FATAL Highway (PDF)

FATAL Highway

The road stretches towards the horizon.

The fuel gauge is dropping, the engine is making a noise engines should not make, and the vehicles behind you appear to have been decorated with skulls by people who knew the original owners personally.

Time for a chase.

FATAL Highway is a compact collection of FATE rules for vehicles, pursuits, crashes and post-apocalyptic road warfare. It provides the machinery needed when an ordinary opposed roll cannot adequately express two armoured cars hurtling through a ruined city while their passengers exchange gunfire and somebody climbs onto the bonnet with an axe.

The rules are quick, flexible and designed to keep the action moving rather than turning every pursuit into a lengthy seminar on differential gear ratios.

Cars Are Characters Too

In FATE, anything important can have Aspects, capabilities and complications.

Vehicles can be battered survivors, customised war machines, sleek pursuit cars or improvised deathtraps held together with wire, optimism and parts taken from three incompatible manufacturers.

A vehicle’s qualities help define what it can do:

• Outrun pursuers

• Smash through obstacles

• Survive hostile terrain

• Carry armour and weapons

• Perform dangerous manoeuvres

• Sustain damage without immediately becoming modern sculpture

• Create advantages for drivers, passengers and attackers

• Acquire memorable flaws at precisely the wrong moment

The result keeps vehicles mechanically significant without requiring players to become automotive engineers before rolling the dice.

Chases, Crashes and Road War

FATAL Highway is built for pursuits in which the road itself matters.

Traffic, wreckage, bad surfaces, collapsing bridges, narrow turns and enemy action can all transform a simple race into a sequence of escalating problems. Drivers compete for position while passengers shoot, sabotage, board other vehicles or attempt repairs under circumstances not covered by the manufacturer’s warranty.

The material can support:

• Spy-thriller pursuits

• Police chases

• Smuggling runs

• Convoy attacks

• Highway ambushes

• Desperate escapes

• Armed vehicle combat

• Post-apocalyptic road-war campaigns

• Any scene improved by speed, gunfire and irresponsible cornering

Crashes are not merely the point at which the chase stops. They are part of the action, with consequences shaped by speed, circumstances and the sort of terrible decisions which led to the collision.

Tried-and-Tested FATE Rules

The vehicle system began in Agents of SWING and has appeared in related forms across several other FATE projects, including @ctiv8 2.0 and Pacific Rim: FATE of Mankind.

This edition brings those ideas together with additional material originally developed for a FATE treatment of ’45: Psychobilly Retropocalypse.

The result is a small, practical toolkit rather than a bloated vehicular encyclopaedia. Take the rules you need, bolt them onto your campaign and try not to leave any important pieces behind after the explosion.

Use It With

FATAL Highway is a supplement for FATE-based games rather than a complete roleplaying game. It assumes access to, or familiarity with, an appropriate version of the FATE rules.

The vehicle system’s original home can be found here:

Buy Agents of SWING

Format

Digital PDF download.

• Rules for vehicles and vehicular action in FATE

• Chases, crashes and road combat

• Suitable for contemporary, espionage, action and post-apocalyptic campaigns

• System toolkit rather than a standalone game

• Written by James “Grim” Desborough

No physical book or customised interceptor will be delivered. You must provide your own leather jacket, improbable shoulder armour and dangerously limited supply of petrol.