White Picket Witches: The Hangout Game Part 1: Setup

Yesterday, I started the White Picket Witches game with members of my regular gaming group via Google Hangout. We are using Hangout to accomodate a couple of players who are out-of-town, but still want to play. I am planning on having an offline component to the game as well, but let's see how that goes.

After a lot of technical issues with computers, connection and microphones, we finally started designing three of the Five Families. The players and I felt, it would be good to leave the other two families for players who'd be joining later (either online or offline). The three families are the Davenports, the Hargroves and the Pierces.

Note: Aspects were done in our native language, so they might not translate their whole intent into English. I am trying to find an equivalent translation that at least carries some of the double meanings attached to the aspects.

The Davenport Family

We quickly decided that the Davenports had something to do with the port of the island... namely the airport.  Sometime in the 20th century, there was a landslide that buried the harbor. It was located at the bottom of the cliffs that surround most of the island. Now the only regular access to the island is the airport. It's built on land graciously donated by the Davenport family.

Aspects:

• Everyone ends up with us.
• Pillars of the community
• We can afford that
• We show you the ropes

Magic: Breath Work

The Hargrove Family

The Hargroves are connected to the island in mysterious ways. They serves as guardians in the literal and figurative sense and have a close connection to nature. Also, they are a large and willful family.

Aspects:

• The Guardians of the Isle
• Animals are our friends
• Firm as a rock
• We are a stubborn bunch

Magic: Muscle Work

The Pierce Family

The Pierce are the traditional parish priests and perform other functions related to the church and community. Probably because they don't take bullshit and are always looking (and talking) about the truth of a matter.

Aspects:

• Nobody likes us
• We love the truth
• We only want your souls
• We bestead the sinners

Magic: Bone Work

After that we started with the creation of the characters. But they aren't finished yet, I am going to post them, when we are finished. So far we have ideas for Felicia Davenport, a tour guide and history buff; Gail Hargrove, a deputy trained in a big city; and William Pierce, the sole professional photographer on the Island.

This doesn't read like much, but we spent almost two hours coming up with this stuff. It was great fun to do this together as a group.

White Picket Witches am Gratisrollenspieltag

My first game of White Picket Witches took place at the Gratisrollenspieltag event in Nuremberg. It was a sort of convention game atmosphere. When I first arrived at Ultracomix around 11:00 am, there were about half the tables reserved for events of the Gratisrollenspieltag and half for the regular Magic games happening on Saturdays. A demo team from Ulisses Spiele, German publisher of Pathfinder and Das Schwarze Auge, had set up shop on a good part of the tables. But there was a game of Star Wars: The Edge of Empire scheduled as well as my FATE game.

At first I thought, I would end up with no participants, but a curious gamer who already knew the Dresden Files RPG stopped by the table and we got into talking about DFRPG and the difference to White Picket Witches. Then two other gamers joined who had only played D&D, Shadowrun and so on. The three guys quickly decided on characters while I explained the game to them. They picked Caleb Gifford, Zachary Grant and Linda Gardner. We completed the characters and then went on to create three places of power, a witch hunter as an antagonist and some more facts on the three families present.

The FATE beginners picked out surprisingly good aspects for the game and understood FATE rather quickly.

The three places of power were:

Gifford Mausoleum
Leitmotif: The Phantom of the Opera
Great (+4) Dangerous, Good (+3) Powerful, Fair (+2) Classy
An imposing edifice that serves as a monument to the dark power of the Gifford family.

Moon Island Hospital
Leitmotif: The theme from emergency room
Great (+4) Sensitive, Good (+3) Savvy, Fair (+2) Brilliant
A place where the ability to emphasize with patients and improvisation carries the day as oppossed to any brilliant medical training.

Seven Oaks
Leitmotif: Rococo music with strings and flutes
Great (+4) Classy, Good (+3) Powerful, Fair (+2) Sensitive
A majestic clearing throbbing with the power of the earth and nature

Veronica Allen
Canon aspect: Rich, arrogant witch huntress
Tragic flaw: Morbidly clean
Casting aspect: Blonde bombshell
Further aspect: Judicial power
Further aspect: Carrier of the Mystic Cross

Assets: Great (+4) Classy, Good (+3) Powerful, Fair (+2) Brilliant, Average (+1) Dangerous.
Stunt: Money talks on Moon Island (same as Felicia Gifford).

Her aspects were created by the players, the assets and stunts by me.

The game opened with the characters meeting at O'Malleys, a local Irish pub. They bantered a bit about old times before getting serious about the metaplot (someone had opened the family crypts and disturbed the rest of the dead). Especially Caleb taunted Linda about her fear of graveyards and the darkness. Nevertheless, they finally decided to head over to the graveyard and examine the tombs at night. They ended up going first to the Gifford mausoleum.

They used a hidden entrance, as to escape notice by the gang of goths hanging out in front of the mausoleum, but nevertheless one of the kids followed them inside. They discovered him and chased him off. After that there was a short Face-Off between Caleb and Linda about her fear of the dark. Caleb clearly wanted to intimidate her and won, gaining the intent aspect of "Linda is such a crybaby". Linda's player conceded the Face Off and got to add "sometimes" to the intent aspect.

Afterwards, Caleb discovered that the oldest sarcophagus had been brutally opened and the bones were disturbed. But via Create an Advantage he discovered an Ancient Dagger had been left behind.

Then the group went on to investigate the Gardner and the Grant crypts. Both crypts had been disturbed. Always the oldest grave opened. The group retreated to the Grant mansion to mull things over. Zachary hit the books in his family's library and discovered that the founders had been burried with a piece of a Mystic Cross bane to all witches. Apparently whoever was behind the graverobbing intended to recreate the cross.

At that point, I decided to move things to the conclusion of that short 4-hour convention game. They got a mysterious call asking them to meet the caller at Seven Oaks, if they wanted the cross back.

Final Face-Off at Seven Oaks. A hooded figure carried the cross and attacked the group with its powers (area attack invoking the "Carrier of the Mystic Cross" aspect). Then all hell broke loose. Caleb repeatedly attacked with his Bone Work magic skill, Linda tried to convince the assailant of the purity of magic and nature, and Zachary went for the cross. Seven Oaks mostly ended up attacking Caleb Gifford for bringing his dark magic to bear on a place of nature, in the end almost swallowing him in the earth. The Face-Off turned into a rather long conflict, because Linda initially failed an important roll and decided to succeed at serious costs bringing in reinforcements for the hooded assailant. Finally, the hooded assailants conceded rather than risk to be taken out.

The players had fun at the game and the dynamic between the three characters was very interesting. Everyone had a good time.

Notes: I goofed up at the final Face-Off, dragging it out unnecessarily. Instead of having two contenders, I allowed all three players to perform attacks. If only Caleb had attacked and Zachary and Linda playing support, the conflict would have ended much earlier. Also, the FATE points dried up rather quickly in the final conflict. Usually, I don't have issues getting the FATE points flowing, but with unfamiliar players and a new hack that got a bit difficult. Even though, we had flashbacks that I didn't mention above. They worked well, but it was a bit hard coming up with the appropriate stories.

After the game, I took some time to explore the store and ended up buying lots of comic books (The Caste of the Metabarons and a new series called Nosferatu). All in all a fun day in Nuremberg.

White Picket Witches: Prepared Characters

Yesterday, I gm'ed my first game of White Picket Witches at the Gratisrollenspieltag (German Free RPG Day). The game itself will be described in an upcoming blog post. Here I'll just show which characters were prepared for the game. I did six characters for three families and gave them two aspects (childhood and heritage), one stunt and one spell each.

Clayton Gardner

Childhood: Knows Moon Island like his back pocket
Heritage: The simple cousin from a family offshot
Stunt: Lie Whisperer (as seen on page 113 of FATE Core preview)
Magic: Muscle Work, Spell: Animal Form (Collie; Simply adorable, a truly good nose, "That smells delicious", Dogged, Soft and cuddly)

Linda Gardner

Childhood: The sweetest girl of the Five Families
Heritage: Grandmother's darling and her best student
Stunt: Always Making Useful Things (as seen on page 107 of FATE Core preview)
Magic: Muscle Work, Spell: Deepest Healing

Caleb Gifford

Childhood: Gets away with murder
Heritage: The black sheep of a black herd
Stunt: Word are Weapons (+2 to Treacherous when you attack an other character verbally in order to harm).
Magic: Bone Work, Spell: Curse

Felicia Gifford

Childhood: The burden of responsibility
Heritage: Heir Apparent of the Gifford Estate
Stunt: Money Talks (as seen on page 129 of the FATE Core Preview)
Magic: Bone Work, Spell: variation of Dead Men's Tales granting a scene aspect instead of a boost.

Victoria "Vicky" Grant

Childhood: The only girl on the Lacrosse Team
Heritage: My father was the parish priest of Moon Island
Stunt: Roll with the Blow (as seen on page 102 of the FATE Core Preview)
Magic: Breath Work, Spell: Purifying Light (A Great or better roll can create an advantage against a monster associated with night and darkness).

Zachary "Zac" Grant

Childhood: The little mischief
Heritage: Always the baby brother of the Grant family
Stunt: Always a Way Out (as seen on page 103 of the FATE Core Preview)
Magic: Breath Work, Spell: Mythical Conveyance

The players will be able to pick the Canon aspect, the Tragic Flaw aspect and the Casting aspect. Then they get to distribute a Great (+4), a Good (+3), a Fair (+2) and an Average (+1) value on their Assets. One of the assets has to be the Magic Asset. This gives them one point more than the White Picket Witches default build, arranged in a column. Because I think, distributing 8 points accross 8 Assets will end up with some fairly generic distributions in the Average to Fair range.

White Picket Witches: Preparing a Convention Game

On Saturday, there will be the first ever Gratisrollenspieltag (the German version of the Free RPG Day). I've volunteered to run a game of White Picket Witches with FATE Core at the FLGS in Nuremberg. Now, all I need to do is prepare for a four hour gaming slot. Time will most likely be to short to explain FATE, build the setting and have an enjoyable adventure. Therefore I am thinking about preping something beforehand and let the players fill in the blanks. My ideas so far:

• Give the whole session a theme/premisse to work from.
• Strip the game down to three families and prepare the name, a starting aspect and assign the type of magic practiced by the family. At the convention, I'll let each player come up with one additional aspect, until each family has three of them.
• Have a list of possible places of power prepared and let the players pick about three and design them.
• The character sheets will be half prepared. I will assign a name, a type of magic and some of the aspects (childhood to tie them together, heritage to tie them to the family; leaving canon aspect, tragic flaw and casting to be decided by the player. Maybe I'll do part of the canon aspect.) Also, the magic spell and a stunt will have been chosen already.
• Let them create two antagonists.
• Create one metaplot beforehand that will be the focus of the session.

That should cover me? Maybe as a back-up I'll have Mr Scratch and/or May ready.

The premise will be: "You are scions of the five families (well at least of three of them). You spend your childhood on the island getting into all sorts of trouble, and then left for college. Four years later, you are back together on Moon Island. You all have changed, but the island hasn't."

The three families will be named as Gardner, Gifford and Grant. The others (not appearing) will be Hargrove, Haynes and Howard. But the Howards have vanished.

• The Gardners are practicing Muscle Work and are "As one with the earth and the island".
• The Giffords are practicing Bone Work and are "As a blight upon joy and happiness"
• The Grants are practicing Breath Work and are a "Pillar of the community and the church"

Possible Places of Power:

• Abandoned Howard Estate
• Black Rock Forest
• Boat House Diner
• Canary Beach
• Moon Island High School
• Morgan Creek Resort
• Some other place the players think about

The metaplot will be "The families' crypts have been opened and the rest of the dead has been disturbed."

Do you think this will get me through a four hour convention game?

White Picket Witches: Stunts for Brain Work

I've defined Brain Work as "the magic of magic. The power to alter leylines and Places of Power. The crystal clarity of thought. The way to read and control thoughts. Aligned with time." Now it's time to give the usual three spells as an example of what Brain Work can do.

Eye of the Storm: On a Great (+4) or better roll and spending a FATE point, the witch creates a temporary Place of Power around herself. The magic will dissipate at the end of the next scene, but until then, Face-Offs can happen here. The Place of Power is heavily tinged with the personality of the witch and yet not as powerful as a real Place of Power. There is no Leitmotiv, it has only one FATE point and the highest Asset of the witch becomes the only asset of the place at Fair (+2).

The Dragon's Path: On a Great (+4) or better roll, the witch may alter the Leitmotiv of a Place of Power for the rest of the scene without spending a FATE point. The witch accomplishes that by altering the flows of power around the place. A leyline was sometimes called a dragon's path. That's where the spell gets its name from.

Mood swing: When the witch succeeds with a Great (+4) or better roll, then she can lower an Asset of a character or Place of Power by 2 points and raise another Asset of the same character or place by 2 points for the rest of the scene.

Note: With Brain Work I am going a bit meta. But I think that's in keeping with the idea of this kind of magic.

White Picket Witches: Thoughts on Face-Offs

Initially, I had planned to publish a post about stunts to go along with Organ Work and/or Brain Work, but since I feel pretty powered out after gm'ing a skype Vampire: The Requiem game and agonizing about the right pledge level for the FATE Core Kickstarter, I am going to write about Face-Offs in White Picket Witches. Mostly random thoughts, but I want to get them out of my system.

What I like about Face-Offs is the fluidity they bring to conflicts. Usually, a conflict is either mental or physical, seldom switching in between (even though, these were the best conflicts I've seen). Face-Offs automatically put you into a state where you can alter between conflict types. There is only one stress track, and the long example in the preview does a pretty good job of showing how the conflict shifts from verbal, to physical, back to verbal.

What gives me pause, though, in FATE Core I get three nifty mechanics for emulating different kinds of opposition: challenges, contests and conflicts. All three basically fall by the wayside in favor of the Face-Off. That serves to give the setting a strong focus, but also strips away some of the new and cool rules. I wonder if that was really necessary.

Next thing, Face-Offs happen in a very narrow environment, basically only at or inside a Place of Power. At least in the rules as written that gives the impression of narrow focus and also seems to get rid off the anything but Overcome actions outside of a Face-Off. Not sure, if Create Advantage could still be useful, maybe yes. Still, it feels as if most of the action will be limited to the Places of Power, because they seem to be the only locations where it is possible to inflict stress and take someone out.

Also Face-Offs change the results of a concession and a taken-out result. Instead of simply determining what happens to the defeated party, the Face-Off grants an intent apect. Something the victor takes away from the Face-Off. An aspect that can be used until it is replaced by another intent aspect. Also, the victor gets one free invoke. A concession on the other hand, doesn't earn the loser any FATE points. Instead he is able to change one word of the intent aspect, thus subverting its meaning. Haven't played the game yet, I can see why it is desirable to get an intent aspect instead of determining what happens to the loser, because an aspect is a soft mechanic that can be used in subsequent scenes and Face-Offs, and doesn't force the loser out of the game. But somehow this feels a bit too soft. Both a taken-out result and a concession have to make sense in the context of the story, so this wouldn't be an issue with most groups. Also, conceding a conflict and getting FATE points for the consequences suffered can be a very nice and valid tactic in FATE Core. This is removed from the picture by the Face-Off mechanic.

There is also one other concern: with the intent aspect it seems initially rather difficult to permanently get rid of someone. Except maybe by gaining an intent aspect like "I shot the Sheriff, but didn't kill his deputy."

The other cool stuff in White Picket Witches are the determining of initiative (basically, the GM compels a player to start the Face-Off), that the Place of Power gets its own move and thus introduces a wild card into any conflict and the way Flashbacks are used (to hinder another player, but offering a FATE point as compensation). This is brilliant.

I see myself using the following tweaks to a Face-Off: base it more firmly on the conflict mechanics from Core, but keep the single stress track and the Places of Power as the only places that can have a Face-Off happen. The intent aspect is a nice idea, but I will probably grant the player who concedes a Face-Off a FATE point for each consequence suffered (but not the FATE point for conceding a conflict - that's replaced with the mechanic for changing the intent aspect). Also, I will keep challenges around. Contests and conflicts not so much, but the challenge mechanic could be useful.

Important Disclaimer: So far this is a theoretical discussion, not based on actually playing White Picket Witches. This will most likely change on the Saturday to come.

White Picket Witches: The Sixth Family

Something the preview doesn't tell you about is the magic of the sixth family that left Salem. The preview offers five magic styles: Breath, Skin, Muscle, Blood and Bone. They each symbolize a certain kind of magic.  But nothing hints at the magic of the sixth, forgotten (or lost or destroyed) family. That's got me thinking.

There is a pattern to the magic of the Five Families. Successively progressing deeper into the body. What comes beneath the bones? I came up with two answers: organs and the brain. Therefore, the sixth kind of magic could be either Organ Works or Brain Works. Organ Work doesn't sound that cool, so may be Entrail Work? Hm... Anyway, here is a short take on both works:

Organ Work: Messy things, hurtful things, knowledge and power from beyond space and time, to gaze too deeply is to invite madness. Things even witches were not meant to know. Aligned with deepest darkness and despair.

Brain Work: The magic of magic. The power to alter leylines and Places of Power. The crystal clarity of thought. The way to read and control thoughts. Aligned with time.

Interestingly, both types of magic would give the Five Families a reason to extinguish the sixth. Did they do it out of fear? Necessity? Envy? Or mixture of all three? Does the deed bind the Five Families together or will it rip them apart?

Review: White Picket Witches Preview

As part of the FATE Worlds Compilation in the FATE Core Kickstarter, Filamena Young from Machine Age Productions has developed White Picket Witches, a setting "inspired by paranormal cozies like Practical Magic and the Witches of Eastwick, White Picket Witches give the players magic and charms to deal with small town pressures... and sometimes, the forces of evil."

Yesterday, the preview arrived for the backers of the FATE Core Kickstarter. The setting is pure (sub)urban fantasy. You are playing a member of one of five family of witches who fled Salem in 1691, just one year before the infamous Salem Witch Trials in 1692. Five families fled and settled on Moon Island, a small island in Boston Harbor. In the next 400 years a small settlement grew on the island. The five families are still there and apparently influence the community.

Reading the book gives me strong vibes of the TV shows The Secret Circle, Eastwick (the short lived series based on The Witches of Eastwick movie), some Teen Wolf thrown in, as well as the movie The Covenant.
Filamena Young also mentions other influences in one of her design posts.

After a short introduction, White Picket Witches talks about the steps to create Moon Island. This essentially replaces the usual world building from FATE Core and offers steps to create a small community focused on the supernatural. The players get to create the five families (and learn about a mysterious sixth family that supposedly has died out), places of magical power, and choose two issue for the campaign to focus in the process of designing their very own Moon Island.

The next step is designing the player characters. They use five aspects called Canon, Tragic Flaw, Casting, Childhood and Heritage. Canon basically is the High Concept aspect from FATE Core, Tragic Flaw stands in for the Trouble aspect. Childhood is about childhood experiences on the island. Heritage is an aspect that ties you to your family of witches. The Casting aspect describes the looks of your character. You are even encouraged to name an actor, but you could also do it more abstract (I've been using this technique for years now in populating my Vampire: The Requiem game, but this was never that formalized into a game mechanic. Really cool!). The only thing I am not sure about is the "invokeability" (is that even a word?) of the Casting aspect. It seems to rather serve a descriptive function than as a full-blown aspect. But I am more than willing to give it a try.

After assigning your aspects, you get to distribute eight points among seven Assets. Assets replace the complete skill list in a game of White Picket Witches. They shift the focus from what you are doing to how you are doing things. Are you being dangerous, brilliant or treacherous? I like that idea (Vampire: The Requiem Chronicler's Guide had a similar hack called Monster Garage, where you used the Seven Sins as skills). Also, in setting the values of the Assets you are saying something about your character.

You also get a magical skill, presumably the one practiced by your family. The preview didn't specify how skilled you are at magic, but Filamena Young has given answer to that online: you start at Average (+1), but can spend points from the Assets to raise the skill.

When you are finished designing your character, you also get to design an Antagonist for your character, to be used by the GM (or handed over to a player for a short time).

The next big difference to FATE Core is the Face-Off mechanic. It completely replaces the challenges, contests and conflicts from Core. Mechanically, there are similarities to a conflict, but also some differences. In a Face-Off, you have to choose sides and apparently only the main two players (or a player and the GM) are allowed to take the Attack action. Your stress boxes increase by the number of people on your side. The other player characters present seem to be able to Create Advantages, though.

Face-Off simulates the things happening on-screen in the source material very well. The very entertainingly written long example provided fits right into shows mentioned above (especially Teen Wolf).

The next part of the preview deals with stunt-like spells. As Filamena Young clarified on the 'net, you cast a spell by rolling your appropriate magic skill against a Great (+4) difficulty. Then the spell takes effect. A spell should be about as strong as a stunt. It is paid for with Refresh. You start with one free spell (in addition to the one free stunt you receive).

The last section shows some example protagonists ranging from the restless dead to a deal-making devil.

Okay, what do I think about White Picket Witches? First, overall, I like it very much. It succeeds very well on emulating the current genre of supernatural shows. The setting creation could probably be lifted for other FATE games as well. Even for games not about Urban Fantasy. I am seriously consider taking White Picket Witches and simply use it as is for my own planned campaign.

Since I consider doing that, I was reading the rules rather thoroughly. The preview would need some clarifications, I think, before being finalized. There are some mechanics only hinted at that would be better served  by fleshing them out:

• The long example implies that the magic skill cannot only be used to activate a stunt-like spell, but also to do something on the fly (seems a bit like Create an Advantage). This could be mentioned somewhere.
• The GM is apparently suppossed to pass Antagonists to other players in order to lighten their workload. Not really explained in depth.
• FATE points as fan-mail for genre-emulation by the players. There is a hint there that it is suppossed to work like that, just not explicitly mentioned.

Also, the long example actually suffers from hand-waving import parts of the game, thus actually obfuscating the rules in some places. Players create "a bunch of advantages", for example, or the mentioning of using the magic skill for something else than activating a stunt-like spell.

But all-in-all, White Picket Witches makes me want to play. To take the setting out for a spin. It's a kickass genre-emulation. I like the way the aspects are defined, the idea of the Casting aspect, the Assets seem like a very nice touch, and the setting creation rocks. The magic skills hint at interesting possibilities (therefore I hope, they won't be limited to using the stunt-like spells but also for some creative casting).

The preview gets 4.5 out of 5 stars for content. I deduct half a star for the issues listed above. An experienced GM can implement them him- or herself, but for a newbie the implied rules might get lost in the awesomeness of the rest.