FATE (formerly Fantastic Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment ) is an interesting family of RPGs that combine the 4dF mechanic and qualitative ladder from FUDGE with a marvellous set of mechanics that use "Aspects" and "Fate Points" (a) to define characters in relation to their stories, taking the place of Advantage and Disadvantages among other things, and (b) support the character-players having more input into the course of adventures, diminishing the load on the GM. Most builds of FATE (not including Strands of FATE ) cleverly do away with the distinction between attributes and skills so that the only things that have to appear on the character sheet are things that matter to the character in relation to the story: if something is average or unimportant, you have no need to write it down.
Character representation is simple, the rules are simple, uniform, and quick to use. But not very detailed or precise.
There is a page on the FATE site at Evil Hat Games that provides a comparison between different versions of FATE . This might be of interest to anyone who has discovered one version of FATE 3 (e.g. Spirit of the Century , The Dresden Files , Diaspora , or Starblazers Adventures ) and is thinking of extending themselves to a different genre or otherwise doing some hacking.