I'm A GM Looking For Help

[Smaug with OCD]

My gaming group has been in discussion recently, and settled on giving the Dresden Files a shot. During the discussion, it was decided that - since I knew the series best - I should be the GM. Most of the rest of my group has not read up to Changes, and does not seem either inclined or able to do so at the moment. I think one other person has read the whole series... maybe? My question to you wonderful individuals is: Do you have any advice for me as a - not entirely inexperienced, but not yet veteran - GM? Is there anything I should do, or shouldn't do, to help my group? Is there anything I should prepare ahead of time? I'm used to running D&D, and have only played a few Fate games, so any advice you could send my way would be appreciated.

[dragoonbuster]

- Fate is primarily about player/PC agency and collaborative storytelling.
- Prepared to be flexible, don't plan too much. That said, don't plan too little, especially by planning a Conflict to last an entire session--Conflicts often wind up being shorter than you expect.
- Understand when you saying "no" is a valid rules judgment and when it is a compel (that can potentially be paid off).
- Compel your players a lot--but not over trivial things; compel them over things that are cool, fun, and/or interesting.
- Reward good roleplaying.
- Make sure you understand the role Aspects play. They are the core, defining element to Fate.
- Play the game according to the rules before house-ruling it. Once you and your group have a valid feel for what does and doesn't flow or balance well, then take a whack at house-ruling.
- Remember that Thaumaturgy is very powerful, but faces limitations in a wizard's access to resources and availability of time. The crazier the spell, the harder it is to prepare.
- Talk to your players.

[PirateJack]

When you're designing NPCs/encounters, base their stats on the average effective skills of the PCs rather than on refresh spent. This means totalling up their skills and the bonuses they get to them from powers/stunts/weapons/armour, and then average them across the party. A decent guideline is that an encounter at around the average is going to be pretty easy with a couple of aspect invocations, average +2 is a challenge and average +4 has the chance to wipe the party if they don't have plenty of fate points to spend (so BBEG time).

[blackstaff67]

My personal opinion:  Don't have anyone run a full wizard, but rather a focused practitioner at first.  Running full-on wizard isn't necessarily user-friendly, in my experience.  I rather think of it like a superhero that's limited to a single element and can later branch out (you might actually present it that way). 

Keep It Simple, Silly.  I'd only allow scions/emissaries of power, shapeshifters, Focused Practitioners, Righteous folk and vanilla Mortals at first.  Those five different template still allow for plenty of variety.  As others said, talk to your players.

But that's just my opinion.

Oh, and don't let any one player steal the spotlight from all the others.

[Taran]

You might want to start small: Feet in the Water game.

It'll be easier for the players and easier for you, as a GM.  Let's you work on small, low-key adventures that aren't game-changing, city-wide affairs.  Let's them get their feet warm, discover the city from the ground up, instead of starting as a major player with tonnes of influence.  It limits templates, somewhat(no wizards) but allows for focused practitioners.  Pure Mortal is a totally viable template at this level and a great template to step into the Supernatural World.

After a scenario, you have lots of options:

1 boost the refresh per a major milestone
2. Do a hand-wavey "3 years pass" and add as much refresh to the game as you want and let the players upgrade their characters
3. Start fresh at a new refresh with the possibility of playing new characters.

Starting at a low refresh also gives all the players(and the GM) a feeling of what a typical 'average' person is like.  Where +2 and +3 skills are professional level abilities.  That way, when you move up to submerged, you really get the feeling that someone with +5 skills is truly the top of their class in the city.

[Mr. Death]

Ignore the rulebook's guidelines for scaling encounters. In a fight, refresh spent doesn't mean a damn thing compared to relative skill levels.

I don't care if what you're facing has spent 20 refresh, if it's only attacking and dodging at 2, a group of Feet In The Water PCs will hand it its arse on a silver platter.

Plan your villains the way PCs would plan -- give them goals, then walk yourself through what they'd do to accomplish those goals. Then, once you've got that in mind, figure out how to hook your PCs into things through some personal plot hook.

Talk to your players, often, about their characters and where they want it to go. Ask them what they think the villains are up to. You'll be surprised how often they come up with something better than what you have planned.

Be ready and willing to improvise.

[RonLugge]

Ignore the rulebook's guidelines for scaling encounters. In a fight, refresh spent doesn't mean a damn thing compared to relative skill levels.

Don't necessarily ignore it -- just remember that skills are just as important.

[Mr. Death]

Don't necessarily ignore it -- just remember that skills are just as important.

Eh, more important, honestly. To get a character up to 20-ish refresh to match a three or four person party, as the game book suggests, the powers wouldn't stack in a way that makes them actually more effective, meaning they'll just get swarmed by actions. Unless you put all that refresh into wizardry, which does stack, and puts it way too far the other way.

The Black Court are a prime example -- it has a whopping 14 refresh spent. Going by the guide-book, he should qualify as a challenging rating against a 3-character, Feet in the Water party all on his own. But its Fists are only at 3, its defense is at 4. That puts him equal, on those terms, to one feet in the water character who's built to fight.

Against two, he might, barely, be able to keep up. Against three, he's getting his ass kicked -- the odds are simply against him that they'll hit him more than he hits them.

And that's without getting into his weaknesses.

But you could build an NPC with no refresh spent on powers and make him a challenge just by setting his relevant skills at 5 or 6. Then, you have someone the party needs to maneuver against to reliably hit, one they'll need to actively and creatively defend against, instead of one they'll be more or less okay with if they just attack, attack, attack.

[Hogeyhead]

Okay, some advice? Well this is advice I would give anyone for any game they are gming other than a dedicated dungeon crawl: Do a session of character creation. (actually dresden files kind of needs it)

Some people will have characters already stated and that's fine, but there are things you should be looking at aside from things like balance, and backstory etc. Well two things first is the 'your characters know each other thing' and they have to collaborate on aspects. Great, but when all their characters are fleshed out and statted look at their aspects. The importance of these cannot be overstated. First they should all be compellable, and all except the trouble should be useful, and most importantly they should all be different. They should not have five aspects that all basically say 'avenging angel'. These really flesh out the character and from a narrative mechanic perspective are hugely important in keeping a character involved, and keeping a player interested.

Good luck

[Sanctaphrax]

Refresh spent does matter, but only if it's applicable to the situation. If the NPC is going to show up for one fight scene and then die/become irrelevant, then their social stunts are just not important.

Also, the effectiveness of Refresh spent varies greatly depending on how you spend it. So counting up the total like the book would have you do isn't the best idea. Look at what the character gets out of their Powers; if Ferrovax is only here to talk, his ~100 Refresh of physical power doesn't matter. But you should take into account the +1 bonus from Marked By Power, and the effects of whatever talky stunts he has.

I don't recommend using Orbius, Demonic Co-Pilot, or Feeding Dependency.

Spellcasting can get out of hand if you're too permissive. So exercise caution.

If the rules aren't clear, don't waste time arguing about it. Just make a call and move on.

If your players start generating plot, run with it.

[blackstaff67]

Refresh spent does matter, but only if it's applicable to the situation. If the NPC is going to show up for one fight scene and then die/become irrelevant, then their social stunts are just not important.

Also, the effectiveness of Refresh spent varies greatly depending on how you spend it. So counting up the total like the book would have you do isn't the best idea. Look at what the character gets out of their Powers; if Ferrovax is only here to talk, his ~100 Refresh of physical power doesn't matter. But you should take into account the +1 bonus from Marked By Power, and the effects of whatever talky stunts he has.

I don't recommend using Orbius, Demonic Co-Pilot, or Feeding Dependency.

Spellcasting can get out of hand if you're too permissive. So exercise caution.

If the rules aren't clear, don't waste time arguing about it. Just make a call and move on.

If your players start generating plot, run with it.

Wait.  I'm running a game where a contributing player's version of the Jade Court (he's running it as a gray-to-lighter gray PC) has Demonic Co-Pilot in it.  Just what's wrong with that?  Nothing that looked abusive jumped out at my eyes...

[Sanctaphrax]

It's just a pain in the neck. Tons of extra dice rolls and a bunch of probably-irrelevant stress hits to track.

There are some balance concerns, but they hinge on the nebulously-defined agenda of the demon. You could maybe break it by talking your GM into letting it apply to Contacts rolls or something (it's a demon of manipulation and deceit, so it helps me with rolls that I make in situations where my mental stress track doesn't matter using skills lower than my Discipline so there's no real risk...) but if you use it as intended it might even be worse than useless. The wording doesn't make it sound optional, so maybe you just get dunked on whenever you invoke four Aspects to boost your final attack against the villain...but I prefer to read it as optional, and I think most other GMs do too.

And when you get right down to it, it does nothing that a DEMONIC CO-PILOT Aspect and access to sponsor debt doesn't do better.

[Smaug with OCD]

WOW! Thank you everyone! I never expected to receive this much feedback. I intend to take a number of your suggestions to heart - such as the idea to start them at "Feet In the Water." This one in particular seems like it will provide my group a lot of help, given that only one or two of them has ever played Fate before.

I also definitely intend to see where the players see their characters going over time. I've been part of too many campaigns where players get shafted by GMs who have different ideas about what should happen. It might be interesting given their varied knowledge of the setting.

If you're interested in an update, our city discussions are currently leaning towards the Twin Cities area, in Minnesota. Nothing is settled yet, and our campaign won't begin until the college semester is over and we're all back in the same general area. But, it's looking more and more like that's where the game is going to be set.

I'm still happily open to advice if you have it.

Any suggestions about stuff I should look into around the Twin Cities before our first session of city and character building?

Thanks again for what you've provided so far!

[blackstaff67]

Things I've noted about Minnesota for adventure seeds:
1) Home to the headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi (think it passes through the Twin Cities if memory serves),
2) Four(!) Tribal areas,
3) Home to the Kensington Stone
4) About 30-40% of the state is forest, plus over 14,000 lakes.
5) Home to the Iron Mountain Range and the mines therein.
6) Duluth, THE westernmost port on the Great Lakes that can lead to the Atlantic.

Briefly, lotsa stuff...

[AgentSchneider]

Given that it's Minnesota (and thus mostly in dark and cold for a good portion of the year) I would make the Winter presence in the area fairly significant. Maybe each of the cities has a Way to a different major part of the Winter realm? Or maybe there is an unusually high Blampire population in the area (akin to the movie 30 Days of Night).