It's Not My Fault He Stole Your Girlfriend, Bro

Last night, due to missing a few players for our regular game, I ran a session of Fate Accelerated Edition using It's Not My Fault, the card-based improv tool for fantasy one-shots. It was one of the best sessions of Fate I've ever run.

To start out with INMF, each player picks two of the 20 "class" cards to start building their character. Then the GM deals each player a third random card from those remaining. Each card serves as an aspect and provides a stunt and bonuses to three of the traditional FAE approaches. My group ended up with:

• Beardo the Beastly, a genderfluid orc barbarian/alchemist/pirate,
• Boros, the dwarf merchant/warrior/con artist, and
• Gwendolyn, the human soldier/sorcerer/illusionist.

(My players added non-human races in on their own, though an upcoming expansion to INMF—It's Not My Fault I'm Fantastic—will add race cards into the mix.)

Once characters were made, I flipped over a card from each of three situation decks:

• Where Are You Now: "Falling from an unreasonable height."
• What Brought You To This: "Mistaken identity."
• How It's About To Get Worse: "Someone has just been scorned."

Turns out, the situation was this: The party had arrived at the temple of an Elven god high atop the Elven tree city. The priests asked Gwendolyn if she was the Goddess Such-and-such (she forgot the name by the time the adventure began). Of course, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say yes. The party was shown into the inner sanctum, the god took one look at them and sent them all flying out of the temple.

Gqendolyn summoned up a feather fall spell to land them safely on the ground below. The elven temple guards arrived to kill them for defaming the temple (and annoying the god), but the party dispatched them quickly. Impressed, the God came down and asked them to travel to the tree city of his consort, who had refused his gifts and would not come to him. Since their love is responsible for the turn of the seasons, it's important that they patch things up.

The party traveled to the goddess's tree city and discovered that one of the gifts the god had sent her—1,000 dead gnomes he bought at a bulk discount store—were alive and building an impressive system of elevators inside her tree. Using the scaffolding, magic, and brute strength, the party ascended the tree along with Patrick, one of the gnomes. (Beardo was quite enamored with the tiny creature, and Gwendolyn perhaps thought he'd make a good hostage.)

At the top of the tree, in the goddess's chambers, they met Travis, a human enchanter who had insinuated himself into the goddess's bed as her new lover. Travis didn't want them spoiling the sweet deal he had going on, so he tried to drive off or enchant them all into going away. The party fought and eventually defeated Travis while overcoming his gnome guards through overwhelming bribery. 

With Travis gone, the goddess came to her senses and agreed to return to the god's tree and restore the seasons. The party was given a feast and some amount of (as-yet-undefined) treasure.

In all, it was roaring good fun. Beardo was perhaps the standout figure, with their ambiguous sexuality and booming, Brian Blessed-like demeanor. I highly recommend checking out It's Not My Fault (and the companion product of character sheet and reference cards—wet-erase markers really work!).