ADigitalMagician Runs a Fate Game

Right now I've got:

@mazarinedrake
@siveambrai
@OnnaStik

With an opening available for @littlepinkbeast if she wants it.

I'm hoping for voice chat, with understanding that members may have various limitation on that front.

This thread is so we can do what I refer to as "Session Zero."

Before we get into setting and character creation, we need to focus on what genres do we want to explore?

Because I'm pretty sure everyone is fairly new to Fate, the key thing to keep in mind that Fate, in general, defaults to a pulpy experience. The player characters are larger than life, competent, and tough.

With that in mind, what genres are we interested in?

I've set up a Sentai game in Fate, I've done pulp horror, I've done sci fi and Space Opera, and I had a write up on both a high fantasy setting and a more low/gritty fantasy.

I am totally up for experimenting, though!

THE GAME

Issues:

Scorched Earth: This is a world after the end of the world. Or before the world begins. Resources are scarce, battles are fought to annihilation, there is no time or energy for prisoners.

What Makes a Hero?

The Song The World Sings: Magic is real and Magic is EVERYWHERE. Folk songs resonate in the rocks, war chants channel the strengths of legends, and creatures can slip out between the chords.

The Characters

Lasha Played by @OnnaStik :
High Concept: Engineer on the Run
Trouble: Prize of the Fountain Queen
Phase 1: I think my Deserting Engineer works best if she's actually gone away from the place she deserted, so let's say she's fled the corps of engineers in the Spring City. I think it makes sense for someone whose rule was founded on a miracle to be interested in creating ever more amazing things, so whenever the despot's (let's call her... hmmm... the Queen of the Blessed Fountain sounds appropriately grandiose?) agents spot a promising musician they "volunteer" that person to devote their lives to the support of the Queen's great Workings. My character, who I think I shall call Lasha, was strongly discouraged by her family from pursuing her increasingly evident gift, but she kept trying to teach herself in private and one night there was some spectacular fuck-up... no one died or anything, but it was definitely impossible for her to hide anymore.

The Blessed Choir (or whatever) aren't really allowed to talk to anyone but each other, the Queen, and their support staff, lest it get around just how much of the actual work is done by them rather than the Queen (who is legitimately very powerful, just... y'know, mortal scale.). They were Working somewhere away from the city itself when some runaway song or combat skirmish happened, when Lasha saw an opportunity to get away and just be assumed dead in the chaos. (She also took a guitar, which she'd been working on learning, with her, because I've started to like the idea of her having one. She's not as practiced with it as with her voice, though.) And she's fetched up in the canyon because she figures in the seat of the Queen's major rival, no one will know or care where she's supposed to be. But she'd really like to see her family again.

???? Played by @mazarinedrake :
High Concept: Mercenary on the Make
Trouble: I Look Out For Number One
Phase 1: ???

???? played by @littlepinkbeast :
High Concept: Outlaw Werewolf
Trouble: Ask Questions Later
Phase 1: ???
Skills: Fight 4, Music/Physique 3, Athletics/Notice/Provoke 2, Crafts/Empathy/Rapport/Will 1

???? played by @siveambrai :
High Concept: ???
Trouble: ???
Phase 1: ???

 

What if we did a game with low/gritty fantasy, and by "gritty" I mean "Mad Max," and by "fantasy" I mean that awesome as Immortan Joe's battlewagon was, it would have been vastly improved by a bleached dragon skull lashed to the hood. :333

 

I fully support this idea as long as the world has magical equivalents of electric guitars and such so that it can have heavy metal bands riding around on these dragonskull battlewagons. Because the only way to improve on Doof Warrior is to have *many* Doof Warrior. Also at least part of the wastelands should be cold icy wastelands so that there can be *viking* heavy metal bands.

 

I fully support and second all of these additions! :D

 

Okay, I know we haven't heard from siveambrai or OnnaStik yet, but I just can't stop thinking about this because it is *so awesome* and I've been listening to music and getting all psyched up and excited already #^_^#

 

You two start, and my brain kind of exploded with ideas. I will present ideas after lunch.

Short version: Magic is hard, but common, so our vehicles are run by specialized travel wizards, but music magic is the strongest shit everyone is aware of.

 

This sounds fantastic. @ADigitalMagician have you read the Magisters Trilogy? It could help set up the system for use/world building http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Souls

 

and of course

 

So, my brain vomit:

Magic and Music are interchangeable. Every song makes the wasteland a little brighter. The old woman sings to her plants to make them grow, despite the earth fighting her every day. You'd think this would make the wasteland less a wasteland, but the skills needed to run a farm and the skills needed to master growth in song are different enough that it's only the occasional garden. While everyone can make a song, fewer and fewer master any music.

Except for the Battle Bards. In a world where resources are skim, and one specialist musician can mean the difference between a prospering community and another ghost town, tensions run high. Battle Bards are the heroes, and the most basic commodity.

Also, vehicles are run by their own kind of song. (I'm kind of imagining sandbenders here, not going to lie.)

Fucking Doof Warriors powering massive land skiffs with Metal and Fury with war boys chanting songs to strengthen themselves and bring victory in battle.

I just like music as magic. Not going to lie.

 

Oooh, I really like this!

 

Ooh, okay, I had an idea. Don't have to use it if you don't like it, or if people think it doesn't fit in, but what if dragons and the like, the really legendary monsters, start as songs that were just so powerful they took on a life of their own? And sometimes the bands that created them managed to control them, for a while, but eventually the song gets too powerful all by itself and when the band slips up playing it, rawr, dragon on the loose?

 

So, if we can get @OnnaStik to sign off on this idea, we can totally get started on the actual world building. (Which you all are involved in. Because Fate is awesome like that.)

 

WOW. Yeah, I don't think we need to look any further for our setting, this is badass and amazing. :D

 

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH! :D :D :D Magic as music and really epic songs turning into dragons and other monsters and flying off and Mad Max aesthetic everywhere, I love this! I'm so glad we're running with it!

So does this mean we're playing bards? XD A heavy metal band, trying to establish itself while avoiding being enslaved? (There's a great metaphor for shitty contract labels somewhere in there. XD)

 

Okay I just saw this on tumblr and if we WERE to play a band of bards, this would be us, just starting our adventure: http://ophidiae.tumblr.com/post/120392115410/gotitforcheap-watches-mad-max-once
Only with more totally unnecessary skulls and poorly tanned leather everywhere! :D

 

Whelp, what you guys play is totally going to be up to you, and you're all going to be connected!

I need to look up some of the world building steps, but I remember the first step:

Themes and Threats

Themes and threats are actually aspects (I will write up a thing about Aspects, but short version: An aspect is a short one line description of what something IS. Harry Dresden is a Wizard Private Eye, for example).

We will be using three, at least one of each.

Sometimes a Theme and Threat can be the same thing.

Some things we can obviously use: We have a world that includes Metal Vikings from a frigid land. We have a wasteland, which makes survival a potential theme. Dragons. Magic. Music. Warlords come with the territory.

So what we need to decide is what of these things are going to help define our setting for play. (The rest will all be there, obviously, this is kind of a "what tone do we want this game to have."

Finally: I should totally make a wiki so we can turn all of this world building into a setting.

 

Okay, so about how we each suggest at least three, and then we'll talk about which ones we like best. (I bolded the parts most directly relevant to the Theme and Threat mechanic, because I am a wordy fuck.)

The setting is a Barren Wasteland, where only the strong and canny can survive.
It's ruled over by a Cruel and Powerful Warlord, and his army of fanatically loyal raiders.
Music is magic, and they who know how to make music are sure to Rise to Greatness.

 

Have you played Fate before? Because your highlighted bits are very close to excellent aspects. (Barren Wasteland is probably too vague, Cruel and Powerful Warlord could probably stick, and Rise to Greatness is a fucking AMAZING Theme.

 

I'd say it's more likely ruled over by many, or at least several, Cruel and Powerful Warlords, of varying degrees of power but fairly consistent cruelty? I like the idea that independent agents could be completely overpowered by one warlord's forces and yet still get away when they're distracted by a rival power. Meaning that Evil Versus Evil is a defining trait of the overall political climate, with the not-so-evil (like us!) managing to scrape out an existence in the margins.

But no one likes the margins, so either by revolution or by building something amazing where nothing ever should have grown, someone's got to try Making a Homeland.

 

I have never played Fate before in my life! I just read and write a lot of fantasy and like playing with tropes.

I really like the Evil Versus Evil part, means we'll get lots of tense moments like we saw in the movie! And maybe we could set up some intra-party dramatic tension by pitting Making a Homeland and Rising to Greatness against each other? Maybe one character wants to hitch our fortunes to whichever warlord seems most successful (mostly likely to give us the High Life, in Cheedo's words) but a different character wants to bring the system down completely and start over with something new (but of course in the end Making a Homeland would automatically bring Greatness with it, so everyone wins! Except the warlords XD). I don't know if the system is flexible enough to allow that, but it's interesting thought imo.