I’ve begun advancing the world history to the game start, but would like your opinions and help. Here’s what I put up last night and this morning: Empire of Iron (our game’s main page), Recent History, for the updates to the situation that I’m sketching out, and Rumors of Iron for other thoughts that are bouncing around in my head. They may not all be true, but they fit the image of the Iron Empire (and a few other things so far) in my mind.
We’re off this week– Eric is rolling into town on Friday. We’ll start the game (the D&D part) next Friday. Over the next few nights I’ll try to set up what’s gone on since we halted the Dawn of Worlds game, especially local to the start area. I’m asking for more input too– see the post above.
If you’ve changed your character a lot from what we last saw, please tell us… if there’s a full plate clad paladin in the midst, I think everyone wants to know.
We got everyone’s characters close to complete last night. It sounds like a very interesting group is emerging… when a town’s in trouble, they call The A Team. (Or similar…)
If you want to discuss character backgrounds and how you’d like to know each other, start up a discussion in comments. As always, if you’ll have trouble making it Friday, please let us know. We’ll be world building… which should be a lot of fun.
OT: Kev, as a human you have favored class any. That allows one of your classes to “break away” from the classes that must be within a level of each other. So Rogue 2/Monk 18 (and the reverse) are perfectly allowable progression paths. So is Rogue 1/Paladin 1/Dragon Shaman 1/Monk 15 if you’re feeling wacky…
We’ll shift to a new game this Friday. Kev has important stuff to worry about that will prevent him from prepping the Shadowrun game. Rather than cancel the session, we’ll shift to our backup game.
Our backup game is D&D. Fortunately, we decided on our backup quite a while ago, so I’m ready to roll. Here’s all the detail you need to know…
**Note: There are already some changes. Tomorrow night’s session will probably be more character research & design, while the following session will be the world building. Jennifer has to leave relatively early in the session– she’s attending a party and providing the video game system– so we’ll save the collaborative world building til next time. **
UPDATE: Medical emergencies intervened on the 7th. We’ll reschedule for the 14th.
We left off in mid fight, deep in the basement filled with bugs. We rejoined the three assault team members… and together the 9 of us are fighting off cockroaches of varying sizes.
Can everyone make it Friday?
IC Punishment, OOC Reward, a good post about a common and tricky subject. I wonder how much this thought should apply to common things, like wounds.
West Marches: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. An interesting persistent world experiment. A cool setup for a game people can drop in and out of randomly. New: Part 4: Death and Danger.
Learning to explain failure brings attention to a common stumbling point.
DNA Phil’s blog. His post about what’s he’s learned over the years is particularly good.
Cool way to collaboratively flesh out backgrounds, etc. (Stolen shamelessly from this Gamecraft thread🙂 Here’s a technique that’s been in use by loads of people, for a long damn time, which was put into print in the game The Mountain Witch:
Instead of mining a character background or world stuff for a figure suitable to some need in the game, tell a player that they see someone or react in some way to a feature, and then ask them why.
“A figure comes out of the sweathouse. It is a man from your past, a respected mentor. You move quickly to greet him. Who is he, Joe?”
“Joe, your character pauses at an unmarked grave by the side of the road for a moment, and bows his head before moving on. Why did he do that?”
Read the thread for some good discussion about when and how it works well.
Last week we enjoyed some board games instead of hiding out in a city full of bugs. This week, we return to our previous quarantine conditions…
Let us know if you’ll have any problem making the game. Otherwise, we’ll duck, weave, and gather some cash rescuing big players in town.
This upcoming Friday currently looks good for gaming. If you’re going to have a problem making it, just let me know.
The situation, to recap: We’re trapped in Chicago, under quarantine, in a city full of bugs. (Though the bugs have been getting quiet and disappearing from the street for a while.)
Three electronic boxes just revealed that this was all predicted long ago, and spat out a list of ten names. If we keep them safe– or, better, smuggle them out– we’ll get 100k Nuyen apiece. Meanwhile, escape from the quarantine looks difficult; the lake’s patrolled by an aircraft carrier, and they’re collapsing buildings all around the city and manning nasty patrols that are tight enough to keep drones in.
[Updated to add: Landon’s advice on picking Aspects to ensure characters have Description, Connections, Story, and Situation.]
Though the advice applies to just about any Pulp game that has a strongly supportive system.
This is all quoted from Roger’s post on the Yahoo FateRPG list: