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Fatum

The Fatum guide

Everything you need to write a solo adventure and let people play it: what the engine can do, and how to use the editor.

How to read this guide

This guide has two halves. The first describes the engine: what an adventure can hold, and what it never will. The second walks through the editor, screen by screen. If Fatum is new to you, read the first chapter in full before opening the workshop: it takes ten minutes and it saves surprises.

The chapters

  1. 1

    What the engine can do

    No game system is included. What you declare, the two rules that govern everything, and what the engine will never do.

  2. 2

    First steps in the workshop

    Create an adventure, recognise the screen's four regions, and know when your work is saved.

  3. 3

    Scenes and choices

    The graph, the inspector and the manuscript: three ways of looking at the same adventure, and the only one that sets a destination.

  4. 4

    The libraries

    Eighteen lists holding your values, items, shops and combats, all built on the same page.

  5. 5

    Writing a rule

    Fill-in-the-blank sentences, AND and OR groups, costs, effects and dice tests. No code, anywhere.

  6. 6

    Text and languages

    The text editor, conditional passages, and how an adventure exists in several languages without being duplicated.

  7. 7

    Checking and publishing

    The validation report, the playtest that explains why a choice is hidden, and publishing an immutable version.

  8. 8

    Your first adventure

    The whole path, from blank page to published version, on a tiny adventure you can write in an hour.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to know how to code?

No, and the editor is built so the question never comes up. A rule is written as a fill-in-the-blank sentence: "has the item [Brass key] in quantity at least [1]". There is no field anywhere for typing code, or JSON.

Which game system is included?

None, and that is the first chapter's subject. You declare your own statistics, items and dice formulas. An adventure rolling 2d6 under a Luck score works exactly as well as one rolling d20 against a target number.

Can several people write together?

No. A draft has one author: there is no simultaneous editing, no locking and no merging. That is a product decision rather than a gap, and the engine chapter lists the others.

Does the editor work on a phone?

The workshop is meant for a desktop screen. It puts three surfaces side by side, and below 1024 pixels they stop fitting: the page says so and still renders, but that is not where you write. Playing an adventure, on the other hand, works anywhere.

What happens to a published adventure when I edit it?

Nothing, until you publish again. A published version is immutable: publishing writes a new one and retires the previous, and a run in progress stays on the version it started. You are always editing a draft.

Can an adventure be written in several languages?

Yes. You write one language at a time, and the mechanics (rules, numbers, structure) stay shared across all of them. An incomplete language is simply left out at publication, with its reason stated; it never blocks.