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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: RonLugge on December 04, 2015, 09:40:06 PM
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I've got some friends who are interested in RPGs, and have been having fun with 5E D&D. Unfortunately, several of them are struggling with the rules-heavy nature of D&D -- and it's simply impossible for me as the DM to remember all the rules of every feature for them. Just too much text.
DFRPG, on the other hand, is much lighter on the rules, and the 'exact text' rarely matters as much except as a clarifier for the basic concept. It's easier to learn, easier to teach, and I think the fudge die approach is much better than a generic D20 roll. Especially with fate points flying around. Character sheets are a lot easier to read and understand, and there's a lot less 'inventory management' hassles.
That said, there is a lot of setting-oriented material to plow through, and I don't want to try and drag them all through it. Most of them will read the actual books, eventually, and I don't want to spoil it for them -- and I'm simply too lazy to repeatedly info dump for some of the others, who will probably need a reminder every single time. So I don't want to use the basic setting.
I went and looked, and as far as I can tell there aren't very many high-fantasy FATE systems currently. (Found a referenence to one, but it was discontinued). So -- as I imagine is obvious by now -- I had the bright idea of hacking DFRPG into a high fantasy system.
I'd love the advice of people more familiar than I am to extend, revise, and improve the basic conversion.
Here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/19anIAFr78gX_Hl3EPr8b5RUFGex9aQFNTdB_JJnfnEw/edit?usp=sharing) is a link to the google doc, please let me know what you think. Thanks in advance.
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Some random bits of feedback:
The race creation rules seem overly complicated. I'd probably drop this entirely and just say:
A race is a template. Some races will have more stuff in that template than others. Exactly what the musts and options are depends on what the table decides is appropriate
For example, a human (presumably) has no powers that they must buy, but also no options for racial powers that they could buy. (Or perhaps you're running a setting where humans occasionally manifest psychic powers! Which could alter the race template quite a bit...)
An elf might also have no musts, but be allowed to buy Echoes of the Beast (with the language provided being a specific fae tongue), Inhuman Speed, and/or some specific sponsored magic. Or for a setting where elves are ancient immortals, they might have musts of Inhuman Recovery (w/ a Cold Iron catch) & Speed, with the potential to buy nearly any power.
There should be some table-wide discussion of whether the "pure mortal" refresh bonus is setting-appropriate. Consider, as an alternative, making mortal stunts cost one refresh per two stunts - that, combined with the ability to make your own stunts that are exactly what your character needs, should put them on par with powers.
There should be some discussion of whether "Lawbreaker" powers are setting-appropriate - and if so, what the Laws of Magic should be for this setting, and whether or not there's anyone around who tries to kill off people who break them, and whether or not such powers should be limited to magic.
And, lastly, there are two specific powers I'd suggest banning: Demonic Co-Pilot and Feeding Dependency. Having seen these in actual play, they both suffer from the flaws of requiring a significant amount of extra dice rolls and bookkeeping, as well as being abusable (especially on spellcasters with high discipline skills, who really don't need any more help). I suggest using aspect invokes / compels in place of either of these powers.
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Thanks for the comments. You've given me some real food for thought.
I hadn't thought it through, but you make a good point that a 'pure mortal' concept may not make sense in this setting. Getting rid of the power difference between stunts and powers might make sense. It's a bit more of a hack than I'm fully comfortable with, but it makes sense -- depending on the table's choice, of course.
As for the banning of the abilities... that goes past just hacking to change the setting and into discussing how to 'fix' issues in DFRPG core. Not that I object to such discussions, but they should be in their own thread, in their own place and time.
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I don't think DFRPG is a good fit for High Fantasy. It's too set in its ways to do Dresden.
You should take a look at Fate Core, it's the latest, sleeker version of Fate. Adding to that, you should take a look at the Fate Toolkit, which gives you a lot of ways to deal with various things like fantasy races, magic, etc. There's also the Fate Freeport Companion, which is regarded as the Fate version of anything to do with classical Fantasy. Even if you don't use everything from it, I think you'll have a better time looking there for inspiration rather than DFRPG.
http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core/
http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-system-toolkit/
http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-freeport-companion/
Since they cost some money, I would get the Freeport companion first, I think that should fit most if not all your needs. The toolkit can be a bit technical. Fate Core is pay what you want.
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Thanks, I'll have to look at those. I knew that my next paycheck was probably going towards Fate Core anyway, but...
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Though I'll also add that I don't want to throw away any of the wonderful, wonderful work that's gone into making Dresden. I love things like weapon values are added to damage, rather than representing a minimum damage. (And the corresponding armor inversion of reducing damage rather than capping it) The way this exaggerates the incoming damage scale compared to what I understand of Fate Core...
You're right that Dresden spends a lot of time *being* Dresden, but a lot of hte rules just plain make sense!
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Fate Core and DFRPG are really very similar. You could port over DFRPG's weapon rules and Power list (minus a few setting-specific Powers) without much trouble.
You'd have to revise spellcasting, though, since Fate Core uses Will instead of Discipline and Conviction. Actually, you might want to use an entirely different casting system. The DFRPG one isn't very D&D-y.
You should also think about how you want to handle magic items. They tend to be more common in D&D-style fantasy than the DFRPG rules assume they will be.
A while back I converted a couple of Pathfinder characters to DFRPG. You might find the results (http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,43164.msg2104946.html#msg2104946) to be worth a look.
EDIT: Healing magic is also a potential sticking point. Do you want to handle injuries Fate-style or D&D-style?
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My basic idea is NOT to port D&D to fate. I want to keep as much of Fate (and Dresden) as I can, while switching to a high-fantasy setting. A lot of the players are relatively new to gaming, and hitting them over the head with a new system will be 'fun' enough without me having to learn it at the same time. I wouldn't even consider it if it weren't for the fact that they can't handle the 5E rules, so I *need* the simpler rules of Dresden to help them along.
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I love things like weapon values are added to damage, rather than representing a minimum damage.
Core doesn't really know weapon ratings per default. There's a number of ways to do them, minimum damage is one of them, but you can transfer weapon ratings as well. I think I've seen a few other ways to do weapons, for example having differently colored dice, blue and red, and you add more red for a deadlier weapon. The number of + on red dice gets added on as damage if you hit. The toolkit offers some more, as does the G+ Fate group, if you're interested, there's already a lot of conversions floating around out there.
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Seriously though: Take a look at Fate Core and the system toolkit. Both are pay what you like and can be adapted to high fantasy pretty well.
The other issue here is you're not describing the setting you'd like to use. If you don't do that, you're going to have problems with people assuming you want D&D in FATE or some other assumptions. Give us the setting, we can help with crunch.
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Seriously though: Take a look at Fate Core and the system toolkit. Both are pay what you like and can be adapted to high fantasy pretty well.
The other issue here is you're not describing the setting you'd like to use. If you don't do that, you're going to have problems with people assuming you want D&D in FATE or some other assumptions. Give us the setting, we can help with crunch.
Definitely going to look at both of those. They're on my to-purchase list as funds allow.
As for the setting... I'm not sure I can get much more descriptive. It's high fantasy. Swords and sorcery. Which -- IMO -- the basic Dresden system seems well set up to handle with only minor tweaks. I *like* the basic flavor of Dresden.
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I think a big issue with Dresden is, in a High Fantasy world, if you allow wizards to walk around casting spells with no draw-back, they could out-shine other characters.
Part of what balances Wizards is they can't get too flashy in many situations, they hex technology and there is Laws that prevent them from killing mortals. (which doesn't much come into play against monsters - so maybe it doesn't matter)
You'll lose a bit of the standard compels that wizards have.
Some may disagree, though.
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Personally, I'm planning to keep the laws in place. And the technology hexing... doesn't come up all that often at my tables. Honestly, hexing tech is more of a compel opportunity for wizards than anything else -- removing it would make them weaker, not stronger. (Or am I missing something?)
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Compels aren't, or at least shouldn't be, a bad thing. So I wouldn't worry about the consequences of removing hexing.
That aside, high fantasy is an incredibly broad category. Arguably broader than everything else put together. So I'm really not sure what you're going for here.
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That aside, high fantasy is an incredibly broad category. Arguably broader than everything else put together. So I'm really not sure what you're going for here.
Because I don't have a single, specific setting in mind.
"Medieval times" type setting, with kingdoms, kings, queens, peasants, merchants, nobles, etc etc. Monsters roaming the land. Heroes to oppose them. Etc etc. It's a very very broad theme. Deliberately.
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Because I don't have a single, specific setting in mind.
"Medieval times" type setting, with kingdoms, kings, queens, peasants, merchants, nobles, etc etc. Monsters roaming the land. Heroes to oppose them. Etc etc. It's a very very broad theme. Deliberately.
Fate works best if you've got something concrete. Out of the box, it works ok, but as soon as you've got something concrete, you can adjust the system to it. Like the DFRPG does for the Dresden Files. All the powers etc. are not part of standard Fate, it's specifically designed to model the Dresden world.
And the same thing applies here. The broader you make your system, the less interesting it will be.
For example, lets take magic. If you say "magic works like this", magic will be like that in every world you want to play with the system. System and world are fairly closely interwoven in Fate, and the way you model things mechanically always has an impact on the reality of the world you play in. Granted, that's true for other systems as well, but the flexibility of Fate allows you to do a lot of different stuff, where other systems are often locked in to their world.
So looking at the DF magic system, it does a few things. It ensures that wizards can be incredibly powerful. It also assures that wizards can't throw out too many spells at once at any given time, because they tire out. If you use the DF system, that will be true for your high fantasy worlds, where it might not always be so.
Alternatively, you could have a world where pretty much everyone can do magic to some degree, or where wizards use magic at every corner, albeit not their most powerful tricks. An archer shooting an arrow would be not much different from a wizard firing a magic missile. A thief picking a lock would not be much different from a wizard hexing it open. So the wizard could simply use guns and burglary (or whichever skills are used for the tasks, Core is a bit different in the skill list), and you're done. He wouldn't be able to do everything, his choice of skills would be the way he specialized on his magic, so that's not an issue either. The only real difference to other characters would be the way you describe the actions. Since he's just as effective as any other character, you don't need a mechanic to limit their spellcasting either. What you could do is give them a mechanic to do more powerful spells and limit that, if you really wanted to.
And there's tons of other ways to do magic. In fact, there's tons of ways to do magic better than DF. All of them based on a different assumption and philosophy on how magic is supposed to work in that particular world.
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Oh, one more thing, Fate Core and the Toolkit are available as an online version here:
http://fate-srd.com/
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- since your setting idea is very broad you could try the world creation together with your players. Fate Core has a good guide on this.
- If you want to play Fate in your own Setting, then DFRPG is a bad game to start with. There are a lot better Fate systems you can use and are available for free. DFRPG moved quite a bit away from the core spirit of Fate
-for high Fantasy I can recommend checking out the Atomic Robo ruleset. It sounds a bit far fetched but it would actually be quite a good fit for high fantasy as well. It's also an improved (imho) version of the fate core rules
- use the fate systems toolkit to decide how magic should work in your world. That's probably going to be the most important decision you have to make upfront.
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If you want to try high fantasy with Dresden, I say go for it. You can always play test and make changes where needed. With regards to your comment in the document that DFRPG isn't suited for dungeon crawls, check out Sanctaphrax's thread called Draconic Dungeons. You might change your mind.
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- since your setting idea is very broad you could try the world creation together with your players. Fate Core has a good guide on this.
- If you want to play Fate in your own Setting, then DFRPG is a bad game to start with. There are a lot better Fate systems you can use and are available for free. DFRPG moved quite a bit away from the core spirit of Fate
-for high Fantasy I can recommend checking out the Atomic Robo ruleset. It sounds a bit far fetched but it would actually be quite a good fit for high fantasy as well. It's also an improved (imho) version of the fate core rules
- use the fate systems toolkit to decide how magic should work in your world. That's probably going to be the most important decision you have to make upfront.
1) That's actually pretty much th eplan.
2) I'll reserve judgement. I *know* the Dresden system best. With a group of veteran players I might be more willing to experiment, but with this group, I need all the rules familiarity I can muster to keep the game on track. They're getting better, but...
3) I'll keep that in my mind.
4) I actually _like_ how Dresden makes it work. High risk, high reward, with a decent measure of resource management. For my table, the extra complexity involved in magic is actually a feature, not a bug. It gives me a 'high work' character type I can give to the most advanced player at my table, while reserving easier characters for everyone else.
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So how is your conversion going? I may try something like this at our twice-annual gaming weekend coming up to teach the group FATE.
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So how is your conversion going? I may try something like this at our twice-annual gaming weekend coming up to teach the group FATE.
Our table had to take a small hiatus due to Christmas + a marriage. We still haven't gotten back into gear to try it.
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Just sat down and started working with it, and discovered a small 'flaw' with inherent flexibility. Instead of adding +3 refresh and setting pure mortal to 3, we've changed it to adding +2 refresh and +4 pure mortal. Otherwise, the 'inherent flexibility' became flatly better for power-based races, with the exception of not having access to mythic abilities.