Oops, I forgot to mention some other FATE-related games happening at Gateway this year.
Friday night I played in Josh Roby's Houses of the Blooded game. I was Torr Adrente, a Wolf dude (Prowess 5, Cunning 0 -- that kinda guy) with a retinue of 20 soldiers, an ominously named sword, and a thing for my uncle's wife. Good times. I'm terrible when it comes to intrigue and subtlety and all that crap, but it was still fun. I love the die mechanic, for one thing. The only other time I've played was in a demo game run by John Wick a couple years ago (or maybe it was OrcCon of last year...?), and back then we only played with a fraction of the rules, so this was a bit of a change. Disappointed that I never got to draw my Bloodsword and see what my Doom was all about, but hey, it's HotB, not D&D.
(That said, I'm now dying to run a straight-up old-school dungeon crawl with HotB just for the sheer irony of it. And because it might make John Wick's head explode. "My name means 'Fighter/Magic-User.'")
Sunday morning, Chris Czerniak, one of the regular San Diego crew, ran his time-travelling Spirit of the Century game. It's kinda Dr. Who-ish, in that there are a couple of actual time travelers accompanied by a team of some of history's greatest heroes. When I played this game many moons ago, that list included Bruce Lee, Audie Murphy, Lord Byron, and Mata Hari, as I recall (I played Lord Byron, and crossed out a number of his aspects to replace them with quotations from Byron's poetry, because that's the sort of thing I do). I didn't play in this game -- I was busy getting jerked around by an RPGA module at the time -- but it did exist.
Sunday afternoon (and also Sunday morning), Strategicon regular Morgan Ellis ran Labyrinths of Mars, the sequel to his last Spirit of the Red Planet game. Last time, I was Throk, a four-armed Green Martian; this time, I was Kalyan, a dashing Red Martian pirate -- er, ex-pirate -- with an ornamental eyepatch, the Martian non-Union equivalent of the Millennium Falcon, and a "mostly loyal crew." I dig the planetary romance genre, even though I'm more familiar with the tropes than with the actual source material itself, so this was some fun stuff, as always. Half the reason I play in Morgan's games is to hear his excellently stentorian prologues ("This is the Spirit... of the SHAT-TERED EARTH!"), but I also got to make one of Czerniak's long-held dreams come true by proposing to his character in-game, so that's nothing to sneeze at, either.
Morgan's great at making really archetypical characters that you can instantly sink your teeth into. He has a few mechanical tweaks, too (don't we all?). For one thing, his skill pyramids have a total of just six skills, from Fair to Superb, which I totally get: It's a con game -- just pick the six most iconic things this character ought to be able to do and go with it. Characters also only have three stunts, and they're almost always custom-made. He uses the ol' -2/-4/-6 stress-reducing consequences rule, but cuts out the stress tracks, and takes a cue from Starblazer Adventures (or, more accurately, Legends of Anglerre) by having a character's Refresh equal his starting aspects minus his starting stunts. I've noticed, too, that he's taken to starting his important NPCs' skills at around +6 or +7, just so he can have a fightin' chance of dealing a consequence to someone. And fair enough, says I.
Fate for every genre (eventually)!
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Gateway Post Mortem
So! Gateway went pretty well. The swashbuckling game was great, which easily had as much to do with my players as with anything else. I unwisely put off almost all my game prep for both that game and the D&D game I ran until the very last minute. I knew I was in trouble a few days earlier when I realized that if I were to take my printer with me to the hotel on Friday, I could just print stuff off there. This I did, and it meant running two games and playing in a third on Saturday powered by, say, two hours' sleep. I don't know how I made it, but I'm still catching up on sleep.
Anyway, this isn't a blog about me, so let's get to the mechanics.
(This is stolen in equal measure from reality and an old Flashing Blades adventure. Flashing Blades continues to be an awesome resource for the genre; I highly recommend it.)
It ended up being full of swashbucklery goodness and intrigue, including a secret message passed via a dropped handkerchief, a masked ball, disguises, mistaken identities, naked fencing, and three simultaneous duels aboard an exploding ship, among others. Best of all, as a playtest it vindicated a lot of the little tweaks and alterations I'd made here and there for the swashbuckling genre. More playtesting is needed, obviously, but it feels pretty solid now.
Anyway, this isn't a blog about me, so let's get to the mechanics.
- The roll-and-keep Fudge dice mechanic was good, as expected (and previously experienced).
- Also as expected, players tended to save up their Elan for when it really mattered. As evidence, I present the three simultaneous duels at the end of the game, all of which pretty much ended as soon as a player got Advantage.
- Speaking of which: The Advantage mechanic continues to be workable in spite of initial reservations about it slowing things down. Then again, I don't think it's gotten the workout it needs, either. In the playtest we did here in Irvine, our one duel had a lot of back-and-forth. At Gateway, those three duels resolved really quickly, because the players were loaded for bear while I didn't use any Elan at all for the baddies. In my defense, it was nigh unto the time of quitting and I wanted to wrap things up in a suitably heroic manner. Still, I maintain that the primary goals of the Advantage mechanic -- to encourage a more action-packed, dramatic narrative within combat and to make all skills matter in combat -- was met... with extreme prejudice. One attempt to obtain Advantage was essentially a staredown: Esprit vs. Esprit (or Resolve vs. Resolve, in SotC terms).
- A couple of the characters had higher Status/Social Class than the rest, and one was decidedly low-class, but... it didn't really come up, which was too bad. I blame myself for that, because it should have, but I missed it. The Baron Francois de Chevreuse had a few social conflicts in which Status easily could've acted as a complementary skill. So... my bad, there.
(This is stolen in equal measure from reality and an old Flashing Blades adventure. Flashing Blades continues to be an awesome resource for the genre; I highly recommend it.)
It ended up being full of swashbucklery goodness and intrigue, including a secret message passed via a dropped handkerchief, a masked ball, disguises, mistaken identities, naked fencing, and three simultaneous duels aboard an exploding ship, among others. Best of all, as a playtest it vindicated a lot of the little tweaks and alterations I'd made here and there for the swashbuckling genre. More playtesting is needed, obviously, but it feels pretty solid now.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Gateway to Anglerre
Event pre-reg for Gateway started this morning, and my swashbuckling FATE game was full by noon. Bwuh? Well, "full" in Strategicon-even-pre-reg-speak actually means "half-full" -- the other three slots are left open for people to sign up on the day -- but still, good to see. Off hand, I can think of four or five people who would've jumped on it right away, so maybe it's not that surprising.
Here's the blurb:
Flashing blades! Courtly intrigue! Puffy shirts! Come swing on a chandelier or two in this swashbuckling romp through 17th-century France. Familiarity with the FATE system -- the engine that powers Spirit of the Century and Starblazer Adventures -- not required. So if you dig Dumas, savvy Sabatini, or relish Rostand, grab your rapier and get your derring-do derring-done. Have at thee!
(I'm also running a 4th-edition D&D game Saturday morning, but that's not really the kind of thing we talk about here.)
If you're in the LA area and want to check it out, by all means come on down. Even if the swashbuckling thing ends up having a line of people waiting at a red velvet rope, there are tons of other great games being run -- seriously, there's everything from RPGA D&D games to Houses of the Blooded to Toon -- plus a pretty sweet dealer room and lots of other non-RPG stuff. If you've just come from GenCon, it might seem a bit tame in comparison, but you'll still have a good time.
In other news, Legends of Anglerre is coming right along. After finishing the skills and stunts chapter (whew!), I was pretty much given free rein to work on just about anything that struck my fancy. So far that's resulted in new rules for Gambling conflicts, a method for turning a group of PCs into a single "group character" (along with rules to handle "group character" conflicts), and the thing I'm working on now, which started as a sort of abstracted-space random dungeon generator (an homage to one of my favorite bits of the old 1st edition AD&D DMG) but has morphed into a random location, terrain, zone, aspect, motivation, and antagonist generator. Still, I love me some random tables! Starblazer's full of 'em, so why not LOA?
The other LOA task hanging over me right now is writing up the demo I ran at Gamex. I've never had to write an adventure in a way that made sense to anyone but myself -- i.e., something more than sparse notes -- so it's a bit daunting right now. But I'll have it done in a week or so. I'll probably end up using my random stuff generator, to be honest.
Here's the blurb:
Flashing blades! Courtly intrigue! Puffy shirts! Come swing on a chandelier or two in this swashbuckling romp through 17th-century France. Familiarity with the FATE system -- the engine that powers Spirit of the Century and Starblazer Adventures -- not required. So if you dig Dumas, savvy Sabatini, or relish Rostand, grab your rapier and get your derring-do derring-done. Have at thee!
(I'm also running a 4th-edition D&D game Saturday morning, but that's not really the kind of thing we talk about here.)
If you're in the LA area and want to check it out, by all means come on down. Even if the swashbuckling thing ends up having a line of people waiting at a red velvet rope, there are tons of other great games being run -- seriously, there's everything from RPGA D&D games to Houses of the Blooded to Toon -- plus a pretty sweet dealer room and lots of other non-RPG stuff. If you've just come from GenCon, it might seem a bit tame in comparison, but you'll still have a good time.
In other news, Legends of Anglerre is coming right along. After finishing the skills and stunts chapter (whew!), I was pretty much given free rein to work on just about anything that struck my fancy. So far that's resulted in new rules for Gambling conflicts, a method for turning a group of PCs into a single "group character" (along with rules to handle "group character" conflicts), and the thing I'm working on now, which started as a sort of abstracted-space random dungeon generator (an homage to one of my favorite bits of the old 1st edition AD&D DMG) but has morphed into a random location, terrain, zone, aspect, motivation, and antagonist generator. Still, I love me some random tables! Starblazer's full of 'em, so why not LOA?
The other LOA task hanging over me right now is writing up the demo I ran at Gamex. I've never had to write an adventure in a way that made sense to anyone but myself -- i.e., something more than sparse notes -- so it's a bit daunting right now. But I'll have it done in a week or so. I'll probably end up using my random stuff generator, to be honest.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
FATE's Gambling Problem
So the first draft of Legends of Anglerre's skills and stunts chapter (with stunts listed along with the skill descriptions to which they belong -- hooray!) is in the can, which means I'm moving on to some other cool stuff for the project. I was happy to be in charge of that chapter, because it's kinda the mechanical heart of the game and where a lot of my interest lies, but it was also necessarily a bit of a slog -- I mean, it's about 50,000 words in total to be analyzed, edited, and revised. What else could it be?
Anyway, in the course of that, I noticed that SotC's rules for Gambling are... well, incomplete at best and weird at worst. It looks like there was more of a system in place at one time, but it was taken out before printing -- or it was intended that there be more of a system that never got put in. Either way, the default way of handling high-stakes games -- every player rolling against the game's stakes as a target number -- isn't especially interesting. Players don't actually interact at all, and if everyone beats the target number, everyone "wins."
Gambling as a skill is an odd duck. It basically goes one of two ways. Either you make a quick Gambling roll for a bit of flavor or as prelude to a different sort of conflict, or you have a larger Gambling-specific conflict that gets much more in-depth. Examples of this are found in Casino Royale or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. That's the sort of thing this system (in its initial draft, as presented here) is intended to handle.
Keep in mind, too, that this is written with Legends of Anglerre's stress-reducing consequences in mind (and some version of this is likely to show up in LOA, if not in a free PDF supplement shortly after LOA's release this winter). Note, too, that I do, like, zero gambling myself. I don't play poker or Greyhawk Hold 'Em or whatever the kids are playing these days. When I go to Vegas, I play the nickel slots because their flashing lights and beeping noises make me laugh and clap my hands, and you can't put a price on that kind of simpleton happiness. These rules don't cover games of pure chance (like craps or roulette) -- they're intended for poker-like games with a lot of betting, raising, and strategy. And tension. Especially tension.
Gambling Redux
Each gambler has a stress track equal to his Resources. If someone else is willing to bankroll the gambler, the gambler uses that person's Resources to determine the length of his Gambling stress track instead. Your Resources must be equal to or greater than the stakes (i.e., quality) of the game.
Every round, gamblers take turns "bidding" a number of stress boxes in the usual way people do when gambling. If someone raises the bid, everyone else has to see him, take a mental consequence, or make a concession (that is, "fold") and leave the conflict for the round.
After all bets have been taken, each gambler rolls a skill. Normally, the skill is Gambling, but by spending a Fate Point to invoke an aspect, a gambler can use another skill instead. Each player reveals his total, but keeps the skill rolled a secret until all totals are known. Aspects and consequences can be tagged and invoked as usual for rerolls or bonuses, but only before the skills themselves are revealed. After the reveal, aspects can't be invoked or tagged. All non-Gambling skills are restricted by Gambling. Whoever has the highest total wins the round. However, different skills have different effects during the reveal.
If you win the hand, you take no stress. In addition, for each round you win, you either receive a Treasure equal to the game's stakes or remove one consequence you've taken during the game (starting with any Minor consequences and moving up from there).
A game consists of a number of rounds equal to its stakes. That is, a Good-quality game will only last for three rounds. Thus, low-stakes games have little tension, since they're only one round long, while higher-stakes games last longer and can ratchet up the tension more.
Anyway, in the course of that, I noticed that SotC's rules for Gambling are... well, incomplete at best and weird at worst. It looks like there was more of a system in place at one time, but it was taken out before printing -- or it was intended that there be more of a system that never got put in. Either way, the default way of handling high-stakes games -- every player rolling against the game's stakes as a target number -- isn't especially interesting. Players don't actually interact at all, and if everyone beats the target number, everyone "wins."
Gambling as a skill is an odd duck. It basically goes one of two ways. Either you make a quick Gambling roll for a bit of flavor or as prelude to a different sort of conflict, or you have a larger Gambling-specific conflict that gets much more in-depth. Examples of this are found in Casino Royale or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. That's the sort of thing this system (in its initial draft, as presented here) is intended to handle.
Keep in mind, too, that this is written with Legends of Anglerre's stress-reducing consequences in mind (and some version of this is likely to show up in LOA, if not in a free PDF supplement shortly after LOA's release this winter). Note, too, that I do, like, zero gambling myself. I don't play poker or Greyhawk Hold 'Em or whatever the kids are playing these days. When I go to Vegas, I play the nickel slots because their flashing lights and beeping noises make me laugh and clap my hands, and you can't put a price on that kind of simpleton happiness. These rules don't cover games of pure chance (like craps or roulette) -- they're intended for poker-like games with a lot of betting, raising, and strategy. And tension. Especially tension.
Gambling Redux
Each gambler has a stress track equal to his Resources. If someone else is willing to bankroll the gambler, the gambler uses that person's Resources to determine the length of his Gambling stress track instead. Your Resources must be equal to or greater than the stakes (i.e., quality) of the game.
Every round, gamblers take turns "bidding" a number of stress boxes in the usual way people do when gambling. If someone raises the bid, everyone else has to see him, take a mental consequence, or make a concession (that is, "fold") and leave the conflict for the round.
After all bets have been taken, each gambler rolls a skill. Normally, the skill is Gambling, but by spending a Fate Point to invoke an aspect, a gambler can use another skill instead. Each player reveals his total, but keeps the skill rolled a secret until all totals are known. Aspects and consequences can be tagged and invoked as usual for rerolls or bonuses, but only before the skills themselves are revealed. After the reveal, aspects can't be invoked or tagged. All non-Gambling skills are restricted by Gambling. Whoever has the highest total wins the round. However, different skills have different effects during the reveal.
- Deceit: A gambler can bluff by using Deceit. If the bluffer wins the hand, he gains an appropriate temporary aspect that reflects his obvious skill, such as "Poker Face," that lasts for the entire scene. If the bluffer doesn't win, however, he gains a negative aspect, like "Bad Liar," that also lasts for the scene.
- Empathy: By using Empathy, a gambler can suss out who's bluffing with Deceit -- and counter them. If a bluffer wins the round and you rolled Empathy, all gamblers who bluffed lose, and the highest non-Deceit total wins the round. If that's you, so much the better. If no one has bluffed, however, you can't win the round, no matter how high your Empathy total is.
- Sleight of Hand: This is just out-and-out cheating. As such, it's a risky tactic. If you obtain spin on your Sleight of Hand roll (that is, your total is at least 3 shifts higher than the closest competitor), you gain a temporary aspect along the lines of "Suspiciously Lucky" that lasts for the rest of the scene -- and may be remembered by any other player who's prone to harboring grudges. In addition, if your Sleight of Hand total isn't higher than the lowest Alertness skill of the other gamblers at the table, you're caught. See Investigation, below.
- Investigation: This counters Sleight of Hand similar to how Empathy counters Deceit. You are making a concerted effort to keep an eye out for cheaters. If your Investigation beats any other gambler's Sleight of Hand, whether that gambler wins the round or not, that gambler gains an aspect of "Cheater" and, in all likelihood, someone will flip over the table and the game ends. Odds are the next skill to be rolled will be Fists. No matter how high your roll is, you can't win the round with Investigation.
If you win the hand, you take no stress. In addition, for each round you win, you either receive a Treasure equal to the game's stakes or remove one consequence you've taken during the game (starting with any Minor consequences and moving up from there).
A game consists of a number of rounds equal to its stakes. That is, a Good-quality game will only last for three rounds. Thus, low-stakes games have little tension, since they're only one round long, while higher-stakes games last longer and can ratchet up the tension more.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Lost in Anglerre
Sorry for the radio silence -- currently, I'm up to my eyes in the skills and stunts chapter of Legends of Anglerre. It's going well so far. Right now I'm codifying some guidelines on how to write your own stunts that are a little more detailed than what I'd posted here (and what I use myself). Comic-Con's inconvenient arrival right in the middle of skills-and-stunts month slowed things up a bit, but it looks like I'm on track to deliver this baby by the end of the month.
And then it's on to preparing for Gateway by cramming my head as full of swashbuckling goodness as I can in August. Thank you, Marvel Comics. And SLG, for that matter.
And then it's on to preparing for Gateway by cramming my head as full of swashbuckling goodness as I can in August. Thank you, Marvel Comics. And SLG, for that matter.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Gateway: I Have No Idea
I've been getting the same question quite a bit from people lately (myself included), and that question is "What are you going to run at Gateway?"
I have no idea.
Whatever it is, it'll be something FATE-based, of course. I just don't know what it'll be. Nothing's really jumping out at me right now in terms of genre, and I don't have some wacky/high-concept idea (like "Paranoia + Star Wars!" or "All the PCs are gibbons!") that's grabbing me, either. So... I have no idea.
Anyone have any suggestions?
I have no idea.
Whatever it is, it'll be something FATE-based, of course. I just don't know what it'll be. Nothing's really jumping out at me right now in terms of genre, and I don't have some wacky/high-concept idea (like "Paranoia + Star Wars!" or "All the PCs are gibbons!") that's grabbing me, either. So... I have no idea.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Swashbuckling: Playtest!
So! Sorry for the radio silence. Parents are fine, baby's kicking, everything's good. I've been back and forth between home and my parents' place in the past few weeks, so the ol' blog has kinda fallen by the wayside.
Speaking of this blog-thing, though, last week we had our first actual playtest session using these swashbuckling rules, and it went pretty well. We had three PCs -- the M-Team: Michel the magistrate, Marion the musketeer, and Merlin the... er... ex-priest and 17th-century French equivalent of John Belushi in Animal House -- and two fights: one against some mooks, and the other a proper duel.
The plot, in brief, involves a kidnapping. Wealthy and powerful Michel is approached by the wife of a fellow Parisian magistrate, M. Des Lauriers. He's being held for ransom in Nice, only he's actually in Poitiers with his Huguenot mistress and the kidnappers have his double, but either way she begs Michel to round up, say, two friends and head down there to resolve things as discreetly as possible.
The mook fight was pretty much along the lines of every FATE mook fight in terms of mechanics, although I have to mention one highlight. The PCs had been tricked into thinking a bandit in a "broken-down" carriage was actually a mademoiselle in need. Shortly after her colleagues burst out of the foliage to either side of the road, Merlin knocked her out with a single punch in her face. Bam!
The duel, though, was definitely a focal point of the playtest, since it actually involved new mechanics. I have to say it went well. The opposition, a member of the Cardinal's Guards, wasn't quite the equal of Marion, but it was still a pretty good combat between them. The Advantage mechanic didn't have a perceptible effect on the speed of the combat, but I'd say it definitely added a lot in terms of the narrative. Both the player and I were encouraged to creatively one-up each other with our various attempts to gain Advantage. He used Physique to swing on a chandelier and land behind me, I used Brawn to try to trip him up by yanking on a rug, and so on. Ultimately, Marion got the upper hand, but chose to just knock me out instead of killing me, so... hello, recurring antagonist.
Meanwhile, the other two PCs faced off against the Guard's two companions. I'd anticipated that all four of them might sit on the sidelines and put aspects on the two combatants, but Merlin was so offended that they refused a friendly drink that he went right to throwing blows. So the four of them tussled, managing to get off an insult or two only occasionally but enough to make them feel part of the central conflict. I ran the other two Cardinal's Guards as true antagonists instead of just minions (i.e., they took consequences, not stress), so they were pretty persistent foes despite having a skill pyramid that topped out at Good (+3).
One thing we instituted and that I can really see myself sticking with is limiting aspect invokes/tags to once per scene. It meant that invokes were a little less frequent, and gaining access to more aspects (through story aspects, assessments, declarations, and consequences) became much more important. It made for a more dynamic conflict, since Andy couldn't just fall back on "Sargeant-at-Arms of the Black Musketeers" every time he drew his rapier -- and when he scored his first consequence, it felt like a bit of a bigger deal.
The next session's scheduled for this Thursday, so stay tuned for some more vague observations.
Speaking of this blog-thing, though, last week we had our first actual playtest session using these swashbuckling rules, and it went pretty well. We had three PCs -- the M-Team: Michel the magistrate, Marion the musketeer, and Merlin the... er... ex-priest and 17th-century French equivalent of John Belushi in Animal House -- and two fights: one against some mooks, and the other a proper duel.
The plot, in brief, involves a kidnapping. Wealthy and powerful Michel is approached by the wife of a fellow Parisian magistrate, M. Des Lauriers. He's being held for ransom in Nice, only he's actually in Poitiers with his Huguenot mistress and the kidnappers have his double, but either way she begs Michel to round up, say, two friends and head down there to resolve things as discreetly as possible.
The mook fight was pretty much along the lines of every FATE mook fight in terms of mechanics, although I have to mention one highlight. The PCs had been tricked into thinking a bandit in a "broken-down" carriage was actually a mademoiselle in need. Shortly after her colleagues burst out of the foliage to either side of the road, Merlin knocked her out with a single punch in her face. Bam!
The duel, though, was definitely a focal point of the playtest, since it actually involved new mechanics. I have to say it went well. The opposition, a member of the Cardinal's Guards, wasn't quite the equal of Marion, but it was still a pretty good combat between them. The Advantage mechanic didn't have a perceptible effect on the speed of the combat, but I'd say it definitely added a lot in terms of the narrative. Both the player and I were encouraged to creatively one-up each other with our various attempts to gain Advantage. He used Physique to swing on a chandelier and land behind me, I used Brawn to try to trip him up by yanking on a rug, and so on. Ultimately, Marion got the upper hand, but chose to just knock me out instead of killing me, so... hello, recurring antagonist.
Meanwhile, the other two PCs faced off against the Guard's two companions. I'd anticipated that all four of them might sit on the sidelines and put aspects on the two combatants, but Merlin was so offended that they refused a friendly drink that he went right to throwing blows. So the four of them tussled, managing to get off an insult or two only occasionally but enough to make them feel part of the central conflict. I ran the other two Cardinal's Guards as true antagonists instead of just minions (i.e., they took consequences, not stress), so they were pretty persistent foes despite having a skill pyramid that topped out at Good (+3).
One thing we instituted and that I can really see myself sticking with is limiting aspect invokes/tags to once per scene. It meant that invokes were a little less frequent, and gaining access to more aspects (through story aspects, assessments, declarations, and consequences) became much more important. It made for a more dynamic conflict, since Andy couldn't just fall back on "Sargeant-at-Arms of the Black Musketeers" every time he drew his rapier -- and when he scored his first consequence, it felt like a bit of a bigger deal.
The next session's scheduled for this Thursday, so stay tuned for some more vague observations.
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