 I have a new appreciation for games that are “Powered by the Apocalypse.” This badass moniker describes games are based on the rules used in D. Vincent Baker’s award winning Apocalypse World roleplaying game (now in its 2nd edition!). The first edition (published in 2010) became the framework for about a million spin-off games that recognized the genius of the system and applied it to different genres. Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel is one of these spin-offs, using the Apocalypse World rules to power a fantasy setting. This article is about some brilliant nuggets I found in the Dungeon World rules. I have never played Dungeon World, and although it’s hard to admit it, I haven’t played Apocalypse World either. I have a keen interest in apocalyptic-y themed fun and award-winning roleplaying games, but it wasn’t until someone posted about how the Dungeon World SRD helped them run a Fate Core game that I finally took time out of my schedule to investigate. It was worth every second. Here are a few mechanics that I borrowed from Dungeon World for use in a Fate-based game I ran recently. These mechanics have whet my appetite for more games Powered by the Apocalypse, as well as generally improving my gamemastering. I’m sure there are more gems to be found, but hopefully this is enough to get you interested in investigating Dungeon World and other Apocalypse games for yourself! 1) Agenda, Principles The first thing that drew me to investigate the game system was the simple gamemastering guidelines. A fellow Fate fanatic had posted that the Dungeon World Gamemastering section was great, and pointed out a few ways it was helpful to him. Dungeon World begins by laying out the gamemaster’s job in three bullet points: 1) portray a fantastic world, 2) fill the characters’ lives with adventure, and 3) play to find out what happens. Mic drop. Just kidding. They go on to hammer home exactly what is NOT the gamemaster’s job, including beating the players and testing their ability to solve problems. Especially hard to hear was that it is not my job to let the characters explore my finely-crafted setting. Once I choked that part down, though, I could see the wisdom. These three points are the reason that people play fantasy roleplaying games. Other agendas tend to just get in the way. There is then a list of Principles that the gamemaster should follow. I won’t list them here, though I will be drawing on a few of them in my other points. Suffice to say that LaTorra and Koebel simply take all the things that make a good gamemaster good and turn them into rules for the game. I took these to heart, and they changed my game for the better. Seriously, why didn’t anyone think of this before? 2) Focus On The Story Many games claim to be ‘story-based’ or ‘story-driven,’ and they all deliver to some extent. ‘Begin and end with the fiction’ is a gamemaster principle in Dungeon World, and the system backs the gamemaster up with the rules. What is unique about the Dungeon World rules is that they kick in only when something in the story triggers the rule. Conversely, the rules themselves generally feed back into the narrative, which mean that every interaction with the rules actually “begins and end with the fiction.” Rather than using rules to simulate the reality where a story occurs, Dungeon World ignores the simulation and instead uses rules to drive the story forward. This subtle shift in emphasis helped my players and I to focus on the fiction rather than the simulation, which ironically tended to make the game feel more real. We spent less time on using mechanics to explain situations and more time actually roleplaying. Win! We also avoided some of the sillier fantasy roleplaying conversations like “can I roll to persuade this character?” If you focus on the story, the answer is obvious: only if you make a convincing argument or have some leverage on them. So no. Or yes. Whatever makes sense in that situation! 3) Fronts Fronts helped me to plan the session and plant seeds for the future. One of LaTorra and Koebel’s gamemaster principles is to ‘draw maps and leave blanks.’ As anyone knows who has run a game, the best-laid plans rarely survive an encounter with the player characters. The answer? Plan less, but give your plans real teeth. Base your opposition on the player characters; what is important to them? Then advance the opposition step by step to the point that if the characters ignore it, the opposition will either suddenly or gradually destroy the things the characters love. That means that even if they spend a full session messing around in tavern in some backwater town, the plot will move forward and drag the players with it. Again, I’ve seen similar optional mechanics in other games (Aspect Events in Fate Core, for example), but LaTorra and Koeble roll it into the rules of the game, forcing you to have more fun. 4) Gamemaster Moves The heart of Dungeon World, and I assume all Apocalypse World derivatives, is the ‘Move.’ A Move is a rule that applies in a particular game-world context. For example, the “Discern Realities” Move happens when a character closely studies a person or a situation. Beginning with the fiction, the rule tells you what to do. Usually there’s a dice roll which defines what happens, and you explain the result in the fiction. To reiterate: the difference between this and other systems is subtle, but important. The context for making a Move is defined so that rules don’t have to be applied where they don’t belong. The best part, however, is the gamemaster’s Moves. They are a bit different. The gamemaster makes a Move in one of three situations: 1) when everyone looks to you to find out what happens, 2) when the players give you a golden opportunity, or 3) when someone fails a roll. At that point, the gamemaster chooses a Move that makes sense. There are only a dozen, but each one helps to create a compelling narrative. It means that whether a character succeeds or fails, something interesting is going to happen. This gem shines in that the story never deflates, even in the case of a failed action. It is always driven forward. 5) Reward The Desired Behaviour The final and most powerful mechanic is the Advancement mechanic. I had to tweak it quite a bit to make it work with Fate, but I could see the value in it, and the work paid off. Dungeon World awards experience points for advancement, much like Dungeons and Dragons, but the context is different. Instead of gaining experience by fighting monsters, you gain experience by failing a roll or by successfully achieving the goals of the game. What goals? Look back at the gamemaster’s agenda, and see if these question match up at all: 1) Did we learn something new and important about the world? 2) Did we overcome a notable monster or enemy? 3) Did we loot a memorable treasure? These three questions define the purpose of the game: to explore, kill monsters, and get treasure. The great thing is that the questions can change depending on the purpose of the game. Maybe you want a game that makes political power plays and rewards intrigue. Maybe you play a game where your characters protect the innocent from supernatural evils. Whatever the point is, it can be made into one of these questions. For the fairy-tale adventure game I ran recently, I used the following questions: 1) Did we learn something new and important about the world? 2) Did we overcome a memorable challenge? 3) Did we do good in the world? In addition to this, Dungeon World also awards experience points for portraying your character accurately. Players do this by, in character, resolving bonds and fulfilling their alignment. To convert this to Fate was super simple, because character aspects define characters in a similar way. Regardless, it was incredibly refreshing to see a roleplaying game that deliberately rewards players for playing their character! Apocalypse World changed roleplaying games by building rules around what actually happens at the game table. It can be adapted for any setting, if Dungeon World is any indication. The rules continually refer back to the fiction, keep the game moving forward, teach gamemasters and alike players to play well, and rewards them when they do. Are you going to try it out? Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (roleplaying games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! Picture Reference: https://adventurerules.blog/2017/11/15/what-i-would-change-for-dungeon-world-second-edition/  As a Fate enthusiast, I confess: when I heard that Evil Hat was going to publish a Fate Adversary Toolkit in August of this year, I was more than a little excited. It’s not often my five year old son asks me to stop bouncing off the walls. I got my hot little digital copy as soon as I could scrape together the $8 and beg Evil Hat to take my money. Now, though, it’s November; the honeymoon feeling has worn off, and I have to admit that I was disappointed about the purchase. I don’t regret it and I would buy it again in a heartbeat, as you’ll see toward the end of this article. Before you rush off to get your own copy though, here are some words and warnings for the wise spender of eight dollars.
1) Purchasing Problems Now, to be clear, these problems have already been remedied. For the eager gate-crashing purchaser, there was more than one obstacle to overcome, however. First of all, the site’s advertisements were not properly linked to the purchasing page, and there was no “add to cart” option available. That, and Evil Hat has discontinued its international shipping, which is annoying to those of us who do not live in the good old US of A. As a Canadian, I had the option to order from a store in Vancouver. I do not live in Vancouver. In fact, it is more than 1000 kilometers away. The good news? The store offers shipping! The bad news? At the time of release, the store did not have any copies available for purchase. I had checked into it again recently, and all of these complaints have been addressed. I am presently waiting/expecting to receive a hard copy for Christmas. At the time of the roll-out, however, the delay was insufferable because I wanted it right then!! 2) Short On Right-Sizing My greatest criticism of the book is that it fails to deliver on the implied promise of providing enemies that will appropriately challenge groups of different sizes and skill sets. The Fate Core rulebook has guidelines for creating opponents that will match or challenge the skills of individual characters and small groups, so that’s well and good. If you follow the core rules about creating advantages and sharing invocations, however, you can run into some fairly silly situations. I recently played with a group that faced off against a much more powerful foe and, by working together, the group took this big baddie out in one shot (+21 on the Fate ladder is an... “Unpossible”??). What should a GM do to create more challenging opponents for a large group of (four or more) players? How does a single character with a full complement of stunts match up with 20 mooks? Maybe I’ve been spoiled with Dungeons and Dragons challenge ratings, but even a couple of specific strategies to create a challenging encounter for larger groups would have been welcome. 3) NOT A Monster Manual The Adversary Toolkit features 10 nice little mini-adventures that span a wide range of genres, from Regency Romance to Post-Apocalyptic mutants. Each mini-adventure has opponents and sample NPCs embedded within. What it does not have is a list of stats for various monsters, neither mooks nor main NPCs. If that’s what you want, you’re better off looking for fan-made resources, like the Fate Fantasy Creatures site by Inkwell Ideas. This is the second implied promise broken. Granted, given the range of possible genres in Fate, it is impossible to make a comprehensive list of creatures and characters for every genre. It would have been nice, though, to have a list of opponents that goes beyond singular adventures, something for the GM to grab when he’s short on planning time. The one mitigating factor of this problem is that the opponents provided in the mini-adventures could be re-skinned for use in other genres if needed. There are even suggestions for re-skinning included. Nevertheless, that requires more hunting and editing than I was hoping for. 4) Threats & Hitters Now, without unsaying the above criticisms, the book is not a total loss. Hidden in the disappointment, there are a few bright lights. The book suggests the Threat and Hitter character designs, for example. When grouped together or tied to a Main NPC, these supporting characters can flesh out a combat that otherwise might become straightforward or routine. Threats are supporting characters that are meant to be big and scary; they get in the characters’ faces and soak up a lot of damage, while dealing just enough that they can’t be ignored. Think of the big bruiser henchman in a Bond flick: Jaws shows up and gives the main villain just enough time to escape. Hitters are less scary, but more dangerous: a sniper that’s far away, or a ninja master that’s hard to hit but can take players down one at a time. Hitters represent threats to the group that must be dealt with quickly once they’re discovered. Both of these character types add depth and flavour to a combat scene. Perhaps they can be used to challenge a group that has mastered the classic Fate collaborative takedown. 5) Obstacles, Constraints & Environments Obstacles, constraints, and environments are ways to use the Fate Fractal creatively in order to make memorable sessions and scenes. From a mechanical perspective, these three "adversaries” are not easily distinguishable from each other. They are more like variations on a common theme, non-character things designed to get in the way of, and/or do harm to, the PCs. They are details with teeth. Again, by using these guidelines, it might be possible for a GM to split a group’s resources enough so as to create challenging combat scenes that can resist the “dog pile” effect of combining free invocations. The Fate Adversary Toolkit adds another layer to the complexity of Fate Core, which is both a strength and a weakness. Fate’s strength is that the rules remain flexible but robust enough to improvise nearly any situation. Fate Core rides the edge of this balancing act. The rules are simple enough to allow for flexible gameplay, but this works best if a substantial amount of background preparation has already been done. The gamemaster needs to have prepared at least some NPCs and possible scenes in advance for the game to go smoothly. The Adversary Toolkit adds things you can do during background preparation. What it does NOT do is make the preparation work any easier. Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! Image Source: Evil Hat Games  This is the final entry for a series of articles where I share some of the detailed characters, places, and things created during a recent campaign. The campaign used Evil Hat’s Fate system, and took place in Edward Turner’s “The Aether Sea” world. We decided as a group to use Fate Core rather than Fate Accelerated Edition, so the things presented here will work better with Fate Core.
For easy playing, “The Aether Sea” has an adventure included, complete with detailed characters and backstory. Following that, it sketches out some possible adventures, but it really only gives you the bones; it’s up to the group to make the suggestions into full adventures. Here is the ‘meat’ that our group put on the bones suggested by Ed Turner. The game items presented here were spun out of an adventure prompt at the end of the Aether Sea book, which I will quote later. First, I’ll describe the setting of the adventure, then give a description of how the prompt might play out. The descriptions and characters are our group’s take on the adventures suggested in the book. That being said, Fate lends itself very easily to creating your own characters and details. Take what I write here and play them as full-on adventures, or simply take some inspiration from them and build your own adventures from the suggestions! In this article, I’ll continue adding some detail to the “Julian’s Bluff” adventure that I began sharing in my previous article. 1) The Rebel Forces The rebels are classic freedom fighters, with a twist. There are two powerful families on Julian’s Bluff: the Graves, and the Millers. The Millers are more powerful, but corrupt. In order to defeat the Hegemony, though, the two families had to join forces. In a canny power move, the Miller family managed to put one of their own in charge of the rebel army. General Sigmund Miller One of the big baddies. Lieutenant Precious Graves is a good-natured thorn in his side in place because of political pressures, but the General can talk circles around him. The General reprimands a disobedient soldier while Graves is around, then welcomes & reassigns him when Graves leaves. High Concept: Cruel Commander of Rebel Forces Trouble: Sociopath Aspects: Only the strong are fit to rule I know what I'm doing Undying devotion to my planet +7 Fight, +6 Resources, Notice, +5 Provoke, Physique, Rapport +4 Will, Shoot, Deceive Contacts 4 Physical Stress, 4 Mental Stress, Consequence slots as normal Stunts: Tactician: +2 to create advantages using Fight when directing loyal soldiers I know people: Use Notice in place of Empathy to determine if someone is lying Henchmen: can call on 2 additional Good NPCs once per scene. Lieutenant Precious Graves Lieutenant Graves came from the next county over as a military specialist in a gesture of friendly alliance. He is in command of much of General Miller's forces in the field. Has been referring bad soldiers to Miller; Miller reassigns them to a corps loyal to himself. High Concept: Athlete-Turned-Soldier Trouble: Easy Mark Aspects: Can't wait to be with Annabel again Serendipity Competitive Athlete +5 Athletics, +4 Shoot +3 Fight, +2 Rapport, +1 Physique 3 Physical Stress, 2 Mental Stress, 1 Mild and 1 Moderate Consequence Slot Stunts: Honest Abe: Use Rapport to inflict mental stress on people trying to harm him. 2) Julian’s Keep: The Royal Hegemony Presence The rebels outnumber the Hegemony five to one, but the Hegemony presence has better weapons. Nevertheless, the Hegemony has been pushed back to just one area, protected by a fortification known as Julian’s Keep. The rebels currently have Julian’s keep under siege. The Hegemony has long since stopped funding this war, however. The only thing keeping them there is General Tanner and his genuine concern for the population of Julian’s Bluff. General Arcturus Tanner Tanner is intended as an main opponent to the player characters, but should definitely be a sympathetic villain. He refuses to leave because he knows that General Miller will seize control and the population will suffer. High Concept: Beloved leader of Hegemony forces Trouble: Fighting in the Alamo Aspects: Death before dishonour Sigmund Miller must be stopped! Rich sense of tradition +7 Rapport, +6 Fight, Notice, +5 Resources, Physique, Lore +4 Will, Shoot, Deceive, Contacts 4 Physical Stress, 4 Mental Stress, Consequence slots as normal Stunts: Honest Abe: Use Rapport to inflict mental stress on people trying to harm him in social situations. Rally the Troops: +2 to create advantages using Rapport when directing loyal soldiers Loyal Troops: can call on 2 additional Good NPCs once per scene. Lieutenant Harvest Lieutenant Harvest is the department head of the Royal Alchemical Society on Julian’s Bluff, whom, if you remember, the player characters were meant to deliver their cargo to in the first place. These materials are used to power and maintain the Titan Spiritual Anthroform, a weapon vital to the war effort at this juncture. High Concept: Science! Trouble: Squirrel! Aspects: Former Reporter Dogged Co-Workers tolerate my genius +5 Investigate, +4 Lore, +3 Shoot, +2 Crafts, +1 Will 2 Physical Stress, 3 Mental Stress, Consequence slots as normal Stunt: Socratic Method: Use Investigate to create advantages in social situations by asking persistent questions. 3) The Hope’s End Standard Per chevron advanced azure and argent, a cinquefoils vert in middle base… If the characters agree to steal the Hope’s End Standard, here are the stats for it. Stealing the standard will require meeting a series of at least two Challenges that follow a progression of Easy (-2 to character’s stat), Challenging (+0 to character’s stat), and Difficult (+2 to character’s stat). To fence the Standard to anyone except General Miller without consequence (aside from losing the hostage) is a Superb (+5) Challenge. Here are the overcome difficulties that characters may face to learn more about the Standard using Lore, Investigate, or Contacts. Be prepared to make stuff up, or have the characters invent what they know: Fair (+2) The name rings bell, and the characters have heard a rumor Good (+3) The characters can identify the Standard, and have heard a rumor Great (+4) The characters can identify the Standard and know one fact Fantastic (+6) Comprehensive history High Concept: Ancient Enchanted Standard Trouble: No loyalty Extras: Boon: Bestows the aspect Protected by the Hope’s End Standard on any one thing with a high concept that is carrying it. This could be a character, group, vehicle, building, sector, etc. Only one thing may have the aspect at a time, but it can be invoked by anyone that can be considered under the protection of that one thing (e.g. anyone in the vehicle, building, sector, etc.) Lucky: The standard has its own refresh of three fate points that may be used to invoke aspects as if the standard were a character. These may be used to invoke Protected by the Hope’s End Standard. Refresh: 3 (Cost: 2 Refresh. A character must give up 2 points of refresh in order to gain this extra. Refresh given up in this way may be regained by giving the Standard away) 4) Titan Spiritual Anthroform I love steampunk. The Titan is a giant mech made of brass and rivets, powered by the spirits of the damned. It’s on loan from our friends at the Annular Necrocracy. If the characters agree to investigate the rumor about a new weapon, this is what they’re looking for. Getting information about the Titan will require meeting a series of at least two Challenges that follow a progression of Easy (-2 to character’s stat), Challenging (+0 to character’s stat), and Difficult (+2 to character’s stat). To steal it would be next to impossible (see the aspects below). If your characters are looking for a fight, look no further. Small Ship Scale (+2 to Physique, Fight, Athletics, and Provoke) High Concept: Used Combat Mech Trouble: Where’d you go?/That damn blind spot Aspects: Necromancers only Fully customizable & customized +4 Physique, +3 Fight, Athletics +2 Crafts, Notice, Shoot, +1 Will, Deceive, Provoke 4 Physcial Stress, 3 Mental Stress, 1 additional mild consequence slot Stunts: Big Metal Body: Use physique to defend against physical attacks. Flame Thrower: Fire Good (+3) fireballs at a target in the same zone. Eject! Eject! Once per scene, the pilot may eject to safety and the Anthroform will collapse, triggering a Good (+3) attack on everyone in the zone as it falls to the ground and flails about. 5) Henchmen These supporting characters can show up wherever you need them for a big fight. They might be a motley crew of mercenaries belonging to the Hegemony, or they may have defected to the rebels. Put them with whichever General you want when you need your characters to face some serious opposition. There is no backstory for them, except what is suggested by their aspects, so feel free to invent your own! Brace (Dwarf; group leader) High Concept: The group’s loud voice Trouble: I want the boss’ job... Aspects: Pride goeth before all I’ve seen that before… Profitability over honesty +4 Fight, +3 Rapport, +2 Notice, +1 Athletics Rally the Troops: +2 to create advantages using Rapport when directing loyal soldiers You Mad, Bro? Use Rapport in place of Provoke to cause mental stress. Swashbuckler: +2 to create advantages using Athletics Freeze (Elf) High Concept: Registered SCU Evocation Expert Trouble: Brace makes me unsure of myself Aspects: Dogged dreamer Solution oriented Cold (Empathy with Frost) +4 Magic, +3 Athletics, +2 Fight, +1 Notice Stunts: Focuses on Frost in Evocation: Use Magic to cast Frost-related effects to attack, defend, overcome, and create advantages. Dabbles in Evocation: Given enough time, can use Magic to create effects using fire, earth, water, lightning, etc. Cast-Fighter: Once per scene, gain +2 when using Fight for the first time. Surprise! Michael (Troll) High Concept: Enforcer Trouble: These people move too fast. Aspects: Eureka! Honesty over profitability Methodical +4 Physique, +3 Empathy, +2 Athletics, +1 Fight Stunts: Shrug it off: Use Physique to oppose Fight. Wise ways: +2 to create advantages using empathy Tough as nails: Once per scene, reduce the severity of a physical consequence. Vuzz Fletcher (Goblin) High Concept: An actual fletcher. Trouble: I ain’t no royal. Aspects: Something’s not right… A name within the field Just do the job +4 Shoot, +3 Fight, +2 Notice, +1 Athletics Stunts: Coward: +2 to Athletics when avoiding harm. Robin Hood: Create a lasting aspect instead of a boost on success with style using Shoot Robin Hood 2: Use shoot to overcome obstacles where it usually wouldn’t apply (subject to gamemaster approval). Hope all this was useful, not just tl;dr. That was Julian’s Bluff; I hope that you can have fun with it, too. If you decide to make use of these resources, please leave a comment to let me know how it goes! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! Image courtesy of drawshield.net  This is the third of a series of articles where I share some of the detailed characters, places, and things created during a recent campaign. The campaign used Evil Hat’s Fate system, and took place in Edward Turner’s “The Aether Sea” world. We decided as a group to use Fate Core rather than Fate Accelerated Edition, so the subjects presented here will work better with Fate Core.
For easy playing, “The Aether Sea” has an adventure included, complete with detailed characters and backstory. Following that, it sketches out some possible adventures, but really only gives you the bones; it’s up to the group to make the suggestions into full adventures. Here is the ‘meat’ that our group put on the bones suggested by Ed Turner; the game items presented here were spun out of an adventure prompt at the end of the Aether Sea book, which I’ll quote later. First, let’s describe the setting of the adventure, then give a description of how prompt might play out. The descriptions and characters are our group’s take on the adventures suggested in the book. That being said, Fate lends itself very easily to creating your own characters and details. Take what I write here and play them as full-on adventures - or simply take some inspiration from them and build your own adventures! 1) Julian’s Bluff A moderate distance from Tun, Julian’s Bluff is on the border between Hegemony-controlled space and the rest of the aether. It is aptly named. The habiformed part of the planet is made of rocky red sandstone bluffs, cliffs, gorges, and mountains. Glaciers in the mountains feed high misty waterfalls and roaring blue and white rivers. Tamarack and pine trees cover every level surface, their green boughs contrasting with the red colour of the native landscape. Sector Aspect: Currently in civil war. Planetary Aspect: Guerrilla colonials vs underfunded Hegemony 2) Refugee ShipAs the player characters approach the sector, they will come across a ship travelling in the opposite direction. Its sails are torn, and there is a dwarf-sized hole in the starboard bow. A Good (+3) Overcome will allow characters to know that this ship is dangerous to fly in the Aether. There is no one visible on deck; a Good (+3) Notice will allow a character to see movement through the hole in the hull. It is, or was, a Royal Navy vessel. The ship will avoid them, not interacting unless physically stopped. If it is stopped, characters will discover it is an overcrowded ship of refugees that will give detailed information about the sector, creating an advantage with a free invocation on the sector aspect for the players. The townsfolk are average nameless non-player characters. High Concept: Damaged Navy Ship If the characters ignore the ship, set a Great (+4) Overcome for them to figure out something about what is going on. 3) Civil War… Here is the text of the adventure, taken from The Aether Sea. We changed the contact to Katin Field; but it could be anyone giving the characters a job. Verdanteye is the moon colony from the adventure included in the sourcebook. Contact: Grun’s Third Arkus Darkblade. (The Aether Sea, page 44.) Cargo: A box full of plants and other alchemical material grown down on Verdanteye. Destination: Julian’s Bluff, a human world a moderate distance away. The customer is the Royal Alchemical Society. Complication: Julian’s Bluff is currently in the midst of a civil war, and the Royal Alchemical Society is in the midst of a battlefield. As the crew approaches the coordinates, a blanket of white clouds covers the ground, another sign of well-established habiforming. As they approach the site, they dip below the clouds and see the landscape below is being pelted with a drenching rain. They fly over a collection of siege engines being wheeled up a muddy track to the top of one of the bluffs. The light is dim, but occasional flashes of lightning reveal a forested gully full of torch light, hundreds of people, and over the sound of the rain can be heard the clash of weapons and the cries of the wounded. In the distance, a Royal Navy ship is firing a hail of arrows down on the forces below. Some of the lightning flashes are coming from a lightning gun aboard the ship. 4) The Dominion A voice from your magic mirror crackles throughout the cabin. “This is Captain ____ of the Dominion. Surrender your vessel or be destroyed.” His image winks out immediately, and you hear a bass twang. A ballista bolt sails into view, a rope unwinding quickly behind it. High Concept: New Battlecruiser Prototype Trouble: Still working out the bugs. Aspects: I’ll get you!!! Building a deadly reputation. +8 Fight, +7 Shoot, +5 Athletics, Sail +4 Stealth, Craft, +3 Notice, Provoke, Resources Stunts: Landing Gear Cannon 1 Cannon 2 Grappling Station 5) It’s a trap!! If the characters escape or avoid the Dominion, the coordinates the player characters were given lead to a deserted outpost just slightly behind the rebels’ line. Rebel forces attempt to capture the ship & crew. Any attempts at magical communication will lead them into a trap at this location: Fair (+2) Deceive. Lieutenant Precious Graves Lieutenant in the rebel forces: handsome, strong, and dumb as a bag of hammers. Precious is a diplomatic concession - the general in charge of the rebel forces lets him stay around to keep his powerful family ties happy. He leads the ambush. High Concept: Just a Soldier Trouble: Easy Mark Aspects: Can't wait to be with Annabel again Serendipity Competitive Athlete +5 Athletics, +4 Shoot, +3 Fight, +2 Rapport, +1 Physique 3 Physical Stress, 2 Mental Stress, Consequence slots as normal Stunt: Honest Abe: Charming and innocent - use Rapport to inflict mental stress on people trying to harm him in social situations. Rebel squad 5 groups of 5 Average Soldiers under Lieutenant Graves’ command. High Concept: Impoverished Guerilla Soldier. +2 Fight OR Shoot Stunt: Grappling Ground Ballista: +2 to create Grappled advantage on Aether vessels, using Shoot vs Athletics. To remove the advantage requires a Good (+3) Overcome action. If the player characters are defeated, they are captured. If victorious (i.e. they take out 10 or more soldiers), Lieutenant. Graves seeks to parley with them, unsure of what to do. He will ask them to come see General Miller, the leader of the rebel forces. This was the first instalment of our session at Julian’s Bluff; I hope that you can have fun with it, too. If you decide to make use of these resources, please leave a comment to let me know how it goes! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! Picture Reference: http://www.acrosstheboardgames.net/luke/sailing-the-vast-aether-sea/  This is the second of a series of articles where I share some of the detailed characters, places, and things created during my recent campaign. The campaign used Evil Hat’s Fate system, and took place in Edward Turner’s “The Aether Sea” world. We decided as a group to use Fate Core rather than Fate Accelerated Edition, so the things presented here will work better with Fate Core. You can also listen to the adventure on our website and podcast feed.
The game items presented here were spun out of an adventure prompt at the end of the Aether Sea book, which I will quote later. First, I’ll describe the setting of the adventure. My group and I had a lot of fun bantering and sharing details of what this kind of place might be like. Here is what we came up with: 1) The Annular Necrocracy A moderate distance from Tun, the Annular Necrocracy is in fact a group of sectors united not so much by their political ideals - similar as they may be - as by the basis of their economic system. The lich kings of the Necrocracy animate corpses to do most menial tasks, thereby freeing up the time and labour of the living for other pursuits. It works very well… if you can get over the smell. In keeping with the sector aspect, however, nobody really knows where all the bodies come from. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Sector Aspect: Far away in the deep, dark aether. There are several sectors within the Annular Necrocracy. There is a division of labour; each sector has a kind of specialization that sets it apart from the others. They all share a couple things in common, however: a relatively small living population, and ubiquitous undead performing menial tasks. There are two that appeared in our adventure: 2) Noble Noble is like the banking district of the Necrocracy. It is often where deals are brokered, though not necessarily where cargo is to be shipped. It features a single grandiose (but sparsely populated) city, and a number of outlying settlements that support it. Most business takes place in the city. If you use the Snarf racing rules, there is a stadium here! Sector Aspect: Fancy brickwork and the smell of formaldehyde Moon Base Noble has two moons. One of them serves as a remote refuelling station for merchant ships passing through to other sectors. The whole place is ‘automated’ using corpses; it’s not much use to try and deceive them if you don’t actually have money. There is one living soul that manages the moon base. Poor guy. Clement High Concept: Master of an isolated moon base Trouble: I can’t believe I’m stuck here 3) Grange Grange Sector – Wheat barons, plantations, and vast crop fields. This is the agricultural sector of the Necrocracy, providing food and cotton for the living and for trade. The Makepeace plantation is on this planet (see below). Evelyn Grange (male) is the Seneschal to Lord Makepeace. He is the great-nephew of King Grange, the ruler of the planet. His life and that of the King have been magically extended, but they are not undead. Lord Makepeace and Lord Grange both hope to join the ranks of the Necrocracy’s ‘ascended’ lich oligarchy someday; the sooner the better. Sector Aspect: Ruled by an aspiring lich king. Planetary Aspect: A land like Dixie... 4) Makepeace Disaster The drama of this adventure plays out on the backdrop of the Annular Necrocracy described above. The adventure centres on the character of Vanessa Makepeace and her necromantic communications equipment; I added quite a bit to her character, and we squeezed a lot of play out of this scenario. Here is the text of the adventure, taken from The Aether Sea: “ Contact: Countess Vanessa of House Makepeace, a Royal of low bearing. Cargo: Several bound specters, part of some necromantic communications equipment. Destination: The Annular Necrocracy, a short distance away, to be delivered directly to Lord Makepeace’s estate. Complication: The binding on the specters is weak. They’ll unbind and start haunting the ship in transit. “ (The Aether Sea, page 44. Emphasis mine) The player characters can meet Vanessa in any place, but her destination will always be the Grange sector in the Annular Necrocracy. She will offer a fair price to board the ship with some cargo, and will respond to reasonable attempts at bargaining. The equipment? A steampunk high-powered transistor radio that happens to be animated by bound spirits. She will also board with a small retinue of three zombies that serve as porters and bodyguards. 5) Vanessa Makepeace A slender, beautiful woman of dark features. She is well-dressed in comfortable travelling clothes. As if by long habit, as soon as a deal is reached she will immediately begin trying to create advantages on the player characters’ trouble aspects, or other social aspects. High Concept: Secretive Royal of Low Bearing Trouble: Obsessed with Necronomics Aspects: Unconventional genius for using necromancy on the living Voice like silk Irreproachable +5 Rapport, +4 Magic, +3 Contacts, Empathy, +2 Deceive, Burglary, Will, +1 Investigate, Notice, Stealth, Resources 2 Physical Stress, 3 Mental Stress, Consequence slots as normal Focuses on Necromacy in Alteration. Use Magic to attack, create advantages, and overcome obstacles when Necromancy can be applied. Soul Reaver. Use magic in place of Provoke to cause mental stress. Shadow-weaver. +2 to create advantages using Deceive. Zombie Bodyguards (3) High Concept: Eat anything that attacks Lady Makepeace 2 Physical Stress One mild consequence slot 6) Ghost & Spectres Ghost: As soon as the crew takes the job, a host haunts the crew of the ship. She will only approach characters who are alone, and provoke the daylights out of them, self-compelling to avoid being able to transmit her message. I used the Ghost stats from this fantastic Fate Fantasy Creatures website, so I won’t copy them here. Save the link, though, because you’ll need it once more for... Spectres: Once the ship is inconveniently far from its point of origin, something (I used an asteroid field) causes the communications equipment to malfunction. I used the character card on p. 43 of Aether Sea for the spectres. If your players decide to try and free the spectres from their chains (which, yes, my group did - I still don’t know why), then the spectres so freed take on the Spectre stats from the Fantasy Creatures site. 7) The Morganis Orb (a.k.a. The Soul Bubble) This is a facinating artifact that evolved organically as our group progressed through the adventure. To rebind the spectres, Countess Makepeace will propose a ritual to rebind them. This is not actually necessary – the ritual she wants to perform is actually just her taking the opportunity to test a theory that she can power an old Homeworld artifact by usurping the life force of the living. Players may use Lore, Magic, or Empathy to oppose her Deceive (feel free to use Fate points to win this one). Anyone who participates in the ritual gets the aspect Drained essence. This is permanent until they can deactivate the Homeworld relic – which the Countess will not do willingly. After the ritual, the Countess will go about re-binding the spectres. The Countess knows that the Orb is an artifact from the Homeworld; she does not know what it does. To let your players shine, here are some overcome difficulties they can use Contacts, Magic, or Lore to gain more information: Fair (+2) The name rings a bell... Great (+4) They know the name of the artifact, and can invent one rumour about it Superb (+5) Tell them why the Orb is a problem for the crew Fantastic (+6) Give them a comprehensive history, and let them add details, because damn. If characters want to do something with the Orb, it is a: Good (+3) Challenge to steal Epic (+7) Challenge to offload or sell it without any trouble. As you can see, this is kind of a big deal. The Morganis Orb High Concept: Indestructible Ancient Artifact Trouble: Powered by the life force of sentient beings. Aspect: Necromancy power source. Extras: Soul Sucking - A correctly performed ritual can be used to steal aspects from player characters and replace them with the aspect Drained essence. If a character has all five aspects removed, they go into a coma until the Orb is deactivated, or they die. Undead Army - The equivalent of 5 lives (25 aspects of living beings) will power the Orb fully. When fully powered, the Orb can animate and preserve an army of zombies. The Orb is currently animated by the soul of Erica Makepeace, Countess Vanessa’s cousin. Erica is the ghost that is haunting the characters. She and Vanessa performed the ritual together, during which she died and her soul became bound to the Orb. If she manages to communicate with any of them, she will alert them to the nature of the Orb (providing an advantage aspect with free invocations), and ask to be freed from it. This little episode provided us with weeks of interesting play time. I hope that you can have fun with it, too. Please leave a comment if you decide to use any of these ideas, and let me know how it goes! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation!  My love for the Fate system is well known, and indeed, widely documented. Somewhere in the British Museum, there’s a Babylonian clay tablet in cuneiform that I’m sure says, ‘Rui is really into Fate. It’s a thing.’ Why? I like strangeness. I like strange characters. I like strange situations, and mostly, I like a system that ALLOWS me to do both. I have a couple of favourite RPGs, but I keep coming back to Fate. I’m not going to go massively into the mechanics of the system (although I’m giving a quick run-through), I’m merely going to present the six ways you can use Fate for the genre you love.
1) Naming those Skills This is the easiest and more straightforward way to tune Fate for use in your game. Change the name of the skill. Or, indeed, what it covers. So if you’re running a fantasy game, Archery sounds like a good thing to have. But will archery cover bows AND crossbows, or do you need Archery (Crossbows)? Also, will this cover ALL small-and-maybe-sharp/pointy-objects-propelled-at-speed, or would throwing a well-aimed stone fall under, say, Throwing? The system suggests not going insane on the number of skills, but with a big, well-balanced party, I don’t see a reason why you couldn’t go deep into the rabbit hole. 2) Freestyling it A simple idea, that sounds positively barking insane. ‘Allow the players to come up with their own skills’. What usually happens is that you’ll find that most players describe skills that make sense (melee, ranged, lore, streetwise), but one needs to be careful that everyone is on the same page, otherwise, some people might be describing skills, some professions, etc. Also, be careful no one gets as a skill like ‘Omnipotence’. All joking aside, the same skill might sound different on every sheet, but the players will know their own character and they will better fit the narrative. 3) Weaving the Character Aspects No part of Fate is more characteristic of the system than Aspects. Simple small sentences that describe your character, and if invoked (using both a pool of points and an elaborate narrative accepted by the GM), will give you a bonus to your dice rolls. This is where you can weave your characters into the meta-narrative. Use them to describe places, NPC’s, you name it. ‘Can hold her ale’ is fine, but ‘Once drunk all the ale at the Orc and Dagger’ will not only say she can hold her ale, but also that there’s an inn called the Orc and Dagger. Is the landlord an orc? Is the landlord a sentient magical dagger? I don’t know, but the players might! 4) No skills. Wait, what? This is possibly one of the most powerful suggested hacks I’ve come across. No skills, just aspects. So this is how it works, you get a name and a role, what you’re actually there to do. Then you get a number of motivations (goals, desires), abilities (skills, talents) and gifts (contacts, gear, magic). ANY of these that you can persuade the GM are relevant at that moment in the narrative gives you a +1 bonus. Boom. Done. 5) Using Thing-based aspects And here is where a lot of more traditional RPG players will go ‘Whaa?’. Everything in Fate can have Aspects. Every. Little. Thing. And all of these can be invoked (see above) during the narrative, by anyone. Say you’re running a Fate Ravencroft game. I’d say a pretty good Environmental Aspect would be ‘Gothic, Dark, and Misty As All Heck.’ So a character might invoke it to hide in a gloomy forest that just happened to be right over there, and the GM might invoke it to give a penalty to ranged attacks (cos it’s dark and misty, you see where I’m going). This becomes a consistent back and forth storytelling exercise, which builds, deepens, and intensifies immersion. 6) Cool Stunts Stunts help tell your character apart from others. If you had 10 characters, all with the same skills, they would play totally differently, because of stunts. Stunts allow for bonuses if certain conditions are achieved. Say, you’re an elf, and your Stunt is ‘What do your Elven eyes show you?’ which will give +1 to perception, if you’re perching on a high, unobstructed place. Once again, with little effort, these can be fine-tuned to your particular setting. (And allow you to steal a much abused Tolkien reference) I came across Fate when it was suggested to me, when I wanted to play the most ridiculous character ever devised. Gell (Gell A’Tinn) is a sentient Gelatinous Cube, that consumed too many wizards and became self-aware. I couldn’t find a system that allowed me to play it, so I looked around, and lo, Fate popped up. I ran him No-Skills, and it worked beautifully. One of its abilities was ‘Made of Jelly’. So that was where my shape-shifting bonuses came from! Have you used Fate (or another agnostic rule system) to fine tune a background? Let us know! Rui is a Portuguese scientist that, after ten years doing strange things in labs, decided to become a teacher. Then, two years ago, like he was bit by a radioactive D20, RPG’s came into his life, and he’s now juggling teaching, playing and GMing quite happily. He lives in the UK with his partner Joana, an ungodly number of potted plants, 4 to 5 RPG’s at various stages of completion (and across as many rule systems), and maps, cursed idols, evil necklaces, and any other props he can get his hands on. He’s been writing for HLG for a few months, and is one of the resident vloggers. He can be reached at @Atomic_RPG.  My role-playing group and I just finished a one-year Fate campaign set in Edward Turner’s “The Aether Sea,” for which I was the gamemaster. In a previous article, I shared some of the resources I used to improvise my way through the game. Over the next few articles, I thought I would share some of the detailed characters, places, and items we created while playing.
For easy playing, “The Aether Sea” has an adventure included, complete with detailed characters and backstory. Following that, it sketches out some possible adventures, but it really only gives you the bones; it’s up to the group to make the suggestions into full adventures. In the following few articles, I will focus on one important place at a time, and share the ‘meat’ that our group put on the bones suggested by Ed Turner, hopefully providing a ready-to-play adventure with each article. The descriptions and characters are our group’s take on the adventures suggested in the book. That being said, Fate lends itself very easily to creating your own characters and details. Take what I write here and play them as full-on adventures - or simply take some inspiration from them and build your own adventures from the suggestions! 1) Tun Tun is an abandoned desert world. An attempt at habiforming didn’t take beyond creating a breathable atmosphere. After establishing one medium and several small settlements, most sensible folk abandoned the project. Since then, the planet has become a smuggler’s den - there’s just enough business, both legitimate and not, that the planet has become a stopover for nearly every cargo carrier operating in this part of the Sea. Sector Aspect: A wretched hive of scum and villainy The towns on Tun are very much in the style of the Wild West; one main street of important one- and two-storey buildings with a few scattered dwellings beyond. Horses are used to get around on land, though there aren’t many of them. 2) Dumas A medium-sized town with a small population, Dumas is known for nice old-fashioned buildings and cutthroat smuggling. In spite of occasional trouble from the Hegemony, they operate very successfully. That being said, everyone in town is bad news. High Concept: Nicest crumbling town in the sector Trouble: One horse town Herman Fragan A greasy, sneering man with a charming smile, a vest, and a bowler hat. If the Firefly reference isn’t clear enough, let me spell it out for you. High Concept: Smuggling Baron Trouble: Sleazy bugger +4 Deceive, +3 Empathy, +2 Rapport, +1 Notice 3) Gaber Another medium-sized town, this one with a medium-sized population. Where Dumas is for smugglers only, Gaber conducts a share of legitimate business too. It serves as a trading post for the (mostly crazy) subsistence farmers who still believe there’s hope for the habiforming, and a stopover for most anyone from the surrounding sectors who needs to transport goods, but can’t do it themselves. High Concept: Centre of the dust bowl Trouble: Better than Dumas… right? Shit Outta Luck Bar The local watering hole. Features a swinging saloon door, rough clientele, Mudder’s Milk beer, and a poker table. They don’t get the snarf races broadcast, but you can place a bet with Shin if you’re willing to wait for the news. Shin Llorn High Concept: Small-time bookie Trouble: The race happened last week... 4) Katin Field If characters are looking for a job, folks will direct them to Katin Field. He lives not too far out of town in an artificial oasis that keeps the sand at bay with a ring of retaining walls. It was a homestead, abandoned when the habiforming failed. He is protected by a retinue of Fair to Good nameless non-player characters. He is also the “contact” for the first job the characters find. High Concept: Smuggling Lord Trouble: Under house arrest +4 Empathy, +3 Deceive, +2 Fight, +1 Notice 5) Klehnaki Chaos Contact: Katin Field Cargo: Himself. He has information to deliver to an ‘information specialist’ who will pay him for it. He will not reveal what his cargo is willingly. Players may use an overcome roll (any reasonable skill) to learn more about the cargo: Average (+1) - the cargo is information. Fair (+2) - The information is secret. Good (+3) - It is secret information about the Klehnaki. Great (+4) - The cargo is the location of the Klehnak, the Orc pirate leader. Destination: Margaret, a well-protected hamlet run by Margaret “Maggie” Darkblade, a goblin informant. Complication: Since the information Katin has is the whereabouts/existence of Klehnak, the Klehnaki pirates don’t want it to be known. The pirates know that Katin has the information, and his house is being watched. When he leaves his house, an informant leaves in a magical rowboat (Good (+3) Notice to see it leaving). An ambush of two Klehnaki pirate ships is set up on route to Margaret. The pirates will attack the players and show no mercy. Leaving the towns is dangerous to begin with. Pirate ships roam the desert landscape, looking for transport ships foolish enough to venture too far from safety. Katin will suggest that the crew take a route through a canyon to stay hidden, providing the group with an advantage called Lay of the land. He will be up front about having something that the pirates want. Klehnaki Pirate Ships It’s said that the Klehnaki are merciless orc supremicists. An altogether nasty group. High Concept: Klehnaki Pirate Ship Trouble: Repurposed Junker +3 Fight OR Shoot, +2 Physique, +1 Athletics AND Provoke Moderate Consequence Slot Fear of the Klehnaki. Automatic Provoke attack on sight. Grapple stations: On successful Fight attack, place Grappled aspect on enemy ship Good (+3) overcome + shifts to remove the condition. The pirates may board the ship when the aspect is in play. Klehnaki Pirate 5 Pirates will board if given the opportunity. High Concept: Filthy Pirate Trouble: Vicious, not bright +2 Fight OR Shoot, +1 Physique There you go! I hope you make use of these sketches for your own game. If you have any feedback, please share it in the comments! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation!  I am a huge fan of the Fate Core roleplaying system. I came at the game from a theoretical perspective; I was looking for a game that fit a list of criteria for what I liked in a role-playing game, and it seemed to fit. Now, the group I play with is just wrapping up a year-long campaign (with myself as the gamemaster) base on Ed Turner’s ‘Aether Sea’ setting, and I found that the system really does deliver on its promise. The mechanics are light enough that you can play a whole session without opening a book, but substantial enough to put meat on the bones of the game world. There is also a ton of content developed for the system: worlds, extras, and characters, much of it free for the taking. In this article, I want to share and review a few of the tools that I found useful when playing Fate. I take no credit for the things I didn’t make - just linking to information that I found already available on the interwebs. I hope you enjoy! 1) Fate SRD The System Reference Document of any role-playing game system is a must-have for gamemasters. For the uninitiated, it is usually the text of the core rulebook uploaded to the internet in a searchable, hyperlinked form. Super useful. Amazing Rando Design has done this for the Fate Core and Fate Accelerated Edition rulebooks, as well as some additional material. 2) Fantasy Creatures Site Inkwell Ideas, Inc. has developed a website resource for the Fate Core system. It features a long list of fantasy creatures, many of which will seem familiar to long-time role-players: roper, kobold, tarrasque, etc. (it’s missing the Beholder, though. I was disappointed! Trademark issue, maybe?). The list has everything you could want in order to play a Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder-style campaign. One weakness: the creatures are all designed to be Main NPCs or powerful supporting NPCs, so don’t set your group up against a full raiding party of orcs from this list. That being said, it’s quite a simple matter to have one to four big baddies surrounded by a horde of nameless NPCs. Fantastic (+6) resource! 3) Character Generator Reddit is a vast, desolate landscape you shouldn’t even try to enter without a cleric who can prepare ‘Create Water’ daily; but out there you will often find gems. On a FATErpg forum, green_circles randomly (and quite generously) uploaded a spreadsheet random character generator, for which I am eternally grateful. Enter something in an empty cell on the sheet and press enter, and the sheet randomly generates all the aspects and skills for a random main or supporting NPC, as well as a list of situation aspects for everything from guards to terrain, and physical, mental, and social advantages. I never used the characters as they were randomly generated, but it was a great brainstorming tool, and all of my important NPCs had at least a couple of aspects generated by this spreadsheet. 4) Opposition Sheet This one is a Landru original. One thing I had trouble with as a gamemaster is the amount of player agency that Fate offers. Not only can players go a completely different way than you expected, (every gamemaster’s plans work until the players show up) players also have the agency to solve problems in multiple different ways, using a variety of skill in non-linear ways to create advantages and circumvent created encounters. Eventually, I more or less gave up planning. I created a ‘difficulty level’ spreadsheet to help me to improvise. This meant that no matter what direction the players took the narrative, I knew more or less the difficulty I should pit them against to create the appropriate dramatic tension. I incorporated the core rulebook’s guidelines for passive and active opposition; the scale on the right hand side corresponds to the scale used on the Fantasy Creatures site; and on the left I included some situations where each level would be appropriate. The file is uploaded below. You’re welcome! 5) Snarf World This is the bonus track for people who have kept reading up to this point. One of the wonderful and hilarious accidental products of our game was the creation of snarfs. Snarfs are an alien species of indeterminate anatomy that the sentient races have begun to use for entertainment. They are raced against each other, with bets being placed on who will win, who will lose, who will place, who will eat their jockey, and whether or not the race will even finish. It is a fun side-quest that can turn into the entire focus of a game if you let it. At the bottom of this article, I have included a text file of the rules for running your very own snarf race. The point of this is to create an absurd fictional narrative in the style of a race sportscast. Have fun! There were several other resources that I created and/or modified for use in the Aether Sea setting (now also linked so you can grab a copy from DriveThru RPG), and I plan to share those in an upcoming article. I hope these resources help you to take your game to the next level! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation!  
 Now, if you are like me, and I doubt you are, you play a lot of games with your co-workers during the work day. I work for an educational technology start-up, and we were encouraged when I first started to find fun ways to build team cohesion and get our minds away from our work for short stints during the day. These have led to some creative decisions from some teams, who mostly focus on Pictionary, quiz games, and trivia questions to break-up their days. My team plays quite a bit, usually 2-3 games a day, of Exploding Kittens. Over the last few months, I’ve also been exploring the possibility of playing a short form RPG with my team during the work day.
I’ve come up with 3 games that I think would work perfectly for this. 1) Dread Quinn and Joel did a great review of Dread on the podcast, and I recommend checking that out if you get the chance. Dread uses a Jenga set to simulate the impending horror of what is going to occur to your characters. Character sheets are pretty simple, and game-play is not really designed for long-term RPG stories. So, with some work, it should be possible to create a short scenario that occurs within a half-hour block. That would be perfect for my team, as we generally take a 30-minute break to play games. 2) Dungeons and Dragons 5th Ed Particularly with pre-generated characters, the newest edition of the world’s greatest role-playing game would make an easy to use short form role-playing session. Wizards of the Coast has put out a great series of pre-generated characters from lvl 1 – 10 which you can print for free from their website. I recommend grabbing enough characters for your team members to have 2 choices, and jump in head first. Create a really short scene, and ask the players how they would react. Keep this as simple as possible, using dice rolls as rarely as you can get away with. Having a dice roller app is helpful here, as carting around dice at work may not be a grand idea. That being said, having one die that you pass around the table isn’t a terrible decision for this short form. Basically, you are running a very short scene, and you’ll need to be able to keep the pacing quick to make this work. 3) FATE Fate, using the FUDGE system created by Steffan O’Sullivan, is a great game to jump in feet first with a group of co-workers. Particularly if you use the FATE Accelerated rules on the FATE SRD. FATE’s simple to use system will let you jump right into a story. FATE uses a simple die mechanic, and rules light elements to get you right into the action. When running work games, focus on small scenarios that allow your co-workers to get a feel for what you’d do in an RPG. Give them either-or choices, and let them roll through and see what they come up with for solutions to the challenges you present them. Running an RPG at work probably sounds like a strange idea to some. You might not be open about your RPG habit, or you might get yelled at by your boss. If, like me, you work in a space that encourages out of the box ways to break up the monotony of the day, you might be able to pull this off. You could also do this during a lunch break or after work. These are all great, easy to learn games that will let you jump into the action quickly, which is 90% of the battle. Image Credit With 18 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. He recently launched,www.keepontheheathlands.com to support his gaming projects. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook. He’s a player in Underground Theatre LARPs and is running a Mage game and a D&D 5th Edition campaign. He’s a serious advocate for inclusive gaming spaces, a father, and a graduate from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution graduate program at American University in Washington, D.C.  As I brought up in a previous article, to play around with the mechanics is to create the rules by which the game world is governed. Role-playing games are an attempt to simulate reality, but not actually the reality we live in. (What is there to simulate? Double-stuff Oreos already exist!!)
Role-playing games simulate the logic of the fictional worlds we see in books, movies, TV shows, and other media. One rule that applies in many of these fictional worlds is that when things get really tough, characters have a resource that they can tap so that they can succeed at their task. It may be called luck, fate, edge, hutzpah, moxie, karma, the goodwill of the audience, the matrix of leadership, or any variety of things; the character applies this resource at just the right time so that everyone can live happily ever after… if that’s your genre. There are a variety of ways that this is simulated in role-playing games. The great John Kim wrote an article to give a quick history of the origins of these mechanics. They are called something different in almost every game that uses them, but for simplicity’s sake I will be calling them luck resources. Luck resources vary between games, but generally they allow players somewhat greater agency by allowing them to reroll, modify dice rolls, and add or change story details. Some luck resources can only be used by the players, some by both the players and the gamemaster. They may sometimes be used before making a roll, afterward, or both. In spite of all these differences, however, I’ve identified the best luck resources as 1) simple to use, 2) providing effective agency (in quantity and quality), and 3) balanced so that they don’t break the game. Let’s start with the ugly: 1) Bad Karma: Marvel Superheroes (Ugly) I hate to beat on TSR’s Marvel Superheroes so much, because I’ve spent many a happy session playing Beast and any number of homebrewed superheroes; but the luck resource used in this game is broken. It is called Karma: characters earn Karma by doing good deeds, saving the day, and otherwise behaving heroically. Karma can then be spent on character advancement or to succeed on rolls. Spending Karma to succeed is where this becomes a luck resource. The difficulty, however is that you need to use the same resource pool for both advancement and luck. The mechanic is simple to use, but it fails to allow effective agency. I agree with John Kim in his above mentioned article; this mechanic generally leads players to either hoard their Karma to make their characters stronger, or to spend it all the time and leave their character weak. This creates a disparity between characters and bad feeling around the table about Karma spending, making for an ugly mechanic. 2) The Hand of Fate: Fate Core and Fate Accelerated Edition (Good) Can I write an article without talking about Fate? I admit my bias, this is my favourite game.That being said, this luck resource leaves just enough to be desired. It is based on Fate Points, which are integral to the game. Players begin each session with a certain number of Fate Points (usually 3), and they earn extra points when bad things inevitably happen to their character. Fate Points can be used to modify rolls before or after they are made, to re-roll, or to create story details, but with a catch; they can only be used to invoke different story elements, called aspects. Without going into great detail, what that means is that your character design will flavour the way ‘luck’ works in gameplay, which adds great storytelling value.The limitation I mentioned is in the value assigned by the mechanic. According to the basic rules (there are variations), a Fate Point is worth +2, no matter how perfectly or poorly it applies in a given situation. This makes the mechanic very simple to use, but at the cost of the quality of player agency. 3) The Bleeding Edge: Shadowrun (Hella Fun!) Say what you want about Shadowrun; in an entirely-subjective-not-measurable way, this is my favourite luck resource. Shadowrun uses a dice pool mechanic to resolve tests. Edge, a kind of luck mechanic, is treated like a character attribute - that means players can choose whether or not they want to have it during character creation. Very early on, I realized what it was and pretty much always bought it up as high as functionally possible. In a single session, you could call on Edge a number of times equal to your Edge attribute. You could call on it before or after your roll, with different effects. After the roll, you could re-roll or roll a few extra dice. If you use it before the roll, however, it would allow you to add a number of dice equal to your Edge score to your pool. Also, if invoked before the roll, sixes got re-rolled in a sweet exploding dice mechanic. All that just to say that five times a session, I was shaking a mitt-full of dice that meant the odds were most definitely in my favour! 4) Where Have All the Heroes Gone: Mutants & Masterminds (Bad) Now, to clarify, Hero Points is not actually a bad mechanic. It’s quite good. It does everything that you want a good luck resource to do. In writing this article, I just noticed that there’s only one luck resource I marked as bad, so I’m going to pick on the one flaw in this one. In Mutants and Masterminds, players get Hero Points that allow them to re-roll, modify a roll, and add or change story details, much like Fate. Players receive them for doing heroic things, like Marvel Superheroes, or for accepting complications built into your character concept, again like Fate. What’s the drawback? The problem is that even if you’ve earned points, the amount you have resets to just one at the beginning of every session. This weakens an otherwise powerful mechanic by limiting the quantity of times players can take agency. Just make a house rule to fix this one - it shouldn’t break the game. 5) A Muse of Fire: Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition (Good) So simple, and so fun, the Inspiration mechanic from D&D 5E is the first luck resource for the WoC franchise that applies to all characters regardless of race or class. It is somewhat different from the others mentioned above. Instead of allowing players to reroll or modify a roll, it permits the player to invoke the ‘Advantage’ mechanic. This increases the odds of success (including critical success) by allowing the player to roll a second 20-sided die and choose the highest result. Like the Shadowrun mechanic, this improves the odds while still allowing for titanic failure when the dice gods demand it. Players may only have one point of inspiration at a time, which is somewhat limited… but borrowing the Advantage mechanic and allowing the resource to only affect dice rolls keeps the balance and just adds a layer of fun to the classic game. There are many other luck resources that I’ve heard of and read about: Savage Worlds’ ‘Bennies,’ Open d6 ‘Fate Points’ (not to be confused with Fate ‘Fate Points’ - stay with me), and many others. I’ve written about the ones that I’ve actually played; but from what I’ve read, the luck resources covered above represent most of them in functionality. All of them are intended to give a larger-than-life movie feeling to your game, and will hopefully help you to take your games to the next level!! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, d20, Marvel Superheroes, Fate Core, Fate Accelerated Edition, Shadowrun, Game Design http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/heropoints.html http://www.highlevelgames.ca/blog/5-good-bad-and-ugly-dice-mechanics  Role-playing games are the best thing since sliced ogre for you, your kids, and your grandma... but there is one particular happiness that can be gained from them that is not for everyone. Only the select few, those of us with refined palates, the nerds among nerds who would appreciate the emphatically overdrawn syntax of this sentence ever learn to enjoy it. It is enjoyed by such brilliant minds as the Matt from Herding Dice, John Kim, and other masters of mechanics. This is the joy of the hacking the rules themselves.
To play around with the mechanics is to create the rules by which the game world is governed; it is a creative process in some ways more fundamental than playing a role. The core of all role-playing games is that they simulate a reality in which people can enjoy playing characters. Game designers have found many different ways to simulate the limitations of reality while allowing characters to have autonomy, each game striking a balance between a sense of realism with a sense of fun. Each design has a different flavour; there are so many games out there now that you can truly order them to taste. There are many mechanics that form a game. This article’s focus is on dice mechanics, what makes them good, exciting, clunky, or weird. Dice mechanics are good when they 1) create tension (there’s a variety of possible outcomes), 2) are somewhat realistic, and 3) are simple. If you have any favourite dice mechanics, please let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for interesting game systems. 1) Meat and Potatoes: d20 mechanics (Bad to Good!) Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, and the d20 Open Game License are the staple of many a role-player’s diet. d20 mechanics have their high and low points. There are an exciting twenty possible outcomes for each roll, which usually include one opportunity for wild success or critical failure. These mechanics break down in the realism department because each outcome has an equal chance of happening. The rules change the probability of success by incorporating modifiers and changing target numbers, but no matter how weak or powerful your character, there’s still a 5% chance that you’ll either critically hit that dragon or fall flat on your face jumping over a log. These eventualities often seem out of place and ridiculous. Regarding simplicity, recent incarnations have improved considerably, most of them paring it down to just a 20-sided die, avoiding the need for excessive polyhedrons. The 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons also introduced the idea of advantage and disadvantage, which improves the believability of the outcomes by giving players a pool of two 20-sided dice to choose from. 2) All Had The Graph Of Power! Marvel Superheroes (Bad to Ugly!) One dice mechanic that has always intrigued me is the one designed for TSR’s Marvel Superheroes. It features very simple resolution: every action is resolved by a percentile dice roll combined with consulting a chart. It accounts for the huge disparity of power in the Marvel Universe by having each character roll under the assigned level of their power for different effects. As interesting as it is, however, the reality it creates is a broken one where failure is frequent. This means Colossus may have difficulty pinning a starving serf to the ground, and Aunt May can knock Spider-Man out cold. There are some mechanics that work to mitigate this kind of thing, but they aren’t powerful enough to avoid frequent absurd power upsets. Wild successes and failures are defined by the chart. Oddly, if you put together the chance of a wild success or a critical failure, depending on the action you’re taking, it is frequently more likely to knock it out of the park or to fail epically than it is just to succeed. Again, this undermines the sense of realism in the game. 3) One Roll To Rule Them All: Fate Core & Fate Accelerated Edition (Best!) Featuring a robust mechanic based on the earlier FUDGE system, the Fate systems are two of my favourites. Players simply resolve all actions using a small pool of four FUDGE/Fate dice, which are 6-sided dice that supply outcomes between -4 and +4. There are fewer outcomes possible with this type of roll, but the outcomes follow a curve. The curve makes wild success and failures possible, but more rare, lending a sense of realism. There are also other mechanics that enable characters to succeed where they otherwise may not, and scale mechanics that allow this single dice roll to resolve conflicts on any scale. In combination, this creates a dice mechanic that simulates realistic outcomes, while providing the creative freedom of a truly universal system and enough tension to make victory sweet. 4) Welcome To The Desert Of The Real: Shadowrun (Good to Ugly!) There will always be a soft spot in my cold gamemaster heart for this game, though I don’t play it much anymore. In principle, the resolution mechanic is fairly simple; a combination of skills and gear provide characters a pool of 6-sided dice they use to resolve opposed, unopposed, and extended actions. The bigger the dice pool, the greater a character’s chances of success or wild success. Dice pools by nature allow somewhat more realistic outcomes, and the core mechanic is really quite simple. There are so many additional rules, however, that gameplay tends to bog down in the simulation. Almost every piece of gear, skill, and action has a specific rule that is perfectly logical and lends to a sense of realism for the game. But, frequently, the complexity takes players out of the game too much for them to enjoy the sense of immersion that so rich a game world deserves. Also, rolling upwards of twenty dice is both super fun and more than a bit ridiculous. 5) ...And Four Stunt Points! Fantasy AGE (Good!) This dice mechanic is a hybrid of early d20 mechanics and the Fate system. It uses a small pool of three 6-sided dice to resolve actions with a single type of roll. Outcomes range from 3 to 18, again making them feel realistic. An object of study for Matt from Herding Dice, it also features some super entertaining tricks. When players roll doubles, they gain a certain number of points with which to buy stunts – which are cool things their character can do. This means that wild successes are not limited to high rolls (though high rolls help). While it does not cover the same scope as Fate, it is nevertheless a very enjoyable resolution mechanic. These are only some of the highs and lows that players may encounter using different dice mechanics. Of course, this article doesn’t consider all the different mechanics that exist, and doesn’t even touch other forms of resolution. If you’re still reading, you’re probably of the ilk that will stay tuned for the forthcoming article about alternative resolution mechanics. See you there! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation!  To say I love cyberpunk would be somewhat of an understatement. I mean, how could you not? I absolutely LOVE Star Trek, but there’s something that is too clean, too utopic in Rodenberry’s vision. Then in comes cyberpunk, stating that the future will be as good and as bad as today is, it’ll just have more rain, more neon and some of the cars will have the ability to fly.
A while back, I ran a cyberpunk setting, under the Savage Worlds rule system, in the dirty, spiraling metropolis that is New Hades (www.welcometonewhades.blogspot.com) and this is where I came across the Interface Zero (IZ) setting. Published by Gun Metal Games, it has now been adapted to the Fate rule system, and this is where we pick up our story….. 1 – The Setting Almost 40% of the book is setting. This might seem overkill, but it doesn’t feel like it. Divided both chronologically and geographically, the book does an excellent job at introducing us to the IZ world. At the start of the book, a couple of pages are dedicated to a timeline, showing what happened to our planet in the years between the present and 2090. If one then wishes a more in depth study, the latter part of the book has the mentioned huge world history/atlas section, detailing the main countries/areas/players on the world stage. Is it too much? Perhaps, but by Cthulhu, it reads like a novel, and gives you the ability to base your players anywhere in the worlds, without it feeling same-y and boring. I won’t spoil it, but environmental catastrophes, diseases killing a not-insignificant part of humanity, cybernetics, robotics, space colonies, etc, etc. 2 – Gameplay As mentioned, it follows the Fate rule system, with everything that comes attached to it (flexibility, adaptability, etc.). It feels, however, that IZ has made a lot of effort to ‘pin things down.’ Whereas the Fate system itself is happy with letting the characters be as fantastic as you can make them, IZ seems to try to make them more centered, more focused. The Fate rules and fudge dice rolls are still there, but one gets a feeling that IZ characters are real, with real armor and real pistols and swords and real cyberware. 3 – The Characters This is where I feel this system shines. It doesn’t allow a free for all of character identities and creation, but it gives the players a huge number of possibilities of races and backgrounds, so varied, in fact, that I’m sure the possible permutations are in the hundreds. Just on race, you can chose Android (robot), Bioroid (synthetic human, think Ash from Alien), Cyborg, Human, Human 2.0 (biologically enhanced), Hybrid (human spliced with animal DNA) and Simulacrum (synthetic human). Each will of course have their advantages and disadvantages: a Hybrid with bat DNA might see in the dark, but might be denied access to polite society. Add to these races occupations as varied as bartender or bounty hunter and you have a huge scope to play around with. Furthermore, although it is mentioned they’re just guidelines, major and minor aspects are suggested, depending on your choices. This, I find, is the Fate system’s greatest strength but, especially for players unfamiliar with the rules, it can be a weakness. Allow me to explain. In Fate, your character has a number of short sentences that describe him/her/it, called Aspects. You call upon these aspects during gameplay for bonuses. My character is a thief, so I invoke my aspect ‘Best thief is my neighborhood’ for a bonus to lockpicking. Now this works amazingly, but for new players it can be tough. How do you pin down a character when your scope is infinite? IZ does a great job pinning this down. It might rob a tiny bit of flexibility, but it makes character creation faster and easier. 4 – Archetypes An inspired idea was the addition of archetypes: pre-made, almost ready to go characters, that can be copied off the page and used in a game almost immediately. I really enjoyed this, as it seemed to bridge the two types of Fate players, the ones that are happy with creating almost everything ‘bout their player from scratch, and the more casual players that only want the flexibility of the dice rolling and Aspects, and would prefer their characters to be more grounded. 5 – Rules The Fate rules are used almost to the letter, with minor alterations. A few pages are spent describing the system in detail, so you really only need this book to start playing immediately. Conclusion I really really like it. The setting is fantastic, the rules are straightforward and straight from the Fate Core, and the characters feel real and interesting. It looks like a system that is parallel to... say, Shadowrun, as in it has the same sort of dark futuristic setting, but attempts to be smoother, faster, yet equally engaging. If you like cyberpunk and want a fast, exciting system, look no further! Rui is a Portuguese scientist that, after ten years doing strange things in labs, decided to become a teacher. Then, two years ago, like he was bit by a radioactive D20, RPG’s came into his life, and he’s now juggling teaching, playing and GMing quite happily. He lives in the UK with his partner Joana, an ungodly number of potted plants, 4 to 5 RPG’s at various stages of completion (and across as many rule systems), and maps, cursed idols, evil necklaces, and any other props he can get his hands on. He’s been writing for HLG for a few months, and is one of the resident vloggers. He can be reached at @Atomic_RPG.  “Your sword is gone.”
“WHAT?!?! What do you mean??” “It doesn’t exist anymore. You have no sword.” “But that was my +5 family heirloom sword! It cost me 50,000 GP and we spent four months in real time on a side quest to get it!!” “...and you put it in an annihilation portal trap. Tough.” “Don’t I get a saving throw?!? Or something??” WARNING! All of the mechanics I mention below are risky. This does not mean any of them are forbidden, nor even bad. Some of them are actually quite common. They are risky in the sense that they threaten to take the fun out of the game for some players. I wrote an article about some rewards that role-playing gamers want to get from their games, then another about some of the games that do a good job of providing these rewards. Now it’s time to talk about the games that will ruin your fun by taking these rewards away. Taking away or delaying game rewards means consequences for in-game actions start to affect the player as well as their character. Players often invest a lot of time and effort to get their characters to a particular stage, and these mechanics tend to negate that time and effort. To be fair, there is definitely an appropriate time to have your heirloom sword permanently removed, or for your character to die. Gamemasters and players often want to play a high-stakes game. Before you decide to apply a mechanic that could potentially undo or complicate the real-life work that players have put into the game you should talk about the risks, and decide as a group if having high-tension drama is worth suffering player-affecting consequences. I mention three joykill mechanics, but there are certainly more pit traps out there. If you think of any that I should have targeted, write them in the comments! I picked these three because they are typical of the worst reward-removing mechanics. Here is the list. 1. Bad Karma - TSR Marvel Super Heroes I’m really looking forward to playing Cyclops and being able to shoot around corners. Now, if I get karma every session and only spend half of it on having good rolls and don’t accidentally kill anyone or do anything out of character, I should be able to earn that stunt in…. oh, about two years of play time. The Marvel Super Heroes character advancement mechanic is a joykill. Which is a shame because I love the game! Character development is handled with Karma - save someone, beat the bad guy, or just do something awesome, and you receive Karma. Karma can be used to buy power stunts - cool things that your character can do with his/her powers. Brilliant! There are two problems with the Karma mechanic, though. The first is that Karma can also be used to buy successes in-game: to karate chop Magneto’s face or narrowly miss being mesmerized by Mysterio, spend Karma. This drains the resource that you would normally use for character advancement. The second problem; to successfully gain a power stunt, you need to succeed several times at different success levels; really cool, in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, it means that unless you have a prohibitive amount of Karma stored up in case you fail a roll, you could end up having wasted your Karma and starting back at square one. It’s important to separate character development resources (like Experience Points) and burnable assets in your game, because otherwise players risk burning up their hard work just so they don’t lose their character. 2. Dungeoneering Drain - Dungeons and Dragons “The vampire succeeds on a touch attack. You lose two levels.” “Noooo! I just got to level twelve! I really wanted to cast sixth-level spells!” “While you’re standing there, lamenting your fate, the vampire touches you again.” “Nooooooo!” There are more than three joykills in the grandaddy of all role-playing games (see the opening vignette about a 2nd edition AD&D scenario), though many of them have been ironed out in subsequent editions. Some of them persist. Try not to use them without warning the players. Rust Monsters: Given that new gear is one of the rewards that players who like Dungeons and Dragons crave, creating a monster whose sole purpose is to eat gear is risky. Whether gear is bought, found, or quested for, a rust monster can easily remove an irreplaceable reward from play. Experience Points for Effects: Just like with the bad Karma above, there are some mechanics in Dungeons and Dragons that require a player to spend the points they would normally use for character development to achieve certain effects (usually magical ones). This is done to maintain game balance; the effects that are bought with experience points are usually quite powerful. This is risky, though, because having a mage at 10th level when everyone else is at 12th can get tedious; character advancement is as rewarding as new gear, if not more. Level Drain: THE WORST!! Again, in a high-stakes game, level-draining creatures (often powerful undead) are specifically designed to hit the player where it hurts the most - in the experience points! Don’t pit yourselves against a vampire unless everyone is on board with the fact that they might lose a couple of levels before it’s all said and done… as if levels were the worst thing to lose. Which brings me to my next point: 3. The Ultimate Joykill - Character Death “I’m going to run across the rickety bridge that spans the chasm.” “Okay, roll for it.” “Natural one.” “Oh. Ouch. Um, make a reflex save.” “Uh… also one.” “Oh. Uh, I guess you fall screaming to your death.” “On the first day?” Something that is nearly invisible because it is assumed in most games, character death is a joykill mechanic. I may be opening myself to criticism, but I think allowing character death to be determined by the random rolling of dice is risky, and leads to a million absurdities from a storytelling perspective. What happens when your character’s goal was to deliver information vital to the success of a world-saving mission, and they get taken out by a couple of bandits who happened to roll really well? No, thank you. I applaud games like Mutants and Masterminds and Fate that deliberately remove character death from the mechanics. Characters can be ‘taken out:’ knocked out, captured, lost, or forgotten… but that just creates an interesting twist in the story. Fate takes it a step further, and allows players to decide when character death would be appropriate, thereby allowing the players and the GM, in conversation, to decide when to raise the stakes. It is essential to have conversations about when you are going to use high-stakes mechanics. High-tension drama is vital to role-playing games, and these mechanics can provide that when appropriate. Bust them out at the wrong time, though, and you will kill the fun for the players in your group. Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation!  Hello. My name is Landrew, and I’m a role-playing game junkie…
“Hi, Landrew…” Hello fellow junkies! In an earlier article, I talked about some rewards that games give players to keep them hooked. After listening to the feedback I got on the article and giving it some more thought, I decided it might be nice to hook my readers up with some solid tips on where to get the rewards they want. In this article, I point out some games (we’ll call them ‘dealers’) that do a great job of providing players with the rewards they want (e.g. a ‘fix’). These recommendations are limited by word count (all hail the corporate leaders) and by my own experience - which is heavily based on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, the original Rifts, Marvel Superheroes, Fate, and Shadowrun. If you have your own recommendations for reward mechanics, please post them in the comments! 1. “Uppers:” Levelling Up/Character Advancement There’s nothing like good old Dungeons and Dragons for enjoyable character advancement. Although there are definitely some cool things about 5th edition, I’ll take 3.5 any day to get a good high. Feats, skills, and base attack bonuses... the rules are crunchy, maybe, but that’s part of the fun! It’s like a tinker gnome assembling nifty trinkets into a deadly whole. While I prefer simplicity during gameplay, complexity during character creation and advancement is a heck of a lot of fun. Pass that rare, dangerous, and somewhat broken source book, please! Honourable mentions go out to cool combat tricks and spells that can be earned in Kevin Siembada’s Rifts, and the power stunts mechanic in Marvel Superheroes. 2. “Bling & Benjamins:” Gear and Money The nominees for the ‘best gear’ award are tied, in my mind. If you want cool gear with its own stats, you can’t get much better than the gear lists from Rifts and Shadowrun. The detailed weapon descriptions add an irreplaceable layer of realism to the game world in both settings. I would be remiss if I didn’t include the gear lists from Dungeons and Dragons, as well. Again, recent game design theory is often critical of gear lists, saying that gameplay gets bogged down in the details. “Do you have a ten-foot pole on your inventory list? Doesn’t that make you encumbered?” However, removing gear lists also removes the fun of neat equipment-specific tricks and having exactly the right piece of gear at the right time. There’s got to be a happy medium out there somewhere... 3. “Hallucinogens & Immersion:” Exploring Game World Settings Which games have the best settings to discover? With all due respect to the many worlds based on Dungeons and Dragons (or were they called realms? I’ve forgotten), this award goes to Shadowrun first, with Rifts as a close runner-up. In the funny world of game publishing, game mechanics are not considered intellectual property - check out the first two paragraphs of this handy pdf from the US Copyright Office. Given this, a lot of the effort that goes into game design is poured into things that can be copyrighted, like setting, supporting characters, and game history. Hands down, nobody does this better than Shadowrun. It is based on an alternate timeline beginning in the 1980s and winding up in a dystopian cyberpunk future where magic and dragons have returned. The history of this alternate timeline is compelling, detailed, and strangely realistic. It features complex interactions on both the geopolitical and local level. For example, the last will and testament of the great dragon Dunkelzahn, late president of the United Canadian and American States, features enough loose ends and just enough interesting detail to provide plenty of role-playing hooks, while also just being a great piece of fiction in its own right. Also, Rifts. Thank you Kevin, for successfully describing a world in which literally anything can happen. Because, magic. 4. “The Mind Job:” Problem Solving Again, not to play favourites, but Shadowrun is my favourite for built-in problem-solving opportunities. The many heist-style modules lend themselves well to sitting down with your buddies trying to figure out a way to beat the odds. I like it because, though it is frankly combat-heavy, there are still a very large number of non-linear possibilities. Oh, that powerful security team can outgun us? How about when the commander is persuaded to give just one poor order to his team because his cousin’s buddy has the BTL he wants? Now the security goons are in the wrong place at the right time for them to notice our distraction, while the mage hacker ghosts in undetected. There’s nothing like the satisfying click of an opening safe in a heist gone right. 5. “The Happy Ending:” Resolving Story Arcs Jumping off the Shadowrun train for a bit, the best story-based mechanic that I’ve encountered so far is Evil Hat’s Fate system. I say ‘so far’ because I know there’s a ton of games emerging that have built-in story mechanics… I just haven’t tried them yet. Fate has a lot of cool points. The use of descriptors, called aspects, as part of the mechanic means that conflict has a built-in narrative quality to it. More importantly, however, is that character advancement is tied to story development rather than arbitrary monster XP values. Gameplay is divided into chunks like a TV show: scenes, scenarios (think episodes), arcs (seasons), and campaigns. The characters advance by reaching different ‘milestones,’ which are reached at the end of each chunk of the story. Advancement happens because of the characters’ experiences, which makes a ton of sense and is super satisfying as a player. With this structure, it becomes very easy to enjoy the feeling of closure you get from finishing the latest season of your favourite show. As you can see, no single game has everything. There are enough great games out there, however, that it’s not too difficult to find the reward you’re looking for. I hope this article helps you put a handle on what you want out of your games as a player; or maybe it will help a gamemaster find out what to give his/her players to keep stringing them along. No matter what, post your ideas in the comments, and let’s take our games to the next level. Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! |
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