Designing Dresden #5

[iago]

I've posted a lengthy delving into the ideas of lethality and toughness in the Dresden Files RPG, from a "look at the design process" perspective.  Interested?  Check it out here:

http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/news/archives/2006/12/designing_dresd_4.php

[Slife]

It seems like it would be interesting to allow players to voluntarily *increase* how severe something is.  Why?

Let's say you are an ogre-blooded changeling fighting off a bunch of monkey demons.  You have to defend someone, and as such can't afford to take a penalty.

Your current stats are

mild

• []

moderate

• [][][]

severe

• [][]

In this case, you'd rather have a moderate hit than a mild one, since if you have a mild consequence you've effectively lost.  Sure, you'll go down fast once you run out of higher level damage to substitute, but you'll be at full capacity for longer.  There's some precedent for similar stuff in the books (Dresden loves to burn his candle at both ends)

[iago]

Good thought, Silfe!  I'll have to chew on that one.

[The Last Bean]

Seems like this would be very condusive to the dramatic style of FATE gameplay, especially if the person has to get into the gritty details of exactly how they make the damage worse. Heck, you could even use something like that to your advantage.

"rather than dodging, I jump straight into the knife, wedging it between my ribs, and grab hold of the guy's arm." Now you've got a higher damage tier involved, AND at the DM's discretion the enemy might take a penaty to dodging whatever you do next, or be unable to move away.

[Lord Nedd]

Seems like this would be very condusive to the dramatic style of FATE gameplay, especially if the person has to get into the gritty details of exactly how they make the damage worse. Heck, you could even use something like that to your advantage.

"rather than dodging, I jump straight into the knife, wedging it between my ribs, and grab hold of the guy's arm." Now you've got a higher damage tier involved, AND at the DM's discretion the enemy might take a penaty to dodging whatever you do next, or be unable to move away.

"Do you know what your sin is, Mal?"

"Hell, I am kinda parcial to all them, but right now I am gonna have to go for WRATH!"

-LN

[The Last Bean]

Heh, funny you mention Firefly. I actually just recently ran a FATE-based Firefly game. Was loads of fun. Only took about half an hour to do the conversion too.

Gotta say, FATE is the best game for new roleplayers I've ever come across. So long as there's nothing weird like magic to worry about, only need about 4 pages of insructions for character creation and play (plus DM to fill in details) and with a group of 5 newbies (2 new to roleplaying, period) only 45 minutes for character creation AND quick lesson in how to play. (which is almost the same thing, after all). I can definitely see why they went with this system for Dresden.