The Campaign Builder's Guild

So, the beta version of the Dresden Files RPG is sent out as a .pdf to folks who preorder the books. I've been browsing these documents lately in odd moments, so I thought I'd put down a thread on the subject to collate my thoughts (and to potentially discuss the project with anyone else who might be interested in Dresden and/or in FATE).

For those who aren't in the know about the Dresden Files, they're a series of (currently) about a dozen novels by Jim Butcher, concerning wisecracking arcane private eye Harry Dresden, the only listing in Chicago's phone book under "Wizard". These are fast-paced noir-colored detective novels, set in the modern-day world, but with a magical twist (so Harry's detective cases often involve werewolves, necromancers, and the Unseelie, in addition to gangsters and skeptical cops). They are very fast reads, and I enjoy them.

For those who aren't in the know about FATE, it's a game system published by Evil Hat under the Open Gaming License, and I'm using a (just slightly modified) version of FATE for my Jade Stage project (see "Jade FATE" on the CBG wiki). There are currently two products out from 3rd Edition FATE: Spirit of the Century (which is 1920's pulp action) and Dresden Files (which is modern, magical detective noir). The next FATE 3.0 product scheduled is just a basic FATE 3.0 core system, which should be nice and flexible and open-ended.

Since Spirit of the Century has been available for a few years now, that's been my jumping-off point for Jade FATE. It's a good starting point, but it's not perfect for my purposes (the Jade Stage doesn't really dovetail well with the "pulp" aesthetic of SotC). So I've very interested in Dresden Files RPG, as contrasting a big noir implementation of FATE against SotC's pulp implementation should allow me to take the best of both worlds.

So, I really dig the way this book is written. It does an excellent job of conveying information about the setting, even while just describing general game mechanics. It also happens to be pretty entertaining (though I guess you would have had to have read some of the Dresden Files books to really "get" most of the humor).

There's an in-world precedent for books and fiction to tie into the supernatural community directly. (In Dresden's world, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" is basically a manual on how to exploit the weaknesses of Black Court vampires, and was probably ghostwritten by their rival White Court. There are serious, long-term effects to the book, because a specific type of monster has all its weaknesses popularlized and woven into humanity's collective memory-- the Black Court is still reeling from the setback.) Part of the conceit of the Dresden Files RPG is that some characters in the book series are publishing a role-playing game for similar reasons: to arm the public with knowledge about how to face supernatural threats.

So the "authors" of the Dresden Files RPG include Billy the teen werewolf, role-playing game enthusiast; the series's protagonist Harry Dresden; and Bob, a highly sarcastic intangible knowledge spirit who lives in a skull on Harry's desk. A lot of things that might otherwise have been included as footnotes or examples are written in the margins of the "manuscript", as in-character notes between these three characters as they pass around a single pre-publication hardcopy, apparently too busy to actually meet in person. (You can tell who's saying what, because they each use a different colored pen.) It's about equal parts question/clarification ("You mean X works like Y?" "Yes, actually it's like this..."), examples from the books ("That's just like the time X happened."), suggested houserules ("I don't think it should work that way." "Well, lots of groups will want to change it like this..."), and assorted amusing banter.

This book definitely does not take itself too seriously. (So far, I have spotted one extended Monty Python reference, and one "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." It's pretty obviously written for nerds, by nerds.) That seems to be in keeping with the source material, but it's potentially a little bit distracting. (I'm just getting around to noticing some actual game mechanics on the second pass through the text; my first skim-through was mostly about finding amusing margin-scribbles.)

Do you know if it will be released for free like SotC was?

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowDo you know if it will be released for free like SotC was?

Well, SotC wasn't "released for free" so much as the OGL material was published online-- all of the various flavor text and setting-related information is not included in the free online version, just the nuts and bolts.

Dresden Files RPG is also published with the same OGL material in the front of the book, but there's a lot more setting-related information and flavor text in this one; the game is designed to be played in a very specific, rather than generic (like SotC) setting. So I imagine it will probably be similarly released in a stripped-down, OGL-only form, but I think it will survive that transition less well.

There's a great deal of setting stuff enmeshed directly into the game mechanics, so there are some places where I really have no idea how they'll disentangle it all.

Want to discuss some of the meat: this post will be about some functions of character creations and character stats that have a direct SotC analogue. (I.e., not the Dresden templates and supernatural stuff, etc.)

A lot of stunts, in general, have been removed or combined with each other, to reduce them in number overall. (There's a prominent section encouraging players to devise their own stunts, with some guidelines on how to do so.) This is fine and understandable; after all, a lot of the focus has been shifted from mortal stunts to supernatural powers. (In SotC, all the characters, though remarkable, are essentially mortal humans-- in Dresden, that's often not the case at all.)

There's also a "how many stunts do I take" dilemma, instead of a set number-- this ties into the power vs. free will idea that's so important in Dresden (not so much in SotC or Jade Stage). Every stunt you take reduces your refresh rate (i.e., your baseline number of fate points) by one; every supernatural power you take (which are essentially beefed-up stunts) reduces the refresh rate by one or more. Characters with a lower refresh rate are more starved for fate points (and consequently have less "free will", because they're less able to spend fate points to resist aspect compels); characters whose refresh rate hits zero become NPCs. When this happens to mortals via stunts, they're considered to be "enslaved by what they've made of themselves" or something; when it happens to supernatural folk via supernatural abilities, they lose the last scraps of mortal free will and succumb to their supernatural/monstrous nature. (Since this is so conceptually clumsy for mortals, I assume it's more designed for supernaturals, who (because of the prices of their powers) are much more likely to approach zero anyway.)

I don't know if Jade FATE has much room for this "price of power" business.

However, I am intrigued by some of the things Dresden has done with skills. I will likely adopt some of these changes (or at least, think about them very hard).

Mysteries is gone, replaced with various other skills that deal with magic. (In such a magic-focused game/setting, that's inevitable, I suppose. Conviction, Discipline, and Lore are the big three here, corresponding roughly to raw magical power, finesse and technique, and arcane knowledge-- though they do other things as well.)

Resolve's functions are split into Conviction and Discipline, both of which also function heavily in magic. Conviction affects the length of the mental stress track, and Discipline is the default defense skill against attacks that affect that stress track (I like this; it solves a SotC problem with Resolve "double-dipping" into defense functions re: mental/social attacks). Conviction also affects the strength of your magic (in Dresden, magic works on a "what you believe you can do is what you can do" kind of system), and Discipline handles the functions of Resolve that involve resistance to fear and nerves, keeping a steady hand under pressure, that sort of thing. I may or may not adopt some of these changes-- I like them for what they do, but the Jade Stage simply isn't as magic-heavy as Dresden Files (not by a long shot), so partitioning the anti-magic skills so that they're spread around over multiple abilities is a lower priority.

Art got changed to Performance, and Engineering got changed to Craftsmanship. These are mostly cosmetic, but I rather like the Engineering->Craftsmanship thing (I've been having serious problems with Engineering in Jade FATE, not least because of SotC's heavy "mad science" focus.) Proper engineers to exist in the Jade Stage (see the Royal Order of Chreotechs, for a start), but that could always be handled with Craftsmanship stunts, or simply using higher difficulties.

Academics and Science, the two main knowledge skills in SotC, (as well as the knowledgey bits of Mysteries) are variously/indirectly converted into Scholarship and Lore (that is, it's not a direct renaming; the skills skills are combined and differently partitioned.) Parts of this I like, and parts of it I don't. I dig combining Academics and Science into a single skill (Science has been giving me headaches in Jade FATE, for the same reasons as Engineering has), but I don't know if I need to separate Lore out from the other functions I'm already using Mysteries for. As-is, a person with a lot of magical knowledge but little or no magical talent has a high Mysteries skill and few or no Mysteries stunts, while a person with a lot of magical power but no magical knowledge has a low Mysteries skill and many Mysteries stunts. I feel like this works fine.

Finally, Leadership has been sort of lopsidedly converted into Presence, a sort of general social skill. (I get the sense that Presence is to Rapport as Conviction is to Discipline.) SotC's "conviction" stress track has been split into a mental stress track, governed by Conviction, and a social stress track, governed by Presence. Presence takes over the aspects of Rapport concerned with making a good impression, and the aspects of Leadership concerned with being a natural commander. (Actual social attacks/defenses are still Rapport-based, it looks like.) I assume other formerly-Leadership-based skills (legal expertise, etc.) are relegated to Scholarship (where they probably belonged in the first place). I like a lot of these changes, but again, the general lack of magical mind-whammy in the Jade Stage might well make separate social and mental stress tracks unnecessary, since mental stress is usually magical in source.

Finally, Gambling, Pilot, and Sleight of Hand have been removed entirely-- Dresden's just not that kind of game. I feel like these are pretty niche skills anyway, and it's not hard to fold their functions into other skills. (Ed: I see, Piloting is now a Driving stunt. All the interesting stuff from Sleight of Hand (i.e., bump and grab stuff, pickpocketing, hiding that weapon on your person) is done with Deceit stunts, and all the innocuous stuff (stage illusions, etc.) is just bsaic Performance. Gambling is probably just Deceit/Empathy based contests/challenges. Liking these changes a lot.)

More Character Creation: Templates, High Concept, and Trouble

This is all new stuff. I think it's pretty well-crafted, and in particular High Concept/Trouble are aimed at some Jade FATE problems I've been grappling with. (I don't really think I have a use for Templates.)

The Template/High Concept/Trouble are, all together, the three cornerstones of your character. Naming off all three together should give somebody a pretty good one-sentence summary of what your character is about.

The Template is necessary in Dresden (and not in Jade FATE) because it involves what you are: whether you're a pure mortal, an emissary of a supernatural power, troll-blooded, a full-out wizard, or what. There are a lot of types of supernatural creatures, and Templates address that by providing a framework of required powers and skills that "come with" the creature type you pick for your character. (For example, if you pick "True Believer" as your template, you're required to take "Guide My Hand" and "Bless This House" as powers, and you need to have a high Conviction skill, etc., etc.)

Really, I think these Templates are a pretty good way to handle what they do, but I'm much more interested in High Concept and Trouble, for my own purposes.

Your High Concept and your Trouble are both special "centerpiece" kind of Aspects your character has.

Your High Concept is sort of a "who I am" Aspect; it sums up your archetype/nature/calling/whatever, and should ideally be a good one-phrase descriptor of the type of person you are. If you have a Template other than "Pure Mortal", it should hook into your Template (so if your template is Wizard, your High Concept might be "Hotshot Firemage" or "Renegade Spellcaster" or "Scholar of the White Council" or "Wizard For Hire" or whatever.) This ensures that if your character is something other than a pure mortal, you have a very central Aspect that represents your supernatural qualities. So there's always something really essential there for you to invoke when you're playing to your nature, and something prominent to compel that's relevant to your central character conceit.

In Jade FATE, I do something like this already, by requiring any mage to take an Aspect that represents their magic use and their particular tradition. It is basically a High Concept Aspect that's only required for certain types of "non-normal" characters. It's interesting to see a more generalized implementation to the same idea.

Your Trouble Aspect represents a central, ongoing conflict that plagues your character, and has no easy solution. They're giant bulls-eyes to the Narrator: "Hey, compel this aspect!" I really like Aspects that represent problems, weaknesses, antagonists, and character flaws anyway-- the idea of a Trouble is basically making at least one such Aspect mandatory and central. I like it!

So, here's something Dresden does that SotC doesn't attempt: weapons and armor that actually mean something.

SotC treats all weapons as pretty much the same: there's no mechanical difference between a spear and a letter-opener. (Okay, there are minor differences: whether you roll with Fists or Weapons or Guns, for example, and if you have a really high-quality or magical weapon with the Craftsmanship improvement, it'll give you an across-the-board +1.) I like this for SotC because it makes combat all about the character's innate abilities, not about their toys. I don't like this for the more gritty/dangerous Jade Stage, because weapons aren't scary. (If an unarmed guy is exactly as dangerous as an armed guy, why should you get nervous when the thugs draw their knives, or fight to wrestle the pistol out of you adversary's hand?)

Dresden Files RPG introduces a new idea: weapon values and armor values. Their exact implementation is unclear to me (I dunno whether this is because it's poorly documented, or I'm not reading closely enough, or what), but the concept is intriguing.

Basically, an attack has a numerical bonus added to it based on how brutal it is. A letter-opener might be Weapon:1, while a baseball bat is Weapon:2, and a Holy Sword of the Cross is Weapon:3. These values aren't straight-up additions to attack rolls (so they don't increase your accuracy), but assuming you successfully hit, they increase the stress you inflict. (That is, if you punch a guy and get a one-shift hit with your Weapon:0 fists, that's a one-point hit. But if you get the same one-shift hit with your Weapon:2 revolver, that's a three-point hit: shifts plus weapon value.)

Armor has a similar (but generally lower) numeric value, which (I assume-- it's a little unclear) reduces the effective weapon value of whatever's attacking you. So if you're wearing an enchanted trenchcoat that counts as armor:2, and somebody riddles you with automatic machine gun fire (weapon:3), that gunfire counts as only weapon:1 against you (I think?)

This whole concept goes through various permutations (take a Fists stunt to let your unarmed attacks count as Weapon:2, etc.), but it's interestingly used in magic. If a wizard conjures up a big, crazy beam of fire as a magical attack (or whatever), that attack can have a weapon value of just about anything, based on how much power that wizard decides to pour into the spell. Too much power can hurt you when you try to wield it, can cause the spell to go out of control, etc.

In general, the whole spellcasting system in Dresden is intriguing. I like it a lot for what it is and where it is, and I may steal some pieces of it for Jade FATE, but there are large parts of it that don't fit the Jade Stage. (That's only to be expected; magic's much more central and important in Dresden than in JS, so it's only logical that Dresden should require a much burlier magic system than makes sense for JS.)

Magic in Dresden explains a lot about why there's a separate mental stress track, and not just because supernatural mind-whammy powers affect it. Every time you use any spell, you do at least one point of mental stress to yourself. If you call up a spell with a power higher than your Conviction skill, this single point of stress is increased by the amount by which spellpower exceeds Conviction. This is the Dresden equivalent of a mana system (or whatever "this governs how much magic you can throw around" analogue you care to name)-- it's easy to use large amounts of magic, especially if your Conviction is pretty good, but it's also possible to burn yourself out really quick (by self-inflicting stress and consequences) if you overstep your limits.

It looks like spells are a complicated process that involves Conviction, Discipline, and Lore. You choose how many shifts of power you want to work with, and your Conviction compared to that number determines whether you take just one point of stress or more. You "spend" those shifts of power to achieve whatever effects you want. Then you roll Discipline against that number to see whether you can keep it under control or whether it goes haywire. Lore is essentially a cap on certain facets of the process-- certain things (like the number of "rote spells" you can know) cannot exceed your Lore.

Rote spells are interesting. General spellcasting is a fluid, organic process-- you get a lot of flexibility to do all sorts of things, provided you can take the stress (with Conviction) of the power you're summoning, and provided you can keep control of that amount of power (with Discipline). But you can define a lot of "rote-learned" spells that are second-nature to you; all their parameters are set ahead of time, and cannot be changed. But they're nice and reliable, because you're always considered to roll +0 on the Discipline roll to control them.

Okay, I've decided I really like the sort of thing they've done with conflicts/combat.

Long story short, you no longer have a "cushion" of three consequences before you can be taken out-- even if you have zero consequences, you can potentially be one-shotted by a massive hit. BAM!

Here's how it works: you can still take one each of a mild, moderate, and severe consequence-- they're rated 2 stress, 4 stress, and 6 stress respectively. If you're hit, you can opt to take one or more consequences and subtract their total value from the seriousness of the hit.

So if you have three physical stress boxes and a Somfin Harble mauls you for 8 damage, you'd normally be taken out by the hit, since 8 stress bypasses your meagre three-box-long stress track. But, you could opt to take a serious consequence and reduce the value of that hit by six-- this means you just take a serious consequence and a two-point hit, something easily contained by your stress track. If you instead opted to take one mild and one serious consequence, you can reduce the stress to zero.

I like this increased deadliness.

There's also something called an "extreme consequence", which is a life-changing thing. You can only ever have one extreme consequence at a time; they're saved for incredible sacrifices or acts of will. When you take an extreme consequence, it knocks 8 stress off a hit you just took, but you permanently replace one of your aspects with a new aspect representing the permanent damage to your body/mind/etc. that you just took. Even when the extreme consequence is healed and gone, the new aspect persists as a permanent change to your character. Hardcore.

Weapons and armor are also a neat solution to a problem I was trying to deal with. More on this later I guess.

There are also some built-in ways to target multiple characters (other than minions/groups) with a single attack, with various costs and penalties. So you can be the swordsman who attacks every enemy in your zone at once, or the pyromancer who turns a room into an inferno, toasting everyone inside.

Sounds quite intriguing. Can't wait to take a look at the OGL material :)
How is combat deadlier if you reduce stress?
Do weapons have other statistics? A single number doesn't seem like a lot considering the large variety of weapons in existence.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowHow is combat deadlier if you reduce stress?

a minimum of four attacks that exceed your stress bar[/u] to take you out of a conflict, no matter how huge the attack rolls are compared to your defense. First you get a mild consequence, then in a subsequent attack you get a moderate one, then in a subsequent attack you get a severe consequence, then in a final attack you are taken out because you have no more consequences left to take.

In Dresden, it takes only one attack that exceeds your stress bar to take you out. Instead of damage that exceeds stress going to consequences and damage that exceeds consequences taking you out, damage that exceeds your stress just takes you out directly, and you can opt to take consequences to try to keep that stress low enough that it doesn't just rock your face right off. If you take a hit so massive that you can try to mitigate it with all your available consequences and the reduced stress still exceeds your stress track, you can go from "uninjured" to "taken out" in a single, huge attack. (In SotC, recall, it takes at least four.)

Also, in Dresden, stress tracks are significantly shorter by default.

Also, in Dresden, any attack made with a weapon (or an aggressive spell) has a weapon value, which adds to the stress inflicted by a successful attack, so it's easier to bypass those stress tracks.

Also, in Dresden, you'll occasionally run up against huge monsters with supernatural strength who can tear you right in half (though this is as much of a setting feature as a game mechanics feature).

QuoteDo weapons have other statistics? A single number doesn't seem like a lot considering the large variety of weapons in existence.

narrative[/i] features rather than simulationist ones.

Hmm, yes, I knew about the SotC lack of stats, but I thought that Dresden might have added more than a stress damage bonus.
I'm not much for overly detailed statistics, but I do generally feel that a few statistics to boost or modify would make it easier to generate mildly improved equipment to reward players without immediately having to resort to powerful objects. That is, if you decide to go with the whole reward scheme.
Not to say that it is a flaw in the system, I was just wondering. It has both benefits and issues associated with it.