Dresden Files Accelerated: Session 2 – Wizard Gandalf Style

One week later, our players gathered to get the first full session of the Dresden Files Accelerated Beta in. (Almost three weeks, and one session later, yours truly finally gets around to writing about it!)

When we last left our Monoc Securities hit squad, they had been ejected from a White Council intervention and given firm orders to continue with their mission. We were each working on an approach to take the next step when the GM put on an evil grin and dangled some Fate Points in front of us.

In D&D, one of the first rules is “never split the party.” In Fate…well, it could honestly go either way. Driven by compulsions to move the investigation forward our way, each of the team ran off to find some cogent piece of information.

Solara summoned her wyldfae ally–a London Fog obsessed fae we tended to call “Foggy.” The orders given to the little one were to find the Whitestaff.

Sadly, Foggy wasn’t able to find the Whitestaff–he was missing. In a place no Fae dared go. What possible place could that be?

Solomon–err, Han–was the dutiful military man. He went to the local constabulary to register his weapons, then reviewed their files for signs of the information he needed. Finding no love there, he found a local church and started praying…which is when he discovered quite a few new things.

After placing his hand in the holy water, he noticed there was a pattern that tended to absorb the water. This led him to seek out the priest, who was shortly revealed to be a former four-star general! Han noticed a few other things–in this sacred space, his hand could burn objects away. The general was able to identify the symbol on Solomon’s hand, indicating it was the ancient sign of the Counterbalance. What fate this held for Han is uncertain.

Erika, bookworm that she is, went straight to the local Monoc office after digging into the records to locate an ancient tablet that referenced the Whitestaff. The mute Guardians of the Archives “questioned” her about her presence, to which she simply replied: “I have access. Go ahead and ask the Boss if you want.” She settled in for a good read and translation session, as the tablet was written in a language she understood, but was a bit rusty with. As she stroked the runes etched into the tablet, it sprung to life, transporting her to a dark cave.

The cave was rough-hewn, and lit by coarsely created candles. There were signs magic had been used to carve out portions of the cave, but in general, the technology involved was low-level. Somehow, the tablet had transported her to the past. Three staves lay upon a table, obviously both magically prepared and incomplete. As she reached out to touch one of them, her hand slipped through the staff, revealing she was incorporeal.

She was also unnoticed by the three magi that entered, who argued about the most potent power of magic. The Black mage maintained that Destruction was the greatest of all. The Grey argued for Mind over Matter. The White held Creation was supreme. Each ancient wizard argued their case, but all save the White grew tired of arguing a perspective that wouldn’t be adopted, and withdrew with their staff to complete its creation.

The White, now alone, addressed Erika directly.

Erika decided she had no reason to withhold information or dissemble, so the two held a candid conversation about the creation and the future of the staffs.

Thusly did the ancient Valkyrie learn of the founding of the Great Wizard Staffs.

Returned from her memory-stone induced trance, she found Donar Vadderung looming over her. The Valkyrie had done what no others had been able to succeed at–activating the stone and learning the history within. She reported on the status of her mission before departing to rejoin her team.

Meanwhile, back at the Unambiguously Branded Coffee House(Not the real TM), Puck was concocting a plan.

His thoughts: no-one likes a copycat. Therefore, he’d make a mockery of the Whitestaff using a flash mob!

Although slightly past its prime as a meme, a variant of Gangnam Style–Wizard Gandalf Style–would be the perfect bait for the Whitecloak. All he needed was the signal, and the performance would begin!

The signal, of course, being Han shouting in exasperation at Hobs–Solomon’s pet name for the hobgoblin that continued to vex him, teammate Robin Goodfellow.

With the insane scene before them, the team retired to the coffee shop to watch for their quarry.

This is where the next compel came into play, from one of the Whitestaff’s aspects. The team’s orders arrived without having been placed! All save Erika, who was overlooked for some reason. After taking a brief swig, Solomon offered the beer to the Valkyrie, gentleman to the end.

Which led to the team being knocked out, a vision for Solomon which revealed he needed both angelic and demonic contact to perform his Knightly duties (which Erika shared in by accident,) and a taunting visit from the Whitestaff–who got away, again.

Analysis – System

In this session, we finally got to see the system come in to its own. One of the frequent aphorisms that I use in regards to Fate is that each player (including the GM) has one duty: make everyone look awesome. We saw a fair bit of this, supported by the Approaches that addresss *how* we do things, rather than what we can do.

Even separated, we all got to enjoy each others’ scenes, and it became clear that our mantles (see the previous post) helped distinguish us in subtle, yet undeniable ways.

Analysis – Game Style

With a trickster fae in the mix, we’re bound to always have a bit of irreverence. The GM is starting to catch his stride, though there are still occasional hiccups. (For example, it seems to me Solara could use a little more spotlight time. But maybe that’s just my opinion.) This session was high on information and low on pulp action, but I’m betting [okay, spolier: I already know] we’re going to see some real conflict kick in shortly.

Session four is tomorrow. No, I didn’t mis-count. I’m actually behind by a post. But this one will have to serve for now.

See you next time!

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Dresden Files Accelerated: Session 1 – Character Creation

If you hadn’t noticed already, my local gaming group was one of a handful selected to help beta-test the rules in progress for Evil Hat Productions’ Dresden Files Accelerated. If you’ve read the books, the system tries to evoke narrative flavour of the Dresden Files using a lightweight ruleset. Specifically, it uses an adapted version of the Fate Accelerated Engine implementation of the Fate Core system.

We had our first session almost a week ago, and our second session will be tomorrow. As with most Fate games (save one-shots and pre-gens,) the first session was mostly focused on world and character creation. Obviously, we were going to choose to use as much of Jim Butcher’s canon as we could–but there would always be a point of divergence as we started to create our own stories.

I was fully prepared to run the game, since I have the broadest experience with gamemastering–and even more focused when it comes to Fate. This was tossed on its head the moment I asked one question: who among us was most familiar with the Dresden Files?

Once that question went to the table, the choice of game masters became clear–and I was moved into a player role. (I don’t get to be a player as often as I’d like. My experience running games, combined with some decent literary chops and a penchant for picking up new systems, tends to make me the first choice for game mastering.) The unfortunate side-effect of this was that I was probably the only person present who had read the playtest packet cover-to-cover.

Guess what? The system’s so compact that our GM was able to skim the core rules (the portions where they varied from Fate Accelerated) while we were all discussing our character creation.

Character creation itself was fairly organic, as I’ve come to expect in Fate–although this time, I noticed the process was more completely realizing the goal of free flow and exchange of ideas.

For starters, I had a couple of mantles (character types–Red Court, Fae, Mortals, Emissaries, Scions, and more) that I was eyeing–but I was fairly certain I was going to select a winged Valkyrie. After I had mostly settled on some basic abilities and a name, we discussed the idea of this Valkyrie being a direct descendant of Erik the Red. After further discussion, it was proposed that she actually had been Erik the Red. A couple of ideas were bandied about in regards to why history remembers a male, and why my character is female. My first thought was to pull inspiration from the anime Fate/Stay Night (or Fate/Zero, but more so the former,) where it turned out that King Arthur was truly Arthuria Pendragon, masquerading as a male to maintain Kingship of the Britons. One of the others suggested we could even say that the Erik that history remembered was secretly transgendered–and her transition permitted her to become a Valkyrie, though not without some internal strife amongst her own kind. To be fair, I was taken aback by the suggestion–I was surprised to hear one of the group mention it, and had to seriously think about whether I wanted to play an explicitly transgendered character. In the end, I chose something akin to my first inclination, earning on of my early Aspects in the process: Mortal History Gets It Wrong. Something that Erika Bridsdottir knows well from long personal experience.

Her Trouble Aspect arose out of choosing to have a character with perfect memory: Immortal Memories. She could remember things being different, or be trapped in her own memories. On the other hand, she’s also likely to recall the perfect factoid to be applied to the current situation.

Combine that with the Aspect Knowledge is Power, and it becomes clear that her high concept has grown from simple winged Valkyrie to Erika the Red, the Bookworm Warrior that she now is.

Each of the other characters developed in similar ways.

“Han” came to the table with a concept for a retired military man. He pitched himself as an Operator. When the GM heard about this, he instantly recommended one of two mantles for this character: Cop, or Knight of the Cross. The player loved the idea of the Knight, but was a little uncertain (almost hesitant) to grab one of Dresden’s three known swords. Though we were creating characters for the world, we also didn’t want to disrupt the canon too much. Initially, the GM was suggesting the idea that a trickster god stole Fidelacchius to give to the character. We talked around the idea for a bit, growing comfortable with it. Then one of the players suggested that since the Swords were formed from the nails that held Christ to his Crucifix, perhaps there was a fourth nail, since crucifixions at the time would occasionally use four. We had stronger buy-in from this idea, creating the fourth sword of the Cross–the sword of Forgiveness (we haven’t given it its proper name yet, none of us are that good with Latin.) Springboarding from that suggestion was the idea that perhaps there was peripheral power in the nails of the two crosses that flanked Christ’s. Add to this the thought that perhaps it would take two nails (one from each cross) rather than one to match the power level of the core three swords, and we had the implication there were at least two other swords of unknown provenance out there–an idea at which our GM was practically salivating over (especially since I had the impression he was planning to use the Denarians in our campaign.)

Puck (okay, Robin Goodfellow,) started as the Erlking’s Huntmaster, and evolved from there. The player wanted more than just a mortal brought to the Huntmaster role, and opted to select a mythological trickster with a long history.

Solara’s player started off wanting to play Molly from the books, then shifted to Michael’s wife, Charity. After talking about how we were building somewhat of our own world, she managed to combine the two characters into a single magical practitioner concept.

Each of us wound up with a potent combatant with some supernatural oomph to bring to the table:

Erika Bridsdottir, Monoc Securities Valkyrie. Historian, warrior, and occasionally the brains of the operation.
Solomon “Han” Tremblay, Canadian Special Forces Knight of the Cross. The bureaucratic might and regular tactician.
Solara, crafter of illusions. The friendly face who skirts the mind-control Laws of Magic.
Robin Goodfellow, ancient trickster Huntmaster for the Erlking. He makes things happen (though not always how we want them.)

After all this, it was clear that our common bond was as a working Monoc Securities Wet Team. (We make people disappear. Or supernaturals. Whatever the job requires.) We mentioned our shared history as passengers pursuing a mark on the tragic Flight XXX (we never numbered it,) which got all of us, save Robin Goodfellow, on to the Securities team. (Robin was present, and survived the flight, but was regarded at the time as a bystander by Solara and Solomon.)

The Mini-session

Since we had some time left over, we started off with a mini-session!

The story begins with the team called to a briefing with Donar Vadderung at Monoc Securities. Our mission: eliminate the Wizard known only as Whitestaff.

Whitestaff had been targeting and eliminating the power players of the Nevernever, using duels to eliminate potent members of the Summer and Winter Courts (the true targets were called upon as arbiters and witnesses on said duels.) Whitestaff believed he had eliminated the Erlking, though it didn’t stick. Intel suggested Whitestaff’s next target was the head of Monoc Securities, as the man had been caught making rude gestures to the cameras outside the Dublin offices.

The team flew to Ireland, where they began their search. Solara was hoping to gather materials for a locator spell, but didn’t have a potent enough connection to Whitestaff to proceed. After finding trace evidence that suggested an old church site would provide our next lead, we ventured forth.

Erika took the lead, trusting in her memories to lead her to the church. She reached the destination only to find they had fallen afoul of a trap! (This was originally a self-compel to be found at the site of a demolition, where the characters are ambushed. The GM suggested a counter-proposal which was acceptable.) The ground collapsed around the team, dropping them into a dark tunnel.

The way back was blocked off, but there was laughter in the distance. Reasoning that whatever got in would also know a way out, the team followed the sound of the voice.

Unfortunately, Monoc’s agents were not to be so lucky. The trail ended at a skull with glowing eyes, impaled upon a spear. Once lit by illusory faerie fire, it became quite sociable, but not overly helpful. As the team interrogated the being (to no avail) it became clear it was powerful, insane, trapped, and drawing strength from the light. Further detailed and recall indicated the being was trapped by the original three ancient wizards, their likenesses engraved on the three coffins, and bearing staves of different colours–one black, one grey, and one white.

Realizing the peril was growing, and the being was a threat they were not currently equipped to address, the team ran for the other exit, this time finding what they sought. When they reached the church, the floor and ceiling were beginning to lose solidity, nearing midday, when the light of the sun would release the skull-being, granting it mobility once again.

Han reached out to his contacts to call for backup, and summon the White Council to completely encase the being once again. In the meantime, local militia provided a dark tent to keep the light from reaching the enemy.

In the end, the team was dismissed (in once case bodily evicted) to continue with their true mission.

Analysis – System

We had little direct interaction with the system, except during the character creation phase. In this portion, I have to give a great big thumbs up to Evil Hat, as it was quite straightforward to create the characters. The mantles, and the respective stunts that went with, helped set the characters within the Dresdenverse, and I doubt any of us could say our mantles were too similar to any of the others.

I would suggest the experience we had during character creation was the system working as intended, as it stayed out of our way while providing inspiration.

Our comparatively rookie GM had no problems adapting to the new elements of the system, which I suspect was also a design goal being reached.

Analysis – Game Style

I’ll admit our group comes from a more traditional gaming background, where the rules more tightly restrict and define the characters. One of the mantras I bring to the table when I’m playing, rather than running, in a game is “be very careful to retain your player’s agency.” By which I mean that a GM should allow the players the opportunity to act, and to have an affect on the situation around them.

In the mini-session, our characters found ourselves stymied by the lich (the skull on the spear.) We struggled to find an answer that would help the situation, short of “run away, and bury it as deep as possible.” This was the intent of the GM, and I think he wanted to introduce the concepts of ancient powers and the three staffs of magic.

Part of me wonders if we should have, as players, tried to “fail forward.” In other words, should we have let the lich free, a problem more immediate than the Whitestaff that was our mission? Or was calling the cavalry the right decision? While the former would have been a much more dramatic decision, would it have meant the end of our session so soon after beginning? (This was the impression we were left with in the moment.)

That said, I did mention my usual mantra to the GM. We shall see what tomorrow brings!

Hope to see you then!

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Romansu High: Pilot Episode (Character Creation)

Years after the fall of the Spheare Corporation, a new corporate alliance, formed by Romansu family–the manifold inheritors of the wealth of the Jupiter Cair Bore Corporation–construct a ringworld around their home planet. Running along the North-South axis of the planet, they name their creation Meridian.

Yet Seeds of Discord have taken root in the hearts of Meridian’s people, threatening to choke the joy not just of them, but of the entire galaxy. Still, a distant hope grows on the ringworld. Among the students of Romansu High, new Chosen emerge, forming the new Sisterhood of the Tarot! Only their magic can transform the Seeds of Discord into Loti of Peace!

The Seeds aren’t the only threat faced by the Sisterhood. Poorly understood new technology continues to arise on Meridian, and planetary natives across the Solar System are allying against the expansionist humans who displaced them. And what agenda lies within the enigmatic Jupiter Core Bears?

Romansu High steps into the future of Mars High, my previous Fate Core game. Half of the players are new, and half have continued into the new game.

Our character creation session went wonderfully, bringing forth the ideas above.

We’re using Fate Core, with a couple of minor modifications. From White Picket Witches (Fate Worlds, Volume 1: Worlds on Fire) I turned the first aspect of the Phase Trio into a Casting Aspect. In a player-induced twist, they created the Sisterhood of the Tarot, which created the idea of making each personal Casting Aspect into a Tarot card which can also be used as an aspect!

For the second Phase Trio Aspect, I took a hint from the Dresden Files RPG–making the second Aspect into an Adventure Aspect. Each one of these represents a turning point that shifted the characters from NPCs to Fate Protagonists.

The final aspect ties each cast member to another, appropriately named The Ties That Bind.

Their current aspect layout can be seen here.

Our first episode begins this week, and I’m looking forward to seeing what my players come up with, as well as how their characters develop.

Care to join me in their journey?

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CAMELOT Trigger After Action Report

The Short of It (aka: the TL;DR version)

Myself and four of my usual Anime Fate players got together to play Rob Wieland’s CAMELOT Trigger, with a scenario of my devising. Much fun was had as robots combined to defeat the Emergent threat.

The Setup (Pre-game)

My usual game fluctuates anywhere from 4 players to 7 players, so I needed to prepare more characters than I expected to need. I also readied two sets of characters: one set of combining Armour, and one set of independent Armours. With the exception of the Valkyrie and Vesper characters, I created male and female versions of each character, and let my players choose whatever pleased them.

The PDF which contains all the characters, generic combiner Armour, one set of Transforming (and combining) Armour, and a few blank sheets is here. The pages were printed two to a sheet, in Landscape. The results turned out way better than I had expected.

Game Time — Setting the Stage

Four players were in attendance. Going in, the players knew we were doing CAMELOT Trigger, and that it was described as “Arthurian Myth played out across the Solar System in Big Stompy Robots.” With that in mind, I asked them if they wanted to play as a team of combining Armour, or with individual Armours (although still a team.) While I had anticipated some division of opinion (and was planning to let it fall to Majority Rule,) the group unanimously selected the Combining Team.

I had originally planned to let the players look at the available options, and select from there. However, the players surprised me by asking me to assign characters instead. Left with the choice in my hands, I selected a varied, but potent team, which was designed to facilitate my intended plot with greater ease.

The final party selection (also known as Robyn Merriweather’s Band):

  • The Green Knight, Robyn Merriweather (Leader and exiled Venusian Vesper)
  • The Fae Knight, Nimrodel Pyn-Locke (sister of Vyvyan Locke)
  • The Black Knight, Bruno Coate (ex-Emergent Black Knight, pretend Templar)
  • The Red Knight, G4-W41-N (escaped Martian Slave)

The group familiarized themselves with their characters and the world, and we were off!

Prelude — Tournament at Avaluna

Robyn’s Band begins at Avaluna base, seeking to score off some of the Petty Titans attending the Tournament, while partaking where they could of the festivities. Nimrodel gets stuck being a diplomat, being recognized and called upon to serve for her family connections. Her escort is none other than Arthur’s Queen, Valerie Le Guin. She’s a grateful companion, and remembers Nimrodel’s sister fondly. At least until they’re joined by Arthur’s Right-Hand Knight, L4-NC3-L07, at which point the Fae Knight begins to feel like a third wheel.

Pyn-Locke’s sense of chivalry and justice is irked by the Queen’s disloyalty, and records the “obvious” flirting in order to (unsuccessfully) spread rumours, and bring the truth to Arthur’s attention.

In the meantime, Bruno and G4-W41-N are competing against each other in an Armour duel. In theory, the two should be equally matched, but the Black Knight is unwilling to harm his Red compatriot. Despite this, the Knights put on a brilliant show.

Unfortunately for Roybn, the show wasn’t enough to keep some attending Petty Titans from noticing her (and the reward posters,) and giving chase for the reward. In the course of her escape, the Green Knight literally runs in to her (former) Queen.

With formalities out of the way, the Queen offers the Band an out, offering a favour from the Realm in exchange for escorting a young Valkyrie to the site of her sister’s demise, where the Valkyrie is expected to retrieve the Armour, then launch the body into the Sun.

The Band learns only after accepting the Queen’s generous offer that Lyn Etti’s (see character sheets) sister fell in battle around the orbit of Mercury.

Act I — Mercury’s Hot Date

The band are reluctant to speak to MerLN within the Dragon Gate, but give the AI enough satisfaction that he leads them true.

Just as the Black Knight is warning his team about MerGN-A’s project around Mercury, the team is beset by a horde of the Emergent “Knights.”

Mer-GN-BK (Black Knight)

Failed (but surviving) bio-mechanical clones of Arthur who patrol the orbit of Mercury for MerGN-A in their (equally failed) “clones” of Calibur-N.

Head: MerGN Tactical Matrix (Fair Armour/Fair Mark)
Front: XGN Lancers (Fair Blast/Fair Cunning)
Back: MerGN Rift Hopper (+2 Defend vs Melee–Hop out of Melee range)
Arms: Blacksteel Broadsword (Fair Daunt/Fair Melee)
Legs: Self Repair (1/scene; 1 FP to reactivate a system)

After a few quick exchanges, Bruno manages to supply the team with a predictive tactical display based on his history among the Emergent. It performs to a standard seen only in ancient Epics, and allows the Band to handily eliminate the first wave of Emergent opposition.

With the enemy at bay, Lyn hops into her sister’s Armour, places the body within the shuttle she used to arrive, and launches it to the Sun.
The Knights offer a formal salute to the fallen Valkyrie, an act that is not lost on the younger one.

In the midst of the salute, Bruno manages to catch snippets of whispers from MerGN-A, regarding an imminent threat out by Pluto…

Except there are no Dragon Gates to Pluto.

Thankfully, the Fae Knight was able to emulate the Emergents’ Rift Hopper during the conflict. With some assistance and aid, she’s able to adapt the emulated Rift Hopper for longer range and greater mass. She doubts it could manage the full distance to Pluto, and isn’t willing to test the modified Hopper until they know the team will be able to arrive.

A quick consultation with their charts, and the characters become aware that Jupiter holds the closest Dragon Gate to their destination.

Act II — Onward to Pluto!

The journey is short, and the Band is very quiet while within the Dragon Gates. MerLN gets a recounting of the battle around Mercury from Robyn, but that’s about all.

When emerging from Jupiter’s Gate, they find three separate groups of Petty Titans waiting to capture Robyn. The Black Knight thinks quickly on his feet, convincing the Titans of his Templar Ursa Major cover, and that the Templars have sent him and his bodyguard (the Red Knight, G4-W41-N) to take her in. With a bit of persuasion (and a rather large set of red Armour closing in on them,) the Titans permit the group to pass.

Once clearing the viewing range of the Titans, Nimrodel feels ready to activate the modified Rift Hopper. Unfortunately, the Rift Hopper does not function as she expects, so while the rest of the Band arrives intact, the Fae Knight is left phasing in and out of reality. (This worked perfectly, since Nimrodel’s player was unable to stay for the final Act.)

Act III — Embattled at Pluto

While the Band regains their bearings, and come to grips with their distorted teammate, they notice enemies in the distance, closing fast. The Emergent will shortly be upon them.

Mer-GN-H (Harpy)
Face and torso of a woman, body of a large bird. Mer-GN-A sends them out as a last-minute vanguard. Robyn’s Owl Armours are converted from this design.

Head: Sonic Disruptors (+2 to Create Advantages like “Sensor Distortion”)
Torso: Flight Control Systems (Fair Armour/Fair Devotion)
Left Wing: Baseline Stabilizers (Average Blast, Melee, Mark, Skulking)
Right Wing: Hyper-speed Actuators (+2 Melee when attacking a single opponent)
Claws: Vibroclaw Sheathing (May spend a fate point to force a single system to shut down on a successful melee attack.)

The Harpies focus on the the traitorous Black Knight, though he and his companions prove too hearty for them. The Emergent manage to rally a great sensor distortion field, but G4-W41-N remembers a frequency nullifier from his slave days which proves to neutralize that threat.

After taking out a fair number of the enemy, the Band watches the Harpies flee. Then, on the edge of their sensors, they see it…a partially constructed Medusa Moon!

MerGN-A takes a few hits, but it appears she only absorbs them. The Red Knight tries to confuse MerGN-A’s sensors while the rest attack, putting some static in place, while the rest of the team presses on. The Moon releases a swarm of vassals to aid itself, only to consume them to repair the minimal damage the team does.

Finding the opposition forces heavy, Robyn triggers the combination of the Armours into the Longbowman, and summons the Quantum Longbow.

The Longbowman tears into the Moon, tearing off one quadrant at a time with its energy arrows, until MerGN-A chooses to preserve as much of her work on the new Moon as she can, winking off the battlefield into parts unknown. Which leaves the Band tired but victorious!

Interlude — Quips and Quotes

“Brave, brave Knight Robyn!” — Sung by the players when Robyn runs from the Petty Titans in the preamble.

“Only You can prevent Bandit Lords.” — the Red Knight, who just happens to be led by a Bandit Lord.

“The perfect crystal lattice of the Negaton Focalization Crystal will be perfect to channel the spike in Negaton levels when the Rift Hopper is activated.” — the Fae Knight (in conjunction with the remaining players.)

“That’s no moon!” — You knew it had to happen with gamers and the Medusa Moon.

“Robyin” — Written on the Noteboard to indicate which Zone the Green Knight was in. (The player or Robyn Merriweather was also named Robin–which was why I chose her for it.)

Aftermath — Decisions Made

I chose a more combative plot-line since this was intended as a stand-alone game. While I managed to touch on a number of different elements at the core of CAMELOT Trigger, I felt many of them were better suited to a longer-running campaign–especially the Arthurian Love Triangle. I selected the Medusa Moon as the final Antagonist for the drama–that thing is perfectly built for a large-scale, hard fought battle.

Aftermath — Room to Improve

While I got the impression everyone had fun, I noticed a few places where I might have done a better job of being the game master.

Characters: I ran out of time to provide my customary sheets for a character. These sheets usually provided not only the Aspects and relevant character information, but also include a brief biography and questions to get the player thinking about the character they’ve been assigned. This would smooth the game opening, and provide a bit more setting information for those unfamiliar with CAMELOT Trigger.

The Longbowman: After watching Robyn Merriweather in play, I’m going to change her stunt so that she needs to use all of her Free Invokes before the team can combine into the Longbowman. This will better emulate television’s giant combining robot genres.

Timing: It was a race to the finish, to see whether the players were going to be too tired to continue, or whether we were going to finish the conflict with MerGN-A’s Medusa Moon. I need to be more aware of time as it proceeds, and keep pushing the action to minimize my tendency to stretch things out.

Conclusion

In the end, my players reported they quite enjoyed the scenario (despite my foibles,) and similarly liked the setting: Rob Wieland’s CAMELOT Trigger. You’ll want to look for it in Fate Worlds: Worlds in Shadow, when it comes out at your Friendly Local Gaming Store!

 

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