Fate Core 2: Electric Boogaloo

Following up on their amazingly successful Fate Core Kickstarter from a couple years back, on Monday the folks at Evil Hat debuted Fate More Part One: From Bits to Books. But don't let the title scare you - while the focus is indeed on printing paper editions of material already available digitally, like last time there's a $10 all-digital buy-in - and it's already worth it, as in less than two days not only has the original goal funded, but the first stretch goal as well:

Yep, a Majestic-12 sourcebook for the Atomic Robo RPG, based on the now-webcomic of the same name. Now, while MJ-12 are, in the comic, presented as the enemies of our favorite wise-cracking robot, this book sounds like it will present them from their own perspective, which should be pretty interesting, and useful. For example, I bet you could easily match it with the fluff from the Monster Hunter International game to do Fate of the Monster Control Bureau.

This revelation also goes to show that there'll be new material available through this Kickstarter in addition to the new printings, and indications are that, like the previous outing, the final results of this are going to be incredible. And of course, if you're new to the system the Fate Core book, as well as a bunch of others (including Spirit of the Century now, I see), are all PWYW on DriveThru.

BREAKING: As I typed this up, the next stretch goal for the Kickstarter was announced - a hardback version of Young Centurions, the nearly-released YA prequel to Spirit of the Century.

What did I tell you? Incredible.

BEHOLD!

Somewhat buried by the fallout from yesterday's news about some fantasy game, came an announcement earlier today simultaneously from Fred Hicks (of Evil Hat Productions, publishers of The Dresden Files RPG), Mike Olson (FATE blogger and contributor to that version of The Kerberos Club) and Brian Clevinger (writer of the comic series Atomic Robo) of, well, exactly what you'd expect those three to collaborate on:

A FATE-powered Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game.

This is, to put it mildly, really exciting news for me - I've just recently become a fan of Atomic Robo, and I'm quite the fan of the guys at Evil Hat. Putting the two together, it's like the proverbial chocolate and peanut butter.

For those of you unfamiliar with the premise of Atomic Robo, I shall elaborate: Atomic Robo is a humanoid robot created by Nikola Tesla in the 1920s, who goes on to a long a fruitful career battling Communists, Nazis, cyborgs, Nazi cyborgs, giant ants, Thomas Edison, government conspiracies, and pretty much any other pulpish, Weird Science menace that rears its head throughout the twentieth century - and beyond.

I can't believe I nearly forgot the psychotic hyper-intelligent velociraptor.

If your interest is at all piqued by this I highly recommend checking out the various free online comic stories, which give what I think is a good overview of the character - most especially the Free Comic Book Day 2009 installment, from which the above panel comes (as you might be able to tell from the title of this post, Dr. Dinosaur is easily a favorite character, surpassing perhaps even Robo himself).

I'll certainly be keeping a close watch on this game as it develops - besides the latest permutation of the FATE ruleset, the potential of an Our World - type guide to the world of Atomic Robo is particularly enticing.