Fictions & Fragments

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...

I've been away from D&D for a while because I've wanted to explore other games and ideas. But I'm back. As a seed for a new campaign, I present the Rediscovered Land. The Rediscovered Land is for a setting that has a little bit of blank space. In ages past, a place called Shuul existed here. Shuul was known for powerful fabulous magics in a time where other civilizations were still primitive. Suddenly and without warning, the land of Shuul disappeared from the world. Now, thousands of years later, Shuul has returned. Why is unclear. Most of the land is surrounded by powerful magical barriers that prevent scrying or entry. There is a single port where a few disinterested officials allow outlanders to trade with a variety of merchants and make their way inland. The merchants have wonders that are found nowhere else in the world but they have little interest in the currency of the outlanders. The people of Shuul are very different. They live lives deeply connect...

I recently ran my first streamed Numenera game. The following are the notes I made for the session. This was a one-shot, so I focused on the scenario and how players would respond to it. I don't typically create a lot of notes for a game so I feel this is a good representation of my prep. I also feel like there are a couple things that really add to a Numenera game: XP cards and  a Cypher Deck. The XP cards make it easy and fun to trade in XP during the game, which I really like. The Cypher Deck makes the chore of generating random Cyphers painless and fun. I definitely recommend these products! The adventure notes follow with additional after-game notes made in italics. The Dangerous End Background Sallice A settlement on the edge of the Steadfast, Sallice is dangerously situated but the opportunities are too good to pass up. Recently the market for Numenera found in surrounding ruins has made Sallice a target. More raiders and abhumans are appearing, attem...