Captain Manning, Part Deux - The Follow-Up

To pick up from last time: Stunts are these nifty things that you create to make your character more bad-ass.  Enough sides, on to the main course!

When the group and I sat down to create characters, one of the options on the table was to play a clone.  I really liked this idea.  When someone says you're a 1 in a million guy, they don't realize that there are 20 at home just like you!  There were a lot of reasons why I wanted to play this character, but the primary of which was to play a fish out of water.  Clone culture is not human culture.  It's close in a lot of respects, but it isn't the same.  Kind of like Fox News: it's really close to journalism, but it isn't journalism.

As we went through the development stages of our characters, one stage is to create a story that links you to someone else at the table.  Storn and I linked up by having his character free the clone slaves on a ship that was burning up in space.  My character, having been trained as a pilot, had "saved the day" thanks to quick thinking on both of our characters' parts.  Thus began a bit of fun with my freedman, Carter, enjoying his freedom and going so far as to have a slipship (thanks to one of my stunts).  I named it The Libertine to which Anton (Storn's alter ego) stated he approved.  I really liked that we both got something out of this exchange - Anton became a firm believer in abolition; Carter became enamored of freedom and wants to share it.  Anton took the name to mean a pleasure-seeker; whereas, Carter took the more traditional meaning of being a freed slave.

In our first game, we encountered a family (who is also a business interest) from the poor side of the cluster.  They were transporting clone slaves.  We managed to get them to free them in exchange for contract negotiation in good faith.  Then, they had the temerity to pick up another batch on the way to their home system.  Anton used his gambling prowess to free that lot. And Carter managed to convince the family to abandon slaves and turn to robots instead.  Yay, social combat!  Woot!

So, little by little, my fish out of water is becoming a faltering and stammering liberator.  I guess I just want to make my ship proud.

All for now.

Captain Manning - The Unintentional Liberator

So, we played "Diaspora" last night.  This is a sci-fi game set in the far future based on the FATE system (for more specifics look here).  I enjoy playing the FATE system: possibly my favorite bits of this game are the Aspects and the Stunts.  Aspects are these fun bits that are based upon your character and are generated during character creation.

These are kind of hard for me to explain, so let me give a brief example.  My character started life as a clone.  So, my aspects from that part of my character creation are: Fast to Act (Clones are tweaked to be a little faster on the rxn time than norms) and One of Many (clones come out in batches of 40 with only a letter and number identifier).  I chose these aspects because you can tap them later during conflicts.

So, to extend the example: Carter is on the bridge with a possible enemy agent.  She goes for laser pistol; I go for mine.  GM and I roll the FATE dice.  She beats me by 2.  I can spend a FATE point and tap my aspect (Fast to Act) for 2 and now we are even - she no longer has the drop on me.  From there we can move into Personal Combat.
OR
A Family who is also Business on the Belt of Aegeus wants to use me to influence my bosses.  We go into Social Combat.  In order to put a halt to the Family's influence, I can tap "One of Many" to add to my die roll and stay where my interests lie.

More on Stunts in a bit.

The challenge of Nine Worlds in One City.

"It is called: 'Midgard.'  It is a city that was built in the early times.  A refuge that the Vanir created.  First, they built the Citadel spanning nine levels and created a mighty oak motiff on the outside.  The Citadel touches all the districts of the City.  And we came here - to this place of refuge, the city of endless roads and tricky gates - we came here to escape that which befell all others.  Is this our true home? No.  But it is home enough for all of us."

-Skald Asgrimir "The Song of Freya and Od"

So, it was a challenge.  I'd been reading a fair amount of Viking lore, part of it brought about by the reboot of "the Mighty Thor" by Marvel Comics.  I'd wanted to try my hand at running Burning Wheel.  My friend Aaron had patiently dealt with my cancellations on Sundays.  Then, the death blow fell: I had to close on Sundays.

The solution was to meet on Tuesdays.  We met to organize.  We had followed Judd's MoBu City template and discussed what Aaron wanted out of a city adventure.  He wanted Epic.  He wanted Big.  I was completely on-board because I knew that a Norse setting would have those elements.  This is a mythology where good guys fuck with Giants and Dragons using magic swords forged by the mighty Wayland.  This is a belief system where when you turned the next corner, Odin (in disguise) could be resting by the roadside.

We spoke about it at length and created Midgard: The City of Nine Worlds.  We talked about the lios alfar and the svart alfar.  We talked about the Aesir and the Vanir and their influence in the City.  We created the City Council and the Ninth Seat which is actually a Cauldron.

It was wonderful!

I can't wait for the actual game!

Exploding halflings?

So, my long lost brother, Chris runs a 3.5E D&D game. He had in a mind a fun little horror type dealio wherein a whacky religious sect of the Mind Flayers (aka The Throon) were invading this little backwater of a planet.

The Throon have this passion for fucking with Nature. One of their techniques is to invade your favorite brain case with a parasite who can juice your body far beyond it's natural limits. The downside to this amping up is that your body explodes from "too much energy."

One of the possessed beings that his PCs ran into was a halfling who went totally apeshit on the party and then blew up. Only one party member witnessed the kaboom. Later, another possessed (this one a dwarf) started to get that exploding feeling (picture that guy, Thunder, from Big Trouble in Little China) and runs away pursued by the aforementioned party member. She watches the dwarf explode and seems non-plussed by this chain of events.

Chris asked why it was that she hadn't reported this happening before, to which she replied: "I don't know. I figured it was exploding halfling syndrome or something!"

Thanks to her, I have a name for my blog. Bless you, Alicia!

Spontaneous Halfling Combustion

Life is a game. We all want to do well at it. Sometimes we have trouble with the rules. Sometimes we've been hacked. Sometimes we just need to laugh and then get really fucking cut-throat. Whatever!

This blog is dedicated to the funny, creative, and often intense world of the imagination that I like to call Tabletop Gaming.

I'm attempting to update this badboy at least once a week to cover what is going on in my infamous quote: "I am a nation of one in a castle of one with a population of one and my domain is limited only by my imagination!"

So, read on MacDuff and damned be he who first cry: "Hold! Enough!"