(no subject)

[the_rck]

Last night, Scott's gaming group met (Calling it the Babylon 5 game seems wrong just now when we're not playing Babylon 5 for a while). Everyone was there except for the guy who's just adopted a baby girl and has to be home for that reason. We don't know when he'll be able to come back, but we probably won't go back to Babylon 5 until he does. At least, I think that's what Scott has in mind. I suppose that, if the absence turns into six months or so, we'll go back to Babylon 5. The difficulty is that his character is sort of central to the B5 game as the link that holds all the other characters together. He plays a trader, and all the rest of us crew his ship.

At any rate, we played more FATE. I'm still trying to get a handle on my character and figure out who she is and what she can do. There are bits of the character sheet that are still blank because I don't know what goes there yet. Scott and I talked about it back in May, but we've both forgotten the details of what we discussed.

Our group got through maybe fifteen minutes of game time in the two and a half hours we played. There was plenty of combat, but there were also things for the non-combatants to do. We ended on a cliffhanger, discovering a bomb that will go off in a few minutes, game time. There's only one character who stands a chance of defusing it, and he's been having rotten dice luck so far this game, so we'll see.

Scott did take a ridiculous bit of background that I made up (cybernetically enhanced snakes) and run with it. I knew the snakes were silly when I made them up, but Scott said to make up anything at all, so... Scott had been making fun of the snakes, so I was kind of surprised when he used them. Of course, he made them considerably more disturbing than I did. Now, when they bite people, those people turn into mind controlled agents of evil.

Comments

[booniverse.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed your character's matter of fact "Oh, well those people are possessed. Naturally" conversation, like it happens every Tuesday at the office.
Your character: "If you describe to me what they are doing, I'll be able to tell what kind of possession they have."
My character: :...what *kind* of possession? What does that even mean?"

I did not expect to get into the weird this soon but it IS a Scott game. I think the mechanics were a little smoother our second try but I don't think we are close to comfortable with the ebb and flow of dice and points and compels and aspects and...stuff. I also think your previous observation about the dice system stands...it still seems like failure is pretty common. I also wonder if that is a product of being "first" level characters. I'd like to continue with the FATE system until we all understand it and see if things get easier, better, cooler or all three. Then again, I do miss playing Molly.

[the_rck]

The possession thing, well, it didn't even occur to me that, if it was obvious to me, it might not be obvious to my character. She ought to know more about the weird than I do. The figuring out what kind, though, there she was improvising a bit and hoping that evidence would surface. I don't know that she believes in mystical possession. She mentioned it for completeness and would probably only consider it if there weren't evidence for some other kind of possession (though she'd keep looking for evidence of something else).

I wish we'd stopped B5 at a less cliffhangery point. I miss playing Emma, but I really want to know how that situation will resolve. Not that Emma's likely to be all that useful planetside, fighting monsters like that.

As to FATE, I'm fairly worried that the dice will stop us from disarming that bomb.

[booniverse.livejournal.com]

I hear you about the B5 Cliffhangery ending...Although the longer we don't play, the more things I can think of which may help out. I'm really good at hind sight thinking!

As to FATE and imminent explody, I will have to check the rules and such, but I *believe* there is a way to boost someone else's score if you have some sort of similar thing to call on...sort of like aiding another. You can give your advantage or your...something FATE-y to another person to use if I recall correctly. In that case, my character has an aspect which he might be able to lend to poor Marcus's character (although my character's familiarity is more with the blowing up of things rather than the keeping things from blowing up but that should be close enough?). If not...we might be in for an interesting third session.

HA! "She mentioned [mystical possession] for completeness and would probably only consider it if there weren't evidence for some other kind of possession" My poor character (and Cheryldactle's character) are firmly grounded in the mundane world and don't even know the "weird" can even exist beyond fantasy novels and such. This is going to be an education for them both.

[the_rck]

I've been trying to come up with a solution for the B5 situation. I'm pretty sure we can get the Perseverance off the planet. I'm not so sure we can help many of the other people who're trapped. I don't want to take the most expedient solution. I want to find the heroic solution if we can. I have a feeling there must be one. We are the heroes, after all.

I suspect that, even if Bradley fails, Scott will find a way to let him succeed. It just might come with a high cost. Scott says that succeeding is possible, even with a failing roll, if one's willing to pay the price.

I figure that once you've seen cybernetically enhanced snakes a lot of other possibilities open up. I decided that Elizabeth is at least moderately genre savvy and will consider weird explanations if they're what fit the evidence. She's not looking for zebras, but she's also not going to assume she's seeing horses if there's evidence to the contrary.