Slideways Squirrels

I promised a gaming/hobby blog. I was writing a paint blog, but the camera is not available right now. Anybody that wanted to should be able to take the information in this post and run their own version of Slideways Squirrels. All that is missing is some background material and custom character sheet I made up.

I mentioned a couple of times a FATE game I had planned for running at a local game store. The game fell through because I felt the store did not need another game on the official RPG night because more people decided to GM games after the store expanded. I thought I would share some of what I was working on in case anybody else wanted to use it, but not share so much that it would ruin the experience should I decide to dust this off in the future.

The idea for the game was built around the fact that a local game store had more players than the small number of GMs could accomodate on the official RPG night. I did not want to run a d20 game as that was one area where the store had steady GMs both for RPG night and for Pathfinder Society on Sundays. Also, due to the way people arrive or leave at different times during a game session I wanted a means of instantly bringing people in and out of the game besides the classic means of simply ignoring the fact that the character was not there earlier in the scene.

I came up with the basic idea that the player characters were placing their consciousness into the bodies of people from other dimensions. If a player showed up part way through the session then their character would transition into a nearby NPC. If a player needed to leave early then their character wakes up and leaves the NPC body. If a player was unhappy with their character back at base then it could easily be explained why a different character was doing the sliding. I ended up stealing a lot of ideas from the television programs Sliders and Quantum Leap with one major exception. The player characters were never looking for a way to get home which means I could borrow from other sources, but not use what tends to be the main storyline typically associated with the setting.

I discussed the idea with one of the owners to see if they were okay with the basic premise for the game being ran in their store, and also to find out if there were any systems they wanted to see played more in the store. The owner suggested both FATE and Savage Worlds. I looked at how to handle the story from a mechanics point of view. In the end I decided on FATE even though I had a system working in either.

I had a player pack with what the characters know about the world, information the players might want before they decide to play or not but their characters might not know yet, contact information, and what to expect from my GM style as well as some guidelines for possible character creation during the first session for both the FATE and Savage World versions. They both need some formatting work still or I would upload them to share. It also presented some of the questions I was planning on asking during the character creation session so I could determine what players were comfortable with. Some of the basic questions were things like were they okay with having their characters slide into the body of somebody of the opposite sex or that of another species? Do the players feel that magic might be appropriate in alternate dimensions? Are there any subjects they never want to deal with in a game such as slavery or hate crimes? Everything would be kept to PG13 standards as the game was run in a store, but there are many subjects you can brush up against that cause people to not want to play any more. The final section of the player pack was an attempt to openly encourage feedback even if it was done by talking to one of the store employees instead of directly to myself as the GM. I tried my damndest to let people know I would do my utmost to not take the feedback personally.

The basics of the background equated to the Earth the player characters are from is being terraformed. The populace at large is becoming aware of the issue and starting to panic. Synthumanics Inc have created a technolgy that will let a person transplant their consciousness into the body of someone from another dimension. They fly in the player characters as experts in their various fields to run operations in these other dimensions. One thing I did set up beforehand was that Synthumanics Inc has no way of monitoring what exactly occurs during these trips so after each session I would have asked the players if there was anything they were consciously not including in reports. As long as all the players aggreed to not report something, then Synthumanics Inc and the government officials responsible for the contracts financing the project would never find out.

Now that I have a preamble long enough to be its own post, lets get into the mechanics.

Each player character would have a High Concept and Trouble aspect as per normal FATE. We were using approaches from FATE Accelerated instead of the skill system in FATE Core. We were using the two stress tracks from FATE Core. Every player character would have a third aspect. For the third aspect I would have a player other than the controlling player describe a situation. The owner of the player character would control their actions during that story and we would attempt to create an aspect from it. I had a series of questions prepared such as, "What drew the attention of Synthumanics Inc to the character?" or, "Who caused the most trouble for the character?". Basically I was trying to ask questions I had which I felt were not covered by the first two aspects, approaches, nor stunts at this point in creation. Each player could come up with a fourth aspect if they felt their character was lacking something crucial not covered by the three. I limited the number of aspects player characters started with partially because there would be different players showing up to a game many weeks, and partially because of what happens when a player character inhabits the body of somebody else.

Each time the player character slides into a body I give them an index card. On that card are at least one aspect, and a full set of approaches. The player character uses their normal approaches under most circumstances. The main reason for them getting the host's approaches is it gives them a surface impression of how the NPC might normally behave in a given situation. There are times the player character may want to mimick what they feel the host would do. So a more forceful character that inhabits the body of somebody that is careful might want to use a careful approach if attempting to handle something the way the NPC would even if the player character's careful is a lower approach than the player character is used to acting. The exception is when tagging or compelling the host's aspect. When that happens something about the host comes to the surface and the host's approaches are used.

So that is basically it for the mechanics side of things. If a player comes in part way through a session I could jot down an aspect and approaches for one of the NPCs present in the scene that was running and hand it over where I would have cards ready before the session for those that came in during the first scene in another dimesion.

The game was broken up into seasons. I had enough content that would likely be safe planned for the first season. The first season consisted of the pilot episode (character creation and a short bit of play to get players used to the mechanics of the game and some of the concepts for the series) followed by twelve more episodes. The first full episode was going to be the Sochi Olympics as the game was scheduled for about a week after the end of the Olympics. The first scene was the player characters sliding in on the plane while the USA team was circling the airport to land. I am likely scrapping the idea as the reason it was going to be the first full session was a matter of timing. I might rework it if a session in the future falls near an Olympic event however.

Everything else is details. There are many details, but this is essentially what is required to run your own game of Slideways Squirrels.