Activ8 – Story Seeds

Current events can make good fodder for games, you just need to add a little spice – and perhaps not even that. @ctiv8, now in its second edition, is a game of mine that concerns itself with direct action relating to current events. It’s about making the world a better place, our world, in a real and meaningful way.

The new edition updates with a bunch of new material and ideas, updated from the intervening years that had made the old @ctiv8 a little dated. It also now uses the FATE system – though a little grittier than standard fate.

You can get it HERE.

Inspiration wise…

Immigrant Deaths
Illegal immigrants are taking huge risks and being put in jeopardy by the gangs that bring them into the country. If they are so determined to get into the UK (or any other country) they shouldn’t have to die doing so. Things should be safer and they should be protected from the criminal gangs. An @ctiv8 team made up of former customs and immigration officers, former smugglers, lorry drivers and skilled immigrants could find ways to help people into the country safely, and undermine the criminal gangs taking liberties with peoples’ lives. Though they’re likely to take violent exception to this.

Torture
Revelations about CIA torture and the complicity of other intelligence services has surfaced. An @ctiv8 agent might gain access to a version of the report that has not been redacted and which names names. Nuremberg established that those following orders bear responsibility if those orders are immoral or illegal but these torturers will never be punished or see prison – unless someone outside the government does it. @ctiv8 agents with intelligence backgrounds, ‘enhanced interrogation’ experience or whom have been victims of torture may pursue these lines of enquiry with extreme prejudice. If these men and women can be found and punished, perhaps others will think twice about following these kinds of orders.

Porn Law Protests
People in positions of power are notoriously kinky, especially Conservative politicians. Then there’s the fact that many of those who are the most outspoken against ‘perversion’ are normally rebelling against a part of themselves. It would be a terrible shame if some people began looking into MPs backgrounds, browser histories, affairs and proclivities and found anything useful for blackmail or for discrediting them, wouldn’t it?

Ley Line Walker (RIFTSpost)

Ley Line Walker

Ley line walkers are non-traditional magicians, able to see leylines and magical energy from devices, people and spells.

Stunt: Sense Magic
Leyline walkers have an always-on ability to sense and identify magic, technomagic, leylines and rifts within line-of sight for magic and within ten miles for rifts and leylines.

Stunt: Ley Line Manipulation
The Ley Line Walker can use their power to manipulate and use ley-lines that they are standing on or near. Spending a Fate point they can…

• Hold a conversation with someone else magically or psychically sensitive on the same line.
• Teleport or fly along a leyline to its end or junction.
• Tap into a leyline to heal all stress and all complications once per day.
• Create a remote observer of ley energy to project their senses forward or back along the line.
• Create a Ley-line forcefield able to absorb 4 stress before collapsing.

Stunt: Spells x3

Ley Line Walkers start with 9 spells from levels 1-4.

Refresh: 0

Ley Line Rifters replace the forcefield sub ability with the ability to hitchhike on any teleportation or dimensional rifting teleportation ability by spending a Fate point.

Unless I run a game I don’t think I’ll bother converting more, I think I’ve shown that this would work – very well – for running RIFTS in a faster, looser, fashion.