Fate: The Unauthorized Nasuverse RPG by Dareon

Fate - The Unauthorized Nasuverse RPG
Or: The ening



Fate is based on the games produced by Type-Moon and Nasu Kinoko. Note that Nasu has put out his own tabletop RPG. This is not that one. Cobbled together mostly from oWoD and Unisystem, this is a meaty, psychosis-laden beast of a system. Full disclosure, I don't know either of the constituent systems, and don't even know this one all that well. This is practically my second reading of the book since a friend sent it to me last year. I also don't know most of the base material, as I'm about two-thirds of the way through Fate/Stay Night and haven't looked much at other Type-Moon properties. I'm just going to point out oddities, interesting things, and funny bits. Feel free to point out anything interesting I miss.

Preface
And we begin with... lyrics from Oingo Boingo?
Well, at least it's not Little Girls . Most chapters and sub-chapters do this, start with a quote of some sort that is tenuously connected to the topic of the section. I'm going to quote them as they come. Here the author, Claude "Jake" Smith III reveals his inspirations, particularly Hunter: The Reckoning. Rather apt, since from my understanding both the Type-Moon games and Hunter are about dying horribly. A page of this and how he doesn't care if his opus doesn't conform to your personal view of how Saber is your waifu, and we're off and running. I should note he makes comments at irregular intervals about how if you don't like this, he's cool with that. Seems vaguely insecure or something.

Tips For The New Guy
A page of "what is an RPG", notable only that at the bottom, seemingly used as space-filler, is the text "Through the Looking Glass, Northern Light Transparently". Probably an attack name. d10s, Storyteller, NPCs, the usual.

Introduction
No quote here, but stay tuned for other oddness. This section covers themes and goals. Much like Magical Burst, the aim is for dark storylines, often of Greek tragedy proportions. It uses Unisystem for mechanics, and Mr. The Third suggests picking up a supplement, The Magic Box , for those creating their own spells. He also adds that although they're not particularly canon, he added rules for making living doll or puppet characters. Well, I suppose they could come in handy. Then there's a basic English-Metric conversion guide, an admonition about IC and OOC knowledge, a girl doing a backflip in the moonlight, and... "Crimson night & Celsion moon, misfiction, not save the Player is Prayer, yes, Dance romanesque and unfinished Romancia."

Chapter One: The Curtain Rises/ "Kaimaku"
The Japanese is both transliterated and presented in kanji. This is the Character Concept chapter. Immediately we're into mechanics. Fate uses oWoD's Luck and personality rules, so you pick a Nature and Demeanor, and regain Luck points by roleplaying them. Those with oWoD books may supply ones they find interesting, as there are a LOT of them and I won't be covering them.

Chapter Two: Harmony of Dissonance/ "Fukyo no Senritsu"
Wait a minute, that's Castlevania!
Instead of commenting on the content of this chapter (Stats, perks, and flaws), the second chapter's quote is instead about... being the second chapter?

The stats and their intended uses should be decently familiar to just about anyone, you have Str, Dex, Con, Per, Int, and Will. 1-2 is human normal, and 6 is the pinnacle of human achievement (And a hard cap, explicitly human characters can't buy higher). Dex 5 or higher gives you more attacks and defenses per round at -2 penalties. The game then goes on to list power tiers:
- Meddling Kids (15 stats, 10 Quality points, 25 skill points, up to 10 Drawback points) These are the basic humans, and are intended to be teenage protagonists and such of basic human abilities. Meddling Adults add 10 more skill points.
- Supernaturals (22 stats, 20 Quality points, 30 skill points, up to 10 Drawback points) Covers your mid-tier thingies, vampires, half-demons, werewolves. Probably powerful magicians, as well.
- EX Supernaturals (30 stats, 25 Quality points, 35 skill points, up to 15 Drawback points) Supernatural heavy hitters, the elder vampire range.
- Epic Heroes (40 stats, 50 Quality points, 40 skill points, up to 15 Drawback points) Nigh-divine powers. Anti-army swords. Nipples that can cut diamonds.

Derived Statistics
Once you have your six basic stats, you throw math at them to find your derived stats. Often, these maths are vaguely irregular. Life Points: (STR + CON - 2) x 4 + 18. Mana (There's an asterisk here, but no corresponding footnote): PER + WILL x 3.5. Movement: [(DEX + CON) / 3] + 4. Luck: (INT + PER + WILL) / 5.3 . Like what is the point of that reduction in the Life Points equation? Wouldn't (STR + CON) x 4 + 10 get you the same result? If you follow PEMDAS, the square brackets in the Movement equation are unnecessary, and what's with the 5.3 for Luck?

This section also goes over Fear saves and introduces Madness Points, but doesn't define them or their effects. Then it goes into Luck. You can use Luck to be all kinds of cool, including coming back from the dead several different ways. It's also used to power really powerful attacks, which is only mentioned in an easily-missable sentence near the end of that section, but will probably be mentioned in the specific attacks.

This is long, and would just get longer if I went into perks right now, so we'll leave that for later.
Number of Psyducks: 4.

I'm rather pleased that I could bring the light and joy of magical girl roleplaying to the masses. Anyway, onward!

Fate, part 2: Perks, Flaws, Class Templates


Good ol' Bertie holdin' forth on min-maxing. Standard perk/flaw rules here, a flaw adds more points you can use to take perks. There's some minor alphabetization errors here, it begins with Albinism, cuts off the first part of Antisocial Personality Disorder, then goes to Abusive Partner. Albinism is also repeated later in its proper place.

Speaking of Abusive Partner, let's start with that. 2 point Flaw. Roll Con + Luck every day and take 1d6x2 bashing if you fail. "This can be combined with the Child Flaw if you want to RP a kid who is being abused by a family member." Psygonk, really.

Banality : (3-pt flaw) Weirdness Censor. Cannot be taken by characters with supernatural powers or children under 10.

Borderline Psychological Disorder : (3-pt flaw) Hey, remember AD&D's Chaotic Neutral? As likely to stab a shopkeeper as pay with exact change? Wasn't that fun? Don't you really want to be able to play that again, and get rewarded for it? If you answered yes, fuck you forever.

Clown : (1-pt flaw) "You find it hard to avoid cracking wise, even when it works against you. You are truly one with the lulz."

Several code of conduct flaws, all Oriental...

Complementarity : (2-pt flaw) This is that thing Harry Potter and Voldemort had, how they could occasionally see through the other's eyes and do telepathic juju. Usually it's just like Harry's example.

Command Rune : (5 points base, 2 points per additional charge, making this normally 9 points) This is half of the mechanical basis for a Fate/Stay Night campaign. A player or NPC with a Command Rune can form contracts and order around players or NPCs with the Servant perk. This is beyond the level of obedience already implied by the Master/Servant relationship, and is closer to a compulsion enforced by the Holy Grail (I do not shit you). Perhaps an example quoted verbatim from the book is in order!


Con-Goer : (1 point) Stay up for days, but make a really involved roll (that makes no sense yet) when you finally get sleep or sleep for a fucking long time.

Cyclic Supernatural : (2-pt flaw)
That's just lazy . On the other hand, he could have provided a 2-page chart of moon phases and power variances per tier. So I guess that was a no-win situation.

Doesn't Like Horror Movies : (2-pt flaw) Genre Blindness. Likely to be eaten by a shark.

Hikikomori : (3-pt flaw) Character has stopped interacting meaningfully with society. Must roll Will and gain two successes to go outside , and takes -2 to any Social roll. Why is this a thing? I mean, a thing for protagonists?

Inversion Impulse : (2-3 pt flaw) The character's personality inverts under extreme stress, with a new set of Nature, Demeanor, and mental flaws. Altruistic guys suddenly become self-centered, moe becomes yandere, boku becomes tsukkomi, cats and dogs living together... I'm drifting. Note that this is not multiple personalities, that has its own entry.

Karoushi : (2-pt flaw) Character is liable to literally work himself to death. Again, why is this a thing for 'heroes'?

Going through some basic skill-boosting or penalizing ones, I notice there are some inconsistencies. Some affect your roll, others affect the difficulty you're rolling against. I suppose this might make sense if the system had been at all explained before getting into the 'interesting' bits.

Mad Skillz : (1 point per level) 2 skill points per level. Not that exciting, but still. Mad Skillz? As you'll notice, Mr. "Jake" Smith likes to pepper things with 'fresh', 'hip', 'tubular' vernacular.

Manifest Millenium Castle : (7 points, only available to True Ancestors with the Rank of Brunestud) I don't know how that works. The capitalized improper nouns imply it could be done with more perks, or they could just be Nasu Things™. Arcade Bumstead has this. Usually, no player can, to judge from the text. But with it, you can summon a castle. That's it. A big stone castle. Furnished, but unstaffed. It's also apparently usable to teleport around, I dunno.

Mental Problems : (1-3 point flaws) All kinds of good shit, competitively priced! Cowardice! Cruelty! Guilt/Shame! Delusions, obsessions, phobias, paranoia... Good times, good times...

Mystic Eyes of Death Perception : (5 points) You wanna kill some shit? Get a load of this motherfucker. Five points for the power to cut shit up, plus 3 for the Magic Circuit (i.e. Magery) to use it. Good Con and knife or sword skills are also a must. What you do is make a called shot at -4, then compare your damage times 6.66 to the target's HP. If higher, you kill the fucker, right there and then, sliced apart like some kind of samurai anime. If your damage of the beeeeeeast! didn't beat the target's HP, you still do double aggravated damage.

Mystic Eyes, Other : (variable) All kinds of powers related to seeing things or meeting someone's eyes. Notable are Flame Eyes, which have most of their rules missing, saying only that the user rolls his Will, and a mage with Will 4, Magic Circuit 4, and 4 successes on his roll would deal 16 fire damage.

Obsessive/Compulsive, Paranoia (Wait a second...), PTSD, Physical Disabilities... Neither the explicit Paranoia flaw nor the Paranoia Mental Problem has rules attached to it. Which is weird because the full flaw has two different costs, implying there should be some note of what's different at each value. After consideration... This is duckworthy.

Puppet : (3 points) Desu desu desu. This is one of several perks to indicate your character was created, not born. Familiar and Homunculus are others, and it mentions Robot, but Robot doesn't exist, or at least isn't between Resurrection and Self-Mutilation. They're essentially racial templates, providing their own set of perks and flaws.

Pyrokinesis, Psychometry... Well, there's the Rank table... Brunestud isn't on it.

Reality Marble : (Variable) This is a Nasu Thing™, and therefore hard as fuck to explain, but it's basically turning the world around you into a pocket dimension where you can do all kinds of crazy shit for a while. Usually they cost at least 10 points. There's also Marble Phantasms, which aren't explained well at all, and I really don't know the difference.

Reduced Damage, Regeneration, Resources, Resurrection... Self-Mutilation, Schizophrenia, Secret, Selective Amnesia...

Servant : (Fucking expensive, like 50 points or some shit) Congratulations, you're the spirit of a legendary hero, wielding the weapon they used in life, brought forth from a mystical place outside the wheel of rebirth by the power of the Holy Grail, which has itself been tainted by Angra Mainyu, all the evil of the world, but will grant you a kinda-twisted wish anyway if you kill off the other six Servants that were summoned along with you.

This essentially sets you up in a class-based system: Saber, Berserker, Caster, Archer, Lancer, Rider, or Assassin. Most people on the internet have probably at least heard of Saber or Archer. There's also an 8th class of Servant, Avenger, which I have never heard of before and is not playable.

Severe Dysmenorrheic Psychosis : (2-pt flaw) Menstrual cramps from HELL with associated hysterics. Why?

Synchronizer : (2 points) Ability to heal wounds by close physical contact . 'Hey, babe, wanna ride my Mana Transfer Dragon?'

Telekinesis and Telepathy come before Teenager, then Teleport comes after... Teenager's interesting. For a 2-point flaw, it's the basic restriction on legal smoking, drinking and driving. For 4 points, it adds Mental Problems (unable to control anger, severe resentment at the world) and Covetous (Lechery). Stereotypes!

You Fail At [x] : (1-2 pt flaw) This is your basic skill ineptitude, notable only for the name. Also, the Ws come after it.

Chapter Three: "White Dream"/ "Shiroi Yume"
These are low-cost class/job packages. Very stereotypical, many of them apply flaws, which can be ignored for a higher cost to the package.

Backpacker : +1 Str/Will/Con, +2 Survival, +1 Animal Ken, +1 Arts & Crafts. Must buy one level of Athletics. 2 points in flaws, drawn from Obsession, Addiction (Alcohol or Marijuana), Honorable, Misanthropy, or negative levels of Resources.

Driver : +1 Dex/Per, 2 levels of Drive, specialized in either Heavy Traffic or Initial D. Must have either Intolerance or Adversary related to the local police.

Nerd/Brainiac : +1 to a mental stat, and +2 to one of Science, Technology, Computers, or a Knowledge skill. Brainiacs are a notch above, gaining an additional +1 Int and +1 in one of the above skills. Flaws are -1 to Social rolls, and Brainiacs take an Obsession along with it.

Student : +1 Int, +1 Academics, +1 to three different Knowledge skills. Must be lazy, reckless, or poor.

Witch/Warlock : +1 Int/Will, Magic Circuit 2, 1 level of Occultism. Must have at least one rank of Occult Library to learn Occultism, and Magic Circuit 2 doesn't let you do anything really interesting like Mystic Eyes or Command Rune or Reinforcement or any of that shit.

Next up: Skills!
Psyducks in this section: 7
Total Psyducks: 11
Pages Covered: 74/242
Completion: 15%
Noble Phantasms Unlocked: 0
: 2

It depends on the supporting rules, really. The feat is balanced (Ha!) for d20 Modern, where AC doesn't go nearly as high, even with magic armor in play. The bonus to AC from magic only goes up to +3, whereas cover will be providing at least +2 and up to +7 AC in most situations. Cover thus becomes a way to extend your character's survival.

Of course, here I am arguing about the attack penalty, when I've always felt the damage penalty made the feat suboptimal.

Anyway.

Fate, Part Three: Skill Focus: Fucking The Vampire

Have I mentioned yet that the games set in the Nasuverse are h-games (Or based on h-games)? Not very good ones, though. So far the sex scenes in Fate/Stay Night have just made me laugh uncontrollably.

Chapter Four: "Elegance Under the Moon"/ "Gekka Ryuurei"

This section goes into skills, specializations, and their use. It covers basic tests, Extended tests (Those that people with Karoushi will work themselves to death on), and Resisted tests, like Brawl vs Dodge. You can even have Extended Resisted tests, like interrogations.

Of particular interest is that nothing here tells you how to buy skills. You have skill points, and I assume you buy skills with them, and given the number of skills and the number of points, you can spend more than one point on them, but this is all speculation. You can specialize in a skill by spending an extra point (I assume skill points, but it doesn't actually say), which gives you a +2 to your roll when dealing with the specialization. You can specialize up to 4 times in a single skill: 1 point for the first, 6 for the second, 8 for the third, and 10 for the fourth. Given that most of the skills here have at least ten different specializations, that seems high. It also doesn't say how abilities key into skills, nor which ones equate to which.

Specializing also affects the exploding dice. When you roll a natural 10 on a skill, it's called a Bullseye: you keep that and roll another die. If you're rolling a specialty, that die is a d8. If that comes up 8, you add on a d6. If you're not specialized, or if you're rolling skills where you have to specialize (Such as Academics or Science, no word on whether that's a free specialization or not), it's a d6 and a d4. There are also critical fumbles, which this game calls Botches. Is it just me, or does every game system have its own terminology for special die results? I would probably be surprised if a system called a natural worst roll an Epic Fail, but only because no one was sane enough to realize it was a bad idea.

So, without further ado, a selection of skills, and a selection of those selected skills' selected specializations that I've selected for a select purpose and my select button is sticking help select help
- Academics : Social Work, Urban Legends, History of the Catholic Church.
- Animal Ken : This skill is noted as being kind of essential for anyone with infernal or celestial powers, as for some reason animals can't tell the difference.
- Bureaucracy : Fraud, Military Teamwork, Stewardship, Bribery, Police Paperwork.
- Computers : Artificial Intelligence, Viruses, 31337 H4xx0r.
- Dodge : Bullets are dodged at -2, so having Dodge (Firefight) is basically breaking even. Given the nature of Nasuverse stories, though, guns aren't likely to feature all that much.
- Drive : Armored Fighting Vehicle, Mecha, Reverse, Initial D. If untrained, you can only drive an automatic and take -2 to everything else.
- Firearms : It doesn't mention this in the skill itself, but Firearms skill is also used to aim several spells and special abilities (Such as Mystic Eyes of Torture and Gate of Babylon), but not bows.
- Occultism : Unquiet Spirits, Tarot, Vampires, Hidden Worlds, Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. I just find it vaguely interesting that you can specialize in knowing shit you're explicitly not supposed to. I know it's Cthulhu and shit, I'm just of the opinion you should pick that shit up by accident, not go out and get yourself a +2 in it.
- Wild Card : Wild Card contains skills that ostensibly don't fit elsewhere. I'll cover them, and you see if you can figure out where they might go and still be just as, if not more, effective. I'll provide that myself in a bit, don't worry.
-Archery. Bonus: Why is this placement for Archery stupid beyond just having another place it'll fit?
-Graphoanalysis. That's handwriting analysis for those with little Latin background.
-Intuition (Gambling, Hunches, Bad Feelings). This might be okay as a Wild Card, really.
-Streetwise (Includes Seduction, but a different Seduction from Influence, and Locate Playaz).
-Torture.

Right, then, let's see if you agree with me.
Archery: Loses nothing by being grouped under Firearms. In fact, since Wild Card is a skill you have to specialize in, Wild Card Archery uses only d6 and d4 for Bullseyes. Meaning you can never be better at (lucky) archery than someone else could be with a gun.
Graphoanalysis: Academics.
Intuition: I'd stick Hunches in Investigation, Bad Feelings in Occultism, and Gambling... Probably in Finance.
Streetwise: Probably Politics and Influence.
Torture: Influence.

Chapter Five: "Garden of a Cradle"/ "Yurikago no Niwa"
This seems to be the actual system chapter, maybe it'll explain all these mechanics we've been working with. We start with times skill uses can take, nothing of much interest here, except that fixing a taser takes the same amount of time as fixing a laser or maser. I think he just grouped those together by sound, and has no idea how either of them works.

Now we come to the Botch rules. If you roll a natural 1, roll again and subtract that from your skill. If that roll is another 1, it's a Botch. So if you roll terribly, you do really badly, but if you roll well, you do pretty badly, so you need to roll shitty, but not absolutely shitty to only fail a little bit? There you are, psyduck! I'd missed you. As usual for critical fumble tables, it provides many hilarious interesting stimulating results. As you can tell, I don't like fumble tables. The only really interesting thing on the tables is the social rolls contain the headings "Out To Lunch" and "Baka".

Next up, initiative. This is Dex + Alertness + Combat Reflexes + 1d10. this gives you a number of Success Levels. Still no definition of that, though. You then subtract that number from 5, and that's when your first attack will go off. Later attacks happen later in the initiative cycle by adding 3 to the first attack time. Then you do this again next round.

A Guide To Skill Use: Common Rolls

Now here are the skill and stat combinations. Turns out there's kind of an okay reason that a stat isn't inherently tied into a skill. Some uses of a skill may use other stats! For instance, cleaning a gun is Int + Firearms, while actually shooting it is Dex. Noteworthy skill uses:
-Sneak around by being light-footed: Dex+Stealth
-Sneak Around Like a Silent Film Villain: Dex+Stealth. Why are these both here? Is there a difference?
-Build a trap: Int + Repair.
-Use Alien Machines: Occultism + Technology + 1/2 Int.
-Throw a Rock: Dex + Melee - 2. This is the same rule for throwing anything.
-Jack Bauer Style "Interrogation": Int + Wild Card (Torture).
-Shot Web (Not provided in this list, but we can go back to the Webbing perk and look): Wild Card (Webbing) + ??? I'd assume Dex to shot it at dude, Int to set up a trap or barrier.
Hmm. I think I just figured out why there's two different sneaking examples. The list gives the impression of being written by two different people or at two different times. Half of it is written normally, the other half Capitalizes Nearly Every Word.

Experience Points and Improvement
I'm not going to take issue with that, because there are much sillier quotes to take issue with.
Players will gain between 1 and 5 XP per session, depending on what goes on. You can increase a stat for five XP per level. "Thus, to go from Str 1 to Str 2 takes 10 points." ...Huh? Skills can be increased as much as you like, and cost 4 times the desired rank, so going from rank 3 to rank 4 costs 12 points. Again: Huh? Something is either being misrepresented or poorly explained here. Specialization in skills is usually cheaper, costing 2 XP for the first, and 6 for each afterwards. Now the big psyduck: Adding a perk costs 1 XP per level of the perk. That's it. Want to be a better driver? Hang in there, it'll probably be like six sessions before you can. Want to be stronger? Another four to six sessions if you happen to be a 90-pound weakling. Mystic Eyes of Death Perception? Sure, you can pick that up tomorrow. It says you need a story-based rationalization, but come on, you think that's going to actually stop some horrid munchkin that wants to be or do Saber?

Hell, just take the skill-point-boosting perk and boom, your driving is twice as good for like a twentieth of the cost!

My brain hurts, this looked like a vaguely interesting system from the outside, and I still need to do combat and sanity. Well, could be worse. I could still have the Book of Erotic Fantasy.
Psyducks in this section: 3
Total Psyducks: 14
Pages covered: 86/242
Ideal Mana Transfer Method: Semen

That's my line!

Fate, Part 4: Let's Play Dead Rising

Chapter Six: "Fresh Blood Shrine"/ "Senketsu Shinden"
This is the combat chapter. It starts off with what I assume is WoD damage types: Bashing, Lethal, and Aggravated. Healing is also covered, and supernatural creatures automatically heal faster than normal.

Weapons
You know how Aldenata has those exhaustive lists of fluff for everything? This is the opposite. Nothing but damage values. For everything. This is vaguely annoying when you get into the list of Oriental weapons. Most people know what a katana, nunchaku, or balisong is. Fewer people are familiar with the dao, neko-te, kusari-gama, or tetsubo. Only those completely obsessed would know what the salient differences between a fu tao seung ngao, gim, or li kwei fu tao were. Because they all do d8.

Other salient points to weaponry:
Damage values are a single die, apparently multiplied by your strength, leading to a huge variance in damage. The Man Your Man Could Kill Like, with the human maximum 6 Str, wielding his d8 battleaxe, would do from 6 to 48 damage.
Martial artists should kick. Do nothing but kick. Never stop kicking. Either that or wrap barbed wire around your fists and/or head, so they do the same damage as kicks.
Speaking of barbed wire, it can apparently be wrapped around anything to improve its damage. It does this by increasing your Str multiplier. Think about this as I go through the interesting weapons, and picture them covered in barbed wire.
Bedpan: d4, two-handed.
Boombox: d8, two-handed.
Cookie Sheet: d4, two-handed, breaks easily.
Kitchen Sink: d12, two-handed.
The Good Book of your choice (Bible, etc.): d4, holy damage.
Riding Crop: d4.
Katana: d10, two-handed.
Stun Gun:
It still hasn't explained the roll mechanic. It doesn't say -2 to what. In theory a dozen kids with stunguns could just shut down a werewolf or something.

A short bit on ranged weapons and explosions (All explosives do the same damage, again a single die times a modifier, so you could be lying on a grenade and only take 8 damage)...

Combat Maneuvers

I don't know if this is actually a major penalty or not, but you can do constant headshots at -4 to your roll. Double Bashing damage and triple Lethal.

Catch Weapon: Dex + Brawl - 5, versus opponent's attack roll. If greater, you catch it and take no damage. If less, you take an extra 5 damage.

Groin Shot: -3 to attack, normal damage, and a complicated Will test to resist... absolutely nothing. There is literally no status or consequence applied to the target, but they still have a Will test to resist and recover from the nonexistent effect.

Jump Kick, Rising Uppercut, Wall Flip, all kinds of wuxia stuff. Then we come to a short treeatise on how guns are not really used in the Nasuverse, and guidelines for how to treat them if the players want them. Then it's a three-page list of every conceivable caliber and how much damage they do: Again, a single die (occasionally with a modifier) multiplied by a flat value. Most of these are exactly the same. Using buckshot rather than slug ammo in a shotgun drops the damage by a die size. Then we're out of the combat chapter.

You know what's missing? That's right! Any mention of the actual system at all.

Chapter Seven: "Blue Sin Mark"/ "Aoi Kyuuseki"

Healing The Mind

This entire chapter covers psychoanalysis brought on by Madness Points and fear tests. Almost immediately, it drops this on us: "As you already know, each time a character's Madness Points total a multiple of his Will, he acquires 1 point of a mental Flaw." This has never been mentioned before.

After a short bit about talk therapy and modifiers to the roll for it, the rest of the chapter is a litany of drugs that can be used to treat the flaws you acquire from going mad, followed by a final note about how if you get your Will x7 in Madness Points, you go irrevocably insane and become an NPC.

This is the end of page 101 of 242. The rest of the book is plot summaries and character details for the video games, as well as rules for rolling up Servants. Of note:
A picture of several toothy, wriggling penises.
Several loli pantyshots.
Three types of vampire, four different types of zombie, Lovecraftian aberrations, and demons.
And I think somewhere in there the author quotes himself.

And so, as I pray, Unlimited Psyduck Works .

Magical Burst, having come later than Maid, took the d66 mechanic from Maid, by all accounts (Read: One guy said it here, I accepted it as the most likely option). I think the guy doing Magical Burst was one of the translators for Maid. So while the mechanic itself may not be entirely Japanese in origin, it is at least co-opted for being in proximity to other Japanese things, and thus awesome by the Law of Contagion.

d66 also shows up like, once in Fate, too. Which makes for a nice segue, actually.

So, the last bit on Fate was a bit truncated because the cognitive dissonance of being told what to roll without having first been told how to roll it got to me. The book apparently assumes a reader is familiar with Unisystem, which I'm not.

Fate Part 5: More Servant Shenanigans Than A Game of Maid

In the interest of protecting anyone who may not have, and desires to later, play Tsukihime and/or Fate/Stay Night (They are legitimately entertaining visual novels, even if the sex scenes have induced a Pavlovian reaction of laughing uncontrollably in me), I'll skip the plot synopses and only touch lightly on the character stats. Rest assured, the plot synopses are great untapped veins of purestrain with inclusions of . So, let's move to Servants.

Before we go much further, it should be noted that "Servant", "Master", and the names of each Servant's class are gratuitous English in the games, much like how an English-speaking translator will use nakama, baka, keikaku, various honorifics, or Naminé-sempai is so gaijin she komo dachi tomo teriyaki sukimura sakura the Rearu Fork Brues... Iie, iie, no way Jose . Seibaa, Laidaa, Baasaakaa, et cetera.

Servants, as mentioned before, are the spirits of legendary heroes summoned into a class-based RPG structure and intended to battle like Pokemon. They also operate a bit like Final Fantasy summons, consuming their Master's magical energy in order to battle, use their strongest attacks, and even exist. Servants may be drawn from any mythology and any time. All that matters is that their exploits elevated them to the status of hero in the people's minds. Villainous spirits are also summonable, but this is due to shenanigans. There have been two separate stories involving the Holy Grail War: Fate/Stay Night, and a prequel, Fate/Zero. There is also Fate/hollow ataraxia; a sequel involving a time loop and Avenger, Fate/Tiger Colosseum and Fate/unlimited codes; a pair of fighting games, Fate/EXTRA; a Persona-like RPG, and Fate/Apocrypha, which was a cancelled multiplayer game with a lot of interesting servants . I'll be covering only Stay Night and Zero here.

The sections on Servants are scattered around the book, with the actual points available at the very end of the last section on page 169. Previously I would just go straight through and handle things as they came, but this section will be improved by my skipping around.

So How Many Points Do I Get To Make My Servant? (p. 169)

Short answer: It depends on how good a magus the Master is. The process of creating a Servant involves a summoning ritual, which must be completed before you know how many points you can spend on a Servant. This may apply only to NPC Servants and Masters, because the other option is making half the players wait until the other half has mostly made their magi before they can start building.

Actually summoning a Servant requires some artifact relating to their life or heroism, or a similar mindset to the hero itself. For instance, the Einzberns summoned Hercules using a piece from the foundations of one of his temples.

Player servants will probably be built at the Epic Hero power level, as defined in Chapter Two . Now the thing is, I haven't done any math on the example characters (And in fact the book makes this hard by not providing point totals), but I'm pretty sure the mortal Masters are built at a lower power scale. This is mostly because in-canon, Masters spend most of their time watching their Servants fight. If a Master enters the fray and begins doing shit, they are either killed horribly (Emiya, Rin), in danger of being killed horribly (Rin), injured horribly (Emiya if you choose better), or complete and total hax (Emiya on rare occasions, Caster's Master).

This power imbalance does not strike me as a fun time around a basement table. In fact, having multiple Servants, or Servants and Masters in the same party strikes me as a bad idea, simply because I'm not a fan of PVP, which would be an unavoidable part of a Holy Grail War campaign.

Most Servants come with Noble Phantasms , the weapon, weapons, or notable accoutrements they used in life. These are ranked from D to EX (and pluses beyond that), with corresponding levels of power.

Breakdown Of The Classes (p. 144, with bits from the Servant perk on p. 60-63)
Remember all this stuff is . I'll try and keep things as close to normal as possible, but that's going to be difficult in places.

Saber is the melee-oriented class. They always gain Magic Resistance from the Saber class, and were a hero famed for their prowess with a melee weapon. They often come with some skill at riding animals or piloting vehicles. The only Saber we know of from the games is Arturia, King Arthur who was actually a girl. There are shenanigans involved, but her Noble Phantasm is, of course, Excalibur. It's a huge beam attack. She actually wields Caliburn, the sword in the stone, hidden behind a veil of wind.

Berserker is the supreme attacking and defending class. The only issue is his Mad Enhancement class ability, which increases all his ability scores at the cost of his sanity. Supposedly it can be turned off and on, but the F/SN Berserker had been ordered to always use it. To qualify as Berserker, a hero must have gone mad at some point during his life. The Berserkers we have seen are Hercules and Lancelot. Hercules' Noble Phantasm was originally a universally-usable monster-slaying technique, Nine Lives, but upon being summoned as Berserker, he lacked the intellect and coordination to use it, and instead had Twelve Labors, an inherent quality which caused him to need to be killed twelve times before he would die. Lancelot came with the cursed holy sword Arondight, but was, as with Hercules, unable to make full use of it thanks to the Mad Enhancement. Instead, he could use any weapon as a Noble Phantasm. Including a telephone pole, submachine guns, other servants' Noble Phantasms, and an F-15.

An interesting note: Hercules actually fits the qualifications for all the Servant classes except for Caster (And Assassin, maybe. Due to shenanigans). In theory you could have five Herculeses (Herculi?) running about. Saber, Archer, Rider, and Berserker are obvious, but he must've been nimbler than expected to qualify for Lancer.

Lancer , while we're on the topic, is a polearm user. Not exactly common, the ones shown are Cú Chulainn (Pronounced Kuh-Cullen) and Diarmuid Ua Duibhne (Die-ar-mid O Dyna). They're the most agile of the Servants, and thus have the highest Dex. Lancer has Magic Resistance and Protection From Arrows as their class abilities. Cuchulainn's Noble Phantasm was the Gae Bolg, a lance that would always pierce the heart of its user by reversing cause and effect. Rather than Dex, this attack is dodged using Luck. Diarmuid was able to dual-wield spears, and used the Noble Phantasms Gae Buidhe and Gae Dearg, which would cause wounds that wouldn't heal and nullify magical weapons and defenses, respectively.

Caster is, of course, a spellcaster. Medea is the Caster encountered in Stay Night, while Zero's is Gille de Rais, a compatriot of Joan of Arc and the inspiration for the tale of Bluebeard. He also looks a bit . Caster boasts the second-highest mana consumption rate, topped only by Berserker, and thus almost requires a strong magus as a Master. Casters are also physically weak, such that a decent mortal fighter could seriously fuck them up, although killing them would be difficult. Given this and the Saber class' Magic Resistance, the best bet for a Caster trying to win the war is to hope someone else takes out Saber. The Caster class ability is Territory Creation, the ability to set up a workshop or consecrated area in which to perform magic. Basically grants a home-field advantage.

Medea's Noble Phantasm is the cursed dagger Rule Breaker, a piss-poor weapon that is more used for its other effect: It will break any magical contracts on the target. Bluebeard, on the other hand, possessed Prelati's Spellbook, also known as the R'lyeh Text. As you might guess, it let him summon Lovecraftian horrors.

Archer is the ranged attack class. They are pragmatic, most likely to win by tactics rather than raw skill. Note that only one of the Archers covered uses a bow, and he uses it only sparingly. The Archer class has the Independent Action ability, which lets them move farther from their Master and even survive for a time without a Master. Archer's identity gets a little complicated, since two Archers appeared in Fate/Stay Night, and both are due to shenanigans. The first one, clad in red, is Emiya Shirou . He fights using a pair of shortswords, and his Noble Phantasm is the Reality Marble Unlimited Blade Works. The second one is Gilgamesh, who was the Archer in Fate/Zero and survived through to the present day. Gilgamesh's most-used Noble Phantasm is Gate of Babylon, essentially a gate to a pocket dimension holding all the riches he accumulated in life. He uses this to fire hundreds of Noble Phantasms at his opponents. Again, shenanigans. He has a second Noble Phantasm, the sword Ea. This is mostly used for the massive drill attack Enuma Elish.

Rider is, as should be apparent, intended as mounted cavalry. However, they are only slightly less effective on foot. Similar in dexterity to Lancer, the difference is top speed versus acceleration. Rider is faster overall, but Lancer has greater delta-V. The class ability granted is, of course, Riding, the ability to ride beasts and vehicles extremely well, from +2 to a single type of animal all the way up to four free successes to ride dragons and everything else. FSN's Rider was Medusa, and Zero's was Iskander, also known as Alexander the Great. Both Riders shown have had the ability to summon their own mounts, Iskander summoning a chariot and Medusa summoning the Pegasus. The chariot is one of Iskander's Noble Phantasms, but Pegasus is not Medusa's. Instead, Medusa has Bellerophon, a golden bridle that increases the statistics and allows control of any mount it's used on.

Assassin is an odd duck. As you'd expect, they're not often one for a standup fight. They have the Presence Concealment ability, which lets them hide from magi and servants who can sense the magical energy produced by a Servant. Supposedly, all Assassins are the same 'person', Hassan-i-Sabah , the leader of the Hashshashin. Each leader takes the name Hassan-i-Sabah, and thus the Servant summoned is more of a concept than a complete person. As such, it's hard to tell which Assassin is which until it's killed you. There are twenty of them. One Assassin possesses Zabaniya - Delusional Illusion, the Divisibility ability. It can split into several different bodies, up to a hundred, by the RPG rules. One possesses Zabaniya - Delusional Heartbeat, which creates an illusory duplicate of the target's heart, links the illusion and the real heart, then crushes the illusion. And one possesses Zabaniya - Cyber Fantasy, which transmutes the target's brain to gunpowder. And then lights it. The other seventeen have not been seen, but we are assured that their Noble Phantasms are also named Zabaniya.

However, there have been other Assassins summoned. In the Fate and Unlimited Blade Works paths of Fate/Stay Night, shenanigans occur, and the Servant encountered as Assassin is the 'spirit' of Sasaki Kojirou. Sasaki is weak as an Assassin, although he is enough of a swordsman that he can hold his own against Saber, and was apparently able to hold the Ryudou Temple gate against every Servant that challenged it. He has no Noble Phantasm, instead possessing the sword technique Tsubame Gaeshi, three slashes performed at exactly the same time.

Other games also have other Assassins listed. These include Jack The Ripper (as a loli ), Semiramis of Assyrian history/legend, and Li Shu Wen. How this squares with Hassan is unknown.

This is quite long enough already, so I'll cover constructing one's own Servant in a later post.

Fate, Part Six: The Magic Bullet

The first thing to consider when constructing a Servant is who they were. Any person who has entered the collective consciousness and become revered for some purpose could be enshrined in the Throne of Heroes, a timeless repository outside the circle of transmigration where the souls of heroes reside.

Now, these don't exactly need to be heroes, nor do they really need to be real people. Frankenstein's Monster has shown up as a cute loli Berserker, for instance. With that in mind, we can select an interesting subject.



Yes, he'll do. Lee Harvey Oswald is an excellent example, because whether or not he acted alone, the world accepts him as the assassin and enough thought has gone towards him that he's entered popular mythology. He's also been studied sufficiently enough that we can do more than guess at his flaws.

As I mentioned before, you need an artifact relating to the spirit in order to summon them. We'll go ahead and say we're using Warren Commission Exhibit 399 .

Lee Harvey Oswald qualifies as both Assassin and Archer. Just because Archer is the more interesting class, let's set him as that. As mentioned before, this means he gets Independent Action once we get into that segment of chargen.

First, though, we select his Demeanor and Nature. Demeanor is the face you show the world, Nature is the real you. Let's go with a Demeanor of Rebel and a Nature of Autist.

Epic Heroes get 40 points to buy stats with. As befits a long-range fighter and radar operator, we'll focus on Dexterity and Perception.
These are the basic stats, choices we make elsewhere will change them.

As an Epic Hero, Oswald has 40 skill points to spend. Since I don't know how to actually buy skills, I'll just plop down some skills and specializations he'd have and move on.
Assuming it's on a 1-to-1 exchange rate, he probably has most of them at rank 3 or 4, with Firearms higher. This is about right, the skills listed for the other Servants has most of them at 3 or 4 with their specialties up around 7 to 10.

Now we come to the fun bits. Epic Heroes have 50 Quality points and up to 15 points in Flaws to play with. The Servant quality is, of course, a must. Servant includes five levels in Hard To Kill, Magic Circuit of at least 3, Regeneration or Rejuvenation, and a fuckton of Mana. Servant also brings with it the Adversary flaw, with the target being Other Masters And Servants. The rest of the Servant point cost is used to buy Noble Phantasms and Servant Special Qualities.
Again, this is just the basic package.

Our next purchases are our Servant Special Qualities, including Noble Phantasm. Noble Phantasms, in keeping with a great number of Japanese properties, have a proper name and a long pretentious title, such as Excalibur - Sword of Promised Victory or Rho Aias - The Seven Rings That Cover The Fiery Heavens. Thinking on Lee Harvey Oswald's mythology, we are drawn to the single bullet theory , also known as the magic bullet. Further riffing on magic bullets brings up the opera Der Freischütz , based on the German folktale of the Freischutz , a man who makes a deal with a Devil-like figure in exchange for several bullets that will unerringly fly as he wishes. So, that gives us our name: Freikugeln - The Seven Bullets Of The Black Huntsman .

Aaand now we hit a problem. Now would be where we determine the rank of the Noble Phantasm, its damage, and what else it can do. As it turns out, thanks to the melee-focused nature of Fate/Stay Night and this system, we can't actually make a Noble Phantasm that's a gun. We'll have to wing it.

All Noble Phantasms and Servant Special Qualities are ranked from E to A or EX. Weapon NPs always add some measure of their user's Strength to damage. There are notes for if it's a projectile, but that simply halves the Str bonus to damage. It's meant for bows or throwing knives. Anyway, we'll go ahead and give Freikugeln Rank B for 20 points. That gives him +4 to the attack roll, and STR x 2 to his damage, halved for being a projectile weapon.

That's the basic weapon. When he summons it, he gets a rifle. And, this being , he won't just get his wimpy little Carcano, no, this will be some huge antimateriel rifle because Japan eats that shit up. I draw the line at making Lee Harvey Oswald a cute girl, however. Now we need to buy our ammo stock and decide how it refreshes. Let's say he starts with 50 rounds, or ammo Rank C for 6 points, and that he can use normal ammo to top up his stocks. This may make things difficult if he's summoned into the past or an energy-weapon-based future, plus there's the complication of needing to raid an army depot.

There are several different area-effect ranks you can put on a Noble Phantasm. The basic state is Anti-Unit, meaning it affects only one target at a time. Then you have Anti-Army, Anti-Fortress, and Anti-World classifications. These are represented as the user's WILL x 10, 15, or 20 meters. We'll leave Freikugeln as Anti-Unit.

Now, the concept of the Freikugeln is that they hit whatever the shooter desires. This will be represented as firing a blast at Rank C++ for 10 points. This deals 100 damage and costs 25 Mana and a Luck point to use. I could just have made it Rank B for the same 100 damage and only 6 points, but would cost 60 Mana. As for hitting whatever is desired, that is remarkably easy to represent. We simply give it Cause/Effect Reversal for another 6 points. Lancer's Gae Bolg has this ability. To dodge it, the target must roll Temporary Luck x 2 and get more successes than the attack roll.

For those keeping track, Freikugeln now costs 42 points. To get a few points back, we'll apply the limitation that he can only use the special attack seven times, regardless of Mana or Luck remaining. I'll call that -5 points, because I really need the points and won't actually be playing this ever. It's actually not that much of a restriction, because there are only 6 targets in a Holy Grail War unless shenanigans occur. We could put an additional restriction on that the seventh shot hits the thing Oswald cares about the most, but that just seems silly. Archer's total perks and flaws come to 38 points.
There are also non-weapon Noble Phantasms available. Shields and armor are built along the same lines as weapons, and accessories can grant bonuses or free successes to skill rolls, or boost stats.

On to special qualities. The Archer class ability is Independent Action . This simply lets the Servant exist for a longer time if their Master is killed. Normally, a Servant vanishes a few minutes after its Master is killed. Using the rules as written, there's no point cost difference between Rank D (1 day) and Rank A (Indefinite). I'll just give Oswald Rank E , for 3 points and move on to more interesting ones. He can exist for up to 12 hours without a Master.

There are a lot of interesting abilities one could give Oswald, but the fact is we only have 9 points left, barely enough for Rank E in two of them. So, I'll just stop here and instead list the Servant Special Qualities. So, there is Lee Harvey Oswald, Servant Archer. His warhead shall make no distinction between riffraff.

Army of The King : Summons a large number of soldiers, equipped as they were during the Servant's lifetime. This counts as a Reality Marble, so only lasts a short period of time, between 10 rounds and an hour. Iskander had this.

Battle Continuation : Reduces stun duration and negates crippling injuries at low rank, grants bonuses and extra rolls to avoid death from HP loss at high ranks.

Bravery : Increases mental resistance.

Clairvoyance : Increases distance Servant can accurately aim (Up to five miles) and lets them aim at fast-moving objects. High ranks add successes for visual Perception checks.

Disengage grants bonuses to run away.

Divinity is just a record-keeping note that indicates the Servant is, in some way, of divine heritage.

Divisibility lets the Servant split into numerous bodies. Unlike Army of the King, these will be around for a good long while. One of the Hassans had this.

Eternal Arms Mastership : The Servant is capable of using any weapon or vehicle of war, and can even steal and use another Servant's Noble Phantasms at high rank. Lancelot had this.

Expert of Many Specializations adds a floating pool of specializations you can assign as needed.

Eye of the Mind lets you make Alertness checks to notice changes to the battlefield. No, I don't know what that entails.

For Someone's Glory obscures the Servant's details or form from observers. A big thing is that Servants can tell what class another Servant is, and Masters can picture the skills and abilities of Servants. This nullifies those abilities. Lancelot had this for some reason.

Golden Rule keeps the Servant's bank accounts from dropping below a certain point. It triggers every month, yet the Holy Grail Wars only last two weeks.

High-Speed Divine Words speeds up spellcasting.

Independent Action lets the Servant exist for a longer time if their Master is killed. This is the Archer class ability.

Instinct reduces penalties to vision and hearing. This is not how it was represented in Fate/Stay Night.

Item Construction is another bookkeeping note that tells you the Servant has the Enchanter or Superscientist perks.

Librarian of Stored Knowledge is Eidetic Memory with a few bonuses.

Mad Enhancement increases a Servant's statistics, but he loses more of his mental faculties at higher ranks and the Master must pay mana every round to maintain it. The ability is poorly worded, as the stat you do not or cannot gain bonuses to switches from Will to Int halfway up. In fact, at rank C, he actually gets smarter. This is the class ability for the Berserker class.

Mana Burst laces the Servant's weapon and armor with energy, damaging non-magical things they strike.

Magic Resistance is exactly what it says on the tin. The Saber class always has this ability.

Mental Pollution is a reflection of an insane servant's mind. It is Magic Resistance keyed to psychics instead, and any psychic trying to affect the Servant's mind takes damage and needs to make a Fear Save.

Military Tactics (Army) grants nebulous, ST-defined bonuses and multipliers when using or defending against Anti-Army Noble Phantasms.

Monstrous Strength grants +2 Str and Epic Str 1. Higher ranks simply make the boost last longer. Medusa had this.

Mystic Eyes/Mystic Face are just like the Perk, except you can add points to it to increase the difficulty. Medusa had Mystic Eyes, Diarmuid had a Mystic Face.

Presence Concealment grants a grab-bag of difficulty increases, roll bonuses, automatic successes, and outright immunities related to sneaking or being detected. Assassin has this as its class ability.

Protection From Arrows grants bonuses and automatic successes when dodging or parrying ranged attacks within a certain radius.

Protection of the Fairies is roughly the same thing as Protection From Arrows, geared towards melee attacks. At ranks A and B, he can even make normal rolls to dodge attacks using Cause-Effect Reversal.

Projectiles gives a stock of throwing weapons that damage like a Rank D Noble Phantasm and grant a small bonus to the attack roll.

Reflection (Void Avesta - False Record of Inscribed Creation) ( ) reflects some or all of the damage caused by an attack back onto its originator. Note that this does not reduce the damage caused, it must be readied, and the user must survive the attack. Avenger has this. Avenger is stupid.

Riding bestows bonuses and free successes to riding or piloting pretty much anything. This is the class ability of the Rider class.

Rune Magic grants up to +3 on rolls to use rune magic, and allows the Servant to keep the better of two Occultism rolls when researching rune magic. Cuchulainn has this.

Self-Modification allows a Servant to scavenge body parts from corpses and unconscious targets and graft them onto himself. This has no mechanical benefit beyond possibly inducing Fear Saves and a note about bypassing biometric security.

Territory Creation allows a Servant to create a magical workspace or temple which aids spellcasting and mana regeneration and includes a level 6 Occult Library.

That's it! I'm done! Thank you for reading! I'm never touching this book again! It's poorly-worded, badly-balanced, , , and if I have this bad a reaction to it, I feel really bad for you guys who are actually doing terrible books!

Fate: The Unauthorized Nasuverse RPG Addendum: Why this game is a goddamn abomination

I'm going to start off by describing just what the Nasuverse's key concepts are.

The Nasuverse is, more or less, our world. However, there's two key differences: one, vampires (and demons, but as you'll see there's not a huge distinction) exist, and two, magi exist.

Vampires are split into two groups; first off, you have the True Ancestors, who are gods. Arcueid Brunestud, from Tsukihime, is roughly average for them and can pretty much cause the Apocalypse by blinking if she's at full power. The thing that keeps them from being absurdly overpowered and broken, though, is that there's maybe two of them including Arcueid left alive from their internal squabbling, Arcueid is an idiot, and the other one (Zelretch) is more interested in hopping around dimensions looking at various alternate timelines than in actually interacting with them.

On the other hand, you have the Dead Apostles, who are created from a True Ancestor depositing some of its blood into a human. Unlike True Ancestors, they actually need human flesh or blood to survive, so they typically end up being serial killers. However, the actual powers they have range from "relatively normal" (a minor character in Tsukihime has super strength and super speed) to "holy shit what " (Nrvnqsr Chaos, who can summon land sharks and zombie lions due to his body being made of 666 different animals, and Roa, who is functionally immortal and can steal people's bodies). Some Dead Apostles, like the one I mentioned earlier who has super strength and super speed (who I'm not going to name because it's a minor spoiler), are closer to traditional vampires, but the majority of them are more like demons than vampires.

Dead Apostles, in turn, can create The Dead, who are zombies. Flesh-eating, George A. Romero-type zombies. The Dead feed on humans and energize Dead Apostles in return, extending the Dead Apostles' lifespan a fair amount. A member of The Dead who has a lot of magical energy in their body can become a Dead Apostle, but this is considered to be so rare that it's virtually unthinkable (naturally, it happens in Tsukihime).

Magi aren't quite as interesting, but still have some pretty neat quirks. What it boils down to is, there's a few different families of magi who have been going on for years studying the field and discovering shit about magic. The way magic works in the Nasuverse, from my understanding, is that anyone with magical potential can do magic, but everyone has a specific field and a specific attribute that they're attuned to. Doing magic outside your field or taking your field too far (for example, trying to project an entire building if your field is Projection), unless you have a lot of magical potential, can seriously fuck your brain up, so it's generally kind of a shit idea unless it's a life-or-death situation.

However, magi are also assholes. Because the big magic-using families all have a tradition of having giant fucking egos, they get together every hundred years or so, summon ancient heroes, and murder each other for shits and giggles. True, there's a whole bunch of nonsense about the "Holy Grail," but in practice that's not why anyone's fighting unless they're either an idiot or very idealistic.

So yeah. In theory this should actually make a really good RPG setting due to how weird it is; it's like a clusterfuck of bits of OWoD, Unknown Armies, and anime cliches. However, it didn't, and we got Fate.

More to my point, Fate pretty much ignores the vast majority of this. The only thing it pays more than the barest of lip service to out of the entire setting is the relatively small detail that Mages get together every hundred years or so and summon ancient heroes so they can kill each other.

Fate is a clusterfuck of dumb mechanics and idiocy, but that's only a small portion of why it's an abomination. Most of it is the fact that, with a little TLC, the setting could be the most awesome thing ever to run a campaign in. It's a setting that's dangerous enough for mundane characters to be tense and interesting, but it's not quite to Call of Cthulhu levels, especially if the party travels in groups; as a result, it could be genuinely really interesting to run a street-level campaign in with people who aren't too familiar with Nasu's works already. However, Fate squanders the living fuck out of its potential and ignores everything that isn't the basic plot of Fate/stay night. Hell, the only attention it even pays to Tsukihime is statting out some of the major players from it, who are mostly so overpowered that they may as well be useless to a GM who doesn't want to railroad his players.

(e: I may be wrong about bits of this, it's been a little over a year since I played Fate/stay night and longer since I've touched Tsukihime, but this should cover the basics. Also, yes, I am entirely aware of how and grognards.txt this is.)