on hand, just to make sure you have enough for any given game. You can use pencil marks on your character sheet in lieu of tokens, but physical tokens add a little more fun.

Cards

At a minimum, we recommend making a card for each clue the investigators might uncover, as well as any important items they might acquire during the story. Cards should also be used to note any aspects currently in play, and using additional cards to help keep track of non-player characters is very helpful to the players. It can also be beneficial to have cards for many of the investigator options available to the players, as this makes creating or customizing characters go much more smoothly and aids during gameplay. Basically, there are a lot of uses for cards in this game, and the more of these the Keeper can create prior to play, the less time you will spend writing things down once the game begins. Naturally, as the story can take interesting and unexpected turns, it is also important for the Keeper to have a supply of blank cards on hand to record new aspects or other information as they come up.

Scratch Paper

While the use of cards is very effective at helping players keep track of what’s going on in the game, some players may want to keep notes during the investigation, so having some blank sheets of paper is often a good idea. While scratch paper may be optional for players, it is a virtual certainty that the Keeper will need it to write something down to help remember it for later. Depending on how your group prefers to keep track of the relative position of characters in certain scenes, paper can also be useful for making a quick sketch of a location.

White Board

Definitely into optional territory now; a white board can be useful for noting temporary information or sketches of locations and can cut down on the amount of paper you need.

Investigator Boards & Stress Tokens

Players can pair these optional boards and tokens with the character sheet for their investigator to make record-keeping easier during the game. Throw in cards that represent consequences, and players will almost never have to write anything down during play.

Props

Props are in no way necessary to play Our Terrible Fate, but there is a strong tradition of using props in Mythos roleplaying games. Listening to a description of an ancient cursed amulet or seeing a picture of it is one thing, but actually holding an amulet in your hands can dramatically improve the gameplay experience. Being told about a letter from a recently deceased uncle is not the same as opening and reading the letter for yourself. Naturally, any props you want to use will need to be created by the Keeper before play. Fortunately, there are many resources available for those that want to incorporate props into their games.

Drinks & Snacks

Drinks and snacks are also not required, but are recommended – especially for longer games.