ADigitalMagician Runs a Fate Game

This might get a bit rambly, I'm not sure how good I'll be at condensing things down to succinct Aspects, but let's see:

The wasteland setting is a pretty obvious Theme and Threat both. Deserts of various sorts stretching from horizon to horizon: sand, rocky waste, frozen tundra. Dotted here and there are little pockets of life: hidden oases, caves that are cool and deep enough to have water tucked away in them, geothermal hot springs in the cold places to provide both water and heat. These places are mostly either kept incredibly secret by the small groups that live there, or at the heart of built-up fortresses that protect them and control access to them - there may be one or two spots kept neutral by delicate balancing acts, where on one hand it's useful for the sides to have places to meet, and on the other any move to grab such an advantageous spot would get a whole bunch of warbands uniting against the aggressor until they'd been taken down. There are also places even more blasted and barren than the rest of the wastelands: sites of former villages now razed and abandoned, ancient battlegrounds haunted by the voices of the dead and the lingering echoes of the devastating songs once unleashed there, too dangerous for any but the boldest of scavengers. Barren Wasteland works really well for most of it, but it doesn't really cover the variety I'm envisioning, so maybe Barren Wasteland with a sub-aspect of The Desert Holds Many Secrets or something similar?

I think there should be a whole bunch of warlords, not just one main one. Some could be the Mad Max style of skulls-and-leather god-kings, and maybe there could also be one who maintains a veneer of urbane civilisation but is just as screamingly ruthless underneath, something like Water & Power from Tank Girl. They'd probably have their territories staked out for the most part and just raid and skirmish with each other, rather than all-out war all the time, I think? Power Belongs To Those Who Take It is kind of a mouthful for an Aspect and doesn't really quite cover things properly, but it's the closest I'm coming up with at the moment, and kind of combines the ruthless warlords and mazarinedrake's Rise to Greatness into one.

The magic-as-music thing probably needs its own Aspect, I think; it seems to be turning into kind of a major part of the setting, at least the way I'm seeing it so far. Immensely powerful songs take on lives of their own and become literal Monsters Of Rock; songs a step or two down from that can still echo for years or decades in the places they were sung. I'm seeing it as a force that wants to be used, and will get people to use it, and doesn't care what it's being used for. It wants power, it wants glory, it wants its moment in the spotlight. Once you start using the Music, you'll either be a star or fall like one. The Music Is Alive doesn't come even close to conveying the wholeness of the thing, but it's a start maybe?

 

@littlepinkbeast, have you read Soul Music? Because that's where my thoughts immediately go from The Music Is Alive. :D I basically like everything you've said, especially The Desert Holds Many Secrets.

(Is it too early to talk about characters? I keep thinking about an "ironsinger", basically this world's magitech equivalent of a mechanic...)

 

The Desert Holds Many Secrets is close to what I was envisioning too. I want a setting like the movie, but even more over the top. Lots of different types of terrain and peoples to go with them (and our setting would pretty much have to bigger than the Australian outback/Nambian desert if we're including a frozen section, which I hope isn't too much of a burden on our GM. Though we might be able to cheat a little on that front with the magic, maybe the frozen wasteland and tundra is that way because of an ancient song or songs that were unleashed there, and the songs still wander the landscape, howling like the wind...). But there should totally be a god-king, an urbane tycoon, various whacky wayside tribes scraping out an existence in the margins...Perhaps there was even some manner of equilibrium in the region, until our band of merry misfits stumbled into it and stirred things up!

I REALLY love The Music is Alive and the concepts behind it. That's got my vote!

I'll be honest, I'm really falling in love with the concept of our group as a newbie band (maybe from Elsewhere, maybe from one or more of the small tribes) with handmade instruments (your concept of a ironsinger might come in handy there, Onna XD) trying to get our post-apocalyptic equivalent of a big break. We've all felt the Music, we know we can harness it, but at this point our potential is greater than our actual power. But it's that very potential that makes us so attractive to the warlords. Will we become someone's pawns, forge our own paths to glory, or crash and burn? I think that should be the outline of our plot.

 

A thing to keep in mind: Not all of these need to be codified into the Themes and Threats.

For example, we could make the primary threat Scorched Earth which will acknowledge both the standard operating procedure of our warlords, and it covers the Barren Wasteland idea as well. It's a threat because it is a challenge in every corner of our heroes lives.

Then we could combine the ideas of Rise To Glory and Making a Homeland into the theme What Makes a Hero?

Leaving us with a slot to fill.

(These are just suggestions, by the way.)

 

I have read Soul Music! I wasn't thinking about it directly when I was coming up with that, but I can definitely see where it echoed in without me noticing now that you point it out.

 

I'd like to make a motion that The Music is Alive be placed in slot three, because it forms both the primary motivation of our player characters as well as coloring multiple aspects of the setting, assuming that the other Aspects are as agreeable to everyone else as they are to me. :333

 

@OnnaStik Start thinking about your characters, but don't be too firm on their backgrounds or allegiances. After the themes and threats, we're going to create locations, NPCs, and power groups that relate to the setting.

@littlepinkbeast: I agree, we need a theme that deals with music and magic. What Is Sung Must Be would be a powerful theme both mechanically and story wise. Or another one (combining ideas with the desert holding secrets) What Song Does the World Sing? or The Song The World Sings.

 

I am entirely on board with Scorched Earth, What Makes a Hero?, and The Song The World Sings, which could be both theme and threat. What with all these echoes of old warsongs all over the place and the death-or-glory nature of the Music...

 

I second Onnastik.

What kinds of things should we be thinking about as we start working on the locations, NPCs, and power groups?

 

I'll reread the chapter but basically, each Theme/Threat is goign to need at least a defining location and defining NPC. Outside of that, this is where we add in all the cool shit we want to see. Antagonists, informants, potential allies, but before we start actively building, let me reread the chapter, you all can just start thinking about ideas.

Also, the Viking Metal raiders is totally going to be a thing. Because I want it to be.

 

I think I like the set of Scorched Earth, What Makes a Hero?, and The Song The World Sings. They're a bit vague-and-cryptic-and-symbolic in some places, but I think they pretty much cover everything we were talking about and I'm not really sure they could get any more plain and still do that. Just have to kind of... keep in mind all the resonances they're supposed to carry.

 

Okay, ideas...Well, here's one. Since magic is a thing (albeit one difficult to use) maybe we can depart some from the laws of practicality and physics. What if one of the locations is a settlement like the Citadel, in the sense that it's perched on and inside a couple of bluffs poking out of the desert...but instead of one or two, it's a series of bluffs and natural towers, connected together by large rope bridges and elevators and cranes, with dwellings built on the SIDES of the bluff in addition to the top and hollowed-out interior.

Like, think the trope of a tree city, but on rocks instead of trees. And this whole edifice is kept up through daily chants that all of the inhabitants, even the crushingly poor people who live on the ground below the city, are required to participate in in order to get their ration of water.

EDIT: also just wanted to be clear that this doesn't necessarily have to be the place where our Immortan Joe-expy lives, it's just the exterior look of the Citadel that inspired me.

EDIT 2: Also this is totally the kind of place where people can get around by zipline, because ziplines are AWESOME.

 

Cliff city +1000. It might be a good place for the urbane tycoon, actually; a thing that needs mass participation to survive calls for a ruler with good PR.

Viking-Metal-Land as a magically chilled place, so as to reduce the amount of latitude we need to worldbuild, makes sense to me. It may well be home to one of those escaped-song dragons we talked about.

Unless the Vikings have killed it.

Or tamed it.

VIKINGS RIDING A DRAGON, GUYS.

 

HELL TO THE YES, dragon-riding song-slinging war-Vikings! :D Maybe it's even the dragon itself that brings the cold with it, so the land around its lair is choked with ice and wailing winds and the Vikings dress in heavy furs (and either their magic revolves around heat, or they've mutated to withstand the cold), which gradually tapers off with distance. But when the Vikings go on raids the dragon brings cold winds and icy fogs and hail with it!

The cliff city would be a good place for the urbane tycoon, I agree. He's got good PR and seems very gracious and charming, but it conceals an absolutely ruthless business sense and a very refined sadism. Definitely a town with dark secrets, that.

 

Ooh, yes, cliff city for tycoon guy. Shades of Metropolis and its skyscrapers, with the choirs of Toiling Masses shuffling along in their lines. And the chambers and passages cut into the rock would even be cool from the depth, mimicking office-building airconditioning.

I dunno about taming a dragon, but it could very well be their warlord! I really like the dragon being the whole reason for the land of the ice and snow, of the midnight sun where the hot springs flow. Maybe its lair is the Midnight Sun, there's ice so cold that light itself takes all night to get through it. Or something. That can be the legend even if there's another reason for it.

The concept I'm poking at for my character is a sort of shamanic drummer, who either uses a full drum kit instead of a single rune drum, or will trade up when she manages to get her hands on a full kit, or is working on building a full kit, or something. I also tend to prefer playing not-quite-human characters, so if there's a way she could be sort of mutated and animalistic, or fused somehow with a spirit beast, or something, that's be cool.

 

Its roost is always bright because sunlight is actually frozen in the ice? Could magic work that way? And I love the idea of isolated settlements suddenly getting cold winds and it's not even a relief because they know what's coming.

@littlepinkbeast, I like your character idea! And if she's finding or making her kit, that's a built-in bit of questing, too.

 

Don't get caught up in the reality. Like, we can just build the viking location and handwave the travel. Fate is far more about narrative than it is about specifics.

 

Well, we've already fallen in love with the frost dragon, so even if the setting is naturally-occurring, I think it should still exist.

 

Well, are the living songs intelligent, because said frost dragon might make a kick ass NPC. Just saying.

 

Maybe most songs aren't, but this particular dragon is Special (perhaps partially because of the sheer badassness of the original song or songs that lead to its creation, perhaps partially because of the songs the Vikings have continued to feed into it over generations). Because I think it would be totally awesome if the frost dragon was a force of nature AND an NPC in its own right.