Fabula Ultima general thread [+]

[Faolyn]

Is the GM expected to perform a one person show for the players when their PCs aren't present?

I've done cutscenes in my Monster of the Week game and they rarely take more than 2-3 minutes. So if it's a one-person show, it's really short.

But mine are more like extended flavor text than anything else.

 

[CandyLaser]

I'd add that if people are interested in listening to people play Fabula Ultima, Perpetua is the current season of the excellent and long-running AP series Friends at the Table and a great choice. Some of their seasons are sequels or otherwise connected to one another, but this is a standalone, so there's no need to listen to anything that has come before. The premise of the season is that there are two groups of PCs exploring a world which periodically undergoes cycles of world-ending apocalypse followed by rebirth, with some beings and items managing to persist across this cycle. The current cycle is a fantasy world inspired by Dreamcast-era JRPGs with some anachronistic tech elements; the world contains a clock which is inexorably counting down to the end of the current cycle, and the PCs are learning about various mysteries associated with the cycles and the things that manage to survive from one world to the other.

 

[aramis erak]

There is a current module, Project FU. Details about it are here, but you can load it directly from a search in the Foundry app. I have played around with it, but I've always been lucky enough to run Fabula Ultima in person. I wish I could tell you more about the module, but it looks nice, and is being worked on. I wish they would do a Foundry module, and Derik of Knights of Last Call regularly talks with the designer, and is a Foundry person who also loves the game ... so we can hope.

I grabbed it, but haven't played with it yet. (pun intended)

 

[aramis erak]

Is the GM expected to perform a one person show for the players when their PCs aren't present?

Yes. At least occasionally. It's part of the genre, so it's included in the game.

 

[Campbell]

One of the things on the villain scenes piece is that while I do not think you necessarily have to include them if you do not you likely should probably step up direct interactions with villains. Regardless my sense is that you are meant to embrace that you are telling a story together. As a player you are rewarded for playing into your character's emotional journey and suffering narrative losses, dying is a choice you have to earn the right to make and you always know when a villain makes an entrance because you get Fabula Points for it. If dramatic irony is a problem for you it likely is not the right game for you.