Actual Play - Greater Good (10/16/2010)

[seannittner]

GM: Dennis Jordan
Players: Brian, Sean, Luke, Matt, Robert and Regina
System: Diaspora

This was my introductory game to Diaspora, a game I had wanted to play for a while. I was one of those nutty early adopters who bought the hardbound copy of the book when it first came out and then never read it. I lacked for inspiration. I thought the game

Comments

[codrus]

Not sure if you are an iPad user or not, but Clusters is a newish iPhone/iPad app that generates cluster maps for Diaspora. Free, even. I've poked around it for a few minutes and it seems quite nice.

With regard to aspect scopes, I like the basic concept. Early on in playing SOTC, I decided that more emphasis on opponents or environments would help the game. It is one of the reasons why I always thought 10 aspects was way too many in SOTC. It still feels awkward that maneuvering to plant an aspect on someone often ends up being the easy way out to beating an opponent, instead of learning a villain's aspects and using them against him. I've hit on this in some older posts of mine, particularly in genres that are about learning who or what the opponent actually is.

http://codrus.livejournal.com/323946.html
http://codrus.livejournal.com/226907.html

[seannittner]

Sweet. I've got an iphone, I totally check out the app. I'm heading out to work out but I'll read the posts when I get back. My basic short sentiment though is hell yeah! Discovered or created aspects brig the world to life.

[unkyrich]

The various FATE setting-building rules all impress me (City design in DFRPG is the best - I'm using it for Shadowrun), but I'm not sure they should be used in a 4 hour game.

Was the social conflict a case of bad implementation of mechanics (it sounds like it, if everyone was equal), or are the rules actually broken?

I'm still interested in Diaspora, and considered several times picking up my own copy at the Con (but fortunately they closed the registers before I had decided).

[seannittner]

I can't say. I haven't read the rules myself so the only thing for me to go off of was the game I encountered. From talking to Mike Parker about it though it sounds like Dennis played it right out of the book, which would indicate to me the mechanic itself is weak sauce rather than the implementation.

Pony nukes

[amberley]

Thanks for the detailed review! I've read Diaspora but never played or run.

I totally got the "Bored now" reference, and hope your engineer got to ride someone like a pony.

If you give a player a nuke they should totally get to use it. It is Chekhov's Gun writ large. Although no one has given me a nuke since That One Game. I may attempt to illustrate this principle in some future game of Apocalypse World.

Re: Pony nukes

[seannittner]

I think there is a place in fallout 3, a hardhold if you will, where people live inside and/or around a nuke that never went off.

Take that premise + Iron Road (the game Scott White ran that I will have AP for soon, but was essentially our entire holding working for years to get a train running again[1]) and I think you've got a post-apocalypse apocalypse on your hands.

[1] I know, what is it with trains? It didn't hit me till after Scott's game that all three of us had trains in our AW game, to a greater or lesser degree. It's almost like we planned this stuff.

Re: Pony nukes

[seannittner]

alas... sadly no pony riding either. Even though I described Matt's engineer as "bored now", that was derivative rather than his intention. She had an aspect "I'm bored" and played quite a bit like Dopple-Willow, but never make that specific reference in game.