Dresden Files RPG

[Hal]

Anybody had a chance to play this yet? My books arrived in the mail yesterday. Hoo boy, those suckers are huge!

If you've had a chance to play it, or at least read through a portion of the behemoth, what do you think?

[Comet]

I'd really, really like to play. The world is awesome even if it offers basically the same stuff as the World of Darkness and the rules are solid from what I've seen. Very high production values in this game, for sure.

[YPU]

We have gone trough the character creation and a short test fight. At first my players were sceptic, then they realized how stuff works and they started asking so I can do this, and that and such and so etz. The system really pushes you to be creative with the situation, I love that.

[Holocron Coder]

Read through both of them, entirely. Great stuff, very flexible system. My friends and I are starting a PbP version (due to time constraints IRL). We'll see how it goes.

[ninja_penguin]

I think it's a system that holds up to pbp rather well. You do need to be pretty creative with aspects and setting the scene to make things turn out well, I think.

I'm rather amused that for some reason, I've never been able to get into the World of Darkness setting when creating a setting. And then when I stepped back and looked at what I had built up for Dresden, it was pretty much a fantastic WoD-esque place.

[YPU]

So what locations is everybody using, local places or far away, or entirely made up?

I am using an old bastion city nearby where my players live. It has an actual underground channel system that is knows to have lost and forgotten branches. It has one hell of a big cathedral, its riddled with statues and imagery of a dragon. Oh and it has the headquarters of the illustrious our dear lady brotherhood which our current monarchy is a member of.

and all of that is just the real world stuff that is all recorded, go figure.

[Holocron Coder]

My friends and I all live in Atlanta, so... that's the setting.

[Erom]

I've tried it. Be prepared to Rule 0 out the wazoo because the crunch is even easier than DnD to break like an egg.

[YPU]

I've tried it. Be prepared to Rule 0 out the wazoo because the crunch is even easier than DnD to break like an egg.

I think it says so in the book, actually.

[Tetsubo 57]

I'm trading someone for both books. I can't wait to read them. :)

[Hal]

So what locations is everybody using, local places or far away, or entirely made up?

I'm going with St. Louis. I grew up there, so I know a lot of the major and minor landmarks, but none of my players will. I think that'll give it a much better element of immersion.

I'd better research some St. Louis history, though; I'd love to discover some things like your underground tunnels or secret societies.

[aje8]

Yeah, I ran an adventure in it. I really like it on the whole, very story driven and very low-work to run. Also seemed reasonably balanced when we run it. And by reasonably balanced, I mean nothing was broken and my DnD games are generally very high optimization, so if none of my players found anything to break, then it seems ok to me.

Location was Boston. We've all been there multiple times and some of us have lived there, but it's not our current home so that we can still make up lots of stuff without bothering/offending anybody.

[Bosh]

Played one adventure and it went very well (although character creation does take a while) but then I've been a FATE fanboy from way back.

I've tried it. Be prepared to Rule 0 out the wazoo because the crunch is even easier than DnD to break like an egg.

Well the underlying FATE 3.0 engine is pretty damn unbreakable. There are some ways to cheese things out with supernatural powers but I didn't see any real game-breakers, what sort of things are you talking about?

[Obscurejones]

I am an ardent Dresden fanboy who was unaware of this game... Thank you all.

[YPU]

Played one adventure and it went very well (although character creation does take a while) but then I've been a FATE fanboy from way back.



Well the underlying FATE 3.0 engine is pretty damn unbreakable. There are some ways to cheese things out with supernatural powers but I didn't see any real game-breakers, what sort of things are you talking about?

Point in case also; The big D man himself. Dresden is quite the power player himself always hanging on to that last fate point putting the rest in powers.
(well, read changes for a bit different view on that I guess)

But it is also the course of his trouble aspect, his problem is not that he has to little power, it is that he could quickly get to much and loose himself in it.

[Kiero]

One of the players in our regular group has it, I recently bought Legends of Anglerre. We might be getting some FATE in between the regularly scheduled games.

DF sounds the most interesting of the things he wants to run, I'll probably be the token mortal.

[ninja_penguin]

Amusingly, Mortal stunts can let you get away with some rather fun things as well. I think the only thing that really puts a dent in mortals is things with Inhuman resistances, because you're less able to, say, turn invisible and run.

[Bosh]

Also any 3.5ed player knows the value of being able to Go Nova and in Dresden Files the FATE point mechanic lets pure mortals be the best at that (as long as they don't go to town on stunts).

[YPU]

So has anybody worked on a good plot yet? I can for a large part rip on the books themselves as my players actually don't read them, but I feel a lot of those stories use very personal hooks, threatening people important to the players.

This can work for my players, but only when they know the NPC's being threatened for a while. I need to get my players going, and that is perhaps the hardest part, putting them together. (Isn't it always?) I plan on having them all be part of a criminal scheme, some unknowingly employed some duped by it, as this should hopefully get them together to stop it.

[ninja_penguin]

Generally as you're building the characters, the rising conflicts should give you at least a few hooks you might be able to use at another time. Similar things can be brought back from the starring roles if the baddie gets away. Otherwise, take a look at the troubles the characters have, and see how that can fit into the city.

[YPU]

Generally as you're building the characters, the rising conflicts should give you at least a few hooks you might be able to use at another time. Similar things can be brought back from the starring roles if the baddie gets away. Otherwise, take a look at the troubles the characters have, and see how that can fit into the city.

This is true, but it sometimes is hard to combine this into ONE big thing for the players to go into.

[ninja_penguin]

Well, I find its easier to basically run an adventure as spotlighting one or two people's big themes, and then work it out so that somebody antagonized during the adventure is the next big plot point, which shines on somebody else. Also, if the character's are connected well, it's not too hard to have them separated at first and group up as stuff goes down. (i.e. Harry finds out something weird is going on, call's Murphey, etc)

[Bosh]

Also Dresden Files works best with locations that the group is familiar with so there should be plenty of creepy local stories to troll through for plot hooks.