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Spirit of the Century returns to the Tuesday Knights

by David Dorward on Feb.16, 2010, under RPG, Spirit of the Century

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, SotC is getting another outing at my regular group. I’ve even managed to write up the story so far.

It has been a very long time since I’ve been able to run it (so long that one of my players has forgotten about the interesting dice in the game), and I’m really looking forward to getting my GMs hat on tonight.

I’ve been lifting large chunks from a prewritten adventure, but the third act never really sat well with me. So I decided to rewrite it, less than 24 hours before I ran it. Aren’t I clever? Still, I think my efforts last night were worth it, I got rid of annoying sequence of repeated “Look here, fooled you! Look here instead!” scenes, and added an Indy reference (along with a few things that I’d better not talk about before they come out in play).

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FATE dice rolling methods

by David Dorward on Jan.31, 2010, under Spirit of the Century, Starblazer Adventures

I own a couple of games based on the FATE system (which is, in turn, based on the FUDGE system), and there are a couple of different approaches for rolling dice that appear in them.

The classic system is 4dF. A dF is a FUDGE die and has six faces representing the numbers -1, 0 and 1 twice over. It is a d3-2.

Starblazer Adventures uses a different approach and rolls d6-d6. This has the advantage that you don’t need to run out and buy dice that are so specialised that your friendly neighourhood gaming store doesn’t sell them.

This morning I decided to invest a few minutes into doing some analysis and comparison of the two systems (no doubt duplicating other people’s work, but entertaining myself in the process).

I generated all possible results that each of the two systems could provide, and converted them into percentages and then charted them.

Total 4dF 4dF % d6 – d6 d6 – d6 %
-5 0 0 1 2.78
-4 1 1.23 2 5.56
-3 4 4.94 3 8.33
-2 10 12.35 4 11.11
-1 16 19.75 5 13.89
0 19 23.46 6 16.67
1 16 19.75 5 13.89
2 10 12.35 4 11.11
3 4 4.94 3 8.33
4 1 1.23 2 5.56
5 0 0 1 2.78

There isn’t much to choose between the results, although the FUDGE dice give slightly less variance and are more likely to hit closer to zero.

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Spirit of the Century may return

by David Dorward on Jan.18, 2010, under RPG, Spirit of the Century

Tomorrow night is the night my Tuesday group lets GMs propose games for the next six week block of games (with voting taking place a week later).

I have found my notes and all the character sheets from the last couple of times I have run the game — both one off sessions — and will be volunteering to run the game every Tuesday night for six weeks. Gulp.

I might even find time to write up the last session. I think I can remember most of what happened.

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Get Smart Name Generator

by David Dorward on Oct.01, 2009, under RPG, Spycraft

One day I might get around to running a Get Smart game using Spycraft 2.0. Crafty are even nice enough to define a base set of campaign qualities for Light Hearted so I don’t even need to dig through the list of options.

In the meantime, however, I present:

The Get Smart Name Generator
d100 Name
1 Agent 1
2 Agent 2
3 Agent 3
4 Agent 4
5 Agent 5
6 Agent 6
7 Agent 7
8 Agent 8
9 Agent 9
10 Agent 10
11 Agent 11
12 Agent 12 is an NPC. Reroll.
13 Agent 13 is an NPC. Reroll.
14 Agent 14
15 Agent 15
16 Agent 16
17 Agent 17
18 Agent 18
19 Agent 19
20 Agent 20
21 Agent 21
22 Agent 22
23 Agent 23
24 Agent 24
25 Agent 25
26 Agent 26
27 Agent 27
28 Agent 28
29 Agent 29
30 Agent 30
31 Agent 31
32 Agent 32
33 Agent 33
34 Agent 34
35 Agent 35
36 Agent 36
37 Agent 37
38 Agent 38
39 Agent 39
40 Agent 40
41 Agent 41
42 Agent 42
43 Agent 43
44 Agent 44 is an NPC. Reroll.
45 Agent 45
46 Agent 46
47 Agent 47
48 Agent 48
49 Agent 49
50 Agent 50
51 Agent 51
52 Agent 52
53 Agent 53
54 Agent 54
55 Agent 55
56 Agent 56
57 Agent 57
58 Agent 58
59 Agent 59
60 Agent 60
61 Agent 61
62 Agent 62
63 Agent 63
64 Agent 64
65 Agent 65
66 Agent 66
67 Agent 67
68 Agent 68
69 Agent 69
70 Agent 70
71 Agent 71
72 Agent 72
73 Agent 73
74 Agent 74
75 Agent 75
76 Agent 76
77 Agent 77
78 Agent 78
79 Agent 79
80 Agent 80
81 Agent 81
82 Agent 82
83 Agent 83
84 Agent 84
85 Agent 85
86 Maxwell Smart is an NPC. Reroll.
87 Agent 87
88 Agent 88
89 Agent 89
90 Agent 90
91 Agent 91
92 Agent 92
93 Agent 93
94 Agent 94
95 Agent 95
96 Agent 96
97 Agent 97
98 Agent 98
99 Agent 99 is an NPC. Reroll.
100 Agent 100

If two players get the same result — reroll.

List of named NPCs via Wikipedia.

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Fantasy Craft and Eberron (featuring Reputation)

by David Dorward on Sep.21, 2009, under Fantasy Craft, RPG

I really like the Eberron setting, and the release of Fantasy Craft gave me all the excuse I needed to dust off my campaign books and start running a campaign.

Two sessions in (not counting The Day Of Character Generation, in which everyone fought over a single PDF and tried to build characters for a very different take of D20 fantasy) and everybody appears to be having a good time (myself included).

The system is a lot of fun to run, and the rules for standard characters (who get damage saves instead of wounds and vitality) and mooks (who just die when sneezed upon) make it a breeze to GM.

I have players who have written up nice, detailed backgrounds (which are already getting tied into the plot) and who can be bribed with in-game rewards to write up the adventure.

On that subject, I’m keeping the Campaign Log over at Obsidian Portal as an experiment. The site was pointed out after I made a previous blog post seeking information about online gaming.

It seems to be working well, and lets the players contribute content without me having to give them all access to this blog. It also structures the information in a format better suited to a campaign than I could achieve here.

On the subject of rewards, I’m offering bonus reputation. This is a part of Fantasy Craft that I like a lot, at least in theory, it is too early to see how it plays out in practice. Essentially, it is a representation of how much kudos you have earned and controls your Renown (how much sway you have with a given demographic, such as the military or the common people), Favours, Contacts, Base, Magical Shiny, and so on. There is something that just feels right about giving extra renown to players who shout about how great their characters are on the Internet!

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