Fates Demand Tabletop Skirmish Part 1
The original party concept
The earliest version of Fates Demand looked quite different from the game being developed today.
At the centre of the original system was a single Hero, Vying for their gods approval.
That Hero was created using two cards, with each card contributing part of the character’s identity, abilities and playstyle. This was the beginning of the character-building idea that would later evolve into a much broader system.
Alongside the Hero were two additional cards representing the rest of the party. Each of these cards controlled two Followers, creating a small adventuring group built around one central character.
The basic structure was:
1 Hero, created from two character cards
2 Follower cards, each representing two Followers
Together, these formed the player’s Party
The intention was to make the Hero the most customisable and important member of the group, while the Followers provided extra bodies, abilities and tactical options without requiring every model to carry the same level of complexity.
Why Start With One Hero?
One of the early goals was to make character creation interesting without forcing players to manage a large number of complicated profiles.
The Hero could be built from two different cards, allowing players to combine different roles and abilities, while Followers were intended to be considerably simpler.
This meant most of the player’s attention could remain on the Hero while still having a small group moving around the battlefield.
It was also an early attempt to answer one of the design questions that kept coming up during development:
How much complexity should each individual model have?
At this stage, the answer was to concentrate most of the complexity into one central character and support them with simpler units.
The Beginning of Character Combination
Although this version of the party system was eventually abandoned, one part of it proved important.
The idea that a Hero could be created by combining two cards became a foundation for later development.
The exact structure changed, but the core principle remained useful: players should have some freedom to shape a character by combining different elements rather than selecting a completely fixed profile.
That idea would eventually become more refined as Fates Demand moved into its next stage of development.
Moving Away From the Original System
The one-Hero-and-Followers structure was useful as a starting point, but it became too restrictive for the kind of game I wanted Fates Demand to become.
As development continued, I wanted the individual characters within the party to carry more importance of their own.
Rather than having one central Hero supported by simpler Followers, the game began moving toward a system where each character could feel more meaningful, more customisable and more involved in the overall strategy of the party.
That change would eventually lead into the next major stage of development: refining the character card system, building out abilities and creating the foundations of the modern Fates Demand rules.
