Great episode. Very cool.

Listen, I have purchased the Fiasco app and I really think it is cool. Are you going to continue to add to it?

Pete
ruthlessdee.com

However, I’ve heard consistently great things about Leverage and Smallville, which are also more generically known as Cortex Plus Action and Cortex Plus Drama, respectively. They both aim to emulate specific motifs, i.e. a Heist show and a HighSchool Supers Friendship/GrowingUp Drama. And I’m very excited about MWP’s forthcoming Marvel Supers RPG.

So to actually answer your question: I *adore* this implementation of sci-fi, and there is nothing currently implemented in Cortex that matches it in terms of its support for the style of game I want to play. And I could totally bring Bulldogs! to FTC5. I usually end up running 4-5 games anyway.

How does it FATE sci fi stack against Cortex? I downloaded the Firefly sourcebooks before they vanished from circulation when MWP stopped maintaining the license. I can’t really say I’m happy with the Cortex system. It’s very D&D-like, and strikes me as not very fluid. Great content, though… and FATE strikes me as a great system to model the interplay of the crew’s relationships and the inherent danger of Serenity’s place in the ‘verse.

Maybe a Bulldog! port of Firefly FATE for a FTC5 slot?

I didn’t phrase my first question well. When the leader gives “The Crash”, does everyone at the table use the same Crash as their starting point? As in, all the journals are about different characters in the same plane crash. This would allow characters from different journals to interact if the players wanted.

Or, do all the players write a completely different The Crash? So one writes a tropical island crash, one writes a spaceship crash into a Jovian moon, one writes an airship crash into a volcano…

My thinking is that adventure journals vary widely. Some are written like memoirs, other allegorical adventure stories, others might be more traditional diaries of internal monologues.

The boxes on the back represent the eventual quality of the characters fate. The idea is to cross one out for each page but the last, leaving one box unmarked for the last page as an indicator of how well off they end up. (borrowing Fiasco’s outcome table ideas). Some descriptive terms might serve better in those boxes.

1. Are all the journals about the same group of characters? i.e. they are all on the same adventure?

2. What is the significance of the boxes and crossing them out?

I’d be glad to help with anything you’d like. I’ve done some tech writing and game design, as well.

There are keyboard noises, and maybe some scribbling with a pencil, I think?

I’m no audiophile, but I’ve tried to listen to your podcast twice and really struggle.

Might be worth investing in a better microphone, or just not typing or writing while you podcast.

Much to my surprise, embarrasment and pride (yes, all at once), my letter got put in as the “hard letter” in the main rulebook. And, apparently I’m not too humble to shout about it.

I can’t wait to see all these new letters. EvilHat and Daniel just release people’s creativity, and that is just always awesome.

– Ben

@Evan – The good thing about it all is that my episodes are sporadic, so you should have time to listen to them without any problem. Enjoy.

I listened to your excellent conversations with Daniel Solis.

Then Do went live. They didn’t need my help, they were blowing the Kickstarter amount out of the water, but I kept on thinking about Games the Buddha wouldn’t play, and then they asked for letters for the bonus thank you gift.

The next thing I knew, I had written about the terrible problems in the city of Visdaya and pledged my $40 (they were well over $12,000, so again, they didn’t NEED me, but I apparently needed them).

Keep up the good work!

It was a pleasure to really get to hang out with you. I hope to replicate the experience soon.

I tend to be a very flexible GM, letting the players take the story where they like. I think that works against me for a con game because of the time constraint. I do think the episode nature of the classic Transformers cartoon helps, because I could set up a menu of Decepticon objectives. I get stuck on the PC interaction, because I think for the game to be fun, the players need to banter back and forth in the uber-cheesy 1980′s Decepticon way (Shrapnel: “Kickback, your meal is escaping.” Kickback: “Then I’d better JUMP to it!”).

On the up side, the characters are well defined with cool abilities, and the Insecticon episodes are available in iTunes and YouTube. I have no idea on the system; I thought about returning to D6, but Insecticons might be better suited for Cortex or Savage Worlds, both of which I have never run (and that strikes me as a big risk).

I’d be interested to hear a revenue or royalty sharing approach to defray the up front and ongoing costs. I assume that game development is in many ways like a tech startup–things are lean in the beginning, with a potential payoff at the end.