Sunday, January 13, 2013

Skill issues, and my REAL second project



I was going to have a post describing my skills in detail and building stunts for them. As you will see, that is not the case. I am having difficulty with the skills section of Magi. I was going along alright, then I realized i was uncertain if I was being clear. I am entirely to close to this project and I may not be objective. So I give you a sample of my skill writing and I ask that you let me know if it is clear, or if you think it needs more. Here is the trickiest one I have:

Affinity
Description: Everything is connected.Or more to the point, everything can be connected. This skill deals with the connections between people, places, and things. It is a difficult skill to fully grasp on its own. The easiest example is movement and teleportation.
Overcome: you roll to move through rough or blocked terrain, or to move further or faster. This could be via teleportation, seven-league-stride-altering you form to a faster one, cybernetics, or whatever. This can also be used to understand the connection between things, roll to find out what that connection is. This could be post-cognition(the past connects to the present), some sort of Kirlian apparatus(aura reading the connection between people),  or whatever.
Advantage: Creating an advantage with this skill is changing the distance, altering the relationship, or creating a new relationship: being in two places simultaneously, Someone liking yo for no real reason(this does not manipulate memory, just relationship).
Attack: You attack to break down relationships, physical or mental. Mental attacks are easier with this, but physical attacks are also doable. remember this is about altering an existing relationships and affinities. Major movement(kinetic energy) is covered by Forces. Attacking someone mentally(altering there relationship with another person or thing) will not change the memories of how they were, just the emotions of how they relate. If you have ever fallen out of love, its a lot like that. Physically altering the affinity of someone with gravity or there connection to the world can send them flying into things.
Defend: You defend with this skill by altering where you were, or altering when you were, or altering how people view you. You can stop someone from hating you, or wanting you dead.




So, while I work that out I will be working on another project for a bit. I was going to continue with Buck Rogers, but I found that it lacked any kind of change to the rules of bog standard Fate Core, save for dog fighting which is covered in Kriegzeppelin Valkyrie.

I had a few other thoughts on what settings to do, but eventually I set my sights on one of my favorites. There is loads of material and many different kinds of campaign frameworks within the setting. It has many different in setting systems that interact with the rules, so there will be loads for me to consider and convert. I will be converting the Aeon Trinity continuum to Fate Core.

Aeon has several really interesting parts to it: Psionics, Superpowers, Faster-than Light Travel, Aliens, War, Mecha, espionage, conspiracy, and loads of others. The setting itself stretches from an alternate 1920s to the 2120s.  I will be breaking down the parts of the setting I like and reworking them to fit how I see the setting. It will be mostly the same, but there will be some changes so that that setting will work better for the types of campaigns I tend to run. Also I will be adding little tweaks to the setting, just for my own enjoyment of setting creation.
Psions
Artificially enhanced humans, with powers beyond those of normal men. They seem to be the salvation of man. If only they could unite. Created by secret alien masterminds, for purposes known only to them, the Psions work hard every day to fight the Aberrant menace.

There are several parts of the Psions I really like and would enjoy monkeying around with. The psionic powers are a bit of trouble. I think I will probably build a bunch of broad skills for the aptitudes and then use stunts to represent various pieces of the modes. this is problematic in a way, as it adds quite a few extra skills to the list.  

Another thing they have is bioware. Basically they can build living tools that only those with psi can use in the original game there is a limit to the amount of bioware you can attune to. I am not sure if this is still required for a Fate version. If I do it would also work well as a system for using some types of cyberware, so it is a thought I have had.

The Psi factions are also very interesting, and I think they would work far better in Fate Core. I am thinking of having an organizational aspect as one of the steps in character creation. I will work on this as the project goes on.
Aberrants
Wielding powers beyond their ability to control. Forged in quantum fire, tempered in the madness of war. These beings are terrifying, not for their alienness, but for the fact that they were once human. Mad and mutated, genius beyond human thought, these beings are power incarnate. Or at least that is the story the Trinity tells everyone.

They show up out of nowhere, like the titans of old they seek only the subjugation of man and reclamation of the Earth. They are not ravening monsters. They are calculating and cunning. Like the people the spawned from they are fractious. Some wish to leave Earth and its people alone, some to rule, and some to destroy.

I really want to do something really special with the Aberrants. I would like them to be playable in the Trinity era. I would also like to make them playable alongside Baselines and Psions alike. THis will be tricky, but not impossible. I think I may use bits from Strange Fate to make it work. Some of the largest Changes to the game world will probably involve the Aberrants. I would like to see a few more o the worlds they control, what they have done in 60 plus years(some of them had left Earth as early as 2020). These strange planets would allow me to do some of the wierder stuff I would like to do with the setting.

I also want to do some stuff with the aliens and the mechs(known in setting as VARGs). There was some interest, when I brought this up, in doing a Babylon 5 hack. As much as I like that series I do not know it well enough to do a setting hack for it. I do intend to bring some of the elements of it to the game, however. We will see how well that works.





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