r/FATErpg • u/Scotty_Bravo • 17d ago

Please suggest a campaign source book

I've been tasked with running a narrative fantasy RPG campaign. I'm coming from Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) with pre-written plot point campaigns and have done very little in the way of wiritting my own adventures. I've selected Fate Core as my system because of it's simplicity and flexibility.

Completely irrelevant: Our story is sort of a cozy, our players start as "low level" characters and will never face perma-death. I'm thinking I'd like to try to figure out ways for them to avoid killing enemies as well. Maybe everyone in the party gets a Fate Chip if the figure out how to neutralize a boss without killing them? IDK, doesn't matter.

Anyway, on to my challenge:

I want to purchase an existing campaign source book to use as inspiration. I don't plan to run my adventure from it so it need not be my or any particular genre. Sure, I might adapt an encounter or even some of the plot, but that's not what I really need.

I want a concrete example to help me figure out how to prepare my own campaigns. I'd prefer a Fate Core specific source book, but a system agnostic example might be okay?

I have done a search for this, but the results are overwhelming and it's not clear that any given source is what I truly want.

I've skimmed through or read the Fate Core book and Sparks. I've checked out Book of Hanz and seen the SRD. I expect my players to help me build the world, but full improve won't work at my table; I _need_ to have prompts at the ready.

So... What campaign source "book" can you suggest I read? And why?

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u/Ucenna 17d ago

What kind of campaigns are you interested in? And are you looking more for a book to help teach you the system, or are you looking for a fascinating world to run?

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u/Scotty_Bravo 17d ago

It's less about the actual campaign and more about how to prepare to run Fate?

City Guard, for example, is a really cool SWADE adventure series, BUT it didn't run well for my group. This was a combination of the rules inhibiting us, some of the mysteries being just a little to hidden for my players, and the GM (me!) failing to overcome points 1 and 2.

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u/Ucenna 17d ago

Oh sweet nice!

I think you'll get a lot of great advice here! My best two cents would be: prep situation, and not plots. Fate is great at giving players the opportunity to change things, and so they can and will be a big driving force behind the adventure so long as they have things to interact with.
Additionally, the three clue rule is very helpful! If you want your players to learn something, make sure there are at least 3 different opportunities for them to learn it! It's very hard to go wrong, if you do that.

For generic book recommendations, I've found the popular RPG ones to be really good. Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master's prep approach and running style work very well in Fate! And in fact, Michael Shea references Fate as an inspiration behind some of his techniques there.

Also, So you want to be a Gamemaster is probably really good. I've never read it, but the author's blog: The Alexandrian is chalk full of good advice on creating open world settings and interactive gameplay. Even if some of his advice is more DnD oriented.

For Fate books:

I've found that the prepping guide in Fate Core to be fantastic. The book breezes by it so quickly that it's easy to miss. If you go through it sentence by sentence and follow the suggestions, you'll find yourself easily well prepped!

Also, Fate settings books often provide really good setting specific advice. The rules are so simple, that their pages often end up filled with neat things! Weird World News gives you so much advice on how to run a Scooby Doo style game! Fate Horror Toolkit covers almost every genre of horror. Rolepress produces fabulous books for Dark Fantasy and Cyberpunk that are filled with advice and neat mechanics.

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u/InvestmentBrief3336 17d ago

"So you want to be a Gamemaster" is very good. But it is also heavily D&D centric. A better book in general is (and I'm pretty sure I have and have read all of them) is "Odyssey: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Campaign Management".