The paper that was due at 10PM last Sunday was actually finished at 8:40PM last Sunday. While still done early, this wasn’t exactly early enough to say “well, it’s time to PAR-TAY!” given the importance of showing up on time on Monday.
It is now the weekend after the last big paper was due! It’s time to PAR-TAY!!! Except, of course, tomorrow morning is the Children’s Christmas Party at work and we have to make an appearance as Mr. and Mrs. Claus and hand out presents to the children and do everything in our power to not have them freak out for their pictures for their parents. (This is seriously one of the most stressful days of the year for me. Will I be responsible for a child being traumatized? They have heard stories for weeks now about how Santa will be showing up come Christmas and THEY ARE GOING TO SEE THE MAN HIMSELF. This is, like, Michael Jackson (pre-90’s), Britney Spears (pre-10’s), and the Archangel Gabriel all mixed up together in one package AND HE IS GOING TO BE HERE!!! AUGH!!!!! HOW DO YOU *NOT* FREAK OUT ABOUT THAT???? And I, somehow, have to live up to that. Which is why Maribou is there. She’s sort of a buffer between me and the kids. A humanizing factor, if you will.)
So, after that? PAR-TAY TIME. Until it’s time to go to our gaming session.
We’re starting up a new game in the Fate System and this will be session 1… which means that we all sit together and discuss exactly what it is that we have in our world and, especially, our city. For my part, I had only one request: Heavily Interventionist Deities.
Why? *CURE LIGHT WOUNDS*
But I get ahead of myself. After gaming concludes, we get to ease into Sunday… which, we think, will contain nothing but Laundry. Which also translates to PAR-TAY TIME. Not too much, though. We have to be at work on Monday.
So… what’s on your docket?
I forgot to ask the question! It’s there now! I’m sorry!
Too late — I already read the post and thought “geez, he doesn’t give a damn what I’m doing this weekend — screw ‘im, I’ll give someone else the opportunity to hear about my plans. Which are excitingly awesome.”
I wrote it when I was bleary eyed and still mostly asleep! Once I had my caffeine, I started caring again!
Last weekend we got too busy to get the Christmas tree, so that’s our plan this weekend.
But two of the kids are going to friends’ houses tonight, the wife is working a swim-meet tomorrow, and I’m trying to finish grading (while managing to spend more time at the League), so…we’ll see if any Christmas tree manages to appear at the Hanley household or not.
Color spray, my disadvantaged urban youth compatriot.
The fate system, to the best of my knowledge, allows for some magnificent damage production. Pick up a tank and drop it on a guy. That sort of thing.
That’s all well and good.
The problem is not the ability to stun a 4-hit-die creature but the seeming lack of the ability to turn an exhausted/wounded team-member into a fresh and healthy one.
Who cares what I’m doing this weekend. I wants more details on the FATE game.
I’ve discussed them to a small degree
here, here , and here.
What more would you like to know?
I take it you’re playing Dresden Files again? I picked up the Strands of Fate and several dF with the intent of running a few one-shots and an eventual Eberron Campaign.
So any advice you’ve got for the wannabe fate GM would be handy for me personally, and any tales of badassery would probably be appreciated by the rest of your readers too.
It’s not Dresden Files, per se.
(I may need to ask Human Hireling to explain… nutshell/wine version: It’s Dresden in a vaguely medieval Dresdenless universe.)
HH can explain much better than I can.
That kinda makes sense. One of the things that makes the DF rules shine is the process of building the setting–and that’s stronger the further away you get from just copying the DF books.
Hey, sorry I was late on my cue there.
Alan, I’m GMing an unholy mashup of the Dresden Files rules, which are sometimes a little over-detailed and persnickety for my taste; the Fate 2.0 rules (link to pdf) which are admirably free form but lack some of the things I like about Dresden (the more narrative, double-edged aspects being the main one); and my own wacky ideas.
The setting is Zak Smith’s Vornheim, which is designed to play with older editions of D&D. It’s interesting to have the group take a fictional city and flesh it out. I gave them some of the top important things about Vornheim as I saw it, and then we came up with factions and locations all together.
My only advice so far, since we just got started, is that when you are creating the setting to come in with a strong point of view that you are willing to make many adjustments to. Ask more questions than you make statements. Let the players make the characters they want and figure out later how that’s going to work mechanically.
[In two weeks I’ll be better able to report if this is actually good advice or not. DMan might have something to say in the meantime.]
I think that Vornheim is one of the more interesting settings I’ve seen. If it reminds me of anything, it reminds me of a dark ages version of Judge Dredd.