Introducing new players

[reflection49]

Hi, i kicked off a dresden files campaign and after the first session everybody had a good time with it. The only thing that i had trouble getting the group to do was using maneuvers and stuff in battle, and also thy seemed to not like the social encounters as much as the standard fightin through a wave of enemies.

Is there any fun way to introduce social encounters and maneuvers?

Also i had a question about how the spellcasting system works. The spellcaster in the group has 5 conviction and 5 discipline, does this mean his highest spell without taking consquences is an 8?

[BumblingBear]

Hi, i kicked off a dresden files campaign and after the first session everybody had a good time with it. The only thing that i had trouble getting the group to do was using maneuvers and stuff in battle, and also thy seemed to not like the social encounters as much as the standard fightin through a wave of enemies.

Is there any fun way to introduce social encounters and maneuvers?

A lot of it boils down to group dynamics and what kind of compels you are giving.

I like to toss around a lot of compels to instigate group RP.

Also i had a question about how the spellcasting system works. The spellcaster in the group has 5 conviction and 5 discipline, does this mean his highest spell without taking consquences is an 8?

A player with 5 conviction and 5 discipline can cast a 30 shift evocation spell if he stacks his aspects right.

The answer to this question is: "Depends".

It depends on taggable aspects, fate points, the roll of the dice, etc.

If a player has 9 fate points and can find a way to use all of them for a +2 bonus, that is +18 to an attack roll.

[evileeyore]

thy seemed to not like the social encounters as much as the standard fightin through a wave of enemies.

Are they Social characters?

If they stacked on the Physical and Mental skills, but no Social skills... they probably want to avoid Social as much as Harry Dresden...   

Is there any fun way to introduce social encounters and maneuvers?

Rough question.

From a not-FATE perspective the best way to introduce Social situations is to find logical reason they'ed need to be in the Social situation.  A Party.  The Police-Fund Raiser Ball.  Interrogating a suspect.  Trawling the local bar's or occult stores for clues.  Anything where the PCs are the Antoganists, the people doing the actions and not the ones resisting the actions.


Also, you could just talk the players.  Some groups just want to kill people and take their stuff defeat the bad guys and right wrongs.

Also i had a question about how the spellcasting system works. The spellcaster in the group has 5 conviction and 5 discipline, does this mean his highest spell without taking consquences is an 8?

Plus any Focus Items and Aspects.  Yeah.

But like BB said, it depends.

[reflection49]

While on the magic subject, what about area attacks? Do i add more to the discipline roll to make it succeed or can they attack a Whole zone without having to roll a higher roll?

[MorkaisChosen]

Area attacks take 2 more shifts of power, so yeah, you need a result 2 higher on the Discipline roll, and are also more likely to take more Stress from the power- a Weapon 3 area attack is a 5-shift spell, and casts the same way as a Weapon 5 single-target one.

[sinker]

The only thing that i had trouble getting the group to do was using maneuvers and stuff in battle

There's a combat example on the forums you could show them that really shows the impact of aspects. I wouldn't show them much more than the combat itself because most of it gets into more complex concepts and personal opinions on how things are run which is likely to confuse them.
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,20530.0.html

and also thy seemed to not like the social encounters as much as the standard fightin through a wave of enemies.

Is there any fun way to introduce social encounters and maneuvers?

The best way that I've found to do this kind of thing is to simply have a really good grasp on the rules yourself and then don't push the social conflict on them. At some point they're likely to want to talk to some person or another at which point you let them make their statement and then say "That seems like a social attack using the Chit-chat trapping of Rapport (or whatever). Why don't you make a Rapport roll to see how well your character communicates those ideas." Eventually they'll have a better idea of how the system works and they'll start doing it without your help. Unless they never want to go talk to anyone and then you should probably take the hint and just let it go.

[admiralducksauce]

The best way I found to introduce maneuvers is by having a lot of scene aspects.  Stuff like "Well-Stocked Bar", "Skylights", "Corpse-Strewn Living Room", and so on.  Players jump on the free tags, and then you explain that to get more free tags, they can do maneuvers to place aspects on people and places just like they've already been tagging.

[Taran]

Is there any fun way to introduce social encounters and maneuvers?

I`m going to start running a game soon and my group currently doesn`t really use maneuvers as effectively as I think they could.  I`ve been learning more about invoking for effect.  I think what i might do is give everyone a free fate point to use specifically for stuff like that just so they can play with the rules and experiment.  I`m hoping they`ll do more maneuvers and compel compel them. If they do it (and why wouldn`t they it`s a free fate point that they can`t use for anything else), I`ll give them a regular fate point for free at the beginning of the next session.  I`m going to see how that works.