by Kris Schnee
Miles nodded. "All right. But I should swap those out for something more serious soon." He cracked his knuckles, then said, "Attention, GMs: casting a spell." He called up his interface and conjured a parachute.
[Skill 4, dice +0], said some Hexapod somewhere. An alien volunteer who wanted to play games with the humans. [1 stress taken. I've created a necromancer's maze; would you like to try exploring it?]
"Sure," said Miles. He made a chute for Eva too, and they jumped off the building together to float down and find this new adventure.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this book, please consider giving a rating on Amazon or Goodreads so others can find out about it!
This story was an experiment for me. Though I've written other books on the theme of "people living in a game world", my focus has usually not been on the exact rules.
As experienced Fate gamers will note, this story does not perfectly follow standard rules. One big difference is that I didn't use the initiative rules, and treated turn order in battle as arbitrary, maybe simultaneous. Standard rules give starting characters a +4 skill, two +3s, and so on. There's a list of 18 skills, with a note about customizing the list for your setting. Since I only had 13, I gave characters fewer skills, which led to a balance problem with the healing rules. Keeping track of it all was tricky, and there might still be errors. Contact me if you spot any mistakes, and blame them on aliens.
Fate really is an interesting game system, since I like a focus on story and character in RPGs rather than tracking hit points and movement squares. Especially since the core rules and many variant ideas are available free, it's worth checking out. Thank you to Evil Hat for making the system available under the permissive CC-BY license for me to play with.
Other inspirations for this story are the RPG books "Godbound" by Sine Nomine Publishing, and "The Book of Dragons" by Mongoose Publishing.
What's the connection between this story and my "Thousand Tales" setting? It's not the same timeline, but the starship's name implies that something like the events of "Liberation Game" happened in this world too and became very influential. Eva is what the "Ludist" movement could have become, if it had seemed like the Ludo AI project was going to happen, but never lived up to the marketing hype. One reason for keeping this world separate is that once you have advanced transhuman tech or AI, it's tough to justify having regular humans riding in a starship, which changes the feel of a space adventure. The aftermath of this story will bring radical change to Hart's kingdom back home.
Coming soon: a fantasy story about the masked servants of a holy state, and a boy who just wanted to fight evil bandits.
About the Author
Kris Schnee has been a parrot trainer, an MIT graduate, a zoo intern, a lawyer, a game designer, and most recently a software developer. He lives in Florida.
Galleries:
http://www.amazon.com/Kris-Schnee/e/B00IY1HDDY/
(Amazon author page)
http://kschnee.deviantart.com
http://kschnee.xepher.net
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The Thousand Tales Series
Thousand Tales: How We Won the Game
2040: Reconnection
The Digital Coyote
Thousand Tales: Extra Lives
Thousand Tales: Learning To Fly
Fairwind's Fortune
Crafter's Passion
Liberation Game
Also By Kris Schnee
Everyone's Island
Striking the Root
Dragon Fate: Interactive Fiction
Perspective Flip
Mythic Transformations
Tales of Kitsune
Fateweaver's Quest
Anthologies containing Schnee's work include "Different Worlds, Different Skins", "Roar #6", "Gods With Fur", and "Dogs of War II: Aftermath".