Fred linked off to a great site, where they are discussing their playtesting experience with the Dresden Files game. It sounds like it’s solid– they had a lot of data and thorough system backing, which makes me think that the GM is going to have lots of guidelines and rules to help out.
An overview of the RPG books is here.
From http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FateRPG/message/16305
Assessments, Declarations, and Maneuvers are all the same action, the way I look at the system. As individual applications, they’re framed differently. Assessments ask the GM to come up with something that in the story-space is already true, just discovered. Declarations empower the player to come up with something that was already true. Maneuvers empower the *character* to assert something new and now true.
Fred
And from Grant: If the GM is amenable, an Assessment may also allow a player character to ‘discover’ an element that the GM hadn´t even thought of previously. In this manner the Assessment works like a Declaration (see below) with the player stating that his character has identified a weakness, Aspect or other feature. The GM sets a Difficulty for the Skill roll to see if the character was correct in his Assessment, or whether he was mistaken. If the roll fails, the GM may wish to impose a temporary Aspect on the assessing character to reflect this, for example ‘Mistakenly believes the security cameras to have a blind spot’.
Comics: Too Fat to be a Rockstar (Weekly), Guilded Age (MWF), Math Comics
Chris Chinn’s Blood and Ink gathered– http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/blood-ink-play-guides/
Quick: Character webs– http://www.rpggm.com/blog/2009/09/25/building-better-npcs-iii-character-webs/
Picking the price of success– http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/2009/10/20/the-little-things-in-life/
Mouse Guard AP#3– http://rpg.brouhaha.us/?p=1884
AP #4– http://rpg.brouhaha.us/?p=1920
Cool D&D Stuff: Bendy Dungeon Walls– http://www.dark-platypus.com/bendy_dungeon_walls.htm
Looking out for the story leads to constipation at the table. Story does not need to be preserved or looked out for. It is not a just hatched chick that needs everyone to be careful lest it is trampled. Just play the damned game, make choices that are brave. Look at your character sheet, let your character surprise you and story will just happen. — Judd, http://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/the-myth-of-story-preservation/
Hardening WordPress– http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/oct/23/wordpress-exploit-scanner-hardening-hacker
Men/Women– http://www.rpggm.com/blog/2009/10/19/unintentional-sexism-in-rpgs-even-women-do-it/
http://www.dungeonmastering.com/tools-resources/character-sheet-cross-dressing
(From the FATE mailing list: this post)
I posted most of this earlier to this list, so look through the archives for that thread, as there were other good hints. But here are my tips for one shot/con games.
Characters –
I would shy away from full chargen at the table. My local group loves to spend a whole evening generating characters, but it’ll take too long in a convention slot.Use partial to full pregen characters. Don’t choose stunts at the table, again it will take too long. Either you pick them before or go stuntless, by choosing good aspects(which is the path I prefer).
At a minimum choose the top skills (the +5, and the 2 +4s for each characters). Let them fill in the rest, but also allow them to put them in in play so you can get going.
Pregenerate several aspects for each character. Make sure you have a list of them and write down possible places in the adventure that you’ll be able to compel them. You won’t be able to track more than one or two aspects per player at a table of 6 for very long. Have some compels up your sleeve and any others are gravy.
Cut their fate points to 5, and compel early and often. Explain self compels, and try to get them to the work for you.
Use the faster damage rules on the wiki if you want to speed up combat.
The Adventure –
In a 4 hours slot with pregens and 5 players I usually get either 3 bigger or 4 smaller encounters. Not much more.
Be sure to design the adventure so that you can drop whatever is needed out to get to the Big Bad at the end. Players are more forgiving of plot problems than not getting to the triumph stage.Start them in the middle of something. Ignore the “meet in the bar/clubhouse/ diner and plan” stage (players will overthink it, and spend too much of the precious game time looking for things that aren’t there.) Get them into the action as soon as possible.
Jeff
The minicon was interesting– in a good way, mostly. I played three new games over the course of the day. The store, EndGame, was awesome!
The first was a pre-release version of Mythender, which I’d never heard of before. It was run by its creator, Ryan Macklin, who is working on the Dresden RPG for Evil Hat. [Though I didn’t make that connection until lunch afterwards.] I played Roland, Charlemagne’s knight, beside two other characters– Merlin (King Arthur’s adviser) and a hero who had slain gods in Europe, hoping to end untimely death forever.
The mechanics were a little complicated, and the game was a little transparently preachy, but it made for a neat one-shot. I suspect a 3 session campaign is as long as it’d ever go, but it was interesting. Afterwards, I had sandwiches with the other players at a shop just down the street. (Ryan’s offhand comments about “Dresden” finally clued me in to who he was.)
The 3 pm game [Burning Wheel] that I had signed up for was canceled by the GM– I think I was the only player who had signed up. I got into a game of Scooby Doo with the Inspectres RPG engine. It was fun and very different– clearly, my memory of the cartoon was hazy in comparison to the other players, but we camped it up and had a lot of fun. The session was very fast– we completed an 8 Franchise die mission in the first two hours. Since the next slot wasn’t until 8, the GM came up with a second plot after a ten minute break and we played it through. It wasn’t as good, but it was still very enjoyable.
When we finished, we crossed the street to the English brew pub across the way. I had a couple of sausages and sauerkraut– it was tasty.
Then I wandered back and joined the 8 pm game of Wild Talents. It’s an ORE game, and the GM had an interesting twist: it was set on the Germanic frontier with Marcus Aurelius as Emperor. We got stuck on a [self created] riddle for a while, but enjoyed roleplaying roman citizens with unusual powers and investigating in the depths of Germania. It was the most traditional of the three games, and was quite fun for being straight forward. As we cleaned up, the GM told us about a very separate path we could have chosen. It would have been an interesting scenario too!
Next weekend is Labor Day weekend, and we won’t be meeting. What does your schedule look like for the following weekend– Friday the 11th and Saturday the 12th? Does Friday work? What times work for you on Saturday (if any)?
A peek behind the curtain at some campaign prep ideas from my campaign, a while ago.
What is everyone’s current status? I know that Kev has added another work-like time suck to his schedule, and that Ben would like to spend time with his love. Do we need to look at moving the game to a different day, or officially cut back to every other week or more infrequently?
Does your schedule get better at the end of summer, or some later time– or is everyone’s schedule so erratic that it would be better not to plan on people showing up consistently?
Should we switch to board gaming for a while if roleplaying meetings just aren’t working? Or do we just need to try a different roleplaying game– the games we currently have don’t include everyone or scratch the right itches?
Lots of questions. Everyone, please write back or comment– let’s talk about what we can do and what we want to do.
Jennifer is away practicing her Italian for the month– I’ll join her for a couple of weekends in the middle. Meanwhile, what do you want to do on Friday nights, if anything? Board gaming on Friday was a lot of fun– does that appeal to you. Let everyone know what you’re thinking and we’ll arrange for more fun. (Heck, this upcoming week we may press Mike into bringing the new Axis and Allies. It’d be interesting to see where it has changed.)
It looks like Dad should be back in town this upcoming Friday, which is also Jennifer’s last weekend in country until August. Can you make it? Please let us know if you’ll have any problems.
Kev, this weekend should be a Christian weekend– Ben had Emily last weekend. (Though if you’d confirm, I’d appreciate it Ben.)
Would everyone prefer to handle game updates via Facebook or Email? Please let me know what service you check regularly, if any.