RP with Parents - UP

As my parents were here for the holidays, I couldn't help but get them into another roleplay session. At first we were going to continue the pulp adventures started during our last vacation, but then we watched UP, by Disney/Pixar. What happened is that we didn't like the movie that much... but we liked its beginning very much. After discussing this, I suddenly exclaimed: "I know! We should reset their story to when we stopped liking it and do our own version by playing the characters, and use Mythic to guide us." And that's what we did yesterday night.

Technicals

I didn't want to bog down enthusiasm with rules like the FATE ones we used last time, and since I've been into the Mythic rules lately, I went with a variation of these. The result was a mix of FATE, Mythic, Risus and recently discovered Lady Blackbird.
The characters were described through two attributes: Body and Mind, 0 being average, 1 above average, -1 below average, etc... These work like Mythic attributes. Then, I went "Risus"/"FATE v3" and simply described the characters with little sentences such as "Wannabe Explorer" and "Fan of that Cool Explorer Guy". It was pretty easy to find four or five short phrases describing each main character.
At first, I gave these ratings (1, 2, ...) but then I discovered Lady Blackbird that very day and used their system: if one of the phrases fits the situation, add a bonus rank to your roll (+10% with Mythic). If you're trying to calm down a wild animal and you have "Best Friend of all Animals" as a description of your character, you'll start with your Mind attribute and add a rank. If you have "Explorer of the Wild", you'll add another rank because, well, it's a wild animal.
Of note: I picked something from FATE v3 in that some of the phrases were goals and motivations rather than skills, just like Aspects might be. This would yield bonus ranks if your action happened to follow one of these goals directly.

Apart from game mechanics, Mythic was used to generate obstacles and the scene system was used with its characters and threads lists.

How it went

Pretty good! It seemed like everyone actually enjoyed the session more genuinely than it might have been last time. The "describing phrases" system was grasped very quickly and dice rolls were easy to prepare: pick Body or Mind depending on wether it was a physical or intellectual challenge, then go through the character description and add a rank for each fitting phrase. This would give us xx% chances of success, followed by the d100 roll of course.
I also kept Mythic's "Extreme Yes/No" rolls which gave us some interesting surprises.

Mythic's GM emulator was mostly used by myself, since I didn't have any character to play at first (I was waiting for a new NPC to appear and take its role). I asked questions that I hoped would yield some obstacles or fun situations. Following my lead, my parents soon started asking questions of their own. Furthermore, my mother came up with a story of her own at some point and I let her explain it. I only stopped her after some good exposition to keep her surprised by having Mythic decide a few of the finishing touches.
From that point on, though, Mythic took a nap because everyone was getting a good idea of where things were going. I tried to push Mythic forward once or twice to avoid having a single player tell the whole story, but it felt forced. I did use it still to settle some little disputes ("The next room is bigger" "Uhh, I'd have thought it would be smaller" -> "Is the room bigger? *roll*")

The GM emulator helped us a few times with its random events. Once it got us out of a rather uneventful situation and later it created tension where a character had to hide from a threat. The characters list was also used for these events. The threads list was updated with mysteries encountered during the story but didn't come up through events so far.

Considering how things went once everyone was comfortable with the story and mechanics, I think my parents would actually work better with a story-game. Probably not one with systems that push players to create stories within a framework (FATE Aspects were, I think, too restricting and meta), but one that allows everyone to chip in with bits of story. Heck, they might enjoy not *being* the characters but controlling them all "from above", so to speak. Collaborative storytelling... I know I found a game that used chips that players would use to introduce facts in a story and that could be payed off by others if they didn't like it... I bet this would work well for them.

The future

We're supposed to resume this game this afternoon but I don't know if it will be possible. My parents are leaving tomorrow and they're already tensed up (one day of car trip). If it keeps up like this, they won't be in the right mood for it and prone to bickering. We'll see...

In any case, I'll study the simplified system we used as I might enjoy it for my own games. It's easy to describe characters and very easy to find out bonuses.

Using Mythic with a module

God I'm slow... Anyway, here's the first part of how I tried using a published adventure with Mythic and... got some issues at some point.

The adventure is the freely available (PDF) Hollow's Last Hope from Paizo. It's meant for D&D 3.5 with about four level 1 characters. I'll be spoiling things, obviously, so if you plan to play the adventure at some point and want all the surprises, you might not want to read this... I will try to keep to generalities most of the time, though, just because someone might want to try and solo it too.

I played with the four premade characters of the module, which I adapted to the FATE system (I hadn't bought the Mythic RPG rules back then). There's Valeros the fighter, Kyra the cleric, Seoni the sorceress and Merisiel the rogue.

The game starts with the PCs entering the town of Falcon's Hollow.
My group came in with a merchant whom they escorted. They got their salary and went on their merry way. I followed the module suggestion of linking at least a PC to someone from the town. Valeros thus knew a friend who he hadn't seen for years. Since this was not detailed in the module, Mythic was a good aid and my imagination was free to roam.

The friend's house hadn't changed and Valeros knocked. Follows the introduction of said friend's spunky young daughter, the bad surprise that said friend has caught a bad sickness and the whole town is actually touched. The local priests can't seem to do anything about it but the local herborist provides some potions to soothe the pain. It doesn't cure anything though.

All this previous part was made up as I went, and since I was writing on the computer for notes, I actually started writing a dialogue for all the characters and it was quite fun. It allowed me to develop personalities too. Mythic wasn't used here, but the game system was a few times.

Mythic interrupt! Yeah, we love these :P Absolutely outside of the original module boundaries, I came up with a bounty hunter stopping the group because he recognizes his quarry among them. Except he's wrong. Mythic was used here to define the bounty hounter (gender, minions, ...) and his actions. Random event! ... which I interpret as him suddenly getting the hots for one of the group ladies (I mean, "Create / Love"... c'mon!) and totally losing his cool. Some stuttering later, he's gone, but not before promising to return.
He was obviously added to the NPC list but hasn't popped up ever since. Which is sad.


This is where things went wrong. I tried to continue the adventure later, and wanted to try recording it as audio instead of typing (I don't even know why...) I was also tired, which didn't help with my patience and imagination.
Sadly, in a fit of exasperation, I deleted the recordings, so I have only my vague memories as proof of what went wrong. I remember having the group try to go to the herborist to learn more about the plague, but then fail somehow... and look elsewhere. This is where I went off the road of the module and tried to have Mythic help me. The biggest problem was that I still tried to keep to what the module explained about the town and the people in there, particularly the fact that there is a church with a main priestess and her acolytes. All I remember is that I was lost as to what to ask Mythic... I spent way too long reading the module to pick up details on the priestess (not much) and... I just gave up.

It gave me a cold shower at the time and I stayed cleared of the module for a long while. But it's obvious the context and I were at fault, not Mythic.

Thankfully, I ended up wanting to try again, forgetting about the mishap and starting over from when they tried to reach Laurel. By then, I had an eye condition that prevented me from looking at a computer screen for more than a few minutes in the bad days... so I wasn't going to type things... and I had to go audio once more. I was *very* wary of this, but it ended up going much better than I expected.

One thing I did was pull up the Neverwinter Nights game editor and select some audio background (music and ambient). It helped tremendously to set the mood and actually forced me to imagine the scenes to select the most appropriate sounds. I also tried to steer the story according to the module rather than push it offroad (I'm pretty sure that's what happened with the priestess part...) What I also did was switch to Mythic RPG. I converted the characters and used these rules for the rest of the game.

I'll listen to my recordings and make other posts sometime... soon... hopefully. But to sum it up: it went very well, with very cool surprises overall.

Fate Heroes - Part 2 - Gnomes

Follow up to Part 1. We left our hero, Minuteman, victorious over a group of disorganized bank robbers and running to the rescue of Man-o-War, one of his Freedom Force buddies.

Intent : Go to the St Johns church and investigate
d10 (6) : no change (I assume a permanent Chaos Factor of 5 by the way)

For the ones who don't know Mythic, the above is where you declare what the next scene should logically be, then roll a dice which result tells you if it happens as is, or with a twist (scenes can be Altered or Interrupted).

Minuteman reaches the church after a few minutes spent crossing the town.

Are there signs of conflict? No -> The church and surroundings look undisturbed.
Are there people near the church? No -> No one is explicitely at the church... just passersby.

"Odd, it is as if nothing happened!" says Minuteman with suspicion.

He tries to contact Mentor through their telepathic link.

Setting note : Mentor is an alien with mental powers (duh, uh? :p), co-creator of Freedom Force and provider of many technological wonders. For more : http://www.giantbomb.com/mentor/94-1212/

Does he reply? (very likely) Not at all

"Mentor? Mentor?! I... I don't feel the telepathic link at all anymore! What is going on?"
Minuteman is getting worried but decides to at least take a look inside the church before going back to the Freedom Fortress.

Is there something unusual inside the church? Yes
What exactly? (here I tried a random event to get an answer but it wasn't inspiring so I went back to questions)
Is the inside destroyed? Yes -> It didn't look like it from outside but the church is in a bad shape.
Does it look like the results of an explosion or hand-made destruction? No -> Furniture and statues have taken visible hits.
Is there someone visible in there? Absolutely -> There's more than one person!
Are they familiar? No
Do they look responsible for the damage? Yes -> They're still wrecking what's left standing.

What do they look like? (I tried picking a random word from the dictionary but, again, wasn't inspired, so I switched to a set of D&D monster types tables I adapted)
Came up with "Swarm Fey" -> It's a group of small humanoid creatures similar to lawn gnomes in size and garbs. They are crawling over statues, running around, smashing things and cackling. It's quite the chaotic vision!

They look busy enough and Minuteman would rather take them by surprise: he tries to sneak on the side, behind some intact benches.

Stealth vs Alertness : -1 vs 1. Not good for Minuteman!

FATE allows paying Fate Points in these cases and get either a +2 or a reroll. Problem is : you need to tag an appropriate Aspect (either of your character, of the scene or of another character). So at that point, I wanted to know more about the evil gnomes, in a slightly pushy way I admit:

Do the gnomes have an Aspect defining a focus on destruction such as "Destroy! Destroy!!!" (that could be tagged to mean they're not paying attention)? Not at all -> Obviously, it backfired ;)
Instead, they get an aspect for their "sensitive hearing". I also note to give them a few points in Alertness when I start defining their stats. In any case, Minuteman is not making this roll any better...

The steps of Minuteman echo through the church and the gnomes all turn their head at the same time, looking to the source of this noise.

Have they seen him?
Stealth vs Investigation : 1 vs 2

Yes, the gnomes have spotted Minuteman.

Do they attack? (very likely) -> Yes!
Are they 1 or 2 zones away? No -> They're near the altar while our hero is near the entrance, slightly to the side. That's 2 zones away.

Main skill of the gnomes : Melee or Athletics? No -> Athletics

Evil gnomes

Fair (+2) : Athletics
Average (+1) : Melee, Alertness

Aspects :
Sensitive hearing (invoke to notice sounds, can be tagged to confuse them with loud noises)
Creepy little brats (invoke for small size and persistence)

How many are there? 5+d6 (3) = 8 -> Two groups of 4 gnomes (+2 group bonus for each on all actions)

I don't want to go into too much detail for the actual fight, so I'll keep to the highlights. Mythic didn't have any role here, but FATE was there to provide some narrative incentive instead.

It starts with Minuteman lifting the bench he was trying to hide behind and waiting for the gnomes to come closer (2 zones is a bit far to throw items with FATE... not very superheroesy, but I'm planning to fiddle with this rule later). The gnomes all run towards our hero but (failing their Athletics checks) stumble over each other and fail to progress much.

Now that they're closer, Minuteman throws the bench on the bunch (huhu). He barely fails his roll though (gets a total of 0 which isn't enough to deal damage) and has to invoke "Might makes right!" to get some damage done, killing two gnomes (they're groups of minions so attacks "go through").
In their counterattack, none of the groups manages to get anything done to Minuteman. Worse! They fail so much that he gets spin... twice! (it's a +1 on your next attack or defense). Even though no actual damage was done on the gnomes as a result, I described it as them being roughed around, thrown against walls or crushed under boots. Just enough to keep them at bay :)

Next round, Minuteman kills two gnomes again, but has to resort to invoking "For Freedom!" (saving Man-o-War being, in a way, For Freedom... Force!) to get a +2.

Mythic was used here to know if the gnomes were artificial or organic : mechanical lawn gnomes or actual gremlin-like horrors? They turned out to be organic, so more "splortch" than "crack".

Once again, none of the gnomes manages to land a hit. Since they're minions, they can't use Fate Points until they get one through the tagging of one of their Aspects... which never happened, so... no FPs for the gnomeys.

Since the fight was getting a bit long, I really wanted to finish this quickly and used yet another Fate Point (I kept getting 0's for some reason, thanks dice!). This time, two gnomes go flying through the church, landing behind the altar.
Finally, one of the remaining gnomes clings to Minuteman's leg and gets a bite.

But it's their last action as they end up crushed in the ground the next round.

I tried to make the fight as cinematic as possible in my head, acting out status quo and even failures of the dice as positive actions anyway, just not terribly effective ones (and definitely mechanically neutral ones). I've found that doing this helps staying focused on fights (especially long ones) and gives some ideas on how to use Aspects or what kind of Maneuvers to attempts. I haven't used Maneuvers so far, but they're basically the alternative to attacks that allow you to place a new Aspect and invoke it for free once if the roll succeeds. It's especially powerful with a team of PCs.

This said, this is where I stopped so far, a few inches from the end of Scene 2. Next scene should have Minuteman going back to the Freedom Fortress... if Mythic is willing :). I might continue this during my two weeks vacation starting next week, depending on mood and other occupations.

Fate Heroes - Part 0b - Minuteman

That's it! I'm finally ready to tackle my Fate Heroes report!

Read this if you don't know what I'm talking about. To sum it up, I will be solo-roleplaying a superhero adventure, playing Minuteman, a Freedom Force character, using the Fate v3 system and Mythic.

Minuteman

Here are the stats for Minuteman. I use the regular Fate ladder that goes from Mediocre (0) to Superb (+5).

Skills

Superb (+5) : Resolve
Great (+4) : Leadership, Melee
Good (+3) : Might, Athletics, Powers (10 pts)
Fair (+2) : Endurance, Alertness, Science, ?
Average (+1) : Ranged, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?

Everything else being at Mediocre (0).

• Powers is a skill I use to represent how super powered an individual is. It's specific to my Fate Heroes variation.
• The interrogation marks are skills I haven't decided upon yet. If during the adventure I see I don't have a skill I need to roll for and that Minuteman would likely be at least somewhat good at, I'll add it in these slots.
  

Health : ooooo oo OOO
Composure : ooooo ooooo OOO

I get into a bit more details about the Health and Composure track below but it's not mandatory read to follow the adventure, so feel free to skip if you don't like crunch ;)

The little circles (usually boxes but it's easier to type) represent stress. Each time you get physically diminished, you tick the box corresponding to the level of stress taken. If you take 1 stress you tick the first box. If you take 3 stress, you tick the third box (and only the third one!). If a box you should tick is already ticked, you "roll up", ticking the next free one.
Finally, when no more boxes are left, you get into Consequences, the big circles here. Whenever stress rolls up over your stress boxes, you tick the next Consequence box. While stress boxes merely represent fatigue or little nicks, consequences get more and more serious. You might be out of breath, then have a wide bleeding wound and finally broken legs.
If you still get stress past that point, you're Taken Out. Doesn't have to mean death, but you're still out of the picture.
For the composure track, it's exactly the same but with the mental (fear, keeping your wits about, etc...)

Powers (10 pts to distribute)

Hyper leap (+3) : regular characters use Athletics to run and jump like most people would. The Hyper leap power allows incredible jumps like hopping up to a roof and down from there, or crossing large distances with a single leap (possibly avoiding many land obstacles).
National Guard (+3) : not yet well define. My idea is that it puts a "Protected from bullets" aspect on Minuteman
Minute Missile (+2) : not yet sure either. For now, it's an alternative to the Ranged skill that can be used to damage or to place a "Dizzied" aspect on someone (the Minute Missile is an energy bold in the shape of an eagle that stuns people)

Aspects

• For Freedom!
• I must take care of Liberty Lad
• The Reds must be stopped!
• Might makes right
• Protecting the people of Earth
• The Patriot (his staff)
• Used to conceive H-bombs
• No one left behind
• "I'm tired of these antics!"
• Eternal Vigilance (tag to protect from bullets)

I won't go into too much details as these might change and because you need to know a few things from the Freedom Force game to get some of them. I'll try to explain them when I use them. But as for what Aspects are to begin with, well... here's the official description. To sum it up, it's a descriptor of the character's behavior, beliefs, and things important to him. In game, when a die roll is low, you can pay a Fate Point, invoke an appropriate Aspect and you'll get either a +2 to the roll or get to reroll it. It's a story tool that says "my character should do well on this task because..." the same way movie characters do. For now, let's just say it's one of the best parts of the Fate system as it makes non statistical elements have an effect on the game ;)

Fate Points

They allow me to invoke/tag/compel Aspects (Minuteman's but also others!) to get +2 to a roll, reroll or even force someone to act in a certain way. I get 1 point per defined Aspect (10 aspects maximum), which makes it 10 Fate Points.


There! I think I have it all. That's who I'll be playing through the adventure. Next post, the adventure itself! (never thought it'd take so long to get there)

Fate Heroes - Part 0

Last time on Moni's Catbox...

I finished Freedom Force some time ago and started the second opus a few days later, just giving myself some pause to avoid getting sick of it (I tend to consume media as one would consume his favorite meal). But was it really a pause? I ended up picking up my solo roleplaying and what else but a superhero setting could I choose? :)

I have been spending weeks on reading Marvel Superheroes RPG material and with Freedom Force on top of this, let's just say I'm very much "Supers!" minded these days. I almost went with a custom character but then realized it would be simpler to pick a character I just learned a great deal about : Minuteman, the main hero of Freedom Force.

This first post, titled "part 0", will explain the RPG systems I use to play, without going into details too much. Next post will be the actual adventure.

How I do it

First, I should explain what I use for my solo roleplaying.

My RPG system of choice is Spirit of the Century, by Evil Hat Productions, a pulp pick-up game based upon the FATE v3 system (itself based on Fudge!). I allow myself to sprinkle it with bits of Starblazer Adventures, by Cubicle 7, the space-opera counterpart to SotC. And last but not least, I apply my own variations (which I call Fate Fantasy but it's nothing official) whenever I feel the rules are lacking something or are not to my taste (if there's something I've learned from RPGs, it's the "customize at will" advice!). For this particular superhero adventure, I have started a new set of variants I call Fate Heroes, which follows advice from Marvelous Fate, a Fate adaptation of the Marvel Superheroes rules.

Yes, it's fair to say it's a big mix of ideas, but overall, it's just FATE v3, adapted to a particular setting.

Last but not least, I use the Mythic GM Emulator from Word Mill Games. I know, I know, a GM emulator? Pfah! But you'd be wrong thinking that. It's actually a very simple but incredibly effective mini-system that allows a GM or players without a GM to come up with what happens in an adventure AND still get surprises out of it. While it does have a few tables for random picks, they don't provide anything set in stone and setting specific and rely on one's imagination and interpretation instead, not unlike tarot reading. The main part of the system, though, is based on asking questions (Magic 8 Ball like) and having the dice answer for you.
I won't get into it more than this as it will be more easily explained during the actual adventure write-up.

Well I guess that's it! All I can add is that I currently play by writing what happens in a notepad-like program to keep track of everything.

See you next post!