Strange Stars A-To-Z: "T" Is For Transmogs

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Transmogs were used by the earliest labor teams to leave Old Earth. These teams usually consisted of multiple robots and a single human team lead. Robots possessed artificial intelligence, often with quite pedestrian, companionable, crotchety, or quirky personalities. Having a human team lead was essential to these teams' success. Robot teams were more efficient, more cooperative, and more purposeful when accompanied by a human.

While the ancient robots displayed unique personalities, they were not highly specialized. Instead, these ancient machines used swappable skill modules called transmogs. These were small, thumb sized devices which snapped into a port in the robot's head. Need to switch spacehand skills for salesmen's skills? Swap out the transmog. Need a construction team rather than an ag-team? Look around in the box where all the transmogs are stored and swap the modules out.

If you're confused which transmogs are which, almost any robot on a labor team can help you find the right one.

A few of these robots still exist among the Strange Stars today. They are valuable collectors items, as they often know the locations of archaitech, the hyperspace routes to long-lost systems, and how to build and repair hyperdrives.

The key, of course, is to find one with the right transmogs to do the job - or someone who possesses some of these old modules but who doesn't know or have a use for them. Many transmogs end up being used as jewelry or charms by the ignorant...

This Strange Stars post was inspired by Clifford D. Simak's short story "Installment Plan".

***

We recently published some Quick and Dirty Robot Rules for Strange Stars. Transmogs can be used with these rules quite easily. Here's what to do:

• In place of the Assignment aspect, give the robot a Personality aspect. Examples include:
• Lazy labor robot
• Battered and brused mechanical spacehand
• Any crankier and you'd need to wind him
•  Sexy but rusty gynoid
• A machine that remembers ancient things
• Select a Failure Mode. Particulary appropiate ones for ancient labor team robots include:
• Touchy transmog slot
• Needs direction
• A tendency to wander
• No spare parts
• Select skills/approaches as normal.
• Write in a Transmog Slot as an Extra. 
• Instead of selecting three Stunts, each of these robots has a single transmog slot. 
• When a transmog is plugged into the slot, the robot temporarily acquires one specific transmog stunt. 
• Transmog stunts represent physical, mental, or social skills; they can never be psionic in nature. 
• A robot may not swap out their current transmog on their own. The swap always requires the assistance of another character. It takes one turn to make the swap. 
• There's no hard and fast limit on the number of transmogs that a robot has in their possession, but 5 is a good starting number.
• If a player is creating a transmog-capable robot, they may start play as soon as they have written one transmog stunt for the character. Other transmog stunts may be selected during play.

Post 198 - My Kerberos Club

Kerberos Photo by Denoir

Rachel Kronick, designer of the Blade & Crown RPG, has just done a wonderful actual play post on the Kerberos Club adventure that I ran last weekend at JonCon '13.  It's much better than I could have done; the session is one big space-time blur for me right now. You won't  be surprised at all by that comment if you read Rachel's report.

I used FATE Accelerated Edition for character generation and play. You can see the rules post on this set-up over here.

For today, I thought I'd share my write-up for the Kerberos Club itself. It was a character in the story, and that was inspired by the fact that the original Strange FATE rules for Kerberos Club RPG encourage each play group to develop their version of the Club as if it were a character. The FATE Fractal enables that.

Below you can see my version of the KC, which is a 1890s period Club. The institution has evolved from its early Torchwoody days of being a secret organization charged with finding and suppressing irruptions of the Strange, and proceeded well past its middle stage of being weird supers hiding in plain sight, as the world becomes Stranger and Stranger.

By the late '90s, things have begun to spin seriously out of control in the Club, the British Empire, and the World.

One interesting feature of the Kerberos Club rules is that PCs can transfer stress to the Club itself; the Club can take Consequences for the players. These are called Collateral Consquences, and represent the impact of the characters' actions on the prestige, reputation, resources, etc. of the Club. Some affects may be fleeting, such as the superficial Minor Consequence of a Fleeting Headline, while others might me more dangerous, burdensome, and lasting, such as a Vendetta, Government Inquiry, Prolonged Lawsuit.

So here's a quick peek at my Kerberos Club.

OGL MECHANICS

The Kerberos Club (1890s)

ASPECTS:

• High Concept: A Necessary Evil 
• Trouble: Trouble Finds Us 
• Aspect: A Haven for the Strange
• Aspect: Stillpoint in the Coming Storm
• Aspect: A house divided*

APPROACHES

• Careful: +0
• Clever: +2
• Flashy: +3
• Forceful: +2
• Quick: +1
• Sneaky: +1

STUNTS:

• There's Room For You: Any member has access to private rooms, as well as the Club's libraries, workshops, and laboratories. This provides a +2 bonus to an Approach once per session per player when using one of the Club's resources for an action taking place within the Club.
• Borrowing Privileges: A Kerberan PC may spend 1 Club FP to discover/locate just the right weapon, book, relic, device, etc. to help solve a problem beyond the walls of the Club. This item may be "checked out" for one session and then automatically returns to the Club armory, library, archive, menagerie, workshop, lab, or vault from which it came. Note that this FP goes directly into the Kerberos Club's coffers and is not lost at session's end.
• Friends in High Places: Any PC may spend 1 Club FP to use the Club's membership, reputation, and connections to call in a specific favor from someone among London's power elites.  Note that this FP goes directly into the Kerberos Club's coffers and is not lost at session's end.

REFRESH/Club Fate Points: 1**

*More on this Aspect in a future post.

**Yeah, this is kind of low, but the idea is that the PCs are adding to the kitty by using the Club's Stunt resources.

Hermione Grantham, The Black Cat Kerberan

This is an example of a Kerberos Club character created using the FAE quick chargen rules described in this post.

Hermione Grantham
The Black Cat Kerberan

ASPECTS:

• High Concept: High Society Predator
• Trouble: Never met a jewel I didn't want to steal
• Class Aspect: Too much money for her own good
• Aspect: The Cloak of Bast
• Aspect: Pursued by the cultists of Anubis

APPROACHES

• Careful: +2
• Clever: +3
• Flashy: +2
• Forceful: +1
• Quick: +3
• Sneaky: +4

POWERS:

• Stealthy Prowler: When she wears The Cloak of Bast Hermione rolls 3DF + 1D6 on her Sneaky Approach.
• Climb Like a Cat: Hermione can quickly climb sheer walls with the speed and ease of a cat. (High Society Predator Aspect), rolling 3D4 + 1D6 for her Quick Approach.

REFRESH: 2

Using FAE To Run Kerberos Club

"Pierrot and Cat" by Aubrey Beardsley

Based on the scenario I recently ran at JonCon '13, what follows is a revised set of guidelines for playing Kerberos Club using FATE Accelerated Edition. The framework described here reduces the extremely crunchy power customization methodology used in Kerberos Club (FATE Edition), with a higher-trust, lighter rules framework more in the spirit of FAE.

CHARACTER GENERATION:

Aspects: One for High Concept, one for Trouble, one related to Social Class, and two others.

Approaches: Players select one +1, two +2, two +3, and one +4.

Stunts: Powers are taken in the place of Stunts, but Stunts may also be used if the players and GM prefer to include them.

Base Refresh: 3

Powers combine aspects of Approaches and Stunts, and are similar to Extras in FATE Core.

The following are guidelines for building Powers:

• Kerberans have one or more Powers; each power is linked to a specific Approach. For example, a Clairvoyance power would probably be linked to the Careful Approach, and Weird Inventor to the Clever Approach. 
• Each Power must be tied to a specific, relevant Aspect. For example, the Clairvoyance Approach Power might be linked to the Aspect All-Seeing Eye of Ra. This Aspect might represent a powerful artifact or relic that is the source of the Approach Power.
• Powers are designed free-form, just as Stunts normally are.Examples include:

A Power called "Clairvoyance" gives a PC the ability to remotely view objects for a number of zones equal to the effort rolled. In contrast, a power called "Firestarter" does stress damage equal to the effort rolled, minus any defensive effort rolled by an opponent.

• The first Power is free. 
• Each additional Power after the first free one costs a point of Refresh.  
• A Power may be broadened to include a second Approach at the cost of an additional point of Refresh. If you have a Power with two Approaches, you may describe two possible actions, roll for each Approach, and take the better roll and its corresponding action as the result.
• Each character must have at least 1 Refresh available at the end of character generation
• To use a Power, a player rolls 3DF + 1D6 + Approach Rating.

USING POWERS:

• Using a Power counts as a PC's full action.  
• Players may spend 1 Fate Point substitute an additional 1D6 in place of another 1DF in their roll for ONE ACTION. This would make the roll to use the Power: 2DF +2D6 + Approach Rating.
• Players may spend 1 Fate Point to add an Additional Approach to the power's portfolio for ONE SCENE.

Kerberos Club Character Creation - Strange FATE VS. FAE

Kerberos Club art

We'll be running Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) this weekend at Jon Con 13 in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. 

Tonight, I'll testing out the out-of-the box chargen rules for Kerberos Club (FATE Edition). I'll post an update this evening about how that's going.

Based on the experience, we will either run our con game this weekend using KC rules as is, or modify or emulate them using FATE Accelerated Edition.

I also have some very neat card based Aspect (and possibly power) generation rules I'll be trying at the con.

More to come this evening.

A Bit More On The Kerberos Club

http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/M12.4.html

We're continuing our slow but sure read-through of The Kerberos Club (Strange FATE Edition) which I will be running in April at JonCon '13. The setting background is the first 179 pages of this 363+ page book. The setting is well-researched and filled with potential plot hooks (alternate history, characters, incidents, etc.) that GMs and players can run with.

The Kerberos Club's clubhouse itself is filled with all sorts of artifacts (either known artifacts or ones to be made up on-the-spot by players or GMs) that can be temporarily "checked-out" and used by a player for a period of time with the expenditure of a Fate Point. This is a pretty stealable mechanic that could be appropriated for many different kinds of FATE games.

This morning over coffee, I had a chuckle when reading on page 45 that the U.S. has a Shadow Constitution, written on tanned human skin, called the Umbra Pactum. This secret constitution is backed up by an entire secret government, which regulates the occult world and seeks to prevent outright occult wars between the various contending occult factions in the United States. Since the original (ORE) edition of The Kerberos Club came out in 2009, it seems to me that this is probably a reference inspired by Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein, which came out the year before.

With another 140 pages of setting to go, it may be a while before I start posting my own Kerberos Club/Strange FATE creations here on FATE SF. Look for some in April.

The Kerberos Club

This April, I am going to be running the FATE Edition of The Kerberos Club at JonCon '13 in the Twin Cities. JonCon is a private gaming convention that emerged from a core of friends who have played for many years in each others' gaming groups. Horror games such as Call of Cthulhu are a hallmark of  JonCon, and I can honestly say that the only truly scary Call of Cthulhu game I have ever played was in a JonCon CoC tournament.

So this year I know I will get in some great games, and my own offering at the Con will be running The Kerberos Club. I am slowly making my way through the narrative background on the Kerberos Club, which is a society or private club for 19th Century Victorian heroes who have been touched by... The Strange. Early in the Victorian era, the level of weirdness in the world is modest, and the Club is secret. By the late Victorian era, the Kerberos Club is completely out in the open - rather like a high weird Victorian JLA - and has frequent clashes will all manner of technological and occult threats. Imagine several dozen singularities unleashed at once, and you have a sense of the haute weird at the end of the Victorian age.

The Strange FATE system which powers The Kerberos Club (Strange FATE SRD here) is on the complex end of the FATE spectrum, with a skill set tailored for Victorian age weird heroes, and skills organized into three distinct power tiers that differentiate the powers of heroes from those of mere mortals. There are also Gifts, which stand-in for Stunts in this implementation of FATE.

So far, I am finding the background text by Benjamin Baugh to be pretty evocative - sometimes quite subtly so - and as well as a little odd at certain points. There are a few places where a sentence seemed to belong earlier in the paragraph. But nevertheless I am pretty intrigued by the setting and am looking forward to digging into the mechanics of Strange FATE in another week or so. There's 180 pages of setting background to push through first!