Author: Stan Shinn (Page 63 of 111)

Questions of Fate

April 30, 2016 / Stan Shinn

Having run two Fate Core games in the last month where I’ve really tried to use all the rules properly, I noticed a few rules questions have come up in-game. I’m memorializing those here to make sure I research these and also alerting the group so others besides myself can read up on how these should work. 🙂

Rules Questions

What are the results of a success-with-style roll on a skill check vs. passive opposition (e.g. a skill roll that isn’t combat)?
What are the results of a success-with-style roll on an opposed roll that isn’t combat?
How do you handle allied NPCs? Can you use Mob rules or is that only for enemy NPCs?
I was sketchy on what skills you can use for Defend and how/when you can use something besides Athletics to defend.
I believe someone said Free Invokes could only give you a +2, not a re-roll. Is that correct?
A Star Trek rules specific questions — how should skills work when Extra’s are piloting an enemy ship?

Math/Logistics Question

I noticed that players sometimes get confused when tallying up their skill modifier, adding any stunt bonuses, adding the dice results, and comparing against the GM’s opposing number. If that were the end of it, it would be OK, but as we turn in the Fate Point tokens, and folks spend additional Fate Points to do re-rolls, we sometimes forget how we got to those original numbers. I’m wondering if there are some best-practices like putting all your Fate Point tokens on a special mat so you can track how many Aspects you’re invoking or some other way to help players and GM alike keep track of the math as you progress through your evolving numbers to get to your final results.

Updates:

Conversations ongoing about this on Google+.
Alternative way to track Aspects.

Star Trek TOS: The God of War

April 24, 2016 / Stan Shinn

Last night’s Star Trek game was one of the most enjoyable games I’ve run in a long time! Partly it was my own love of the Star Trek setting, partly it was the enthusiasm of the players (notably Robert with his props and wardrobe), and partly it was the cinematic nature of the Fate RPG which I think was a great fit for this setting.

The Characters

Lt. Cmdr. T’shani

We had the following characters:

Capt. Lorn Harper (Human, Commanding Officer) — played by Robert
Cmdr. Arlin Cross (Human, 1st Officer) — played by Mason
Lt. Cmdr. Mac’Vor (Half-Vulcan, Chief Engineer) — played by Todd
Lt. Kelly Bishop (Human, Comm Officer) — played by Martin

We also had one notable NPC — Lt. Cmdr. T’shani (Vulcan, Chief Medical Officer) — who for some reason received a lot of attention in the game. 🙂

The Story

The story opened on Stardate 41661.7, where the U.S.S. Ares was exploring an uncharted system on the fringe of Federation space.

U.S.S. Ares

Energy signatures indicated a recent battle. The crew of the Ares investigated and learned that a Human-looking peaceful race called the Coborati were attacked by a warlike neighboring species called the Bellani. The Bellani were 3 meters tall with soft features and elongated necks and limbs, led by a mysterious figure called “The Oracle” who was said to be their “God of War”.

After a starship battle with the Bellani, chief medical officer Lt. Cmdr. T’shani, along with a few other crew, are captured by one the Bellani ships which then jumps to warp.

The U.S.S. Ares then travels to the nearby planet Cobor. The Federation crew hatched a plan to use a captured Bellani scout ship to infiltrate the Bellani homeworld, rescue T’shani and her companions, and unravel the mystery of the God of War.

Eventually, assisted by Bellani resistance fighters, the crew managed to insert themselves into the Bellani prison where T’shani and companions were held. The companions were then summoned to appear before The God of War. Obtaining their phasers smuggled in by the Bellani resistance fighters, Capt. Harper led a fight against The God of War. After sufficient taunting by the Federation crew, The God of War in his anger began to lose his shape. He was a Changeling, not a Bellani, who had duped the Bellani people for many years! As the fight ended, the Bellani government officials realized they had been deceived and renounced their erstwhile ‘god’ and entered negotiations to enter the Federation and forsake their warmongering ways.

Rules Observations

I’ll make a separate post on rules that we need to look up or master. The Starship rules worked well I think, with the Fate Fractal making it easy to run the combat using ships treated as characters. The ‘Shields’ house-rule letting you know ‘shields are at 94%!’ was a nice bit of flavor which mapped to the Stress boxes as you tracked damage.

Roleplaying

There was some great roleplaying! Things I remember:

Mason played a character with a ‘Lady’s Man’ aspect. His distraction when seeing the attractive Alani (a Coborati officer) led to him botching a control panel repair job, which resulted in the reactivation of a previously suppressed transponder inside a rescued Bellani escape pod reactivating. Shortly thereafter, 7 Bellani warships emerged from Warp and confronted the heroes. Later, Mason’s character acted on an aspect and wandered off to explore the back-alleys of Cobor, only to be confronted by Alani’s jealous husband. I love how Fate mechanics tie into getting yourself into trouble 🙂
Robert was in great form doing a Shatner-style captain. I loved it! His props were second to none as well.
Todd worked his ever-impressive Scottish accent for his engineering role.
I was impressed with how quickly Martin picked up on the Fate rules. He slid into great, genre-specific roleplaying. Loved how his attempts at Empathy and negotiation served as the foil for the trigger-happy, Kirk-style Capt. Harper!

Visuals on the game table.

Started using fluorescent markers on the plexiglass with no battlemat — works great to draw zones and not get distracted by Chessex grid mentality.

Someone’s In-Character Tonight!

Wow! Look at these props! They make noises and everything!

The Great Wylie Apocalypse

April 12, 2016 / Stan Shinn

It’s been a rough month! I’m ever so thankful for everyone’s concern and support. Here’s a quick recap on the notable apocalyptic events of recent weeks.

March 24

I live in Wylie, TX. My wife Janine and I wake up around 10:30pm to hear what sounds like a freight train bearing down on us. Hail was coming down in various sizes, much of it quarter or golf-ball sized. Entire ground was white with hail. Was so loud we did not realize till after the fact that we had double-paned windows both upstairs and downstairs that were shattered as a result. Some hail bounced across the gameroom and was at our stairwell — traveling over half the width of our house inside.

The next day there were dead birds everywhere, victims of the deadly, large hail.

In the aftermath, we took stock of the damage. We’ll have to:

Replace our roof
Replace our gutters
Replace several windows
Replace most of our window screens (it looks like werewolves were clawing to get inside)
Replace many of our blinds
Replace our pergola (it was twisted and damaged and we had to tear it down for safety reasons)
Sandblast and refinish our wood fences (looks like someone took a machine gun to them)

All this work is underway and our insurance is paying for almost everything, but it’s still exhausting to work with so many contractors, etc.

March 31

A head cold was making the circuit among my sons, and I eventually got it around March 31. We have plastic sheeting duct-taped around our many broken windows, but despite that the outside air flows freely in the house around the edges, which is really bad for my allergies and asthma. I think that was a contributing factor to what happened next. It couldn’t get any worse, right?

Wrong.

April 4

April 4 my cold turned into pneumonia. Spent most of the week in bed just trying to breathe.

April 11

Mostly over pneumonia at this point, not contagious but will still take a few days for my lungs to clear up. Then we had another round of hail! Our house was unscathed, but my sons got caught in it.

My oldest son Matt was driving (with my son Paul in the passenger seat) in Wylie about 5 minutes NW of his place (10 minutes SE of my house). Rain had not yet hit, but on the edge of the impending storm, BASEBALL-sized hail started raining down on them. One piece of hail hit and knocked completely off the rear-view mirror. Another few hard hits shattered the rear windshield. The front window was a spider-web of cracks at this point. It was a pretty dangerous situation.

Matt knew if the front window gave way they’d be in a world of hurt. They were in a rural area and visibility was near zero, but Matt knew there was a school nearby, so he did some crazy driving (including hopping a concrete curb and possibly damaging the car) in order to get to safety. They ended up in the lee (non-wind) side of the school and escaped further baseball sized hail. Their car looks like someone took a baseball bat to it, but aside from Matt having one cut on his arm from broken glass, our boys made it through this safely.

Boys’ Car Rear Window

Boys’ Car Front Window

Neighbor’s Picture of some of the Hail

April 12

My friend Jeff from my gaming group who also lives in Wylie found his trampoline over in his neighbor’s yard — tossed around by the wind! I believe he’s otherwise unscathed.

Jeff’s Trampoline

Wylie schools are closed due to the latest hail damage. But, everyone is safe! I hope our family is done with adventures for a while!

Now adding dealing with a totaled car to our long list of repairs. :-0

Tales from the Wilderland Session 02: Of Leaves & Stewed Hobbit

March 31, 2016 / Stan Shinn

We continued our adventures in Middle-earth. In the three months since our last adventure, the heroes were doing everything from fighting Orcs and building settlements, to starting Bardic performance circuits and making schemes to open lucrative trade routes.

A trip to rescue the hobbit Dindy Brandybuck gained added urgency after Barlimun received this perfumed letter:

(Click to view full PDF document)

The heroes journeyed south, crossed the Anduin, and headed into the orc-infested mountains.

Once there, as night fell, they spied a light in the distance. As the heroes forced marched through the darkness they found none other than Dindy Brandybuck and his companions, hunkered down in an old earth-works ringfort. The heroes arrived just in the nick of time since orc warhorns sounded and two dozen orcs and goblins attacked!

The Ringfort

The heroes fought off the assailants, but in the fray, Dindy was captured and taken to the Goblin caves. The heroes ventured down into the dank darkness. This song rang through the caves:

Goblins live down in the caves,
Ain’t had nothing to eat for days!
Empty bellies, sharpened teeth,
Sharp blades in a blackened sheath!
Goblins are a courteous folk
Always polite and real well spoke!
After a fight when we’re the winner
Bring the foe back home for dinner!
Dwarves is tough and mostly beard.
Elves are stringy and taste weird.
In better times we eat Man-flesh
Smoke it, cook it or eat it fresh!
Put the Hobbit in the pot!
Eat him up, we’ll have the lot!
Bring him to the Goblin feast!
Bring him to the Goblin feast!

After some heroics and several dead goblins and orcs, the heroes save not only Dindy but also Landana who (it turns out) had also been captured by the orcs! Barlamun was unconscious and dying by that point, but Landana’s healing powers revived the heroic bard, whose near-death bravery elicited eternal gratitude from the wood-elf.

Barlamun and Landana subsequently ventured to Bree, Barlamun’s hometown, with plans to build a life together, free (they hope) from the influence of the domineering elf-king Thanduil.

Tales from the Wilderland Session 01: Don’t Leave the Path

March 24, 2016 / Stan Shinn

Ran a kickoff game of Middle-earth adventuring! We ran late and grew weary in the game, much like the characters we were playing. I really liked the hex-crawling, but I do think it could be even better in the context of a long-running campaign, and with using the actual The One Ring D&D rules once they come out this summer.

Barlimun befriended the Elf King Thranduil’s niece Landona. I’ve got a feeling that won’t go without repurcussions!