My First DM's Guild Offering - Depths of Dread

I have been working on converting the new D&D storyline, the Curse of Strahd, over to the FFG Star Wars system using my Fantasy Conversion rules.  In the process, I have been working on altering the Morality rules to suit the darkness of the Ravenloft setting.  I will be finalizing those rules and posting them here, but in the meantime, I finished the D&D version of those rules, and I have posted them for sale on the DM's Guild website.  If you are interested, please take a look here, and pass the work on to anyone you think might be playing this campaign, as I think it will add a lot of fun into it:

Depths of Dread

Touch of Fate, Part 2: Aspects

In the first Touch of Fate article, we looked at ways to use Dresden Files style campaign creation in our Star Wars games. This time, we are going to look at ways to use one of the core mechanics of Fate, Aspects.

Sometimes when creating characters to play in RPGs, we come up with great motivations, back stories, and personalities. However, it isn't always easy to see those things come into play at the table. One of the great things about the Fate system is that it takes those details about your character and uses them to drive the core mechanics of the game. It does so with Aspects.

Aspects are short narrative statements that define and describe a character or situation.  A great summary of what aspects are and how they are used can be found here: Fate SRD.  For characters, aspects are related to who they are, their background, or their personality.  For instance, Luke Skywalker at the beginning of A New Hope might have the aspect, "Force Sensitive Farmboy".

In Fate, aspects are used by players to give their characters a bonus to their die rolls in situations that one of their aspects could apply. The player spends a Fate point to do so. Aspects can also be used by the GM to make life more complicated for a character. This is called a compel and gives the character a Fate point to use later.  Continuing our example above, Luke's player might spend a Fate point to invoke "Force Sensitive Farmboy" when calling on the Force to get a bonus, but the GM might also compel it when Luke gets into an altercation in a cantina because his isolated upbringing means he doesn't know how to tell who the dangerous faces in the crowd are.

To add aspects to your characters, come up with a few statements that describe them - some Fate games have specific ways to come up with them, such as one for a high concept, one for the character's trouble, and others based on events in the character's background. I would recommend only going with two to three when trying it out.

If course, the tricky part is trying to figure out a way to use them in the game, otherwise, why bother?

There are a few ways to give this a try based on how deep you want to go:

1.  Use aspects to give boosts and setbacks: Allow the player to add a boost die to their roll when they can invoke an aspect. The GM can add a setback to a roll if they compel an aspect.

2. Tie use of the Destiny pool to aspects: The players can only use Destiny points when they can invoke an aspect or compel an aspect of an NPC or situation.  The GM can only use a Destiny point when they compel a PC's aspect or invoke an NPC's aspect.

3.  Replace the Destiny pool and use Fate points instead: Give each player Destiny tokens to use as Fate points. You can either give them a predetermined number, say two to three, or let them roll Force dice to determine their starting number. They each have their own pool and spend them for a standard light side point effect, but can only spend them by invoking an aspect. The GM gives the player a point when he invokes an aspect to complicate life for the character or use a standard dark side point effect.

Each option has its own strengths and limitations.  Option 1 is the simplest to add, and allows players to really use the things that drive their characters, but can lead to players always trying to get a boost by trying very hard to connect every action to an aspect.

Option two preserves the ebb and flow of light and dark that the Destiny pool gives, while adding in the character story factors that aspects can give you, but can restrict it's use in certain situations.

Option three basically gives you the full Fate point experience, however, this option does remove the light vs dark balance that the Destiny pool provides.

All in all, adding aspects to our games is a good way to try to dig a little deeper into our characters and bring the details of a character to the forefront while in play, and I would recommend you give it a try.

To give feedback, use the contact form, email me directly at plarfem@gmail, or find me on Twitter @hackingedgeblog.

Curse of Strahd conversion?

I may be running the new D&D campaign, Curse of Strahd, for my group using our fantasy conversion rules posted here:

http://hackingtheedge.blogspot.com/2016/02/fantasy-conversion-rules.html

Would anyone be interested in seeing a formal write-up of the conversion notes once done? Let me know in the comments or by responding on Twitter @hackingedgeblog.

Hacking the Edge is now on Twitter

Hacking the Edge is now on Twitter!  Follow us for updates and notifications about new posts.

@hackingedgeblog

https://twitter.com/hackingedgeblog?s=09

At the Table- Fiasco Style Relationships

Welcome to the first post in the At The Table!  In this series, I will give concrete examples of how my gametable tried some of the options discussed on this site.

Today, I will give an example of how we used Fiasco Style Relationships to kick off our Star Wars campaign last night.

The campaign is a conversion of the Dawn of Defiance modules from Saga Edition- but we are running it just after the events of The Force Awakens, so the First Order are the bad guys, and the PCs get drawn in to the Resistance.

First, I created a a custom Fiasco playset (you can check it out here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxUTXhu-XPR6WlZJaF84cURZc3M/view?usp=sharing)

We rolled our six sided dice (4 per player), then everyone took turns drafting results using the dice pool to create relationships and details between the players.

We would record the results on index cards in between the players.

After everything was drafted, the relationships between the players looked like this:

And the Details between them looked like this:

I also asked them to help define the four major NPCs of the Campaign, the Nemesis, the Contact, the Mentor, and the Informant.  Each of these is pretty well defined in the campaign series, but I wanted the players to get invested in the NPCs, and having them create them is a good way to do so.  We came up with:

Nemesis- Anaya "Oma" Ren - one of the Knights of Ren, a elderly human who has ties back to Palpatine's Dark Force users.  She performs horrific experiments on Force users to find out the secrets of the Dark Side.  One such place she performs these is in a lab in the bowels of Nar Shadaa (a tie-in to the locations drafted above).

Contact- Tella the Hutt- unusual in that it is a Hutt working to aid the Resistance against the First Order.  She is a young Hutt, relatively mobile, and was drawn into the conflict when her father, Tobo, was murdered by the First Order in a fight over territory.

Mentor- The system that they will find their mentor on is Cato Neimoidia.  They talked about wanting a Kel Dor for their mentor.  Knowing that this is where Plo Koon meets his end in canon sources, we couldn't help but decide to use him as a mentor.  Exactly how he survived Order 66, how he is still alive today, and why he has not done anything in the galaxy since then, I know, but I'm not posting here :) (My players might read this...)

Informant- Senator Varth - This will be a elderly human former Imperial Senator, who was recruited into the First Order for his vast knowledge, but decides that the destruction of Hosnian Prime is too much.  I have not yet decided if this character will follow the same arc as in the original storyline, for those who have played it.

Taking the NPCs into account, as well as the relationships, we all worked together to craft an overarching backstory that takes into account most of the relationships and details. The rest will get filled in later.

D and S's character's, who are Force Sensitive twins, were being experimented on by Anaya Ren in the dark recesses of Nar Shadaa.  E and T's characters, seeking out information on the Jedi, found this laboratory and managed to help free the twins.  They went on the run as Anaya Ren brought the resources of the First Order to bear.  They found work where they could on freighters here and there in the space lanes and generally laying low.  At some point, however, the ship they were working on made a delivery to a First Order shipyard and they were discovered, their ship being destroyed and leaving them in an escape pod.  Luckily, it was at that time that a some members of a salvage operation (headed by E, I, and M's characters) decided to help out and picked up their escape pod.  In the process, M's character was identified, so now he is being hunted as well.

So, there is obviously some more to develop, but this method gives some detailed reasons the group is together and can make for some great dynamics right from the get go.  I would love to hear if anyone gives this a shot.

Touch of Fate, Part 1

This series of posts will give some tips on how to take some pieces from the Fate system and add them to your FFG Star Wars game.  Today, we look at adding in Dresden Files style character creation.

Fate, by Evil Hat Productions, is a great game that really focuses on character driven action, and covers a wide variety of games, from The Dresden Files to Atomic Robo, to a generic system that you can use for any story you want to tell, Fate Core (and its lighter version, Fate Accelerated).  Fate uses character themes/taglines called Aspects and a point based economy (called Fate points, naturally) along with a skill system and dice to resolve conflicts.  Fate system games are available here:

http://www.evilhat.com/home/

The description I gave above is of course, an oversimplification, but at its heart, Fate focuses on story and characters.  I love that part of the game, and the Fate points can also be interesting (more on that in later parts of this series), but I find the mechanical aspects of Fate sometimes to not flow as well as I would like.

So, I decided to try to take some of the story driving parts of Fate and add them into the Star Wars system.  Specifically, we used the setting creation rules from the Dresden Files RPG, as that didn't have any real mechanical changes we would have needed to integrate.  Now, the first time I tried it was with a Fantasy campaign using the FFG Star Wars system (See the Fantasy conversion we used here: http://hackingtheedge.blogspot.com/2016/02/fantasy-conversion-rules.html), but it works just as well in the Star Wars setting.

The Dresden Files, in the book Your Story (available for as little as $13 in ebook form at the time of this posting), discusses how to create a city to use as a backdrop for your adventures.  The most important part of this is that it is done collaboratively as a group, instead of the GM coming up with everything themselves.  It is done at the start of the game, before the players have finalized what characters they want to play.

The Dresden files book has a much more detailed version of the process, and walks you through it step by step (and also assumes you will be doing this for a real world city with a supernatural side), but the gist of it is as follows:

1.  Determine the overall themes and threats of the setting/campaign- What will the players see over and over in the game?  What will the tone of it be?  What are the major problems that the players want to deal with? This can be as specific as you want it to be.  My players came up with a city that is dealing with internal strife, a wererat problem, an overzealous church, and repelling an external invasion.  For a Star Wars game, these are usually more general and deal with the tone and goals of the campaign since the players are often traveling to multiple systems throughout the game.  A good theme statement for Star Wars might be "Just trying to make a semi-honest living on the outer rim" and a good threat statement might be "The inquisitors will never stop hunting us."

2.  Determine the factions and the status quo are- Who are the power players/factions in the setting?  What is the current situation in the game, and which factions want to keep that the same?  Which factions want to change it?  In our fantasy game, we had the Duke who ruled the city, the City watch and City Guard, the Church, and the Thieves Guild (who were wererats, of course).  For Star Wars, you usually have the Empire and Alliance, but it sometimes helps to be a little more specific, especially when it comes to the Empire- perhaps it is the local ISB cell, the aforementioned Inquisitors, or a specific warlord's forces.  The status quo is the general state of affairs- a good statement for a Star Wars game might be something like "The Empire tries to continually tighten its grip on the locals and everyone just tries to keep their heads down."  You then discuss which factions want to keep the status quo the same and who want to see changes happen.

3.  Determine the important locations.  Where will most of the scenes take place?  In my game, we came up with the Tavern the players would frequent, the temple the cleric would pray at, the slums that they would frequent, and a few other choice places.  In Star Wars, one should certainly be the group's ship, and also any planets the players will be likely to visit, as well as some places on those planets.

4.  Determine the faces.  For each of these themes, threats, and locations, who are the major NPCs the group will run into?  What are their mannerisms and goals?

5.  Determine where the players fit in.  What are their relationships to the factions in the setting?  Which of the faces do they know, get along with, or hate?  What location do they call home?

Each of these steps can be as general or specific as you want.  The important thing is to give the GM some interesting ideas to incorporate, and make sure that everyone is on the same page with what they want to see in the game.  I encourage you to give it a try.

Next time, we look at ways to integrate Aspects into character creation.

Feedback is welcome- either by commenting on the article, by using the contact form, or emailing me directly at plarfem@gmail.com.

Using Fiasco Style Relationships in Edge of The Empire

Fiasco, by Bully Pulpit Games, is an amazing game that allows you to play out a dark comedy or drama in one session.  If you have never played it, I would urge you to give it a shot- there are games of it running at a lot of gaming conventions, and you can purchase the game in physical form or pdf from their website listed here: http://bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/

Fiasco is a one-shot, where things usually go horribly for some if not all of the players.  So, at first, it might not seem like there is much to be adapted for use in a Star Wars game.  However, Fiasco begins by determining relationships, needs, locations and objects that drive and define the relationships of the players.  Using this in a more traditional RPG can solve one of the biggest issues when starting a new campaign- how do the PCs know each other?  Why are they working together?

To use Fiasco style relationships, you will use a pool of six sided dice (4 per player).  They are all rolled and placed in the center of the table.  Then, players take turns picking numbers out of the pool and selecting from a list to define a relationship between two PCs.  Each PC will have a relationship with the PCs of the players sitting on either side of them.  An interesting part of this is that the players can help define a relationship for anyone at the table, not just their own character.  Each relationship, need, object, or location is given a major category, then defined further with a sub-category.  In the end, you have a web of relationships drawing the PCs together, some needs driving their adventures, and objects or locations to call back to.

There is an episode of Tabletop where they perform setup for their Fiasco game you can check out to get an idea of how this process works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuJizhyf-y4.  The game they play after the setup is pretty amazing as well, so it is worth a watch.

While the process for creating the relationships works as is, you don't necessarily want to use the playsets straight from Fiasco- game masters will want to tailor it to their campaigns to ensure that what the players will select will fit with what they have in mind.  There is a good example of a simple way to do this on a great D&D blog, Sly Flourish: http://slyflourish.com/fiasco_relationships.html.  Another way to do so is to start with an existing Fiasco playset and modify it to your needs.

Here is a link to the relationship document we used when we were playing Jewel of Yavin followed by Beyond the Rim: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxUTXhu-XPR6Uy12SVhkV0d5M1E/view?usp=sharing

Here is a link to the relationship document we used when I ran a converted D&D game from the 4E DM's kit, Reavers of Harkenwold: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxUTXhu-XPR6c1ZoaVFmenh3YWc/view?usp=sharing

Both of these were inspired by a couple of actual Fiasco playsets listed below:

DragonSlayers playset: http://bullypulpitgames.com/downloads/december-playset-dragon-slayers-2/

Jedi Purge Playset: http://fiascoplaysets.com/home/jedi-purge

I would urge you to give this a whirl on your next campaign- it really makes character creation as much fun as playing the actual adventure, and can add a lot of depth to your characters.