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The Marxist 'Stages of History' theory provides our plot outline.

We find our heroes rattling around in the back of a space transport, checking and rechecking their equipment ahead of a terrifying HALO jump. Play as a "Hurry up and Wait" war story scene.  They are cargo, they need to kill time.   Encourage a round of cards for 'duty roster' stakes  Play on character's fear or impatience related aspects to have a character 'freak out' and get the other players to use empathy or rapport to talk them down.   Run through the Halo drill again (Revise the theory of a High Altitude Low Opening Jump to create advantage using Lore ).  Get players to embellish something from the character background into a 'On my first mission ...' story.   Interrupt the story with the 'jump' light.  The HALO jump is a challenge A Will test at Great difficulty (teamwork bonuses apply) to leap from the transport. An Athletics test at Great difficulty to deploy parachute.  Interpret failed rolls as is 'succeed wit
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Gorilla uprising on Venus - A FATE red planet adventure

For GMs, an introductory adventure. Assumption:  At least one player is playing a Venusian Uplifted Gorilla (ideally Gelina Yurkova) Scene 1:  On Mars (The Ordinary World) After an awards ceremony at _Ascraeus Mons Base_, Players are in a mess hall toasting each other taking turns to brag about their achievements for the Union. After a few vodkas random drinking comrade 'Christov Polovtsev' yells " Coin Check ". Everyone responds by pulling out a coin and tapping it on the table.      Renown test at medioce Difficulty If a player fails the test they do not have their coin on them.  They have to 'buy' a drink for everyone in the mess hall.  In a post scarcity society that means next time the base or mess hall needs a unpleasant job that needs to get done, they are the ones who are 'volunteered' to do it.   Conversation turns to stories of how the coins were earned. Challenge coins are a reward for service. The number of sh
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Red Planet Venusian Frogs

The Red Planet source book describes the native Venusians as:  "The Venusians are short, squat, frog-like creatures whose culture breaks down roughly into the same four classes as feudal Europe: peasants, artisans, warriors, and rulers. " This post provides additional details about Venusian Frog society as developed by the ' RPG review cooperative ' FATE Red Planet games session held 2017-2018.   Shared in the hope you can include them in your game.  If you too please comment to tell me how it went. Late feudal - early modern frogs Our Venusian Frogs are have an 'early modern' society analogous to C15th Europe.  They are still feudal.  Most people live as land lords and peasants, but specifying a late medieval / early modern setting rather than a 'fantasy feudal' we achieves two things: Firstly it makes the Venusian Warriors a bit more challenging bad guys for a technological society with zap guns, wrist communicators and space ships.   Our b
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Tweaking FATE Red Planet for a conservative player

The game supplement ' Red Planet ' by Jess Nevins provides a pulp science fiction setting with a utopian socialist twist for the FATE Core table top role playing game.  Both the base rules and the supplement are available for .pdf download at Drive Thru RPG on a 'Pay what what you want' basis.  Go download them, play within them and tell me what you think. I ran a session of Red Planet as my first taste of the FATE role playing system and as a return to Games Mastering after a very a long break.  It was buckets of fun.  I spent far too long writing background material.  Players being players went in different directions to the ones I prepared for.  This blog shares some of that material with you in the hope that you are inspired to run your own game, use my ideas and tell me how it went. The elephant in the room -  the Red Planet setting is fantasy communism. Red Planet provides utopian science fiction roleplay in a 'retro-futurist' setting.  It's a r
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