Out of Character

It was sophomore year of college. Leda was walking to class. Those eyes across the quad drew her in. Sparks flew. Then a whirlwind romance ensued. Holding hands, racing into each other's eyes, slow dancing in the moonlight. It was fast and furious. Then they were called away to serve in the space marines. Battle changed them, time changed Leda, and two years later, they had nothing in common. Nothing but the memory of enduring love, and in her heart of hearts, it had never ended.

Will this suffice?

Though she'd never bring it up, Hariette had a sister who died of a rare alien fungus, while they were both little. It really affected her and her choices in life. Curing the fungus later helped stem the grief a bit, but she's never really gotten over it

Great work everybody. Thos will be sufficient. Just remember to name them also. And Harrigan, that's okay you don't need to create another one.

Not sure if this will work, but I'm imagining that TBD is somewhat haunted by all the fallen comrades he has had to leave behind. Maybe there's one in particular that sticks out. Just a kid, never knew his name, but he barely looked old enough to serve. Found him lying on the battlefield, mortally wounded, TBD could tell, but it was going to be a long slow painful death from that kind of an abdominal wound. Kid kept asking if he'd be ok, because he was the only one who was taking care of his mom, sending his pay home to pay for medications and the caregiver and... But the unit was bugging out, the position was lost, and was about to be overrun by Chikchichi drones that would have dragged him back to the hive to feed their queen and extract whatever intel they could by whatever they call their psychic brainrape. He told the kid he'd be ok, to think of home and his mom, and then when he closed his eyes, put a round through his head. It was mercy, but it still haunts him.

If we need something he loves - that's a tougher call. He's a hard guy and doesn't let anybody in (rough childhood). The only thing he ever really loved was his dog, Lady, when he was a kid. She was a little floppy eared poodle mix mutt that followed him home one day. They became inseparable. She went to stay with a relative when he entered the service, but died shortly thereafter. They said she just wasted away, sitting on the porch, waiting for him to come home.

Okee!

*swipes his tears away* Yeah, yeah, it should be okay. Good work.

When we finish Session 1 I want to hear everybody's opinion on what the heck is going on in this campaign :D

I want to apologize you as I’ve made a mistake on my last post. Those info Hariette got from the mask wearing alien were supposed be understood by Cass as she is the anthropologist and Hariette is the biologist. I’ll edit my post as soon as I find the time but you don’t need to change anything. Sorry for that.

Edited my last post to reflect the new information made available to Cass.

Hello everyone. I wanted to emphasize one thing again because it has been bothering me in the last few days. As the Session 1 progresses, I've realized that it is more like I'm presenting you a definite story instead of you exploring the world at your wish. I, maybe more than most people, know how disturbing that can be, especially in a table top rpg where everything is kind of about how players can freely lead the way, do the things they want, and especially in a game like Fate where that element of freedom is even more highlighted than other systems. I also like open worlds or sandboxes and my intention is to present that to you as well. I promise you after the Session 1 ends you'll get to explore and create the world as much as you like. Just bear with me until you figure out this mysterious events :)

So -- I'm reluctant to say anything here because I hate back-seat GMing, but I've got some thoughts on the current scene / action that may or may not be helpful.

So at the risk of being a jerk, I'll offer those thoughts. Ignore me if I'm off-base.
Just a question here about whether this needs to be a roll. In Fate, you're normally going to the dice to accomplish something when the stakes are high, the outcome is uncertain, and failure is as interesting as success. Keep that in mind when asking for things like Notice rolls, which are a trad construct that can gum up a Fate game. Here, maybe failure would be meaningful and interesting -- and if that's the case, cool, but it stood out as something to mention.

Then when Windy posts...
Here we can highlight another thing that's different, and cool, about Fate. Namely, we don't know if this computer is the real deal. If it works. We can wait for ireneofunyes to state whether it is or not, or Windy could spent a Fate Point to make it a working PC -- provided that jives with the overall reality of the scene, which our GM has the final say on. Once that decision is made, we can get into what kind of action Leda is trying to perform. Subtext here being don't lead with the skill -- describe in the narrative what you are trying to do, then see which of the skills and four actions fit.

Just idle thoughts!

Yes, you’re absolutely right. I’m too accustomed to D&D nowadays, a Notice roll like that would make sense in a D&D game but in Fate rolls are almost always need to be started by a player. GM’s job can be at most to suggest what skill can/should the player choose. I’ll stick with it this time but I’ll try to make sure not mix different systems’ working styles.

To be fair, it's a far, far harder adjustment to make than most folks realize. I mean -- there were videos back in the day people were recording where they were saying Fate wasn't even an RPG. :)

I don't know that I would say that the player 'almost always' started by the player -- at least compared to more recent narrative and story-based games, such as PbtA and the like.

Anyway -- just let me know if the peanut gallery comments become annoying.

Just out of curiosity, what did Leda do with that level of harm? Just to make sure you understand the system, @WindyRidge, Leda could take that harm as a single point of Stress, or she could take a Minor Consequence. The former (Stress) is the smarter play generally unless you have some things on your sheet that change when you've got consequences marked. Stress recovers faster, can't be used against you as an aspect that can be invoked in a hostile way, and is generally pretty good at modeling the absorption of little nickel and dime stuff that doesn't bother a hero too much unless it all piles up.

I took it as a single point of stress. But being new and not having the rules memorized I didn't know I had the option of taking a minor consequence instead. Thanks for pointing that out.

Yes you have that option but it only makes sense if you have taken 2 or more shifts of damage. Mild consequence absorbs 2 shifts, moderate 4 shifts and severe 6 shifts. Since you have 3 boxes of stress, let's say you have taken a 4 shifts of damage. Instead of filling all your stress boxes and taking an extra shift as your mild consequence, you can take a moderate consequence and absorb all those shifts just like that. There is a downside of course: as Harrigan said, consequences are aspects that can be invoked by everyone and they are always true, thus if you have a consequence called "poisoned", then you are poisoned and you will undergo everything a poisoned person undergoes until you recover from that consequence. Mild consequences are easy enough, you get rid of them after one scene if you treated them in-game. Unlike stress boxes, which are automatically cleared when a scene ends, mild consequences need treatment to recover from. If you take a moderate consequence, then a whole session needs to be passed after your treatment and if you take a severe consequence, then only way to cure it is to reach a major milestone in the story, after treatment again. These are Fate Condensed's rules for stress and consequences. You can use them anyway you see fit. Just because some option is more optimal doesn't mean you have to choose it.

Thanks for the explanation.

Just to rfresh everybody's memories, here is an excerpt from the Fate Condensed rulebook, explaining Create and Advantage action:
So a few things to bear in mind:

You must state that you are trying to create an advantage, you must state wheter you are creating a new aspect or making use of an existing aspect and if you're creating a new one, say where are you attaching the aspect: to an opponent, ally or environment? I'll try to clarify these things as they go along but remember: in Fate, every time you perform an action, you have to decide which one of the four actions you try and state other specifics required by that action. Then you pass it out to me and I say what should you roll and what is the target difficulty.

Updated sheet for the Mild consequences

Congratulations everyone! We have finished our first session. I get that it might be a bit sudden, but that was it. Hope you have enjoyed out time together. With that, we have reached a minor milestone. According to rulebook, before we start Session 2, you have some options.
In addition to these, as I've said earlier, you can write your stunts or free aspects as well. You can think of our progress until now as a prologue. It'll probably a week before we start the next session. Besides, you need to choose your ship type. At Session 0 I've prepared a few options for you here. You don't need to choose between these of course, you can create it together but we should design a balanced ship.

Lastly, I want to hear your opinions on Session 1. How did it go, what were you expecting, did you enjoy it, do you have any complaints etc?

Good call on asking for feedback. I should do that more in my games.

I haven't played a lot of Fate, very little in fact. I'm cognizant that you have indicated at least twice that the opening bit was going to be different, and a bit outside of the normal for Fate.

The opening felt like none of our choices really mattered. Maybe they had immediate effects but the end result was identical for each of us, and seems like any choice we made, it still would have ended up where we did without having really learned anything. I don't think this is a great way to introduce someone to Fate -- I was kind of expecting a more freeform collaborative style, especially after the free reign we took in character creation.

However, we got to explore how to roleplay our characters, which for me is mainly the point of playing, so that was good. I kind of like where CC's personality is fitting in my head, and I think she's going to be fun.

As such, I'm conflicted. I don't know that what we've seen seems like a fun game style to continue to play in, but you're said that your style going forward will be different -- we just haven't seen that yet.