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Front > Fateplay index > The Book of Iron, chapter I

Fateplay is an interactive method of storytelling, appliable to roleplaying games, Live-Action roleplaying and forms of improvisational theatre. Fateweaving is drawing out the essence of a story and cutting it down to the minimum necessary actions of each individual character for the story to happen. These necessary actions (written as imperatives) are the fates of a play. Distribute them to the actors, and the play has begun.

The Book of Iron, chapter I

The Avatar

The first chapter of the Book of Iron was a mixed fateplay, which will probably be the format I'll be using as it's not that binding than total fateplay but it has some interesting options.

The game was rather small, originally fifteen players but that was reduced to about ten. That didn't ruin the game, anyhow, possibly just helped to create nice, relaxed atmosphere of waiting.

I used fateplay elements to create some events to disturb the quiet peace (where's the fun if nothing happens...), one character was fatebound to order some people to try to kill other member of the cult the game was about and organizing that took four players and their fates, then there was one vision and to end the game, the arriving of the Avatar. Avatar was spiritual being which was carried by one of the players (fate element, so the player knew but character didn't) and then, at decided time, he had a seizure when the Avatar took over the body of the cultist. Avatar, which brought cosmic love and understanding with him, was then killed by a strange man dressed in all black only 30 minutes after he had came. Too bad, but people weren't ready to love and understand each other, that was the final fate.

Players enjoyed, obviously because the system was new and interesting. Most difficult thing was to prevent non-fate characters to disturb the fates, but I guess that's nothing new. Mixed fateplay needs GM devoted to guiding the game and making sure that fates go all fine. I wouldn't run very big game with major fate elements, maybe with something small and meaningless (well, not meaningless but not major plot elements because the possibilities of them being disturbed) to spice the game up. The Book of Iron will get more chapters every now and then when I feel the need to run a game again, small games of 10-15 players are quite easy to run (not too easy though, running a game is hard work anyhow).