(AP) Never Home - my now-beloved FATE game

[Lord_Steelhand]

Here is some FATE actual play notes from my FATE game called Never Home http://juddgoswick.com/NeverHome/NeverHomeMain.htm.  The game is going better than my meager web skills.

The setting is a fantasy world, mainly in the Sea of Larga.  A recent war between Elves and Gnomes have left humans and Dwarves under the sandals of the Elf Empire.  the City-State islands have largely been crushed by the Elves and only a few city-states and ships are allowed to run free due to the treaty of surrender.  One of these ships is the "Never Home", a gnomish ship propelled by magical paddlewheels.  The crew of the ship runs about, doing odd jobs and heists to pay the bills.  The game thus far has been episodic in nature, with tight scene framing for establishing the job, but with no established linear plot beyond the job.

The players are as follows:

Judd (me) - GM
Kevin - Asiv  Kimris (the Captain, and veteran of the war)
Les - Kai Eltros (a kung-fu mystic kid who is assigned by his order to protect the ship)
Matt - Drake Silva (the ship's Fixer (he makes the deals), and former spy and assassin from the war. He has divine magic in Stealth.)
Will - "Sarge" Luther McLain (Earthman US Marine from 1989, sent to Larga by an experiment - has freakish Earthman strength)
Brian - Phillip Rain (ship's councillor and sage - divine magic in Acrobats and Movement)
NPCS - Stigir, the dwarf engineer and Ma, the Poltergeist Cook and Den-mother

So far the players have taken well to using Fate Points and the pyramid was optimized by a layer and everyone used that to make character skills, just choosing the importance of certain skills to the concept.  My biggest complaint here was the player impatience with going through each phase as thought it was a period in their lives.  The other problem that has been more subtle is that players made their characters alone, not together.  This lead to some duplicate concepts that have not caused great problems, but has had a negative impact in some character inter-relations.

We have played several episodes (over 6 sessions of bi-weekly play) and a few things have shown themselves:

* Player co-ordination in combat is low, since each player seems to want to showboat a bit.  As the players have gotten to know each other a bit better, this is starting to be less of a problem.  Les has been very good in holding his Chi-based combat supremacy in check (his character really only gets involved if he needs to, since he is not a violent person, just able to defend his charges if need be).

* The players have gottent he hang of spendinf FPs on each other's actions by declaring some action that allows them to aid the other (we are using exchange-based combat with dramatic weapon and armor rules).  This game mechanic has allowed the first item to slowly go away, as the group imagines themselves as much more connected to their crewmates in combat situations.

* I am very bad at negatively invoking aspects, but am getting better.  Players will remind me every so often, but I try and weigh the drama of the choice to make sure they are not just fishing for FPs...

* I give out quotes and action suggestion cards each session and these have been a big hit.  I make sure to award FPs for appropriate dialogue and actions as well.  I try and reward being faithful to the character's job in the crew for actions, and cool quotes always get an FP.  Anything that makes the other players light up also gets an FP or two, depending on the reaction.  the secret is playing to the crowd.  If you entertain the audience (your fellow players), you get FPs...

* The aspect system does indeed allow players to play to the core of their characters.  It makes your character able to have more impact in scenes where you are acting in concert with your character concept.

* I have been using lots of images in the game (pictures of NPCs taken from google images, pictures of items on item cards given to them, etc).  This has allowed the group to think about the game more visually, I think.  I also use lots of TV terminology since the game is played as if we are shooting episodes in a TV show (I do not use Now Playing rules, but many of the TV ideas get used here).  This has also been picked up by the group.

* I ask for feedback at the end of each session and have used that to dial-in the way we play.  One golden example was when the Captain got injured in a combat.  He was still spending FPs on other players and I intially said "you have to describe some way you are aiding him" and the player couldn't come up with anything.  I suggested the following "how about you describe a flashback or image-over where the Captain has inspired the PC who you are helping."  The player shied away from this, largely because it wasn't his idea, I think.  In the feedback afterwards, the player was less emotional about his character getting Taken Out of the scene and we discussed and put into play the "man down" bonus where a downed PC can still spend points on a fellow PC even if down only if the PC can describe some sort of emotional response that the other player would have at his injury.  This has the side effect of encouraging inter-PC relationships.

I know this is a jumble, but wanted to get some chatter up here about it.

Any other fun fantasy or TV genre things that people have tried that really seemed to click in FATE?  Input heartily welcome!

[iago]

Sounds like a great game with a good central concept, and one where you're getting your stride as you go along.  I'm sure it'll work out great.

The Fate games I've run have been - Amber, Buffy/Cthulhu, and Dresden Files.  I've also been in a couple, most notably the pulp stuff Rob's been running to get Spirit of the Century felt out.

[village6]

So, here I am sailing the seas of RPG resources on the net ("arrrr matey!"), and I come across the Forge as a place where FATE hangs its hat.  I'm preplexed and enthused by FATE, so I want to see what kinds of people and ideas are moving in its orbit.  I immediately notice some madman who is proposing Matrix, Pulp, and Fantasy to be run in this most excellent game system.  Lo and behold, even after all these years, our tastes run alike.  It is good to find you Judd, and I hope that we can someday play together again.

Be seeing you...
- Village6 a.k.a. David Quick

[Lord_Steelhand]

Hey, Quick!

How's life, drop me a PM and we will get in touch!  Great to hear from you.