Fate/Last Chance

You retract your hand from its extent, eyeing the red symbol that has burned itself upon it. From within the haze of the magic ritual, a figure emerges.

“... I ask you: Are you my Master?"

–

This is how it all begins.

In Fate/Last Chance you’ll take on the role of 「Masters,」 mages with fantastical abilities, and the 「Servants」 that they form contracts with, reincarnated vessels of heroes – and villains! – from history and myth. This lightweight d10 dice pool tabletop system is designed to enable a group of Master-Servant pairs to fell impossible foes, win unwinnable wars, and grow stronger together amidst a blinding fury of landscape-leveling trump card supermoves. In this world, Masters are empowered by their Servant contracts, enabling them to fight right alongside their legendary partners. Guiding the magi and myths is an 「Overseer,」 the Game Master who crafts the turbulent backdrop of mage politics and larger-than-life ancient villains, who will deploy the unique 「Break Board」 system to make fights as literally Earth-shattering as the players can dream them.

The lightweight, chuunibyou cousin of Blades of Ether, Fate/Last Chance is a game where the power scale starts off the charts and only gets higher, where sweeping cinematics and singing character moments triumph over all else. These rules are a framework for “wouldn’t it be cool if” and “check out what my character can do” stories, straddling the line between a traditional TTRPG and a collaborative narrative system. It's a love letter to power scales, playing action figures with your OCs, 「corner brackets,」 and a world where "a lance that reverses causality to always have hit your opponent before they hit you" makes sense.

The 「Break Board」 challenge system is built from the ground up to reflect the kind of fight where strikes fell buildings and leave city-sized craters, from which the target gets up, wipes the blood and dust off of their forehead, and chants a magic-laced verse before shouting the name of their most powerful ability at the top of their lungs and returning the favor. It supports larger-than-life combat by putting the emphasis on the ebb and flow of advantage and the constantly rising scale of power. With the Overseer running phase transformations and dramatic comebacks via the Break Board, the players can focus on coming up with the next awe-inspiring moves they’ll use in the ever-escalating conflict. Whether you team up to win a Holy Grail War, a death game played by Masters and Servants for the right to wish upon the eponymous chalice that can grant any desire, to resolve Singularities, space-time continuum anomalies that create alternate histories and possibilities and fill them with rogue Servants, or because you’ve been thrown summoning catalyst–first into any other sort of adventure that can only be solved by manifesting a flying fortress and raining the lightning of creation and damnation upon the problem, this high-speed and power scale–avaricious tabletop system will bring your friendship-forming, ability name–shouting adventure to life.

To play this game, you’ll need a set of 10-sided dice (ideally at least 10, whether shared by the table or per player), printed or digital copies of the character sheets and Break Board, and, if playing on paper, at least 5 tokens to mark the Break Board with.

Digital character sheet and Break Board

Fate/Last Chance is dedicated to Annkatrin, Aurora, Cassandra, Lesath, Lukas, Mel, Penny, Rei, Roisin, and Volumnia, the Masters of Chaldea’s Team C.

Credits: Acelia, graphic design consultation; NMR, the name.

Playtesters and test readers: Dylan, eri, fen, Kaylee, KnightOfTheFarRealm, Les, Marcy, Meg, Pinetree, skaði, Teffi, Vididii, and Vix.

No homunculi were harmed in the making of this game.