FATE SF

Neanderthal

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:11:00 +0000

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/10/
neanderthals/hall-text

The picture of Neanderthals keeps evolving. No pun intended. A few years ago, the science shows said that Homo sapiens sapiens probably exterminated them, and had none of their genes. The case was made for conflict and little positive cooperation and interaction with Neanderthal people.

Today, that is not so much the claim - as will be especially clear to people who saw last week's episode of NOVA. All of us have a few of Neanderthal genes - they're often 2-3% of our genome. The Neanderthals had burial customs (and hence probably religion), and apparently wore decorative ornamentation. Neanderthals were also advanced tool users; their inventions included a kind of glue which helped affix spearheads to spear shafts. They cooked and ate vegetables. Maybe they even roleplayed.

OGL MECHANICS

Ice Age Human
Closest relative of modern humans

ASPECTS:

High Concept: Cold climate survivor
Trouble: High energy diet, please!
Aspect: Close-in fighter
Aspect: Advanced tool maker
Aspect: Beginnings of art and religion

APPROACHES

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

STUNTS:

Power Lifter: The average Neanderthal could bench press 300-500 lbs. Take a +2 bonus to any Forceful attempt to lift, move, or hurl something.

REFRESH: 3

The Triceratops Of London

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:42:00 +0000

Art by Mark Rehkopf

Wooo-hooo, FATE SF's all-time favorite dinosaur, the Triceratops, put in an appearance in my recent Kerberos Club scenario (excellent player reportage here) at Jon Con '13 last month in the Twin Cities, Minnesota!

The scenario used a FATE Accelerated Edition hack optimized for Kerberos Club (design outlines here).

Today, we're sharing our write-up for the Triceratops.

The one below made a mean mess of some of London's finest commercial streets, but eventually ended up in the London Zoo.

Get a Triceratops onto the streets of a game near you soon!

OGL MECHANICS

Triceratops
Everyone's Favorite Plant-Eater

ASPECTS:

High Concept: Tri-horned herbivore
Trouble: Ornery as hell
Aspect: Never met a human I didn't want to charge
Aspect: Armored on the front-end
Aspect: Meat steam-roller

APPROACHES

Careful: 0
Clever: 0
Flashy: 0
Forceful: +5
Quick: +3
Sneaky: 0

STUNTS:

Goes Down Slowly: Take two Severe Consequences (6 stress each) before being Taken Out.
Impaling Attack: When a Triceratops Succeeds with Style on an attack using the Forceful Approach, the person playing the Triceratops may declare it has impaled its target on the Triceratops' horns. An Overcome action will be required before the target can detach itself from the horns.
Stampede: Spend 1 FP to roll 2DF + 2D6 on any charging action using a Forceful Approach.
Armored Frill: Take +2 to Forcefully defend against attacks from the front.

REFRESH: 2

The Fate of the Maltruskan Union

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:32:00 +0000

http://www.krazykimchi.com/hominids/

No moment in the history of the Terran Expansion is as shameful as humanity's first encounter with an alien civilization, the Maltruskan Union. The Maltruskans were a gracile hominid race that had settled many worlds near Sol. Their society was mercantile and clan-based. Their technology was a stable Imperial Standard T+2 on the Diasporic Scale of Galactic Development, and they made good use of the ancient network of slipknots, as well as of hyperspace travel.

The Mastruskans' Fall after their first encounter with humanity was precipitous. The problem was both biochemical and psychic. Biochemical: the Maltruskan's were vulnerable to a form of pheremonic attraction and servitude to humans. Psychic: the Maltruskans were moderately empathic, and overly responsive to humans' appetitive nature and the instinctive psychic pressure that humans exerted in proximity to Maltruskans.

Of course, the problem was also imperial: the humans of the Terran Expansion era simply didn't care very much about the welfare of even very similar species. They viewed the Maltruskans as one more resource to exploit to Terran advantage.

The result was the wholesale disintegration of Maltruskan society: their mass enslavement on the humans' plantations and in their extractive industries, and the destruction of the Maltruskan's household, clan, and inter-clan systems. Within a few years of their initial contact with humans, Maltruskan society and technology was in ruins, and only a few enclaves of an odd, subterranean troglodytic Maltruskan sub-species remained extant.

Things did not fare well for the Maltruskans' new masters, either. Once the Maltruskans' network of settled worlds had been overrun and incorporated into the Terran Expansion zone, human expansion stopped, and human-settled worlds became ever more culturally involuted, decadent, and ineffectual. Some Imperial scholars have suggested that this was a hidden vulnerability inherent in the empathic bond established between human masters and their Maltruskan slaves. Whatever the case may be, the end of the Terran Expansion Era came swiftly in the form of an invasion of Comet Barbarians from the periphery of the Terran Expansion zone.

One of the Comet Barbarians' chieftains became the first Imperial Sovereign. Glorious First conquered all the worlds of the Terran Expansion zone, and she began the forcible Separation of the human and Maltruskan populations. The second and third Imperial Sovereigns completed the dismantling of the traffic in Maltruskan flesh - which extended into the barbarian zones well beyond the formal Terran Expansion zone. These two Sovereigns abolished slavery of all species and kinds within the Empire forever.

The fourth Imperial Sovereign, also known as the Banisher Pontiff, carried out a decree of Excommunication on several Maltruskan worlds that had been purged of human populations. In this way, it was hoped that the Maltruskans might rebuild their culture and civilization, even if limited to a few isolated systems.

Notwithstanding that, there continue to be Maltruskans out and about amidst the Empire. A brave few make their way among humans by using hermetically and psychically shielded encounter suits. Still others have established small clans on remote or barbaric worlds. It is said that a few Maltruskan tribes even wander the deserts of the Imperial Throne World of Altair III. Still others - perhaps the troglodytic psychics - are said to have taken refuge within the lower levels of the Imperial Palace itself.

More than a few humans, meanwhile, dread the day when the humans of the Empire have that inevitable disastrous first encounter with a species for which they are not biochemically or psychically prepared. If this disaster befell the starfaring Maltruskans, why couldn't a similar one befall humans themselves? Modern Imperial Quarantine Procedures are based on the assumption that one day this will happen.

Ancient Lore In The Alwyn Campaign

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:07:00 +0000

How do you handle the presence of ancient super-science (or even remainders and the reinvention of modern science and technology) in a retro-medieval setting? The Alywn Campaign is set on Earth long after the Great Burn destroyed a planetary civilization(s) that had access to star-spanning technologies. Add to that the potential presence of even more advanced alien technologies some of which are indistinguishable from magic.

In FATE Accelerated Edition, past knowledge and ancient tech may call for access to specialized Stunts. Here are a few ideas for how those stunts might be structured. I am sure our players will come up with their own ideas at the gaming table, but hopefully these ideas will serve as a springboard.

OGL MECHANICS

Rubble Rat: You have this Stunt because you have learned a thing or two about the Ancients the hard way, while out prowling the dangerous ruins from before the Great Burn. Player gets a +2 to their Careful Approach once per scene to recognize or discover the purpose of a ruin or relic.

The Tongues of the Ancients: You have this Stunt because you are learned in one or more ancient written languages from the times before the Great Burn. You may know High Vorlonic (i.e., Minbari), Classical Interlac, English, Spanish, Somali, or another language. The number of ancient languages you know is equal to your Clever Approach. This Stunt is usually taken at character creation and should be accompanied by an Aspect related to scholarly or monastic training.

Lore of the Times Before: You have this Stunt because you have gone beyond the Holy Books, and have dabbled with reading the books of the Ancients from the times before the Great Burn. Player gets a +2 to their Clever Approach once per scene to try to determine the purpose or significance of an ancient ruined place or piece of tech.

The Gift of Prometheus: You have a preternatural gift, and possess an intuitive understanding of ancient technology. Any time you encounter an ancient relic, spend 1 FP to either declare its function, or compel the GM to disclose its function (GM may choose which). This gift has a limit: technologies of the First Ones (Vorlons, Shadows, etc.) are truly beyond your ken. But even these will call out to you as being special when you see them.

A Great Hand Reaching Out: You have been touched by the technology of the Shadows, or their minions, and have been contaminated in some way by their foul arts. Choose an Aspect reflecting this connection. You intuitively recognize Shadow technology. Add +2 to your Sneaky Approach to awaken, and then understand its function (in that order).

The Alwyn Campaign Links and Resources

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:57:00 +0000

The Alwyn Campaign is an Earth-based far future campaign set in the Babylon 5 universe. The year is 3262, hundreds of years after the Great Burn, a nuclear war that destroys Earth civilization. Humanity has crawled back up to a medieval/early Renaissance level of technology, but most humans are highly distrustful of the technologies that led to the Great Burn. The setting is featured in one of the B5 future history vignettes of the episode "Deconstruction of Falling Stars", and is reminiscent of the science fiction classic, A Canticle for Lebowitz by Walter M. Miller.

Very Brief Intro to the Setting

More Descriptive Introduction to the Setting

Setting Locations and Parameters

Handling Ancient Lore and Tech In The Alywn Campaign

First Session Set Up

The Alwyn Campaign Google Map

Treasure Found

The Silent Teacher
Circuit-Jewel Ring
3 Phased Plasma Guns, one cartridge each
One First Aid Kit

Dramatis Personae:

Francis, High Concept: Raised By Bears, Trouble: Uncivilized. Other Aspects include: All problems can be solved by charging, yelling, and waving a giant Axe and Chosen of [the Giant Squirrel God].
Derek, High Concept: Outcast Merchant, Trouble: Drunkard. Other Aspects include: Knows the cost of everything, value of nothing; "Million Pockets"; and Skankeroon.
Big Al, High Concept: Fort Snelling's Hardest Working Hustler, Trouble: It always costs a favor. Other Aspects include: Pillar of the (criminal) community; and Nothing worth having is behind an open door.
Larissa, High Concept: Intrepid Hunter, Trouble: Curious, other Aspects include: At home in the wild; Eagle-eyed; and Iron Stomach.
The Blacksmith - Henry Leroy Jenkins

Session Reports:

Starports Are A Blast!

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:31:00 +0000

Spaceport goes bang!

Last night's Alywn Campaign session ended with a bang! PCs Larissa, Francis, and Derek had gone back to the John M. Ford Minneapolis-St. Paul Interstellar Starport to see if they could access a starship. Exploration and salvage (i.e., looting) was their goal.

They explored the tarmac a bit and found numerous steep hillocks or drumlins. Some had holes dug into them; others did not. Two had metallic structures protruding from the mound. The PCs decided to explore one that had both protruding metal structures and holes. Larissa found a hatch around the base of that drumlin. After some heaving and hammering on the manual latch, the hatch open and slid downward and out of sight.

The PCs entered a dimly lit room. It had a first aid kit with supplies in pristine condition, crashcarts and stretchers mounted on the bulkheads, as well as an inner airlock with keypad/viewscreen and a table console with many buttons. Francis and Dereck began pushing buttons. Many buttons. Eventually, more lights came on, there was humming and vibration from deeper in the ship, a ship AI turned on and began conversing with the PCs, and the inner bulkhead opened.

The PCs found themselves in a room with another console, a larger first aid kit (really a small surgical suite), five odd control nodules, and five large metallic containers. The AI came-on in this room too. It cycled through several languages until it hit upon the PCs dialect, which is an odd patois of English with many borrowed words and phrases from Spanish, Somali, Ojibway, Lakota and Interlac.

The PCs asked what was in the containers, and the AI told them that the containers held individuals subjected to Diplomatic Quarantine. Larissa found a depression on the control console in this room which seemed to fit her Circuit-Jewel Ring; this apparently authorized her to command the AI to release one of the quarantine subjects. A great deal of organic fluid with sizable biomass lumps sloshed everywhere. A medical robot appeared and began to release a strange looking creature from the harnesses within the containers. The creature looked like this:

It had a translation orb in its abdomen, and began communicating with the PCs.

More or less simultaneously, the lumpy elements in the floor slime began moving, and attacked all three PCs, grabbing limbs and latching on with their headtails:

None made it to the neck, but Derek's character succumbed to the nasty paralytic these creatures release to subdue their prey. Long and short of it was that Larissa and Francis prevailed in combat. Dereck managed to garrote one of the creatures and dislodge another that had attached to his leg. He got the hell out of Dodge, and headed back as quickly as he could travel to Fort Snelling.

Derek is planning on getting into a less risky end of the relic market.

Meanwhile, Larissa and Francis stayed in the ship and revived a second quarantine subject. This one turned out to be a normal human - a Ranger in fact. He was not fully thawed out before rescue and evacuation of the ship became imperative - about this time the ship activated its self-destruct mechanism - so a somewhat traumatized and amnesiac Ranger was carried out of the ship.

Larissa, Francis and the Ranger got clear of the spaceport just in time to see the column of fire created by the ship's explosion. The full scope of the damage will have to be assessed in a later expedition, but they saw the spaceport terminal undergo a pancake collapse. It is an open question whether Virgil survived.

Oh, and Francis did a catch and release with one of the little monsters. It's probably out there somewhere. And the big nasty alien got away using some kind of stealth magic.

Player feedback and GM reflections on the session:

I wasn't handing out Fate Points when PCs were doing cool things during the battle

I need to be more conscious of that as a critical part of GMing action scenes

Derek's player is retiring that character in favor of a more combat-oriented one

I never explained Declarations properly to Derek's player. To make matters worse, his character took a moderate consequence very early in the battle. I should have thought about offering him some ideas for Declaration that could have avoided or mitigated that initial damage.

I'm trying to balance combat vs. non-combat in these adventures. Larissa's player definitely wants more combat. So I've been trying to supply more of that. But this session, I wasn't paying sufficient attention to the needs, abilities, and interests of each character/player. As a GM I am somewhat combat avoidant, and at least in the early days (the 1970s) was a monte hauler. These days, I strive for more balance (i.e., more risk to balance potential rewards) but I need to pay attention to the balance between challenge and possible PC responses - and offer some ideas and options.
Derek's player read the new draft of FAE and caught an important rules change between drafts: PCs can now start with 3 Stunts and 3 Refresh. I liked the earlier draft better (1 free Stunt, after which additional Stunts cost Refresh) as the set point was grittier. We'll be going with the new draft, however, so PCs will be adding Stunts as seems appropriate.
We also identified a need for an Ancient Tech/Lore kind of Stunt, representing knowledge and skill with things from before the Great Burn. I'll be working on some examples of how such stunts might work within the next couple of posts.

FATE Dice

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:54:00 +0000

New dice! They will hit the gaming table tonight.

Spaceport, Or Mall Of America?

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:02:00 +0000

Michael Pollock, Architect

In the third session of the Alwyn Campaign, the players in the Thursday Night Group decided to explore the ruins of the John M. Ford Minneapolis-St. Paul Interstellar Starport. They trundled over the ruins of Highway 5 and approached the main terminal's eastern entrance.

The embankment below the terminal building was riddled with holes. They went in one, and found themselves in seemingly endless galleries filled with piles of luggage. Many of the cases were open and the piles, which seemingly had no particularly obvious pattern of spacial distribution were filled with various items: a pile of suitcases with clothes, a pile with cheap jewelry, knives, and so on and so forth.

Scrabbling about in these materials, they were soon greeted by an old raggedy-man named Virgil. This strange fellow carried a curious makeshift spear with supersharp oldtech on the delivery end, and was wearing a number of other improvised pieces of ancient tech, possibly as jewelry. Virgil also wore lamellar armor made of tablet devices. His mode of speech was rather peculiar too, and his sense of time and space was rather off. Where have we seen this before ?

Virgil kept on referring to the terminal as the Mall of America, and to himself as having been here since the Great Burn. The PCs got a tour, and discovered that the terminal's mall was rich in a wide variety of ancient and exotic commodities. The main challenge would be limiting the introduction of these commodities so as not to either flood the market and therefore devalue the commodities, or attract undue attention from other ruin delvers.

When Virgil mentioned that he knew where Plasma Pulse Gun Pistols (PPGs) were stored, the PCs decided to trade a bottlefull of Napoleon Ants for a couple PPG pistols.

As the PCs were about to head back to Fort Snelling, they decided to check out one other tunnel near the entrance to the starport. Going in a ways, the encountered subterranean canids with lightning projection powers. The PCs killed a few, and the rest of the pack fled deeper into the tunnel system.

The players decided that for next session, they want to go out on the starport fields, and see if they can get onto one of the ancient grounded ships!

Post 200 - A Few Thoughts From Clavain

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:55:00 +0000

Inhibitors by Joonas Koonula

"We did make love. Early on, we made love often. The other Conjoiners didn't like it, I think - they saw it as an animal act, a primitive throwback to baseline humanity. Galiana didn't agree, of course. She was always the sensual one, the one who revelled in the realm of the senses. That was what her enemies never truly understood about her - that she honestly loved humanity more than they did. It was why she made the Conjoined. Not to be something better than humanity, but as a gift, a promise of what humanity could be if we only realized our potential. Instead, they painted her as some coldly reductionist monster. They were so terribly wrong. Galiana didn't think of love as some ancient Darwinian trick of brain chemistry that had to be eradicated from the human mind. She saw it as something that had to be brought to its culmination, like a seed that needed to be nurtured as it grew. But they never understood that part. And the trouble was you had to be Conjoined before you appreciated what it was that she had achieved."
-Alastair Reynolds, Redemption Ark

Post 199 - Focusing In On Devices For FATE

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Sat, 04 May 2013 23:04:00 +0000

Jeff Berry poses with a Ruby Eye (in firing mode)

Eyes are the signature superscience devices of M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel, and are cited as well in the Humanspace Empires RPG. (The latter game, which can be downloaded for free on the site at the link, is an OSR-inspired attempt to reverse engineer the space opera precursor setting for the star spanning races and civilizations that ended up trapped together in Tekumel's pocket universe.)

Magical superscience devices aren't unique to Tekumel; they are a common feature of a wide range of pulp-inspired and space operatic settings. Take Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series and you will find them there. Lensman? Check.

Eye-like devices even crop up in more contemporary sources. Gene Wolfe's The Claw of the Conciliator for one.

Art by Don Maitz, Artist Guest of Honor at Minicon in 2014

All of this begs the question: can you use FATE to create charge-based quasi-magical and/or superscience devices of the kind found in a range of science fantasy settings? The answer to this question is "yes" and I am relatively certain there are many different ways to do it in FATE!

First, you could think of some of these devices as placing an Aspect on a person or scene. For example, a beam-like superscience device like Barker's Excellent Ruby Eye puts the Aspects "Invulnerable" and "Trapped In Stasis Until Further Notice" on someone. Alternatively, that's an automatic Taken Out for any given scene. You'd better hand out a FATE Point to the victim of that weapon, because either way you'll have a pretty pissed off player.

A device like Barker's Eye of Exquisite Power Over Maidens is equally problematic. A device, scroll, or spell which causes a player to immediately fall in love (or lust) with another player or NPC is deprotagonizing, and may even raise personal safety issues for some players. Consideration needs to be given to these factors.

That's part of awesome.

So let's come up with some mechanics for these superscience devices for FATE. Many of them require some degree of manual dexterity and eye-hand coordination to use properly. Many are, after all, ranged devices.

Let me know what you think of the ideas for mechanics outlined below. I'll write-up a few unique devices in future posts, so that we have some examples to consider, and perhaps playtest them in upcoming sessions of the Alywin Campaign.

OGL MECHANICS

Guidelines for old-school inspired magical and superscience devices:

The user of the device may be taking a Create Advantage, Overcome, Attack, or Defend action.
The kinds of actions which are possible will depend on the nature of the device.

Something that shoots a "love" or "like" beam is going to be more like a Create Advantage or Overcome.
A device that blows holes in walls will be more like an Overcome.
Something that blasts flames will have a bit broader range of possible actions: Attack/Defend, Create Advantage, and maybe Overcome (if facing a wall of ice, for example).

Devices require a Shooting roll against the target (if the device has a target).
If the device has no specific target, make a straight-out 4DF roll and add any inherent skill bonuses from the device for the effect.
A target can Defend using skills like Athletics to get out of the way of the device's beam.
If the user of the device succeeds with style in their action, they place one or more Aspects on the target or scene (which are often predetermined by the nature of the device)
No instant kills.
If the nature of the device would place an Aspect on someone where they are in effect Taken Out, the target should have the opportunity to make a Concession.
If keeping track of charges is important to your setting and/or to the discipline of the table, you can:

Assign the device a specific number of charges
Have the player roll a d100, d30, d20, d12, d10, or d8, d6, or d4 to determine the number of charges
Roll 1DF. The device has one of three Aspects: (-) result = "Fully Charged"; (blank face) = "Partially Charged"; (+) = "Out of Charge"
Alternatively, the GM may specify a charge state
Unknown, and subject to an "Out of Charge" Compel offer at some point
Subject to negotiation (player gives a Fate Point for the device to be Fully Charged, or takes a Fate Point for it to be Out of Charge)

Post 198 - My Kerberos Club

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Sat, 04 May 2013 17:19:00 +0000

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.

Post 197 - The Thursday Night Group Goes Back To Tekumel

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:26:00 +0000

Last night, the Thursday Night Group had a visitor from Duluth, +George Harnish who likes both Tekumel and FATE. So we took a break from playing the Alwyn Campaign and broke out some Tekumel using FATE Core. We had a two hour slot for gaming, so to get characters created as quickly as possible, I ran a brief follow-up adventure to my Con of the North game, "Raid on the Temple of Vimuhla."

Three of the five players created warriors. The fourth created a thief from a high status clan (one who specializes in stealing from "them that has", while our fifth, the Man from Duluth, created a priest of Dlamelish.

The set-up was that the PCs had just rescued the two hostages being held in the Temple Of Vimuhla in the city of Katalal. Their goal was to get out of the temple and make it to the underground tube car system whose nearest known station was under the local Temple of Ksarul.

Imagine the scene in the temple: at the highest levels in the temple, the Ritual High Priest and Scholar High Priest had just been killed by intruders (our PCs). Down below in the dungeons, the chief torturer and several young and willing apprentices had also just been killed (can you guess by whom?). Meanwhile, the temple was chockablock with hangers-on who were there for the evening feast.

A hostage from the Green Kirtle clan, and her armed escort had just been freed by the party, and the PCs were itching to get out of Dodge.

I asked the players to choose three Aspects to set the stage for the game session. Their choices were:

Night
Underworld
Carnival (everyone kind of smiled at this idea)

When I asked "Hmmm, what kind of carnival?", player Rachel quickly responded "The Parade of Worms."

This produced groans.

I said: "Let's go with that. Sounds like a Sarku festival to me."

The priest of Dlamelish did a quick investigative roll as we started the adventure and declared that temple personnel had hinted that there was another very secret entrance to the Underworld from the lower regions of the temple of which the PCs were unaware. I said, "Sure. You were told it's in the crypts, but you'll have to find it on your own. They were a little too vague on the details."

The PCs headed down to the crypts and entered the ossuary. There was a bit of a tussle here between the thief and the priestess because in the ossuary, the thief discovered a beautiful green jade ring.It was on a finger bone in the ossuary's finger-bone jar. Next, the PCs found the secret holy-of-holies to Lord Vimuhla, and then a special crypt room with a very large central sarcophagus on a dias, as well as lesser sarcophagi and funeral urns on all sides.

Then there was a battle with the supernatural guardians of the sarcophagus room. The temple's first high priest was buried here. Our female warrior fought a Fire Shen; the grizzled male veteran of the legions faced off against a Magma Ahoygga; the priest of Dlamelish sought to flatter and seduce an orange fire demon so that it would not attack.

Eventually our players found their way into the Underworld. They descended a vast staircase.

At this point, we were running out of time, so I pulled a few RPG Inspiration Cards to set the final scene. One of the cards was Carnival, another was Lovers, another was Death, and the final one was Twins. I asked the players what all of this meant. The results are below.

Before the PCs reached the bottom of the stairs, Rachel made a declaration that the level where the stairs landed deep below was in fact a tubecar station. So we actually have two access points to the tubecar station in the Underworld below in Katalal, OR the temples of Ksarul and Vimuhla have Underground passages that converge - which is bound to cause trouble from time to time.

A tubecar arrived. When the doors opened, the PCs discovered to their dismay that the contents were the fungal congerie better known as the Parade of the the Undead! An Unspeakable Ritual was underway within the tubecar. The car also contained a mysterious twin of the Green Kirtle woman they had rescued. On this horrific note, our adventure ended.

A Couple of Quick Reflections

With some help from Rachel, I am going to develop some quick Tekumel handouts to facilitate faster play in the future. Things like Clans, Gods, Races, Legion names, and cool Tekumel flavored Aspects.
The implementation of magic that the Dlamelish priest used worked well, I thought.
I need to tweak the skills a bit more, to increase the Tekumel flavor and utility for players.
One player hadn't been to Tekumel in about 20 years. He said it felt natural stepping right back in to the world.
The Man from Duluth reflected that he had wondered what it would be like to do a dungeon crawl using fate. I think he felt it was a pretty good experience.

Dawning Star For FATE Core

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Wed, 01 May 2013 03:26:00 +0000

A total of 802 pages of great SF

+Lee Hammock has started posting design notes for a FATE Core reimagining of his Dawning Star SF RPG setting. I'm really excited to see this happening, as Dawning Star, published by Blue Devil Games, was one of the high points in independent creative design during the d20 boom.

(Blue Devil Games' Passages is another gem of streamlined d20 Victoriana. Fans of our sister blog, The Everwayan, are encouraged to check out that multiversal gate-based RPG. )

Dawning Star has serious space opera appeal with simply great art and a clean graphic design, thanks to the art direction of Danilo Moretti.

I am sure the new iteration using FATE Core will be just as spectacular.

A post on the overall project is here.

That is followed by a post on Dawning Star species for FATE Core.

The Bootleggers' Bible

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:49:00 +0000

The Nash Quad, the first all-wheel drive vehicle

This past weekend was JonCon '13 in the Twin Cities. I ran a FATE Accelerated Edition version of Kerberos Club there (more on that later this week), and I was also fortunate enough to play in +B Cook's FATE Core prohibition-era game inspired by the CrimeWorld supplement for FATE Core.

Bob's game, "The Bootleggers' Bible", has a terrific write-up over at Rachel Kronick's Blade & Crown Blog. Check it out!

The Bootleggers' Bible was a really great scenario - one which I found it particularly enjoyable because I am a big fan of Boardwalk Empire. It is nice seeing how versatile FATE Core is. This one felt very focused, immersive, and real-world to me, like the best of the Jazz Age Call of Cthulhu scenarios.

Hopefully these kind of examples put to rest the idea that all FATE Core games have to be gonzo genre mashups. That's of course fun, but it is not required for fun with FATE Core.

That being said, the ease with which the game handled the Jazz Age suggests that FATE Core would also work very well for more occult/supernaturally inspired settings with a bit of the pulp gonzo, like +trey causey's fine Weird Adventures setting which is also featured on his blog, From the Sorcerer's Skull. Yeah, I admit I'm itching to try that out.

Concessions

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:22:00 +0000

Image by Alvimann

After several years of playing FATE, I finally had a player decide to take a Concession during a combat. It happened in my FAE Kerberos Club game this weekend; the context was a devastating charge by a Triceratops. This doesn't happen every day in my games, but it was fun to see.

Preorder for Nova Praxis Hardcover

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:11:00 +0000

The preorder for the Nova Praxis hardcover is up now on the Void Star Studios website.

If you are looking for a transhuman SF RPG that uses the FATE engine, Nova Praxis has it! If you are wondering what the game is all about, you can check out the Void Star Studios page on the game here. I also did a series of posts and reviews of the game back in the Fall. The link to the reviews and a sample character (built using the earlier draft rules, which of course evolved) can be found here.

But a lot has changed since my reviews. Over the last few months, designer Mike McConnell has been hard at work to ensure that the game will work for YOU, especially if you are a fan of FATE Core. Not only does the final version of Nova Praxis have a custom-built implementation of the FATE engine - created for transhuman SF gaming - but Mike has also built reverse compatibility into Nova Praxis, so that it can easily be used with FATE Core.

So get in on the preorder if you think you'll want the hardcover!

And you don't need to wait for the release of the hardcover to start reading and playing the game. The Nova Praxis Augmented PDF is already available for purchase. It's simply the best PDF in my game collection. Nova Praxis Accelerated is a truly state-of-the art, highly navigable design that is optimized for tablets and for apps like Goodreader - one of the few PDF products that I could actually use to run a game at the table.

Congratulations to Mike McConnell for producing such an excellent game, and for running an exemplary Kickstarter!

We're looking forward to running the game at some events this summer! Stay tuned for details.

Hermione Grantham, The Black Cat Kerberan

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 02:37:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 02:03:00 +0000

"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

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:46:00 +0000

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.

The Architects: Silent Builders Of Refuge

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:43:00 +0000

Paolo Soleri's Asteromo

The Architects, or Silent Builders, should not be confused with The Engineers; they have nothing in common with those blundering celestial giants. Far from being engineers of bio-terror and death, The Architects are builders of refuges and sanctuaries for those whose lives have been endangered by others. Their species is at least 250 million years old, if one judges by the Silent Builders' artifacts: the great arcologies they reveal to those fleeing war, genocide, and persecution. Because of their antiquity, and the active role they play in preserving the weakest among the younger races, The Silent Builders are properly understood as a Forerunner-class species with a Preserver ethos.

The Empire first discovered the work of The Architects immediately after the legendary Anti-Annexation Campaign in which the Joyful Brigade laid waste to the numerous hive worlds of The Assembled Totality. Journeying far past the dead worlds of the Totality, the Imperial Dreadnought Brief Exposure and its seven escorts discovered something interesting - an impregnable orbital arcology of extremely advanced design - in a resource-rich but supposedly uninhabited system of the Dying Swan Cluster.

The Cluster's systems had long been mapped by the far-ranging agents of the RUR. As the Imperial vessels began new sensor sweeps of the system, they were suddenly displaced a hundred light years' distance coreward, their drives damaged beyond repair. The next mission the Empire sent to that system was diplomatic; it negotiated a successful non-aggression and trade pact with the Enclosed Totality, the refugee state that controlled the orbital.

A dozen arcologies are known to have been built by The Architects within the Imperial Extents. They exist peacefully within the Empire as independent states; most are extremely ancient habitations which long preceded the Empire's rise.

Three of these arcologies are space habitats; the remainder are arcologies built on planets or moons. Ten of the Silent Builders' arcologies are home to refugee populations from one or more worlds; two house refugees from the Empire's own Wars of Expansion. Another of the dozen hosts no refugees; it is located in thhe poorly defended Interstitial Region of the Empire and has been taken over by pirates. The twelfth, known as The Unheralded Habitation, is a black hexahedral arcology that has been uninhabited for centuries. It is regarded with superstitious dread by the hillfolk who inhabit the distant mountain villages overlooking the great structure on the Plains.

Soleri's Hexahedron (pop. 170,000)

Hundreds of the Silent Builders' arcologies are known to exist beyond the Empire. The largest number that have been mapped exist in a halo of systems surrounding the RUR Workers-State. From the RUR, a "tail" of arcologies extends further coreward from RURspace towards the galactic center. New arcologies continue to be discovered near current zones of galactic conflict. The Silent Builders place these refuges just far enough away from epicenters of conflict to ensure that opposing parties of belligerents do not discover them.

Refugees from current and recent wars rarely discuss how they found these sanctuaries. But the historical records of long-established refuges contain vague yet tantalizing hints. The Architects' constructs are almost never discovered; they are almost always revealed in a previously uninhabited or disused star system. The Record Halls of these ancient arcologies often contain references to a "Herald" who appeared to their war-torn ancestors and led them to safety.

Where these arcologies actually come from, and where and how they are built, continue to be mysteries. One day a system is entirely barren, empty of built structures and habitations; the next day a city-building is already there in-system, ready and waiting. For this reason, if no others, many seek out the Silent Builders to learn and master their techniques.

OGL MECHANICS

The Architects, a galactic organization

ASPECTS:

High Concept: Builders of refuge-arcologies
Trouble: Long-sought by the curious
Aspect: Drawn to places of great conflict
Aspect: The weak must be saved
Aspect: From among the weak we find our Heralds

APPROACHES

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

STUNTS:

Sudden Revelation - Once per scenario, the Silent Builders may reveal one of their refuge-arcologies in previously uninhabited system. This puts a new location into the game.
A Herald Shall Lead Them - Once per scenario, the Silent Builders may uplift as their Herald someone from a species that is threatened with extinction. The Herald's body will be suffused nanomachines that render it nearly invulnerable, and their mind will know the words and the way to bring their people to a hidden refuge. After leading their people to safety, they will simply fade from sight and memory, joining the Silent Builders in their Greater Refuge.

REFRESH: 2

Remembering Paolo Soleri, Rochester, And My Dad

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:42:00 +0000

Soleri's design for Babel IID,
with Empire State Building for scale

First some general background; then, a personal story.

Thanks to Porky's recent blog post, I learned that on April 9, 2013, Paolo Soleri passed away at the age of 93. He was the inventor of the term arcology, a term which combines architecture and ecology. A city that is a single
building. A city-building that creates its own environment.

Fans of Gibson's cyberpunk novels, and of the Shadowrun RPG, are very familiar with this term. It is usually used for the SFnal city-buildings of proximate cyberfutures. All too often, such environments appear in stories as the nexus-enclaves of extremely exploitative corporations and their employees.

This wasn't Soleri's vision at all.

Vision for Arcosanti, Arcosanti, AZ

His idea of arcology wasn't to isolate groups of humans from each other in separate city-buildings or even Metropolis-like city-tiers, reproducing on a whole new level the ever-increasing racial and social stratification of capitalist society.

http://usedbookblog2.blogspot.com/2009/05/
visionary-cities-arcology-of-paolo.html

Instead, Soleri's arcology pointed toward another way for humans to live in harmony with the non-built environment: build cities that don't spread horizontally to consume and destroy nature. Live in harmony with it. Make it easier to leave the city and experience nature.

Bridge it. Blend with it. Build under it. Think and feel it.

http://www.visualnews.com/2013/04/13/
paolo-soleri-founder-of-arcology-dies-at-93/

As someone influenced by Teilhard de Chardin, Soleri believed that changing the built environment in this way would change human awareness, consciousness, and behavior.

Arcosanti civic space, Arcosanti, AZ

It is a vision of the future that we still need. That's why his Guardian obituary begins:

"If you are truly concerned about the problems of pollution, waste, energy depletion, land, water, air and biological conservation, poverty, segregation, intolerance, population containment, fear and disillusionment," reads the sign at the entrance to Arcosanti, "join us." Beyond the placard lies the proposed solution to this list of ills: an otherworldly landscape of concrete domes and soaring vaults rising out of the Arizona desert, like a cross between an ancient Mayan ruin complex and the Star Wars cities of Tatooine. This is the experimental eco-town of Arcosanti, the lifetime's work of the visionary Italian-born architect Paolo Soleri, who has died aged 93.

***

So now to the personal. I grew up in Rochester, New York. That city is best known for Kodak, but when I was a kid Rochester had an entire cluster of world-leading industries dealing with the image. When I was 15, my Dad took me to Soleri's exhibition "Two Suns Arcology, A Concept for Future Cities/Cities Energized by the Sun" which opened at Xerox Square in Rochester. The exhibition space was filled with scale models and drawings of Soleri's arcologies, including the one that is under construction: Arcosanti in Arizona. It had a profound affect on my sense of what is possible in the world, of what dreams can be given form.

It is one of the most important memories of doing something with my Dad.

Arcosanti 5000 Master Plan

Babylonian Encounters: The Sanctuary Of Enever

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:30:00 +0000

"Hello Babylon 5" by Egri

Timeframe: Season One and After

Location: GREEN SECTOR, Deck 2, Segment 7 (one unit Forward from Na'Toth's quarters)

Name: The Sanctuary of Enever

DATA FILE

There is no Minbari temple in The Garden's Religious and Cultural Centre on Bablyon 5, but deep within the station is a sacred place to which only Minbari of the Worker Caste have unrestricted access: The Sanctuary of Enever. The Minbari known as Enever was the first of his race on the Station. In fact, he was here before construction was even begun, as Enever was a space-architect of the Worker Caste.

His duty to his Caste and to the Grey Council was to contribute funds on the behalf of the Minbari Federation to support the construction of Babylon 5, as well as to contribute the Minbari hand and eye to the construction of a space station that was both functional and beautiful. He succeeded, but at a great personal price.

Enever was already dying when he arrived at Epsilon III. He came with a crew of 50 Minbari architects and engineers of the Worker Caste. Enever told no one of his illness until he was very near the end. He suffered in silence. Enever endured the great pain through meditation and prayer. He worked night and day to devise plans that were pleasing to both Minbari and human eyes, and acceptable to EarthGov. Enever and his fellow Minbari workers designed the hull exterior "to reflect the light of errant and missing souls", an expression they explained to their confused human counterparts as an allusion to the tragedy and loss experienced by both sides in the Earth-Minbari War.

The architect's body was found shortly before the official opening ceremonies for the new station. His Worker Caste colleagues brought him home immediately for final ceremonies. But they left something of Enever behind, in the diplomatic aide's quarters he had used during his time on the station. These quarters became The Sanctuary of Enever, a meditation space within the deck reserved for Babylon 5's most important ambassadors and their aides.

Only a member of the Worker's Caste can open the door to this sanctuary. In the center of the room is a small dais on which a lavender crystal stands on a pedestal. When the door to the room is closed, the crystal glows to life. A holographic model of the Babylon 5 station is then projected within the room. Once can use hand gestures to expand the model to zoom in on particular areas and features.

Curiously enough, the model somehow stays up-to-date with the station's current configuration (including its complement of fighters, defensive systems, ships and shuttles docked in the Zero-G Docking Bay, and other internal features). In fact, the map is more accurate than the station's official maps, which are imprecise for certain areas of the ship. How the holographic model is updated is uncertain, as the walls of the sanctuary are unusually well-shielded against all manners of eavesdropping and electronic surveillance.

Once every year on the anniversary of the station's official opening, a member of the Worker Caste arrives from Minbar to conduct a special ritual of remembrance for Enever. At other times, members of the Worker Caste come here to meditate and pray. The Worker Caste say: "In this place, the eye, the hand, and the mind are in harmony; the soul is united".

The sanctuary's door will open for any member of the Worker Caste but only for members of that caste. Station personnel have not been able to break the code that controls access to the room.

PLOT HOOKS

One rumor about the sanctuary is that the hologram has another setting: it can also project an ever-outward spiraling network of jumpgates and star systems, with Babylon 5 at its center. Many of these are unknown to Earthforce and IPX, both of whom would like access to the sanctuary in order to map them.
Ambassador Kosh has been witnessed entering and leaving the sanctuary without Minbari escort. The Minbari refuse to comment about this. Commander Sheridan once asked Ambassador Kosh: "What do you do in there?" Kosh replied: "Silence makes the mind sing."*
Anyone with psi-skills who passes by the sanctuary will sense the presence of a powerful mind at work within the room - even when no one is inside. If they venture within the sanctuary, they will be drawn to the lavender holographic crystal on the dais. It is psychically active.
Immediately below the sanctuary is a 7' x 3' x 3' cavity that is surrounded by very advanced machinery. Scans reveal the outline of a body within the chamber... one with a Minbari skeleton.

OGL MECHANICS

ASPECTS:

High Concept Aspect: A living tribute to Enever
Trouble Aspect: Many wish to enter
Only the Worker Caste has the key
One hologram hides another
A favorite haunt of Ambassador Kosh

*Thanks to +Jeremy Whalen for letting me use this fine Koshism.

Babylonian Encounters: Bartoli's Breads & Bakery

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:06:00 +0000

Timeframe: Season One and After

Location: Two locations: one in Blue Sector, Central Corridor, Segment 10 (just opposite the entryway from Customs), one in Red Sector, Deck 28, Segment 8 (just aft of the Lower Zocalo).

Name: Bartoli's Breads

DATA FILE

Infamous with station personnel for baking and serving "the worst bread in the universe", Bartoli's Breads & Bakery's kiosk in the Central Corridor is a quick stop for pastries, sandwiches, and coffee for new arrivals on the station. Bartolli's also has a full bakery and restaurant in Red Sector for shoppers willing to take a few small steps off the Lower Zocalo. You will always find a Centauri or two buying pastries there.

Both locations are indeed very popular with the station's alien residents. Bartoli's markets itself as offering "real human treats, just like the first Bartoli's Bakery back on Earth." This slogan has led to jokes about "Bartoli's pastries being people." While most humans think the pastries aren't very good, the aliens don't seem to mind, and the price point is high enough to make up for the lack of repeat human customers. Business is so good in fact, that Bartoli's near-Zocalo location is a sit down restaurant. Some of the canned sandwich meats are actually quasi-fresh.

Owner Luciano Bartoli is meticulous about paying his bills on time, unlike many station vendors, and he has leveraged this reputation for punctuality and reliability into a side business in catering. Bartoli's provides pastries and sandwiches for many station conferences, with the exception of those held in the Babylon Hilton. The delivery business means that Bartoli's personnel have the run of many areas of the station, including a number of very secure areas. You can find them making deliveries almost everywhere it's safe to go.

PLOT HOOKS

Station authorities have received anonymous complaints from humans about the food at Bartoli's: specifically, that the fillings in some of the pastries contain Centauri spoo. Regulations require the authorities to mount a food inspection since some humans have food allergies to this popular food (and we use the term loosely).
Bartoli's delivery staff have recently been observed several times bringing new packages back from a delivery location. Sometimes the packages are brought all the way back to the bakery, while at other times, the packages get delivered to a third location. These deliveries often involve Centauri customers, but also sometimes Security personnel. Station authorities want it investigated...discretely.
A group of Narn toughs has on several recent occasions roughed up Centauri patrons at the Bartoli's location near the Zocalo. Luciano Bartoli has had enough. He decides to hire some muscle (and brains) of his own to figure out who these ruffians are, and teach them a lesson.

OGL MECHANICS

ASPECTS:

High Concept: A favorite stop for aliens and new arrivals
Trouble: The worst bread in the universe
We pay our bills on time
Fresh canned coffee and meats
The run of the station

Babylonian Encounters: Maxwell Flint

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:36:00 +0000

We're resuming our long-promised sub-series about the people and places of the Babylon 5 station. This sub-series uses Diaspora RPG as its systemic reference, but will use FATE Core/FAE's High Concept and Trouble Aspects to help define the most important Aspects of a person or place.

We begin with a station resident who is a veteran of the Earth-Minbari War.

Timeframe: Season One and After

Location: RED SECTOR, Deck 30, Segment 6, in the block of cheap housing adjacent to the lift. There is a mixed retail area nearby, as well as Alien Sector lodgings and Alien Bazaar space (see Mongoose's Guide to the Station, p. 54 for the deck map).

Name: Lt. Maxwell Flint, Earthforce, ret.

Jerome Flynn as Maxwell Flint

DATA FILE

Maxwell Flint is a veteran of the Earth-Minbari war. After serving on several Earthforce vessels as a communications and intelligence analyst both during and after the war, he mustered out and used his Earthforce connections to secure a construction job as part of the workforce building Bablyon Station.

He helped build-out the station's communications networks, and currently works on an on-call basis to assist with repairs to the station's communications systems and interstellar tachyon communications network. He can also be hired out for repairs on private ships' communications systems.

Max, as his friends call him, undoubtedly knows numerous back doors into the station's communication systems and the local hub for the jumpgate's tachyon communications network. His apartment on the station is filled with vintage military communications equipment, much of which is directly connected to the station's communications secure hub.

Station staff haven't discovered this intrusion yet.

But a careful review of the station's communications logs would reveal many brief and almost untraceable communications ... some occurring within the station itself, some being station-to-ship transfers, and others being data transfers piggybacking onto Earthforce's own transmissions through the tachyon network.

A careful search of Flint's quarters will also reveal numerous hidden and highly encrypted data crystals... way too many for a communications repairman. His quarters are also better shielded against EM noise than most; and the shielding goes in both directions.

Like many veterans, Maxwell Flint resents the Minbari, He will stay clear of most aliens, with the exception of the Narn. He has done many favors for them, they pay well, and he appreciates their straightforward manners.

PLOT HOOKS

Earthforce has engaged Flint as an asset in running a counterespionage operation against the Narn. Through Flint, Earthforce is feeding the Narn false intelligence in order to see how they respond to different political and military scenarios.
Flint is deeply in debt to loan sharks in the Downbelow. To recover his funds and pay off his debts, he has been snooping-in on Earthforce military intelligence signals (such as Earthforce fleet locations and intelligence such as Centauri diplomatic chatter) and selling that information to the Narn.
Flint is a comms repairman who often picks up privileged information from his private customers (typically small merchant and diplomatic vessels). He uses this information to tip off allies on Babylon 5 about potentially lucrative trade deals.
On who knows? behalf Flint has been installing transponder software on a number of private ships he services. The software transmits a location ping using a ship's tachyon transponder just before a jump into or out of hyperspace. This allows a ship's location to be tracked inter-systemically.

OGL MECHANICS

ASPECTS:

High Concept Aspect: Mustered out, but always on call
Trouble Aspect: Narn-friendly xenophobe
Communications and cryptography expert
Veteran of the Earth-Minbari War
Been on the Station since the beginning

Apex Skill: Communications (space)

Stunt: Military Grade Communications

Napoleon Ants

noreply@blogger.com (John Till) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:33:00 +0000

Worker Ant image by Mariana Ruiz
Image made available by Creative Commons license
available through the link above.

The Napoleon Ants are an ancient species of translucent-bodied ants whose probable origins are in the times before the Great Burn. The Holy Book mentions "small-bodied but mindful saints whose voices were raised in the unison of constant prayerful labor. They restored life to a dying world." The sacred text may be referring to this species of hearty toilers.

Napoleon Ants have a high resistance to chemical, radiological, and biological toxins. Their resiliency is matched by their determination to isolate and cave-in structures where these dangers accumulate. Napoleon Ants turn over contaminated soil, and have the ability to break down stone, concrete, metals, and plastics. They break down and sequester many dangerous materials. They are also quite invasive and expansionist, but are generally not hostile to humans. Their activities are more likely to intrude upon concrete and worked stone than to destroy crops and food supplies.

Like all ants, these little Napoleons function as a collective. They operate purposefully and in a coordinated fashion. Napoleon Ants can collapse large structures within a few hours when the collective determines it is necessary. They know how to identify and exploit the weak points in both natural and built environments.

Their ghostlike appearance is rather disconcerting. And when humans are near one of their colonies (which can reach into the millions), they often feel they are being watched, assessed, categorized, and processed.

They are.

Napoleon Ants are yet another iteration of the General Intellect in nature. They have a collective consciousness that operates through the a local telepathic field. This field exists whenever two or more ants are in close proximity. While ordinary minds cannot penetrate or communicate with this consciousness, more sensitive minds will feel its presence.This gestalt stores data, and creates and sustains a group memory for the collective. Napoleons visiting from other collectives may upload data to the local collective, or download it to share later with their home collective, allowing information and experiences to be shared over large areas.

Some hive-minds are quite old. It is even possible that some precede the Great Burn itself.

Pray these ancient angry minds have retired to some Elba deep within the earth.

OGL MECHANICS

Napoleon Ants
Collective Intellect/Species-Being

ASPECTS:

High Concept: We're all about conquest
Trouble: Creepy little transparent ants
Aspect: Collective telepathic consciousness
Aspect: Process and isolate
Aspect: There's always a way in or out

APPROACHES

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

STUNTS:

Find the Weak Point - Because they are skilled at finding the weak points in structures, Napoleon Ants gets a +2 to Cleverly create an advantage by further weakening a structure.
Long Memories - Because their collective consciousness persists over multiple generations, once per session a Napoleon Ant colony can remember something from the distant past.

REFRESH: 2

Note: The collective consciousness of the Napoleon Ants exists so long as at least two ants are in the same Zone. It normally radiates outward no more than three Zones from the population center of the collective, although cases of chained clusters of consciousnesses existing over large areas exist.