Monday 17 March 2014

FATE Episode 1: Tutorial

I recently DMed (or GMed, or Refereed, or whatever) a variation of FATE, with many rules from the Dresden Files RPG. It was a campaign spread over a number of weeks held at a local hobby store with only a few regular players. I've decided to write this play-report from a gaming point of view, including some dice rolls and aspects, instead of just a narrative point of view. Any aspects will be in italic type, and skill rolls will be Proper Nouns.

Two Player Characters were created for this game, with both being made on the spot while the rules were being explained during World-building:
Racharzan - An Aracnoid necromancer, a spider-like person from the dangerous wilds of Australia.
A.C.E. - An Automated Centenarian Entity robot from Japan, with a oversized Kawaii-Desu-Neko-Blade.

Episode 1: Tutorial

Was going to draw my own gangster penguin, but this was awesome. Check out more from this artist by following his link.
Mobster Penguin
cmalidore.deviantart.com
The party started by barging through the large double doors of a mafia safehouse in order to capture a penguin crime boss with a wizard assistant and a small army of tuxedoed mooks. Because that all makes perfect sense.

The fox-hole was based underground and long fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead revealing what appeared to be a storage room, with crates and barrels against the walls. A seemingly bottomless pit was in the centre of the room. men and women stood either side of the hole, dressed in suits and ties. They carried a combination of shortswords and automatic pistols. A large puddle of soapy water was in front of the hole, like it was being cleaned and then abandoned in a hurry. A pile of bright red barrels sat to the back of the room, each labelled with a hazardous flame symbol and was leaking oily, black liquid. Red barrelsEvery gamer knows what that means. Next to the pile stood another man, this one with a burnt staff of twisted oak and wearing tattered and red-trimmed robes over his suit. Finally, in the corner of the room was a raised platform. Here stood The Boss, Don Pancake McQuack, the leader of the penguin mafia in the city, with two bodyguards and a machine-gun turret.

Determined on their apparent mission to capture the penguin for reasons unknown, they charged forward with no hesitation. The mooks moved forward, a few drawing their swords. One in particular edged precariously around the puddle of soapy water. Ace got his first trial of combat when he jumped forward and completely separated the top half of a mook from the bottom. Others opened fire with their machine pistols, but many bullets only grazed Ace or bounced off his metallic armour.

A swordsman that was planning on rushing against Racharzan was interrupted when ectoplasic, skeletal hands appeared to claw out of the ground, grabbing on to him and brought him down, tearing him apart. It seems Racharzan had gotten the hang of some of the magic rules.

Seeing that the mooks were falling rapidly, The Boss sent his bodyguards down to the fight as well. The man in the robes raised his staff and a took aim at Ace. The power he brought up scorched the area around him setting it on fire, and the rest soared forward in a lance of solid fire. It dug into Ace's defences and pushed him to the edge of his stress, and he retaliated by slashing in a wide arc around him, managing to cut through not only one, but two mooks. The third in the area was temporarily blinded by a rainbow of light released from his Kawaii-Desu-Neko-Blade.

Rac moved forward into the puddle to attack the lone swordsman, but crossing the soapy water was more difficult that expected when he failed his Athletics roll and he fell on butt, not getting the chance to bite him. Now that Rac was on the ground, the gunners took their shots at Racharzan. He took advantage of the fact he was on the ground, using a fate point to take advantage of the otherwise disadvantageous 'fell on butt' aspect, only getting shot in the shoulder as a minor consequence. With Ace heading towards the wizard, Racharzan struggling in a puddle and with The Boss slowly edging towards the machine-gun turret, the session came to an end.

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