First session done

 Earlier this week we played our first session of this campaign, using FATE CORE as expected.

Our Player Characters are

Roz from The Wild Robot 

Snake from Metal Gear Solid 

Motoko from Ghost in the Shell 

(and All Might from My Hero Academia, but that player missed the session)

We're still getting the hang of the system, and I'm honestly a little rusty on GMing generally, but I think there's a lot of potential here. We made it through a dreamlike tutorial level, and then they got dropped into the world of Diablo 2. They made it to Lut Gholein and are about to embark on their first proper "adventure".

Before long they will meet the wizard who summoned them, and he will explain the situation to them, and outline some possible next steps. Since the group is a bit more thematically coherent than expected, I'm having fun thinking of worlds that they'll fit right into, vs ones that will be more "fish out of water" for them.

Here's a rough schematic of the campaign so far, including the possible next worlds.

No major rules issues yet... I've ruled that the Burglary skill covers hacking until/unless I expand the skill list, and we've also got some custom stunts to fine-tune, but everything feels pretty good so far!

It's Happening!

 Ten years and change after my last post here, I've finally decided to commit to running this for my game night group. We'll be using FATE CORE more or less as described in my previous posts. Character Generation should be tomorrow night, and/or maybe a brief tutorial session.

I've re-started my research on these games, and wow is their cosmology (and metaphysics) convoluted! Lots to play with, especially considering that, in my framing, the events of the game series are propaganda that may or may not reflect the reality of this setting.

Happy Holidays!

As Disney's present to me, they gave me a map of Arendelle and its surroundings, and confirmation of the year it takes place in! And in the spirit of generosity, I'm sharing that with you.

(OK, technically I paid for Frozen Fever, but this info was an unexpected bonus.)

No one fights like Gaston...

The Murine Principle

Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?

NPC Spotlight: Agent 47

This is the second installment of NPC spotlight, where I detail the heroes of the Disney and Square-Enix alliance who will be the opponents of the player characters. Last time was one of my favorite minor Disney characters, and this time it's a Square-Enix guy. Of sorts.

Back in 2000, a small independent company named Io-Interactive released its debut, Hitman: Codename 47, which proved to be the first of a successful franchise. In 2006, Io was purchased by Eidos. In 2009, Eidos was purchased by Square-Enix. So Io is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Square-Enix, and thus, the Hitman setting is part of the Disney/Square-Enix Empire in my campaign.

(It's fun to note, in passing, how the consolidation of entertainment companies in the real world parallels the expansion of the empire in my campaign, but that's an issue for another post.)

Except for their shared ruthlessness, Agent 47 has nothing in common with Captain Crocodile. The latter is a very prominent part of the Disney war machine, whether leading troops from the front, or heading the administration of a conquered world. 47, on the other hand, should be all but invisible.

As far as actually describing Agent 47, well, there's not that much to it. He's a mercenary assassin, a contract killer, a murderer for hire. He's genetically engineered (or something) for maximum ability. He occasionally shows flashes of morality, but never so much that it actually interferes with his job. His role in service of the Mouse Emperor is pretty self-evident. Once the player characters attract too much attention, Agent 47 gets sent after them.

The great thing about Agent 47, from my perspective as a GM, is that he could be anywhere, and can strike in any fashion. Any world that has humans could have Agent 47 skulking about in stolen clothes, ready to slip some cyanide in a drink or unleash a volley of .45 ACP bullets.

Possible Aspects (NPCs only get one):
The Contract is Everything
Impervious Calm

Important Skills:
Deceive
Shoot
Fight
Burglary
Stealth

(images copyright Io Interactive, or possibly Square-Enix)

Sample PC: Robot Unicorn

Learn by doing, right?

Reading through the FATE rules, I made a simple character as I went along. Perhaps you remember Robot Unicorn Attack hitting it big a few years back? I figured that's about as straightforward as videogame characters get, so here's what I came up with:

As far as I can tell, the Robot Unicorn has no name. I just picked "Rob" as a handy abbreviation.

The character's High Concept is totally already defined. Robot Unicorn: exactly what it says on the tin.

The Trouble aspect was trickier. At first I was leaning against having Priceless Horn as the aspect, because Trouble aspects are not supposed to be redundant with the High Concept. The book gives the example that a character with the high concept Lead Detective shouldn't pick the trouble aspect Hated By The Underworld, because that drawback is already implied by the high concept. But I thought about it, and attempted horn thievery is not as universal a plot complication as I'd initially assumed. Sure, Darkness wants unicorn horns, but the villains of The Last Unicorn want unicorns themselves, not the horns, and I don't remember Unico having to avoid horn-poachers either. That said, perhaps the aspect could be made more specific, like "Horn Coveted by the Cyberwizards" or "Horn Valued as Droid Aphrodisiac", but this will do for now.

The Genre aspect (remember, I'm not using the games default "phase trio" for the last three aspects) was surprisingly easy. Rather than try to define the genre of the setting (synthpop fairytale robo-fantasy?) I just picked the gameplay genre. Endless Runner can totally be invoked to justify bonus relating to movement or stamina or whatever.

The Catchphrase aspect seemed tricky at first, since Robot Unicorn doesn't talk at all. But even though there's no dialog in the game, there is a catchy and iconic theme song. So I took the most memorable line from that, which presumably reflects the character's intense loyalty, or something.

The Wild Card aspect was actually challenging to come up with. After going through the wikipedia page for Robot Unicorn Attack a few times, I settled on Pixie Collector after the game's bonus point mechanism. I'm not exactly sure what this entails, but one of the neat things about FATE is that the aspects invented to describe the characters can also contain details to help guide the GM's worldbuilding. And since at least one Disney film setting does include pixies, this character would motivate me to make sure those pixies show up in the campaign, ideally sooner rather than later...