Setting Ideas

So, we have had some scheduling conflicts that have got in the way of getting the first session up and running. In an attempt to get the crative juices flowing, I offered the group the following list of settings that have been kicking around in the back of my head for what is proabably longer than is healthy for a normal human being:

Lac Bridgeon

Time:	Non-Earth world
Genre:	D&D-esk Fantasy
Feeling:	Cultural clashes between four races
Tech:	Medieval
Magic:	You betcha!
Spirits:	Competing race-based pantheons
Sources:	D&D, DM of the Rings, the Red Box Hack, Carl Jung

Setup

The four races are split between the four elements:

• Humans, Fire, Analyzers, swords
• Elves, Air, Intuiters, bows
• Dwarfs, Earth, Doers, tools as weapons
• Goblins, Water, Feelers, chains

The starting setting is centered around a mostly Human port city that sits between Elves in the West, and Dwarves in the East. It has a problem with Goblins in the sewers.

Tensions between the four races is high. They really don't understand each other very well -- or at all. Especially the cardinally aligned ones (Humans and Goblins, Elves and Dwarfs).

Characters

Moreso than any other fantasy setting, the player characters will be anomolies. They will actually get along with members of the other races in their party (to a certain extent). And so, these characters can be of any race. It would be coolest, however, to have at least one character from each race represented in the character's party.

Setting Building

I started this setting after reading some stuff on building campaign worlds for D&D. The central theme, of four cardinally-aligned races that, therefore, do not see eye-to-eye, could be dropped into any fantasy world. I sketched out a map of very small part of the world. What is outside of that is completely open to interpretation. In fact, much of the map can be filled-in as needed.

Real Heroes

Time:	Present Day
Genre:	'Realistic' Super-heroes
Feeling:	Super Angst meets the Paparazzi
Tech:	Present-day
Magic:	Super-powers but no spell magic
Spirits:	Present-day, no direct power
Sources:	The Incredibles, The Specials, Heroes, The Tick, Mystery Men, Hancock, Wild Cards

Setup

Starting about 6 months ago, people started manifesting super powers, most of the time in a pretty public way. All the people that manifested super powers were between the ages of 16 and 20. Maybe a couple of hundred people across the whole world were affected.

Characters

Characters are trapped between their personal desires for their powers and societal pressures.

I'm concerned with exploring the nature of fame when the famous can smack a photographer to the ground hardly without noticing. I want to look at governmental, police and other legal issues.

Setting Building

I figure in-game story telling about events in the world is probably the best way to fill out this setting. We all know about the world right now and are quite capable of guessing how various factions will react to the presence of super-powered humans.

The Whole Ether Company

Time:	Near Future, parallel universe
Genre:	"Low-Tech" Science Fiction
Feeling:	British Imperials in Space
Tech:	All "future" technology was found, not discovered
Magic:	Psionics
Spirits:	Weird, Ancient and Alien
Sources:	Classic Traveller RPG, The East India Company, The World of Null A, but with a bit more pulpy flair

Setup

In 1869, a British trading expedition in India discovered an intact space craft. The craft was claimed by the East India Company and returned to London for study. Due to the presence of a "Matter Transmogrifier" on the ship, the process of studying the craft's secrets was greatly sped up.

After winning the Great War in 1914, pretty much single-handedly, the East India Company took control of most of southern Germany as partial payment for their efforts. When they turned their attention to interstellar colonization and exploitation, they changed their name to the Whole Ether Company.

They were forcibly driven off Earth when the Americans nuked the WEC spaceport near Stuttgart in 1938. The WEC retaliated by dropping asteroids on the East coast of the US.

At the start of the game, the WEC has three colonies, Avalon (known for its huge trees), New Manchester (known for its mineral-rich mountains) and New Wales (known for its rolling fertile fields).

Characters

The characters will be explorers, trying to fill in the gaps in the WEC's stellar maps. They will meet and greet all sorts of alien creatures, people and architecture as they jaunt across the galaxy.

Setting Building

I've been rolling this setting around in my mind for more than a dozen years. I remember riffing on the setting with Myron an age ago. I was focused on where the British were going and he wanted to explore the damage to the Eastern seaboard of the US. There are a lot of open areas, even though the thread I've followed (how humans got into space) may not be the most flexible.

Classic Traveller

Time:	Far Future
Genre:	"Low-Tech" Science Fiction
Feeling:	Making ends meet on the fringes of a massive Interstellar Empire
Tech:	Restricted List of Future Technology
Magic:	Psionics?
Spirits:	None
Sources:	Classic Traveller RPG, Battlestar Galactica (2003), The Foundation series, Larry Niven's Future History
Rules:	http://www.phreeow.net/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Spirit+of+the+Far+Future

Setup

Humanity has spread throughout a fair swath of the galaxy. It has joined into many Empires that have fallen and reformed, over and over. Currently, the Imperium controls some 2/3rds of known space. Two other human empires stand in opposition, the Vilani (declining) and the Zhodani (rising). There are several non-human empires on the fringe of the Imperium (Aslan, Hivers, Centaurs and Vargr), as well as a number of minor intelligent races.

The traditional place to adventure is on the fringes of the Imperium, where the Imperium is still expanding.

Characters

The Imperium (and her neighbours) require each citizen to serve in an Imperial agency (Armed Forces, Merchant Fleets, etc.) for a minimum of 4 years. Classic character generation walks each character through 4 or more years of service to the Imperium (or equivalent). Once the characters muster out of their service, they join up and adventure together. I'm sure we can make that more compelling!

Setting Building

The history of the setting is quite well established. However, the details are completely open, especially on the edges of the Imperium. I figure players will be free to create whole worlds, as well as riff on stories about events in the area.

Characters in Fate: Statistics

There was a very cool discussion on the Fate list sparked by a new player of Spirit of the Century. He was having problems moving his mindset from d20 AD&D to Fate. Jovin and Landon Darkwood showed this cool way of thinking about Aspects, Skills and Stunts:

• Aspects represent what your character Is.
• Skills represent what your character can Do.
• Stunts represent what your character's Role is in the game.

Landon goes on to explain that Stunts are as close as Spirit of the Century gets to character classes. They are there to say, "my character is the dude who does 'X' in the story." Be that crashing the car into stuff, soaking damage or hypnotizing people.

I was just thinking—another way of thinking of these three types of stats is:

• Aspects are the answer to "who are you?"
• Skills are the answer to "what do you do?"
• Stunts are the answer to "what are you known for?"

I hope that helps!

The Setting Game: Topics

Topics

This is not an exclusive list, just a bunch of suggestions. Some, particularly the setting topics, are likely going to change in response to the previous declarations. I've split them up into two groups, Genre Topics and Setting Topics.

Genre Topics
These topics are for deciding on the broad tenets of the setting. They are meant to answer the question, "What kind of story is it?"

• Setting genre / Time period (like renaissance, modern day or post- appocalyse) [1]
• Technology (kind, level, availability, etc.)
• Magic (kind, level, availability, etc.)
• Religion / Deities / Demons / Spirits
• Plot genre (like detective, swashbuckling, prison or horror) including the broad type of adventure (quest, unity of location) [1]
• Character power level (weak, average, heroes, super-heroes, kinds of powers)
• Availability of resources (what is scant and what is abundant)
• Fame of the characters (and it's nature)

[1] I'm trying to make a distinction between *when* the setting is (setting genre), *how* the plot tells the adventure (plot genre), and *where* the adventure is (Setting Topics, below).

Setting Topics
As soon as the broad tenets of the setting are laid down, we'll move on to topics relating to the particulars of the setting. These will cover the locations, people, social structures, etc. of the setting.

• Locations of note
• Location(s) of the adventure
• People who live in the locations (and races)
• Government and its minions (bureaucrats, army, police, etc.)
• Some important current events
• Some important currently living people
• Some important historical events
• Some important historical people
• Aspects for the setting or any location

(The rules for these topics are here.)

The Collaborative Storytelling Experiment

Back in September, I stumbled across Spirit of the Century and the Fate system. I became an instant fanboi.

All my roleplaying life I had been looking for a system like Fate. Something that encouraged character development and immersive role playing. Something that had simple rules that applied to many situations. Something that encouraged the development of a story. It's a complete bonus that it also completely tosses the "you're all sitting in a bar" introduction trope by getting the players to work out how their characters already know one another. Oh, and Aspects. Aspects are way cool.

So, spured on by this—and the, perhaps too ambitious, thought that we might be able to apply to playtest the next Fate game, the Dresden Files RPG—I set out to pull together my old gaming group for a Spirit of the Century adventure.

I had originally thought I`d just cobble together a simple plot from the history of a sci fi setting that has lived in my head for almost two decades. I sent out the invite and the character ideas came back. It was then I realized that I had a problem. None of my players were seeing the world in the same way I was. It was probably my fault, ``Late 19th Century British Empire`` is a little vague.

I had been reading about experiments in setting creation, like:

• Leo Balsera`s talk about the Fate fractal on Master Plan
  
• Bill Burdock`s Universalis + Fate + PDQ mash up
• Zero Sum Fate
• Lexicon RPG

These are very cool notions which got me thinking about how a gaming group could select a setting collaboratively that would incorporate elements that all the players would enjoy.

I`d say that it was Bill Burdock`s mash-up that had the biggest influence. The only problems were, I didn`t own Universalis and I didn`t want to force feed tenets to the players.

So I came up with the Setting Game. You can see Bill`s influence in the token economy. It hasn`t been playtested yet, and I intend to report on the experience after we try it out in mid-January.

My plan is to take the output of the Setting Game session and tweak the Spirit of the Century skill list, drop some inappropriate stunts and fiddle the character generation rules in prepration for a character generation setting the following week. We`ll begin play after that.

I believe that the excellent advice on running pulp games that is in the Spirit of the Century rulebook will allow me to deploy a fun adventure for the third time we meet.

The Setting Game: Rules

The purpose of this game is to develop a game setting that all players (including the GM) can have fun in. It's purposely open-ended to allow for maximum freedom for the players.

The game is intended for a Fate campaign, but I expect that it would work for any relatively universal game system.

It has not been play tested.

Game Play

The players take turns making declarations about topics that the GM proposes. They tackle one topic at a time until they are ready to move onto the next topic. Each player has a number of tokens that they can spend to veto any declaration permanently.

Tokens
The control on the declarations is a simple token economy. Each player (including the GM) starts with 10 tokens.

A token can be spent to veto someone else's declaration, and, once vetoed, the declaration cannot be re-introduced in any form. This is meant to keep things more-or-less on a path that we can all live with.

The GM controls the other side of the token economy. If a player happens to make a particularly cool declaration, the GM might reward her with an extra token (or a spider goulash).

Taking Turns
The game will be split up into a number of phases. During each phase, the GM proposes a topic for the declarations during that phase.

Once the topic has been announced, one player starts a new round by either making a declaration or passing. Each other player, in turn, does the same thing: make a declaration or pass. At any time, a player may spend a token to veto a declaration. The round ends when everyone has had a turn.

Note: A player's declaration cannot contradict any other valid declaration on the table. The GM is the final arbiter on what constitutes a "contradiction".

At the end of a round, the GM asks if anyone wants to make further declarations. If there any takers, another round is played on the same topic, starting with the player who started the previous round.

When a phase is complete (no one wants to make any more declarations), the GM announces the next topic and the first declaration right passes to the next player (this is so that the "first declaration" right is shared amongst all the players).

Strategy
It helps to make your declarations specific, rather than general. The GM is likely to be able to build a more compelling adventure or campaign if he knows that you want to "fly from planet to planet in a spaceship" rather than if you told him, "a science fiction story", which could be anything from cyberpunk to a Larry Niven future history story without ever leaving Earth. Not to mention that you are less likely to get your declaration vetoed if someone else wants to "be able to throw spells around" (both are possible in a Spell Jammer-esk setting).

With that in mind, when you are making declarations, spend a little time thinking about what it is about your idea that makes it fun for you. Focus your declaration on that bit of fun. For example, I love Science Fiction settings, but what I really love about them is exploring how humans react to the strangeness of new worlds.

The topics I`m thinking of using are here.