Ok, so I managed to get my books and I've been poring over them for the last two days absorbing all that I can from them.  In the sections on magic, it states that they didn't put in separate blurbs about pyromancy or kinetomancy in the thaumaturgy areas because those are normally expressed through evocation.  I'm honestly surprised Harry or Bob didn't speak up in the margins on this one, since I can think of a number of ways to use thamarurgy with pyromancy for heavy effect right off the top of my head.  Say for instance you're going up against a scourge of blampires, you know where their nest is and you know they have no hostages.  Instead of fighting them direct, a wizard could conceivably just gather up some samples of their dwelling and use those to link to the real thing in much the way Harry used a single sprinkler head to link to every sprinkler head in the train station during Small Favor.  In other words, firebombing the place without the need to be anywhere near it when the place goes up.

So my question, going off the book would it be more acceptable to be capable of something like that if you had fire as one of the elements you're specialized in concerning evocation?  Does what you take with one affect what you can be good at with the other?

WCV seem to draw all of their power from within, from the Hunger, rather than without.  It's mentioned in some books that just trapping beings dependent on ectoplasm to form a body will lose cohesion and fall apart if you put a circle up around them.  So yeah, even if a specialized circle like MacFinn's in play and make it work I am guessing there will just be a pissed off WCV, fully powered, waiting inside.

I was thinking, with the somewhat fluid rules of spellcasting in play would there be a way to rig up a circle that actively drains the power from the target inside, in addition to trapping external power away from them?  That seems like it would be more effective, excepting that if you left them inside too long the Hunger would drive them into a mad feeding frenzy.

From my understanding of things, a threshold is not needed for a ward, it's just needed to make wards with stronger attributes/any sort of longevity.  See Proven Guilty where Harry is limited to a detection web at the convention.  Or his amazement at Elaine's wards (which are permeable to the living but not to smoke) in White Knight, specifically because she lacked a threshold to anchor them to/build on.

I don't have nearly enough grasp of the game rules and mechanics to answer the initial question with certainty or in the correct terms.  ... But, going by Harry's extensively powerful wards (both the offensive ones and the full on lock-down ward used in Death Masks) built on/anchored to his relatively puny threshold, I'd guess the strength of the threshold has little or no effect.  The presence of any threshold will allow the wizard more options for the ward and longevity once completed, and from there it is entirely dependent on the level of power/skill/imagination of the caster as to how it turns out.

Yo, sorry to everyone who responded that I didn't shoot a reply back sooner.  I was out and about most of the day.  I am annoyed to report that I could not get my stuff today as planned, as apparently no one in my area sells any form of tabletop game materials except D&D.  So, looks like its gonna have to be the internet to the rescue... except I live on cash, with no credit cards/bank accounts at present.  So yeah, might take me a bit longer to get into this than I'd hoped.  I'll just have to be patient... again.

Ok, not gonna bother to "@so-and-so" as I respond to more specific in the thread atm, you all know who you are I'm sure.  I do apologize for not being more specific in asking about the ways of the tabletop game.  When I said "noob" in reference to myself, I meant it.  I literally do not even know where to begin asking.  Did not mean to make anyone think I literally wanted them to tell me everything all at once.  That'd be a tall order indeed.  But, matters of learning the game can somewhat be put on the back burner for now since I have no game to learn.  In the meantime I may look into the suggestions about looking into the SRD of some other Fate based game and the bits of Your Story on Google to at least get some concepts of the mechanics. 

In searching for a place that sells DFRPG, I did come across a gaming shop/meeting place.  They don't carry this game, but still might be worth looking into.  The Dresden Files are awesome enough I can easily see getting someone interested even if they'd never heard of it before.  Aside from that possibility though RL is pretty much out of the question, since I have virtually no social contacts outside of the internet at present.  Still, I am sure I could find a good play by post as suggested, or seduce some of my online friends into the ways of Dresden and get a game going with them with OpenRPG/skype or play by post.  That, even more than learning the mechanics, will have to wait till I can actually play the game of course.

Thanks for the responses guys.   

Hello to the forum! 

As the thread title might inform you, I'm totally new at this.  Never played a tabletop game of any sort, but I've been hungry for some Dresden Files RPG ever since I heard about it being in development ages ago.  The Dresden Files being one of my favorite things ever has a lot to do with it.

There are a couple of problems for me though.  For one none of the people I intended to play it with are in my life anymore.  For another, obviously I have no idea how the whole thing works, exactly (I do not even have my copies of the materials yet).  Definitely gonna get Our World and Your Story either way to complete my Dresden collection, but was wondering if there is anyone else with similar issues regarding a lack of folks to play with about (I've been told this game works fine with OpenRPG).