Keepers: The Second Season

The Reboot.

So, I hit a snag, and a problem, in my home Crux game.  The temptation to kill the game and start with something fresh has to compete with my urge to finish it.  You see, I made a big mistake.

The problem stems from the error I made in creating the game to begin with.  Crux had been a pet side project, and suddenly using it to run a game was more of an impulse decision.  I did it because I had been drinking and breathing it for two or three months beforehand.  On top of that, I had two new players- new to me, not to gaming- and I had little experience running Fate Core, not one of my slipshod hacks of nWoD or Pathfinder.

I don't want to play or run Pathfinder again.  It isn't bad, I just feel exhausted with it.

But Fate Core?  I still think I could learn how to do it better.

Mistaken At Inception

The big mistake is that I hurried didn't really forge a good story around the group the characters belongs to.  This means they have, well, no cohesive reason to work together.  It never came into being.  Because of that, there isn't a group story, just their individual stories.  Which has worked remarkably well.  But there isn't a group story going on.

So the question, "why do you work together?" needs to be answered.

My idea is do what I've been calling a soft reboot, but it's more akin to season two of a tv show.  Often you'll see TV shows that get second seasons do something different at the start of season 2.  Especially if they were uncertain if they were going to have a second season at all.  First seasons will often finish a storyline, which is great.  But finishing that arc and keeping the story going requires a bit of a "soft" redo on a few things.

Agents of Shield did this.  The first season elements- the bus, Shield as an organization, etc., didn't make it 100% whole into the next season.  Season two established new characters and new central locations.  B5 did similar things, as did other shows.  Often this is because of budget.  Season two got a chance to redo a key set, having learned from mistakes during season one to improve on it.

"Soft Reboot"

This is my plan.  I say soft "reboot" but really mean a new season.  Things get tweaked.  Changed.  Characters get revisited, reexamined, but not changed radically.  Central to this is getting the characters a new central plot platform.  The Keepers, as they are called as a group, get their own story arc of sorts.  A central mythos to give them a strong reason to work together.

To do this, I'm having a second character creation session.  I'm going to try to do things differently, to improve on my mistakes.  Fingers crossed.