My suggestion would be for everyone in the group to start off doing something simple. Just stick to the character templates until you get enough experience with the system to figure out how to price things like items of power. Just focus on aspects, stunts, skills, and whatever powers the characters template explicitly allows for starting off. When you get the feel for how FATE works, start experimenting.
With the exception of that one guy, everyone pretty much has. I have a werecat and a Knight of a Faerie Court (Erlking kind of has a court).
Ditto. My group is coming from D&D and Exalted. We're on our third campaign and still haven't figured everything out yet... if in doubt, go with whatever sounds cool. We actually just got to making new items of power and focus items this campaign, although one of my players has been toting Teddy Roosevelt's rifle since our first game.
Just wanted to say, I love the idea of Teddy Roosevelt's rifle being an item of power.
What specific things do you want to know about Aspects, IoPs, were-forms, themes and troubles? I know some of the system can be hard to wrap your head around at first, because it is so abstract. But once you get it, it really hums. The system is not free-form improv, although if you are coming from a dice heavy system, I can see where you get that impression. The system is designed so that dice are only rolled if something interesting will happen as a result, so you aren't going to be rolling handfuls of dice when it wouldn't make a difference to what happens in the story. Aspects, by being compelled and invoked, give a way for the story to override the dice when the players decide it is dramatically appropriate, so the system definitely favors an element of narrativism, but aspect use can be gamed (gaming them requires the players be creative about what they are and how they are used, rather than number crunching) so the system can reward gamism as well, and it makes a beautiful fusion where the two creative agendas can be allowed to overlap. The gamist will serve the interests of the narrativist, because his creativity and willingness to contribute to the imaginative space of the game will be his best methods of "winning" and the narrativist serves the interests of the gamist because all of his creative stuff gets rewarded with in game benefits.
Were-forms: Are they limited to human to beast or is a more Terra West option allowed?
Items of Power: Really this is more of a thing were a how-to would be awesome. The book is very vague in what an item of power can and cannot be (not literally "it can be a gun but not a rubber ducky"). The book says minor abilities and certain other abilities, but ... what would those abilities be?
Themes, Troubles and Aspects all fit into the same problem for me, which is basically the same problem every kid runs into while playing cops and robbers ("bang, bang! I shot you!" "Did not!" "Did too!"). So the question for this was really, how do I make these things flexible but concrete?
Coming at this from another angle, how would you stat the character concept with the Unisystem? If you find that system easier to create the character's abilities, stat it out with that and maybe we can get an idea of what you're shooting for and help convert it to the Dresden Files RPG system. The Item of Power rules can be a bit tough especially if you're new to the system. That said it's possible the rules won't create the character at that power level, and the concept or at least the powers might have to be tweaked.
Really it couldn't. The larger array of character types was really what drew us to the official version of the game (well that and wanting to support The Dresden Files and Butcher). In the previous game it was a human P.I. and two Wardens tasked with keeping a town in Alaska safe from a weak Veil, rampaging Yetis, and a resurgence of 3-eye.
