[Diaspora] actual play (first time Fate, first time Diaspora)

[Andrew Codispoti]

My group and I are new to Fate, and we've decided to try Diaspora for 
our first taste of Fudge Dice and Aspects.

We completed our first session last Monday, and are scheduled to play 
again tomorrow, so I thought I'd post the AP from the cluster and 
character creation so that I'll be ready for the first regular session 
report from tomorrow.

I've included the entire AP writeup below, and I'll post it on GeekDo. 
You can also find it on the wiki we'll be using for our Fate escapades: 
http://is.gd/4VZkJ
or 
http://fate.deepeningdays.com/diaspora/actual_play/not_sure_how_to_fly/first_session

There are links at the above page to the full character and cluster stats.

----

We opened up Diaspora for the first time last Monday. There were three 
players (Matt, Angela, and myself, Andrew). We started with a standard 
first session, and rolled up our cluster and characters.

Actually, this was not just our first time playing Diaspora. It was also 
our first time playing Fate! Thus we were dealing with Aspects for the 
first time, and getting used to the freedom they offer. Matt and I have 
a D&D background. Angela is venturing into RPGs for the first time.

To offer a conclusion before I get down to details: we were awed by how 
much fun creating characters (and the setting!) was in Diaspora. We're 
really looking forward to our next session, and to jumping in to Fate 
play and the mini-games that Diaspora offers.

Now, section by section.

Cluster Creation

We each took responsibility for two systems. We rolled for system 
attributes in order, so the stats were completely random. The stats 
become a starting point for the stories we told each other about these 
systems.

The three stats (Technology, Environment, and Resources) are just enough 
meat to start the creative process. For one of my systems, I immediately 
seized on one word from the attribute ratings chart: the system's T -1 
meant “atomic power.” Technology -1 means the system has harnessed the 
atom but hasn't yet ventured out into space. I had sudden visions of 
WWII-era tech (propeller-driven aircraft, occasional zeppelins) with the 
arbitrary addition of wide-spread atomic power. The vision was somewhat 
fanciful, but I went with it, and decided that “Durango,” as I named the 
system and the single habitable planet, had not yet sent a manned 
mission to the moon, but was attempting to. The suddenness with which 
Durango sprang into existence merely served to illustrate to me that the 
freedom enjoyed in this method of system (and character) creation means 
that the smallest thing (the word “atomic” on the attribute rating 
chart) can become the seed for an entire concept.

On the whole we rolled rather interesting cluster stats. One system, 
Valatea, was T 2, E 4, R 0. Matt came up with two interesting aspects 
for this system: “So Beautiful You Never Want to Leave” and “Fat, 
Sweaty, and Wanting More.” The first seems like a natural when you have 
“many garden worlds” in the system. But the second gave the Valateans an 
interesting quirk: though possessed of the most beautiful worlds in the 
cluster these people were by no means satisfied! There's another T 2 in 
the cluster, New Hoth, and we decided the ascetic Hothans and the 
decadent Valateans were natural antagonists. Indeed, during phase 2 of 
character creation the cold war between these two systems erupted into 
outright conflict (more on that later). Most of the other system stats 
were 0 or lower. Basically, we had several resource-starved or dangerous 
systems, with Valatea and New Hoth the technological pinnacles. One 
other system popped out: Gortrex was T -3, E 0, R +2. In another bit of 
fancy Matt decided that the Gortrexans exported that which Valateans 
desired above all else: the impossibly cute Cheeba, a duck-monkey animal 
kept as a pet. The Gortrexans were also amusingly primitive, and assumed 
the Valateans were gods.

Now we rolled up the connections between our systems, and new stories 
instantly made themselves known. Valatea instantly established its 
prominence: four of the five other systems are linked to it. But 
interestingly enough, Gortrex, the source of the Valateans' duck-monkey 
vice, was only reachable by hopping through pre-space-age Durango.

We were already impressed by the unique setting that we'd managed to 
develop in half an hour, so with this base in place we jumped into 
character creation.

Character Creation

Phase-based character creation is fun because it's another mini-game. It 
is a storytelling experience but with the in-game time condensed. There 
are choices to be made, and each character goes through changes as the 
phases pass. This was our first time creating characters like this. 
Thoughts: it's interesting juggling the copious ideas that tend to 
spring out of this sort of free-form, brainstorming character creation. 
One of the decisions to make is where to place each character trait in 
the phases. I found myself “jumping ahead” and creating character ahead 
of the game. I knew where I wanted my character (Jackson) to end up, and 
had to keep reminding myself that I had plenty of “time” to fit in all 
the aspects that I wanted him to have. This was actually part of the 
fun. The traits that I thought Jackson would have at the beginning of 
the process transformed subtly when I gave in to the game and allowed 
him to evolve through the phases. Getting down to it:

Phase 1 (Growing Up) saw us choosing origin systems and stories. This 
was familiar enough, though Matt and I (D&Ders) had to keep reminding 
ourselves that we could stop making decisions about the characters, that 
we had four more phases to go and that we would want to check in with 
the other players for cross-pollination of ideas.

None of the three characters was from either of the two Tech 2 systems 
in the cluster. Jackson (Andrew) and Trey (Matt) were both “primitives,” 
in fact, though Trey made it off-planet in the first phase (he was given 
as a sacrifice to the “gods,” a party of Hothans collected tribute from 
Gortrex). Angela's character, Similene, grew up on a harsh rainforest 
world in the Mildred system and learned to make good use of poison as a 
frog farmer.

During Phase 2 (Starting Out), Similene began to systematically study 
the chemicals she had been dealing with all her life, and undertook 
training and study on the poisons derived from the deadly frog species 
of her planet, Fanorth. Trey ended up on New Hoth, naturalizing but 
maintaining his ability (learned as a youngster) to dissemble. 
Meanwhile, on Durango, Jackson joined the military and took to the 
dangerous life of a fighter pilot (I imagined WWII-era aircraft tech).

Phase 3 (Moment of Crisis): Since there were only three of us, we 
decided to tie all our moments of crisis together. This is the phase in 
which the characters definitely meet and become entangled in each others 
escapades. This was when the process really heated up for us. Ideas were 
flying back and forth across the table, and for the first time we were 
experimenting with explicitly collaborative storytelling in an RPG (as 
opposed to the implicit collaborative storytelling that is natural in D&D).

As the cold war between New Hoth and Valatea broke into open conflict, 
Trey (with a non-Hothan phenotype) trained and set to work as a spy 
working for the Hothans. He infiltrated the Valatean military, and 
joined the crew of a ship tasked with creating a weapons-research base 
on Gortrex, from where the Valateans could conduct research out of the 
eyes of New Hoth. Similene, having been drafted by the Valateans, was 
aboard, ordered to do research into military application of the poisons 
she dealt with. When Trey tried to recruit her to his cause she betrayed 
him, and he was put in the brig. As the ship passed through the Durango 
system, Jackson, captured by the enemy and used as a human guinea pig in 
an unofficial space mission, was launched into orbit in a primitive 
rocket. The Valatean crew of the research ship decided to rescue the 
reluctant astronaut, mostly out of concern that the Durangos might be 
reaching their space age at last.

Something went wrong in the decon process, and Jackson unwittingly 
carried a virus or bacteria into the living quarters of the ship. The 
Valateans died off with startling quickness. Trey, effectively 
quarantined in the brig, was unaffected, but Similene manifested 
symptoms which began to rot her flesh and slowly kill her. In the nick 
of time she synthesized a cure of some kind, and innoculated herself and 
Trey.

Out of control, the ship was tumbling into Durango. The remaining crew 
was made up of a man who thought he had been kidnapped by angels or 
demons, a scientist, and a spy hailing from an Iron Age planet. We 
decided to transition into Phase 4.

Phase 4 (Sidetracked), Diaspora states, “is about events out of your 
control.” It doesn't get much more out of control than the events 
related in the previous paragraph. We decided that this was how our 
characters got out of it: Similene popped the lock on the brig and 
released Trey, who did his best to explain what he knew of Tech 2 
physics to Jackson. In a miraculous display of steady hands, intuition, 
and bizarre communication (all the planets in the cluster share language 
roots, having been seeded by an ancient colony ship), the three managed 
to work together to get the ship under control (mainly this involved 
getting the autopilot to work, something none of them knew how to do). 
We each set down some aspects that really tied the characters together.

This story about a group of people from low-tech worlds dealing with 
slipstream-level tech was very entertaining, and I think it will 
continue to bear fruit as the story unfolds next session.

Finally, we finished off with Phase 5 (On Your Own), wherein the crew, 
safe from tumbling into Durango but not safe from the presence of the 
Valatean military, who wondered what happened to the crew, are trying to 
decide where to go next. Jackson, starting to find ways to deal with the 
revelations he's experiencing, takes on a religious attitude and a task 
of bring tech to his hopelessly backwards people on Durango. Similene 
vows to take the fight to the Valateans who got here into this mess, and 
Trey looks with a greedy eye on the research equipment squirreled away 
in the ship's holds.

What happens next is anyone's guess.

Final Thoughts

This first session was a goldmine of stories! I think we are definitely 
taking the game in a lighter direction than Diaspora might be meant for, 
but I'm confident the game will stand up to it and that the rules will 
ease us back in that direction. This is fine. My personal favorite 
story: people from backward worlds dealing with high technology. We're 
fudging the details, but I think the crew may develop an interesting 
relationship with the ship's computer as they attempt to accomplish 
their goals. The presence of two systems in the cluster which are 
completely unaware of the space-faring nature of the world outside is 
very interesting, especially with one of our characters hellbent on 
bringing “the good word” to his own homeworld.

Diaspora is serving the story at all times, so far. We've hardly been 
conscious of any system thus far, just a few guidelines. Next session is 
the first real test of the rules. We're very curious to see how our 
story meshes with the system.