Fictions & Fragments

Since I've begun working with 3d printed tiles I've noticed that there aren't a lot of resources on setting up your own dungeon using tiles. My previous builds have all been flat cardboard tiles. There are a lot of things I love about flat cardboard tiles: No walls get in the way of the player view. You can always build vertical surfaces for important elevation. No planning space is lost because of tile size. They are FAST and easy to make! 3d printed tiles, like commercially-purchased dungeon tiles, have a different place in a game. There's time and expense in making or purchasing the tiles and painting them.They are awesome show pieces but there's a very different level of investment. Also, it seems like most easily found dungeon maps aren't easily duplicated in dungeon tiles. With either 3d printing or commercial purchase there are several different distinct tile shapes- floors, walls, corners, doors, etc. I wanted to have an idea of how many of eac...

Last week I dusted off my 3d printer and started printing a new set of dungeon tiles using the Dragonlock Ultimate Dungeon Starter Set from Fat Dragon Games. I've printed some other dungeon tile sets and there are things I like about Dragonlock. The tiles are well-designed. 3d printing files that can be printed cleanly and easily make your life as a hobbyist printer much simpler. The more adjusting you need to do, the less likely you'll print the file. These are easy to print and get consistent results. They look good! These are well-designed tiles that mimic the look of Dwarven Forge and other manufactured tiles. The tiles have a nice weight. They feel sturdy and substantial which makes it easier to move them around confidently. The clips for the tiles hold things together tightly and come apart easily when pulled. In previous tile sets, the clips have been the thing to do me in. These have easy ports for attaching and removing clips. The clips themselves are easy to...

Planning for Session 1 of Fate Accelerated (FAE) Caper,. I am likely to have 3 players and I have 5 roles. This is a game heavily based upon the TV show Leverage, which I have seen a ton of. As a review, the 5 roles are: Hitter, Hacker, Thief, Grifter and Mastermind. Out of these 5 roles, I think the Mastermind is the easiest to remove. I think it makes sense to abstract away the planning of the heist and treat the Mastermind character as an NPC who contributes a Game Aspect of "Planned for this". This allows all the players to benefit from the Mastermind's role without requiring someone to play them. Since there is still one role left over, I think that the same thing could be done with the remaining role. Hitter, Hacker, Thief and Grifter all have particular things they specialize in. The role not chosen can be represented with a Game Aspect of "Hitter", "Hacker", etc. If I had to choose a role to be represented this way, I would probably choose...

A show my wife and I really enjoy is Leverage. The writing is great, the show doesn't get too dark and the premise is fun. There is a Leverage RPG out of print which I recently found at a used book store but didn't find interesting. I decided I'd rather remake the premise in Fate Accelerated. I'm calling it Caper because it 1. is about stealing things 2. evokes a sense of fun and whimsy so that things don't get too grim. Fate Accelerated (FAE) is simple and easy to get involved in. It's been seen as the system for Rollplay Nebula Jazz and the Dresden Files Accelerated (DFA). It's just like Fate Core but with a set of Approaches instead of a series of skills. I've enjoyed the way that DFA implemented Mantles, which as Classes/Roles/Playbooks that add some focus to character creation. Roles For this game, I wanted to define a few roles that work like Mantles. They are directly taken from Leverage. The characters from Leverage each have very clear ro...