Hacking Threat and Advantage

Who’s played Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars Edge of the Empire game? *counts hands* Awesome. Whaddya think of the dice? At first, I was afraid. I was petrified. Kept thinkin’ I could never live without numbers on my dice. Seriously though, it’s crazy to try to wrap your head around it if all you’ve ever seen are numbered dice. I had to listen to Order 66 to really get it. But once it clicked? Heck, I even made my own dice roller. The way the two axes of action resolution interact with the game is pretty incredible.

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13th Cortex Accelerated Kids

So I’ve been thinking lately about getting my four year old son into gaming. I went and downloaded rpgKids by @newbieDM (btw, check it out – it’s super cheap and pretty awesome), but something doesn’t feel… quite right, at least for me.

I’ve been getting pretty excited about the concepts and methods espoused by both Cortex Plus and Fate Core/Accelerated, as well as amazed at the seemingly at-odds simplicity paired with boundless depth. There are also a couple of neat mechanics in 13th Age that I like – and are totally explicitly borrowed for Cortex Plus Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying!

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Avatar Cortex Plus

So I backed the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide on Kickstarter. I’ve got the preview PDF (which includes a bunch of nifty ideas, but not all of them). But I’m itching to be doing this hacking stuff now!

A few months ago (holy crap, has it been that long?) I ran our playgroup through a 1st level D&D 4e adventure in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was a lot of fun, and I think the story was pretty neat. As I delve deeper into Cortex Plus, it seems like an awesome way to impart the flavor of Avatar directly into the game, and I’d love to play the scenario again with the different mechanics.

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Leverage RPG – Browncoats In the ‘Verse

Our Continuing Quest…
So in our gaming group’s continuing quest (or perhaps it’s my quest, since I’ve been guest-GM for a couple months now) to explore new games, we sat down to play the Leverage RPG. I’d never seen the show, heard a liveplay, or played it myself, but I was fairly confident given my comfort level with Marvel Heroic RPG so, hey, why not?

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