The Essence of Fate

Fate Condensed is a compact, stand-alone version of the Fate Core System streamlined for clarity and ease of reference.

Fate Condensed gives you easy-to-digest rules in as few pages as possible, letting you get to the table and roll the dice, fast. It includes a few simple refinements to the Fate Core engine honed over a decade of active play and development. And best of all, it’s 100% compatible with every one of our 90+ Fate products already published.

Fate veterans will appreciate the concise layout, minor refinements, and additions to Fate’s rules (see below for the details).

New to Fate? Fate Condensed can drive any game, any scenario you can imagine. Unleash your creativity! Fate’s flexible rules make it easy.

You can adapt your favorite movie or tv series, or create an original world uniquely tailored to your group. Players populate that world with proactive, capable characters leading dramatic lives. The Game Master challenges them with crises tied both to the world and to their personal troubles.

Fate Condensed gives you the flexibility and power to bring your vision to life!

Refined. Streamlined.
Fate Condensed.
What’s new?

Inside Fate Condensed, you’ll find:

One-point stress boxes to help reduce player confusion. (Don’t worry, you can still use Fate Core stress if you want!)
Skills no longer determine turn order. Instead, the story determines who goes first, and the active player chooses who goes next.
We’ve improved advancement, eliminating significant milestones and finessing major milestones to compensate.
Active opposition is no longer separate from the defend action.
Fourteen pages of optional rules to make building your own custom variant of Fate easy. These options give you rules for countdowns, scale, extreme consequences, methods to make your Big Bads bigger and badder, and more.



Released: 11 April 2025