I ran my first session of Dresden last night, and it went okay. I'm still having trouble getting a handle on the rule system, and my players have never played before, so there's going to be a bit of a learning curve.
I have a couple of questions about things that came up during the game. I don't have access to my books right now, but I feel the need for instant gratification, so I'm hoping maybe I can get some answers here. If anyone can offer suggestions, I'd be very thankful.
1) In one scene, the two characters (A wizard and a meteomancer, i.e. weather-focused practitioner) were ambushed by thugs in an alley. I gave the thugs each two physical slots, and fists (+2) and weapons (+2). There were 4 thugs altogether. Their purpose was to scare the PCs, but I wanted them to get defeated. They got in one cheap shot (but a substantial one) on the wizard right away, because he had no dodge skill, so he rolled it at mediocre, and left him with a moderate consequence. Then in the first exchange, he put an air shield in front of his apprentice (the meteomancer), and she then used her intimidate skill on the thugs. Here's where I'm not sure about things. We played the intimidate as a mental attack against the thugs' conviction. I'm not sure if that was right. We also couldn't figure out how to adjust the shifts needed for her to target all of the enemies in the zone. I looked and looked, but couldn't find it. In the end, I just used the same rules used for putting a block in front of multiple allies.
Can someone tell me if this should have been a mental attack? If so, did we use the right skill for defense (which the thugs had at mediocre), and what should I have done about her targeting multiple opponents?
Also, do players know all the obvious aspects on a scene, or do they have to discover them? What about the NPCs (not that these guys had any fate points anyway, but I'm just curious)?
2) They tracked the ambush to a drug dealer on Broadway. He didn't give up much information (due to a stunning success on his conviction roll to defend against intimidation), but they decided to follow him. The meteomancer wanted to use her magic to use cloud cover to make it darker, putting an aspect on the scene that she could tag to improve her stealth roll. She ended up spending a fate point and making a declaration, but could she have done it with a skill roll? If so, what?
I'm sure I'll have more questions as I think of them throughout the day, but this is what I have off the top of my head. Again, any help is appreciated. I really love this system, but I'm having a hard time with it. It's been a long time since I had to learn a system from scratch!