FIST: Ultra Edition
A downloadable game
Now: the second half of the twentieth century. The powers that be are locked in a tense nuclear standoff, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Away from the watchful eye of national intelligence, a cadre of exceptional misfits is assembled. These soldiers of fortune are uniquely equipped for covert and unusual operations.
In these uncertain times, the line between science and superstition has been broken, and the new arms race is only beginning. You, or your associates, may be faced with weapons, tactics, and actors unlike any you have ever seen. For a price, those exceptional misfits can help.
When you’re all out of options, it’s time to call FIST.
FIST: Ultra Edition is a tabletop roleplaying game about paranormal mercenaries doing the tough jobs no one else can. In the game, you belong to a legendary rogue mercenary unit called FIST. You are a soldier of fortune who doesn’t fit into modern society. You are a disposable gun for hire, caught up in the death and destruction of pointless proxy wars and oppressive establishments. You may also be someone who can turn into a ghost or control bees with your mind.
The paranormal secrets of the Cold War are your bread and butter, and you fight for your life to make ends meet alongside others like you: stopping disastrous science experiments, infiltrating occult compounds, neutralizing eldritch horrors—all in a day's work for FIST. Players are typically outnumbered, easily killed, and disliked or hunted by most sources of authority. You don't have tons of money and gadgets backing you up, just your wits and a few tools. War is hell, and you're one of the little guys.
FIST is inspired by Metal Gear Solid, The A-Team, and Doom Patrol. It's mechanically descended from John Harper's World of Dungeons, Ben Milton's Maze Rats, and Offworlders, by Chris P. Wolf and Olivia Gulin.
- PARANORMAL MERCENARIES: Use the modular traits system to construct unique and fully-equipped characters in seconds. Play as a telekinetic alien, a mutant sniper, or a cyborg ninja.
- BRUTAL ACTION: Experience fast, fluid stunts and combat with partial successes. Play with a simple, dynamic system which deepens organically as characters advance, offering intriguing choices and mechanics but never interfering with the action.
- TACTICAL OPERATIONS: Plan and execute Cold War espionage missions using enemy, weapon, and mod templates in tandem with the Intelligence Matrix, a massive repository of random tables, inspirational tools, and premade content. Structure campaigns around a levelling system which uses open-ended character development in place of XP and loot, and customize your game with a wide array of optional mechanics.
- ULTRA EDITION: Create stranger and more powerful mercs than ever before with 23,220 possible starting character builds. With revised content from FIST Classic plus 116 brand new traits (and 36 character roles!) portray bullet-time wizards, cannibalistic weaponsmiths, and astronaut werewolves. Enjoy the final form of FIST, a genre-blending mélange of old- and new-school design.
"FIST is legitimately one of the most fun things I've brought to my table. It's PbtA that plays like OSR, and it's Metal Gear by way of Hellboy."
- Richard Kelly, Sprinting Owl
"FIST is such a thrill ride. The sheer depth of possible characters, the joy of the random results, the added chaos the WAR DICE add into the mix. It's nothing less than explosive."
- Jeff Stormer, Party of One
"FIST is a game of minimum prep and maximum action. Every character feels unique after just a few minutes of setup, and every session creates a story that’s never been told before. This game knows exactly how to get your players excited, your characters emotional, and your loadout ready to rock and roll."
- Caleb Zane Huett, lead designer of Triangle Agency
"FIST has changed the way I look at RPGs. With FIST, you can sit down, roll some dice, and have a fun, flavorful character in five minutes flat. You might get them killed five minutes later, but if so? Rinse, repeat, and you’re back in the game. Add in the clever mechanics for freeform tactical play, a GM toolkit with enough tables to seat an army, and prose so evocative that it’s a joy just to read the book, and this is a must-have game."
- Jess Levine, I Have the High Ground, going rogue 2e
"I have transported people to the moon through ancient temples, I have fought off armies of alien bugs using mashed potatoes, I have laid down suppressing fire on Russian soldiers while my teammate defused a bomb. FIST is a marvel of modern design that pushes its core mechanics into bold new places (sometimes at gunpoint). It's a blast to run, and a thrill to play."
- Tony from Plus One
"FIST is as enjoyable to read as it is to play, with immersive text and a splash of a casual banter vibe that sets the mood as you learn, and puts you just in the right headspace to play a rogue little outcast."
FIST is easy to hack and built for creative homebrewing. You can check out a library of 150+ (and growing!) FIST-compatible zines, pamphlets, modules, and more made by fans of the game right here.
Check out our lowkey FIST Discord server for fresh homebrew, inspiration for the missions, aesthetics, and worldbuilding of your game, play-by-post missions, chats about other games and hobbies, and more!
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $20 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Donate a Community Copy
Purchasing FIST for double the price donates a free community copy of the game for others to claim. Please note: your donation may not show up immediately since the community copies pool must be updated manually.
Community Copies
Community copies are available for free to anyone who can't afford to buy the game.
Download demo
Development log
- FIST ULTRA'S FIRST BIRTHDAY!Apr 30, 2024
- NEWS: Fixed PDFs, storefront mini-restockOct 10, 2023
- NEWS: Free update, jam winners, and more!Aug 31, 2023
- BOX SET IS LIVE!Aug 31, 2023
- FIST BOX SET KICKSTARTER LAUNCHES TODAYAug 30, 2023
- Kickstarter launches 8/30/23!Aug 21, 2023
- FIST Box Set Kickstarter!Aug 06, 2023
- Physical pre-orders close 7/14/23!Jul 09, 2023
Comments
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Are ultra edition prints avaliable?
they're out of stock at the moment but you can sign up for email updates here!!
https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/fist-ultra-edition
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES 45/12
Hey Claymore, I am trying to put together a playlist of all the Musical Cassette Tapes (pg 146) and was wondering if you could clarify a few:
[423. Ataraxia - Mort Garson] This seems to be an entire album, is there one track that you meant to single out?
[446. Bye Bye Blackbird - Miles Davis] Not sure which version, I'm assuming the one on 'Round about Midnight?
Good catches! The Mort Garson one should refer to the song "The Unexplained" off the album Ataraxia and for Miles Davis, yes - 'Round about Midnight
Hey @Claymore I would like to be able to add F.I.S.T. as a mod to Tabletop Playground so I can play with my group when we're not able to get together. I'd like to include a couple of sections from the PDF namely
- The Character Sheet,
- The Rules Summary (pg 71-74),
- The Character Creation (pg 2, 39-69),
- The Players getting started (pg 1-10).
- The Maps (pg 149-150)
Just the stuff the players need to create characters and play the game but not the full PDF. I'll link to this itch.io page and give full credit to you.
If that's okay please let me know if not this is a really amazing system and thanks for making it!
Hey there! FIST is CC BY SA 4.0 so you can basically do whatever you want with it as long as you credit us and allow your work to be shared and modified freely too!!
Awesome thank you guys so much!
https://mod.io/g/tabletopplayground/m/fist-ultra-edition?portal=steam&login=auto
We got a shoutout from Mothership's Sean McCoy in the latest Quinns Quest !!Does anyone know any superhero supplements for FIST? I want my players to battle one 😈
CHOKE is a 1d6 chance that a character (usually NPC, but sometimes players) will "choke under pressure". Basically, when a character with a CHOKE score is stressed out or something, you roll 1d6 and if the die comes up equal to or higher than the score, the character performs their listed CHOKE action in the fiction.
Thank you friend!
Great stuff! More weapons please haha!
we have some more stuff coming!! what would you like to see?
Hello, i was reading that you can attach a silencer to any weapon but what does the silencer do exactly? does it give more damage or is just a hollywood silencer and no one will hear the blast?
Hollywood silencer!
awesome!?
An advice question/clarification request, for the creator or any others with GM experience:
How do you handle the levels of new characters? E.g. say a player has "leveled up" / advanced their character 10 times, and the character dies. When making a new character, should it also level up 10 times? Or maybe subtract one, to make it 9? Or don't do this at all, always starting at the base level? Especially in the context of longer campaigns.
I feel like I'm leaning towards the latter, just to make character generation very quick and keep an emphasis on capital & worldly gains over solely character advancement. But it also feels overly punishing for character death, and I don't want my players to feel too scared to do badass things.
Thoughts?
Devs here! As written, all characters start at base level, even if the previous character was high level or the rest of the party is.
While this is punishing, it's for three design reasons:
1. War should be punishing and death should feel bad in order to keep the stakes high and the players immersed - if players want to do badass things, they need to do smart badass things that give them an unfair advantage against the enemy, like sneaking, sabotage, flanking, etc. FIST is more of an underdog, against-all-odds fantasy than a power fantasy.
2. Character progression tends to be horizontal instead of vertical - all the stat bonuses and items in the traits list are fine-tuned so that while characters may have more tools as they advance, they don't become invincible, and a 6 trait character can work alongside a 2 trait one.
3. Capital and worldly gains are important - loot and gadgets and backup are the name of the game, and a fresh, underleveled character can be "caught up" with everyone else by sharing loot.
Hope this helps and thanks for playing!!
EDIT: Something that might be helpful for setting player expectations is comparing FIST to roguelikes. It's very inspired by these games, where death is bad - you always start from scratch.
That helps a lot, thank you so much for the quick clarification!! Really enjoyed reading the rules by the way, excited to try it out 🙂
Didn't see anyone else do this, but attached is a youtube playlist of every song on the cassette page. It should be more or less in order. I put Baba O' Riley in place of Teenage Wasteland as I think that's the song you meant, and for Ataraxia I didn't want to put the whole album so I just put the song with the best vibes in my completely objective opinion. https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLotpA8G4VFO2N63vW0kHwuaLfmCN16cEn&si=L6...
FIST is the beautiful marriage of two philosophies of game design, which is then crashed by Hideo Kojima, and everyone who witnesses it will never forget it.
FIST has become the instant go-to for sessions when the whole group can't make it but we don't want to cancel. CLAYMORE is the master of the d66(6) table and uses it to great effect to make character creation happen in fifteen minutes and adventure generation happen even faster. I never feel put on the spot being asked to run FIST on even a moment's notice. In fact, I cannot wait to see what happens.
My players use a lot of different words after I run a session of FIST for them, but the sentiment behind them is always the same: that fucking ruled.
thank you so much this review is lovely 😭😭
Is there any official email for business cooperation application for this FIST RPG? The official website seems under maintenance at present.
We got a review by Questing Beast!!!
New AP from All on the Table!
Is there any chance you will have late pledges for the Kickstarter? I would love to get FIST in physical form but there does not seems to be one other than the Box coming out of the Kickstarter at the moment.
yeah, i wanted the same. it looks that we will need to print the PDF
looks like Spear Witch has some physical rulebooks in stock!!
https://spearwitch.com/products/fist-ultra-edition?variant=47175536279838
Yeah but i'd really like the Box and the limited edition rulebook. But if that is not an option, well nothing i can do about that :-)
sold out :( reprints Soo ?
I wasn't sure were else to ask this so apologies but I think I've been banned from the Discord server although I haven't actually used it (I joined it when I first downloaded FIST but never ended up using it and have since been unable to rejoin) I was hoping you would be able help resolve this or get me in contact with someone who could.
Hi there! I just got this game through the Palestinian Relief Bundle (thanks so much for supporting a great cause!) and I'm really enjoying delving into these rules, (i am for sure going full cyberpunk anime mode). Hopefully I can get my gaming group to play this sometime soon 😅, we usually just play D&D so this will be a real shift. Anyways I love your community presence and just wanted to say Keep Up the Good Work!
thanks for the kind words and supporting the bundle!! if it helps your group get up and running at all, we did just add a quickstart guide to this page (under Download demo). hope y'all have fun!!
sorry if it,s a stupid question but im new on the platform. the sales of the bundle will be valid to get more community copies?
not a stupid question! we usually add community copies, to be claimed by anyone for free, when people donate extra to us at CLAYMORE. the bundles go to charity, so you get a copy of FIST you can claim if you bought the bundle!
oh, thanks for the info, i was just entered a bit ago on the platform, and with that bundle i discovered a lot of interesting ttrpg games included yours, and i got interested on try the game (im new into the world of rpgs)
welcome aboard!! you're in luck, we actually just added a quickstart guide that explains the basics of RPGs - you can find it on this page under the "Download demo" heading
QQ: is it me or in the Intelligence Matrix example of use (p.29 - 30), we discard basically all but one of the content rolls? Is expected use to build on previous results or do you just keep going til something clicks?
either/or, but we suggest the latter (discard what doesn't click, keep what does)
Hello!
There's someone on Twitter taking TTRPG donations for their local jail!
I wanted to ask if I could distribute my copy to them, if not, I wanted to see if you could! Anyways, stay well!
Yes 1000% absolutely!! Please do and thanks for letting us know about this!
Nice! Maybe throw this their way (I'm not on Txitter), it's a replacement for dice I came up with a while back. I know some detainment facilities are anal about dice...
https://e5burrito.itch.io/pbtlota
knocking it outta the park again burrito!!
Hey, is there a chance that you could notify me when new community copies are available? Thx!
Added 10!! 🫡
Omg, thx, you guys are the best, definitely recommending this game to everyone as well as donating some money when I have the chance, can't wait to try this out!
I've got my eyes on this game for a while now, and I frequently come back to check the community copies, for I have no financial means to buy it right now. So, I would like to ask: How does this work? I'm aware they're uploaded manually, but is there any consistent frequency, or it's like more random-like?
Also wanted to say your game looks great and, by the comments below, I suspect you did a great job. I appreciate you for that. Lastly, sorry if I sound inadequate by wanting to play your game for free. I actually wanted to pay -- And I eventually will --.
we kind of add more randomly or if we anticipate a big surge of interest - there were also recently a lot of community copies bc Kickstarter backers had donated several, but those ran out a bit ago.. anyway you don't sound inadequate in the slightest, we love giving this game out for free!! have you got a discord or email address we could send a download key to ?
(alternatively just hit up claymorerpgs@gmail.com and we'll hook you up!! <3)
I would be lying if I said I had words to describe just how lovely this response was. Here's my discord username: jeebee_wtbd
Again, my deep thanks. I'm excited to finally try your game.
Honestly really great and pretty fun. too bad I lost my copy a couple months ago when my PC bricked itself and I lost my old account. Oh well, money well spent either way.
adding more community copies so you can grab a new one !!
Woah, that was quick. Thanks guys, much love ♥️.
Great system, however character spreadsheets aren't print-friendly when it comes to colors (entire blocks of black on character sheets). Any1 has any community made alternatives?
you might like these index card character keepers! https://lonearchivist.itch.io/fist-op-profile
Truly just a great game, always end up having a blast each and every time I play it
It’s a pretty neat system. I’m going to try and run this with my TTRPG this semester.
So FIST.
I have been part of the community for about a month now.
I have nothing to say but good words about this game and the people who made it.
The quality of the game is there, it is simple to pick up and play immediately. The community is extremely open to homebrew and there are already so many modules and addons for this game. I have already found 2 PbP games to play in and was in a voice one-shot!
I cannot stress how much the community is open and the lengths they go to help everyone feel welcomed and enjoy the great game. It is CLAYMORE that made the basis for this awesome community with this game.
Keep it up!
When you guys says supportive you mean i can use the setting and system in the same way of creative commons?
Or i have to pay for a lincense?
Edit : never mind i saw the information table.
Will there be some kind of solo/coop supplement?
Yes! A solo mode is in the works as part of an upcoming rules expansion/splatbook called SUPPLY DROP
Honestly, that really does sound nice. Can't wait! :D
Awesome!
Hi i'm trying to create an campaign and i noticed that in the example canpaing there is an Celebritie Character that has a CHOKE level, what does the CHOKE do? is it something that the NPC always want to do? or does in danger? if it is explain in the book, can you show me what page it is explained?
yeah, it's explained on page 90! it's a lot like a morale check in OSR games, it's something they do when put in a narrative chokepoint (oftentimes mortal danger)
A video review from Dragons are Real!
So, I just got done with running my first two sessions and I have some feedback.
My players loved the tone and setting, but found the dice mechanics extremely frustrating. A flat 50% chance to fail without a bonus made them feel like the game does not reward skill or planning, but instead just blind luck, and it contributes to the fact that they feel like the intended method of play is too randomly roll up a character you aren't very invested in, then play them into they did very quickly and then roll a new character.
As the gm I feel like that probably isn't the intention, but I can understand why they feel that way. Most of the rolls last session were failures, even for the characters trying to do the things they had +1s or +2s in.
I adjusted the success numbers down a bit - 2-5 is a failure, 6-8 is a partial success, 9+ is a success - as a bandaid, but I… feel like maybe I want to suggest adding an Optional Rule to either grant a few freefloating attribute bonuses at character creation or slide the chance of outright failure closer to %25.
Either way, I hope this doesn’t come down as too negative, I’m just kind of frazzled and frustrated and looking for guidance.
Not at all negative, this kind of stuff is always appreciated! For what it's worth, the chance of rolling a 6 or lower on 2d6 is 41.66%, so the baseline odds are slightly in the PC's favor.
This game takes a lot of inspiration from older games where the risk of failure was pretty high - say, you have to roll a 15+ on a d20 to pass a difficulty check - so a lot of the time, the most successful missions are ones where characters avoid rolling the dice as much as they can. This might mean staying out of combat, talking their way out of things with pure RP, setting up several boons to give themselves advantage when they do have to roll, etc.
Having characters be disposable, constantly die for pointless reasons, and only become a person you're willing to get attached to when they've stuck around for a few missions is 100% intentional - you're disposable soldiers, and the ones who are either strong or lucky enough to stick around will be the characters you end up fleshing out. That isn't to say I haven't seen several characters who players really got into before deploying then and managed to keep alive—it just helps to play starting level characters as though you were really there, and getting shot once or leaving one thing to chance could really, actually kill you. Also, I'd see if your players are interested in the pamphlet adventure we put out called HAZARD FUNCTION—it's a sort of microcosm of this idea where you play three Very weak characters at once and whoever makes it out alive graduates to being your "real" character.
That said, adding a floating +1 is a somewhat common house rule I've seen for the game. Giving out some extra WAR DICE, using the Chopper Chatter rule, or just encouraging players to choose them as rewards can also help with this; we added the mechanic so people who are having a string of bad rolls can push a check result up when it really counts!
Oh, I should also add that character durability and competence increases dramatically around two or three level-ups—I'm running a game for some PCs who have levelled up two or three times and their attributes, loot, and player skill/cautiousness/cleverness make them sometimes untouchable
I used the Chopper Chatter optional rule, and also gave the players an extra War Die just for good measure, and they’ve just been bumbling through everything, barely able to succeed at anything, even the things they’re meant to be good at
I admittedly don’t fully understand where the ‘fun’ of having a ~25% chance of success comes in, but Claymore definitely seems a lot more generous than that.
I started playing TTRPGs with D&D 3/3.5 and I don’t think I fully understand the idea of getting through dangerous situations without rolling dice. Should I, like, not have my players roll to shoot if they have a clean sight line and are undetected? Or would that be, like, in the +2s territory?
Seems like you see only 10+ as success, that's a 'mistake'.
7+ are successes too.
So, with a flat 2d6 roll you have 58,33% chance of success. A +1 makes that 72,22% and a +2 83,33%.
Maybe, and I'm trying to guess here, you (or the GM) is being too harsh on 'partial success' results (7+).
The ~25% chance of success wasn’t in FIST, I was referencing to the OSR style games that Claymore referenced where you need to roll a 15+ on a D20.
But I admittedly do struggle with the partial successes. I’m not good at figuring out what a ‘complication’ should be necessarily. Sometimes I can’t think of a complication related to the roll that feels appropriate without making it an effective failure.
Like, one of my players was trying to sneak up a ladder while a person nearby it was distracted. Rolled a partial success. What do I do there? I had one of the rungs on the ladder snap underfoot when they reached the top of the ladder, alerting the guy at the top and bottom of it, but giving them time to react before being seen.
This felt like “Success with a complication” to me but “Failure” to them.