Dresden Files RPG Burning Alpha Playtest - Recap
Posted by: Shaun in Dresden Files Playtest, Gaming, Role-Playing Games, tags: Dresden, grappling, playtest, RPG, spellcasting
I still need to work on getting all of the different characters posted. It should be easier now that I have everyone’s sheets sitting in my pile of gaming stuff. Expect those in the next couple of days.
In the meantime, though, we did play our playtest sessions of the actual game. Mostly, we used the first session to sort of bring everyone up to speed on the game mechanics. The nice thing is, it seems like some of the rules as presented in the Dresden Files RPG are a little more clear than they were in Spirit of the Century, especially the rules for performing Maneuvers.
Before I go into the actual play report, I’d like to review some of the characters. We went over Oklahoma “OK Tom” Tomorrow previously, but I haven’t really detailed any of the other characters.
Martin Dover Gentry is a changeling, and the owner of the comic book and curiosity shop, First Edition. He’s built around a magpie theme, so he’s very birdlike. We modified the Supernatural Stunt Bless this House slightly to fit with his theme - in some legends, magpies were the ones who taught people how to build homes, so we thought it was appropriate. Mechanically, it works as written, we just chose not to base it in Faith.
Calista Annabelle Thorn is a werewolf firefighter with a hero complex. She pretty much has the werewolf package straight out of the Character Templates chapter.
Kate is a college cheerleader/novice Wizard. She’s also a spoiled rich girl. She used the basic wizard template, minus Thaumaturgy - the player really had no interest in it.
I won’t go into minute details on each and every roll. I don’t think that it’s important to the playtesting, and, really, the basics of the rules have already been vetted in SotC. On the whole, the regular game mechanics worked excellently.
The Scenario
Martin’s comic shop, First Edition, was robbed. He and OK Tom discover the assailant still in the building and chase him down. After a brief fight*, the mysterious theif tries to get away, but gets creamed by a car. The characters check the thief for signs of life, but instead find him to be a conglomeration of sticks and junk, wrapped up in old jeans and a hoodie and carrying a backpack. In the backpack were the items that were stolen from the comic shop, including an old hand-carved chess set that had been left by the previous owner. The black rook and queen were broken. When the rest of the group showed up at the shop, everyone went searching for clues. Martin, Calista and Kate found a wallet on the construct, and decided to track down the owner to see what he knew.
This is where the added importance of compels came in handy. I compelled OK Tom’s Bicycle Messenger Aspect - he had packages he needed to deliver. Upon making his last delivery, he found a a man dead, clearly murdered. A small green plant was growing out of his chest. A quick once-over of the room revealed the murder victim’s letterhead - he was an artist named Tad Willows, and his logo was a black rook. The package he was delivering also had a logo on it - a black queen. It was sent by one Emily Bellhaven. He used his Psychometry stunt to gather some additional information about the artist, basically discovering the “how” of how he died, but not the “why.” He passed off the information to an underfunded group of cops that we had created during the city creation sessions.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group traced the wallet to the area known as the Woods. Turned out that the wallet owner was a cripple, and a red herring. They were about to head back to First Edition when Kate’s College Student Aspect got compelled - she had a test that she HAD to take. While at school, another one of the stickmen came after her**. She managed to escape by slipping through a crowd, basically using an Athletics as a block against the assailant.
After that, everyone met back up at First Edition to figure out where to go next. Calista decided to use her werewolf senses to sniff out where the stickman came from. OK Tom decided to go digging on his own.
The scent trail led Calista, Martin and Kate on a merry chase around the Portland bus system. A quick compel of Calista’s Werewolf Aspect caused a bit of a scene (”Is that a service animal? We don’t let pets on the bus…”). Martin’s Resources cleared the way, and the chase was on. The three of them followed the scent into the Shanghai Tunnels beneath the city, which were filled with about two inches of water. As they were searching the tunnels, they heard footsteps splashing toward them.
Meanwhile, OK Tom decides to call Emily Bellhaven. It goes straight to voicemail, and he leaves a message, pretending to be the murdered artist. Later, the cops call him back, demanding to know how he knows Ms. Bellhaven, and if he’d be willing to have a detective come and speak with him at the loft. OK Tom, of course, agrees. He shows up at the artist’s loft a while later, and sees a detective’s car out front. So, Tom makes like a delivery boy. The cop questions him as the crime scene unit and coroner’s van show up. The officer demands that Tom hand the package, but loses the social conflict. He tells Tom that he’ll get a court order for it, and to keep the package sealed and safe until that happens. Of course, Tom opens it later. Inside are some seeds, and some chips and grains of some kind of grey stone.
Meanwhile, down in the tunnels, the werewolf, wizard and changeling are attacked by yet another stickman. Martin dove for its ankles, effectively blocking the thing while Kate made a grab for its hoodie. Calista used her Supernatural Strength to body check it, taking it out. After that, they followed the tunnels to a door. Beyond that, a good-sized room lined with cupboards and drawers and workbenches. They proceed to start investigating everything.
OK Tom, meanwhile, had gone to Powell’s Bookstore to do a little research. He discovered that the seeds were honeysuckle, and the stone was volcanic basalt, the same kind found at the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. He discovered that the plant growing from Tad Willows’ chest was honeysuckle as well. He makes an attempt at calling the rest of the group. Unfortunately, between Kate’s hexing and their being under ground, the call doesn’t go that well. Ther was, however, some hilarity involving text messaging, and a lack of a QWERTY keyboard. Tom then goes to his Contacts, invoking his Shadowy Contacts aspect, attempting to find out what the hell is going on.
Down in the basement, Calista picks up a new scent - this time of spring flowers, honeysuckle, and fresh cut grass. They follow it to a doorway bearing a plaque with the word ‘Antiquities’ on it. A clever use of Kates hexing shorted out the alarm system, and cleared the way for them to get inside. The trail stopped in one corner, at a stacked up pile of boxes…
Tom got ahold of his contacts, and started grilling them on what was going on. Turns out that the victims were Changelings aligned with the Autumn Court who were expected to make the Choice soon - the presence of the honeysuckle indicated that the perpetrator was a member of the Spring Court.
Meanwhile, I compelled Kate into using The Sight to see past the Glamour that was the pile of boxes. Behind the glamour was Annah, a former Changeling-turned-Fae who is one of the contenders for the Spring Queen throne***. This was, of course, the excuse that we needed to test out the Spellcasting rules. Calista body-checks the Fae and uses a maneuver to give her the Prone aspect. Kate gathers some power, but holds it in check. Annah used Seelie Magic to attempt a Bind maneuver on Martin, but he tags her Prone aspect. She fails the Discipline roll, and causes Fallout. Vines break through the linoleum floor and start coming for everyone, incidentally binding the Fae. Everyone else escapes the effect, but the vines continue to grow out of control, and are about to bind the door closed. Martin’s turn comes around, and he drops his Refresh to buy Wings, giving him a Refresh of 1, and then Intimidates Annah, giving her a “Cowed” aspect. She looks like she’s going to try and escape, so Kate releases the power that she’s gathered with an Evocation effect, knocking Annah unconscious. The vines were still coming, so they tear the Fae out of her bindings and flee back the way they came.
There was some incidental dialogue after that, most of which was questioning and bullying Annah, with me trying to twist the truth without actually lying. We left strings hanging to pick up when the game actually comes out.
* We managed to weasel in a test of the new Grappling rules here - it worked incredibly well.
** Kate’s player is very D&D/White-Wolf minded, and she had trouble grasping the idea of succeeding at a conflict rather than a task. It took quite a bit of explaining, and I don’t think she ever quite “got it.”
*** One thing that never came out during the course of play - mostly because the players never really made it an issue, and it was mostly an entertaining side-note - is that the new Faerie Courts that were created for the Portland setting don’t necessarily play by the same rules as the canon Courts. I wanted to keep the Chess metaphor going, so the Spring and Autumn Courts match the back row of the Chess board - a King, a Queen two Knights, two Rooks, and two Bishops. However, as new as they are, and with their limited resources, not all of the royalty has been chosen. The courts are filling the gaps with more powerful Changelings who are approaching their Choices.
What Worked:
The grappling rules worked really well for us. Much better, in fact, than they do in most systems. I don’t know if anyone else had problems with them, but for us, it was really quick.
Evocation worked well for me, personally. In retrospect, the vine maneuver should have probably affected the intended target - I erred on the side of what I thought was more interesting. But, in a situation where the players know the rules fairly well, spellcasting as written doesn’t take much input from the GM, which is exactly how I like my games to run - let the players do the hard work 
Also, the Backlash and Fallout mechanics worked really well - I liked using them.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to really test out Thaumaturgy, but the rules, as written, look like they should play well, since they follow the same basic principles.
What Didn’t:
There wasn’t really any mechanical issues that didn’t work.
When it came to antagonists, I had some problems, mostly due to the fact that there weren’t any fully statted out examples of things like True Fae. For the constructs, I basically used the goon rules from SotC - they were +2 at pretty much everything, with 2 boxes of Stress. For Annah, the recently changed Changeling, there wasn’t anything to go off of. I intended for her to be a weak Sidhe, but she came off as significantly underpowered. Some minions might have helped, but she was really an excuse to bust out some evocation.
Other Thoughts and Feedback:
One thing that we saw, specifically with the Supernatural Stunts chapter, was an organization issue. Since nobody was super familiar with the rules, the lack of an alphabetized list of supernatural Stunts made things a little bit difficult. It’s a minor issue that will most likely be mitigated in the final product, assuming it’s got a comprehensive index like SotC does.
One of the players also asked about someting that occurs in the source fiction, and how it’s intended to be handled in the game. In the books, Harry is often drained after casting a lot of spells, to the point where even calling up simple effects is beyond him. This player wanted to know how the game modeled that. I told him that it was pretty well handled by taking consequences in exchange for power, and, if that wasn’t good enough, the character’s Wizard aspect could be tagged or compelled to represent that. So, I was a little curious as to whether that was the intention, or was it something that just isn’t important enough to gameplay to matter.
So, that’s pretty much it, as far as our DFRPG playtest went. Really, the problems we had were pretty minor, and we’re all pretty stoked for the full game to come out. I think that this system will sing in long-term play.
