This past session of GMing, I took my party back in time to 1934 Seattle. My players get to get into shenanigans...with Time. I could use some help with a system I'm going to use to model the effects of Time Travel.


Specifically I want to use a Time Stress Track. At the end of every Scene the Time Travelers make an "attack" against Time and Time defends against it. However, Time can't be "taken out" instead you have to mitigate the damage with Consequences which I think will be a great way to model "ripples in the currents of time".


Also, I wanted to allow my players logically to mitigate the damage by spending Fate Points. "We're going with the flow. That was supposed to happen."


Sounds good on its own to me, but I need help with 3 things:


1. How many stress boxes should Time get and how often should they be cleared out if at all ? Along with that, how should the strength of the attack be modelled and what would be the attack score?


At this point I'm considering like 5 stress boxes and never clearing out the Stress Track.
I was thinking the strength would be arbitrary case-by-case with no empirical scale. If anyone has use or has ideas for an empirical time scale I'd love to see it.


The attack/defense rolls would be straight dice.


2. I want to let players use Fate points to mitigate damage. Should this be 1 fate point negates all damage if they come up with a good story or just some of the damage?


I'm inclined to say all of the damage since they will probably get into trouble because of compels.


3. What should be the scale of time consequences?


I'm confused on this one.


I feel a Mild Time Consequence is a change that is mostly aesthetic that doesn't really change much.
Example: The Mall in Back to The Future. Marty McFly went back in time from "Twin-Pines Mall". The first thing Marty did in 1955 was drive over the farmer's Pine Tree. When he gets back to 1985 the Mall is now called, "Lone Pine Mall." That's a small change comparatively.


But after that I'm stumped. There are only 4 levels of consequences normally but for something as big of scope as this I'm willing to make more. Note that our game takes place in 2008ish and my players are in 1934 so they will be running into ancestors of one or more important characters.


I know the consequences I need though:


1. A Consequence that affects a Major Character like the Face of a Location. Like
a. changing the Face of a location into a non-Face,
b. replacing the Face of a location with another or
c. turning a non-Face into a Face.
2. A Consequence that affects the Theme or Trouble of a single Location.
3. A Consequence that affects the Theme or Trouble of the Whole City. (I hope it doesn't come to this.) 
4. A Consequence that affects the entire family line of a character. We have a few family lines in the game.
5. Similar to 4, a Consequence that affects the "Theme" or feel of an entire Organization.


Any input on this would be appreciated.

Recently I developed and wrote a TV Show Pilot currently on Amazon Studios here.


It's an animated comedy called Starship Enlisted and it's about the Enlisted Crewmembers of a Starship who do all of the work and get none of the credit.


I'm looking for reviews and feedback on the project, both for its 6 page mini-bible and the Pilot Episode Screenplay. Although giving it on these boards in some form would be cool, what would be better if I could get some folks to leave feedback and reviews on the Amazon Studios site itself.


I need feedback so that I know what works, what doesn't and so I can make my show better. Currently, I don't even know if my show is funny and it's supposed to be.


Without feedback, my project will languish at the back of the pile, gradually declining in popularity until Amazon finally decides to pass on it with a robotic e-mail. With feedback, the project will be more likely to be noticed and picked up for further development.


Any sort of positive or negative feedback on the Amazon Studios Project site is appreciated. If done on the Amazon Studios site, it will increase the project's visibility. I am not opposed to overly negative feedback because I want to make my writing better. If you like my work, that's cool. If you don't like it, I'd like to know why. Any feedback left on Amazon will be better than it languishing with no feedback.


If you're interested, please click the link above(or in my sig), log into/create an Amazon Studios account, read the Screenplay & Mini-bible and leave a review. It's a total of 35 pages of reading, some clicking of some stars and some writing. It just might help Starship Enlisted get made into a real TV Show...

Writing a short story involving a 185ft Giant using an appropriately sized Dragonuv Sniper Rifle for vermin shootin'.


You can guess what kind....


But, I also wanted to know more about this normally cartoony situation. SO I found I had to use... *Dramatic swell*....MAAAATH.....*Orchestra Hit*....


Unfortunately, I'm not so good with physics and I just wanted to know more about the logistics of this situation from somebody who knows more than me. Hopefully somebody lurking this forum will know something and have a TI-83 handy.


Note: For reference I used a 2 inch tall ninja(5'5" in life) I have on my desk as reference compared to my 5'8" giant. And this assumes an appropriately scaled gun and full-metal jacket bullets. Assume he got the Dragonuv online at the giant supply store(he did actually now that I think of it).


1. How tall is the giant using my aforementioned scale? My initial calculation came to about 185ft tall give or take. 


2. How big would the bullets be, i.e. could a human sized person carry one? I already calculated a 7.62x56mm round scaled up to about a foot in diameter and 6 ft long but I don't know how much that would weigh.


3. Physics doesn't scale well against gravity and having 34 times the gunpowder does not mean that 34 times as much force will be imparted. How good would the muzzle velocity actually be assuming gunpowder? If he misses the bullets will rip through things, I'd just like to know how far it'll go until it stops and what will happen tot he ground it hits.


4. Assuming the scaled up bullets actually work(I don't want to handwave it but I can with Magic), how loud would the shots be? If it's loud enough, the heroes holding onto the giant may not need to worry about getting stepped on after being violently deafened by the sonic boom.

Entropy Curses that kill someone outright break the 1st Law, no question there. But would lesser Bad Luck Curses break the 2nd Law?

The goal of a Bad Luck Spell would be to reduce the Quality of Life, making someone's life hell, not end it. Though that may end if it drives the subject to Suicide, though that's not the Spell's goal.

Dresden RPG, I am in need of help: I need more Dresden. I want to play more DFRPG, especially with the fine group of folks I found through this very board, but I have a problem:

With conflicting games/schedules, travel schedules,  and one player's imminent wedding later this month, my group's number has dwindled and is fluxuating. If things continue, I may end up as either a GM without a group again or a GM with a group of 3 consistent players which may fluxuate to just 2 players.

Bottom line is that we need more players and we came together from this board in the first place, so what better place to find more?

We currently meet every 2nd and 4th Saturday(but that may change if we can get more players) in Bellevue near Redmond.  The next session is scheduled for this Saturday, the 11th, but that may or may not happen. I get to decide in the next little bit.

We are playing in a Supernatural Seattle featuring the Themes It All Started Here and A Little Bit of Everything  and the Threat, Something Lies Beneath.

Our regular roster includes a Dotcom Billionaire, An Out of Retirement Warden and a Reborn Seraphim Bartender.

If you are interested in joining us, send me a message through the board.

-Lano

I got an idea for a character today at work and I don't know where to go with it...
The idea is (As the title implies) a Shinsengumi, a "Wolf of Mibu" plopped into the modern world somehow.

The only musts I know are that he must be an expert Swordsman and have an Item of Power: a Masamune, which is a kind of legendary sword made by a legendary swordmaker(Gotta have one)

I don't know....what he's like in modern day. How he fits into the picture or how the hell he got from the 1860/70/80's to the 21st century whilst and at the same time not been like every other long-lived creator in the Dresdenverse and age like wine. 



Thinking outloud here:

High Concept: Time Shocked Shinsengumi OR Time Shocked Samurai

Trouble:   Maybe....Time Shocked? I don't know....

Phase 1(Where is he from?): Old Fashioned Hitokiri OR Wolf of Mibu

He Becomes a Samurai in the Shinsengumi, the Wolves of Mibu. Even has a Blue Kimono.

Phase 2(What Shaped Him?): ?

He came to the modern world. 


Help me out here. What can I do?

I've been reading the rules for a while but I can't figure out how I would adjudicate this:

Victor Sell's Potions are 2 shift effects that open the Sight. How would you adjudicate a magic user opening someone else's Sight?

Would it be a Complexity 2 ritual? Would it break one of the Laws of Magic?

Why do that? What better way for a warlock to drive a mortal with no Discipline skill insane to shut him up OR to clue a non-believer into the supernatural world?

Since the devs have been asking for reports of actual play, I'd thought I'd share my group's first session, which was also the debut(for us at least) of Magical Spokane, Washington.

The People:

The GM: Myself.  No experience in FATE.

The Players: 4 Veteran Role-players. No Experience in FATE

1 of us had not read the books, but got what they were about and why the were cool. He was playing because the system + setting sounded neat. 2 of us (myself and my brother) devour the books. 2 of us started reading the books recently and can't put them down (One of my players doesn't read, but he can't put down Dresden)

Dramatis Personae (In no particular order):

1. The Negotiator (complete with Big O and Samuel L. Jackson jokes): Pure Mortal Lawyer turned Metaphysical Stock Broker for the supernatural. He is a Freeholding Lord, Owner of The Blue Moon Tavern(Accorded Neutral Territory) and features the Aspect, Bargaining is a Science.

2. Edgar Poe, Pure Mortal Spokane Cop on the Gang Task Force. He had 2 aspects that ended up being licenses to print FATE points and for moments of dramatic convenience: Unbeliever and Right Place, Right Time.

3. The Dark Disciple of Lancelot: An abducted Semi-Demi-Hemi Son of Thor Zeus, he is an item wanted by the entire supernatural community. The Summer has tried to buy him by creating a Sidhe specifically to be his one true love. Their marriage makes for the much compelled and invoked, My Love is a Seelie.

4. Puck: Changling Trickster of the Summer Court. A paper thin, weak muscled physical combatant, this guys was also a Social Combat Abrams Tank. He had Glamours and featured the Aspects of Glamourous Life of the Partay, Native of Two Worlds and We Don't Need No Winter, Let The Motherf&#$!@ Burn!

The pre-game:


We had spent most of the previous night (About 3 hours total) making characters. The next day, we had to spend an hour double checking characters, and making a new one for someone who be there the day before. I flexed my INTJ brainstorming muscles and helped create The Negotiator Phase-by-Phase with nothing but his High-Concept to build on and the throwing of ideas out there.

Tip to our people also new to FATE: READ THE RULES. Many of us, including myself, did not read the rules well enough. I'll get to that in a minute.


The Game's Setting:

We used mostly what had been posted in the Spokane Game thread for our City Creation. We then went location by location of places we know we wanted to go and made up a few location cards.

Tip to other gamers: If you have a computer with internet access in easy reach and you are playing in a Real City, keep a Firefox tab open to Google Maps. Especially Street View. We should have done this(it even says so in the book) but we didn't.


The Game Itself:

WE are a group that normally Roll-plays collections of stats on character sheets and has fun between digressions into talking about WoW. Normal play time: 5-6 hours on average (only 75% of that time is Roll-playing)

The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game made us Roleplay our characters for 10 hours straight without digressing (except for food).

Ho....Ly.....S%$#!!!!!!!! That's never happened before.

1) Between the 4 of us, we've been exposed to over 30 RPG systems. Of all of them, FATE was by far one of the easiest and simplest to learn and get used to....but it still kicked our asses.

a) Because we idiots did not read the rules well enough, no one used assessments, invocations, tags or the placing of temporary aspects very well.

b) New players who want to play Supernatural Characters greatly underestimate and overlook Mortal Stunts. The Dark Disciple's many powers made him do freaky things but none of that compared to Sgt. Poe's Tough as Nails, which saved his ass more than all of those powers.

2) We did not realize how important Aspects are until I tried like hell to compel a few to keep the economy going.

a) The Dark Disciple had a few too many aspect that were impossible to relate to the adventure I was running as did Puck.

b) I got called out a lot for Weak Compels, but it ended up that the pure mortals ended up with more Fate Points than they could spend.

c) when a few of the players finally got a handle on aspects, it got cool.
example: Puck had found out about this...festival of tricksters taking place in the area on April 1st and that someone was setting traps for the Little Folk who normally win every time. He decided to negotiate with Skywalk Little Folk's Leader, The Sky King to help them out. Knowing that The Sky King wears Teddy Bears as Armor, Puck bought a new one to place an aspect, A Gift Fit For A King onto the scene. It was a Fate point for Dramatic convenience well spent. He made an assessment to find out if The Sky King had an aspect like, Can't Resist a Good Prank. I decided that was true and the duel of negotiation began. Social is just like physical combat; same rules, same use of aspects, same placing of temporary aspects, same assessments, same everything. The difference are the skills used and the stress track affected. It was epic.

d) When you make characters on the fly using a single aspect and then adding more as you go, you get throw-away characters with a lot of depth that become staples of the campaign very quickly. The Sky King was made off the cuff by 3 of us over the span of a few minutes. Now he's a staple of our world.

3) If you're going to keep track of Fate points, use Poker chips. It gets new players to understand their importance immediately, and if you have a full set, you can color code them to players.

4) The devs have written that combat sucks, that you should be terrified of it the way Harry is. I told my players this. They went in like it was 4th Ed. D&D, every man for himself tank & spank. Guess what happened?

a) My Big Bad Wolves showed that even Inhuman Strength and Speed is to be feared. In an apartment building, after taking out 1 with a cold iron bullet to the head, Sgt. Poe took cover and ambushed the second. Good call. He shot the BBW's buddy and nailed the serious consequence One-Eyed Wolf and forever labeled him Anubis when I described the shot as taking off the head of his Skin-Suit. Anubis took cover, his two buddies went into the laundry room next door. Next exchange: the BBWs teamed up their strength and threw a Washing Machine through the wall a Sgt. Poe. He took 2 mild consequences (thank you Tough as Nails). He got taken out after taking another mild and moderate after the next exchange when the BBWs rammed him with the Dryer and kicked him out the hole in the wall, onto his patrol car. It was epic...

Unfortunately, Real Life happens, I will edit this post or reply to the thread to continue my report of our experiences.

EDIT: Bolded a few things for easier reading. COrrected the Grandcester of the Dark Disciple.