Originally shared by Jamie Frost
I’m currently running a game of Masks on Sundays, and am considering starting up a second campaign of something different. It would be weekly, on either Tuesday or Thursday, with run time of 3 hours which I’m okay running a little long on, a start time of no sooner than 5pm EST and an end time of no later than 10pm EST. The medium would probably be Roll20 and Hangouts. Cast your votes regardless, but if you’d be interested in playing let me know your time and date preferences.
Potential campaigns are as follows:
Avatar FAE: I really like both Avatar series, and the setting is ripe for roleplaying. I ran a campaign in it once, but there were a couple of problems. The first was that I used a mishmash of Atomic Robo and Venture City, and it was too crunchy and weird; stripping it down to FAE with Aspect permissions doing most of the work should help that. The other issue is that it was too sandbox-y and I didn’t give there players much to latch onto, plus they didn’t have much hand in world building. To fix that, we’d carve out our space in the setting using A Spark in Fate Core.
Fellowship of the Mushroom Kingdom: One of the things I really like about the Paper Mario games is how they take all these characters who would ordinarily be power up pinatas and give them personalities and cultures. The sidekicks are really way more interesting than Mario! So I’d like to run a game where the PCs are nonhuman characters, like Bobombs and Shy Guys and Goombas and whatnot, who have to save the Mushroom Kingdom from a terrible threat while the plumbers aren’t around. The system would be Fellowship by Jacob Randolph.
Masks and Mechas: I like Masks, and I like giant robots, so why not combine them? The PCs would be young mech pilots, in a setting where mechs are as much a part of life as supers are in Halcyon City. This one will probably require the most work on everyone’s part to get right, because Masks requires that certain thematic elements be present and we’ll need to make sure the setting has them all.
I don’t have that one, but I played the non-Fate version. It was fun, but I don’t feel compelled to spend money on it when I know I’m going to toss out the setting and wouldn’t necessarily keep any of the mechanics either.
To play avatar, why not try Legend of the Elements ?
logbook-project.com – Legend of the Elements
I’ve looked through LotE, but Fate fits Avatar better than the apocalypse engine does in my estimation. Also that system focuses on things I don’t consider particularly important.
Just very fast spitballing here:
Transformed makes little sense in this right?
Is the Legacy about a Legacy of pilots or is it more about the Mecha or both?
How about the Doomed? Is it a special Mecha that draws on the user’s lifeforce or does it itself have an expiration date?
The Nova just has a super powerful Mecha nobody else can control and they can hardly do it?
I feel what would be missing from the roster would be the Mechanic archetype who is super good and cool because they love and care for their Mecha more than anybody else and that can do amazing things because they put so much work into it.
The Newborn makes a lot of sense here but probably wouldn’t work quite so well if they are the Mecha itself. Not 100% sure there.
The Joined leads to Combiner Mecha or Jaegers!
Great spitballing! Naturally the ultimate answers would come from the players, but here are my thoughts:
The Transformed is about body horror, and I think that’s easy to translate into a mech setting with something like highly visible cybernetics or mutations that make them more effective pilots.
The Legacy could conceivably be both, but it makes more sense if there are multiple pilots with their own mechs. The Legacy needs more than one member, and they need to be of importance to the setting, so having them be active pilots makes the most sense.
The Doomed could be that, or any number of things. Maybe they’re infected with nanites which let them control their creepy mech, but the nanites will eventually break them down and fuse them with the mech like all who came before them. Maybe their mech is stolen from ancient and dangerous precursors, and their Doom is being tracked down and killed.
That is pretty on point for the Nova. Their mech is dangerous, and does things other mechs just can’t. They’re the Lagann, the Wing Zero and so on.
The Mechanic could be a good background for a lot of the playbooks, but to me it screams Beacon. You’ve got a pretty tame mech that you’ve put a lot of work into because darn it you are going to be a pilot! Also, No Powers and Not Nearly Enough Training for all the upgrades you scavenge.
I don’t really like Newborn or Joined, but yeah, they’re pretty good thematic fits. The Newborn could maybe be like Android from Dark Matter or Rommy/Andromeda from Andromeda: they’re part of their vehicle, but they can walk among humans too. That’s important: pilots have lives both in and out of the cockpit.
I would love to try any of these out man, I’m totally free, My number one thing is Mario, then two is mechs, and three is avatar, I’m up to play any of these 🙂