Fate Lessons #2 - Tossing Death Troopers off the Cliff


In this week's Star Wars adventure, our heroes were on a mission to extract a Rebel agent who had crashed on a planet and was being pursued by the Evil Galactic Empire. It's based on the old West End Games' Stat Wars adventure "Operation: Shadowstrike" contained within Instant Adventures.

My previous post on lessons I've learned in GM-ing Fate was rather popular and I found the exercise useful for myself as well so I'm continuing that idea here.

I've had some discussions on the use of sticky notes and marking up of the map. There's one reason I do that - if not I doubt we'd be doing much with Aspects. Most of us having been gaming for a long time and are got our start with more "traditional" games. As a result, it's likely we'd totally forget what Aspects were in play - it's something I ran into playing Atomic Robo a few years back.

One encounter in our adventure wound up having a nice combination of environmental Aspects as well as created Advantages. Walking through woods our heroes spotted some Imperial death troopers before they themselves were spotted. This saw a variety of Aspects getting created by the PCs - for example, the assassin droid did not hide but rather strolled down the canyon between two low cliffs, getting the attention of one of the troopers - and creating the Aspect "droid distraction" with a free invoke.

A former clone trooper, Doha, attacked from ambush, with the Aspect "never see it coming". A former Imperial officer, Stark, took advantage of the droid distraction to slug a death trooper with a baton from behind. Seeing that he was one point of damage short of totally taking the trooper out in one hit, he spent a Fate point to invoke the Aspect "steep drop" so that the attack knocked the trooper off the cliff, the combination of the blow and killing him. Stark had intended from the start to send the trooper off the cliff - spending the Fate point added the bonus damage that resulted from this maneuver.

We definitely got a bit more traction out of environmental Aspects this adventure, something I had been hoping for. Next adventure I want to focus a bit more on Aspects being used to compel actions. We also saw how while players do get a fair amount of narrative control, danger still exists, with R2-C4 being forced to take some consequences in the battle with the death troopers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jules Verne Translations That Don't Stink

Image
Shortly after I graduated from college R. Talsorian published their fantasy steampunk RPG,  Castle Falkenstein. Having missed out on Space: 1889  when it first came out this was my first steampunk RPG, though I had been exposed to the genre by Gibson and Sterling's novel The Difference Engine (a novel which, though I though I found the setting compelling, I did not particularly care for - must reread some day). Jules Verne was one of the authors in the inspirational reading section of Castle Falkenstein.  Heck, the game also made him into France's scientific advisor, having him responsible for their massive Verne Cannons  which formed a sort of nuclear deterrent.  With that in mind, one Sunday afternoon I was at a Barnes & Noble bookstore my new girlfriend (now my wife of nearly 16 years!).  On a whim I decided to pick up a Jules Verne novel. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . That night I started reading it, never having read any of his works b...
Keep reading

Stepping Away and a New Beginning

Image
After maintaining this blog for nearly seven years (an eternity in internet time), I've decided to step away from it. When I first began I wasn't 100% certain what it would be about. For a while I thought it would be a blog related to OSR type RPGs but I found my own tastes not firmly rooted there. Looking at the history of the blog, I see a lot of Call of Cthulhu which is hardly surprising. However, some lack of consistency definitely made it tough for me find a defined niche and over the past few months I've been giving some thought to starting a new, more narrowly focused blog. The imminent end of Google+ played a part in these thoughts, with much of my traffic coming from that site. I write because I enjoy writing, but I do enjoy growing an audience. My plan to start a narrowly-focused blog took a turn when I had the opportunity to join the  Rolling Boxcars  blog. Talking with the contributors (one of whom I game with on Discord already) and going through thei...
Keep reading

Using the Force in D6 Star Wars

Image
Defending yourself with just 1D in Sense is not easy, as Luke discovers when training with a remote. My previous post discussed the proto-D6 System as found in the Ghostbusters RPG. For those unfamiliar with the D6 System and the way it does the Force (or for a brief review) the essentials are: You roll a bunch of six sided dice against a target number, typically ranging from 5-ish (easy) to 20 or even higher. Your rating is listed as something like 2D+2 which means roll 2d6+2. By default, most normal/non-heroic people have 2D in most stats.  Starting heroes will might have their best skill be at 5D or a touch higher. You can take as many actions as you want in a round. However, taking two actions in a round reduces all dice codes by 1D, taking three reduces all by 2D, etc. Starting with Force skills will lower a characters starting attributes. Unlike most skills they start off at 1D. There are three Force skills - control, sense, and alter. Control lets you contr...
Keep reading

Developing Boston for 1920s Call of Cthulhu

Image
While Chaosium has produced sourcebooks for many locations in Lovecraft Country (Kingsport, Arkham, and Innsmouth) as well as non-fictional cities of the 1920s (such as New York City and New Orleans), the nearby city of Boston, while being featured in many adventures, has never received its own full sourcebook. The most common era for my Call of Cthulhu  games has been in the 1920s - some campaigns have been in New York City while others have been in Lovecraft country. For those in Lovecraft Country, many adventures have been in nearby Boston. Over the years I've slowly been building up some expertise in the area and I thought it might be of interest to others gaming in the same setting - whether with Mythos horrors or a purely mundane game. First, let us investigate those official sources. While Boston has found its way into many adventures, I can think of two sources where it has been given a fair amount of detail. First, The Unspeakable Oath  double issue 16/17 has ...
Keep reading

Balancing Classes in Swords and Wizardry

Image
DM: "The box is the size of a small trunk; it is latched but not locked."  Dougal: "I'm looking for traps on the box."  DM (rolling for Dougal's "find traps" ability. The roll indicates that Dougal has failed to find the poisoned needle in the latch.) "You don't find a trap."  Morgan (the group's leader): "Black Dougal will open the box."  DM: "Black Dougal, you find out that you missed a tiny discolored needle in the latch. Roll a saving throw vs. Poison, please!"  Dougal (rolling): "Missed it!"  DM: "Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."  Fredrik: "I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in." Game balance. It's a tricky concept in RPGs. D&D 3rd and 4th editions made a very strong effort to balance the character classes with one another as well as to balance encounters. For my purposes, they went too far. A...
Keep reading