Dresden Files Accelerated, “Mantles” and PbtA-Style Playbooks in Fate RPG

January 8, 2021faithfictionfatherhood 1 Comment

With our Innumerable Isles game, my gaming group is just starting to get comfortable with how the Fate RPG rules work, many of them coming from a strong background in heavier “crunch,” less narrative-focused (rules-wise, at least) games, like D&D, Shadowrun, WFRP and the previous generation of 40k RPGs (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, etc.). Given that I both have a very fond place for how Fate plays and I understand the frustration of jumping around from rules system to rules system, I’ve decided (as I’ve mentioned before) that most of the games I’ll be running for the near future will use the Fate RPG system.

I am working on my own RPG system for the Avar Narn setting, with some ideas about some additional settings to build for use with my fiction and that eventual ruleset, but I also really enjoy tinkering with the Fate system without having to entirely reinvent the wheel for core mechanics and basic systems.

So, as two of my many side projects at any given time, I’m working on putting together my own hacks for Star Wars and Shadowrun, two settings I’m likely to revisit with predictable frequency. In doing so, a few ideas have been storming around in my brain.

My experience with my group and the Fate system is that, when it comes to character creation, at least, my players would like to have additional guidance–particularly when it comes to creating Aspects and choosing stunts. And then there’s my own proclivity for thinking about ways to have the ruleset reinforce tone, character and setting. The Playbook approach of the Powered-by-the-Apocalypse games goes a long way into simplifying character creation by providing a ready character idea with thematically focused abilities that, as a whole, maintain some flexibility within the character concept.

Generally, I’m not the biggest fan of character “classes,” as I personally prefer maximized flexibility in character creation. However, character classes and roles as distinct and discrete constructs have definite value in roleplaying systems–that’s why they’re so common in the first place. Among other things they: (1) help ensure each player in the group has an area in which their character holds the spotlight, (2) buttress the crafting of character concepts, (3) simplify and speed up character creation, (4) reinforce ideas about setting and theme.

Both Shadowrun and Star Wars are settings conductive to the use of “classes” or “playbooks,” having iconic archetypes to draw from. In Star Wars, we have the Jedi (of different types), the Smuggler, the Soldier, the Bounty Hunter, etc. (the FFG Star Wars system provides many different such archetypes). Likewise, Shadowrun characters tend to fall into archetypes as well: the Street Samurai, the Mage, the Shaman, the Rigger, the Hacker/Decker, the Face, the Infiltrator, etc.

PbtA would make each of these playbooks (indeed, you can find PbtA hacks for Star Wars and for Shadowrun, as well as The Sprawl and its supplements, which handle cyberpunk games with or without fantastic elements in the PbtA system).

I can’t say definitively whether the PbtA-style Playbooks influenced the writing of Mantles in Dresden Files Accelerated, but it sure seems like they did. Regardless, the DFA‘s Mantle system is a stroke of genius; it provides a great example of how to apply the Playbook philosophy to the Fate rules (whether Core, Condensed or Accelerated).

If you’re not familiar with DFA‘s Mantles, these are used to flesh out different character concepts or archetypes, both mundane and supernatural. Each Mantle includes some core Stunts for the Mantle as well as a list of additional stunts for selection in character creation or advancement. Sounds like a Playbook’s “Moves,” right? Where things get really interesting is that (since DFA uses Conditions instead of Consequences), each Mantle gives a character additional Conditions. Some of these Conditions have a track, boxes in which can be checked to power the stunts in the Mantle’s list. Others are binary and may do all sorts of interesting things–like shutting down the use of particular stunts. An example is the Law Enforcement Mantle, which has a “Police Powers” Condition that allows the character to do the things expected of a law enforcement officer as well as a “Suspended” Condition that prevents the use of Police Powers when checked–you’ve overstepped your authority and someone’s demanded you “turn in your badge and gun,” as the cop films would have it.

So, the Mantle grants thematic “Moves” and often includes thematic Conditions and even subsystems unique to that character type. If every character has a Mantle, and the Mantles are at least roughly balanced (to the extent that the game you’re playing and the players you’re playing with need balance), then there’s no need to resort to Refresh costs to apply a Mantle.

So, the Mantle carries with it the structure of the PbtA Playbook. As with PbtA, you can always allow a character to have Stunts (or Moves) not from the Mantle’s list when it makes sense for them to do so.

In DFA, Aspects and Skill (Approach, really) ratings are determined separately from the Mantle, so you get the Mantle’s structure combined with the vast freedom of creating your Aspects and the basic difference between characters of the same Mantle by how they arrange their Skill/Approach arrays. You can add to the structure of a Mantle by providing example Aspects players can choose from, suggesting or requiring apex Skills or Approaches for a Mantle, and/or building a selection of Extras that a Mantle is required to take or from which they may select (a Shadowrun Rigger needs drones, right?). Conversely, by leaving the selection of Extras divorced from the Mantle, by having a “general” stunt list available to all characters, and by leaving Aspects and Skill selection untethered to Mantles, you preserve overall character freedom while gaining the thematic and mechanical benefits of using Mantles. For a happy medium, give “suggested” Aspects, Extras, and Skill arrays that can be used by those players who want to make their character quickly but that may be modified or ignored by the players who want more freedom in crafting their particular character.

Here’s the downside: it’s a lot of work on the GM (or whomever is putting the mechanics for the game together) to build Mantles (or, as I’ll prefer to call them, Archetypes)–particularly if you’re trying to create a broad selection of Archetypes with unique Conditions and Stunts (or at least only minor overlap). I’ve found myself with the DFA rulebook open in one tab, a number of other Fate rulebooks open in successive tabs, and the Flow app open on my iPad all at once to take notes, mark things out, and generally brainstorm ideas as I list and define Archetypes. For me, it’s the kind of creative work I enjoy anyway, and I think it will improve games I run in those settings by both scaffolding players in their character creation and providing some thematic focus to character creation for the setting and particular narrative.

As I work on my personal adaptations of Star Wars and Shadowrun to Fate, look for me to post those rules, Archetypes and ideas to the blog for your use and/or modification, should you like them. At the very least, if you like Fate, go pick up a copy of Dresden Files Accelerated. It’s a great use of the Fate system standing alone, and I’ve found it to be an excellent source of ideas for hacking an already-incredibly modular RPG system.

Afterword
If you’ve followed the RPG aspects of my blog for a while, you’ll know that I previously started a hack of the Cortex Plus/Prime rules for Shadowrun (as well as posting some of my most popular articles with build advice using the official Shadowrun rules, with an eye at Sixth Edition but many of the points applicable to the 20th Anniversary or 5th edition rules as well). I’ll likely go back and finish the Cortex version at some point, as it’s another system I very much enjoy (and very much enjoy tinkering with). There are some parts of me that keep telling me that, as narratively-minded ruleset with (arguably) more crunch than Fate, it’s a better overall candidate for a Shadowrun game, and some of the same ideas in this article can likely be used with Cortex as well. But for now, I’m going to stick to Fate.

The Fate of Piracy, Part III: About Ships in the Age of Sail

October 19, 2019July 5, 2020faithfictionfatherhood 1 Comment

For the previous post in this series, click here.

We’ll begin our foray into rules for ships and sailing in Fate games by addressing some of the historical difficulties of easy classification of types of ships in the Age of Sail. Hopefully, this gives you a sense of just how hard it is to create easy categories or “classes” of ships to profile.

Let’s start with the understanding that ships in this Fate hack will make full use of the “Fate Fractal” or “Bronze Rule.” Ships will be statted as characters, with skills, stunts (representing upgrades or modifications) and aspects (representing unique qualities, history, reputation, etc.). Some stats will come from the ship design itself, others will come from the crew that (wo)mans it. I’m not sure exactly on the interplay between those two facets, but that’s a subject for a later post in the series.

The English Rating System
The English (and later British) Rating system for warships goes back to the reign of Henry VIII, where it was initially related to the number of guns on a ship (or, at times to the ship’s tonnage), though the categories were not the “rates” that would come into later being. Instead, ships were classified as Royal, Great, Middling or Small. By 1626, a ranking system came into being, though this seems to have been tied to the pay of the sailors on board rather than to the size or number of guns of the vessel.

By 1660, the word “rate” had replace the word “rank” and vessels began to be measured by the number of carriage guns (that is, excluding swivel guns) carried on board. The ratings vary over time, particularly as designers were able to cram more weapons onto ships, but a generalization goes as follows:

First Rate: 100 guns, usually over 2,000 tons BM (see below about “Builder’s Measure”)
Second Rate: 90-98 guns, about 2,000 tons BM
Third Rate: Ships with two gun-decks and 60-80 guns
Fourth Rate: Ships with two gun-decks and 50-60 guns, about 1,000 tons BM
Fifth Rate: Ships with single gun-decks sporting 32-40 guns, running 700 to 1450 tons BM
Sixth Rate: Ships with 22-28 guns, and 450-550 tons BM

The rating system was designed primarily, it seems, to determine which ships could stand “in the line” of battle under the naval tactics of the time and which could not.

Most of the ships in the Caribbean were unrated ships smaller than anything above. A few pirates, like Blackbeard and his Queen Anne’s Revenge (which, having been captured by Teach in 1717 is relatively late in the period) could have classified as fifth-rate ships, but I’m not aware of any privateering or pirate vessels that were larger. Bear in mind also that only military ships were given a true rating, so ships that could have been classified on this list wouldn’t necessarily have been.

This was partly a matter of expense—warships are expensive to build and staff (a First Rate ship could have 750 people aboard!) and the Caribbean is rough on ships—it purportedly has the highest concentration of wood-eating ship-worms in the world and the lifespan of a quality hull in Caribbean waters was only about 10 years!

Another factor was the need for versatility in ships for the Caribbean—trade was more often more important than fighting, so cargo space and speed were more desirable than lots of guns and men to crew them. The galleons of the late sixteenth century and seventeenth century could be relatively-easily adapted between trading roles and more confrontational ones. And, like “frigate” and “pinnace” below, “galleon” itself originally referred to a style of design, not a size, with small galleons of a few hundred tons to the Manila galleons of 2,000 tons or more. Even in the late 16th century, the Portuguese had a ship nicknamed Botafogo, which was at least 1,000 tons and carried a staggering 336 cannons.

Sizing Ships Up
Modern ships are measured by the tonnage of water they displace, but this was not so for ships of the seventeenth century, which were measured by tons burthen (or burden if you want to get out of Middle English and into modern), which represented the amount of cargo a ship could carry.

To make things more confusing, the burthen tonnage of a ship was calculated by a formula called the “Builder’s Measure” (hence the “BM” above) rather than the reality of the design of holds and space.

The Builder’s Measure in 1678 used the following formula:

So, a ship like the Little Unicorn (captured by the British from the Dutch in 1665 or 1666), which had a length of 72 ft, a beam and a beam of 22 ft would, by the 1678 Builder’s Measure, have a tonnage burthen of 185.19 tons. This was classified as a fifth-rate ship of despite its size and small number of guns. The British converted it into a fireship.

Names and Classification
The naming of ship types in the seventeenth century is less than helpful. The word “pinnace” was used to describe both a “ship’s boat” powered by oars or a single small sail to tend the larger ships in a group by ferrying people, messages and goods between them and to describe ships around 100 tons burthen with two or three square-rigged masts.

Likewise, the word “frigate” first denoted a hull design (long, low and sleek for speed) rather than a specific ship type, resulting in “light frigates,” “frigates,” “heavy frigates” and “grand frigates” without clear distinctions (because, when important, reference was more likely to be made to tonnage or to rating).

This was not an age of mass production, and shipbuilders were constantly experimenting with designs to find an edge. The names for classifications of ships could rely as much on the arrangement of the sails and number of masts of the ship (the “sail-plan”) as its raw size or other factors. For instance:

A sloop was a single-masted, fore-and-aft rigged ship. Having a single mast limited the size, but you could still find a wide array of sloop sizes.

A ketch had two fore-and-aft rigged masts.

The brig had two square-rigged masts with headsails.

The brigantine, however, had one square-rigged mast and a hybrid-rigged main mast (also with headsails).

The snow had headsails, two square-rigged masts and a smaller “snow-mast.”

The barque had two or more square-rigged masts and headsails with a fore-and-aft-rigged aftmost (that’s “rearmost” for you landlubbers!) mast.

Fully-rigged ships had three (later they could have more) square-rigged sails.

So, what do you call a frigate-hulled ship with a brigantine sail-plan? Your guess is as good as mine, and the primary sources from the period don’t make it seem like much concern was given to precise appellations for ship categories (notice that the “galleon” and the “fluyt,” common ships for the period, are missing from the above category).

Remember the problem with the word “rapier” in the series on swordsmanship? Yep, it’s kind of like that.

Variance within a “Class”
If confusion among classifications isn’t bad enough, let’s talk about the variations within a particular “type” of ship.

For instance, the Spanish Armada of 1588 had 22 galleons in its fleet, with some as large as 1,000 tons and some as small as 250 tons. If proportions are maintained, that means some ships were four times as large as others—yet they were all galleons. In later periods, the Manila galleons could easily reach 2,000 tons.

As mentioned about, frigates are another example of wide variance. In the 17^th century, frigates tended to denote full- (square-)rigged ships, because square rigging is the fastest sail plan (at least with the wind to your back). They could have one or two gun decks, likely meaning a range of 18 and about 300 tons to 40 guns and 750 or 1,000 tons.

Later, the “great” or “heavy” frigates would be created by taking a larger ship and cutting down the fore- and aftcastles to make a lighter, leaner, ship with a single monolithic topdeck instead of one having raised areas at the front and back. This was called razée, from the French “razed” or “shaved,” though you’ll sometimes see this described in English (particularly in the 16^th century) as “race-decked.” I much prefer that styling than the sometimes used razéed, the orthography and pronunciation of which gives me fits (It should be pronounced like “rah-zayd,” which in turn would be more accurately spelled razé-ed or razée-d. Y’know, it’s a mess either way).

Conclusions about Ship Classifications
For a game, if we’re going to stat out various types of ships, it is very helpful if we create some categories that are a little less flexible than the seeming free-for-fall historically used. Yes, that’s arbitrary, but accuracy must sometimes give way to expedience. For those of you who, like me, grew up playing Sid Meier’s Pirates! before it was in color, you’ll remember that that game used fairly distinct categories for its ship types. I don’t know about you, but that never spoiled my fun.

What’s important, at the end of the day, is determining what kind of ship stats are necessary and useful.

Trivia: If you’re used to the image of the captain at the ship’s wheel, understand that that’s a relatively late addition to the period we’re looking at. Based on archeological finds, we know that the ship’s wheel was in use at least by 1703.

Before that, ships were sailed by a tiller. Some ships, particularly those intended for war, might have their tiller below decks where it was protected or even have two, one on the topdeck and one below decks.

For the next post in the series, click here.

The Fate of Piracy, Part II: About Piracy

October 19, 2019faithfictionfatherhood 2 Comments

For the first post in this series, click here.

I feel like it is necessary for me to talk generally (and hopefully briefly) about historical piracy.

Morality
Obviously, piracy is an immoral thing. At best, it’s bullying and theft. At worst, there’s torture, murder, betrayal, sexual assault and many other crimes. Modern media has given us a whitewashed version of piracy, with lovable ne’er-do-wells like Jack Sparrow and depictions of gentlemanly pirate captains who mind their manners while robbing you. Maybe there was some of that, but far more often, I think, the lines of moral behavior were crossed with abandon or simply ignored altogether. There’s a reason pirates were called hostis humani generis (enemies of mankind).

This is not to tell you how to run a pirate game. There’s no reason you can’t run a lighter-hearted sort of game a la Pirates of the Caribbean and, if you’ve got young people playing, that’s probably much safer fare. You know me, though—I’m much more interested in games with the feel of Black Sails, where even the “good guys” are morally questionable at best. This is a discussion to have as a group while deciding on then particulars of the setting your players will pirate in (is that a word? Can you “pirate?”). Along the same lines, circumscribing those aspects of pirate reality that are uncomfortable to treat and determining how to handle them or whether to leave them out altogether is, I think, an especially important consideration in a topic and setting so fraught with the worst humanity has to offer.

Pirates and Privateers
Though, as a practical matter, the distinction between pirates and privateers was often a legal technicality or a matter of perspective, it’s important to know the difference.

A privateer receives a “letter of marque and reprisal” from a sponsoring nation, essentially making the bearer a private soldier in service of his country (funny to think how “modern” an idea of military privatization seems to us despite our own history). With that letter, the privateer and his ships are authorized to attack the ships and ports of those nations with whom the sponsor is at war, taking prizes and plunder, which is split between sponsor and privateers. Bear in mind, that in the early modern period, standing professional armies were only slowly becoming a thing, so the engaging of privateers provided an avenue for governments to quickly deploy wartime assets at little or no cost to itself.

A pirate does not have authorization to engage in the seizure of ships or towns from any country—they are brigands and outlaws. Still, many pirates had some scruples about their selection of prey, refusing to attack ships of their own nationality (though that’s a fraught issue, as we’ll see below) even when they were not authorized by that nation to conduct operations.

As the history of piracy bears out, the line sometimes—maybe often—blurred between privateer and pirate. Those who might have been considered pirates were sometimes given letters of marque when they were viewed as useful to their home nation; this could even happen retroactively to the captain’s activities! On the other hand, privateers would turn pirate, for a number of reasons. Sometimes the prey was scarce and the crew grew desperate, electing to go after any ship they might take. Other times, the sponsoring nation would leave privateers in the lurch when political conditions changed and/or treaties were signed.

Wars of Religion
I don’t think it can be understated how important the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism in the 16^th and 17^th centuries was in the rise of privateering and piracy. The war between England and Spain that included both the Spanish Armada of 1588 (and the other armada attempts) and the “singing of the king’s beard”—and really all of Sir Francis Drake’s roving—found its core cause in the conflict between a Protestant Queen Elizabeth and a Catholic Phillip II of Spain. This is also the time of the English Civil War (which one might argue was more political than religious, but the primary sources reveal a strong belief in the close association between Catholicism and absolute monarchy, to say nothing of the Puritan influence on the Roundheads), the time of the Eighty Years’ War between Catholic Spain and the Protestant Netherlands, the Thirty Years’ War and, at the beginning of the 18^th century, the War of the Spanish Succession, itself about the balance of power between both rival royal houses and the Christianities to which they were aligned.

The Catholic faith of the Spanish gave cover enough for raiding their significant wealth in the Caribbean, and many of the sea rovers presented themselves as good Protestant soldiers raiding the ports and ships of the Spanish in support for the “One True Faith.” The most well-known privateers and pirates, at least in the 17^th century, tended to be Protestant English or Dutch, from the Sea Beggars to Sir Henry Morgan. Whether the roving captains really believed themselves to be “good Protestant soldiers” or just found the idea to be a good excuse we’ll never truly know—the Christianity of the time, no matter the specific denomination, made easy room for slavery and violence, despite the core messages of the Gospels.

Freedom at Sea
The sea rovers came from many nationalities and walks of life, and the crews of the privateering and piratical vessels of the time were probably some of the most diverse collections of peoples anywhere in the world for the period.

One of the major draws to those who would become crew members was the difference from life at sea under a merchant captain or in naval military service. In the latter situation, the captain’s word was law and, knowing what I do about human nature, I believe it when both the primary sources and the secondary histories describe that tyrannical captaincy was somewhat common.

Things were different aboard a freebooting vessel. Yes, the captain had sole command in times of immediate danger—combat, the chasing of prey or evasion of the authorities, storms at sea, etc. But the captain himself was usually elected by the crew, and when there was no immediate threat, (most of) the crew got a vote in choosing their course of action. This simultaneously hindered some of the great expeditions from achieving much success, but also meant a type of democratic freedom unavailable elsewhere in the world, especially for those not born into the upper class.

A roving venture began with the adoption of a Code. This was viewed as a contractual agreement freely entered into by all who signed and could be both morally and ethically enforced against them if they broke it. The Code determined who would be leading (on ships or as admiral), what the split of plunder would be (and, while the shipowners—often the captains—received extra for the use of their vessel and specialists where given an extra partial share for their much-needed skills, the split tended toward equality more than disparity).

Now, all of this democracy is well and good in theory, but let’s also not think it was more idealistic and free from coercion than it was. The owner of a ship in an expedition had great leverage over his fellows—if they didn’t elect him captain, he might simply decide to take his toys and go home. Further, maintaining a captaincy was not simply about holding the justified admiration of the men; it was about getting results. A captain without the skill for finding and securing plunder, or simply with a bad run of luck, would quickly find himself at odds with his men.

Those are enough general points for now. If you want to delve into the details and specifics of piratical life, use the bibliography in the first post—to which I will soon add some primary sources for you, though in short look for the journals or publications of Alexander Esquemelin, William Dampier, Basil Ringrose, Bartholomew Sharp and Lionel Wafer. Take Esquemelin especially with a grain of salt—he seems to have hated Henry Morgan and his descriptions of events often conflict with other (more plausible) sources. I also highly recommend the Pirate History Podcast for distilling this information into entertaining and informative episodes.

Trivia: William Dampier, in addition to being a privateer, was an accomplished navigator and naturalist. He’s credited with bringing a slew of words into the English language, including “chopsticks,” “avocado,” and “barbecue.” His work describing the flora and fauna of the places he frequented, as well as the details of indigenous peoples he met (among them the Mosquito and Kuna peoples) proved extremely influential and valuable. His work on wind and water currents, especially, provided a foundation used by naval navigators for centuries.

The Fate of Piracy, Part I: Introduction

October 17, 2019October 19, 2019faithfictionfatherhood 2 Comments

I love pirates. Maybe it’s because, every so often, I think I might just understand what H.L. Mencken meant when he said, “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

More likely, there’s something about men ready to stick their middle finger up to the powers of the world and seek some form of independence on their own terms. American democracy owes more to Caribbean pirates than it does to the Greeks. Look it up.

Even more likely than that, there’s something about the constant challenge of “being on the account.” Pirates and privateers may have died by blade and shot and noose, but they more often lived by their wit and cunning. As you know, I love the complexity of swordplay. Though I have few opportunities at present to indulge, I also love sailing (or at least I think I do based on past experience!).

And, even more likely than that: I grew up playing with Lego Pirate Ships, reading about pirates, playing Sid Meier’s Pirates! on the computer, watching Pirates of Dark Water on Saturday mornings.

Regardless of the reason, I am fascinated by privateers, pirates, the Age of Sail and adventure at sea.

I’ve noted in several recent posts about the “narrative sandbox” idea I’ve been working on with regards to roleplaying settings. As my Shadowrun campaign is playing out, I’m getting to test and adjust some of what was previously only theory-crafting. In the meantime, I’ve recently played a little bit of the Greedfall video game and I’m currently listening to the excellent Pirate History Podcast. In my review of the Sixth Edition Shadowrun rules system, I noticed that, while I liked the idea of the rules in the latest edition of the 7^th Sea RPG, I didn’t like them in practice, either.

All of these things have led me to start thinking about (1): sticking to Fate RPG as my ruleset of choice for games and (2) working on a fantastical age of sail setting of swashbuckling adventure. As if I don’t have enough simultaneously unfurling projects to bounce between…

Nevertheless, in combining three of my favorite things—historical research and general nerdity, roleplaying games and worldbuilding—I’ve started to toy with toolkitting the Fate rules for just such a game. Think an open-world sort of game like the Pirates! computer game with enough survival, political, exploration, combat and skullduggery components to please most players of RPGs. In a more fantastic setting than the historical Spanish Main (though, with a “realistic” starting place for systems, they should be equally at home in a historical campaign).

This series is going to track my progress at creating some rules I find useful for running just such a game. I’ll start on the historical analogue side with rules development and add some fantastical aspects (no pun intended) later on. So, in some ways, this series will track something like my series on swordplay for authors and gamers, but with some special Fate crunch added in.

Unlike that last series, I’m going to front-load some of the sources I’m using in preparing both the rules and this series of posts:

The Sea Rover’s Practice, by Benerson Little
Benerson Little is a former Navy SEAL, someone with intimate knowledge of maritime and amphibious warfare. On top of that, he’s a respected historian of piracy and privateering, particularly on the tactics and stratagems employed by those ne’er-do-wells in the search for plunder. He served as an historical consultant on the series Black Sails and for the miniatures game Blood and Plunder (which might, eventually, show up on the blog once I make more progress with Frostgrave), both of which I love. I’ll be resorting to this book primarily for building systems for interesting ship-based conflict.

Osprey Publishing Books
These works tend to be concise summaries of different types of soldiers in various historical contexts, always accompanied by great illustrations. Books I’m looking at here include: Pirate 1660-1730, Spanish Galleon 1530-1690, Buccaneers 1620-1700, Blackbeard’s Last Fight, Warships of the Anglo-Dutch Wars 1652-74, Pirate: The Golden Age, The Pirate Ship 1660-1730

Seamanship in the Age of Sail, by John Harland
War at Sea in the Age of Sail, 1650-1850, by Andrew Lambert

Both of these will be used to further inform my understanding of sailing techniques for creating satisfying (but not overly complex) systems for ship chases and maneuvering as well as ship-to-ship combat.

British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1603-1714, by Rif Winfield
British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1714-1792, by Rif Winfield
First-Rate: The Greatest Warships of the Age of Sail, by Rif Winfield
French Warships in the Age of Sail, 1626-1786, by Rif Winfield
The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, 1600-1815, by Brian Lavery

As you’ll see in the next post(s), there’s a lot of complexity to ship types and ship designs in the late 16^th through early 18^th Century period we’ll be examining here. As you can see, the books I’ve lined up here are entirely devoted to warships, most of which (as I’ll explain later) were unlikely to be seen in the Caribbean. If I can find some good references for the smaller and lighter-armed ships that would have been more frequently encountered in the Spanish Main, whether in the hands of the upstanding merchant or the most fiendish pirate, I’ll be adding those in.

In the next part, I’ll include some brief notes about pirates and piracy in general to inform our games.

For the next post in this series, click here.

Cortex Prime Shadowrun, Part VI: Magic, Foci and Alchemy

April 10, 2019April 12, 2019faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve worked on this series. Yes, my writing work is unpredictable and jumps from topic to topic. The curse of the creative “free spirit” with too many interests, I guess (though I’m usually quick to say that “be interested in everything” was the best advice I ever got). All of that aside, I’m getting back to working on some Cortex hacks of various types to flex my RPG mechanics muscles again. I hope you find the work useful.

Foci
Foci are a big deal in Shadowrun, in many ways the magician’s equivalent of the street samurai packing the Panther Assault Cannon. Modeling them in Cortex is, on the one hand, relatively simple–each Focus is a Signature Asset. On the other hand, Shadowrun uses multiple types of foci and there are some specific attributes of foci in the world of Shadowrun that ought to be mechanically addressed as well.

The creation of foci is best handled in the same way as the acquisition of any Signature Asset: the player pays the requisite cost and a narrative explanation of how the Asset was acquired is given. There’s no need to go through complex creation rules.

Attributes of All Foci:

Limit: A focus may only be used by a character with the magical ability and the ability to take the specific types of actions to which the focus applies.

Limit: Binding: Until a character pays the cost to add a focus as a Signature Asset (whether at character creation or through advancement), a Focus is not bound to the character and cannot be used.

Limit: Active/Inactive: Foci must be powered by magic to be useful. When not powered, foci are inactive and can essentially be ignored altogether. When active, the following rules are in effect. Activation and the rules described below should be considered Limits on a Focus asset..

Astral Beacon: an active focus gives off a lot of astral energy, allowing others with the astral perception/astral projection abilities a benefit in finding, analyzing and targeting a magician with an active focus. When using astral perception to find or to gather information about a target with an active focus, add the focus to the actor’s dice pool as an advantage. A magician using Psychometry or other spells and abilities to analyze the astral signature of a place after the fact may, if the GM determines that the rating of the focus, its past use and the time elapsed since the use is reasonable under the circumstances, be added to the acting magician’s dice pool as an advantage.

Link: Because a focus must be bound to its user, it provides both a material link to the owner regardless of activity and a method for targeting its owner astrally when active. A magician in physical possession of another magician’s focus, or astrally viewing an active focus, may add that die to a dice pool to create an advantage for the purposes of targeting the focus’ owner with magic.

Specific Foci:

Alchemical Foci: Alchemical foci add their Rating to Alchemy tests.

Disenchanting Foci: These add to tests to disenchant artifacts, foci and other magical objects.

Spell Foci:
A spell focus adds its rating to Sorcery actions that match the category of spell and type of action to which the focus is attuned.
Limit: Category: A spell focus must describe one of the five categories of spells (Combat, Detection, Illusion, Healing and Manipulation) and may only be applied to Sorcery tests involving the category to which it is attuned.
Limit: Task: A spell focus must also describe one of the following magical tasks: Counterspelling, Ritual Spellcasting, Spellcasting. The focus may only be applied to Sorcery tests involving that task.

Sustaining Foci:
A sustaining focus allows a Magician to sustain a spell effect equal to or below its Rating without the Magician actively maintaining the spell. The spell may be cast at any time and “saved” into the focus to be used whenever the focus is activated.
Limit: Power: To add the stored spell effect to a dice pool, the focus must be activated and the Magician must pay an Edge point to use the effect for that Scene.
Limit: Counterspelling: Counterspelling may be used to reduce or obviate the spell effect maintained by the sustaining focus. To restore the functionality of a effect that has been partially or fully dispelled, the magician must cast the spell to be maintained anew.

Spirit Foci:
A spirit focus adds its rating to Conjuration tests of the task and category of spirit to which the focus is attuned.
Limit: Category: The focus must have a specific type of spirit (fire elemental, spirit of man, etc.) to which it is attuned. It may only be used for interactions with that type of spirit.
Limit: Task: The focus must be attuned to one of the following tasks: Summoning, Banishing, or Binding and may only be used for that type of task.

Weapon Focus:
A weapon focus adds its Rating to close combat tests in the physical or astral planes and allows its user to damage creatures and spirits normally immune to physical damage.

Alchemy:
Alchemy allows a character to store a spell for a one-time use later. This is simply handled: The character makes a test to cast the spell, but using Alchemy instead of Sorcery. The character resolves the test, including Drain, and pays one Edge to store the effect for later (the player should describe the form the alchemical device takes for narrative purposes).

Activation of the alchemical spell may require a test. If the alchemical device stores an attack effect, its rating should be added to an appropriate attack pool for close combat or a thrown weapon.

A spell that causes damage has an instant use. A spell that creates some other effect lasts for a Scene or until dispelled.

EDIT: You might be wondering why some of the classic foci (the Power Focus, for one) has no description here. Those foci that I haven’t listed are temporarily left out until I find a way to include them that satisfies me. As it stands, the Power Focus is just too powerful to add in–without the insane detail of creation cost inherent to the actual Shadowrun rules, I need to find some mechanisms within Cortex Prime that would allow some modicum of balance compared to the other, far more limited, foci.