How are your campaigns?

[Ulfgeir]

Just curious on a couple of things on how others play their campaigns.

What powerlevel did you start your campaigns at?
What city did you use for your campaign? 
Did you have any special requirements regarding the characters in your campaign?
How close are you following the timeline in the books?

And to answer my own questions:

The campaign I play in, we started at "Feet in the water-level", and have now after 3 full adventures reached a major milestone so we got a +1 refresh. Since my GM thinks it is fun and cool if people writes chronicles, those that opted to do that for the campaign got an extra refresh from start. So out of 7 players 4 started writing chronicles (only 3 of us has so far written for all 3 adventures, which took something like 9-10 game sessions. And yes it is really cool to see it from the perspective of the other characters). Reason for the low starting level was that it would give us room to grow.

We chose Boston, as it is an old city. We also wanted all characters to be relatively young, so we all started them as students at the university. So far the in-game time has been about 9 months. So my character who started as 19 is still not legally allowed to drink alcohol (legal age is 21 as far as we could tell). Which is interesting when she hangs out at a  student pub where one of the other characters is one of the bartenders and another one a bouncer...

When we started our campaign the in-game time was slightly before Halloween 2012. The vampire war is over, and we are post "Night of Terror" due to what happened in Changes.

[Mr. Ghostbuster]

What powerlevel did you start your campaigns at?
Nearly everyone in my gaming group was new to the whole tabletop RPG thing. So we started out at "Up to Your Waist" so that they weren't overwhelmed with character creation and less likely to make uninformed bad decisions with their first characters.

What city did you use for your campaign?
We created a Dresdenverse version of our hometown, Cedar Rapids, IA. It was fun "Dresden-izing" our town. Its also big enough to allow action/intrigue while being small enough to explain why its beneath the notice of some of the bigger powers.
 
Did you have any special requirements regarding the characters in your campaign?
Only the power level, really. And the vague idea that the characters have to make sense within the context of the world in which it was set. Most of our players came up with great, interesting characters.

How close are you following the timeline in the books?
I think we set ours right after Small Favor. We're still on our first adventure and the villains/npcs in our game are kind of small potatoes compared to what you see in the series, so timeline issues really haven't been an issue. At least not yet.

[Theonlyspiral]

Hey there,

We went straight into a submerged game. We wanted any concept to be viable. Right now we've played 2 sessions covering less than 24 hours. We picked Calgary as we live here. Also with large amounts of aboriginal people's, and crazy weather we figured there would be lots of fodder for different magical factions. We started in the current day, as to make use of things with the Formor. Also no one was really attached to the Rampires so loosing them made no difference to anyone's enjoyment.

[JDK002]

Power Level:
I told my players to come up with character concepts before we decided on a refresh level.  I wanted them to be able to make the characters they were interested in playing.  So we figured out everyones minimum refresh and ended up at Chest-Deep.

City:
Phoenix Arizona.  It's where we all live, so it was the easiest to come up with locations for.  The city is big enough where you can justify pretty much anything and anyone being there sooner or later.

Requirements:
No explicit ones.  Just that the players be willing to work with me on fitting their ideas into the narrative canon and game mechanics.  We got some great characters out of it.  A pure mortal who is basically a supernatural blackmarket dealer, A fire-dancing Pyromancer who is weary of her considerable power due to accidentally killing her parents with it when she was a teen.  A wizard of the White Council who has a long family line in it, and a history of falling to black magic, whiich he is determined to break, a scion of a denarian who was planted into the mortal mafia as a spy who begins to question her loyalties, and man who became inextricably bound to an dangeriously annoying trickster demon who is trying to find a way to breaking the binding.

Continuity:
I'm vauge about when my campaign takes place.  I just say "sometime during the war with the Red Court".  I don't do a lot of fan service in my games, no characters from the books have made cameos yet.  Though a certain knight of the cross is going to play a supporting role in an upcoming scenario of mine.

[admiralducksauce]

What powerlevel did you start your campaigns at?
7 refresh, although I bumped to 8 refresh after 6 sessions.

What city did you use for your campaign? 
No city. The PCs are a biker gang, and so we use overarching campaign themes rather than location-based ones, plus many of the faces are nemeses of individual PCs and they typically have reach long enough to threaten the guys wherever they might be.

Did you have any special requirements regarding the characters in your campaign?
Monster-hunting bikers. Mortals, spellcasters, and holy-based characters would be the easiest to fit in, but as long as you explain why the other gang members haven't hunted and killed you, you could play a "monster" character, that's fine.

How close are you following the timeline in the books?
Not at all. We're not really even in what I would consider the Dresdenverse. We just steal from the bestiary (a lot) and cosmology (a little). In fact, starting our next session I'm converting the campaign over to Fate Core and doing a more focused ruleset now that we've been in nearly 10 sessions. We know generally who everyone is, what we like to play, and what we like to do in the campaign and so I can tweak rules to promote those things now.

[blackstaff67]

My/our shared campaign is set in the South Bend/Mishawaka area (Northern Indiana).  We started everything/everyone at chest-deep though since we've had several adventures we've gained a pair o' skill points and a point of Refresh.  That said, given the population density of the region, we use various towns and villages instead of neighborhoods for events and incidents.  No special requirements save that the characters must have some socially redeeming value to be part of a group.

Everything is set just after Ghost Days but before Cold Days.  It is possible we may ignore the events of Cold Days for purposes of the campaign, but I feel the Fomor will be making an appearance--I know the Denarians will.

[bobjob]

What powerlevel did you start your campaigns at?
We started a refresh of 10 so that all character template options were open to the players. We still ended up with a lot of custom templates.

What city did you use for your campaign?
Since we all live in surburbs of Austin, Texas and the hippies have this campaign going to "Keep Austin Weird", we all thought it would be very appropriate to Dresdenize our city and the surrounding suburbs. Since we're in central Texas there is a heavy Red Court presence.
 
Did you have any special requirements regarding the characters in your campaign?
As a rule, I will let players requisition all the rope they want to hang themselves. I have a knack for using character backgrounds to cause some major complications and to drive the story in new and interesting ways. After all, with great power comes great ways for me to stick you with story hooks and obligations.

How close are you following the timeline in the books?
Our game takes place between Summer Knight and Death Masks, so the war with the Red Court is very fresh. Since one of the characters was playing a Wizard of the White Council, it was even mentioned that some young upstart in Chicago had violated the Accords by killing several members of Bianca's court (the wizard was familiar with Bianca). So, I'd say I stick pretty close to what is going on in canon, although I have no problem changing things should the story take that direction.

[HumAnnoyd]

What powerlevel did you start your campaigns at?

We started out Chest Deep with 8 Refresh and 30 points in skills.  After over 2 years we are at 12 Refresh and 41 skills.

What city did you use for your campaign? 

After a bit of discussion we went with Seattle.  We all live here and while other cities were discussed I think it was a good idea to go with what we all were familiar with.

Did you have any special requirements regarding the characters in your campaign?

Other than the restrictions caused by the starting Refresh we didn't really have any restrictions.

How close are you following the timeline in the books?

We have been going along with the books pretty closely.  To the point where our current game is set in 2006 to conform better with the timeline of the novels.