I seem to have missed any and all threads that were talking about this game. What the hell is it?

RPGPundit

It's a pulp-era game that uses a modified form of Fudge (the FATE rpg).

http://www.evilhat.com/?spirit

Maw has the heart of it.  It's pulp, with all that that entails, including the bit of truth to the joke that pulp games are the favorite of designers and are pretty broadly ignored otherwise.

It's a 420 page game ins 6x9 format currently taking preorders.  Physical copies ship at the beginning of November, but people who pre-ordered have received the pdf.  It's been pretty well received, partly as a credit to Fred Hicks' commitment to customer service, partly because Christian St. Pierre really *nailed* the art, and partly (I hope) because it's a pretty good game.  

In terms of pedigree, we released Fate, a specific Fudge build, a few years back, and it's done pretty well by us.   SOTC grew out of a local campaign which was created to deal with the fact that we have a lot of players locally.  Pulp was well suited to a game about members of a club of gentleman adventurers, allowing for pickup games to be easily run with whoever happened to be on hand.  Game went well enough (and proved enough of a showcase for ideas) that we started writing it up as the next generation of the Fate rules.

So far, people have liked the use of examples, the practical advice, the flavor and the customer service.  Concerns have been raised about the sheer size of the book, that the volume of advice is unnecessary for some, and that play starts in the 20s, rather than the 30s.

There's a bit of hippie stuff in it.  Fate points are gained by players running into problems due to aspects (somewhat like 7th Sea's drawbacks) and can be used for minor narrative power.  Knowledge and perception skills are definitely slanted in such a way as to try to avoid pixel bitching.  Injury is a bit abstracted, and social conflicts get the same kind of mileage that physical ones do. Some of that might appeal, some of that might be pure poison, depending on the player.

So all in all, it's not gonna be everyone's bag, but that's the nature of the beast.  We're pretty proud of it.  

Anyway, I'd be happy to take a swing at more specific questions if anyone has them.  Otherwise, thanks for the interest!

-Rob D.

Rob, can you give a general overview on the differences between Spirit and the free version of FATE?  Other than the obvious insertion of specific setting information.  I'm curious on how FATE has changed now that lots of people have played around with it.

Why can't there be a Pulp RPG that _doesn't_ use the Indiana Jones font?

Apart from that it looks quite good. 'Though I seriously doubt that there's the market for a pulp game. It's been done several times and never gained critical mass.

Quote from: SosthenesWhy can't there be a Pulp RPG that _doesn't_ use the Indiana Jones font?

It's not just a design choice.  It's the law!

-Rob D.

Quote from: NicephorusRob, can you give a general overview on the differences between Spirit and the free version of FATE?  Other than the obvious insertion of specific setting information.  I'm curious on how FATE has changed now that lots of people have played around with it.

Ok, three big changes.  The first is in the handling of aspects.  Previously, aspects were a limited resource (you had a number of boxes and checked them off when you use them).  They no longer have boxes, instead, they are triggered by spending a fate point (so you can now either spend a FP for a small bonus, or spend it in conjunction with an aspect for a bigger bonus).

We ended up making this change when we were dinking around with some ways to make things a little more fast and loose, and we hit upon the idea of "Spend a FP to uncheck an aspect box" and that worked out really fantastically well.  It made FP's flow a lot more smoothly, and it let players do their cool stuff a bit more often.  Thing is, the pattern that tended to bring about was to spend a FP to uncheck a box, then check it off again, so the change was really just a logical shorthanding of that.  It required the tweak of starting play with more FP (to make up for the lost boxes) but that's worked out quite well.  

Additionally, aspects are now much more ubiquitous and interactive.  Scenes can have aspects (like "on fire" or "cramped") and there are clear rules for "tagging" aspects on places and other people.  In fact, one of the big tricks in combat is to put aspects ("blinded", "Stunned") on your opponent, then tag them!

The second big change is stunts, which have ended up subsuming extras without many of the problems those had. Stunts are distinct rule chunks (like feats or charms) with explicit rules effects.  We could have gone with a standardized ruleset for them, but we felt that, like spells in D&D, there is a lot of power in having these things be explicit and flavorful, so they're there, and there are a lot of them.

The third big change is the handling of injury, and I'll sum it up as follows:  Injuries are aspects.  And yes, that means you can invoke your broken leg aspect to try to get sympathy from that pretty nurse!

Beyond that, most of the differences are specific to pulp or are results of this being a specific build.  As an example, we _really_ drill into the skill list, with a crazy emphasis on how to make each skill awesome in play, and I think we do some cool stuff with that, but that's less of a change and more of a specific presentation.

That help at all?

-Rob D.

Rob, if people buy the game after the print release, is the PDF still included?

Quote from: Elliot WilenRob, if people buy the game after the print release, is the PDF still included?

Not at the moment. When preorder ends, we'll start selling the pdf as its own thing.  That said,  we'd _like_ to do some sort of bundling or upgrade deal but there are technical hurdles to that which we don't have a solution for yet, but we're working on it.

To illustrate, the current pdf distribution is pretty much done by hand and supportable only because Fred's got enough technical know how to make somethign like this work, but it's not sustainable.

-Rob D.

Okay, question:

Are there any sci-fantasy elements to it? For example, magicians, mind-powers, martians, super-powers, ray-guns, etc.

My baseline for this genre is the Terra cosm from Torg.

And why is it called "Spirit of the Century"?

RPGPundit

It's named after a semi-famous steam train that used to do the New York to Boston run.  Apparently when it was due to be decomissioned it was purchased by Babe Ruth.

Wow. Don't expect any non-US american to get this. I can call myself lucky that I happen to know who babe ruth is..

I'd suspect Mr. A of pulling your leg, except that a Google search did turn up a "spirit of the century" Lionel train set.

Very few Americans will get the reference, either. The name just sounds like a 1930's-50's pulp character (also echoing intentionally or not Will Eisner's The Spirit comics), so it's nicely evocative.