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Was an enlightning writeup and it's good to see how other groups engage with the process, thanks very much. I can see one place you appear to do things differently to most of the group I play with though. In devising the North and South tarot (both to do with Fate and skills) most of our group actually uses those choices to help detail a character's background and give the FM some options to consider when devising how our Fate will play out in game. From your Fate writeup I can see you pulled the 12 of Masks (3, 3, 1, 1) for the North card and the 4 of crows (3, 2, 2, 1, 1) for the South. The primary difference from your writeup is we take each step seperately. So the 3, 3, 1, 1 skills would be selected to represent the skills the character learned, and maintained, from their childhood/teen years (Root Skills). So with your two 3's being in evade, melee or toughness we would've tried to explain why two of those skills were necessary. Was our father drinking due to the downturn in business. Did this make him abusive and so we learned to take a beating and 'not be where the fist was landing'. Or were we fighting with other kids because their families owed credit to our dad and they were all in a place where they were much poorer and in debt to our family. As such the character was hated, bullied and beaten up. If so maybe toughness and evade were things the character learned. The character had to 'harden up' just to get by. For the 1's maybe Athletics and Wilderness as we simply left town for a while to 'get away' when things got to be too much. So we learned basic physical skills like running and jumping and swimming and also basic survival techniques. Or maybe Athletics and Music representing our constant running and climbing around town to get away from the 'bullies' and Music because it's what we did to 'mentally escape' our shitty life. In your example the Southern card is about the choices we made as we 'matured', what we chose to be. So being bullied and the town going under there was absolutely nothing that encouraged the character to stay. Heading West he found a new home and a new name. His skills in the wilderness and athletics and toughness helped him survive the trip. but arriving at his new home he saw more of the same 'bullies'. Not again, not this time, and so he became an unofficial protector in the neighbourhood. Picking up melee skills and learning how to handle a longarm. No longer the 'bullying of children' but rather the 'wars of men'. He still plays music because it lets the character get away, only in his maturity he learned techniques to just focus and calm himself. Maybe he recalls music he's heard in his head and he is now 'drawn to' fine music as a result of this. But however it happened it has resulted in the Centering skill. He also learned to hide his fear of 'bullies' and stand up for what is right. It is here he learned to hide the truth and 'deceive' others. Nothing nefarious, maybe the character is even trying to run away from his own 'truth' and history. We discovered that asking these questions and dealing with the skills as two seperate stages of a character's life help to define the Fated a little more. The youth shaped by circumstance and the adult shaped by choice. The questions that arise help to 'nut out' the character and give a greater insight into how they'll react to situations they may find themselves in during the course of the chronicle. The focus on narrative in TtB can be replicated in the creation system wonderfully. There's not right way and wrong way to do this stuff and each groups MMV. We're just working with the system in a very precise way for a set of particular results that help our storytelling/gaming. For me the best thing about this creation system is it opens up opportuntiies that a player may not even considered at first. Initially I thought the Tarot might restrict character builds a little too much. But what I've found is that it opens up so many variables and possibilities. As an example using the exact same Tarot drawn above and looking at the music skill selected it would be possible to build a performer (musician) who would also become exceptional at close combat by merely taking a low strength, high grace and picking up the Flick of the Wrist talent. You could still start on the scrapper pursuit but at it's core the character wasn't a self appointed 'writer of wrongs' but just a muso that was bullied and harrangued and finally thought enough is enough and learned to protect themselves. It also means the Trick action you mentioned becomes a lot more powerful when on the performer pursuit with a card drawn to the twist deck on any failed Trick action that relies on deceive rather than sleight of hand (pick pocket). The Tarot system just gives a set of defined parameters (core stats) in which to let our imagination and the system run riot to build the narrative. Apologies in advance if it's perceived I derailed the thread a little, was not my intention. I just wanted to highlight for other readers that the skill selection of the tarot can be used in a very literal way to help build more narrative, assist a player in directing their in-game choices and assist the FM in defining how our fates will play out. You have to admit, if a choice was made to go with a drunk and abusive father the first lines of your character's Fate begins to convey quite interesting meanings for a FM to play around with. Couple this with music folklore, deals with the Devil made at a Crossroads in exchange for brilliance and fame your FM could have a field day with your character's destiny. Kind Regards, Ad

TtB offers another option being Ongoing Challenges. You could handle some of the story that doesn't gel well with others in the group with these challenges and some narrative. It does mean it takes more of a back seat to the overall action on the game night but the system does allow for weeks, months or even years of 'downtime' to impact on the communal narrative. it does mean that they're working 'behind everyone else's back' but if you're group is happy to RP through the conflict that may ensue later and your group is mature enough to RP on only in character knowledge the system does allow for such activities to be undertaken. Have to agree with the previous posters though, the easiest path is to have everyone with similar interests. wave ad

Just want to highlight something, it's not as if the NPC had flipped a ten but rather is the target number (TN) the fated is aiming for. I won't detail all the ranks but let's look at two Fated attacking each other, which is a special case for the usual rules. You add your Acting Value (AV) to your rank to get the overall target number required. So a starting scrapper who is bulging with melee Skills/Aspects has melee 3 plus strength 2 if the Fates were kind during the Tarot reading resulting in an AV of 5. When attacking another Fated (PC) you add the rank (12 I believe for a Fated) to their Defense value. So let's say the defender has an evade of 2 they would have a final Defense of 4. Defense 4 + Rank of 12 gives the attacking Fated a TN of 16. That means our attacker with an AV of 5 for melee skill needs a flip of 11+ to hit the defending Fated PC. Not too easy to do but possible. So when you see a rank for an NPC you add that to the NPC's Acting Value (usually Skill+Aspect) to arrive at a final TN the Fated must reach with their Flip + AV. So a FM would declare a guild guard is hitting my PC with a savage blow. To avoid it I ask for the TN I must reach on my defense flip. The FM will give me a TN based on the NPC's rank and attacking skill and attacking Aspect. I then need to make a flip and add my defense or willpower. If I reach the TN I do not get hit. If I fail to reach the TN the guard has hit me and we would then work out the damage. The difference between trying to reach a TN and assuming an NPC has a flip value is a subtle but significant one. The FM rarely if ever touches the Fate deck. They just declare things happen and we then have to trust or cheat fate to determine the ultimate outcome. Overall the system appears to be a fairly robust one as it permits some altering of NPC 'skills' and 'triggers' to reflect a significant range of special or unique capabilities.

I wasn't a backer but I am a member of a longstanding RPG group that originated with three of us wanting to do something on the Monday night (for us) patch night for the original EQ. While we were doing other games together this 'evening group' has been gaming together about 15 years. While some of the guys aren't fans of PDF's I'm used to doing research from pdf articles so it doesn't bother me. As for where our group (that has 3 backers, maybe 4 (EDIT: Just verified we have 6 backers 3 of which hit the $225 package) is at well we've created our characters. Right now we're engaged in some 'softplay' via email while our FM gets some work done on the game and we discus ways to manage our sizeable group. Malifaux seems to be a natural fit for us. A few of us devoured WW's 'WoD storyteller system' and followed it into the LARP version as well. We've played or ST'ed for groups of a considerable size so what we read in the FM Almanac on game creation/management and communal storytelling all makes perfect sense to us. I've been using 'timelines' and 'update sheets' for my key NPC's and NPC groups for over a decade in LARP so I'm more than happy with that aspect of the FM system. We're thinking that our few hours of the evening may be best served by using the email summary prologue a few days before and a simple TV episode formula of three defined Acts to get the most out of our gaming tie. Our FM is even considering if we can do our epilogue via email as well. Partly this is all due to the size of our group. Victorian, Steampunk, Western Horror, Gothic Horror, Machiavellian political games to control a resource, tinges of the macarbe and downright insane, differing views of legitimacy and 'right'. As an old fan of Deadlands and someone who devoured Werewolf - Wild West setting and enjoyed the crazy games of Cthulhu I played and the weirdness that is WoD Lost, Malifaux is simply a vibrant thematic tapestry that is waiting to be developed, devoured and digested by those who seek to explore it as players or FM's. There are some problems with the books with certain content missing. But I guess you can look at it as an opportunity or a fault. one example besides the throwing knife mentioned in another thread is where p 120 of the Fated Almanac talks about the crafting skills and how they are vitally important to a Fated character. And I can honestly understand why that's the case. But it goes on to say the Fate Master Almanac has more information on the subject and it should be noted that crafting is not a 'set process'. I even get that part of it too when you consider the setting and environment the Fated characters are in. But when you search the FM Almanac guess what, nothing about crafting or income or anything else along those lines can be located. I understand the intention was to get the important info into the FM book but it's just one post it note on a wall that most likely slipped off the board, or content was set aside to make room for something else as deadlines crept up. I guess while it would have been nice information to have it's not essential and we have an inkling of what is 'meant' anyway. Through the Breach (TtB) books are like most RP books an opportunity. Different people will approach them in different ways and for me personally the first thing I see is the setting, and it has really drawn me in. I wasn't a Malifaux player so while some of my mates have the minis and played the mini game I flicked through a few books. But this is what I was waiting for, an opportunity to add our stories to the city and its surrounds. We'll work through the holes in the rules with a bit of common sense and our usual minor ranting and raging. But at the end of the day we'll have some fun times and interesting stories to tell. Those who are familiar with FFG 40K RPG games will understand what is meant when the statement 'content is missing' is made. It's not a precise rules system, but I don't think it was designed to be. Hopefully the Wyrd Chronicles will have a page or two with rules updates/errata or even thematic content dealing with certain items from TtB. Maybe even some more setting information on the Badlands would be nice. TLDR: Through the Breach is a first edition RPG whose function it appears was to give fans an opportunity to explore a rich and amazing world. It does that quite well. As a mechanical system TtB has some minor issues that we are locating and discussing amongst our smaller group and settling on answers for. If we get more TtB publications later awesome. If not we'll write our own content that suits us. Right now we're not discussing it much outside our group because we're still getting a handle on it ourselves. Thanks for sharing the world though, it's already earned a place amongst our favourite story settings. wave ad

Play with the group this issue came up with. After carefully looking over the weapons list and the writeup on thrown skill final result was. Throwing Knife 1Melee 1/2/4 Thrown 3S Weapon can be used in both melee and can be thrown at range of 3 x Throwing Skill. Part of the issue arose because we don't believe you can add custom enhancements to non-custom weapons. While this isn't expressly stated some of the custom writeups actually state "X the custom weapons..." We also looked at where custom enhancements were added. In the firearms section it is right at the beginning and there are no 'Custom weapon" charts in the same we we find for melee. <shrug> is just one of the things we've found that aren't expressly clear. Another example would be how many custom enhancements can you add to a single custom weapon? Our FM has gone with one, although we think he'd let us add an 'embellishment' as a second since it doesn't carry a mechanical benefit. Because, yes making the assumption you can add multiple enhancements to a weapon you get some ridiculous numbers, especially when compared to the average damages done by most weapons/spells.

Awesome thanks very much guys and yes Masterdisaster the pic is exactly what I was after. Appreciate the quick response. I recall seeing mention of the recall on the oversized minis from Gencon. I went looking for pics but couldn't find any. Would anyone know of any pics of them? Kind Regards, Ad

Hi All, Quick question, any ideas on minitures that are available that could represent a female character with the 'Wall of Muscle' general talent. Basically looking for something that will be representative of a height 3 character. If nothing is available anyone got any tips on what kind of size would be representative of a Height 3 vs a Height 2? Thanks in advance. Ad