While I’ve run Venture City Stories, I realized I hadn’t done a write-up for it. VCS delivers a
micro supers setting for use with Fate Core. The product's brief, coming in at
30 pages of material. Evil Hat released it as part of their Patreon Project and
you can find it “Pay What You Want” at RPGNow. Since EH’s running a promotion, I decided to do a quick overview. I’m going to come at this from a
couple of directions, but to be clear I like Fate. It works for me as a system. In particular we've integrated many elements from it into our local homebrew, Action Cards.
Presentation
Venture City Stories is cleanly laid-out, following
the template established in other Fate products. It looks good, with highly functional sidebars
and call-outs. There’s a wealth of solid art here for a small
product. Illustrator Tazio Battin delivers with an excellent and evocative style.
The images manage to capture the sense of a world with high level supers and
street level conflict.
Premise
Venture City is a focal point location, a grim and murky
urban center with corruption run through it. It exemplifies the rest of the
setting: a world questioning supers and a deeply blurred line between good and
evil. It reminds me a little of Hub City from the DC Universe. The whole tone
feels close to Marvel’s Ultimates universe. You could also compare it to Aberrant, but dialed back significantly.
Setting Material
A little over two-thirds of the book presents Venture City.
It opens with a nice overview of the issues and problems facing both the world
and the city itself. After quickly setting the stage it moves to explore the
details through people, places, and groups. I like the focus on
concrete concepts players might interact with, rather than just a history and
gazetteer. It’s a sketchy presentation, but it works especially well for two
reasons. One, it manages to leave the GM room to imagine connections and
come up with plots. Details are given, but they’re more hooks and ideas. Two,
the connecting material in sidebars shows ties between the segments and illustrates how larger plots and stories could connect.
I like the setting, particularly because it is both grey without
being gritty. At the same time it presents a living, breathing world. The
Fate elements blend seamlessly with the background. Sometimes when I
read supers settings, I’ll grind to a halt when we switch from info to
stats & mechanics. Venture City Stories handles that well. It offers an
awesome model as a Fate product. Is it worth it for non-Fate GMs? Let me come
back to that at the end.
Super Powers
Fate players can celebrate having several different
Super power sub-systems available. A quick look at the community extensions or the G+ group offers a host of options. We have several published versions as well, including material from the Fate Core Toolkit, “Wild Blue” in Fate Worlds, and the heavily reconstructed ICONS Assembled. Venture City Stories gives a simple system covered in only three
pages.
Essentially players come up with a core concept for their power.
They break the important features of that power into discrete stunts. Each
power has a Drawback; really a trouble aspect for it. But it also has a set of
Special Effects- microbenefits which can be called on when a player succeeds
with style on the use of their power. They can also use their power in overdrive
which gives them an amazing result, but inflicts a Collateral Damage
effect. One of the examples is a Speedster able to travel anywhere in an
instant but tearing up the streets behind them.
It like this structure. It worked pretty well when I ran Thirty Days to Save Science City. I’ve
also tested it out with our homebrew and players seem to grok it fairly well.
They especially enjoy the idea of the boosted power with a consequence. The
Special Effects mechanic takes some getting used to. It means players must think about their powers in a different way. It reminds me of Dragon Age’s system of
post-roll stunts. Venture City Stories's length works for and against it.
The added mechanics are tight and streamlined. But at the same time I would have liked more examples- both of play and of character builds.
Despite that, I’d recommend Fate Supers GMs take a look at Venture City.
Other Concepts
Venture City Stories also uses Factions as a key mechanism.
We’ve seen things like this in other Fate games (Legend of Anglerre for
example). Here Factions are defined by a slogan (public image) and a secret
(true problems). Factions also have ratings in six skills: Bureaucracy, Espionage,
Resources, Security, Tech, and Violence. The rules don’t take much time
explaining those, assuming GMs can figure that out.
I like this mechanism. When I put together my online session, I leaned heavily on it. I essentially assembled the
setting by coming up with different factions. To the structure above I added
some GM-facing details: Hooks and Ways In. Hooks are just quick plot ideas
involving the group. I avoided any detail on these; I wanted them as improv
material. Ways In are the people, places, and thing players might actual contact
in play. In the past when I’ve done games with multiple factions or groups,
they’ve remained nebulous and then I have a harder time connecting the players to
them. Here I began by thinking at the concrete level. Then when players did investigations and research, I had a line to throw. These can frame successful contacts and the like. This prep approach doesn’t take
long if you avoid doing more than sketching 3-5 ideas for each. And there’s
significant long-term payoff.
Final Thoughts
Fate players should pick this up. The presentation of the
city offers a good model for building other locales. They might also like the
supers system- though I suspect GMs will want to hunt around for some other
example character builds (as I did). It takes some getting used to, but
generally I dig it and it offers a slightly new approach. If you’re looking to
do a pick-up Fate supers game, Venture City Stories has a solid system and
an easily playable open setting.
Non-Fate Supers GMs will find a rich and interesting
supplement. It has more of what I want a supers citybook to do than most. On
the other hand, it leaves me wishing for more. But the low cost and the quality
of the material means that most superhero gamemasters ought to at least check
it out.
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