Anyway, as a result of her making Internet friends with David, we got to sit down and make a couple of characters for his new RPG, Maschine Zeit. So far, it looks like it’s going to be a techno-thriller/horror-ish kind of game, along the lines of Event Horizon. I think. Kinda. There are apparently actual ghosts in the machines.

Anyway, the first thing that the game asks you to do is to decide what you’re group is doing up in the large abandoned space-hulks that float above the planet. Kristin and I decided that our characters were former corporate employees who have since gone freelance for their own reasons. I wanted to play a scientist, she decided to make a laborer.

Next up, we’ve got the character’s concept. I liked that the example text from the chapter gave a really clear indication of how the concept was intended to be constructed; basically, “A ______ who’s ______, and now ______.” Pretty straightforward stuff. I came up with Dr. Anish Joshi, a disgruntled scientist, who wants to strike out at his former employers.

Step three is figuring out why we’re on one of the abandoned space stations, and who’s paying for the expensive trip up there. We went with the idea that our characters were pulled together for our different areas of expertise by an independent businessman, Jurassic Park style, although our benefactor is secretly working for a major corporation. It was all we could do to not name him Mr. Johnson. This kind of merged a bit with the next step, where you figure out how you know each other and whatnot.

Next, we finally got to put numbers to paper and get down to the nitty-gritty of actual character creation. I’ve always viewed the character sheet as the player’s interface with the game world, so what’s on the sheet is pretty important to me. Of course, not having read through the actual mechanics, I don’t know what the numbers mean. But, the character creation chapter assures me that higher numbers are better.

The gist is this: you’ve got 150 points to break down amongst 9 individual stats, which are divided into 3-stat blocks. So, under the Soma Elements you’ve got Body, Mind and Persona. These basically break down to your level of ability on physical, mental or social tasks, respectively. After that, you have your Pneuma Elements, which represent the stuff you’ve learned. Knowledge is book-learnin’, Rote Skill is what you’ve learned through hands-on training, and Interaction is what you’ve learned through dealing with people. Lastly, there’s the Psyche Elements. Your Id represents your instincts, your Ego is your sense of self and pride, and your Superego is your “sense of self in relation to the outside world.”

The points themselves are split amongst these nine stats (the book suggests splitting them up into multiples of 5), to give you an array of values between (generally) 5 and 25. The higher the number, the better you are in that ability.

After you’ve distributed those, you get to move on the the Personal Elements. These are divided into Descriptor, Skill Set and Association Elements, and they’re open-ended, much like Traits from Dogs in the Vineyard. I copped out and just gave each of my Universal Elements a corresponding Personal Element, but I imagine that you could have as many Personal Elements as you have points for. Personally, I think this is where character creation for Maschine Zeit is going to shine, as this kind of open-ended character creation is where it’s at for me.

There are two other types of Elements on the sheet, Genotype and Dramatic. Genotype Elements are for what I can only assume to be the Kewel Powerz (TM) of the game. I’m not sure exactly what Dramatic Elements are, but they’re keyed to how many players there are in the group, so I’m guessing that they may be some way of mitigating the risk of not having as many PC’s around to help if you’ve got a small play group.

Here’s Dr. Joshi, all statted up:

Character Name: Dr. Anish Joshi

Concept: A disgruntled scientist, who wants to strike out at his former employers.

Trip Funded By: Corporate Interests, under the guise of Private Interests

Universal Elements

Soma Elements

Body: 10

Mind: 25

Persona: 15

Pneuma Elements

Knowledge: 25

Rote Skill: 15

Interaction: 10

Psyche Elements

Id: 10

Ego: 20

Superego: 20

Personal Elements

Descriptor Elements

Wiry: 10

Brilliant: 25

Cold: 10

Skill Set Elements

Scientist: 25

Analyst: 20

Debator: 10

Association Elements

Fringe Research: 15

Highly Credentialed: 15

Humanist: 20

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What are Aspects?

First of all, when I talk about Aspects, I’m referring to the primary feature of awesomeness from Evil Hat’s FATE system, which powers their Spirit of the Century and Dresden Files RPGs. In short, Aspects are basically short phrases that describe something important about your character. In FATE, they’re generally used one of two ways; either you can invoke an Aspect to get a bonus on your die roll, or the GM can pay you, the player, a Fate Point (which are the FATE system’s form of player-input currency) in exchange for compelling you to act in a particular way based on one of your Aspects.

For example, let’s say you have an Aspect that says, “Sucker for a pretty face.” When you’re trying to convince an attractive young lady to give up some information on some Ancient Artifact you’re trying to keep out of Nazi hands, you shell out a Fate Point and tell the GM that you’re invoking your Aspect. You get a bonus on whatever die roll you use for sweet-talking info out of pretty young women. Later on, the same lass turns out to be secretly working for the Nazis, and slips the Ancient Artifact out of your pocket. The GM then gives you a Fate Point and compels you to let her go, citing the same Aspect.

Clear? Good. Indiana Jones reference too heavy handed? Eh. Sue me.

Aspects in the World of Darkness

Okay, so now that you are aware of what Aspects are and the basics of how they work, let’s look at a couple of ways that you could use them in a World of Darkness game. There are no guarantees that any of these suggestions will not break the game. However, they are also likely to lead to awesomeness that wasn’t there previously.

The WoD Problem

Okay, it’s not really a problem, in the strictest sense. I’ve just never cared for the Virtue/Vice setup.

First of all, in all of the ideas below, we’re going to use Willpower points as the player-input currency, and then tie WP spending and recovery to the Aspects.

Method #1: Virtue and Vice as Aspects

The simplest way of applying these mechanics is to straight-up use Virtue and Vice as Aspects. When you want to be able to spend a point of Willpower, you justify that through either your Virtue or Vice. You want three extra dice on that attack roll? “My Wrath overcomes me as I strike.” You want some WP back? The GM’s gonna make you go for that idea that’s full of Hope, but probably not very likely to happen.

The downside is that Virtue and Vice as written aren’t really meaningful. I think in practice, most people tend to take the seed of the Virtue or Vice and turn that into something a bit more specific, usually with one tied to the other. An ex-cop might have Justice as his Virtue and Wrath as a Vice, with the explanation that he’s got a tendency to let the ends justify the means while seeking justice. Fortunately, there are ways of tweaking this…

Method #2: The Two Aspect Character

In this method, we ignore the idea of Virtue and Vice per se, and instead give your character two aspects, one based on a Virtue, and the other on a Vice. This has the benefit of being, basically, what people do anyway, with the added bonus of actually having a concrete way of gaining back Willpower. Instead of having Justice and Wrath, you’d have a statement that’s a little more solid, like, “I am the law,” or, “I will make the wrongdoers pay!”

For a little exta fun, you could also make your character’s Concept or splat combination into Aspects as well.

Method #3: The Donoghue Method

In the post I linked to previously, Rob Donoghue made a brilliant suggestion of making each dot you have in Willpower an Aspect. Thus, a Willpower 4 character will have 4 aspects, chosen by the player. You’d create Aspects that apply to your character at character creation, and then, as you spend XP on raising your Willpower, you’d have to come up with Aspects that represent why you gained that dot. The nice part of this method is that you wind up with a character that has a ton of Aspects, and, once that happens, it’s really easy for the GM to get your character invested in the game. Also, in my experience, most WoD GM’s like to make players justify their XP expenditures. This makes you think long and hard about whether or not you have justification for spending those points on Willpower.

Next time, I’m going to address one of my pet-peeves in WoD – well, in a lot of RPG’s, really – the Extended Roll.

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The game I’m working on, tentatively titled Dystropolis, is a transhumanist-themed FATE game. The idea for it was inspired by this passage from Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom:

It was the second year of my undergrad, taking a double-major in not making trouble for my profs and keeping my mouth shut. It was the early days of Bitchun, and most of us were still a little unclear on the concept.

Not all of us, though: a group of campus shit-disturbers, grad students in the Sociology Department, were on the bleeding edge of the revolution, and they knew what they wanted: control of the Department, oustering of the tyrannical, stodgy profs, a bully pulpit from which to preach the Bitchun gospel to a generation of impressionable undergrads who were too cowed by their workloads to realize what a load of shit they were being fed by the University.

At least, that’s what the intense, heavyset woman who seized the mic at my Soc 200 course said, that sleepy morning mid-semester at Convocation Hall. Nineteen hundred students filled the hall, a capacity crowd of bleary, coffee-sipping time-markers, and they woke up in a hurry when the woman’s strident harangue burst over their heads.

I saw it happen from the very start. The prof was down there on the stage, a speck with a tie-mic, droning over his slides, and then there was a blur as half a dozen grad students rushed the stage. They were dressed in University poverty-chic, wrinkled slacks and tattered sports coats, and five of them formed a human wall in front of the prof while the sixth, the heavyset one with the dark hair and the prominent mole on her cheek, unclipped his mic and clipped it to her lapel.

“Wakey wakey!” she called, and the reality of the moment hit home for me: this wasn’t on the lesson-plan.

“Come on, heads up! This is not a drill. The University of Toronto Department of Sociology is under new management. If you’ll set your handhelds to ‘receive,’ we’ll be beaming out new lesson-plans momentarily. If you’ve forgotten your handhelds, you can download the plans later on. I’m going to run it down for you right now, anyway.

“Before I start though, I have a prepared statement for you. You’ll probably hear this a couple times more today, in your other classes. It’s worth repeating. Here goes:

“We reject the stodgy, tyrannical rule of the profs at this Department. We demand bully pulpits from which to preach the Bitchun gospel. Effective immediately, the University of Toronto Ad-Hoc Sociology Department is in charge. We promise high-relevance curriculum with an emphasis on reputation economies, post-scarcity social dynamics, and the social theory of infinite life-extension. No more Durkheim, kids, just deadheading! This will be fun.”

The world is changing, and you are one of the few people who understand why. You are a member of one of the many transhuman Tribes; ad-hoc meritocracies whose goals are to usher in a new world for Posthumanity. Through knowledge and hacking and black-market deals, you’ve managed to make yourself into something more than you were born to be.

The Powers that Be, though, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Their business models are tied up in it. Their governments are constructed around it. They teach it in their schools. They view your kind as simple dissidents. They are no longer worthy of the power and control they possess.

It is up to you and your Tribemates to take the world from them. For the good of all.

That’s kind of a rough idea of the concept. It needs to be fleshed out and made, well, better.

So, what do you do in this game? The plan is to put the players on the other side of the world domination game. Usually, RPG plots center around people who are fighting against overwhelming odds to keep some monolithic evil from taking over the world. In this case, I wanted to explore the idea of having the players be proactive in taking the world away from those who have either misused it, or have simply ground progress down to a standstill. I thought it might be fun to have the players be the “bad guys,” in the sense that they are out for world domination, at least.

Mechanically, I plan on stealing liberally from most of the published FATE games, especially the Dresden Files RPG and Diaspora. My current thought is to give the Dystropolis campaign a framework based on Diaspora’s social conflict system. I’ll post more on that when I get a chance to playtest it.

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(Atlanta, GA) – DriveThruRPG, an online marketplace for traditional dice-and-paper roleplaying games, recently conducted a fund-raising program in the wake of the devastating earthquake that affected Haiti. The effort resulted in an amount of $178,900.00 being wired to the international relief organization, Doctors Without Borders.

“Nothing like this has ever happened in our community,” said Sean Patrick Fannon, Marketing Manager for DriveThruRPG. “The response of the publishers and the gaming community has been nothing short of miraculous. I am extremely proud of what we’ve all done here. It can’t take away the misery and tragedy faced by the people of Haiti, but we are hopeful that our efforts can bring some relief and recovery to them.”

DriveThruRPG chose Doctors Without Borders because of their flawless reputation for bringing medical and humanitarian aid to those in need without any partisan or philosophical agenda attached. Already on the ground when the earthquake struck, Doctors Without Borders is perfectly positioned to make immediate and efficient use of the funds collected.

“We are extremely grateful to DriveThruRPG and the roleplaying game community for choosing to contribute to Doctors Without Borders. Their generosity will help provide lifesaving and urgently needed humanitarian assistance to the victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti,” said Jennifer Tierney, Director of Development for Doctors Without Borders-USA. “As Doctors Without Borders provides surgery for victims of the earthquake, as well as post-operative care, mental health support, and other medical care, this contribution will make a real difference in Haiti.”

Reports from Doctors Without Borders indicate that over 11,000 have been treated by them, with over 1,300 surgeries performed (most of them major). The money donated by DriveThruRPG will go directly to helping rebuild their supplies and expanding their operations during the recovery of the Haitian nation.

“This is just the beginning,” said Steve Wieck, CEOof DriveThruRPG. “We’ve tapped into a real power for positive social change and charitable good here, and we’re looking ahead to future opportunities to use our technology to help game publishers and game fans network to provide assistance to those in need.”

DriveThruRPG.com is the world’s largest source of roleplaying game products available for download. It is an industry leader in modern business and technology developments for the tabletop gaming fan. For more information, contact Sean Patrick Fannon (sean@onebookshelf.com, 614-946-9371).

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization working in nearly 70 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. For more information, contact Emily Linendoll, Press Officer (emily.linendoll@newyork.msf.org, 212-763-5764).

I’m super proud to be both a member of the RPG community and a contributor to the money that DTRPG donated to Doctors Without Borders. Everyone who donated is, in this, at least, an awesome person who deserves all kinds of credit.

I’d also like to take the time to acknowledge some of the contributors to the bundle, especially Duane O’Brien and David Hill, who are beyond awesome.

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One of these ideas is the WoD Mod series; a bunch of random, unplaytested hacks for White Wolf’s World of Darkness line of games. Very few of these are written with the intension of saying, “This was bad game design. Here’s how to fix it.” There might be a couple of posts like that, but for the most part, these are about trying to get the game to give you a different feel. Also,  as I said above, nothing in here is playtested, and it’s entirely possible that I won’t get a chance to test them ever, so, I’m relying on you kind WoD players to try these out in your own games, then come back and let me know how they work, or if the idea was completely retarded. Which is possible because, hey, I don’t write games for a living.

Let’s talk about the Morality track in WoD, shall we?

Basically, as written, the Morality attribute is intended to measure how in touch your character is with whatever his nature happens to be. For mortal characters, this is basically a question of adhering to general Western moral ideals. For all the supernatural critters, it’s  a measure of  consonance or dissonance with one’s nature. How close are you to the monster inside you? Or, something like that, anyway. In practice, all it really does is disincentivise people from playing either retardedly moral or retardedly amoral characters. It’s really really hard to get to Morality 10, and pretty much impossible to stay there. You also have to be really really bad to drill down to Morality 1. Generally, you have to engage in every activity that makes GMs, and probably every other player at the table, roll their eyes as you describe how you mutilate kittens in gory detail. In practice, there’s generally this sweet-spot between Morality 5 and 7 where most characters reach a kind of stasis, and manage to stick around that range. If you play any World of Darkness game, you probably know all this already.

One of the things that I always want World of Darkness games to be about is being forced to make the hard choices – do you give in to the nature of what you are, in order to accomplish what you need to do. To that end, here’s the hack I propose for making the WoD just a little more Faustian.

Instead of using the normal power currency for the activation of Disciplines, Gifts or Spells, turn Morality (whatever it happens to be in the game line you’re using) into a spendable pool of points, like how Willpower works, and spend those points to fuel your abilities. Keep the original power currency, but use it to fuel the “mundane” stuff – healing, buffing your stats, or whatever. The real point is to make it so that using your awesomeness costs you something real. So, when a vamp decides he wants to be superhumanly strong, instead of using Vitae to do it, you tap into the Beast – you give it control for just a little bit. Of course, if you give an inch, it takes a mile.

If you ever drop to 0 points, the Beast or the Rage or the Geist takes over and does things with your body while your conscious mind goes and hides for a while. Your Morality score automatically drops by one, you get to check for derangement, and the GM gets to put you in a shitty situation. Shitty situations are awesome, by the way.

Also, the original Morality degeneration rules still apply. Yup, you now have two ways to turn into a monster. If you do bad things, you degenerate, Gollum-like, into a subhuman – and possibly insane – creature. If you give in to the darker urges inside of you too often, same thing.

So, why do this? Really, it’s a way of making the rules affect the fiction in a cool manner. It’s also a good way of addressing one of the main themes of the game in a mechanical way. As it stands, you make Morality degeneration rolls when the GM decides that you’ve done something that warrants it, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but, in my experience, WoD GM’s rarely actually call for degeneration rolls unless you do something blatantly evil, like murdering a busfull of schoolchildren with some vulgar magic, or wolfing out on your wife during an argument over taking out the trash.

In any case, that’s pretty much it. Give it a shot, let me know how it goes, or doesn’t!

Next week: Virtue and Vice as Aspects!

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I haven’t really gotten to play Diaspora yet, but the decision by the creators to not publish a PDF until they can present the file as a product in itself, rather than just a dump of the book layout, seems like a pretty cool idea to me. It could just be that weird holdover from reading The Fountainhead, but there’s a large part of me that thinks that is of the opinion that a person’s product is his or her own to do with as they please. I also think that, while it may not be a profit-driven decision now, it could be a really good way of looking at PDF releases in the future.

A lot of folks have said that they have problems reading electronic copies of books on a computer screen, and I wonder how much that can be mitigated by creating PDF’s that were designed for digital distribution from the ground up. Also, this could start the trend toward gaming material that could be more easily ported to an ebook reader. I know that White Wolf has also made some statements about moving in that direction, which is awesome.

Brad Murray, one of Diaspora’s creators, has a very astute blog entry about how information is presented and correlated between physical books and electronic documents. Reading it made me realize that these issues haven’t at all been addressed in most available PDF game documents. I very much think that they should, not just because it’s interesting, but because I think that electronic distribution with an option of a print-on-demand physical book is likely the future of the entire industry, especially as the cost of the reader technology drops.

This is one of those weird situations where the niche hobbyist is really going to do something innovative that will ultimately inform, at least in some small way, how some of the bigger players in the industry will offer their products in the future.

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Fri 12:45 pm – We meant to be leaving for the con in an hour or so. Two of our jobs got cancelled and replaced with a single job that probably won’t start until 3 or 4. We will hopefully make it in time to buy our badges tonight.

Fri 4:11 pm – Finally on the way to the bay! We have an extra hour delay, though, on account of needing to borrow my sister-in-law’s laptop for podcasting. Still, at least we’re on the road.

Fri 8:30 pm – Finally got checked in and registered. As always, getting badges, was painless. Parking not so much. The con filled up the garage, so we had to valet park. Of course, I left my wallet in the car, which means getting it bedore tomorrow will be a pain.

Sat 9:30 am – Not exactly live, but last night we were able to get into a Changeling: The Dreaming game run by Dave Martin of The Wrecking crew. It was fun, but I was incredibly tired, and started getting grumpy near the end.

Sat 1:00 pm – just got back from lunch with Sean from Narrative Control and some other folks. Had a great time. Hopefully, we’ll be able to convince some folks to do some pickup gaming between the scheduled games.

Sun 4:30 pm – Just finished playtesting Justin’s Schaurmarchen game for GOCon. Anybody playing in that one is going to have a great time with it.
Last night we got a chance to demo Geist: The Sin-Eaters. The premise is good, but the demo needs a little bit of work. Can’t say too much, but it should be worth getting when it comes out.
We also recorded an interview with Dave Martin last night, and an episode of Narrative Control with Justin and Sean. Both of those had some really great content, although NC I thought went better than the interview.

Sun 10:30 am – Just about conned out. I’m currently sitting in on a Dogs in the Vineyard game as an observer, and reading through Shock: Social Science Fiction.
That last one was a total impulse buy. I went down to get Dominion and 3:16, and Shock: was just kind of there. Judging by the opening fiction, it looks like it might have been a good buy.
Last night’s plan was to play Dread, but it was midnight before people were going to be out of their games, and we were all exhausted, so it just never happened. Which was fine, really. I only wish that we’d decided not to play prior to 2 am, since we’re going to be exhausted for the trip home.
Still, Kubla was a good con, as usual. Next year, though, I think I’m going to fill up my schedule, even if I have to add games that I don’t actually want to play. I figure that will get me into more games overall, while still giving me time for pickup games and whatnot.

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Of course, we’re in the midst of a wicked recession (in case you ain’t heard), and it wasn’t just me, so there’s really no hard feelings. Fortunately for me, my wife owns her own company, and she’s offered to let me help her out, so I won’t be entirely useless. Still, I find myself with some excess free time.

One of the things that I said I’d do was to post more. Obviously, I’ve failed to do that. However, I’ve had a couple of ideas for games that I need to get written down, and, well, there’s not much better places to do that than the blog that I’ve set up for exactly that purpose.

In any case, the beginning of those posts should start on Monday. Hopefully.

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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.

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