Fate magic - Aspect based magic

One of the questions that I see pop up more than any in discussions about Fate is people asking how to implement magic using the system; there are a number of suggestions and possibilities (I offered one such suggestion in my previous possibly the worlds simplest Fate magic system post); recently I downloaded copies of the 1st and 2nd edition of the Fate RPG out of curiosity to see how the system had evolved, and one thing in particular caught my eye in the first edtion, it was a system for improvisational magic.

Effectively the system allowed you to make a series of choices on a number of tables defining the effects of your spell, this would then give you the difficulty of the roll that you needed to make.

I like the flexibility of this magic but didn't think it would really work that well with the current iteration of Fate, it occurred to me that perhaps magic could be represented by allowing the spellcaster to create aspects; aspects are used to establish facts within Fate, if you have an aspect saying "fastest gunslinger in the west" then the you are in the fastest gunslinger in the west.

Being able to Cast a Spell

In order to cast any sort of spell the character must have an appropriate aspect that explains either their magical training or innate talent, this aspect can also be invoked/compelled as normal.

Creating a Spell

Spells are used to create aspects, in order to do this the character has to make a roll using an appropriate response or skill (whether this is a magic skill or an existing skill  is down to you, although Lore would probably be suitable from the Fate Core list).

Each use of magic costs a fate point.

The difficulty of the roll begins at mediocre (+0) and is modified by the choices that the caster makes from the following table.

The scope of the aspect is...

• Boost (gives the caster a temporary aspect that can be invoked free once and then disappears) +0 
  
• Situation aspect (lasts only for a scene) +2
• Consequence (inflicting harm on a target) +2 (mild consequence) +4 (moderate consequence) +6 (severe consequence) +0 (if the target is a mook) +2 (if the target is a significant NPC) +4 (if the target is a PC)
• Character aspect +4 (permanent but only applies to one PC or NPC) +0 (if the target is a mook) +2 (if the target is a significant NPC) +4 (if the target is a PC)
• Game aspect (a permanent fixture of the campaign world) +8

Additional modifers

Target of the spell is the caster only -2

Spell takes a single action to cast +2

Spell takes a scene to cast +0

Spell takes a session to cast -2

Spell takes several sessions to cast -4

Spell requires no components +2

Spell requires easy to obtain components +0

Spell requires difficult to obtain components -2

Spell requires extremely difficult to obtain/unique components -4

This system is only a rough system, and may require some tweaking but it should be workable in a Fate game, although I would suggest having even game aspects having only a limited life-span to prevent your game being overrun by loads of aspects. 

Jade-xalted: Constructing a Concept

One of the complaints/issues that I have often heard laid at the door of the Fate system is that, because there is such a lot of leeway when it comes to designing aspects, that it can often be bewildering for players, especially if they are unfamiliar with the setting or RPG-ing in general; in the forthcoming Cthulhu supplement for Fate (which I have been privilieged to do some of the writing for) it offers a little more guidance for creating aspects and even (should the players/GM wish to use them) a series of random tables for creating aspects. I plan to adopt something similar for the Jade-xalted conversion, the constructed aspects will be quite general to allow for the players to customise them, but should hopefully create a good jumping off point for anyone who is a little bewildered by all the choice available in the Fate system.

Obviously you do not have to use this system but it should help anyone who is struggling.


Concept Aspect

Under this system a concept aspect uses the following format:

"I am a/an [adjective] [type] who is skilled at [verb]"

List of sample adjectives:

• Angry
• Calm
• Clever
• Clumsy
• Elegant
• Famous
• Fancy
• Fierce
• Glamorous
• Handsome
• Helpful
• Honourable
• Innocent
• Lazy
• Mysterious
• Old-fashioned
• Peaceful
• Powerful
• Scarey
• Scarred
• Sly
• Thoughtful
• Thoughtless
• Ugly
• Violent

List of sample types:

• Mortal
• Solar Exalted
• Lunar Exalted
• Sidereal Exalted
• Air aspected Terrestial Exalted
• Earth aspected Terrestial Exalted
• Fire aspected Terrestial Exalted
• Water aspected Terrestial Exalted
• Wood aspected Terrestial Exalted
• Abyssal Exalted

List of sample verbs:

• Athletics
• Blackmail
• Craft work
• Gambling
• Fighting
• Larceny
• Leading others
• Oratory
• Research
• Running
• Sociallising
• Sorcery
• Stealth
• Storytelling

So, for example, using this system and sample list I could quickly create a 'violent Solar Exalted who is skilled at leading others', a 'sly Lunar Exalted who is skilled at larceny' or an 'honourable Fire-aspected Terrestrial Exalted who is skilled at sociallising.'

The aspect could be invoked or compelled whenever the adjective was applicable or when the character's specialist skill or talent comes into play.

For example: Our violent Solar could invoke his aspect when involved in violent action but may be compelled when he struggles to resist being provoked into such action unwisely, the player of the exalt could also invoke when attempting to lead others in some sort of action but may also find others naturally looking to him for leadership or seeking his advice on important matters (when the aspect is invoked).

Invoking the concept based on the type of Exaltation

Players can also invoke their concept aspect based on what type of exaltation they have received, this is not as immediately obvious as the preceding invokes and so I provide guidelines below for appropriate invokes/compels, anyone familiar with the Exalted setting should feel free to use their own judgement though.

• Solar Exalted: The Solars were created to lead the gods forces against those of the primordials, a solar concept may be invoked when vastly outnumbered in a combat or in an attempt to rally/lead others against a foe; however the Solars eventually found themselves becoming detached from the humanity that their powers raised them above eventually culminating in the first age solars becoming brutal and violent, a solar concept may be compelled when a lack of empathy could cause issue or when a lack of restraint may cause a problem.
• Lunar Exalted: Originally the Lunars were bound to their Solar counterparts, but fleeing the wyld hunt they now find themselves uncomfortable in civilisation. A lunar concept may be compelled when a lunar is confronting a Solar Exalted or when their lack of familiarity with civilised society may cause problems; it may be invoked when the characters knowledge of the wild would aid them or when attempting to resist the blandishments of the civilised world.
• Sidereal Exalted: Manipulators of fate, a sidereal concept may be invoked or compelled when chance may play a part in unfolding events, since people tend to forget sidereals their concept can be invoked to aid with stealth or avoiding detection.
• Terrestrial Exalted: As rulers of the realm a terrestrial concept may be invoked to aid in any social roll within the realm, however they may likewise be compelled should the exalt be in a situation where knowledge of their heritage might be disadvantageous. Terrestrials may also invoke their concept aspect if there is a significant quantity of their particular element is present in the same zone or if they can convincingly weave the element into their description.
  Please note: If a terrestrial features their element in their description then that element is actually produced (causing no additional game effect beyond the invoke but potentially giving away their heritage); for example, a fire-aspected terrestrial invokes his aspect by describing a flaming punch, his attack will actually produce a momentary gout of flame.
• Abyssal Exalted: Created as dark reflections of the solars by the Deathlords, abyssals may invoke their concept aspect when dealing with undead creatures or spirits or when manipulating the energies of the underworld is advantageous, however they are ill-suited to the lands outside the underworld and the concept may be compelled in situations where their deathly aura and lack of warmth may prove complicated.

But what about castes John?

Castes were the game 'splats' in the original Exalted and were basically used to govern what powers and abilities you could possess, since Fate is a more freeform and i'm hoping to create a quicker more action-packed gaming experience that with the original WOD rules i've chosen deliberately not to focus on castes.

However if you are desperate to include castes then I would simply suggest that you assign a character's caste based on the highest of their professions at character generation, the five professions were created based on the skill spread of the original castes so this should be a fairly close fit. 

Jade-xalted: Character Generation - Aspects & Professions

Since this is a hack to allow Jadepunk to be used to run an Exalted style game, i'm not going to reprint masses of the rules from the Jadepunk book (also i'd like encourage people to purchase the game since it is an excellent RPG campaign), i'm only going to discuss the rules where my proposed hack differs from the Jadepunk rules.

Aspects

Characters in Jade-xalted have five Aspects:

• Concept: A short sentence that sums up your character; if your character is an exalt then the concept must make some mention of what type of exaltation they carry (please note that if you are playing a terrestrial exalted/dragonblooded then some mention of their associated element should also be included).
  Example: Rough and tumble solar exalted soldier, sly and sneaky lunar exalted thief, proud but honourable terrestrial exalted noble (fire).
• Background: Where did your charater come from and what experiences they have had in life.
  Example: I was born in the slums and had to fight for every opportunity I got, I was in and out of trouble during my youth for stealing and other petty crimes, I grew up on my father's estate and received the finest schooling his military pay could afford.
• Exaltation: Although dragonblooded generally exalt (if they are going to) during puberty, a celestial exaltation can come upon a person at any time; where were you when you became exalted, what did it feel like and how did it affect you?
  Example: I was cornered by imperial soldiers when I felt the light of the Unconquered Sun lend strength to my arm, I was trapped with no way to escape the noose when Luna's grace allowed me to pull the shadows around myself, my family were proud when I received the grace of the Dragon during my seventeenth year.
• Belief: How do your characters beliefs colour their lives, were they staunch adherents of the imperial creed or a bit more free-spirited?
  Example: I was always taught that the Solar Exalted were demons and that the Wyld Hunt kept us safe now i'm not so sure, my people always feared that creatures that lurked beyond the edge of the map and now i'm one of them, I was raised to believe that the Dragonblooded were the destined rulers of the world but I don't know if i'm ready for that responsibility yet.
• Trouble: Consider your preceding aspects, which of them cause you the most complications in your life, have you made any enemies since your exaltation?
  Example: The local authorities know my face it can only be a matter of time before the Wyld Hunt seek me out, since being exalted I find civilisation increasingly stifling and long for the wilderness, I had so many plans for myself but now they all must be set aside to advance the aims of my family.

Professions

As with Jadepunk, Jade-xalted uses professions instead of Fate Core's skills to rate a character's proficiency in a particular area; these professions are:

• Warrior: Warriors come from all different backgrounds, but they all share a proficiency for violent action.
• Overcome: Feats of strength and of combative skill.
• Create advantages: Combat maneuvres and creating advantages in the heat of battle.
• Attack: Making physical attacks at close quarters and range. 
• Defend: Protecting oneself and others from physical damage.
• Priest: Priests travel the world preaching the word of the gods, in their travels they come to know the hearts of men and learn about the world during their journey.
• Overcome: Priests overcome obstacles through knowledge that they have acquired in their travels, they have to be adaptable and strong in their faith to survive.
• Create advantages: Using their knowledge of the world to their advantage or rousing the faith of other men.
• Attack: Spurring others to action through rousing speeches or engaging in a contest of faith with another.
• Defend:  Defending those of the faith or using your knowledge of the world to help protect your flock in dangerous situations.
• Sorceror: The sorceror creates engines of fantastic magitech as well as researching into matters of the arcane and occult.
• Overcome: Building or repairing magitech, sorcery and researching occult secrets of the ancient past.
• Create advantages: Scrying using magic, temporarily boosting the function of occult devices. 
• Attack: Using more baroque items of magitech or sorcerous items, casting an offensive spell.
• Defend: Unless a sorceror is controlling a magitech item that can shield them from damage or is casting a spell to shield them from harm they are unlikely to defend.
• Assassin: Deception and stealth are an assassin's main weapons along with other nefarious talents.
• Overcome: Bluffing/lying, thievery, stealth & disguise. 
• Create advantages: Creating distractions, cover stories or false impressions.
• Attack: This profession isn't used to attack directly, more likely to set up a more devastating attack.
• Defend: Using misinformation and doublespeak to throw off investigations or disguise their true motives.
• Diplomat: The diplomat is at home in polite society, always knowing the right words to say and the appropriate palms to grease.
• Overcome: Influencing others to do what you want, bartering, gaining information.
• Create advantages: Creating advantages to represent momentary emotional states. 
• Attack: Only likely to be of use in social situations or perhaps in ritualised duels. 
• Defend: Defending against attempts to ruin one's standing or blacken their reputation.

Each profession is rated with a bonus, choose one at Good (+3), two at Fair (+2) and two at Average (+1).

Hindrances in Grim World

I've recently been reading the excellent Grim World game supplement for Dungeon World and the Fate roleplaying system; if you're a fan of either game then I highly recommend that you have a look at it since there are some excellent classes and new ideas listed that can add a lot to any game. A particular section that caught my eye was titled "Dungeon World/Fate hack" and it suggested porting some elements from the Fate system over into the DW game; essentially the player picks three 'hindrances' (similar to the 'trouble aspect' in Fate) when generating their character and, whenever the GM uses the hindrance to cause them complications (as with 'compels' in Fate) the players receive a luck point that can be used to re-roll dice, gain bonuses or add improvised elements to the setting.

Effectively the hack is porting trouble aspects, GM compels and fate points into the Dungeon World setting and doing so very simply with minimal additional complication (always a positive thing in my view); it got me thinking as well that, aside from the actual effects of spending the luck points, the ideas behind this are pretty much non-system specific. I think that this idea could be used to great effect in other games, encouraging players to think a little about what causes their characters problems in their life and it also allows the players to have a little more input into the game setting, for example, if one of the players takes 'in debt with the mob' as a hindrance then you can reasonably infer that they are interesting in seeing some stories involving organised crime.

I'd love to think that people will give this idea a try in some other games, if you do, let me know how it goes :)

Mooks - Fate Accelerated GM prep time saver and one of my favourite things about the game.

Please note that in this article I am mainly talking about the mook/henchmen systems out of Fate Accelerated, however Fate Core has a similar (but slightly more detailed system) for the same thing and much of what I say in this article applies to that rules system as well (although the specifics of the actual rules differ slightly).

Recently I was preparing the session notes for my Serpents Fall Fate Accelerated fantasy game that I am running online for a group of friends via G+ hangouts (further details about this campaign can be found in previous blog posts and videos on my Youtube Channel), and I came to the oft dreaded part of the proceedings, generating the stats for the many NPCs to be included in the session. I often find this part of the session preparation fairly arduous and time consuming as I work out what stats the NPC needs to perform as expected; the complexity of this varies from system to system. Many may point out, it is possible to just fudge the stats of NPCs and run them in an improvisational manner, however I tend to prefer having something written down to maintain consistency in the setting.

In my opinion Fate Accelerated has an excellent solution that bridges the gap between improvising and planning the stats of NPCs and this is the section of the rulebook that deals with generating Mooks.

What are mooks?

Mooks are unnamed thugs and monsters that are there to provide a brief distraction for the players, to use up a few of their resources or to act as henchman for the main villain/s of the piece; they would be the stormtroopers in the Star Wars films or the legions of henchmen beloved of so many James Bond villains.

Effectively in Fate Accelerate you create these mooks by coming up with a couple of Aspects for them to reinforce what they are good and bad at and a give them 0-2 stress boxes depending on how tough you want them to be (this is relative, mooks cannot take any consequences and are taken out once their stress boxes are filled, player characters normally wade through them occasionally sustaining a little bit of damage). The only other stage is that you come up with a few descriptions of what the mook is good at and, when this applies, you add +2 to any rolls they make, you then come up with a couple of things they're bad at, and these things apply a -2 penalty to rolls when applicable, otherwise the mook just rolls at a skill level of +0.

This delightfully simply system allows you to generate all of your background NPCs and henchmen (with accompanying stats) in a very short space of time, it still allows them a narrative impact and allows you to maintain consistency should this NPC (or NPC type) ever be used again; if a henchman should be "upgraded" to a main NPC it is a simple matter to add additional Aspects and full Approaches as you would do for a main character in Fate Accelerated.

Overall it took me about fifteen minutes total to come up with the stats for the mooks that were featured in my recent Serpents Fall game, I have included some of the stats below so you can see what a potential mook looks like:

Wild BoarAspect: Ferocious charge, Blind to pain.Good (+2) at charging, goaring, shrugging off pain, tracking. Bad (-2) at intelligence, resisting provoke attempts.Stress [ ][ ]

Saxon commander (Aedelred)Aspects: For the safety of the village, I fight for honour and my lord, the law must be upheld.Good (+2) at commanding his troops, throwing/fighting with an axe. Bad (-2) resisiting challenges to his honour.Stress [ ][ ]

Please note: The following stat blocks use the group rules from Fate Accelerated, which essentially just involves lumping a group of similar mooks together into a mob and assigning the mob one stress box for every two members.

Saxon warrior group (6)Aspects: Glory & honourGood (+2) at fighting in a group. Bad (-2) at fighting on their own.Stress [ ][ ][ ]

Outlaws (20)2 bands of 10.Aspects: We've given all we're going to, rob from the rich, the woods are our home & shelter. Good (+2) at fighting from ambush/in the woods or when lead by a strong leader. Bad (-2) when fighting against organised opposition.Stress [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]

In conclusion, the system is a great time saving and removes one source of potential stress from the storyteller/GM during session preparation, given that getting a session ready can involved a fair amount of work and plannning, anything to minimise stress has to be a good idea.

How complex is Fate Core character generation?

This blog post could have alternatively been titled "how long does it take an 11 year old to generate a character in Fate Core?"

Following the recent running of my skytrain scenario (details here) for my face-to-face group, one of the members of the group expressed their dissatisfaction with the 3 stages character generation system for determining character Aspects.

What is the 3 stage character generation?

For those who aren't aware, in Fate you have 5 Aspects, these are little story tags ("best gunslinger in the west", "MI5 superspy", or whatever) that you can invoke (call upon by spending a fate point) to either get a +2 bonus on a dice roll or a complete re-roll, they can also be invoked against you by the storyteller, they essentially offer you a fate point to accept a narrative complication based on the Aspect, for example: "Since you're known as the best gunslinger in the west a young up and coming gunslinger wants to make a name for himself by taking you down and calls you out in the town square."

If you accept the complication then you receive a fate point and the scene plays out as any other scene in the game, if you don't except it then not only do you not get a fate point but you actually have to pay one to avoid it. Aspects are a great way of building a narrative around a character and of steering plot towards what you (as a player) find interesting, since, as a storyteller if one of my players has "best gunslinger in the west" then I know they're interested in high-action gunfights and it's in my best interest to include some in the game.

Okay, but what about the 3 stage creation?

Well in the game one of your Aspects is called your high concept and in a summarisation of your core concept whilst the second is your Trouble, the main source of complication in your live; in Fate Core it suggests that you determine the other three using this 3 stage creation. Essentially, in stage one you come up with a first adventure or scenario involving your character and jot down what occurred in that adventure and then pick an Aspect related to it; in the next stage you pass the notes on your adventure to the player sitting on your left (and in return receive the adventure notes from the person sitting on your right) and come up with an idea of how you had a guest spot in their adventure and pick an Aspect based on that. This repeats for stage three, the idea being to build up a web of connections between player characters before the game even starts.

I like to liken this process to superhero films, with the actual session being the Avengers film, where all the heroes come together and the three stages being the solo-hero films (with odd guest spots from other heroes) that came before.

So what does this have to do with an 11 year old generating a character?

I have to admit to being taken by surprise when one of my players expressed dissatisfaction with the 3 stage process (a part of the character generation that I had always thought to be fairly straight-forward and useful to avoid that often stilted 'meeting up' scene in RPGs), since i've used it in a number of Fate Core games and it's never been a problem. Of course, this part of character generation, is easily jettisoned, characters can simply invent their Aspects with no real harm to the game; however, my more pro-active player also seemed a little taken aback by the idea that the character generation was in any way difficult (having being unable to make the character generation session, but still managing to create his character in about fifteen minutes at the start of the session).

He proposed an experiment, his 11 year old son had recently expressed an interest in roleplaying, so he bought the lad over and both him and myself went through creating a couple of characters using the Fate Core system. Wanting to stick to something that the boy was familiar with (since he's never really done any RP before), we created military characters in a Call of Duty style. Timing the character generation we took half an hour to create the two characters using the 3 stage method, and this included time to explain a few things about Aspects, Stunts and Skill. Granted the characters we ended up with (a ghost-like stealth operative who had been sequestered for this mission after successfully blowing up an enemy submarine and a mercenary pilot who had been bounced from the regular army following an incident with collateral damage) weren't the most nuanced characters, nor were they the most detailed, however they were both perfectly playable and already had links and a reason for working together.

Think about it, I believe that the Fate system in general seems to work better for people who think more about the story/narrative of a game (although granted it isn't a great fit for every type of setting, since no game can do everything perfectly) whereas those who prefer to jump into the stats of a character and then fit a background of this seem to not enjoy it so much. That is just my own experience though; when I next run Fate Core, if it's a one-off then i'm going to have pre-generated characters created (with some limited customisation options) and if it's a campaign I may adopt something similar to how background and character connections work in Dungeon World to help determine Aspects.

RPG Blog Carnival - December 2013: Taking Charge

The RPG Blog Carnival is an idea to get groups of bloggers to all writing about a monthly topic, the aim being to build a dialogue across many different blogs, providing different viewpoints and ideas to the viewer. The way it works is that a blog discussing a monthly topic will post the RPG Carnival Logo and will link back to the 'hosters' post.

This month the topic is taking charge.

Original post :

http://runeslinger.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/december-13-rpg-blog-carnival-taking-charge/

"Taking Charge. This could be interpreted in any number of ways, such as (not limited to), outlining ways a group of characters can be more proactive in their affairs, a group of players choosing to improve their existing gaming habits (including the GM), players stepping up to make more effective use of their agency as co-conspirators an contributors to a campaign, and/or getting a good grip on a game that is out of control and going nowhere. It could entail fiction, examples of actual play, discussion of tools like social contracts or statements of purpose, and more. As the year comes to a close and people get retrospective (and wonder why there is so much left-over turkey still in the fridge despite days and days of sandwiches) a topic like ‘taking charge’ might take a tone of cleaning house, evaluating the current state of affairs in your own game, or your chosen niche zone within the hobby, or setting the stage for what will come next at your table, real or virtual. There are many places this topic can take writers and readers during the December Blog Carnival. "

Okay, i've arrived fairly late at this months RPG Carnival post, slipping in on the final day of 2013 just as the shutters are being drawn and moments before the 'closed' sign is going to be turned on the previous year, however, I think the concept of "taking charge" is a great one to discuss because it is a topic often raised during RPG sessions and campaigns and has a lot in common with recent discussions on GM roles amongst the Youtube RPG brigade (my video response to this topic can be found here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aURyyMSXFqM ).

Campaign Preparation Sessions

One thing I have been looking at recently following my reading of the Odyssey Campaign Management Guide (which is a very useful book and I review it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-350PrvUUA on my Youtube channel) is the idea of having either one or several structured meetings with the players when you first start to plan an RPG campaign to ensure that everyone gets what they want (as much as is possible) out of the game that you are going to run and that you, as a GM, also get a level of enjoyment from the session. I think this is very important because i've seen and run a few campaigns where one or two players have gone along with the campaign concept because others liked it and haven't really invested in the game as a result, this is a sure-fire way to end up with players losing interest and perhaps dropping the game altogether; by the same token i've also seen (and been in this situation myself) GMs so bent on ensuring player enjoyment that they forget or sacrifice their own enjoyment in the game, since such a lot of the campaign management (both during and between sessions) rests on the GMs shoulders, although it's certainly possible to delegate and share some of this work amongst your player group, having a GM who isn't enjoying themselves rarely leads to a long running campaign and usually in my experience results in a campaign slowly sliding towards inevitable collapse as the GM becomes burnt out and loses all enthusiasm.

So how does this relate to taking charge?

Well, if you just ask your players what sort of game they want, you are taking a scatter-gun approach to the whole thing and will inevitably end up with a whole mess of ideas that do not work together or that you have to wade through in order to get to any useful information; a far better way to manage these initial brainstorming ideas is for the GM to take charge and direct the course of the discussion. Asking specific questions from your players will normally yield better and more targetted results that asking something vague like "what sort of game do you want?"

What sort of questions should I ask?

My Rogue Trader campaign will be coming to an end soon (probably within the next 3-6 games depending on player action) as the players resolve the nefarious actions of the Word Bearers chaos space marines in the Endeavour system and, wanting to plan a little further ahead than I normally do after reading the excellent Odyssey Campaign Management Guide, I gathered the players for my next campaign together recently and sat them down with the intend of discussing what i'd run for the next game.

I came in with no real preconceptions of what sort of game we might end up with, but I did note down a few things about my players:

• One of the players prefers heroic fantasy.
• One really enjoys a sense of place and recurring background NPCs that change and can be interacted with.
• One of the players generally prefers to play a mage or something magical.
• The other player is pretty flexible and will try most games.

When I sat them down I first of all asked the following questions:

• What sort of genre would people prefer to play in?
• My group, having been currently engaged in a dark science fiction setting wanted to try something a little different and after a bit of discussion decided that they wanted to play a fantasy setting, but not the normal faux-medieval fantasy that we were all so familiar with from a number of previous games.

• What rules system would people like to use?
• After a bit of a debate the players were quite keen to use the Dungeon World rules, having played a couple of one-offs we all really enjoyed those rules and wanted to keep to a fairly fast-paced, story-based system but, given that the current game is Fate based (and i'm already running an additional Fate game), wanted to try something different and Dungeon World seemed like a good match; it also encourages a group world creation and collaborative story-telling between players and GM, something that we have all been enjoying in recent games.

So armed with the knowledge that my players wanted to play a non-standard fantasy game using the Dungeon World system, the next thing I asked them were what their 'must-haves' (their 'deal breakers' if you will) were for this game and, after some discussion we eventually whittled it down to the following list:

• A rougher, grittier, more survival based game.
• The PCs playing underdog heroes fighting against overwhelming odds.
• A semi-permanent base of operations/game area with a number of background NPCs.
• A Robin Hood-esque feel where the PCs are outlaws fighting for the right against an oppressive government.

With these four deal breakers in mind we started discussing whether there were any sort of campaign worlds available that met these criteria and, given that Dungeon World has very much a D&D feel, we started with D&D campaign worlds and eventually chose the Dark Sun world of Athas, with the player characters working outside the law to overthrow the despotic sorceror king of a small city state. A quick question fired off to the Dungeon World G+ community (https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/100662698267895582168/communities/100084733231320276299) and some judicious scouting on the web revealed that some people had already kindly produced some DW material for the Dark Sun setting and also lead me to the official Dark Sun website (http://www.athas.org/).

So how did taking charge help?

In addition to allowing us to more quickly get to the meat of the matter at hand rather than spending hours talking around the subject (and probably getting nowhere) directing the flow of conversation into specific channels resulted in making us all aware of the elements that interest the various players (and myself), this will be great for the health of the game since (as the GM) I will be able to refer back to this list and ensure that I am including elements to draw all of the players in and keep them interested in the game.

The meetup we have done so far is only the first of several that I plan to do in advance of creating the campaign, and in the following meetings I also intend to take charge and target the discussion at specific areas, in the next meetup I intend to discuss some of the particulars of the game area and highlight whether the players actual want to run the game within the Dark Sun setting or whether they just want something similar.

Handling Absent Players in Fate

Handling Absent Players in Fate

We've just gone through the lean winter months of RPing running up to Christmas when family events and real-world commitments start to really make it hard to get a game going, even regular groups start to experience trouble (unless extremely commited) as plans have to be made and re-made in order to accomodate all the many various social events and other things that occur in the time surrounding Christmas; having had to reschedule a number of games recently due to this my thoughts have recently turned to how to handle absent players in my online Fate game.

I've recently been reading "Odyssey: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Campaign Management" (a review can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-350PrvUUA), and it contains some good advice for setting down the rules of the social contact between the GM and the players in a roleplay group; from that and my own ideas i've been able to start formulating some rules that I intend to adhere to in my game going forwards to help minimalise last minute disruptions/cancellations, i've noted them below and then gone into my reasoning in a little more detail.

• Choose a more regular time for the game to take place.
• Determine how many players are the minimum for the game to go ahead.
• Come up with rules for how to handle the characters of missing players.

Choosing a more regular time for the game to take place

At the moment we tend to negotiate the date for the next session when we reach the end of the currently running one, initially this was because the players had trouble committing to a more regular time (due to altering work rotas, etc) and it was thought that through choosing it nearer the time it would minimise the amount of absences; this hasn't really proven to be the case and I feel that not having a regular time causes players to feel less committed to the game or likely to be able to make plans around a session date, so it is my intent (at the beginning of next session) to discuss a regular day for the game with the players, if someone can't make the odd one then hopefully the next couple of points should still allow the game to progress.

Determine how many players are the minimum for the game to go ahead

My current minimum of number of players for whom i'll run the normal game is going to be 50% of the player party (in this case 2 players), should I have lower than this then, rather than abandoning the game, I will run a flashback/side-quest for the player that I do have, filling in some part of their character's history and will then return to the 'present day' of the game when we have 50% or more players.

Come up with rules for how to handle the characters of missing players

My current plan is that the characters of any missing players will be available as an Aspect that can be used to aid the players who are present, for example, if Gunnar Kron's player can't make it then the group will gain "Gunnar Kron, haunted norse warrior" or something similar as an Aspect, although Gunnar would not take part in a combat or encounter normally, if a PC found themselves in a situation where Gunnar could conceivably help then they could spend a Fate Point and invoke Gunnar Kron like any other Aspect.

I've not yet decided what i'd do regarding potential compels on these Aspects.

RPG dilemnas - Fate and Encouraging hesitant players

It occurred to me recently, following a character genning session that took an awful lot longer than I expected for a Fate Core game (so long in-fact that we had to reschedule the game for another evening), that a character creation system that seemed so streamlined and simple for myself may not be so for other; as a die-hard Fate fan I personally find the creation of Aspects and generating a character very simple and easy to do, because i've always got a fair few ideas for characters and the system allows me to create something that matches these ideas.

But what about people who perhaps don't have such a lot of character ideas buzzing around in their head? This doesn't make them any worse roleplayers by any means, however, whilst there has been some discussion about the fact that Fate adopts a certain approach towards a game and that it doesn't suit all games equally (after all no one system is going to be perfect for all styles of game "out of the box" as it were), perhaps the default method of character generation isn't necessarily suitable for all people.

I observed a few main "issues" during the character creation for a repeat of my Wild Blue one-off during character generation (I have put some suggestions for resolving this in blue underneath each point):

• Some players had difficult thinking up suitable powers or working out how to frame them within the rules system.
  Greater familiarity with the rules would help here and perhaps creating a list of example powers would have given them a good starting point.
• There was some trouble with thinking of reasonable ways to link the different characters together using the 'three phase method' listed in the Fate Core rulebook.
  Perhaps toning down the number of phases to just having a starting story/phase for each character and then allowing them to come up with their Aspects in a more freestyle manner; although doing this would then require a different method of linking the characters together.
• Stunt creation caused some notable pauses as the players struggled slightly with deciding on what they wanted their stunts to do.
  The example stunts listed in the Fate Core book helped in this regard as did referring back to the characters core concept.

I think that in retrospect I would probably have been better to create some (either fully or partially complete) pre-gen characters that the players could choose from and perhaps tweak to make more to their liking since, whilst I think having a full session for character generation is all well and good for a longer running campaign, it seems a little OTT for a one-off. Hopefully coming up with some pre-gens in future would also make it a little easier on those people who struggle with getting over that initial imagination 'hurdle' when it comes to creating a character idea.

Keeping Track of Aspects for our Serpents Fall Game

I'm always looking for ways to improve our online Serpents Fall game (and indeed any game that I run), it occurred to me recently that part of the reason that players might not be as on the ball with Self-compels and using Aspects may be (in part or in full) due to them being unaware of the Aspects that are actually available for them to use.

It's my intention, starting from next session to have a document (probably in the same Google Drive where the character sheets are stored) that lists all of the player Aspects and also any scene/NPC Aspects that the player characters are aware of available so that they can simply flick to the document in order to see what Aspects are available for use.

At the moment the document will look something like this:

* * *

Aspects Available

SCENE ASPECTS


NPC ASPECTS


CHARACTER ASPECTS

• Ozuchi Komodo
• Last of the Komodo Tribe
• Those Stygian Shaman will stop at nothing
• Medicine man
• Easily assimilates local culture
• Stygian
• One day I will return to Stygia and unite my people as the prophecy foretold

• Horesh Komani
• Initiate sorceror death-priest
• Uncomfortable with living energies
• Destined for sorcerous greatness
• Skilled with ceremonial obsidian death knives
• Khemrian
• It is my destiny to become the most powerful death-priest in Khemria

• Gunnar Kron
• Raiding party warrior
• Murderous reputation
• Experience raider
• Warriors instincts
• Norsican
• I will redeem my past

• Captain Benito
• Cursed pirate captain
• Cursed to never again sail the seas
• Lemurian Heritage
• Stick to the code
• Member of the Scarlet Brotherhood
• One day I will take back my rightful place as the Pirate King

* * *

It is also my intent to discuss with the players re-wording their Aspects slightly to make them into phrases that could more comfortably form part of a normal sentence, some of them already fulfil this criteria but I think there's room to make them a little bit more descriptive now that we're all a little more comfortable with how Aspects work.

Fate Accelerated - Vehicles - First draft

The below vehicle scale is based on the scale rules from Legends of Anglerre.

I was forced to scrap the idea of having no stress boxes, only consequences because I wanted to make the larger scale vehicles more difficult to kill but didn't want the players/GM to have to track a vast number of additional consequences.

Each vehicle has it's approaches rated at +0 by default and receives a number of points (based on their scale) to spend on increasing their ratings on a one to one basis.

Vehicles can only directly attack others that are a maximum of 2 scale points lower or higher than their own (individual human sized characters count as scale 1), each Stunt devoted to this matter can increase this limit by a single point.

Otherwise Stunts generally work the same as normal in Fate Accelerated (either adding a +2 in certain circumstances or allowing the vehicle to accomplish something 'cool' 1/session as per the Fate Accelerated rulebook); each Stunt costs a point of the vehicles Refresh (no vehicle may have a Refresh of less than 1).

RPG Blog Carnival - November 2013: Invasion of the Pod People

The RPG Blog Carnival is an idea to get groups of bloggers to all writing about a monthly topic, the aim being to build a dialogue across many different blogs, providing different viewpoints and ideas to the viewer. The way it works is that a blog discussing a monthly topic will post the RPG Carnival Logo and will link back to the 'hosters' post.

This month the topic is situated around plots and treason! Suggestions of political or military coups or circumstances that maybe through design or the wrong location at the wrong time result in your PCs getting tangled up in matters that are usually hidden by shadows.

Original post : http://nearlyenoughdice.com/november-blog-carnival-gunpowder-treason-and-plots

As per my original post on this subject (http://wh40krpg.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/rpg-blog-carnival-november-2013.html) I enjoy occasionally subverting the normal stereotypes that are expected in RPGs to create a more interesting scenario. Such is the case in this scenario...

Invasion of the Pod People

Please note: I have tried to keep this scenario fairly generic so that it could be dropped into different games with a minimum of effort, NPCs do not have concrete stats however I have tried to give them keywords to hint at what sort of statistics they should have.

This story is inspired by the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a modern day game based loosely on the film recently run by a friend of mine.

Synopsis: The players discover that a number of members of the galactic senate/government are being replaced by a strange race of biological mimics descended from plant growths; what is the goal of the strange plant creatures? How far do their roots extend into the galactic senate and would rule by the pod people be so terrible?

Background: This scenario assumes the presence of a galactic government or senate, the scale of this is left deliberately vague (it could be a single sector or a galaxy spanning Empire, whatever your story requires).

The story also assumes that most NPCs are human, this can be altered in your game to suit as long as the distinction between the pod-people and the 'normal' races of your campaign is obvious.

How are the players bought into this story: This story begins with the players discovering that not everyone in the galactic senate is what they appear to be; there are a number of ways that this could happen, some of them are listed below:

• The assassination of Senator Vree: One of the galactic senators is assassinated in the presence of the players via a suitably gruesome method (high powered rifle, explosion, etc), the players discover that instead of blood, a deep green sap-like substance stains the area around the crime scene.
• The players witness a group of figures kidnapping a member of the galactic senate, the next day the Senator appears to give a speech and seems fine (denying any suggestion of kidnapping, saying the player characters must have been mistaken); however during the speech Senator Sevan does not push for increased resource mining in the asteroid belts strewn throughout the system, but instead calls for a more careful husbanding of resources.
• One of the players (or a group of them) is kidnapped, they wake up in a cell with a strange plant or pod attached to them by whispy rootlets, when they break free the pod cracks open, pouring out a dark green slime and revealing a slimey, half-formed doppleganger of themselves.
• The characters are asteroid miners, the corporation they work for has been granted extensive mining rights by the Galactic Senate, the players weren't on the initial survey team but since then the digs seem cursed with numerous accidents threatening to shut down production.

The Ashpodel (Pod People)

The Ashpodel are a species of subterranean plant that live within the fissures of the many asteroids strewn throughout the system, although intelligent and possessing a collective intelligence they are generally happy to just lie around soaking up the cosmic radiation that sustains them; this all changed when the Galactic Senate gave approval for increased mining rights to a number of large corporations within the area. Previously operations were limited to a number of small asteroids and the intelligence plants generally ignored the operations, keeping out of the humans way and being mistaken for more mundane varieties of asteroid based plant-life, however the more recent industrial scale operations threaten the larger asteroids and the very existence of the pod people.

If you imagine each of the plants as a cell in a large brain, shedding one or two cells (as was the case with the few plants that died previously during the small scale mining operations) would not harm the whole, however, the new operations threaten to wipe out vastly more of the plants.

Unable to move in their natural form the plants have taken to colonising the miners themselves and the group-intelligence behind them is attempting to use its pawns to have the mining operations in the sector shut down.

It goes about it (assuming it is not interrupted) using the following steps:

• Takes control of Theo Lerant, the person overseeing the mining operation (this has occurred before the start of the game) and used him to send lots of people to the various asteroids (ostensibly for surveying purposes), these people are themselves then colonised and used as pawns. Once this is done the overseers arranges a series of accidents that slow down/halt the progress of the actual mining.
• The plants new pawns carry seeds in their bodies back to their homeworlds, each attempting to infect someone of importance.
• Since the plants absorb the knowledge of the people they infect and take-over it does not take them long to work out that the Galactic Senate controls who has access to the mining rights, their number one priority then becomes infecting someone high up in the council and preventing further mining.

Azoic Mining Corporation

The Azoic Mining Corporation is a multi-system conglomerate who specialises in planting mining rigs on asteroids and space debris and then drilling into them to mine various minerals that they then sell on for a profit; the company is run by Theola Saren daughter of retired business mogul Thanus Saren, and she sees it as something of a family legacy to take a direct hand in running the business.

Previously mining in this system has been restricted due to the fact that surveying showed a profundity of asteroid based plant-life in the area; however Theola has acquired some evidence of a personal 'indiscretion' by Senator Sevan and has used this as leverage to persuade the senator to back her call for exclusive mining rights in the system. Faced with the ruination of his career, Senator Sevan has used his popularity and contacts within the senate to push through the mining rights and grant exclusive (and extensive) mining rights to the Azoic Mining Corporation; in return he received a generous kickback and the only copy of the evidence of his indiscretion.

Yuo Lerant is the person overseeing the mining operations and initial asteroid surveying; following an incident on a large asteroid designated KT206 Theo and his team were all infected by the Ashpodel. Following the plants master plan Yuo dispatched survey teams to each of the asteroids housing the plants (this may be a way for canny players to locate the source of the infection if they can get Yuo's records) where they too were infected. Each of the survey teams then returned and carried spores within their bodies ready to infect more people following the Ashpodel's plan.

In order to prevent any further mining menacing the Ashpodel and to dispose of the few members of the mining crew who weren't infected, Yuo and his infected cronies arranged a series of 'accidents' where a lot of miners were killed; this has caused mining operations to be shut down whilst an investigation is carried out (by the time this is underway the Ashpodel plan to have worked their way into the Senate).

Annoyed by the lack of progress and accident rate, Theola has arrived in system to head the investigation personally, looking for trustworthy people to help delve into the cause of the problems.

The goals of the corporation are:

• Find out what has caused the current incidents.
• Allay the fears/concerns of the Galactic Senate.
• Get production and mining re-started.