I'm a FUDGE/FATE newbie ... will I need separate FUDGE rules to play, or is the Dresden Files RPG a complete game in itself?  In other words, when I buy Dresden, will I also need to buy the FUDGE basic rulebook from Grey Ghost?

While DFRPG is a complete game, you can get a better feel for the philosophy for the game by looking at FATE (free download) or Spirit of the Century (a "pulp" RPG from the same company as DFRPG, using a similar system).

Since you termed yourself a "FUDGE/FATE newbie" I would highly suggest you check out this stuff in advance to get a better feel for the game system. FATE isn't quite like other RPGs in that it's more loose than most rules systems. While there are many options, there aren't as many rules as some games and it may take a while for you to get it figured out. Once you do, however, the options are excellent!

As I said, can't beat the price. 

Well, that's not a good thing. Why bother to sell +/- dice if they're not really FUDGE compatible?    It's like some moron said "they're pretty and we don't know what they're used for, but how 'bout if we make them like this instead. Even more pretty..." 

Very pretty! 

I guess FUDGE dice are like other dice in my collection -- at first I'm more interested in quantity and I'm willing to settle for cheap dice, but as time passes I think "hmmm, gotta have those cool colors" and start to invest in the nicer dice. Once I get a set of really nice dice, my players will start to shop for nice ones of their own. When my sister and I go to GenCon she'll start shopping for FUDGE dice that fit her "persona".

They may seem pricey now, but I'm sure I'll own a bunch of 'em soon enough!

Yeah, my local game shop ordered them and get them in pretty quickly.

Keep in mind that there are actually TWO different sets of FUDGE dice that are out there (that I know of, there may be more...)
1. The classic set with blue, black, white, cream, and red.
2. The wild set with purple, pink, orange, green, and yellow.

The second set was particularly important when it came to be time to get my teenage daughter interested. She just *had* to have those hot pink FUDGE dice!

It didn't quite cllick for me the first time, either, but once I went through the rules slowly lline-by-line things fell into place. What I did was to start with the SRD in Word format and start trimming out chunks of things that seemed more "advanced" to see what was more "basic". The rulebook is thick, but parts of it duplicate itself and most of the bulk of the rules are examples.

I thought at first that I had to understand every paragraph in the book, which I found to be pretty intimidating, but then I realized that most of the stuff is just some guidelines. I made up some character cheat-sheets with just the names of the Aspects and Stunts (no explanations) and asked my players what they thought each did; usually we could just go with their concept and everything works out just fine. When in doubt, the rulebook can add extra ideas and such.

Once you realize that there aren't many rules you NEED, the game clicks a lot better. Most of the time I run a game without looking at rules at all, and use the Aspects and Stunts as a skeletal outline for each character. The game just sort of flows from there, with me improvising dice modifiers and such as needed.

Maybe that helps?

DDR has a pretty good explanation, but I thought I'd add my two cents worth.

World of Darkness has a lot of very specific rules which are fairly numbers specific, and part of this is due to the "dice pool" system which encourages handfulls of dice rolled. Most actions are resolved by dice rolls; it's the philosophy of the game system. The more dice you can roll, the better the chance of success.

FATE, and by extension SotC and soon DFRPG gives more guidelines and encourages the storyline more and dice rolls less. You typically roll the same number of dice each time, so your degree of success is more closely tied to your ability and the difficulty of the task being attempted.

While both are fine games, WoD tends to be more rules-heavy IMO and that gives me more of a constricted feeling about games run with their rules. FATE is looser and open to improvisation, which gives me a feeling of potentials and options. Not everyone wants this, however, as it tends to force the GM to be more creative on the fly.

Does that help?

Some good ideas, and the folks at EVIL HAT are a step ahead of you.

The "default" setting for the DFRPG will be Baltimore, so as to not conflict with Jim's pre-existing characters and storyline.

The playtesters are tinkering with guidelines as to how to "Dresdenify" other cities and at this point there are a dozen or more cities other than Chicago or Baltimore being fleshed out by playtesters.