Aye
Ya, the phase Trio seems kinda clunky on pbp. We should probably move to the "develop through play" option more.
Aye.
Aye!
Aye, sounds good to me!
Works for me! (Though I'd love to keep the 'origin story' Anton, Sirus and myself have so far, because it makes me laugh.)
I agree that the story already developed should be kept. :)
Alright, I am all for keeping the story, and any aspects you'd like. Let's talk skills and stunts then.
We have two options with skills. The first is to use the default list and just decide where things like hacking go. The second is to make some changes to the list and break things out that we as a group feel should be on their own.
That said, I have thought about this, and was wondering what you guys thought about the following.
-Pilot is broken out from Drive, and further broken down by what you can fly. I was thinking that Pilot would be something like this:
--Aircraft: covers planes and helicopters
--Transatmospheric: Covers suborbital and SSTO aircraft as well as basic maneuvers in orbit (ie you can go orbit to orbit around a planet, but are not rated to go beyond the planet or it's moons.)
--Starship: Covers interplanetary boats and interstellar starships
Of course, it also has the same limits and uses as Drive, but it applies in different situations. Also, Drive is now limited to surface vehicles (Boats and cars)
-Hacking is broken out of Burglary. Burglary is used for infiltrating physical locations while Hacking is used to infiltrate virtual locations. Hacking is also used to bypass electronic locks, while Burglary is used for mechanical ones. Hacking is also subject to the same restrictions as Burglary.
-Engineer is broken out of Crafts. Crafts is used for building and maintaining simple tools or vehicles and making works of art or craftsmanship. Engineering is used for building and maintaining complex tools or vehicles and designing things like reactors, engines, or starships. Engineer is subject to the same limitations as Crafts.
These are just ideas. We can either use them or not, but I figured that adding these makes sense and avoids adding too many skills. If you guys think of something that you'd like to use more, I'm all ears.
Anyway, on to stunts.
Stunts and aspects are similar, but they are used in different ways. Aspects can be invoked or compelled to change how the story plays out. Stunts change how and what you can use skills for. A stunt should never replace a skill, though (ie. replacing shoot with notice.) Good stunts either apply in certain situations, have a cost (Fate Points or stress, or even consequences,) or both. You can also chain stunts of each other.
For example, Say Anton has a stunt called Crazy Mad Pilot that lets him use Pilot (Starship) instead of Shoot to use a starship's weapons that are tied to the main flight deck/bridge/CIC. as long as he's the pilot and he's familiar with the ship. He could have a stunt called Overloading the System that allows him to cause the ship to take a consequence in return for increasing his Pilot (Starship) roll by +2. He has to have Crazy Mad Pilot and it has to apply. It will also cause Sirus to yell at him for the next three days as he assesses the damage that Anton did to his ship.
It is possible for characters to have the same stunts, so if Valerie wants Overloading the system, she'll need Crazy Mad Pilot first. Delgar will probably correct me if I'm wrong, so if he says something, pay attention. (he's Dax's player, by the way.)
So that said, we also need to get you guys some skills. Normally the cap is at +4, so you'd have the following skill allocation:
- 1 skill at +4
- 2 skills at +3
- 3 skills at +2
- 4 skills at +1
I am going to up it to +5 if we decide to break out more than a couple of skills into their own thing, so we'd have:
- 1 skill at +5
- 2 skills at +4
- 3 skills at +3
- 4 skills at +2
- 5 skills at +1
Which should still let us keep the bases covered without a ton of overlap.
Any questions? Comments? Declarations of undying loyalty?
I agree with everything but breaking up the Drive skill. I honestly don't see the use of it, nor do I see how it would actually see play with three similar skills. My suggestion would be to let Drive be renamed to Pilot and let people take stunts with specific types of vehicles if they want to be super proficient.
One other expansion on something you said. A stunt can allow a Skill to replace another skill, but only in certain situations. An example would be Sharpshooter allowing you to use Notice instead of shoot, but only when using a sniper rifle at long range. As always the final say on when you can use a stunt is up to the GM.
Question, How many stunts do we get? Should we make up stunts for these new breakout skills?
My first pass on what I might pick is (If we are going with +4 and the skills you "broke out", then):
Engineering +4
Crafts +3
- Always Making Useful Things. You don’t ever have to spend a fate point to declare that you have the proper tools for a particular job using Crafts, even in extreme situations (like being imprisoned and separated from all your stuff). This source of opposition is just off the table.
- Better than New! Whenever you succeed with style on an overcome action to repair a piece of machinery, you can immediately give it a new situation aspect (with a free invoke) reflecting the improvements you’ve made, instead of just a boost.
Physique +3
- Tough as Nails. Once per session, at the cost of a fate point, you can reduce the severity of a moderate consequence that’s physical in nature to a mild consequence (if your mild consequence slot is free), or erase a mild consequence altogether.
Investigate +2
Will +2
Shoot +2
Drive+1
Contacts+1
Resources+1
Provoke+1
Probably need to wait until we settle the skills situation first. If I remember right, it's three stunts with a refresh of 3 (You start each session with at least 3 fate points.) You can trade up to 2 refresh for 2 stunts on a 1 for 1 basis.
As for breaking the piloting skills out, it was because I was planning on having you guys go from orbit to surface and back, and let's face it, I'm going to throw some trouble your way while you're in transit. I was thinking about it logically, rather than narratively. A person who can pilot a starship isn't going to have the same skills as a person who can pilot an SSTO shuttle, and that is different from piloting a purely atmospheric craft. The fact that I could tie up the shuttle pilot and leave you stranded for a bit had nothing to do with it, nope, not at all.[/blatant lies]
@GM whatever floats your space boat. Your call as always.
@Sirus you get three stunts plus another for each Refresh you pay. Refresh is essentially the amount of Fate points you start each "session" with. You can make up stunts or use the suggested ones in the books.
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I have undying loyalty to cheese.
With that said, the book mentioned that Drive might be broken up into also Pilot, and that seems fine.
For the rest, I find myself persuaded by the good Doctor Newgen. Fate seems to me to be -very- story-driven. And, in the same vein, VERY logical/game mechanic light. I mean, there isn't even a "healing" skill. Wanna be a doctor? Craft! Wanna be an engineer? Craft! Wanna angle the deflector shields? Also Craft! I fully understand the big, huge vacuum of wanting to break things down, but, Fate doesn't seem to want to go there.
Of course the limiter is the skills, and if you're going to be -that- generous with starting skills, I can hardly object. =} But for all the players that don't take any driving skills and just boost up the skills they already have, you might find some imbalance. But more skills means the Stunts are also watered down, since the 3 stunts now have more skills to be thrown around in.
(Um, also, don't discount me just taking -all- the pilot skills and foiling your masterful plan. MUHAHAHAHAHA!!)
(Were it -me-, I'd just have some sabotage happen in atmo. If, right after take off, the main buffer panel were to blow off, and -then- we were attacked by aircraft, well, that would be a very interesting day, wouldn't it? =)
This is all IMHO. If you wanna give it a spin (as it were) then by all means. Bollux, six months in we might wanna re-roll new chars and do it right anyway. Jus' sayin'. =)
Hmmm. I think I don't have enough knowledge to make one up for engineering. If youall want to make an awesome one though I'll probably pay a refresh for it. :)
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Question about Craft: In the book this seemed like an umbrella skill meant for "Do the thing". Anywhere from make a thing to open a door seemed to be a craft check.
Hence, I was under the assumption that, like, in the FTL space-combat example I brough up before, the person on the shields would be rolling craft, and the person on the guns would be rolling craft, and...pretty much everyone doing everything would be rolling craft, except for the Pilot.
Is that not accurate? Do you mean it to be something else?
The way Fate works is that multiple skills to do multiple things as long as you can justify it. To use the ship example, sure Craft might be applicable, but so could other things. Wanna fire the main cannon? Shoot could work. Wanna use your massive knowledge of physics to calibrate and re-angle the sheilds into optimal position? Lore could work. Wanna inspire the crew to follow your commands faster? That could be Rapport or Provoke. As long as you can justify it and the GM gives you the ok you're good.
Pretty much, but I would like to have it where we agree that certain skills are more applicable than others, and you'd better have one heck of an argument ready for using craft to negotiate with the customs officer about your ship's docking fees.
While there is nothing to stop you from taking all the pilot skills (if implemented,) there's also nothing to stop the others from not taking them. ;) Besides, who says that I won't kidnap the shuttle, impound your ship, or have a shoot on sight order given to all the marshals in the airport?
The great thing about Fate is that it's hackable, and trust me, I could have divided things up even more than that as far as piloting goes. For example:
Pilot (fixed-wing, prop, small)
Pilot (fixed-wing, prop, large)
Pilot (fixed-wing, jet, small)
Pilot (fixed-wing, jet, large)
Pilot (Rotor-wing[helicopter], small)
Pilot (Rotor-wing[helicopter], large)
Pilot (VTOL, jet, small)
Pilot VTOL, jet, large)
Pilot (Transatmospheric, small)
Pilot (Transatmospheric, large)
Pilot (Exoatmospheric, small)
Pilot (Exoatmospheric, large)
Pilot (Subluminal)
Pilot (Superluminal)
Just add in that you can use a similar skill -2 in place of one you don't have and you've got a semi-realistic view of how piloting in real-life works (I was curious to see what it would take to be a pilot once and found that you just can't go from aircraft to aircraft.) And this isn't even as fine grained as I could get, either. A Piper Cub isn't the same as flying a small, twin engined turbo-prop, which is totally different from flying an F-16 or a small ultra-light.
As for facilitating the story, I think having it possible that you can get stranded somewhere makes things more interesting. Also, on further consideration, I think I'm going to keep the cap at +4. There are enough people that even adding 5 skills is going to have a little overlap.
Waiting on stunts and to get what everyone thinks about the skills and does their skills.
I am thinking:
Hacking +4
Lore +3
Investigate +3
Notice +2
Will +2
Stealth +2
Rapport +1
Crafts +1
Athletics +1
Shoot +1
Oh, whoops. I forgot about stunts. Since hacking is coming out of burglary what would you think about making up a new stunt for it?
For the other stunts I'm thinking
I’ve Read about That! You’ve read hundreds—if not thousands—of books on a wide variety of topics. You can spend a fate point to use Lore in place of any other skill for one roll or exchange, provided you can justify having read about the action you’re attempting.
The Power of Deduction. Once per scene you can spend a fate point (and a few minutes of observation) to make a special Investigate roll representing your potent deductive faculties. For each shift you make on this roll you discover or create an aspect, on either the scene or the target of your observations, though you may only invoke one of them for free.
Mine are set unless someone presents an awesome stunt for Engineering. If Pilot is taken from Drive I'll choose to pilot whatever class of ship ours is.
I'm thinking of going
+4 Lore
+3 Notice, Will
+2 Shoot, Physique, Craft
+1 Drive, Burglary, Athletics, Resources
Stunts:
Science! You’ve spent hundreds of hours dedicated to the scientific arts. You can spend a fate point to use Lore in place of any other skill for one roll or exchange, provided you can justify the scientific principles behind the action you’re attempting.
(Shamelessly re-worded)
Tuck and Roll! You've been in dozens -if not hundreds- of explosions. Through your vast experience of the subject you've learned a thing or two about mitigating the damage you take. When you use Athletics to Defend against an explosion you get a +2 to your roll.
Xenobiologist. You're one of the top researchers of alien plants and animals. You get a +2 to Lore when creating an advantage with Lore as long as it has to do with non-earth lifeforms.
(Tell me what you think of this, I know we said no to actual intelligent aliens, but does that mean there are no indigenous life forms on any of the habitable planets?
Mine are set unless someone presents an awesome stunt for Engineering. If Pilot is taken from Drive I'll choose to pilot whatever class of ship ours is.
That would be Pilot (Spaceship)
Speaking of, we still need to build it.:)
@Dax: Don't worry, there's alien life out there, and planets that make Australia look like a petting zoo. >:D
I can drive a stick! Does that count?
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P.S. My skills and stunts:
Pilot: Starship +4
[Stunt: I Know a Few Maneuvers]: Gain a +2 bonus to create an advantage using Pilot, whenever Anton is the Pilot and the ship is getting shot at.))]
Shoot: +3
[Stunt: I SHOT FIRST!]: You can use Shoot instead of Notice to determine turn order in any physical conflict where shooting quickly would be useful.
Craft: +3
[Stunt: She'll Hold Together]: Any time you’re piloting, and you succeed at a Craft action, you automatically create a Fair (+2) advantage for someone else who is manning another system due to your more-efficient use of energy distribution.
Notice: +2
Rapport: +2
Contacts: +2
Fight: +1
Athletics:+1
Physique: +1
Will: +1
Refresh: +3
In that case, I will take the piloting skill that applies to planet/space cargo vehicles. Transatmospheric? Somebody has to know how to fly the stuff to the ship.
Does this mean interplanetary ships are not atmosphere-capable? Does that then mean we have a shuttle or two as well? So many questions!
@Anton: Change Craft to Engineer and you're good.
@Sirus: Yes and yes. A cramped, bare-bones courier with just enough space to keep the crew and passengers from killing each other would be about 250-350 meters (about 320-440 yards) A tramp freighter is going to be around a kilometer (About 2/3 of a mile). No landing on planets that you care about with that.
Deceive +4
[Stunt: Fleecer. +2 to create a Deceive advantage against someone who has believed one of your lies already during this session.]
Empathy +3
[Stunt: I Know All the Tricks. +2 to all Empathy rolls made to discern or discover lies, whether they’re directed at you or someone else.]
Rapport +3
[Stunt: Smooth Talker. Twice per session, you may upgrade a boost you receive with Rapport into a full situation aspect with a free invocation.]
Provoke +2
Shoot +2
Stealth +2
Athletics +1
Contacts +1
Investigate +1
Notice +1
(I hope I've done this right and that it looks good for Val...)
I was reading about Aspects ideally being double-edged. Thus I think I’ll change the one I suggested a few days ago (Always have back-up routes planned) to “I know a risky alternate course.” Sometimes it might even be a short cut. I think an Aspect like that will add more narrative potential.
Now skills. I don’t know quite where the idea for my character being a polyglot falls into the structure of skills. Is it Lore? Same thing with navigating. Is that Lore, Craft, or Drive? Below is a preliminary plan. I’m almost positive it will change.
+4 Skill Lore (languges?)
+3 Skills Empathy, Will
+2 Skills Deceive, Investigate, Rapport
+1 Skills Pilot (Superliminal), Hacking, Physique, Fight
Oh Stunts. Here are two of the three. Grappler (Physique) +2 to Physique rolls made to create advantages on an enemy by wrestling or grappling with them.
Psychologist (Empathy) Once per session you can reduce someone else’s consequence by one level of severity (severe to moderate, moderate to mild, mild to nothing at all) by succeeding on an Empathy roll with a difficulty of Fair (+2) for a mild consequence, Good (+3) for moderate, or Great (+4) for severe. You need to talk with the person you’re treating for at least half an hour in order for them to receive the benefits of this stunt, and you can’t use it on yourself. (Normally, this roll would only start the recovery process, instead of changing the consequence level.)
Since the skill choice will probably change, one of these may change.
Not so much a threat as an example, but yeah, there's only three pilot skills, aircraft, transatmospheric (Which includes orbital stuff,) and starships.
And yes, that's the last bit.
To start with we need a high concept and a trouble. For example, the Millennium Falcon is The Fastest Hunk of Junk in the Galaxy, but it often suffers from Frequent Breakdowns.
I'm honestly taking inspiration from the Occurrence Border. It won't be as bad as that one. Sirus wouldn't have it. I still plan for his jury-rigging tendencies to make the ship... non-standard. Specifically, Sirus will use little yellow post-its to inform the crew what some buttons do and which buttons to now press. Not every button does what it says in the manual.
High Concept: A ship of that quality really shouldn't fly that well.
Aspect?: The owner's manual is a suggestion, really.
This aspect allows the GM to have things go wrong at just about any time (especially if we get new people aboard...), so I like it. :)
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Alright!
I'm sure everyone will have their own suggestion, so we can just look at all of them and then decide from there. I guess I can set the table.
The Solar Sun Angel started out as a state-of-the-art scout-hunter and light-duty transport. After several years of glorious service, she was retired with honors and billed for recycling. However, as a rich vein of energy-rich uranium-239 was discovered in the asteroid belt of Dargor III, private investors were paying top-dollar on anything that could survive a lack of atmo. Thus Silence, Inc. dropped a large amount of credits for a bulk purchase of several older ships, sight-unseen. The meticulously laid interior of the Angel was stripped out, hastily re-fit as an ore-hauler, and put into action.
After many years of hard labor, the vein's largest largess was mined out and some of the transport stock liquidated. Thus the People's Smugglers of Judea scooped it up for a song, made sure it was space-worthy, and thrust it into whatever arena could promise a return.
Now renamed the more appropriate Sweet Doomed Angel, she is Used Future. While her internal system still show some glimmer of her noble birth, the rest of her has been so repurposed, replaced, or re-re-re-jury-rigged, that her performance isn't so much a smooth line on a graph, as an average of a sine-wave because she always Needs More Love.
Alright, that's my suggestion. Next! =)
Or maybe the concept should be more along the lines of: That ship can do what!
Or: Junk should not be that good. I think I like that better than "of that quality"
Or: She isn't pretty, but she's quiet.
Aspects:
Turns on a dime.
Silent running is the best running (aka: the heat never bothered me anyway)
(I'm not entirely sure how these things are conventionally worded)
Small and Sturdy
Great cargo room due to Clever Engineering (TM)
What are youall's thoughts?
Alright!
I'm sure everyone will have their own suggestion, so we can just look at all of them and then decide from there. I guess I can set the table.
The Solar Sun Angel started out as a state-of-the-art scout-hunter and light-duty transport. After several years of glorious service, she was retired with honors and billed for recycling. However, as a rich vein of energy-rich uranium-239 was discovered in the asteroid belt of Dargor III, private investors were paying top-dollar on anything that could survive a lack of atmo. Thus Silence, Inc. dropped a large amount of credits for a bulk purchase of several older ships, sight-unseen. The meticulously laid interior of the Angel was stripped out, hastily re-fit as an ore-hauler, and put into action.
After many years of hard labor, the vein's largest largess was mined out and some of the transport stock liquidated. Thus the People's Smugglers of Judea scooped it up for a song, made sure it was space-worthy, and thrust it into whatever arena could promise a return.Now renamed the more appropriate Sweet Doomed Angel, she is Used Future. While her internal system still show some glimmer of her noble birth, the rest of her has been so repurposed, replaced, or re-re-re-jury-rigged, that her performance isn't so much a smooth line on a graph, as an average of a sine-wave because she always Needs More Love.
Alright, that's my suggestion. Next! =)
I'm liking this beginning, actually. Add to it:
The PSJ soon realized that all that heavy shielding from her radiation transport days made her insides nearly impervious to anything short of opening an airlock and seeing for yourself. The interior was scrubbed to relatively safe radiation levels and she was set to her current tasks.So, concept is: Slightly radioactive military smuggler?
Love the ideas you two got flowing. I laughed when I started reading the Border Occurrence page.
On a different note, one of my coworkers made something rather hilarious for us. Given a certain encounter in the RotRL game I'm running, I nearly passed out laughing.
In all honesty, having one other character know how to pilot the starship is a good idea in my opinion. If Anton gets incapacitated, we’d be stuck without a pilot. However I can rework Tavid’s background a bit to switch from starships to aircraft. A bit of a challenge since being able to pilot a starship (even minimally) really worked well in conjunction with being a navigator. I think I’ll take some inspiration from Seveneves. Will pilot aircraft be used frequently? I guess it depends on the planet...much like some cities where getting around by public transportation is fine for a visitor and other cities you’ll need to rent a car.
DM-Salsa, how was navigation going to work in terms of skills? Lore, Pilot, Craft? ....by the way, that video is great. Thanks for sharing.
As far as the ship goes, the concept of slightly radioactive ex-military smuggler would work as a character concept too, so I like it.
Maybe the trouble is She’s very suspicious. All that shielding for radiation is ideal for defeating anti-smuggling scans. The authorities pay extra attention to her.
A good trouble might be Sticks out like a neon green thumb or something like that. Maybe Battle-scared
Oh, I like that last one.
*Ahem*
Pardon me, carry on.
Instead of actively sticking out, I think I prefer the more passive identifiers, like Battle-Scared. Something you'd have to look out the window to see. So we aren't identifiable from miles away (that's bad for business), but if someone closes to right on top of on us or scans really well we might be in trouble.
I could switch one of Val's skills to Pilot (starship). It'd be easy enough to say that as a 'long-standing member of the crew', she's picked up a few of the controls.
Slightly Radioactive Ex-Military Smuggler sounds like a great concept. I love it. It's the 'slightly' part that really sells it. I'm happy with it :D I also like Battle-Scarred as a trouble; I'm with Sirus in that sticking out too much is bad.
I agree with the high concept.
If we really get into a jam, the Docter can drive us away in whatever ratty old pickup truck we find. Cause he can drive... Apparently.