Author Topic: New to DFRPG  (Read 3488 times)

Offline Warderbrad

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New to DFRPG
« on: April 26, 2011, 12:43:49 AM »
Hello all,
  I am hoping to find someone who can help me.  I have purchased both the books and as a test group to learn the rules and such I have myself and two friends.  We are all very into Dresden Files and are excited however trying to read the books I am finding it to be very different from any other RPG I have ran, and I have ran many types.

  We are having problems with character creation and city creation.  We are finding it hard to come up with the parts needed to fill in.  I have to admit we mostly are all used to having a menu of options to choose from.  We are relishing in the idea of the emphasis on RP however also feel a little at a loss for how to get started. 

  In order to keep it more simple we wanted to start at a level of "Waist Deep" however both of my players wanted to start as "Apprentice Wizards".  It seemed like due to them not being full wizards that it should be ok to allow that but I wanted to know from others who have ran this over and over to know if it would work. 

  Also one of my players wants to run a character based on herself.  However she has problems with idealizing herself and coming up with Aspects.  In fact all of us have a hard time with the creation of aspects.  While the book spends a lot of time on them it still feels very much like being thrown into the deep end here.

  Basically as a new GM for this is there any suggestions people have or resources I can use to help get a grasp on the fundamentals of the game.  I know that the city of Baltimore was detailed out but I didn't see anything that could be considered a "sample adventure" or anything which would let me jump in.  I learn best by doing.

Offline evileeyore

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2011, 01:05:42 AM »
Also one of my players wants to run a character based on herself.  However she has problems with idealizing herself and coming up with Aspects.

That is rarely a good idea.  If possible you should try to steer her towards "working outside the box" and make someone she's not likelyto get upset about when a "purely positive" aspect is turned around.



You might even want to suggest you guys use the NPCs from the Baltimore story, maybe with a few slight changes.  Atleast for your first few "shake down" runs of the game.  Maybe run a full scenario using the pregens, then start fresh once you guys have a firm grasp of the rules and themes.

Offline Richard_Chilton

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2011, 01:18:37 AM »
There's a one shot adventure at http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,23712.0.html - one that does a great job of explaining a core bit of the game.  The bad guy is the person the players pick as the bad guy.

The resource board also has a lot of resources.

As for "playing myself" - that never ends well.  Never.

Richard
« Last Edit: April 26, 2011, 01:34:30 AM by Richard_Chilton »

Offline Set Abominae

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #3 on: April 26, 2011, 01:23:20 AM »
What they said, and welcome to the neighborhood!   ;D
No, ma'am. We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we're aware of. May we come in?


Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #4 on: April 26, 2011, 03:15:56 AM »
I'm always glad to help with character creation. As a quick look at the resources board will show, it's a hobby of mine.

And I like Neutral Grounds too, although Damocles Ravenborn will require some beefing up if you want to make him the real villain.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2011, 06:28:47 PM by Sanctaphrax »

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2011, 04:14:34 AM »
It's okay to base a character on yourself but using yourself as a character isn't. Dresden isn't reality because:

A: Magic
B: Fiction
C: Game

Definitely start with a pre-gen.

Offline MorkaisChosen

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2011, 09:59:04 AM »
I'd argue a little against all the people saying "play self = bad".

Playing a character based on yourself is risky, and I wouldn't recommend it in most cases. A modern game like DFRPG, where it's easier to make a character who's quite literally You, is probably worse, but if you can get the disconnect in between gameself and realself, it can work.

I'm speaking here as someone who's enjoying doing slightly mean things to a version of myself in an Exalted game; thing is, he occupies a box in my head where he's basically got a personality much like mine, but I don't think of him as me. Done like that, it can work. But like I say, it's a risk, and it may be worth considering something else.

Offline Crion

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #7 on: April 26, 2011, 03:47:29 PM »
Throwing my two cents into the mix here. . .

Hello all,
  I am hoping to find someone who can help me.  I have purchased both the books and as a test group to learn the rules and such I have myself and two friends.  We are all very into Dresden Files and are excited however trying to read the books I am finding it to be very different from any other RPG I have ran, and I have ran many types.

Well, hello to you, congrats on the purchase, and good job with finding a group! As you've already noticed, the DFRPG has a great deal of things different from most RPGs. I ran into the same problem at first, but trust me, it has gotten better as soon as my players realized that this was NOT going to be like the games they are used to.

  We are having problems with character creation and city creation.  We are finding it hard to come up with the parts needed to fill in.  I have to admit we mostly are all used to having a menu of options to choose from.  We are relishing in the idea of the emphasis on RP however also feel a little at a loss for how to get started.

Ah, good old creation. Don't feel bad, most people hit snags there, especially when they are used to number-heavy or mechanics-heavy systems (d20 and World of Darkness, for example). The first step is to forget numbers and mechanics and focus on the idea of a story. Telling a story of your character tends to be the easiest way to make your character, and gives it more than just random aspects. With the character sheet, as soon as the player knows the type of character they want (probably pulled from a template), have them start filling it in with a story, even if it is a skeleton. You'll be amazed at how much actually comes out of this, and how fast you can hand an aspect over to someone based on just a few sentences.

City creation is a little more difficult. If you are running a city that isn't already created for you, you have two options: make the city with the players, or make it without them. From there, all you're doing is adding certain themes and threats, and from there, anything goes. It really is MUCH simpler than the book makes it out to be, especially if you choose to make the city "grow" from game to game. For example, I am setting a game in an alternate London in 1867. My current themes/threats are "The Smoke," "Class Unrest," and "Black Heart of the Empire." Otherwise, I just throw in what is needed when it is needed. Then again, I've got some extra experience on most, so. . .

  In order to keep it more simple we wanted to start at a level of "Waist Deep" however both of my players wanted to start as "Apprentice Wizards".  It seemed like due to them not being full wizards that it should be ok to allow that but I wanted to know from others who have ran this over and over to know if it would work.

Concepts are key, simple as that :-p
Take a look at the Neutral Grounds scenario, like everyone else is suggesting; you have some samples as to how this can work, and yes, it CAN work. A friend of mine did the equivalent of the Scooby Gang from Buffy using this type of thought process, and from the sounds it of, it turned out well.

  Also one of my players wants to run a character based on herself.  However she has problems with idealizing herself and coming up with Aspects.  In fact all of us have a hard time with the creation of aspects.  While the book spends a lot of time on them it still feels very much like being thrown into the deep end here.

Playing a version of yourself is a chancey thing at best. At times, people get annoyed when they play themselves and bad things happen. Others play themselves and realize that it is boring or harder than it seems. Even worse: when you design "yourself," other players may look at you and say that something "isn't you." From my experience, playing oneself tends to add to the drama at the table, and I often suggest against it for a long-term campaign.

Now, taking certain parts of yourself and putting them into the character is an interesting way to go. Certain character quirks someone may have may fit in perfectly, or knowledge from an occupation can be a real boon. You can pull inspiration from yourself, but it is easier when it is a small part and not everything.

As a side note: you can run into the same problem with a city that everyone is familiar with (like your home town), as everyone will argue over semantics and not pay attention to the game.

  Basically as a new GM for this is there any suggestions people have or resources I can use to help get a grasp on the fundamentals of the game.  I know that the city of Baltimore was detailed out but I didn't see anything that could be considered a "sample adventure" or anything which would let me jump in.  I learn best by doing.

The closest thing we have to a "sample adventure" is the aforementioned Neutral Grounds casefile. If you are new to the DFRPG and don't know what to run for a first game or as a test run, I would suggest glancing over the "Character Creation on the Fly" section, read over the casefile until you have an idea what is in store, review those rules and the basics, then begin. You can see how well that works.

Before I converted my steampunk~ish game to the DFRPG rules, I ran the first two scenes from Neutral Grounds. At that point, I noticed that my players were throwing around comments that made up new aspects for them to fill in the gaps, such as "Twisted Temptress," "The Snake Charmer," "He Who Fights and Runs Away. . .", and "I Punch Vampires In the Face!" Of course, this was all in good fun, and it was amusing to see what they would come up with.

Of course, with all this, don't forget Rule 0, or The Golden Rule: Have fun!

--Crion
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"I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching--they are your family." Harry Dresden

Offline sinker

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #8 on: April 26, 2011, 05:38:14 PM »
Something I'm surprised no one has said yet and something that I use all the time is that if you're getting hung up on city creation then skip it. What we do is we make sure to create the themes and threats because that is a huge indication of where people want the story to go. As an example one of the themes we developed for our Denver game is that the veil is thin here (for lots of reasons). As a result our GM has been using the fey fairly often (as their fights tend to spill out of the Nevernever) and also has gone a little towards the oblivion war as people are coming here because it's easier to call outsiders here. Once you've got your themes and threats quickly figure out some organizations and where they fit in, sort of a broad politics and power set up. Then figure out a location or two, usually a central place for the PCs or the villains and then go.

Fill in the rest as it comes up in play. Organizations will acquire faces as the players interact with them. Locations will pop up as the players need. If the players need a lot of occult knowledge and get to know the local bookstore owner then you have a new location and face that you can work with. If they never need it then it won't come up and you don't wind up with a location/face that you never use or worse yet feel like you need to shoehorn in.

Offline Warderbrad

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #9 on: April 27, 2011, 01:36:55 AM »
I want to thank everyone who posted comments.  Nearly all were very useful (even if all they did was reaffirm that what someone else had said was a sound point of view).  I decided in the end to let the player who wanted to base the character on herself go forward, however I did make sure (via subtle questioning) that she would be not only able to handle negative circumstances but also to make sure that she would not have an idealized version of herself.  Actually she came up with more negative traits and beginnings of aspects than she did wholly positive ones.  I am much more at ease with the idea of her character.
I am still a little uneasy about the apprentice issue as there is no clear cut template for the apprentice.  I know it says that it is a less powerful wizard but that is vague.  Can someone point me to a post of a completed character that they feel would be at the "Waist-Deep" power level as an apprentice wizard.  That would be a huge help.
The second player wants to play a native american medicine man apprentice.  I am not sure if I should encourage him to use the wizard template as well or if the focused spellcaster or even sorcerer would be best as a starting point.  If anyone has any suggestions with that I am open to those as well.
We have chosen to use our home town (I heard what you all said about the possible difficulties of arguments), we have many locations and faces in mind and have themes and threats, our next step is to work on aspects for the city.  It seems like the aspects are what hang our group up the most.  We are only able to work on it for a couple hours at a time so it is being spread out over a number of days, however this is letting us come up with ideas and then go and get the research material to flesh out those ideas.  A good and bad point there.
Anyway I am welcoming all feedback and once we have completed forms I am interested in posting them to get feedback on the final result if any are willing to do so.

As an aside, I thought this would be funny to share:
About two days after buying the books and starting to read them, my desktop computer's power supply went out (not a big deal as they are sometimes the most common things to go out), anyway within a day I had the replacement and installed it.  About 48 hours after that I was informed that the video drivers were out of date and proceeded to upgrade them.  After doing so my main monitor went blank (I have two video cards and three screens).  I got concerned but the computer wanted to do a restart to complete the driver update so I wondered if maybe it would correct itself.  I let it reboot and then the computer would power on and nothing would show on any monitor (this issue is still being worked on).  I could attribute it to a computer just being flaky as they can be at times. 
However then about a week later I had been using my laptop, plugged into my monitor to make for a more comfortable viewing position, and I get a blue screen of death.  When the laptop restarts it says that there was no system disk.  I started to freak out and went into the on-board diagnostics and it said I had no hard drive. :o Come to find out the laptop hot overheated and the hard drive became a little loose.
 The laptop happened to go out while researching something during a planning session for our DFRPG game.  Now everyone is "convinced" that I am a burgeoning wizard who is fouling up my machines with my aura.  At the beginning of each of our sessions now there is a running joke about keeping the laptops away from me.
I felt it was funny and wanted to share.

Offline evileeyore

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #10 on: April 27, 2011, 02:54:22 AM »
I'd argue a little against all the people saying "play self = bad".

Playing a character based on yourself is risky, and I wouldn't recommend it in most cases. A modern game like DFRPG, where it's easier to make a character who's quite literally You, is probably worse, but if you can get the disconnect in between gameself and realself, it can work.

I'm speaking here as someone who's enjoying doing slightly mean things to a version of myself in an Exalted game; thing is, he occupies a box in my head where he's basically got a personality much like mine, but I don't think of him as me. Done like that, it can work. But like I say, it's a risk, and it may be worth considering something else.

This.  I've seen far to many people get upset and take things personally when their character is toatlly different them to ever let people play an version of themselves if I didn't really trust them.


@Warderbrad:  You friend doesn't sound like the type who'll keep it seperate to me.

Offline Warderbrad

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #11 on: April 27, 2011, 02:59:12 AM »
I considered this, I have added the caveat that if I find problems arising that a new character will have to be made.  At this point I do not want to stifle any excitement for the game as there are few players to draw on.  If I can get this to fly for a little while and build up a larger group, being more stringent on these type issues will be much easier as I will not worry about not being able to get a game going at all if even one person drops out.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #12 on: April 27, 2011, 03:04:10 AM »
None of these are mine. I found them by reading the Spare Character Concepts thread and using the search function.

Quote
Jacob Kelly

A native american White Council wizard named Gabriel Horn took a young kid from a family of grifters as an apprentice and hid him from the Council (he told the apprentice it was to keep him safe from the Red Court). When the kid was half-trained (he was good at Evocation, had not learned Thaumaturgy yet), Gabriel disappeared. Surviving on his own as a homeless guy off-the-grid, not knowing who to trust, he felt he had to investigate the deaths of some local homeless people and housing project residents, and made a few friends in the supernatural community. He likes to hide and run away, but when it comes to someone else being in danger....

(Note - for this and the next character I created my own template - Wizard Lite. It's intended to represent people who know too much and have too much training to be sorcerers but who haven't got it all to be Wizards. They also have committed to spend their next several refresh on becoming wizards as they find game reasons to do so).

High Concept: Abandoned Apprentice
Trouble: Unspoken, Unwritten, and Unremembered
Phase 1: Love of 3 Card Monty
Phase 2: Gabriel Horn's Deerskin Bracers
Phase 3: "I couldn't just watch, could I?"
Phase 4: "Technically, I haven't done anything wrong."
Phase 5: "Hey! Ugly! Over here!"

Stress: P/M/S 3/4/3

Great: Conviction & Deceit
Good: Empathy & Discipline
Fair: Stealth, Investigation, Alertness
Average: Burglary, Endurance, Presence, Lore, Athletics

Stunts & Powers:

(-3)  Evocation -> Air Control +1
(-1)  The Sight
(0)  Wizard Constitution
(0)  Soulgaze

(-1)  Read the Surface

Refresh 2

Focus Items:
Deerskin Bracers (+1 Spirit Defence Control)
Carved Bone Knife (+1 Water Offense Control)

Rotes: Apis (Wind Blast)

Quote
High Concept: Wizardling (wizard in training..not fully ripe)
Trouble: I pissed off something nasty...

Skills:
Great: Conviction, Endurance
Good: Discipline, Guns
Fair: Lore, Fists, Alertness
Average: Intimidation, Might, Athletics, Rapport, Stealth

Stunt/Powers:
-3 Evocation
-2 Ritual
-0 Wizards Constitution
-1 Sight
-0 Soulgaze
Total Refresh Adjustment: -6

Specialization
Evocation: (Fire, Water, Sprit)
Control: Fire +1

Focus Items:
Jade necklace: +1 Defence (Spirit)
Ritual Bone (wand): +1 power to fire and wair
2 open enchanted item slots

Stress:
Physical: 0000XXXX
Mental: 0000XXXX
Social: 00XXXXXX

Adjusted Refresh: 1

Quote
Brewer Laughlin (Wizard) – Waist Deep
High Aspect: Wizard-in-Training
Trouble: Just An Apprentice
Other Aspects: Look What I Can Do!

Stress:
Physical: OOO
Social: OOO
Mental: OOOO

Skills:
• Great (+4): Conviction, Discipline
• Good (+3): Contacts, Lore
• Fair (+2): Rapport, Presence, Scholarship
• Average (+1): Athletics, Endurance, Fists, Might

Supernatural Powers:
   • Channeling (Earth) [-2]
   • Thaumaturgy [-3] (Frequency: Crafting +1)
   • The Sight/Soulgaze [-1]
   • Wizard’s Constitution [-0]

Adjusted Refresh: 1

Offline evileeyore

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #13 on: April 27, 2011, 03:13:33 AM »
I considered this, I have added the caveat that if I find problems arising that a new character will have to be made.  At this point I do not want to stifle any excitement for the game as there are few players to draw on.  If I can get this to fly for a little while and build up a larger group, being more stringent on these type issues will be much easier as I will not worry about not being able to get a game going at all if even one person drops out.

Sounds like you've got that part well under control then.  Carry on.

Offline InFerrumVeritas

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Re: New to DFRPG
« Reply #14 on: April 27, 2011, 04:06:53 AM »
For Apprentice Wizard, you've got a few options:

First, you can have a character who has had training focused on one aspect of magic, either evocation or thaumaturgy and has had more limited training in another aspect (taking Channeling or Ritual instead to save that point of refresh).  This can either be from either training or aptitude.  I'd say that if you're starting you campaign in the vampire war, evocation focus is probably the most likely:

Evocation focused character: Evocation, Ritual, The Sight (w/Soulgaze), Wizard Con.
Thaumaturgy focused character: Thaumaturgy, Channeling, The Sight (w/Soulgaze), Wizard Con.

Or, you might have a character who has more limited magical aptitude but has some other skill (such as detective skills):

Ritual, Channeling, The Sight (w/Soulgaze), Wizard Con., Mortal Stunt

Finally and probably the option that I recommend the least, you can have a character who learned magic quickly but maybe neglected the fundamentals (such as opening their third eye):

Evocation, Thaumaturgy, Wizard Con.

Something I highly recommend is having characters that aren't identical.  So, make sure that your apprentice wizards aren't clones of each other.  Even if your players want to make the same type of character, I'd recommend having different elements of choice and areas of specialization at the very least.  Possibly have one more focused and the other on control.  Ideally, you'd have one Thaumaturgy expert and one Evocation expert, at least IMO.