Wednesday, January 18, 2012

There's a Fire Beetle in my Narcotic!


Well I'm happy to say that our official game of Legends of Anglerre, the fantasy FATE engine has officially kicked off and we have the first session under our belts. Unlike a lot of the mid-week roleplaying games we do from time to time, this one is not a limited run or a one-shot. For this FATE romp we've ambitiously made a go at an open-ended, ongoing campaign.

When I posted the write-up for the Bulwark a while back I was getting warmed up for it to be part of the overall atmosphere. One cool thing we did, prep-wise, for this campaign was use the world creation, standalone fractal RPG, Microscope, to hash out all of the background details. I liked doing it this way because the world creation by itself was a fun side adventure, and it always guarantees that all the players are on-board with the backdrop since they all had a hand in creating it.

Another item in the 'trying something different' department is that we're using the Obsidian Portal RPG wiki site to host all of our characters, legends, NPC's, items, and more. The name of the campaign is The Tainted World, and you can find it here. We're going with a magical-infused, alternate reality Earth where the ruins of the civilization we all know and love (and currently reside in) are all around. Rather than copy and paste the first adventure here, if you are interested in reading, you can check out the adventure log here.

A couple of other quick notes, since FATE does use some specialized dice, and instead of borrowing all the time, I did pick up my own set of these very cool Fudge dice from Q-Workshop. Also, as usual, the Minions of the Monster Master have recorded a lot of this material in actual play, and extremely explicit, podcast episodes. If you check them out, you've been warned!

That's it for now, I'll try to get some stuff posted about my character, items, and what-not soon. I think a blog is about the only socially acceptable place to talk about your characters, right?

5 comments:

  1. Are you still a Yeti, exploring the Taint?

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  2. Hi Mik

    While I didn't follow much of what you said in your post, I had to let you know that the title immediately made me think of a line from Bomb The Bass' Bug Powder Dust song: "Bug powder dust and mugwamp jism..."

    Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trbvx1U6Ry8

    Cheers
    Dave

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  3. @Spacejacker: Of course! Now I've got a talking pistol and a ten-foot hammer as well. Some taint requiring a safe distance to probe from.

    @Dave: Just some RPG intro stuff, love the track, you've opened my eyes, haha.

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  4. Very awesome stuff!! Legends rocks!! I am proud to say I beta tested the system a bit via some con games in LA run by one of the assistant developers Mike Olson I've had the good experience of playing in many of Mike's con games over the years FATE and otherwise. I generally like how LoA plays, I like FATE in general for the increased participation of players, how people just seem more engaged in the game at all times than with say a typical D&D game where individual players get some prolonged down time. When I am not involved in the game as much as a player I tend to want to get up from the table, go get a snack, check text messages ... in short get distracted. I find that happens less in FATE stuff. I love aspects, consequences, and the broad flexibility the system offers. I have not seen any of the supplemental material for it though yet ... just the core book.

    Using Microscope is inspired sir!! We have done that now a few times and man it just works awesomely doesn't it!! It pulls out some great ideas and really just helps a group come up with a full on campaign setting in a creative, interesting, somehow meaningful way ... all in the span of a gaming session (or less).

    I am very, very interested to hear of your groups exploits as I aspire to do more than just one shots with LoA myself, I have run and/or played in a few one shots so far but never a campaign and I'm hoping to get one going in the spring/early summer perhaps.

    Best of luck and thanks for the post!!

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  5. @LoE: We're in synch as usual. If you search 'Sarterra' here on the blog you'll see a ton of world creation stuff we did using the most excellent Dawn of Worlds, but Microscope is another beast entirely. This was our first foray with it, and finding my sea legs with it I kind of would like another shot at it.

    And about Anglerre, it is awesome for the reasons you stated. We used to play a lot of Spirit of the Century, then a brief stint with Starblazers, and now it's been Anglerre for a while. The FATE system allows for no wall-flowers, and that's what makes it great.

    Stay tuned, there should be lots more LoA action to report on. There's a sister wiki here as well:

    http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/the-tainted-world

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