Spirit of the Century: Time Heals All Wounds, The Finished Mark Twain

I had some time over lunch to put the finishing touches on my Spirit of the Century Mark Twain for the Time Heals All Wounds adventure I want to have ready for Gen Con. It's been a blast fitting the history and legend of Mark Twain into a FATE based character.

As I've posted in this series, my overall character concept for Twain is Time Traveling Man of the World. With a generous amount of help from the Internet (and Google+), I have a fantastic list of FATE aspects to establish Twain as a Spirit of the Century character.

Spirit of the Century, and FATE, uses a rating system known as The Ladder to describe abilities and difficulties of things within the game. It looks something like this:

+8 Legendary
+7 Epic
+6 Fantastic
+5 Superb
+4 Great
+3 Good
+2 Fair
+1 Average
0   Mediocre
-1  Poor
-2  Terrible

A person with an Average (+1) score in an ability is considered to do it regularly, competently, but not exceptionally. Characters in the game have the following skill pyramid; one skill at Superb (+5), two skills at Great (+4), three skills at Good (+3), four skills at Fair (+2), and five skills at Average (+1).

With this in mind, I wanted to capitalize on the idea that Mark Twain was a man of his wits, that he could fast talk or charm his way out of any situation and into the hearts of almost anyone. It seemed like a perfect fit to make his superb skill Rapport which includes the trappings of First Impressions, Closing Down, Opening Up.

To bring in Twain's stage presence and his worldliness, I chose Art as one of his Great skills. Art includes the trappings of Art as Knowledge, Art as Craft, Art as Communication, and, most importantly for Twain, Art as Performance. To capitalize on his old river boating and fighting newspaper man days, I filled his other Great skill slot with Fists. Twain's a hard drinkin', hard fightin' kind of guy or at least he was.

For his Good skills, I went with Empathy for its trapping of Reading People. I also pulled in Might (trappings of Fighting People, Breaking Things, and Lifting Things) to further play on Twain's tough past. And then I rounded out the Good skills with Academics, with the trappings of Research, Exposition and Knowledge Dumping, and Declaring Minor Details, to showcase his intelligence, research and storytelling abilities.

For his four Fair skills, I started with Resolve, for his coolness under pressure. As he was a multi-patent holder and maintained a fascination with technology and science, I gave him Science. I figure that the trappings of Lab Work, Medical Attention, and Science! could also come in handy during the adventure. As a physically tough and verbally impressive individual, Intimidation, with the trappings of Threat of Violence and Brush Off, seemed to fit the bill. Finally as a former newspaper man and as a world traveler, Investigation isn't a stretch.
Then it's more of the same for the Average skills. I've finished everything off with Gambling, Drive, Contacting, Alertness, and Endurance.


For Twain's Stunts, I chose:

Blather [Rapport]

Razor Tongue [Art]

Poison Words [Art]

All the World's A Stage [Art]

and I made up the stunt, Temporary Time Shift [Science]

And, with that, we're finished with Twain.

Mark Twain, Time Traveling Man of the World

Aspects:

Hard drinkin', hard fightin'.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

Man of the World.

Accidental Time Traveler.

A Particular Way With Words.

Big Spender

Fate Tied to the Comet

Impressive Mustache

The Mysterious Stranger

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Beat the Clock

Tesla's Friend and Benefactor

Thrilled by Man's Ingenuity, Disappointed by His Stupidity

Skills:

Superb: Rapport

Great: Art, Fists

Good: Empathy, Might, Academics

Fair: Resolve, Science, Intimidation, Investigation, 
 
Average: Gambling, Drive, Contacting, Alertness, Endurance

Stunts:

Blather [Rapport]



Razor Tongue [Art]

Poison Words [Art]


All the World's A Stage [Art]


Temporary Time Shift [Science]

Health: [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]    [ ] [ ] [ ]


Composure: [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]    [ ]



If you like this series or have any ideas of that you'd like to share, please post them in the comments. I've had a lot of help already and more is always appreciated.

** Storied Adventures seems to be obsessed with Spirit of the Century at the moment, but it's a bit broader than that. It is usually a board and table top gaming blog that is written by a guy who loves board games and is returning to RPGs after a 20 year absence. I am attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Spirit of the Century: Time Heals All Wounds, Mark Twain, Time Traveling Man of the World

Thanks to everyone's help, I think I've got a good list of FATE aspects for my Spirit of the Century Mark Twain. As a side note, this process has been a whole lot easier thanks to comments on this blog and in the Google+. Thanks to everyone for their ideas and encouragement.

For Twain's character concept, I think I'm going to go with, Time Traveling Man of the World. For his time, Twain was almost singularly aware of the greater world due to his newspaper sponsoring trips around the world so that he could write about and comment on his experiences. He also spent his early adult years as a riverboat captain. He's seen a lot. Add being ripped through time for our SoTC adventure, and I think it's a fitting character concept.


Mark Twain, Time Traveling Man of the World

Aspects:

• Hard drinkin', hard fightin'.

• It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

• Man of the World.

• Accidental Time Traveler.

• A Particular Way With Words.

• Big Spender

• Fate Tied to the Comet

• Impressive Mustache

• The Mysterious Stranger

• The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

• Beat the Clock

• Tesla's Friend and Benefactor

• Thrilled by Man's Ingenuity, Disappointed by His Stupidity

Next up, I'll start working out the middle aged accidental time traveling Nikola Tesla.

If you have any thoughts on ways to invoke and compel Twain's aspects, please post them in the comments.

** Storied Adventures seems to be obsessed with Spirit of the Century at the moment, but it's a bit broader than that. It is usually a board and table top gaming blog that is written by a guy who loves board games and is returning to RPGs after a 20 year absence. I am attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Spirit of the Century: Time Heals All Wounds - Working out Twain's Aspects

As I posted earlier, I'm working up Spirit of the Century adventure to have in my back pocket in case I get to run an after hours game at this year's Gen Con. As before, I'm working out some of my thoughts on Google Plus and then refining them a bit for a blog post. Sorry if you're following me in both places.

The first character that I'd like to flesh out is Mark Twain. In  Time Heals All Wounds, the Mark Twain character is a younger version than the white haired old man that most people hold in their minds. This  will be a younger version of Twain, who's in his early to mid thirties and has been accidentally sucked through time, over ten years after his death, into the Spirit of the Century universe of the 1920s.

I'm looking for the Twain in this picture.  It was taken a couple of years after his hard drinking and hard fighting newspaper days out West. He's a tough and has traveled the world by this point. He's been to the Mediterranean and traveled in countries like Egypt. Twain is also married giving him a reason to want to get back home.

To get some idea of Twain's toughness, check out this second photo, taken years later. You can still see the physical toughness of the rive boat captain and brawling newspaper man even later in life.

While I only need ten aspects, I hope to make a big list that I can then just cherry pick when making up his character..


Some aspects that I've thought of so far:

• Hard drinkin', hard fightin'

• It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

• Man of the world.

• Never waste an opportunity to display my wit.

• Accidental time traveler

I've had some really great suggestions from my Google Plus Gaming circle.

James Desborough, aka Grim Jim, proprietor of Postmortem Studios, suggested these fantastic ideas. These are amazing FATE aspects. I have no further words. Enjoy!

• A Particular Way With Words

• Big Spender

• Fate Tied to the Comet

• Impressive Moustache

Brent Newhall posted the following:

Hmm. I don't know Twain's stuff well enough to match these up to quotes, but the attributes I'd want to capture include:

• Resourcefulness

• Rapier Wit

• Way with Words

• Keen Eye

Another Google Plus user, Mark Delsing, added this great one from Twain's own words:

• The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Feel free to post your own ideas in the comments.



** Storied Adventures seems to be obsessed with Spirit of the Century at the moment, but it's a bit broader than that. It is usually a board and table top gaming blog that is written by a guy who loves board games and is returning to RPGs after a 20 year absence. I am attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Spirit of the Century adventure: Time Heals All Wounds concept

I originally posted this to my Google Plus account, but I thought I'd copy it over here and flesh it out a bit.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm heading to Indianapolis with the entire family (including three little kids) to attend Gen Con this year. Three little kids makes it kind of hard to set aside a four hour time block for role playing during one of the scheduled events, and that's just fine. We have a blast every year that we attend. We are also not staying in the main conference hotels because our kids really do deserve a rest after a day exploring the convention. A more remote hotel fits that bill nicely.

Still, there may be an opportunity for some after hours gaming back at our hotel and I would like to be prepared. I was originally planning on having a Call of Cthulhu or Mouse Guard adventure worked up, but decided it was too much work for the time that I have. Besides, I wanted something that would probably appeal to the widest group of potential players that I might have.

So, I've decided to prepare a Spirit of the Century game just on the off chance that we get an opportunity to play. While the book is a little dense for me to do a full pickup game, I think Spirit of the Century's FATE system could really sing with both experienced role playing game players and with players new to the idea of role playing. So another part of my prep will be the creation pre-generated characters for everyone, but I'll hold off on that until the adventure is done in order to tailor the heroes for the challenges that they may face.


I'm calling the adventure Time Heals All Wounds and it includes a bit of time travel, the rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, the friendship between Mark Twain and Tesla, and a final showdown at Machu Pichu.



For inspiration, here's the public domain photo of Mark Twain in Nikola Tesla's lab from Wikipedia that got me thinking about all this.

I had read about Tesla and Edison's rivalry a few years ago and thought it would be fun to do something with that idea in a game. While watching a documentary on Twain, I saw that he and Tesla were close friends in the late 1800s. I'd also read that Edison had had meetings with Twain in Twain's later years. It was interesting to me that these figures had all crossed paths.

For my Gen Con session, I want to do something that includes all of these historical figures, but the time lines don't work with Spirit of the Century. I also wanted to put a pulpy spin on who they were and how they'd go about solving their problems. Twain's death in 1910 added a huge stumbling block to this idea as Spirit of the Century is set in the early 1920's. Besides, Tesla and Twain spent time together mostly in the later 1800s. Then I thought of Twain's book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court  and how it involved time travel. 

Then everything fell into place. 

Time Heals All Wounds is going to be about Tesla's growing bitterness and loneliness following Twain's death in 1910 and his ongoing quest for recognition in the shadow of Edison. After being snubbed by the Nobel Prize committee in 1915, Tesla starts a research project into time travel combining some of Einstein's theories with some of his own more radical ideas. 

As our story opens, Tesla has used his device a few days before, but something has gone horribly wrong. Instead of going back in time, he's brought Tesla and Twain to the present and the resulting paradoxes may just rip the world apart!

Can our hero's stop Present Tesla's plan before he destroys the world? Can Mark Twain keep Past Tesla in check and get them both back to their own time? Will Edison work with Marconi to do them all in? All that and an exciting conclusion on the cliff city of Machu Picchu awaits in Time Heals All Wounds!

So that's where I'm at. I'll be posting some notes here as I go along.

A couple of people gave me ideas for source material and flavor in the original Google Plus thread. Brad Murray, one of the creator's of the award winning Diaspora RPG, suggested that I pick up the Atomic Robo comics as they deal with ideas surrounding Tesla's rivalry with Edison. Dave Chalker of critical-hits.com suggested picking up the Five Fists of Science.

The first thing I need are ten punchy, pulpy FATE aspects each for mad scientist Nikola Tesla, Nikola Tesla from the past, Mark Twain from the past, Thomas Edison, and Guglielmo Marconi.

This should be fun.

** Storied Adventures is a board and table top gaming blog is written by a guy who loves board games and is returning to RPGs after a 20 year absence. I am attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

You can interview the creators of the Dresden Files Role Playing Game

The RPG community on the popular social new site reddit.com have a chance to interview Leonard Balsera, Fred Hicks, and Ryan Macklin from Evil Hat, makers of The Dresden Files RPG, Spirit of the Century (one of my personal favorites), Don't Rest Your Head RPG, and SwSwashbucklers of the 7 Skies.


The way the reddit.com community interviews work is that community members (membership is free and easy) get to ask questions and up or down vote the questions that they love or hate. Those questions with the top votes are then posed to the interview subjects. In my opinion, they are some of the better interviews that the subjects end up giving.


You can see some of the other people that the reddit community has interviewed in this manner by checking out the reddit.com interviews youtube channel.


So, head on over to the thread and pose your questions.

** Storied Adventures is written by a lapsed role playing geek. It is one man's chronicle of embracing one more of his many geeky facets. I have no ongoing financial relationship with any of the games listed. I am, however, attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)

Starting the stories

The first Dungeons & Dragons
book that I ever looked at.

I first encountered pen and paper role playing games when I was in third and fourth grade. This was back in the early 80s and my mom had me in a carpool in order to get me home from my school. Some of the kids that I rode along with were much older and involved in Boy Scouts. We generally dropped by a number of schools and homes on the way to my final destination, picking up and dropping off child cargo as we went. It could take a long time from being picked up to actually arriving at the final destination, be it school or home. To pass the time, these boys played a game in the van with meticulously drawn maps on graph paper and lots of interesting colored dice and books with interesting and terrifying monsters on the covers.

The second Dungeons & Dragons book that I ever read.
I blame this image of the two thieves stealing the
jeweled eye for my penchant for
playing thieves and rogues

The game they were playing was something called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

I was fascinated, but not allowed to play. The parents that shuttled us around thought I was too young. However, they didn't see the harm in letting me listen in on the boys' adventures and look through the books when they didn't need to look something up.

I was hooked.

A couple of years later, my family moved to another state. My dad was in the military and we didn't stay in one place for very long. We moved into on base housing and two boys happened to live in the town house next door. As a way of welcoming us, the parents suggested that the boys show us around and we became fast friends. A couple of days later, their dad brought home a pop up camper that needed to be aired out before being used for the summer and set it up in the parking spaces out front and I was invited to "camp" out there for the night.

With no TV and a hot Southern night in the mix, we all started to wonder if this camp out was such a good idea after all. Inevitably we started complaining about being bored. While searching through the drawers for something to do, we ran across some graph paper and I remembered the games that were played in my carpool. So I described the game as best as I could remember it to my new friends and they wanted to play that game. When I explained that I didn't have the books, they encouraged me to just make it up from what I could remember.

So, we played the game. Well, maybe not the game, but a game. They created characters by asking me various questions about what they needed. I spent a few minutes creating a dungeon on the graph paper and we found some six sided dice in another drawer that we used to roll for hits and other stuff.

They loved it. 

I wouldn't find out how much until later that year when my parents surprised me on my birthday with a copy of the original red box set of Dungeons and Dragons (Wizards of the Coast have just released a new D&D Starter Set using the same art as the box that I received). Apparently the boys couldn't stop talking about this game that we played involving monsters and dungeons and their parents told my parents. When my mom and dad saw the red box on some random outing to the store, they remembered the word "dungeons" and decided that this just had to be what my friends' parents had been talking about.

We played that game for the next year. When we reached the maximum character levels, we'd retire the them and start from scratch.

A couple of years later, I moved somewhere else in town and found another group of kids my age that were already playing D&D. They were using the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules and weren't interested in playing my well worn vanilla edition. I didn't mind, I was happy to be a player instead of the only Dungeon Master. When my new DM was looking to play, our group started branching out into other role playing games  that started springing up around that time.

I started by stumbling across Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness in that back of a doll and collectible stuffed animal store that wasn't far from our neighborhood (that's another story). I was a fan of the graphic novels, so it seemed a good fit. After that, I picked up the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game as it used the same rule set as TMNT. Fast on its heels was Paranoia: A Role Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future, and Call of Cthulhu: Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft. We dipped our toes into nearly every system and every world. We played games constantly and read fantasy, pulp horror, and science fiction books incessantly as potential sources of inspiration. I remember reading Moby Dick in seventh grade for extra credit (a challenge that our teacher thought no one would take up) and thinking "this would make an awesome game!" 

My friends and I were some of the most voracious readers that I knew. Sometimes it would get us into trouble. The parochial school that we attended didn't look too kindly on the monsters and demons that graced the covers of our books and the school finally gave up calling to inform our parents of what we were reading after consistently being told that "yes, they were aware of what we were reading" and "no, it didn't bother them."

I moved again to attend high school and played off and on through those years. Never as much or in as varied a set of games as the previous five years. When I went away to college, I stopped playing altogether and focused more on school.

Within the last two years, I've started to come back to gaming. I've been playing hobby boardgames since just after college and some of the bleed over between that and role playing games started to pique my interest. I remembered how much I loved playing, and really missed it.

While at Gencon 2009 with my wife, who was covering the board gaming side, I picked up the HackMaster Basic RPG on a whim. Those earlier experiences with other games had me gravitating away from Dungeons and Dragons proper. I liked it. Later, I won a copy of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook by entering a story into an Atomic Array podcast contest. I liked it so much, I've since bought the The Pathfinder Bestiary, which is truly awesome. At this year's Gencon, I picked up a copy of the Spirit of the Century RPG and, as a result, I've become a complete FATE system fan . I recently won another contest put on by Atomic Array, and just received Rogue Games'  Shadow, Sword & Spell: Basic, which I am enjoying very much (its 12 degrees engine has a number of features similar to what I love about FATE).

All this is to say. I'm back. I've missed this stuff and I'd like to give a little something back to the community that I've enjoyed so much in the past and that's welcomed this wayward player back into the fold.

** Storied Adventures is written by a lapsed role playing geek. It is one man's chronicle of embracing one more of his many geeky facets. I have no ongoing financial relationship with any of the games listed, though I was lucky enough to win a copy of the the Pathfinder Role Playing Game and Shadow, Sword & Spell (thanks, Ed & Rone) and Richard Iorio of Rogue Games also sent me a copy of a Shadow, Sword & Spell adventure (thanks, Richard). I am, however, attached to my wife's Amazon affiliate account, so purchases made through any Amazon links support the ongoing blogging efforts of Storied Adventures (many thanks!)