Shadowrun Fate Accelerated: Some First Notes

We’re doing some quick Shadowrun via Fate Accelerated. I’m not sure exactly how we ended up there, but I’m pretty happy with that. My experience with Cyberpunk 2020 wasn’t great, so I’d always been  cool on the genre. OOH I’d recently run Neo-Shinobi Vendetta, which has a strong cp vibe. But Shadowrun’s also another beast entirely. I never played it in “back in the day,” though we sold a ton of it at the shop. Other groups run with it, but those never intersected with any of mine. So it’s been super fun to actually work through the material. I had some 1e resources from a Chain of Generosity, plus the Sixth World Almanac, and some pdfs. There’s massive amounts of cool stuff, though hard to synthesize at times because of the shifts in editions and generations. Someone really needs to do a "New Gamers Guide to Shadowrun" and maybe a series on which earlier products are most useful for the current edition (like I did with L5R).

That’s a digression.

We came up with the basics for FAE on the fly. Players chose classic roles and picked out a few stunts to fit with that. We kept the basic structures of FAE intact. The game has a secondary goal of familiarizing everyone with FAE’s general play, so I don’t want to spin too far out. Having been reading through SR, I have some scattered thoughts about handling things. I should note the Community Fate Extensions has some articles on this, in particular Rob Wieland has done some cool work.

*High Concept defines role or class. So in SR we have some archetypes which defining starting skills and ability access. Roughly Street Samurai, Decker, Rigger, Mage, Detective and Fixer. My CP reading may influence my breakdown. The last two essentially cover archetypes with particular connections and social/knowledge skills. Mage includes a broad swath from Technomancer to Street Mage to Shaman. Stunts tune that in a particular direction. For play, High Concept defines broadly the fiction of what they can attempt and sets some niches.

So players can all equally attempt “Meta: Create Advantage” action, but they’ll come at it from different directions. And their role gives them, I guess, “fiction permission” to manage that area. So by virtue of having a Decker high concept in some form, they have access to all the cool high-end Matrix-y stuff. I want to be liberal about this so a player’s definition of their role doesn’t hobble them compared to others. If hacking or magic has a broad range of effects, then the Street Samurai should also be able to reach far, albeit through distinct channels (favors, demolitions).

So Role as High Concept’s a key support in players making statements that they can do X or Y. I’m probably stating the obvious, but I’m clarifying that a little for myself. A good deal of what might be discrete buys and powers elsewhere get rolled up in this.

*Stunts are cool. On the one hand we have the standard FAE formulation:

Because I [describe some way that you are exceptional, have a cool bit of gear, or are otherwise awesome], I get a +2 when I [pick one: Carefully, Cleverly, Flashily, Forcefully, Quickly, Sneakily][pick one: attack, defend, create advantages, overcome] when [describe a circumstance].

Those allow players to define specialties with their approaches. They offer a narrow skill bump effectively. I can imagine using this to define a Shaman's totem. 

The other formulation is:

Because I [describe some way that you are exceptional, have a cool bit of gear, or are otherwise awesome], once per game session I can [describe something cool you can do].

So these are limited use powers or cool stuff. We’ll assume that “Once per Session” and “When I spend a Fate Point” are equivalent for purposes of building these. In some cases we might replace once per session with “When this very narrow circumstance occurs.”

The first set are pretty easy to create, but the second are a little more open. Going through my lists of Stunts from various sources here are a few of the second type that fit well.

• Fast Friend. When the character enters a new social situation (company, party, neighborhood) they may spend a Fate point to immediately make a good friend or contact there.
• Breaker. Once per session when fighting a mechanical (robot, vehicle, armored suit) I can do +1 shift damage and add a free tag to a target.
• One Person, Many Faces. When you meet someone new, you can spend a fate point to declare you’ve met that person under a different name and identity.
• Back Channels. Once per session you can cut through red tape and get a near-immediate response from bureaucracy and administration.
• Ready Steady. You always have the proper tools for basic tasks and repairs.
• Bend Bars/Lift Gates. You may spend a fate point to perform an absurd lift, pull, or other feat of strength.
• Scoundrel’s Reflexes. You may make a check to hide yourself even when completely surprised.
• Second Identity. You have an alternate persona or identity you can use when gathering information.
• Contacts (X). I have a strong and close contact at (a particular company, gang, organization) who can get me info and favors. This is stronger than the usual ally and has access to inside info and is willing to assist. After I use them for something big, I have to pay a fate point to refresh them from all the heat I brought down. 

And a few first type that occurs to me:

• Because I’m Hardcore about Parkour, I get a +2 when I Flashily overcome obstacles running across rooftops and other precarious environments.
• Because of my Cryptokey I have a +2 when I Sneakily create advantages via Hidden Communications and Dead Drops.
• Because I’m an Expert Tracer, I gain a +2 when I Cleverly attempt to overcome in tracking down a target in the city.
• Because I have a Custom Ride I gain a +2 when Quickly operating in Chase contests.
• Because I’m a Rumormonger, I gain a +2 when I Sneakily create advantages through gossip.
• Because I Read Up on Things, I gain a +2 when I Carefully overcome to figure out some strange or alien device or machine.
• Because I have a Street Network, I gain a +2 when I Quickly overcome in gathering “word on the street” about someone from my contacts.
• Because I’m a Trained Cleaner, I gain a +2 when I Carefully overcome in stripping all my evidence from a scene.

*So stunts in this reading of FAE include what might otherwise be Extras. Bionics, cyberimplants, magical spells, computer programs, drones. If so, should stunts have categories? Mechanical, Magical, Bionic, etc. Or should I not even bother with breaking things into categories? Are they more vulnerable to disruption? Or is that just something with the fiction? My original thought was that characters with cyber-implants could have those taken out by EMP or something. If so and this were a regular threat in the setting, then maybe there ought to be some kind of discount. But looking at that now, I don’t think I need to be that granular.

*I think I’ll probably tweak the Stunt economy. They’re cool and fun. So players should have access to more of them in play. Decoupling them entirely from Refresh means I can do a more point to buy set of mechanics? Maybe? Or I might not need to do that. I have to think about that.

Anyway that’s the sketchiest of first thoughts on this. I’m sure I’ll come up with more as we play. I’m looking forward to mixing the grittiness of Shadowrun with the looseness of FAE. We’ll see how it works. If you have suggestions about what are “Must Read” sourcebooks for Shadowrun or if you’ve had experience with Magic or Cyberpunk with Fate Accelerated, I’d appreciate suggestions. 

Threeforged Design Challenge: On to the Voting

I participated in the ThreeForged Design Challenge. Participants wrote up 1000 word rpg design, with the expectations it would be unfinished. This was then anonymously sent to another participant who worked on it and added another thousand words in this second round. Finally those which made it went on to a third stage designer who added two thousand words. Designers had no control over the theme or mechanisms of the game they got. I think that’s awesome and potentially forces a designer to engage with something they otherwise might not. They could make changes and adjustments, provided they kept the central concept. 

I managed to get through all three stages. If I’m reading Paul Czege’s notes right, he had 127 original submissions and 117 of those went from Stage Two to Stage Three. Then 102 made it out of Stage Three. That’s a decent success rate for something with a fairly tight deadline. However, my Stage One design didn’t make it. I’ll post that up once everything's done and anonymity lifted. I’ll seriously disappointed because I dig the concept and I wnated to see how others developed it. I'm curious about which stage it died at and it that failure arose from schedule, dislike, or something else. My Stage Two game did get finished. That’s an odd one, as I’ll explain once everything’s finished.

In any case, you can download and read each of the 102 games here. If you read at least five of them, you can vote. I’ve started working my way through and found a couple I adore. One thing I’ve come to realize in this is how trad my approaches are. I think I’m OK with that, given that I’m willing to play more experimental games.

SCRAPS

I went through four ideas I rejected before I came up with my final entry. Here’s some text from one of those I started but set aside.

Sorcerers warred generations ago. They’d created great and vast constructs and devices to control the vast hollow world we live in. In the war they turned these devices against one another, allowing some to create more of themselves, teaching others to make magics, and etching perpetual rules in the minds of stiil more. Eventually there were no more Sorcerers, but their Relics remained. Some became quiet, while others became as gods for certain isolated cities and strange lands.

For most, they are monsters. They range from swarms and small man-sized beasts, to larger creatures as large as a small village, still others roll across the land itself, mountains that crush all in their path. Sometimes these Relics meet and they devastate the landscape. They’re made of scale, flesh, stone, steel, magic, air, fire, and other substances. Some appear almost natural, while others have sharp edges and gaping seams.

To protect settlements, a class of warriors has arisen. They hunt these relics in bands. They begin small, and even then they must rely heavily on luck. But from those fallen foes, they can forge weapons and armor to battle greater relics. They gain renown, become heroes, and eventually think to take on the largest colossal relics and protect their people. They fail, but others will try.

Main areas of play:

• Scouting, travelling out into the wilderness and overcoming challenges to prepare their hunt
• Hunting, the actual battling against a monster. Big beasts eventually ala Shadow of the Colossus. Players have roles which complement each other. A ladder game of a sort, with one role’s action supporting another. Think Ghostlines. Hard choices: risking injury or loss of valuable harvest in the process. Gathering goods or capturing afterwards. Visceral and emphasizing risk-taking and teamwork.
• Town Life: Coming back, telling stories, supporting your interests (orphanages, family farm, etc).
• Making Stuff: Going to craftspersons and turning in harvests to make cool new items, weapons, and armor. Perhaps random cards about what can be made at any time. Or else recipes they have to gather for? This should be as fun as the other part. Or an engaging mini-games which can be dialed down.

Push your luck mechanic: Players, in different roles, have to pick away at a shared objective (a beast in this case). Roles must be distinct. The roles should complement each other.

Assets they (might) have going in:

• Scouting
• Native Skills
• Weaponry
• Items
• Assistance
• Connection with Environment
• Traps/Preparation

What are their objectives in battling this beast?

• Kill It
• Show Off
• Keep from Being Killed
• Help One Another
• Keep Others from Being Hurt/Killed
• Do it Before a Clock Counts Down
• Get Stuff
• Get More Stuff
• Get the Stuff They Need
• Get More Stuff
• Keep Down Collateral Damage
• Avoid Bad Reputation
• Avoid Traumatic Conditions

To Advance: Satisfy a Need, Take a Trauma, or Upgrade Equipment

Improv vs. Prep: Play on Target Podcast Ep. 44

Last week the Play on Target podcast returned with renewed energy. We tackle "Improv vs. Prep." It isn't a battle for the ages, but we do wrestle with when & why to prep or wing-it. Also I think I only mentioned our last episode, "Genre Mixmaster" so I'll mention it in passing again. That show has ustaking on random ideas and try to build a campaign from them. It's a mental exercise, but I encourage other GMs to listen to the and see what you would have come up with. In re-listening, a couple of new approaches hit me and I want to revisit my answers. But I won't, because I'm on to other ideas...

Improv vs. Prep: Play on Target 44

Genre Mixmaster: Play on Target 43

BUT AS TO IMPROV?

In an interesting collision of topics, I also covered something similar in an episode of This Imaginary Life recently. Our discussion of GM prep went in another direction. More importantly the vastly improv nature of a couple of the GMs bowled me over. In our PLOT discussion,  the four of us, for better or worse, have similar approaches. You can see that concretely in another PLOT episode What We Actually Do to Prep.

LINKY-LINK

I want to link to a couple of things I mention in the episode. Here’s my post on the GM Prep surveys I did. From there you can get to the actual data, in case you want to see the numbers. I think I mention it in the episode, but I’ll say it again: consider looking at Impro for some high-level thinking on the topic. If you want something more concrete and focused on gaming, you should pick up Unframed. As I said in the podcast, it’s one of the best Gnome Stew books and full of interesting ideas you can execute easily.

THE GM’ING PORTFOLIO REVIEW PROCESS

I say it at the end, but I want to stress a technique worth doing. Analyze what you do to get ready for a game. We use the term “comparing dice bags” in the podcast to describe the process of aggrandizement GMs do it talking about prep (either towards more or less prep). Clear your mind of that. If you don’t do that, then I’m being cynical and jerky and you don’t need to clear your mind. But think about what you have done for say the last 3-5 sessions to prepare. Let’s leave out the twiddling and contemplating we GMs constant do when driving, riding on trains, waiting in the elevator, etc. What did you do that involved interfacing with something else? Grabbing images online, stating monsters, painting figures, marking up modules, outlining incidents, writing up the previous session, finding random tables.

Ask yourself what really comes into play? How much of what you write down is used or referred to?

And I suggest this not to say: cut everything else. Instead look at the work you do that generates meaningful results. Why does it? How can you make that better, stronger, more useful?

As well, sometimes in talking about improv and process and we lose sight of a key fact: for some GM prep is fun. I have a set of prep I love, love doing (NPCs lists, Triad sheets, problem sheets). I’ll refer you to The Rhetorical Gamer’s post on this.

INDEX CARDS

You already know this, but index cards (or post its, flash cards, or rewritable do-dads) are your best friend as an improv GM. When things appear, write them in big letters and drop them on the table. If it’s something for a particular player, hand it to them. Aspects, things "Held," NPCs, hard bargains. Maybe spend time at the beginning or end of sessions getting the players to sum up the plot or threads, perhaps with a little direction on your part. Write them down.

Collect everything you haven’t handed to the players at the end of the session. Not only have you been showy and grabbed attention at the table, you now have notes. And you haven’t had to stop while running to write down names or ideas on a sheet of paper off to the side. You’ve done that, but in a way that engages the table.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing and have had some success with.

Improv vs. Prep: Play on Target 44

Genre Mixmaster: Play on Target 43

Play on Target Episode Listing 

RPGaDay 2015: Final Week+ Roundup

#22 Perfect Gaming Environment

I don't know about perfect, but here's my thirteen point plan:

1. Plenty of light.
2. Space on table for GM, preferably bounded. No GM screen.
3. Enough space on table for players to set up and have a battle map.
4. No table obstructions or raised areas to block players view of one another.
5. Padded chairs of some kind
6. Carpeting for comfort and sound control.
7. Odor-free.
8. Space for food and drinks to be set up off table.
9. Miniatures, terrain, etc on their own off-table area. Visible but not too cluttered.
10. Plenty of room to move around behind players and GM.
11. Bookshelves with reference material, but far enough away players don’t start reading during play.
12. Relatively stable climate and humidity.
13. Not on fire.

#23 The Perfect Game for Me

I imagine this question will get many anti-answers. And I have to count myself in that camp. My perfect game shifts depending on mood. I mean I’m playing Fate and Rolemaster in the same week. Sometimes I like crunch…but crunch I have a handle on. I don’t think I’d want to pick up a new crunchy system, but I could handle those I already know. Sometimes I like a light touch with my games. I want the rules to get out of the way and assist me. They should be a road I ride on and not a speed bump I constantly have to brake for.

All that being said, I’m really happy with Action Cards because it does what I want when I run. Given that it is a homebrew and one we’ve been tooling with for a decade and a half, every change I’ve made has been to make it better for me (and for the groups I run for). I’m able to tweak on the fly and see how those changes pan out pretty quickly (given that I use it for three f2f campaigns). Since my f2f groups know the game and have played several iterations of it, they’re good about rolling with changes. They examine them and give feedback. If I were houseruling an established system, they might feel differently. I know I would.

I’ve made Action Cards into tool to do what I like when I run games. I like the card counting, the speedy resolution, the occasional move to narrative for success, the granularity of experience, the opportunity to mark up cards and make them your own, the simplicity of the character sheet. So it’s probably the game that’s going to fit as perfectly more me as any could more often than not. That’s a strength, but also a limitation. For the last couple of years, I’ve been making notes on making the system useful for other people. A good deal of that involves looking at it as a toolbox. That means looking at mechanics, offering several variants, and talking about the implications of those. For example, how damage is resolved (card based, margin based, or dice based).

And perhaps that’s what makes Action Cards a perfect game for me: I have ownership of it in my head and I can constantly tweak and play around with it.

#24 Favorite House Rule

Since we do a ton of homebrew, I could aruge that everything there’s a houserule. Where we have used rules that feel like they’re house’d, more option they’re options from supplements.

But I did make a couple of major additions when I ran Mutants & Masterminds 2e online. I limited access to a few powers and restricted the levels available to others. More importantly changed how movement and ranged operated. Classic M&M has severely escalating distance as you go up in movement power ranks. I knew I wanted to use tokens and maps, and have some details there for players to interact with (terrain, objects). But I didn’t want a grid or measured distance approach. The Masterminds Manual had rules for using miniatures at the table, and while they were OK, they made everything very granular.

Instead I opted to go with a Zone based movement system, ala Fate. I would break maps into irregular sections: sometimes based on what was in a zone, sometimes based on geographical features, and sometimes based on where I could make things non-obscuring in Photoshop. In player your ranks in a Movement power determined how many zones you could move and still attack and how many you could move as a full action.

RANK-->              MOVE ACTION-->            FULL ACTION

2-3-->                    Adjacent Zone-->            Two Zones

3-5-->                    Two Zones-->                    Three Zones

6+-->                     Anywhere you want 

Movement within a zone would be a simple action, more a declaration than anything. Players could state their adjacency within a zone and we’d group tokens up. We used a similar set of rules for considering AoE effects. Lower ranks could hit pairs, higher could target everyone in a zone. Mega-effects could target multiple zones.

It worked well overall and everyone grasped to know how far their characters could move or act. It also gave players some freedom to jump in front of other attacks and get into the tussle. On the one hand it meant that we didn’t have to worry about distance measure tools. On the other it didn’t handwave movement completely. It also gave me the flexibility to use very different maps at very different scales. So one week it might be a lab, another it might be a college campus, another it might be the docks, and another might be lower Manhattan. I could offer reduce players’ movements to simulate this (but usually I didn’t). Mostly I’d up the difficulties for range on the larger maps.

It also made making maps easy, because I could take overviews or abstractions (like a carnival’s guest maps) and simply break them up.

#25 Favorite Revolutionary Game Mechanic (for me, emphasis mine)

I love aspects. I didn’t get them at first. Reading through Diaspora I couldn’t quite put together why things had phrases and descriptors. Later, somewhere between Spirit of the Century and Strands of Fate, I got it. I realized I’d been doing something like it in Action Cards, but narrowly and with hesitation.

For me, aspects offer both a conceptual hook and a concrete mechanic. They give me a strong mental shorthand for what happens when players do actions- how they change the situation, affect the environment, set up the bad guy. It helps me think of specific keywords to hang my descriptions on. Imagine they’re the *boldface* in my text for the players. I’ve always done quick lists of phrases and words when sketching out in prep. Aspects make that feel even more useful. And because I know they might make contact with the table, it encourages me to come up with new ideas and terms. I want to avoid the FPS “another room with crates” result.

I dig the mechanical use. In many ways an Aspect’s simply another version of +1 Forward or Hold from PbtA games. But it has some extra dimensions, requiring a descriptor that makes it more real. For example when players scout a location in my games (something like an Examine action), I’ll give them information and/or answer questions based on their results. But I’ll often give them an aspect as well, +1 Forward with a name and history to it. I also like that aspects aren’t necessarily just a bump. They offer a quick but interesting choice (+ vs. redo). They can also be invoked to create a narrative effect.

Aspects support and make easy establishing trust in a game. I’ve played in a lot of games where doing non-com actions results in stops or ephemeral progress (possibly undercut by another player’s action). I can establish early that these actions can have a concrete value within the mechanics, not just in the fiction. Players can grab on to these things in a scene or frame their actions around them. I’ve seen it help players who might not otherwise engage with the details (“I swing”) grab ahold and play with the scene more.

And aspects float up and down. The Golden Rule of Fate parallels the key rule of PbtA: Describe what you want to do first, and then go to the mechanics. After declaration we might push the mechanical notion of aspects to the surface (“OK, it sounds like you’re trying to create an aspect like Gap in his Armor”). But often it doesn’t need to be made explicit- they take the action and I quickly scribble Gap in the Armor on a card and toss it on the table. Or I don’t and simply work that into the description for the next player.  It depends on the flow and the player engagement. Aspects have a light touch and we can shift in and out of them quickly.

When I’ve played and run, aspects become a tight resource- requiring hard decisions. Do I spend the time doing that versus a more direct action? Will the aspects fit or get undone. The GM’s applying the pressures of time, ego, and threat- is it worth my opportunity cost? I’ve always seen that pressure, so I’ve never seen them stack up. And I like that resource management choice, more than in other games with those kinds of spends. It feels simple in execution, but hard in deliberation.

I know Fate wasn’t the first game to use these, but it’s where they came to me. I like the vocabulary and “technique” this mechanic has added to my play. 

#26 Favorite Inspiration

A hard call, but let me tell you what my mind flashes back to everything I think about campaigns, stories, arcs, and fights.

Chinese Wuxia TV Series.

You used to be able to find them on Netflix as disc rentals. I checked out perhaps a dozen of them, watching a few discs and trying to figure out what was going on. I only made it all the way through a couple of them…they’re super-long. Most are based on classic Wuxia novels, the majority have cool set ups that would look awesome with actual effects, and all of filled with over the top DRAMA.

I use the capitals there very deliberately.

There are tons of these. They have complicated stories, and the kind big scale action that translates well to grand gaming. Perhaps not as useful for more intimate themes or games, but they are fun. And when fun’s what I want to bring to the table, I start thinking about these again.

#27 Favorite Idea for Merging Two Games Into One

I got started on this a little later because of my work on the Post-Apocalyptic lists. That's given me a chance to see the varied responses and anti-responses. Perhaps the most interesting were those that literally joined together two concepts. I’ve thought a little bit about that before: on PLOT we came up with "Dragons in the Vineyard," where you play templars from Dragon Age and earlier in this series I talked about bringing the concepts of L5R together with Fading Suns to create "Legend of the Fading Suns". But I’m going to be more conventional, aiming for things I might actually do.

I’ve often fallen in love with settings and then run them with other systems (three different games for L5R, two different for Changeling the Lost, one for a Crimson Skies-like thing, and more). One setting I love but loathe the system for is Scion. I love the idea of a modern mythic game which remains concrete (as opposed to something like Nobilis). I dig the different pantheons the books present, and how they all feel interesting and distinct. And it’s among the most diverse games out there. It encourages players to connect with different cultures. I’ve run it a couple of times, once with the actual system and once with a poor Fate hack. The latter fell short because of my desire to emulate everything about the original game, rather than abstracting things.

So I’d like to see Scion done with a PbtA hack. I don’t know exactly how it would work (Pantheon playbooks? How do knacks work? What about realm powers?). Character actions are much larger in this setting than most PbtA games. But Worlds in Peril has shown me that much of that can be handled by the fiction. What’s needed is to consider the kinds of actions and play within the game. It might not work, but it appeals to me. It would get around some of the awkward mechanical bits of the social combat/interactions in the original, making them equally potent and connected. Also I think PbtA could model Fatebinding well. I’d want to see this mash-up; I don’t know if it’d work, but it would be cool to see. At least it could be a worthwhile experiment.

BUT...

If we’re talking about combining two rpg things together, not just games or settings, then I have something I want to see even more. See I’ve really come to love the Fate Codex. I like Fate and that anthology/magazine makes me reexamine the system with each new release. It has a smart mix of articles and there’s always something I want to read in there. I get ideas not only for Fate-based games, but broader approaches to rpgs in general. The Fate Codex also looks great: clean layout, solid art, and consistent presentation. I find it kind of mind boggling that it comes out of a Patreon project.

I’d really like to see a version of the Fate Codex done for Powered by the Apocalypse games. I know a good deal of material’s getting pumped into Kickstarters and electronic sales, but I think there’s room for a broadly aimed anthology like this. I know there was (is?) a Dungeon World zine, and I think a PbtA Codex could include that kind of thing as well as closer (Monsterhearts?) and further versions (Blades in the Dark).

What could it include? New playbooks, designers talking about how they built playbooks, tools for generating quick material for various games, authors talking about best practices for their games, new frameworks, alternate versions of playbooks, new hacks for different settings, fiction, GMs talking about their experience running, showing a game to a newbie, suggestions for how to run PbtA games at conventions (or specific games), advice for setting up a one-shot, interviews, previews of upcoming Kickstarters, how to handle long term campaigns, breaking down particular moves for what they do at the table, debates over approaches, and I’m sure there’s more. That’s just a quick list.

It wouldn’t be for everyone, but I’d read it. I’d find the various, likely contradictory, voices interesting.

Someone needs to make that happen. 

#28 Favorite RPG You No Longer Play

I’ve written before about the big three games we used to play all the time: Champions, GURPS, and Rolemaster. I mean multiple campaigns, multiple GMs, years and years of play. In each case I started running them as soon as they came out and played through several editions and rewrites for each. The first two I have to leave in their grave, but I’m actually playing old school Rolemaster right now. It’s fun, swingy and weird. But it’d take a braver person than I to run that for new people.

So, instead I have to go with James Bond 007. I dug that game and when I went back to look at it, it surprised me with its design. It remains a solid and accessible system. I know there’s a retro-clone, Unclassified, and I bought a copy of it. But I think if I were going to go back and play it, I’d want to actually set it within its era. Or at the very least keep at of the 007 trappings. Steve and I have talked about doing a James Bond/NBA mash up where the vampires and Bond stylings fit with the eras they’re set in. I still might do that someday.

#29 Favorite Website/Blog

That’s going to be a tie I think.

I could say this blog, Age of Ravens, which is pretty cool and you should check out more pages because you're already here.

But instead I’m going to say RPGGeek and Gnome Stew.

The former has one of the best communities for discussing rpgs. The people there remain generally helpful and smart. If you’ve be scared off by BGG’s community, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the RPG Geek side of things. Their VirtuaCon is the most intense and fun online gaming experience I’ve had. They have decent reviews and interesting blogs. But it also has great tools for organizing and recording your collection. You can use Geeklists to build thematic arrays for example. Plus you can find tons of obscure and half-forgotten games there.

Gnome Stew? Well it’s just solidly and consistently good. It has a clean presentation, diverse articles, and smart writers. I’m rarely disappointed with their content.

Which is more than I can say for Age of Ravens. I mean how many post-apocalyptic games can there be?

#30 Favorite RPG Playing Celebrity

When I was at Origins, John Alexander recognized Jonna Hind from her appearance on various Indie+ YouTube RPG sessions. He called her a celebrity, which she went to great pains to deny. So Jonna Hind’s my favorite RPG playing celebrity. And by the transitive process anyone willing to record and broadcast their Hangout sessions.

#31: Favorite Non-RPG Thing to Come out of RPGing

Met my wife, Sherri Stewart.

See Week One here, Week Two here, and WeekThree here. 

23 Things About Sky Racers Unlimited

We're just starting our Crimson Skies-tinged campaign arc in OCI. As I've done for the other portals and campaigns recently, I drafted a list of information about the setting. I wanted this to be all the background necessary; to break down everything into easy to get chunks and keep me from spending too much time on the world building.  Of course originally I'd planned for these lists to be ten items, then twelve, then twenty, and now finally 23. So far the effort to utility ratio feels pretty good. It takes me a few hours, maybe six, to put these things together. It helps frame the game and a good chunk of it hits the table. It's also dense enough that I can always find new things when I'm going over it before a session. 

For this portal, I had Sherri contribute nine of the items. That's a new experiment. She'd picked this portal, so she should have the chance to put her stamp on things. That worked well and she drew in some areas that wouldn't have occurred to me. That's sparked some cool idea for future incidents connecting to those. You can see some previous "23 Things" here: Ocean City, Abashan, Masks of the Empire. For other material on the Sky Racers mechanics, see here and here. I've also pulled together a Pinterest reference board for the campaign.   

1. The World Asunder: The world cracked in the mid-19^th Century. Even as local wars shook Europe and colonial powers cemented their holding, the tide shifted. Looking back today, many can now identify the hand of the Aurichalc. In scattered places rapid technological developments, suddenly industrialization, political collapse, cultural shifts, and revolutionary movements upturned the old order. Aetheric technology appeared in many hands, often among the powerless but just as often among those simply out of power with the will to destroy. The Aurichalc had been operating in secret crafting their means to shatter the established powers and engineer the world they desired. While this period saw rapid advancements in many areas, the devastating impact these new technologies had on the environment, political freedom, and cultural traditions cannot be discounted.

2. Break Up of the Colonial Empires. The efforts of the Aurichalc initially seemed focused on local overthrow of Colonial Empires of the French, British, American, and others. They succeeded in shattering many of those structures- putting new powers, industrial technologies, and weapons into the hands of indigenous peoples. However the Aurichalc proved fickle allies. While each member of the cabal had their own temperament, they generally acted to destroy authority. Revolutionaries would overthrow their oppressors, only to be immediately undercut by agents of the Aurichalc. Warlords who stepped into the power vacuum would overstep their reach and be cast down just as easily. While these sunderings settled down over time, they remained a constant fear for generations. Why the Aurichalc worked to destroy the Chinese Imperial House but kept royal elements in Korea, the Mamluks among the Ottomans, and other lands remains a mystery.

3. Our Robot Overlords: The Aurichalc’s work eventually brought them out into the daylight and they took an open and more active hand in affairs. More importantly their experiments began to drastically reshape the world- now less about changes in social power and more about things like the Living Gas Cloud that swallowed great swathes of Texas, the Cracking of Austria, and the Night of Black Wings in Japan. And they began to war among themselves, using man and science in an effort to do…something? What they fought for remains uncertain. They stole border lands from one another and struck at operations within various territories, but what did they gain? Some suggested that the Aurichalc had always been at war; that their earlier interventions had been an agreed upon truce to build up.

And then at some point the Aurichalcs left. But rather than freeing the world from their noose, it only tightened it. Each of the Aurichalc had created some form of replacement, constructs created in their image. Dr. Sagawthi survived his encounter with the dread Lady Mahabir in 19XX and returned with his tale of a humanoid robot. Soon visitations and sightings of the other Aurichalc confirmed this change. How and when these mad scientists died remains a mystery. Some suggested they’d always been mechanical and had merely shed their disguises. Others believed that the Aurichalc had been aliens and had left their machines to secure a conquest. Regardless, the shift to robot overlords signaled a wider shift in the Aurichalc and the beginning of a battle against them.

4. Timeline: The year is 192X. Technology is a weird mix of retrofuturist visions and desperate jerry rigging. The Aurichalc dispensed science, know how, and half-truths in many places, leading to revolutions in development and advancement of the oppressed. But it also led to accidents, to collapses, to destructive conflicts, and to some grasping beyond their reach. Many things have a gleaming, art deco look to them (The Rocketeer, Sky Captain), while others have a grittier, dieselpunk appearance. It depends on how they’ve developed. Imagine the 1940’s for the general tech level, with certain areas being significantly higher (like flight) and others being lower (like nuclear science). The old empires and nations still remain, but scattered, stripped, and skeletal. New countries and peoples have arisen to dominance.

5. Aetheric Technology: Over time technologies developed by Aurichalc leaked out to be adapted by others in the world. Perhaps none has impacted more than the potent, low-cost Aetheric engines and related technology. While such devices could be turned to many purposes, most strikingly they allowed for advanced powered flight. In combination with propeller systems, fast and maneuverable aircraft could be created. In fact Aetheric technology worked well in transport because in use, the engines must be kept moving. An Aetheric device operating in a stationary location will eventually begin to warp and poison the area. Kept moving, they have almost no negative effects.

6. Who were the Aurichalc? Seven figures made up the original Aurichalc, though only five robot servitors survive. While these Mad Scientists had tremendous technical expertise that pushed local science and industry decades forward, they each eventually came to be known for a particular field. 

• Tabansi Diallo, the Maker of Monsters. Using unknown genetic techniques he crafted a menagerie of fantastical beasts and let them loose on the world. They rule the land and air in many places around the globe. 
• Darco Bryde, Father of the “New Races.” His earliest experiments centered on transformation of existing populations, resulting in groups which echoed old myths and stories. But Dr. Bryde seemed to tire of that and within a few years had populated his holdings with humanoid beasts. Some escaped, while others served loyally. Different regions have treated these uplifted peoples differently, but almost always with deep suspicion. However they were instrumental in the destruction of Bryde’s robot doppelganger. 
• Sara Oxendine, the Automatic Duchess. Unlike Bryde and Diallo, Oxendine worked in steel and gears. She created robotic servants of various sizes, though even the most human of them appeared unnatural. She echoed several of Diallo’s designs, resulting in packs of clockwork beasts which still haunt the world. 
• Jiang Rao, the Alchemist. Rao remains one of the most mysterious of the Aurichalc. He created several chemical disasters and let loose the Burn Mist which affects several regions. He learned to manipulate people with chemicals and some kind of hypnotic devices. These he used to subvert and assassinate. That seems not to have helped him in his conflict with the Automatic Duchess who destroyed his mountain HQ in 19XX. 
• Kasa Mahabir, the Shadow Surgeon. Mahabir developed implants and devices she installed in her agents. While some were obvious and monstrous, many were more subtle. Mahabir was more bizarrely capricious than most of her compatriots. Several times she kidnapped terminally ill subjects in order to repair them. Most she returned intact, some she returned transformed. 
• Luis Zegarra, the Black Gardener. Zegarra worked with turning nature itself to his ends- transforming vast areas into wild and deadly ranges. His terraforming through alien and invasive plants forced migrations and created forbidden areas only the most foolhardy or adventurous explore. 
• Avedis Sahakian, the Engineer. Unlike many of her colleagues, Sahakian never created anything which could operate completely independently. Instead she constructed vast moving fortresses, massive walking armored suits, and of course the basis for Aetheric Flight.

7. The Reign in Spain: Dotted around the Seville City-State are the “Golden Orchards”.  These are small, protected and walled campuses ostensibly dedicated to scholarship and research and financed by the Goldens House.  Among other possible agendas, each Orchard is built around an orphanage and some refugee housing. Here, the Seville City-State extends succor to people displaced by the Aurichalc and their legacies, including some of those altered permanently and visibly by the Many experience. The stated reason is that the public is uncomfortable with these outsiders until they have been shown to be harmless and useful members of society. 

The refugees have historically remained in these Orchards, surrounded by Goldens House loyals, until they’ve been trained to take up duties and positions arranged within the greater City-State. There have always been rumors of Goldens using ‘Aurichalc monsters’ to do their political bidding--and many of those rumors point back to the Orchards. The Orchards are home to a great deal of secret research--so secret that it is even hidden away from it’s own board.  Increasingly, the unsettling habits of the heir of Goldens House and the refusal of the Orchards to satisfactorily disclose projects and purpose have set some board members to agitating for defunding the Orchards for ‘failing to show proper respect and fiscal decorum’. 

8. The Present: It has been three years since the last appearance of any of the Aurichalc. The raid on Bryde’s island seemed to signal a change, though prior to that the cabal had become quiet and rarely acted outside of their core domains. Many think that they’ve simply shifted purpose and programming. But many others believe that the robots left behind in their place have simply shut down. Still few wish to travel to the heartlands held by these monsters to test that theory. But the last seven years have seen significant changes. Several zones once lost have been reclaimed, technologies have been learned from and adapted, new techniques for battling fallout from the Aurichalc’s programs have been discovered. As well populations have stabilized, international contact and trade have become more stable, and several years of natural weather patterns have led some to hope. Whether this shift will lead to peace or an era of increased conflict and competition remains to be seen.

9. The Race: Months ago, Lord Adelbright Ruthven contacted several major industrialists, scientific compacts, and gentleperson’s adventuring clubs. He represented a consortium sponsoring a competition, a race. Each invited group had connections with one of the new class of aerial dreadnaughts: enormous sky-liners intended to cross the globe. These ships could be used to transport passengers, move explorers, and survey the lost lands. All had flight decks and hangers allowing them to carry small patrols of fighter planes for defense. Each group wagered a massive an entry fee and had agree to certain terms. The race would be handled in several leg, taking the ships across the Atlantic from the coast of Spain. The vessels would then run a series of location heats across North and Central America. The prize? That remains rumored. Few have spoken, but the terms convinced seven to enter and expend vast sums. Add to that the chance for publicity and exploration of lands cut off from the rest of the world.

10. Your Patron: One of the strongest industrial collectives to have arisen in recent years has been Goldens House, headquartered in the Seville City-State (formerly Spain). The original company came together from a marriage of several trading families in the mid-1800’s. They saw the writing on the wall and worked to come to terms with locals and workers. This allowed them to weather the storm of revolution and commercial disasters. Even when communications broke down in the darkest days, they kept a network of international family members passing reports and warnings. They’re considered the key player supporting Seville which has come to control most of the Southern Iberian Peninsula as well as the northern coast of Morocco and Algeria. Some other industrial powers regard them with suspicion, whispering that their ideals line up more with the revolutionaries than established nations, companies, and nobilities. The current heir to Goldens House is Nur Al-Taneen. Over objections of her board, she will be personally commanding the maiden flight of the Osprey de Acero.

11. Your Mission: The Osprey de Acero is a wonder, a massive flying vessel designed to carry personnel safely, transport goods, and eventually open up lost areas. The vessel will be armed and equipped with at least two flights of planes to act as a defense against air pirates, flying monsters, and other strange occurrences. As well it is one among several competitors, and the terms of the race are a little open. You and your compatriots have hired on as members of the “B” team. This means you act as support, backup technicians, and emergency pilots. Some of you have been hired for talents outside of your piloting and engineering, some of you have been assigned here because of a clouded past.

12. Take to the Skies: While ground transport remains a vital and important mode of transportation, flight has become crucial to the development and reconnection of regions and peoples. In many areas, the plane has become as ubiquitous as the automobile did in the early 20th Century. Larger flying vessels, buildings, and “towns” serve as modern caravans and circuses. As well, there’s a modern planes and gyrocopters- dashing pilots and daring aviatrixes. Flying companies and mercenary groups have developed, often in response to sky pirates and aerial banditry.

13. Changes: As the 19th Century crept to a close, with the leviathan of the Aurichalc gripping the globe, many thought the worst had passed. Then, as the last year of the century waned, new plagues exploded. Over several weeks, in one form or another, it struck widely separated communities, hitting every region of the world. The plague changed people, altering their physiology. Most died as their bodies became alien to them. Some caught in the zones underwent no changes or ill effects. Only the young survived, and even they had a significant mortality rate. They became different: slight shifts in appearance, slight modifications to their physiology, new flaws and limitations. It became known as the Changeling Plague, the Tithing, or the Coming of the Night Children. To some the changes made these transformed seem like legends or myths come to like: pointy ears, glowing eyes, bizarre stockiness. The same affected population could result in many different forms, some like the so-called Selkie, more inhuman than others. Those who survived the plague often suffered at the hands of their neighbors and countrymen. Populations were scattered, interred, or murdered. Some joined with the Aurichalc where they could. Others tried to hide their condition. But the singular outbreak of the plague was not the end as the changed and unchanged survivors of the plague gave birth to a new generation of these new humans.

14. Communications: Planes and vessels use Aetheric communication technology, like radio but clearer. It has a relatively short range, but can be run through relay towers with only modest noise gain. Some planes have larger arrays, and some have these connected to scanners or other scientific instruments. In particular some recon planes can transmit back the images from their Aetheric Scatter Positional Sensors (or ASPS).

15. Monsters: They made monsters, many of them. And while their numbers have diminished, many still remain. Some had radical and experimental forms, while others harkened back to old stories. Dragons, in particular, have proven to be a continual threat to sky security. Pilots in the highest altitudes have claimed to have encountered stranger beasts, seemingly stolen from the depths of the ocean. Tales abound of Sky Pirates who have co-opted or domesticated the most dangerous creatures, but that’s clearly a stratagem to enhance their reputation. Most monsters of flesh and bone do possess a traditional adversary, their robotic counterparts. Monstrous automatons have been seen battling against horrors of flesh and bone. The wise, however, make themselves scarce during such encounters.

16. New Maps: Pre-Aurichalc maps and globes are mere curiosities anymore. Beautiful as they may be, they reserve no more interest than the lowest souvenirs of the more-glorious human past. Why? Because they lack the single-most important monitor of borders, populations and legal ownership: beacons. Every population of significant size, every region possessed of some security, any community with aspirations to any designation greater than a compound maintains at least one unique beacon. A good-sized city boasts a network of beacons of differing signal types, sending out messages that contain hierarchies of identification--nation, region, city, alliances.  As well, these places maintain monitoring stations of all sorts to track signals coming in, sputtering out and changing affiliation. Newspapers contain columns of beacon designations along with the most recent signal & messages--this is how many immigrants and travellers keep tabs on their home regions, but also how the populace as a whole tracks the state of nations, of war & peace and prosperity.  Some people monitor as a hobby, making their own stations from kits and keeping records of the signals. (Think ham radios (spoken & code) or even CB radios (specialized lingo) as a hobby--also some of the signal types are more like seismography or light signals.)

17. Recruiters: Since Ruthven’s Challenge, there has been a scramble for expertise.  Academia has lost luminaries to conveniently timed sabbatical requests. Guides, monster hunters and quartermasters of any note have been scarce for the hiring.  Retirements abound in air navies throughout the re-civilized nations.  There are even rumors of kidnappings of cartographers and signalmen.  The lucrative offers for race staff have attracted the most brilliant stars of exploration, and most of these experts are meant for the respective War Rooms of their employers.  More a concept than an actual room, these experts gather to confer over plans, new intelligence and the goals at hand to hatch tactics most advantageous to their consortium.

18. Challenges: While details are scant, it’s clear that the aerial dreadnaughts and their crews are expected to stage a number of successful expeditions along the way. The original specifications for the race provided by Ruthven are not generally known, but the air of excitement and breadth of experts being collected by the competing consortiums suggest a range of targets. Rumors are flying about one industrialist instructing his recruiters to ‘hire for a series of scientific and art scavenger hunts...lists and clues and confounded puzzles!’.

19. Sky Salons: As the time has drawn closer to the advent of the race, it’s become clear that almost all of the sky-liners are selling tickets and promising luxurious accommodations and entertainments to those who can pay the price.  Bands, musicians, singers, popular entertainers and even an orchestra or two have apparently been booked -- and newspapers are full of sketches and articles describing ballrooms, stages and viewing decks. 

20. To What End? Maps of the expedition course are expected of course--but inquiries and gathered experts suggest that each of the consortium may be mapping different priorities.  Goldens seems intent on last-known, now-silenced or irregular beacons; another seems to be chasing down scraps and rumors about mines, another about orchids.  Some suspect that each of the contenders may have individual non-overlapping win conditions--and others suggest that these are simply independent opportunities that each competitor hopes to profit from.

21. Batten the Hatches: Much of the preparation of these dreadnaughts has been converting them from vessels intended to travel established territories to readiness to face a multitude of threats beyond mundane piracy.  Great creativity in gunnery and deck battlements is evident--but whispers of aetheric shields, nets and beams abound.  Certainly, many remember the wild days when the skies darkened regularly with monsters, swarms, hostile vessels and strange probes loosed by the Aurichalc.  Experience suggests that ships will need an array of different protections and offenses to keep away the threats that are certainly teaming over the foreign wilderness.

22. Monster Lore: Aerial veterans of the days when the Aurichalc’s creations roamed know that many of the preparations are fitting the dreadnaughts and their small-bodied fleets to carry out the modifications needed to avoid or deter many of those creatures--at a minimum, each craft must be able to travel for some time at near silence, be able to create a cacophony and, for the smaller craft, to ‘lure’ with rhythmic metallic noise to draw off the most dangerous predators from the big open decks of their parent ship.

23.  Bringing You the World: Each ship has a aetheric radio room and each competitor has been allotted two slices of time each day, one during daylight and the other on the overnight, designated for updating sponsors and their supporters with news of their progress and to show off their wit and style--a variety hour of discussion, news and music.  The intent is to create 24 hours of race programming for the duration of the event.  Test broadcasts are already immensely popular.