Stay on Target

Sam:
Need 1 planet

LR:
need On your Own
3 Questions

Bphage:
GTG

Kenna:
2 planets
Need Cabin aspects

Terry:
Need Cabin aspects
3 Questions

Getting so close!

I wanted to take a moment to talk about how I plan to run this game – much of this is old hat for 3/5s of you, but hopefully it’ll be a useful refresher.

In pbp, it’s necessary to give players a lot of control to keep things moving. You guys have done a great job so far with your aspect generating stories and planets. This system wants you to narrate your action – how you narrate it, and what skill you mean to test, will have a bearing on the target numbers, so go for it. Also feel free to describe things in the scene. I’m going to give a glimpse, but as a practical matter it’s not a limit to what’s there in the scene. If you’re in an alley, and you think you would like to escape through a sewer grate, but I didn’t say anything about a sewer grate, I have NO problem with you adding one to the scene. It’s reasonable, and sewers are fun. In most cases, just do this – don’t ask, don’t worry about it. We will make it work. Now, if you want to say that, instead of a sewer grate, you find a set of hovercar keys, that’d also be fine, but would cost you a FATE point.

Basically, don’t be afraid to add to the narrative.

The other thing I’ll say is that I will not be balancing combats for tough but winnable fights. Some fights you can handle, many you can not. You’re a combat heavy crew, but your 5 guys. This is a game world with a standing police force numbering in the hundreds of millions. I expect you to do well in a fight, probably win most little scuffs. But if I send a couple platoons of space marines intent on killing you, don’t expect them to be hobbled for your characters to beat. Sometimes running or surrender will be the better options. I’m not going to summarily execute you – most the time.

Last thing is I’m big on the dice. I expect you use them, and work with what you get. I’d prefer if everyone rolls their own dice. Remember that the way a typical action goes is:

Step 1: You state the skill you wish to test, and narrate the attempt

Step 2: I respond with target number, and/or suggest a second action and target number, with any relevant changes with your proposed action

Step 3: You roll, and resolve the action, narrating what occurs and maybe even move directly to your next action.

This keeps turn around basically at one exchange with me. In combat, there may be some extra work necessary to determine whether someone is down or not – but you’ll have full access to the character sheet, so you can probably guess.

I’d prefer if everyone gets along. That said, it’s not impossible that you might decide to compel one of your companions. This is a good thing. Remember, compels are agreements – and allow an exchange of FATE points. Don’t be bashful about it, and don’t get bent out of shape if your aspects work ‘against’ your character.

Time duration can be an issue in pbp, especially if you split up. If one of you goes to buy something, and the other gets in a fist fight, the fight might last 10 mins of game time, but take a week to resolve, where haggling might take a couple hours and resolve inside 5 posts. For these reasons, I generally try to keep the party in one place, but when it does split up, I either accelerate the slow thread, or decelerate the fast one. The other thing that helps a lot is if the crew that is on the fast thread can keep themselves busy. In character conversations can buy enough time to resolve the other thread.

More generally, if things slow in the game, I will push it forward. This has worked pretty well, but there’s the possibility I’ll step on some of your plans. Try to work them in, or feel free to say, hey, before X, I did Y. We can fit that in at the same time as we get the rest of the game moving again.

Wiki (Cortex) updates are going to be a big part of tracking play, and I expect everyone to participate. In addition, ANN and Waves will play a roll. I’ll update this reasonably regularly during play, particularly as we move into the more sandbox portions of the game. Your character might catch a news story that sounds like an opportunity, or you might get a Wave from an old friend looking for some help. I see these as metaplot devices for me to use, and generally would prefer to do most of the modifying here. If you want to use Waves to contact a npc, just do that in the game thread.

For now, I still don’t have a better solution than blogger. I like the phone flexibility, and it seems many of you do as well. As a rule, I would use a WP program to write things up, and then drop it on the site – blogger shits itself too often to lose your posts to it. I’m still looking at tumblr, but for now, I’m thinking blogger.

Oh, and here ya go terry

Caesar Zapata (Terry)
1) Why did you roll the grenade under the hovercar?
2) You left your crow’s nest before they left the grounds. Why?
3) Why did you suggest the secondary egress route instead of following ‘the plan’?
4) How many Alliance troop carriers did you say you saw landing?
5) Why do you have misgivings about this job?