White Wolf Forum: The Dresden Files

[JessHartley]

Just wanted to point out to Jim that there's currently a thread on the White Wolf Forums discussing which type of White Wolf Mage Harry would be.
http://forums.white-wolf.com/viewtopic.php?t=41487

It's nice to see two of my favorite fandoms crossing paths...

[Kalshane]

Wow, those forums have changed since the last time I've been there. Though back in the day, when I first started reading the DF I did start a thread of my own in the Mage forum about them. Guess times haven't changed that much.

And of course, I have no idea what they're actually talking about in the current thread because I haven't picked up the new Mage game.

I'm happy enough with my Mage: The Ascension 2nd/Revised blend rules and my already established "World" that I can't see myself tossing them for the new game any time soon. Especially since I wasn't impressed by things I picked up from a brief skimming of the new book. All mages are from Atlantis now? WTF?

[Kalium]

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and peg Harry as an Obrimos.

[ToddM326]

what is the white wolf forum?

[Mickey Finn]

White Wolf is the gaming company that gave RPGs a shot in the arm when they released Vampire: The Masquerade, an RPG that concentrated on the characters rather than the monsters and treasure. They managed to rather brilliantly (whether you like the game or not, you gotta admit Sam Chupp had a stroke of genius) combine a ton of types of vampires by making them all clans descended from the first vampire...different bloodlines became classic vamps, everything from Nosferatu to Lost Boys types to Anne Rice Types.
They then went on to release Werewolf: The Annoying (or whatever) and Mage: The Ascension (as well as Wraith, Changeling, and 6 billion supplementals). Mage had an interesting system for magic...there were various spheres of control (like Mind, Time, Correspondance, etc.) that were combinable to create effects. There were no rote spells like Fireball...you combined sphere effects that you knew to create the fireball. There were also schools of magic (like clans, called traditions) that define what kind of mage you are in general, like a death mage, or a mad-scientist type, or a zen-warrior-monk type or whatever (those aren't the names they use).

So, the WW fans are trying to figure out what type of Mage Harry would be.

[XavierDLH]

Mickey Finn, I hope you're on The Dresden Files RPG team... 

...Or at least one of their play-testers!

[Mickey Finn]

I'm on the mailing list and might play test if Iago wishes...problem is, I don't live near them, so that would put a crink in things.


Longwinded explanation:
MY RPG experience is weird, anyways.  I was actually hired as a writer for FASA's Shadowrun division...2 weeks before the suprise announcement that they were closing their doors. I never even got my first assignment. (I did, however, get paid...every single  rulebook in the library was sent to me for research purposes. They didn't ask for them back.)

I've been MUSHing for the past 16 years (with a few year gap in the middle), using Amber RPG rules and White Wolf. I was one of the people who designed and implemented the concept of staff to support the wizzes (people running MUSHes), and was the head judge for a while on the first vampire MUSH. I was in charge of the Castle Falkenstien official MUSH, which ultimately never opened because of work overload on several wizzes plus author Michael Pondsmith's apparent hectic schedule.

My roommate holds the record for putting up with Steve Jackson the longest as Head of Sales, and one of my close friends  used to work for FASA and now writes freelance (Trigun and Slayers are hers, for example). Half of Living Room Games (Earthdawn post-FASA, Digital Burn) are my old friends from college.

Despite all this...I'm not really a gamer. I just started my first tabletop game in years (as a player). I can't memorize numerical rules.  I'm pure story, descriptions, and characters. I'm just attracted to the type of folks who run games, because they're stories.  In college, I did live action World of Darkness...but as a rotating NPC for the folks running the game, not as my own player. They'd say "We need a medical examiner," and I'd make up a personality on the spot and run with it...but I didn't worry about the stats, they did.

So, if Iago & Rob Donoghue want me as a playtester, it'd probably be a "Hey, we need a guy who knows enough about games to tell us stuff, but be more like the average joe wandering in a game store than a game lawyer."

[ToddM326]

So, the WW fans are trying to figure out what type of Mage Harry would be.

Lots of questions today...

So what is a Mage?

[Mickey Finn]

Mage=Wizard


Not to be confused with Matt Wagner's excellent comic series

[Kalshane]

The basic concept behind Mage: The Ascension is that reality is based on perception and belief. Mages were individuals who could change reality by basically believing enough in something happening that it happened. They used a wide variety of styles, rituals and implements to focus their beliefs (and these implements were collectively known as foci).

However, since reality was based on belief, the beliefs of normal people (called Sleepers) mattered as well. Not as strongly as Mage's, but they outnumbered the mages by about a million to one, so they kind of had the advantage. When there was a conflict between what the Mage was doing and what the Sleeper's believed, it would create a Paradox, which would then do bad things to the Mage in question. So most Mages tried to stick to non-obvious (Coincidental) magic as much as possible to avoid getting bitch-slapped by reality.

In the Mage universe, technology is also a form of magic, just one that's accepted by most of the modern world and thus doesn't suffer from Paradox. There's a group known of Mages as the Technocracy that are sort of shadow rulers of the world, and as one would expect, use "technomagic" to achieve their aims.

The game is actually a lot of fun, and is my all-time favorite RPG. However, it's really, really tough to run due to the freeform nature of the magic system, so I haven't played it nearly as often as I've played other games. The first Mage campaign I ran, however, is still the best game in any system I ever ran. My players still talk fondly about it 10 years later.

I can't speak for the new Mage: The Awakening game, though. White Wolf "destroyed" their world a year or so ago and re-created all their games from the ground up. I've yet to pick any of them up.

[Mickey Finn]

They have pretty covers, but I've yet to run into anyone who wants to run a game in them. I admit to being skeptical due to the apparent loss of Malkavians (vampires of chaos an insanity...the best malks are the subtle malks) in the game. That didn't work for the TV series, either.*




*Yes, there was a short-lived TV series called Vampire Hills 90210...er, sorry, Kindred: The Embraced. Aaron Spelling and Mark Reinhagen blended Vampire and Spelling's soap opera style in an attempt to blend audiences and failed miserably.

[Kalshane]

They have pretty covers, but I've yet to run into anyone who wants to run a game in them. I admit to being skeptical due to the apparent loss of Malkavians (vampires of chaos an insanity...the best malks are the subtle malks) in the game. That didn't work for the TV series, either.*

I admit I like the idea of a core game, with the other games being expansions. Crossovers were always a headache under the old system and it was silly to have half the book dedicated to the exact same rules that were in every other WoD book. However, none of the new settings and concepts have really grabbed me enough to make me want to read, much less buy, the new books. Plus, as I mentioned, I have an already-established world that I'm quite happy with. (I bought the final Mage book just to see how things ended, but I have no plans to ever run it.)

*Yes, there was a short-lived TV series called Vampire Hills 90210...er, sorry, Kindred: The Embraced. Aaron Spelling and Mark Reinhagen blended Vampire and Spelling's soap opera style in an attempt to blend audiences and failed miserably.

Well, it didn't help that they changed a whole bunch of stuff from the game, which turned all the gamers off, and then spent most of the episodes they did show having clumsy exposition about the setting to try to get the non-gamers up to speed with the setting elements they did keep.

[finarvyn]

I admit I like the idea of a core game, with the other games being expansions. Crossovers were always a headache under the old system and it was silly to have half the book dedicated to the exact same rules that were in every other WoD book.

Yeah, but there are lots of these types of games on the market that would be as sutible (or more) for a Harry Dresden campaign than the WoD system.

* Unisystem (Eden games) has been done for Witchcraft, Terra Primate (planet of apes), All Flesh Must Be Eaten (zombies), Buffy/Angel, Conspiracy-X (x-files), Armaggeddon (angel/demon), Army of Darkness, Spacefarers and Prairie Folk (Firefly) and probably more I have forgotten. There are settings with modern-day magic and supernatural critters, and I think it's a lot easier to run than WoD.

* GURPS (Steve Jackson) is by definition designed to allow for characters of any setting. It's a bit clunky sometimes, but the magic system is pretty logical (lots of easy-spell prerequisites in order to acquire advanced spells) and could be adapted to fit Harry's world. Lots of modern-day weapons and skills and such already generated.

* d20 Modern (WotC) has an Urban Arcana setting for modern-day magic. The spell-casting system is similar to D&D, which isn't really much like Jim's magic system, but other elements of the game are pretty close. Also, the basic d20 game system has been worked through various eras including d20 past, d20 future, d20 post-holocaust, D&D fantasy, Star Wars RPG, Adventure (pulp), d20 Cthulhu, and the list goes on and on.

* Fred & Rob's FATE system (and Fudge in general) can be used in many settings, such as Cthulhu, King Arthur,  dungeon crawl, Amber, Spirit of the Century (pulp), eventually Harry Dresden, and probably many that I have't thought of.

My point is not to bash World of Darkness, but simply to point out that the idea of a core set of rules that fits multiple settings isn't that new. True, many of these will include at least a short-cut version of the core rules in each volume, but often these only fill up a couple of chapters in the front with the remainder devoted to setting content.

I've looked at the WoD game system and it's okay, but certainly isn't my first choice if I want to run a Dresden game.

Just my two cents.

[Kalshane]

I wasn't looking at it from the perspective of running a Dresden game. We've got the Dresden RPG coming out for that.

I was just commenting on my opinions of new WoD versus old WoD.

Really, you can (at least try to) run any kind of game with any system. Some systems just work a whole lot better than others.

[finarvyn]

I was just commenting on my opinions of new WoD versus old WoD.

Oh ... in that case, I agree with you. 

Having an extra core rulebook in one place is a lot better than having half of each new rulebook filled with the same thing.