All very good points. And after thinking about it, I think the DFRPG is just too much work for my players. And in a way, I can see it.  Fate points fuel everything and to get more fuel, they have to be clever storytellers ALL THE TIME. So I see them looking over their sheets trying to figure out what to do in a given scene, how to move the story forward, but also incorporate their aspects. This can get tiresome very quickly. If aspects were more of a guide line and flavor than an actual mechanic, I think they would have used it when they thought it appropriate.

It's not the players really. We've played prime time adventures and Dogs in the Vineyard and these guys shine. They're really good at character development. But when a game makes you do it to survive a combat, it seems... annoying.

Am I making sense?

I just got done running The Dresden Files for my group here in Leeds, UK. The game itself, went well. They liked the story and their characters, however the didn't like the mechanics. And seeing them in play, they left a lot to be desired from my stand point. Maybe I was doing something wrong or just not understanding. So here are my main issues and maybe you can point out some things I can do to make this game go smoother.

1) Hard to give the PCs fate points - They use them quickly and it's hard to give them some kind of inconvenience every scene so they can get them back.

2) Having to use fate points to gain bonuses - So one of my characters wants to take cover in a fire fight but he has no fate points to tag the aspect 'crates.' As I understand it, you can't use an aspect unless you have fate points. Seems very counter intuitive.

3) Complicated magic system - anytime the wizard wanted to do something, it took a while. And I have to admit, I often got fuzzy on how if you succeed on a evocation, do you add in the power to the success of the casting? I just felt like it could have been made simpler.

4) Looking up powers - it was tough looking up stats for villains. there was sort of a little cheat box at the bottom, but I had to go to the other book to look up what powers they used. I ended up making my own monster sheets with power descriptions included.

I'm really not trying to start a flame or anything, I just want to try and save this system for my group. they want to ditch it and go with something like primetime adventures or wordplaly. I feel kinda bad thinking I dropped almost $100 bucks for a game I'm gonna play 3 times. Ugh.

The Nevernever is very euro-(if not Anglo)centric as it's described in the books. I was reading up on middle eastern mythology and in some of the reading I found that the djinn have a very similar kind of thing to the fairy courts. In some myths they seem to have another world that they live in that is close to ours and they organize themselves in hierarchal structure, but more tribe based.

Anyone read anything about this? Or know of any good books on the subject?

I listened to the first episode and I didn't get much out of it. The rules for character and city creation were never very confusing to me, but the use of aspects and fate points in the game are what seemed a little blurry and that is what I was looking to hear more of.

Has any of the Evil Hat guys thought of doing little audio demos for their games? I think it would be really cool to hear from the creators of the game to really get a feel of how it's supposed to be done.

What about a mortal character that goes a sort of magical James Bond and has a huge store of magical items, but only uses them as needed?  So he may own -30 worth of items, but doesn't use them all at once. Then as the need arises he picks and chooses the ones he needs for particular missions, never using more than say... -7 worth at a time.

Is that within the rules?

Boy, I just read some of the criticisms of Mother Teresa from Hitchens and I gotta say I'm surprised. Again, don't want to make this thread about religious debate.

As for the Ghoul idea... having an endless supply of dying people would be pretty helpful for a ghoul. And if you want to go really dark with it, Christianity loves it's cannibalism! Catholics (as a church) believe in transubstantiation. That the bread and wine actually becomes the blood and body of Christ! I was brought up with that being just fine, but now when I think about it, it's a very bizarre (and kinda gross) ritual.

I could totally see a religious Ghoul perverting that into a justification for cannibalism. A very interesting idea!

This may be a strange thing to ask, but I would really love to hear so folks playing TDF:RPG! With all the aspects and tagging and Fate Chips being thrown around, I would love to hear how it's intended to be played. I mean, I have an idea, but I don't feel very confident about it.

Nothing really long, just a scene or something.

I would do it myself (I'm the co-host of the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast), but I'm not sure how to play this game. I don't have any conventions going on soon and I live out in Yorkshire, UK!

Seeing (or hearing) examples of scenes being played out would really help!