Jadepunk Skill Modes

So, when I started my Jadepunk game I mentioned that the Professions system was pretty close to Fate Accelerated's Approaches system, which isn't really my cup of tea. Professions is closer, but I'm a bit too much of a crunchy, traditionalist gamer not to at least play with it a bit.

The thing is, after discussing it with my players we decided that you couldn't really take a Jadepunk character and translate it directly into the Fate skill pyramid, so I decided to give Modes a try instead. This feels closer. It's not quite right, I need to move some skills around before I'm really happy with it, but I like the direction it's moving.

So, it's not ready for use yet, but here's what I've got so far.

Campaign Mapping

Here is the playtest document for the Campaign Mapping mini-game that I use in my games. It's not only for Fate, I use it for basically every game I run, but it was written with Fate in mind.

Basically it's a way to guide collaborative campaign building, inspired by the system used in Smallville. We've used it at least a score of times so far, and it's undergone some changes here and there, but for the most part it is very solid. It produces neat results, and because everyone builds the game as a team you get instant group buy-in.

It hasn't been edited or anything, so be aware. It's actually part of a larger project I've been working on, so sorry if the references aren't perfect. I just cut it out so I could share it.

Enjoy.

The Jadeborn Campaign Map

So, I thought this might prove somewhat interesting to all the #Jadepunk  players out there. Earlier this week I posted the pitch I used to talk my players into my Jadepunk/Mistborn hybrid, and this Thursday we got together to discuss characters and play a little campaign mapping mini-game that I wrote that helps us get buy-in to our new games.

Linked is a PDF of the output from that mini-game.

To make it easier to read: the gray circles are my players. All other circles are people or organizations (fill colors don't mean anything, it just makes it easier for us to tell different types apart). Squares are places. Diamonds are campaign concepts we want to explore. Triangle are objects or things players own/want to work toward.

Size and position are important. The bigger something is, the more important the placing player wants it to be. The closer it is to something else, the more closely they are related.

The green and red circle round a shape indicate details and traits players have added to each campaign element. Green indicates a possible asset to be used/acquired in play, red is a complication or plot hook. The text guides you as to the placing player's intention, and serves to inspire the Aspects related to that element.

That's about it. There'a a whole mini-game to figure out who gets to place what, since I find that limitations give guidance and breed inspiration, but that's far too long and unrelated to go into here. I just wanted those who cared to have an idea how to read the map, as it defines the starting point of our campaign.