Fortune's Fool - Game Play

The Fate Deck
In Fortune’s Fool, every action you take is a decided by drawing a single Tarot card from the Fate Deck. Whether you are scaling a cliff face, charming a rich nobleman, or dueling with an enemy, the result is determined by turning the next card.
The game master never draws cards in Fortune’s Fool. If you fire your flintlock at an enemy, you make a draw based on your Ranged Combat ability. If that same enemy returns fire, you make a draw based on your Dodge. In Fortune’s Fool, your fate is in your own hands.

Character Creation
Whether you are a complete neophyte or a seasoned gamer looking for a challenge, the Fortune’s Fool character creation process has something for you. Character creation is based on a series of intuitive choices. You decide your character’s race, gender, age, size, social class, birthright, environment, and religion. While each choice is simple by itself, they combine to create a wide variety of rich character options.

With each choice you make, you face a fundamental dilemma: is it better to be good or lucky? With impressive stats, skills, and martial training, it is tempting to choose ‘nobility’ for your social class. On the other hand, the ‘bourgeoisie’ social class seems much less potent. But fortune favors members of the new rising, middle class and it looks down on the old fashioned ruling class! As a nobleman you will have more skills and abilities, but if you choose bourgeoisie, you will be much luckier.

Fate Twists
Fate is a capricious mistress. She will be kind one moment and cruel the next. But when she is on your side, everything falls into place! The Fate Twist is a fun element of Fortune’s Fool that reflects this idea.

Your character will have a certain number of Fate Twists you can perform each session. The luckier you build your character, the more you will be able twist fate. These twists allow you to manipulate the Fate Deck itself. You can use your twists to reshuffle the deck, take peeks at upcoming cards, and even stack good cards near the top.

These twists are meta-abilities performed by the player, not the character. For example, you might use a twist to have the gamemaster shuffle two beneficial Major Arcana into the top five cards of the Fate Deck. This will greatly increase the chances that the next draw is good for you! When you draw that great card, you know every step of what happened, but your character has no clue. To them, things just ‘worked out.’

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