ADigitalMagician Runs a Fate Game

I'll happily take on the guitar if you guys aren't interested in it. Plus, it'll be a convenient device for her to be tinkering with all the time!

 

I missed littlepinkbeasts call for drummer. I'm happy being a guitarist as well. Expect a lot of hammerons though. :)

 

Okay, serious chat:

I have IDEAS for the city, and if you guys trust me to flesh out some of the major details, we can start the entire adventure in the cliff city?

If so, we can totally start on character creation, with step one being: Y'all need a High Concept and a Trouble.

Don't worry about making an optimal aspect yet, we'll work together if you don't have a good one.

Also, because music and being a musician seems to be the order of the day, that doesn't have to be part of the high concept unless you want special focus on your character's particular speciality.

So, let's start this shit.

TL;DR:

You need: A high concept, a short description of what your character is. Is she a Shredding Healer whose guitar brings new life to the wastes? Maybe she's a Dust Covered Roadie? Or even just a Stranger With a Strange Song.

(Okay, I give up, music puns feel like they're going to be par for the course.)

 

I like the cliffs, I am happy with starting there if everyone else is!

Depending on whether it fits your worldbuilding ideas, mine might be a Deserting Engineer- basically, someone of power, possibly the despot, wants to build wonders. To that end, they "collect" any skilled ironsingers that come to their attention and put them to work on their own grand projects, and my character has run away from that... it might be better suited to being a Trouble, though? In which case Dust Covered Roadie is a really tempting pun to use for the Concept...

 

Is there still room? I love the Fate system and this sounds like a very fun game.

 

I like Deserting Engineer, but I think it needs more detail.

The person I want in charge of the canyon city I am jokingly referring to as the Imperator, though the name might stick, her one important aspect is The Price of Power. Physically scarred from assassination attempts, a wizened and lonely woman who has put everyone she might trust at arms length. In addition, her veins are blackening and whatever it is seems to be spreading more and more every year.

You can tie into that concept, or you can make up a city group (Does the Imperator have a group of engineers you ran from?) or you can make a group in the Spring City, or come up with ideas for that warlord.

Basically, you're allowed to make statements about the world, don't be afraid just put it on the table!

@KarrinBlue I've already locked the number of players for this group, but if anyone decides they want to drop out, we can definitely talk then. And since this seems to be a REALLY SUCCESSFUL choice for kintsugi, I am definitely going to run another game when this one is over.

 

We can be heroes! Ideally longer than just for one day.

Lessee. I've kind of gotten to really like the idea of my character being a guitarist, so if @siveambrai would like to stick with their original plan and be the drummer, that's totes cool. And @OnnaStik can be either pure vocals, or vocals + guitar, as they like. Guitar/guitar/bass/drum is a pretty classic setup.

Not sure how non-human is okay with everyone / fits into people's idea of the world, but if it's okay, the mental image I ended up with for my character as a guitarist is more or less http://privateerpress.com/hordes/gallery/circle-orboros/units/warpborn-alpha with an axe-shaped electric guitar instead of a plain old axe. It probably shoots lightning now and then, because you can't airbrush a werewolf with an electric guitar axe onto a van or album cover and NOT have it shooting lightning. (Also presumably more leather scraps and less actual armor, at least to start with.)

Lemme see. I'm thinking she's originally from the viking lands, banished from her tribe for poking around in a forbidden place and waking up its echoes and getting turned into a werewolf thing, and she ended up wandering down into wherever the game takes place, looking for fun and fights and glory, but I'm not really sure how to make that into a High Concept that would really be usable as an Aspect in play. Werewolf Outlaw or Lone Wolf and Axe maybe, but I can't really see how I'd invoke or be compelled by those. For a trouble, I'm thinking We've Got To Do Something! is a possibility, but an inability to keep her big nosy nose out of things it doesn't belong in and a resistance to overlong planning might be too much trouble in a setting like this.

Any suggestions?

 

@ADigitalMagician Well OK then! Enjoy the game!

 

I'm going to throw my rough character idea out. But she's a Badlands Brawler who made a Deal with the Devil. She traded ability to personally turn music into song for higher physical traits and resistances (a la Fallout Super Mutant). She lost most of her family to the harsh landscape and is determined to survive at all costs.

Oh! Depending upon the starting town she is working as a pit fighter in the "not a Thunderdome" or hired muscle for a trader/caravan.

I'm would like to keep the trade off part but I'm happy to take input if the trading music/magic part doesn't work. I figured that other people could use her bashing talents in their spells but she is just incapable of doing it herself.

 

@littlepinkbeast The fact that I know exactly what model you're talking about without following the link is funny to me.

My opinion: Re how human/inhuman everything is: Let it fly. They'll fit. I'd rephrase the wording on the second version of that High Concept to Lone Wolf with an Axe. And either one will do.

My question RE: We've Got To Do Something! Can you think of at least one way you'd invoke that? (I can think of dozens upon dozens of ways to compel it, and for that reason alone think we might want to make it more specific so it's not overshadowing other troubles.)

 

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.

I guess now that she's not being actively hunted, this is moving back from Trouble to Concept, so her Trouble is now Compulsive Tinkering.

 

Hee. Funny to me, as well.

She's not actually all that Lone, it was just hard for me to resist the lure of the play on Lone Wolf and Cub. I think I like the sound of Outlaw Werewolf, so let's go with that.

My thought with We've Got To Do Something! was that I could invoke it for things like leaping into action when startled or quick reactions when there's no time to waste. For narrowing it down I'd probably want to focus on the hot-headed impulsiveness and snap judgements side of it. No Time To Think! maybe?

 

I'm a little confused about the differences between High Concepts and Troubles. Is the former supposed to be just a description and the latter a motivation/character flaw, or is there more to it? How should I go about fitting what I've already established about my character to this format?

 

The High Concept is just the brief, bare-bones description of who and what your character is, yeah. A Trouble could be a character flaw, or it could be a personal enemy, or just anything that makes your life that much more complicated.

They're also just two of the five aspects we're going to eventually wind up with, so don't worry about trying to hang the entire character on just those two hooks.

 

@OnnaStik has it down.

I don't think compulsive tinkering is a very good "trouble" to be honest. How about for a High Concept though, you go with Engineer on the Run? And your trouble could be Prize of the Fountain Queen.

If you still like Compulsive Tinkerer you've got a REALLY strong phase 1 background there which would let you take that aspect anyway.

@littlepinkbeast Werewolf Outlaw or Outlaw Werewolf are both decent. And I didn't see the pun, which is why I suggested what I did. So basically, any of those will work as a high concept.

I still think we should tune your trouble. Possible similar aspects Ask Questions Later, Well Known Liberator, Itching For a Fair Fight? Like any of those possible angles?

 

Thanks Onna. :) Pretty sure my character's Trouble should be Look Out For Number One, then, because I expect her selfishness to cause a lot of trouble for her. For her Concept, maybe Mercenary on the Make, if that doesn't overlap too much with her Trouble.

I see her as having had a hard childhood. Grew up in crushing poverty, in one of the small, semi-nomadic communities that exist on the edges of the more established territories. Became very familiar with the facts of hunger and death at an early age. It's not her desire for a better life, but the lengths she's willing to go to get it that constitute a character flaw. I have a feeling that she's also the one closest to normal in this group. She might see her musical abilities as the only thing that sets her apart from the common mob, which makes her all the more determined to use them to succeed.

 

Or mechanics thing:

Because so much of our setting is founded on Music, I'm thinking about how to make that work with skills, and I think I just want to replace the Lore skill with Music. It'll have all the same mechanics.

 

@mazarinedrake Make it I Look Out For Number One. Mostly because then it becomes a catch phrase when you invoke it. And catchphrases are cool. And Mercenary on the Make sounds great for a high concept.

 

All right, Engineer on the Run and Prize of the Fountain Queen it is. :D

 

You got it, Piper!