sockjack
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Posts: 56
Preferred Game Systems: DRYH, Fate, Mazerats, PbTa
Currently Running: SI'Sah Stories (The Sprawl Campaign), & Random Oneshots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Bad Monkeys
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Post by sockjack on Sept 12, 2016 7:21:35 GMT -8
Long story short, I got a new rpg group together to start a Fate Core campaign this Sunday, but no one has a particular campaign/setting in mind. I figure this would be a great time to take a collaborative approach to designing the everything. I just don't know exactly how to do that cleanly.
The game plan is to have the first session be world and character creations. We all give give 3ish ideas of what they want in the game, then we all vote STV style to fill in the blanks.
Any advice on how to make sure the build session and subsequent campaign doesn't devolve into a pile of burning failure would be much appreciated!
Thanks for reading!
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tomes
Supporter
Hello madness
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Post by tomes on Sept 12, 2016 9:53:55 GMT -8
So. There is this GM-less game called Microscope ( www.lamemage.com/microscope/), which is a world / history building game. Now, I'm not suggesting that you use it per se (as you would need to purchase, read up on, and run this as it's own separate game), BUT there are definitely things I have learned from this game that would help in creating a collaborative world with multiple other people. First off: I'd actually recommend Microscope itself, so there's that. But in regards to your question... I'd start by making sure everyone is on the same page with a general premise (before people start throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the game; unless you want RIFTS or something). The general premise should be able to fit into a sentence. Like "A space-faring human culture exploring unknown regions in space", or "An isolated outpost of generic fantasy races after a zombie apocalypse, trying to find survivors". Or whatever. That gives a start. I really like Microscope's method of allowing everyone to have a say with the Palette. This is when you go in a circle, and each person is able to Add or Ban an item. "No Orcs". "Yes to intelligent magic items". "Yes to demons from other planes". "No to vancian magic". Whatever. This continues until someone says "pass", and then everyone else has one more round. What this does is allow everyone to have a voice, but noone to control the conversation. And if everyone is good with all that, you should have a rough starting point that everyone agrees on, and some rough parameters. If everyone says "No orcs", and someone says they want to play an Orc or Half-orc, well, then you have a different sort of problem. But at least you've identified the asshole early on, and can solve for that problem accordingly. What you want to avoid is everyone saying "cool" to a scifi inspired game, and then someone saying they are a wizard. If you do this Palette thing correctly, we should all be on roughly the same page for what is and isn't allowed in the setting we've agreed on.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
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Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
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Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Sept 12, 2016 13:28:12 GMT -8
With my recent Fate campaign, I was going to create a world, but one of the players had a copy of the rules and said we should do the collaborative thing. So I said "sure, what do you guys want to play?"
Silence
So I said "Ok I was thinking about this jetpunk thing, Britain wins the space race in the fifties, Dan Dare, Journey into Space (Jet Morgan), that kind of thing"
Yeahhhhh no
"OK, so, ideas? Fantasy, sci-fi, horror, historica, modern?"
Silence.
"OK" flipping though the Worlds PDFs, "King Arthur in Giant Mechs? Firefighter? WW1 pilots? Body-snatching flesh eating aliens in Louis XIVs court? Wild West Superheroes..."
Then one says "Hold on, what's that one?"
" Wild West Superheroes"
"No, WW1 pilots vs Body Snatching Aliens"
Me "errr OK"
Best. Campaign. Ever. for me as GM. It's literally writing itself.
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sockjack
Apprentice Douchebag
Another Successful Oneshot!
Posts: 56
Preferred Game Systems: DRYH, Fate, Mazerats, PbTa
Currently Running: SI'Sah Stories (The Sprawl Campaign), & Random Oneshots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Bad Monkeys
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Post by sockjack on Sept 12, 2016 19:25:12 GMT -8
So by the sounds of it, I should just have a grip of ideas and then have them flesh out whichever one they bite on?
I think I can do that, but what should I do for passive players then?
1 of the players has never played a tabletop rpg before and is quiet in general. The rest are good players, but loud. I don't want the quiet one's ideas getting buried in the shuffle.
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Post by Forresst on Sept 12, 2016 19:40:55 GMT -8
THat's easy. Let the louds say a thing, then single out the quiet one to have a say. Wash rinse repeat. If you want a little more structure to it, maybe you might consider something like
1. Genre - Fantasy, Steampunk, Retro, Modern, Near-future, Far future, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, space opera, cowboys, pirates, ninjas, other?
2. Tone - Heroic, Gritty, Cthulhu-style neotragedy, good guys, bad guys, morally ambiguous, young, old, other?
3. Focus - Action, fighty-fight-fight, adventure, political, intrigue, war, rescue mission, mcguffin chasing, bad guy smacking, other?
4. Specifics.
By specifics, hopefully everyone is engaged enough to just be adding their own ideas in.
Sometimes I think people get paralysed by too many choices, or not knowing what the "proper" choice is, at the start of a brainstorming session. So if you kinda start out as broad as possible, you can offer kind of a list of ideas for people to say yes or no for, without severely limiting what they could come up with later. This lets them kinda build up the gumption to say "actually fuck pirates I want to be cowboys with lasers", which can sometimes take a bit of prompting to get to.
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tomes
Supporter
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Post by tomes on Sept 12, 2016 20:25:01 GMT -8
The rest are good players, but loud. I don't want the quiet one's ideas getting buried in the shuffle. If you want to do it loosely, do what Forresst or fredrix said. If you want more structure, the reason I recommended Microscope is because it deals with exactly that issue... it provides some structure around "limiting" how everyone shares, so that they share equally. For example, when it mandates that each player, one at a time, add or ban one item in the palette. That strict rule is on purpose, to ensure equal sharing. You can handle it ad hoc (as they suggested), or using a structured system... but either way, if you handle it, you will get some sort of equal participation. I'd be very interested to hear how it goes whichever way you do it.
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sockjack
Apprentice Douchebag
Another Successful Oneshot!
Posts: 56
Preferred Game Systems: DRYH, Fate, Mazerats, PbTa
Currently Running: SI'Sah Stories (The Sprawl Campaign), & Random Oneshots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Bad Monkeys
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Post by sockjack on Sept 13, 2016 20:23:00 GMT -8
Forresst - Thanks for the Idea, I like how that really simplifies the setting progression. that should keep the discussion from stalling out really well! tomes - I like your take on round tabling the concepts, I'll have to grab microscope and check out the palette approach you were talking about. I'll definitely be using that as well! I ended up creating a doc for the players to add on ahead of time. I figure that should make the actual session run faster too. I'd be happy to let you know how it goes, hopefully as cleanly as it went with fredrix's group!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2016 1:11:28 GMT -8
Forresst - Thanks for the Idea, I like how that really simplifies the setting progression. that should keep the discussion from stalling out really well! tomes - I like your take on round tabling the concepts, I'll have to grab microscope and check out the palette approach you were talking about. I'll definitely be using that as well! I ended up creating a doc for the players to add on ahead of time. I figure that should make the actual session run faster too. I'd be happy to let you know how it goes, hopefully as cleanly as it went with fredrix's group! It seems to me that you should start off with the core assumptions of what fate does best. You are playing a crew of competent people. The game will likely have a pulpy sort of feel. While you could run a horror game where everyone was helpless and was incapable, that's not where FATE hits its stride. From there figure out what sort of competent characters you want to play. What people are interested in should give you a general idea of what setting that would work with.
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sockjack
Apprentice Douchebag
Another Successful Oneshot!
Posts: 56
Preferred Game Systems: DRYH, Fate, Mazerats, PbTa
Currently Running: SI'Sah Stories (The Sprawl Campaign), & Random Oneshots
Favorite Species of Monkey: Bad Monkeys
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Post by sockjack on Sept 19, 2016 20:30:49 GMT -8
Thank you all for your input and advice! Here are the results!
The Session: The Sunday Session kinda flopped since 3 of the 5 players canceled last minute. (Literally all within seconds of each-other, impressive really) The palette approach seemed to lose some steam since missing so many players kinda discouraged us, but we managed to drill into what exactly they were looking for. Structuring each part ahead of time also helped keep everyone focused and narrowed everything down to something manageable. Definitely made the whole thing a lot less stressful!
The Result: The players that made it decided on a Gritty Dark Comedy tone, focusing on Espionage, sabotage and political machinations. I had some input from the other 3 earlier from the online doc, which said they wanted magical/modern/drama elements to the game. So we ended up agreeing to a Dresden Files game set in Occupied LA during an ongoing Vampire War, with the two present players each making a High Concept for the game and the others sharing the last slot. (I know that's vindictive, but I wanted to reward the players that actually showed up.)
The Story: The game opens with Red Court Vampires controlling most of the Greater LA, and the players being a tiny resistance group doing whatever they can to fight back without being killed by the Vampires; or worse. They will be kinda like the Batman, if he was poor, untrained, ill-equipped, and had no idea what he as doing. They will be trying to gain allies wherever they can in order to bolster these shortcomings, with whatever that entails.
The Comeback: The two players that showed up really delivered on coming up with awesome locations for the story. And one of the absent players added to the doc once they were free. They added a ton of meat to the story's bones and made a cool “little fish in a big pond of Sharkacudas” theme run through it all. Those three seem really excited for the campaign, and they are all familiar with Fate already, so the can help with the others if they choose to participate.
I'm gonna have them all come up with a Crew Concept ala' Deep Dark Blue, as well as regular Character creation next session. It should be a great campaign as long as I can get everyone to show!
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tomes
Supporter
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Posts: 1,438
Currently Running: Dungeon World, hippie games, Fallout Shelter RPG hack
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Post by tomes on Sept 19, 2016 21:06:02 GMT -8
Wow. I have to say, I'm jealous. Great job.
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Post by Houndin on Sept 20, 2016 9:08:34 GMT -8
I'm late to the party as usual, but in the same vein as microscope, there's another free one called Dawn of Worlds. I have a youtube of part of my group playing it. (It's only like 2h25m long... go for it) And there's a Gnome Stew Article about it too. We had a lot of fun creating the world. I intend to use it at some point in a PWYW product, if I can ever get off my ass and actually write anything more than forum and social media posts.
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