It has been a long time between drinks for the C Team but it was an eager Derek (my character) who lined up with the likes of Langley our Australian Merc ( +Reece Carter ) Bingo the party demolitionist ( +Jonathan Henry ), Major Tom our laid back big gun specialist ( +Robert Hanz ) and Jen our master of contacts and shopping ( +Jennifer Corniuk )… We got together pretty much soon after our plane trip into New York where we had a run in with the bad guys (Archon Inc.) and we go to cover and consider our options.
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| You should have seen him picking up his feather duster! |
There was a fair bit of umming and ahhing around this point. The GM +Cameron Corniuk was very clear that this bit was at our direction. What did we want to do? It had been a while so Cam reminded us of what we had been up to and it was down to us. Our first task, in my mind, was we needed to get the information on Archon, and by information I meant what they were really up to. We had discovered them making secret weapons on an oil rig off Tasmania and thwarted their plan but then they came at us. So it was time for us to get to the bottom of what their real plans were (not the respectable front they put on things). So we hired Sam the computer expert to dig up the dirt and basically he hit the mother load.
But that gave us the problem of having too much information and what were we going to focus on? The GM gave us the choice of one thing and I think Bingo piped up and said we were interested in getting info on any secret installations using bio chemical weapons or the like. There was an installation that had recently called in a bunch of containment equipment for that sort of material and so it became our target. The stress of the information unfortunately became too much for Major Tom (he was dead tired in real life so called it a night) as he headed off to a local Cafe telling us all that it would “all work itself out”!
So we hit the location (in a huge multi-storey building near New York) and Langley headed in to search for intel on what they were doing here while Jen and Bingo started moving down the building setting up the explosives that Bingo had spent some time preparing for the “final” farewell to this installation… So what did dear Derek do? He set up the window washer scaffold to work on remote with dummies to make it all look OK and then turning he stripped off his overcoat and the group saw Derek was wearing a French Maid outfit! I had decided on Derek’s fifth and final aspect and I called it “Always the clown“. As a distraction he was going to go through the building pretending to be the cleaning service and have the security guards chase him around (think of the Coyote and the Road Runner entering and exiting multiple doors but never quite connecting). What I was trying to do was to “create an advantage” for the rest of the team to get everything done without too much hassle and I had either Always the clown or A beer short of a six pack to invoke if the rolls went badly.
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| The system I am falling in love with!! |
Unfortunately I never got to the roll as the GM thought it was hell funny and had the visual so well he just let it happen! Of course I had not planned on robot hounds (which accosted Langley) and took out Samuel the computer expert. Overall it was a good plan and the plan worked with a few hiccups. At the end I got us all out on the scaffold which I had rigged to free-fall for a bit before the brake mechanism eased in (like a carnival ride of sorts) and we skipped away with a canister of the nerve gas (which was a nasty lethal airborne concoction that became inert at high temperatures), some more intel and a lovely explosion to keep Bingo happy.
The best thing? The GM called it a significant milestone allowing us to pick up skills or various other goodies. I have been looking forward to this stage as I really want to see how the advancement works. They have a rule in it that any level on the skill pyramid can only have as many skills in it as the one immediately below it, so with Derek who has +4 Drive as the top of his pyramid then +3 for Craft and Notice, +2 for Deceive, Empathy or Will and +1 for Athletics, Burglary, Shoot and Stealth. Now with the way it is set up the only thing that I can do with skills in advancement is add a +1 skill as if I did anything else it would unbalance the pyramid. The other thing I can do is bank the point if I want but essentially this makes the point a little useless. I do find this a little irritating because I am an impatient person and I want to make my good skill better. That is I want to bump my Drive to +5 but as that would leave nothing at +4 it is something illegal in the game. So I have to take the patient route and build a little at a time!
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| The iPad App Fate Core Folio screen shot after the updates to Derek were finalised! |
I do actually like the fact that I need to flesh out the character a little more. The progressive skill movement will make me savour the build of my character more. Not to mention that the significant milestone also gives me the benefits of a minor milestone so I may swap out a skill and take another as I don’t see Derek using Burglary so I may swap that out for Physique as he has been a bit action hero at times so I think that he may be a little more resilient than the average Joe. And as for the new skill, probably Provoke so I can make people get irritated and annoyed at me, thus causing the distractions I need to take an advantage!
I got to use the new App for Derek’s character sheet from the Apple store called Fate Core Folio on the iPad. It worked well for me and I particularly like the dice roller that automatically factors in skills and you can add modifiers. That said, I had created Derek in the older set of Fate Core rules and when I went to update him to some newer rules the story page (it is in the App and handles your story and aspects) kept crashing the App and I had to recreate him from scratch. Once this was done though the App worked well and I am really glad I spent the small fee to get it. Not to mention I was the envy of the GM when he looked at some screen shots of Derek!
On the whole a great game where I am beginning to inject some personality into Derek. I would dearly love a game where I had no distractions (like sitting at work as I did today) to really get into him but I am still loving the game of Fate and the setting we have built up around ourselves. However +Cameron Corniuk I would like to face some more challenging opposition… Let’s make the C Team sweat a little. Let’s see us have to take a consequence or two in the near future to save our hides. Let’s take down Archon!
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