Participants (in various roles): Lali Cheshire, Karen Twelves, J Li, Ezra Denney, Tom Vallejos, Colin Fahrion, Eric Zim, Brian Williams, Sophie Lagacé, Edmund Metheny, and Sean Nittner.
System: Fate Accelerated (in pieces)
Big Bad Gauntlet designed by Lali Cheshire.
After many slack conversations, emails, phone calls, google docs reviews, and much tinkering, we got together to try out a playtest of the Big Bad Gauntlet for Big Bad Con.
The playtest was vastly informative. As we had it structured the GM/Leaders were really a first among equals and the Agents, coming to them with challenges were the actual authority/GM. We were using a PTA style resolution system with decks of Fate Cards. It felt like it had a lot of promise but when we started breaking down the structure of play, it became pretty apparent that this was only working because our players and GMs were doing their best to keep it working.
After a lot of discussion we decided to go with a more traditional model of GMs running their own games but having a very limited fate point economy (and what fate points they did have went away when used) that could be supplemented by bribes from the Agent and help from the Audience.
We walked out ready to have more slack conversations, emails discussions, and start some new google docs!
A note for future games: A hand of Fate cards, where each player secretly puts one card face down into a pot, works in effect a lot like the crisis mechanics in BSG. It didn’t end up being utilized for this, but I really like the idea of using this more in the future.
