So I was trying to find a way to effectively organize my thoughts for a very complicated casefile yesterday and I struggled all night to get my notes down. I was not pleased with my scattered thoughts and difficult-to-follow dumps of information.

Today I went looking for other options and stumbled upon a solution that is making me giddy with how easy it is and how much better it is than what I've used before so I just wanted to share with you guys in case it could be useful for you too:

https://www.mindmeister.com/ < It's a Mind-map generating tool. The user interface takes minutes to learn and then you can just build and build and build. I'm building an extremely complex casefile right now and I'm finding that not only does use of this tool allow me to organize my thoughts easily into a visual layout I can use to keep track of everything... It also has helped me think of things/options/notes that I hadn't thought of while just freewriting.

There are premium versions of the service that cost money, but there is a "basic" version (shown in small area beneath the three large options in sign up) that costs nothing but gives limited numbers of maps. It's okay though because you really only need to work on one or two at a time usually as a GM.

You can export the file to a .mind which means you'd be able to reload it into the site any time so you can definitely juggle files to make full use of the 3 slots received with basic.
It has iPhone, iPad and Android apps too so you could access your mind map easily on your phone if that helps during a game.

Anyway, I just hope this is useful to someone else. It's a goddess send for me!

-Arsh

In my city, Birmingham, AL, there are two neutral accorded grounds that aren't bars:

The fountain at Five Points South
The circle of the fountain itself, but there is a lot of uncertainty as to how far past the fountain counts as accorded space and considering the approach is very wide and open, it's not necessarily the safest bet until you get right up to the fountain.

The Botanical Gardens
(maintained by the Summer court, but accorded as neutral space)

Katarn,

Oh wow.. I love how you replied to this. Itemization is such a wonderful thing for long posts! I wish I had made it a little more clear however that Tamara Raith is an NPC and... Let me reply to you as such. (I see I mentioned that she is my main NPC in the first post, but it's not really mentioned again in the latter post! Sorry!)

I like it when people create their own Denarian.  If you're canon-happy like me, you can easily have this Denarian be an unnamed one Nico uses if he gets away, or one of the ones the Church captures, depending on your timeframe.  They are the perfect, dangerous, merciless EVIL you can inflict.  There's not usually a redeemable quality (aside from perhaps the mortal inside).  Also, your statting of Malachi/Mashael is well-done; it's unique but balanced (I might've statted it a little higher as a Denarian, since -12 comparable to Harry around DM or so.)

The characters are only -8 at this point. It was a matter of creating something with a limit such that I could know I wasn't going to walk in and CRUSH them if he encountered them directly. At the same time, I wanted to be able to USE his powers and make it feel very POWERFUL but not such that they couldn't actually contest him. The story elements were given very thoroughly so they could KNOW that he was not a THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD host. Mashael's coin had been last recorded with the church around 60 years ago and after that it'd gone missing. So they could presume that there was no way Malachi had had his coin for more than 60 years. He was a youngish host. This explained his being not too immensely over-powered, but he was still a VERY deadly threat with a Demon backing him. My players reacted well to this. Charles (his player is so hilarious when a big situation comes home... He looked at me out of character and said emphatically "ARE YOU CRAZY? Oh... we are so screwed..." which was hilarious because one of the players (Kitty's player) has never read the books... so she has no idea what a Denarian really *is*. It all got very funny watching the reactions to my throwing something that bad at them.) Charles was the only one that really could tell them anything about what the Denarian was as he was the Wizard and the most supernaturally experienced of the party. They asked him what it meant/what they could do and he was more or less like "What can we DO? ... Kiss our ass goodbye?" and freaked out for at least ten minutes before getting it together and making a gameplan. He was so funny.

As for Malachi/Mashael... I had a few interesting thoughts there. One important thing is that essentially... Because Mashael was of the specific concept "SOUL EATER" I had imagined her (the demon is female) to be able to potentially grab more than one host due to this unique nature (and do to that alone) making her a little unique in that respect amid the Denarians we know of. As such, in my mind, Malachi, when he escaped, essentially is still out there doing her work. He just passed the coin to Charles. On the other hand, Malachi is corrupt enough as an individual now that Mashael doesn't really NEED to keep constant contact with him. He gladly accepted his bargains with her by now.

Onto gameplay itself:
*Dynamic character development (such as Rain and her Mafia dad) makes for a great game.  It's rare PCs do this (of the dozen-or-so DnD characters I've played, perhaps 2 or 3 had it- and only one of my DFRPG characters did, and that was with DM help).

My players are wonderful. I've been playing with this group since highschool for the most part. They are really good roleplayers above everything. Which is great, because I personally have a "Roleplay first" attitude at the gaming table.  Rain is a teenage boy (all the pcs' vague descriptions are way up at the top post. Sorry I should have reiterated them! I'm going to post all their aspects soon hehe) and a coyote-were. Rain's development with his Mafia dad has been a joy to all involved. (Ashes' player is actually mainly roleplaying Rain's dad and his best friend Jason for me because Ashes more or less created both of those NPCs in a game we played a couple years ago where Rain's player first played Rain... essentially, she reused Rain as a character, but he was adapted into Dresden world fun and we've all really enjoyed his reappearance.) All of my party are definitely undergoing Dynamic character development. My group loves this sort of thing exactly.

*I'm "glad" to see a character get TAKEN OUT when appropriate- in most games, it's hard to get PCs to concede this, no matter what circumstance arises.

Do you want to know I honestly forgot the Extreme consequence at all? *laugh* because I've never had an opportunity to use it before... lol will talk with Ashes' player about that and see what we decide.

It's a question of how realistic you want your game to be. Since Ashes is a BCV you could conceivably survive (albeit CRUSHED- is that a severe or extreme consequence?) without much suspension of disbelief.

I want my game to be... not "realistic" necessarily because it's a supernatural setting.. but I do want it to FEEL REAL in that there is REAL danger and thus the threats involved can not be ignored. This was honestly excellent that something this extreme happened because my players now have NO DOUBT that I WILL take them out if they do something that justifies it such. They won't forget that. Trust me. And it's good because it makes the world's threats more real to them.  Ashes did survive obviously, and I imagine she'll be cracking bones in and out of place for the next story arch, not to mention that enemies WILL tag her consequences repeatedly.

*I like the concept of Soul Points.

Thank you. I did too. As a way to handle that specific thing. I've used this before in several kinds of games actually just usually it equates to more of a "me keeping track of how many <insert name of power source> here the villain has so I can determine how many mean little tricks he has up his sleeve" essentially. He did this more or less to do something that was beyond his sheet's capacity but definitely not beyond his Demon's capacity.

*Be careful with PC kidnapping- make sure the player still has something to do (in this case, she could've been offered the coin again)

As per the above, I didn't kidnap a PC. She was an NPC. But I have already kidnapped an NPC during this game. Kitty got kidnapped second session by a Red court vampire that was lackying under Malachi so he could try to get the information out of her of where Tamara laired. Kitty being a fey changeling had not  yet really accepted that she was a fey changeling or that the supernatural stuff wasn't just her going crazy... So it ended up being really interesting. She wasn't bored! She got to have a few special scenes just with her in them because the Red Court Vampire tried to intimidate her into talking and she (made me so very freaking happy as a Gm because her player is brand new to the setting and to the system and she SUCCESSFULLY employed the social attacking rules without needing to be prompted to go that route!!) socially took the RCV out. Malachi entered the scene directly at that point and he didn't play around at all. He used a cold iron chain and dragged it around her face while demanding answers. When none were forthcoming he just signed and dropped the chain on her face and began to make his get away (since the party had arrived by then and were just outside his door fighting the RCV guards he'd left). Kitty did really great then and guessed an aspect of "Sadistic" on him, handed me a fate point and tagged it and social challenged him, playing up her pain to get him to stay and watch. She kept him distracted long enough that Charles entered the room (via his own magically burned in doorway -_- lol) before Malachi managed to get away and so Kitty wasn't the only one who got a look at him or a chance to Assess on him. Clever girl.

*More good roleplaying on Charles's part (and actual giving a player a Coin is always convolutedly fun   )

Charles' player is like that. I adore him at my table. He can be difficult because he tends to take my plot and completely run away from it sometimes (in any game I run... he completely destroyed one game of mine because he just RAN from what I was trying to lead the party toward over and over until I ran out of justifications to get them to their next scenario enough times I had no idea what I was doing anymore. lol! But it was just him being his character. He's just GOOD at it.) And yes... I'm going to have fun with this. I spent the rest of the session writing little notes of what Mashael said to him in his head... it was fun. And got a lot of reaction from the player. (I know he personally really enjoyed Lasciel as a story element, so I know he's going to enjoy having a demoness of his own if I play it right)

*Ashes: see, good roleplaying.  I like Lori's backstory as well.

Ashes is played by my mate. She's an absolutely fantastic roleplayer and the best story-teller I've ever known.  Lori's backstory was my work... something I surprised Ashes' player with completely after the first story arch (one played around May last year in which Lori had been kidnapped by a creature that was helping some BCVs to fuel their magic and it was then that Lori had been able to tell Ashes about her history because Ashes had become a BCV... and they obviously had to chat it out about their true natures if they were going to last. Lori was a model and that was what Ashes really knew about her. Why she was that gorgeous made a little more sense of course hearing her bloodline... I also just really liked having a WCV-Virgin that had managed to "escape" due to true love. It was what Ashes felt that saved her and I had a really powerful character dynamic to play with. Of course people wouldn't leave the PC's girlfriend alone. Ashes is going to learn the hard way about Spiderman Syndrome, I'm afraid...

*Did Charles take the coin? I'm a little confused.

Yes. He did. Malachi slapped the coin to his flesh to force an encounter with Mashael and in his mind, speaking to her, he accepted her bargain of HIM for Tamara. She gave Tamara back (as per them finding her in her car) but not until she was done with her... since Charles failed to bargain that aspect. :3 I'm evil, I know.

*Discipline Checks ftw   I've totally done this in DnD and sometimes DFPRG.

Oh me too... me too. I love Discipline checks. In fact it was hilarious in this game when Kitty (fey changeling with Leanansidhe heritage who is a Dj and lounge singer... Incites "Inspiration") was playing at Tamara's club (Abyss) and Charles came in looking for them and failed his Discipline check to start dancing. He was SO stiffly tapping his foot across the room and going "Why is this music so .. catchy..." (lol because he's just kinda stiff like that)

*Is there a love triangle? I couldn't follow who satisfied Tamara's "True Love" Catch.

Kinda. Yes. Ashes has a girlfriend, Lori. Her love for Lori was proven "True" by her self-sacrificing act at Sloss in which she severely risked her own destruction to save Lori. Ashes has really liked Tamara since they met tho, and Tamara *wanted* Ashes. So while nothing's really ever happened between them (because Ashes hasn't really had the nerve to talk to Lori about it even tho she thinks Lori would be okay with her having a friend with benefits) Tamara and Ashes have an emotional attachment if nothing else. Ashes satisfied Tamara's catch because of the EXTREME show of her love for Lori that she'd just had a few days previously. (I'm honestly playing with the dynamic of that in my game. Since Ashes isn't a human or even a living creature technically, I'm not sure she can really BE a satisfying point for the catch. But in the past, I'd played it as... any time her mind was really on Lori or her emotions were flared, she couldn't touch Tamara without burning her a little.) So this just makes things interesting. (Doesn't hurt that Ashes is my mate so I can play some more "close relationships" with her like that without worrying about crossing lines. )

For the future:
*I like this disowning family- it can be fun and changes character dynamic.

I'm just trying to decide how far they'll take it. WC tends to like to control their own. And Tamara's Trouble is Caged Bird. I dunno.

*Decide how connected your villains are- do any WCVs have connections to the Denarian.  If so, how?

Good point... and will need some consideration. Thank you!

*Careful with jail- some things (like mass murder) don't get ANY bail, or an astronomical one.  Innonce-proving is probably more operable (if you go this route, find something for the PC in prison to do meanwhile- visit from the Denarian again? depends on the coin's status, or if the Denarian is trying to feed....)

Yeah that's part of why I made sure to get this post out here. I honestly don't know enough about the judicial system to confidently say what would happen (and my pcs are good for stopping me and saying "Well... actually this is the reality." So that I can go "Okay we'll go with that" or "Okay intentional inaccuracy!" which I love ...) but I don't want to base a scenario that won't work at all. I totally expect them to end up having to break her out of jail in the end and that being just... great -_- because she'll have to do a lot to avoid the windfall from that.  And since Tamara is an NPC I don't have to worry about her having something to do. It's all good!

*Raiths vary person to person.  Overarching, I'd say- Scheming. Predatory. Cat's Paws. Familial (to a point).  Lara is the epitome of Raiths, in my opinion.

Yeah I know this, but I'm just trying to decide if she COULD justify disowning Tamara completely. Because Leandra would probably use this particular instance of "disgrace" as a justification for that. I just have to think of how that will affect the NPC's Trouble aspect as well. She's not a Caged Bird if the family opens the Cage and says screwoff. Yknow? At the same time, a disowning would be kinda interesting as Tamara has still lead a semi-sheltered existence and is used to throwing money around like it was nothing... etc. Could make some interesting scenes as she copes with that her friends undoubtedly help her.

In short, roleplaying seems to be your strongest point; play and pander to that.  Keep up the good work.

I have the fortune of a group who consider a session excellent if all we do is character interaction that doesn't get broken up too much. They like roleplaying above everything and are enjoying the system pretty well so far in that it allows for a lot of skipping over ROLLplay (like ... you have a 4 Athletics? No, don't bother rolling to make that jump. It's not that hard.) etc. They are great as a group. I'll try  to sit down and post all the PCs aspects later!

I AM glad someone is enjoying reading this. I like keeping a thread that tells a story.. its just hard to make the time to fully update it. lol I'll do my best to edit the original post and add in what happened early in the game at some point.

And thanks again for your reply. Helped me think some things out.

So my last week was interesting. The players ended up recognizing Malik as a Denarian (one character has a really good alertness and remembered the coin which he had a habit of flipping over his knuckles). They put their heads together and the Wizard was able to research the coin to find it was Mashael's. Everyone was put on alert, but unfortunately, the BCV (Ashes) forgot one angle that could be used against her and soon got a call from her girlfriend, Lori, who had been nabbed by Malik who then told Ashes that he would kill Lori outright if she didn't show up at Sloss and bring Tamara to trade with him. He effectively used a mental attack against Ashes to terrify her and Tamara agreed to go with Ashes to help her get Lori back.

The rest of the party decided to follow and try to jump him after Lori was to safety and Rain ended up bringing in some major backup by asking his father, Mitchel Garabaldi, (who is the head of the local Mafia presence) for help. Garabaldi brought a nice slew of armed men to help in the fight and Rain got to see a side of his dad he's never seen before (making for some really amazing roleplaying!).

Malik did NOT play around. He had Lori strung up between two smokestacks about 80 feet up when they arrived. Ashes and Tamara were stopped dead by his threat to kill her before they could get to her (he was on a high water-tower calling down to them). He hit Ashes with a powerful Incite Fear (using that Potent/lasting and ranged) and ended up giving her a Severe Panicked consequence and a mild afraid. To help Ashes keep it together, Tamara assured her it'd be okay and started to climb the water tower as per Malik's demands. By the time she got mid-way up the calvary rolled in and the rest of the team began to pin Malik down (with gunfire and magic) and Charles (The Wizard) cast an earth spell to catapult Ashes into the air toward Lori. Ashes made her Athletics and caught one of the upper ropes and began to cut Lori free. Unfortunately in her terror, she forgot a few intelligent things she could have done and rather than say... swinging to the nearest tower with the last rope still intact, or side-stepping into the Nevernever (which she could do here due to the presence of a Thin Veil and lots of Death) (which she later KICKED HERSELF both in character and out of character for forgetting...) She decided instantly to just drop to the ground and using her great strength, throw Lori into the air just before impact so Lori would break velocity and only fall about 10 feet. Ashes did this without really even thinking about having recently become undead and the fact that she wouldn't be killed even if taken out. She was afraid but didn't care. She wanted to save Lori and was willing to sacrifice anything for it.

So Ashes tossed Lori into the air before impact and then hit the ground with 80 feet of falling damage and was TAKEN OUT. She was CRUSHED and Crumpled.
This had a great impact on the other characters as most of the party became instantly concerned with Ashes and yelled for her/ screamed, and made endurance checks in some cases not to vomit. (a splatted body is not pretty )

Meanwhile, Malik appeared to attempt to touch Tamara with the coin. The party reacted by trying to cause him to drop it, and he had to concentrate on not falling off the ladder/dropping the coin for a while. Tamara got to the ground and he fought for a moment, shocking some of the party members with some mental damage before enough of his stress tracks were taken out that he ended up deciding to bail before anyone could call in all those consequences and really hurt him. This was after he burned up a Soul that he pulled out of his pocket to soak some damage from them. (Everyone was like OMG THAT BASTARD! This had a great effect on the characters realizing that he was feeding a soul to the demon.) (which btw, I handled by giving him a separate pool of points "Soul Points" aside from his fate points that he'd gotten by corrupting people enough he could steal their soul for Mashael and then he held onto them to use to coax Mashael to give him extra power. It worked well and helped me limit how much aid Mashael threw into the fight.) At this point, Malik grabbed Tamara and vanished into thin air and everyone was surprised and didn't know what to do for a moment until Charles pointed out he probably sidestepped into the Nevernever and began the ritual to tear open a rift to follow. Kitty and Rain (with his companion, Jason) decided to go with Charles after Garabaldi agreed to take Lori and Ashes to his home to take care of them.

Once in the Nevernever, the party began to go careful down a long cavern corridor (after the Wizard schooled the two supernatural newbs on the Nevernever and its dangers). As soon as the other two began down the path ahead of him, the wizard suddenly felt someone grab his arm from behind with a cool metallic touch in the center. He found himself suddenly in an area of blackness (this scene was carried out away from the rest of the players). A voice began to speak to him and offer him a way out of the situation he was in. He knew immediately who was speaking to him. He addressed Mashael and discussed her deal with him. He asked her to give Tamara back to them. She offered to trade him Tamara... for himself.  He agreed without hesitation. She seemed surprised and he explained to her "She is my friend." (An interesting turn of attitude from Charles who usually seems more detached to the party but who has the aspect  "Responsibility is a Bitch". heh) He then demanded the condition that the Demon return his friends safely back to the real world and that Tamara be returned unharmed.  I gave his player 3 fate points for good roleplaying and for what felt a fair trade for him accepting the coin combined. Charles then gained a stress track for fighting the Demon's will and wrote an aspect for her coin.

So Charles snaps out of it and the other three have realized he kinda just stopped in mid-stride... they start asking questions and he blows it off easily, saying he realized they should handle this another day. After some suspicion from his friends, he begins a ritual to open the portal back to the material world and they argue over it until suddenly the floor falls out from beneath them and they fall through darkness and land in a garden. They are now in an outlying town north of Birmingham. They realize this and start hiking back toward town when a friend of Kitty's from college just "happens" to drive by and offer them a ride (Denarian keeping her promise btw). They end up back in Bham. At this point they get to find out that they've been gone for 3 days.

Meanwhile, in Garabaldi's house, Ashes slowly came back together. Lori has been mentally traumatized and has been kinda unresponsive and afraid for Ashes. Ashes woke up late on Day 2 and was still very hurt. I let the player transfer the Severe "Panicked" consequence to a severe "Broken" physical consequence because the player felt she really couldn't play Ashes as Panicked for a whole story arch (it just wouldn't fit the character. I fully understood this... and she deserved a severe Physical just as badly. She swapped her moderate for a mental "Disgusted with self" and moved to severe "broken") She spent a little time assuring her girlfriend and trying to make her feel better about things (then accidentally started popping bones back in place and scared/nauseated her human girlfriend very badly) (Lori is "in the know" btw. She was a White Court Virgin and was "Saved" from her vampirism by Ashes who she found love with. She has since been through some really bad things tho and had not wanted to have anything more to do with the supernatural stuff if she could avoid it...she's got some mental scars, I should say). At a point, Ashes ended up deciding to go look for Tamara. She left and went to Sloss first to regain Tamara's vehicle... and found Tamara sitting in her car all snuggly and out of it. (Read: Drugged to hell and back with Ecstacy). Surprised, but glad to find Tamara, Ashes drove her back to Garabaldi's place while Tamara just kinda happily spaced and cooed at her. After getting Garabaldi to help Tamara get into the house, Ashes sat down with her (Tamara and Ashes are like best friends) and tried to talk to her about what happened (but Tamara was too drugged and just kept giggling and trying to snuggle Ashes' thigh). Garabaldi got a call meanwhile from some of his informants and ended up taking Ashes aside and letting her know that while Tamara was missing there had been a report of a mass murder at a local night-club, at least two dozen dead of unknown causes. Ashes figures Tamara was used to lure a crowd in for the Denarian to eat their souls. She checks Tamara terrifiedly to make sure she doesn't have the coin... which she didn't.

So Day3, the rest of the party finally makes it back to Garabaldi's house and have decided (mainly Charles, but..) to check Ashes and Tamara for the coin.
(Since Garabaldi told Charles over the phone about all they'd found out and that Ashes had checked Tamara for the coin)

Charles' thinking was "If Tamara had the coin and Ashes had been the only one there when she looked for it, if the Demon wanted, she could make Ashes forget she'd found it. Or worse, Ashes could have it and then they'd have a BCV with a Denarian riding along." So they could take NO chances.

Charles had the group plus Garabaldi help him arrange a very thorough search of first Ashes then Tamara. This got interesting. (I love my players so very much. Their roleplaying is so thorough.)
Since it was day-time and Ashes was in an interior hall hiding from the sun under a blanket, Charles had Garabaldi get some of his men to grab a couple of large mirrors and stand so they could, at a moment's notice, turn them to throw sunlight on Ashes. Charles then took the blanket off Ashes who was very out of it because of it being daytime and explained what he was doing and why and was VERY apologetic toward her. He had Rain hold up a blanket to give her some privacy and made her strip. Then Kitty was instructed to give Ashes a thorough search (they went for cavity searches and everything. My players must think I'm really mean. lol I just thought it was a little funny that they were afraid that the Denarian might have made Ashes shove the coin up her ass or something to hide it... that's pretty hilarious honestly. I'm glad I have them at least on edge enough that they think nothing is sacred!)

So after Ashes turned up clean, she was allowed to redress and Charles informed her that SHE would be searching Tamara since Tamara and her were friends and since Tamara can't eat Ashes (She has no life force, so I've long since ruled that White court get nothing off her. Can still seduce her, but she's not as tempting to  try to eat. She's empty more or less.)

So the hall empties into the bedroom where Tamara is laying on the bed all comfy and snuggly and drugged... And Ashes tries to explain to her what she's doing, but it's useless. So she just asks Tamara to take her clothes off (And Tamara's been kinda gently "after" Ashes for a while now so she's like 'OKAY!') and starts shrugging out of her clothes readily. All the guys in the room plus Kitty start getting rather ..uh.. interested. (Discipline checks are made!)

Kitty shakes out Tamara's clothes and finds no coin. So Ashes looks Tamara over.. and since there's no external hiding places... she decides to be direct and just go ahead and check out Tamara's cavities.
So when Ashes touches her, Tamara screams in pain and recoils. Ashes pulls her hand back and sees there is some burning going on where she touched Tamara. (This is where the player realizes I've ruled her as having True Love since she was readily willing to sacrifice herself for her girlfriend and basically traded her life for her as far as she knew.)

Everyone is kinda 'Oooww..." and Garabaldi gets Ashes some gloves so she can finish the job. (Why the characters didn't think of gloves for this to begin with is beyond me... but...) So They find no coin and Tamara curls up on the bed and cries a bit. Charles throws a blanket over her and apologizes. She lays there all whimpery and the party tries to discus what this means... Then they start to talk about getting some rest. Tamara, still drugged and very out of it purrs "You could just sleep here with meeee..." (completely not like her. She's the rebel white court who tries not to ever ever burden her friends with seduction... but remember, Ecstacy.. and she's very out of it now.) All the people start making Discipline checks. Ashes makes hers. Kitty barely meets it. Charles, Rain and Jason (Rain's companion, another were-coyote) fail it. Jason failed it VERY BADLY (like a - - - - roll lol) So basically Rain and Charles both take a few steps toward her and Rain's all "She's talking to me.... *GRIN*" and then Jason snaps the two of them out of it by more or less attempting to DIVE onto Tamara (and does some amazing athletics check to not be caught by his friends who are trying to stop him. He ended up shiting to Coyote form, bounding between them, bounding off the wall and sshifting back to (naked) human form to try to jump into bed with Tamara. They managed to grab him at the last minute (I think someone spent a fate point actually lol) and they literally teamed up and drug him out of the room (to much yelling) and then all the men just kinda stayed outside. Kitty backed out looking a bit edgy and ... finally Ashes and Tamara were left alone in the room. Garabaldi (who'd been smart enough to not go in the room in the first place) then locked the door and slid the key under it. lol

Now all the uncomfortable guys decided to go separate ways and ruminate on the possibilities and get some rest.

Charles goes home, Rain and Jason get a handle on themselves and go to Rain's room to chill, and Kitty leaves to check on her work and go get some rest.

This is where I left them last time.

Ashes had a conversation with Lori later and Lori agreed to see a supernatural therapist to help her with her mental scars which are getting worse.
Then Ashes talked with Tamara after she "sobered up" so to speak... and Tamara and Ashes were both kinda upset to find they couldn't touch anymore. (Still working on some story ideas around this since Tamara wants Ashes lol Also because I have some ideas for what Ashes might be... as in she's not necessarily what she thinks she is.)

What my players liked about this was the roleplaying-heavy environment, the mystery and the fact that it didn't just open, roll, and then close. They don't know what the Denarian wanted. They don't understand her plans. And they didn't catch the bad guy. He got away. (That's what they all know as a group. of course, Charles has some other problems... but he hasn't had a chance to really chat with Mashael yet.)

So some really interesting things are possible in the future...
But all that aside... next going to post my idea for next plot.

I've seen someone talk about using a new stress track for having a demon in your head. Likely run it off of Discipline since its a mental defense. 

And maybe I'm just forgetting something but I don't see that giving up the coin would = giving up all her own original magic. Just what she gained from the Demon.

Thanks guys. Is what I figured.
I just wanted to make sure there wasn't some reason obvious to more seasoned DFRPGers that I was missing.

Long story short, I have a couple PCs with Hunger tracks and the question just came up:

If I up my Discipline to 5 do I get an additional Mild "Hunger consequence" as well?

I know they get hunger stress track based on the same rules for all the other stress tracks, so my answer would be yes.
But I would appreciate any rules clarifications.


Thank you!


Arsh

Wow! I just left this little question here and what a response! I really appreciate all the thoughts posted.
Fairly enough, I should say that in my case currently this pertains to the Scion conversion I posted about previously as that's the game I'm running right now that needed help using shields properly, BUT I'm going to be running another game out of DFRPG soon and I wanted to make sure I knew how to work shields for that game because I have a player I just know is going to want to use them.

Crusher_bob seems to have pretty much laid it out simply as possible.

From what I know of historical warfare, the shield stopped being carried on the battlefield with the advent of plate harness (i.e. full plate armor).  Instead of a single handed weapon and a shield, people instead started to go for two handed weapons that could damage someone in full harness.

So, a rules space to look at would be:

Someone in plate harness (armor: 2) and wielding a pole axe (weapon: 3) has an advantage over

Someone in plate harness (armor: 2) with a sword (weapon: 2) and a shield (does whatever).

But someone in mail armor (armor: 1) would prefer a sword and shield over a 2 handed weapon.

As grainy as the rules are, lets see if they allow anything to fit into this space...

--------

Option 1:
The shield provides +1 armor.

That gives the 2h, plate guy weapon 3, armor 2; and the S&S, plate guy Weapon 2, armor 3.

This makes them even vs each other, they both have a net weapon vs armor advantage of 0.  So, not so bad

Now, how about the mail armored guys?
2h, mail guy has armor 1, weapon 3 and S&S guy has armor 2, weapon 2. So the trade offs remain the same.

This produces a simple rules space where the trade offs are simple, but doesn't produce any 'bad' results.

-----------

The only problem with this is not really in the way it works, but in the way it works in the circumstance in which I was using it. Essentially, the character using a shield was Tora, the daughter of Thor. She's already ... really tough... and obviously trained in weaponry. So making her even harder to do damage to... well it wasn't really working out as a +1 to armor so we sought out other options. (She has armor 2 from Supernatural Toughness and wears 1 armor rating clothing that were made for her by a friend.) Giving her a total of 4 armor really seemed too powerful since she was already hard to hit in the first place and now almost no damage was being dealt and even really powerful enemies couldn't land any damage off her track to a consequence. She faced some really nasty opponents and was all on her stress track as she killed them.

Option 2
Shield adds +1 to the defensive skill

This option makes the shield a much more attractive option because the shield is effectively 1 armor, in addition, it reduces the number of hits you take, so it's always better the trading up to weapon: 3.  Not a great choice.

------------

When we did it this way, it made her even harder to hit and reduced the damage because of less overflow in the attack. My mate really felt this way was too powerful and so did I so we just stopped using the shield at that point, setting it aside until we knew what to do with it (and I made this thread). (Lesser foes REALLY had a hard time with her, whereas otherwise they could at least knick at her.)

This could really just be an issue so much because the character in question is already so, so tough, BUT... This is exactly the reason we need to know what is balanced/fair and what is RAW.

What stops a Supernatural Toughness character from wearing thick armor and a shield and being utterly impossible to hurt?
There are no penalties for wearing armor, no penalties for wielding a shield...

I understand the in-game reasons. Assume that the in-game reasons have already been made reasonable in the setting and think about the question as such.

In this setting, yes, it is weird for someone to walk around with a shield, but much as Michael carries his sword around in a duffel bag, there ARE ways to disguise what one is carrying. PLUS there's a big difference between trying to walk into an airport with a sword and board and whipping out a shield from a pick-up truck as one is entering a hidden compound that's full of Giants and Titanspawn. As long as she gives it a look around and is sure that there aren't any cops etc nearby  when she gets out, she won't get questioned again for the scene in all likelihood. And Tora? Being the kind of person she is? If she got stopped by a cop and asked why she's wielding a shield and a big hammer, she'd honestly just tell them she was defending her friends and probably make a social attack on them (Which, her Presence ain't shoddy!) to talk them into leaving her be. She's done it before successfully. If she ever got to a point of needing to be "taken in" because a cop saw her with her weapons and thought she needed to be looked into, she'd honestly probably end up knocking them out and getting away from the scene. 

I dunno. I'm just saying that she gets around the weirdness. Our setting is a bit different so that it makes sense. Yes, Tora has ended up on the news and yes she's had to deal with the consequences of becoming temporarily very wanted in an area because she killed someone (that the mortals can't possibly know was actually a monster trying to eat them) and yes, she and her friends have had to deal with some serious consequences as a result of her really just not hiding her armor and shield and weapons at certain times.

But at this point I think I'm going to end up rolling with...
that the shield is just a part of her overall "armor". Her armor isn't full plate to begin with. It's usually something like a kevlar shirt or a small plate "sports bra" type breastplate made of molded, reactive armor. The point being that her style isn't full-cover armor. So the shield could really just be flavor, a part of her 1 armor rating from the protective gear she wears. And I'd be happy enough with that. Maybe if she went full defense, she could get an extra armor or defense out of it.
Her shield, for the record, is a mechanical shield that extends and detracts to go from a buckler/small shield size to a medium shield size. (Think of the awesome shields in Gears of War 2. Similar in concept if not in style.)

And yes, shields can be broken. >:3

I definitely wouldn't make shield use a stunt though. Just to me, that seems kinda like too much cost for something that just anyone could pick up and it'd at least help.


Also for the historical viewpoint: You DO NOT straight-up BLOCK attacks with your shield. If it's a blow from any heavy weapon (axe, hammer, etc) you will BREAK your arm that way. Shields are used to parry/deflect blows aside to keep your arm from taking the shock.
Those speaking from the point of view of having faced shield-bearing opponents in a larp, it's kinda a bit different when the weapons are all made of foam and latex. People CAN and DO hide behind a shield and just let blows fall on it an d be untouchable (my mate has a shield and uses it sometimes and maaaaaan does it suck to fight the shield) but in all realism (for the sake of re-creating the effect in a game when the shield isn't blocking boffers) you can not ever assume that just hiding behind a shield is going to save the wielder trauma. It might even get them hurt. They have to parry the blows with it. That's why armor is a pretty appropriate representation.
For example, an Amazon was being attacked by a thrall with a shotgun. She used a shield to block some of the blast and took damage past the shield (armor 1, reduced the damage but she still took some stress). Very appropriate. The shield just causing the attack to miss her (like if it added to defense rating) would not represent that as well to me.


Okay... I think I know how I'm going to handle this for my game currently. I'm glad it could open such a nice discussion though. Thank you to everyone! I really appreciate all the input.