Dealing with Supernatural and High Combat

[matiez]

Just starting up a Dresden game and have several issues milling about my head.

Firstly, what is the best way to incorporate supernatural and still have that immersive, believable feel? Kinda immersion breaking to have a troll running down the streets smashing buildings and cars. I'm having issues with selecting good supernatural fights that will work. As said in City Creation, if there's a bunch of supernatural stuff going on why don't the mortal populace know about it?

The caveat of this is fighting mortals, or just fighting in general. Since this is modern day, issues with the police will be rampant. Leaving bodies, casings and witnesses can be a real game killer. Also, what types of mortals or supernaturals are best to be used as drop in fights? The few ideas I have are muggings, vampire feedings, ghouls and the occasional street gang. Basically, what would a Random Encounter Table look like in the Dresdenverse?

[admiralducksauce]

Just starting up a Dresden game and have several issues milling about my head.

Firstly, what is the best way to incorporate supernatural and still have that immersive, believable feel? Kinda immersion breaking to have a troll running down the streets smashing buildings and cars. I'm having issues with selecting good supernatural fights that will work. As said in City Creation, if there's a bunch of supernatural stuff going on why don't the mortal populace know about it?

The caveat of this is fighting mortals, or just fighting in general. Since this is modern day, issues with the police will be rampant. Leaving bodies, casings and witnesses can be a real game killer. Also, what types of mortals or supernaturals are best to be used as drop in fights? The few ideas I have are muggings, vampire feedings, ghouls and the occasional street gang. Basically, what would a Random Encounter Table look like in the Dresdenverse?

With a mischievous grin, my answer to "why don't the mortal populace know about it?" is "Make your players answer that."

A little more serious consideration, however, shows a few options:
1.  Don't have trolls running down the road like the Hulk.  If you need to have the veil/masquerade/whatever maintained, then trolls need to not go on rampages in public.
2.  The troll DOES go on a rampage but isn't caught on tape and lots of people swear up and down that they saw a troll smash their engine block.  So what?  People swear up and down that they were abducted by aliens / their house is haunted / octopeds from Lemuria built the pyramids.  Who's going to report "troll attack" on their insurance claim, anyway?  They're going to have to eat the cost of repairs if they do that.
3.  The troll goes on a rampage and multiple sources get cellphone / other video evidence of it smashing its way through stuff.  At this point, you can say "OK, there's video evidence of a troll."  And guess what?  You still have to get to work on time and pay your electric bill and pick your kids up from school.  Unless troll attacks start messing with your lunch hour or ruining soccer games, there will be a media blowout, after which nobody will care.  The BP oil spill, Rwandan genocide, and chimpanzees tearing womens' faces off all actually happened, and the majority of the general public don't give a shit anymore.

Trust in an uncaring, cynical, selfish population and you have carte blanche to throw whatever you want at your PCs.

[admiralducksauce]

Since this is modern day, issues with the police will be rampant. Leaving bodies, casings and witnesses can be a real game killer.

This is a different bag of beans from the "trolls get caught on youtube" problem mentioned above.  You have to make a choice here about the tone of the game you want to run, and talk that over with your players.  Tell them that being a violent murderhobo gets you unwanted police attention, and that you plan on sending more than the token "you hear police sirens, better run for it!" police presence after a rampage.  Smart PCs don't go to jail because smart PCs either 1) don't act like violent murderhobos or 2) smart PCs take the appropriate ranks in Contacts, Resources, Burglary and other skills to know how to clean up after a crime scene, navigate the legal system, and bribe corrupt cops to let them off the hook.

Another option is to give the PCs license to battle the creatures of the night.  Make them federal agents or cops or set the game somewhere where the justice system is so corrupt, small, and/or inept that it doesn't matter.

[computerking]

Also remember that many of the supernatural creatures have higher authorities that don't like too much Mortal attention (Fae Courts tend to impose penalties, even on Wylde fae, The Heirarchy of the Red Court, Papa Raith and the White Court Daddies, for some examples) and who should be taken into account when your baddies are planning their actions. No Troll would rampage through the streets hitting cars if there was a chance the players would tattle to a Knight, Lady or Queen, for example. Also, No troll would want to rampage through the streets too often, anyway, with all those big rolling chunks of Steel all over.

As for players, most should have ties to their heirarchies, as well, except for a couple of the Templates, and those could still be curttailed by other Creatures' leaders having some claim to the area. (I had a Summer Guardian threaten my players after they used the Nevernever as a bomb depository once)

Also, if your players end up in debt to someone, having them act as the "keepers of the peace" can seriously curtail their own transgressions, as well as force them to come up with ways to stop or cover up other characters' actions.

[Becq]

I would suggest that the answer to this can be found in the "Science Fails" section, YS11-12.  The implication is that while full-on hexing is the perview of magic, technology doesn't always work particularly well against other supernatural creatures, either.  So while cameras won't spontaneously combust around a troll like they might around a wizard, they will generally have enough graininess or bursts of static to cast serious doubts on what is truly in the picture.  And Dresden has mentioned a number of times that people have a strong tendency to dismiss or rationalize even clear evidence of the supernatural, even including what they see with their own eyes.  And there are plenty of people who are 'in the know' (or who are supernatural themselves) and sufficently connected that they can taint any evidence that might not be sufficiently easy to rationalize.  So even images that were clear might disappear or turn out to be significantly less clear on review.

[matiez]

Thanks to everyone for the awesome ideas. Definitely clears the air a bit.

[TheMouse]

I like to think of this in terms of evolution.

In our universe, there aren't any trolls or vampires. So if things went sideways and suddenly there was a troll smashing cars, we'd freak out. The result would be YouTube videos galore, and some group of people would come and at least try to kill the troll. Things would escalate quite a lot, and it'd be a mess. In the end, humans work together to kill large threats as a matter of species survival, so one pesky troll would end up dead with hundreds of rounds of ammunition in it, and quite probably with it missing big chunks due to explosives of various sorts.

That's not the Dresden-verse.

There, humans have lived alongside the supernatural since forever. When we discovered fire, we hoped that it would keep away the things in the night. When we made swords, we hoped that they could kill the things in the night. But our best method of survival, on an evolutionary scale, has been to stay well away from where the monsters are, and stick our fingers in our ears, close our eyes, and shout, "LALALA! I don't seeeeeeeee yooooooooooooou!" whenever the monsters wander into our midsts.

This is a species survival trait. It's like how you don't need to learn to be afraid when a dog barks and rushes at you; our distant ancestors were eaten by large four legged things with big teeth, so we're naturally intimidated by them.

A troll is the same thing. It's an instinct for the folks in the Dresdenverse to pretend the troll isn't there as much as possible, because that's how you avoid it.

Of course, not everyone has the same instinctual reactions. Some people aren't afraid of dogs the first time one leaps toward them barking and furious. Some people are born wanting to do mad things like base jump. And some people are born without the instinct to run and hide from the troll.

In conclusion, most people have a primal urge to hide from that which goes bump and then pretend it hadn't happened. There might be some people who don't have that urge, but we call them, "Player characters."

I also tend to figure that intelligent supernatural beings with a motivation to not bring humanity down on their heads would fall back to behaviour previously considered antiquated. Ritual type behaviour, far from mortal eyes. So instead of fighting it out in public, they might call for some sort of duel in a ritual spot, a spot chosen for being out of the way.

[sinker]

A lot of people dislike the earlier books and thus tend to forget about them. Remember that in Fool Moon Susan gets video of the werewolf. The general reaction was that it was interesting and may or may not have been faked and then it drops off the face of the earth (likely due to one of the major supernatural factions, remember they don't like people knowing about them or even the possibility of them) and everyone forgets about it.

[Becq]

A lot of people dislike the earlier books and thus tend to forget about them. Remember that in Fool Moon Susan gets video of the werewolf. The general reaction was that it was interesting and may or may not have been faked and then it drops off the face of the earth (likely due to one of the major supernatural factions, remember they don't like people knowing about them or even the possibility of them) and everyone forgets about it.

The series makes fairly clear that there is a subtle but powerful effect that seems to me to be very similar to the Delirium in Werewolf: The Apocolypse.  Most of the time, humanity will forget/rationalize/brush off/ignore/whatever even fairly blatant evidence of the supernatural.  But only most of the time.  Sometimes you get a human who remembers and believes what he saw ... examples including Susan, or the entirety of the Venatori Umbrorum.  Perhaps this is due to repeated exposure.  A good example of this might be Butters.  If I recall correctly, he seemed to backslide into disbelief a few times, and had to me nudged by Dresden back into acceptance of the supernatural.

[Sanctaphrax]

Random encounters are a lot easier in the Nevernever. If you'd like to have a lot of them, I suggest making the Nevernever important.

Failing that, summoned monster attacks are easy to justify and have few consequences once over.

I don't really think that a special explanation is needed for the secrecy of magic. I wouldn't be convinced by a werewolf on Youtube. And if I believed in magic, as many people do, there would be no reason to assume that I knew the first thing about it.

[Becq]

Not just magic, either.  Consider the Chlorofied who (if memory serves) attacked Dresden in the middle of a crowded department store.  I don't have the books handy, but I think they explained it partly away with some sort of mind-altering attack that affected the mundanes, but even so ... surely there were security cameras?  Without some sort of metaphysical mojo playing into the situation, it's hard to explain how that scene wouldn't at the very least start up some MAJOR conspiracy theories, even if most people just laughed it off as "obviously fake".

I'm thinking that perhaps the occasional problems that crop up (ie, someone like Susan catching a photo and trying to make a big deal of it) might represent a situation that counts as an exception to the rule, and probably constitutes a compel for affected characters.

[CottbusFiles]

All the magic Dresden threw around i doubt that any cameras survited that encounter

[Tedronai]

All the magic Dresden threw around i doubt that any cameras survited that encounter

Let alone the Mind Fog that filled nearly the entire space.

[toturi]

Or you could invert the theme that the mortals don't want to know or do not know.

You could set the game in a place where it is the opposite. The mortals know and the mortals have actual (abeit secret) laws to deal with such things. Perhaps the mortals there do not use "magic" but "scientifically unexplained phenomenon" or some such.

[Silverblaze]

Also an option.

If you want a combat heavy game.  Gloss over facts about law enforcement and CSI teams.  It could help the game run smoother.

Also, smaller towns don't even have budgets to have a good CSi team (technologically advanced or trained experts).