#RPGaDay2015 - 7th - Favorite Free RPG

It's August 2015, and to follow on with the success of last year's #RPGaDay event, David Chapman at Autocratik has created a new list. Each day in August, I'll be posting my "answer" to that day's topic.

Almost caught up...

This is a tough one since really there are so many free RPGs out there. I have to admit I'm a little torn about my answer, as this RPG is technically "Pay What You Want" and I bought it through Kickstarter before the free version hit the interwebs (officially). But if I strip those issues away and go with the RPG that's brought the most fun to my game table, which also happens to be available for free, then I have to go with Fate Core. I've been playing Fate since the release of Spirit of the Century, and I have to say Fate Core is the RPG I anticipated more than any other announced product since D&D 2nd Edition.

Here are my Fate highlights:

• Running Spirit of the Century at a public event in the late '00s
• Running Dresden Files RPG in my home game, soon after its release
• Playing in a weekly Dresden Files RPG/Forbidden Kingdoms hack, run by Jason Corley
• Playing in a weekly Dresden Files RPG, using at-the-time unreleased Fate Core rules, run by Ryan Macklin
• Running my go-to-last-minute Fate Accelerated con game, Quest for the MacGuffin, multiple times
• Running a Fate Accelerated My Little Pony game for my daughter's 10th birthday

[Play-Thru] Fate Accelerated Edition

When Spirit of the Century (SotC) was coming out, I was excited about a pick-up pulp game that used the new version of FATE. When I got the product, I was skeptical of the idea that a 400+ page tome could be used to do anything quickly, let alone throw together a roleplaying session.  Luckily SotC turned out to be a killer game, and once you have some time with it, it's certainly right for a pick-up game. Fast-forward several years and the promise of third edition FATE has come to fruition in Fate Core. It's brilliant--I'll say that--but my favorite thing to come out of one of the hottest RPG Kickstarters in history is not the main product, it's Fate Accelerated Edition (FAE). It's my favorite because it not only fulfills the promise of SotC, but it might just be the perfect pick-up game, period.

Before I get into my Play-Thru I'll clarify a thing or two. First, FAE is in no way limited to pulp adventure. You can literally use it for anything if you have a flexible mind and group. Second, at 48 pages I don't feel the need to get into too much detail about the mechanics. Just broad strokes folks.

The big difference between FAE and other versions is the skill list, in that there is none. Instead, players are asked to stat six approaches--no doubt taking a cue from Cortex+ [Edit: Turns out I was wrong about this bit; Cortex+ got it from Fate--credit where credit is due]. Players then start the game with two or three Aspects and one Stunt (which uses trimmed-back rules).

I decided to test FAE at a local charity game day. I called the adventure Quest for the MacGuffin. Here was the description: "Players will create pulp adventure characters with the new and not-yet-released Fate Accelerated Edition. These characters will then complete a quest involving a MacGuffin, in a setting the players help create."

With that information, I pretty much sat down, explained Aspects, Approaches, and Stunts, and we got to work. The players decided they wanted to do '30s-era pulp, with Nazis as the bad guys. They also decided there would be magic, but it would be extremely subtle. After the setting was decided, the players made their characters. Then the players decided their MacGuffin would be the Eye of Odin. Finally, they decided their characters learned the Eye was at a castle in Germany. The rest was left up to me.

That above process took about 90 minutes. There were four players, and two of them had never played any version of Fudge. We then used the remaining two and a half hours to play. I had the setting, the characters, and the destination, so I simply created obstacles in their path. Before the session ended, the players were in several scenes and five encounters, including a satisfying climax.

In my second test, I ran FAE for five people, three of which had never played any version of Fudge. We still got the creation process done in 90 minutes and played a satisfying story in about two and a half hours, this time the players were members of a space federation, dispatched to investigate what happened to Science Outpost Sagan and the Dark Matter Harvester. It went equally well.

One interesting side effect of both sessions is many of the players walked away with characters they cared about and wanted to play again and a campaign setting they wanted to spend more time exploring. I just found that fascinating.

Aside from pick-up games, I could see FAE being used as a sort of "proof of concept" tool. Let's say someone in your group has a setting idea, but the rest of the group doesn't get it. Run a session with the loose idea in FAE and figure it out. Alternatively, let's say your a designer and you get a setting in your head. Here's a way to brainstorm while playing.

The PDF can be had for literally any price you desire to pay. Evil Hat is selling it on a "pay what you want" model, and they encourage you to just download it for free if you'd like, and then give them money if you think it's worth more than zero dollars. The print version will only set you back $5 when it's available. Knowing what I know, the value of FAE can't be judged by page count. I'll pay the $2.50 Evil Hat asks for sure. That's a no-brainer.

@ReverbGamers Master List Number 17

#17: What was the best reward you've ever gotten in a game? What made it so great? How much do you need tangible rewards (loot, leveling, etc.) to enjoy a game?

Probably the best in-game reward was in a D&D 3.x game. Our whole party received custom magic items that leveled with us. Basically new powers and abilities were added as the game went on. The DM gave us a little control (in the form of requests) as to how they changed over time. Mine was a cloak, which was fitting for a rogue. Aside from the leveling aspect, what made it so great was these items tied in to adventurers from history, and their spirits were eventually there to help us beat the "big bad" of the campaign. So having a story tie-in was the main thing.

In general, I like characters that upgrade--new levels, abilities, etc.--but I think that has more to do with conditioning than any sort of need. I played in a FATE campaign, where it turned out I was just as happy being able to swap skills around and modifying aspects was just as gratifying. My character never actually got better. I think this means I'm less about the trappings of change and more about the change itself.

Hmm... There's something to this revelation. I think I will delve into it in a future post.

ICONS Revisited

Awhile back, I put ICONS back on the shelf. Having run it twice, I wanted to love it, but I couldn't bring myself to. There were a couple reasons, but the principle one was in play. I couldn't get past the Invulnerability power.

Basically a character with Invulnerability can never be physically harmed by a character with Strength two or more points below that Invulnerability. From a genre standpoint, it makes total sense--Batman can smack the heck out of Superman for days and it wouldn't do anything but annoy Superman. But from a game standpoint, it felt wrong. In my experience there should always be a way to hurt the bad guy.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with Chuck Rice, who writes a lot of support material for ICONS. I decided to bring up this flaw to maybe get some house rules from a subject matter expert. It didn't go the way I'd planned. Chuck made some pretty good arguments for why this was OK. So I resolved myself to run the game one more time, looking at it from his standpoint--it is a genre convention; it forces the players to thing outside the box; this is a Good Thing.

This week my Friday group was down a player, and since we're just starting a campaign, I didn't want to go on without him. I took the opportunity to run Steve Kenson's excellent adventure, The Skeletron Key, using the official freebie characters given out to promote the release of ICONS. Justin played the Hangman, Ed played the Mighty Saguaro (brilliantly, I might add), Veronica played Miss Tikal (that name still cracks me up a year later), and our guest player, Matt, played All-Star.

I warned the players in advance about the inability to damage some things--they wouldn't necessarily be able to smash their way to victory. I told them to think outside the box when this issue came up. The group really thought on their feet. They used Stunts and Retcons to defeat the physically tough opponents. All-Star was equipped to hurt anything in the story, but that didn't stop the other players from doing their part. 

I was impressed. Not only did the players get around my perceived flaw in the game, they had a blast doing it. And it felt more like reading a comic or watching a cartoon. The result is ICONS does a great job of providing an authentic-feeling, super-powered experience.

Another thing I learned about the game is I'll be running it exclusively from my iPad. As a physical book it's beautiful, but I have some organization issues with it. There is no index and the table of contents is anemic. The powers section is not organized in a way that lends itself to quick reference. Powers are broken down alphabetically by type, rather than just alphabetically. Further, there's no alphabetical page number reference to make things easier to find, and the table of contents doesn't tell you what page the sections for power type start. It makes for a very frustrating experience when you're new to the game and need information now. On the iPad, I just bookmarked this stuff, and I can now reference the book very quickly.

Overall, ICONS is a great game, and as long as you warn the players of the genre conventions and keep your copy on a laptop or iPad, you should enjoy it too.

UPDATE: Bulldogs! Not Cursed

Our group got together last night and successfully completed characters.

We ended up with a psychotic, pink teddy bear, a warrior-race black sheep who just wants to do science, a manipulative purple guy, and a robot avatar for the ship's artificial intelligence. Should be fun!

Given the characters, this is shaping up to be a more gonzo game than I expected. In my experience that won't exactly make for a long campaign, but I believe a good time will be had for whatever the duration turns out to be.

In addition to finishing characters, I managed to explain conflicts, including the confusing-for-some damage and maneuvers. We also ran a quick, in media res combat to nail down the basics.

Overall the group seems to be looking forward to the campaign. No curse here. Move along.

Is Bulldogs! Cursed?

So I have to confess I came late to the show when it comes to Kickstarter. I got involved in time to back a couple cool projects after Eloy Lasanta asked me to check out his presentation of Part-Time Gods. One of those projects was Bulldogs!.

I  was aware of Bulldogs! in its d20 iteration. I'd heard "Good Things." Unfortunately, I was already too disenchanted with d20 to really look into it. But a FATE version? I was in...

When I got my PDF copy of the new Bulldogs!, I poured over it. It was Thursday evening, and I had a new gaming group, poised to try a new science fiction (preferably FATE) game the very next night. We were going to use Diaspora, but there were some concerns about the hard SF leanings of the game. We wanted to kick ass, and I'd heard Bulldogs! was in fact "Sci-Fi That Kicks Ass."

I'd loved nearly everything I'd read in Bulldogs!, and the next night I presented it to the group. They gleefully agreed it would be the way to go. We started with the Ship Aspects and completed those. Halfway through the Captain Aspects, though (technically it was two-thirds--we had two of the three Aspects), three children came up from the basement and asked who was smoking.

There were no smokers in the house.

After a frantic search we determined there was smoke and an electrical burning smell. I called the fire department, and we got out of the house.

The house didn't burn down, but needless to say, the gaming mood had been killed. There were crying children and freaked-out adults. We decided we'd finish creation the following week.

The next week we set about finishing character creation. The house was warm because we've been trying to conserve AC costs, but with guests coming we shut the windows and turned on the AC! About an hour later, the house went from 80 degrees to... 82. The AC was broken (and as it turns out, the culprit of the previous week's fire scare).

With two big guys (myself included) and a colicky baby on the premises, the heat was too much for our group and we only made it about halfway through our characters.

So I'm wondering... is Bulldogs! cursed?

There's an adventure from my Deadlands Classic days called Canyon o' Doom. It was guaranteed to stop a campaign in its tracks. In fact, Canyon o' Doom was involved with the death of three campaigns (not because it was a bad adventure--I loved the story). It was just... unlucky.

I sincerely hope Bulldogs! isn't my new Canyon o' Doom...