Woopah! Makin' aspects with the Jake

Earlier today I was talking with +Ryan M. Danks about aspects and other things Fate. Toward the end of teh conversation he said I should write down my method for creating aspects. So here goes. My thoughts on aspect design. None of this is going to be all that revolutionary,you have probably heard this sort of thing before. This is just how I look at Fate.

Character aspects should be of immediate use. This seems obvious, but this is the area I see people fall into a lot. they will make an aspect that describes the character, but it is vague or too long reaching. If you want to get compelled then you need aspects that will be useful immediately. This means go for some kind of action you always take decision you always make, or thing you must take. If it is an action you take this can be expressed as a short slogan, "is clobberin' time," or, "I've got a bad feeling about this," or as the types of situations you get into, "I'm all thumbs," or, "Easily Distracted," are good for those types of things. Basically think of the types of action you want your character to make and build some aspects that will encourage the story in that direction from moment to moment. Decision point aspects are a lot like action aspects in that they are the things you character believes and ways they think the world should work. I like to look at these as things you character must do no matter what. Build you aspects to create situations that will bring this side of your character into conflict in some way. Things like, "Honesty is the best policy," and, "The rent must be paid," are good because they will put your character into conflicts and problems right away and you can use them to get out of those selfsame problems. Finally aspects as a thing are awesome as they state what is of immediate import to your character. Whether it is money, your father's sword, your family, or that Midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64, Firefly that you picked up for a steal, these are the things of utmost importance to your character and are the ideal aspects. They are easily compelled, and easily invoked. Win win.

Character aspects should be both useful and a hindrance, but they do not have to be. I am going to restate that last bit, aspects do not need to be both good and bad for your character. more specifically they don't have to be equal parts good and bad. There is the opinion that the best aspects are equally good and bad. Often that is true, but not always. Sometimes what is best for you is to have an aspect or two that are mostly good or mostly bad. the key here is to see what is best for your character, and to make sure that you have enough Fate coming in and enough Fate going out during a given session. How much is dependent on your group. That having been said, try and reword your bad aspects so they have some use, and try and reword your good aspects so they have a bit of downside. If I had the aspect, "Miserable Alcoholic," that works. Its a fine aspect. Generally speaking, though it will be used for compels rather than invokes. So maybe I want to get a little more bag for my buck out of this. Then I might re-imagine the character just a smidge and rename the aspect, "I drink to forget." what this does is allows a little more of the character to shine through during a compel, and it allows for me to occasionally invoke it to remember something or forget something. It is still mostly a hindrance, but it now has a little more depth. I could easily have gone with, "Mean drunk," or, "Deep in his cups," to alter the feel of the character and still get that same kind of scene framing that I get with the first change.

That is about it for now, on the subject of aspects, from me. I don;t normally like dispensing advice, mostly because what works for me might be horrid for you, but if you found this useful let me know. Leave a comment, or something so that I know that you would like to see more posts along these lines. If you think I am full of it, also leave me a comment so that I know to leave this sort of stuff to those better suited for it.

Raise the Black Flag: Ship Combat

After looking through a lot of Fate material both old and new, I have come to a few conclusions on how I would like to do Ship Combat in Raise the Black Flag. I will be starting with an already solid combat system that I think will work with a bit of tweaking. I will be using as a basis for ship combat Diaspora's Starship Combat minigame.

The reason is that when it is played it feels a lot like combat is described in Pirate and Age of Sail Stories. And that is what I would like to emulate. So there you go. there are some issues though. Firstly, their are no electrics or sensors or the like, so I will need to swap those out for something else or else remove them from the mini game altogether. Overall though I think that very little of it needs to change in order for ship combat to feel just like I think it should.

The other issue is how to do a ship to land attack. I really would like there t be a way to defend a shoreline fort from a sea vessel in a fun and imaginative way. This is the area I have the least understanding of how to do. I want fort defense to be fun and interesting. I want the players to be able to plan and figure, without having to go into minutiae and their plans must matter mechanically. I want there to be advantages on both sides of the fight. The ships are able to maneuver but the land has better supply or defense or something.

The issue I am having is a way to have defenders be able to make plans and defend without it getting bogged down. I would like to do something like a tower defense in Fate, but I have no real idea on how to do that. Also I would like a way to do a ticking clock that does not feel arbitrary. Maybe the players come up with a defense and that sets a couple of the difficulties and then the rolls will alter the time frame of the attack? I just can't quite get my head around this idea, but I know it has the potential to be amazing.

So any thoughts on how to handle those problems would be greatly appreciated. I have some ideas, but I don't necessarily have the best ones.

Pirate Word of the Day:
Landlubber: A person unfamiliar with the sea or seamanship. A sailor on the first voyage. A person who lives and works on land. The guy you definitely don't want next to you on a sea raid.

Shadow Legion: Madness in the Dark

In this session +Ron Frazier, +Brian Boring, +Frank Falkenberg, +Sharif Abed, and I got together to play our most tense session yet! Our heroes decide to board the Sukar vessel in search of the secret to Sukar jump tech. Commander Kevik manages to successfully make an ad-hock dock with the vessel despite being hopped up on morphine. Inside the air is thin and there is no light anywhere. Ginko decides to poke around and they almost activate a bunch of Sukar hunter/killer robots. they manage to reprogram them and take them as allies in the coming conflicts. During a loud and long discussion of what to do next they hear the scream of the Sukar, which shakes them up a bit, especially the group of marines they brought with them. what follows is a tough couple of fights in which the commander gets many of his marines killed. This leads him to seek and end quickly and he rushes off with G'Lex to the engine room, leaving Ginko and Alric to fend for themselves. Both groups get into a conflict. It ends with them coming together and all the air on the ship being vented. We ended with the Sukar ship heading toward the main fleet and the heroes only having a twenty minute supply of air.

Problems I see in the setting and rules
 The Esp issue: when I originally wrote up Psi I had not played with it much and as such I wrote the description without thinking too much about how it would work. Here is the original description of Esp as I saw it:

The Esp skill allows for reading of minds, seeing the past, and seeing possible futures. the skill is for Overcome Actions to gain information and Create advantage actions to use your sixth sense against others or for yourself.

See I saw it as working a lot like Psychic powers in other fiction. The problem is the seeing the future part. This cannot be resisted by anyone and allows for easy creation of really useful and powerful aspects without any way to defend against it. the more I play the less it fits how I see Esp working. I would love for esp to relate to the connections between minds. this would have very interesting ramifications when the Halo gets built and Telekinesis only works on those with a biological mind. I really dig that idea more and more as the campaign goes on. I think in the future I will be removing the temporal aspects to Esp. It will only be for mind reading and the like. Maybe their could be a type of Halo that allows for temporal effects(again only when dealing with organic minds).

Skill issues: OK, I am going to talk about an issue I have noticed in EVERY game of Fate I have played so far. Players tend to work their narrative asses off in order to keep problems in their top three skills. If it goes below that they start to get antsy, upset, and nervous. I don't know how to fix this problem. Some might not even think this is a problem. I do. I see it as the thing that eats up the most time and takes me out of the game whenever it happens. For example, today Brian wanted to use technology to defend against a mental attack. we ended up debating this for maybe thirty seconds, and it took me right out of the game. Now I do not see this as a problem with Brian's style of play so much as a piece of a larger issue. This issue...I see no real solution to. It bugs me. Maybe I should go with something like Diaspora's skill use rules where you can only use a skill once in a scene or something.

Education and technology each need to be split into two skills each as they tend to be overused. I would like to split technology into the engineering end of things and the programming or systems use side of things. Not sure what to call those skills either. With Education I would like to split it as well, but I have no idea how to do it. Any suggestions on this would be very useful.

Here is the recording of play, if you would like to watch it:

Shadow Legion: Into the Valley of the Shadow

Two weeks ago +Frank Falkenberg, +Sharif Abed, +Brian Boring, +Ron Frazier, and I got together to play another game of Fate Core. In this our heroes head out on their great mission to find the source of the Sukar, to find some weakness or weapon they can use against this alien menace.

In this episode I built an extended challenge into the game. Basically there is a difficulty that needs to be reached in order to gain a specific benefit. As well as an overall difficulty to finish the whole project. After thinking on it for a weak I think I would have preferred to have a minimum success required to move toward the end goal. I don't know, I will think on this idea some more.

Our heroes also were compelled to do all kinds of crazy dangerous things in this session. Which I think is fantastic. Overall the game went well. The party works well together and still have a nice amount of conflict going on.

Also this is the first appearance of the ship's doctor, a Marddeth named Fialagoo. This may be my favorite NPC I have ever design on the fly.

Paranoia: FATE of Alpha Complex

On fate Points earlier today we had a brief tangent about what Fate does well. I made a quick mention that I thought that Fate would not do Paranoia well. I immediately started to calculate how to do Paranoia in Fate. Here are my initial thoughts on how that might work:

Campaign Aspects
The Computer Cannot Be Wrong
The Computer Is Broken

Your character starts with a trouble aspect and one other aspect. it has no skills, no stress tracks, and no refresh. You do have a Red security clearance, a new jump suit, and a job as a troubleshooter.

when you die and are reconstructed, or reach what would normally be a major milestone you have the option of gaining a skill point in a skill, a stunt, a mutation, a security clearance upgrade, a Big Gun, or a point of refresh.


Stunts: Use the rules for creating a stunt from FAE, but replace +2 with +1.
Mutations: A stunt that gives a +2 bonus, however being a mutant counts as a second trouble that can be compelled. No one trusts a filthy stinking mutant. when you take a mutation write down whether you are a registered or unregistered mutant.
Security Clearance: Increasing your clearance makes you more valuable to the Computer. You can legally have more information than lower security clearances.
Big Gun: All troubleshooters may request to have a gun. you are special, the Computer gave you a present. You have a Big Gun. Big Guns do a minimum of four stress, however if you miss your attack roll by three you take four stress rather than your opponent.

Fate Pirates: Raise The Black Flag!

Themes I think are interesting in Pirate stories

"Heaven, you fool? Did you ever year of any pirates going thither? Give me hell, it's a merrier place: I'll give Roberts a salute of 13 guns at entrance." -Thomas Sutton

"My Lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part, I am the innocentest person of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons." -William Kidd

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." -H. L. Mencken

Pirates. At heart, they are despicable men, doing horrible things, for petty reasons. And yet there is something about the idea of pirates that we love. From Treasure Island to the Pirates of the Caribbean, pirate stories continue on in our culture. Buried treasure, sword fighting, the freedom of the high seas, the romance of it all, we just eat it up. I am one of those who loves pirates...well, I love the romanticized stories told about Pirates. I was looking around and I realized there are no pirate Fate Games anywhere. And so I will begin on creating a proper Pirate Game for Fate Core. Here goes. I have compiled a list of things that i think every pirate game needs.

Ship Combat is incredibly important to a proper Pirate Game. It needs to feel authentic. I would like a Ship to ship battle to feel like those seen in Horatio Hornblower, Master and Commander, and of course Pirates of the Caribbean. I also would like to add a bit of Historical accuracy to the ships used. Maybe a brief discussion of ships and the like. I enjoy history and adding information of a historical nature will give a better feel for the world, I think. So there must be some ships that give advantage over others, overall and situational.


Characters must be meaningful in Ship Combat if they so desire. This may mean that there are a couple of stages to ship conflict, or the layers will have more than one character. this will add more complexity, of course, but I will try and minimize that as much as possible.

Buried treasure, there must be a reason to bury treasure. In real life pirates spent all their booty(heh, booty). You don't steal things unless you intend to profit from them. Yet, buried treasure is a staple of pirate lore. Blame Robert Louis Stevenson. Because of this, there needs to be a solid, in setting, reason for pirates to bury treasure. Perhaps a weird statute of limitations, angry island gods, curses, ghosts, or something else I have not thought of. This is an area that is rife for Role Playing goodness, so I will have to work extra hard on making this aspect really sing.

Native religion has magic Vs Old World Orthodoxy having philosophies and technologies Vs Pirates have old world religion mixed with new world superstition. One thing I absolutely loved about the Pirates of the Caribbean movies was the magic in it. It was evocative and big, while still  being wild and unknowable. Also in history sailors would have strange rituals and lucky superstitions, as well as dealing with omens and fate. I think that in this setting the pirates will be a very motley religious group, with bits of old magic combined with European style Catholicism. Pirates are largely illiterate and treat the Church like a mystical protector(saints and the like). The Natives deal directly with the spirits of sky and ocean, but it is subtle and indirect. Technology and numbers beat native magic most of the time.

There must be a reason to loot ships. In the real pirate age there was a lot of gold being hauled out of the new world, as well as other resources. There was also a couple of small and large wars and cold wars happening. This led to a lot of battle ready sailors sitting around and watching all this gold going back to Europe. When their jobs were ended, these men just kept fighting. They kept the gold. I think something like that will work well here. Also it will be easy enough to add a question to the Phase Trio about the last conflict and what you did during it. I could then provide a brief timeline of conflicts as I see them happening.

Old world needs new world's goods. Strife is abundant. This almost goes without saying. But their must be a Europe or a Europe analog that needs the goods offered by the New World, or New World analog. Piracy thrives on conflict and multiple powers vying for the same locations and resources.

Legends and myth are a part of the world, though not often met. Also the legends of sailors are different than the stories of lubbers. When the legends happen, this is the big time. Mostly pirates just rob and plunder, but when they step into legend? That is when you get the pirate stories you want. If I set this in historical pirate times, I will need to research actual sailor myths and legends of the time. If I make up my own, then I need to research and come up with my own versions of them. Lost worlds, ancient secrets, and curses are all a big part of this, especially curses.

Matchlock Guns, Cutlasses and sabres, Cannon and grappling hooks. There were a great many pirate eras, from ancient Greeks, to Vikings, to the Barbary coast. However, when I say, "Pirate," you think the Caribbian. You think the Spanish Main. You think, "Avast! Yo Ho! Me Hearties!" The technology must be right, or at least it must feel right.

There are different kinds of Pirates, ad they should play a bit differently. I am uncertain if I want this. However there were a lot of different kinds of pirates and a lot of different ways of Piracy. If I put them all in, though, then I fear I will be diluting the game. I will think on this some more.

Anyway, there are my first thoughts on doing a Fate Core Pirate game. Let me know what you think, or what you think I am missing.

Shadow Legion: Marddeth

The Marddeth have a story...
In the beginning was the Katroczeh[Maker/Creator/Builder]. It created the Shreev[Code/Reason/Breath]. The Shreev was life, but the Shreev was without Reazi[Form/Purchase/Meaning]. Katroczeh gave the Shreev the means to achieve Reazi. In seeing its work was near completion Katroczeh crafted its final message, carving it into the rock of the land. It then departed. When The First saw the message they rejoiced for the knowledge.

Then came the Interpretation[schism/divide/discussion]. Then came the Singularity War. The Drei[Thinkers/Unbodied/Formless] believed that thought was all and the physical reality was a waste. The Marddeth[Solid/Shaped/Real] believed that Form mattered as much as thought. The Interpretation and the Singularity War raged for an age. In the end only the Marddeth remained.

This was the beginning.

New Planet
Ahlmak: long ago the Marddeth were created here. A metal rich lifeless rock circling a cold star. The Marddeth have long since abandoned it, though many still make pilgrimages to it once in their lives. The only permanent residents are the four cults of Katroczeh that maintain temples on the planet.


Unique Marddeth
Most Marddeth take on forms that are reminiscent of the other intelligent races of the galaxy. Some do not. Some take the idea of form far beyond. these are the heretics and the rogues, hermits and recluses of the Marddeth.

Bahmu: A Marddeth of massive proportion. Bahmu has not set foot on a planetary body in centuries. It roams the space lanes hunting for ships which it attacks and devours to fuel its growth. no one has seem this titanic being in well over fifty years. There are many who do not believe Bahmu even exists.

The Flood: A heretic of the highest order. the Marddeth that became the Flood was obsessed with the next step in Marddeth evolution. It would alter its form on a nearly daily basis. One day it stepped forward and declared the current direction of the Path of Form was false. Seven days later all life on that planet, artificial and organic, was extinguished. There have been three expeditions to the planet. Only one came back. A Tesh was the only survivor. It was he who told of the Flood. It was he who renamed the planet. Dashel rthuna, Fields of Echo.

Sado: Sado split itself into many bodies. Sado believes that to attain enlightenment it must experience everything. Sado is crazy. Many have met Sado. Even Sado has met Sado. On those rare occasions, Sado kills itself. Sado is crazy.

Dr. Fialagoo, MD: Fialagoo believes that to understand the Path of Form, one must first understand form in all its variety. So it went out and got a Medical Degree. It got seven of them. Fialagoo is probably the greatest doctor in the galaxy. It is also a little...off. It is cheerful and in love with pharmaceuticals. This is its greatest form of entertainment. But really does care about all those organics. Really, it does.

[Magi]Roll/Keep III: Roll/Keep With a Vengeance

 Nemesis, winged tilter of scales and lives,
Immortal Resenter! I sing Thy song,
Almighty Payback on proud-spread wings,
Lieutenant of fairness, Requiter of wrongs.
Despise the lordly with all Thine art
And lay them low in the Nether-dark.

~Hymn to Nemesis, Mesomedes

As I played with this idea of a roll keep system using Fate Core I came to the realization that this would work for my Magi game. I still have a lot of things to work out, but I would like to share what I have com up with so far.

In this game you have two types of skills, dice rolled skills and dice kept skills. Dice rolled skills would equate to attribute in other games, and I may end up calling them that here. I would prefer not to. These are the skills that let you know how many fudge dice you are rolling this turn. There are three of them: Entropy, Stasis, and Creation. When you are in a situation you need to decide how you wish to approach the task at hand. You would choose one of those three things to do so.

Dice kept skills are the skills that let you know how many Fudge Dice you can keep from a given roll. Normally these are what would be called skills, and I may end up calling them that. These skills are seven in total and are: Elan Vital(life), Matter, Forces, Spirit, Affinity(connection), Psyche(mind), and Tempus(time).

When you are doing a normal action where the outcome is both important and in question, you roll a number of dice equal to the Dice Rolled Skill you used, and keep a number of dice equal to the Dice Kept Skill you used. You then add it all up and compare that to a target number or your opponents roll. This is the minimum required success for a non-magical action.

Magical actions will require you to keep a minus dice for every extra level of effect you wish to have. the bigger the magical effect, the more minuses you need to keep in order to power the effect. you can also seek to gain extra effect by taking more minuses than you need to overcharge the roll.

You can manipulate the rolls in a number of ways. Before the dice are rolled you can spend a fate point to set a single die to the side. This is not rolled and is not added to the resulting dice total, but is counted towards the end effect as if it were an effect die. You can also spend a fate point before or after the roll to add a die to the roll, or to keep an extra die(provided you have more dice to keep).

Stunts allow you to alter the rolls in very specific circumstances. Basically they represent specified magic spells or techniques that you have practiced enough to be fantastic at. There are two kinds of stunts. The first kind give you a +2 bonus to a roll when using a specific type of magic. It works alot like how stunts work in FAE. The second type is a lot bigger and as such it counts as two stunts when you take it. It allows you to use Minuses and Blanks for effect dice when you are rolling, but only when using your magic in a very specific way.

The final thing I have for Magi this time is a change in the name. Magi was always a working title, and I have finally come up with one I like a better. I am now christening this project Hubris. I feel that covers the game pretty well, as well as demonstrating my mindset when I set out to do this project. So, let me know what you think of my ideas here. I have not tested them fully yet. I am curious as to your thoughts on the matter.
If you wish to see the previous thoughts I had on Magi here is a list, in order:
The Pitch, where I had a couple of cool ideas
Step One, I start defining the core of the game
Step Two, I try and get the basics of the setting and almost get it
Step Three, Magic, Nodes, and a few more influences
Step Four, First thoughts on character creation
Step Five, More on Nodes and the setting
Step Six, Stress
Step Seven, Character Creation examples
Step Eight, The Nature of Magic
Step Nine, Skill descriptions
Step Ten, Nodes and Supernodes
Step Eleven, First thoughts on Fast vs Slow magic
Step Twelve, Where I say what I am removing after I had tested the game a bit

Shadow Legion: The Center Must Hold

This week +Frank Falkenberg, +Ron Frazier, +Sharif Abed , +Brian Boring, and I got together to play another session of Shadow Legion together. It went well. Lots of things happened.

The characters make it back to Center, the home of Charter government. They immediately split up. Commander Kevik hurries to the Terran Majority embassy to let Ambassador Pratima Burhano know of the Sukar threat. Initially she does not believe him, but when he promises a favor she agrees to present his evidence before the Charter Council.

Gamesman Alric makes the next move in the Great Game. He manages to get Matriarch Brun to agree to a mating arrangement. However she does win this round of the Game. When he speaks with Ginko Alric begin to put the pieces together that their immediate superior, Council Being Smythe, is far more than he appears. There is mention of the Primacy of Man and a secret fleet.

G'Lex and Ginko both make some discoveries as well. Ginko discovers much about the Sukar's technology level and history, with some help from Alric.G'Lex discovers a leftover program from the AIs they discovered in the last session. It sent information of their activities back to the AIs.


New Setting Information

The Primacy of Man: In the birth of the last century a small science cult sprang up that believed in moving humanities genetic potential forward. They began a system of intense eugenics and genetic modification. When the Gate’s where create they swiftly moved to an earthlike world and sealed it off from the rest of the universe. Political tension is high as they believe they are the superior beings in the universe.

Shields: Weapon technology had negated all traditional armors. The invention of The Shield has made many weapons untenable, and reopened old ways of doing harm. The Shield works by preventing objects moving at a certain speed or higher from passing it by. The shield can be bypassed by massed fire(shooting it till it collapses) or by using a slower attack method(melee weapons).

When attacked, the defender can choose to use the shield’s stress box instead of the character’s stress box. You can remove the stress from the shield by spending a turn and rolling technology against a difficulty equal to the stress in the box.

Shields and ratings

Low quality Civilian Shield: a Single 1 stress box against ranged weapons

High Quality Civilian Shield: a single 2 stress box against ranged weapons

Military' Grade Shield: a single 3 stress box against ranged weapons

 

Armor: Advanced firearm technology had made armors obsolete, until the advent of shields. Shields made hand to hand combat viable again, and armor returned with it. Armor works like a shield only against melee weapons rather than ranged.

Armors and rating

Light armor: a single 1 stress box against melee weapons

Medium armor: a single 2 stress box against melee weapons

Heavy armor: a single 3 stress box against melee weapons

Shadow Legion: Die Nibelungenlied

Last week I did not run a game, as I was busy. The week before I ran a game for +Sharif Abed, +Ron Frazier, +Brian Boring, and +Frank Falkenberg. Our heroes were searching  a massive facility in orbit of one of the suns in this uncharted systems. the heroes ended up split three ways, each running into their own problems. Sharif's character meets with Etzel, the leader of the AIs who built this facility. He manages to convince them that he and his crew are not here to attack. Ron and Brian's characters head back to the ship when PAICO, the ships AI, tells them he is under attack. They manage to save the ship. Frank's character runs into a commando team from the Deija ship. There comes a wonderful scene of confusion as each side fights every other side. In the end Frank's character is captured, as is the Deija commando leader. there is a big argument about who is bad and who is good, in the end our heroes escape with the promise to never tell anyone what they had seen here.

So I split the party in this. in fact I split the party twice. Fate seems to handle this rather well. There did not seem to be any big hiccups with splitting the party or dealing with three separate combats alongside a character rushing to repair the ship faster than it can get damaged. Part of it might be in how I run the game. I tend to jump around and treat each action as part of the whole even when they are happening great distances apart. I think the main reason this works so well is within the system of Fate Core itself. The game has simplified the actions and streamlined them, making jumping around far easier. Also the advice in it is solid and specifically geared toward what Fate does well.

And then...the end of everything.

Last week I played in +Michael Pedersen's Fate Core game along with +Sharif Abed and +David Cooper . We played through the next step in our plans to take down the Cold Bloods, a vicious street gang bent on ending he world. My friends, of course, wish to stop this plan. My goal is slightly different. I wish to have the power to end the world for myself. The gods have forsaken my people. They did nothing to stop the death of our god or our civilization. Now they shall know the pain of the damned. I am fairly singleminded in this task.

I am afraid I went rather a bit far in this endeavor. It seems that Michael was having difficulty this session and we end up stopping after about an hour. We do have a magnificent conversation on GMing in Fate for about an hour. I feel i may have come across a bit strong in this conversation. I have that tendency. I talk too much. It was with the intent to help, but I think I do come across as overbearing. Here is the recording: