I'd expected to send out the next Playtest Packet today (Sunday -- let's pretend it's still Sunday and not nearly two hours into Monday), but events conspired otherwise. I've been doing a lot of fiddling with trappings, and that's taken more of both my attention and my time than I'd anticipated. So be patient with me, playtesters, if we cycle through a few permutations of custom/Strange skill construction over the next week or two.
In the meantime, I'm still plugging away at getting the actual rules -- y'know, how to do stuff -- into acceptable shape. I've been consulting every FATE game I own for this, so it'll largely be a "best of" collection. ("Best of" according to me, of course. YMMV.) I've also been cleaning up the existing text, making a few alterations that have come up in our discussion forum, and that kind of thing. Which is useful and good, of course, but it also delays getting the new stuff out.
So hold tight, folks. There's another one of these things arriving in your inbox in the next couple days.
Fate for every genre (eventually)!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
[Kerberos] Playtest Packet #3 Away!
The third Playtest Packet (which includes the first two Playtest Packets in a revised form, plus some new stuff) has gone out, so if you should've received one but didn't, let me know.
One thing the playtesting process has pointed out so far is that while the chargen process isn't necessarily complex, it sure looks complex. This has been kinda frustrating for me, as the barriers to entry seem a lot higher than they actually are. In my head, everyone on my playtest list I haven't heard from has reacted the same way: "Character points? Lists of things? Tables? I'm out."
Overcoming that reaction, real or imagined, has been... a process. And that process has been all about organizing information to make it easier to digest. Take the big list of trappings. It started with putting them in a table, then adding one-line descriptions to each, and finally onto classifying them by function (e.g., Offense, Movement, Perception, etc.). So hopefully that will simplify things for people -- now you can figure out what you want the skill to do and just look at the categories to get the broad strokes. Also, the roadblock of Prohibited trappings has been replaced with the toll-road of Incompatible trappings. Instead of being arbitrarily told, "No, you can't do that -- build the skill a different way," now you can put any collection trappings together under a single skill, and the worst that'll happen is that it'll just cost a ton of points. That's a change in game mechanics, obviously, but the biggest reason it's in there is so people don't have to worry about building a cool Strange skill only to discover that this trapping isn't allowed to co-exist with this other trapping, so back to the drawing board, chump.
There's a lot of other stuff in there, including Ben Baugh's excellent chapter on social class (which meshes with the rest of this effortlessly), so if you're on the list you can look forward to that. If you're not on the list and want to be, get in touch with me on RPG.net or Facebook or something and just say the word.
One thing the playtesting process has pointed out so far is that while the chargen process isn't necessarily complex, it sure looks complex. This has been kinda frustrating for me, as the barriers to entry seem a lot higher than they actually are. In my head, everyone on my playtest list I haven't heard from has reacted the same way: "Character points? Lists of things? Tables? I'm out."
Overcoming that reaction, real or imagined, has been... a process. And that process has been all about organizing information to make it easier to digest. Take the big list of trappings. It started with putting them in a table, then adding one-line descriptions to each, and finally onto classifying them by function (e.g., Offense, Movement, Perception, etc.). So hopefully that will simplify things for people -- now you can figure out what you want the skill to do and just look at the categories to get the broad strokes. Also, the roadblock of Prohibited trappings has been replaced with the toll-road of Incompatible trappings. Instead of being arbitrarily told, "No, you can't do that -- build the skill a different way," now you can put any collection trappings together under a single skill, and the worst that'll happen is that it'll just cost a ton of points. That's a change in game mechanics, obviously, but the biggest reason it's in there is so people don't have to worry about building a cool Strange skill only to discover that this trapping isn't allowed to co-exist with this other trapping, so back to the drawing board, chump.
There's a lot of other stuff in there, including Ben Baugh's excellent chapter on social class (which meshes with the rest of this effortlessly), so if you're on the list you can look forward to that. If you're not on the list and want to be, get in touch with me on RPG.net or Facebook or something and just say the word.
Monday, January 10, 2011
[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.
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.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
[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?
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?
Thursday, January 6, 2011
[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!
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
[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!
Sunday, January 2, 2011
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.
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.
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