Fate is a peculiar because it is a collaboration between several players and a game master. Without that collaboration you don't quite have a Fate game. You merely have Fate mechanics. There is nothing wrong with using the Fate mechanics that way, but I want the full Fate experience.
So I need 3 players to give their input. No worries though, because Mythic can provide those players as well. Looking at the categories of Meaning tables we see something that is perfect for our needs: Character Motivations. Except for us, they will be Player Motivations.
Player 1: Riches/ Plan
Player 2: Physical/Struggles
Player 3: Transform/Revenge
Now to interpret these player motivations in context of our adventure setting.
Player 1 likes a game where there are plans and rewards. Maybe he would like heist games.
Player 2 is all about that physical combat and struggle.
Player 3 is looking for a more character driven game where the character can transform, and we already knows one of his character motivations: Revenge.
In accommodating these game desires, we will be in a good position to further develop the setting. Player 1, as we mentioned would enjoy a heist type story, so there have to be things to steal and people to sell them too. Player two wants physical struggles to play a major role in the setting so we have to have challenges that need brawn to over come and probably a lot of heads to crack. Player 3 needs and individual or organization to gain revenge against and the setting has to have personal elements that will lead to character transformation, so no mere backdrop setting.
We still have a solo game in mind, but I have already put my stamp on the setting at inception. By fitting in the needs of Players 1-3, I am adding an element of "otherness" to my own creation.
Accommodating Player 1 means that we need to be close to urban centers, so this isn't a wilderness enclave of infected but one near to a city. I am seeing an inner city industrial area that has been closed into an internment camp. Food and medical supplies are brought in by armed guards but are ultimately in the control of gang and warlords. The presence of rival gangs (perhaps split by the animal features?) manifest plenty of room for Player 2's physical struggles.
Player 3 needs some community to interact with and something to gain revenge against. Rather than have a gang leader or self serving corporation be automatically to blame, what if the character doesn't start knowing who should be the recipient of his ire? He could be an atypical infected who has no clue how he got the disease. He could part of a handful of mystery cases that suggest his infection was not the act of a mad animal, but the act of a careful plotter. Now we have a mystery to grow with our game.
We now have plenty of gris for the mill, so lets look at the Fate Core setting creation steps and fill in those blanks.
Fate Core instructs us to define the game scale first. Well this is clearly a local scale, and it may never grow out of that. Local scale is good though. It means little changes made by the characters could go a long way.
Next we need to distil the setting down to Current and Impending Issues. Current Issues are problems that are unfolding right now. Considering that we have multiple gangs struggling over an increasingly dwindling habitat, intergang conflict is makes a strong Current Issue. We can record this as "Constant Gang Wars".
Now we need an Impending Issue. For this I want to involve the world beyond the fence. The fact that there are carriers of a very dangerous disease in the middle of a major urban metropolis would be a very frightening prospect. While there are plenty of people beyond the fence that acknowledge that the interment is very tragic, there is a growing feeling that perhaps everyone should be shipped off to a wilderness camp, far beyond the cities boarders. Only the fact that the population submits to medical and magical testing with a goal to end the epidemic, spares them that deportation. So, our Impending Issue is "Everyone will be deported when the medical trials are defunded", a problem that is constantly on the horizon.
The next step is to make Issues into Setting Aspects. To those not familiar to Fate, Setting Aspects are descriptive phrases that can be invoked to for advantage or disadvantage by players and game masters a like.
For our Current Issue lets go with "Constant Gang Wars are Taking Their Toll"
Our Impending Issue can be summed up with "Rumors of Project Remission's Ending Evoke Constant Dread".
So, now we we have a couple avenues to explore during our game. Who are these gangs and who leads them, and what is going on with Project Remission.
W.D.
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