>I could swear it wasn't that long ago that I has doing this, but I
>can't let you off the hook for a quarter. So here we go...

:)

>1. I absolutely loved Caravel. Everything about it.

Glad to hear it! I'm very proud of it; the Pepper's all cozy for me. :)

>And I was
>intrigued by the mini-suppliment format. Would you envision anything
>along those lines for FFE?

In more ways than one, yeah. There are a couple of points on which Caravel
is practice for things I'm doing with FFE. The fact that Caravel has
full-page 600dpi hand-drawn maps _without_ being a grotesquely large file
is the result of some techniques I've been playing with involving
transparent layers of pure-bitmap images to create a faux spot-color effect
... That's something that'll be important to the look I'm hoping for with
FFE (and of course, FFE will be packed to the gills with maps).

Okay, that's boring production drivel; I know :) But on a more substantive
level, Caravel inspired the dawning of the Uresia Master Index:
http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/uresia-master-index.htm

... which is very much a "dry run" for the Fly From Evil Master Index,
which will be, in the same spirit, a running index of the entire FFE
library as it grows. I've been wanting to do something like that for a
while (planning it specifically for FFE), but with Caravel I finally had
the excuse to teach myself the necessary techniques. It'll be extremely
useful for a game like FFE, because if you are (for example) playing an
Irishman, there will be references of interest to character background
scattered throughout the material ... specific neighborhoods in the San
Francisco sourcebook, political notes in the politics chapter, etc., in
addition to the general entry for the Irish in the Ethnic Groups chapter
... The same will be even more true if FFE is blessed with customers and
therefore supplements, so a solid cross-library index will be a real
benefit. Well, I know _I'll_ get a lot of use from it anyway; my memory
bites :)

And on the simplest level, yes, I'd love to do mini-supplements for FFE,
especially location supplements.

>2. And while I'm sucking up, I can't wait to get my hands on a FFE
>Sparks set. Is this in the works? Would you hold on to it until
>closer to the full release or could publish it as a teaser?

Very close to the full release, yes. I can't 110% confirm that such a set
will exist, but I can 110% confirm that I _intend_ for it to. In the
meantime, there are quite a few suitable Sparks in the groovy "Cairo Moon"
general-pulp-era set. http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/sprkcai.htm

>How much dice-rolling goes into
>things like Interrogation and Seduction in FFE?

No rolls at all, sometimes. One roll, sometimes. More that that, sometimes.
Depends on stakes and nature of the scene, the personal style of the GM and
players, and what kind of leverage and motive each side brings to the
conversation. "Less than in Risus" is about as close as I can get to
providing a benchmark.

I can say that, rules aside, one of my personal favorite parts of FFE are
my (pretty extensive) GM-side and Player-side tips, techniques and advice
for tackling, varying and presenting different kinds of genre-essential
scenes. So, as a player, you'll be armed with a brief-but-substantive,
non-rulesy primer on interrogation techniques and strategies that both
evoke the genre _and_ help you crack the case. As a GM, you'll be
comparably armed with a primer on interrogation scene-construction,
scene-pacing and scene-salvaging techniques. There are also related tidbits
... like a sidebar on subtle clues people give that they're lying, hiding
distress or fear, etc (useful to GMs for fine-tuning an NPC's performance;
useful to players for catching on).

So, whatever that adds up to. That many.



|| S. John Ross
|| Husband · Cook · Writer
|| In That Order
|| http://www.io.com/~sjohn