As I sat running my red pen over the final pre-playtest draft of Duty & Honour, it struck me that I might well have three whole games to run in the very near future. Bearing in mind that the most I have ran for the last 18 months has been a slack handful of one session tests, this is a remarkable sea-change and to be frank, quite a welcome one at this point in time.
The first, naturally, is the playtest of Duty & Honour. By the nature of the game it is quite an easy thing to run although mentally the challenges of playtesting whilst refereeing are far greater than those of just running a game. The previous two test sessions haven't really got beyond chargen but they have radically changed the game and improved it no end. I imagine I should run about a 4-5 session test mini-campaign over the spring months.
The second is another playtest - this time it is Malcolm Craig's Cold City follow-up creation Hot War. This is a post-apocalyptic setting in the 1960s after the Russians released nuclear and twisted technology weapons lose upon the UK. I'm planning on running it as a loose (and I mean very loose) sequel to the Cold City game that we have just played under Andrew and it should last again, about four sessions including one character generation session as this seems to be a tad more involved than the Cold City version.
The third, strangely, is possible return in some arena of Pulsars & Privateers! Ian has written in his 2008 Gaming Resolutions that he is determined to get me to resurrect this campaign because it was prematurely canned due to work pressures. I have to say, I agree with him - having looked back over some of the material I think there is a definite possibility of a revised and sharpened version of P&P somewhere on the horizon. I have NO idea what system it would use. Now that we have some experience of it I'm awfully tempted to suggest Primetime Adventures or I may lump for the more mechanical 'Fate 3.0 SRD' hack method. I doubt the Unisystem Lite rules will remain if I do. Looking back at the characters there's a ton of stuff that I see which should be exploited and a load of stuff that could have been done so much better.
Of course, the question will be - if the previous episodes were the pilot does it get another run or does it jump straight to DVD? It's a prime candidate for a game to play in a Pendragon break and its a prime candidate for a session at CottageCon II. We shall have to wait and see....
Neil
11 comments:
Yeah, the system is a thorny one. Primetime Adventures is one option, though I still have my reservations. I also find it a difficult one to see in genre that does, by its nature include a core of action? Could just be me though.
I know what you mean about the Buffy system, though it worked out fine.
As for Fate 3.0, well you can tweak the skill list, probably wouldn't take much. You have some excellent starship combat rules on the YahooFate Group (that really allows the crew to do good stuff).
If stunt are a concern they can always just not be used, I don't think they are necessary.
I suppose Fate falls down in modelling different sorts of kit but who cares.
You also get the aspects.
I'm not necessarily wanting every game to be a Fate game, variety is the spice of life, but it might be less work based on what's hanging around on-line (for the above, damage changes, etc).
Still, I'll give anything a shot, as long as it enhances what we had or stays out of the way. The million dollar question :)
Ian
Whilst this may be instructing ones grandparent on sucking eggs, the trick with PTA is getting to the core of the conflict and resolving that rather than the ephemeral action around it. My favourite example would be Star Wars - the conflict at the end has NOTHING to do with Luke destroying the Death Star. That bad boy was always going down. The conflict would be whether Luke could find his own connection to the Force. Hey, and the kid even got some fan mail from the Han Solo player as well!! *wink*
The more I think about it, the more the issue driven agenda of PTA suits P&P nicely. No wasted opportunities held silent at the table, everything there for people to see and exploit.
Hmmm... the only issue is that PTA suffers badly as a one-shot.
Neil
Yeah I realise that. It's just sometimes these grenres just have cool shit in them without any conflict.
It'll be interesting how it changes the emphasis of the game - such how the disaster movie / zombies on the space liner episode would have changed under the above model.
Always interesting. I'll give anything a go 110%.
As for the one-shot, well you can't you'll just have to do a short season or something ;)
Ian
It's really easy to use PTA for a one-shot, you just set everyone's SP to 2.
'Yeah I realise that. It's just sometimes these grenres just have cool shit in them without any conflict.'
You still have the cool shit, you just don't use the mechanics for it, just the narrative. You still have a lot of flavour in a conflict driven game and not every scene needs conflict. Most of the time when we're playing PTA we don't even use the conflict resolution rules.
Yeah, I think it's more he might feel he's missing out on the undulating rise and fall as each protagonists takes centre stage, etc.
That's what I'd miss with the one-shot 2 SP approach.
As the great thing about that is it spreads the potential to create killer scenes across the series, as you know who whose 'in focus' next episode so you can even consider your scenes in line with that.
That's what I'd miss with the one-shot anyway.
Ian
That's not unique to PTA. Whilst it's one of the few games to build it into it's mechanics, every campaign (should) moves the focus around the PC's and all RPG's lose that as a one-shot. It just comes with the territory, not the system.
"You still have the cool shit, you just don't use the mechanics for it, just the narrative. You still have a lot of flavour in a conflict driven game and not every scene needs conflict. Most of the time when we're playing PTA we don't even use the conflict resolution rules."
Yeah, I realise this also. I think what I'm trying to say is: I have no problem what PTA has to offer, it's great.
What I am saying is it's also occassionally fun to roll dice to 'shoot-up stormtroopers' even if that's all you're doing :)
As a trade though I'm fine, I'm just greedy!
Ian
I love the way that using three little letters - p,t and a - can always be guaranteed to explode any thread...
Neil
I'm just of the opinion that the TV show gimmicks that decorate the system shouldn't be confused with the system and that the core conflict-resolution mechanic is incredibly versatile. It could even be used to see if you successfully shoot a stormtrooper, if that's what you really want to do.
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