Saturday, April 6, 1875; Missouri Wilds [1. This was a bad session for timing; people were late and a session break in the middle cut down on the “in world game time”.]
At breakfast, I brought up that thorny topic, the madman’s money. It was not as hard as I thought it would be; the demon dollars couldn’t grip tight on me. I told the Doc and Malachai that they were the victims of the madman’s blade, that they had more of a claim to the cash he was carrying than any other man. So I handed them the fat wad of money I’d taken from the dead man– Lucien’s wallet. They set about protesting, but could not come up with a better plan. They promised to think on a proper division during the day, and we’d talk around our fire tonight.
Category: Roleplaying
I’ll keep it below the fold, ’cause it’s long again.
Below is the rough draft of the journal for my character, Robert Cassidy. I enjoyed writing it up, and hope the inspiration clings. Some of this was backstory; the session began in mid-march trying to join the wagon train. Much of the writing prior to St. Louis was finding the character’s voice and explaining backgrounds and flaws. Hopefully, a lot of flavor came through.
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Making Compels Sing
From Blue Collar Space, a look at how to encourage compels and prevent some of the defensive reflexes they sometimes bring out.
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Dresden Files: Baltimore Preview
Dresden Files: Preview of their sample city Baltimore. Lots of statted out NPCs as examples.
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Aces and Eights: Characters
We just completed our character generation session, though we were a little short with Dad out sick. Here’s the skinny on the characters to date. [The dice were cold; Kev wound up having to generate 4 sets of stats to finally wind up with one decent set.]
Kev created Dr. Emerson Brown, a wealthy son of a doctor and landlord in New York City. He had a great upbringing, but wants to escape dad’s shadow. He just turned 21, and is headed out west with a few guns and a medical kit. He’s known for his doctoring and has a few other white collar skills. He’s impulsive, short tempered, and has high standards. He has bedside manner, and comes off completely dismissive. He could be interesting to be around.
Mike used his last character, a kid of 15, and just finished up allocating the new building points (for reputation) and buying more gear tonight. He has outdoors and riding skills, and is headed out west to start up a ranch, capture some wild mustangs, and turn a tidy profit. He’s terrible at lying.
I created a boy from rural Tennessee, Bob Cassidy, now 19. He’s got a lot of natural talent [high wisdom], good cooking/fishing/observation type skills, a lot of experience handling a wagon, and some good gossip and talking skills. He won’t say no to food, and can’t lie to save his life. If you hear rustling at midnight, it’s probably just Bob looking for a snack.
We’re going to start at noon on Saturday. We’ll start off in St. Louis and join a wagon train, supply up, and start off for the territories to homestead a town, or build up a struggling town with a lot of new talent.
Late last night, I was thinking about aides that would have streamlined character generation a little more. The core realization is based off of something Fred Hicks wrote about 4e; that the character sheet you use in play is a lot simpler than the character worksheet you use to derive those numbers. I used that insight to create an Aces and Eights character worksheet. It guides you through the process from stat rolls to finishing up skill points and buying gear.
Here’s my character, Bob Cassidy. Without all of the math in between, and by separating the combat and non-combat parts of the character, I think it’s pretty easy to get a feel for him.
Speaking of math, here’s a simple spreadsheet for spending.
Finally, the real easiest way to do it: use the character generator. It does the math for you, and will roll or allow you to input your rolls. If I hadn’t already done things several times, this would be the way I’d enter it all– for the math check if nothing else!
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Stalking Diaspora
Doyce has a couple of good posts for Diaspora: Being Immortal and a huge Session One post. Let the stalking begin. 😉
Judd’s game, a thread on ENWorld.
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Aces and Eights resources
Our upcoming game is Aces and Eights, and we’ll be playing members of a wagon train heading west. Since there’s a lot of changes from real world history, and it’s a new system to us, I thought I’d dig up some links.
The history of the continent is wildly different, due to a much earlier civil war. This annotated map does a good job of showing the various countries and conflict zones. This timeline is a very short “one page” of differences that setup the map above.
The download page has excerpts from the rulebook and many other interesting references, including objects to hide behind in a shootout, silhouettes, a stage schedule, the alternative history excerpt, and so on.
There are two bits of errata linked on their website: Basic Combat and Wounds Modifiers Primitive Ranged Weapons.
The revised chapter 6.5, detailed backgrounds, is a PDF. It has the 01-92 “parents legitimate” fix, and probably a few more. Kenzerco also posted up tutorial videos for the combat system. For a couple of nice combat reference PDFs, see this post.
From RPG.net, there’s a quick example of play that went pretty well. (If you scroll down, you get the 7 session story.) The play log and characters are here. They just started a sequel game here.
Despite extensive searching, I haven’t found good third party or personal guides to the system. I know that I often appreciate different explanations and guides– sometimes the third time, you hit on the formula that explains it perfectly.
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Next Game Selected
Today we met and discussed the options for our next game. After much debate, we decided that the next game we play will be Aces and Eights. We’ll get together next weekend and create characters. We will make characters as a part of a wagon train, heading west to seek a better life. We’re aiming for a detailed campaign– somewhat complex and a little detail oriented to start with.
Next weekend, we’ll get together at 3 pm, watch an episode of a western show to get on the same page, and make characters ready to head west.
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More on compels
From the mailing list Xarlen asks
The way I conceptualize Compels, it’s really easy to toss in complications in the middle and the end of the various stories. That’s when there’s clear conflict and the player has to make their choices.
But it’s also important to get the PCs some juice before things are ratcheted up to that point. In DF, players WILL start with low refresh.
So, how do you really toss compels and make complications at the beginning? Aside from the old “You have an Arch Nemesis As an Aspect, here’s a fate point for them to pop up later.”
Fred answers,
Compels are a tool for how I add pressure to the early events of the story.
My basic storyline might be “okay, so there’s been a murder, and you’ve got to solve it”, but compels would be how I add, “while trying to keep your marriage from falling apart” and “before the police catch up with you, since you’ve been framed for it”. Pressure becomes the motive that drives things forward.
Jan gives his own example,
“You’re a ‘Hot-Headed Kinetomancer’? Okay. So: You’ve been enjoyed a quiet evening in your local haunt when this group of low-level talents walk in, laughing among themselves about some in-joke. As they sidle up to the bar, you hear one of them crack a joke at the expense of your mentor, and that _really_ gets your bile up. Go ahead.”
In effect, start with the compels on generic things — temper, financial (“In Debt to a Loan Shark”) or social situation (“My GF hates what I do”). FATE is spent, action is had, and all things are good.