Les Miserables...but in space! (Not really. In the future, anyway.)
The Game: Uprising: The Dystopian Universe Roleplaying Game
The Publisher: Evil Hat Productions
Degree of Familiarity: None other than my general familiarity with Fate
Books Required: Just the one
Uprising is an RPG based on the card/social deduction games Resistance, Coup, and One Night Revolution, some of which I own but none of which I've played yet. It's Fate Core, kinda; it's been altered pretty heavily. To wit, it uses "means" and "ends" rather than skills or approaches. Aspect and the Fate point economy is pretty consistent, though.
Uprising is also mission-focused, and includes a progression of scene types not too dissimilar from Blades in the Dark. It also includes betrayal mechanics, which I have mixed feelings about in RPGs. I'd be willing to give it a shot some time, I suppose.
Well anyway, let's make a revolutionary!
Uprising takes place in Noveau Paris, but one apocalypse later. Supposedly the lands around the city (which has been pretty thoroughly Anglicized, to the point that they speak English with a few mispronounced French words) is irradiated, although that's probably just government propaganda.
So we start off choosing a playsheet. There are three social classes: La Société, Les Citoyens, and Les Exilés. Upper crust, normal folks, and folks who live outside the city, respectively. Each of these has three playsheets within it. I think I'm gonna go with Les Exilés, because I like the The Armiger playsheet.
The Armiger doesn't have the neural casing and mental AR capability of other characters, but has a bunch of cyber implants and is meant to be a tank. I think I want to play a character who got Murphy'd (as in, Murphy in Robocop) and got put back together with implants rather than choosing to get upgraded. That gives me a pretty strong motivation to burn this government down, especially if the gendarmes did it. His name is Umar.
Umar was a citizen (citoyen), and while he was never exactly a loyal, line-toeing sort of fellow, he never really stepped out of line, either. And then one day he saw some gendarmes beating the shit out of this kid, maybe all of 14, and Umar jumped in shielded the boy and shoved one of the gendarmes back. He doesn't remember anything after that.
What actually happened was that the gendarmes beat him to death, shattered both femurs, both arms, his jaw, most of his ribs. He lost a lung, his right eye, and suffered damage to most of his organs. They left him for dead, and so he would have been, but the kid he saved (the kid ran off while the gendarmes were beating on Umar, and he was the youngest brother of a doc in la Résistance. Said doc used a lot of resources keeping Umar alive, and the intention may have been to use Umar as a symbol or something. We'll see how that works out.
So now I answer five questions, which provide my Aspects. Groovy!
Why do you rely so heavily upon augmentations? Well, that's easy. Umar would be dead without them. He Needs These Augments to Live.
What is your most disturbing physical feature? Probably the Assisted Organ System. Umar can't breathe, eat, or move on his own, and so the machinery that helps him do all that makes noise. He gurgles when he eats (and can eat whatever organic matter he can shove into the compartment in his stomach; he can eat normal food, though) and his breath has a weird, grinding noise to it.
Which augmentation is your favorite? The Pneumatic Leg Servos, allowing him to run and jump like an Olympian. Not worth getting his actual legs crushed to powder, but...well, maybe.
Who accepts you despite your intimidating presence? This would normally be a PC, but of course it's just me. We'll say that Tay, the kid that Umar saved, looks up to him and sometimes helps smooth introductions to new Résistance folks. Tay Sees Me as a Big Brother.
Why did you join la Résistance? Well, hell, Where Else Can I Go? I think Umar happily takes revenge on any gendarmes he can find, but that's not why he's here. This is literally the only place open to him anymore. (Which raises the question of whether he'd stay if he had anywhere else to go.)
Next step would be choose my Secret, but it's a whole process involving other players...well, actually, there are 12 of them, so I'll just roll a d12, how about. 2 gives me...Mole Hunter. Oh, that's perfect. Umar is tasked with rooting out traitors to la Résistance and squishing them.
Moving on! We now choose the means spread (this would be like approaches in FAE or skills in Fate Core). There are three possible spreads, and I want the one that gives me Fight +3, so that's easy. Fight +3, Manipulate +1, Maneuver +2, Observe +2.
Stunts! I get Friend of La Résistance to start because I'm an Exilé, and then I get to pick two more off the list. Ooh, there's a few that make sense. I think I want engine of destruction, letting me do more damage in a fight, and I'll take pariah, which lets me give other PCs a boost by calling attention to myself. Would I like to lower my refresh and pick a third? I think I would, because scary fits this character.
And that's it for individual chargen! We'd build la Résistance and the government and on if I had a group, but since it's just me, I ain't doing that.
Umar is of partially Middle Eastern descent, so darker skin, black hair, brown eyes (well, eye, his right one is cybernetic). Some folks with augments are a bit more subtle, but Umar is not - his stuff is loud and overt, because the doc that did it had no time to be smooth about it. His midsection is covered in metal and plastic, his legs both have exoskeletal coverings and audible servos, and his right eye socket is mechanical. Umar doesn't breathe (he's got internal components that oxygenate his blood), which means his voice has a weird, flat tone to it. He also doesn't sigh, gasp, or do other exclamations that rely on breath, and you don't realize how weird that is until someone points it out.
