Next Fate Experiment Idea: Pandemic: the RPG

I'm still deep in Eberron game creation mode, however, I'd like to post this idea for future development. In the course of planning the next session with my players, I thought about making a Fate game with Matt Leacock's outstanding board game Pandemic. In this game, players collectively try to find a cure for four deadly diseases ravaging the world before time runs out. All the players have different roles that give them special abilities in the game, such as being able to move other players to different locations (Dispatcher), and finding cures more easily (Scientist). I've only played this game three times, but I find that the game is addictive enough that you'd want to play it more and more, and with different roles each time.

The players can be patterned after the roles in the board game: Dispatcher (moves people), Operations Expert (builds... something for this RPG), Scientist (has stunt for finding cures), Medic (cures lots of people with ease), and Researcher (has info-collecting stunt). I think I need to rename these roles into something more real-life, like the Dispatcher can be a Military Operator instead, or there could be several Scientists that are experts in different fields, like Virology or Bacteriology.

Scenarios can involve a frantic search for Patient Zero, a mad scramble in the Amazons to find a rare plant for a cure, and going to a quarantined location to administer the cure with a generally hostile population while avoiding local gangs who are out to get the cure for themselves. Diseases would have to be made up, of course, as well as the cures, but the location would have to be Earth at the present time. Creating Advantages would involve getting breakthroughs in containing the diseases and finding cures, and the players can make these up as we go along.

The players could be up against rival pharmaceutical companies out to prevent the characters from discovering a cure, to local politicians out to use them for political gain, and the ever present danger from terrorists, especially bio-terrorists. So much potential for a game! Must set aside this for a while now as I finish up prepping for my Eberron game. Hope to be back soon to flesh this out some more. And hope to play more Pandemic for inspiration!

Finally! An update and actual game creation!

After more than a year I finally got to update this blog... anyway, I got a regular tabletop roleplaying gaming group now and I pitched my idea for an Eberron campaign using Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition early this year. Even though some of them love the idea of playing with minis, no one wanted to play the 4th edition! So I pitched in another idea -- playing Eberron with Fate Core rules. I got the "go" vote and voila! For two sessions we toiled with the game and character creation. I know at least two of my players (out of five) have played Spirit of the Century with me before, and yet, we struggled with character creation. Me thinks it is because of the unique way of creating characters with Fate Core. As you probably know, there is no list or tables where you get to pick out items/stats; everything, including powers (Stunts) get to be determined by the players by putting in Aspects. Certainly, at one point, I was tempted to say "Screw this, let's play the 5th edition instead" because everyone was struggling with Aspect creation!

First things first: game creation. Any Eberron campaign would inevitably touch the Last War, so one of the game Aspects I proposed was "Shadows of the Last War". This would be invoked for effect, mainly for the scenery (such as war-torn landscape) and people's reaction (general suspicion, especially of other nationalities). I let my players decide on the second Aspect, and they proposed that the problem they would face initially would be the "Refugee Problem". I agreed, and put in "New Cyre" in Breland as the location of the first scenario, since that is where most of the Cyran refugees during the Last War ended up. As per the Eberron Campaign Guide, the leader of New Cyre is the former ambassador to Breland, Prince Oargev ir'Wynarn. So now I have a location, a supporting NPC, and two issues for my Fate Eberron game! Woohoo!

Next issue, actual character creation!