Fictions & Fragments

I love Harry Potter! At home we talked about the idea of a Harry Potter game, inspired by Mark Plourde as mentioned on the Cypher Speak Podcast. So here's 2 ways to handle it: as a Fate skill system. In Fate Core, the game expects 18 skills. Here's a trial of mapping Hogwarts school subjects to skills. Apparition Astronomy Arithmancy Care of Magical Creatures Charms Defense Against the Dark Arts Divination Dueling - replace Fight and Shoot Flying Lessons - replace Drive Herbology History of Magic - replace Lore Muggle Studies Potions - replace Crafts Transfiguration also non-school subjects Contacts Provoke Rapport Resources The school subjects cover almost everything I'd want in a Harry Potter game, but I wanted to be able to explain why the Malfoys are so well-known and connected without using school subjects, so Contacts and Resources stayed in from Fate Core. Additionally, Provoke and Rapport seem important for dealing with other wizards (and perh...

One of the best ways to keep a Cypher System game interesting is to use GM Intrusions! I've found that they take the place of random/wandering monster encounters, add dramatic or comedic moments to games and give GMs an opportunity to reward or challenge players when a session demands it. To explain the idea to the unfamiliar, Experience Points are a currency in the Cypher System. You use them to re-roll and to declare story details, similar to FATE or FFG's Star Wars RPGs. In a GM Intrusion, the GM gives a player 2 XP - 1 is a reward the player keeps for themself, the other they give to another player. As a GM, you need to give out a couple of XP during a game, otherwise your players may not be able to make character advances at the end of a session. Those XP can be crucial for re-rolling failed rolls and keeping the story favoring the characters! As a GM, your reward for helping your players gain this crucial currency is to craft an exciting moment for the game in the for...

I've been interested in FATE for a while. It's a great premise for a game system but so different from games like D&D that I'm really taking some time to wrap my head around it. One of the great things about FATE is that there are so many great ideas in the base material! The Evil Hat Patreon/Worlds of Fate series has amazing ideas. The Fate System Toolkit and Adversary Toolkit are awesome products - in fact, the Regency Romance spread in the Adversary Toolkit will probably be the first FATE game I run, because it's something my wife has wanted for a long time. The hardest thing to understand how to do well in FATE is aspects. Suggestions in Fate Core is that aspects have both positive and negative connotations as well as boundaries. Instead of 'Strongest Man Alive', a good aspect would be 'Strongest Man in the State'. That final quality defines the possibility of conflict with other 'strong men' in other states. There are many other th...