Part 5 of the Ferrymen series, a long running home campaign adapting Diaspora to Fate Core.

Been busy recently – partially with some exciting RPG stuff I unfortunately can’t talk about right now – so today’s Ferrymen post is long overdue. My subject is the player party’s break-in to the Carthaginian Consultancy’s fortified headquarters, a dramatic set-piece from the end of our last arc, that had been foreshadowed from literally the first session of the game.

Undoubtedly, the impact of this moment was derived from the shared history of the player party leading up to the encounter. But the mechanics used to evoke the unique challenges of the heist played their part, I think, and a lot of that could be equally applicable to any GM preparing a heist or similar set-piece for a Fate game. What follows is partly mechanics, partly GM advice, but mostly just extrapolation of material from Fate Core. I hope that having it all in one place will nonetheless be a useful reference. Continue reading →

Part 4 of the Ferrymen series, a long running home campaign adapting Diaspora to Fate Core. See Part 6 for a post-playtest update to the Factional Conflict rules below.

Over the last three dozen sessions of Ferrymen, the crew of The Erebus (aka the player party) have repeatedly run up against the legislative dominion of the Carthage system – the sole manufacturers of FTL “slipstream drives”, who limit this precious technology to those who pay tribute and abide their trading regulations.

From the harsh taxes that drive business owners into criminality, to the ruthless eradication of “piratical elements”, to the spies of the Carthaginian Consultancy that reside on every slipstreaming vessel… it’s difficult for the crew to escape the evidence of Carthage’s misdeeds. Continue reading →

Part 3 of the Ferrymen series, a long running home campaign adapting Diaspora to Fate Core. See Part 8 for a post-playtest update to skill modifiers and interface generation (amongst other things).

Previously in the Ferrymen series, I provided our rules for spaceship conflict in Fate Core, and promised it would be followed up with rules for interface vehicles – smaller spaceships that are used for conveyance between spaceships and planetary surfaces.

The first thing to do when imagining the function of interface vehicles in Ferrymen is to dispel all notions of Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica from your mind. Continue reading →

Part 2 of the Ferrymen series, a long running home campaign adapting Diaspora to Fate Core. See Part 8 for a post-playtest update to the campaign skill list and spaceship skill modifiers (amongst other things).

Last time I talked about my “Ferrymen” campaign, I teased the release of our spaceship combat rules, which I created following our translation from Diaspora to Fate Core.

These rules are designed to encompass the elements of Diaspora that resonated with us and had become the most essential parts of our setting, whilst we also embraced the stripped-out, streamlined ethos of Fate Core. Continue reading →

Part 1 of the Ferrymen series, a long running home campaign adapting Diaspora to Fate Core.

Over three years ago, I started running a Diaspora campaign for five of my nerdy friends. That game – Ferrymen – transitioned to Fate Core upon that game’s release, and this weekend I ran its 37th gaming session. Continue reading →