FATE News (english) http://www.feedrinse.com/ Fri, 24 May 2013 11:14:55 GMT Feed Rinse 1.0 (info@feedrinse.com) Extra: Secret Societies for FATE Core http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/05/extra-secret-societies-for-fate-core.html

Extra: Secret Society

Permission: an aspect describing the membership in the secret society
Costs: 1 Aspect slot, 1 refresh

Being a member of a secret society grants the character access to the resources of the society. Therefore, she is able to use either her own skill or the skill of the secret society (which ever is higher). Also, the character may learn the special stunts listed for her secret society at normal cost. If she is using skills at the societies level or the special stunts, she is employing techniques, tools or manpower from that society. Someone watching the character and being knowledgeable about secret societies, might recognize which society she belongs to.

A character willing to pay the costs may belong to several secret societies, as long as they are no rivals. It is almost unheard of to be a member of two rivalling secret societies.

Secret Society Template

Aspects: Each secret society has three aspects related to its organization.
Skills: Each secret society offers a single skill column topped at great (+4).
Stunts: Each secret society offers three stunts related to its concerns,
Rivals: Each secret society has at least one rival secret society.

For skills it is probably best not to include any skills that have a direct attack application. So, from the default skill list Fight, Shoot and Provoke should not be used. In case a society teaches combat techniques, it's probably best to give them an appropriate stunt.]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) FATE Sat, 11 May 2013 13:19:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-4923393333281805178 Richard’s Guide to Blocks and Obstacles in Fate Core http://www.faterpg.com/2013/richards-guide-to-blocks-and-obstacles-in-fate-core/ [...]]]> no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Fri, 19 Apr 2013 02:04:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=137 Blocks and Borders Live in Fate Core http://www.faterpg.com/2013/blocks-and-borders-live-in-fate-core/ [...]]]> no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:59:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=129 Space 1889: Riders of the Upper Nepenthans http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/03/space-1889-riders-of-upper-nephentans.html Wherein a small group of stepperiders accompanies a pregnant woman to meet her future husband. A  story about glory and battle told at the fires of the Upper Nephentans.
Ranix the Warrior, Fazuuk the Seer and Tarn'k the Hunter are given the task of bringing the pregnant woman Kiszula to meet her future husband Prince Harka from the Lower Nephentan tribe. Among the stepperiders of Mars, it is taboo to marry within ones own tribe. Kiszula managed to get herself pregnant at the last tribal gathering and insists that the child is Prince Harka's. So the princes of the Upper and Lower Nepenthans brokered an agreement for a marriage between Kiszula and Prince Harka. Fazuuk, Ranix and Tarn'k are now suppossed to take Kiszula to the Ruumet Breer Graveyard located between the tribes' territories.

Tarn'k scouts ahead on his gashant while the other three Nephentans follow on their own gashants and with the gashant carrying the dowry for Kiszula. Travelling with a pregnant  Martian woman is exhausting. Her constant complaints are met with stoic silence by Ranix, chatter about the ancestors by Fazuuk, and an absent minded "Yes, Kiszula" by Tarn'k. Maybe that's why Tarn'k acts as an outrider.

Near the end of their journey to the Ruumet Breer Graveyard, Tarn'k encounters a carcass of a slain ruumet breer. From the wounds it looks like steppe tigers had slain the mighty beasts. In the distance, he spots a cave that might be the lair of the steppe tigers. He leads the group on a detour to avoid directly crossing through the steppe tiger territory.

At nightfall, they set up camp. Fazuuk proceeds to settle down Kiszula as comfortably as possible. Tarn'k builds the fire and Ranix keeps watch. Then Kiszula asks Tarn'k to come over and asks him to bed down next to her during the night, because she is cold. Tarn'k elegantly passes this task off to Fazuuk who tells Kiszula that he knows how difficult things are. Kiszula says he can't imagine what she is going through. Fazuuk tells her that the female ancestors also speak to him and thus he knows what to do. He gives her a broth of steppegras beer and herbs that settle her down - and make her somewhat delirious. She implies that Prince Harka wasn't alone with her when she got pregnant, that he didn't lead "his gashant to the watering hole" and that he isn't even interested in women. Surley, the ravings of a delirious mind and nowhere near the truth...

Later at night, during Tarn'k's watch, the young hunter suddenly hears a noise in the dark. He draws his bow, wakes Ranix, tells him to be silent and cautiously proceeds away from the fire. Indeed, they are not alone. Two steppe tigers are circling around the camp. Tarn'k shoots an arrow but narrowly misses one of them. Then the steppe tigers leap into the camp. Ranix get badly wounded, Tarn'k lets loose arrow after arrow and Fazuuk protects Kiszula and prays to the ancestors. Indeed, the ancestors are on the side of the Nepenthan warriors. Ranix manages to slay both steppetiger after Tarn'k has hit his them with arrows several times.

Afterwards, Ranix insists on moving the camp a bit; and in the morning hours, Ranix and Tarn'k start to gather trophies from the carcasses: teeths, parts of the furs and Tarn'k successfully removes one of the bone plates from a steppe tiger's skull. Fazuuk tries to get Kiszula to eat some raw steppetiger meat to make the unborn child stronger. Then the warriors and Kiszula continue their travels.

On the last day of their journey, Tarn'k finds some trails of heavily-loaded  gashants and as he arrives at the Ruumet Breer Graveyard, he finds a discarded metal flask with some clear liquid that smells and tastes alcoholic. The alcohol is much stronger than any steppebeer. Probably belonging to some red nosed invader.

After a while, the entourage of the Lower Nepenthans arrives. Their gashants look as if they were wounded and their leader Tenpashan demands to married to Kiszula. Fazuuk refuses and after some huffing and puffing by Tenpashan and his warriors, he gets to the bottom of the tale: Prince Harka was apparently shot down from his gashant by some red nose warriors that he tried to attach. Instead of helping him, Tenpashan ordered a tactical retreat. With the prince dead, he'll become the next chieftain of the Lower Nepenthans. Kiszula would be his fourth wife. Fazuuk then brokers an agreement: the Lower Nepenthans will guard Kiszula while Fazuuk, Ranix and Tarn'k will verify that Prince Harka is indeed dead. Also, if Kiszula marries Tenpashan, the Upper Nepenthans will receive eight rifles. That settled, the three warriors proceed to track the red noses.

Tarn'k can easily track the trail left by the gashants of the invaders. The red noses aren't particularly careful to conceal their tracks. They feel rather secure out here in the Nepenthes-Toth Steppe. As the night falls, and Phobos and Deimos rise in the sky, Tarn'k finds their encampment behind a hill. He sneaks closer, signalling Fazuuk and Ranix not to approach. Tarn'k sees several earthmen dressed in uniforms sitting around a campfire, drinking and joking while a lone guard patrols the perimeter. Also, he sees a cage large enough to hold captives with one huddled form inside. That could be Prince Harka.

Tarn'k reports back to the other two warriors and they formulate a plan. Ranix and Fazuuk will approach the camp to trade the prisoner, while Tarn'k will sneak around to the cage ready to free the prisoners, if Ranix and Fazuuk fail.

As Ranix and Fazuuk approach openly, the red noses call their officer forth. He speaks some Koline and the trade commences. But unfortunately, Tarn'k is discovered and all hell breaks loose. Ranix is gravely wounded by the sabre of the office, but with the help of Fazuuk's ancestors and Tarn'k's arrows raining down, the three Martians prove victorious.

Tarn'k opens the cage and discovers that there are not one but two prisoners. One is a savage High Martian without wings, the other one calls himself "Hamfreyy Laawreenz", a warrior of the Princess Kwin Vyktooreea, a might warrioress chieftain from Earth. Ranix collects the rifles and ammunition of the fallen invading warriors. Also, he claims the sabre as his trophy. The High Martian confirms to Tarn'k that Prince Harka is indeed dead.

Triumphant, but with sad news they return to Kiszula. Haamfreyy and the High Martian come with them, to be taken to one of the canals after the marriage ceremony. Fazuuk marries Kiszula and Tenpashan. The warrior return with 38 rifles, steppe tiger furs, and teeths and bones from the beasts to the Upper Nepenthans to be hailed as heroes and celebrated.

Note: I keep wanting to write "... her future ex-husband". Definitely reading too much After Elton.]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Space 1889 Sun, 31 Mar 2013 13:06:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-6265906019994368960 Space 1889: Scandals in St. James's http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/03/space-1889-scandals-in-st-jamess.html Wherein five adventuresome gentlemen meet for a rather unintentionally scandalous evening at the Travellers Club in 1889. Acquaintances are made, the Russians make a move and dinner is interrupted.
The evening starts at the estate of the Sir Winston Lawrence, chanting can be heard from downstairs. As the head of the household investigates, he finds his daughter Elizabeth Lawrence listening to the chants of a human who tries to clean the house with fake Martian chants. Her sister Lydia is watching from the stairs. Sir Lawrence doesn't find that very amusing and has his Martian butler, Vincent, remove the fake Martian guru from the property. Vincent (his Martian name being unpronounceable to most humans) complies and while escorting the guru out, secretly retrieves the 20 pounds sterling that Miss Elizabeth had paid the fraudulent guru. Sir Lawrence has a stern talk with his daughter in the meantime and decides that it's best, if she gets married soon. Miss Elizabeth begs her father to not reconsider taking her to the dinner reception of Sir Robert Whitecliff at the Travellers' Club. Sir Lawrence relents and tells her that she can still come.

Meanwhile at the Travellers' Club, Humphrey Lawrence, the estranged and missing son of Sir Lawrence, is talking with his High Martian travelling companion. The winged monstrosity gulps down raw meat and speaks in a strange mixture of Martian and German.

William Herondale, gainfully employed with the Foreign Office in London and a second-degree nephew of Sir Lawrence, meets with Sir Pinterbottom at the request of Lady Amelia Pond, a woman playing in the Great Game for the British Intelligence agency. William had met Lady Amelia in Cambridge where she had recruited him for the British Intelligence agency. After spending some time in Istanbul and getting entangled with a Russian operative called Natasha Iswolska, William had returned to London and a new assignment with Sir Lawrence. Officially, his mother asked her uncle to employ him, but unofficial William is under orders of the British Intellegence agency.

Sir Pinterbottom sits on a bench and reads a newspaper as William approaches and sits down next to him. Pinterbottom tells him about the dinner reception at the Travellers' Club and more or less points out that this is important business that William is attending there. The young man should keep his eyes open.

In the evening, Mr Huntingdon, a veteran of the second Afghan war and a suitor of Miss Elizabeth is travelling by Hansom cab to the Travellers' Club to attend the same dinner reception as the other gentlemen. His cab is forced into a detour because of Irish dock workers rioting in St. James's. That is just a bit odd, because the dock worker union was suppossed to have ceased their strike some days ago. Nevertheless, Mr Huntingdon arrives at the club, limps in and deposites his big hunting rifle at the reception desk.

In the drawing room, others are already waiting. Sir Lawrence with his wife Margret and their daughters Elizabeth and Lydia, and the young aide William Herondale. Butler Vincent is standing discreetly on the side, ready to serve his master Sir Lawrence. Shortly after Mr Huntingdon enters, a big burly Russian named Ivan enters and asks the somewhat impatient Sir Lawrence and entourage to follow him to the ballroom. William finds this a bit odd, since the dinner reception will be held in the smoking room.

The assembled ladies and gentlemen follow Ivan and he leads them to meet with his employer, Duke Alexander Petrovitch Iswolski. When William is introduced to the duke, he reacts a bit impulsively and tells him to give his daughter Natasha his regards. Sir Lawrence is irritated by that. His aide is not supposed to speak before him. As introductions are finally made, Sir Lawrence belittles the Russian diplomat in a rather insulting manner. But that isn't what concerns the duke. He merely wants to present Sir Lawrence with a mutual acquaintance.

Humphrey Lawrence is waiting in an anteroom with several doors. He has been told by Mr Robert Whitecliff to wait there. Humphrey is patiently waiting for the dinner reception of Mr Robert Whitecliff to begin. He is wearing leather pants, boots and other rough travelling gear. Suddenly, one of the doors is opened by Ivan. Humphrey wonders why it is the door to the ballroom and not the door to the smoking room, when Duke Iswolski points to him and presents him to his father, Sir Lawrence. While doing so, he tells Sir Lawrence that Humphrey was found wandering the streets of Syrtis Major in a rather dishevelled state and slightly out of his mind. Humphrey is glad to see his father, but his father will have none of it, even implying that Humphrey is an imposter.

Miss Elizabeth swoons upon seeing her lost brother, but Mr Huntingdon manages to catch her and carries her to a nearby couch. He tells Vincent to get some water. The Martian butler leaves, but encounters Ivan who tells him that Sir Whitecliff is already waiting for his guests to arrive. Vincent goes back to the ballroom and tells Sir Lawrence that Sir Whitecliff is waiting. Duke Islowski leads Humphrey back into the anteroom. Everybody else leaves for the smoking room granting Miss Elizabeth and Mr Huntingdon some time alone. She complains about her tight corset and asks Mr Huntingdon to please loosen it a bit. Of course, the love-struck Mr Huntingdon complies. Then both of them go to the smoking room, just in time before Sir Lawrence sends Vincent to get his daughter.

Besides the entourage of Sir Lawrence and Duke Iswolski, Mr Runark is attending the dinner reception. Sir Whitecliff is a tycoon building etherships for her Majesty, Queen Victoria. The HMS Canterbury is his most recent project and is affected by delays. The dock workers strike is just one of many issues. The HMS Canterbury is suppossed to contain a lot of new and innovative designs, yet none of the patents have been registered yet. The maiden voyage will take the HMS Canterbury to Mars, but things are not going well. Apparently, Sir Whitecliff is getting desperate by inviting a Russian duke and his competitor Mr Runark to  dinner. He hopes to gain something here.

Before the dinner begins, Sir Whitecliff opens the door to the antechamber and introduces Humphrey to his family. None of the assembled guests hint at meeting Humphrey earlier already. Sir Lawrence greets his son a lot warmer than just minutes before and asks Vincent to pick out some suitable suits from among those stashed at the club. Vincent leads Humphrey upstairs to help him get changed. When the two return, the dinner has already started.

Mr Huntingdon flirts with Miss Elizabeth who tries to get William Herondale to join into the discussion too. William obliges and smiles at her. Something that Mr Huntingdon doesn't find very amusing. He gets into a duel of words with Mr Herondale. Mr Herondale likes the dance of words and secretly delights at appearing to flirt with Miss Elizabeth. Though his true target is Mr Runark. The other tycoon is rumored to still be single at a rather advanced age and to have a rather unseemly close relation to his personal secretary and aide. William know the secretary from meetings in circumstances best not mentioned in polite society. Now, William is casting occasional glances at Mr Runark. Mr Huntingdon elbows him in the side causing William to loose his composure on the first try. But finally, Mr Runark notices the young man's interest.

During dinner, Vincent uses the opportunity to nose around the club a bit. He notices Ivan, the butler and bodyguard of Duke Iswolski going upstairs. Discreetly, he follows him and observes that Ivan exchanges coin with a person guarding a door, saying something about 9 o'clock and the duke leaving at that time. Vincent looks around a bit and finds another door leading into the guarded room. There he picks the lock and carefully opens the door. On the other side, a High Martian is sitting in the room still chewing on raw meat and muttering words Koline and German.

Shortly before 9 o'clock, Ivan enters the smoking room and whispers to Duke Iswolski. The duke gets up and excuses himself from the dinner, since he has to attend to urgent business elsewhere.

After the duke leaves, the dinner is interrupted as an angry young man intrudes into the smoking room. He confronts Sir Whitecliff and apparently is his son Michael Whitecliff. Father and son go into the adjoing room. Then a loud noise is heard like someone hitting somebody right in the face. William very rashly jumps up and goes into the other room to see if everything is alright. Sir Lawrence tries to stop him by asking for a few words, but William brushes him aside more concerned with the well-being of Sir Whitecliff.  Unfortunately, invading a families privacy in Victorian times is a social gaffe. As he opens the door, he watches Michael Whitecliff storming out of the room and Sir Whitecliff holding a bloody handkerchief to his nose. William asks if everything is alright and then escorts Sir Whitecliff back into the room. None of the others have noticed the blood.

Sir Lawrence is rather angry at his aide, and even Miss Elizabeth is not so sure, if William will be adequate competition for Mr Huntingdon. Suddenly, noises can be heard from outside. Mr Herondale walks to the window and sees rioting dock workers in front of the club. They throw a brick through the window which narrowly misses Mr Herondale. From downstairs noise indicates that the front door has been broken open. Upstairs, Vincent sees the guard lifting his rifle, turning to the door and shooting through the door - presumably to kill the High Martian.

In Closing: This report is of course heavily biased by the person witnessing the events and reporting them to his superiors in the British Foreign Office.]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Space 1889 Sun, 24 Mar 2013 23:01:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-8118060073215673147 Monsterhearts: Devil Falls, AK Episode 3 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/03/monsterhearts-devil-falls-ak-episode-3.html
Meanwhile, Annalee has taken refuge in a quiet corner of the library. She gazes inward reaching for visions. She sees how Carol prays to Kal'Thoragh to set her free. The demon lord complies with her wishes and opens her cell door and loosens her straight-jacket. She attacks the nearest orderly and kills him by chewing through his neck with her bare teeth. Annalee feels that Carol is coming for her and Max. Frightened, she runs from the library into the arms of Spencer the groundskeeper. He corners her and she eventually faints. He carries her off into the gym.

During a short break, Max wonders where Annalee is. He asks around until he meets Misty, Iris and Amanda. They tell him that they haven't seen her at all. Baron hovers around the edge of the conversation, while Misty tentatively tries to flirt with Max telling him that she's sorry for what they did. But she also reminds him that without the witches he'd literally be nothing at all.

While Max is talking with the witches, Baron talks to his best friend Veronica. Then he suddenly has an insight where Annalee is. He sprints to the gym followed by the coven, Max and Veronica. Just in time they stop Spencer from doing something unmentionable to Annalee and wake her. Annalee runs out into the rain, while the three remaining witches turn on Spencer who is fleeing. Baron runs after Annalee, and Max goes after the witches.

The witches are standing at the edge of the hockey field, chanting. Spencer is climbing a ladder into the lighting rigging. Max suspects the obvious: the witches want Spencer to kill himself by jumping down to the hockey field. He starts to talk the witches out of their course of action. They don't really listen. In the end, Max grabs Misty to carry her away. Misty slams a pair of scissors into his back. Max is injured, but the circle is broken and Spencer survives.

Out on her way to the greenhouse, Annalee meets the merrow. The one that Chloe turned into. Baron stops in his tracks as well and flees into the greenhouse. He slams the door shut and cowers on the ground. Annalee is lunging with her knife at the throat of the merrow. Baron gazes into the abyss. Something unexpected happens. He sees a vision of how he can save himself from Kal'Thoragh by saving Annalee and trying to get away from his demonlord. He hears the words "God loves you." He gathers his courage and leaves the greenhouse to confront the merrow.

Annalee manages to wound the merrow, but it lashes out at her. Enough is enough. Annalee changes. Her hair becomes darker, her fingernails grow, she becomes her darkest self and casts an illusion. Suddenly, to Baron and the merrow she appears as an incarnation of Kal'Thoragh the Butcher. The merrow retreats in panic. Baron kneels down and sees that his demonlord reaches for him with his flaming sword. Annalee cuts of a lock of hair from a terrified Baron. The boy flees to the front of the school to get away from her.

Max, Baron and finally Annalee go to their sixth hour class: English Literature with Coach Delgado. Since Max and Baron arrive much too late, he gives them detention. Annalee arrives last, almost five minutes before the end of class. Delgado talks to her, giving her the choice between detention and joining the school newspaper. She opts for the latter. Then she tries to turn him on. He turns her down. She is hurt and turns all the books in class into bugs. Everyone freaks out. Except Baron and Max. Baron crushes the big bug in front of him and pulls its intestines out. Max watches calmly and suspecting something to be very wrong with Annalee. Annalee flirts openly with Gary who tries to protect his screaming girlfriend Faye. Delgado suffers a nervous breakdown. Class is over and Annalee persuades Gary to join her in the cellar for some hot kissing.

Annalee drags Gary down into the boiler room where they start making out. Kissing turns into much more. Afterwards, Gary gladly gives Annalee the friendship jewelry he shared with Faye. Annalee is happy, but not finished. As the two leave the cellar, they stumble upon a corpse. Another cheerleader has been killed. They inform Principal O'Rourke. But when they return with her, the corpse is gone.

After school's out, Max and Baron return from seeing the school nurse James who treated their wounds. They join Coach Delgado and the hockey team at the ice stadium. Zack is there, Baron's friend from the WoW guild, Veronica and Annalee. All three want to watch the hockey practice with Baron. Zack uses his iPad to tape the whole thing. Veronica doesn't like Annalee being there. She's afraid that the witch is after Baron who she's secretly in love with.

The hockey game between Team Max and Team Baron is surprisingly evenly matched. A whole lot of calling on dark powers is going on until Kal'Thoragh grants victory to Team Baron. Coach Delgado looks pleased that Baron is finally becoming a team player and offers him a place on the ice hockey team. Baron - to everyone's surprise - accepts.

Annalee is cheering Baron, and Veronica has had enough. She pushes Annalee into the row in front of her. But Annalee isn't intimidated. She causes all the hockey sticks to turn into snakes. Coach Delgado suffers another nervous breakdown. Zack runs out, leaving his iPad behind. Annalee snatches the iPad. Veronica also is visibly shaken. Delgado leaves to see the nurse and leaves Baron in charge. Baron simply ends the practice session by saying: "It's over."

TO BE CONTINUED

Notes:

  • Annalee is still in her darkest self. Currently, I am not sure who she harmed the most: Carol or Faye. I told her Carol. She said "Oh, that's easy. I just drive to Fairbanks, go and see her, and then apologize." If things would be that easy, we wouldn't play to find out...
  • The characters had another vision (not mentioned above) and know that Kal'Thoragh needs five dead girls before he can start to manifest.


]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Monsterhearts Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:54:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-1615844849724716630 Monsterhearts: Devil Falls, AK Episode 2 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/03/monsterhearts-devil-falls-ak-episode-2.html a threat, a custom move and a love letter. Annalee the Witch, Max the Hollow, Cassidy the Werewolf and Baron the Infernal were joined by a new student, Gabriel the Angel. Gabriel knew that god loved Baron more than him, and Cassidy reminds him of heaven.

We cut back to the early afternoon and see that Baron drugs the beer with the green pills obtained from Paul. Just as Kal'Thorag the Butcher had commanded him to do. Then he goes back to the school and puts what is left of the pills into Boyd's locker. Boyd is the arrogant goaltender of the hockey team, and Coach Delgado's son. Baron doesn't like him in the least - though it is a mystery why.

Cassidy, Max and Gabriel arrive at the party early that evening. Cassidy and Gabriel both drink the drugged beer. Max doesn't, because he knows what is in there. Baron tricks Faye, the chaste and pure class president into drinking some of the beer too. Gary, her boyfriend keeps asking for Annalee who hasn't come to the party yet. The two fight a little and Faye stumps away frustrated. Just in that moment, Cassidy picks up screaming from beyond the hill leading back to town. Cassidy recognizes the scream as Annalee's. She runs off, followed closely by Gabriel and Baron.

When they reach a frightened Annalee, they see that she's attacked by a a hideous monster with green scales, black lanky hair and iron claws - the merrow that killed and almost ate Erica. They save Annalee from the monster and attack it. Baron and Gabriel hurl rocks and a golden glowing mug (Gabriel manifesting some of his powers). Cassidy changes into her wolf shape behind their backs and attacks the merrow viciously. The three of them bring the merrow down, while Annalee flees to the (questionable) safety of the party. There she meets Max and her friends Carol, Amanda, Misty and Iris. The five girls form a secret witches' coven. Carol, Amanda, Misty and Iris keep eyeing Max.

Meanwhile, Baron, Cassidy and Gabriel kill the merrow. Cassidy, still in wolf shape runs into the woods, and Gabriel follows her. Baron sits down besides the corpse of the merrow to gaze into the abyss listening for the commands of his master, Kal'Thorag. His demonic master answers and lets the body of the merrow burn into fine green dust. He commands Baron to take the dust and use it to turn someone into a merrow. Baron happily agrees.

Gabriel confronts the wolf and calls her on being Cassidy. Cassidy turns back into her human shape, and Gabriel lends her his jacket. Just then they are interrupted by Melissa, the head cheerleader, and her boyfriend Todd, the captain of the hockey team. They immediately suspect Cassidy and Gabriel as having had sex in the woods. Melissa giggles and makes fun of them. Then she and Todd run off to tell the others.

Finally, everyone is back at the party, happily drinking. Baron gets close to Chloe who had been pregnant with Kal'Thorag's child last summer, but choose to have an abortion. He puts some of the dust on her. She immediately begins to transform. Everyone is shocked, but nobody had noticed Baron doing the deed. As Chloe transforms slowly, hardly anyone notices. Annalee runs to her coven un order to do some magic. She wants the other students to flee. Together with her coven she enacts a big illusion of  approaching police sirens. Panic breaks out, everyone runs away. Gabriel and Cassidy drive off the merrow, before also fleeing. But now both are injured.

Carol collapses after doing the spell. Carol had been the designated driver and everyone else except Max has had something to drink. Max agrees to take Annalee and her friends home in Carol's pickup. On their way back to town, the car collides with a big black shape. Annalee blacks out. When she comes around again, she is alone in the car. Max and the witches are gone.

Cassidy and Gabriel end their flight at the football field behind the school. They start treating their wounds and eventually start kissing. Kisses turn into touches, touches turn into cast-off clothing. In the end, Melissa would be correct with her assumption.

In the meantime, Annalee walks home and tries to find out where Max is. She locks herself into her room and sacrifices Max' diary that she stole in order to cast a spell. She falls into a deep trance and enters Max' body. When Max opens his eyes, he is bound inside a cave, naked and in a ceremonial circle. Amanda, Misty and Iris are also there. Unbound, admiring their captive. As Amanda crawls all over him, Max gazes into the abyss. There he receives strange visions. He sees four girls (Amanda, Carol, Misty and Iris) forming a homunculous out of clay, praying and pouring life energy into the clay. Carol is not with the others. Instead, in the vision, in a small corner of the cave, she sacrifices to Kal'Thoragh. As she sheds her blood, the demon lord animates the clay creature who turns into Max. The hollow is tainted by the dark energies of Kal'Thoragh. Annalee's contact with Max gives him fleeting access to her spell powers. He confronts Amanda and casts a withering aging spell on her. As Amanda flees in horror, Misty and Iris etch a bit closer and Max, still bound, get's them to spill the story. They wanted their very own boytoy. That's why they created him. Annalee withdraws. Max convinces Iris and Misty to cut him loose. Then the two witches flee, leaving the still unconscious Carol behind.

Annalee has a good idea where the cave is located, even though she hasn't been there yet. She takes daddy's car and drives to the Devil Falls at the end of Crescent Lake. On her way there she tries to figure out how to help Max. She doesn't like where her thoughts are leading her. She suspects that Max was created as vessel for Kal'Thoragh. She wonders how to break the bond between demon lord and vessel, then she understands clearly that she has to kill Carol.

Max meets her halfway around Crescent Lake, but Annalee insists on going to the cave. There she plans to murder Carol, but in the end cannot bring herself to murder the unconscious girl in cold blood. Instead, Annalee and Max take her to grandma April. Annalee spills the story about Carol's involvement to her grandma late at night. The elderly witch binds Carol and the next day, she is taken to a mental hospital in Fairbanks.

Next morning in class, Ms Chamberlain the homeroom teacher announces that a new student will join the class. His name is Gabriel and he just moved to Devil Falls.

TO BE CONTINUED

Notes:
- Mostly went well. I should have let Annalee roll "Manipulate an NPC" to get her grandmother to help. But that roll didn't matter in the end.]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Monsterhearts Sun, 17 Mar 2013 21:49:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-9195179711014297154 Stranger Shores: Character for a Hangout Game http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/03/stranger-shores-character-for-hangout.html On Thursday, I am GMing a hangout game in the Stranger Shore setting. The game is supposed to serve as a short introduction into FATE Core. I've prepared five characters for the players to choose from. The skills are already adjusted to reflect the latest changes to FATE Core. All characters still have aspects and skill slots for the players to customize them. The faction names are explained in this post. All characters start with Refresh 3, stress boxes are based on Physique and Will respectively (and thus not listed).

Malthusian Fallen Angel

Aspects:
High Concept: Fallen Angel
Faction: Malthusian Conspirator
Community: Shady Dealings

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Contacts
Good (+3): Elemental Control (Light), Resources
Fair (+2): Fight, Shoot

Stunts & Extras: 

  • Sinister Reputation: You can use Contacts instead of Intimidation to create advantages based on the fear generated by the sinister reputation you’ve cultivated for yourself and all the shady associates you have.
  • Seven League Stride: By apparently walking straight into a wall or a shadow, the character can teleport to another location within one day travel of his current location. The player needs to spend a FATE point to use the stunt.
  • Elemental Control (Light): Can use light to overcome obstacles, create advantages, attack and defend.

Humanist Community Leader

Aspects:
High Concept: Coarse,yet gentle Ogre
Weakness: People & things are fragile
Faction: Humanist Spokesperson

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Physique
Good (+3): Provoke, Empathy
Fair (+2): Fight,

Stunts & Extras: 
  • Brutal: Use Physique instead of Fighting to physically attack a physically unharmed opponent.
  • Tough Hide: Armor:2 vs all attacks causing physical stress.
  • Incredibly strong: gain +2 to Physique, when overcoming any physical obstacles to movement.

Demonic Geneticist

Aspects:
High Concept: Purified Demon
Weakness: Cold-wrought iron
Faction: Darwinist Geneticist
Job: Researcher at GenTech Industries

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Lore
Good (+3): Elemental Control (Fire), Investigate
Fair (+2): Fight,

Stunts & Extras: 
  • Scientist: Gain +2 to Lore, when creating advantages related to biological research.
  • Flaming whip: Gain Weapon:2 when physically attacking with your flaming whip
  • Elemental Control: Fire. You can use fire to overcome obstacles, create advantages, attack and maybe even defend.

Iconoclast Warlock

Aspects:
High Concept: Wicked Warlock of the North
Weakness: For whom the bell tolls
Faction: Iconoclast clawing at the gates of Faerie

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Witchcraft
Good (+3): Lore, Will
Fair (+2): Deceive, Notice

Stunts & Extras: 
  • Witchcraft: You can use the Witchcraft skill to overcome obstacles and create advantages
  • Warlock: You can use the Witchcraft skill to attack and defend.
  • Knowledgeable: You gain +2 with Lore when creating advantages related to the weaknesses of supernatural creatures

Albigensian Nephilim

Aspects:
High Concept: Haughty & arrogant Nephelim
Faction: Disgusted Abligensian
Community: Fear and Loathing in Juneau

Skill Pyramid:
Great (+4): Provoke
Good (+3): Sorcery, Will
Fair (+2): Fight,
Average (+1): Physique

Stunts & Extras: 
  • Indomitable: Armor:2 vs all with Provoke or Witchcraft/Sorcery attacks causing mental damage
  • Sorcery: You can use your Sorcery skill to overcome obstacles and create advantages
  • Curse Heaven! You can use Provoke instead of Sorcery to attack people in churches, cemetaries and other sacred places mentally

]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Stranger Shores Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:10:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-5123381065413154724 Monsterhearts: Session Prep http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/03/monsterhearts-session-prep.html
  • Annalee the Witch was cheated out of her gaze into the abyss at her grandmother's house.
  • Player characters might encounter the Merrow of Lake Crescent.
  • Baron the Infernal will drug the beer supply at the party. What happens if a player character drinks some beer?

I've decided to address Annalee's gaze into the abyss with a custom move, because she was looking for some very specific information. Also, I am going to introduce that custom move as a love letter. The Merrow will be statted as a threat. It is not, as of itself a menace, but rather a threat attached to a menace. I think the real menace is something else. Drinking beer at the party will be a custom move also. It will be rolled with +dark.

Love Letter to Annalee

Dear Annalee,

since I completely misjudged the scene at your grandmother's house with your aunts being all mean to you and you hitting the books looking for answers to your previous visions, you are entitled to roll +dark after the stats are highlighted. Don't forget to add the +1 carry forward from your previous vision. On 10+,  you can choose choose two: 
  • You will learn that Cassidy can take the shape of a wolf
  • You carry +1 forward toward asking Cassidy for help against the merrow
  • You are cured of one condition.
On a 7-9 choose one:
  • You will learn that Cassidy can take the shape of a wolf and you gain the condition "drained".
  • You learned a confusing jumble of half-truths and maybe even suspect Cassidy to be the merrow.
On a 6- you take the condition "unloved" because you listened too much to your mean aunts.

Love & kisses
Your MC

The Merrow

The merrow constitutes a threat. It craves intimacy (isolate them), it offers power (shower them with outlandish gifts) and it has the capacity for sudden violence (outright kill someone they love). The merrow is a tough opponent and will require 8 harm before being killed.

  • Is there only one merrow?
  • Who awakened the merrow?
  • Who is using the merrow?
  • Who will be offered power by the merrow?

Drinking the Drugged Beer

When you drink from the beer that has been poisoned with drugs by Baron, roll +dark. On a 10+ choose three. On a 7-9, you can choose two.
  • Baron doesn't gain a string on you.
  • The next morning, you do not gain the condition "headache".
  • You don't carry +1 forward when lashing out physically at the party.
  • You do not end up making out publicly with another student from your homeroom.

]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Monsterhearts Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:41:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-2964988106549811445 Monsterhearts: Cardiff, Wales Episode 2 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/03/monsterhearts-cardiff-wales-episode-2.html Google Hangout game set in Cardiff, Wales. The player of our witch Merill couldn't join us. So it was up to Lucien the Serpentine, Morrigan the Ghoul and Mattieu the Selkie to continue wreaking emotional havoc.

At the end of the last episode, Marcel the transgender teen was kissing Morrigan. Both were rather surprised by this event. Thomas saw that and looked confused between at Lucien and Mattieu. Lucien used that opportunity to smile back and obviously trying to turn Thomas on. Mattieu became jealous almost instantly and jumped over two tables to slug Lucien. Lucien's nose started bleeding and he faked unconsciousness. John the quarterback, who was standing next to Lucien, looked menacingly at Mattieu and cracked his knuckles. Mattieu told Thomas that he needn't follow someone like Lucien around - ignoring John completely. But Thomas reacted shocked and more or less told Mattieu to tell Lucien that he was sorry, because Thomas didn't want to associate with bullies. Mattieu reluctantly woke Lucien up and told him that he was sorry.

Morrigan came over and joined the boys, asking Mattieu: "And you want to become class president?" Mattieu just replied: "Actually, no. I only ran for the office, because someone told me it would be fun." Thus more or less taking himself out of the race. Then he left with Thomas.

After school Morrigan observed Felix handing over money to an older boy. In exchange, he got some knockout pills. Morrigan remembered that Felix had been infatuated with another girl, before taking interest in Merall. Back then, Felix had resorted to stalking. Morrigan figured out that Felix probably uses the knockout pills to get the girl he "wants" at the moment. She confronts him about it. Felix knocks her backwards into a lanternpost, causing a serious laceration. Morrigan, being the Ghoul that she is, shruggs the wound off and intimidates Felix by implying that the pills are the only way for him to get a girl. He leaves in a huff and gets on the bus.

Lucien comes home to the family mansion and is greated by his father. His father asks him sternly if he succeeded in becoming class president. Lucien tells him meekly that the voting has been postponed until the next day. Then he asks his father for help. Reluctantly, his father tells him about secret drugs hidden in grandfather's cupboard. He tells Lucien not to take too much, since grandpa isn't around anymore to make new ones. Supposedly mixed with alcohol, the drugs make a person very prone to accepting suggestions. Lucien also gets the car to buy some alcohol. He doesn't notice that he is not alone in the car. His little sister Cassandra has snuck into the backseat.

At school, Mattieu serves detention. Mr Gilles ordered him to clean all the desks in the classroom. Then he leaves him alone. Thomas joins him. Apparently standing back a bit insecurely. Mattieu exchanges a few words about texting with him. Thomas finds it hilarious that Mattieu "pretends" not to know about mobile phones and texting. Mattieu steps up to Thomas and then grabs him by the shoulders. Thomas apparently knows what he is doing and embraces Mattieu. Suddenly, he confidently kisses Mattieu. Mattieu shrugs out of his jeans and t-shirt, Thomas practically  tears of his own clothes and they explore each other. Mattieu submerges himself in the sensation, sees the visions the water brings him and realizes that he isn't the first Selkie to seduce (or be seduced?) by Thomas. The ocean shows him visions of Thomas making out with Mattieu's halfbrother Louie. The realization crashes down on Mattieu like waves and he looses himself in Thomas' arms.

Later in the evening Amanda and Mattieu prepare the beach party. The create a small, illegal fire, gather some driftwood around the fire, near a ruined boathouse. Mattieu asks Amanda, if she has a mobile phone and John's number. Of course she has. Mattieu borrows the phone and texts John as Amanda that she would like to make out with him at the party. Amanda reads the text, just smiles and shrugs, apparently not minding. Mattieu has thus fulfilled his bargain with John who is responsible for getting the beer.

Lucien arrives at the party, and his sister Cassandra darts out of the car. She wears make-up, entirely too provacative clothes for a fourteen year old and wants to party with Lucien and his friends. Felix, Lydia and her boyfriend The Matt! approach. The Matt! finds it entirely uncool that Lucien brrought along his little sister. Lucien's popularity takes a big hit. Lucien takes out the vodka laced with grandpa's drugs and after some cajoling gets his sister to drink some. Then he tells her to go home. Alone. Slightly tipsy. Way to go with responsibility.

Then he joins the other students at the fire. He gets Felix to drink some of the vodka and asks him for help. Felix agrees to help in return for getting Cassandra's number from Lucien. Lucien doesn't hand out the number right away, but Felix will help nevertheless.

Morrigan arrives together with Marcel, Thomas and some friends. They walk over to Amanda and Mattieu. Thomas and Mattieu are both grinning at each other openly. To Morrigan it is pretty clear what happened and she tells them. Mattieu tells her that they did it at her desk, trying to gross her out. Morrigan just turns to the fire.

Lydia approaches and takes the opportunity to talk with Morrigan about the class presidency telling her that The Matt! and she are still uncertain who to vote for. If Morrigan is interested in winning their vote, Lydia suggests for her to join her and The Matt! at the boathouse later. Then she turns around and walks off. Morrigan gazes at her back and stares into the darkness beyond the fire, the world forming a tunnel leading to Lydia... and the her hunger awakens. Morrigan finds herself consumed by her hunger for fear and hungrily eyes Ed the nerd who used to be her best friend and the scumbag Felix.

Lucien gazes into the fire and let's his thoughts wander. Before his mind pictures of Lydia and the Matt! rise. They are passionately kissing inside the boathouse and start love-making. Then Lucien sees himself stepping out of the darkness and joining them.

Mattieu only has eyes for Thomas. He observes him sitting at the fire. He remembers how he felt in his arms and smells the salty ocean loosing himself in the moment. Suddenly he realizes that Thomas wants to break out from his live and feel the excitement of the world. Louie probably promised him to show Thomas another exciting world. For Mattieu it becomes clear what he has to do. He has to show Thomas who he really his. Then Thomas' heart will be his.

Meanwhile, Morrigan decides to go after Felix first. She approaches him, casting first a menacing shadow over John's back who is shielding Felix from her. Then she walks around Felix, approaches him from behind, whispers in his ears what she knows about him. What he does to the girls. Felix is already intimidate and caves in. He sinks to his knees while Morrigan sniffs the fear that he exudes. John tries to chase her off, but she ignores him. Then she takes Felix' face almost lovingly in her hands and draws nearer and literally tasting his cold sweat, running her tongue over his face.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Notes: I found the last scene really creepy, even though I suggested elements of it. The development between Mattieu and Thomas was unexpectedly quick. Finding out about his halfbrother irritates Mattieu. All in all, our MC handled the classroom scene very well.

]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Monsterhearts Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:02:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-4081119903720519538 Monsterhearts: Devil Falls, AK Episode 1 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/03/actual-play-of-monsterhearts-devil.html playing Monsterhearts a week ago also had something to do with it.

Our game is set in the fictional town of Devil Falls, Alaska. It is located inland at the also completely fictional Lake Crescent. The eponymous waterfall flows into the lake at the northeastern end. The town is located to the south of the lake on a plain. At the western end of the lake lies the Hotel Crescent, a spa and wellness hotel. A small airport lies on the westside of town. Devil Falls High School is located in the northeastern corner of the city containing a hockey arena, a football field and a greenhouse.

Our cast so far consists of:

  • Annalee, a gifted witch
  • Baron, an infernal lackey of Kal'Thorag the Butcher
  • Cassidy, a werewolf born as a wolf and the only girl on the hockey team
  • Max, a homunculus hollow and another member of the hockey team

We meet them for the first time as their Tuesday homeroom class is about to start. Their elderly but strict teacher is Ms Chamberlain. On their way to class, Cassidy runs up to Mary-Jane, the star pupil, and asks her, if she could copy her homework. Mary-Jane agrees, but only if Cassidy gets back the lunch money that Veronica bullied from her the day before. Cassidy agrees and waits outside of class for Veronica. Veronica is quite a piece of work. She and Baron got expelled from their last school for suspected arson.

While Cassidy waits for Veronica, Paul tries to sell green pills to Annalee and Max. Max has latched on to Annalee quite firmly and takes his social clues from her to the point of twinning (at least that's how Cassidy sees it). Max just takes the drugs from Paul and then shuts him down. Annalee is a bit conflicted about the drug business and hasn't made up her mind yet how to feel about the pills.

When Baron and Veronica arrive, Cassidy tries to slug Veronica with a puck as she doesn't want to give the lunch money back. Veronica sidesteps Cassidy and slams her head into the railing on the gangway to the classroom. Cassidy is hurt. Baron tries to drag Veronica with him to the classroom, because they are already late. Cassidy observes the two and suddenly realizes that quiet, pyromanic, violent Veronica is very much into bad kid Baron. As Ms Chamberlain approaches and gives afterschool detention to all three, Cassidy tells Veronica that she will make sure Baron and Veronica get some time alone during detention, if Veronica hands back the lunch money.

In class, Ms Chamberlain announces that Erica, a popular girl and last year's homecoming queen, has been found dead near Lake Crescent. Apparently her body was mauled by a wild animal - probably a wolf. During the third hour a short memorial will be held in the auditorium. Baron uses this as an opportunity to mouth off to the teacher and even threatening her. After class, Ms Chamberlain walks Baron to the principal. There he threatens Principal Kate O'Rourke. She decides that she's had enough and calls the police to have Baron arrested as a potential homicidal maniac.

During the memorial for Erica, Cassidy tries to turn the planned party down at the lake into a memorial party instead of the year's welcoming party. Zack, a friend of Baron's, hears that, climbs on a chair and announces that Cassidy is inviting the whole school to a party at Lake Crescent. Max is furious at this display of inappropriate behavior and tackles Zack. Zack goes down and Principal O'Rourke notices the commotion. She orders detention for Cassidy, Max and Annalee (who is more or less innocent in all this). Cassidy tells her that she already has detention today and get O'Rourke to postpone the detention to Wednesday.

Meanwhile, at the police station, Baron has been placed in a cell. There he tries to gaze into the abyss and fails miserably. Instead, Kal'Thorag the Butcher appears to him and asks him to poison the beer keg at the party in the evening with the drug that comes as green pills. Baron agrees and Kal'thorag opens the cell door. Baron walks out of the police station without being noticed.

Back at school, lunch break has started. Max and Cassidy sit at the hockey team/cheerleader table, where Melissa announces that she will become homecoming queen this year as Erica is unable to compete. Max shuts her down in disgust. Annalee is also at the table flirting with Boyd, the arrogant goaltender that she secretly detests. Suddenly he kisses her squarely on the mouth (gives her want he thinks she wants). Breaking out in tears, she runs away.

Baron has arrived at school again and seeks out Paul in a dark corner to get the green pills from him. Paul spills that he hasn't them anymore, because Max took them from him. In the end, he tells Baron that he can have the pills, if he can take them from Max.

Baron arrives in the cafeteria just as Max hits Boyd for kissing Annalee. Then Max runs off to find her. Baron follows him. While searching Annalee, Baron tries to get the pills from Max. Max ends up hitting Baron on their way to greenhouse where they suspect Annalee is hiding.

Amidst all this commotion, Cassidy feels rather lonely and stares into her coke. There she gains a crystal clear vision while being exhausted from the events. She sees a large, reptilian shadow following Erica while she is jogging around the lake. As the shadowy monster suddenly attacks the blonde runner, a wolf hurls itself at the monster, preventing it from devouring Erica. The monster throws the wolf into the trees and slithers back into the lake. Cassidy realizes that she was the wolf and that she cannot remember any of this.

In the greenhouse, Annalee has her secret and sacred space. She gazes into the abyss and the abyss answers her. She also gets the vision that Cassidy gets and realizes that she needs the help of the wolf in order to fight the green-scaled monsters with the lanky black hair and the claws of iron. She calls her grandmother April, the only other witch in her family and asks for advice. Her granny asks her over for tea after school.

As she leaves the greenhouse, she runs into Baron and Max. Rather distraught she realizes that Baron is trying to get the drugs from Max. She urges Max to destroy the pills rather than give them to Baron. But Max refuses. When she tries to hit him as frustrated as she is, she stumbles and he catches her. Looking down, Annalee realizes in horror that she's stumbled in a large three toed footprint that resembles the claws of the green-scaled monster. Now completely sick, she asks Max to take her to the school nurse James.

Sixth hour has started. Annalee, Baron, Cassidy and Max are supposed to attend the English Literature class. But only Cassidy is in attendance as Coach Delgado starts the class. Mary-Jane is also there, remarking on the looks of Coach Delgado who is wearing a muscle shirt as usual. Cassidy is more interested in the actual lesson about an obscure poem attributed to William Blake that describes a hideous monster with green scales, black lanky hair and iron claws. Blake calls that monster a "merrow". Cassidy has a déja-vu. Max finally arrives, carrying a tardy slip for himself and Annalee. James has excused her from attending English Literature.

After school, Veronica and Cassidy start detention absent Baron who is meeting with Max. Max is attending hockey practice and meets with Baron. Baron finally gets his desperately needed drugs. Now he can set the diabolic plans of his infernal master into motion. Annalee visits her grandmother April and her aunts Mae and June. She drinks tea with them and is treated to a delicious cheesecake, but unfortunately not to any answers.

Later, Annalee makes her way to the party at the shores of Lake Crescent. Suddenly, she hears twigs and branches cracking behind her. She turns around, her eyes widen and she screams in fear. Unfortunately, the music from the party drowns out her scream...

TO BE CONTINUED

Notes:

  • Doing the homeroom seating chart was fun. I haven't even used a quarter of the awesome the players put in there.
  • The NPC sheet sucks for me. I need lines on that sheet.
  • Sketching Devil Falls on the community sheet was also not as rewarding as I thought. Going to redo that in MS Office Word.
  • The player most critical of the whole Monsterhearts told me afterwards it was fun and he'd like to play again.
  • I did a major goof-up with the scene at granny's house. I would have liked to dump some info regarding the werewolf on Annalee, but didn't realize how to do this. After having read this article on using gaze into the abyss as info dump/hitting the books, things have become much clearer. I should have let Annalee gaze into the abyss again (this time with the +1 forward for acting on the previous gaze into the abyss), this time with help from her grandmother. I am probably going to replay the scene at granny's home at the start of the next session with Annalee and have her roll +dark to find out about who the wolf in the vision is. After that we'll find out about Annalee's fate.
  • The story is coming nicely together. Baron will poison the beer keg (and mark XP for that). Annalee needs to find Cassidy. Cassidy knows what they are facing but has no idea what to do about the merrow. Max has become a willing accomplice in drugging an entire party.
]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Monsterhearts Sat, 02 Mar 2013 02:10:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-6912007042055823146 WPW Hack: Club Babylon Part 3 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/wpw-hack-club-babylon-part-3.html Borderland Series (which I haven't read yet) and decided go in the general direction of that.

Fairyland (or whatever you want to call it) is touching our world in that neglected part of town and monsters start crossing over. They take on the guises of the modern world while still retaining their powers and appetites from fairyland. They are disguised by the refusal of people to see the truth of the aggressive biker gang (they are goblins), the creepy janitor (he is an ogre) or the head of the modelling agency (a medusa). But not all monsters are repulsive, some are terribly beautiful and alluring. But all of them are dangerous to the unprepared mortal.

But the people living in this part of the city aren't defenseless. At around the same time the connection to Fairy formed, longtime clubbers at Club Babylon suddenly found that they possessed a special kind of magic that levels the playing field with fairy tale monsters. Some have taken the fight to the street and protect the neighborhood, but others have become enticed by the monsters. Possibly to gain acceptance or lash out at the world around them.

In my mind this part of the city has the following three aspects:

  • Abandoned and neglected
  • Beauty in the most unlikely of places
  • At the border of the Otherworld

The assets are: Great /(+4) Dangerous, Good (+3) Bitchy and Fair (+2) Sensitive.
]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Club Babylon Mon, 25 Feb 2013 08:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-145991142281164842 WPW Hack: Club Babylon Part 2 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/wpw-hack-club-babylon-part-2.html

Your Aspects

Who are you really (Mikky Ekko)? In White Picket Witches this is your canon aspect; in FATE Core it would be your High Concept. Write down in two to three words what your character is about. Are you a "Single Mom", a "Hard-Working Lawyer", a "Overworked & Underpaid Waiter", a "Closeted City Official", or someone else entirely?

Getting nowhere (Magnetic Man feat. John Legend)? Well, this is really your Trouble aspect or rather Tragic Flaw in White Picket Witches lingo. Your life is stuck. Others have moved on. Why do you keep coming back to Club Babylon? What do you hope to find here? Who or what are escaping from? There is a reason why a thirty-something (or older) person goes clubbing, while his friends lead well-adjusted lives with double-income, 2.1 kids, a cat and a dog. What drives you to come to Club Babylon on so many nights?

Who's That Girl (Eurythmics)? This is your Casting aspect. Either pick an actor in a certain role that you'd like to pattern your character on, or give a short type description. Basically, pick the aspect as you would do in White Picket Witches.

Who loves you (Alannah Miles)? There is a person in your life who loves you. Tell us about him or her. This can be any kind of love. Chaste love, love for their child, love for their parent. Carnal lust for you. Romantic love. Unrequited love. Love grown cold. What is your relation to them?

Sex and Violence (Scissor Sisters)? The darkness of fairytale monsters has come to roost in your city. Why do you fight them? Have they taken something from you? Someone? Do you protect your neighborhood? What motivates you in your fight against monsters that no one will believe in anyway. Or is it just the opposite? Are you attracted to them and their dark powers? What do you want from them? Have they lured you with promises of wealth, power or love? Do you lust after them?

Your Assets

For Club Babylon I am using the following seven assets:

  • Bitchy (replaces Treacherous)
  • Brilliant
  • Butch (replaces Powerful)
  • Dangerous 
  • Fabulous (replaces Classy)
  • Sensitive
  • Witty (replaces Savvy)

The replacement assets function pretty much as the ones they replace.

In addition, you get an eighth, magic asset. The magic asset describes the kind of magic spending so much time at Club Babylon has infused you with. Currently there are three kinds of magic that'll be described in a later post in some more detail:
  • Butch Wizardry: The magic of inner power and outward strength.
  • Gay Glamour: The magic of illusion, make-believe and enchantment.
  • Transvestite Sorcery: The magic of change and transformation.
Each character receives one asset at Great (+4), one at Good (+3), one at Fair (+2) and one at Average (+1). One of the four assets chosen must be the magic asset. All other assets begin at Mediocre (zero). The magic asset is used to activate your spells.

Antagonists

Antagonists are build like in White Picket Witches. Possible antagonists include the urban developer who is secretly a well-off goblin, the iconic Troll under the Bridge (of course), rivals from the Club, rival lovers, jealous exses, goblin gangs, an ogre groundskeeper, or an urbane and handsome devil who's deals are just too good to refuse. Maybe a sluagh is whispering secrets into the wrong ears or the sidhe turned out to be beautiful and terrible. 

Hangout

A hangout is the favorite place of your character. Where does he spend his time away from Club Babylon? A hangout is created like a Place of Power with a leitmotif and three assets. Here the Face-Offs happen. These are the places intimately connected with the characters. Some of their magic has become part of the place. Here, the magic of a character is at it's full strength. Here she can face the monsters invading her district. The leitmotif can be invoked once for free in each scene a character spends at "his" hangout. But don't forget: like Places of Power, a hangout should be easily accessible to others. It could be a street corner, a favorite coffee shop, the comic store around the corner, a small city park or something else entirely. One additional hangout is shared by all players: Club Babylon.

Club Babylon

Leitmotif: The Invisible Light (Scissor Sisters)
The players get to choose the three assets and their ratings. I'd recommend the place to be at least Fabulous and Witty. But it's your club now. You tell me where your characters spend their late nights.

Next: A closer look at the city, the darkness and the monsters hiding there.
]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Club Babylon Sun, 24 Feb 2013 13:14:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-5348586105540774752 Monsterhearts: Cardiff, Wales, Episode 1 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/actual-play-report-monsterhearts.html Monsterhearts via Google Hangout. We had four characters: Merrill the Witch, Morrigan the Ghoul, Lucian the Serpentine, Mattieu the Selkie. For the player of Lucian it was the very first role-playing game ever (cherish that memory, no game is like the first game).

The strings were distributed among the non-player characters and player characters. The ones between the characters were:

  • Lucian watched Morrigan come back to live.
  • Mattieu watched Merrill rummaging through Graham's stuff and kept quiet about it.
  • Mattieu had seen Lucian swimming.
  • Mattieu knew that Morrigan had taken his pelt and stuffed into her locker.

We took most of our time designing the class room together. Our GM had prepared great questions to get us thinking about the home room and the other students. We decided to set our game in Cardiff, School had started two weeks ago and already two girls (Carmen and Erica) from the class had gone missing. Our home room was Geography class taught by Mr Gilles.

Merrill was heading for class with Lucian who was followed by Thomas carrying Lucian's bag. On their way, they witnessed a confrontation between Merill and Felix. Felix had a thing going for Meral, a devout moslem girl from Pakistan. But it wasn't exactly romantic, rather a bit creepy and he was leaning in on her. Merill  decided to step in and teach him a lesson, when she saw him. First she kept steady as Felix told her to go away and bashed her into the locker, then she tried to fight back, but was stopped by Mr Gilles. He thought she was the guilty party and ordered after school detention. She challenged him and implied that he was tolerating girls being victimized. The other students saw her as being pretty furious and Mr Gilles was a bit uncertain that he had done the right thing.

Meanwhile, Lucian was getting a call from his father Mandrake. He practically ordered his son to run for class presidency.

Morrigan had already arrived in the class room and her former BFF Ed tried to talk her into another game of Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. She shut him down immediately and he looked quite afraid of her - not knowing why.

In the corridor, Mattieu was also heading for class together with Amanda, a friendly face who had helped the Selkie find his way around school. They talked about throwing a party at the beach in the evening and Mattieu noticed Thomas standing behind Lucian. He pointedly addressed him first and invited him to come to the party, telling him he could "bring Lucian too" - visibly snobbing the Serpentine to turn on Thomas who everyone was suspecting of being gay. Thomas looked pleased (and Mattieu got a string on him).

Meral was now completely exasperated, stormed into the class room and cursed loudly about men while sitting down. Morrigan, who was sitting behind her, leaned forward and tried to find out what was going on. She noticed that Meral was in reality afraid of Felix.

Merrill came in and sat down at her desk next to Meral. She asked Morrigan, if she wanted to go to the party. Morrigan said yes. Then Ed asked Morrigan, if he could go to, and she shut him down again.

Then Mattieu and Amanda entered. Mattieu jumped barefooted on a table and told the whole class that they were invited to a beach party in the evening. Mr Giles didn't approve of him standing on the table though, and ordered detention as well. He was to help Merrill cleaning tables. Mattieu went to his desk and set down sullenly.

Mr Gilles started class. At first there was the business of electing a class president. Graham, the straight-A student, volunteered (as each year since 5th grade). But this time he was challenged. Mattieu had asked Amanda about class presidency which described in most boring terms, only to suggest to Mattieu that he should run as a candidate. Mattieu, being the clueless Selkie that he is, volunteers for the office. Lucian tries to get Thomas to nominate him, but Thomas just gives Mattieu a quick glance and does nothing. Meanwhile Morrigan denigrates the office, prompting Mattieu to nominate her. Meral nominates her then as well. Lucian is forced to volunteer himself for the office. Mr Gilles postpones the election to give everyone a chance to evaluate the candidates. Mattieu mentions that he's going to throw a party. Mr Gilles asks him, if he seriously expects to get votes that way.

Then a rather tedious and boring geography lesson starts. During the short break a lot of things happened. Lydia, the mayor's daughter, and her boyfriend Matt, the coolest kid in school, approach Lucian to offer their votes, if Lucian does them a favor. He doesn't really comply with that, leaving two votes up in the air.

Mattieu tries to talk John, a big and not very bright football player, into getting him some beer for the party. He succeeds, but John asks him to lay in a good word for him with Amanda. The Selkie doesn't really know what texting is, but promises to see what he can do. Actually, he recommends that John should Amanda and him on the beach next morning for surfing. But John doesn't care about the morning, he wants tonight. Whatever Mattieu needs to promise to get the beer.

Merrill urges Graham to fight for the class presidency. But Graham suddenly throws a fit and a note pad, shouting that he had enough of this. He doesn't want to run. The note pad is thrown with a such force that it hits Marcel's coffee cup and spills coffee over him. Marcel suddenly breaks down crying. It is all a bit too much for him. Well, up to the summer holidays, Marcel used to be Marcy. Now he calls himself Marcel and wears boy's clothes.

Morrigan senses fear in the boy and goes over to him. Mattieu is watching her intently. Morrigan just shouts: "It's only some stupid office. Stop making such a fuss about this!" (unfortunately Morrigan can't call people on their shit, because she doesn't have that adult move). Then she kneels down beside Marcel and tries to calm him down by offering her affection. She is as surprised as the rest of the class when Marcel kisses her.

Notes: This was planned as a one-shot, but we barely got started exploring the setting we had created. Creation was a lot of fun and I for one would love to see the story unfold further. Oh, in case you are wondering: I was playing Mattieu the Selkie.

Note the Second: If you are waiting for the second part of Club Babylon, I am sorry to keep you waiting. But Club Babylon is hitting pretty close to home and I find it very difficult to write and do the setting justice. Character Creation needs a serious rewrite before publication on the blog. But it will come, probably on the weekend.]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Urban Fantasy Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:56:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-6726679530664830266 WPW Hack: Club Babylon Part 1 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/wpw-hack-club-babylon-part-1.html Painted whores, sexual gladiators, fiercely old party children,
All wake from their slumber to debut the bacchanal.
Come to the light! Into the light! The invisible light.
Scissor Sisters, The Invisible Light

Somewhere in a big city, sometime in 21st century, in a dark and deserted back alley lies the entrance to Club Babylon. Down a short flight of stairs into the basement, a ten dollar bill pressed into the hand of short-statured, aging drag queen Regina and off you go into a seedy establishment that had it's heyday probably in the late 80ies, early 90ies. The regulars surely look like they've been here since then. They've aged with the club and yet, they still come here. 

You are one of the regulars at Club Babylon. Maybe you are not going each and every night, but you come here at least once a week. Here you are among your oldest friends. Aged partygoers, some in jeans and t-shirts, some in leather, others in full drag; gay, lesbians, transgender and their friends. You are here to capture the old magic of your youth again.

After midnight, Regina turns up the music, the strobed lights and the dancefloor becomes a stage for the dancers, each one of them fabulous and unique in their own way. A sense of community pervades Club Babylon and the atmosphere of lost glamor works its own charm on the guests. Regulars like you command a strange and wonderful magic of your own: the sparkling magic of Glamour, Butch wizardry and sweet Transvestite sorcery. That which makes you different, makes you strong.

Club Babylon is a peculiar haven of light in a run-down part of the city. The shadows and darkness of neglect are falling and with them come the creatures of the night, the scavengers of human society, dangerous monsters from myth and legend that remain hidden from the human eye. Only your magic penetrates the guises of the goblins, ogres and trolls that feed (sometimes literally) on the humans in the shabby parts of the city. Despair and lost hope are their meals, and sometimes they add meat and bone to the stew.

But you are fighting back. You protect the part of town that is yours from night's predators!

Next up: Character Creation.

]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Club Babylon Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:32:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-2664494558656136799 Actual Play Report: Hollowpoint in 43 A.D. http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/actual-play-report-hollowpoint-in-43-ad.html
First we more or less stormed into a village of the Bracari and tried to find someone to give us directions to the cave system. While Lucius and Cornelius terrorized the villagers, Mercator posed as a native being harrassed by a Roman (V.). Mercator found a sympathetic ear and got them to tell him how to reach the cave. Also, he found out that degenerate, cannibalistic humans lived in the cave.

After leaving the village, we travelled to the caves. They were cramped tunnels leading into the very earth. Lucius, a giant of a man, was a bit uncomfortable in the small tunnels. We had to fight our way through waves of the degenerate tribe, while Mercator was looking for a way into the throne room of their chieftain. When we arrived there, Lucius wanted to attack the chieftain alone, but Cornelius assisted him. Mercator found a woman chained to the wall. Cornelius and Lucius defeated the chieftain and Mercator freed the captive.

She told us that the chieftain had made a deal with a Roman. A Roman with a distinctive strand of white hair. A description that matched our prefect. We took her with us and returned to the surface. Our commander Lucius was gravely wounded and revealed to us that the woman we had freed was his wife. Now he wanted to take her farther into tribal lands instead of returning to our oppidum. Cornelius was shocked! A traitor in our midst. He ran the Celtic woman through with his pilum accusing her of witchcraft and having enscorcelled Lucius. Enraged, Lucius wanted to choke Cornelius to death. From the hills, Celtic warriors with woad-painted faces suddenly stormed our position. Cornelius mercilessly cut down the traitor, then turned to face the warriors. Mercator died under the assault of the fierce Celts, revealing a faded tribal tattoo that identified him also as a Celtic sympathizer. Cornelius ordered Vibius to retreat, but instead, he threw a pilum at Cornelius' back. Wounded, he had to watch helplessly as Vibius was killed by the Celts for his misplaced loyalty to his dead comrades.

Cornelius escaped to the oppidum, carrying the secret knowledge of the prefect's betrayal with him. In the camp, he reported back to the prefect explaining about the two traitors Lucius and Mercator, how they all had fought and won against the degenerate tribe. But of course he omitted the hints of betrayal by the prefect. The prefect ordered Cornelius to be whipped as punishment for abandoning Vibius and retreating.

Meanwhile a legate has arrived at the oppidum to inspect the troops, Aponius Gavius Sulla. He was accompanied by his trust bodyguard Falco. Aponius had met Cornelius at a bacchanal back in Rome, so it was only natural that Cornelius sought out the legate as soon as he was free to roam the oppidum again. He asked for an audience and Aponius graciously granted his wish, mostly asking Falco to talk with Cornelius. Then the legate commanded Cornelius to take Falco and Ignatius, an other legionnaire, to gather evidence on the prefect.

Aponius met with the prefect suggesting a small feast to be held in the evening down by the river. There he entangled the prefect with words and distracted him, while Falco, Ignatius and Cornelius talked with the night watch. The watch confessed to having let someone leave the oppidum at night, but hadn't seen who it was. But he had acted at the order of his optio. The optio confessed quickly. The three legionnaires brought the optio to the feast. Commanded by Aponius, he confessed to letting the prefect out of the gate. That was enough. Aponius commanded Cornelius and Falco to take the prefect outside the gates. Once there, Cornelius implied to the prefect that it would be honorable to fall into his own sword in order to protect the honor of his family. The prefect begged Cornelius not to tell anyone about his dishonor. Cornelius agreed not tell anyone about his shame on this day.

After the prefect had committed suicide, legate Aponius took over his post as leader of the oppidum. Cornelius received a commendation for his efforts. Falco, already being the right hand of Aponius, didn't request any additional reward, of course.

Note: The prefect is not named in this account, since Cornelius of course kept his promise.]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Hollowpoint Sat, 16 Feb 2013 23:38:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-7962374728179994728 WPW Hack: Fate, Blood & Sevens Sins Part 3 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/wpw-hack-fate-blood-sevens-sins-part-3.html

Vampire Healing

The description of Bo from Lost Girl in FATE Core stats finally gave me an important idea: how to handle healing based on drawing life force, blood, etc. from another being. I am going to use something similar for vampires.

A vampire is (only) able to heal consequences by inflicting consequences of equal or greater severity on someone else. Then she spends a FATE point to heal her own consequence. Nameless NPCs can only be used to heal mild consequences.

Alternatively, the GM can rule that all consequences downgrade by one level of severity at the beginning of a game.

Dominance & Submission

Vampires are predatory, territorial creatures. When they meet, they try to establish a pecking order. This can be either handled by a single overcome role with Age, or you can enter special Face-Off. In that Face-Off, the only Asset that can be used to attack and defend is Age. Whoever wins the conflict gets a special Dominance aspect. Each character can only have one Dominance aspect. If a new one is gained, the old one is erased.

Turf War

Vampires defend their territories, but they also like to acquire more. Turf War represents a way to do that. When a vampire declares a Turf War, he first has to spend a FATE point to change the Leitmotiv of the turf owned by another vampire (according to the rules in White Picket Witches). Then he has to announce his claim on the territory and initiate a Face-Off against the current owner. But this Face-Off is rather ritualized. It is up to the gaming group to decide if that ritual carries over into the fiction or not. The attacker has to attack alone. After all, there is only turf to go around. The defender can ask her allies to join her. In a Turf War, the GM uses the turf to attack the challenger. A place will fight subtly against the change of ownership. If the attacker succeeds in the Face-Off, he gains the turf and may switch out any one Asset of the place and select a new Leitmotif. He doesn't gain a new intent aspect. If the owner of the place concedes this Face-Off, she gets to keep her territory, but the attacker gains an intent aspect and a dominance aspect against her. She may subtly twist the wording as usual. If the defender wins the Face-Off, she gains an intent aspect and a dominance aspect against the aggressor.

A vampire may have as many turfs as her Age indicates. When a vampire looses her last remaining turf, she can create a new turf upon reaching the next significant milestone. Until then, her Pride is penalized by -2.
]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Vampires Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-1880783800404300341 White Picket Witches: The Hangout Game Part 1: Setup http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/white-picket-witches-hangout-game-part.html
After a lot of technical issues with computers, connection and microphones, we finally started designing three of the Five Families. The players and I felt, it would be good to leave the other two families for players who'd be joining later (either online or offline). The three families are the Davenports, the Hargroves and the Pierces.

Note: Aspects were done in our native language, so they might not translate their whole intent into English. I am trying to find an equivalent translation that at least carries some of the double meanings attached to the aspects.


The Davenport Family

We quickly decided that the Davenports had something to do with the port of the island... namely the airport.  Sometime in the 20th century, there was a landslide that buried the harbor. It was located at the bottom of the cliffs that surround most of the island. Now the only regular access to the island is the airport. It's built on land graciously donated by the Davenport family.

Aspects:
  • Everyone ends up with us.
  • Pillars of the community
  • We can afford that
  • We show you the ropes
Magic: Breath Work

The Hargrove Family

The Hargroves are connected to the island in mysterious ways. They serves as guardians in the literal and figurative sense and have a close connection to nature. Also, they are a large and willful family.

Aspects:
  • The Guardians of the Isle
  • Animals are our friends
  • Firm as a rock
  • We are a stubborn bunch
Magic: Muscle Work

The Pierce Family

The Pierce are the traditional parish priests and perform other functions related to the church and community. Probably because they don't take bullshit and are always looking (and talking) about the truth of a matter.

Aspects:
  • Nobody likes us
  • We love the truth
  • We only want your souls
  • We bestead the sinners
Magic: Bone Work

After that we started with the creation of the characters. But they aren't finished yet, I am going to post them, when we are finished. So far we have ideas for Felicia Davenport, a tour guide and history buff; Gail Hargrove, a deputy trained in a big city; and William Pierce, the sole professional photographer on the Island.

This doesn't read like much, but we spent almost two hours coming up with this stuff. It was great fun to do this together as a group.


]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) FATE Wed, 13 Feb 2013 23:08:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-2370744960614432158 WPW Hack: Fate, Blood & Seven Sins Part 2 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/wpw-hack-fate-blood-seven-sins-part-2.html
Vampiric power often resides in the blood. To emulate this, a vampire character can take a consequence and apply the number of stress usually mitigated by the consequence as a bonus to his Age roll. As a consequence he should take an aspect that alludes to her being hungry, starving, thirsty or worse.

One important note: vampiric powers are inherently nocturnal. They do not work in daylight as long as the sun is in the sky. Your vampire may not burn in the sun, but he is weakened and cannot use his Age score.

Slight change: In the last post, I stated that each vampire starts with one extra at no cost. I think, all vampires should start with two extras at no cost. Simply because Age can't be really used to attack, defend or create an advantage.

Also, the powers listed here are just suggestions. If you or your group comes up with any other ideas, just take those.

Animal Magnetism

The vampire exudes predatory sexuality and lust. By succeeding on an Age roll at Great (+4) or better, he gains a +2 bonus on all rolls with Lust to Overcome or Create Advantages for the rest of the scene.

Claws & Fangs

The ability to grow claws and fangs is a staple of vampire literature. The wounds they inflict in physical combat become more serious. If they succeed on an Age roll against difficulty Great (+4) or better, the vampire grows claws and/or vicious fangs that inflict an additional two points of Stress (as Weapon:2) for the rest of the conflict.

Cold Commands

Some vampires can command lesser creatures to follow their very commmands. Whether by voice or eye contact, if you succeed with Age against a difficulty of Great (+4) or better, you can hand over a FATE point to a player character or non-player character. You ask them to take an action (Overcome, Create Advantage, Attack or Defend) that can be accomplished with one roll. If they take the action, they get to keep the FATE point. If they don't, the FATE point goes to the turf.


Dark Rebirth

This power is a nod to all the sequels where the vampire defeated previously returns. At the end of the session in which a vampire with this power was destroyed, the player rolls the Age of the character. If she succeeds at a Great (+4) or better roll, then the vampire returns from the grave. He looses the power and regains one refresh. The Rebirth power may only be bought again when the next major milestone has been reached.


Daywalker

Your character has achieved a remarkable feat: she can walk in daylight and still access some or all of her vampiric powers. At dawn she rolls Age against Fair (+2) difficulty. For each two points of shift she achieves on the roll, she can designate one of her powers to be useable during the day.

Dreams & Memories

Some vampires are able to project their thoughts into another person's mind. With Dreams & Memories, a vampire can reach into the very core of another being. If this done by telepathic command, sharing their dreams or whispering into their ear is up to the group or even the individual vampire. By succeeding on an Age roll at Great (+4) or better, they are allowed to change one of the aspects of their victims. This can be either the Canon Aspect, the Mortal Days, the Vampire Nights, a Consequence or the Intent Aspect. They are allowed to add or change up to two words of the aspect. The change remains in effect until the character rests the next time.

Heightened Perception

If the vampire succeeds at a roll with Age at Fair (+2) or better, then his senses become very acute for the rest of the scene. He get a +2 on any rolls involving the five senses, but his Defense against loud noises or other forms of sensory overload is reduced by two points.

Hypnotic Voice

The vampire can use his voice to confuse his opponent in a Face-Off. He makes it difficult to concentrate and retain cohesive thoughts. If he succeeds at a Great (+4) or better roll with Age, he can ignore two points of stress generated by a verbal attack (like Armor:2 against non-physical attacks).

Mind Reader

Some vampires are adept at reading another's thoughts and memories. If the vampire succeeds at a Great (+4) or better roll with Age, she may ask another character one question that can be answered with yes or no. The other character must answer truthfully. The truth being as he knows it.

Mists & Shadows

The Legendary (+8) Dracula was capable of transforming his body into an insubstantial mass of fog or shadow. This power allows a vampire to do the very same thing. If they succeed on a roll with Age at Fantastic (+6) or better, they turn into a wraith-like mist or shadow. For the rest of the scene, they cannot be attacked physically anymore, but sunlight will burn the vampire to ashes. Also, it is hard to notice the vampire, requiring a roll of Great (+4) or better. This power is beyond most fledgling vampires.

Renfield

This power can be turned on a nameless NPC. By rolling Great (+4) or better on an Age roll, the vampire turns the nameless NPC into a Fair minion (see FATE Core). The minion gains a name and an aspect. If it is taken-out or overcome, the vampire looses any influence over him. When a Renfield survives his first session as a vampiric minion, the power can be used on him again and turn him into a Good minion. A vampire can have no more minions than his Age.

Shapeshifter

By succeeding on an Age roll at Great (+4) or better, the vampire can turn herself into a bat or wolf. She can choose the form at the moment of transformation. Her canon aspect changes into an appropriate aspect. As a bat she gains the Wall-Walker power (by virtue of being able to fly) and as a wolf she gains the Claws & Fangs power.

Swarm Shape

Some vampires can turn into a whole swarm of bats, rats, cats or spiders. This power emulates this. The vampire succeeds in a Great (+4) or better roll to affect the transformation. A swarm can either completely escape the Face-Off (without the initiator gaining the intent based aspect) or can be used to get additional stress boxes (one per shift generated). The player can choose which effect to gain upon transformation.

Ultra-sonic Scream

An ability that may point to bat-like ancestry. If the vampire succeeds at an Age roll with Great (+4) or better result, any shifts generated are applied as stress to any and all creatures involved in the Face-Off.


Vampiric Resilience

Most vampires are hard to take down. Resilience is the power that emulates that. On a Great (+4) roll with Age, the vampire can ignore two points physical stress from each blow (like Armor:2) for the rest of the scene.

Vampiric Strongness

The antiquated word describes the vampire's knack for supernatural strength. When a vampire rolls Great (+4) or better with Age, he gains a +2 bonus on any rolls related to raw strength for the rest of the scene. This bonus also extends to any and all physical attacks made with the sin of Wrath.

Vampiric Swiftness

Vampires are shown as being incredibly swift. On a Great (+4) or better roll, they get a +2 bonus to Defend against physical attacks in a Face-Off for the rest of the scene.


Wall-Walker

The vampire can walk on ceiling or scale walls with ease. If she succeeds at a Greater (+4) or better roll with Age, she can ignore ground-based and height-based obstacles to movement for the rest of the scene.]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Vampires Mon, 11 Feb 2013 08:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-7430724644282891193 WPW Hack: Fate, Blood & Seven Sins Part 1 http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/wpw-hack-fate-blood-seven-sins-part-1.html
In the Requiem Chronicler's Guide there was a hack called "Monsters Garage" that stripped the vampiric experience down to a few essential components. They also did away with skills and instead focused on how you do things not what you do. The focus was on employing the seven deadly sins of envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, wrath. This matches up perfectly with the seven assets used by White Picket Witches. So I am going to use the seven deadlies as the Assets of the game. But let's dive in from the beginning.

Setting Considerations

The game assumes that vampirism is transmitted by blood, as seen in Vampire Diaries, True Blood or Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. It is up to the gaming group to determine when the blood has to be transmitted and which additional steps (if any) have to be taken to complete the transformation into a vampire (e.g. being dead, dying, having to bury out of the grave, etc.)

Also, I am going to assume that vampires gather, be it as packs, covens, clans, bloodlines, a complete undead society with elaborate rituals and rules, gangs, nests, broods, whatever. This will provide the social dynamic. It is up to the GM and players to define this.

Thirdly, I am assuming that vampires require blood to survive. This will be expresses as an Extra and limitation that all vampires share: they can only heal a consequence by inflicting an equally bad or worse consequence on someone else. Stressing-out nameless NPCs is sufficient for recovering mild consequences, but nothing more serious. A vampire can use another vampire to recover consequences.

Your Aspects

Core Concept: This works similar to the canon aspect of White Picket Witches and the high concept aspect of FATE Core. In two to three words, tell the audience who you are. Are you the Trusted Bodyguard, a Ruthless Drugdealer, the Elderly Executive, an Ancient Relic, the Dedicated Elementary School Teacher, a Suave Tattoo Artist, the Curious Archaelogist or a Famous Radio Talkhost?

Weakness: Vampires have weaknesses as varied as the genre. Some are repelled by crosses, some are vulnerable to sunlight, others are prone to violent rage or hurt by silver. Pick a weakness for your character. Something that will impair her when confronted with it. Put it in an aspect. Not all vampires are created the same.

Casting: How do you imagine your character to look like? You can pick a particular actor (even in a particular role) or just cast your character as a "-type". The purpose of this aspect is to visualize the character in three to five words.

Mortal Days: Who were you as a mortal, back in the day when you could still walk openly among humans? What was the life that was stolen from you? This aspect can be about family or friends, habits, occupations and what not. It should solidly connect you to other humans.

Role in Vampire Society: Even though vampires are predators, they connect to other vampires. This aspect describes your role in vampiric society. Are you a newly converted vampire? The advisor to your broodmaster? The ruler of a respected house or lineage? An enforcer of laws?

Your Assets

Your assets are the seven deadly sins: envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, wrath. In this game, you express your actions by describing which sin you are committing in order to get what you want.

As an additional asset you get Age. The asset describes how experienced you are in using your vampiric powers and how powerful you are a vampire. A newly created fledgingly starts with Average (+1) Age, while an ancient vampire alive back in Roman times might have be of  Fantastic (+6) or Epic (+7) Age. Most vampires created since the Middle Ages range between Great (+4) Age and Fair (+2) Age, if they have been around since before WWII.

The group may decide to limit Age to a certain bracket or even require all player characters  to start at the same Age.

Age is rolled, when you are activating your vampiric powers.

Since I don't like spreading points around bit by bit, each player will be able to have one asset at Great (+4), one at Good (+3), one at Fair (+2) and another one at Average (+1). The assets include the sevens sins and Age. At least one of the values has to be put into Age.

Refresh, Stunts and Extras

Each character starts out with one free stunt, three refresh and one extra. Additional stunts and/or extras can be taken by reducing refresh. Stunts can either be invented using the guidelines in FATE Core or by applying an existing stunt to one of the seven sins.

I will provide a short list of extras based upon vampiric powers in one of the next blog posts.

Antagonists

Antagonists are built like in White Picket Witches. Possible antagonists include the vampire who made you, the vampire you created, a rival vampiric gangleader, mortal authorities, competitors for your turf, the usual vampire hunters, other supernatural creatures like werewolves, ghosts, demons or even the devil himself. Just look to the genre for inspiration.

Turf

Each player designs at least one turf. An area her character owns in the world of the vampires. Her hunting grounds, her lair, a place she likes to spend time at or a meeting place for others of her kind. Also, the group should probably design at least one or two turfs that are shared by more vampires, where they can meet, greet and plot.

Turfs are designed along the same rules as places of power. They have a leitmotif, and get three assets (read: sins) assigned. In a given scene, when a vampire is on his own turf, he can invoke the leitmotif once for free (very cool idea by Rob Wieland for The Phaser Chase).

Okay, that's the basics. Next time I'll talk about vampiric powers and then there is this idea about Turf Wars.


]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Vampires Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:35:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-5969032292298016092 Methods for Shared Setting Building http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/methods-for-shared-setting-building.html

FATE Core

The group selects two issues and turns them into aspects, then creates a couple of NPCs to attach as "faces" to the issues, and after that creates some important locations and their faces. The Dresden Files RPG works similar, as it served as the blueprint for that method.

Diaspora

Each member of the group rolls up some game values for a system or two in the local cluster, then assigns aspects to the systems and connects them to the other systems.

Starblazer Adventures/Legends of Anglerre

Everyone marks a small circle on a piece of paper, then lines are drawn from the circle to the nearest edge of the paper. This partitions the map into sectors, city quarters or large natural features. Then everybody again places circles inside the map partitions. Each area and each circle gets a name and an aspect. Instant map of the game area with aspects and names.

White Picket Witches

Each player creates a Place of Power defined by a Leitmotif (basically a theme song) and assigns three of the seven Assets of the game at Great, Good and Fair level to the place. Name the place and you are good to go.

That's a very quick rundown of the currently available methods as starting place to create my own (or decide which one I like best). I admit that I am partial to the White Picket Witches method.
]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) World Building Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:27:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-7293992114613877331 The Invisible Light http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-invisible-light.html Scissor Sisters. More specifically this:


Yesterday, I finally realized why the voice reading the final lyrics sounded so familiar: Sir Ian McKellan was reading them. Yes, sometimes I am really stupid that way.

I so want to turn this into a FATE hack. It reminds me a bit of the old Frankie Goes to Hollywood song "Welcome to the Pleasuredome".


"Babylon,
Where bricks of mortared diamonds tower,
Sailor's lust and swagger blazing in woman's beams,
Whose lazy gaze penetrates this sparkling theater of excess and strobed delights,
Painted whores, sexual gladiators, fiercely old party children,
All wake from their slumber to debut the bacchanal.
Come to the light! Into the light! The invisible light."

Only I don't have any idea how to do this. I don't even know, if I got the lyrics right. And probably no one is going to want to play the resulting game with me.

Somehow, I visualize this as an old, rundown club dating back to 80ies, visited by aging drag queens, younger (but not young) hypersexualized leathermen, older gay men and their friends hanging out and dancing   in the flashing lights. Yet, after midnight, a bacchanal starts. The club works its own magic. The men and women visiting the club each having paid their price to partake of a special kind of magic. Something that recharges at the club and carries them through the day. But each night, they are drawn back to the dingy club, meeting the same old crowd and feeling strangely at home. They are of the night and know about the strange dangers lurking in the backstreets of downtown. Guardians against the darkness.

As the face of this club I visualize:

Reginald "Regina" Frazier
Canon aspect: Aging drag-queen bouncer
Tragic flaw: Sucker for a handsome face
Casting aspect: Peter Dinklage in drag
Further aspect: A Heart of Gold
Further aspect: The Babylon is my life's work

Assets: Great (+4) Classy, Good (+3) Dangerous, Fair (+2) Sensitive
Stunts: "Tell me your story" (+2 on rolls with Sensitive to get people to open up)

Note: I used White Picket Witches to do the aspects and stats, because that's the quickest way to do them at the moment.

Don't ask me all where this is coming from. I should probably watch less "Lost Girl" and try to catch more sleep.


]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Club Babylon Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:08:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-8880337765169985619 White Picket Witches am Gratisrollenspieltag http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/white-picket-witches-am.html Gratisrollenspieltag event in Nuremberg. It was a sort of convention game atmosphere. When I first arrived at Ultracomix around 11:00 am, there were about half the tables reserved for events of the Gratisrollenspieltag and half for the regular Magic games happening on Saturdays. A demo team from Ulisses Spiele, German publisher of Pathfinder and Das Schwarze Auge, had set up shop on a good part of the tables. But there was a game of Star Wars: The Edge of Empire scheduled as well as my FATE game.

At first I thought, I would end up with no participants, but a curious gamer who already knew the Dresden Files RPG stopped by the table and we got into talking about DFRPG and the difference to White Picket Witches. Then two other gamers joined who had only played D&D, Shadowrun and so on. The three guys quickly decided on characters while I explained the game to them. They picked Caleb Gifford, Zachary Grant and Linda Gardner. We completed the characters and then went on to create three places of power, a witch hunter as an antagonist and some more facts on the three families present.

The FATE beginners picked out surprisingly good aspects for the game and understood FATE rather quickly.

The three places of power were:

Gifford Mausoleum
Leitmotif: The Phantom of the Opera
Great (+4) Dangerous, Good (+3) Powerful, Fair (+2) Classy
An imposing edifice that serves as a monument to the dark power of the Gifford family.

Moon Island Hospital
Leitmotif: The theme from emergency room
Great (+4) Sensitive, Good (+3) Savvy, Fair (+2) Brilliant
A place where the ability to emphasize with patients and improvisation carries the day as oppossed to any brilliant medical training.

Seven Oaks
Leitmotif: Rococo music with strings and flutes
Great (+4) Classy, Good (+3) Powerful, Fair (+2) Sensitive
A majestic clearing throbbing with the power of the earth and nature

Veronica Allen
Canon aspect: Rich, arrogant witch huntress
Tragic flaw: Morbidly clean
Casting aspect: Blonde bombshell
Further aspect: Judicial power
Further aspect: Carrier of the Mystic Cross

Assets: Great (+4) Classy, Good (+3) Powerful, Fair (+2) Brilliant, Average (+1) Dangerous.
Stunt: Money talks on Moon Island (same as Felicia Gifford).

Her aspects were created by the players, the assets and stunts by me.

The game opened with the characters meeting at O'Malleys, a local Irish pub. They bantered a bit about old times before getting serious about the metaplot (someone had opened the family crypts and disturbed the rest of the dead). Especially Caleb taunted Linda about her fear of graveyards and the darkness. Nevertheless, they finally decided to head over to the graveyard and examine the tombs at night. They ended up going first to the Gifford mausoleum.

They used a hidden entrance, as to escape notice by the gang of goths hanging out in front of the mausoleum, but nevertheless one of the kids followed them inside. They discovered him and chased him off. After that there was a short Face-Off between Caleb and Linda about her fear of the dark. Caleb clearly wanted to intimidate her and won, gaining the intent aspect of "Linda is such a crybaby". Linda's player conceded the Face Off and got to add "sometimes" to the intent aspect.

Afterwards, Caleb discovered that the oldest sarcophagus had been brutally opened and the bones were disturbed. But via Create an Advantage he discovered an Ancient Dagger had been left behind.

Then the group went on to investigate the Gardner and the Grant crypts. Both crypts had been disturbed. Always the oldest grave opened. The group retreated to the Grant mansion to mull things over. Zachary hit the books in his family's library and discovered that the founders had been burried with a piece of a Mystic Cross bane to all witches. Apparently whoever was behind the graverobbing intended to recreate the cross.

At that point, I decided to move things to the conclusion of that short 4-hour convention game. They got a mysterious call asking them to meet the caller at Seven Oaks, if they wanted the cross back.

Final Face-Off at Seven Oaks. A hooded figure carried the cross and attacked the group with its powers (area attack invoking the "Carrier of the Mystic Cross" aspect). Then all hell broke loose. Caleb repeatedly attacked with his Bone Work magic skill, Linda tried to convince the assailant of the purity of magic and nature, and Zachary went for the cross. Seven Oaks mostly ended up attacking Caleb Gifford for bringing his dark magic to bear on a place of nature, in the end almost swallowing him in the earth. The Face-Off turned into a rather long conflict, because Linda initially failed an important roll and decided to succeed at serious costs bringing in reinforcements for the hooded assailant. Finally, the hooded assailants conceded rather than risk to be taken out.

The players had fun at the game and the dynamic between the three characters was very interesting. Everyone had a good time.

Notes: I goofed up at the final Face-Off, dragging it out unnecessarily. Instead of having two contenders, I allowed all three players to perform attacks. If only Caleb had attacked and Zachary and Linda playing support, the conflict would have ended much earlier. Also, the FATE points dried up rather quickly in the final conflict. Usually, I don't have issues getting the FATE points flowing, but with unfamiliar players and a new hack that got a bit difficult. Even though, we had flashbacks that I didn't mention above. They worked well, but it was a bit hard coming up with the appropriate stories.

After the game, I took some time to explore the store and ended up buying lots of comic books (The Caste of the Metabarons and a new series called Nosferatu). All in all a fun day in Nuremberg.]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) FATE Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:55:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-5678520856246864262 Changes http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/changes.html Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the Weird Fantasy Role-Playing game by James Raggi. The game never happened, but I kept posting to the blog and kept thinking about the Drowning Woods.

Now, I've started another blog called "Wings of FATE", which is the blog that used to be here. Yesterday I decided that it's being merged with "Beyond the Drowning Woods" into "Fate of the Drowning Woods".

I am not that tired of 21st century RPGs as I thought I was about one-and-a-half years ago. FATE Core actually helped me to realize that.

Okay, onwards and welcome to readers heading here from "Beyond the Drowning Woods".]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Sun, 03 Feb 2013 22:43:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-2703857945814932021 White Picket Witches: Prepared Characters http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/02/white-picket-witches-prepared-characters.html

Clayton Gardner

Childhood: Knows Moon Island like his back pocket
Heritage: The simple cousin from a family offshot
Stunt: Lie Whisperer (as seen on page 113 of FATE Core preview)
Magic: Muscle Work, Spell: Animal Form (Collie; Simply adorable, a truly good nose, "That smells delicious", Dogged, Soft and cuddly)

Linda Gardner

Childhood: The sweetest girl of the Five Families
Heritage: Grandmother's darling and her best student
Stunt: Always Making Useful Things (as seen on page 107 of FATE Core preview)
Magic: Muscle Work, Spell: Deepest Healing

Caleb Gifford

Childhood: Gets away with murder
Heritage: The black sheep of a black herd
Stunt: Word are Weapons (+2 to Treacherous when you attack an other character verbally in order to harm).
Magic: Bone Work, Spell: Curse

Felicia Gifford

Childhood: The burden of responsibility
Heritage: Heir Apparent of the Gifford Estate
Stunt: Money Talks (as seen on page 129 of the FATE Core Preview)
Magic: Bone Work, Spell: variation of Dead Men's Tales granting a scene aspect instead of a boost.

Victoria "Vicky" Grant

Childhood: The only girl on the Lacrosse Team
Heritage: My father was the parish priest of Moon Island
Stunt: Roll with the Blow (as seen on page 102 of the FATE Core Preview)
Magic: Breath Work, Spell: Purifying Light (A Great or better roll can create an advantage against a monster associated with night and darkness).

Zachary "Zac" Grant

Childhood: The little mischief
Heritage: Always the baby brother of the Grant family
Stunt: Always a Way Out (as seen on page 103 of the FATE Core Preview)
Magic: Breath Work, Spell: Mythical Conveyance

The players will be able to pick the Canon aspect, the Tragic Flaw aspect and the Casting aspect. Then they get to distribute a Great (+4), a Good (+3), a Fair (+2) and an Average (+1) value on their Assets. One of the assets has to be the Magic Asset. This gives them one point more than the White Picket Witches default build, arranged in a column. Because I think, distributing 8 points accross 8 Assets will end up with some fairly generic distributions in the Average to Fair range.



]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Urban Fantasy Sun, 03 Feb 2013 20:28:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-6311540932343038703 FATE Core: German Character Sheet http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/01/fate-core-german-character-sheet.html
FATE Core: German Character Sheet]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) Character Sheet Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:34:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-2146184065010073293 White Picket Witches: Preparing a Convention Game http://wingsfate.blogspot.com/2013/01/white-picket-witches-preparing.html Gratisrollenspieltag (the German version of the Free RPG Day). I've volunteered to run a game of White Picket Witches with FATE Core at the FLGS in Nuremberg. Now, all I need to do is prepare for a four hour gaming slot. Time will most likely be to short to explain FATE, build the setting and have an enjoyable adventure. Therefore I am thinking about preping something beforehand and let the players fill in the blanks. My ideas so far:

  • Give the whole session a theme/premisse to work from.
  • Strip the game down to three families and prepare the name, a starting aspect and assign the type of magic practiced by the family. At the convention, I'll let each player come up with one additional aspect, until each family has three of them.
  • Have a list of possible places of power prepared and let the players pick about three and design them.
  • The character sheets will be half prepared. I will assign a name, a type of magic and some of the aspects (childhood to tie them together, heritage to tie them to the family; leaving canon aspect, tragic flaw and casting to be decided by the player. Maybe I'll do part of the canon aspect.) Also, the magic spell and a stunt will have been chosen already.
  • Let them create two antagonists.
  • Create one metaplot beforehand that will be the focus of the session.

That should cover me? Maybe as a back-up I'll have Mr Scratch and/or May ready.

The premise will be: "You are scions of the five families (well at least of three of them). You spend your childhood on the island getting into all sorts of trouble, and then left for college. Four years later, you are back together on Moon Island. You all have changed, but the island hasn't."

The three families will be named as Gardner, Gifford and Grant. The others (not appearing) will be Hargrove, Haynes and Howard. But the Howards have vanished.

  • The Gardners are practicing Muscle Work and are "As one with the earth and the island".
  • The Giffords are practicing Bone Work and are "As a blight upon joy and happiness"
  • The Grants are practicing Breath Work and are a "Pillar of the community and the church"
Possible Places of Power:
  • Abandoned Howard Estate
  • Black Rock Forest
  • Boat House Diner
  • Canary Beach
  • Moon Island High School
  • Morgan Creek Resort
  • Some other place the players think about
The metaplot will be "The families' crypts have been opened and the rest of the dead has been disturbed."

Do you think this will get me through a four hour convention game?

]]> no_email@example.com (Murder of Crows) World Building Wed, 30 Jan 2013 23:20:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344524469447907324.post-5469254080758859431 What’s New in Fate Core? http://www.faterpg.com/2013/whats-new-in-fate-core/ no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:50:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=126 [Atomic Robo] Tentative Table of Contents http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2013/01/atomic-robo-tentative-table-of-contents.html
Hey, Happy New Year! I know I'm more than two weeks late on that, but the baby was two weeks early, so it all balances out.

(BTW, have you checked out the Fate Core Kickstarter lately? It's doing all right.)

The usual thing I say in answer to the question "How's Atomic Robo coming?" is "Work continues apace," which is wholly accurate. But for all that, it's not a very interesting answer. So I figured I'd give a little progress update here in the form of a tentative table of contents -- or at least the names of the chapters as they stand now, not in any particular order other than the one that makes sense to me right now off the top of my head. The bolded stuff is already done and ready for editing, barring a few examples or something. The italicized stuff is at least partially done.

  • Robo's World (Note: This is Brian's stuff on the setting; I think it's done.)
  • Timeline
  • The Basics
  • Outcomes and Actions
  • Aspects and Fate Points
  • Modes, Skills, and Stunts
  • Making Characters
  • Challenges, Contests, and Conflicts
  • Let's Do Some Science
  • Factions
  • The March of Progress
  • Running the Game
  • Telling Stories the Atomic Robo Way
  • Playing in Multiple Eras
  • Character Write-Ups
  • Intro Scenario

So, as you can see, it's mostly good to go (to editing). The current wordcount (not counting "Robo's World") is about 70,000 words, which is trending on-target.

A few details on the in-progress chapters:

  • "Factions" talks about factions (like Tesladyne) as characters, and the role they play in the game. This is mostly a revision of a chapter from the playtest material, with some new bits added.
  • "Playing in Multiple Eras" is about era-hopping campaigns. This is something we talked a lot about in the early going as a mode of play the game heartily supports. That's still true. Right now this chapter is an extensive outline and lots of notes, but could arguably be reduced down to a call-out box in another chapter rather than claiming an entire chapter of its own. As much as we all (that includes you and me) like the idea of era-hopping, it really only shows up in two volumes -- 1 and 3 -- and the first volume of Real Science Adventures. Does a chapter on this subject have a place in the book? I dunno. How about I write it and we find out?
  • The character write-ups -- there are around 30 of them -- are the biggest time-sink I still face. Several are already done, having been written for playtest purposes (Jenkins, Jack Tarot, Helen, two different versions of Robo, Otto Skorzeny, and a few others), but some of the remaining ones require a little more research. This has taken the form of me twisting Brian's arm to write me some short bios. "Ow! Ow!" he says. "No, don't make me talk more about Atomic Robo!" It's hard to listen to sometimes. But really, at this point, I don't know how much I could differentiate, mechanically speaking, between, say, just about any two She-Devils. Or Benjamin and Koa. Or Mac and Slim. I have a feeling some of these may end up looking a bit like the proto-PCs I made for playtests: modes, a few skill improvements, one or two aspects, and a stunt, with the rest to be filled in by the player during play. But I guarantee the really iconic characters, like Helsingard and Dr. Dinosaur, will definitely get the full treatment. Anything less would be -- say it with me -- mammalian treachery.
  • The intro scenario is the one from the playtest. It's revised, done, and ready to go, but it should probably be reformatted for ease of editing. Because I'm a nice guy.
So there we are! Pretty close.

Oh, and obviously, revisions to Fate Core prompted by Kickstarter backer/playtester feedback will have an effect on ARRPG, but right now it's tough to anticipate how much of one, so I'll deal with that as it comes.
]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Kickstarter Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-8557881988760405226 [Atomic Robo] Let's Play It Your Way http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/12/atomic-robo-lets-play-it-your-way.html
Did everyone have a good Christmas or whatever? Ours was... a little more complicated than we'd expected. And I'm pretty much run off my feet as a consequence. But in celebration of the Fate Core Kickstarter campaign hitting 5,000 backers yesterday, here's a tiny little preview of Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game. Specifically, it's an example of how we're using Atomic Robo itself to illustrate some game concepts.

In this case, it's conceding a conflict.

(But first, have you read Atomic Robo and the Flying She-Devils of the South Pacific yet? You really should. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but it's been out for a while now, so... that's on you.)

On with the example!
Robo tries to intimidate Takeshi with an Intimidation total of +4. Takeshi defends with Will and gets a +7—success with style. He gets a boost of Numbers On My Side.
Robo changes tack and decides to use Physics to try creating an advantage instead, based on the idea that using ion guns in an enclosed metal environment is an inherently bad idea. The GM decides that this will be an unopposed roll, and it succeeds. Robo creates the aspect Science On My Side.
Undeterred, Takeshi goes on the offensive. He rolls Intimidation and gets a +5, and invokes Numbers On My Side to make it +7. He also spends a fate point to invoke his aspect Only Victory and Defeat to bump that up by +2 more, for a +9. Then, in a gutsy move, he spends another fate point to invoke Science On My Side for another +2. Takeshi and his men don't care about their own safety. That makes his total +11.
Robo doesn't think he can beat that, nor does he want to end up with a consequence from this, so he decides to concede. He loses the conflict, but on his own terms: Takeshi will keep him alive for now, but incapacitated. Robo gets a fate point for the concession.
Now, a couple points:

One, this is only one possible interpretation of this conversation -- you could call Takeshi's first line in that first panel as an Intimidation attempt, for example, as well as Robo's rather threatening "It'd kill you too."   Or maybe Takeshi's first line is him creating an advantage. They're all valid, and any of them is totally plausible in play. But this is the one I'm going with. For me, up until the point when Robo literally threatens physical violence, they're just talking, sans dice. But when Takeshi casually insults Robo's piloting skills, Robo's player decides, "All right, it's on."

Two, normally in the book, I don't use characters as players, such as "Robo gets a fate point," but in this case I'm prioritizing brevity. These are captions; I don't want them getting too long.

I plan to use this technique as often as is feasible in ARRPG. The actual panels from the comic are an amazing resource, and we'd be crazy not to take advantage of them.
]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Kickstarter Sat, 29 Dec 2012 18:10:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-3040359848886517330 [Fate Core] It's Skill Pyramids All the Way Down http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/12/fate-core-its-skill-pyramids-all-way.html WIZARD!
I had a thought over on RPG.net today on sub-pyramids of skills, so I figured I'd expand on it here.

Then I had further thought on the same thing, and suddenly it was skill pyramids all the way down. But we'll get to that soon enough.

First, let's say you have a skill that's important enough to your game that you really want to drill down into what it can do. Piloting, fencing, and magic are the first things that spring to mind for me. I'll go with magic, because the first two will entail a lot more thought and crunchiness. So we have a skill called Magic. It's about magic stuff.

Come up with a number of distinct things -- around 10 -- that the skill can do. "Distinct things" will vary depending on personal preference, game world, and campaign. For magic, I'd go with schools, and for the sake of convenience and my familiarity with the subject, let's say they're the nine schools of 2nd edition AD&D: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Evocation, etc. (They used these in 3.X too, right? Anyway. That's neither here nor there.) I'm calling these specialties for now.

You also have these specialties in a pyramid, with an apex equal to your Magic skill. So if you have Fair (+2) Magic, your Magic pyramid might look like this:
Fair (+2): Evocation 
Average (+1): Invocation, Transmutation
Three slots in your pyramid, three schools of magic.

If you have Great (+4) Magic, you have skill in all schools of magic -- a wizard's wizard, who puts the study of the magical arts above all else. That might look like this:
Great (+4): Evocation
Good (+3): Invocation, Transmutation 
Fair (+2): Enchantment, Divination, Abjuration
Average (+1): Conjuration, Necromancy, Illusion
When you cast a spell, you don't roll your Magic skill -- you roll your specialty skill. So if you're casting a fireball, you'd roll your Great (+4) Evocation. If you're casting phantasmal killer, you'd roll your Average (+1) Illusion. Etc. Probably the only time you'd roll Magic is to know stuff in general about magic.

What do these specialties do? Give 'em some Fate Core actions, as appropriate. No need to define them more than that. Evocation overcomes by blowing stuff up, creates advantages by blowing stuff up, and attacks by blowing stuff up.

This is the part that goes rather completely crazy, in my opinion. Once you have this secondary pyramid, you make a tertiary pyramid for each of these schools of magic. What's in these skill pyramids? Not skills -- spells. Since this is already so AD&D-heavy anyway, open up your PHB and take your spells right from there.

So for Evocation, this wizard's wizard above would have 10 Evocation spells, rated from +1 to +4. For Divination, they'd have three spells. And so on.

Yeah! You're right! That is a lot of spells to keep track of. An ungainly number. It's ridiculous! See, I told you it was crazy. It's more a thought exercise than anything else.

There are a couple more reasonable approaches to this. One is to make the schools individual skills (instead of specialties), and then make spells the specialties. E.g., you have Good (+3) Evocation, which means you can have a Good (+3) Fireball, Fair (+2) Burning Hands and Melf's Acid Arrow, etc.

Another way is to ditch the whole "school" thing and instead go with types of magic, like Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Death or something. Each of those is a skill, and spells are specialties -- but probably not cribbed from AD&D. I'd make them player-defined, then build the spells as custom skills in the style of Atomic Robo. Maybe you have n points to spend on making those spells, where n is determined by your skill rating.

(BTW, if you're an ARRPG playtester and any of the above reminds you of modes, it's sheer coincidence.)

This has nothing to do with skill sub-pyramids, but: Another way to go would be to have spells as stunts, possibly as stunts you could swap out via some sort of spellbook mechanism. So whether have you have schools of magic as skills or specialties, you can roll Evocation, Abjuration, and Divination all day long to do whatever it is you do with those schools (according to their actions), but then you might also have stunts that stretch those boundaries a bit. For example:
Fireball: When attacking with Evocation, spend a fate point to affect everyone in the targeted zone.
Shield: +2 to Abjuration when defending against physical attacks.
Discern Location: Spend a fate point and specify one creature you've seen or object you've touched. You know the location of that creature or object unerringly and in exacting detail, even if it's on another continent, planet, or plane of existence.
 Anyway. Back to Robo.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Fate Core Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:58:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-619942382187726884 [Fate Core] Rules vs. Settings http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/12/fate-core-rules-vs-settings.html This is a warning.So! That Fate Core Kickstarter's been pretty crazy, am I right? It's great to see so many people excited enough about it to back the campaign -- exactly 3,600 people, as I type -- and also to see how many of them are new to Fate with this edition. That's awesome.

Not surprisingly, there's a lot of discussion about Fate Core in various places around the Internet, and a lot of it's revolving around what it can do. Most of the time, inquiries about this kind of thing look something like this:
Really enjoyed the Terra Nova TV series when it was on and was wondering if it would be possible to make that kind of setup using the FATE system?
(That's James Cartwright, commenting on the Kickstarter page.)

Or this:
I would love to see a strong example of a heavily race based system. Ideally in my mind an anthropomorphic animal game in the vane of Redwall, Mouse Guard, or Ironclaw.
(That's Jonathan Dietrich, also on the Kickstarter page.)

These both sound like great games to run with Fate Core. Terra Nova may have let me down as a show, but the premise was cool -- sci-fi tech and dinosaurs! As for the anthropomorphic animal thing, well, I own Mouse Guard and backed Cairn, so I'm in.

My reaction to this kind of thing is always the same: Yeah, of course Fate can do that. What does it really involve, anyway? Knowing the source material? Fate Core gives you everything you need to sort out the rest.
This is a pretty unfair attitude, I know. I'm so used to hacking Fate and talking about hacking Fate and seeing Fate hacks that at this point it's kinda That System Everyone Hacks to me. You want to do something with Fate? Great! Go do it. What are you waiting for? Again, unfair.

However, there's an actual point to be made here as well. As I also said on Twitter, there's a real difference in Fate Core between saying "I want rules for..." and saying "I want a setting that's like...." 98% of emulating a genre using Fate Core is knowing the genre well in the first place.

Do you need special rules for shooting a dinosaur -- rules that aren't already in Fate Core? I don't think so. I mean, sure, you'll want to stat up some dinosaurs, but that's definitely within the scope of the rules as written. Do you need special rules for playing a sword-wielding mouse (as opposed to a sword-wielding human)? If everyone's playing an animal, make sure everyone has at least one aspect describing what kind of animal they are. (And then, y'know, stat out some cats and weasels.) Hashtag done!

Let's take Fate Core assistant developer Brian Engard's Wild Blue setting as an example. Wild Blue is part Western, part fantasy-magic stuff, and part supers. It has new rules for the magic-and-supers stuff (in the form of gifts), because Brian had a specific vision for how those work in the setting that he needed to convey. It has a couple new skills that suit the setting. And... that's it for new rules. Because Fate Core does everything else.

But Jonathan Dietrich came back with this:
Which is a great question! I tried to answer it on Twitter, but Twitter's not the best medium for that sort of thing, so let's see if it I can do it justice here.

What we're really talking here when we talk about sci-fi dinosaurs or heroic rodents isn't rules, but setting. Most of what'd be in a good Terra Nova RPG built on Fate Core would be descriptions and stats for things from the show -- an implementation of the system, sure, but off the top of my head I can't think of anything especially new it needs in terms of rules or mechanics. (Of course, I'm no Terra Nova scholar or anything, so maybe I'm misremembering.)

Anthropomorphic animals? As a complete game, I'd want lots of descriptions of animals and examples of aspects and stunts for each. But what I can't imagine is that any of that would deviate from the tools that Fate Core gives you. Maybe -- maybe -- you'd want size and scale rules, but extras can do that as-is. (The Extras Toolbox will probably have those size and scale rules, but still.)

The thing is, the protagonists in these stories do things that "baseline" human protagonists do in Fate Core anyway. (Well, apart from, like, gathering nuts for the winter, I guess.) They don't shoot laser beams from their palms or have super-strength or bend the laws of reality or anything. Even if they're mice or voles or whatever, they do what mice or voles or whatever in the setting do -- which makes mice or voles or whatever the new baseline, which means you don't need special rules for them. If you know your source material and follow the directions in Fate Core, you'll get the game you want.

With all that established: What makes Atomic Robo so special that it need its own book?

This is a fair and complex question.

One, Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener want to do it. I want to do it. Evil Hat wants to do it. Lots of Robo fans really want us to do it. So... we're doing it.

Two, ARRPG may be an implementation of Fate Core, but it has several significant divergences meant to engender the kind of play we want to see out of an Atomic Robo game. Modes simplify character creation and skills to get players playing ASAP. We expect some people who buy the book will be Robo fans first and RPG fans second, or totally inexperienced with RPGs, so right from the start "quickplay" was the default. (Fate Core's easy for first-timers to pick up too, of course; a lot of these core concepts of ARRPG were established long before I even set eyes on Fate Core.)

Y'know how I said I'm not a Terra Nova scholar? Over the past year, I have arguably become an Atomic Robo scholar. Eating, breathing, and sleeping Atomic Robo has had a huge effect on the game in a hundred little ways. Atomic Robo doesn't tell stories the usual Fate Core way, so ARRPG structures stories the Atomic Robo way. The game has mechanics that emulate some specific stuff from the source material, like a group of Action Scientists working together to apply science to a mystery, a quick method for handling the in-game invention of new technology, and the capacity of characters (like Robo himself) to greatly exceed normal human limits.

What else? Aspects are categorized differently. There are no phases. There's no refresh (another very early decision). PCs start with more stunts. There's a subsystem for building customized skills outside of the extras framework. ARRPG has the great GM advice from Fate Core, but with an eye toward telling Atomic Robo stories, and new tools to help you do it. And because I wrote it, it has a random table. Maybe two. Maybe a random number of random tables. We'll see.

(Incidentally, some of the above will probably make it into the Extras Toolbox in some form or other.)

On top of all that, it's a thorough sourcebook for Atomic Robo -- more information on the Robo-verse than you'll find in any other book, plus a bunch of great art from Scott, both from the comic and new stuff. As a fan of Robo, this might be my favorite part of it.

Anyway. What was I talking about? Something to do with rules vs. settings in Fate Core?]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Kickstarter Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-8898868146231157976 [Fate Core] Surprise! http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/12/fate-core-surprise.html
Surprise!

The Fate Core Kickstarter campaign has kicked off a little earlier than anticipated, thanks to editor Jeremy Keller and all-around provocateur Fred Hicks.

You've probably already checked it out. If you haven't yet, it's, uh, doing pretty well. Funded in under 15 minutes, hit the first two stretch goals shortly thereafter.

And in case you weren't already aware of this particular tidbit: If you back at any level -- including the $1 Access level -- you get immediate access to the draft copy of Fate Core.

Not bad, right?

This is all kind of novel for me. It's the first project I've worked on that's gotten the Kickstarter treatment. I had nothing to do with setting up the Kickstarter itself, nor am I currently on the hook to produce any new material as part of a stretch goal. So really, in a sense, I kinda don't really have much of a stake in this beyond wanting people to like and play a game I've worked on. (As I've said before, I've been extremely lucky so far in my RPG freelancing career to have worked on pretty much only fairly high-profile, well-received projects.)

But I'm going to be watching this Kickstarter with as much attention and enthusiasm as, I dunno, this, or this -- because it's always fun to see a highly anticipated campaign for a cool project go from "funded" to "ridiculous runaway success." Join me, won't you?

Join me.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Kickstarter Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:30:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-2557309043562221100 Fate Core Kickstarter Launches http://www.faterpg.com/2012/fate-core-kickstarter-launches/ no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Tue, 04 Dec 2012 05:37:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=118 [Atomic Robo] Covers and Progress http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/11/atomic-robo-covers-and-progress.html

Scott's been noodling around with cover ideas for ARRPG. Thoughts? Other than my first thought, which was "Those robot fists are awesome!"?

("Of course they are," says Scott. "They're based on a real thing.")

Related: Several chapters of ARRPG have been submitted. By this I mean that they've been put in a place online where an Evil Hat editor can eventually get to them. More chapters are being revised and written as I type this. Well, not exactly as I type, because I'm typing this, and I can only type one thing at a time. I guess I could alternate characters between this blog post and the chapter, but -- look, I feel like we're getting off-course here.

Also, Action Scientists, aka playtesters! Thanks for your work on the secret mission you've been assigned! Good stuff. Keep 'em coming.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) art Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:50:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-5552472707658241284 [Fate Core] Coming Soon http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/11/fate-core-coming-soon.html So everyone knows about this by now, right?

No?

If you don't, you really should check it out.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Kickstarter Tue, 27 Nov 2012 06:04:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-1466494885928249749 Fate Core is Nigh http://www.faterpg.com/2012/fate-core-is-nigh/ no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Sun, 25 Nov 2012 16:09:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=114 [Atomic Robo] Playtest Closed http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/11/atomic-robo-playtest-closed.html
That's it!

Round 3 of playtesting for Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game is now closed, which means no new playtesters will be... what's the word... accepted? Required? You get what I'm saying. We have a lot of playtesters, but I don't anticipate any further significant changes -- changes large enough to warrant more full-scale playtesting -- to the rules as they currently exist.

So... if you were like "I'm gonna get in on that Atomic Robo thing on Tuesday!" then allow me to offer my sincere apologies. Missed it by that much.

If you're already a playtester, your feedback's still welcome, but now is the time to move into the next phase of things. That means turning what we have into something that looks like an actual manuscript, adding/adapting some more content from Fate Core, and generally getting everything in a state won't make the editor mad at me.

In the absence of constantly updating you on playtest-type stuff, I plan to offer some genuine preview-type stuff along the lines of the character sheets I posted yesterday. Stay tuned!]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Mon, 05 Nov 2012 19:25:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-463463510529131874 [Atomic Robo] Invaders from Mars Characters http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/11/atomic-robo-invaders-from-mars.html I had fun making these characters for the one-shot tomorrow, so I figured I'd share 'em with you all. Apart from a rare couple of exceptions, I haven't been making full-on pre-gens for these playtests, because I've wanted to see how players handled the E-Z No-Math Character Creation that's the default in Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game. But I think I've seen plenty of that thus far, and besides, I have to write up a number of characters from Robo canon anyway.

And you know what? It was a lot of fun. '30s Robo, Jack Tarot, and Helen in particular, because it gave me an excuse to pore over The Deadly Art of Science. Of the other two characters, one's based on Welles'  character in his War of the Worlds radio drama, and the other's wholly invented but a plausible participant in the events of the scenario. (I also enjoyed finding character portraits, which is something I rarely do.) Regardless, they all look fun to play. Here's hoping I'm right about that, eh? Guess we'll find out tomorrow at Dice House Games!

So here they are. If you're in the playtest, check it out! More characters ready-made for you! If you're not, then check it out! Here's what characters look like!]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) character creation Sun, 04 Nov 2012 06:09:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-2969462352875417530 [Atomic Robo] and the Invaders from Mars http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/11/atomic-robo-and-invaders-from-mars.html Full Disclosure: Image has been altered using MS Paint.This Sunday I'm running an Atomic Robo playtest at Dice House Games in Fullerton. I was debating whether the scenario should be themed after Halloween or the election, since it's proximal to both. In the end, I decided that Halloween scared me less, so Atomic Robo and the Invaders from Mars it is!

1938. Grover's Mill. Robo. Jack Tarot and Helen. Tripods. Heat rays. You get the idea.

It's not really a big public event, but I figured I'd mention it to the big public nonetheless. If you're around and want in on that, let me know in the comments. I plan to start at 2:00, and I'll take up to five players. Plus, it's a Game Day at Dice House, so stick around after and play some other games.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Sat, 03 Nov 2012 04:49:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-4534526717324666047 [Strange Fate] The SRD Has Landed http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/10/strange-fate-srd-has-landed.html Hey, so this is very cool: RPG.net user thecosmicgoose has extracted the OGL bits from The Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) and made a system-reference document out of it. Now, admittedly, it's basically two chapters from the book with all the non-OGL stuff excised, so it's not exactly pretty, but hey, what do you want? No doubt the it'll be subject to some prettification later, and by someone other than me, because man, I do not know what I'm doing on that front.

Anyway, the SRD is here. Check it out and have at it!]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) kerberos club Wed, 31 Oct 2012 06:43:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-386589597149051633 [Atomic Robo] Playtest Round 3 Is Now http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/10/atomic-robo-playtest-round-3-is-now.html At last, the time is upon us, as foretold in the scriptures. By "scriptures," I mean "this blog, a few days ago."

Last night I sent out an email to the Round 3 playtesters. If you should've gotten it (because you sent in your signed Disclosure Pledge) but didn't, contact me and/or leave a comment here.

For pre-existing playtesters, this revision contains some pretty significant changes -- all improvements, from where I'm sitting. Weird skill construction has been spelled out more clearly. Ditto brainstorms, plus a minor change to how they work. One of the modes lost a skill. (Guess which one!) (It's Action.) All of the sample characters have been revised. A bunch of little typos have been fixed. Terminology has been updated. A chapter on the basics of Fate Core has been included. (About time, right?) Challenges have changed a lot. E-Z No-Math Character Creation has been simplified even further. Etc.

So yeah, it's been a pretty thorough revision. Every document got some attention to one degree or another, although the big winners were Modes, Skills, and Stunts and Challenges, Contests, and Conflicts (previously known as Contests, Challenges, and Conflicts). Part of this is because Fate Core is in an advanced stage of editing, which means I have a more definitive set of rules to draw from for ARRPG, and part of it's because we've gotten some great playtester feedback to incorporate. By "great," I mean consistent -- the commentary has been pretty uniform overall, which makes it easy to know what needs work.

In other words, thanks to all you playtesters who've gotten back to me with comments! Even though I haven't replied to all of you, because I'm just one put-upon man and you are legion, rest assured I read your emails and appreciate you taking the time to send them. Keep it up!

UPDATE: If you're not part of the playtest yet, it's not necessarily too late. Download this and follow the instructions.

Speaking of playtesting: Morgan Ellis, friend of the blog, ARRPG collaborator, and my platonic Fate-mate (starting to rethink that phrase now), is still looking for a couple of players for an ongoing ARRPG playtest campaign in the Los Angeles area. If you want in on that and you're cool -- what am I saying! Of course you're cool. You're reading this, aren't you? Anyway, get in touch with him if that's you.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-4229183240295997350 [Atomic Robo] Playtest Round 3 Postponed! http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/10/atomic-robo-playtest-round-3-postponed.html

Heya, folks. Sorry to disappoint, but seeing as how it's Saturday night, I think I can safely say that I'm going to have to postpone the next round of playtesting to next week.

The past few weeks have been... profoundly unproductive, for a number of reasons -- not the least of which was the lymphadenitis that laid my son low this past week. It sounds worse than it is, but you know what? It's still pretty bad! He's okay now, though, and just in time for his birthday party tomorrow.

Anyway -- the Round 3 revision is pretty significant, so the additional few days' wait will definitely be worth it. E-Z No-Math Character Creation has been simplified even further, and I've cleared up how modes, skills, and actions are presented, which has important ramifications for other chapters as well (even if only in terms of consistency). There'll also be a chapter on "The Basics" of Fate Core, because it's kinda shocking there hasn't been one until now. And also other stuff. I'd rather own up to missing a self-imposed deadline than rush it.

So stick with me, Action Scientists. Better news to come next week.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:23:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-2988366518962176011 [Atomic Robo] Son of Playtest Updates http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/09/atomic-robo-son-of-playtest-updates.html
Good news first: Everything's comin' right along. I just finished updating the intro scenario to the most current version of the rules and will be uploading it for all you currently active playtesters out there (as opposed to the inactive ones -- maybe I should call you "Action Playtesters" and "Resident Playtesters" instead) sometime on Wednesday. Which is today, from where I'm sitting.

Feedback has been very useful, so thanks for that. Most of it's along the lines of "There's a misspelled word on page four!" but hey, that stuff's important too, so it's all good. More of that and everything else, please. Keep it coming. You're helping make a better game.

Requests for a better character sheet have been heard. Unfortunately, they've been heard by me, but still I think what I have here is a definite improvement. I'm not saying it's the end-all-be-all or anything -- just that I like it more than the last one. I'll be uploading it (with a side of PCs) shortly after the intro scenario. If you have an Atomic Robo character sheet you've made for your playtesting group, or just because you like making character sheets, send it my way. (Unless you've already done that, in which case thanks for having done that.)

The bad news isn't really all that bad, but: I'm pushing Round 3 back by a couple weeks. Initially, I'd expected to time it with Big Bad Con, but owing to a few factors, including a totally unproductive first experience at SoCal Smackdown (...), I'm going to hold off. For one, I'd like to be able to incorporate a bit more playtester feedback, from home playtest groups and the Big Bad Con playtests. From my perspective, there's no rush to fix some desperately broken rule, so better to take more time on Round 3 and put out a more complete playtest packet rather than make you pick out subtle differences between the two versions like some overly wordy activity out of Highlights for Children.

Now, if you're in Round 3, which is a lot of you, but I guess you don't know it yet because I haven't told you, you're probably like, "Aw shucks." But don't be like that, because when you do get called up, you'll have a tighter, more complete game to play around with. I dunno. Sounds pretty good to me. Expect to see an announcement for that in mid-October.

And if you're reading this going, "What the what?" don't just go like that -- get in on the next round of the playtest. I expect it'll run through the end of October, so there's still time to sign up. Science needs you!]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Wed, 26 Sep 2012 15:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-6994073466644638183 [Atomic Robo] Playtesting at SoCal Smackdown http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/09/atomic-robo-playtesting-at-socal.html
So hey! This weekend I'll be running Atomic Robo at SoCal Smackdown at the Anaheim Convention Center in beautiful-ish Anaheim, California. You may recognize Anaheim as the home of Disneyland, California Adventure, and fleeing suspects being shot in the back by local PD. Yes, you read that right! Disneyland!

I'll be there Friday and Sunday nights at 7:00 pm, so come on out. If you played ARRPG at Gateway or GenCon or wherever, this will be an entirely different scenario. Not only will we be playtesting the most current iteration of the rules, but I'm also taking the weird character and extras rules out for a spin.

In addition to a few proto-PCs -- they have just info provided in to start playing, but plenty of blanks for you to make them your own during play -- there'll also be a couple weird characters up for grabs:

  • Henry, a rogue Helsingard warbot fighting its inherited impulses who's joined Tesladyne to atone for its creator's/clones' sins, and
  • Jenkins. Jenkins.
Either or both should make for an especially interesting playtest -- especially if we have both of them in play. If you've read the Extras chapter in the playtest docs, that would make things... well, I'm just going to say "interesting" again.
]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:16:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-3018808563514340415 [Atomic Robo] Round 2 -- Play! http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/09/atomic-robo-round-2-play.html
Hey, so last night, as recklessly promised, the next round of Atomic Robo playtesting begun. If you got an email about it, that's you. Get to work!

Round 1-types, I'll send you an email today as part of our weekly check-in, but the revised playtest docs are up now if you want to download 'em. Everything labeled "Sept v2" is new or has been changed; everything else -- a ground total of one document -- is the same.

I'll go into the revisions in more detail in the email, but for those of you watching from the sidelines or still sitting on the bench waiting to get into the game (soon, I promise!), here's a short list of what's changed/new:
  • Aspects chapter
  • Extras chapter
  • Challenges in general
  • Hypothesis Challenges in particular -- they're not even called that anymore!
  • Stress
  • Skill terminology
  • GM's fate point budget
  • And much, much more!
I'm excited about the changes and new stuff, myself -- I think it's already a much-improved game, thanks to playtester input, and it'll only get better from here.

And if you want to get in on the playtest, it's not too late! Click here! Follow instructions! Remain calm! Trust in Science!
]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-70878707747029854 [Atomic Robo] Playtest Updates http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/09/atomic-robo-playtest-updates.html
Lots of times, I like to make this joke I stole from Peter Schickele where I say "A number of people have asked me about [something-or-other], and both of them wanted to know..." etc. See, the joke is that it's not many people doing the asking, even though it doesn't sound that way at first.

I cannot make this joke with Atomic Robo.

Interest has been... high. Very high. A side benefit of this has been that I've really gotten familiar with contacts and mailing lists in Gmail. Just never needed to use 'em before! But now I really do, because as I type this -- and I'd have to check on this to make certain -- I'm pretty sure Round 3 of the playtest is full. Round 3. In case you're just joining this whole Robo discussion, I haven't even announced Round 2 yet.

Now, that said: Do not despair. If you're interested in playtesting, please please download the Disclosure Pledge and follow the instructions thereupon. These playtest rounds are like unto waves on the beach, one after another. I will get you in there somewhere.

So if you've done that already and you're not in Round 1, you're probably wondering, "Well, when do I get to get in on this?" Here's the scoop on that.

  • I'm in the middle of a revision right now. The game has already gotten better, thanks in part to the feedback of the Round 1 playtesters, which has been invaluable. I'm especially excited about this revision, partially due to the Extras chapter, which I think is pretty cool.
  • I expect to update the playtest docs this weekend. (An email will go out to the Round 1-types when I do.)
  • Shortly after I do that, I'll also email the Round 2-types. So: to more definitively answer your question, this weekend. That's the Mike Olson Guarantee.
  • Round 3, whoever you are (and there are a lot of you), I will get you guys up and running within two or three weeks. Thanks to Morgan and Chris, we've got a couple ARRPG playtests happening at Big Bad Con the first weekend of October, and I want to make sure that everyone involved gets to experience the best version of the rules I can make available. As it happens, the timing's perfect for Round 3.
  • Assuming there is a Round 4, and I see no reason to believe there won't be, it'll probably begin around the middle of October. It'll also probably be our last round of playtesting, because we need to wrap this thing up by November at the very latest. (Originally, it was October, but the parallel development of Fate Core, and the resulting revisions and rethinking of ARRPG, kinda messed with that a bit. Fate Core's awesome, by the way.)
For the record, even though I said I'd only be taking 20 groups in Round 1, I took... more. And even though one could reasonably assume I'd only earmark another 20 groups for Round 2, I've earmarked... more. Because I'm a big softie and have a hard time saying no to Atomic Robo fans.
]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Fri, 14 Sep 2012 05:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-7277225923985873494 [Atomic Robo] Public Playtest, Round 1 http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/08/atomic-robo-public-playtest-round-1.html
Behold, an ordinary playtest!

If you want to be a part of the Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game playtest -- and I think I know you enough to say that yeah, you do -- simply follow these steps:
  1. Ask yourself, "Am I going to have a chance to actually experience this with a group of players in the next few weeks and provide feedback?" If your answer is "Yes," proceed.
  2. Download a copy of the disclosure pledge.
  3. Read and sign it (typing your name on the signature line is enough to acknowledge you've read the pledge and agree to abide by it; no need to put your actual John Hancock on this thing).
  4. Email your signed pledge to the email address indicated on the pledge. The subject line should say "ARRPG Pledge."
  5. Remain calm and trust in Science.
  6. Once we have your signed pledge, you'll be sent a link where you can download the current playtest documents.
The playtest will take place in multiple rounds, and is expected to run through October. This first round of the playtest will include only 20 groups. If you don't make it in, don't sweat it -- the next round will start within a few weeks. We fully intend to include everyone who's able to make a serious commitment to playtesting.

And remember, if you're going to be at Gateway or Dragon*Con this weekend, you'll have a chance to playtest there as well.

On a personal note, I hope you're all as excited as I am about all of this. I mean, I kinda already know you're not, but if you're even approaching my level of excitement, this is going to be a fun time. The playtests at GenCon were really solid, and the rules have only gotten better and tighter since then. It's only going to improve going forward, and that's largely going to be because of playtesters like you. So thanks, and let's do this!

UPDATE: The interest level has been... well, I don't want to say "overwhelming," but it's right up there. As of 8/31, I have all the Round 1 playtesters I need. But! Round 2 still has plenty of room. Please keep 'em coming! Science needs you!
]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Thu, 30 Aug 2012 05:20:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-1016182085156710046 [Atomic Robo] GenCon Playtesters http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/08/atomic-robo-gencon-playtesters.html Hey everybody. I'm just putting this post up here so when I tell the ARRPG playtesters at GenCon to come by the blog and leave a comment, they'll land here and feel special.

Playtester-types: I welcome your comments. You'll have talked to me or your duly appointed ARRPG GM about your feelings on the game, but if you want to say anything else, good or bad, this is a place to do so.

Everyone else: You can just read this and, I dunno, be jealous, I guess.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Fri, 17 Aug 2012 01:47:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-2158048633676393715 [ARRPG] Atomic Robo at Gateway! http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/08/arrpg-atomic-robo-at-gateway.html Did you know that Gateway is just a scant two weeks after GenCon? I feel like that can't possibly be the case! And yet it is. If you're going to be some combination of a) there, b) wanting to play Atomic Robo, and  c) available Friday night, Saturday afternoon, or Saturday night, come on down and playtest.

These playtests will no doubt benefit from ARRPG having been through the wringer at GenCon, so odds are quite good that the rules will be all the better for it. Plus, the public playtest will have started by then, so people may even show up familiar with them before coming to the table. Imagine that!

Here's the extremely non-committal blurb, in case something horrible happens at GenCon and I need to ditch the intro scenario I've planned:
Come playtest Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game, currently in development and due for release from Evil Hat Productions in early 2013. ARRPG is based on Fate Core (also currently in development!). New to Fate? No problem. No familiarity with either Fate or higher-dimension mathematics is required. Just remain calm, trust in Science, and roll those dice.
(As you can see, I tend to return to the same gags over and over again.)

I'm running the Friday night and Saturday night games, and a friend who shall remain nameless is running the Saturday afternoon game. No matter what game you play in, though, you'll have a good time.

Event pre-registration begins tomorrow, August 11th at noon-ish. If history is any guide, these games will fill up fast, so get on it!]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Sat, 11 Aug 2012 05:10:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-93966250793936790 [Fate Core] Men's 100pg Hurdles http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/08/fate-core-mens-100pg-hurdles.html Pictured: My office.As of... now, the Fate Core chapters I was assigned to revise and/or rewrite have been sent off to Camp First-Round-Edits. They'll be back before the end of the month. I'll miss them, but at the same time it's good to have them out of the house.

So that's one hurdle hurdled, then. Whew! What a relief. Now I can just relax.

Except that before I get on a plane for Indianapolis a week from tomorrow, I still have to bring ARRPG up to the new specs, devise and/or revise an ARRPG scenario, make proto-characters for said scenario, figure out the rest of my Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) scenario, make a few pre-gens for that scenario, and... I dunno... pack, I guess. And for all I know, my Fate Core chapters could come back to haunt me before GenCon, too. So while it's nice to have met a goal more or less on time, it's just one hurdle of many over the next couple weeks.

Incidentally, I made mention on Twitter of a way-too-long sample magic system I wrote for a Fate Core chapter that's already been removed for being, well, way too long. But assuming it doesn't turn out to be the late-night rantings of a freelance writer working on a sleep deficit, it'll see the light of day somehow or other. Might be here on this blog, might be part of a supplemental Fate Core PDF. I dunno yet.

Don't sweat it too much, though. It's not some revelatory thing you can't live without. It's just an example of how to use elements of Fate Core to make a magic system for your game. I mean, I hope you like it and everything, but there's no need to batter down my door to get it. My office is noisy enough as it is.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) kerberos club Tue, 07 Aug 2012 18:12:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-977704921762241127 [Atomic Robo] Minor Repairs http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/08/atomic-robo-minor-repairs.html

Good news, everyone! Turns out the aftershocks from Fate Core Rules-Quake '12 weren't as severe for ARRPG as I'd originally feared. I mean... they were still pretty serious. We lost a whole thing. But it looks like everything's working out pretty well, skill-wise. It's probably even an improvement, actually.

Let me elaborate on that, because you're probably all, "Hey, could you be less specific about the thing in question?" But, like, in a sarcastic way.

So I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before (at least once) that, in ARRPG, there are these things called modes. You can think of modes as thematic bundles of skills that reflect broad areas of competence. Action is a mode. Science is a mode. Modes make on-the-fly character creation easy, because they don't require you to make a decision for every single skill your character has.

Prior to yesterday, there were a total of five standard modes (among them, Action and Science). Now there are but four. When you make a character, you pick (and rate) three modes. With only four standard modes to pick from, however, what you're also doing (as Fred has pointed out) is deciding which of the modes just isn't important for your character.

Why was this done? A number of reasons -- so many, in fact, that when I wrote them all out I was surprised by how compelling they all were en masse. But the most practical reason is the math.

There are two ways to make a character in ARRPG. One involves making choices. The other involves some simple math. Neither method is better than the other, but the choice-making one is simpler in practice than the math-doing one (an important difference when making a character during play). The thing that makes that no-math one work, though, is the math going on behind the scenes. Thanks to a certain change in the Fate Core rules, that math wasn't working out anymore, which had the potential to be a pretty serious issue.

What with one thing and another, the way to fix this issue was to cut one of the modes. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say that two modes have been merged, but... not that much more accurate, to be honest. Regardless, in the process each of the remaining modes has been made a little more distinct, which is a good thing. (Except Science. Science has experienced no change whatsoever. Science don't care.)

If you're wondering how four themed skill-bundles can possibly reflect everything that, say, Atomic Robo does, or Dr. Dinosaur purports to do, the answer is simple: They don't! Those four modes are just the standard modes, but there are other modes -- weird modes -- that you can make yourself.

I'm not going to get into all that now, though. I have a literal ton of work to do. (Not literally.)]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Atomic Robo Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:03:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-7484304774717449427 [Greyhawk] Magic Resistance http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/07/greyhawk-magic-resistance_28.html
My most recent instance of this fractal challenge has been Magic Resistance and consistency with Armor.

In the source material, Magic Resistance and Armor effectively do the same thing--make the possessor harder to hit. The distinctions between them are what's being used for the attack and the specific mechanic for that determination. So the attacker has to roll to hit then if the hit is successful, only then do you take damage into account. Neither provides a reduction in damage--only a reduction in the chance of taking damage.

SoG already reflects that Armor reduces the number of shifts of damage done, which seemed important as degree of success and damage are linked to the same roll in the Fate mechanic. While inconsistent with SoG’s source material, it has playtested pretty well. Stated differently, I don’t like the source material’s mechanic for “Armor Class” enough to translate it into Fate as is.

My initial take on Magic Resistance was more consistent with the source material: an additional chance that a magic effect has no impact. Initially I felt it was necessary to bring this assumption over intact because in the world of Greyhawk, the great consensus is that a 20% resistance has as much chance to resist a 1st level spell as it does a 3rd level spell. It turns out that this is not an entirely accurate assumption--in order to play the game as it was written, Magic Resistance is adjusted up or down depending upon the level of the spellcaster (DMG, p. 228)

Reviewing that definition for Magic Resistance gave me the following assumptions about how it acts in the gameworld:

  - Magic Resistance is separate from Saving Throw (i.e., opposed skill roll).
  - Magic Resistance can negate a magic effect BEFORE any opposed skill roll is rolled.
  - More powerful magic users can reduce or entirely offset the value of the magic resistance.
  - Magic Resistance is more effective against less powerful magic users.

So for me there was a decision point in translation: Accuracy or Consistency?

Here’s two different ways it might be handled in Fate. One is more accurate to the source material and one is more consistent (fractal) with existing mechanics.

“More Accurate” Magic Resistance

Translating the Magic Resistance Value

The source material is expressed in the source material as a percentage.  The defender must then roll that value or less.  To turn that into a 4dF difficulty that must be met or exceeded (as per the normal SotC mechanic), you could do the following:
10% Magic Resistance is +4
20% Magic Resistance is +3
30% Magic Resistance is +2
40% Magic Resistance is +1
50% Magic Resistance is 0
60% Magic Resistance is –1
70% Magic Resistance is –2
80% Magic Resistance is –3
90% Magic Resistance is –4
100% Magic Resistance is -5
This means that in its most basic form, something with 80% Magic Resistance must roll -3 or better on 4dF in order to resist the magical effect.

Basic Rule

When a magic effect impacts something with Magic Resistance, the defender rolls the dice TWICE:
The first die roll is to determine if Magic Resistance cancels the magical effect.  If Magic Resistance does not work then the defender rolls again... 
The second die roll (if the defender’s Magic Resistance fails) is for the defender’s Opposed Skill Roll.
The defender rolls the 4dF and if the roll MEETS or EXCEEDS the difficulty the defender is immune to the magic effect.

You could accomplish a similar effect by only rolling dice a single time and then translating that roll in those two contexts, but it didn’t seem to have the right “feel”.

Adjusting Magic Resistance

The skill of the caster has an effect on a defender’s Magic Resistance.  To be consistent with the source material (again, DMG, p.228) and some of the other general assumptions that SoG makes about levels of skill/power, adjust the Magic Resistance (as above) by the following rule:
Subtract 5 from the power of the Magical Effect and apply the difference to the Magic Resistance’s "difficulty".
Examples:
Spell Power +3 - (5) = -2 to the difficulty (makes it less difficult to resist)
Spell Power +6 - (5) = +1 to the difficulty (makes it more difficult to resist)
So putting it all together you’d have the following scenario:
Defender has a “base” 10% Magic Resistance, which means rolling +4 (or better) on 4dF.
Defender is targeted by a spell with a power of +4, which then adjusts the defender’s Magic Resistance to be:
+4 (Spell Power) - 5 = -1 modifier to the Magic Resistance of +4 = +3 or better must be rolled.
Defender rolls +2 on 4dF, so Magic Resistance doesn’t work and then the Defender rolls his Opposed Skill Roll (as per normal).

The Bottom Line

Though this feels like a fairly accurate translation, I don’t think it’s playable “enough”.

“More Consistent” Magic Resistance

Going to back a previous statement, there’s the gameworld assumption that Magic Resistance is similar to mundane Armor.  So this translation considers Magic Resistance consistent with Armor, just used against magical effects instead of mundane attacks.

Translating Magic Resistance

A closer translation of Fate Shifts to a 100% scale, means that each shift is worth between 15% and 20%.  For ease of translation, let’s stick with using 20% = +1 shift.
+1 Magic Resistance equates to Magic Resistance 1% to 20%.
+2 Magic Resistance equates to Magic Resistance 21% to 40%.
+3 Magic Resistance equates to Magic Resistance 41% to 60%.
+4 Magic Resistance equates to Magic Resistance 61% to 80%.
+5 Magic Resistance equates to Magic Resistance 81% to 100%.
By virtue of Fate's different level of granularity, there’s a bit of a fudge factor there especially in the 81% and up range, but I think it’s balanced out during play (see below).  So the reduction in shifts of effect is not entirely accurate with source material, it is more consistent with the changes that were made to mundane armor.

Basic Rule

Magic Resistance applies the shifts in the same way as armor protects from mundane attacks.
Example:
A creature with Magic Resistance listed in the source material as 40% (worth +2 in SoG) is attacked by a spell generated by a Wizard with a Magic skill of +4.
The Wizard casts the spell, the player rolls 4dF and gets +1 for a total of:  Skill (Magic +4) + Dice (4dF, +1) = Magical Power of +5
The creature has an opposing skill (let's say Willpower) of +2 and rolls +2 on 4dF.  Including the Magic Resistance, the opposed result is:   Skill (Willpower +2) + Dice (4dF, +2) + Magic Resistance (+2) = +6
The creature's +6 is greater than the Magical Power of +5 and the spell has no effect on the creature.

The Bottom Line

Though this translation allows for a reduction of magic effect (which doesn't exist in the source material), it is still consistent with what I think is the more important gameworld assumptions, is consistent with mundane armor and avoids the creation of another modified mechanic.
]]> no_email@example.com (Guy Bowring) spirit of greyhawk Sun, 29 Jul 2012 03:53:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-2123498167423907016 Expanding the Fate Core Team http://www.faterpg.com/2012/expanding-the-fate-core-team/ [...]]]> no_email@example.com (fred) News Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:10:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=109 A Double Whammy of Fate http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-double-whammy-of-fate.html

So. Lots of stuff going on. Eventful!

Here's the news: What with one thing and another, Fred Hicks asked if I'd be willing to help Lenny Balsera (along with Bulldogs! co-author Brian Engard) with the development of Fate Core. Uh, yes. Obviously. I want to go to there.

Initially the idea was that I'd let up on Atomic Robo for a few weeks and get back to it in a big way after GenCon. This would've pushed ARRPG back about a month, but whatever -- as long the delay wasn't going to stem directly from me, I was fine with it.

But it became clear pretty quickly that the changes in Fate Core that'd prompted Fred to reach out to Brian and me in the first place are simply too significant for ARRPG, in its current state, to escape unscathed. If I were to leave ARRPG as-is, the GenCon playtests would be... less than productive. They'd still be good for buzz and hype and all that, but the playtesters probably wouldn't be contributing to its development. And that's not really an option, from my perspective.

What to do? We can't cancel those playtests. I don't want playtests that aren't actually playtests. Nope. The only way out is through.

To that end, I'm now going to be working on both projects simultaneously, incorporating as many of the changes to Fate Core as possible into ARRPG before getting on that plane to Indy. If you playtest ARRPG at GenCon, know that you'll also be among the first, for all intents and purposes, to playtest Fate Core. 

You're probably asking, "What are these changes to Fate Core that are affecting Robo so significantly?" No? You weren't asking that? Well, I'll just proceed as if you were. I'm not going to go into that here, because both games are still in development, but I will say that Lenny's taking a really cool, inspired new direction with Fate I really like. And if I like it, it's gotta be good, right? 

To paraphrase Philip J. Fry, "Don't you worry about Fate Core. Let me worry about blank."

Anyway. I'm still figuring out just how much ARRPG's going to feel all this. I suspect it might not require a ground-up redesign of some fundamental subsystems. I also suspect I may be wrong about that. But whatever -- it's all good. I'm up for it. My duties on Fate Core involve writing/re-writing about half the book, so rest assured I'll be at the epicenter of this thing from start to finish.

TL;DR: I'm also working on Fate Core now in addition to Atomic Robo. It's going to be awesome. See you at GenCon.

In the meantime, go back Race To Adventure!
]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) self-promotion Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-1271097982415871576 [Atomic Robo] San Diego Comic-Con Playtest! http://spiritoftheblank.blogspot.com/2012/07/atomic-robo-san-diego-comic-con.html Okay, I'm biting the bullet here and finally settling on a time for the ARRPG playtest on Saturday. It's going to be in room 15AB at 2:00 pm.


I've decided that there's no way I have the patience to get into Hall H for The Hobbit anyway, so let's play Atomic Robo instead.


Saturday, 15AB, 2:00 pm. Look for the guy in the Tesladyne shirt. First four or five people there get to play. I FORGOT MY TESLADYNE SHIRT. Damn it. Well... look for a guy in some kind of shirt who looks like he's playtesting a cool new game about Atomic Robo.


Those of you lucky enough to be at Connecticon, of course, can maybe squeeze into Adam's ARRPG playtest, also happening Saturday at 2:00 pm. Get on it!


Incidentally--playtest last night (Thursday) at Gam3rcon went really well. Only one guy knew Atomic Robo, and only one (other) guy was familiar with FATE. The other three were just curious about new games, I guess. But they acquitted themselves well and had a lot of fun. The scenario (based on a premise by Scott Wegener) was effective and the players enjoyed sorting it all out. We didn't have time to finish, due to a variety of factors--it's been a pretty harried Comic-Con for me already--but that didn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm for the game. Everything rules-wise was well-received. Despite their best efforts, though, they evinced a nearly frustrating lack of criticism!


Morgan Ellis will probably be harsher at tonight's playtest. Or maybe not.]]> no_email@example.com (Mike Olson) Comic-Con Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:00:00 GMT tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491933635924780786.post-3349501139922034247 Spirit of the Century Gets a Trilogy! http://www.faterpg.com/2012/spirit-of-the-century-gets-a-trilogy/ [...]]]> no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:35:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=105 Spirit of the Century gets a Novel http://www.faterpg.com/2012/spirit-of-the-century-gets-a-novel/ no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:29:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=103 It’s On Fire http://www.faterpg.com/2012/fire/ [...]]]> no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:52:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=98 Phase 2 http://www.faterpg.com/2012/phase-2/ no_email@example.com (fred) Posts Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:11:00 GMT http://www.faterpg.com/?p=94