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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: McNulty on May 27, 2013, 02:35:04 PM
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I'm not familiar with the novels, so forgive me if this is silly question. But how does the mundane world stand in regards the supernatural? Are most of the people totally clueless? What if they see someone (ie the PCs) doing magic, how do they react? What about government entities? This is something that the rulebooks doesn't really cover toomuch (or if they do, please do point me to the right page)..
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Since mortal magic usually gremlins higher technology, not much is recorded (and you shouldn't be doing magic in front of them, anyway). Most mundanes usually engage in self-delusion, telling themselves they saw something other than what happened. And calling mortal authorities in is almost always a no-no...an unwritten understanding, if you will.
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I'm not familiar with the novels, so forgive me if this is silly question. But how does the mundane world stand in regards the supernatural? Are most of the people totally clueless? What if they see someone (ie the PCs) doing magic, how do they react? What about government entities? This is something that the rulebooks doesn't really cover toomuch (or if they do, please do point me to the right page)..
It's mixed. There's a significant minority with their eyes open who know, at least in part, of the supernatural. Those in power also appear to be aware of it - and take active steps to keep the believers looking like a lunatic fringe. (Videos are changed, evidence disappears, people are committed to destroy their credibility, etc.) At the same time they're suppressing evidence they also fund various governmental and NGO organizations meant to contain the supernatural. This leaves the ignorant majority believing what the media and government say: "There is no supernatural."
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The general public by and large is totally in the dark. It's been suggested that there are government types that keep incidents under wraps, but that they don't typically get involved with the supernatural world at large, at least not directly.
The supernatural community isn't quite so big on the conspiracy angle. They take some precautions to not draw attention to themselves, but they more so just bank on the general public's inability to accept the truth, and that they will just make things up to cope. "That wasn't a zombie I saw, it was just some homeless guy on drugs.", "That couldn't of been a bunch of werewolves, it must of been a pack of wild dogs or wolves that wandered into the city limits."
It's also worth noting that It's an unspoken rule of the supernatural world that you NEVER intentionally get the mortal authorities involved on any large scale. That It's considered to tantamount to launching a nuke at an opposing nation.
In short, the PC's (and GM) should be mindful of the vanilla population, but they shouldn't let it hobble them either.
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I imagine that a pretty sizeable of the public believes in supernatural stuff. That doesn't mean they're clued-in, though. The magic they believe in might not bear any resemblance to the magic that exists.
There are a lot of people in the real world who believe in ghosts and witches and the like, after all.
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It's been suggested that there are government types that keep incidents under wraps, but that they don't typically get involved with the supernatural world at large, at least not directly.
Someone makes a certain video from Fool Moon disappear. ;) As for direct involvement, Murphy's squad is directly involved - they get the "weird" cases and are used when superiors need something deniable. If Chicago needs deniable investigators, so will other government entities...
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Someone makes a certain video from Fool Moon disappear. ;) As for direct involvement, Murphy's squad is directly involved - they get the "weird" cases and are used when superiors need something deniable. If Chicago needs deniable investigators, so will other government entities...
Oh their are absolutely government entities in the Dresdenverse that deal with the supernatural. What I was getting at was that based on the books and what JB has said about it, they have a very "us vs them" mentality. That they are VERY covert and don't make themselves known to anyone of the supernatural community. The closest thing we see is Denton and the other feds in Fool Moon, and even that seemed to be a special circumstance.
I know I can't be the only person who noticed that through the entire series, Harry never once says he knows or has ever met a government agent that is clued-in. No one else he knows seems to either.
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The closest thing we see is Denton and the other feds in Fool Moon, and even that seemed to be a special circumstance.
That wasn't anything like a 'government entity'. That was a handful of rogue agents acting of their own accord after being manipulated, probably by the Black Council.
The closest thing to a government entity dealing with the supernatural that we see in the novels is Special Investigations, and they don't really report to anyone regarding their dealings, so it's questionable as to whether or not they would actually count as a government entity in that regard. It could be argued that SI is, instead, a rogue department, acting with neither the knowledge nor the approval of their superiors (who at least outwardly refuse to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural, and burden SI with the cast-offs of more reputable departments).
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Most government intervention is strictly on the local level by local agencies/departments. Outside WoJ, I'd bet most mundane countermeasures are ad-hoc city or county (possibly tri-county) squads.
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WOJ has it that there is a Special Collections branch of the Library of Congress that is clued in and not to be trifled with. But even odds that the rest of the Govt is unaware of them or their work in any specific way
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No doubt there are supernaturals involved covertly in government positions of various kinds. I've been toying with the idea of the Black Court having a hand in the Vatican. :)
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And we know from CD that Lara has been gaining ground in that sector.
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Yeah, while there's no Masquerade (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Masquerade) in The Dresden Files, the public at large either delude themselves (Because really, vampires and magic? Yeah, right) or if they do have an inkling about the truth, they keep it to themselves and don't talk about it (Because really, who would believe them?).
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And those with the courage to speak up about it tend to get locked up on a psychiatric hold (poor Butters).
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Yeah, while there's no Masquerade (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Masquerade) in The Dresden Files, the public at large either delude themselves (Because really, vampires and magic? Yeah, right) or if they do have an inkling about the truth, they keep it to themselves and don't talk about it (Because really, who would believe them?).
That's the logical point of view, but this then leads to another question which the DFRPG books doesn't cover too much, eg how common are supernatural entities (and their actions)? If you have one wizard and a few vampires/other supernatural beings in a city full of millions of mundanes, no one will notice them, but make that a party of PCs with considerable powers and 20+ supernatural NPCs, it's a different story.
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You're right that's not addressed well in the books at all. I tend to run with whatever feels right at the time.
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Well, in the books the Reds and the Council had some large scale conflicts in major populated areas and nobody noticed in any official way. The Reds were basically running most of South America. Hell, Harry fought hordes of zombies atop a Freaking Dinosaur in the middle of the downtown in the 3rd largest city in the US, leaving corpses, bones and massive property damage behind, and they still managed to find mundane excuses for it all. I tend to think Notice is more or less independent of the size of the encounter.
For any official "Notice" to happen, the person(s) involved would have to be close enough to personally witness it, strong enough to convince themselves they are not crazy, ballsy enough not to duck their heads and avoid further involvement, and then stupid enough to actually advertise. So far the only one in the books that qualifies for all of those is basically just Susan.
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That's the logical point of view, but this then leads to another question which the DFRPG books doesn't cover too much, eg how common are supernatural entities (and their actions)? If you have one wizard and a few vampires/other supernatural beings in a city full of millions of mundanes, no one will notice them, but make that a party of PCs with considerable powers and 20+ supernatural NPCs, it's a different story.
Minor talents are not THAT rare (the Paranet seems to find them in decent numbers... still a very small minority of the population though), but their talents tend not to be very visible/'flashy'. Even somebody like Mort (who's high up on the "below Council level" scale) wouldn't necessarily be obviously 'real' to a non-clued-in person (especially since he was a charlatan for a while). Mort's not flinging fire and force around like Harry. Some are fairly flashy, though, such as the Alphas.
People of faith other than KotC (eg Forthill), changelings who haven't developed obvious Faerie physical features, pre-first-feeding White Court, non-tattooed Red Court Infected, etc. will be indistinguishable from normal people, at least until they display unusual powers.
White-Council-level wizards are about one in a million, Harry (and Molly later) seem to be the only ones permanently based in the Chicago area.
Vampires we don't really know. Judging from Changes the Red Court was probably somewhat more numerous than the WHite Council, likely in the tens of thousands, but
Black Court, they're supposed to be nearly wiped out but Drulinda (from "It's My Birthday Too") was able to find one when she went looking for vampires. I'd guesstimate as rare as wizards or more so... given how powerful they are said to be compared to the other vampire courts, even a few thousand would make them a more significant power than they seem to be in supernatural politics.
White Court, nobody knows, some people on these forums say there are tons and some say probably less than a thousand. I tend to think the latter.
Ghouls seem to be around in the mortal world, available enough for various villains to use them as thugs, but not massively common.
The Little Folk are everywhere but mostly invisible to normals, I think. Other Fae are mostly off in Faerie.
Other supernaturals are also mostly off in the Nevernever.