Good morning,

So my group had their second session for the game.  I had time to do some planning this time and it definately had a more Dresden feel to it with a few battles with ogres and zombies.  :)  Combine that with a plot that revolves around the Red Court, sorcerers, the white council, the summer and winter courts, a magic dagger....and books of magic that will cause an extreme amount of chaos.  Well it felt much better to me.  :)

Thoughts.

We have a mundane character (arcanse bookstore owner played by my friend Dawn) that is trying to work in this world.  She is a bit frustrated because although she can definately shine when it comes to finding info, she is struggling in the fights and how to use her own skills in them.  Although she did have a cool moment where she pulled out a bag of iron nails and pulled off a manuver against an ogre. 

The game is definately harder.  The consequences come quick and often since there are weapons and inhuman strength and such.  But everyone felt like it fit the world.

Magic is still a bit confusing to get.  Maybe that is me, but when I read the "how it works", for some reason it is not really working in my head.  We figured it out, but at first I kept adding their "shifts" of conviction and the discipline to get what they had to roll.  Which made it completly impossible.  But once we got it, it seemed a little too easy.  One chracter had a Good +3 conviction and used all three shifts for her spell, and they had +4 Great discipline.  But they only had to make a good +3 roll to make it work.  It seems unless they are going beyond their conviction, that it was too easy.  That never happened.

The group has a decent amount of fate points (5, 5, and 6).  They really used them in the battle, but I am still not feeling like I am compelling them enough for it to seem there is enough risk and the fate points are their only recourse.  That is my own thing.  I want to get them down to 1 or 2 fp and really have to struggle with knowing they are running out of them.  I did get one of the players down to 2, but then it was getting late. 

My poor mundane character only has a 2 health track and she was getting battered around.  :)  Not sure how that will work out until it is tested more. 

Zombies are tough. 

Using the sight is a bit odd (only in coming up with something).  Especially when I wasn't prepared for it.  Ended up not being as cool as it could of, but that was mostly my fault. 

Some of the cooler moments. 

The Emissiary of power (for a dragon played by my friend Henry) crushing the hand of a cult member trying to blackmail him. 

The manuver by the mundane player to use iron on the ogre. 

The Knight of Winter (my girlfriend Natalie) compelling her own "conflicted loyalties" to make her break into the arcane bookstore owners shop and look for a book.  It was funny. 

Hey all,

My first group got together last night and made (mostly) a few characters. 

The process took us a while, and we had to quit because it was getting late.  But they did get most of it done, with choosing their stunts and allocating their skills being all they have left.

Here is what was done, with more specifics to come when I have more information.

An emissary of power (dragon) by Henry
A knight of the Winter Court by Natalie
An occult book store owner by Dawn

I made a few by myself, just to add to what I am sending to Evil Hat.
Dylan Martin, infected by the red court, member of the Fellowship of St. Giles
Father Caleb Goodkind, true believer. 
Liz Preston, mundane operative.

Once I have everything done, I will post it here.  :)

So, I have city creation  (for the most part) for my own group.  I decided to try another group as well.  I found a few people from this community and even one from www.nerdnyc.com and we got together last night to meet for the first time.  It was a lot of fun and this time I decided to hang back and let them come up with everything on their own.  That is different from my group where I really jumped on it from the beginning and pushed it forward.  

It was an interesting discussion with

sinboy

rosefox

ogreteeth

This is part 2 of the City creation for NYC.  It has the locations and Npc's for each.  This is about 95% done and will be tweaked a bit over the next few days.

Here is part 1 if you missed it.  
http://staceyinastoria.livejournal.com/18776.html

This is part 1 of my New York City creation for the Dresden Files RPG.  I apologize now for how long it is, but I do tend to over due things from time to time.  :)  So, I am splitting it up into two parts.

Part 1 will be the themes and the history (that I found interesting) that was changed, or affected by the Dresdenverse.
Part 2 will be the locations and the questions you had to answer for each city. So here is part 1, and I am doing the LJ cut to try to avoid annoying everyone with my long posts!.

After getting the info from drivingblind today the burning alpha playtesters have began brainstorming about how they want to create their own cities for the game.

I am doing this as well.  

I live in New York City, which is both a good and bad thing for this type of game.  There are so many neighborhood and cultures in the city (and the surrounding boroughs) that I am very excited about the prospect of seeing what we can created.  On the other side, New York City can be a big daunting and you want to make sure you get the feel of it.  That could be either very easy, or a bit difficult.  The funny thing is of my main group, five of the six of us are transplants from other places (one from Maine, one from Oklahoma, one from Pennsylvania, one from Connecticut, and one from all over).  Only my friend Henry has lived in NYC his entire life, mostly in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  

So, I got to thinking about New York City and what it has to offer and here are just a few notes.

1.  It is a city of culture.  You can literally choose from MANY different races and culture.  That is nice when dealing with a supernatural aspect of things.  
2.  It is a tough place to live.  The summer's and winter's are harsh (mostly due to the fact that most people do not drive, so they are out in the elements more).  Which also would make you more of a target.  Rent can be very harsh, and I don't imagine the city I am creating in the game would be any different.  Combine that with the supernatural aspect of a Red Court vampire feasting on you and well it can be a handful.
3. I love the idea of doing something with the Statue of Liberty.  Having the ley lines run through it and it being the center.  I also would like to make it almost a place of safety from the creatures of the night.  My thought is when it was commissioned from the French, it was financed by someone that had ties with the White Council and the statue was actually "blessed" in some way.  I am early in this thought.
4.  The twin towers.  I can imagine that would be a place that comes up in the game.  9/11 was horrible and I would never do anything to remind people of that, it would be more of a setting than anything else.  You cannot think of NY without thinking of that horrible day almost 7 years ago.  Having known people that died in the Oklahoma City bombing, I can sympathize with the pain in this.
5. The subway system is another place that can be used almost like the way Butcher uses the tunnels under Chicago.  A lot of things you could do with the NYC subway system.
6.  You have some other cool areas.  Chinatown, Coney Island, Times Square, Yankee Stadium, The West Village, to name just a few off the top of my head. 

Those are just a few thoughts as I tried to sleep. 

So last night a few of my friends and I got together to make a Spirit of the Century character.  Mostly due to the fact that two of my gamers have played SOTC and they want to play the DFRPG when I test it.  I thought it would be easier to break them in with SOTC before we jumped into the DFRPG. 

We had to do so because Henry's character was arrested at the end of the last session for throwing dynamite in a crowded room and killing a few people. I thought it would just be easier to say his character is goin and making a new one.

While doing this, the Dresden Files RPG came up.

This is not really a surprise considering how excited I am to be able to play test the game. Right now I have five people in my group that could be playing the game. Four of them have read every book (with one person on the last book right now). One person has only read one of them and she says she is going to try to read more before we get too far in this process. I may even run a seperate one depending on whether anyone in my other group is interested.

So we sat down and started talking about characters and such, so I decided to show them an example of someone else's prior playtesting. So I went to Rick Neal's blog and we talked about some of the types of characters. 

After doing this, my friend Henry really seemed to be excited about the thought.  One of his first questions is whether he could play a ghoul, and the playtest actually had a ghoul character.  We also talked about the aspects the character had, which in this world could be really damn cool.  I personally think the aspects were MADE for this type of world.  

The funny thing is my girlfriend is new to the whole gaming scene, but she LOVE the Dresden Files.  So we have work around her schedule and find a way to get her to play this as well.  Now I have to teach how to play the game.  :)  But that is ok, excitement is infectious and I am so freaking excited.  

he second round of the playtesting for the Dresden Files Rpg is about to start. The reason that is news to me (and then you) is that I was selected to be one of the playtesters. The first round was called Bleeding Alpha, while this one is going to be called Burning Alpha. Here is the artwork that says quite a bit about what Evil Hat is trying to achieve. Not to mention it is just cool as hell! 




I came across this game accidentally about a year ago. I was looking around Jim Butcher's website (mainly do to how much of a fan I am of The Dresden Files) and came across an image you could download talking about the role playing game being designed based on the books.

Obviously, I was intrigued and went and looked at Evil Hat's website. I had never heard of them, but that isn't saying much considering how little I knew of the Indie gaming scene. But upon checking out the site I immediately signed up for the playtesting although I had no idea about the games they had previously made.
Since then I have become a HUGE fan of Spirit of the Century. It uses Fate, which is Evil Hat's version of Fudge (yes it can get confusing). The Dresden Files Rpg will be using an updated version of Fate (3.0) and since I have played SOTC a few times now, I am very excited about the dynamic system these games use. It should be awesome.

You can also check out the community I started here on LJ for all things related to the game.

dresdenfilesrpg, 

The goals is get as many people as possible to post (or link to) their blogs about the game. That way everyone that wants to know about the game has a place to go to get the info. I can only hope that all the playtesters will help in this. Speaking from someone that was hungry for info about the game earlier this year (during the first playtest); I know what it was like to go searching for the info. Hopefully, this will make the search easier.

Lastly, I cannot even begin to say how excited I am about this. I love the Dresden Files and SOTC is awesome. My hat goes off to Fred Hicks, Lenny Balsera, Chad Underkoffler, and everyone else at Evil Hat that is doing anything to help this project along.

Stacey