dfrpg elements in standard fantasy rpg format

[Mrmdubois]

You could work a little bit on clarity, but who couldn't?

I come from a d&d background though and can't say I've had much trouble with the transition.  The level of creativity you can employ can be a little intimidating at first, but to get a grasp on it I think Taran had a good suggestion with pregen characters who have rotes already.  If you don't want to do all the work yourself then just discuss with your player what he wants to do and work out some rotes from that.  If he's unsatisfied and knows why you can make more changes or new rotes.  Keep in mind that any element can achieve any action if you can think of a justification and the table agrees and finally the GM is willing to hand wave, so trying to do a bunch to redefine them for "typical d&d" isn't necessarily doing the elements any real justice.

Changing the Laws is fine if you don't plan on playing a Dresden game but want to keep the mechanics.  Otherwise I wouldn't bother.  If you are playing Dresden then talk with your group to let them know there are gray areas and they can explore them.  If they wanted they could probably go and ask a friendlier Warden, "So, if I tried X...is that bad?" Sure it might put them under some minute scrutiny for a while or instigate a social conflict, but hey now you've got a story!  Personally, I like trying to think of where the grey areas are and whether it's worthwhile to exploit them.

If you want there to be divine magic Hellfire and Soulfire and any other sponsored magic already have you covered.  It's magic with the string attached that you have to keep your god happy.  There's also the Faith powers.

As for actions having consequences?  Just compel.

Out of curiosity Sanctaphrax, what is it about then?

[tetrasodium]

You can't track or summon with spirit evocations.

PS: I don't really like the whole "FATE is about story" thing.

I know with the track/summon, but having the elements for evocation & then thaumaturgy being this other set of things entirely caused a lot of confusion when they looked at the elements, said "so it could do a a spell like like..." confusion when the answer was "well technically, not really that's a special thaumaturgy option... no... it's neither an element or specailization kinda thing, thaumaturgy has different rules from evocation"

with regards to FATE is about story thing, I agree somewhat because "story"  is just a poor choice of wording, but it needs more than d20 "I summon X shifts of Y" and "what do I find out with [insert skill] [insert effort]?" from playersI'd rather see players getting involved & trying to creatively justify how [insert element their character is heavily involved in] could provide them with a thaumaturgic spell of X functionality than the "x shift tracking/summoning/etc spell" the division seems to have been causing

[Lavecki121]

I kinda have to agree with Mrm a little here. From what I have done in the system thus far is define story, advance story, even create story, and I'm a PC not a GM. This system allows for story to grow and shape itself off of a colaboration. I dont see how (in at least this version of FATE) it is not about the story.

[Sanctaphrax]

Out of curiosity Sanctaphrax, what is it about then?

If I answered that, I'd be doing what I dislike.

Saying what a game is about, in my experience, is generally a way to tell people who play differently that they're doing it wrong.

What attracted me to DFRPG is the excellent mechanical structure and the possibility of truly perfect balance through the use of Aspects.

[Haru]

What I meant by story in this occasion is, that you try to get the player to say what he wants his character to do instead of what kind of numbers he wants to push around the table. Yes, both numbers and narrative are equally important, but if you can get yourself to think about the spell as part of the narrative instead of a bunch of numbers, you will be much more creative when coming up with a new way of employing them. Once you get the hang of the rules, you can come up with both parts simultaneously, but until then, I think the GM can pick up the slack on the mechanical side better than on the narrative side.

[tetrasodium]

If I answered that, I'd be doing what I dislike.

Saying what a game is about, in my experience, is generally a way to tell people who play differently that they're doing it wrong.

What attracted me to DFRPG is the excellent mechanical structure and the possibility of truly perfect balance through the use of Aspects.

Agreed, but I'd like to extend on this with my own thoughts.  I suspect we might be in agreement on them, & they might be helpful with regards to some of the confusion on the "fate is not about story" & my belief that "story" is a poor choice of words.

I'm sure that at least a significant percentage of the folks here have at least heard of the [=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Testurl]Bartle test[/url] where players are divided into some mix of explorer, Socializer, Achiever, & Killer.  It may have been originally designed toward splayers of MUD's & MMO's, but both of those are descendents of pen & paper RPG's making it still apply to different player playstyles. By using the word choice of "story", you somewhat imply that FATE should be slanted heavily towards some of those with some of the other playstyles being an odd fit when that is not the case.

To use a real world example, few would claim that a live radio broadcast of a sporting event is a "story", in the technical sense it both is & is not.  With fate, you can have:

• A: A player rather far into the socializer slant that wants to roleplay & doesn't think anyone should bother with dice, maneuvers, aspects, etc because it "gets in the way of story." He gets annoyed when people inject nonsense like combat into his "story" & retreats into a portable hole when it starts if at all possible
• B: A player who wants to explore the world & doesn't give a fig about "story."  Things like aspects/maneuvers/etc just get in the way of doing that.  He too doesn't care about one of the other aspects & retreats into his portable hole/pokeball when that thing comes up in game
• C: A player who doesn't give a fig about  A or B & just wants to kill shit & break things.  Since this player is uninterested in the exploring/socializing aspects & has been told "FATE is about story", they play a character that effectively lives in a portable hole until there is combat rather than "ruining" the game for the other's
• D: A player who wants to achieve something with their character who wants to collect things (or whatever).  He's been told that "FATE is about story" and  sees that enchanted items cost refresh, since C is playing a blind deaf mute outside of combat and A/B are off doing their own things that kind of exclude him as well, he too leans towards mute/uncertain about involvement without ever realizing that some of those cool toys & things he wants to achieve can be obtained through involvement & assessing/declaring a hanging light into the ballroom so he can swing from it shooting "monsters" along the waylooking badass in the spotlight.  Because he's been beat over the head previously in other systems for being a "spotlight hog", he never gets comfortable enough to go about really inserting himself into A, B, & C's areas in ways that direct the spotlight towards him & really shake things up due to the fact that such things would "break" thew game using many other more rigid systems.  He also kinda lives in a portable hole not wanting to "hog the spotlight" & break the game, but he occasionally springs out into action pokemon style..

In reality, almost nobody is 100% slanted towards any one thing, but people usually lean towards 1-2 things more than the others.  The problem with all the portable hole/pokeball dwelling characters is that the sudden appearance of a few characters that were all but ignored & trying to be deaf mutes really causes problems. It causes even more problems if they have spotty/random attendance because they figure their interest won't come up much this week & nothing is lost for them since it's "probably just going to be a minor milestone I don't need" instead of an experience accumulation.
I might not know a thing about, or be interested in boxing... but this randomly selected muhammed Ali fight i just listened to is a pretty damned cool "story" that FATE could handle easily even though almost nobody would call it a "story" (being at work, I can't exactly go hunting for one with a more active announcer)

Haru's comment about getting players to say what their character is doing is relevant to this whole thread.  The original reframing I did in the first three posts was designed to help players accomplish just that by explaining something alien to them in terms that are more familiar to them & make it easier for them to think about how to do more than push numbers around the table.

The one in 5 or so (if that) players I have sit down that are familiar with the dresdenverse are usually so paralyzed by the thought of conflicting with the cannon in the books that they are afraid to step out of their portable hole very often, "when do we meet Harry/Marcone/etc, or can I play Harry?" is usally more of a problem for them.  Woe to the GM who gets one of them as an A or B type player as the only other player with a C or D type player's first session.  By describing things in a more typical fantasy style, both sides of that coin are (hopefully )less afraid of taking the reins & doing more narrating than "pushing numbers around", the game can be more healthy.

[Addicted2aa]

Fate is about story, because the mechanics are designed to improve the narrative, as opposed to create a very realistic simulation(like gurps) or a game entirely separate from the plot(4e). Aspects change the story, they don't just affect the combat or even rolls at all. Fate Points, the taken out rules, and declarations share narrative control between the player and GM. There are probably more examples, but that's good enough. The game is very much about story, but you can use it however you feel. Much like any game. You may be better served finding a different game, but it can still be used for dungeon crawling or railroads. That's just not what it's meant for.

As to the OP, I think your addressing the wrong problem. If you have players who are new to Dresden and Fate, giving them a wizard is almost guaranteed to cause issues. Wizards are the advanced class. If you're running open gaming, run it like a con game. Create a couple pre-gens(already suggested I believe), know their abilities inside and out. If you do make a caster, make it a focused practitioner, write down his rotes and one or two rituals he might know.
Then write a module design specifically around those characters and the abilities you wrote up. Come up with situations where each character has the optimum solution you can think of, as part of their package. Don't put down any power or skill you haven't written part of the adventure for.
Then run it. Dresden, while technically rules lite, is a system as complex as Gurps or Hero, and requires almost if not as much time learning to master. It has easy options though, so if you're running for newbs, use the easy option

[Sanctaphrax]

@Haru: That's true in every game.

@tetrasodium: I still can't work out what it is that you are saying. Sorry.

@Addicted2aa: You are incorrect. Aspects do affect combat, quite heavily. And sharing narrative control does not make a game "about story".

My impression, from your post, is that you're using "about story" as some kind of short-hand for narrative mechanics. This isn't correct, please don't do it.

PS: DFRPG is by a wide margin the best game I know of for a dungeon crawl.
PPS: You're providing a pretty good example of what I mean when I talk about insults.

[Haru]

@Haru: That's true in every game.

Yes, but it goes double for a game like Fate. In other games, the description is built into the spell itself. A magic missile or a ray of confusion looks the same no matter who casts it. That's not true in Fate, where a spell is mechanically only a description of "I throw X shifts of Y at him". And to get out of that trap, I think it helps if you start to think of spells as a narrative tool first, and add the mechanics later.

[Addicted2aa]

@Addicted2aa: You are incorrect. Aspects do affect combat, quite heavily. And sharing narrative control does not make a game "about story".

My impression, from your post, is that you're using "about story" as some kind of short-hand for narrative mechanics. This isn't correct, please don't do it.

PS: DFRPG is by a wide margin the best game I know of for a dungeon crawl.
PPS: You're providing a pretty good example of what I mean when I talk about insults.

I never said they don't affect combat, I said they do more than that.

I still don't understand why you find that insulting.

I'm not using about story as a short hand, I'm saying the heavy presence of narrative control, plus the heavy reminders about keeping a good story in mind strongly indicates the game is in fact about story.

If you think fate is the best for a dungeon crawl, use it for that. I personally think Dungeon World would create a better feel for the shared experience and if you wanted the original feel I'd guess one of OSR's is better.

[tetrasodium]

Yes, but it goes double for a game like Fate. In other games, the description is built into the spell itself. A magic missile or a ray of confusion looks the same no matter who casts it. That's not true in Fate, where a spell is mechanically only a description of "I throw X shifts of Y at him". And to get out of that trap, I think it helps if you start to think of spells as a narrative tool first, and add the mechanics later.

• I'm going to give an example that fuses this with my "story is the wrong word"bit above where I talk about the different types of players having trouble & talking past each other to the detriment of the game as a direct result of that word choice with  Sanctaphrax's ~"FATE  is great for a dungeon crawl, but story can go cry pound" recent idea.
• For simplicity's sake "you're all in a bar and you all know the drill...
• Players (killer, explorer, & maybe achiever) don't care about "story", so mostly  of the stare at the gm/socializer while waiting in relative silence zoned out until something happens that  they care about
• GM tries to wake up players hiding in portable holes in the socializer's back pocket on the way to the crawl & isn't sure there will be enough time to finish it, so he throws in a random encounter
• socializer & explorer don't really care &phone it in with X shifts of Y if need be until things progress
• GM Sighs inwardly because the "random encounter" wasn't so random & was brutally obvious that it could have been tied/linked to things socializer  & explorerer had both shown interest in... but being that "fate is about story" they were phoning in the combat & never considered assessing or declaring the ambush starting in the trees as being linked to the things like "you notice the corpses have medallions/tattoos linking them to  the [secret society of badstuff], "the GM eventually just declares himself out of frustration
• killer immediately tunes out because the Society of Badstuff (SoB) is story & he just wants to kill shit & break things, he never realizes that he could do things like assess or declare a fight into the socializer's talky talky "nonsense", or the explorer's upcoming dungeon crawl
• dungeon crawl begins, the GM describes the entrance/a room/whatever & socializer/killer sit silently half paying attention, explorerer sets about exploring, nobody does things like assess/declare a prison guard/prisoner that they could fight/socialize with while the explorer explores because they are trying to patiently endure the bone that the GM is  throwing at the explorer
• so on & so forth, around & around they go through the vicious cycle of merely enduring

I never said they don't affect combat, I said they do more than that.

I still don't understand why you find that insulting.

I'm not using about story as a short hand, I'm saying the heavy presence of narrative control, plus the heavy reminders about keeping a good story in mind strongly indicates the game is in fact about story.

If you think fate is the best for a dungeon crawl, use it for that. I personally think Dungeon World would create a better feel for the shared experience and if you wanted the original feel I'd guess one of OSR's is better.

This exchange between Addicted2aa & sajnctaphrax is so perfect for my point that it almost falls into what looks to be an inadvertent devil's advocate situation.  One of you is arguing that it's great for a dungeon crawl & it's not about story, the other is arguing that it's a poor choice for a dungeon crawl compared to other systems designed for that due to the fact that "FATE is about story."  You two are talking past each other while circling my point about story being the wrong word.  I'm guessing Addicted2aa leans towards some mix of Socializer/explorer(?) & Sanctaphrax explorer/killer(?), but neither of you are seeing that you are saying the same thing!  Fate is not about story, it's about everything & nothing at the same time.  If the players want to explore & socialize their way through  a plot...  GREAT![/i Doso.  If they want to dungeon crawl, kill shit & break things, do that too/instead!  By saying "FATE is about story," both of you are illustrating a player patiently waiting fir that other player's bone to finish instead of assessing/declaring a link to the thing you want to see in what you saw as just a bone that you didn't want to ruin/intrude on.

[Addicted2aa]

Correction, I'm not saying Fate is bad for dungeon crawling. I'm saying there are likely better options.

Also to address your point, I've heard there was a study asking why people play rpg's and anecdotally seen, that people play RPG's because there is a story. So even your explorer, killer, and archivist, still care about their being a story, but they want other things out of the narrative than just "plot". What that division does it highlight what they look for outside of the plot, or what direction they want the plot to take them. Personally, for RPG theory I prefer using the GNS model, Gamist, Narrativist, and Simulationist(Think I'm spelling these wrong). For one thing, it includes GM's in the break down better than that model and for another it also breaks down types of games.

Narrativists are interested in character and plot first and foremost. Simulationists are interested in mimicking the real world(or a specific genre) to the best of their ability. Gamists are interested in "winning." FATE by itself is mainly a Narrativists game, with the mechanics designed to bring out interesting conditions, tension, drama, and emotional moments.
DFRPG is a bit Narrativist and a bit Simulationist, with it trying to simulate the Dresden novels.
Neither of them are particularly Gamist in design, though conflicts definitely follow a traditional Gamist model.

That said, the mechanics are perfectly sound for a Dungeon Crawl, with a strong Gamist twist, and could possibly even work to create a Simulationist game in almost any genre, including reality. That's because it's a really well defined and flexible game.

[Sanctaphrax]

I never said they don't affect combat, I said they do more than that.

Indeed, I transposed "just" and "don't" while reading. My apologies.

I'm not using about story as a short hand, I'm saying the heavy presence of narrative control, plus the heavy reminders about keeping a good story in mind strongly indicates the game is in fact about story.

The latter does, to a point.

But narrative control actually works well for a game that's entirely about numbers because it lets numbers do absolutely everything.

If you think fate is the best for a dungeon crawl, use it for that. I personally think Dungeon World would create a better feel for the shared experience and if you wanted the original feel I'd guess one of OSR's is better.

I've never played or read Dungeon World, but DFRPG does compare favourably to every game that I have played or read. Which is a decent number, including one and a half versions of D&D.

Yes, but it goes double for a game like Fate. In other games, the description is built into the spell itself. A magic missile or a ray of confusion looks the same no matter who casts it.

That's not really true. D&D players re-skin all the time.

In any case, players who don't know the rules always have to fall back on narrative.

...Sanctaphrax's ~"FATE  is great for a dungeon crawl, but story can go cry pound" recent idea.

Not what I said. You can totally do stories in FATE, I just don't think it's the super-special central pillar of the game.

...Sanctaphrax explorer/killer(?),...

Nope. Those category systems don't work well for me, because I mostly like rules for their own sake. My favourite things about RPGs actually don't happen during play.

I mean, I like playing too. But I'm more of a reader/tinkerer than a player.

neither of you are seeing that you are saying the same thing!  Fate is not about story, it's about everything & nothing at the same time.

We are not saying the same thing.

But I agree about the everything and nothing bit.

[Addicted2aa]

Have you tried the OSR games? Also what is it that you look for in a dungeon crawl?

Almost forgot, Sancta, why is it insulting to say that fate isn't about dungeon crawls?

[Sanctaphrax]

No. I intend to eventually though.

Rules that let you resolve standard dungeon challenges in an interesting and satisfying way. It's important that those challenges never become trivial or completely bypass-able.

Because inevitably, whatever games people like are "about" whatever playstyles those people like. Saying "D&D4 is not about story, D&D3.5 is" is usually a way for 3.5 players to express their contempt for 4e. And because it tells people that their fun is badwrong or that they're foolishly using the wrong game.