A Role Playing Games Blog
FATE
Free FATE
6October 10, 2011
Recently I decided to switch to Free FATE for my current FATE games. This has mainly three reasons:
-
It’s free. We used Starblazer Adventures before, which is an awesome FATE game, but I just can’t expect all my players to get the book.
-
It’s short. With just 48 pages is much more compact than most other version of FATE. Of course it doesn’t genre-specific rules, but I can easily use what I need from other FATE games.
-
It’s available in German. One of my players don’t speak English at all, so I had to translate everything for him. Especially when it comes to stunts this can become quite the task.
Some people might say that my first reason is moot, since not every player needs a copy of the rules. That’s of course true, but some players are interested in reading the rules themselves – which I support if possible – but I just couldn’t lend them my book because I needed it to prepare for the next session. And SBA with it’s 600+ pages is not what I would consider “light reading”.
Free FATE is basically the shortest version of FATE I could find that doesn’t oversimplify things. I especially like the way stunts are handled. Instead of listing dozens of individual stunts Free FATE provides you with guidelines for your own stunts.
From what I’ve seen so far the rules presented in Free FATE are 100% compatible to Starblazer Adventures. So the switch from SBA to Free FATE should be pretty painless.
By the way, Free FATE is one of the few games where the German translation is actually better looking than the original one. While R Grant Erswell did a great job collating, modifying and augmenting the FATE rules, he’s layout skills are not up to par. It would be awesome if Kathy Schad, who did the layout for the German translation, would give the English original a facelift as well.
Interview: Sarah Newton
1October 5, 2011
Some of you might still remember my review of Legends of Anglerre which I posted a while ago. While reading this book I thought it would be a blast to do an interview with its lead writer and editor Sarah Newton. Luckily Sarah agreed to answer a couple of question for us.
Stargazer: Thanks for taking your time to answer a few questions for our blog, Stargazer’s World. Let’s start with a couple of questions about you. Can you please tell our readers who you you are? I especially would like to know what your first roleplaying game was and how you came to work in the RPG industry.
Sarah: My name’s Sarah Newton, and I work for Cubicle 7 as head of their editorial team and line developer and house writer on the Starblazer Adventures, Legends of Anglerre, Cthulhu Britannica, and World War Cthulhu lines. I’m also responsible for their translated games, including Qin and the upcoming Yggdrasil. I’ve been gaming for (cough cough) over thirty years, and am absolutely passionate about the hobby. I began with Tunnels and Trolls back in 1980 – the old pink "Buffalo Castle" was the very first RPG product I ever bought, even before the rules, and I ended up having to make my own rules to play it! After that I got into Traveller, RuneQuest, Dungeons and Dragons (White Box then AD&D), and then pretty much all major RPGs right up to the present day, with the exception of White Wolf, which for some reason I kind of missed – I’ve only recently discovered Exalted, though I like it a lot.
Starblazer Adventures: First session
7September 13, 2011
On Saturday I finally ran my first Starblazer Adventures session. As I’ve detailed in a couple of posts here on the blog we used the Mass Effect universe as a background and the player characters where employees of the Exogeni Corporation.
The adventure started in Geneva. The player characters have been summoned to the local Exogeni representative who had a new job for them. Their mission was to take the scout ship Aurora, travel to the Mithril system and check out if the planets in the system are suitable for exploitation.
On the ship that has been parked on the Geneva space port, they met their crew consisting of a female human engineer, a Turian navigator and a human cook and cargo specialist that I called a “steward”. The flight was mostly uneventful until the ship suddenly received a distress call.
Review: Legends of Anglerre
1September 7, 2011
It’s hardly a secret that I have a soft spot for the FATE system. I think over the last months I have acquired and read almost every FATE game I could get my hands on. Recently I decided to use Cubicle 7’s Starblazer Adventures to run a Mass Effect campaign. We haven’t actually played yet (the game is still in scheduling hell), but character creation was a blast.
When I was trying to convert Mass Effect Biotic abilities to FATE, another of Cubicle 7’s FATE games was a great help to me: Legends of Anglerre. Legends of Anglerre is – like its “sibling” Starblazer Adventures – based on the 1980’s British Starblazer comic series. Both Cubicle 7 FATE games use a version of FATE which is pretty close to the one used by Spirits of the Century. The one major difference is that both SBA and LoA use the d6-d6 dice mechanic instead of Fudge dice. This leads to more extreme roll results, but is otherwise not that different.
Legends of Anglerre, which was written by Sarah Newton and Chris Birch, is to fantasy game what Starblazer Adventures was to space opera: a toolbox that allows you to run games set into almost every campaign world within the genre. If you are a fan of the FATE system, the 388-paged tome might actually be the last fantasy RPG you ever have to buy!
I don’t think I need to explain the basics of the FATE system in this review. Most of my readers should be familiar with the system and if not, you can check out the official FATE RPG site, which gives you a great overview of how FATE works.
Ask The Readers: What’s your favorite Steampunk RPG?
21August 26, 2011
My recently-discovered love for the music of Abney Park and their upcoming roleplaying game Airship Pirates has made me quite excited for all things steampunk again.
And even though steampunk is probably not the most popular genre for roleplaying games, there are quite a few excellent games out there. The most well-known steampunk setting is probably Deadlands which combines the Western genre with elements of horror and steampunk into an original mix.
The classic roleplaying game Space 1889 might not actually what most people first think when they hear steampunk, but the Victorian Age Science Fiction RPG definitely features a lot of the common tropes of the genre.
Recently I wrote a review of the FATE edition of Kerberos Club, a game that allows you to run games in a Victorian Age touched by the “Strangeness”. Like Space 1889 it’s not a pure steampunk game, but more like a Victorian Superhero game with some steampunk elements. But because of the versatility of the FATE system, it should be pretty easy to use it to run a full-blown steampunk game.
When you are into indie games, you should definitely check out Lady Blackbird or fellow RPG blogger Rob Lang’s 24h RPG Cloudship Atlantis. Both are available for free and are a good introduction to the genre.
But I am sure there are dozens of other campaign settings or complete games using at least elements of steampunk that I haven’t mentioned here. WotC’s Eberron definitely has a healthy dose of steampunk-ish elements, even though it’s probably more like “magipunk”.
So, what is your favorite steampunk setting? Is there any game every steampunk fan should check out? Or perhaps you know of that one obscure game no one talks about. So please share your thoughts in the comments below and let us know about your favorite steampunk games!
Ask the Readers: One campaign, several GMs
9August 19, 2011
Regularly I hear or read about campaigns in which the gamemaster is not a permanent position held by just one person, but everyone from the group takes on the GM’s mantle from time to time. For a lot of people that even seems to be the traditional way to do it.
Since I started playing pen & paper roleplaying games in the early ‘90s I’ve participated in a lot of campaigns. And usually a campaign has one dedicated GM and when another person wants to run a game we then switch to a new campaign. I don’t think it has happened that often that someone took over another GM’s campaign. For some reason it just doesn’t feel right to mess with other people’s worlds.
As regular readers of this blog you will probably have noticed that I have been reading a lot of narrativist games recently. What a lot of this games have in common is that the players usually have much more influence on the world and how the story evolves than in more traditional games, like D&D for example. The gamemaster has to give up a good amount of control already, so why am I bothered by the idea of several GMs in charge of a single campaign.
One thing I am definitely not too fond of are gamemaster characters. I am talking about those special NPCs of a GM that are run as if they were player characters. More often than not these NPCs steal the show from the players and ruin the game for everyone. When someone who is not the regular GM takes over, their player character may become such a special NPC.
So, what are you thoughts on this subject? Is it ok for you when several people share the position of the GM from time to time. Or is this something you avoid like the plague? Please let your voices be heard in the comments below!
First Look: The Kerberos Club FATE Edition
4August 18, 2011
Arc Dream Publishing’s The Kerberos Club has been released three times over the last few years. It’s first version used the ORE system, the second version used Savage Worlds and last but not least the most recent release uses Evil Hat’s highly popular FATE system. What all games have in common is an alternate history/steampunk/victorian superheroes setting. The “Strangeness” has touched the Victorian Era, even Queen Victoria has been changed by it. The Kerberos Club, which the players are members of, is a Gentleman’s Club open to all races, creeds, classes, and *gasp* even to both sexes. Its members have been touched by the Strangeness as well, but use their abilities to defend the Empire against all enemies foreign and domestic.
The 374-paged book not only contains the Kerberos Club setting, but also all the rules actually needed to play the game. What I like a lot about this game is that it allows you to play in three eras. During the early Victorian century, things are already touched by the Strange, but still pretty close to what you can read in history books. In the middle era things start to get more fantastic. While early era games are still almost historical with a hint of the supernatural, middle era games resemble a street-level superhero setting. In the late era you get a full-blown Victorian superhero setting with everything from airships to dinosaur cavalry. So the GM can basically pick between three power levels for his campaign.
You have a question about an existing or upcoming Stargazer Games product? Ask away! You want to know what we think about a recent development in the RPG industry? Send in your questions. You always wanted to know what we think about game X? Send us an email.
