Recently I decided to switch to Free FATE for my current FATE games. This has mainly three reasons:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Related posts:

1. Freebie: Free FATE
2. Strands of Fate
3. First Look: The Kerberos Club FATE Edition

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.

I got working on RPGs through a curious quirk of fate. Back in 2008 Jason Durall was producing his bumper "Basic Roleplaying" rulesbook for Chaosium, and, as a lifelong d100 / BRP fan, I’d pre-ordered a copy. It came through prior to proofing; in a previous life, I used to write functional specifications for web development, so proofing is something I do instinctively, and I asked Jason if he’d like me to send him some proofs. He said yes, and introduced me to Charlie and Dustin at Chaosium, who expressed an interest in my "Chronicles of Future Earth" setting. That was my first ever RPG commission – although it was only published last January! After that I got into the FATE system and met Chris Birch, who’d just written Starblazer Adventures, and wrote Mindjammer and did the lead on Legends of Anglerre, which was where I started working for Cubicle 7.

Stargazer: Who are the RPG designers and SF writers that inspired you the most?

Sarah: I think I’d have to say Greg Stafford for RPG designer: the world of Glorantha and particularly its cosmology have been a constant inspiration since I "discovered" RuneQuest back in 1981. His inclusion of concepts from Joseph Campbell in roleplaying is a stroke of genius, and exactly fits the sort of things I’m looking for in a game: the quest of a hero for transcendence and transformation, and of course rollicking good adventure on the way!

For SF writers, there are two: Cordwainer Smith and Olaf Stapledon, the latter particularly for his book "Starmaker". Smith has again a mythopoetic approach to his SF; he’s by no means a hard SF writer, but instead groks that the genre is about wonder, speculation, and the possibilities for human beings to transcend their limitations towards something far greater. Olaf Stapledon is simply breathtaking in his vision: considering he was writing in the 1930s, his ideas are only now being discussed seriously in the scientific mainstream. That’s an amazing power of vision.

For modern SF writers, I love Stephen Baxter and Peter Hamilton, and of course Ian Banks. I’ve also recently got into Gareth L Powell, particularly his novel "The Recollection", which is beautifully written space opera, and absolutely great stuff.

Stargazer: Most people probably know you because you have been one of the authors of Legends of Anglerre, the FATE-based fantasy roleplaying game by Cubicle 7. Can you tell us how you got involved in that project? And can you please share some insight on the development process. What was your goal when working on that game?

Sarah: I had the great privilege to work as lead writer and editor on Legends of Anglerre, thanks to the awesome support of Chris Birch and Dom and Angus from Cubicle 7. I’d just finished working on the Mindjammer setting book for Starblazer Adventures, and Chris invited me aboard to work on what we were calling "Starblazer Fantasy Adventures". I jumped at the chance – it’s a rare opportunity to be involved in building a complete fantasy roleplaying game from the ground up!

There were five of us closely involved in the development of Legends of Anglerre: me, Chris Birch, Mike Olson, Tom Miskey, and Marc Reyes, as well as writers such as Mike Chinn (the original writer of the Anglerre stories on the Starblazer comics) and David Donachie, who’s an Anglerre expert and a great cartographer – look for his work in the upcoming Legends of Anglerre Companion! We used to "meet up" for Skype conference calls once every week or so; we divided the necessary tasks between us, and I acted as project manager assembling the various contributions into a single manuscript. We also had a truly great playtest and peer review team on the Cubicle 7 forums, who bashed the rules around and helped us bug-check all through the process – I can’t thank all those guys enough, their contribution was invaluable.

My own goal with Legends of Anglerre was shared with Chris Birch: we wanted the game to really be the fantasy version of Starblazer. Completely compatible, for those cross-genre "fantasy spaceships" mashups, but also an absolutely complete game in one volume, with no need for endless splat books. We were also under clear instructions from both gamers and Cubicle 7 management *not* to write another 650-page monster! We condensed and edited and brought the entire thing in under 400 pages – still easily enough to kill someone with a single blow, but light enough to lift with one arm!

The thing is, although the Legends of Anglerre rules are simple and short – believe it or not, the entire rules are about 20 pages long, presented in the first and second chapters – we wanted the game to contain everything you’d need to run a full fantasy campaign in pretty much any genre. There’s plenty of scope for introducing your own flexibility – inventing your own spells, stunts, creatures, whatever – but if you *don’t* want to do that, there’s also plenty of pre-generated powers to use. There are rules for ships, sieges, running kingdoms (and staging fights between kingdoms!), guilds, empires, magic schools, and so on; there are rules for mass combat, high-powered and even godlike characters, other planes, extremely powerful creatures, creating magic items, the whole range of things you’d expect from a complete fantasy RPG – all in one book!

Stargazer: What part of Legends of Anglerre is your favorite? And was there something particularly complicated to implement using the FATE system?

Sarah: I love the powers system. We derived that from the psionics and special abilities rules in Starblazer Adventures, re-structuring them to be more logical and systematized, whilst retaining an incredible degree of freedom for spellcasters and the like. We were really keen to make sure the powers were flexible enough to work as magical spells, divine powers, monstrous creature abilities, however you want to describe them, and also to take advantage of the incredibly free-form feature set of the core Starblazer / Legends of Anglerre skill system. Starblazer Adventures, for example, lets you use a mundane skill (let’s say a weapon skill) to attack, defend, block, and perform manoeuvres; it allows a player to get truly creative with what he does with a skill, within the framework of the rules. We took that freedom, and plugged it into the powers system; now, for example, a spellcaster can use his Fire power skill to attack, defend, block other attacks, resist fire, and even create impressive fire-based manoeuvres, and then create stunts to do the really extra-cool high power stuff. We then took that into the epic and mythic space with the high-power rules, too.

I’m also very proud of the advancement system. FATE previously didn’t really have a well-defined advancement system, but a fantasy RPG needs one as a basic requirement – everyone wants to see their characters get more powerful and cool as they play. We worked very hard to make sure the advancement system wasn’t simply an "experience point" system, but was built into all aspects of the game – so you can use it not just to improve your own abilities, but to advance your own guild, warband, or even kingdom, or explore the powers of a magical item, or increase your prestige in your community. You can even become a god!

Stargazer: As far as I know you’ll be also working on the 2nd Edition of Starblazer Adventures. Can you please share with us what will be new in this upcoming edition. Will it be necessary for owners of the first edition to upgrade or are there are mostly minor changes?

Sarah: First: you don’t need to upgrade, but we hope you’ll want to. Starblazer Adventures 2nd edition is exactly that: it’s a new *edition* – it’s been re-edited. That means it’s been re-structured, some of the wording has been changed, there are clearer (and more) examples, and the typos and bugs of the 1st edition have been fixed. We’ve also taken the opportunity to include some of the new rules from Legends of Anglerre, such as future aspects, group characters, and the Fog of War mass combat rules. Structurally, the game is now in two books: a Player’s Guide and a Story Teller’s Guide, each approximately the same size. We had a lot of feedback on Starblazer 1st edition that the rulesbook was simply too big, and that players wanted something more portable they could read and use in play and for character creation. We’ve taken that on board, and the Player’s Guide contains everything players will need for the game, up to and including the core system rules.

We’ve also tweaked the equipment rules, the layout look n feel, character sheet, vehicles rules, and also included the trading rules I’d worked up for Mindjammer Adventures. We hope people will be keen to upgrade – although the 1st edition rules remain completely usable!

Stargazer: It occurred to me that a lot of FATE games like the aforementioned Starblazer Adventures, Diaspora and Bulldogs! are actually SF or Space Opera games. Do you think there’s a particular reason why FATE is used or is it just a sign of the popularity of the game system?

Sarah: I’m personally surprised FATE isn’t used more widely in all genres, although it does lend itself very well to a pulpy, action-packed style of play. In my own humble opinion, I think science-fiction roleplaying has been a bit dogged by a very serious, hard scifi approach, which is great for certain genres of roleplaying, but not particularly for action-packed space opera. To be completely honest, I don’t think there *was* a fully-featured, action-packed, cinematic space opera RPG system before Starblazer Adventures – I’ve been GMing science-fiction RPGs since the very beginning, and Starblazer is the first to feel properly space opera and let you play through the classic space opera tropes. Again, that’s all IMHO, of course!

Whilst I’ve not read Diaspora, I do own and love Bulldogs! – it’s a great game with a cool and very specific setting, with an awesome Starship Troopers feel. I love what Brennan and his team have done with the game, and wish them huge success. I think there’s loads of room for FATE love in the RPG community – it’s only been 5 years since Fred, Rob, and Lenny invented the FATE 3 system, and it’s certainly changed my RPG life. It was awesome seeing them sweep the board at the ENnies this year – congrats again, guys!

Stargazer: Apropos FATE and SF: You are the author of the Mindjammer setting for SBA and an upcoming novel of the same name. Can you tell us a bit about both? And can you give us some updates on the progress on the second edition of Mindjammer?

Sarah: Mindjammer is my attempt to write my perfect science-fiction setting. We’re now in the second decade of the 21st century, and the nature of science-fiction has gone through massive changes since the invention of SF roleplaying in the 1970s. We’ve been through 80s space opera, right through cyberpunk and beyond, and even surpassed the transhuman and singularity movements, to the extent that "transhuman science-fiction" is almost a tautology – pretty much *all* modern science-fiction is transhuman in one way or another!

I think science-fiction roleplaying should reflect that, whilst retaining its awesome, maximum game fun, action-packed feel. Mindjammer attempts to do that, by introducing transhuman themes such as longevity, augmentation, technological psionics, sentient starships, memory uploads (and downloads), and much more as the basic assumptions of the setting. Since winning the ENnie Judges Spotlight Award in 2010, we’ve been working on the Mindjammer 2nd edition, with heaps of new content and all new artwork by the enormously talented Paul Bourne. It should be out towards the end of this year, and followed by numerous other supplements.

The Mindjammer novel is Cubicle 7′s first foray into fiction to support its RPG lines, and is a 400-odd page action-packed novel of transhuman adventure, set right in the New Commonality of Humankind. If you know the Mindjammer supplement, you’ll already know some of the main characters. I’m personally very excited about the Mindjammer novel – it’s not only a cracking story of far future space opera, cinematic and geared up to gamer expectations, it’s also proper science-fiction in its own right, dealing with some of the implications of the hyper-advanced technologies which the Commonality has. The story deals with a team of troubleshooters working for SCI Force – the Security and Cultural Integrity Instrumentality – working with a culture which is being "Rediscovered" by the Commonality, and which isn’t dealing with the culture shock very well.  What they discover – well, I won’t give any more away than to say it could threaten the Commonality itself!  You can read more in the novel itself, available online and in good hobby stores everywhere from mid-October; check out www.mindjammer.com for more!

Stargazer: While doing some research for this interview I noticed that you have written “The Chronicles of Future Earth” for Basic Roleplaying. I actually bought a copy of that book mainly because I was intrigued by the setting. Alas I was a bit disappointed that the scope of the setting was quite limited. Do you think there will be more material for the Future Earth in the future?

Sarah: Definitely yes! The Chronicles of Future Earth was my first ever RPG book, and originally was pitched to be five times as long – well over 200-300 pages! Chaosium obviously didn’t know me as a writer at all, so were quite naturally cautious, and preferred the first book to be more modestly sized, which is the book you see today. They’ve asked me to write a player’s guide for the Venerable Autocracy, which I’m in the process of doing, and hopefully that will hit the shelves during 2012. I also have material for a trilogy of campaign scenarios and several supplements, so there’s plenty more if people want to see it. Everyone has said very kind things about Chronicles, and at the same time said they wanted more, so hopefully we’ll be able to oblige!

Stargazer: Is there anything else you’re currently working on? What else would you like to share with our readers that I forgot to ask you?

Sarah: Most of all, I’d like to say thanks to gamers everywhere for keeping our hobby going. It’s thanks to everyone’s passion, enthusiasm, support and dedication that people like me are able to produce games, and it’s a great honour and a privilege. Sites like Stargazer’s World play a crucial role in this, and great thanks and kudos to you, Michael, for your dedication in keeping it going. It’s a great hobby to be a part of!

For me, the next year or three are looking busy, with lots of material coming out for Starblazer and Mindjammer, Legends of Anglerre, Chronicles, and Cubicle 7′s upcoming Call of Cthulhu sourcebook "World War Cthulhu". For Starblazer, we have the long-awaited Planet Killers, and a very exciting new setting which we’ll be announcing in the new year; for Mindjammer, we have the second edition "Mindjammer – The Expansionary Era", Mindjammer Adventures, Planeships and Slowboats, a Commonality atlas, and PDF scenarios; for Legends of Anglerre, the upcoming Companion, plus a trilogy of scenarios, and an exciting historical fantasy setting sourcebook. I’m also working on two more Mindjammer novels, and some other fiction projects which have to remain under wraps for now. It’s a hugely exciting time to be working in the industry!

Thanks again for the opportunity to be interviewed, Michael, and best wishes to yourself and everybody reading Stargazer’s World. Happy gaming!

Stargazer: Thank you for taking your time answering our questions. Good luck with the Mindjammer novel and all your other current and upcoming projects! Take care!

By the way, you can follow Sarah Newton online at her website sarahnewtonwriter.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Interview: Evil Hat Productions
2. An ICONic interview: Steve Kenson!
3. Interview: Bill Coffin

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.

The SSV Icarus, a System Alliance science vessel was calling for help. The ship’s engines were failing and it has been caught in the gravity well of a gas giant, slowly spiraling to certain doom. The players decided to change course and help the Icarus’ crew.

Some of you might actually recognize this setup. That’s because I used Daniel Swensen’s one-sheet scenario “Orbit Five” as a basis for my adventure. It was actually no problem transferring the scenario to the Mass Effect universe. I changed the visitor into a Geth-like robot creature (perhaps another agent of the Reapers, who knows?) but I basically ran the adventure as written.

My players actually suspected from the get go that something was wrong on the Icarus and cautiously explored the ship. Things went pretty smoothly and when they realized that the crew was dead they decided to abandon ship using the Icarus’ shuttle. That was when I decided we need to try out Starblazer Adventurer’s combat rules and let the visitor attack them. Combat was pretty quick and the players made good use of their character’s stunts and aspects. We ended the adventure when the adventurers safely returned to their ship.

All in all I am quite happy how the session went. Everyone obviously enjoyed the rules, even though we still had some problems really making use of all the options FATE offers. But I am sure we’ll get the hang of it in no time.

But we realized that we have two other problems: a) it’s almost impossible to schedule another game anytime soon and b) the Mass Effect universe lacks a lot of details that the GM has to fill. The first problem was solved by splitting the group into two. The one group will meet on the weekends and the other will meet during the week. We hope to play at least one or two times per month from now on (with each group). I really hope this works out.

We also decided to drop Mass Effect as a setting. I am not exactly sure, what I am going to run for the now two groups, but it will probably not be Mass Effect again. One idea was to run a game set into the Traveller universe or something of my own design. I still have a couple of tricks up my sleeves.

Related posts:

1. Starblazer Adventures: Our character creation session
2. Starblazer Adventures meets the Mass Effect Universe
3. Starblazer Adventures: Biotics

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.

The book starts with an introduction that gives the reader an overview about roleplaying games. the Starblazer comics, FATE and what you need to play the game. If you already own SBA the introduction also gives you some tips on how to use stuff from the one game in the other. The differences between both games are small and LoA is fully compatible to SBA.

The “How Do I Play This?” chapter is a great introduction to FATE. On seven pages you get almost everything you need to run a FATE game – from Aspects to how to run conflicts. These few pages make a perfect introduction to new FATE players.

Let me give you a word of advice before I continue with the review. FATE rulebooks tend to be huge. Don’t make the mistake of believing you have to read the whole book from cover to cover in order to run a game. Start with the “How Do I Play This?” chapter and then read up on what you need to create characters. Use the rest of the book as a reference and don’t try to understand everything at once.

The Character Creation chapter gives a step-by-step explanation of how to create characters in LoA. Like in most other FATE games you have to go through 3 to 5 phases dependent on the campaign’s power level to create the background story and Aspects for your character. Phase 1 describes the character’s early days, their apprenticeship for example. Phase 2 is the character’s Legend, his or her first major adventure. Beginning with Phase 3 the character is the Guest Star in another character’s Legend. That way the characters in a party already start with a common background. Alternatively players may chose the “On-The-Fly” method which allows them to add Aspects and Skills during actual play.

After having picked the character’s Aspects during the 3 to 5 phases, the players buy skills and pick the appropriate number of stunts. After that you can write down one piece of relevant equipment per Aspect and Stunt. Last but not least the player has to calculate Stress and Fate points and write them down on the character sheet.

In my experience coming up with the Aspects and a backstory takes the longest in any FATE game. But I also believe that character generation gets significantly faster the more experienced players and the GM are.

But even if creating Aspects takes a while, it almost assures that the players have put some thought into who their characters are. LoA actually helps players with coming up with Aspects by providing tables to generate random character lifepaths. This is a nice touch.

The next chapter explains how player races in LoA work. LoA actually uses a very elegant solution. In order to be a member of a certain race you just need at least one racial Aspect. That can be something like “Noble Elf of the Deep Woods” or “Greedy Dwarven Blacksmith of the Hammer Clan”. Each race description lists several example racial aspects and special Stunts only a member of the race may pick. Aside from the standard fantasy races, LoA also lists Centaurs, Dragons (!!!) and Fauns. Last but not least the book gives tips on how to create your own custom races.

In fantasy characters often conform to certain archetypes like warrior, thieves, clerics or magic users. While the character creation system in Chapter three allows you to create characters any way you want, some people prefer their characters to be closer to one of the common fantasy archetypes. Chapter four “Occupations and Character Types” provide exactly these!

The chapter provides players with sets of several sample builds from the Agile Swashbuckler to  Holy Warrior or even a Vampire. Each build contains an example Aspect, a set of key skills and several stunts. I am pretty sure that players coming from games like D&D might actually appreciate the concept of character builds to help them create characters. The occupations might also come in handy when you don’t have that much time to create characters.

The sixth chapter is all about equipment. As you probably know the FATE system doesn’t put a lot emphasis on mundane equipment. The same is true with Legends of Anglerre. There are basically five types of armor (three mundane and two magical) and five types of shields. Weapons are a bit more detailed, but not much. Some weapons have Aspects of their own that can be tagged like any other Aspect in the game. In addition to that players are encouraged to pick “tasty weapon aspects” for the weapons their characters have been using for a while. Examples may be a special fighting style you’ve picked up or a special move the character can perform.  The possibilities are endless.

Chapter Seven is focused on Aspects. The chapter starts by proving tips on how to come up with Aspects for your characters and later explains thoroughly how to invoke,  tag and compel them. What I especially liked about this chapter are the examples. If you have trouble understanding how Aspects are actually supposed to work, the examples given here should make things much easier for you.

Chapter Eight is called “Skills and Stunts” and it’s one of the highlights of the book. In FATE stunts are usually directly tied to Skills, so it makes a lot of sense to list the available stunts directly under the respective skill’s descriptions. Or so you would think. Not so in most other FATE games where Skills and Stunts are in different chapters. In Legends of Anglerre you get the description of the skill, a short list of trappings (these are basically like stunts, but everyone who has the skill can perform them), followed by the Stunts.

This chapter definitely shows that Cubicle 7 has listened to their fans, because the not-so-great organization of SBA was one of the few complaints. LoA can really shine in that department! Don’t get me wrong, I love Starblazer Adventures but sometimes I wish it was a bit better organized. But I digress…

The chapter concludes with some guidelines on how to create your own stunts and skills.

Chapter Nine is all about Powers. Powers are basically special stunts that need an appropriate Aspect as prerequisite. Powers can be everything from innate magical abilities, superhuman talents or spells. In the case of spell magic additional Power Skills like Alchemy, Divination or Telekinesis are used. Basically all the powers you know from other fantasy games like D&D for example are listed here, so it should pose no problem using LoA for games set in almost any fantasy campaign world. And if there are certain powers missing, the chapter provides you with guidelines to create your own. These guidelines were actually invaluable when I tried to come up with Biotic abilities for my SBA Mass Effect game.

No fantasy game would be complete without artifacts and magic items and chapter ten is all about those. Rules-wise special items work like Aspects or Stunts and the book gives you numerous example improvements the GM can add to mundane items to give them additional “oomph”.

But the game doesn’t stop there. It also provides rules for easily creating traps, magical items, magical allies like Familiars and artifacts. More complex magical constructs follow the rules for characters for example.

That’s one of the strengths of the FATE system: if needed everything from an item to a kingdom or even the campaign itself can be described with Aspects, Skills and Stunts like a character, without adding an additional layer of complexity to the game.

The chapter also lists numerous example magic special items like Potions, Talismans, Spell Books, Traps and Miscellaneous Magical Items. While the list could definitely be longer it contains enough examples to give you inspirations for items of your own design.

Chapter Eleven focuses on the use of Fate points. While some of these rules have already been mentioned in the Aspects chapter, the chapter doesn’t feel redundant. Fate points are pretty much at the core of the FATE rules and their usage can’t be explained often enough.

From other games that use similar meta game currencies I know that players tend to hold those back until the last minute. That’s something you really shouldn’t do in Fate. This chapter helps players to understand what you can do with your Fate points and why you shouldn’t save them for too long.

“How to Do Things” is the title of chapter twelve. This chapter provides you with all the rules needed to do things in LoA: how to use shifts, how to take action, how contests and conflicts work. Like in other FATE games conflicts in LoA can be either physical like Melee combat or social like a heated discussion. The side that lost the conflict usually gets stress that can be avoided by taking consequences. And again Legends of Anglerre manages to shine here. One of the problems with FATE is that inexperienced players and GM have trouble with deciding what kind of consequence is appropriate. Is a broken leg a Major consequence or a Severe one? LoA provides a list of sample consequences that should solve this issue once and for all!

The chapter also contains rules for minions and an extensive example of play. The next section of this chapter is about how to do things with powers. On six pages the book provides an overview on what you can do with powers, how the DM can determine difficulties, how to resist powers and so on.

The last section of chapter twelve focuses on all the remaining issues a GM is commonly facing, like setting difficulties for general skill checks, handling time in your game, and how environmental hazards like dragon’s breath work in Legends of Anglerre!

Chapter thirteen is all about “Creatures Great and Small”. In it you’ll not only find all the rules needed to create and run creatures, but there are also special creature stunts, as well as rules for swarm creatures and “sum of parts creatures”. The latter type you might know from various video games where you have to destroy a creature bit by bit.

What really amazed me while reading LoA how much stuff they managed to cram into the book without it feeling totally overwhelming. SBA for example is approximately the same size but feels huge compared to LoA. Perhaps it’s the fact that LoA is much better organized than SBA and the fantasy genre itself is much narrower than space opera.

Chapter fourteen focuses on “Gods, Guilds and Empires”. Basically it shows how your can use the FATE rules to describe organizations (like guilds or whole empires) using pretty much the same concepts you use for characters. Organizations have Aspects, Skills and even special stunts like Strongholds, Conspiracy or Libraries. This allows you to resolve conflicts between organizations easily. Mass combat using armies of fleets is actually handled much in the same way combat between characters is. This allows for empire-building campaigns where the player characters become powerful enough to influence the fates of whole baronies, guilds, religions and even kingdoms.

Chapter fifteen called “Sailing Ships and War Machines” explains how to use and create constructs in your game. Again the rules are not so much different from the ones used for characters or organizations. In construct conflicts the zones used have of course a bigger scale than in character combat and the chapter provides a couple of examples. I especially like the effective use of zone diagrams in that chapter. You immediately get a good idea of what the encounter scales are. See the image below for an example.

Chapter sixteen called “Fog of War” provides rules for unit-level combat. In this kind of combat the players take on the roles of Generals who control several units like infantry, cavalry, artillery, or even ships.

Even though you might get the impression that each of these chapters adds another level of complexity to the rules that’s not the fact. The basic rules are always the same. You just get new stunts, skills and aspects for every scale of play. Usually when I ran fantasy games I avoided large scale battles and empire-building campaign because I didn’t want to turn the roleplaying game into a strategy one. Or I just used hand-waving and GM bias instead of focusing on the rules. But after reading Legends of Anglerre I am actually pretty sure that you can run a campaign with all those aspects (no pun intended) in it without having to fear that it breaks immersion – provided you use the FATE system.

Chapter seventeen is called “Templates” and provides the GM with examples for organizations, constructs and units. The list is far from exhaustive but should give you a great overview of what is possible with LoA.

“Epic and Mythic Gaming” is the focus of the eighteenth chapter. If the standard game is not enough for you, this chapter gives you guidelines on how to run an epic game, where the characters are the shakers and movers of the campaign world. Epic occupations like Warlord, Divine Champion, etc. shall help you to create truly larger-than-life characters.

Instead of an epic game you can also choose the mythic play. In mythic play atmosphere is more important than rules. While epic games are about larger-than-life conflicts, mythic games are usually more subtle. Player characters interact with cosmic forces and fulfill quests for deities and demigods. Again the book provides players with a short list of mythic occupations to help them during character creations. Examples of Mythic Occupations are Dancer of the God Court or Promethean Hero.

Chapter nineteen is all about “Collaborative Campaign Creation”. While this may not be everyone’s cup of tea – some GM’s prefer to have full control over their campaign world – this is something I definitely have to try out when I finally have the opportunity to run Legends of Anglerre. This chapter gives directions on how to create a whole campaign setting from scratch, while every player has the opportunity to add elements that are important to him or her.

Chapter twenty describes the concept of “Plot Stress”. You can make things more interesting by adding stress tracks to the campaign, the group or the character plot. By their actions the characters can inflict plot stress that then causes certain consequences that have been defined by the GM.

This reminds me a bit of the concept of Group Tension from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition. I have to admit that while I understand the idea behind that concept, I am actually not too fond of it. Probably because it needs the GM to plan ahead a lot more than I usually do.

Chapter twenty-one explains how treasure works in Legends of Anglerre. Usually wealth is handled in an abstract way using the Resources Skill, so players are not forced to write down every bronze coin they find in the street. But if you need to know how many coins you’re actually lugging around there’s a handy “Coin Value Rough Equivalent Table”. The chapter gives some guidelines on how to use Treasure Aspects and how much resources players in certain campaigns should have access to.

Chapter twenty-two provides you with all the rules to create a cosmology for your campaign. You can either pick and choose or just use the handy tables to randomly generate how your world works. While the chapter on other planes of existence, planar travel and cosmology is quite short, it’s definitely nice to have. Especially if you want to run games inspired by Planescape.

Chapter twenty-three called “Twisted Tips” is one of my favorite chapters in Legends of Anglerre. It provides the gamemaster with a lot of helpful advice on how to create a campaign and run the game. The chapter starts by giving an overview about the various fantasy subgenres and how they can be played using LoA.

Over the course of the chapter you not only get an overview of basically every game style, campaign theme, fantasy society and fantasy location you can think of, but also gives tips on how you prepare and run a game, how to establish characters and provides the GM with a rough plot framework that helps you to run games almost on the fly.

The section on controlling perspective is also very interesting. Even veteran gamemasters may learn a thing or two about how to frame scenes, “camera” work and how to get information to the players. Even if you think you already know every trick in the book I wholeheartedly recommend giving that chapter of Legends of Anglerre a closer look.

Chapter twenty-four presents a complete ready-to-run swords-and-sorcery campaign setting – the world of Anglerre itself. The kingdom of Anglerre is a kingdom under siege – surrounded by enemies and threatened by magic.

Anglerre is a low-magic setting where magic rare and harder to master than in other settings. People are cautious about sorcery and using magic can be quite perilous.

The chapter contains a detailed gazetteer of the lands and should provide enough material for the GM to run games set into these lands.

Chapter twenty-five presents a second campaign setting, “The Hither Kingdoms”. This setting is high fantasy and contains all the tropes you normally expect from such campaign settings: dwarves, elves, magic, monsters. If you are used to classic D&D settings, I am sure you’ll feel right at home there. The chapter contains a gazetteer of the lands, an overview of how magic works in this world, the gods and the cosmology, as well as a list of the key figures in the world.

Chapter twenty-six is the game’s Bestiary which contains numerous creatures and NPCs you can use in your campaign. Alas most of the creatures come only with short description. Some of the monster descriptions are illustrated with artwork from the comics.

The book concludes with a rules summary, the stunts list, the Legends of Anglerre record sheets (for characters, organizations and constructs), as well as an index.

So, what are my final thoughts on Legends of Anglerre? I have to admit I like it a lot. Legends of Anglerre looks definitely better than it’s close sibling Starblazer adventures and feels much better organized. It contains everything you need to run any kind of fantasy game using FATE and even provides GMs with not one but even two complete campaign worlds. If you just want to run a classic game where the focus is on the characters themselves you can disregard a lot of the rules, but if you want to run mass combats or feature conflicts between whole kingdoms in your games you can do so with relative ease. If you like FATE and the fantasy genre chances are that you’ll love Legends of Anglerre. I know I do.

Legend of Anglerre is available both as hardcover book or a PDF version. Since Cubicle 7 is part of the Bits & Mortar initiative you can get LoA as a print+PDF bundle for the price of the hardcover book alone. The hardcover book is of excellent quality and has a color interior although the artwork is mostly black & white. It sets you back $49.99. The PDF version is available at DriveThruRPG and costs $24.99.

Please note that this review has been based on a read-through of a review copy of both the hardcover book and the PDF version of the book which have been provided by the publisher.

Related posts:

1. Review: Legends of Steel – Savage Worlds Edition
2. FATE review
3. Freebie: Free FATE

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!

Related posts:

1. Ask The Readers: What’s your favorite genre?
2. Ask The Readers: What is your favorite “noir” RPG?
3. Victorian & Steampunk Name Generator

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!

Related posts:

1. Ask The Readers: Running a Ultima campaign in S&W
2. Campaign Inspiration
3. When your campaign has jumped the shark

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.

Explaining all the details of the FATE system would probably be beyond the scope of this post. I guess most of you are probably at least fleetingly familiar with at least one of the FATE games. What sets Kerberos Club’s version of FATE apart are the following:

a) Skills in the game are measured on two axes. There’s the skill rank like in all other FATE games and the Power Tier. All skills start out in the Mundane Tier but they can later be increased to the Extraordinary, Superhuman, Ascendant and Godlike Tiers. When characters of two different Tiers compete with each other, the player who uses a Skill in a higher Tier replaces one of his Fudge dice with a six-sided die for each Tier of difference. That’s in my opinion a pretty easy and elegant way to simulate super powered abilities in a FATE game.

b) Instead of dozens of Stunts, Kerberos Club uses six “Gifts” that basically serve the same purpose. They can be bought during character creation and character advancement and allow to bend the rules a bit. The Gifts are Companion, Equipment, Impact, Signature Aspect, Skilled and Theme. Veterans of the FATE system will quickly notice that the Gifts are actually a neat way for the player to design his own stunts instead of picking them from a huge list. For example the Equipment Gift grants the character an important or special piece of equipment that has one or more improvements like adding a +1 bonus to a certain skill or it allows the wielder to use one skill in place of another in certain circumstances.

c) Collateral consequences are additional consequences player characters can use to avoid any kind of Stress. But unlike personal consequences they don’t need to be directly connected to what caused the Stress in the first place and they affect the player character’s environment, the Kerberos Club, maybe even the whole Empire itself. Collateral consequences are another narrative device the players can use to affect the world around them.

I have to admit I haven’t delved too deep into Kerberos Club, yet, but it looks like it could be for the Victorian Superhero genre what Starblazer Adventures was for Space Opera. Even if you don’t intend to use the Kerberos Club background you get enough material that you can use in any game set into the era. It also introduces a few new and very intriguing elements to the FATE system.

This first look is based on the PDF version of the game which I got on DriveThruRPG. It sets you back $24. There’s also a free Quick-Start Guide which contains an introduction to the setting, four sample characters and a taste of the FATE system.

Related posts:

1. Freebie: Free FATE
2. Strands of Fate
3. Free FATE

After all the players had finally arrived I gave them another overview of the FATE system. Then after talking about their basic character concepts we started with the character creation phases.

To make things easier for all of us and because I thought it was the best fit for what I had in mind, I chose the Gritty option. That means there are three phases during character creation (Training, Starblazer Legend, Guest Star). Each player character gets 6 Aspects, 3 Stunts and can spend 15 Skillpoints. Choosing skills and stunts took mere minutes, but going through the three phases to come up with a backgound story and the six Aspects took several hours. Luckily my players have brought some snacks and I had prepared some Chili con carne, so at least we didn’t starve through the process.

But in the end the players came up with some great Aspects. I am not sure how well they will work ingame, but at least they sound great and give a good overview of how the character “ticks”.

So what characters did the players create? There is the female corporate pilot whose father had already worked for ExoGeni and who is known for her reckless flying, the ambitioned Turian tech who has issues with authority, the genius archeologist who considers his brains his only weapon and finally the Drell ex-soldier who had to survive as an orphan in the streets of his homeworld.

Hopefully we can play for the first time in two or three weeks. Alas scheduling is as always a major issue and two of the players have to drive about an hour to get to my home. But this is not keeping us from giving Starblazer Adventures a try. As said before we are all quite excited. We all enjoy the Mass Effect universe and everyone is very happy with how the characters turned out. Now I have some time to prepare our first adventure. Wish me luck.

Related posts:

1. Starblazer Adventures: First session
2. Preparing for Starblazer Adventures
3. Improve Your Game: Character creation as a team effort

Tech is actually pretty easy. In most cases no special skills or stunts are needed. Starblazer’s Science and Engineering skills and their respective stunts pretty much cover everyting needed. The Omni-Tool from Mass Effect basically combines the Med Kit, the Multi-Tool and a PDA in one single item. In addition to that usage of the Omni-Tool shall allow the user to administer medical treatment with either their Engineering or Science skill whatever is higher.

With the help of Legends of Anglerre I was able to create a couple stunts for the new Biotics skill. In order to pick that skill the character needs at least one fitting Aspect. The stunts then give access to the powers you might know from Mass Effect 1.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

These stunts should work well enough in most cases. If additional detail is needed, I might add more stunts later that represent the various Biotic amplifiers, the biotic affinity of the Asari species or improved omni-tools. But for now I think it’s a good start.

Related posts:

1. Starblazer Adventures: Our character creation session
2. Starblazer Adventures meets the Mass Effect Universe
3. Starblazer Adventures: First session

So my group grew from 3 to 5 players and when talking about what kind of campaign setting they wanted to play in, we finally settled on a Mass Effect campaign. In my opinion Mass Effect fits SBA’s style perfectly. The only thing I have to do is add some rules for Mass Effect’s tech and biotics powers. But I am sure I can come up with a couple of skills and stunts during this week, so we can finally start with character creation next week or so.

Using an established universe has some advantages. It not only saves me a lot of time, but I can also just point my players to the Mass Effect Wiki if they want to read up on the background.

Currently I am thinking about two possible campaign models. The first is pretty close to the computer game. The player characters are in charge of a Systems Alliance vessel out on patrol, or doing search and rescue missions.  As an alternative I was thinking about an ExoGeni Corporation campaign, where the players are prospectors, researchers etc. looking for suitable planets for colonization or mining at the edge of colonized space.

While I let the the players decide what kind of campaign they prefer I’ll have some time to prepare the biotic and tech rules and come up with a few stats for space ships and alien species. By the way, if you have already run a Mass Effect game using FATE, please share your experiences in the comments below. Any advice is highly appreciated!

Related posts:

1. Mass Effect and Ashen Stars – Could this work?
2. Starblazer Adventures: First session
3. Starblazer Adventures: Biotics

The screen is extremely sturdy. Most GM screens available are printed on pretty flimsy cardboard, but not so in this case. The cardboard is comparable to the one used in hardcover books. The front side shows four full-color images taken from the Starblazer Adventures comics. I included an image of the screen above.

The back side of the screen contains basically all tables a Starblazer Adventures Storyteller could ever need. I am pretty sure that aside from checking up some stunts or stats you’ll never even have to open the book to run the game. It’s all there on the screen. There’s even a Play Summary, that summarizes all basic FATE rules including FATE point costs, Conflict actions, and Stress.

The Storyteller’s Screen sets you back $14.95 and should be available from your FLGS or directly from the Cubicle 7 store. In my opinion it’s definitely worth it.

Related posts:

1. Preparing for Starblazer Adventures
2. Starblazer Adventures: Our character creation session
3. Starblazer Adventures: First session

So Starblazer Adventures it is! Over the last few days I have been leafing through the massive 629-paged book, rereading several rules, checking out the included settings for inspiration and thought about an introductory adventure. But then I realized that I was approaching this all wrong.

Before coming up with my own ideas about a setting, adventures etc. I should talk with my players about it. Starblazer Adventures has a chapter about Collaborative Campaign Creation that provides players and GMs with some simple tools to create whole campaign settings from scratch collaboratively. So what I will do is talk with my players about how FATE works first. Then I’ll ask them what kind of SF game they prefer. This directly leads us to the collaborative campaign creation.

When he have the campaign background more or less nailed down, we can start with character creation. The player characters’ Aspects will further help me to flesh out the campaign setting later and come up with the kind of adventures they really want to participate in.

Between our character/campaign creation session and the first real play session I plan to turn the basic campaign map created using the method described in the SBA rulebook into a pretty starmap using Cosmographer 3.

By the way, FATE will also be the big topic for our next RPG pub meeting. Hopefully I can share the love with my fellow German gamers!

Related posts:

1. Starblazer Adventures: Our character creation session
2. Starblazer Adventures meets the Mass Effect Universe
3. Starblazer Adventures: Biotics

Recently I have been listening to some actual play recordings of people playing the Dresden Files RPG and one thing intrigued me the most: the players were actually thinking more about who their characters are than what they can do. In the majority of games I’ve run people usually created their character with their abilities in mind. I’ve also noticed that coming up with Aspects in a group is much easier than doing so when you are all alone imagining how it could be to actually play FATE.

Listening to people actually playing and discussing the game was actually an eye-opener for me. Suddenly the things I have been struggling with made much more sense. For some reason I never had these issues with more traditional games.

Rereading Starblazer Adventures’ “How Do I Play This?” chapter actually helped me to realize that at the core FATE can be described in just 10 pages. Everything else might help to give you more details, more examples, more stuff to use for your game. But in the end it boils down to just these 10 pages. And still this allows you to play almost in any genre you can think of. Wow! I can’t hide it, I am extremely excited.

Alas I am suffering from a terrible gaming dry spell at the moment. I haven’t played or run a game in quite a while. Hopefully this will change in July and I think this might be the right moment to finally run a FATE game. Since I am still longing for some SF, I might actually give Starblazer Adventures or Bulldogs! a try. But there’s also a copy of Legends of Anglerre lying on my bedside table which is also a lot of fun to read and probably even more fun to play…

I have to admit that while I wholeheartedly love the Dresdenverse, I am not sure if I can properly run a game in it. I need at least to read a few more novels before I have a better grasp of the game world before I will dare to run this beast. But one day, I will…

Related posts:

1. Freebie: Free FATE
2. Free FATE
3. Strands of Fate

I had a lot of toys as a kid. I was never into toy cars, model kits or sports paraphernalia. I liked board games, later electronic games, but my favorites where action figures. Most people my age remember the Star Wars Action Figures, GI Joe, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Transformer and the myriad other toys of that golden age of action figure and TV show synergy called the 80s. But I am old enough to remember some older toys, like the larger GI Joes and the Mego dolls (yes boys played with dolls!). In that transitional period from the larger doll type action toys and the supremacy of the smaller action figure there were one set of toys I was particularly fond of, the Fisher Price Adventure Series.

These were toys, according to the promotional sheet that is the first illustration on this post, designed for the growing child from three years of age into the early grades. They were play sets of real life professions, adventurers and other exciting activities. There was a safari set, ambulance, scuba divers and motorcyclists among others. Real life adventure heroes! Typically they had vehicles with two or more action figures with only 5 points of articulation. They were simple and fun and I spent hours playing with them, eventually amassing a large collection of Adventure Series figures and vehicles.

By now you may be thinking, what is this guy doing writing about toys in a role-playing blog? Well amazingly many of the games and storylines I played as a child have inspired me later in life either as themes for stories I have written, games plots or even entire campaigns. Others are still undeveloped waiting for the right time to become a campaign. This is the story of a weird little hybrid experience and how the toys of my youth inspired me. If you want the story of how I imagined this read on. If you just want to go to the details of the actual game scroll down the page, I’ll be sure to let you know when we are back on topic! (See this is almost like a “choose your own adventure” but only in post form).

BACKGROUND STORY (full of childhood reminiscing but no actual gaming involved)

The metaplot of the Adventure Series

The storyteller in me was active from an early age, even if I had no concept of what RPGs were or truly understand my love of telling a good yarn. This disparate set of Adventure Series action figures became a large group of interrelated people, with familial ties, relationships and antagonists (the effects of too many Latin American soap opera on a young impressionable mind!). At first my favorite was the Safari Set and the father of the group (I assumed he was the father, the woman dressed in yellow his wife and the others their kids) my “hero”. He was the protagonists of the stories and he and his family were usually aided in their adventures by the characters from the other sets. That’s how I eventually decided the two divers in green swimsuits were related to the safari family. The blond diver was their older daughter and the guy her boyfriend. The other two divers (actually a recolor of the same two diver figures, but with yellow swimsuits and the woman had brown hair) were the sister and husband of the safari mom.

But my adventures took an unexpected twist when during an outing to Kentucky Fried Chicken (back when it was not simply KFC and they only served chicken) I dropped the safari dad action figure and an employee sweeping the floor put him in the trash. I was devastated; I had no hero, what was to become of my Fisher Price adventures?

(Small aside here, I didn’t manage to replace safari dad for years, it wasn’t until much later when I managed to buy the toy in single card, and by then I had stopped playing with these toys much. But I did take them out to play out the return of the long lost father. But I’m getting ahead of myself, back to the story…)

I played around with my Adventure Series toys for a while and eventually found my new protagonists, the motorcycle guy. What made him the hero? Well besides the fact that he rode a motorcycle (which to me seemed like the coolest thing back then), he had two extra points of articulation, he could bend his knees! I soon renamed him Frank (again the name seemed cool to my young impressionable mind), he was an orphan who became a champion motorcycle driver that fell in love with the safari family’s older diver daughter, who left her boyfriend for him and all the animals the safari family had captured in their trips became Frank’s pets.(Does that mean as a child I wanted to be a motorcycle ridding guy with lions and other wild animals as pets? Back to the post…) The Action Series crew became a troubleshooting team lead by Frank. I eventually got other sets like a space shuttle and green robot figures so the group traveled all over the world, even to space.

The island of Rodan!

(SPOILER ALERT, read no further unless you want Christmas ruined!) At this age I would await the arrival of the big store Christmas catalogs with gusto. At five I had figured Santa Claus and the Three Kings, the major gift givers in the Puerto Rico holiday season mythology, did not exists and all the loot came from family members. So when the catalogs arrived I would flip to the toy section and begin circling all the toys I wanted. That Christmas while perusing one of the catalogs I came upon a mysterious toy… (END OF SPOILERS, safe to go back to reading!)

I discovered a Rodan toy and I wanted it! You can see the picture in this post. Which self respecting child would NOT want that red pterodactyl like creature perched on his arm? (The kid on the picture further down looks a little disturbed I know, but I did not get that subtlety back them). I had no idea who Rodan was, not having seen the “classic” Japanese movies, but I knew it was cool. So it went to the top of my Christmas loot list and the waiting began.

With some months to go I could not stop thinking about Rodan. I wanted to play with the toy, but since I could not I did the next best thing; I worked him into my stories. Frank and his Action Series crew were soon contacted to explore this mysterious island out in the middle of the ocean. When they arrived they discovered they were trapped, just like others before them. The island was populated by many other people (i.e. other toys) who had travelled there, and just like Frank and his team, were unable to leave. They also discovered the island travelled though time and to other worlds, so unless they found a way home soon they might never be able to leave. (This may sound strangely like LOST, but I was a big fan of Verne’s The Mysterious Island which my grandmother had read to me and the Mystery Island TV show, so those may be seen as more appropriate inspirations)

Frank and his crew began to investigate the island and learned about a mysterious being called Rodan. He lived in a volcano in the middle of the island and he was responsible for keeping everybody trapped. So Frank being the adventuresome fellow that he is gathers his crew and begins the trek across the islands jungles, mountains and rivers, to find this Rodan and escape. In their journey they met other people (again different toys) some that helped them and others that tried to stop them, one of the robots (yes there where Action Series robots) was corrupted and became a spy for those working to protect Rodan, some in the team decided Frank was not helping them escape but instead putting them in more danger and some even decided to stay and sabotaged Frank’s goals.

Months passed and Christmas was around the corner, by then Frank and his team, along with some allies they had picked along the way, where close to the volcano. They approached it the day before Christmas. I was ready for the next morning when I would open up the box, take Rodan out and play out the final confrontation. To my great disappointment the Rodan in the box had a broken wing… So my grandfather explained to me the toy would have to be sent back and I would eventually get a replacement. I was devastated, I had other gifts and it did NOT ruin my holyday season, but I wanted to keep playing with my then favorite toys, and I had been doing all this build up for nothing…

The best laid plans…

So I improvised. When Frank, his friends and allies enter the volcano they found a giant statue of Rodan but not the creature itself. Instead they faced and were captured by an evil scientist (the action figure of Doctor Hans Reinhardt from the Black Hole movie), as any good villain will oft do he explained his evil plans. Like all the others he had arrived in the island and become trapped, puzzled by the islands effect he travelled to the volcano and discovered machines that caused the islands erratic traveling across space and time. This apparently was a side effect, as the machines had been created to trap Rodan inside the volcano.

The evil scientist deciphered how the machines caused the islands traveling and took control of them; he made the island appear where he wanted to gather the specimens he desired for his experiments. And he was also Frank’s father! (Cue dramatic music… Too much soap operas I tell you!)

The group escaped, hid from evil scientist absentee dad (if you psychoanalyze me through play I’m sure this all would be telling) and plotted to stop his scheme and destroy the machines. This was all a delaying tactic on my part. I was just bidding my time until the replacement Rodan arrived.

When it did I was ready to finish this month long adventure. Frank and his friends defeated evil scientist dad and destroyed the machines causing the island to reappear on earth. As they were getting ready to leave the volcano begins to erupt. From the bowels of its lava prison emerged that terrible creature RODAN! They fought the beast, defeat it but it escapes the island and Frank’s team remains together to hunt and stop the destruction caused by releasing Rodan upon an unsuspecting world.

Looking back that seems like an awfully complex storyline for a child’s game, and I am sure in putting it in adult terms I have made it seem more mature than it was, but I had a vivid imagination and my family played with me a lot so I got their input and help as I played; and the ending? What a downer… I’m pretty sure my players will tell you thats the beginning of my obsession with endings where the good guys never truly win.

Back TO GAMING (or something nominally related…)

Inspired by my childhood games

Years later, when in college I wanted to play a modern game with a twist, a game were players would begin the as regular folk and them be thrown into an unexplained and dangerous situation. At the time I played a lot of Palladium games (Robotech, RIFTS, Heroes Unlimited, Ninjas & Superspies, TMNT, you name it!) so it seemed like the logical fit for my game.

Round 1…

I actually had two aborted starts to this game. In both instances I asked the players to create “normal” people, scientist, soldiers, and law enforcement officers and put them in weird situations. The first time around I attempted my adaptation of my childhood games with two players. I think one was an FBI agent and another police detective, both working the scene of a terrible train wreck. They were few survivors, but when they begin to investigate they realize the survivors were NOT passengers on the train. In included many famously disappeared people, including the crew of the Mary Celeste and some supposedly dead persons such as Christa McAuliffe, the teacher that died in the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle.

(A very important caveat, by using her as an NPC I meant no disrespect on her memory. It was a reference I knew both players would immediately get and be shocking, that’s all, sorry of anybody finds that disturbing. It was NOT my intention!)

When they interview the presumed dead teacher they learn the crew of the Challenger did NOT die in the explosion. They instead found themselves transported somewhere else. There they joined other people who seemed to be likewise taken from Earth and other places. They fought evil and secretive overlords that kept them isolated in different regions of a larger landmass, each region separated by nearly insurmountable mountains. These overlords would pit one group against another through manipulation and deception. The people that arrived in the train wreck were a group of rebels who used a portal to escape.

When the PCs examine the devices the escapees from this “other world” brought along with them they discover they are emitting a signal in a hitherto unknown frequency (yes I know how implausible that sounds, but it is after all a game!). Soon after an island appears in the middle of the Atlantic, the media begins to call it Atlantis and the players were in route to investigate, and that was that. We never played that game again. They were supposed to get there and get lost in an island travelling through space and time.

Round 2…

I tried the idea a second time, with a larger group including the same two players that had participated on the first version of the campaign. Again I used the Palladium system, but this time around I planned a little more. I asked each player to create a real world person, any profession, but someone who would be one of the top people in his or her own field. I also asked them not to create loners, I wanted fully fleshed out persons with families and responsibilities. All the better to tie them to their real lives and motivate them to try to return once they became trapped in the island.

They were all gathered by the US Government and flown to a ship in the Pacific Ocean. There they were briefed on the sudden appearance of an island in the middle of the ocean. The island had appeared 72 hours earlier and while satellites confirmed its existence they could NOT gather any data as they went haywire over the landmass. The team had been put together to go in and explore, determine where it came from and if it posed any danger.

There were a couple of wrenches thrown into the mix, one of the NPCs was a supposed psychic who had predicted the islands arrival, but he was in fact a psychopath serial killer contacted by the island’s mysterious masters to bring people to the island. Also the military team providing support for the exploration team had been infiltrated by an agent of the island’s masters.

The teams arrived on the island by boat and soon discovered the jungles were populated by dinosaurs (a nod to Jurassic Park, it was BIG back then). After capturing a few specimens and making camp the team got to testing them. The military support noticing movement out in the jungle deployed out only to be betrayed by the mole and ambushed. So the team was left without their military back up and soon was under attack from bipedal evolved dinosaurs commanding cybernetic velociraptors.

This was another game idea we never played after the initial session. Some of the players were not excited about the execution other simply were uninterested. I had planned for them to meet the evolved dinosaur men who would be the antagonists during the first few session, they would learn that they were trapped in the island, about the secret masters and find the first clues that would take them to other regions in the island. In a way it would have been a multi genre game, like TORG or RIFTS, except the rationale behind WHY all this disparate genres would be meshed together would have been different

Final thoughts

I still have hopes of running this game. I think as a campaign it has a lot of possibilities. I think the system I chose back then was a bad fit. Something more conductive to storytelling, perhaps Fudge or FATE, or even Savage Worlds which I think my players might prefer over those other two. So this is a crazy campaign I hope to tackle some day, maybe at the old role –player’s home.

Like I said before this may sound a lot like the LOST TV show but it all happened long before the show was aired. I’m not claiming I created LOST before there was LOST, like many things we create we are burrowing ideas and tropes from those that created before us. A lost land, filled with wonder from which you cannot escape has been the subject of many stories before and will likely be again.

There are many other sources of inspiration to this campaign idea, some more obvious than others besides my childhood games. The Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer and the Dungeon series of books, my love of Jules Verne, and some other stories like those of Burroughs, all jumbled in with my childhood games. But ultimately the idea for the campaign is for a group of people trapped in another place, doing their best to escape and return to their normal lives. I hope I can play it someday…

PS – I do not have ANY pictures of the toys I talked about above, all the images were scoured form across the internet, I hold no rights or ownership over any of them and use them to merely illustrate the posts, and hopefully mildly amuse you with the captions.

Related posts:

1. Crazy Campaign Chronicles: Defenders of the Earth Redux or a Very Pulpy Future!
2. Mad Ramblings of a Crazy GM
3. Chronicles of the Four Dragons

One of the biggest problems in most games has to be how the party got together and how they know one another. One solution that I have used many times is actually from an Old-School blogger, It’s a file called 100 Reasons and can be found here:
http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2010/08/give-me-reasonor-hundred.html

But I would like to talk about an alternative that a lot of people actually seem to enjoy. Group character creation. I’m not talking about everyone making there characters at the same time and making sure the party is well rounded.  I’m talking more about creating a little background story along with character creation.  I don’t always riff off of FATE games but they do have a lot to teach.  This time I want to take a look at the 5 phases of Spirit of the Century and how
you might use this to make characters in D&D or any other game for that matter a little more organic.

A word of caution though, this probably isn’t a very good idea in Old-School play as characters tend to die very often. For that I would recommend the 100 Reasons mentioned above.

Lets look at the phases and how they might be used for a normal game of D&D or Pathfinder. Of course in FATE games they want you to choose aspects and skills that are appropriate for the phase in question. You could use this to justify why you have ranks in a certain skill or perhaps why you chose a particular feat.

Phase 1: Background
This one is simple enough, where did you grow up, where you poor, are you an orphan (ahem). What did you do during your childhood up until your teens.

Phase 2: War
Spirit of the Century takes place after World War I. A lot of campaigns include a war of some sort. Ebberon for example. This doesn’t have to be world changing and could easily be something else.
Sample questions to answer are, what did you do during the war, which side were you on. Did you go awol. If there isn’t a war in your game it should be simple enough to replace this with some major event. Perhaps a small peasant uprising took place before the campaign.

Phase 3: Novel
This is where it gets interesting and a bit fun. Write a one line sentence of an adventure your character has done recently. Make it reasonable as you are 1st level, but you are above the 0th level people so you have a bit of leeway. Examples from a previous game of mine: “Saved a girl from a circus lion”. Another one was: “Courted a beautiful noble woman”.

Phase 4: Guest Star
Spirit of the Century ask now to write the previous “novel” down and shuffle them and pass them around. Write a brief sentence explaining how you took part in the other persons novel. Get creative this explains how you became friends or at least acquaintances with the other person. Examples from my game. The ranger drew the fighters novel about the circus lion. They decided that the lion escaped and cornered a small child in the market and they beat it into unconsciousness with whatever they had at hand. Not really anything to use as a plot seed but definitely something to raise a pint to. The other example was the rouge drew the bards novel of courting the noble lady. They decided that they were courting the same woman along with a third person. This person was a weasel and a con and ended up winning the girl over. They put aside the fact they were after the same woman and put all their hatred upon this third person. Now I had some type of villain to use. My first instinct was they were going to be summoned to court for an adventure and it would be this person giving the quest, since he is a noble now. They hated this, and I mean this
in the best way possible.

Phase 5: Guest Star
This phase is exactly the same as the phase above. It is just used to create a more tangled web of friendship. Some cases it is probably not necessary, as I didn’t use it in the game I am speaking of.

Hopefully this will give you some ideas to use besides “You are all in a tavern, you’ve been friends for as long as you can remember.” or the infamous “You seem trustworthy.”

As last time, anyone use anything similar before? Have any tips or improvements you would like to share? One last thing, what game should I mine for gold next? I would really appreciate any suggestions and nothing is off limits!

Related posts:

1. Bridging the Gap
2. Campaign Primer Ideas! Part 1
3. Eclipse Phase – A Study in Philanthropy

Quick disclaimer, this is NOT a comprehensive list and I don’t pretend to know everything about game stores in the area. That said, here I go…

My first stop was at Sci-Fi City in Orlando. I love this store; I’ve been visiting it for years. I call it my favorite attraction; some people come to Florida for Disney, I come for this store! It has a great selection of role playing games, miniature games, minis, paints, comics (all bagged and boarded, a plus), trade paperbacks, dice, collectibles, posters, a LARGE gaming area, computers you can rent, its geek heaven. I have never gamed there mind you; I just visit and walk through the aisles like a 4 year old visiting Toy R Us for the first time. It happens every time!

What about RPGs, which was the main reason I went there? They have an excellent selection of new games and older titles. I was searching for Pathfinder RPG book and found to my dismay they were pretty much sold out. They did have a great selection of Savage Worlds games and I stocked up. I got my hands on Slipstream which I have always wanted, a physical copy of Realms of Cthulhu, which I own on PDF and my most precious find Space 1889 Red Sands! It is hard to explain the thrill of holding a new Space 1889 book in my hands.

I got the GameMastery Flip-Mat: Prison, the GameMastery Map Pack: Swallowed Whole (a friend had told me it wasn’t that great but I just could not resist getting this), an issue of Knights of the Dinner Table my FGLS had not received and a new set of dice. I would have gotten more stuff, including some board games, if I had extra space in my luggage (and more money), but I am really happy with what I got. They had a GREAT sale, 30% off in most games, so I got some great bargains.

The employees at Sci-Fi city are friendly and very helpful. I’ve been visiting the store for years and never have I run into a rude employee. They have other locations I have not visited, and an online store that seems well stocked and with some nice sales, but I have never used their services.

After I was done at Sci-Fi city, and despite my girlfriend’s protestations I went on to another nearby store, Coliseum of Comics at the Fashion Square Mall. This is more a comic store than a gaming store but I could not pass up the opportunity to see what they might have. If you love comics the store is a sight to see. Mind you Sci-Fi City has an equally great selection of comics; coliseum of Comics just looks chick, like a comic boutique with the layout and the decorations and the statues, collectibles, wall of really old back issues. Their trade paperback selection was great, organized impeccably and with great lists and references to let you know which order you had to read what.

They also had a great kids section and a smaller but well presented games and RPGs section. Lots of board games, which makes sense since the store is located in a mall and they could be a draw, the RPG selection was modest but with a good selection. Lots of D&D 4^th edition, The Dresden Files RPG, but conspicuously, besides some Flip-Mats and Map Pack, no Pathfinder books, this is a solely anecdotal, but both places seemed to be out of Pathfinder, makes me wonder. In all honesty I did ask at Sci-Fi City and they told me they had run out, I did not ask at Coliseum of Comics, maybe they just don’t carry Pathfinder books.  But before I fan the fires of a possible flame war, back on topic…

They had the Watchmen HeroClix collection… This tempted me, it was pricey, but I so love the Watchmen and I had wanted to get this for so long. Ultimately I resisted temptation. I left my bag of holding back home. I left Coliseum of Comics empty handed. They have other locations; some which I have visited on previous trips, here is their website. What loot I got may not seem like much, but I am really happy with what I got. I have some days left in Florida; I may just go back…

So what was your holiday gaming loot? What gaming related gifts did you get, or got for yourself? Inquiring gamers want to know!

Related posts:

1. Ask Your Readers: Christmas Gifts for Roleplayers
2. Christmas in July!
3. Christmas in July Sale at DriveThruRPG!

Here’s a list of the changes from “standard” FATE:

• No Adjective Ladder/Fewer Confusing Terms
  In SoF the adjective ladder has been removed, the game directly uses the numerical values instead. Mike also did away with terms like “shifts”, “tag” and “efforts”. The concepts themselves are still there, but more regular terms are used.
• Skills = Abilities + Aspects + Advantages
  Skills have been replaced with Abilities (which serve the same function but are much broader). More specific uses of abilities are covered by aspects and special advantages. The abilities are same for all genres, genre-specific concepts are introduced using aspects and advantages, making the core rules genre-agonistic.
• Character Aspects and Specialty Aspects
  From the official product page: “Unlike other FATE games, we break a character’s Aspects down into two separate categories; Character and Specialty Aspects. Character Aspects tell you who a character is, where he is from, and what his place is in the world is. Specialty Aspects are more focused; telling you in greater detail what a character is especially good (or bad) at.”
• Persistent Aspects
  In Strands of Fate aspects that greatly impact the situation at hand are considered “always on”. You don’t need to pay Fate points to use them.
• Stunts = Advantages
  Advantages in Strands of Fate come in three tiers of increasing complexity. Tier 1 advantages usually are described by a single sentence and grant a bonus on a specific ability use. Tier 2 advantages are more complex and usually cost Fate points to use. Tier 3 advantages are basically supernatural powers (like Psionics, Magic, etc.)
• Stress Tracks, Conflicts and Consequences
  Strands of Fate uses three stress tracks (Physical, Mental and Social) and has conflict systems for each kind of conflict. There’s also advice for introducing additional stress tracks (Mana or Wealth for example).
• Equipment
  Strands offers an additional level of detail on equipment compared to Spirit of the Century (or other FATE games). Some equipment may grant dice roll bonuses or even additional aspects. These rules are optional and advice for simplified weapons, armor and equipment is included.

I haven’t had the time to give it a closer look, but from what I’ve seen it looks pretty promising. For more details on Strands of Fate, please check out the Void Star Games website.

Related posts:

1. FATE review
2. Freebie: Free FATE
3. First Look: The Kerberos Club FATE Edition

Without further ado, here is the interview…

Sunglar: Thank you for the opportunity to interview you. I know some topics may have been addressed in other interviews or blog posts, but I’m asking them for the benefit of Stargazer World’s readers who might not have read those. Can you tell us who you are, and what you do in the gaming industry?

Steve: My name is Steve Kenson. I work as a staff designer for Green Ronin Publishing and also as a freelance designer and writer for other RPG publishers.

Sunglar: How did you begin playing role playing games?

Steve: I came across a first edition boxed set of GAMMA WORLD when I was 12 and begged my parents to buy it for me. I spent quite a bit of time rolling up random mutants, and then convinced some of my friends to play it with me. That led to playing D&D and countless other RPGs in the years sinc

Sunglar: What was your first superhero role playing game?

Steve: Villains & Vigilantes (which I just recently re-purchased from RPGNow). My middle school friends and I played ourselves, as the game suggested, as students at a school for young supers. My character had laser powers, as I recall.

Sunglar: What exactly is ICONS?

Steve: ICONS is a new superhero roleplaying game, designed by me and published by Adamant Entertainment.

Sunglar: What makes ICONS different from other superhero role playing games out there?

Steve: ICONS focuses less on character design details and more on quick game-play and broader strokes like character aspects, descriptive terms that carry certain game effects.

Sunglar: How does ICONS compare with your other creation Mutants & Masterminds? What similarities are there, what differences?

Steve: Both games look to emulate the comic book superhero genre. M&M does so with a fair amount of attention to detail, whereas ICONS paints with broad strokes. Both games play quickly, but ICONS is more description focused and M&M more rules focused.

Sunglar: Can you tell us about the mechanics used in ICONS? What makes them unique? What was your inspiration?

Steve: ICONS draws a lot of inspiration from prior games like Fudge, FATE, Feng Shui, and Marvel Super-Heroes, to name a few.

Sunglar: ICONS has random superhero generation rules, as well as including a point buy option. Do you think random generation encourages the feel you want for the game?

Steve: Random hero creation is a big part of why I wanted to create ICONS. I liked the idea of a quick design system that would provide inspiration and even challenge players’ imaginations to build interesting heroes around a collection of game traits.

Sunglar: When you say ICONS is inspired by “old school pick-up style superhero RPGs” obviously the classic Marvel Superheroes RPG comes to mind, were there any other significant influences that come to mind besides that game?

Steve: The aforementioned Villains & Vigilantes was my introduction random-roll superheroes, so there was certainly some inspiration there. Spirit of the Century (which I ran a fun game of) was also an inspiration.

Sunglar: How much of FATE is there in ICONS?

Steve: A fair amount of inspiration. I referred to ICONS as “FATE-inspired” rather than as a FATE branded product. There are a lot of similarities: the scale (what FATE calls the “ladder”), aspects, Fate/Determination points, etc., but the scale is different and ICONS handles aspects and the game mechanics of things like Determination somewhat differently.

Sunglar: What other ICONS related projects are you involved in?

Steve: I’ve written a few ICONS adventures. The first was released as a pre-order special and two others will be released as regular products from Adamant.

Sunglar: Seeing that superheroes are so popular, as evidenced by games, movies, animation, and the ubiquitous nature of comics in our culture, why do you think supers games don’t have a bigger share of the market?

Steve: Three main reasons that I can think of offhand: First, because D&D was the first RPG, fantasy has become and tends to remain the default genre. Second, comic books are a very visual medium, so superheroes may tend to do better in visual presentations like animation, films, or video games. Lastly, some RPG players might find the standards of the superhero genre restrictive compared to more blood-and-guts genres where you can kill monsters.

Sunglar: The release of ICONS seemed to signal a renewed interest in superhero games, if the product offered in websites selling electronic copies of role playing games is any indication. With the upcoming new edition of Mutants & Masterminds and the DC Universe game, do you think we are seeing a golden age of superhero rpgs?

Steve: There is certainly a wealth of choice when it comes to superhero RPGs on the market. Between new games like ICONS and DC Adventures, resurgent old school games like Villains & Vigilantes, and old standards like Champions, there’s pretty much a game for everybody out there.

Sunglar: I would think that the dynamics of team centered comics make them ideally suited for role playing games, but in my experience superhero games are one of the most difficult genres to run. I really like how ICONS deals with team dynamics. Do you think superhero games by their nature more difficult?

Steve: Not necessarily more difficult, but different. Superhero stories differ from a lot of other types of adventure stories. Superheroes are often more reactive, and more supportive of the status quo, than the main characters in other genres, who are often loners or rebels or looking to overthrow the status quo.

Sunglar: Has the popularity of loner, brooding anti-hero types affected the dynamic of superhero role playing games? Does ICONS support this style of superhero?

Steve: It certainly could. ICONS doesn’t presume what a hero’s motivations might be, simply that the heroes should have strong motivations. So you could use the game for a darker, more brooding type of game.

Sunglar: Do you think ICONS, both mechanically and/or thematically, offers the DM tools to make running superhero games easier?

Steve: One element is that ICONS puts the burden of the die-rolling in the players’ hands. They make all the tests, either actively or passively (their hero trying to resist another character’s action). This frees up the GM to focus more on the narrative elements of the game, including bringing different aspects into play.

Sunglar: How accessible is ICONS as a game for new gamers?

Steve: Hopefully, it’s easy for a new gamer to pick up and play, just like 12 year-old me picked up GAMMA WORLD and spent all that time rolling up mutants. I’ve read a number of stories about folks playing ICONS with their kids, which is very gratifying to hear.

Sunglar: What does it offer for the older gamer who has tried other superhero role playing games before?

Steve: Ideally, ICONS offers a quick pick-up game that is easy to run on the spur of the moment, is fun to play, and brings back some fond memories of superhero games past. Whatever the case, I hope that gamers old, new, and in-between have fun with it!

And that’s about it for my very first interview for Stargazer’s World. Let me reiterate my thanks to Steve for his time and patience. Here is looking forward to all his future projects.

Related posts:

1. Interview: Evil Hat Productions
2. More ICONS goodness…
3. Interview: Iain Lowson

In a nutshell ICONS is an easy to play, easy to pick up superhero game that harkens back to the classic superhero role-playing games of the 80s, specifically the old Marvel Superhero RPG, also called the FASERIP system, that got retro-cloned with the 4C system. It has all the charm of those old time games with a modern, simple and elegant mechanic with great touches that enhance the role-playing aspect of the game.

If you are a fan of superhero games, do yourself a favor and pick up ICONS. There is one caveat, if you are looking for Champions style granularity, or something like Mr. Kensosn’s Mutants and Masterminds, ICONS is not that. It’s light on rules but big on hearth, and believe me that is a good thing.

Want more details? Read on…

The first thing that struck me was the art style. The whole book is done in a very particular style by Dan Houser, reminiscent of the animated style often associated with modern superhero cartoons, like the Justice League or the more recent Batman team up series The Brave and the Bold. Art is abundant, the layout easy on the eye, the font easy to read. The tables take up a lot of the real estate, and I think some slight changes in the layout might have made the book even shorter (its 128 pages long including the ads) but I’m no expert on this. I’ll say this, I read about half of the book directly from the computer or on my iPhone and I had no trouble reading it.  The original PDF is a 9MB file, but I received an e-mail form Adamant letting me know a higher resolution copy is available for download where I purchased my copy.

In all sincerity the art took a little getting used to. I found it whimsical at first but eventually it became a little distracting. I would have loved other styles of art. I know what they were going for but I believe the system is strong enough to support all styles of superhero gaming, from over the top cartoon fun to more serious Watchmen style game and somebody who casually looks at the book in a book store or game store may dismiss it based on the art style. Don’t get me wrong I loved what Mr. Houser did, I just think the book would be better represented by a variety or art styles.

But that’s cosmetic, what about what’s under the hood? The game opens with an introduction to a very simple game mechanic and I think the discussion of the statistics and what results to expect is a strength that helps the reader understand what to expect from the system. The Determination mechanic, a resource available so characters can improve their chance of success, perform power stunts and other in game effects, seems a great balancing factor between super power houses and more down to earth heroes. The more powers you have the less Determination, so Superman has all the powers, but Batman has all the points to make his crazy plans work.

The idea that characters earn Determination through the complications and disadvantages (called Challenges in the game) they established for their characters enforces the tropes of the superhero genre. And I think this is one of the things the games does particularly well, emulate not only the superhero, but the situations and events typical to comic books. From Determination, to creating a team and how the Determination heroes contribute serve as resources to the members, to the role of leaders in hero groups, to catchphrases heroes utter,  all these elements emulate comic books, are quantified in the game, and reinforce the type of adventure that feel, well, super heroic!

Character generation is random, from assigning attributes in the order rolled, to rolling for the origin of the hero and number of powers. I’ve said it before; I’m NOT a fan of randomly generated heroes. But I did give it a chance (and the result is the topic of my previous post) and think it works. It harkened back to the days when I rolled characters using the Marvel Superheroes RPG, but the game has tweaks built in, like allowing you to swap two attributes and the inclusion of complimentary powers (called bonus powers in the game which can be confusing) within power descriptions that you can choose instead of rolling for the next random power, that lets you create a character with some internal consistency. If you don’t want random generation, there is simple point buy option in the book.

Power selection is varied enough that you can cover most powers you can think of. Undoubtedly someone will come up with some power that cannot be represented using the rules, but I can’t think of one for now. The descriptions are very general and some will require interpretation or house ruling, but I think this fits the style of play the game supports. This is a game that wants you to have fun first and foremost and worry about rules later.

My least favorite part of the book is the Taking Actions chapter. It lists the rules, attributes and what you can do with them like attacking and facing challenges and some of these concepts are important enough to have been explained with more details, perhaps a few additional examples. This alone may make the book a little harder to pick up by a newcomer which is a pity since this would be an ideal entry level superhero game. Character advancement is covered very briefly, integrated into the Determination mechanic, but this is one area of the game that could be expanded in future supplements.

The book could have been organized a little better, for example, an earlier discussion of what determination is. Reproducing important tables like material strength level and such in an appendix for easy reference. Some rules refer to other parts of the book and could have either been consolidated in one place or simply repeated. An index is something I always look for in a book. ICONS is small enough that you don’t get lost looking for things but an index would have been a great addition.

But these are minor complaints on an otherwise excellent book. The Game Master section is short but it contains solid advice on running the game and superhero campaigns in general. The sample villains are varied, colorful and fit many of the typical roles to be found in any superhero comic. The short sample adventure illustrates the concepts put forth in the Game Master chapter.

The game also includes some stock characters and creatures, enough to extrapolate much of what you will need. There is some discussion on weapon damage in the rules but I think some tables with real world items and their game effects would have been a good idea.

ICONS is not a game for someone looking to have every detail spelled out for them. It requires Game Master Interpretation, player trust and participation. So many modern games try to quantify every aspect of play and end up becoming endless lists of rules and exceptions. Not ICONS! ICONS is meant to be played by people who trust each other and want to tell a fun story together. That is the best recommendation I can think of for this game!

All this comes from reading the game, I’ve yet to put it to the test, as soon as I get to play I’ll come back and let you know how it went.

Go roll up a character and have fun! I want to hear your stories playing ICONS…

PS – Adamant Entertainment recently announced that all proceeds of ICONS for Kindle and iBooks will be donated to relief efforts surrounding the Gulf oil spill. Kudos to them for this! This is the kind of company to support.

Related posts:

1. What about the ICONS Character Folio? A review…
2. Your daily dose of ICONS!
3. More ICONS goodness…

Another game that makes cooperative character creation necessary is the latest edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game. In that game each party has to chose why they are working together (there’s a limited number of choices) and each party type grants certain abilities. There’s even a mechanic for handling in-party stress.

What I’ve learned in my years of roleplaying experience is, that a game definitely profits when the first session of a new game consists of character creation and coming up with a reason of why these characters work together. And in my opinion game masters should make it clear that the characters are supposed to cooperate. In-party intrigue and infighting may be fun once in a while, but when the party members are on each other’s throats all the time, it has usually an detrimental effect on any game.

My advice to GMs is, that when you’ve decided what game to run, schedule a character creation session. Talk about what the players have to expect. Then ask the players to discuss their character concepts and make sure each character at least knows one other character in the party. Another possible connections are being a friend of a friend or having the same mentor, patron or enemy. Whatever it is give the players a reason why the would work together. And trust me, forcing the player characters to work together “because the king said so” never works. It’s better when the players come up with something themselves. The GMs role should be to encourage them to think about reasons.

As with all roleplaying advice your mileage may vary, but creating characters as a team effort definitely made things much easier for the players and the GM. If you haven’t done so, give it a try.

Related posts:

1. Starblazer Adventures: Our character creation session
2. Ad Astra PDQ character creation
3. Improve Your Game: Narrative Control

The older I get the more I realize I’m set on my ways. There are things I do that when something disrupts them it annoys me to no end. In an effort to fight stagnation I’m trying break my routines, do things differently and shake things up in my life. Gaming is no exception!

Over this past few months I’ve been exposed to many new gaming friends, through the Puerto Rico Role Players Facebook Group, Twitter and this wonderful blog, and from everyone I learn something new.  Some years ago I would not consider playing games of a more collaborative nature between the Game Master and Players, help organize large gathering of gamers or written my ideas about gaming and shared them with the world. All things I’m doing, and I’ve decided my next game will be more in the vein of modern storytelling games. I’m really itching to run a game using FATE.

But in the more immediate reality of my weekly gaming session I recently tried out something new. When you are a DM/GM on a weekly game for a prolonged period of time it’s easy to fall into a rut, or begin repeating yourself. I’m a big advocate on player feedback, and always end my session asking my players:

• Did you like today’s session? Why?
• Tell me one thing you liked…
• One thing you didn’t like…

It may sound simple but those are some tough questions, especially when someone tells you they did NOT like the session and shoot off a list of things. I think it’s best to discuss something like this before hand and establish some ground rules like: avoid personal attacks, be constructive), etc.

My current campaign has been ruining for close to a year now and due to character death and some player changes, I believed it may be due for some refocusing, repurposing, letting go of old plots and trying out some new things. Of course I’m working from my point of view, so I figured I need to try something different. A player questionnaire!

I tried this before for a Star Wars campaigns some years ago, but it was at the beginning of a campaign, no tin the midst of an ongoing game. I was asking them to pick apart the game I’ve dedicated the better part of a year to, so you can imagine that if you need to strengthen your resolve and not take it personally for the simple question at the end of every session, it would be that much harder for a campaign questionnaire.

So far four of my six players have answered the questionnaire and the results have been revealing.  What they expect, where they see their characters, what they like and dislike. Some have been pretty blunt and some details might have shocked me, but I consider this exercise a success and it already has given me ideas I used as recently as last night’s session.

I realize there are a lot of gaming questionnaires out there, but I’ll share a version of my questionnaire with you. I’ve cleaned up specific references to my campaign so you may change it and use it to your own needs. I’ll just let you know this was for a year long fantasy campaign in which characters are all in the 7^th to 8^th level range. I hope it can be of some use…

Let me know what you think, or what sort of questionnaires you use for your own games. Happy gaming!

Related posts:

1. Pleased to Meet you! I’m Shinobicow
2. Meet the team!
3. Improve Your Game: Character creation as a team effort

STARGAZER: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Can you please begin by introducting yourself to the readers?

BILL: My name is Bill Coffin. I am and RPG writer and designer, known primarily for my work with Palladium Books in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More recently, I published an RPG with West End Games called Septimus, a sprawling space opera game based on the D6 system.

Much of my work lately has been on getting a small publishing company off the ground called Reliquary Press. We publish fantasy, science fiction and horror novels. I have published my King Arthur novel, Pax Morgana, through it, but we’ve got some other titles on the market too, such as From the Herald’s Wearied Eye by Jessica McHugh, Succumbing to Gravity by Richard Farnsworth and Warhead by Ricardo Delgado, who is also an artist for Dark Horse Comics.

During the day, I’m a business journalist. I run Risk Management magazine as well as an associated blog (www.riskmanagementmonitor.com), podcast and Twitter feed. My work has been featured also in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and a number of other trade publications.

Most importantly, I’ve got a great family. My wife Allison and I have two children, and we live in New Jersey. It’s not nearly as weird there as that Jersey Shore program would have you believe.

STARGAZER: What was the first roleplaying game you ever played and how did you get into gaming?

BILL: I’m one of those old school gamers, so my first game was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, when I was about nine years old. However, I found it a little complex for my liking (and my brothers preferred something simpler), so we spent a lot of time playing that classic Moldvay Basic D&D boxed set, and from there we hit every other boxed-set TSR RPG to come out during the 1980s – Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, Top Secret…you name it.

What got me into gaming was that I had the luck of growing up during the golden age of the RPG hobby. Back then, RPGs were something new. It was before immersive video games, hell, even before cable TV and home video, so an RPG really was a doorway into other worlds. The replay value was off the chart, and for imaginiative players, it provided truly endless replay. When you’re a kid and your friends all game, getting a group together is never a problem. So I just got into gaming and never really left.

STARGAZER: Are your currently in a roleplaying group and what are you playing?

BILL: Nothing currently, alas. my gaming group is now very small, and we generally cant game except by way of e-mail, which has its pluses and its minuses. We’re getting a Pirates of the Caribbean” type of game going using D20 Modern as the ruleset, but since it’s PBeM, the actual rules stuff will be handled by me off stage, so the game remains as immersive and as narrative for the players as possible.

STARGAZER: What is your all-time favorite RPG?

BILL: That’s a hard one. Palladium Fantasy, I think. I played that exclusively for so long, and wrote so much for it, it’s kind of in my blood. However, the game mechanics of that are way too heavy for my tastes anymore. I much prefer something simpler, like AD&D or Castles & Crusades (a much more elegant retelling of the AD&D system).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness also has a huge place in my heart, mainly for the utterly superb After the Bomb setting, which my friends and I played the hell out of. Rest in peace, Erick. Your games did wonders for me.

STARGAZER: Can you tell us when you first got introduced into the "industry"?

BILL: Back in the mid-late 1990s, I took a break from novel writing (I had published two at that point) and submitted a sourcebook pitch to Palladium for fun. I got picked up rather quickly by Palladium, and the pay was great. Working with Palladium was really fun and rewarding, and it was just really easy to keep that going. After a while, I was working contracts on a regular basis. I suspect that maybe had I not gone full time with Palladium and just kept handling individual projects for them, things might not have soured between Kevin and myself. But I’ll never know. Alas.

STARGAZER: You are credited in quite a few RPG products. What game was the most fun to design and why?

BILL: Systems Failure was a special thing because Kevin had this wild idea for a game setting and I asked if we could just bang out a quick RPG for the setting, something small and light, like Robotech or TMNT. He went for it, and we got that thing turned around in just about a month. What a whirlwind job that was! I was really proud we pulled it off, and the fan response to the game was quite enjoyable. I got e-mail from more than a few real-life militia who said they had a copy of the game in their bunkers. A rare distinction, to be sure.

STARGAZER: You latest game, Bill Coffin’s Septimus, had a pretty troublesome history. As far as I know it has been cancelled at least once and you considered various systems before it finally got released at WEG’s first Open D6 product. Now Eric Gibson, owner of WEG has returned the rights to Septimus back to you. Can you tell us a bit more about Septimus’ history?

BILL: I’d like to begin by saying that my dealings with West End Games have really been with one person, Eric Gibson, who has since taken an indefinite hiatus from the gaming industry. Eric is a really nice guy who has only ever wanted to produce quality games for people. While we were never able to really make Septimus work as initially planned, I have no hard feelings about it, and I wish Eric the very best.

My deal with West End was originally based on a fixed period of time between my signing of our contract and Eric’s publishing of the game. I delivered the game, and that initial time frame expired, so I called in the cancellation option of my contract. While weighing my options for what to do with the game,Eric came back and offered to pay me up front for publishing rights to the game, which was to be released at last year’s Gen Con. It was a very fair deal, and I took it, but unfortunately, Eric couldn’t get the game published by convention time. He had a bunch of softcovers done up through Lulu (I have a few here at my house), and we sold a bunch at the show, but that’s about it. During all this time, there was the whole preorder fiasco, which pretty much happened apart from me. After a while, Eric decided to get out of WEG, and he very graciously returned the rights to Septimus to me, rather than have the game linger in limbo. I am very grateful to Eric for his consideration.

At the moment, I am sending out electronic copies of Septimus to anybody who asked for one. I’m also working on a version of the game that I can upload to vendors such as RPGNow and DriveThruRPG where it can be sold for $0.00. That way, the game will stay a free D6 product into the future. Of course, I need to square that with Eric, but I’m hoping he won’t mind.

STARGAZER: I think you once mentioned on the rpg.net forums that you were interested using FATE for Septimus. Is this still an option for a future rerelease of Septimus?

BILL: Anything’s possible. I seriously considered converting the game from D6 to FATE because I’m a huge fan of the FUDGE system, and FATE is a really nice retooling of that. There was also a fair amount of enthusiasm for FATE, so I might convert the game over for them, regardless.

One option put forth to me by a fan, and one that I have considered for some time, is to simply make a systemless setting book for Septimus, akin with what Green Ronin did for Freeport. That way, folks can take the system and do what they want with it.

STARGAZER: Recently I noticed a trend that RPG bloggers start their own small publishing companies or pitch their designs to big publishers. What do you – as an industry veteran – recommend to anyone who is interested in getting a job in the RPG industry?

BILL: Don’t expect a whole lot of money out of it. I once heard the best way to make a small fortune in this business is to start with a large one. Now, with print-on-demand publishing these days, the barriers to entry for this industry are lower than ever, especially for outfits that choose to publish digitally. (Honestly, I hardly ever buy hard copy games anymore; almost my entire library exists on my laptop.)
I think the key here is this: if you love RPGs, and if you love writing them, then by all means, why not fire up your own operation and throw your work on the market? I know the bigger publishers would rather things boil down a bit, but if you’re a startup, this is a great time to get into the business. It really all comes down to something Kevin Siembieda once told me, and it is absolutely true: you have to be a fan of your own work. If you are, then you’re well on your way to making it. If you’re not, then you’re probably in the wrong line of work.

STARGAZER: The internet and the various social networks have changed the way game designers, publishers and artists communicate with their customers. How do you use the ‘net to stay in touch with your fans? Are you on Twitter?

BILL: I tend to use RPGnet a whole lot, but folks can always reach me at bill.coffin@gmail.com. I’m finally getting off my lazy butt and getting my own site up and running over at www.billcoffin.me (which will remain that way until I get billcoffin.com back). You can reach me on Facebook and you can follow me at www.twitter.com/bill_coffin.

I’m also a big fan of podcasts, and I occasionally get a guest spot on a cool show like Kicked in the Dicebags. I’d like to get my own podcast off the ground; the key is making sure the content is unique. I’m talking with fellow writer Jason Vey about something that mainly focus on writing and the geek stuff that inspires guys like us. I’d like to think folks would listen to something like that. We’ll see.

STARGAZER: Thanks again for taking your time for this interview!

Related posts:

1. Freebie: Bill Coffin’s Septimus
2. Bill Coffin’s Septimus will be WEG’s first big release under the OpenD6 banner!
3. WEG: This is the end

The RPG has been split into two books: “Volume One: Your Story” contains all the rules needed to run your own games, while “Volume Two: Our World” gives some in-depth detail on the Dresdenverse and contains the stats for numerous monsters and NPCs. While the game can be played with the first book only, I wholeheartedly recommend getting both of them.

The two hardcover books will be released in June/July, but the final PDF version has been released on RPGNow/DriveThruRPG yesterday. The bundle containing both volumes sets you back $40 but this is a good price considering you get over 700 pages of top-quality roleplaying material. In my humble opinion the Dresden Files RPG is the most beautifully game ever made by Evil Hat Productions!

Related posts:

1. News from the Dresden Files RPG
2. Dresden Files RPG: Nevermore
3. Dresden Files RPG: Preorder Is Go!

STARGAZER: At first I want to thank you for taking your time for this interview. Before we get to talk about FATE and the upcoming Dresden Files RPG, can you please introduce yourselves to our readers?

FRED: I’m Fred Hicks, and I run Evil Hat Productions, a small press publisher of role-playing games.  I’ve written a few too, contributing to Spirit of the Century and the Dresden Files RPG and Fate, as well as creating the weird little game Don’t Rest Your Head.  I also do book layout and art direction, both for Evil Hat and for Hero Games at the moment, as well as for other companies on a contract basis.

LENNY: I’m Lenny Balsera, and I am the current line developer for the Fate system. I served as lead  system developer for the Dresden Files, and was an assistant developer for Spirit of the Century. I also do freelance work. (Are you listening, RPG publishing world? I do freelance work!)

STARGAZER: What was the first RPG you played and what are you playing today?

FRED: Red box D&D was where I started in the 3rd grade or so. But today I’m playing… uh. What have I had time to play lately?  Mainly board games: Dominion figures in predominately there, though I also go heads-up with my wife over the 2-player game Lost Cities.

LENNY: I started playing Red box D&D when I was in fourth grade, and moved to AD&D 2nd shortly after that. Right now, I’m running a Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies campaign that’s close to finishing, interspersed with one-shots of Zombie Cinema, D&D 4E, and the new Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin.

STARGAZER: On my search for free games I eventually stumbled upon FATE 2.0, the game Evil Hat designed, based on Steffan O’ Sullivan’s FUDGE. Alas it seems impossible to get a look at it’s predecessor FATE 1.0. Can you tell us a bit about that game and when you came up with the idea to FATE?

FRED: Sure. Fate 1.0 is really the loose collection of notes Rob Donoghue and I pulled together to codify our early hacks of FUDGE to support the play of Amber (and eventually Buffy) using that system. It’s where we first brought in the idea of aspects and so on.  But the version of Fate you found, 2.0, that’s really the first form that was put together and firmly established for the public at large, and was the result of us running Fate around the block for a few more laps than that.  So really that’s the first “product” — even though it was a free one — that we got out there in the Fate line.

STARGAZER: What sets FATE apart from other games are definitely the Aspects. Can you explain how the Aspects work in the game and how you came up with that concept in the first place?

FRED: They’re a combination of two ideas.  Before we took Fudge to the point of it being its own thing almost in the form of Fate, I ran a game or two that was in “straight Fudge”.  I did away with Attributes entirely, even then, sticking only to Skills and Gifts. And in those games, I let Gifts establish some absolutes, some things which were simply true about the characters, like “Greatest Poet Of His Generation”, and so forth.  They’d color play intensely, establishing areas in which the character simply couldn’t be beaten without facing an opponent who was in his or her same league, carrying a similarly applicable Gift.

When we started talking about the vaguely-formed roots of Fate, Rob brought in an idea from 7th Sea, where characters *paid points* (instead of getting points back) to have bad things attach to their characters, like a nemesis or a penchant for drunkenness.  This combined with my previous Gift idea to create a sort of alchemical fusion we called Aspects.  You could be the “Biggest Drunk Ever” with these things, but you’d get a positive payoff whenever the Aspect goosed you (eventually we called that a compel, but we weren’t there yet), and you’d be able to utilize it to your advantage whenever you could work out a situation where it would help (“That guy’s just a Drunk, we don’t have to take him seriously” as a lead-in to a surprise attack, for example).

LENNY: I basically look at aspects as “spotlight enhancers” – when good or bad stuff happens to your character, there’s an incentive in play to center that stuff around your aspects. The result is that what occurs in the game is uniquely “about” the main characters in a way that I think is, pardon the pun, compelling. There’s no real such thing as an “everyman” story in Fate – it’s always a story indelibly starring the PCs that are present.

STARGAZER: When I read through the FATE 2.0 PDF yesterday, while preparing a few questions, I noticed that there’s a quote from Jim Butcher’s “Storm Front” in there. Did you even back then have plans
for a roleplaying game based on the Harry Dresden novels, or was this just coincidence?

FRED: I’d known Jim Butcher for years already at that point, so it was a case of liking my friend’s stuff and tossing a reference in there because it was fun to do it. So, sort of coincidence — it was that friendship that eventually made the connection for Evil Hat to produce the Dresden Files roleplaying game.

STARGAZER: Spirit of the Century, your pulp-genre game powered by FATE is supposed to be a pickup game, but it’s a whopping 400+ pages. Some people might be intimidated by the sheer size of the book. What’s the best way for new players to approach SotC?

FRED: Well, first off, let’s address that whole “400 pages is intimidating!” thing with SOTC.  It’s a whopping 400 pages, yes, but in a 6×9 book. Each page is a single column of text, less than 500 words, maybe more like 350. I think people lose sight of that because they spend so much time focusing on page count and not looking at any other physical facts about the book.  The 6×9 form factor was done to make it more “packable” (as in “toss it in my backpack & go”), and to feel more pulpy in the hand, so to speak.  If we’d done it as a 8.5×11 thing, I don’t think the hand-feel would have been quite right, but it would have been more like a 200-250 page game in that format.  Is *that* less intimidating? Because if it is, then the intimidation ain’t in the content itself.

LENNY: And honestly, a lot of the book is really examples and our personal recommendations on how to deal with the various skills and stunts and whatnot. The actual rules don’t take up a whole lot of the book – you can look at the rest of the stuff as a lengthy series of recommendations, but if you don’t learn all the specific trappings for every skill and all that stuff, it’s no big deal and shouldn’t slow down play.

FRED: But to get to the meat of your question: Don’t try to take it in all at once. It’s laid out step by step, with plenty of ways to hit the fast forward button.  Get a group together and do character creation — which is always a social, collaborative experience in Fate, not an act of “lonely fun” where you sit in a shadowed room and make up characters by yourself.  Character creation *is* play — you’ll see that attitude expressed throughout Evil Hat’s games, in fact.  If you don’t like the feeling of being “on the spot” to come up with things about your character during character creation, easy — don’t do it. We have an “on the fly” character creation method that’ll suit you fine.  Don’t want to look through the stunts chapter to find out which 5 you want for your character? Flip to the back of the book and use some of the quick-pick packages we lay out for people there. Or don’t take them right away and add them on the fly during play.

It’s easy to come to the system at square one and think “man, this thing is big/intimidating/complicated”, but it isn’t. You can get familiar with it in small incremental steps, and it gets clear pretty quickly that there’s a lot of self-similarity among all the moving parts — a side-effect of a design principle we call the “fate fractal”. Which is why you’ll see a lot of fans of the system talk about how it’s actually rules light despite the apparent heft.  The heft is simply because we like providing lots of examples, lots of inspiration, lots of advice.

STARGAZER: In SotC you introduced stunts to the FATE system. When I remember correctly, you made some changes to stunts in your upcoming Dresden Files Roleplaying Game. Can you explain us, how stunts work and what changes you made for the upcoming game?

FRED: Lenny, want to field this one?

LENNY: Stunts have a lot in common with feats from D&D 3E and its numerous relatives – they’re a way of distinguishing your character by giving them a few more special tricks and shticks to differentiate them from another character who might have a similar skill set. It’s a way of further focusing what you’re good at – a lot of characters might have a reason to be good with Guns, but there’s the akimbo pistols guy, there’s the sniper guy, there’s the firearms scholar (using Guns as a knowledge skill), and so on.

The main thing we wanted to do with stunts in the DFRPG was unify their mechanical function a little more – SotC’s method was sort of haphazard and rough, taking genre tropes and whatever we thought was cool and adapting it. So there are some stunts that have a little more heft than others, etc. For Dresden, we wanted to open up the possibilities of stunts more and make them customizable, so while we do provide some examples of stunts for each skill, the real mojo comes from creating your own and fine-tuning your character that way.

STARGAZER: Let’s talk a bit about the Dresden Files RPG. You plan to release the game as two books, one containing the rules, while the others is about the world. Why did you decide to split it into two books and will the game playable if you only get the rules?

FRED: For one, because a single 700-page full color full size hardcover book is a recipe for carpal tunnel syndrome.  But yes, it’ll be entirely playable with just the rules found in volume 1, Your Story.  You’ll have to come up with more monster-stats on your own, and you won’t have a ton of setting info that’s great for fans of the novels without volume 2, Our World, but some people aren’t looking for setting.  Which brings us to the second reason for splitting the book — it lets people pick and choose what parts of the game they want for themselves instead of having to grab hold of a Ptolus-rivaling tome of infinite slaying.

LENNY: Yeah, the development of the game has been influenced by the fact that we’re all huge Dresden Files fanboys and fangirls on the team – we wanted to be as inclusive as we could with the content. So every day, it seemed, there was something new from the books we could mention, a new thing to stat, a footnote to make. The temptation to provide both a set of complete rules to experience the universe with
and have a workable “fan guide” for the setting was pretty profound. Compound this process over the years that we’ve been in development, and eventually you end up with an enormous tome of a thing. It seemed a crime to cut a majority of that content, so the two-book approach seemed the most reasonable thing to do.

STARGAZER: The development of the Dresden Files RPG took quite a while. What kind of hurdles did you encounter during the development? And where there any cool ideas you had to drop?

FRED: Oh, I’m sure there were all sorts of things that got dropped at one point or another.  But really, we managed to fit nearly all that was awesome into the game and left out nearly everything that wasn’t. Which is something of an answer to why it took so long.  We had hurdles aplenty.  Our first full iteration of the system was crap — seriously, just crap.  It took us a little while to get to where we’d admit that, and when we did admit it, we agreed it had to be nuked from orbit.  So we did.

LENNY: Yeah, that was around the point that I initially got brought on to the project – we came to a realization pretty early on that Fate v2 just wasn’t robust enough to drill down to the level of detail we wanted. So Dresden required us to reengineer the whole damn thing from the ground up, which was an undertaking of rather dramatic proportions. The chronicle of the affair is on our website.

FRED: But a lot of the hurdles were really about not yet being the company that could take on the job.  We were handed a license that frankly outmassed us by a few orders of magnitude.  So in a way the delays were as much about becoming a company that *was* capable enough — and finally, with a development team that was big enough – to really take on all parts of the game.  That alone took us a few years, but it also produced things like Don’t Rest Your Head and Spirit of the Century, literally as side effects of the whole process.

LENNY: Right. At the beginning of things, Fred and Rob didn’t really know a whole hell of a lot about publishing. (I still don’t.) So there was this period where their main goal turned toward learning about publishing and growing into a business, a role that Fred has risen to manage with skill and equanimity.

STARGAZER: Will there be additional releases for the game after the two core books have been released?Will there be official Dresden Files adventures or supplements?

FRED: Well, to get right to it, we don’t have a license that covers doing anything other than what we’re already doing.  We can negotiate for more if we want, but that would need to be a separate agreement, a separate contract.  And Jim as well as we are invested in the idea of keeping the game manageable for the fans and avoiding too much in the way of supplement sprawl.  That said, I could see us doing a set of adventures in PDF at least, if the demand’s there. But for now I think we mainly just want to get the core game out there and see what people do with it.  Their ideas are almost certain to be better than our own.

LENNY: Keep in mind that there’s likely to be a lot of “unofficial” support on the Internet from us, too. I mean, I plan to be wherever the fan community is, talking about statting future books and whatnot. I could see some free Web supplements happening, stuff like that. We’re Dresden fans too, you know? We want to babble about it at length.

STARGAZER: What are you plans for the time after the Dresden Files RPG is done? Aside from a long vacation, of course?

FRED: Drinkin’.

LENNY: Amen, brother.

FRED: Eventually we’ll recover from that, and we’ll look at getting to work on a Core Fate product, one without any of the setting or genre trappings of the previous couple products.  And we’ve got some other stuff in the hopper for supporting Spirit of the Century, and maybe some new directions to go on as well.  But I’ve been talking, internally, about this “Wall of Dresden” effect.  We can’t see over that Wall. We haven’t cleared it yet. When we do, we’ll be in an undiscovered country.

STARGAZER: Some people claim the gaming hobby is in the decline and will be replaced by other past-times if it doesn’t change. What are you thoughts on that issue? Is pen & paper roleplaying doomed? Do RPGs have to become more like MMOs or board games to attract new players?

FRED: I think it’s the nature of people to look at something that was once familiar at the point that those familiar things start to change and decide that the sky must be falling.  Is the pen & paper roleplaying we grew up with doomed?  Well, no.  I think it’s already past dead in the sense that it isn’t what it was before.  It grew up, went to college, got a job, and had kids.  It’s not the same thing it used to be.  But is that bad? Is that doomed? Is that really “dead”? No, I think it’s just different. Kids these days! With their hair and those pants and their story games. Who can figure!

LENNY: I don’t know. It’s not like RPGs have ever really had a broad, mainstream appeal if you compare them to other types of entertainment. Can you really compare any phase of Dungeons and Dragons’ history to that of any relatively successful board game, even? I don’t like absolute terms like “doomed” – I mean, you don’t really hear a lot about model railroad building, but there are still people who do it, right? It’s probable that the way we’ve looked at producing and distributing RPGs in the past is no longer feasible due to a variety of factors, but some people have been arguing that this has always been the case. The recording industry has been stuttering its way through a similar process since electronic music distribution has become more dominant. Markets change. That’s just how it goes. I don’t think it’s the games that necessarily need to change, as much as the business models used to sell them.

FRED: I don’t think RPGs have to become more like MMOs or board games (though board games are chock full of great ideas these days, as are MMOs).  I think some of them can, some of them should, some of them will.  But there’s no imperative to imitate here.  I think there’s an imperative to innovate, though, and games which don’t are going to wither on the vine.  Companies and designers that insist on doing the same old same old are going to be in trouble.  That’s not a dig on things like the Old School Renaissance either, as I think they’re still doing something new in their revisitation of What Is Old School — whether they admit it to themselves or not. Revivals have their place, always. You don’t ignore your history. But you’ve got to build on it.

LENNY: I think it’s also a potentially a mistake to assume that these audiences will cross-pollinate. There’s no special reason why someone who likes World of Warcraft will like D&D, other than the fantasy
color. Yeah, we can argue about the influence of tabletop mechanics on computer RPG mechanics and whatnot, but that doesn’t really mean anything in terms of actually identifying a market. And D&D 4E *did* have its mechanics influenced a lot by what’s happening with MMOs… has that really helped it any in terms of sales? (I’m asking because I don’t know.)

FRED: All I know is that I’m still playing the pen & paper games. That they still scratch an itch that other entertainments don’t.  From looking at Evil Hat’s fans, I can’t say as I’m alone in that either.

STARGAZER: Recently I noticed a new trend: prolific bloggers start their own companies and publish their own RPG products. What tips do you have for any aspiring publisher?

FRED: More than would fit into the next ten interviews.  If you want to see my thoughts on publishing, I blog about it with some frequency over on http://www.deadlyfredly.com/ — I’m doing my best to run Evil Hat transparently, so folks can look under the hood and see how it ticks, and figure out what parts of it will work for them.  I also did a round up of some of my earlier advice posts, before I started up Deadly Fredly, over on my tumblr, http://deadlyfredly.tumblr.com/post/504942222/old-publishing-advice-links — so start there, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

STARGAZER: Thanks again for answering our questions, good luck with the upcoming Dresden Files RPG and I hope we can talk again in the future!

FRED: Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure!

LENNY: Thanks for the opportunity.

Related posts:

1. Necessary Evil
2. Review: Smallville RPG by Margaret Weis Productions
3. Preview: Kingdom Builder by Chaotic Shiny Productions

You can check out all the details about the upcoming game and the preorder over at
dresdensfilesrpg.com! If you are a fan of the FATE system or Jim Butchers novels, you definitely should check this game out!

Related posts:

1. News from the Dresden Files RPG
2. Dresden Files RPG: Nevermore
3. The Dresden Files RPG now available at RPGNow!