[Sotff] Clusters (was: Some questions about the Diaspora book)

[C. W. Marshall]

On 5-Jun-09, at 12:24 AM, Kenneth Coble wrote:
>
> I think it's a great idea to break this portion of the rules out for
> the demo -

<snip>

>
> PS: I just realized how long this is, and how it's only tangentially
> related to Diaspora.  If this is going too far afield from the point
> of the mailing list let me know, I certainly don't want to wear out my
> welcome here or spam the list with stuff that's off-point.  I'm just
> enthused about this project, and this bit of it in particular has lent
> itself to me fiddling with it for the past few days!

As one of the people at the table, and one of the co-designers of  
Diaspora, I'll pipe in and say thanks for this -- this is exactly  
what we want to see Diaspora used for. We have consciously designed  
the game as a modular toolkit, and each tool (or chapter) will, we  
hope, provide players with mechanisms for resolving gaming issues in  
fun, exciting ways. The greater the variety of applications (either  
within the Diaspora universe or in other systems) for any of the  
subsystems is all win.

Your example is spot on: even if you aren't playing a Fate game  
(though why wouldn't you be? : D  ), the setting generation takes  
three numbers and encourages us to make stories out of them. It  
invites stories, and focuses creativity out of locations which seem  
to be an edge-case.

So it's directly related to Diaspora, and is evidence (I would  
suggest) of the robustness of the system.

Thanks,

Toph