[Kerberos] We Like Change

Yesterday's chargen playtest at DiceHouse Games really opened my eyes to a few problems in KFC. For one thing, just being in the midst of six people completely new to the rules (mostly) and trying to make characters was an experience. Even better was the fact that it was six people of varying experience with FATE: We ran the gamut from Tony, who's barely touched FATE, to Morgan Ellis, my oft-mentioned platonic FATE mate and frequent Strategicon scheduling determinant.

My primary concern with this all along has been whether (or, to put it more optimistically, how much) it would appeal to the FATE community, so I took Morgan's fist-shaking during character creation and mutterings about crunchiness as something of an answer. Admittedly, this version of FATE doesn't really have your standard three-aspects-and-go character generation. I mean, there's nothing stopping you from doing that, I suppose -- Archetype aspect, Social Class aspect, and Conviction aspect, then figure it out as you go -- but it'd take quite a bit more familiarity with the quirks of this particular system before you could, say, slap together a Strange skill on the fly.

Desmond was another one. He spent the better part of two hours trying to put together four Strange skills to represent a suit of power armor (coin-operated power armor). I'm still not entirely sure what the hold-up was, but I know of a few things changes I can make and things I can clarify that should speed up the process significantly.

And that's the good news, really: We spent a few hours making characters and, more importantly, talking about making characters, and that discussion was full of little revelations and insights that have already made this a better game. I implemented a number of changes to the already-extant 50+ pages of playtest material, and I'm ready to move on to some more setting-specific stuff. Not that I've forgotten about writing the, y'know, the actual rules at some point -- how conflicts work, how long things take to accomplish, how hard it is to break down a door, etc. -- but that's coming too. I'm trying to take it three things at a time.

If you're interested in this, it's not too late to get in on the playtest. Email me or contact me on Facebook or on RPG.net or something. I'll send out a new Playtest Packet sometime this week that will include a link and password to our KFC forum on the Arc Dream website so you can join the discussion.

[Kerberos] Playtest Packet #2 Away!

The lean-and-mean Playtest Packet #2 has gone out to the playtesters. If you're on the list and don't receive it sometime today, drop me a line and let me know so I can rectify that.

What's in this one? Mostly Archetypes. There's a good deal of detail on the Faerie and Magus Archetypes (which were fun to convert from ORE to FATE) in particular, plus a few paragraphs on how magic works in Victoria's Century. The PDF incorrectly says that it also contains errata, but it doesn't -- I put it together in the wee hours of the morning, and simply forgot to include it. I'll continue to post errata in our forum on the Arc Dream site. Join us there, won't you?

[Kerberos] Playtest Packet #1 Away!

All right, so I may have been a little liberal with my use of the word "today" yesterday, but whatever -- the first playtest packet for KFC has gone out. If you signed up as a playtester, look for it in your inbox. Check it out, then come on down to our forum on the Arc Dream site. See you there!

[Kerberos] Playtest Packet #1 Going Out Today

Either today or this evening (I'm betting on this evening, personally), I'll be sending out the first packet of playtest materials to everyone on this big list of playtesters I have here. This packet will contain:

• Arc Dream's don't-call-it-an-NDA "Be Cool" form. This is important and you should read it.
• Character creation rules.
• The password for the KFC playtest forum on the Arc Dream message boards.

Again, my prime concern for KFC is character creation. Does it make sense to you? Does the math seem right? Does it make characters you feel would be fun to play? Does it make characters that demand you play them right now? What kind of horrible abomination of a game-wrecking character can you make with it? That sort of thing.

So be on the lookout for that, impatient playtesters! Excitement!

Five, Four, Three, Nose, One -- Happy New Year!

To kick off 2011, I want to plug a couple of FATE projects on the Web. Granted, they were brought to my attention by the very people who created them, but that doesn't make them any less impressive.

The first is Malmsturm, a German FATE-powered game which, I believe, will be available in Germany soon, if it isn't already. If you can't read German, but enjoy puzzling through shaky translations of it, you might want to try to read it here and see if you can make heads or tails of Google Translate's take on it. Personally, I've found myself not up to the task, but the sheer amount of information there tells me that it's something worth checking out for those who are.

Speaking of sheer amounts of information, Emlyn Freeman has been meticulously detailing a complete setting, and FATE mechanics to go along with it, at RealmCrafting. There's a lot of detail there involving Emlyn's process of creating everything from cities to religions; in some ways, it's kinda the opposite of what I do here, in that I usually don't go concern myself with stuff like, y'know, flavor, so if you're missing that sort of thing, definitely check out RealmCrafting. In fact, check it out anyway. There's a lot there, and something's bound to inspire you.

As for me, I'm hard at work on KFC. Today I'm finishing up the Skills chapter and getting as much of the rest of it done as possible. If all goes according to plan (as it so often does!), character-creation playtest materials will go out mid-week. We're doing some sort of playtest next Sunday, as well, at DiceHouse in Fullerton, CA, although that may also be constrained to making characters. Honestly, it's the only aspect of this FATE supers thing that hasn't been playtested. Obviously, we're going to be playtesting the rest of it as well, but right now the thing that concerns me is whether this character-generation method makes as much sense to everyone else as it does to me.

[Kerberos] Update Again!

I've been banging away at this project (I was looking for a way to combine the words "Kerberos," "Club," and "FATE" to somehow come up with an acronym of KFC, and had given it up as hopeless until Ben Baugh suggested "Kerberos FATE Conversion," so there we are) every moment I can spare between eating, sleeping, and making sure my now-all-too-mobile toddler doesn't run out the front door. My pile of reference material includes SotC, DFRPG, Diaspora, Legends of Anglerre, Wild Talents 2nd Edition, and, of course, The Kerberos Club, all of which, if I were still in school, would make this the coolest research paper ever.

A ton of would-be playtesters have contacted me, and you're all on the list. Sometime during the first week of January, I'll be sending out playtest packets to everyone with a rundown of the FATE ruleset I'm using for this book (even if you already know FATE, you need to read this stuff) and character creation guidelines. The first thing I'm going to want people to do is to make some characters -- and I want them as rules-exploity and min-maxed as possible. I want to see how bad these rules can be in the hands of someone who sticks to the letter of the law but disregards everything except sheer power. As much as I try to make characters like that, I know that there's still an internal sense of reasonableness that I just can't shake, so I'll need you guys to make those game-breaking characters for me.

Ben Baugh has a great little section in The Kerberos Club entitled "What's to Stop Me From Gaming This System?" I have a similar attitude regarding my system. I already know you can break it. I just want to see how bad it can get, and trust that the average player isn't, in Ben's words, "the kind of boor" who "would want to spoil such a marvelous bit of starry-eyed game design idealism." C'mon -- we're grown-ups.

[Kerberos] Updates!

So! Just got off the ol' Skype from my first call with Shane Ivey at Arc Dream about this whole FATE Kerberos project, and I have to say... I'm pretty damn excited. There's a lot I can't disclose yet, but there are a few things I can, so let's do that.

• It'll be a standalone book. No surprise here, really -- without a definitive version of FATE that everyone can agree on, we kinda don't have another option. I don't think many will complain, though. This means the standard bits on what aspects are, what skills are, how the Fate Point economy works, and etc. I will endeavor to keep all of this as concise as possible, but not so much so that it isn't easily understood. This book will not stop a bullet. That's the Mike Olson guarantee.
• FATE trumps ORE. Many bits of KC are very FATE-friendly as-is, but where ORE's mechanics and FATE's are incompatible, or where replicating what KC does with ORE would be a convoluted process, the relative rules-lightness of FATE (not that it's actually rules-light, mind you) will take priority. It's my feeling that people who buy FATE Kerberos will be doing so in large part because they like FATE, and they'll want a decidedly FATE-y version of things that plays to FATE's strengths instead of a game that tries to turn FATE into ORE. ORE is a very different animal than FATE, so if it's an equal choice between, say, making a bunch of dice rolls or just compelling an aspect, I'll go with the latter.
• Fudge Dice are the default. My take on scaling powers uses both Fudge Dice and d6s, so that's what we're going to use. However, I know that not everyone likes Fudge Dice, so there'll also be guidelines and advice on using one or two other dice mechanics instead. Regardless, the rules will work no matter what dice mechanic you choose to use.
• The KC you know and love will be preserved wherever possible. By this, I mean that many of the concepts used in KC (and Wild Talents, as applicable) will be retained and FATE-ized with as little alteration as I can manage. For example, characters will still have an Archetype and Convictions, but as aspects, not as their own discrete mechanical elements. If I can find a cool halfway point for a given component between ORE and FATE that stays true to both and doesn't require pages of explanation to work, then I'll take it.
• WE NEED PLAYTESTERS. Seriously. I can't go into specifics about the timeline, but we're going to need to get some good playtesting done within the next couple months. If you're interested in this, and I know you are, leave me a comment below, send me an email, or whatever with your contact info, and we'll get materials out to you ASAP. Please note that this is contingent upon me getting my notes and stuff together in a form that can actually be sent out to people, so if you email me today, don't expect to get a playtest packet tonight. Or tomorrow. Or over the weekend. I'll also be fishing for playtesters in the FATE RPG Yahoo! Group and on RPG.net. And Facebook, too. Sure, why not. Maybe I'll set up a group there we can use. 

There's a lot more, but it's all either minutiae or stuff I just can't talk about yet. It was a pleasure to finally speak with Shane in person-ish, though. And now if you'll excuse me, I have a crap-ton of really awesome work to to do....