Our Terrible Fate is an investigative game of cosmic horror, based on the Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft. Cosmic horror is about investigating mysteries only to slowly realize that humanity’s perception of the universe is woefully inaccurate. Not only do we understand very little about our truly insignificant place in the cosmos, but even a glimpse of the truth is likely to lead to madness or death… or both. There are a number of tabletop roleplaying games that incorporate the Lovecraft Mythos into their settings – the most well-known of which is likely Call of Cthulhu – and these settings occur in a variety of time periods. Our Terrible Fate is designed to allow players to incorporate resources and scenarios from other Mythos games, so it can be used to play in any time period. However, a great many amazing stories in this genre are set in the 1920s, so Our Terrible Fate is set in that period by default.

Our Terrible Fate was designed so that it could be enjoyed by experienced gamers as well as those new to the idea of roleplaying games, but it is best learned from other players. One of the best approaches to learning the game is to read the first couple chapters of this book, and then try it out with your friends. Don’t try to learn everything all at once, take it a little bit at a time. Experienced tabletop gamers should be aware that some elements of Our Terrible Fate are different from many traditional games. While the back story of an investigation is usually determined prior to the start of play, players in Our Terrible Fate have a great deal of freedom, and the plot can shift and change in dramatic or unexpected ways at a moment’s notice.

The creation of Our Terrible Fate has benefited from the many Lovecraftian settings and games that have existed over the years. Building on the framework of Fate Core, Our Terrible Fate also draws ideas and inspiration from Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Delta Green, and Acthung! Cthulhu. Some concepts were also adapted from the Burning Wheel, created by Luke Crane. Anyone that enjoys roleplaying games would benefit from giving Luke’s games a look

At its core, Our Terrible Fate is a roleplaying game. A roleplaying game is a kind of interactive story – part theater, part storytelling, and part game. Players create fictional characters using the rules in this book, and then guide those characters through a variety of stories and adventures. In a roleplaying game each player controls their character’s every action and reaction as they make their way through the game world. If a player wants his character to run down the stairs instead of up, that is what the character does. If a player wants his character to try and convince the local law enforcement officer that there is a perfectly good explanation for the dynamite in his possession, he can start some fast talking.

Our Terrible Fate also includes gameplay elements borrowed from board and card games. Keeping track of information is important – particularly so in investigative games – and as more locations, characters, and clues are introduced during the game, cards are put into play to represent them. Some situations can also benefit from a clear picture of where the characters are within a given location. Players can use miniatures to represent characters and modular maps to show their position – this can also be used to build suspense as new areas of a location are gradually revealed as the characters explore their surroundings.

A game of Our Terrible Fate requires at least two people to play. One of them assumes the role of the Keeper of Our Fate. Everyone else assumes the role of the players.

Players

Each player assumes control of an investigator, a fictional character that exists within the game world, sometimes referred to as a player character. The Investigators are the protagonists of the game; they investigate the strange and unexplained, solve mysteries, and often end up try to shield the world from threats to terrible to contemplate – even if it means sacrificing themselves in the process. As a player, you guide your Investigator through the game world, deciding where he or she goes, what they say, and what they do when they get there.

Keeper of Our Fate

The Keeper of Our Fate, more commonly referred to as the Keeper for short, acts as guide, host, referee, and narrator. The Keeper is tasked with controlling the actions of other personalities in the game, presenting the environment and setting, and helping to determine the outcomes of the player characters’ actions. The Keeper portrays the game world and acts as the eyes and ears of the characters, describing the locations the investigators visit and the characters they encounter there, arbitrating the rules, and detailing the clues the investigators uncover throughout the game.. In addition, he or she uses the rules of the game to determine the success or failure of the characters’ actions, as well as the consequences of those actions. As Keeper, you use the rules and guidance in this book and the scenario to keep the game running smoothly and make sure everyone has a good time playing.

The game begins with the players and Keeper choosing a scenario to play. Some scenarios are fairly short and can be played in an hour or two, while others are much longer. Each scenario includes a hook, a brief description that gives players an idea of what the scenario is about. The Keeper presents the hooks for available the scenarios and, together with the players, decides which scenario to play next. Through play, new hooks are revealed, unlocking new scenarios for future games. Epic stories consisting of multiple interlinked scenarios can also be played and are referred to as a campaign.

Once a scenario is chosen, players will choose or create their investigators. Using information contained in the scenario, the Keeper helps players ensure their investigators fit in the story. Players may choose from among a variety of pregenerated investigators, which they may then customize, use an existing Investigator from previous play, or create a new investigator from scratch. The options for investigators begin with a small number of archetypes common in Lovecraftian fiction, but additional options are unlocked during play, making new kinds of investigators available to the players.

Early in every scenario, the players are presented with an issue that describes what they are investigating. This could be an unexplained disappearance, a letter from a friend asking for help, a newspaper headline concerning an expedition in foreign lands, or a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger. Gameplay revolves around investigators uncovering clues to reveal more about the underlying mystery. As the player begin to piece the truth together issues may change, and new issues may emerge. Once the investigators have satisfactorily addressed all outstanding issues, the scenario concludes. Any investigators which survive – and are still sane at the end of the scenario – may be used by players in later games.

What begins as a simple favor for an old friend may turn into a desperate attempt to thwart a potentially world-ending conspiracy while evading crazed cultists and whispers of ancient gods.

Once the game gets started, play is roughly organized into scenes – not unlike a television show or movie. Typically, a scene begins with the Keeper describing where it takes place and what is going on; then the players describe what the investigators do. The Keeper details the actions of non-player characters, and so on. Once the action of the scene is resolved, the players usually decide where the investigators head to next, and the process starts all over again. Events and actions can also be played through in different ways, including a montage-like series of related events or a brief side scene. A key responsibility of the Keeper is deciding how to play out each of these scenes in order to keep the game flowing smoothly and ensure a fun, engaging, and interesting game for everyone.

Decide what you’re trying to accomplish first, then consult the rules to help you do it.

Players should not feel restricted by the rules. Rest assured that if you want a character to do something in the game, there is a way to handle it using the rules. The important thing to remember is to base your decisions on what the characters would do (rationally or irrationally) in whatever situation they find themselves – not based on what you think will work out better under the rules.

The Keeper has a lot of flexibility when deciding what game mechanics to use in different situations, and in keeping with the Golden Rule, should always first consider what is trying to be accomplished in the story – and the game as a whole – before deciding on which mechanic to use.

Never let the rules get in the way of what makes narrative sense. If you or the players narrate something in the game and it makes sense to apply a certain rule outside of the normal circumstances where you would do so, go ahead and do it.

The rules are always secondary to what makes sense in the game world, and they should not prevent the players and Keeper from telling a compelling story. If everyone agrees that one outcome to a given action makes for the best story, there’s no reason to even consult the rules – just go with it.

Fate points are a kind of game currency that can be spent by the players and the Keeper to gain bonuses and exert additional influence on gameplay.

Aspects are short phrases that describe the game world and everything in it. You can use an aspect to gain more control over the story or provide a mechanical bonus to a roll, but aspects can also make characters’ lives more difficult. Using an aspect to your advantage (referred to as invoking an aspect) costs you a fate point, while allowing an aspect to complicate your character’s life (called accepting a compel or compelling an aspect) awards you a fate point.

Clues are special aspects that are initially known to the Keeper and hidden from the players. Uncovering these clues is usually the primary goal for the players during much of the game. Eventually enough clues will be revealed that the players can figure out what needs to be done to resolve the issues in the scenario. Gathering additional clues may provide greater understanding of what’s going on or offer insight into exactly how the investigators might resolve the issues and successfully conclude the scenario.

Bad things happen to characters in this game. If they’re lucky, they may come through an encounter with the mythos with just some bumps and bruises, some nightmares, and a scar or two. Unfortunately, it’s just as likely they will wake up to find themselves in a half-dug grave in the middle of the woods, covered in blood and dirt, with no idea how they got there. In game terms, this kind of extreme result is referred to as being taken out. Being taken out could mean the character is merely rendered helpless or irrelevant for the remainder of the scene, or it could be much more significant and lasting – even including permanent insanity or death. Characters can absorb stress and take consequences to avoid being taken out, allowing them to stay in the action longer, but doing so often means those consequences will make things more challenging later on. Consequences can take many forms: injuries like bruises, broken limbs, or bullet wounds, mental trauma like crippling fear, phobias, and amnesia, and even damage to a reputation, a ruined relationship, or deep-seated shame.

Being exposed to the Mythos is ultimately detrimental to a person’s sanity, and it is important to understand how a character’s mental stability and well-being may begin to unravel over time. The sanity of investigators and other characters is represented by a combination of aspects, stress, and consequences. As a character’s sanity begins to erode, he or she can develop mental disorders, suffer from hallucinations, and even succumb to madness from which there is no return.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Character aspects are phrases that describe some significant detail about a character. They are the reasons why your character matters, why someone is interested in seeing your character in the game. Aspects can cover a wide range of elements, such as personality or descriptive traits, beliefs, relationships, issues and problems, or anything else that helps us invest in the character as a person, rather than just a collection of stats.

As with all aspects, character aspects also have a mechanical impact on play. When an aspect suggests your character would be particularly well-suited to the task at hand, you can spend a fate point to invoke that aspect for a bonus. When the Keeper compels one of your aspects to complicate the situation, you earn a fate point. Character aspects are also useful in determining what sort of resources would logically be available to the character, be they some sort of equipment, access to a location, or people to call upon for help when needed. Character aspects can describe things about a character that are beneficial or detrimental—in fact, the best aspects are often both.

Alex’s character, Samantha, has the aspect Tempted by the Promise of Knowledge on her sheet, which describes her tendency to let curiosity get the better of her and make bad decisions whenever she sees an opportunity to learn something she doesn’t know. This adds an interesting, fun element to the character that gets her into a great deal of trouble, bringing a lot of personality to the game.

It is important that an investigator’s aspects answer some key questions about the character, so aspects for investigators are further broken down into the following different types:

Skills are what you use during the game to do complicated or interesting actions with the dice. Each character has a number of skills that represent his or her basic capabilities, including things like perceptiveness, physical prowess, professional training, education, and other measures of ability.

At the beginning of the game, the player characters have skills rated in steps from Average (+1) to Great (+4). Higher is better, meaning that the character is more capable or succeeds more often when using that skill.

If for some reason you need to make a roll using a skill your character doesn’t have, you can always roll it at Mediocre (+0). There are a couple exceptions to this, like unusual skills that most people don’t have at all.

An antiquarian by the name of Gaius has the Lore skill at Great (+4), which makes him ideally suited to knowing about obscure myths and legends. He does not have the Stealth skill, however, so when events lead to him finding it necessary to sneak up on someone, he’ll have to roll that at Mediocre (+0). Bad news for him.

Stunts are special tricks that your character knows that allow you to get an extra benefit out of a skill or alter some other game rule to work in your favor. Stunts are like special moves in a video game, letting you do something unique or distinctive compared to other characters. Two characters can have the same rating in a skill, but their stunts might give them vastly different benefits.

Samantha has a stunt called Another Round? It gives her a bonus to get information from someone with her Rapport skill, provided that she is drinking with her target in a pub or bar.

Stress is one of the two options you have to avoid being taken out — physically it represents temporary fatigue, getting winded, superficial injuries, and so on. Stress also represents the shock of seeing the horrors of the world, both natural and otherwise. This could be witnessing a murder, coming across a particularly gruesome crime scene, or encountering a creature that seemingly defies all known laws of physics. You have a number of stress levels you can burn off to help keep you in a fight, and they reset once you’ve had a few moments to rest and catch your breath.

Consequences are the other option you have to stay in the fight, but they have a more lasting impact. Every time you take a consequence, it puts a new aspect on your sheet describing your injuries. Relative to stress, it takes longer to recover from a consequence, and it’s stuck on your character sheet in the meantime, which leaves your character vulnerable to complications or others wishing to take advantage of your new weakness.

Refresh is the number of fate points you get at the start of every game session to spend for your character. Your total resets to this number unless you had more fate points at the end of the last session.

When you need to roll dice in Fate, pick up four Fate dice and roll them. When you read the dice, read every as +1, every as 0, and every as –1. Add them all together. You’ll get a result from –4 to +4, most often between –2 and +2.

Here are some sample dice totals:

= +1

= 0

= +2

= −1

The result on the dice isn’t your final total, however. If your character has a skill that’s appropriate to the action, you get to add your character’s rating in that skill to whatever you rolled.

So, once you’ve rolled the dice, how do you determine what a particular result means? Glad you asked.

Fate uses a ladder of adjectives and numbers to rate the dice results, a character’s skills and the result of a roll. Here’s the ladder:

+8 Legendary

+7 Epic

+6 Fantastic

+5 Superb

+4 Great

+3 Good

+2 Fair

+1 Average

+0 Mediocre

-1 Poor

-2 Terrible

It doesn’t really matter which side of the ladder you use—some people remember the words better, some people remember the numbers better, and some people like using both. So you could say, “I got a Great,” or “I got a +4,” and it means the same thing. As long as everyone understands what you’re communicating, you’re fine.

Results can go below and above the ladder. It is encouraged that you to come up with your own names for results above Legendary, such as “Zounds!” and “Ridiculously Awesome.”

When you roll the dice, you’re trying to get a high enough roll to match or beat your opposition. That opposition is going to come in one of two forms: active opposition, from someone rolling dice against you, or passive opposition, from an obstacle that just has a set rating on the ladder for you to overcome. (Keepers, you can also just decide your NPCs provide passive opposition when you don’t want to roll dice for them.)

Generally speaking, if you beat your opposition on the ladder, you succeed at your action. A tie creates some effect, but not to the extent your character was intending. If you win by a lot, something extra happens (like uncovering additional information or doing more harm to your opponent in a fight).

If you don’t beat the opposition, either you don’t succeed at your action, you succeed at a cost, or something else happens to complicate the outcome. Some game actions have special results when you fail at the roll.

When you beat a roll or a set obstacle, the difference between your opposition and your result is what is called shifts. When you roll equal to the opposition, you have zero shifts. Roll one over your opposition, and you have one shift. Two over means two shifts, and so on.

Brousseau, Paul’s character, is trying to escape from a house that is supposedly “haunted”. He doesn’t believe in such things, but the door to the bedroom he is in just slammed shut, and his friends down the hall are screaming about something coming out of the walls. As if that wasn’t bad enough, furniture has started flying around the room, blocking his way to the only remaining exit – the window.

Steve, the Keeper, says, “This is passive opposition, because it’s just getting in your way. It’s opposing you at Great (+4). Dodging a bed and shelves full of books to dive through a window isn’t going to be easy.”

Paul sighs and says, “Well, I’ve got Athletics at Good (+3), so I’ll try to run and dive through it, hoping to dodge the big stuff.”
He takes up the dice and rolls, getting , for a result of +2. This steps up his result on the ladder by two, from Good (+3) to Superb (+5). That’s enough to beat the opposition by one shift and succeed.

Steve says, “Well, it may not have been graceful, but you managed to jump through the window without being flattened by an inanimate object that seemed determined to crush you, or any other serious injury. Of course, now you’re lying in the front yard while everyone else is still trapped inside.”

Paul replies, “I knew the pay for this job was too good to be true,” and Brousseau continues dusts himself off before circling around the side of the house, hoping to find some way to help his friends.

Whenever you’re making a skill roll, and you’re in a situation where an aspect might be able to help you, you can spend a fate point to invoke it in order to change the dice result. This allows you to either reroll the dice or add +2 to your roll, whichever is more helpful. (Typically, +2 is a good choice if you rolled –2 or higher, but sometimes you want to risk a reroll to get that +4.) You do this after you’ve rolled the dice — if you aren’t happy with your total.

You also have to explain or justify how the aspect is helpful in order to get the bonus — sometimes it’ll be self-evident, and sometimes it might require some creative narrating.

You can spend more than one fate point on a single roll, gaining another reroll or an additional +2, as long as each point you spend invokes a different aspect.

Having escaped the house – Brousseau still refuses to call it haunted – a little shaken but otherwise unharmed, the investigators decide they need more information before they return. Brousseau decides to see what he can find out from a local deputy, but she is surprisingly tight-lipped. The deputy is giving him passive opposition at Good (+3), and his Rapport skill is Fair (+2).

Paul rolls. He breaks even, getting a 0. That leaves his result at Fair, not enough to get the information he wants.

He looks at his character sheet, then to Steve, and says, “You know, as a Former Enforcer for the Miami Mob, I spent my share of time sitting in police stations, and I know the kinds of stress police officers have to deal with on a daily basis. I’m going to talk about ‘a cop friend who used to be drinking buddy of mine’ to get her to open up.”

Steve grins and nods. Paul hands over a fate point to invoke the aspect, and gets to add +2 to his standing roll. This brings his result to a Great (+4), which exceeds the opposition. The deputy begins to think Brousseau might not be such a bad guy and starts talking about some of the strange incidents that have been reported recently. Brousseau listens intently….

Sometimes, you want to add a detail that works to your character’s advantage in a scene. For example, you might use this to narrate a convenient coincidence, like retroactively having the right supplies for a certain job (“Of course I brought that along!”), showing up at a dramatically appropriate moment, or suggesting that you and the NPC you just met have mutual clients in common.

To do this, you’ll spend a fate point. You should try to justify your story details by relating them to your aspects. Keepers, you have the right to veto any suggestions that seem out of scope or ask the player to revise them, especially if the rest of the group isn’t buying into it.

While Brousseau tries to work the cops for information, Samantha decides to try the historical archives in the local library. Unfortunately, many of the older documents are not accessible by the public.

Alex looks at her sheet and says, “Hey, I have Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Miskatonic University on my sheet. Can I declare that the library has an agreement with universities to allow scholars access, so I can access the rest of the archives?”

Steve thinks that’s perfectly reasonable to assume. Alex tosses over a fate point and describes Samantha showing the library staff her university credentials and assuring them she will be careful with the documents.

Steve describes the head librarian leading Samantha to the restricted section and saying, “Right this way professor.”

Sometimes (in fact, probably often), you’ll find yourself in a situation where an aspect complicates your character’s life and creates unexpected drama. When that happens, the Keeper will suggest a potential complication that might arise. This is called a compel.

Sometimes, a compel means your character automatically fails at some goal, or your character’s choices are restricted, or simply that unintended consequences cloud whatever your character does. You might negotiate back and forth on the details a little, to arrive at what would be most appropriate and dramatic in the moment.

Once you’ve agreed to accept the complication, you get a fate point for your troubles. If you want, you can pay a fate point to prevent the complication from happening, but it is not recommended that you do that very often — you’ll probably need that fate point later, and getting compelled brings drama (and hence, fun) into your game’s story.

Players, you’re going to call for a compel when you want there to be a complication in a decision you’ve just made, if it’s related to one of your aspects. Keepers, you’re going to call for a compel when you make the world respond to the characters in a complicated or dramatic way.

Anyone at the table is free to suggest when a compel might be appropriate for any character (including their own). Keepers, you have the final word on whether or not a compel is valid. And speak up if you see that a compel happened naturally as a result of play, but no fate points were awarded.

Tom’s character, Jackson, has the aspect Problems with Authority. Figuring he wasn’t suited to helping his friends talk to the locals, he volunteered to stay behind and keep an eye on the house.

Steve tells the players, “Evidently sitting parked in a van for several hours has gotten the attention of someone in the neighborhood, because a patrol car has just pulled up behind you.” She turns to Tom. “What do you do?”

Tom says, “Uh… well, I’ll stick around and try not to look suspicious. If the deputy talks to me, maybe I can at least find out who called the cops.”

Steve holds up a fate point and says, “And is that going to go wrong, given how well Jackson is likely to get along with a police officer in uniform?”

Tom grins and replies, “Yeah, I suppose Jackson will lose his cool pretty quickly, and that’ll get complicated. I’ll take the fate point.”

Steve and Tom play a bit to figure out just how Jackson puts his foot in his mouth, and then Steve describes the deputy ordering Jackson to step out of the van. “Sir, I’m going to need you to open the back of the vehicle so I can take a look inside.”

Tom shakes his head, remembering that some of the equipment they have in the back might be a little difficult to explain.