Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Fate of Poseidon: Adventure calls, will you answer the call?

H'okay, so yesterday's post went pretty well. Folks seemed interested in what I was attempting here. I guess I will continue on with the project. Today we delve into Character creation for Fate of Poseidon. Right off this is going to be a little bit different than other Fate Core based games in a couple of ways. First almost everyone in Blue Planet is genetically modified in some way or another. This is important and so I think it should be handled in a couple of different ways. I think the major biomod templates should be covered by an aspect. IN fact I think there might need to be a biomod aspect, as your mod does not necessarily have anything to do with your occupation or how you define yourself. The second way I want to do biomods is to use them as an explanation of your skill usage and your

Character creation

Aspects
High concept: as normal
Trouble: as normal
Biomod: How are you modified from the human norm? Or are you an uplifted Dolphin or Orca? this will affect things.
Background: Why are you on Poseidon? Are you a native? Are you a new colonist? Did you come here to mine, or for the space and freedom? Perhaps you are an agent of GEO or the UN, or something else entirely.
Why are you with these people: What it says on the tin, talk it over with the group. Why are you all together? what drew you to this place and these people?

You will notice that I changed up the Phase Trio(in fact I removed it), the reason I did this is that I wanted to create something a little more akin to your traditional RPG in start out feel. You have a connection to these other PCs, but the main focus will be on your character and how you deal with them from the start of the game forward. this also builds a somewhat distrusting group dynamic, where not everyone knows everything about everyone else.


Skills
I am a bit torn on this issue. On the one hand I really dig a smaller skill set. It is less to keep track of and allows for highly competent characters in a lot of fields right off the bat. However Blue Planet has a huge list of skills, and such. I do think that I should add in a few more skills. However I am not going to alter the skill pyramid, because I think that lack of knowledge is a very important part of the Blue Planet experience. What you don't know can most definitely hurt you. So I will be breaking Lore up into a bunch of related skills: Science, Medicine, History, Survival, and maybe one more skill. I think there should also be a couple of other added skills, Swimming should be its own skill separate from athletics. It will cover not just swimming but knowledge of how the ocean works in a practical sense and use of underwater and water survival and traversal gear. Also there needs to be Pilot: water craft, and pilot aircraft...maybe something else. anyway that is it for my expanded skill list. Everything else is as it was in the main Fate Core book, unless I change my mind later.

I will also be changing a few other things as well. As I said the lack of knowledge or a skill should really be a problem for you. So when you run into a situation where you do not have a skill in a relevant skill you can take a Fate point to automatically fail the roll and complicate your life. Basically you succeed at a major cost without having to roll and gain a fate point. I am not certain how well this will work, but I kind of like the feel of it. It can make a lack of skill a plot element and really relevant.

Stunts
Stunts don't change much in this. They mostly cover really important or impressive gear, biomods that are special or important to your character concept, or any kind of specialization or broadening of a skill. Just use the rules for crafting stunts as they are presented.

I will go into the various biomods in a later post as they are worthy of their own post. I plan on doing all the main biomods listed in the Blue Planet players guide(v2). I would love any feedback on how to do invokes and compels for the various Biomods. Any other feedback would also be welcome.

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