Thinking About Sexy Monsters

In my ongoing attempt to become everything I once hated (storygamer, bicyclist, etc.), I am seriously considering making my next duet campaign an urban fantasy setting – by which I mean fairies and vampires living in the modern world, not Lankhmar or Waterdeep. 

I know, I know.  I’m surprised, too.

The reason for this interest in urban fantasy is pretty simple: it’s 90% of the TV I watch.  The price of buying a house a couple of years ago was giving up cable, so it’s pretty much all Netflix and occasional Blu-Ray boxed sets.  Robin and I have spent several nights each week for the last year working our way through the first seven seasons of “Supernatural,” devouring the first season of “Once Upon a Time,” and finally catching on to “Lost Girl.”  Just to space out the remaining unseen episodes of “Supernatural” and “Lost Girl,” we’ve started sampling “The Dresden Files,” the US “Being Human” (which we hope we’ll like more than the British version), and “Hemlock Grove.”  Netflix is full of urban fantasy – and the most recent boxed set we bought was season five of “True Blood.” 

I really shouldn’t be surprised by this.  I was a teen and twentysomething through the 1990s – the decade when White Wolf dominated the gaming shelves with the original World of Darkness.  Even though I personally never managed to play in or run more than a single session of Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, or Mage: The Ascension, I still bought an awful lot of those books (often second-hand) and have a couple of gaming shelves still stuffed with core rules and sourcebooks for those games, Changeling: The Dreaming, and the complete print run of Kindred of the East.  Magic and monsters in the modern day is as much a part of my gaming DNA as AD&D 2^nd Edition and d6 Star Wars.  The surprise is realizing that genre is synonymous with urban fantasy and also realizing that after nearly a decade away from any games in the genre that I’m ready to return.

The last long-form urban fantasy game I ran for Robin was a Land of Eight Million Dreams (“changelings of the east”) campaign that transformed and rebooted several times into a Bastet (were-cats) game instead.  We played that for the three years we lived in San Marcos – a college town a couple hours north of our native San Antonio, Texas – when we were cut off from friends and family.  It was our first duet game – the first duet game I ever ran – and it eventually involved so much high magic and kaiju that I’m actually flabbergasted to realize it was urban fantasy.  (I guess that when the setting is a foreign culture like Japan, urban fantasy feels just as fantastic as the Forgotten Realms or Nehwon.)

When we returned to San Antonio nine years ago, we had exhausted our taste for games set in modern times and started playing more fantasy settings and period pieces.  We eventually recruited some players from our old college friends and began running normal group games again as the duets got more experimental.  The recent unpleasantness alluded to a few posts ago has left us adrift again, so perhaps my yearning for an urban fantasy game is metaphorically looking for a safe port in a storm – or maybe it’s monkey seeing a lot of urban fantasy and monkey wanting to do it too.

Or maybe it’s waking up and realizing urban fantasy is just plain sexier than most genres.  One of the reasons I find myself surprised at considering a return to the genre is that the last decade has seen an explosion in the sub-genre of paranormal romance… and I have to admit to a bit of reflexive snobbery there.  Wandering through Half-Price Books and seeing shelf upon shelf of tightly-packed paperbacks about sexy lady monster hunters sexing up sexy demons, sexy vampires, sexy werewolves, etc., I have to admit that my straight white nerd guy reaction is to roll my eyes and turn instead to CLASSICS like The Lord of the Rings and Swords in the Mist.

But why?!  I’m in that section of the store because I’m looking for sexy, sharp-witted Regency historicals about sexy, sharp-witted proper ladies sexing up sexy, sharp-witted proper gentlemen.  I’ve read and enjoyed several paranormal Regency romances; heck, I tried to write a game about them!  As an unrepentant fan of the bloodshed and wenching of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, I have no right to turn my nose up at the tortured romances and sexy sex scenes of Laurel K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris.  I like sexy sex scenes!  Let’s face it, I like urban fantasy!

(And yes, I’m aware that urban fantasy purists would argue that paranormal romance is a separate genre.  I don’t care about whether or not the romance is central to the plot; if you have magic and monsters in a modern city and it’s not a horror story, you’re writing urban fantasy.)

As I’ve mentioned before, a very important part of the duet games is helping to keep the romance alive in my marriage.  We can’t have our own children and we don’t want anyone else’s so keeping our relationship vital and vibrant is very, very important.  A central element of our duet games is the romantic relationships between characters.  The last near-decade’s concentration on fantastic and historical settings has often led to convoluted attempts to preserve the feeling of modern courtship practices in settings without dates and premarital sex.  I am suddenly asking myself why I’ve been making things so hard on myself.

If we do transition to urban fantasy for the next game, I’m going to have to put some thought into system and setting.  I’ve got those shelves full of OWoD books; it may be simplest to simply return to a system we abandoned years ago.  Perhaps the time has come to finally run a Kindred of the East campaign, or Werewolf, or Changeling.  I’ve been having fun with the looseness of FATE Accelerated Edition (FAE) but we haven’t really embraced the situational aspects yet; there’s some good world-building advice in FATE Core (and there’s the FATE Dresden game, duh!) , so perhaps I should incorporate that.  Surprisingly, there’s actually an urban fantasy setting for Savage Worlds called Marchland (two if you count Deadlands Noir, which I don’t); I’ve read some of the preview materials and it sounds like a less meta-fictive twist on Changeling, so it could be fun.  There’s a lot of options right at my fingertips.

I guess the real question is “What kind of sexy monsters do I want in my game?”

Er...

Stunt 2: Because I am an alien Christ-figure, I get a +2 when I Forcefully Defend innocent bystanders

.

Umm…  I hadn’t seen “Man of Steel” when I wrote my FAE Superman stats last Friday.  As many have commented, Zack Snyder kind of forgot to include that character trait in the movie.  I can assure you that stunt was not meant as a dig at the film; I enjoyed the movie and can even excuse the slight mischaracterization on the grounds that it is literally Superman’s first adventure in the film’s continuity. 

(I enjoyed it partially because I never made the mistake of forgetting that this was a film by Zack Snyder, director of “300.”)

FAE Batman and Superman

Creating characters for FATE Accelerated Edition (FAE) is pretty damn fun.  Here's everybody's favorite superhero and that guy who's in that movie that just came out.

BATMAN*

High Concept:  “I… AM… BATMAN!”

Trouble: “I made a promise on the grave of my parents…”

Aspect 1: “Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot…”

Aspect 2: “The world’s greatest detective.”

Aspect 3: “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”

Forceful: +3

Clever: +2

Sneaky: +2

Flashy: +1

Careful: +1

Quick: +0

Refresh: 3

Stunt 1: Because “I am the night!,” I get a +2 when I Sneakily Attack mooks. 

Stunt 2: Because I am secretly billionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne, I get a +2 when I Carefully Create an Advantage using my wealth.

Stunt 3: Because I am a ninja in a Dracula costume, once per session I can exit the scene without anyone seeing me leave.

SUPERMAN

High Concept: “It’s SUPERMAN!”

Trouble: “Strange visitor from another planet…”

Aspect 1: “Faster than a speeding bullet…”

Aspect 2: “Stronger than a locomotive…”

Aspect 3: “Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…”

Forceful: +3

Careful: +2

Quick: +2

Clever: +1

Flashy: +1

Sneaky: +0

Refresh: 3

Stunt 1: Because I am secretly mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, I get a +2 when I Cleverly Create an Advantage using my journalistic skills. 

Stunt 2: Because I am an alien Christ-figure, I get a +2 when I Forcefully Defend innocent bystanders.

Stunt 3: Because I am the original superhero, I get a +2 when I Forcefully Attack a super-strong villain.

*I was going to be super-clever and use only “Batman: The Animated Series” quotes for aspects, but that was taking way too long to look up so I just grabbed quotes from memory.

FAE and the Zorro Test

A starting character in FAE can have up to five starting aspects (one of which has to be the character’s “high concept” and one of which has to be a “trouble”), the usual spread of approaches, a refresh of 3 (how many FATE points the character starts with), and up to three stunts (minor situational aspects that either give a bonus to a specific approach in limited circumstances or allow minor player control of the story once per session).  The really awesome thing about this process is that I don’t have the FAE rulebook handy; I’ve already memorized character creation. 

Perhaps the most important question to ask of any game system is “Can I make Zorro?”  The answer from FATE Accelerated Edition (FAE) is “Yes, you sure can.”

ZORRO

High Concept: "Zorro!  Zorro!  Zorro!"

Trouble: “As Don Diego, I pretend to be afraid…”

Aspect 1: “Out of the night, when the full moon is bright…”

Aspect 2: “This bold renegade/Carves a ‘Z’ with his blade…”

Aspect 3: “The fox, so cunning and free…”

Flashy: +3

Clever: +2

Sneaky: +2

Forceful: +1

Quick: +1

Careful: +0

Refresh: 3

Stunt 1: Because I have the spirited mustang stallion Tornado, I automatically succeed once per session when I need to outrace something on horseback.

Stunt 2: Because I am a world-class duelist, I receive a +2 when I Flashily Attack in a one-on-one swordfight.

Stunt 3: Because I have my mute servant Bernardo, I get a +2 to Overcome when I Sneakily investigate the villains’ plans.

Yeah, I think that works.

Initial Impressions of FAE

Unable to resist the siren call of free pay-what-you-want and pirate cat-girls, I downloaded FATE Accelerated Edition (hereafter, and throughout most of the book itself, referred to as FAE – which makes me want to do a bunch of “Lost Girl” awful fae-themed pseudo-puns).  As I recently mentioned, I feel Savage Worlds isn’t doing a good job modeling the kind of story Robin and I are telling in our current duet game and I’m willing to experiment with another system.  A quick read-through and a single session’s worth of play have me thinking FAE might be the system I need.

(A caveat: Contributing to this shift in thinking is a shift if playing style.  An increase in pirate campaign sessions and the wild ‘n’ wooly, action-oriented mess they were led to a greater desire on Robin’s part for more story-oriented, dialogue-heavy role-playing.  I can’t blame Savage Worlds for not suiting my needs.  It isn’t you, baby; I’ve changed.

I can, however, report that the tactical – heck, I’d call it tactile – dueling system of Honor + Intrigue was horribly unsuited for our playing style.  I had fun with it, but I can’t blame Robin for hating that it usually took half an hour to resolve a two-person duel.  In theory, Honor + Intrigue creates competent beginning characters; in practice, it leads to lots of swords swinging through empty air.)

I bought the FATE-powered Agents of SWING a while back and I’ve flipped through a friend’s copy of Spirit of the Century and both of those impressed on me that the core version of FATE is* ridiculously over-complicated for a supposedly simple, story-driven system.  FAE is certainly streamlined and more intuitive than FATE; the rulebook is only an OSR-friendly 50 pages long (though it doesn’t contain a bestiary or magic items or anything like that – in no small part because it doesn’t really need them).  I’ve read through it pretty quickly and I think I actually understand the rules. 

…Which is pretty amazing, to be honest.  When was the last time you spent an hour reading a new-to-you RPG system and felt you could run a game?  Admittedly, FAE uses a lot of familiar concepts – FATE points have a lot in common with Savage World Bennies, aspects share some similarities with Honor + Intrigue careers – but there’s a lot of loose-goosey story-gaming concepts that seem much more explicable in FAE than they ever did in Agents of SWING.  

FAE is definitely a story game, though, and if you have no tolerance for those than you won’t get much mileage out of the system.  There’s a lot of deliberate meta-gaming going on that might pull many gamers out of the story; in fact, it’s built into the central mechanic: aspects.

Aspects are verbal tags that describe or suggest possibilities about a character, location, or situation.  In addition to helping define a character or her situation in a game, aspects can be invoked by paying a FATE point to grant a mechanical bonus to a dice roll.  Zorro might have the aspect “This bold renegade carves a Z with his blade;” his player could invoke that aspect for a +2 on the equivalent of an attack roll (because of the finesse needed to carve a Z), an intimidation roll (what do you think he carves those Zs on?), a fear check (he’s bold, after all), a thief skills check (he is a renegade), or many other situations.  The GM can also compel aspects against players, creating story complications that reward the players with more FATE points to spend.  In Zorro’s case, that “carves a Z with his blade” might be invoked by the GM to compel Zorro to leave his signature behind after breaking into the evil comandante’s office to have a look at his crooked tax records, thus alerting the comandante that Zorro knows about his secret plans.

In addition to aspects, characters are defined by approaches which indicate their facility for dealing with challenges in particular styles: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, and Sneaky.  Every character has access to every approach, which are ranked from best to worst on a +3 to +0 scale, and these are added to a roll of four FUDGE dice to determine success on actions that actually require a roll (which in turn have a difficulty range from 2 to 8+).  How characters use and interpret these approaches – and the difficulty numbers assigned to tasks – is a matter of aspects and character concept.  Batman and Superman could both have Forceful at +3, but Superman’s “More powerful than a locomotive” aspect means he wouldn’t even have to roll the dice to lift a car while Batman might have to beat a difficulty of 6 to lift it far enough for a trapped car crash victim to crawl free; conversely, they might both have Clever at +2 but since Batman is “The world’s greatest detective,” he’s going to have a much lower difficulty to solve a villain’s puzzle. 

Such meta-fictive concepts would have driven me nuts as little as a year ago, but (as I’ve mentioned) my gaming style for duets with Robin has changed a lot… or maybe it hasn’t and I’ve just embraced the storygamer that was in me the entire time.  The duets have always been more deliberately themed or high-concept than the group games – it’s more often a matter of me suggesting a setting or character type to Robin than the other way around, and such suggestions usually have an implied story arc – so embracing a game system that stresses deliberate storytelling instead of the emergent story of most RPGs is probably a natural change for me.  I don’t think I’d try to use FAE with a normal gaming group,** but I think it will be a better choice for the duets.

We’ll see…

*Or was.  FATE Core is supposedly more streamlined.  I’m reading it for further insights into running FAE, so I might have more to say about it later.  My initial impressions are that the complexity is modular.

**But I have to admit those Batman and Superman examples make me want to run a Justice League game.