(I just transferred 1 FP from Stellata to Sindaria. Is that right?)

Yup!

Homing in on her voice, Henry steps through the dappled shadows at the bottom of the stream and grabs her hand, pulled along as they float downstream with the nice plant lady.

Can she forcefully pull him in?

OK. Good. Gotta go!

Oooh.

Guys is the code review website the right place to submit code that does not fully work and ask people to help you out with figuring out what is the problem?

@MaxPower Bring that over to this other room

@Jonatha ok

@Cat Sindaria reaches out through the darkness and pulls Henry through the dappled shadows at the bottom of the stream, grabbing his hand as they are float downstream with the nice plant lady.

Sure. Thanks @BESW!

TTYS

@Cat Always a pleasure. See you later.

Bye @Cat!

see you

Bye all!

This leaves Kirby with the dragon, and I think we can finish that scene independently later.

I might not have Kirby next time

or after next time then

If possible, I'd like to bring that charred body along too. See if he's still alive and knows a thing or two. That might be too much to cope with though.

Kirby might get nommed off-screen, or we might just wait to see what happened to him.

@JonathanHobbs Since this is a Giving In, no.

I see no reason atm for Kirby to be nommed off screen

but I do half expect he will get eaten my next session

So we'll leave the scene there for now. Nice, everybody.

I do have a sort of plan, that might or might not have gotten easier now that no one is here

at the very least it's much less likely I will take anyone other than poor mage mook with me if I do kick the bucket here

Thoughts on the session? Comments, complaints?

mainly, I would be fine with having Kirby nommed off screen if I hadn't fixed his aspects up a bit

if I can manage to get him out of this I think they will work much better

I am really surprised with how not-horribly that ended. Stellata was probably going to have to grab Sindaria and flee from the wizard busy attacking, and then that plan changed not at all when the dragon arrived.

But instead she got to go downriver!

Heheh.

And Sindaria and she are sticking together for the time being it seems. Hooray. :D

I honestly didn't expect the dragon to show so soon

"THE SCONES WERE BURNT!"

xD

What happened!?

yeah

and I knew what that was before you even said that

that's why the "noooooo!"

When last we left the dragon, Kirby was running from it and Sanguine was trying to calm it down by making pastries.

Kirby insulted it and dared it to eat him

I am also very pleased that Stellata's first roll was a +4 to be cleverly in the moment, alert and ready for anything. That is a tone-setter for me. I could not have picked a first roll more suitable for her.

it's a kid or a juvanile at best

it is pissed off something fierce right now

@BESW That's some fast pastry-making!

We don't know how long Kirby spent slamming into trees before he got that far....

yeah

we really don't

And the Forest is a good excuse for time/distance discrepancies.

Know the way might be a useful stunt for a blind oracle?

lol

used all my stunts

(know the way doesn't imply knowing what's in the way though)

maybe if he lives long enough, I might change one to that

Maybe Anticipate Tree.

Kirby only has two stunts on his sheet!

@BESW haha

oh

stunt

I thought you said aspect

lol

yeah stunt. :)

because I am an oracle I get +2 for finding my way around.... maybe

something sorta like that

that would be a bit of a tone-changer for an otherwise apparently blundersome oracle but could come in handy

I know that prolly isn't usable exactly the way it is

but Trogdor tired

@BESW Fate is fun. I learned a lot about it in not very long.

@JonathanHobbs Glad to hear it.

I was concerned it might have turned out to be a "make-up-your-own-victory" engine but it really really isn't. I actually had a challenge.

I realize I put you under a lot of pressure very quickly, character-wise, but that is something else to learn about Fate.

And that challenge was driven by complications.

@BESW I am totally okay with that. My mind was whirring as much as Stellata's would've been so it was totally appropriate.

And with you all whizzing downstream, I can have you split up when you wash ashore if our next sessions don't all coincide.

If my mind had been whirring in circles trying to work out what to do very quickly in a casual social situation where Stellata's leaning back in a chair having a chat? Would've been bad. Here it was fine and helped me make some rash decisions.

I started out with Brian suggesting something along the lines of "wizard attacks, Sin learns something about shadow magic from her mentor."

Clearly, dragons make everything better.

dragons make everything better and Stellata has learned rapidly about the forest

including that there are still dragons

and that they are very dangerous, but also very silly?

lol

yeah

Oh, and I loved the expression I imagined on your face when you realized the wizard was a mook.

lol

@BESW If she knows what a scone is yes, if she doesn't, just that they're dangerous and scones are very important to dragons (or at least one of them).

Heh. Scone check.

Roll for scones!

@BESW What did you imagine?

d4

er

4d

Well, well. She knows what scones are.

dragons can be quite silly

@JonathanHobbs Incredulity, dawning comprehension about the danger the dragon might present, if it one-hit something that got +5 on its first attack against Sin.

@BESW all she saw was some very potent magic and then some very potent if alternative antimagic.

No, your expression, not Stellata's.

Oh!!

lol

@BESW Yes. And: "If that was a mook what the hell is Zemenar going to be like!?"

and all I did was casually mention it

that was funny

GM prep in Fate is for chumps when you can churn out stuff like that on the fly.

I also thought "I spent a fate point to recognise a mook who went and yelled at an old ma in a cave!" - though in reality I spent a fate point to recognise possibly someone very dangerous so I'm satisfied. I also realise there's not often going to be much harm in busting stuff out in our sessions: use it whilst you have it.

mk, well, night guys

Yeah, we're a little OP because our sessions are usually a single scene each.

see yall later

G'night.

Goodnight @trogdor!

mm hmm

And yes, mooks are... not as insignificant as minions in 4e.

They're still +2 at the stuff they're supposed to be doing, and have a number of amusing uses.

My favorite, and a tactic I expect Zemenar to employ, is as ablative armor.

Mooks can give up their actions to 'attach' to a non-mook and basically act as extra stress boxes to be marked off first.

Also, I'm going to leave this here for later. Possibly buggy CSS dice and its gradient permalink.

I probably shouldn't touch 'em, but I'll point them out to those who should.

Ablative armor is very apt.

And the mooks can detach and reattach as appropriate throughout the fight.

Wow, okay.

Basically, "mook" is a unit of narrative significance rather than mechanical threat.

They're generally less threatening, but they make up for it by being easy to use in bulk.

@BESW unless they're doing something they're very good at

Or given time to stack aspects.

but I guess they're less threatening than a regular NPC, e.g. a dragon

Which is what that guy did: he pulled out a two-tag Menacing aspect and then blew it all on a single attack for a +6 modifier on a -1 roll.

@BESW Lesson learned: a couple of tapped advantageous aspects is a lot

Fate conflict generally doesn't consist of a lot of attacking.

I think I just witnessed fate conflict. Right?

And it involved almost none

It consists of Creating Advantages and using tags to prevent others from Creating Advantages.

And at some point you say "Okay, I have enough bonuses that I can stack on an attack to make it stick."

Right.

I had the lackey blow his wad because I was going to have him get eaten before he got to do anything else.

And did you notice that Sind survived it unscathed because Henry had done the same? He'd created a two-tag aspect and gave the tags to her.

Yeah.

So it's a matter of building up tags and forcing your opponent to use theirs poorly.

If you have a lot of FP, you can use them to force the fight early.

The dragon has... five? in the NPC pool right now. It's going to blow them on Kirby pretty fast.

I await what trogdor will get up to

and his plan

The dragon has a raw +6 on Flashy physical attacks, two mild consequence slots, and can clear a mild consequence once per session.

dang.

A Dragon.

Something that comes to mind is a battle scene described by Spoony in one of his vlogs.

This was an epic fight branching out over a good portion of a capital city and was the second-to-last battle in the entire campaign.

The 'heroes' had, right at the beginning, seriously pissed off a sort-of-a-demigod of a man running the city and they'd been upping the ante the whole time: the man trying to uncover them and flush them out so he could kill them or worse, and the PCs trying to stay hidden and doing a remarkable job of being successful at life in those conditions.

This fight was open war between a rebel movement they'd stirred up in the city, and the mercenary guards the city's leader had called into the city to try to flush out the PCs (who had been doing hit-and-run tactics on the guards up until this point to wittle them down)

Anyway. Fight was amazing, but the most amazing part was the spellcaster in the group.

This is a system in which spellcasting takes investment of a lot of time and resources and cannot be done simply or quickly but when done is very powerful.

What this spellcaster had done was - over the group's week of planning for this final fight - gone around to rooftops everywhere, and started rituals to 99%-cast spells in those spots. They planned it strategically, and planned exits so that the spellcaster could immediately move from one ritual circle to any one nearby and hopefully evade chasers.

So whilst the rebels were fighting in the streets below against the mercenaries, this spellcaster would be running up to one of his ritual circles, spending almost a minute finishing off the spell - then he'd bathe the street in fire and run like it's nobody's business to get away from those who'd take notice and make chase.

Then he'd appear elsewhere and launch off another spell. It was devastating.

Heh.

And to me that translates pretty directly to Fate, and piling up aspects in locations for ritual casting. This is cool.

Yup.

Though in this case it would be more like: "Okay, so... I tag all of these things and get +52 to my Forceful roll of -2. There are ten men in the street. They need to defend against +5 each."

"And I have 2 shifts left over for... eh, let's put a boost on the scene: Smokin'."

lol!

That's one of my favorite things about Fate: the way the kind of aspect you place influences the scene and what is possible in it so tangibly.

The words you choose have instant mechanical effect. Words are power.

@BESW I'm also seeing something else you pointed out, the everyone-gets-their-own-crunch thing. See ritual casting stuff above, see our entire scene.

Yeah. Kirby was very low-crunch.

The dragon is very high-crunch.

But the dragon could've instead just had a ton more FP to throw around.

@BESW Yeah I'm surprised by the effects my aspects had and didn't have

I... wasn't on the ball with aspects.

Too many of them and I had to keep switching tabs.

I need to write them on a piece of actual paper.

@BESW Or hit start+left for the game window and start+right for the tracker's window?

Yeah, but I also needed all the NPCs and PCs, with their full aspects and stunts.

@BESW addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tile-tabs

Find out if Chrome has anything like that

I look forward to the web app...

@BESW Oh yeah. :)

Tomorrow I'm gonna tinker with creating my version of the front-end.

I imagine it as being very like power2ool with chat.

@BESW I'm imagining something like that too, yeah. With equally concise cards.

Ok, uh. I should sleep. :D

Me too.

G'night!

@BESW Night. :)

Glad you liked the session!

Back shortly to just say thanks again for the session.

It was like a stick of dynamite.

Ka-pow!

@Cat Glad you liked it!

@BESW definitely!

And I'm always eager to hear what made people happy or less-happy about my sessions.

I'm happy.

Lots of action, which I liked, but basically just appreciated the chance to learn some more about FAE through what was happening onstage

Yeah, the sessions are a bit more physical than I'd expected, but I think it's working.

I'm definitely still learning the engine myself.

Do you want me to try to paste together the summary of the session, or have you already started that?

If someone else would do it, I'd be very appreciative.

I have some time, np

G'mornin

Hi!

We had a session with Sin, Kirby, and Stellata.

....and a dragon burnt a wizard crispy.

But now I must to sleep.

Oh dear, and goodnight.

Episode posted.

I guess I'm off to do more laundry

tty'all later

@JonathanHobbs 1.0 was me, 1.1 was me with a fix for Chrome from @Sohum

and if this many people are interested, a github seems reasonable ...

@Problematic is the forum down?

@C.Ross not from here

I can also see the forum OK. It was slow last night.

@BraddSzonye aye, I imagine it'll start to crawl if too many people are on it. But I guess that's what we get at ten bucks a month :)

Once discourse offers paid hosting, I'll probably migrate if it's not too costly

It was fine once it loaded, but the initial page view took several seconds.

now it works

@BraddSzonye yeah, something was probably just slow to load

If there's no activity for... an hour, I think? Heroku will put the dynos on standby. You probably caught a cold boot.

hmmm

If you're paying for multiple processes, it won't do that, but I don't want to pay $35/month for it right now

@Problematic I think that's fair

I hope to play again sometime, but with a new baby and a two year old, who knows

@Problematic Aha, that makes sense.

I've been working up a few scenarios for when I run into people who actually have time to play.

So far, I have one for a group and one for a solo or small group. One or two scenes each.

I've been doing similar, but not with the Enchanted Forest setting