Why FATE? (Part 1?)

So I thought I'd go into my reasons for deciding upon the FATE 3.0 System as the primary engine for my game. As with many FATE converts, the story starts with Spirit of the Century.

For those unaware, Spirit of the Century is a great little RPG based around Pulp Heroes in the 1920's and 30's. While some might think that Spirit would be a perfect product as is to use for Ministry, I just got the wrong sort of vibe from it. Spirit is very pulpy, heroes win, villains lose, nobody dies etc. It doesn't really capture the feeling of Desperate, Skin of your teeth Adventure that I loved from the D20 Sessions, that sort of Gritty-but-Cinematic vibe you get from an Indiana Jones film, the Bourne Movies or the more recent James Bond pictures.

So why feel such devotion to the system? Even when it doesn't do what you want? Why not stick with D20? Well the reasoning behind that is fairly simple, for one thing FATE is a free OGL system like D20, so I can modify it, use it and sell it as I see fit. But there's another more concrete reason, that reason is Aspects.

Aspects are a system by which the Players can create their own Multifaceted Special Abilities. These can be anything from Special Talents to a particular element from that PC's backstory that can be called on to grant an advantage in battle. They scream character and narrative while providing a cool mechanical edge to the game, easily one of the best ideas in Roleplaying.

I did need to make some changes though, for one thing FATE as presented in SotC uses specialized dice that don't provide a very fun Random Factor to the game, so that had to change. I exchanged it for a scaling Dice System, using a different type of Die from the standard Dice Set to represent a different level of skill. Here's my quick break down.

Master = d12
Expert = d10
Journeyman = d8
Novice = d6
Amateur = d4

It gave things a nice broad feel without cranking the numbers up way to high.