Spirit of the Century
Rankenphile
Passersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
Passersby were amazedby the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
So there's this RPG out there, Spirit of the Century, that has been gathering a lot of attention from fans of independent press games. It uses the FATE system and is chock-full of 1920s and 1930s pulp goodness, and looks to be an absolute blast, but I'm hoping for some sort of personal play experience or opinion before I take the plunge.
Does anyone know anything about this game, or any other game produced by Evil Hat?
Does anyone know anything about this game, or any other game produced by Evil Hat?
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Someone should do a one-shot on these boards for us to try out.
But I'm having a hard time selling myself on dropping $50 more bucks on yet another game.
Once you've got down your basic actions and what you can do with fate points, the game runs fast as anything. If you're looking for something super-crunchy with lots of emphasis on tactics, SotC isn't it. But I love it.
(Any game that lets you use science to solve your way through a brick wall is okay by me.)
If a one-shot appears on these boards hopefully the timezones will add up and I'll be able to play.
SoogaGames Blog
alright
I think I'm gunna order it
god damn it I don't have the money for this
god damn it
"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!"
~ Dr. Emilio Lizardo
After finally getting my group to read the book, they immediately buckled and realized how awesome this game is. So I ran the first half of what we're planning as a one-shot to get us back into RPing regularly. We had a two-gun cowboy/patriot type that hates 'foreigners' (especially Indians), a master escape artist/magician, a super-scientist that's had run ins in with ninja and African tribes, and a two-fisted archaeologist whose signature weapon is a stick of dynamite.
They beat up some thugs that burst into an upscale party for a heroic sailor, then tracked them back to their boss, a steam-powered-train cyborg that used his signature 'railway train punch' to take out the scientist. Then the archaeologist managed to shove a stick of dynamite down a steam-pipe protruding from the villain, blowing up most of his evil lair along with him. Only by a spectacular trick shot was the cowboy able to knock something into the path of the blast to protect the damsel in distress that had been kidnapped by the bad guy.
Now they have to follow the trail back to a temple hidden in the jungles of Africa. Where, of course, a mad scientist awaits. They seemed to have a good time, and I enjoyed it too, even though we're figuring out the rules as we go. And it's rough to make them understand they get to tell me what happens most of the time.
Long story short : I've run it once, it's great. I'd love to run a one-shot for anyone interested. Just need to give me a while to prepare for it. And it can't be Sunday or Friday. So if y'all can settle on a good day...
We can do character creation (which is just as fun as a session, I think!) soon, and then give me a week or so after that to try to have a quick game ready. Knowing IRC, it'll take us probably two more sessions to actually make it through one adventure, but I'll try to make it as short as possible.
Come again?
This sounds fascinating.
Basically if you make your roll, you get to describe what you do. The game is all about the players and their characters. The GM's just there to handle NPCs and give them a storyline to follow. For instance, if you make your melee attack roll against a group of minions using lead pipes, and you roll well enough to take out three of the four...the player gets to describe in detail how he feints and grapples one, throws him into another, and uppercuts the last, barely managing to duck out of the way of a swing from the one remaining guy.
alright, ordered, with a pack of fudge dice.
sweet, thanks for the feedback, guys.
By the way, if anyone else is interested in ordering it, do it now. They're leaving for GenCon soon, so they can only fulfill orders placed on or before August 11th before they head out.
Holy shit this game is fucking brilliant in its design. It really strips away all the complicated bullshit in traditional "PnP RPGs" out there and builds what the genre should be - A role-playing game.
THe core mechanics - you don't choose a race and a class and assign stats to your attributes and buy your gear and blah blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
No, fuck that. You come up with a name - the shorter and jazzier, the better - like Jet Ryder or Captain Duke Skyway or Kent Diamond. You think up a brief (like, two to three sentences) origin about your childhood, and you assign two aspects from it to your character.
So Keith Greenback is a two-fisted private dick that grew up on the mean streets of Chicago, orphaned and struggling to survive? What are two aspects about that sort of thing that could be potentially useful, but still offer potential story hooks and could even get you in trouble here and there? Let's say "Tough as nails" and "Back-alley brawler".
Next up, two sentences about how he spent his time in the Great War - the fictionalized version of WWI. Let's say Greenback spent some time working with the CIA doing covert ops in Europe, basically drinking his way across the continent on the Government's dime, learning to schmooze with the upper crust while digging up dirt on the back-room wheelings and dealings. Two more aspects - let's say "Wine, dine and looking fine" and "A Couple Hot Leads".
This goes on through creating your own novel blurb about the character, then one he guest-stars in with another player
These aspects are ones that you make up, that you assign your character. The more flavor, the better. You can use invoke your aspects when the time is right (confronted with some thugs in a back alley, you invoke "back-alley brawler" to give you bonus points in your favor to make sure you make it out of there alive) or the DM can attempt to invoke your aspect to make things go not exactly your way (you're right on the edge of what feels like a hot tip, but some thugs are giving you a hard time. You can either ignore them and pursue your lead, which would be the smart thing to do, but your character does love a good brawl, so if you go down that line of thought even though it isn't what is "best" for your character, you'll earn a Fate Point you can use later to influence things to go your way).
Seriously, this is just a great game, from everything I've seen so far in the book, in generating a good story-based adventure rather than another by-the-numbers hack-and-slash equipment-driven questathon. I'm seriously excited to try it out.
SoogaGames Blog
I'll give the example that was on the Rolemonkeys podcast, that being the example of a guy taking the 'Irish' aspect. Say you're in a bar, and one of the other players is about to get into fisticuffs with a British gent, he could invoke your Irish aspect (giving you a fate chip if you play along), and make you want to have at it with the British dandy just for him being British, either for or with the player. Seemed like a fun way to shake things up to me.
Gah, I need to get me a paper copy of this now, pdfs may be cheap but unless you've got a shitton of paper, a good laser printer, and some way to bind the whole thing, they're not very convenient...if I had a laptop that worked I'd probably be a little more apt to use that, but I still wouldn't be as happy about it as a hard copy. There's just something more satisfying about having the book in hand.
Not just that, but you can invoke aspects of your environment.
Brilliant, brilliant shit.