Planning

Welcome to the game!

What are your ideas for setting / tone / mood / character?

Hello there, sorry for not answering yesterday, it was a busy day for me.

I'm willing to GM almost anything, but before that, let's talk about things we are not willing to do in a RPG. From my side of things, as a Christian I'm personally not willing to do stuff dealing with 'gods' and demons (fictional magic in general is fine). Much less importantly, I also don't do romance because it feels weird to RP that. Other than that, only the obvious no-goes like rape or torture (the latter I can be a little flexible about. Like, Batman threatening violence is fine, Jack Bauer waterboarding someone isn't).

Now, regarding setting / tone / mood / character... tell me what you want to play. From the initial description it seems like you're into traditional fantasy, so we could do that. But you also mentioned wanting variety, so we could do (though not necessarily):

Superheroes. What are your favorite superhero media? The ones that come to my mind first are stuff like Batman and Static Shock. We could do something more cartoony/comedic or something more """realistic""" or noir-ish, or a mixture of both.

Speaking of noir, I'm into intrigue, so expect at least some amount of cloak-and-dagger stuff in whatever I GM. How do you feel about spies, detectives, secret organizations, ninjas or gentlemen thieves? Speaking of which...

Fate has very pulpy DNA, so we could do something set in the 20th or 19th centuries (again taking from specific media). Tensions between powerful countries? Steampunk?

Or something weirder. Cloud sea Steampunk?

Or we could go into the far future and do something Star Wars-y or like Guardians of the Galaxy (Star Trek I have never watched). Or into a nearer future, with something like Fallout or a cyberpunk story (except not nihilistic-ally violent like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners). Or both of those, like Rimworld. (Or some kind of brighter future, although no media comes to mind at the moment.)

We could even do a mix of sci-fi and medieval-esque, like Viriconium or Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

And speaking of Japanese animation (Nausicaa), I've lately been wanting to GM or play a game inspired by Pokemon. You can check out my thoughts about GMing this for a group in this rant here. I even created a forum for this game, except it's completely empty because I've felt paralyzed thinking about the logistics of setting up the forum and then GMing for a group. This is because of my inexperience in general. However, GMing for a single player seems far less daunting to me, so I wouldn't feel paralyzed doing it 1-on-1, either GMing or playing. Are you familiar with Pokemon? In case you wouldn't want to play it, would you be willing to GM it?

However, there's a caveat for the above. I also plan on someday writing a Pokemon-like webnovel, so I'd want to have your written permission to take material from the RP to use as inspiration for this future story. I understand if you aren't willing to give that.

Well, still speaking of anime, we could do something like a battle shounen (like Naruto or Hunter x Hunter), or some other kind of anime (Gundam? Spy x Family? Akira?). Of course, anime is a medium rather than a genre, so there are animes of almost all kinds of genres to choose from...

We can mix-and-match from those options above, and of course it's a non-exhaustive list. Oh, and when I mention specific media, generally think inspired by rather than set in (except we could do "set in Pokemon" (rather than "like Pokemon") if you wanted to, because that one's easier).

As for what I'm wanting to play...

Mostly Pokemon(-like) or superheroes, but if you want to GM something else in particular I'm willing to play almost any of those options above.

Of course, after we pick genre and setting we are going to have to make some decisions regarding what Skill/Approach list to use, and Stress and Consequences, before we start making up setting aspects and then characters.

Noted.
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I agree.
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Oh, yeah. Do you know Conspiracy X? It has a very special place in my rpg heart.
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That's also in my favorites. Cloud Sea steampunk / weird science sounds very cool.
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I have only a very vague idea about Pokemon, because ... I'm not interested in it. :(

Right now, my rough idea is I run a Cloud Sea steampunk / weird science game for you, and you run a Conspiracy X game for me.
How does that sound?

Cloud sea steampunk sounds fun! However, I had never heard of Conspiracy X before, and I do not own the book, which is apparently of a system other than Fate...

What else would you want to play? I'd enjoy GMing a superhero game with elements of intrigue in it, but if you would rather something else, tell me.

Ok, what I said was very misleading. I didn't explain Conspiracy X. I didn't want to ask you to run me a non-Fate game with an unknown setting. And I'd like to play using Fate.

Conspiracy X is basically The X-Files, cloak-and-dagger investigation, conspiracies, espionage, alien species in league with the government, supernatural creatures and phenomena, and natural but creepy and weird creatures or phenomena.

Have you seen The X-Files (the original show)?

I haven't, unless I have and do not recall it. Sorry.

Let me give you a pitch...

Since at least a 100 or more years ago, there began to appear all over the globe various phenomena and creatures, sometimes including human beings, with certain characteristics and abilities that seemed not to obey the laws of physics as they are currently understood. Up to very recent times, the appearances of such phenomena had been only a trickle, a rounding error, perhaps nothing but scientific blunders. What could have up until the present year been dismissed by - or deliberately hid from - the public as hoaxes or mere mistakes of perception, can no longer be so. The trickle has suddenly become something of a flood. Strangeness, Oddity, Extranormality - is suddenly irrupting into the public eye.

After decades of superhero media in the worldwide pop culture, it was perhaps inevitable that many of the individuals that suddenly found themselves with special abilities would choose to don colorful costumes and aliases and call themselves "heroes" and "villains". Once a first person did it, the idea spread memetically until a majority of those "extranormal" individuals in the public eye had either chosen or been bestowed with a moniker. Indeed, this is the reason why extranormals are often called simply "supers" by the public.

However, all those extranormal phenomena in the public eye might be only a thin slice of the pie... a century (or more) of secrets have built up behind the scenes, in which many hidden players had the chance to build up power in many varied forms. But this so-called Golden Age that has now begun - some call it the Pyrite Age - has disrupted all kinds of hidden games, to the dismay or pleasure of their players. The Golden Age is shaking up the world and its shadows, at its bluntest in the form of disasters and public acts of violence: it's a Wild West out there. Some compare it to a train crash in slow motion. The world wishes to go on as normal, it just wants to ignore all the Oddity now here, but things have gotten - extranormal.

(Alright, I felt real artistic writing up the pitch above, but I'm probably going to improvise most of the setting as we play along. Overwrought planning is a defect I'm prone to and it always paralyzes me when trying to do any sort of project, so I'll be trying to rely on Fate's improvisation potential. At the moment I only have 1 or 2 secret organizations in mind, I'll come up with more stuff once we have your player character. If you do accept this pitch...)
Hehe, I have already come up with a rough idea for my character in my head, but I haven't begun writing the idea yet. From the words "cloud sea steampunk" and "weird science" I came up with this concept: an Engineering Prodigy (I want to add at least one more word to that) who has the deal with the trouble of his Grandpa's Great and Terrible Inheritance, while accompanied by his trusty mini mech-slash-airplane, AVIS and his Odd Mind (the name AVIS is provisional).

The grandpa, partly inspired by this here song, was a world-renowned genius, sometimes called the One Man Renaissance, who had vastly contributed to many areas of the sciences and technologies during his lifetime. However, grandfather's importance and influence had come with a heavy but, he had been a virtual slave to the X Trading Company (X being a placeholder), a veritable megacorp with its own company-state that rivaled many of the "real" countries of the cloud sea, which engages in all those sordid practices that a megacorp does in a cyberpunk world (even though this is steampunk). Grandpa created a great many of the technologies, even the most evil ones, that had given the Company their powerhouse status. Despite his fame, most of his life's work had been done in secret from the public eye, classified, closely guarded as precious trade secrets by the owners of his golden cage... but now he is dead, and he has left an inheritance behind.

Somehow, he had managed to keep his children (or at least his grandchildren) from sharing his fate. Far away from the Company's claws, the Prodigy had been raised by parents very skilled in aeronautics and mechanics. Taking up after them, he had begun to build something he called "AVIS", a small giant of a flying machine with features of both a bird and a humanoid, encasing a pilot behind armor and guns. However having built much of the body he had been struggling with the controls until a very unexpected package was delivered to him in secret, upon his grandfather's death...

The grandfather that he had known very little about had apparently known a lot about him and his efforts, because he sent the Prodigy an incredibly intricate mechanical brain (perhaps not of his own invention, but of very ancient origin?) with instructions on how to integrate it with AVIS. With this brain, AVIS became not just a vehicle, but a robot seemingly capable of autonomous thought, albeit unable to speak. And more: the brain came with vast amounts of data, encrypted in various manners to differing extents, of which the little that the Prodigy has managed to decode thus far hints that it must contain many secrets, of the technological kind and others. Some these secrets, perhaps not even the Company is aware of...

But this inheritance did not reach his doorstep in perfect secrecy. Somehow, someone in the X Trading Company has become aware of the mechanical brain's existence, and began a (for now) small man-hunt for the Prodigy, who will have to flee the only home he has ever known to brave the horizon-wide skies in search of answers and continuing freedom...

Wow, that was a lot of words.