Characters I've Played: TJ

TJ is a character I've come back to a few times over.  Like some other characters I've played (funny how it's happened), she started out as a character for a zombie horror game that didn't last terribly long.  But when Sunday Game Group was discussing having regular roleplaying for the first time (which was maybe 4 or 5 years ago, now!) we discussed starting off with the Cortex System from Margret Weis Productions using the Supernatural setting.  So TJ seemed like a natural fit for an update into Evil Hat's Fate Core.

So a first thing to throw out there is that TJ is what's generally called a "crossplay" character.  I've actually seen the topic of "is it possible for guys to play girls in RPGs?" come up quite a bit lately, so I feel like it's important to acknowledge the discussion.  Personally, I've never seen much of an issue.  The characters I play aren't me and as a writer I tend to make characters based on what fits the story I want to tell.  So in this instance, TJ just fit.  Do I play her as a woman would play her?  I have no idea, to be honest.  But I try and keep in mind that TJ should be a complete person with opinions and feelings.

That means that TJ has a sexual orientation (which is bisexual) and standards as to what she wants in that orientation.  I have the list of what she likes in my head and I can use that list to go back an assess things from her viewpoint.  Which, I think, is the value of roleplaying to me.  I know what I'd do, or would like to do, in a lot of life situations.  It's far more interesting to see if I can build a story for someone else and carry that to outcomes.  It's a test of my writing/creating skills and a test of my ability to create logical reasonings for things.  In that sense playing a girl, for me, isn't really all that different from playing a Tauren.

So that all said, a bit of story about TJ.  TJ was born in the Portland, Oregon and was a gearhead from a young age.  She has a number of tattoos, which reflect successful missions as a hunter.  She is strong but still has a figure rather than an overly-muscled frame and she cares deeply about people and the environment, but is fairly apolitical.  There's a couple of secret bits of information about here that I'll try to hint at here, but not reveal.

TJ's original system was D20 Modern, then she rolled over into Cortex, and then from there we did manage to briefly continue our Supernatural game in the version of Fate used in Strands of Fate.  As a reminder, I'll be going over TJ's High Concept, her Trouble, 3 Phase Aspects, her Skills, and her Stunts.

TJ's High Concept is an easy one for me, because it was the first set of words I came up with when I was first creating her.  She's a biker, a girl, she's got tattoos, and she hunts the supernatural.  All that rolls together well.
High Concept: Tattooed Biker and Huntress

TJ's Trouble is similarly fairly straightforward.  She's a striking woman, with all the tattoos.  She's not gorgeous or hideous, but she's fit and has strong features.  She dresses in a tomboy fashion and doesn't do "meek and demure."  Add to that a loud motorcycle and a penchant for baseball bats and shotguns and she's pretty hard not to notice.
Trouble:  Hard to Forget

The first phase aspect is usually the background for my characters.  In the Supernatural setting I like to make this about what made them a Hunter.  For TJ, this goes back to when she was visiting a friend in Santa Cruz and an angry ghost decided to crash their party.  It turned out the ghost was haunting the locket TJ's friend had picked up at an antique store and assumed the girl had gotten the locket from the ghosts' husband, who'd cheated on the ghost so many years ago.  TJ stopped the ghost by destroying the locket, making a pretty clear aspect.
Phase One (Background): Ghost Lock-down

The second phase is a situation in which the characters form some of their initial connections.  One of the main characters that TJ has had repeated adventures with is named Jane, who is a bookish, smaller, quiet hunter, which serves as a good foil for big, loud TJ.  We've never quite fleshed out their first meeting, but it's been hinted at that TJ saved Jane from some monster and Jane saved TJ from the cops.  TJ also showed a penchant for breaking down the obstacles in her way.
Phase Two (Jane Guest Star): Break Stuff

Third phase, like second, should be another guest starring situation.  I don't know that at this point any of the characters I've played with in the past fit particularly strongly for this slot, so I'll leave it open for the day we play again and I need to fill in.  A key feature of TJ's persona is the fact that she uses her tattoos to record her hunts, so it's an easy choice to make this aspect about that.
Phase Three: Stories in Ink


Skills wise, TJ is fairly straightforward.  Her key ability would probably be fight, as that's where she makes her living.  Beneath that would be the drive skill (for her motorcycle) and the craft skill for her mechanical inclination.  Following that would be physique (because she's got the ability for a lot of stamina), athletics (because she works out regularly), and shoot (because it's her other key mode of combat).  Filling out her skills would be rapport, empathy, notice, and contacts.

Great(+4): Fight

Good(+3): Drive, Craft

Fair(+2): Physique, Athletics, Shoot

Average(+1): Rapport, Empathy, Notice, Contacts

In terms of stunts, TJ uses them to fill in a bit of her weak areas.  She has a strength with shotguns, but relative inexperience with other guns, so I give her a shoot stunt that boosts her shotgun skills.  I've called this "Buckshot Blast" in the past and I'll stick with that here.  Similarly, TJ isn't a great investigator, but sometimes can make leaps of insight that get her where she needs to be.  I'll make a stunt in this case that plays off her empathy to take on a trapping of investigation.  This, I think, should be called "Seeing the Pattern."  Finally, TJ is fairly intimidating and can get what she wants out of people using her looks or her brawn.  Both of these fit in with physique, so I'll give her an ability to use physique to intimidate or charm over rapport.  I'll call this "Woman of Note."
Stunts
Buckshot Blast
Seeing the Pattern
Woman of Note

So that's TJ.  Feels good to update her though she's less out of date than others I might do in this series.  Hopefully another chance to play her will come up soon.

Previous in this series: Thorren

Yes, Even More Dice on Kickstarter

I've been in on the Fudge It! campaign on Kickstarter for a while now because I really do have a little too much affection for having a wide variety of dice. Call it gamer superstition, but I like having different colors and styles to fall back on if I feel like something isn't rolling well. And the Fudge It! campaign promises to give me some new options for my fudge/fate dice.  The campaign also has support from both Grey Ghost Press, the originators of Fudge dice, and Fred Hicks of Evil Hat, publishers of probably the biggest consumer of Fudge dice: Fate.  It looks like the Fudge It! campaign should just make funding at the end of April.

Speaking of Evil Hat, I'm also jumping on board with Evil Hat's official Fate Dice campaign, which is new but moving quickly. Two of three stretch goal sets of dice have already been revealed and are awesome! The Centurion Set, based off the Fate game Spirit of the Century, is is gold, burgundy, and black which gives me a very steampunk vibe. The first revealed set is based on the cover of Fate Core and features sparkling dice in purple, green, and blue. But my current favorite is the Atomic Robo set, based off the Atomic Robo comic and forthcoming Fate game, which features translucent cyan and green and a pearlized grey. The set is gorgeous and the cyan and grey are a great matching set. I'm sure they'll become my go-to dice.  Rumor has it that the next set to be revealed will pay homage to the Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher and the Dresden Files RPG from Evil Hat.  I can't wait to discover if that's true.  If I can base my estimate off of Fate Core, the Fate Dice campaign is going to blow way past the currently set stretch goals and result in some bonus designs and colors.  We'll see!

Game Night: Steampunk Smackdown!

A couple Sundays back, most of the Sunday night group couldn't make it due to various reasons, so we jumped into a bit of Strands of Fate steampunk.  The group consisted of a Steampunk Sentient Robot (Chooooooie!), a Captain, a sniper, a burly tough guy, and my character.

My character dubbed herself Juno and was a wizard.  No really a wizard.  She'd be happy to tell you so.  Disregard those mechanical apparatus under her clothes.  Doubt and feel her wrath.  The rest of the group started out without Juno, who was from the area they were headed to, to investigate the disappearance of the local baron's daughter to mysterious kidnappers.  Juno also had her reasons to hunt down these kidnappers, giving a logical reason for her to link up with the group.

But I'd decided that Juno might just be a bit arrogant.  And she knew of Captain Zack (Sparrow, that is), who she informed she wouldn't be being intimate with.  The Captain reported with well-earned sarcasm and got a chest full of Aether bolt courtesy of Juno's bad temper.  Choo-choo didn't particularly like that and warned Juno with tea-kettle-y rage and a raised fist, but ended up picking up Captain Zack instead.  Juno managed to still convince the group she could be of help to them and thus tagged along as they headed off to a bar to look for clues.

Eventually, Choo-choo and Juno headed back to the group's airship while the captain got busy, the tough got drunk (and passed out), and the sniper got fed.  They never quite made it there, though.  On the way up the dock, Chooie overheard some other folks talking about the kidnappings and was sure that they were involved.  This, tea-kettle-y rage was unleashed.  Three of the group squared off against Chooie and Juno ducked behind the big robot to hide.

Meanwhile, Captain Zack was still getting laid.

Back at the dock, Juno threw up a shield, preventing the rest of the rival airship's crew from joining the fight. Eventually a grenade got introduced to the fight.  Juno went to blast one of the combatants, but her machinery failed.  A moment later, Chooie booted the grenade and the robot's great might punched the object through Juno's shield... and into the airship.  The resulting explosion was heard back at the bar and sent the burning wreckage of the ship down into the city.

The bewildered rival crew eventually lost out and the guards showed up.  Juno, in self-preservation mode, claimed to not really know Choo-choo and played up the act of creating a shield and her lack of knowledge of why the fight had started.  The guards took her, and Chooie, anyways.  Eventually, Captain Zack did get them freed and the group started out.

While in the air, the ship was attacked and forced into a storm where the worst happened: they encountered a terrible sky-kraken!  That was the cliff-hanger ending.

It's Fated

I feel like a good place to start off writing here is to talk about my experience with the Fate Core Kickstarter.  Simply put, it was awesome!

Okay, so I could end there, but you should know WHY it was awesome!  I've been a fan of Fate for a while.  I first played Fudge maybe four or five years ago with friends in an attempt to introduce them to the Rifts world.  It was fun for one game, but didn't really hold anyone's attention.  I liked the simple mechanics, though.  Skip ahead a couple years and the Dresden Files RPG was released by Evil Hat (publishers of Fate Core).  My buddy decided he was going to run it, and here were those funky dice from my long before Fudge game.

DFRPG runs on the preceding version of Fate to Fate Core.  Our game was tons of fun, even if the sudden disappearance of half our party (and the representatives of our in-game Russian mafia) disappeared. I liked the mechanics even better, even if there were some rough spots.  Fate was quickly my Sunday group's favorite system.  Between DFRPG and the upcoming release of Fate Core we've used the also excellent Strands of Fate/Strands of Power system.

But anyways, back to the Kickstarter!  I managed to hear about it within 24 hours of it going live, and being familiar with Evil Hat, jumped right in.  When I signed up, I was in for one book and there were maybe 5 or 6 stretch goals announced.

The game was funded, if I recall, about ten hours after I pledged.  Quickly, the stretch goals representing various settings based on Fate Core mechanics began to be left in the dust.  Even better, the Fate Core book was ready for download right away!  I could get into the system without waiting for publishing and shipping!

And them came some awesome stretch goals like The Deck of Fate (playing cards with Fate dice results doubling as fate points!) and Fate Accelerated (a stripped down version of the game designed for newbies!).  In that time period , the settings books began to be available, too.  I can tell you right now that I've read Kreigszepplin Valkyrie and Camelot Trigger cover to cover and I'm in love with those settings.  But even better was when all the settings became print books, which I was promptly able to buy in for.  Ditto a Fate Core toolkit book and Fate Accelerated got their own books.

In the end, I pledged $80 and paid an extra $20 for separate shipping and am pulling in 4 physical books, those same four books in PDF/ePub/mobi, a font, pdfs of at least 2 other upcoming Evil Hat books, sounds files and videos of Fred Hicks of Evil hats doing funny things, and pdfs and utilities pledged by other backers of Fate Core, which looks to be adding another half-dozen pdfs to my haul. Not te mention that further Fate projects have been funded because of this single Kickstarter.  All that while watching a rocketing ascent to over $433,000 of a stated $3,000 goal!  The folks over at Evil Hat seemed so genuinely excited and proud of their Kickstarter that it's hard not to be thrilled.  (And why would I not be?)  Truly, Fate Core's Kickstarter set an amazing standard for RPG Kickstarters to aspire to!