Fate Core Setting Creation Part 1

So, I haven't had anything gaming related to say for a while!  =)

Before my bi-monthly Sunday Pathfinder game earlier this week, I was tinkering with a setting I had thought of a while ago and decided I should try to write it down using Fate Core.  It's a very nice (to me) version of Fate by Evil Hat Games.

The basic premise of the setting is that the entire world is this giant insanity inducing maze forest. Inside this maze forest are pockets of livable areas that may or may not make sense.  Some are serene valleys, volcanic areas, deserts, mini-oceans, etc.  The only way to travel between these areas are portals that appear once and a while.

These portals are short lived and all are two-sided.  Unless a person is attuned to the area the portal leads to, they can only stay for 24 hours before the portal kicks them and anything they're carrying out back into the area they came from.  Any amount of people can travel through a portal once it's opened.

The main reason I've set up the world like this: my group are active adults with families, jobs that require travel, and other important things going on.  If I can keep all 'adventures' to a single session (aka 24 hours) and it makes sense only certain people can go (the portal closed before the whole group could get together to go in) I feel a lot better about the game.  I dislike RPing other people's characters as the GM, and it can get annoying for everyone when we have to take time to remember to do stuff with characters that are easily forgotten cause the player isn't there.

I've noticed this 'invisible character' issue a lot these past few Pathfinder games.  It's hard for my GM to remember that the characters exist, sometimes we don't have sheets for everyone, and often the characters are 'watching the horses' when we could really use their abilities in that session.

Is this a bit contrived and/or video-gamey?  Yes, but I'm okay with that.  There are more video-gamey things to come.

Also, to answer your first question:  Why not just fly?

Because the Maze extends across the world as never ending branches and under the world as forever expanding roots.  Basically, each area is bio-orb (instead of bio-dome) surrounded by the Maze.

Just Curious

I really wonder what it's like to love only one gaming system above all others. I see so many people talking about adapting various settings to their beloved RPG, and I just can't grok it. Why not just play the setting in the system it was designed? I'm not saying porting settings to other systems is bad, far from it. I'm actually jealous of people who can enjoy a single system so much that they'd take the time to tinker and adapt it to a setting. 

Just curious

It Takes One to uh...Odissi?

It's no classical phrase, but I'll guess it'll work.

My favorite things in gaming make me a very annoying player.  I love shape-shifting, having lots of animal companions/summons, crafting, making money, and having solo side adventures.

So, in order to make the game fun for others, I don't get to play my favorite type of characters or peruse my favorite story lines except by accident.  Some would ask, "Why game at all then?"  

First, I really enjoy playing with other people who I consider my friends and care about.  It fills me with great joy when my friend the GM runs a successful game and makes us all 'angry' at the monsters.  It's awesome when my friends' characters reach their goals or do something really awesome that puts the spotlight on them.

Second, it puts me out of my comfort zone.  I'm forced to play characters I normally wouldn't--this has actually lead to me finding out I really enjoy support and buffing characters.  I also like characters that have all the skills (but not necessarily all the powers) for a situation.  Although, with that last character type, I really have to be careful not to step on other's toes all the time!

And lastly, it gets me out of the house!  =)

Solo gaming allows me my guilty and incredibly boring (to other people) gaming pleasures.  Being a GM and the players all at once.  Characters that mesh well or a single character that gets an extremely specific story.  Playing game types or story lines anyone else would find boring or strange.  

In order to make my games not fall into 'just writing a novel' trap, I use multiple solo gaming tools: Mythic GM Emulator, Rory's Story Cubes (and all the expansion sets), websites and several books full of random charts for names, places, dungeons, and NPCs.  

However, depending on how detailed you get, solo gaming can be very draining but mentally and if you're getting serious, physically!  Making sure to not fall into the 'every PC is the same' trap is actually the most difficult part of the whole operation for me.  Also, knowing the stats for literally everything and doing maps if you want can be taxing.

This side of the hobby also allows me to use my LEGO figures and bricks to full effect.  Dragging around a whole 66 quart storage container around to your normal gaming session is out of the question!

What else can I say about solo gaming?  It takes a specific type of person to really enjoy it.  I know it's not for everyone, but I'm glad there are communities for it (as funny as that is--communities for a solo activity 'meant' for groups).

I'm currently writing up five characters for a Ryuutama RPG game.  You have a calculating yet charming merchant, a stern faced hunter who can see forest spirits, a healer trying to finish her brother's herbalism research book, a farmer with a love of music and the gift of Summer magic, and finally a mustachioed man artisan cook who wields a cast iron frying pan who sparkles when he speaks of the cookbook full of recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation.  I haven't figured out their pack animals or pets, but I'm sure there will be a donkey with a bad attitude in there somewhere.

Fun times!

Also, I apologize for the lack of posts.  Luckily I finally have a doctor that is taking my issues seriously!

Hump Day Update

Sorry about the lack of blog posts over the weekend.  I was pretty sick with my reoccurring kidney issues and back/nerve pain.  Even went to the hospital again!  At least they treated me like a person this time.  Having my STNA sister around probably helped that!  =)

Episode eight of my modded Minecraft 1.7.10 let's play series will be coming out today around 5pm!
I've got back to playing WoW despite that huge blog post of not being interested!  It seems that the new Tanaan Jungle zone in WoD is really similar to the Timeless Isle from MoP, so I re-subbed.  I've actually been having a lot of fun.  It was nice to have something to do all weekend when I couldn't really move around.

The new shipyard for the garrison is also pretty neat.  I really like seeing the actual ships you've built sitting around the harbor.  Man, I really miss my farm from MoP.  =(

I also found out (technically again) that you can buy WoW Tokens in game for gold from other players that allow you to get a month of game time!  Since I had some stuff hoarded in my bags and around 5k starting gold, I decided to see how long it'd take to get 27k ish gold.  It took four days!  I really only needed to make 17k gold after selling everything but still.  Since I don't really care about always having the most awesome items available, I'm selling all the Felblight I find.

If I can continue this trend, I'll basically be able to play WoW for free!  Then I won't feel bad.  xD

Hmm, what else?  I'm reading a trilogy called Orcs by Stan Nicholls.  It's a fantasy series told from the perspective of orcs instead of following around a group of humans, elves, or halflings saving the world.  I'm loving it so far.  It also helps that I was able to get the anthology book for $8.

My next blog post will hopefully be my thoughts on solo gaming!

Weekend Videos

I've decided that I'm going to post a LP video of my modded Minecraft video every day of the week instead of just on weekdays.  I want this to become a good, continuous habit!  Making videos helps me feel better.  =)

I'm also trying to decide what other games I should make LPs of or at least do Pam Trys... videos.  I might bring back my Pam Dies In series for rogue-like/arcade style games.

My Thoughts on World of Warcraft

It was around this time of the year back in 2004 that I first experienced World of Warcraft.  My fiance had been invited to what I assume was the open beta and was eager to share the game with me. I immediately found the game to be beautiful and a wonderful change from all of the 'real-life brown and grey' games that had been coming out at that time.

Up till that point my only experience with MMOs had been playing Everquest (although due to the death penalty, never getting past level 20) and a brief stint into player hosted server Ultima Online. My main character in Everquest had been an Iskar Shaman, and I loved the idea of playing a non-human look-a-like and being able to run around buffing people.

I had never played any of the Warcraft RTS games, but I knew of  Blizzard from playing Diablo II and Starcraft.  I immediately fell in love with the Horde.  I could be an full blooded orc that wasn't evil!  There were bull people, shamanism, raptors running around, and epic tribal music.  It was great!

Playing the open beta allowed my fiance and I to become hooked.  We bought the game the night it released and made characters together.  My first character and one that has become almost part of me was Garuk, an orc beastmaster hunter.  Back then you didn't start off with a pet but my first pet was FlappyFoot, a derpy looking red raptor found in Durotan.  He was so named due to the odd 'flapping' animation of his feet when running.

Fast forward and WoW had become a very important part of my life.  It was a game my fiance and I could play together, and it allowed me to feel better about myself.  Here was something I was good at--not just playing the game but also earning money through the Auction House.  It's weird to look back on now, but I was so proud that I could buy my fiance whatever he wanted in WoW.  I couldn't work back then (although neither one of us knew why I kept losing jobs), so I couldn't bring in real money.  But by the gods, I was some sort of trading wizard in that virtual world.

Travelling into Outlands was a blast.  I loved Nagrand with its wide open plains and over arching elemental theme.  Sadly as the Burning Crusade expansion's life span was coming to a close, so was my fiance's interest in WoW.  At that point I was leveling his character for him, so we could occasionally play together.  Eventually, he stopped.

I rushed into Wrath of Lich King at midnight and was running around Sholazar Basin trying to be the first person to reach max level mining by dawn, even though I was almost six levels too low for the zone.  While I didn't reach max level that night, I did fall in love with that zone and the little Gorlocs that lived there.

I was not so excited for Mists of Pandaria.  By this time I was getting sick of WoW's crafting system.  It was the same thing every expansion just with new icons and names.  At this point in my life I had been exposed to countless (seriously) MMOs and their various crafting systems.  The only real fun part for me in MoP was the farm you got in Valley of Four Winds (and the Harvest Moon-style relationships you could foster with the other NPCs there), that Sandstone Drake mount you could turn into, and Timeless Isle with all of its treasure chests, rare NPC spawns, and fun things to do.

I gave WoW one last chance with Warlords of Draenor.  Certainly it was going to be fun all over again because this time you got a Garrison and minions!  With having so many max level alts, I had to do the Garrison quests too many times and logging into each character just became a chore.  The Garrison felt more like a mobile game with its energy, timers, and restricted game play than something actually fun.  Garuk got to level 100 but only because I felt he deserved it.

I have zero hopes for the expansion announced today: Legion.  I don't care about demon hunters, I don't care about elf lore, I don't care about customizable artifact weapons.  There are only two things that might interest me:

1) If the new follower system is interactive like they say, where they come with you on missions.  It'd be kinda cool to be able to do dungeons or whatever with a party of hand picked NPCs instead of random people.  Even if you couldn't do normal dungeons, being able to DnD party it would be interesting.

2) BM Hunters get customizable pets like how feral/guardian druids are getting customizable forms for their artifact weapons.  I don't want a stupid colorful bow.  Let me give Flappy Foot some sweet armor or flaming claws!

I'd say I would be interested in a new crafting system but that has 0% chance of ever happening.

Minecraft 1.7.10 Let's Play

My new modded Minecraft 1.7.10 series is uploading now!  Visit this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqBG353Q7_U&feature=youtu.be

Hope you guys enjoy!  The list of mods and the texture pack used are in the description of the video.