www.gamingtavern.eu

[dr_mitch]

This is from the GM's perspective, which may be different from the players.

Short version: I think it went well. Diaspora is very easy to run and prepare for, but with enough crunchy bits to hold my interest. Space combat- one of my favourite bits of the system based on reading- was an absolute dream in practice.

Long version: Despite the ice, we still had two players. The initial set-up: the party were all on the run from various things in a stolen spaceship. Everybody was flat out broke (Assets skills of zero), and spacecraft are expensive to run.

The "Indie Nightmare" came to the heavily balkanised Mesa system, and elected to dock at Station 9- neutral ground for Mesa's warring nations. It gained some strain on route, and the feeble trade goods from Twilight did not raise enough money to repair it. They were desperate for work- any work.

So they tried to find it. Michael Gecko soon made contact with a man called Tudor Nash who offered a job; he wanted U-237 from Penn, and gave coordinates of a quarry to take the radioactive mineral directly from source- bypassing the Elysian control on U-237 mining. After negotiation, he agreed to pay for fuel for the journey too.

Karl Vandan then spotted an old enemy- Hesta Sims- accompanied by four goons. He sensibly hid and ran away.

The intrepid heroes realised they needed another cargo- something for Elysium- to make the other job worthwhile. Gecko found it- a woman called Alika Meyer who wanted some crates delivered to a warehouse in Scarssin. Investigating the cargo she mentioned, the team discovered it was protected by a security guard.

Talking to another guard, Gecko found the cargo was weapons- seized by Station 9 security. So naturally the team decided to warm up their ship's engines, and take a cargo trolley from their ship to seize the cargo.

An attempt to intimidate the guard failed, and he went for his gun and his radio. Vandan fired a laser, burning the guard's hand and preventing radio use. To do this he made use of the corridor's shiny metallic walls. The guard fired and scored a glancing blow against Vandan.

Gecko then vaulted the trolley and rushed the guard. And Vandan rammed him with the trolley. The guard's burned hand slowed him down, and he was KOed.

[The combat minigame went quickly and smoothly and liberal use of environmental aspects made it interesting.]

The heroic pair avoided detection and even took off before the alarm was raised. They were ordered to return to Station 9. They didn't, and two Mesan craft- an SAP (Space Attack Platform) and Escort pursued them.

The Escort had its computer systems damaged thanks to electronic warfare. Beam fire was next. The "Indie Nightmare" blew up one of the SAP's engines, and narrowly avoided damage from the Escort due to computer system damage. The SAP then launched a devastating torpedo barrage, which almost did severe damage. Almost- the damage was readily repaired by Gecko's Engineering skill.

The "Indie Nightmare" then made use of the damage to the opposing ships to make a clean getaway!

[As I said, space combat was a dream. It was straightforward yet tactical. Fate Points were exchanged extremely liberally.]

To be continued next week...
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Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[Halfjack]

I'm so happy to hear your game went well! Thanks for posting your AP -- I'd love to hear from the other players too and see if they saw the same things you did.

Doing a little dance here.

[dr_mitch]

Both players were extremely positive about the system when we spoke about it after the game. I'm sure we'll hear more. To go further with my views on it, I really like the mixture of the Aspects/Fate Points structure and the crunchier bits (eg: skills, stunts, equipment, spacecraft).

I want to try out social combat minigame. But even more than that, I want to see where the story goes next. It's a big cluster after all...
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Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[First Age]

A really enjoyable game. The nightmare of Sheffield's icy roads were soon forgotten as Paul transported us to the Cluster. I'm reasonably new to Fate and was delighted that the current RPG.net darling system lived up to expectations. Further I really take to Diaspora's 'spin' on Fate. Fudge dice (yay!) encouraging use of manoeuvres and aspects. Love the Fate point economy in action and the way aspects are declared and shared up front so that they can be tagged, compelled and invoked. They don't give me any 'immersion' problems, they do remind me that I have a game which supports what I want to do and gives me an in game bonus to boot. Anything can be an Aspect, much as in Wordplay any thing that can be described can provide dice to a Challenge.

The personal combat and starship combat games were great. The starship combat mini game just worked a treat. Tactical decisions in the cold night of space using the advantages of your ship to the best of your ability. For us we had a technological advantage and a good balance of movement and offensive capability. Simon designed the ship well.

An extremely satisfying evening strongly supported by the Diaspora rules. Without doubt the best Fate game out there (for me) and delighted to see that the SRD is available to use as a base for any other game you fancy designing!

I look forward to more.
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First Age

[dr_mitch]

Second session: All three players this time.

The "Indie Nightmare" left the Mesa system on full burn, and headed through the slipknot to the Elysium system. Once there, the crew decided to head to the gas giant Lucius to skim off some more reaction mass. And picked up a distress call from within the atmosphere!

After some tricky manoeuvering by Jarek van Haarl, they docked with the Elysian military vessel "Live and Let Die". It had been shot down, and the hull was breached All eight crew were in vac suits but unconscious from slight leakage from the gas giant's corrosive atmosphere.

With considerable effort, the crew were pulled on board the Indie Nightmare for emergency first aid- although they did not regain consciousness, and needed full medical assistance. The PCs also discovered some strange artifacts- including a blue pyramid- an optical storage device from the vanished Tamaru. And the remains of an optical computer.

Meanwhile, another ship was spotted- a Pegasan craft, Calm Horizons. More fancy piloting within the gas giant's atmosphere let the "Indie Nightmare" get away undetected.

The heroes then headed to Elysium, and handed the crew to the customs officials- and Gecko successfully argued the customs gang did not need to make a full search of the ship- fortunate really as they were smuggling crates of weapons from Mesa.

They then went down to the surface in the ship's shuttle- to drop off the weapons at a warehouse in Scarssin, contact Marten Hansen, and get paid. What could go wrong?

Marten Hansen was a high-up in one of Scarssin's two big gangs- the Hawks. And Karl Vanden's old gang- the Doves- chose that moment to launch a raid. Surely a coincidence

A brutal shoot-out in the warehouse followed. Marten Hansen was killed. As was one of the Dove's main hit-men- a monstrous cyborg by the name of Erik Hoffmann.

[System notes: This was of course another use of the combat minigame- and a more complex situation than last week. It went smoothly enough, but nearly all FATE points were spent. Well- the gas giant rescue also used quite a few FATE points- partially through determination to make sure all of the rescued crew survived.]

The heroes managed to arrange a meeting with another Hawks high-up, who sent men to secure the warehouse. The meeting is to discuss payment for the cargo, and perhaps other services.
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Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[First Age]

Another good session and very glad to have Paul guide us with the particulars of Fate. The system may see life somewhere with me as GM this year. All things Traveller in feel without the pulpy anti-gravity but delivered in a Fate package.

I am still getting used to the Fate Point economy. Two key scenes burned all my Fate points despite some willingly received compels. My play style may need to adapt to pushing my character to acquire compels if I want the spice to flow, as it were. Having easily compelled Aspects clearly helps.

I'm also wondering, as part of my prep as GM, whether I need to have all the Aspects currently in play displayed in some way for the players to pick up on and start tagging. Not sure how I'd do that. I might start by having a PC Aspect list available to all players up front to facilitate PC to PC compels and a place to scribble new Aspects placed on them due to game action. I'll need to think how I display aspects as NPCs and settings bring them into play. Perhaps on the maps but maybe on a screen or via small cards?

I'm also actively comparing how Fate handles environmental factors compared with Wordplay which does the same but treats every Trait described as usable in some way. It's as much about how the information is presented in order to make it usable in as seamless a way as possible.

Setting up Aspects through action for others to Tag is a nice way of bringing in co-operative play. It shakes out a little the 'PC as an island' factor and gives a good mechanical lift to others through your action. 'Helping' mechanics are not new, but Fate implements them well. Of course I may also just be a bit profligate in my Fate point spending!

The game is flowing very well in any case, and doesn't stop when you have run out of Fate points! I see the group continuing to get ever deeper into trouble. Gun running and illegal fuel smuggling is only the beginning. And those scavenged high tech items. They spell trouble....
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First Age

[pedr]

Yes, I agree with a lot of that, Graham.

I am enjoying this a lot, though I think I probably need to tweak my aspects to provide a slightly wider range of things that they're useful for and also create a few more which are easily compellable - and be more proactive in finding ways of convincing people - especially Paul - to compel them!

I was thinking about cards, perhaps stand-ups, with aspects written on them. Having tried to run WFRP3 once I think the use of props/'things' there can be learned from (and improved upon, even if only with home-made production values)... Have small cards with aspects written on them so that everyone can see the things which are available, and such-like.

[dr_mitch]

Yes- getting people's aspects (and NPC/environmental aspects) up front to be tagged and propelled is something we need to do. And I need to be more active in compelling people's aspects- definitely something I don't (yet) do enough.

Next time (assuming I'm organised - *cough*) I'll bring a bunch of index cards with such things written down. That should solve the "up-front" problem nicely. Another thing is for players not to feel shy about compelling their own aspects- and saying something along the lines of "excuse me Dr. GM, can I have a FATE point for that please."

That said- I don't think it was bad that almost everybody ran out of FATE points towards the end of the last fight (well- maybe a round or two later would have been better). Things were closely matched, and it made the fight feel a bit more brutal. Of course, having no FATE points is a little frustrating from the player's end.

Like I said, I think index cards for one and all- including me- are the answer. Maybe we should start up a general FATE discussion thread.
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Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[Halfjack]

Are you guys using the folding character sheet from the web site? We found this a super tool (Jeremey Keller, author of Chronica Feudalis introduced us to it) because it folds such that your Aspects are visible to the other players as well as yourself. Makes compels so much easier.

But aside from that, yeah, tweak those aspects! A crappy aspect might as well not be there at all and the quality of an aspect isn't always clear until play, so don't shortchange yourself.

[dr_mitch]

Thanks for the tip- folding character sheets printed out. Actually, I think I've got a snappy approach to compels and so on for next time in any case.
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Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[pedr]

Incidentally, I found this comment about FATE by Halfjack posted on RPGnet to be quite illustrative:

[dr_mitch]

Third session.

The gang met the Hawks leader, and some other Hawks in a very smart restaurant, complete with water features (a rarity on Elysium). They were promptly accused by the deceased Marten Hansen's driver of betraying them to the Doves (actually, as the players now know and the characters probably suspect, the driver was the betrayer).

They did not altogether discredit the driver, but did convince the Hawks leader and the majority of others that they ought to be paid in exchange for the weapons.

[This was social combat. This didn't quite flow- it felt a little unintuitive to me, but it's still something I want to have a go at again. I'm sure it will go more smoothly next time.

One mistake was maybe letting the PCs all act seperately rather than combining them into one.]

Cash in hand, the heroes left, deciding probably not to return. They bought medical supplies and flew on to Penn. However, they were ambushed at the Slipknot- by the CASANDRA ship Calm Horizons, last seen (and avoided) at the gas giant.

Space combat/running away followed.

Penn is under the "protection" of Elysium. Any traders with Penn have to deal with Elysium or get past the Elysian ships in orbit without being detected.

The Indie Nightmare crew opted for the second method. It's a good thing having a top-notch navigator, and a crew member with knowledge of patrol patterns of the Elysian military.

[This was a DC 8 navigation check made by Jarek van Haarl with Karl Vanden's help].

Anyway, the heroes arrived safely at Penn, and landed at a quarry to meet their contact, Robertus, and arrange to pick up some U-237 for delivery. Approaching in the lander, they saw a woman running away from some guards with clubs and stun guns. Naturally, they leapt in to help!

Suppressing fire, hand to hand combat, and being buzzed from the air left the goons taken out, and their thuggish leader surrendered to Michael Gecko after he had beaten up three of his followers.

I wonder what will happen next.

[Personal combat again, and as complex a situation as the one at the end of the second session. This time everything just clicked. A really good point to end the session on. Also, this time, there was no difficulty when it came to using other people's aspects.]
_________________
Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[dr_mitch]

Fourth session. I had the feeling I wasn't as on the ball as I should have been tonight, but anyway, here it is...

The gang fled in the aircraft with the woman they had rescued- Rachel James. They then found out from her that the guard they had beaten up were the only guards.

They returned in their lander, after some debate. They found the guards armed with rifles and waiting. And the leader had a rocket launcher!

He fired and missed. He was then taken out. More gunfire, and an automatic burst from the heroes took out the remaining guards.

[A very short personal combat- a massacre over in 2 rounds, thanks partially to some very lucky rolls by the PCs (generally around +3), and unlucky rolls by me (around -3).]

Michael Gecko then went to convince the mine workers to help him load the U-237. The mine workers wanted to be taken away from Penn for a better life. Gecko wanted to convince them to hold out here- perhaps the PCs would be back. He succeeded.

[This was social combat, and went quite smoothly this time. Only one PC involved, however.]

Meanwhile, the others went to the villa of the quarry owner- Robertus Fenris. They found him having called the local authorities [aspect tagged- "Where did it go wrong?", screaming at them about 'space bandits' and trying to bribe them. The PCs basically forced him to free the mine workers, who were debt-slaves to his business.

While this was in progress, the authorities arrived- three aircraft full of Elysian military. The mine workers were armed, and had Fenris- and a document granting them "freedom". But the PCs fled- pursued by two of the aircraft.

They fled and didn't stop running. Barely pausing in Elysium (just topping up reaction mass at the gas giant Lusus- after all, with the U-237 they had plenty of fuel). Still with the medical supplies they had intended to sell on Penn, they returned to the Mesa system.

The Indie Nightmare could not return to Station 9. So they got in touch with their contact and arranged a meeting at an asteroid called Aleph. An asteroid, as it turned out, owned by Zientek. Their spaceship had been stolen from the Crown Prince of Zientek.

They escaped detection [my moves to compel aspects were turned down], and as soon as they had been paid for cargo left for a better place- Eos, a semi-inhabitable gas giant moon, and territory of the Liberty Alliance, another of Mesa's nations.

There they sold the medical supplies, and thanks to some incredible rolls and copious use of aspects avoided consequences to the ship due to lack of trade and abuse. They were not so badly off in some regards- after all, although they had done no selling on Penn or (on the way back Mesa), there was an *incredible* Brokerage roll, and they had not even paid for the U-237 sold.

Then Jarek van Haarl was approached by an old friend from Pegasus- Soren Andersen- with another job. Delivering half a tonne of the spice from Phobos back to the moon Eos.

What could possibly go wrong?

[One thing I've thought of that might be a motivator for letting me compel more next time- allow Fate Points to be kept between sessions. Essentially, if someone (or the ship) has more than five Fate points, allow them to begin next session with that number rather than just five- though five is still a minimum.

Of course, so far it's never been a factor.]
_________________
Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[dr_mitch]

Fifth session. The game was at my place this time, and down a player- our usual host missed it. He missed out on a treat...

The heroic Indie Nightmare crew travelled to Phobos to pick up some spice. En route, at an Elysian space station, they saw Calm Horizons (the ship that had attacked them before) being refitted with heavier weapons.

Landing on Phobos through the constant sandstorms was problematic, but they made it- not to the capital, but to the smaller Abbey of Vezay- where the warrior nuns were more likely to freely sell the spice.

They agreed to the sale. And made another offer to the bold navigator. He could retake the test- and if he passed, they had some information for him.

He was sent into a trance, and escaped the demons of his subconscious almost too easily. On the way, he had visions of his past- and something he had not seen before- the Indie Nightmare approaching an alien spacecraft- like nothing seen in the cluster before.

[Social combat again, over rather quickly. The rolls in general this session were either exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. But I think I had made things too easy.]

The information given referred to odd signals, sent by a microwave laser, from a location around 30AU out in the system.

A *long* trip followed- around a month. Where the Indie Nightmare encountered the ship seen in Jarek van Haarl's vision!

The craft was still somewhat operational, although it's habitat area was breached. It launched fighters to attack the Indie Nightmare. A truly vicious battle followed, and the Indie Nightmare suffered a hull breach!

[The battle almost mopped up every single FATE point. It was possibly the first time the Indie Nightmare had fought rather than ran away. But I still *love* the space combat minigame to bits...]

The fighters were disposed of. The heroes boarded the main craft, and were attacked again by security robots.

[This was a quick fight- I didn't even need to bother with a combat map.]

On board, the heroes found the dead crew- birdlike humanoids, around 5' high. And gizmos. Fusion powered guns. Strange communicators. Alien jewellery. And (as part of the ship) an optical computer.

The intrepid heroes towed the ship back, and seized the opportunity to use the optical computer to read the blue pyramid storage device. Sadly they had no idea what the strange symbols they saw meant. Information on the storage device...or perhaps just an error message.

They used the (even longer) two month journey back to detach the computer from the ship, but largely left it alone. The spacefarers wanted the ship- and were told that what they found was theirs- but did not wish to anger those in charge of Phobos and the spice. So they sold it to the Phobos nuns at a handome amount- although they did take the computer and some of the more personal items.

But the heroes did make a handome profit, and are perhaps one small step closer to solving a mystery.
_________________
Paul Mitchener

Maths Sensei

Author: Blood of the Gods (Wild Talents in Ancient Greece), Drowned Lands (in Adventures in Wordplay), Dragon City (in the OpenQuester).

[First Age]