Roll Some Dice

OrcCon was the weekend before last, so I apologize for just now getting around to this. However, it's not for lack of enthusiasm -- the playtests of Leftovers went very well, and I'm psyched to get more going soon. I came back from the con with some great feedback and ideas that'll make the next version a better game. I also gave away four ashcan copies of the current version of the rules, and have received assurances that total strangers will playtest it in distant lands (like Utah!) and report back with their findings. The basic plot was this: One or more of the PCs has a younger relative named Suzanne, who uncharacteristically doesn't show up for dinner one evening in the Trench. Asking around reveals that she headed out into the Ruins by herself to find "something cool" and prove that she's old enough to be on her own. She's mischievous and cocky, so this comes as a disappointment but not a surprise. Of course, anything outside the Trench is so

So last night my ol' gaming group and me (plus one) did a brief playtest of Leftovers via Skype and Google Wave. This included character creation, which ended up taking way, way longer than I'd hoped -- but I chalk that up to having to mediate everything through our Internet interfaces. I wanted it to take 30 minutes; it ended up being more like two hours. This would be bad news for OrcCon this weekend, at which I intend to include chargen in each of the two 4-hour sessions, but I've made a character sheet that I think should sort out most of the confusion in advance. I know part of the problem was people rating their Traits, then later on finding out that, for example, if you don't rate your Violent Trait at all, you'll be terrible (and dead) in a fight. Personally, that's a feature, not a bug, but I don't want people getting screwed over by their lack of familiarity with the system. The character sheet has the formulae for the four derived stats (Physic

So I didn't end up submitting this game by the contest's deadline. I just got too preoccupied with FATE stuff right smack-dab in the middle of the contest and didn't get around to it. Frankly, though, whatever. I've made enough progress that I'm going to see it through regardless. It strikes me as a great game for cons. The rules couldn't be much lighter, and the way the mechanics encourage -- nay, require a make-it-up-as-you-go approach seems ideally suited for a con one-shot. Once I'm done with it, I'll either put it on a wiki of some kind or get a rudimentary PDF put together for download.