Let's play Fate! (Pen & Paper RPG)

The Game Room
1

In the midst of a discussion about D&D and other roleplaying systems puppygod mentioned a free, essentially open-source system called Fate. From what I’ve seen it looks extremely cool, and represents a pretty big shift away from the D&D model of roleplaying, so I thought I’d propose starting a play-by-post game for anybody who’s interested. Looking at the various on-board D&D threads it seems as if 6-8 players is about ideal for this setting. RoOsh, NAF1138, Hoopy Frood, and Pollux Oil have already expressed interest, and so they each have a slot if they want it.

I’ll give the other four slots to the first four interested people to respond. I’m happy to place latecomers on a waiting list, in case a slot opens up later.

Each player gets one PC, and I’d ask that everyone agrees to play nicely, and to be lenient with your DM (who only recently discovered this system). :slight_smile:

Having established that, while I already have some ideas that I’m planning to implement, I’m open to any setting, theme, or tone of play, so long as it doesn’t rely on obvious extant franchises that incur the wrath of the mods and the copyright attorneys.

Having said that, I thoroughly encourage everyone to look through the (free) Fate sourcebook before seriously considering what you’d like to see in the game: one of the really neat things about Fate is the extent to which it encourages players to actively participate in planning and executing the story. (You obviously want to read the entire thing, but the section on Aspect, in particular, highlights how this system distinguishes itself from D&D and the related systems.

2

cool, this really looks fun. Are you thinking of running fate v2 or spirit of the century?

3

Oh ghods, I’m SO in… Especially if you’re doing Spirit of the Century!

4

I was thinking of doing Spirit of the Century, if people didn’t mind.

And ArrrMatey! gets a spot!

Three spots left, so smoke one if you don’t have it!

5

Sweet, I’ll confirm my Spot!

6

I’m totally in for a spot. I haven’t had a chance to fully read the rules but I’ll brush up on it tonight.

7

RoOsh and Pollux Oil, you’re both confirmed. :slight_smile:

So does anyone have some thoughts on what kind of setting they’d like to see? If you’d rather, I would be happy to run a combined universe-type game, where everyone simply makes what they want (within reason), and we figure out some excuse for the characters to get together.

8

I read through that really long SoC manual, and if I created a character I’d have it probably be a Martial Artist/Swordsman or some type, or a Gunslinger sort of Character actually.

But I totally don’t mind doing a Fish out of Water scenario, I’m sure I could find a way to justify my existence.

9

Chiming in to confirm. I haven’t read the rules yet, and won’t get to read them until tonight, but I’ve got a few character ideas in mind.

As far as preferred setting, anything’s fine with me. (I think a collision of the multiverse type thing would be interesting. We could have cyberpunk mixed with fantasy mixed with wild west, depending on what characters we create.)

10

[QUOTE=Hoopy Frood]
Chiming in to confirm. I haven’t read the rules yet, and won’t get to read them until tonight, but I’ve got a few character ideas in mind.

As far as preferred setting, anything’s fine with me. (I think a collision of the multiverse type thing would be interesting. We could have cyberpunk mixed with fantasy mixed with wild west, depending on what characters we create.)
[/QUOTE]

You’re in! And yes, I can’t remember what it’s called at the moment, but there’s another system that’s famous for mixing and matching of this type: the whole setting was based around the idea of people from different universes getting stuck in the gameworld, resulting in elf archers, MI6 agents, and cowboys grouping together. :smiley:

Fate’s rules can accommodate this kind of play really easily, so I’m all for it if the other players are.

11

Oh yes, and a quick recap for anyone following along: all four reservations have confirmed, and we’ve added one new PC, giving us five players:
RoOsh,
NAF1138,
Hoopy Frood
Pollux Oil
ArrMatey!

Being that as it is,

We have room for three more players

I think five people is more than enough to start with, so I propose we proceed with working out the gameworld, making characters, and start when everybody’s sheet is in… other interested participants can join in along the way. :slight_smile:

(Oh, and I assumed it was obvious, but everyone should feel free to PM me if they have questions/comments/clarifications/anything else game related.)

Oh, and I’d like to ask: I don’t think we’ll need a battlegrid but I’m a great fan of props and handouts, and I don’t fancy emailing everyone attachments every other day, so are there any suggestions beyond Photobucket for archiving party-viewable content?

12

Depending on the types of things you want to share google docs could work very well.

13

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
Depending on the types of things you want to share google docs could work very well.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, that’s a good idea. If I end up being evil enough to do a graphical or simple crytography puzzle, it might be easiest to use a reasonably obscure foreign orthography in google docs.

14

So I think I’m going to do a cat burglar type character out of a modern-day setting.

He’ll be very athletic, stealthy, and always aware of his surroundings (including the fastest exit out), and can open just about any lock and disable about any electronic system out there, but in a fight, he’s the type that will runaway, usually as fast and direct as possible. It’s not the fact that he’s necessarily opposed to violence, he’s just smart enough to realize that he doesn’t like the sight of his own blood. If he has any combat skills at all, they’ll probably be related to something along the lines of a throw-oriented marital art (e.g. judo), the idea being to escape the opponent and get away, not to stick around and go toe-to-toe. Also, he’s not going to be much of a diplomat, though he’ll have some skill in fast talking his way out of awkward situations. At least until someone actually sits down and thinks about what he said, though, by that point he plans to be very far away.

He’ll resent ever being called a coward (especially given the caliber of people he’s stolen from, some of whom would kill–and have killed–their own mothers to get ahead). He’s just very skilled in the fine art of self-preservation.

15

[QUOTE=Omi no Kami]
You’re in! And yes, I can’t remember what it’s called at the moment, but there’s another system that’s famous for mixing and matching of this type: the whole setting was based around the idea of people from different universes getting stuck in the gameworld, resulting in elf archers, MI6 agents, and cowboys grouping together. :smiley: .
[/QUOTE]

The game you’re likely thinking of is TORG. (Capitalized because, while they never say so in the game, the title is an acronym.)
I’m fine with mixing genre-types for characters, but only if we have an actual reason to. (TORG’s reality-storms are a good example, or being taken from our times / places by some outside force.) In essence, I’m wondering what sort of game you want to run? I’m more comfortable deciding a character when I have some idea what sort-of setting we’re playing in.

16

ok, I am going to buy the spirit of the century PDF pack today. Am I going to need anything else besides that do you think?

17

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
ok, I am going to buy the spirit of the century PDF pack today. Am I going to need anything else besides that do you think?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think so- part of the reason I elected to go with Fate was because of the open license. For that matter, you might not even need the PDF unless everyone wants to go with the pulp 30s theme, since the vast majority of the SOTC revisions are freely (and legally) available at Crackmonkey.org -- Non Sequitur Arguments and Ad-Hominem Personal Attacks

18

[QUOTE=ArrMatey!]
The game you’re likely thinking of is TORG. (Capitalized because, while they never say so in the game, the title is an acronym.)
I’m fine with mixing genre-types for characters, but only if we have an actual reason to. (TORG’s reality-storms are a good example, or being taken from our times / places by some outside force.) In essence, I’m wondering what sort of game you want to run? I’m more comfortable deciding a character when I have some idea what sort-of setting we’re playing in.
[/QUOTE]

I had a few different ideas to explain the mixing, although I’d like to clarify something before proposing one: does anybody have a specific mood they’d particularly like to see, or not see? Most of my games tend to have a fairly heavy comedic edge, and I know that can throw some people who prefer more serious roleplaying.

19

[QUOTE=Omi no Kami]
I don’t think so- part of the reason I elected to go with Fate was because of the open license. For that matter, you might not even need the PDF unless everyone wants to go with the pulp 30s theme, since the vast majority of the SOTC revisions are freely (and legally) available at Crackmonkey.org -- Non Sequitur Arguments and Ad-Hominem Personal Attacks
[/QUOTE]

Even better. I like free.
ETA:

Also, I think the heavy comedic edge (for me personally) would be a good change of pace from some of the stuff I am doing right now. Everything else I am playing is VERY serious, some comedy would be nice.

20

[QUOTE=NAF1138]
Even better. I like free.
ETA:

Also, I think the heavy comedic edge (for me personally) would be a good change of pace from some of the stuff I am doing right now. Everything else I am playing is VERY serious, some comedy would be nice.
[/QUOTE]

Alright… we’ll wait to hear back from everyone, but to give ArrMatey! something to work with, I was thinking of explaining the mixing and matching by beginning the game in Hollywood, where a set was being painted in preparation to film a sequel to Dungeons and Dragons, named Dungeons and Flagons. (In which the PCs all fail their quest and, in their despondence, fall into a pattern of potion abuse.)

In any event, some dimwit set designer managed to score a real, bona-fide Magical Tome in an old novelty shop. He haphazardly copied out numerous symbols and figures from the book, sometimes combining unrelated symbols because the composite design “looked cool,” and then blew the entire thing up and painted it across the floor of the set. Cut to the first day of filming, when a freak accident results in a lighting bolt striking the floor of the set. Said bolt charges the symbols and sets of an uncontained, catastrophic pseudo-spell that transforms fantasy into reality throughout all of L.A. and perhaps beyond. Unfortunately, a sizable proportion of actors in this universe were method actors, resulting in their instant transformation into the character they were dressed to portray.

Many gamers probably underwent similar transformations, while many of L.A.'s less desirable elements turned into demons or worse…

It’s been several years since the incident, and once the ensuing chaos calmed down L.A. pretty much settled back into its normal rhythm. For some reason, however, nobody who has gone to investigate how far the spell went has returned: some theorize that they have perished, some claim that the spell simply wears off if you walk outside of the area of effect, but few people seem particularly keen to find out for themselves.
So that’s the kind of world I thought the PCs might end up in: most people who were affected were affected thoroughly, to the point that their entire reality has shifted to accommodate their new identity: despite academic knowledge to the contrary, each Character exists under the impression that his or her identity has remained unchanged. That would let everyone have as free a hand as they want with creating their character, and it’d let them implement as much or as little fish-out-of-water stuff as they felt like.