Fate of Farscape: Epilogue Part 1

Finished my first proper session of Farscape using the Fate system, we had a bit more discussion at the start of the game to get some more idea of the characters. We spoke for a while about how each character was going to be introduced into the story and what they they were doing at the start of play. The start of the story we decided would be a Shadow Base, which is a secret research base on an asteroid field orbiting a rift in space. It's Farscape crazy things are done like this and it's of course not going to end well for the base, especially when the players get involved.

We really only played for two hours but it was enough to get an understand of the system give me a good starting point to go from. Ever character in this first game had their own starting story which will be heading towards each other in the next game and then the party will be sealed with whatever madness happens on that base.

Below is my story elaboration of what transpired in the game from a GM point of view, hopefully my players will lend me their own story talents and allow me to post them on this blog.

Deep In The Uncharted Territories.

The large transporter comes into range of the shadow base sensors and is quickly spotted. The Nebari Captain Zalach leans over the control panel seeing all the weapon locks and scans being performed to his ship. The comms light starts flashing above his head and before flicking the switch he turns to another Nebari who quickly starts tapping away on another console. As the Captain smiles at his great plan to infiltrate the secret base and also for the show he's about to perform. On screen a Nebari female is looking a little nervous as she asks for his I.D and intentions.

The Captain stuck lucky and quickly capitalized with his charm, explaining that there was a fuelant leak which had call for a special clean up crew to be called in. While his crew member was hacking into their systems and implanting his own virus with the information to make this whole plan work. The Comm's girl was quite flustered being charmed but also not excepting this arrival, but after quickly checking her logs it did seem there had been call for them from this base. Seeing that he was winner her over Captain Zalach laid it on thick and panicked her enough to take it seriously and call the security.

The transport was met by a group of Nebari security, one particular hard nosed charactered called Officer Nezt started interrogating the Captain has he came off the ship and started ordering his men around. The Captain had dealt with his type, some Nebari would always base there judgement on facts not emotion so he repeated what he told the Comm's girl but with more authority. As predicted Nezt ordered one of the guards to check out the story. Relying on the hackers programme to do it's work gave them the reading they wanted and the guard reported this back. Officer Nezt had nothing to go on at this point so left them with the other guards to escort them to Level 7 Sector 9.

Deep Within The Shadow Base.

Mim the doppleganger experiment as he was mainly called by the Scientist, Techies and Security was sat on his bed staring at the blank wall remembering that days experiences in the Sceny room. His door opened up as it would most nights and enters Dr Di-Janti the Head scientist of the research facility. Over the many cycles of growing up in the two rooms she had been his constant. The doctor had grown fond of her research project and was getting increasingly worried about the things on the base she didn't know about. It was at this time she decided was the time for Mim to escape his prison and explore the galaxy, the fuelant leak was too good of an opportunity to pass up on. She handed him a devices and quickly explained that he needed it if he wanted to explore, it would help when the time was right. With that Mim was left in his room alone staring at the wall with a small box with lights and a couple of buttoms.

Deep In A Parole Universe.

MK 2/116 and MK 2/115 felt and saw their orders from their masters and stepped out of their pods into the massive cave that was within the Collectors Ship. As they made it up onto the surface of the ship which with the size and rock type mineral as a hull resembled the surface of an asteroid or small moon. As the Spacer species was genetically created to survive within the vacuum of space their exo-armour seals itself and a kind of plant life within it's organs creates the oxygen it needs, they are the perfect species to repair ships and are very technically minded.

As both the Spacers used their jet boosters to get to work on clearing the asteroids from the ships path so that it can have a clear path to the space rift that it's come to study. MK 2/116 notices that MK 2/115 is not following the perfect pattern of explosives to maximise the clearance rate. MK 2/116 finishes planting his explosives and tries to direct the other Spacer with this thoughts. Not all Spacers develop psychic abilities but as these two Spacers have not left each others side since their start of creation in the pods a mental link has developed between them. MK 2/116 knew that MK 2/115 was receiving his mental image of what he should be doing but MK 2/115 ignored him and continued to plant his explosives on the wrong asteroids. MK 2/116 realised what he was up to and knew this model had the defective gene of rebellion but had hoped this time would not come. Quickly MK 2/115 used his own trigger to ram MK 2/115's so that he couldn't detonate the bombs. As he finished and MK 2/116 in thoughts asked across the void of space what he was doing, MK 2/115 sent him the thought back of freedom. This was lost on MK 2/116 as he didn't gain any feeling from the thought but then MK 2/116 pressed his trigger and nothing happened.

What happens next is hard to put in words as MK 2/115 sent MK 2/116 the most powerful thought and feeling, his acceptance of death for something he believed in and something actually stuck in MK 2/116 from that moment. And as MK 2/115 pulled out his blow pressing it to one of the bombs MK 2/116 had no time to act before the force of the catalyse of explosions start bathed him in asteroid. After the amazing zero grav acrobats and use of the jet booster the Spacer that will be known as Zero comes out of it's range just before the fuel runs. Left a drift in space and floating quite rapidly towards the space anomaly Zero has the idea of using an explosive far enough in front of him to give the necessary force backwards. As he launches the last of his explosives in front of him while starting a count down, before he can press the button it disappears into the anomaly. The fear of what is about to happen doesn't have time register before Zero enters a rift in space. The experience is poorly described as a split seconded were every part of your being is pulled apart and it frelling hurts.

Again poor Zero hadn't time to fully comprehend the complete new start system he was in as the bomb he had thrown through was detonating. The force of this explosion caused him minimal pain but did send him towards a large asteroid. Coming in quite fast Zero squeezed whatever was left in the jet booster to slow his decent and land with a thud. Laying there on the asteroid he now had a moment to take in a completely different galaxy of stars and for the first time feeling all on his own with no masters to give orders. But if he had no orders then he would explore and hopefully find some way off this asteroid.

Part 2 coming soon...

I'm tired now will post this in the morning and will finish off the Epilogue write up probably Monday as there is more that happened in the session. But for now I enjoyed the first session and we are all eager to play more which is always a good sign. So can't wait to play more Fate games and particularly my love of Farscape will hopefully be full filled once a month from now until we get bored and play something else.

Character and Game generation for Farscape Fate - Part 2

How the Characters turned out

Well after the first session we now have four pretty much completed characters, with lots of good ideas for story hooks. There are still area's that need filling but as the game suggests these can be picked up in game as the story advances and you become more comfortable with the game.

Creating Characters in FAE

Making a character in Fate Accelerated is pretty simple the hardest part is understanding and creating good Aspects and stuns. While we all discussed the system and each of there character ideas, we quickly realised that it isn't something that immediately clicks as an concept especially if your used to the standard way of creating a character in a tabletop game. I can see a lot of the hardcore being put off from the start and not giving it the full appreciation it needs to become the system it is. But as my players are good friends and are willing to give something a try, we all decided that a lot of it will click while playing the game and we just pushed on with Character creation and see what happens approach.

Character are built up from upto five Aspects, one being your High Aspect and one being your Trouble. When you have at least your High and Trouble Aspect you should have a good picture of what your character can do. Aspects can be many things that give some form to your character and can be used in game to help. But the fundamental point of Aspects I think is that they create Factoids in the world, if an Aspect says you have magic then you can use magic in whatever interesting way you come up with, within the group of course. As every Aspect has to be agreed in some part by all the players and accept what it means within the world.

Approaches are next which replace skills and give you six words which capture a type of approach to a situation. i.e Careful, Flashy, Sneaky, Forceful. You spread some plus numbers ranging between +1 - +3 between these and then when playing these will be our bonus when rolling, the fact that they are approaches stops the player just using the highest one each time because you can't Forcefully hack a computer. It forces the player to also narrate his actions more incorporating the word into an action.

The last thing that is needed some thought over is Stunts, these are special skills that can either make you better in a specific area or break a rule of the system. The latter is usually some like 'once per turn I can do X' were X is decided between the GM and the player. All my players have taken one stunt at the start of play but they can take up to three with no expenditure. I'm glad they all did the same thing as the book suggests taking one stunt and picking up the rest within the game. I can see my players picking it up quite quickly and coming up with some cool stunts to add more to their character.

That is pretty much it for making a character the rest is just adding three stress boxes for damage and three conquences. Also starting with 3 Fate Points which can be spent in ways to make your Aspects even more helpful.

Meet the Player Characters...

First up is Rob (Maus) and after finally everyone quickly picking character that could never been the leader type he felt the pressure and crumbled into what I think will be a great character for him and the game. He has chosen an Nebari who is a Pirate Captain so works well in the theme of Farscape and will have reasons to pull the other player character together when needed.

Name: Zalach

High Concept: Infamous Nebari Pirate Captain

Trouble: No guts no galaxy

Other Aspects: Legendary Cunning, Nebari on the Fence

Approaches

Careful: +0

Clever: +2

Fahbot: +2

Forceful: +1

Quick: +1

Sneaky: +3

Stunts

Fahbot Tactician - Because I am unorthodox in my tactics, I get +2 to clever rolls when creating a combat plan.

As you can see quite clearly from this he is going to be a fantastic Captain for Farscape and the group in this game. There is so much for me to use there to attract them towards interesting plots and crazy adventure. Also with the Nebari on the Fence we decided he didn't work for both sides of the Nebari and they both take offence to this. Rob said to me that he didn't want to be the leader in this group because he was doing it in another group and didn't want the hassle. I think he will enjoy the hassle he gets in this game especially when he gets the Fahbot plan to work and all of them pull something amazing off.

Next is Karl's he went in an interesting direction when I gave him an entire universe not just the series to gain inspiration from, he decided to us the basics of a race from an old sci-fi and create a new race in Farscape, called Spacer's. The idea behind them is that they are created by another alien race to be their slaves and survive in the environment of space so that they can work on their ships and on asteroid mines. These creatures have a armoured plant skin which can seal when in a vacuum and self regulate air to breath. Karl has created a nice document for me after our discussion which I liked as he's put some thought into making an interesting race and given me more plot hooks. I will post this document in a later blog.

Name: 0 (Zero), originally he was Mk 2 / 116 but Spacers lose their number when they escape. 
High Concept: Escaped Spacer Slave.
Trouble: Trouble understanding other races and customs. 
Other Aspects: Technical Savant, Zero G Acrobat

Approaches
Careful: +3
Clever: +2
Flashy: +0
Forceful: +1
Quick: +2
Sneaky: +1

Stunts

1) Because I am a technical savant, I get a +2 when I Cleverly create advantage when I'm doing something technical.

Karl is a good role player and I hope will bring to life this slaver and make 0 into an interesting character to interact with. His character will be the main techy of the group and should have lots of fun in the game coming up with new and interesting ways of getting out of trouble. Also with the Escaped slave Aspect we have spoken about the race that created him called the Collectors that will be hunting him down. We haven't discussed it further but we decided that they are genetic engineers of some type.

The third character is Graham's the only one in the group that has only seen a bit of Farscape, but likes Sci-fi games so is very interested at giving it ago. He also because of his lack of knowledge of Farscape has gone for something made up, a experiment that has created a Doppleganger. He hasn't elaborated further so I think there's lots of scope with this for future plot hooks.

Name: Mim

High Concept: Doppleganger experiment

Trouble: Clueless

Other Aspects: Implanted knowledge, Monkey see, monkey do

Approaches

Careful: +1

Clever: +3

Fahbot: +1

Forceful: +0

Quick: +2

Sneaky: +2

Stunts

Doppleganger training - Because I copy everything I see, I get +2 to Careful rolls when mimicking someone.

We discussed this at good lengths to get the idea he can shift his body into any humanoid species that he has seen, he has implanted knowledge which he will use to help his mimic abilities but also I can use this has good plot hooks so it's a great Aspect. There is also lots we can do with his Aspects to add more story as he discovers more about himself and what he is.

Now last but never least is Suzi's character, the last couple of times she played the typical sexed up rouge Nebari girl but surprised us this time with coming to the session with a completely new character idea and pretty much got the rest that were in the old game thinking of completely new character. This time she is playing one of the dog race the Vorcarians which are great trackers and bounty hunters. She has come up with some dark past we will definitely be exploring with this game.

Name: Nuska

High Concept: Killed mate wouldn't share bounty and ate him

Trouble: Killed mate

Other Aspects: Do anything if the price is right, best tracker in the sector, I always get my target.

Approaches

Careful: +2

Clever: +0

Fahbot: +1

Forceful: +1

Quick: +2

Sneaky: +3

Stunts

It’s who you know, not what - Because I am an excellent bounty hunter, once per session I can use a contact to gain some information or the right tool.

There is still a bit of work needed on the Aspects but the idea is great and it will be good to have the female member of the party as the combat player. Also she will be the one that might betray the party so got to make it mean something or there has to be reasons they forgive the character if this does happen, these kinds of plots run throughout the series and I'd like to have them within this game. As long as we are good friends and understand that it's all about enjoying the story I think we can create some amazing stories. Unfortunately Suzi won't be able to join us at the first game and will join us next month so it will be interesting introducing her character into the party.

How the game will begin...

My ideas so far will be involved with a Shadow Base hidden within some asteroids surrounding a space anomaly deep in the uncharted territories. We quickly discussed some of this at the first session but was going to start the game after the attack on the shadow base with them all escaping together. Now I've decided that we will run this as the epilogue to how they all met each other.

The Nebari Pirate we decided was given a job to attack the base and steal something for his clients, the money was good and he wasn't told it was a shadow base. The doppleganger is on the base as an experiment and I was thinking that 0 could actually be from a parole universe. I want to bring the multi-universe idea from Farscape into my game and I see this as a great opportunity if Karl is up for it. My thoughts is the anomaly is in fact a unstable worm hole and as the Pirate attacks the base the Collectors are investigating the same anomaly on their side. My basic idea is something explodes or happens to trigger the worm hole and bring the Collectors ship into this universe, on this ship bring Spacer's and the Character 0 into the story. It's a very basic idea that I will develop more if the players are interested.

Tomorrow I start the first game with not much prep except lots of ideas and a few good role players. It will probably start off a little rough and not as engaging at first as we work out the system and the story. But I think we will get the hang of it and start concentrating on enjoying the crazy stories that happen in the uncharted territories with a group of misfits trying to survive.

I will post more about any system changes I come up with along the way. Also if your interested in the progression of the story game logs and player logs will be posted.

Character and Game generation for Farscape Fate - Part 1

Creating The Game World

In this blog I will be talking about what as a group we came up with at our first session and what I have expanded on with these ideas in mind. As the first session was on one of the hottest Saturdays in the late afternoon it was ideal to sit around a table. We managed a couple of hours and at least got the characters almost complete. I got to discus with the group what they wanted out of the game and we together came up with some connections and reasons for the group to be together. 

For those crazy few that have not had the pleasure of experiencing the wonderful and imaginative series which is Farscape. I will briefly explain what is the Farscape universe and in what state the players will find it.

Farscape is set in a part of the Milky Way far away from Earth, the main character John Crichton a Human finds himself there through a worm hole. This being the first theme that will feature in my game worm hole travel and parallel universes. Farscape the series touch on the multiverse theory and it does create some interesting plots within the game.

Also a theme that is always present in Farscape is the threat of being chased by organisation or powers across the galaxy. The group has helped create and will except many of the different factions and races within the game wanting them for many reason. 

And the last theme that I will mention which will definitely feature in my game, the crews ever evolving frictional comradely. All my group are great role players and bouncy off each other so well, I except half the plots will evolve from their interactions with each other. 

The State of the Uncharted Territories.

The uncharted territories is a large part of the inhabited area which is claimed by the major factions within that area. It has obviously no known size and parameters it is just a term used in Farscape and will be used in this game. I will describe the major factions of note in a later blog for more details for those that are interested. But just think of it has a Star Trek or Star Wars universe but with more lawlessness. That is what the uncharted territories means it's the parts the major factions can't being order too. This is where the players are from and it will be the setting for most of the games.  

The game will be set after the series ends so knowing the outcome of what was called The Peacekeeper Wars is kind of useful to understand in what state the uncharted territories and the main factions are in. The game will be set around 25 years (or cycles as will now be refered) after the PKW so I have taken some artistic licence on what happened after the war ended which I will explain in this Spoiler alert below.

The Peacekeeper Wars.

This war was fought between the Sebacean Peacekeepers (genetically altered humans) and the Scarren Empire (Big lizardy types) and there assorted allies or slave races. It was a costly war for the Peacekeepers and only because of the Eidelon's returning which were the Peacekeepers old master that had the racial power to create an aura of peace and reason which was used to keep the peace between all the different races. Also John Crichton dropping a worm hole bomb in the middle of the final fight which scarred both sides into at least agreeing to open peace talks and ending the war. If you haven't seen Farscape then that is pretty much the TV movie that finished off the series and don't worry lots more happens and it's well worth a watch on it's own if you don't want to sit through four amazing series, sorry love Farscape can you tell.

In my verision which differs from the comic series which I'm ignoring as my players aren't that Farscape hardcore like me but I will probably steel some ideas so probably good they haven't read them. So both the Peacekeeprs and the Scarrens lost a large potion of their ships to the worm hole bomb and so after coming to come peace accord they both went back to their territories to lick there wounds, except both sides their problems with rebel factions within their own that disagreed with their leaders decisions, also the Peacekeepers for 3000 years have been taught to hate all alien races thus the Eidolens trying to resume control has created factions within the Peacekeepers from the start. Some Scarrens rebel as they see weakness in their leader or just see the chaos of war to escape the Empire and start a life in the UT.

During the 25 cycles between the PKW and the start of game both factions have settled down with now only minor trouble within their territory. The UT has pretty much stayed the same lawless, full of pirates, smugglers, bounty hunters and criminals. The main factions have now started policing the areas outside there own and are bring more order to parts of the UT.

       Sebacean - Peacekeeper                                                                            Scarren - Ruling Class

The Nebari Establishment/Resistance

I was always disappointed that Farscape as a series had to end because they never got to explore the Nebari in more details which would have been some of the 5th series if they had got it. Every time I've started a game I've giving it some kind of Nebari interest and two players played the race but as they games never progressed far we never got to really have the Nebari involved. This game again will have a Nebari influence and one of the players will be a renergade Nebari pirate so I expect the Nebari to feature a lot in the game.

As it is set a while after the PKW I have decided that the Nebari so their opportunity and started to take over parts of the UT and expanded their boards to rival both the Peacekeepers and the Scarrens. 

The Nebari like to mind cleans people that don't fit their ideal, so they will have set up factories to process the inhabitants of planets they have conquered that don't immediately become subservient to the Establishment. 

Also as the Establishment's territory has grown so has the number of Resistant members fighting against the Establishment. As the Establishment conquered different species they just created more terrorist cells on more of their planets. The Establishment is in constant war with the Resistant and this has slowed them enough for the other two main races to regroup and start acting against the Establishment. I don't know exactly yet what the friction will do between the three major powers but the Nebari are deluded enough to think they can win against the other two and claim all the UT as Nebari.

Nebari - Resistance

Other Critters

I am planning like many a Farscape episode has a critter of the game, which might be a monster type creature or it could be a planet with some interesting alien life forms for them to explore and get into trouble with as always is the case with these things.

I am also planning of having a race that is unfortunately in the D20 Farscape book as the system was terrible for Farscape and captured nothing of the series. But it does have some nice planets described and a small monster manual at the back with some interesting Farscape type creatures. One being the Shaeloss, this is a race of translator microbes gone wrong in an experiment to try and advance them. The experiment resulted in giving the microbes full intelligence. The microbes started taking over their host and quickly wanted to make everyone like them. They are like sci-fi zombies with intelligence and an agenda. I loved reading about this race as it brought a lot of ideas to mind with how I could just them as an ongoing bad guy, I saw them as Farscape's answer to the Bog, like Luxan's and Klingon's.

Picture of Ilanic Shaeloss

Next blog I will post the characters we created and how they will fit into this frelled up universe. As my first game is on Saturday I will probably be writing up ideas to start the game off, which will be involving a scientific Shadow Base. Which I will explain in my next blog as I go into how their characters lives are going to tangle into hopefully a rag-tag group of misfits.

The start of my very first Fate game, and the third frelling try at Farscape

So for the past few years I have attempted to run a Farscape game for me and a few friends that generally just want an excuse to meet up as the older we get the hard it seems to do. The game has been started twice before with a few gaps in between mainly due to life getting in the way as usual. But I am resurrecting this game once more to hopefully run a game once a month which is fun and easy to pick up and play. The system that made me think I could finally achieve my idea of a completely story driven system with out far to much book checking and maths to slow down the enjoyment came into my life.

Fate can be found HERE and it's Pay what you want for it, well worth a download if you are even remortly interested in tabletop role playing as it's a very new and interesting way of using the system to keep the story moving. It is a very good system to be introduced to tabletop role play and great for kids if you want to get them started.

If you click on the link above you will see there are two different books, Fate Core and Fate Accelerated. The first is the full Fate system and the FAE is a lighter version which is a nice introduction. But also stands on it's own merits of removing more of the normal system mechanics like skills so that you can focus on the story even more.

The FAE system is what I will be using for now as like I said our group also enjoys LARP and are mainly there to have a laugh and do some cool stuff in a game. I made the decision that even though some of us in the group are more comfortable with skills in a tabletop game I think it will allow us to not get to bogged down in what is being added together.

The game was designed so that you can change the rules of the game to get the best system for your game, in the community this is called Hacking and I have read through a few including my friend +John Large's blog in which he has wrote blogs about Hacking the Fate system to suite his Rogue Trader game and also his White Wolf mortal game. His site can be found HERE and is worth a read as it has many good idea to help understand how to Hack the system.

I won't go to far into the system in this blog as the books are available to read, but I will explain the basics for anyone that might want to read this and understand what I'm talking about.

Dice/Scale

The dice is the first thing that makes it very different from many popular tabletop games, the dice is a D6 which has three different sides marked, +,-, , the last one is blank by the way. Everyone gets four to role and that is the first thing in the game that puts you on the Fate Scale.

Fate scale is very simple its a ladder of succession arranging from -2 to +8 or Terrible to Legendary. Pretty simple which will give you an outcome with the four dice, your skills and other stuff I'll come to later.

Aspects

These are the most important mechanic in the game and the hardest to get your head around how it works within the game as a system. One thing you need to do is forget some habit from normal tabletop games or trying to create a character with parameters like skills and attributes. I'm not comfortable myself with the concept and have only used it once in a quick game I ran to test it. As I tried to explain the concept to my players it was tough as I don't think I'm great anyway at explaining games. We persevered and as we just talking about character ideas they started to take shape themselves. It was agreed that playing the game and using them will also help understand them more.

Aspects are a concept that represents something about your character, it can be just a word or a sentence, sometimes they are quotes your character would say. But what they do in game is create facts that effect the game world and can be used by the player within the game. This game requires a lot of player involvement in shaping the game world and every game should have a discussion with the GM and all the players to establish what will be in the game and what shape the game will take.  I will talk about this later in a blog about the game world we chose.

Also in game an aspects can be triggered to give you a bonus, either a +2 or a re-roll. But it can also be used against you which will cause you some trouble or drama within the game but will also grant you a Fate Point, I'll explain later. This is how the game gets it's narrative flavour and encourage the players to help create the story together.

Approaches and Stunts

Approaches replace skills from Fate Core, instead you get six words which describe how you 'approach' a task or challenge. You get several number ranging from +1 - +3 which you arrange and then that is your bonus when using that word in a test which adds onto the four dice.

Stunts are were you can add more interesting flavour into your character and either be specialized in something or break the game rules for one thing. Also stunts and all aspects can also be items if it is something that is important to your character. You can be as simple of creative as the game will allow with stunts just like approaches but everyone has to agree.

Fate Points

Well approaches and stunts are free but to use an Aspect to help you then it costs a Fate Point, you always start with a couple every game but it is the player and GM's job to work the Aspects into the plot by compelling them which gains the player a FP but also some bad happens which is discussed before decided on. This help creates drama and problems the players have to overcome and spend the newly gain FP's but that's the fun of the game.

 The Game

The game world that we will be playing in is the Farscape Universe or fondly know as The Uncharted Territories. I will explain in more details in my next blog about what we as a group decided on and each player character.

In a nutshell it will be set a while after the Peacekeeper Wars and the players will be a group of Pirates/bounty hunters in the uncharted territories and known but one of the themes will be them gaining more notoriety around the galaxy. Like in the series the themes of being chased and crazy sudo-science. The group has given me four very uniquely flawed characters that will probably give us no end of funny and cool moments while playing.

My first game will be in two weeks so I will be posting more blogs with my ideas for the game, please freely free to comment and make suggestions, positive critiquing on my work is fine and welcome. I have got a lot of great ideas so far from many members of the Fate Community and other rpg communities. I'll try and attribute my work to those I have used but if I don't I'm sorry just point it out and I'll rectify the mistake.

Hope you frelling enjoy my blog