back from illness

I haven't been on in a day or two, I've been sick and I never work well while sick.

Secrets of Cats is a cool and well written supplement but I don't think it serves as a good model for what I am trying to do. Not directly at least. By that I mean I cannot just do what they did and fill in my info. I plan a more and less detailed world. I want to describe enough to make it feel like the world is living and breathing place, very different from this one, but with this world as its distant past.

back to the drawing board

I have finally read the first few pages of Secrets of Cats. I don't really like the premise but it is a good study in how to create a world and how to write about it. The first draft I posted yesterday is not up to par in the writing, I need to come at it from a different angle. I need an outline to work from. I can envision the world I want to write very clearly but that is only the first step in this process. I need to go back to planning and get that right before I write anymore.

First Draft

I said that I would post the basic description of the world I am building when it was more polished. Here it is. Its not perfect and only gives a basic overview of the background of the world, but I think it at least gives the flavor I am looking to convey.

400 years ago Earth was invaded by aliens, they were both inscrutable and capricious. These alien conquerors did all the thing that alien conquers always do. They enslaved a large portion of the human population. They forced these slaves to destroy the great cities of the past and build cities of soaring crystal that no one lived in. They changed, modified, destroyed and rebuilt almost everything and everyone. They were cruel seemingly for cruelty’s sake alone.

Then, one day 100 years ago the aliens and most of their technology disappeared. They did not return to their great warships, they did not travel across the planet and meet to depart, they were simply not there one day.

This departure left all the humans that had been workers or slaves abandoned with nothing. People began to die without the support networks that the aliens had put in place. Cyborg slaves succumb to rejection syndrome, farmers that grew exclusively alien crops died from starvation with full storehouses.

The aliens had experimented on their slaves modifying their DNA to create abominations. Many of these twisted creatures died without their masters to care for them. Many others moved out of their cells and hid themselves in holes or wherever they could find. A few, monstrous beings raged across the land, feeling nothing but hunger and rage, killing to satisfy both. Still others had become hateful of the un-mutated and skulked around the edges of burgeoning societies to take the straggler or the stray child.

As the aliens enslaved mankind they likewise enslaved animals. Teaching them to talk and reason just make them more effective in the gladiatorial games the aliens never tired of. Some developed psionic powers that made them even more interesting to the aliens. Most of these animals have now returned to the wild though some live with humans. It is now impossible to tell if that dog can talk or a crow can use a gun or if that squirrel can read you mind.

They awakened machines giving them emotions and a desire to be real lifeforms, only for the amusement of watching the failure. Now robots roam the world looking for purpose. Advanced AI live on the remaining computer systems ruling over small data nodes that no longer connect to anything. Living appliances with no movement capabilities hope to be found and allowed to fulfill their function.

The aliens had used their advanced technology to keep one group of humans from communicating with another by changing the language spoken by different communities of slaves. This created little nations of humans that were goaded into wars that were not of their desire, but could not be avoided.

Clouds of nanite robots were unleashed. They destroyed and rebuilt buildings, towns, people, animals, even geological features, at random. These nanites lingered in pockets across the earth and some people learned to use them. Now wizards of nanotechnology cast fire and death at will. Some have the power of healing and some have even been rumored to bring people back from the dead.

World Building

I simply cannot get through secrets of cats. I am procrastinating, not just on this but on things in my life that could have serious consequences.

Creating a world is an ambitious goal, I am finding it so daunting that I am avoiding it. I have a brief intro to the world done but it is poorly composed and not very interesting. I will post it here when its a bit more polished.

I have had a week or two with the FATE system in my mind and have come to what I think are good insights. 

First, FATE allows players to help build the world and I have not been making use of this in my planning for my setting. I need to make the world interesting but open enough so the players can say what their town or city is like and who is there. I need my world to be more like a backdrop than a traditional campaign setting.

Second, the rules of FATE are a good deal less the GM's friend than rules of other systems. The rules cannot and should not be used to reign in the PCs. The PCs should abuse and break the rules of the game like they should abuse and break the rules of the game world. The best thing that a GM can do is think of himself as another player not the god of his little world.

Discouraged again

Still haven't made any significant progress one secrets of cats. getting kinda discouraged again. Family problems mostly.

The world I am making is going to take a lot more planning than I thought. I knew that it would be a lot of work, that's not the problem. Planning is the stage before writing when you decide what to write. I am working on a bare bones document to explain the basics of my world. I will post it here as soon as its done.

adventure 1

No progress in secrets of cats yet. had a busy weekend.

I have decided on the basic structure of the adventure I'll run at Pacificon, but as some people that want to play it also read here I wont spoil it. What I will do is chronicle the steps I go through in its creation and how they also serve as stepping stones for creation of the campaign setting I intend to publish. I find that the most difficult part of the creative process for me is the blank page. I have an idea now and that is the toughest part.

Pacificon 2

No progress on secrets of cats. 

Decided that I'm defiantly going to Pacificon this September, so I'm going to start work on an adventure to run. I think I'm gonna go with something like the seven samurai set in my post apocalyptic world. I have some good ideas of how to set it up and make it feel fleshed out and deep.

moving to somithing new

I have reached chapter 6 in the toolkit but I don't think I am going to read anymore. There are a bunch of cool thing in there but I think I may be putting the cart before the horse if I try to implement any of them. I am going to stick with the core rules and learn how they run and not add to them unless I need them as a solution to something a character wants to do.

I am going to begin the secrets of cats to see how a full campaign setting is written in this system.

First FATE

I DMed my first game in FATE tonight. It went well. We didn't get past character creation but I think my players had a lot of fun. Making characters is very much like playing, it had adventure and intrigue and interaction between characters. It was great fun for me to see the characters blossom from simple ideas to characters with motivations and connections to the world. Its kinda different from the way other games do it.

I am running a post apocalyptic, kitchen sink type game. I love game worlds that allow you to play whatever you think up. My sister is playing an intelligent tree and my brother is a gunslinging knight. Both of those are kinda rip offs of other stuff but so is almost everything.

We had fun and should continue to have, so that means it was a success.

group planned

I am up to chapter 4 in the Toolkit. I love alternate rules, that's why I own 40 plus Gurps books. These rules are very interesting but I think its in my best interest to run the game just from the core book at first. With the exception of adding a couple of skills.

I have gotten a group to agree to play tomorrow night, so I should have some interesting stories of how we got it wrong and, hopefully, still had fun.

Fate Points

OK, one goal down. Next is to read over the FATE toolkit (just finished chapter 2) and decide if I want to use any alternate or additional rules. I suspect I will need to modify the skill list at least.

I have received some very good advice from the good folks at the EN World forum. I previously said that I thought of FATE points as akin to Hero Points in the old DC Heroes RPG, but I now see that I was wrong. FATE points should be used and given through out the session, that's why the PCs get a certain number back at the beginning of each session.

The FATE points must flow.

EN World Post

A few days ago I posted a question on the FATE gaming board over at EN World. I got some interesting feedback.

its here

finished

I have finished the FATE Core book.

It is my plan to move on immediately to FATE toolkit.

I think that extras are very cool. A system whereby the addition of new mechanics can be added to the game that only takes 10 pages to explain is a feat in itself.

As far as the book as a whole goes I loved it. I'll have more to say on this later, for now I just thought I would post to say I have reached my first milestone on my journey.

end in sight

I finished chapter 10. I might be able to finish this tomorrow, chapter 11 is only 21 pages.

I am really not sure I want to implement the skill pyramid. I like the skill selection at start but the idea that you have to have one skill stack on top of another is kinda silly to me. Maybe it will make more sense in game but right now I am considering changing it, even if it does make it easier for the characters to advance to high skill.

discouraged

I finished chapter 9.

I am not sure I like the aspects for scenes idea but I'll play it as written and see how it goes.

Before I read chapter 9 it was my plan to simply convert a small dungeon I designed to FATE and use that as an introductory scenario. I'm not sure that kind of adventure will even work in FATE. I'm not sure that my GM style will work in FATE. I hope it will but I am having difficulty with the concepts as I get deeper into the rules.

I am discouraged but how slowly I am reading and understanding this game. I plan to read the Tool Kit next but that might be a while.

Made of Twigs

I have made some but not much progress reading today. I made it to pg. 232.

The adventure creation rules are so different from other games I have played as to be almost alien. I have to read each page 3 times or so to get the gist of what is being said. I am catching on but its taking time. I haven't read a set of rules that I wasn't familiar with, at least in previous editions, in years - like ten years - and I am finding FATE to be a stretch of my understanding of what a pen and paper RPG can be.

Aspects are not only the basis for character creation but the basis of everything. Think about that a moment, it is as if the new edition of D&D had, as a part of its core mechanics a rule that said every dungeon had to have a Dexterity and Wisdom score. That is exactly what FATE has done with the ubiquity of aspects. A PC can, if he can figure out how to convince the DM that it makes sense, spend a fate point to get the house he is in to spontaneously catch fire if say, it has the Made of twigs and dried grass aspect. That's not the same as having his character lite the fire, that player gets the house itself to lite the fire!

That is a great game mechanic, I cant wait to play this game.

NPC veriety

I have finished Chapter 8.

I am struck by how easy it is to make up NPCs. A wide variety of challenges that look like people and be thrown at the PCs very easily. And they can be overcome in a variety of ways with or without killing. I tend to play bloodthirsty types but FATE seems to be designed to allow the range of combat and non-combat challenges that you get in movies. I think I like that. The idea that there is a mechanic for allowing the NPC's to be defeated in battle but not necessarily killed is cool.

collaborative storytelling

"Your main goal should be to enlist the players as partners in bringing the drama, rather than being the sole provider." - FATE Core pg. 212

So far as I can see this is the main thing that sets FATE Core apart from other games, certainly other games I have played. FATE players can get NPCs to do things through the spending of fate points. They can ask the GM to give them a fate point to do something that complicates things for their characters. In fact it is clear that the players are not always in their characters corner but, if playing FATE right, are in the corner of the story and making it cool. Not their characters story cool but the collaborative one.

I have played games like this in the past. A dear departed friend and the greatest Game Master I ever knew played endless hours with me and our group in a system that we never knew the rules for and cannot now replicate. We sometimes spent whole sessions, long ones, without a single die roll, by anyone. It was true collaborative storytelling and I did not realize how much I missed it.

FATE may well give me the tools to recreate the feel and excitement of those bygone games. It gives me hope that I can get back a piece of something that was special. It gives me a hope because someone wrote rules that allow for this kind of play and others have adopted it with delight.

now that I understand this I cannot wait to play.

slight progress

I'm up to page 206. The GM section is not hard but life is getting in the way of game again.

The main gist of the GM chapter is 'don't be a jerk'. Good advice for anyone, but especially true for GMs.

bad day

Made it to page 191, but this has been a bad day health wise. I'll try and get more read but not sure. Sitting and listening to old Rammstein.

of combat

I have made it to chapter 8... of 11. I will not be able to finish the FATE Core book as soon as I had planned but I'll get there in a day or two.

When I finished chapter 7 I was struck by the shortness of the Combat chapter. In most RPGs I've read the Combat chapter is one of the longest and almost always the most complicated. Combat in FATE is pretty simple and fast paced. The real kind of fast paced not the D&D kind where things can get bogged down if any character wants to do something out of the I-hit-you-you-hit-me mechanic.

In FATE the point of Combat is to make it as dramatic as possible not as realistic as possible. If you want realistic combat play Gurps, rules for everything and two, count'em, two, separate combat systems. In FATE just tell the GM what your character tries to do and the GM gives you what to roll and narrates what happens with the result.

I love the combat system, not sure how I feel about the stress and consequences, but though I have played FATE exactly one whole session at a con, none of the PCs ever took any damage of any kind. The dice loved us. But, this is not a good way to test a core mechanic of the system. I am planning to set up a test game in the world I am designing (the point of this blog) and trying to give my players a good taste of the injury and recovery systems.

Further Progress

I have made it to page 154, the beginning of the rules for what they call "conflicts".

In FATE a conflict is basically a combat, it's not called combat like most other games though. The reason for that is pretty cool. In FATE a conflict can be physical, mental and even emotional. A player can attempt to have his character harm the self esteem of another character and the harm can take the form of emotional injury called consequences that can last for a whole campaign.

The injury system sounds very cool but I haven't gotten to the deep explanation of how it works exactly. The FATE mechanics do not lend themselves to a simple sequence of this piece of the rules fits into that one and builds smoothly. A good example of a system that dose this is Gurps, the book can be read cover to cover and each rule discussed builds on the one before it. Instead FATE is a single system and parts are hard to separate from other parts.

Cool Referance

I fund a cool reference for FATE, I thought I'd post it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/17h3a2/a_mechanical_summary_of_fate_core/

Skills or Something

I have finished chapter 5 Skills and Stunts.

The thing that strikes me most is how not like skills the skills are. What I mean by that is that skills in FATE are a lot more like what you would call stats in other games. Your strength and dexterity are skills but so is your fighting ability.

The skill chapter goes out of its way to inform GMs that the skills listed are very fluid and can be adapted, split up, or added to in whatever way suits the setting the characters find themselves in.

I like systems that allow the GM to show the players what type of world they are in instead of telling them. Skill lists in FATE provide this exceptionally.

No Insight

I made it to page 103 today. Still not on track to make my goal of Thursday. Life, unfortunately, comes before game.

I think that the skills and stunts system is pretty cool. I don't have any real insights or observations today, I just need to get to reading.

Pacificon 1

I just made a GM account at Pacificon's site. I have the chance to just declare and describe my event now but I chickened out. its still like 6 months away and I haven't finished reading the rules let alone designing an adventure. I just feel like if I schedule early it will make it more likely that I will actually go. Patience, its good for GM's.

Reading

I knuckled down and finished chapter 4 before midnight. I think I'll have to read it again before I GM a game but for now I'm happy to be back on track to finishing the book before Thursday.

The next chapter is Skills and Stunts. It should be a lot easier as far as mechanics go.

Aspect Invocation = the cool

I got to page 70 today, I'll have to do better each day if I want to finish inside my one week goal. I am a slow reader and I had a bit of difficulty with the material today.

Today the idea of aspect invocation refused to resolve itself in my brain. I reread almost the whole first half of chapter 4 and I think I finally got it. Invocation of aspects allows a player to get a bonus on a conflict resolution roll but the thing that was confusing me was how this allows for the maintenance of suspense and tension.

Compelling aspects is how.

Compelling is the GM's way of getting the players to do things that he wants for the story. He offers FATE points as bribes for characters to invoke their aspects in a way that benefits the story and maintains suspense and tension. This antagonist relationship between the story and the characters creates a situation where it is in the players best interest to help the GM tell a story. Maybe not the story either of them envisioned, but a fun, suspenseful, and exciting one.

This is not to say its a perfect mechanic. It puts a lot of pressure on the GM to think on his feet and not rely on notes and maps that keep the players in line with the story he is trying to tell. As a long time GM I can say that it is very frustrating when a group of players do something outside the scope of the game you designed. Especially if you put your heart and soul into designing an element of the game that the PCs don't even look at for more than a second or two and then go on a quest to discover the meaning of a random encounter that had no purpose in your game but to put a bit of action in a session. And frustrated GM's do foolish things. This detracts form the fun of a game profoundly.

In a game Like FATE the players and the GM know that each has a bit of control of the others actions. Invocations and compels allow a kind of direct communication that in other games is oblique at best. The GM can point to aspects of his design that he wants the PCs to look at more closely and the players can tell him what they want expansion on.

I have always wanted to play a game like this and I think my gaming group has too.

Player Control

I finished chapter 3 and now have some thoughts.

FATE points work kinda like hero points in the old DC heroes rpg. I love the idea that the characters have some control of the Deus Ex Machina, but I'm not sure how I feel about giving them some control of the world.

I have always made my games in such a way that the events around the characters happen until the players interfere and the NPCs react to the changes. I'm not the kind of GM that has a specific story to tell and forces the characters to go through it my way. I have played 1st through 5th edition dungeons and dragons and have always had a partiality to Gygaxian adventure design. The bad guys should try to kill the PCs and TPK is always an option (it's only happened to me twice however). If the PCs know that they can decide that for a critical roll probability will be on their side it might change that dynamic and I am worried that this will detract from the suspense that is the source of a good bit of the fun of an RPG.

I'll have to read further and see if a different mechanic allows for the creation of suspense. There is something about the GM getting fate points to use for something, maybe its just for, what they call, compels? Got to keep reading.

determined

I made it to page 41 in the FATE Core book.

I think I love the character creation mechanics. they are different from anything I have ever encountered. All my gaming career I have played games with stats and numbers that define the character, FATE uses sentences. I know that this is not a huge revelation, but its interesting to me. I have played a FATE game but I did not see the ramifications of this mechanic. It ties the characters together and to the world around them in a way that the stat based games take a lot longer and more work to do.

As an example I spent the last three months making a detailed Star Trek game. Much of that time was spent making characters for the players to play. I decided that the players should have a choice of characters to play and so made three to five for each of the major positions on a Star Trek away team, each with detailed backgrounds so the players would know who these people were. That means that I made at lest 12 characters that would not be played.

If I had used FATE and created characters at the table I could have had the players do all that work and make characters that they wanted to play. I consider myself a good GM, but that game fell on its face. In large part due to me having to micromanage a group of players that didn't know the system I was running and didn't want that system to get in the way of the roleplaying that they were enjoying.

FATE could have saved that game. It could have made that game great.

I am determined to let roleplaying and storytelling be my guiding star.

Hello and Welcome

Hi,
My name is Daniel Woolery and this is my new blog. I have just returned from Dundracon, a game convention in the California bay area. I had my first experience playing the FATE Core system and I liked it a lot. This blog is going to follow my journey to learn to Game Master that system and then create a new campaign setting to run at the next convention I attend (probably Pacificon).

I have been playing and DMing roleplaying games since 1988. I was 14 and my mom bought me a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. it was a great game and I still play it sometimes. I'll probably post a longer gamer biography at some point.

I plan to update frequently and post all the things I do to reach the stated goal. My first goal along the way is to read the rules from cover to cover. I have begun but am not too far into it yet, what I have seen, I like. I am giving myself one week to finish the core book so by the 25^th I should be done.

I hope to post two or three times a day with updates to what I am reading, ideas and notes for my game, and observations on the mechanics I think are interesting.

This will be my second big project connected to gaming. First was a game set in the Star Trek universe using the GURPS 3^rd edition rules. This game was scheduled to run for 10 hours but only ran 8. I was prepared for one thing and got another. A mistake I do not intend to repeat. This will be the subject of a future post.