Because it's their nature. 

Mab tells a story about the scorpion stinging the fox that's carrying it across the river ... it knows it's killing itself, but its nature is to sting, so that's what it does.

Winter Fae don't get a chance to say "hey random violence hasn't gotten me anywhere in the last 1000 years, maybe I should try being nicer."

That's an interesting way to look at it. The concept is a little hard for me to wrap my head around. Perhaps I should stop looking at these creatures as intelligent entities and more like manifestations of some natural process that merely appears intelligent.

I'm on my second work through of the Dresden files series (own all the books and audios and the RPG) and i'm on Ghost Story right now. It's got me thinking a bit about circles.

Early in the series, Chauncy is stuck in a circle and has to make a show of ranting and raging to get out of it.

Toot Toot gets stuck in a circle a few times... always tries to escape as a matter of form.

In one of the books a Toad demon kicks dust at a circle containing Harry and Susan but can't break it.

Harry chucks something (film canister) at a circle to break it.

Harry holds Der Erlkonig in a circle for a bit.

The summoner dude (Binder?) threatens Harry with breaking his circle at the same time Molly is sealing him in a really big circle.

I'm a little fuzzy on the whole free will concept as it is mentioned in the books. I'm not sure I understand how a creature with any sort of intellect beyond animal levels can NOT have free will. However it does say that you can only break a circle if you have a mortal will right?

If that's the case why would Chauncy or Toot Toot even bother? They don't have this 'free will' thing. Shouldn't they know they can't get out?

Also,  clearly a circle is more than just a circle. If it was just a line in the dirt you could step over it and that wouldn't be much use so it must be a three dimensional shape. Or is it more like some sort of semi-permeable force field?

So how far up does it extend? Is it a cylindrical container? Some sort of sphere or hemisphere? Or is a cone that extends upwards? Dresden said something earlier in Ghost Story about circles... something about extending upwards into infinity?

Obviously air can get across the boundary (unless you make it specifically to stop air movement). What happens if you build one under a tree and leaves fall on it? Or dust? What if (like Harry opening the Way in Changes) a building/cavern falls on you while you're in the circle? Does it hit you? Does it break the circle? What about some mortal who unwittingly does something to go through the circle? Like some sort of Rube Goldberg machine that they don't know what it does or they accidentally trigger, does that break it? Or given the same Goldberg machine, if it's set up specifically to break the circle but a thousand years pass does the intent of the original builder count? That'd make a hell of a nasty booby trap if that'd work.

Can someone explain circles a little?

If it's becoming a problem in play and you find you keep ending up with Consequences that suggest they need to be dealt with urgently or the character might die, perhaps you could introduce a house rule that the names of Consequences can be changed, like other Aspects, between sessions?

So if you end a session with the "Bleeding Out" Major Consequence, between sessions you could change it to "Lost a Lot of Blood."

I like that idea. Though i'd say it'd be more like: Consequences that have had status changes can have their names changed.

So that "Bleeding Out'" becomes "Lost of a lot of Blood" when someone gets the chance to actually do something about it. Like stitch up the Doc' face, or apply pressure or something like that.

It is my understanding of these rules that consequences and aspects have no actual effect unless someone tags/invokes/compels them (I'm still sussing out the difference between those three things). So he's free to act however he wants until the GM throws a Fate Point (compel, right?) at him and says "Uh dude... you lost a lot of blood.", until some bad guy sees him and figures out that he's lost a lot of blood (tag) or until he decides to RP it out as a handicap (invoke).

Was the character out of Fate Points?

He spent the two that he had on re-rolls and got worse rolls the second time around.

Greetings all,

I just had our first real combat in my DFRPG campaign Troubled Waters and it got me thinking, mostly because I want to do things correctly and I've never run DFRPG before.

Say IRL I get stabbed. Getting stabbed sucks. Getting stabbed is painful and messy. Getting stabbed tends to bleed quite a bit. With medical attention a bad stab wound puts you in the hurt locker. Without medical attention a bad stab wound puts you on the coroner's slab.

I understand that when someone does damage to you, you take stress equal to the difference between the attack and defense with mods for stuff like armor and weapon. If you overfill your Stress track you have to take Consequences.

As I understand things stress is a bit like old school Hit Points in that it doesn't represent 'real' damage but rather your ability to avoid being actually hurt.

Consequences on the other hand, are sort of like actual physical wounds, bruises, pulled muscles and so forth.

PC #1 got surprise attacked by something icky that wanted to eat his face. He is the group's doctor and a mostly non-combatant character who decided to go down into a tight confined space where something was waiting. The rolls were:

Attack: Epic (+7) - Defense: Mediocre (+0) = Epic (+7)
Defender's Armor: Mediocre (+0)
Attacker's Weapon: Fair (+2)

Total Stress: Legendary (+9)

Now, it is my understanding that this will pretty much take out anybody and since this was a critter looking for a meal it wasn't going to play patty cake. The PC starts with 3 slots in his Physical Stress track.

You can take one (or more if you have the stunt for it) of each level of Consequences, which is what I let the guy do. He takes a mild and a moderate, leaving him ONE stress remaining to put on his track ( I assume this goes in Slot 1). With the surprise round over, the combatants roll for initiative and the player ends up with an Average. At this point I am starting to feel sorry for him because his dice hate him and he can't seem to catch a break. I remind him that retreat is an option and I recommend that he GTFOOT (Get the Frack out of There).

The critter continues it's attack. With essentially the same result. This time he remembers that he has Fate points to spend. At first he tries re-rolling all dice, but gets the same exact result. Then he decides to just add 2 to his final total, effectively letting him soak some damage.

When all is said and done he ends up fleeing with one remaining Physical Stress slot remaining and Moderate Consequence. With the amount of damage this thing did to him, I imagine he's bleeding all over the place. It is my understanding though, that if you survive the encounter Stress disappears immediately. After more reading I realized I'd forgotten that the attacker that inflicted a consequence gets a free Tag on it (which is lucky because he'd be dead).

Mild (-2): Horrified (examples: Bruised Hand, Nasty Shiner, Winded, Flustered, Distracted) - lasting for one scene.
Moderate (-4): Chest Slashes (examples: Belly Slash, Bad First Degree Burn, Twisted Angle, Exhausted, Drunk)- Lasting until the end of the next session after recovery starts
Severe(-6): Clawed open Face (examples: Broken leg, Bad second-degree burn, crippling shame, Trauma induced phobia) - Lasting till the next scenario or two to three sessions.

Mild says "Walk it off", Moderate says "get some rest" and Severe says "Go to an ER". So does that mean that the PC is going to keep bleeding? If so, what is the effect of that? In my head I'm envisioning the doc having to sew up his own face or talk someone else through it. If this occurs, does that reduce the level of the Consequence?

Incidentally the critter did get put down by another PC who was nearby. I think I'm going to need to reduce the power level of these things a little and make the one that nearly ate PC 1 a 'boss' creature or something.

I couldn't find anything I liked online as much as I liked what was in my head so I punted and made my own. I think they turned out pretty decent for a prototype.

The wood is actually scrap wood I found at my office. It was exactly the right size for a die (3/4" by 3/4"). I just had to cut it down into 3/4" cubes. Since the wood was about a foot long I had plenty left over in case I screwed up (which I did). I think it's pine but I'm not sure. Add a little red oak wood stain and some etched brass facings from an Etsy artisan and I think I've got something pretty serviceable.

I thought about recessing the brass plate into the die facing but every time I did that the wooden block split apart. I'm also toying with the idea of affixing the plate with these nifty brass carpet tacks I have. But again the wood split so I have to pre-drill a hole first which I'm not really liking.

Still I'm happy with the result. Now I just need to make the velvet lined presentation box I have in my head so I can prevent my regular dice from scratching and/or contaminating the Dresden dice with their crappy rolling-ness.

I agree.  Nobody invites cockroaches into their house.  When I said "piggyback" on someones shadow, I meant that they somehow, by extention, get an invite.

If they possessed a PERSON, and that person got invited, that would probably count as an invite!

In the middle of the night, when my toddler woke up screaming (probably from a bad dream), I couldn't help think about your shadow people.  What if, when they crossed a threshold, the more powerful ones lost the ability to manifest etc...That way, in a house, they'd be very insubstantial, but maybe maintain the ability to cause fear (just as a maneuver - no actual mental damage.).  So, on the whole, they're harmless but still creep people out.  Outside a house, or in a hotel or apartment, they'd be able to cause much more havoc.  You wouldn't have to make a custom power - maybe give them incite fear and make that the last thing to go.  Or maybe it's just a mundane intimidation check.  It doesn't take much to freak people out in the middle of the night.

Probably not what you're looking for, but since I was up part of the night thinking about it, I thought I'd share

That would actually fit quite well with reports with them. When sighted in houses (which would be behind a threshold) they tend to just sort of stand there looking scary and watching you. When I have encountered these things (IRL I believe them to be a purely mental construct) that's  pretty much what they do too. You wake up in the middle of the night with a FOID (feelings of impending doom) and see the shadow of a human figure in the corner or in the doorway or something.

Perhaps they start off weak enough that this is all they can do. But with sneakery (such as hitchiking on someone's shadow and getting an invite) or whatever. Maybe they can do some minor stuff to mess with you.

I don't know about most people but I can't learn something just by reading a book. It helps me if I get to sit down with someone who knows what they're doing and can run me through some scenarios and answer questions and stuff.

Seeing as how I'm going to be taking over the game in a couple of months I was wonder if anyone (eastern time zone please) might be interested in getting on Itabletop or Skype or something and working through some scenarios so I can get a better grasp of the Dresden system?