FLFS Play Aids
It’s been one of those surprisingly productive days today. I’ve been a Full Light, Full Steam Illustrator-ing madman, doing up some little bits and pieces of layout art and then moving in on some play aids that I’ve been meaning to add to the game.
Situation Engineering SheetHaving run Dogs at con many times over, I’ve been struck by how indispensable the Town Creation sheet is. It’s like a character sheet for the Game Master, with all the important bits right there and handy. So handy, in fact, I doubt I will ever put out a game that doesn’t have a situation sheet. For FLFS, it’s sort of like a worksheet to guide players through Situation Engineering. You write in the inspirations you’ve gathered, create three conflicts off of the inspirations, build the individual conflicts with cogs, complicate the cogs together, and then write up the situation abstract that puts everything in an almost sensible order. Click on the thumbnail to download a significantly more legible pdf version. |
Cog Cards
FLFS uses some heavy delegation of running NPCs, and the situation’s sets and props are more communal property than GM toys. This means that the details of characters, sets, and props — called cogs in Situation Engineering — need to be easily passed from player to player. I love me some 3×5 cards, so I set up individual cogs on separate cards — easy to flip around the table as needed. Folks who might not share my love with the 3×5 card can just print up sheets of them. Cowards.
And needless to say, click on the picture to download the pdf document.
August 18th, 2006 at 6:00 am
Those are pretty slick. Have you considered some sort of icon to make the different Cog formats more immediately recognizable?
August 18th, 2006 at 8:31 am
Thanks, Mark. The NPC is immediately distinguishable from the others since it’s vertical instead of horizontal. I’m assuming that the Prop and Set cards will be distinguishable from their short but prominent titles.
August 18th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Dude. These are SWEET. FLFS is rapidly climbing my ladder of “must play as soon as possible.”
August 21st, 2006 at 11:35 am
Now that’s what I like to see in a game!
Peace,
-Troy
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Oh, man, I just did up a Situation on this sheet, primarily to make sure that there was enough space for everything and all, and it makes me grin ear to ear to see the thing in action. In the space of ten minutes I came up with this great, convoluted situation with pirates and rival french figher pilots and seduction and corruption and awesome. Love this thing.