{"id":1298,"date":"2019-07-16T10:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T14:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=1298"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:43","slug":"five-or-so-questions-on-magical-kitties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/07\/five-or-so-questions-on-magical-kitties\/","title":{"rendered":"Five or So Questions on Magical Kitties Save the Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi All! Today I have an interview with Justin Alexander from Atlas Games on <\/strong>Magical Kitties Save the Day<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, which launches today on Kickstarte<\/a>r! It seems like a fun game for players of all ages, so check out Justin’s responses below!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tell me about Magical Kitties Saves the Day<\/em>. What excites you about it? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has me truly excited about Magical Kitties<\/em> Save the Day<\/em>\nis how much fun everyone has during our playtests. People are enthusiastic\nabout trying the game. People are even more enthusiastic to try it again. As a\ngame master, that kind of enthusiasm is infectious. And the world of Magical\nKitties<\/em>, based around just a few core principles, so endlessly varied and\neffortlessly rewarding to create in: Your magical kitties can be in your\nhometown. Or in the Old West. Or fighting aliens. Or living in a Martian\ncolony. Or, really, anywhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me back up. <\/em>In Magical Kitties<\/em> everybody plays a kitty with a unique supernatural power. Every kitty has human. (Some humans believe that they<\/em> own the kitties, but that’s clearly ridiculous.) Every human has a Problem. The kitties need to use their powers to solve their humans’ problems and save the day! On top of that, every hometown has Troubles. Troubles can be almost anything: Witches. Aliens. Hyper-intelligent raccoons. To run an adventure, all the GM has to do is take a Trouble and point it at a Problem. As the Trouble makes the Problem worse, the kitties have to fly into action! (Often literally.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How do players create their human\ncharacters and kitties? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can either very deliberately craft your\nkitty or you can use the random character generators to discover your kitty.\nEither way, character creation is very fast, so it’s more about whether you\nhave a specific vision or if you want to be surprised and challenged. You can\nalso mix-and-match the approaches: Maybe you care a lot about what your kitty’s\nMagical Power is, but want to randomly generate your kitty’s Talent and Flaw\nand then figure out what your kitty’s personality is from that. You can do\nthat!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kitty’s attributes: They are Cute, Cunning, and Fierce. They also have\nTalents and Flaws, describing what they are particularly good at (being a\ntalented actor or a keen sense of hearing) and also what gets them into trouble\n(like having a big mouth or being a scaredy cat). And, of course, they also\neach have a cool Magical Power — invisibility, telekinesis, technopathy, frost\nbreath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to humans, the most important thing is their Problem. Again,\nplayers are empowered to customize their own Problems. But we also include a generator\nthat combines an emotion — like sad, angry, scared — with a source, things\nlike money, illness, family, friends, work\/school, and so forth. This is\nultimately a creative seed, and so you need to make it specific to your human\n(and your kitty).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if a human is scared about money, for example, that might mean they’ve\nfallen behind on their mortgage payments and they don’t know what to do. Or\nmaybe they owe money to dangerous monsters. If they’re angry about money, on\nthe other hand, then maybe someone has stolen something from them and they’re\nfurious about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What\u2019s the mechanical structure of Magical Kitties Save the\nDay, especially in regards to dealing with Troubles and Problems?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The core mechanic of Magical Kitties<\/em>\nis a streamlined dice pool system that effortlessly creates degrees of success:<\/p>\n\n\n\n