[DFRPG] Occult Toronto
Erik Weissengruber:
Opening up a thread about the Dresden Files game I am running and am setting in Toronto.
Heavy on the supernatural, but with low-powered PCs. Promises to be a challenge for the characters and for me to run.
I have had mixed results in the FATE games I have run before.
In these posts I hope to address
Group setting creationDriving scenarios with Aspects from setting creationWorking with Compells
What I really want to do is employ the setting/scenario/Compelling mechanics AS WRITTEN and examine their efficacy.
Moreover, there is a Social Contract angle I want to follow: I am running what will be a series of linked one-shots, essentially. I have to keep my sessions short and occasional because of family and work commitments. Perhaps the creative group buy-in delivered by setting creation will be enough to provide the binding threads that I can't put together with regular and extensive gaming sessions.
Phil K.:
Erik,
I just moved my Friday night gaming group into a Dresden Files game from D&D 4E. There have been a few problems I've experienced, mostly due to creative agenda issues. I've got a group of six players, four of which had not read the Dresden Files when we sat down to do character creation. I think the lack of setting/color familiarity may have thrown of character creation and player buy-in a bit. The choice to switch games was mine, in a purely autocratic fashion I'm not entirely proud of. I was getting burnt out on D&D and wanted a change. Didn't get everyone on board beforehand. Rookie mistake, one I should have avoided.
Anyway, what I'm saying is I think it would be beneficial to a DFRPG game (or any game based on licensed material) for the players to all be familiar with and bought into the setting already.
Getting used to compels and having enemies tag aspects have been the hardest things for me to get used to. I look forward to hearing how your experiences go.
Erik Weissengruber:
Socially
-- I have done some short series and some one offs of various games with the people in question. It's not as if I was trying to push a group in a direction. It was more of a "hey, we've hung out a few times ... ya wanna help me design a Dresden Setting?"
-- That means, on one level: "Hey, let's play the game of setting creation."
-- On another, it means: "Hey, if this works out well, we could get a series of games going."
Color-ly
-- Like me, they had kinda heard of the Dresden world and game, had peeped at a few of the comics, but not much deeper than that.
-- We didn't begin with questions like "imagine if the White Council were trying to recruit Toronto's wizards." I started with "hey, what do you guys think of what's been going on in Toronto recently?" Then we talked up the Dresdenverse in very vague terms, but then moved on to brainstorming along the lines of "what kind of weird or spooky stuff have you imagined happening in Toronto?" I have these decks of kiddie cards, one of fairies and one of monsters. We consulted them as oracles: each player picked a fairy and a monster and imagined how the creature they grabbed would end up in the Toronto landscape. Still have no idea about what to do with the Phoenix (at least Toronto has Persians, Chinese, and Europeans so you have three cultural zones that love that there flaming bird). And now I have to actually try do do something cool with Unicorns!
Aspects
-- I have had little series of games start and then derail because people didn't like the kind of colour other players were introducing. And SotC, Starblazer Adventures, DFRPG and other FATE games do not put the GM in position to keep a tight lid on those things.
More to come.
Phil K.:
Erik,
Sorry if the previous post came off as accusatory; I wasn't implying that you were railroading a group into a new game, just trying to share my mistake.
I think having everyone invested to the same degree, with the same goal, is a good place to start. At least part of the problem I've encountered has arisen from the varying levels of buy-in to the source material/setting.
The monster and fairy cards sound interesting. Unicorns in the Dresden Files have been portrayed as much darker than in typical fantasy. I'd have to go back and check "Summer Knight" but I believe it was described as a large, powerful horse of dark coloring with a razor edged, spiraled horn. It was portrayed as one of the enforcers for the summer court of faerie. Definitely not your sign of purity and chastity from typical fantasy. Don't know if that helps at all.
Erik Weissengruber:
No, no, no your tone was very civil and straightforward. No probs there!
I was simply trying to say I am in the middle of forming a new creative group. The challenges there are MUCH different from shifting the practices of an existing, functioning group.
I was just trying to get some common Colour. We had talked about some serious real-life feelings about Toronto. There is no WAY I could make Toronto seem as gritty as Chicago or East St. Louis or Baltimore. So a bit of the light fantastical was another way to go -- the books themselves have some goofy fey behaviour in them.
And on Unicorns as something fierce and intimidating: part of the challenge is to bring in some of that feeling of unease that accompanies the fairy realm as you get it in ancient ballads like "Tam Lin."
Can the use of Aspects and focus on Milestones and character advancement bring that into being? We shall see as we shall see.
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