Guidelines for sharing your world building
Bliss Stage Fansite: Love is my Weapon
The prisoner TV show from the 1960s [free]
Diaspora AP
Chatty’s Mouseguard– 1, 2, 3, and 4
The 5×5 method
Old mechanics, new applications
Easy recipe: Popovers
Cool program for opening docx and odt files!
Fun holiday and bday cards
to read– Questions based setting creation and Good Archipelago setting
Listings:
Fireflywiki.org
John Kim’s list
Cortex System Forums Lots of useful threads, requires registration.
Sites:
Fireflyrpg.com, a great site with lots of useful information. Fan ships, vehicles, quick references and more.
Dragonlairdgaming.com, site of Jim Davenport, a Serenity RPG designer.
Waves in the Black: Cargo Hold (Lots of useful downloads– character sheets, sample crews, plots, etc.)
Scott Metz’s link page, with links for Serenity, D&D, and more.
Serenity themes and premises, an investigation/discussion.
Ki_Ryn’s ships
Peracles RPG, several scenarios and extensive campaign logs.
Serenity RPG 101 Links, merchandise, and info.
Sean’s Gallery, lots of ship pictures.
Things We Think About Games is an exceptionally quick read, fun and thought provoking. Much of the book is a collection of short, sharp sayings. Much of the work is in the interpretation– sometimes that author takes up the challenge, writing up to a page of discussion– and sometimes the analysis is up to you, only a quickly sentence is provided.
It’s a fast read that might shake loose some dangling thoughts. It’s probably more useful to designers, to make sure they’re not falling into traps, but there’s a little something here for everyone. I’ll happily lend it to locals if they want to look it over.
There’s a cool game out there called Psi-run. I understand it was at the Ashcan Front last year (2007) and I’m curious about its current status.
Its die system is a derivative of Vincent Baker’s Otherkind System… but that’s about all I know. Does anyone know if they’re trying to make GenCon this year?
Here are a few of the links that I think will be useful if I find/run the game: Vasco’s wiki, Char sheet (PDF), an Actual Play thread, and a quick play example.
Late Addition: Action Scenery (pdf) from Amagi Games perfectly complements the original article below.
From the Fate RPG group recent posts from the post Combat Tips for New GM and its responses.
Work in Maneuvers, Aspects, and use Blocks for more engaging conflicts. Examples:
Combat Maneuvers: Blinding and Choking gas grenades, villains with disarming whip attacks, etc.
Temporary Aspects: Off-Balance. Reeling. Blinded. Distracted. Screaming! On Fire (good one to compel), Distracted (Good use of Deceit to boost a combat action), Buried under rubble (who says you have to limit attacks to people).
Blocks: For example, you have a mobster and some goons stealing a treasure from the museum opening, maybe the goons use machine gun fire to lay down a block to keep anyone in the crowd from interfering. Also remember that non combat skills can certainly be used IN COMBAT. (Intimidate is an obvious one. If a player can get to a phone, I’d see contacting as being just as valid)
From the wiki: Combat and Tactics and Faster Conflicts.
Use Zones and write aspects on the map directly.
Goals: The trick to more interesting combat is to have the goal of the antagonists not to beat the players into submission. Their goal should be to steal something. Or to take someone hostage. Or to distract them while the doomsday device is activated. Etc. etc.
The key to making the fight less static and swing/miss, swing/hit is to have something at stake outside of who can take more abuse. If the goons are trying to get away with the U.S. constitution, you can set up situations where the characters could use overkill force to stop them, but ONLY at risk
of the parchment itself. (What a conundrum) You can have clever shell game tactics. You can have traps. Vehicle chases. etc, etc. In general just beating the players shouldn’t be an NPC goal, just because it’s not so exciting.
Reducing Fate points can also increase tension.
Off Topic: Starblazer Adventures, using the same FATE 3 engine as Spirit of the Century, is off to press. There’s a long preview at the link.
From Fred Hicks, via Amagi Games, is a cool Setting Creation Session form. It looks fast, with the freeform just structured enough to ensure that everyone was a chance to provide input regularly.