Club Metro retrospective

This was a response to an article that the Inland Empire Weekly ran on a nightclub reunion that I organized last year. I want to preserve it outside of Facebook, so I'm reposting it here as one of my fairly rare non-gaming posts. Even so, I think that for many people in my gaming circles this post will be somewhat relevant.

Treasure, what is it good for?

I've seen a couple of discussions about dealing with treasure in Fate Core, particularly in terms of D&D-style hacks.

I remember when I was a kid playing Basic D&D and later AD&D, by the time our characters reached 10th level they would have mountains of treasure. This isn't including magic items or other artifacts - I'm just talking about a tally of gp, sp, cp, etc. on the character sheet. We never actually really spent any of it on much of anything. I mean, sure, there was potential expenditures of hirelings, buying new equipment and maybe later on building a castle or something. Regardless, it amounted to mounds of treasure.

Which got me thinking:

What is all of this treasure actually used for, anyway?

So what do you actually use treasure for? How much is too much treasure? How much is too little (from a player's perspective)? How do you handle the massive economic collapse that happens when adventurers come back from looting sites of historical cultural importance with more wealth than most villages will see in their entire lifetime? Am I just some kind of dirty story gamer for not seeing the appeal in having a huge haul of gold?

Blue Planet Fate: Biomods and Augmentations

+Jacob Poss has taken up the challenge of adapting Blue Planet to Fate Core and asked for some input on how to handle biotech and cybernetics.

There are basically two routes to go with this. The first is to just have the biotech represented by aspects and, when not appropriate stunts. Characters might lose some granularity of picking through a shopping list of mods, particularly the minor ones - they are mostly flavor using this method. The aspects would serve as permissions for doing things covered by the modifications.

The second route is what is seen in Nova Praxis, where essentially each modification does it's own thing. They aren't stunts per se, but as Extras each with their own specific effects. Given the nature of Blue Planet, this is the route that I'd go for. Since modifications are so ubiquitous in Blue Planet, I'd give each character a number of modification slots above and beyond the normal freebie stunt slots or refresh. 3 is probably a good starting number. At its most basic, each modification takes a slot. More potent augmentations can cost more than one slot. Additionally, certain biomods (such as Transhumans or Shock Troopers) might lose slots to required modifications.

The Full Monty here is to lift Nova Praxis' augmentation system wholesale (and possibly the underlying method for how sleeves work, as least with biomods). This requires assessing an Augmentation Value for each modification from Blue Planet (a number of the existing ones in Nova Praxis would probably work just fine). Characters could start with 3 augmentations, and would use Physique x 2 as the maximum number of augmentations that the character can support.

Whichever method used (straight aspects versus more developed Extras with their own guidelines) depends on the depth that you want the game to have with regards to modifications.

The Non-Gaming Household

It seems like a lot of people in my social media circles have spouses, kids, family members, etc. that are also into all manner of gaming and nerdery. I really enjoy reading their posts, seeing the pictures of the cool things their kids do, and generally basking in the glow of gaming goodness.

My own situation isn't quite that way. Now, I'm not writing about it in any kind of  "Woe is me" way, or to bemoan how I want it to be different, or invite any kind of criticism or advice on how to change it. I just want to discuss the factors involved and the reality it creates, because I know not every gamer out there has the perfect geek significant other or kids who like to play rpgs.

Milestone Worksheet

First things first, I cooked up a milestone worksheet to go along with my milestone fractal post. You can grab it from Google Docs. Also, I had a couple of comments after finding a great discussion on fractal adventure design on ENWorld.

A Milestone Fractal Example

Someone mentioned that they do a lot better grokking these kind of things with examples, so I thought I'd try to cook one up.

First, I have some slight refinements of what I posted yesterday (I swear I'm not trying to copy how +Ryan M. Danks posted his adventure fractal, I'm really not).

The Milestone Fractal

I was originally going to write about adventure planning in the same spirit as what +Ryan M. Danks posted about Adventure Fractals. Instead it's taken a turn toward campaigns and not just adventures. I've actually written previously about this subject on Dreams of Flesh and Spirit, and some of those concepts are going to be making a reappearance.

Locations, Fate Core Style: Part II

In my last post I went over some of the guidelines I use when creating a location for a game. Today I'm going to step through the process with an actual location that fits in with Fate of Vimary: the desecrated Shrine of C'nawa.

Locations, Fate Core Style: Part I

If one were to ask me what things are critical to bringing an rpg "to life", I'd say: characters and locations. Nearly everything else is secondary, including the greater world. You need the characters to have roles to play, and the locations to interact with.

Campaign Preparation

I was originally going to make a blog carnival post on campaign creation but instead got sidetracked by campaign preparation (and ran out of, well, August).