Fate: Best Practices

 

In a fit of nostalgia this week, I appeared on a podcast (Mastering Dungeons; long-time listener, first-time guest) talking about Fate, of all things. I was ostensibly there to talk about campaign creation, but I was, uh, all over the place. It brought up a lot of thoughts about Fate in general, some of which made it into the conversation, but many of which stayed on my page of notes (I had notes). And I thought, hey, if I were still blogging regularly, this could make a plausible blog post. So that's what it is now.

These are just things that, IMO, make Fate really shine.

Play honestly. I talked about this a little on the podcast, but Fate is not a game that's overly concerned with things like balance and action-economy. If you go into it looking for ways to exploit the system, you will find them, and you will make the game less-fun for you and everyone at the table. Play the character your aspects say you are; conversely, give your character aspects that make them a fun, integral part of the story rather than an efficiency-machine. Given Fate's roots in the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game and the goals of its creators, it should come as no surprise -- if I had a nickel for every time I've heard Lenny Balsera say "F#ck balance," I'd have about 35 cents. Let us also heed Ryan Macklin's famous warning that "The math will f#ck you." I may have those attributions reversed, or maybe they've both said them, possibly simultaneously at the Big Bar on 2 at Origins. Regardless, nothing but respect for these two foul-mouthed kings and their massive contributions to our beloved Fate.

Rename skills and approaches. This really only applies if you're making your own campaign, but for a Fate game set in a very particular time and place, I think one of the best things you can do to set the tone is to tailor your game's skills and/or approaches (or whatever your equivalent) to match. Fisticuffs instead of Fight. Skullduggery instead of Deceive. That kind of thing. Til Dawn's approaches -- Chill, Dark, Fabulous, Fierce, Shady, and Technical -- are a great example of this. They don't correspond to FAE's usual Careful, Flashy, et al., but they indelibly lay out what your mindset should be as a player or as a GM. This is a game about futuristic, gender-bending mecha-DJs getting in and out of drama while musically battling it out with other futuristic, gender-bending mecha-DJs on stage. Imagine how much less evocative that'd all be if its approaches weren't so distinctive.

Go hard against the PCs. Don't hold back, GM. If it gets too hot for the player, they can always concede. In fact, make getting them to concede a primary goal, when the story warrants it. To do this, start with overpowering your major NPCs. The PCs have a top skill of Superb (+5)? Cool, this guy has Legendary (+7) Skull-Cracking. The players will frequently have a fate-point advantage over you, and an easy way to compensate for that is by just upping the skills/approaches of your important NPCs. Just keep the focus on offense. A superhuman ability to avoid damage will make for a superhumanly boring badguy. Overpowered antagonists virtually force the PCs to work together, creating advantages for each other and coming up with creative solutions beyond "I guess I hit him again." That dynamic is one of Fate's key strengths, IMO, so lean into it.

"Save your fate points for being awesome." You can't really talk about how to run a great Fate game without invoking (no pun intended) Morgan Ellis, whom I associate closely with these wise words. Setting aside the profound life-lesson this phrase represents to me, the idea here is to value what your character can do by spending your fate points on exciting action rather than avoiding the repercussions of someone else's action. Not to say that you should let yourself get taken out of a conflict, but don't pillow-fort and fritter away your precious narrative currency on playing it safe. Take some stress. Take consequences. Hell, take all the consequences, then concede and get more fate points to spend on being awesome later. The one tiny bit of Fate that I think everyone can agree isn't the greatest (how's that for diplomatic?) is that a successful defense doesn't explicitly force the fiction to change. Success with style gets you a boost, and a tie gets the attacker a boost, but there's that little two-shift range in there where kinda nothing happens. We don't like that. So really, there's no reason to not just take a point or two of stress instead. And then you can spend the fate point you saved on being awesome later on.

But do spend your fate points. Sort of a corollary to the above. The worst way to end a session of Fate is with a pile of fate points in front of you. What a waste! You probably earned those fate points with compels and GM-manipulation, so spend them already. One way you can at least limit the hoarder's tendency to hoard is by making the players "discard" fate points down to their refresh at the end of each scene. Or if you want to be more severe, refresh could double as your fate point maximum as well (although that could cause problems of its own, but that'd be a whole other blog post). Point is (again with the unintended puns!), spend 'em if you got 'em. They're not doing anyone any good otherwise. Spend fate points, be awesome.

I think that's it, and honestly this went way beyond my notes, so it ended up being more thorough than I'd expected. But now I want to hear from you, as seemingly every YouTuber says at the end of a video. What's your advice for getting the most out of Fate? And thanks again to Shawn and Teos of Mastering Dungeons for having me on.

[Faith Corps] Star Wars: Maintaining Tone

Hera looking irritated. Or maybe under pressure.

After playtesting that Star Wars Rebels scenario I'm running at the end of the month at Gamex, I've decided to make some minor changes.

The playtest was fun, and the characters felt right, but I like it when a game's (or, in this case, hack's) mechanics support the tone of the thing we're trying to emulate. Obviously all of us human beings involved in the game are largely responsible for that, but when the game constrains our choices in certain areas such that we have no choice but to maintain tone... I like that. (I tried to take that to a bit of an extreme with the long-languishing Sparks Nevada RPG by mechanically incentivizing not just roleplaying, but saying certain things associated with the canon characters.)

One of these changes is deviating from a recommendation in Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors RPG (for such is our source of Faith Corps mechanics, in much the same way that, for years, Spirit of the Century was our source of Fate -- or, back then, FATE) in a small but important way.

The Demon Hunters way of handling a mob of minions is to give them a die code for "Mob of X" -- which works great -- plus a few other dice, and then a number of mild conditions. For a small mob, the recommendation is five or six mild conditions. As you might expect, that makes for some super-resilient mooks, way more resilient than I expect the default minions of a Rebels game -- stormtroopers -- to be.

In play, even three mild conditions was too much, in fact. They just stuck around too long, especially for the in-medias-res intro scene in which I used them. Thus, I'm dropping them down to one or two. Typically in Rebels, stormtroopers are more pressure than major enemy. They're usually used as either an excuse for a relatively brief fight scene, or as a reason to run/give up when they show up in overwhelming numbers. The former case is a 10-minute fight, the latter is a compel. Er, endure. (Endurance, maybe? What's the noun form of "endure" that's equivalent to "compel" used as a noun? We haven't gotten there yet.)

The other change is more of a thing, and it's this: pre-defining conditions for the PCs. In the heat of the playtest moment, I found myself tossing out really lazy conditions, like "Blasted" and "Oh My, More Blasting." Now, should I be a better GM? Absolutely. Boldface, italics, underline, of course I should.

But later I realized that the reason I was going for those goofy conditions was that I didn't want to stop and think of a good condition in the middle of the action. Plus, the easy, go-to conditions (like "Blasted") aren't really appropriate for Rebels. You don't see the crew of the Ghost getting actually shot a whole lot.

So! Pre-defined conditions -- more like conditions as presented in the Fate System Toolkit -- help with that. But defining them on a per-character basis means that you can force every character to react to stress differently, which means the players' choices all fall into the category of "Things That Reinforce Tone."

The companion alteration to this is to say that mild conditions clear at the end of the scene, a la stress in Fate Core. What that means is that mild conditions become new aspects with a lifespan of one scene, so you can use them to further characterize a PC without using up character resources like approach/discipline dice, aspects, or stunts to do so. Moderate and severe conditions stick around for longer, so you can use those to show how the events of an episode change the character for the length of that episode (in the case of moderate conditions) or an entire story arc (for severe conditions).

Every PC can take as many as three mild conditions, like before, but they have five conditions to choose from, so they're not locked into being the same way all the time. And none of these mild conditions involve actual injury (well, except for Zeb) -- they're more about the mental toll the events of the scene are taking.

For example, Hera Syndulla's five mild-condition choices are:

• Under Pressure
• Nervous
• Irritated
• Flustered
• Protective of ______________

As the scene goes on, and Hera fails to defend against all those aforesaid stormtroopers' various hails of blaster-fire, the effect might be that she thinks, "I've gotta think of a way out of this -- fast!" Or maybe "How are we going to get out of this?" Or "This is the last thing I needed today!" Or "If I could just have two seconds of peace I could think of a way out of this!" Or "Hey, Kanan's in trouble!"

These don't account for every single reaction Hera might have to failing to defend against blaster-fire, but it's a good variety, and they all feel in-character to me. And they reinforce this important but oft-overlooked maxim: Failing to defend against an attack doesn't necessarily mean being physically injured by that attack.

Here are Ezra Bridger's:

• Overconfident
• Mouthy
• Impatient
• Stubborn
• Protective of ______________

Quite a bit different. If Ezra fails to defend against that same blaster-fire, he's more like to think "These guys are chumps!" or quip "Is that the best you bucket-heads can do?" He's liable to worry about his shipmates in the moment too, from time to time, but the big ones to me are Stubborn and Impatient (and, to a lesser degree, Overconfident), because it ties into his emerging Dark Side tendencies. He doesn't walk around with yellow eyes and a black cloak when things are good, but when pressured, he can definitely lean that way. (Probably doesn't help that he's a teenager.)

I do want to talk about moderate and severe conditions, because they're their own respective beasts, but this is long enough as it is. I'm going to save that for another blog post. Hey, anything that gets me posting more than once a month is fine by me.

[Faith Corps] Hey, Star Wars!

Event pre-reg for this year's installment of Gamex opens tomorrow at noon, and one of the games I'll be running there is a highly anticipated (by me) Faith Corps treatment of Star Wars Rebels.

Your first question may be, "Mike, what're you, some kinda bag of hammers? How could you misspell 'Fate Core' so completely?" Fair question. Rude, but fair.

Twist answer: I didn't! Faith Corps is the game system that powers the new edition of Demon Hunters: A Comedy of Terrors RPG. Designed by Cam Banks and Amanda Valentine -- maybe you've heard of them? -- it's mostly a blend of Fate Accelerated Edition and Cortex Plus with a little Atomic Robo thrown in. I've used it for a couple of Star Wars games at conventions since last fall, and I'm really digging it. The mechanics are pretty similar to Cortex Plus, with plenty of room to play around with different dice tricks, but it plays almost identically to Fate, so it's been very intuitive for me. (And, y'know, just different enough to trip me up sometimes.) And since it's that close to Fate, well, I figure talking about it on this blog is fair game.

Anyway, last fall I ran a Faith Corps Star Wars game called Rebel Scum in which the PCs were Imperial Intelligence in the nascent days of the Alliance to the Restore the Republic. They were tasked with infiltrating a Rebel cell and finding out what they could about the Alliance's plans. What they ended up doing was assassinating Mon Mothma, framing someone else for it (right before convincing a group of Rebels to space him), and assuming leadership of the Rebellion. Take that, canon!

I followed that up in February She-Devils of the Outer Rim, a mash-up of volume 7 of Atomic Robo with a bunch of EU stuff I'd never heard of before I found it on Wookieepedia. Given the source material, I'd expected and planned for a whole lotta dogfighting -- came up with some simple dogfighting rules and wrote up a bunch of ships, using WEG Star Wars and the X-Wing minis games as general guides -- but they didn't really end up doing much. Point is, I have a set of good, workable, easy dogfighting rules. Plus sweet Star Wars-ized portraits of four She-Devils from Robo, courtesy of Scott Wegener.

At the end of the month, at Gamex, I'll be running this Star Wars Rebels scenario. It's the first time I've really statted up canon Star Wars characters of any kind, let alone such fairly well-known ones, so the pressure's kind of on (in my mind). I managed a playtest of most of it last night with four local gamer-friends, and it went well, so I'm looking forward to the real thing. I'm trying to blend elements from a few different eras of the Star Wars saga; we'll see if it's too much. Of course, by then it'll be too late, but whatever. Come play it anyway! 

(If it goes well, I'll try to run it on-demand at Origins and, assuming I can make it up there, put it on the schedule for Big Bad Con.)

[Atomic Robo] OGL Rules Now Available!

Yes! It is literally in writing!

Thanks to the kindness of the Fate More Kickstarter backers, many new rules systems from both ARRPG and ARRPG: Majestic 12 have been OGL-ified (by me!) and are now online! For you! All for you! Right here! Click this link!

These subsystems include:

• Modes! Modes had previously appeared in the Fate System Toolkit, but in a rather abbreviated form. The OGL has the full Robo treatment.
• Custom skills! Point-based skill construction rules, similar in spirit and intent to Strange Fate's custom skills, but much simpler.
• Stunts and mega-stunts! Ripped from the pages of ARRPG!
• Brainstorms! Players, take the wheel!
• Invention! Includes the variant used in Majestic 12!
• Mission briefings! Sorta like brainstorms, but different! Look, I don't have time to go into it now!
• And nothing more!

I'm looking forward to seeing what other people might create using this stuff. Fate has always had a strong fan community full of builders and hackers; it's always a pleasure to contribute more toys to the toybox.

[Fate More] Get On It!

Hola, amigos! I know it's been a long time since I rapped atcha, but I've been hecka busy. Or... neglectful. Little of both, probably.

Anyway, I come to you today with an important message about Fate More.

What's Fate More? See, this is the problem.

Fate More is Evil Hat's Kickstarter campaign to publish more Fate material in hard-copy form. Most of this material has already been written and even released in PDF form, so the Kickstarter is basically just about covering the costs of printing and distributing these titles. It's already successfully funded, as you may be aware, but it's entering its final 48 hours and there are some really fantastic stretch goals and "Extras" that may go tragically unfulfilled. And the very thought of that makes the Hulk sad.

Or maybe just angry.

What's been unlocked so far? ONLY ALL OF THIS:

• Venture City, a greatly expanded Venture City Stories. Fate supers!
• Do: Fate of the Flying Temple, a standalone FAE take and sorta sequel to Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.
• Young Centurions, a FAE prequel to Spirit of the Century featuring young-adult PCs and all that that entails.
• Atomic Robo: Majestic 12, a supplement for ARRPG all about playing Majestic 12 agents as the good guys (because they are). Brian Clevinger coughed up a bunch more detail on Robo's world, and I wrote some fun new mechanics for M12 missions and requisitions, then it was edited and laid out -- I'm getting too detailed here. Point is, it exists, and you can get it through this Kickstarter.

In addition, Evil Hat will release an open-license version of ARRPG's rules for modes, mega-stunts, and brainstorms. And I guess I'll have something to do with that, too. And if you think that's cool, there are plans to open-license other stuff, including:

• Venture City's power-construction rules.
• War of Ashes' miniatures combat rules -- that I wrote!
• Lots of cool new mechanics from various Fate Worlds & Adventures releases -- many of which involved me somehow to varying degrees!

(Forgive me for focusing on stuff I wrote or edited, but it's my blog.)

Speaking of the Fate Worlds & Adventures line, that's kinda the main thrust of this whole thing -- compiling them into full-color hardcovers. 

The campaign's almost certainly going to hit that $50K stretch goal, which includes two things I worked on (PK Sullivan's The Three Rocketeers and Nick Pilon's Frontier Spirit). But it's the third one, at $80K, that I most want to see succeed, because it contains Deep Dark Blue, which is the closest I've come to actually writing one of these things myself. The actual author is Lore Graham, who created and wrote the bulk of it, but I'm technically credited as a writer, I believe, mostly for my submarine construction and combat rules. So, y'know, for purely selfish reasons, I'd like to be able to hold that in my hands. 

And, uh, so would you! Right? Because it also has Slip, which has got to be the weirdest of these things I've worked on (in a good way, of course), and Eagle Eyes and House of Bards. Imagine, an entire house of bards!

(I didn't work on anything in Worlds Rise Up, unfortunately, but it has four cool settings of its own: Behind the Walls, Sails Full of Stars, Gods and Monsters, and Nest. I wasn't involved with them and don't really know anything significant about them either, but Evil Hat don't make no trash.)

If this is you -- not literally Atomic Robo from 1926, but metaphorically -- Evil Hat explains it a lot more thoroughly in this Kickstarter update. And while you're there, back the thing! You only have about 48 hours left to help bring hard copies of these books (and all that open content) into existence!

[Atomic Robo] On Modes

Wow, I really thought I'd posted once in October! I've had a hack I've wanted to blog about for the past six weeks or more.

Anyway, something more pressing has come up. Jonathan Hobbs asked on Twitter for more guidance regarding the creation and implementation of modes in homebrew Fate games. Specifically, he had these questions:

How do I identify the key areas of competency to represent? 

Well, for ARRPG it was pretty easy, to be honest -- I knew Action and Science had to be in there, because of Action Scientists. Neither of those really covered talking, which is another thing characters in the comic do, seeing as how most of them are human and all. Thus, Banter. And then I had some other standard Fate Core skills left over, like Burglary, Deception, and Stealth -- again, all things humans need to be able to do -- which suggested the need for a fourth mode: Intrigue.

This is a bigger issue than just this, though. You're really asking "What is my game about?" If it weren't a game about scientists, there wouldn't have been a Science mode. 

What is the impact of a larger or smaller number of modes? 

Something Fred Hicks and I realized in the early days of Robo's development was that with four standard modes, you're really deciding "Which one of these isn't important to me?" Which is great for fast character creation, because your range of choices is very manageable. "She's not good with people" translates easily to not having the Banter mode.

So I think four's the practical minimum, or you don't have any real choice at chargen. Too many and you're replacing one problem ("Which skills should I pick from this big list of skills?") with another ("Which modes should I pick from this big list of modes?"). It also depends on how many skills you're working with. If your list is, say, 12 skills long, the more modes you have the less relevant and distinctive they'll be.

How do I determine how many skills should be in these modes, and what is the impact of modes generally having a large number of skills (5-8) vs a small number (3-4)? 

I'm going to make a few ARRPG assumptions: PCs have 30 points to spend on this stuff, skills cost points depending on how many applications they have, and the cost of a mode is the total of its skills' costs.

So assuming all that's in play, the number of skills in a mode is going to be practically limited by their cost. Generally speaking, I think you want to keep the cost of a mode below 10 points. Three 9-point modes still gives you 3 points left over to customize a little bit. Certainly I think it's useful to keep the costs of all of your standard modes at around the same value, so you can pick any given three and not worry about going over your budget.

Three of Robo's four standard modes are 9 points each, and the fourth, Science, is weird -- like, literally weird, not game-term weird. That's intentional. It's totally coincidental that each of those three 9-point modes happens to have six skills.

If you're not working with points and all that jazz, and are just eyeballing them, like the rules for modes in the Fate System Toolkit do, then -- well, actually, just seek out the FST if you haven't already, because it already has advice along these lines in it. 

How do I determine if I should want a skill to be in many modes or few modes? 

I say start with as few skills in each mode as you think it needs, and then fill in from there. If it only needs three, and you can't think of another that absolutely has to be in there, then keep it at three. If it has more than six or seven, ask yourself if the theme of the mode is too broad.

For example, I'm pretty sure the Action mode started with Athletics, Combat, and Physique as its core skills. Those are the things I expect a one-dimensional "action hero" to be able to do. Rambo, Indiana Jones, and Brienne of Tarth are different kinds of people, but I think we can agree they all at least have these three skills rated above Mediocre. Then I was like, wait, Robo's a pilot -- where does that fit in if his three modes are Action, Science, and Robot? Certainly it's not an inherent part of Science or Robot, and operating a vehicle seems pretty action-heroic, so Action acquired Vehicles. I think Notice came next, because only Intrigue had it at the time (before Science got it too) and it didn't make sense that anyone who isn't good at sneaking around is equally ungood at spotting someone sneaking around. Last came Provoke, because being intimidating seems like an action-hero thing, too. (Another skill that Robo definitely has that doesn't seem to have a place in either Science or Robot.) As it happens, these six skills came to 9 points, as did the six for Banter and Intrigue.

Basically, if you can rationalize that everyone with this mode should also have these skills, then that's what skills the mode should have. Can every robot crack wise? Like, does the typical Dalek bother with strong words or witty repartee or really care about people in a social way at all? The answer is obviously EXTERMINATE. So Robot shouldn't contain Provoke, Rapport, or Empathy, even though it isn't unreasonable that a robot could have those skills -- they're just not a product of that robot's robotic nature. But every robot is probably designed in a way that makes at least Athletics, Notice, and Physique relevant to its operation, so those are good candidates for core Robot skills. (I believe I gave the Robot mode in ARRPG Will as well, for two main reasons: to reflect the computer brain it likely has, and also that because I don't like my robots to be easily intimidated.)

What approaches for mode creation work well, and how should I be attempting to draft these up and piece them together?This... is tough. I mean, I've only used the one approach to doing this, really. Even the one in the FST is more or less the above method (so-called) without the mathematical rigor. I dunno, anyone else have any thoughts on different ways to approach modes?

[Atomic Robo] Robotoberfest

Well, it's the last day of Sept, so you know what that means: It's almost time for Atomictoberobofest!

That's right -- Atomic Robo comes to your town, if you live in Tampa Bay, FL or Fresno, CA or Oakland, CA.

First up is Necronomicon in the Sunshine State, where John Campbell will be running some sort of ARRPG game. That's happening next weekend, October 9-11, so if you're around there or are willing to make the trip, go check it out.

Then I'll be at ZappCon in beautiful Fresno -- where the city motto is "You can get there from here!" -- running some sort of ARRPG game on the morning of Saturday the 17th. The blurb's super-vague, so maybe it'll be a Majestic 12 game, maybe it'll be "Atomic Robo and the Invaders from Mars," maybe it'll be a Robo Force game, I dunno. There's no way to know.

I'll also be part of a panel on Sunday the 18th at 2:00 pm about family gaming. Because ARRPG won a Silver ENnie for Best Family Game at GenCon this year, so it's only logical that I'd be able to speak about family gaming at some length, right? Please come to that panel and see if that's at all a reasonable assumption.

And if you can't make it to Fresno that weekend but you can make it to Oakland for some reason, it better be because you're going to Big Bad Con.

UPDATE: Though I can't find them on the schedule itself, there is apparently at least one Atomic Robo game happening at Big Bad Con on Sunday the 18th, as well as Morgan Ellis running Shadow of the Century, and also there'll be other Fate games, although I see exactly one on the schedule, so I dunno what the story is there. 

[Gen Con 2015] Self-Indulgence

It's been two weeks since Gen Con, and since getting back life's been pretty busy with family stuff (yay), work stuff (yay), and one of my kids going back to school (YAAAAAAAY!!!). I'm rapidly running out of time to crow about this -- arguably, I already have -- but I can't just let it go without comment.

You're probably already aware, but Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game won a Silver ENnie for Best Family Game at Gen Con a few weeks ago! I dunno, I think this is pretty cool.

Friends kept telling me Robo was going to win this very ENnie (it was also nominated for Best Game, as you may recall, but the competition there involved D&D, The Strange, Firefly, and Mutant: Year Zero, so we all agreed even Silver was highly unlikely), but I steadfastly went in with zero expectations, so when the award was announced I was genuinely surprised. Not the least of which because there was serious competition in the Family Game category as well -- I wouldn't have been shocked if any of the other nominees had gotten the Silver instead.

I don't know how much sense I made during my brief acceptance speech. I'd been thinking of and rejecting jokes for it for a couple weeks, so fortunately I didn't step onto the stage with a bunch of material that just had to be heard. But I thanked the judges, the voters, Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener, my wife and kids, everyone on stage with me (Morgan Ellis, Brian Engard, and Sean Nittner, though I honestly thought John Adamus was standing behind me too), and Adam Jury, but I bet I forgot to thank Evil Hat as an entity, or Fred Hicks for bringing me on board as a freelancer in the first place, or others who helped and whom I forgot in the moment. So I'm doing that now. Thanks!

Morgan then told everyone that they oughtta check out Atomic Robo the comic, especially if they want to introduce their kids to comics, then I chimed in to agree, then we got into a brief bit of "Sorry I never told you about Atomic Robo, Mike!" and "Yeah, this guy, he never even told me about Atomic Robo!" and I bet everyone in the audience was like "WTF are these two clowns talking about?" but fortunately we got off the stage right after. Regardless, I'm glad Morgan spoke up.

Then afterwards I went and played an 11:00pm game of D&D. Mike Mearls and Jeremy Crawford were there, so I congratulated them on their many (many, many) wins, and Jeremy says, "Hey, this guy over here" -- here he jerked a thumb in Mearls' direction -- "he's got the Atomic Robo RPG on his shelf at work!" And Mearls says, "Hey, whatta you gotta go and tell him a thing like that for, ya rube!" Then he went to poke Jeremy in the eyes with two fingers, but Jeremy put his hand up in front of his face to block him, so Mearls just slapped him on the back of the head. I dunno, some of that may not have happened -- it was a crazy night -- but the bit about Mearls having a copy of ARRPG in is office is true, that I rememeber for sure.

The next day, when I was back there playing D&D again (I played a lot of D&D at Gen Con...), they both signed my PHB, thusly:

I don't know how well you can read it there, but Mearls wrote "Thanks for playing the #2 best RPG of 2014," implying that ARRPG was the best, which is nice. Then he told Jeremy to write "Atomic Robo is better than D&D," to which Jeremy reacted with genuine doubt. I told him to just write whatever (or just sign his name, which was, y'know, what I thought was going to happen), so he wrote "Isn't D&D kind of OK?" And to think, he was so well-spoken at the ENnies when he accepted all those awards.

What else happened at Gen Con? I ran two fun games of Majestic 12, one off-books game Wednesday night when we were all too tired to see it through, and another Friday morning that had plenty of energy to the end. Oh, and I went to a fantastic baseball game, probably the funnest thing I did all weekend, but I've found that most Gen Con attendees are surprisingly disinterested in minor-league baseball, so I'll just leave that there.

Anyway. No joke, the real honor was that ARRPG was nominated for something at all. The medal's icing on the cake. The most important part to me is that people are playing and liking the game. So if you're one of those people and you voted for Atomic Robo, thanks! If you're one of those people but you didn't vote, then you missed an easy opportunity for me to owe you one. If you don't like Atomic Robo in the first place, you seem to have stumbled upon the wrong blog, but take a look around and maybe you'll see something you like.

[Gamex 2015] Fate On Demand

Gamex is coming up over Memorial Day Weekend. That's just a few weeks! Event pre-reg opens tomorrow, so if you're planning to attend or just thinking about it, here's a roundup of the scheduled Fate games thus far. Not as Fate-heavy as some Strategicons past, but still plenty of variety. And you may notice there's something a little odd about this list of games. Can you guess what it is?

Voyages of the Starship Loki (Friday 2:00pm, GM: JiB)

Deep in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, far from the security of the Federation a lone Peacemaker class starship explores the unknown parts of the galaxy. These are the voyages of the starship Loki. Will the crew survive the dangers so far from home space? Voyages is a sci-fi game set in a Star Trek-esque future where humans have spread out to explore the galaxy using the Fate Core Rules.

JiB's all Fated-up for Gamex! He's normally a Hero kinda guy, but for this con he's going all-in for Fate. And all it took was years of positive experiences! Anyway, this sounds fun, right?

Kingsman (Saturday 9:00am, GM: JiB)
Welcome to Kingsman, tailors to the finest of gentlemen for over 100 years. MI6 has reported a potential threat to the crown. Arthur is certain that the government wankers won’t be able to do anything about it, so it’s up to Kingsman to save the realm yet again. Kingsman is a modern super spy game set in London using the Fate Core rules. Can you save the queen and the realm?

Hey, it's that movie everyone liked but me! Regardless, it's a super-solid premise for an RPG -- exactly the sort of thing that appeals to me. Clandestine private paramilitary problem-solving agency, secret history, fancy umbrellas... it's all there. You should be there, too!

Neon Rose: A Cyberpunk Mystery (Saturday 2:00pm, GM: Patrick Thompson)

A mystery set in a post-apocalyptic, futuristic world where corporations rule and technology is abundant.

So... cyberpunk, in other words. Patrick, playing it close to the vest! If you like Fate, cyberpunk, mysteries, things held close to vests, or GMs named Patrick, this is the game for you. And if you like all of those things, this is the game you've been waiting for your whole life.

Spirit of Hyboria (Saturday 2:00pm, GM: Seth Halbeisen)

Rippling Muscles, dark shadowy cultists, and way too many snakes. What every great struggle in begins with, except for you! Bring you sword, your skill, your subterfuge, your spells. Vanquish the rising tide of evil. Save innocent sacrifices. Barbarians always welcome.

Didja hear about that new Conan RPG coming later this year? Well who needs it! Seth's running this thing in just a few weeks! This is a Fate Accelerated Edition game, which seems perfectly suited to Conan to me, and Seth's been running plenty of Fate at Strategicon -- not to mention an ongoing Atomic Robo campaign at home -- so check it out. Enough talk! *throws dagger*

Aeon Wave (Saturday 8:00pm, GM: Patrick Thompson)
Discovery of an ancient Martian radio signal known as the Aeon Wave has led to the development of advanced technology called Aeontech. The shift of technological power toppled governments and gave rise to the megacorps who currently wage war over the priceless secrets held within. Hidden in the shadows of the megacorps freelancers battle to save humanity from the fate portended by the Aeon Wave.

Did you back this on Kickstarter? Either way, it exists now, so here's your chance to play it.


[UPDATE] The Wages of Despair (Saturday 8:00pm, GM: Morgan Ellis)
How you ended up on this worthless rock of a planet in the ass end of space is your own tale to tell. Another day paradise living on borrowed time and maxed out credit. But now OrbitOre Interstellar needs to move 80 megatons of unstable Anti-Matter across dangerous, uncharted space. They have a ship, all they need now is a crew. It’s a suicide mission, but a hell of a payday. What else have you got to live for? (Come play Bulldogs! Sci-Fi That Kicks Ass)

See here! Morgan's running not just a Fate game, but a Bulldogs! Fate Core game. (Did you back that?)

Vinternacht (Sunday 9:00am, GM: JiB)

People don’t travel away from Ebbe in the winter. But, then Ulrich was murdered and now none of you are safe. The Jarl’s thugs are searching through the town for you, but you escaped into the forest and climbed the Trollvegge. Now the weather is turning bad and it’s going to be hard enough just to survive the winter night. Vinternacht is a Viking age game using the Fate Core Rules.

JiB's really got a thing for Norse stuff, am I right? Anyway, this sounds like a fun game about camping.

Aeon Wave (Sunday 2:00pm, GM: Patrick Thompson)

Kinda the JiB and Patrick show, huh?

And then there's Games On Demand, running all day Saturday and Sunday. I don't know exactly what'll be on offer there, but odds are Fate games will be happening at least once or twice a day, so if you miss out on everything else somehow, go take advantage of that. RPG coordinator Jim Sandoval really wants Games On Demand to be a big thriving thing at Strategicon, and you can help get it there simply by playing a game on demand.

Anyway, did you spot the odd thing about this list of games? It's that I'm not on it! Yeah, for the first time in I don't know how long, I'm not running a Fate game at Strategicon. I am running a game -- Star Wars: Blood Moon, Friday night -- but it uses Mini-Six, not Fate. Change is good. Plus I have all of these other games that I don't often get a chance to explore. Plus it's just good to play a variety of games. Okay, I think I've justified that well enough.

If more Fate games get added, I'll update this list. Like I bet Morgan's probably planning to run something. Stay tuned!

[Atomic Robo] News You Can Use

In before May!

I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I've been busy with a variety of things -- many not even gaming-related! But I did want to post about a couple notable recent... things.

First off, Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game has been nominated for an Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game! It's a real honor. Even more of an honor is the crazy list of other nominees: Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, Firefly, Icons Assembled, and The Strange. As you can see, those range from pretty huge to as huge as they get. Two of them I own and like, one I've only played, and the last I admittedly really know nothing about other than it's from a highly respected, well-known designer and its predecessor cleaned up at the ENnies last year. (Guess which one is which!) Seeing the team behind ARRPG on that list... it's surreal.

To say that I do not anticipate that ARRPG will win is something of an understatement, but that's fine! It's amazing to see it up there with those other games. If you'd like to help it along, though, go here and vote for it. Or any of the others! They're all great! And there are other things to vote for, too, so vote for those. I... don't really know what this online voting means -- I coulda sworn there was a judging panel or something, and that the fan favorite award was voted on by Origins attendees -- but hey, it can't hurt.

Second off, what'd you do for International Tabletop Day? (It was April 11th.) Me, I playtested the Sparks Nevada Thrilling Adventure Game for four Thrilling Adventure Hour die-hards, then saw the final monthly Largo show. Bittersweet, but I'm so glad I got to be there.

Pow. Sniff.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in LA, the man known as the Dungeon Bastard, aka Bill Cavalier, aka Tom Lommel, and Lyndsay Peters, who has the audacity to face the world without a single alias, let alone two, ran a demo of Atomic Robo at ITT HQ. I wasn't able to attend, but it went well. Pretty cool, that thing happening at that place for that event. The best part? I wasn't even involved! Always gratifying when you discover that someone else likes your work enough to actually use it.

That bat'leth is a dry-erase surface -- perfect for any Fate game!

What's more, Mr. Bastard has kindly put his materials for the game online. It was a little nonstandard, and certainly deviated from one or two standard ARRPG standards and practices, but it worked, so who cares about that. Maybe you can make use of the Bastard's work to run a Robo convention demo of your own! In fact, go do that.

And that's it for the news, I think! Oh, I ran a Majestic 12 playtest at Kingdom-Con in San Diego last weekend, and it went well. The supplement's mostly done, barring a minor but important change as a result of the aforesaid playtest and some adventure hooks by Brian Clevinger and myself that we thought would be handy. Plus, new modes! New skills! New mechanical bits to make things extra-Majestic! New Scott Wegener art! Tons of background material from Brian that may never make it into the comic! I'm looking forward to getting it into your hands. (If you don't have hands, we'll work something out.) Should be out in June.

Coming Up: Gamex is happening soon! I'll do my usual roundup of Fate games so you can schedule accordingly.

[OrcCon 2015] Fate With a Side of Fate

Hey, OrcCon's this weekend! And, as usual, there's a whole whack of Fate games happening. Pre-reg for these events has already closed, but the majority still have open seats for sign-up on the day.

Friday the 13th
"The Rule of Magic" (Fate Core, GM: JiB)

Crown Jewel of the Free City of Aescerlon, the Schola di Magii rises glittering above the streets of the mighty city, and from there are all real decisions made in Aescerlon. Will you survive the plots and intrigue of the most powerful magical conclave in the world? Schola di Magii is a high fantasy game where magic is the force that gives both power and position but at what cost.

I don't know anything about this other than what's in the description, but it's JiB, so it'll be fun and you should get in on that. Is this an established setting, or is it something he made up? I don't know either! Find out!

"Star Wars: The Dark Times" (Fate Core, GM: Morgan Ellis)

It is a dark time in the Galaxy. The Republic has fallen and the evil Galactic Empire has risen. The Jedi have been outlawed and all knowledge of them has faded into legend. But now rebellion against the Empire has begun and civil war threatens to consume the galaxy.

Morgan and I were both bitten by the Star Wars bug this OrcCon, thanks to Rebels. As I've related many times, our first experience with Fate was Colin's Star Wars hack of Spirit of the Century, back before I knew either of them, so this is a very natural turn of events. I'm not sure what time I can get there on Friday, but hopefully I can make it to this game. If not, you must play in it for me.

Saturday the 14th
"Scum and Villainy" (Fate Accelerated, GM: Seth Halbeisen)

A smoky bar, strange music, and rare exotic drugs. This is where you live, when you're not on a ship. Maybe it's your ship, maybe it's someone else's, but it's a ship, and that means freedom to do what you want, where you want, and blast things if you want to. Until the Empire steps in, they piss on everybody's parade. Maybe this is the big score, the one that gets you out of debt for good.

More Star Wars Fate! Seth's a Fate mainstay at Strategicon, so between his expertise with the system and a can't-miss premise -- you are Han Solo! -- this is obviously worth playing. Do so!

"Thieves' World" (Fate Core, GM: JiB)

Thieves’ World is a gritty street level fantasy game set in Sanctuary, the location of the Thieves’ World Series of books. Sanctuary is always dangerous, but something dark is moving in the shadows and narrow alleys, something that has even the most hardened of Sanctuary’s denizens afraid. Many people have left or are making plans to leave and those that remain talk of the end of the world.

Hey, JiB's back with another Fate thing! If you're not familiar with it, Thieves' World is a very cool setting created by a Robert Lynn Asprin bunch of hippy D&D-playing authors in the '70s who essentially wanted a shared home for their communally shared fantasy characters. Chaosium produced a multi-system boxed set for it back in 1981, but, tragically, Fate was not included because it didn't exist at the time. Thankfully, JiB is here rectifying that error.

"Hana Academy" (2:00 pm, Fate Core, GM: Jesse Butler)

Welcome to Hana Academy! This is a game about relationships and finding yourself in a magical high school setting. You will be playing one of the Gifted, someone apart from the bulk of the student body who will be able to engage with the supernatural elements of the setting. Each of the gifted can be easily identified by their unique symbol, or garland. Midterms approach, will you be ready?

I don't know this setting or where it might be from (other than the Elemental Plane of Anime), and I'm not sure I know this particular Jesse, but y'know, that sounds like a thing! Go check it out.

"Funkadelic Dance Off" (2:00 pm, Fate Accelerated, GM: Seth Halbeisen)

It's a meme catastrophe! A wish -mash of 70's bling, 80's indigence, and 90's criminal grit. Everything goes down at the Roxy, where anything that's hip happens, including Sex, Drugs, and Extreme Violence! Pick a meme, and save the day, all while swinging a nunchuck and sipping a Mojito... Lots of bad guys, Ninjas, and you, being awesome. Period.

I have no idea what's going on here, but it really sounds like Seth does. Memes! '80s-style poverty, which I'm sure isn't what he intended to say there! Ninjas! "Pick a Meme" sounds like he might be repurposing (or maybe just renaming) approaches in an interesting way. On an unrelated note, it's the second game from him to mention drugs in the description. Is he trying to tell us something? Something about drugs?

"Star Wars: The Dark Times" (8:00 pm, Fate Core, GM: Morgan Ellis)

"The Kaiju vs. Mecha Power Hour" (8:00 pm, Mecha vs. Kaiju, GM: Ira Traborn)

For you, it's just another day of killing evil kaiju (or other people, whatever). But then something different happened. A pair of twin fairy priestesses calling themselves the Cosmos summon you and other kaiju fighters to their dimension to battle a great evil that they need help with fighting. Can you and your allies face this great evil to save a world not you own, but similar?

...so if you didn't get in on the Mecha vs. Kaiju Kickstarter that wrapped up about a year ago and want to see what it's about, this is the game for you. I don't know this Ira Traborn guy, but he's running a few cool-sounding games (like this one) at OrcCon this year, so good on him.

Sunday the 15th
"Carnivale du Malheur" (9:00 am, Fate Core, GM: JiB)

Carnivale is a gothic horror fantasy game set in Ravenloft, the Domain of Dread. As members of the Carnivale you travel the highways and byways of the lands of Barovia. People call you gypsies & worse but you call yourselves Vistani and you have seen things that the townsfolk fear to utter even in the safety of their homes. But, will even the mighty Vistani survive the storm brewing in the mists?

Hey JiB! Why do you insist on doing this to yourself? Just run the same game three or four times! This is too much work. He must be doing it for a good reason, though, and that reason is probably "Fate Ravenloft." Play in it! You won't have a malheur. That's the Mike Olson Guarantee*!
*Not to be construed as a guarantee.

"Operation Crossover" (9:00 am, Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game, GM: Me!)

Since 1947, the brave soldier-scientists of Majestic 12 -- that's you -- have toiled in the shadows, waging a secret war against threats the average civilian doesn't want to believe exist. Whether securing rogue Tesla-tech, apprehending dangerous terrorists, or exploring other dimensions, you keep America safe from things that go "ZKZZRAK!" in the night. Today's mission: saving the world. Again.

Yes! One of these games is actually run by me! (For the record, I'm running two other games in two other systems this weekend.) This is a playtest of sorts of the Majestic 12 supplement Brian Clevinger and I have been working on. Would you like to see the PCs for it? Well, here they are anyway.

"Hana Academy" (2:00 pm, Fate Core, GM: Jesse Butler)

"The Kaiju vs. Mecha Power Hour" (8:00 pm, Mecha vs. Kaiju, GM: Ira Traborn)

And that's it! Twelve Fate games. Not bad. Come out and play-yee-yay.

Happy New Year, Let's Dogfight

Okay, I've really let this go until the last minute here. I can't believe I haven't posted anything in four months! That's ridiculous. A lot's happened in that time. Like just two days ago, I went to Legoland.

Unfortunately, that's another story for another time, because I have to leave for a NYE thing in like 20 minutes -- well, more like 30 minutes, but I still have to get dressed and dig Banzai! out from our boxes of board games -- so I'm going to get right to this thing I've been meaning to post about nearly all year: my Fate dogfighting rules.

The thing I realized about dogfighting is that while I love the idea and the imagery of it, I don't actually know anything about it. I just want it to sound cool, and for everyone at the table to feel like something dramatic and awesome has happened. So instead of choosing maneuvers and spending time hemming and hawing over strategic decisions, I've opted for a system that determines that stuff randomly, then delivers a dramatic finale.

YOU WILL NEED: 

• A Deck of Fate, minus the approach and arcana cards
• Dice
• Uh... this whole list-format may have been unnecessary.

Anyway, this subsystem breaks the dogfight up into two parts: a contest to see who gets into position first, and an attack, made by the winner of that contest.

Airplanes have four skills: Control, Guns, Speed, and Profile. You use some combination of the first three in the contest, Guns to attack, and Profile to defend. You'll use them in conjunction with the pilot's skills -- in my Crimson Skies ARRPG games, those skills were Fly and Gunnery, both under the Pilot mode. Each of the first three plane skills is associated with a suit in the Deck of Fate (Control is blue, Guns black, and Speed red).

Then follow these instructions. I'm not going to type them out again. Time, man, time!

You'll also need this dogfight matrix, which uses a table that's similar to the Fate Triangle, but not quite. Don't worry, the instructions explain the whole thing.

(No, I don't know what eclipses do. I'm not fussed about it.)

(Yes, I'll post some airplane write-ups in a day or two.)

Happy New Year! I look forward to reading some comments in 2015.

[GenCon 2014] It's Over, Go Home

This is funny, trust me.

Well. GenCon 2014 was one for the books. Yup. Some high points:

• The State of the Hat panel on Thursday. Fun way to kick off the convention. (I like doing panels. Are you doing a panel for a thing? Maybe you want me on it!) Some cool stuff on display there, including the Campaign Coins fate point tokens and a spiral-bound copy of the War of Ashes playtest rules. Finally got to meet Fred, Rob, and Sean in person. At least, I'm pretty positive Sean and I have never met. Anyway, also got to meet my personal savior, Adam Jury. Plus, the panelists didn't outnumber the audience this year, which was nice.
• Three very successful and fun playtests of The Sparks Nevada Thrilling Adventure Game, including one for a table of four superfans and one for aforementioned Evil Hat project manager Sean Nittner. Good feedback all around. This new version really feels like the show, and it's faster-playing to boot. One of these had the best aspect I've ever come up with (pictured above).
• An equally successful and fun game of Atomic Robo that let me playstorm ideas for training and planning montages for Shadow of the Century -- plus my players included Dave and Liz of Nearly Enough Dice, all the way from Scotland, which was very cool. Great to meet you guys in person! Wish we could've found time to do an interview face-to-face, but oh well. Hangout it is.
• The fastest ARRPG game of my or anyone's life at Games on Demand -- about 90 minutes, after introducing the PCs and explaining the basics of Fate -- but still managed to squeeze in two fun fights, a brainstorm, and, y'know, general roleplaying and farting around. Felt like a sprint from start to finish, but we did it, and everyone had a great time. I really enjoyed conceding on behalf of those last two NPCs.
• Playing in a Tunnels & Trolls game run by childhood idol Ken St. Andre. I told him later at the Flying Buffalo booth that T&T was a formative game for me, and that I was now a famous game designer. I don't think he believed me on either count. But it was still nice to tell him anyway, even if only one of those things is true.
• A drum corps fan I met Thursday morning while making our D&D characters for the convention. Most of the rest of the gamers at the table were fairly unpleasant, demeanor-wise, so it was cool to be able to talk drum corps with this guy (marched Cadets '92, son marched SCV in... 2011, I want to say), let him look up stuff in my PHB, and ignore those other people entirely.
• My first D&D game of the convention, when the DM had everyone go around the table and call out their race and class. After "Fighter, fighter, fighter, wizard, cleric," it was a pleasure to say "Bard!" The looks on their faces... priceless. But they changed their tunes the first time I handed out an Inspiration Die. Take that, unbelievers.
• My second (and, unfortunately, last) D&D game of the convention, when the tweenaged girl at the table got to strike the killing blow against the monster with her magic missile. I just like it when first-time players get to do cool stuff, especially if they're kids.
• Seeing ARRPG on the rack at the IPR booth and hearing that it was selling like hotcakes.
• Getting interviewed (on video!) about ARRPG, and suggesting questions to the interviewer, who was -- admit it, Spencer! -- more enthusiastic than prepared. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It was flattering. Cool guys, those guys.
• Played a demo of D&D Attack Wing. Like X-Wing, but with dragons. I... may be in trouble.

• Signing books! I feel like I signed a lot of books, including one copy of Jadepunk. No Fate Core, though. I guess that was a 2013 thing.
• Meeting a few industry-types who either wanted to meet me or felt they had no other option once I had been introduced. Regardless, hey, meeting new people.
• Talkin' business! Business business business! Numbers!
• Every single time someone told me they liked/loved/were excited about ARRPG.
• You! That time I saw you there and we talked about, I dunno, some gaming thing, probably.
• Going to the ENnie Awards the night that Fate Core, Fate Accelerated, the Fate System Toolkit, Fate Dice, the Fate SRD, and Evil Hat itself won ALL THE ENNIES. And also John Adamus and Ericka Skirpan got engaged on stage, which was a thing only one of them knew was going to happen. I'd never been to the ENnies before -- never really felt like I had a reason to go -- so I can only assume they're all like that.

Low points!

• Only getting to play games for 3 hours. Boo.
• That T&T game wasn't actually, like... good.
• D&D DMs being stingy with Inspiration. I'm roleplayin' my face off over here! Gimme the Inspiration already! Sheesh.
• Staying at a hotel out by the airport and having to take a 40-minute shuttle there and back every day. This was a bigger hassle than just the time lost. The shuttle only ran once and hour, and at night there was just a 10:00 and a 1:00 -- so if you didn't get the former, you had to wait around for three hours for the latter. Say, if you're at the ENnies and the thing lasts until 10:30.
• Being constantly aware the whole four days (five, including traveling Wednesday) that Gateway's in two weeks.
• Not getting around to meeting you. Yeah, you! I meant to meet you, honest.

Looking forward to next year, when I will make good on my promise to myself to not schedule so much stuff. See you there.

[GenCon] What Am I Doing I Don't Even

GenCon is next week! Holy troat!

Somehow or other, I already have a pretty full schedule for the con. Here's what I know so far:

• Thursday, 1pm: The Sparks Nevada Thrilling Adventure Game. 
• Thursday, 5pm: State of the Hat, the Evil Hat what's-goin'-on panel. Yay, doing a panel! For future reference, I would do more panels. Panels seem fun. Are you putting a panel together? I bet we can contrive a reason for me to be on it!
• Friday 10am: GMing at Games on Demand (pictured above). It's only a two-hour slot, so odds are good it'll be Sparks Nevada.
• Friday 2pm: Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game.
• Friday 7-ish pm: Attending the ENnies. I may be missing an Indianapolis Indians game for this, so some Evil Hat Fate thing had better win something to make this worthwhile.
• Saturday 2pm: GMing at Games on Demand again. Four-hour slot, which makes Atomic Robo or my ARRPG-based Crimson Skies thing likely.
• Sunday 10am: My last two-hour stint at Games on Demand.

I'm also currently slated to play a few scheduled games, including a one-hour D&D 5E demo-intro-thing Thursday morning, a Tunnels & Trolls game (with Ken St. Andre!) Saturday morning, and some Crimson Skies (the WizKids minis game) Saturday night. But... I dunno if the D&D and Crimson Skies games are going to make the final cut. For one thing, the shuttle to and from the convention center is an hour. For another, back when I booked those games, I was like "OMG, what will the new edition of D&D be like?!" (I've since played it more than a little) and "If I'm going to run a Fate Crimson Skies game, I should probably play the minis game" (I've since become... less convinced of the necessity of this). 

But there is zero chance of me missing that T&T game. And I have plenty of generics, so come at me, bro.

I'm also trying to leave more gaps in my schedule for GoD or off-the-books games or, like, someone saying, "Hey, I want to talk to you about this project," which, based on the past few months, is a thing that could conceivably happen. If you interpreted that statement an assertion that I am so important and in-demand that I expect people to be stalking me just for the mere chance of hearing words fall out of my mouth, you are absolutely correct.

Seriously though, it's nothing like that. It's more like this is my fourth year at GenCon, and every year I promise myself that "Next year, I'm not going to sign up for any games in advance! All the cool stuff seems to happen at GoD and in off-books games!" and then I've done the exact opposite of that three times now. So I'm trying for a late-game course-correction here.

Anyway, see you there. And hey, if we don't see each other there, then maybe I'll see you at Gateway, because it's only two weeks after GenCon, which was only two-and-a-half weeks after Comic-Con. 

I'm freaking out.

[Atomic Robo] At San Diego Comic-Con! UPDATED

Wow, where'd Comic-Con come from this year, huh? Sneaked right up on me. I am... kinda totally not as prepared as I'd thought I'd be. I guess you have to actually, y'know, plan for stuff like that. Which I normally do! But this year, I dunno, it sneaked up on me.

Regardless! I have time Thursday and Sunday, so if you're going to be there and you want to play ARRPG, Sparks Nevada, my Crimson Skies-via-ARRPG thing, uh, my sorta-works D&D-via-Traveller hack, whatever. We have options.

In fact, I'll leave a sign-up sheet at while there's no room at the Red 5 booth (1717) for something like a sign-up sheet (I'll admit, it was optimistic of me to suggest there would be), I'll tell them when games will happen and they'll be happy to direct you accordingly, because they're super-good people. If you're around and interested, and want to let me know both of those things, you can put your name down there and that will accomplish that purpose go to the indicated place at the indicated time, or contact me online (here or on Twitter) to let me know you plan on being there.

Regardless, I'll run games in 15AB, the open-gaming room.

The first game will be Thursday the 24th at 11am. First five cool people to show up get to play!

I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to another San Diego Comic-Con! Comic-Con! Comic-Con! Comic-

Standard foot traffic outside the convention center.

These people would like to hear more about Star Wars, please.

These people would also like to hear about Star Wars. Or whatever.

Oh.

Right.

Almost forgot.

[Atomic Robo] The Robo Has Landed

Pictured: Atomic Robo, existing as a physical product
you can hold in your hands and everything. 

Has your copy of Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game arrived yet? Well did you preorder it? Of course, at this point you could just buy it, because it's out and in stores. You are running out of excuses, in other words.

In all seriousness, it's been extremely gratifying to see ARRPG getting such a great reception from people online. I spent more than two years neck-deep in this game, so it's really rewarding to see tweets like this, or this, or this thing here, or this other bit over here plus this frankly embarrassing praise, and so on. I guess what I'm saying is that the approval of strangers is very important to me, and then on top of that I'm obviously not able to be one-hundred percent sincere about any of this because it's so genuinely affecting. All of this boldfacing is actually part of a defense mechanism against emotional vulnerability. So... thanks!

Anyway, if you're still waiting for yours to show up in the mail, or even if you aren't, you can while away the empty, meaningless hours listening to a couple recent Robo-oriented (Roboriented!) podcasts.

Late last month I was on Useless Drivel talking with Rob and Matt about a bunch of stuff, including but not limited to:

• A radio show I had in college (that apparently had a MySpace page)
• The Thrilling Adventure Hour
• GI Joe, sorta
• The Heroes of Three Crossings
• Crimson Skies
• The Shieldwall minis wargame and the War of Ashes RPG
• The Kerberos Club
• Jadepunk
• OSS 117
• Luchadores
• Atomic Robo
• Legends of Anglerre (sad face)
• The not-at-all-secret origin story of the Atomic Robo RPG
• Why this blog is called "Spirit of the Blank"
• Living the dream

(I mention on this podcast that I'm going to make those Crimson Skies Fate dogfighting rules available, and that's still my intent, but they're not up yet. End of line.)

And just a couple weeks ago, Atomic Robo scribe Brian Clevinger talked Robo and the Technocracy with Ryan Macklin on Master Plan. The focus of the conversation is RPG licensing from the licensor's point of view, and also Brian corroborates my ARRPG origin story, which is kind of a relief.

On a related note, Ryan and Tim Rodriguez are running a Kickstarter right this very moment for Backstory Cards, so go get in on that.

BONUS PODCAST RECOMMENDATION: The last episode of Nearly Enough Dice (episode 141, for future generations) has a very nice, unapologetically glowing review/unpaid endorsement of ARRPG. The episode isn't completely Robo-centric or anything, and neither I nor Brian are interviewed on it, but still, it's good. Especially if you're like "ARRPG sounds pretty cool, but I dunno, I need someone with a Scottish accent to convince me," then this is -- it's the podcast for you. It's almost eerie how precisely they've tailored this episode to suit your exact needs. You'd be foolish not to listen.