Spirit of the Century
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).
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.
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.
