About This Project

The goal of this project is not to stick with only one implementation of Fate for Tribe 8, but to instead continue to evolve and perfect an implementation of Fate that captures everything I want.

When Tribe 8 was published in 1998 I instantly fell in love with the game. I had been a fan of Dream Pod 9's work since Protoculture Addicts, Mecha Press and their early licensed supplements for Cyberpunk 2020 and Mekton II. The Mekton II supplements would later get spun into the stand alone Jovian Chronicles game using the Silhouette engine, which quickly become my favorite game.

Tribe 8 embodied something else. It was a steep departure into fantasy from Dream Pod 9's science fiction roots - and very different than any other fantasy game on the market at the time. The setting was compelling, dark and possessed a fascinating cosmology. I had no trouble figuring out what stories could be told in Tribe 8 unlike other games I really liked conceptually but could never really build up momentum with (Blue Planet is a great example of this). Tribe 8 pulled me from a long-term roleplaying and fantasy genre funk.

As much as I love both the game and the Silhouette system, they always seemed like an odd pairing. In particular I never felt Silhouette was a concrete system married to some very abstract concepts such as social conflict and mythology. Synthesis stood out in contrast to the more pedestrian Silhouette system. The grittiness of Silhouette matched the tone of the Tribe 8 system, but it still didn't fully support the type of play I felt Tribe 8 was going for.

In the years since Tribe 8 was release new games and styles of play have come about that held promise of the Tribe 8 game I really wanted. The Shadow of Yesterday was one of the first of these new design patterns I discovered. I have yet to get a chance to play it, but the way that the character was defined and how conflicts were resolved were somewhat of an "Eureka!" moment for me. Next up after that was FATE 2.0 and eventually Spirit of the Century. Fate held a lot of promise for me in helping Tribe 8 reach its potential and out of that my original project Spirit of Vimary was born. Because I was new to FATE-based games I tried to model it after SoTC and quickly got bogged down in numerous issues.. I shelved the project for a while, holding out hope because that parts that did work, worked well.\

Then last year I got hold of Strands of Fate after reading a number of reviews and posts about the game. The changes made to standard Fate seemed to be just the thing I was looking for...and once I set out to adapt Tribe 8 to it everything immediately clicked into place. The rules felt right. The adaptation went really well and it hits about every thing I wanted it to. Then Fate Core came along and, after backing the Kickstarter, I was able to resolve some of the things I had problems with in Spirit of the Century. Currently, a Fate Core adaptation is what I am working for.