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Skull Takers Adventure Part 1

Day 1

My name is John Brighten, and despite the circumstances I am in good health. I wish the same could be said for the rest of the world. I am not sure what happened or why, but I remember hearing about the apocalypse back when I went to church. Maybe this is it?

I have not had anyone to talk to for a long time, so I thought that maybe a journal would help keep me sane. Maybe someone will read it someday and know that I existed. It is a nice thought. Mostly all I think about these days is my existence.

I do not know the dates, but I do know that the sun has risen and set many times. I am glad that it still does. At least the dark ones have not taken that from us.

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Predicting Unpredictable Players

Today’s article is geared more towards GMs, but I hope dedicated players will be able to pull some things about it. After all, this is about you from the GM’s perspective.

Players are unpredictable.

If your world is at all rocked by that statement, then bless your heart. The rest of us probably learned this the first time we ran a game. Maybe at first we thought it was our fault; that he hadn’t prepared enough for the adventure. Eventually, if a GM sticks with it, then she will come to the inevitable conclusion that no matter how much she prepares, she will never be able to predict her players’ actions.

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Pets in Fate

I once ran a campaign where one of the players had the goal that their character’s pet goat would kill a dragon. It came from a long discussion about how there were always goats around dragon nests in Skyrim so they were probably the secret guardians of humanity that…well, I’d probably better not try to explain it actually. That would take a whole other post.

For this post I would like to talk about pets, specifically having a character pet in Fate. We love them as players, we agonize over them as GMs, and we talk about them years after the campaign is over. Fate Core actually does a very good job of making sure that you can build a variety of pets depending on what you want them to be able to do, mechanically.

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World Building for a Fan Fate Game

FATE Core is often used to play games based on preexisting worlds established in anime, book, movies, or television series. Sometimes we as gamers make the mistake that this means we don’t have to establish our game world because a rich one already exists.

Now I am not saying that traditional methods of creating the gaming world as you go, or just having the GM create the world for that matter, are always bad ideas. And perhaps the task sounds too daunting, and you would much rather delve into a dungeon right away then figure out how many air nomads are married in the Eastern Air Temple or which type of starships are available in a certain sector of space.

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The Impossible Juggling Act

I once ran a FATE game where I decided to take inspiration from a YouTube series that made fun of roleplaying games. I put a lady of the lake in the game that was going to give the heroes a chance to prove they were the chosen ones and take an amazing weapon to be used for their own. Of course the catch was that this lady just wanted to mess with adventurers and gave them random bits of junk that she promised was the magic sword she was to grant the chosen ones.

Then the guy in the group that is usually very quiet and constantly giving up treasure to other members of the group that want it more spent every fate point he had to be accepted for the task. Apparently he is a HUGE fan of Arthurian lore, and he so badly wanted to be the one to wield my game’s equivalent of Excalibur.

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Creative Challenges 2

Time for another batch of random Creative Challenges. The first time I did this, the challenges were meant for players and GMs of Fate to try and push themselves to try new things with the mechanics. This time, I am going to push for story challenges. Hopefully these will push you to be more creative and inventive with your characters and the story they are playing out.

Just like last time, these challenges are targeted at FATE gamers, but since they are more story-themed they may be easier to adapt to other games.

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Solo Player Games

Tabletop roleplaying games were one of the first cooperative games published. I suppose I am using that term ‘cooperative’ a bit loosely all things considered, but the point is that our hobby has for most of its existence been geared towards positive social interaction, rather than social competition as most tabletop games have been until recent years. When you play an rpg competitively, it tends to stand out that this is not what the games were meant to achieve.

Even more difficult than a game where everyone is a backstabbing rogue, however, is the solo campaign. Here you want a player character to work with others towards a common goal, but there actually are not any ‘others’ to speak of playing with you. It is just one player and one GM.

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Custom Mystery Setting

So today I thought I’d try something different. I’ve been working on a mystery one-shot (which can be found here) set in the early 60’s where the player characters have to solve the murder of a Private Investigator that was employing them. And since I think best by typing out my thoughts, I figured I might as well post about it.

Why Make A New System For A One-Shot Game?

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Thoughts on Prepping Players

We have already finished the Dresden Files Podcast RPG, which I am definitely not sad about considering how well it ended. Now I am technically involved in 3 games: 2 casuals that I run for friends whenever they have time to come over (maybe once a month), and of course the new Star Trek podcast RPG that you will be able to listen to soon.

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Crunchy Fate Games

So a while back I made a post where I stated that FATE is not for everyone and it is not for every situation. I stand by that still. But I was surprised to find out just how many people disagree with me on this issue. A number of Kickstarter projects have had people demand FATE versions of their rules in exchange for support. Gamers have refused to participate in events unless someone runs a FATE game. And of course people that try to design their own FATE settings are being told that their rules are not “good enough” for FATE.

That last one really hits home since both Taylor and I have been designing our own systems based on TV shows we love. I mean, isn’t one of the big advantages of a system like FATE supposed to be that we can play in a Star Trek, Air Bender, or Firefly setting?

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