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The Three Rocketeers • A World of Adventure for Fate Core Pay What You Want
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The Three Rocketeers • A World of Adventure for Fate Core
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The Three Rocketeers • A World of Adventure for Fate Core
Publisher: Evil Hat Productions, LLC
by Björn L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/15/2022 11:38:48

All for one, and one for all? - a Mephisto review

Three Rocketeers

The title of this Fate world already reveals what this scenario is about: the reference to the Rocketeers and the Three Musketeers point precisely to the two elements combined here. This setting represents a world in which the stories about the Three Musketeers are transferred to a science fiction setting. The player characters belong to the Rocketeers, who protect the throne of Gallia as an elite unit in the service of their queen. Gallia here is a star-spanning empire reminiscent of France, and of course, there is also a counterpart for England, the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. As you might expect, the Church plays a significant role here as well.

If the player characters do not want to immediately play the interpretations of the four protagonists of the novel by Dumas, they can start with the simple character creation. The peculiarity of this Fate system is that it drops all skills, and thus aspects play a much greater role. The aspects - if they fit - automatically give bonuses to the rolls, just as skills would otherwise do. Six aspects describe the characters, providing a picture of what kind of Rocketeers they are, what their problems are, their approach to sword fighting, and their families. In addition, there are free aspects. Also, the stunts are redefined as they are not coupled with skills and are more focused on the four approaches. In addition, the setting is described in general. Besides the stellar kingdoms and their intrigues, there is also a look at the technology, focusing on rocket packs and energy blades. Rules-wise, a system can be used to define conspiracies as the primary opponents of the player characters. Finally, a pre-written adventure puts the player characters on the trail of an intrigue against their queen.

Three Rocketeers uses the idea of combining a familiar setting with a different genre. The idea of moving the adventures of the three musketeers into the future is presented quite coherently. The corresponding rules, which simplify the game and thus make it faster and more dynamic, also fit the setting. However, despite these good ideas and modifications, I do not think this game world will captivate players for long.

(Björn Lippold)



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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The Three Rocketeers • A World of Adventure for Fate Core
Publisher: Evil Hat Productions, LLC
by Jon S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/26/2019 01:33:33

I got to play this at Origins 2018 and had a blast! (Pun intended.) The no-skills variant of Fate is interesting and fast to play!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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The Three Rocketeers • A World of Adventure for Fate Core
Publisher: Evil Hat Productions, LLC
by Jon F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/29/2015 03:40:04

I got myself a copy of "The 3 Rocketeers" the newest World of Adventure for Fate RPG, by P K Sullivan. I thought it my offer some diverting reading over the Christmas break. How wrong I was! It was so good, such a cool premise executed so engagingly, and so tickled my fancy that I read the whole thing over the weekend, before my holiday break even started! Now I cannot wait to have a chance to play it. The setting is a combination of two major tropes. First the swashbuckling adventure and heroic thwarting of nefarious conspiracies portrayed in the novels of Alexander Dumas. Second space-age adventure, with rocket-packs and interstellar travel. Instead of musketeers, we have rocketeers as PCs and they serve to protect the young Queen of Gallia from interstellar, yet familiar rivals. There is a Britain, Germany and Spain equivalent, and even dastardly Cardinals and a Star Pope. Enough background is provided for setting the scene for CharGen and for sparking a host of stories. The swashbuckling style of The Musketeers is maintained because melee weapons and duelling are still commonplace (for the usual sci-fantasy sci-fudge reasons). I am not usually that keen on crossing-the-genres games, as they often extend towards "the gonzo" which often seems only suitable for one-off games. But this is one that feels to have some depth right-out-of-the-book, and that I think could support some extended play. By presenting a setting based on the spirit of an adventure book set in 17th century France, but transposed into an interstellar hi tec setting the game is able to be fully equal ops, and inviting to all, avoiding those perils for fully historical settings where massive gender and racial inequality permeates the cultures presented. I would have liked a star-map (just because I love them!) but it certainly is not needed. The rules are an interesting twist on Fate core, with skills ratings replaced by a simpler (but subjective) totalling of +1 for each of your 6 PC aspects that are relevant. NPCs use the 6 approaches of FAE. There is a system for fencing stunts, which seems perfectly appropriate given that it is clear that the game's intention is that there will be a lot of duelling. Other new rules include a simple system for quantifying the attributes of the conspiracy that our heroes face, and how that impacts on play. I cannot yet comment on how any of these will work in play, but nothing is so complicated as to offend my simple tastes. Almost a third of the 40 page book is taken up with an introductory adventure "Battle for the Gallian Throne". I havent studied this in detail but after a quick read looks to be a well crafted and exciting romp, that might take several sessions. With the insertion of a few extra NPCs, detours and red herrings could easily be the become a longer adventure and possible foundation for a larger campaign. All in all, a great package and one which P K Sullivan and Evil Hat should be very proud of! If I could make a criticism it is only that because my enthusiasm for this is so great, I want more than such a small world book can deliver! I have a whole bunch of questions about the setting, unanswered in the limited space available in the book, which I'd love to have illuminated.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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The Three Rocketeers • A World of Adventure for Fate Core
Publisher: Evil Hat Productions, LLC
by Chuck C. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/28/2015 16:16:45

This looks like a fun and accessible introductory campaign frame for people new to Fate. The Musketeers tie-in should give many players a handle on the setting, and who doesn't want to fly around with a jet-pack? For Fate GMs, there is a nifty take on Conspiracies that can be ported to any setting.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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The Three Rocketeers • A World of Adventure for Fate Core
Publisher: Evil Hat Productions, LLC
by Steven W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/19/2015 12:40:52

My only complaint is that I wish it were longer!

Three Rocketeers is a cinematic mash up of space opera and swashbuckling adventure, using an "even rules lighter" version of Fate!

This 40 page pdf gives you rules, including a "drill down" focus on fencing that enables you to differentiate all the different sword wielders in the game, an easy to read and expand upon background, several per-generated characters, and a complete adventure.

Admission 1: I am a patreon backer for Evil Hat, so I am the target audience for this Admission 2: I am a HUGE Three Musketeers fan, so I really, really am the target audience for this.

I give this product 6 stars, 2 thumbs up, and my highest recommendation.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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The Three Rocketeers • A World of Adventure for Fate Core
Publisher: Evil Hat Productions, LLC
by Bruce B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/17/2015 09:04:20

This is pretty glorious. Basically, everywhere Alexander Dumas might have mentioned counties, strike those and put in star systems instead. It's got lines like "The Vatican system was first explored by Star Pope Andromeda II when a catastrophic engine failure stranded her ship in the system." If this kind of thing works for you, then you'll be delighted to know that this book does it really well, really consistently. (If it doesn't, well, there'll be another book along in due season.) For some of us, this as very much as wanted and lovable as very different works like Mindjammer (which I just got done praising again earlier this morning).

There's also some neat game mechanics in here. This Fate riff uses six aspects, stunts, and nothing else. If you've seen the stuff Rob Donoghue's been doing with TinyFate and the like...yup, same kind of thing. I won't go on at length - you can check it out yourself. I will note that I love every permutation on the idea behind this example stunt:

Master of Disguise: Because I am a master of disguise with a knack for being in the right place at the right time, once per session I can join a scene already in progress, having posed as a minor character.

...because it so perfectly adapts a whole bunch of great dramatic/comedic moments to game play, and the game really supports it rather than making you struggle to get through unwarranted barriers.

As you'd expect, swordplay gets extra attention. Swordplay stunts combine four elements - appearance, edge (special tricks), main hand, and off-hand - into a single package. All Rocketeers have a swordplay stunt that models how they fight. For instance:

Subtle: Invoking your fencing aspect to create an advantage based on misdirection grants +3 instead of +2. Perfect Footwork: When you succeed with style on defense, you may create a situation aspect with a free invocation instead of gaining a boost. Small Sword: Gain +1 to attack an enemy who has already acted in the round. Cloak: Gain +1 to create an advantage when you obfuscate your weapon.

(That's from the Rocketeer-version writeup of Aramis.)

Since there aren't skills to spend milestone advances on, you use milestones to add an additional entry to an element of your character's swordplay stunt.

As is of course necessary for Dumas-type action, there's fun handling of conspiracies:

In Three Rocketeers, conspiracies are modeled with aspects—alliance, goal, and weakness—and approaches—Influence, Might, Power, Reach, Resources, and Secrecy.

And there's a great adventure, and just loads for fun. I've said "fun" quite a few times in this post. Well, what can I say? This is a really fun book.

(Reposted from my Google+ stream, at https://plus.google.com/u/0/107122403431806926287/posts/bHTpiNEhSCr )



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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