Are you ready for some two-fisted science adventure? Then it’s time for the Atomic Robo RPG! Have you ever wanted to face down global conspiracy as an immortal atomic robot or Carl Sagan? The Atomic Robo RPG makes it possible. In this campaign, a trio of scientists working for Tesadyne face a series of unusual problems at work. Can a reformed mad scientist, an engineer who thinks he’s a robot, and an ex-Nazi dinosaur stop an invasion of the vampire dimension on Tesladyne island?
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IT IS HERE!
LONG HAVE WE AWAITED THIS DAY.
TREMBLE, SNACKS AND BEVERAGES OF ALL FORMS AND TASTES.
CAST AWAY THE COMFORTS OF SLEEP AND BED FOR WE HAVE LISTENING TO DO!
yaaaay atomic robo yaaaay
YES!
Ok You guys missed out on a ton of the cool stuff in the book. Before you play this again you need to brush up on “CHAPTER EIGHT: LET’S DO SOME SCIENCE”. The “INVENTION” section does what you you guys tried several times with creating gadgets. and what are you doing playing this game without a single “BRAINSTORMS”.
Jay, hat to break it to you. but they started the Campaign ages ago. Your advice is too late.
@ Jay – I am sorry there are aspects of the game that I probably missed since this was my first running of this game (especially as a mini-campaign). However I by the end I think we all had a pretty good grasp on the basics, and all the players (which also includes Dan as of the next session) gave excellent feedback on what I needed to do for future games. I do plan to run more Atomic Robo games for the main podcast sometime in the near future.
Cool start. My group ran an Atomic Robo session a little while ago and we missed a ton of stuff first time around too. I’ve always found Fate surprisingly complex for such a simple system, particularly for new players.
But the most important question that has yet to be answered is, does Tom’s character have feathers?
No feathers. I prefer the old Trex design. I know it’s not as scientifically accurate, but I much prefer the aesthetics of the Jurassic Park template.
So, two immediate thoughts (finally got around to finishing it). With a bit more confidence, Aaron can play a pretty good Robo. On the flipside of that, his Jenkins is waaaaay too chatty. Personally I’d have saddled him with a techie or talkative marine type action scientist tagging along to do the exposition for him so Jenkins can stick to monosyllables and basic sentences.
I feel like Aaron’s tendency to reinvent the past (see: Duality postmortem, Caleb calls him out on it), his difficulty rolling with new information that doesn’t fit his preconceptions about a scene on his feet (as a random example, I just relistened to Operate Heavy Machinery and he referred to an NPC as a woman at least once after being told he was a dude) and his difficulty delivering monologues undermine him a lot as a GM. I hate to be negative–as I said when Drew ran that game, the last thing nerds need is to have their (our) confidence undermined, as we tend to be an insecure people–but I found this hard to listen to, and I might skip the rest of the campaign unless he seriously and suddenly finds his feet.
as an online text roleplayer, the sense that roleplayes are what I call “collaborative chaos” is strong. different people have both different headpictures and different expectations of and for every scene. you can get away with learning your headpicture and expectations are wrong without adjusting them as a player, but as a GM, you need to manage -everyone’s- headpicture and expectations. it’s a rough gig.
also, re: dinosaur feathers, the mouseover text on this XKCD is my favorite comment -ever- on why excluding them is wrong: https://xkcd.com/1527/
@crawkill –
http://brighsidelair.wdfiles.com/local–files/start/Itsallgoingtobeokay.jpg
ahahahahah!
@Aaron–
that wasn’t what I said at all, and you’ve 100% avoided addressing the very specific complaints I mentioned. of course it will be okay. I might just be listening to RPPR twice every fifteen days for a few months, rather than three times. =P I held off whining until I had specific things to whine about. if you don’t know that those are flaws you have, you -need to,- because you can’t deal with em until you do. this ain’t new information, and I’m not saying anything RPPR players haven’t said to you in the past on record.
While he’s not the strongest GM on the RPPR crew, Aaron is running with a system, setting, and group of players that I think are particularly well-suited for him. PC death is unlikely and it seems like retcons will be no big deal. Nothing in the setting particularly makes sense of adheres to actual laws of physics or anything.
While I wouldn’t want to listen to an Eclipse Phase campaign run by Aaron, I think this Atomic Robo game shows promise. Likewise, I’d hate to listen to an Atomic Robo game run by Caleb, because as brilliant as he is with stuff like Dirty World, Delta Green, Eclipse Phase, and Better Angels, he’d never really be able to (or want to) get into the setting and tone of Atomic Robo.
I enjoyed listening to this; I thought Aaron kept the focus on the player characters, which is essential to Fate, and the characters were fun to listen to.
I particularly enjoyed the comic-style banter between the PC’s. Not knowing much about the Atomic Robo setting does stifle the interest a bit, though. That’s a personal thing, though, nothing about the game, Aaron’s GM, or any of that really affected me, just the feeling like I’m missing all the jokes.
FYI for anyone interested, everything Atomic Robo has been freely available for a while now on their site. It’ll still be in print, but they’re posting everything there in a webcomic-y format as they go along and make new issues. I think they’re only missing the anthology comic they did for a while.
http://www.atomic-robo.com/
Props to David for mentioning a samoflange. Negative props to everyone else for not responding properly: “What the fuck is a samoflange?”
I love all three of these PCs, and I can’t wait to see how their interactions develop through this campaign.