Posts Tagged “Dresden Files”
We created Portland in two sessions. The first took just a hair over three hours (from other posts, this seems about the right amount of time), the second took maybe an hour. We had an additional player for the second session.
Choosing a city - we started with a list of about a dozen candidates, purposely avoiding cities that other groups were doing - took us maybe a half hour. A couple of players weren’t jazzed about Portland at first, but once we got to sketching it up, the city started to take on a life of its own, and everyone started getting really excited. We found the Wikipedia article on Portland incredibly handy, and we had one player at the table on her laptop pretty much the entire time, looking up information as we needed it. Once we figured out the themes we were playing with, translating them into Aspects was a snap.
Creating locations was absolutely the most enjoyable segment of city creation. So enjoyable, in fact, that we went completely overboard, creating nine locations between four players (including myself as the GM). This is probably the root of our troubles during the second session. Still, this is what the players latched onto. They came up with locations, Aspects, and Faces almost faster than I could write them down.We also took some liberties with the city, creating one or two locations that don’t actually exist, such as the neighborhood known as The Woods, but were interesting in light of the setting. In any event, as I said, we wound up with nine locations all told. This process took the most time.
We hit the Touch of Magic section next, and found that, in our discussions of the locations, we’d already started addressing this point. This is about the time that the redundancy issues started manifesting. When we were coming up with locations, we basically asked ourselves, “Is this magical? If so, how?” for each location and character associated with it. So we found ourselves hitting this all in one fell swoop. So when we got to this question, we sort of went “Oh, this is already done,” and moved on.
The same issues occurred as we continued down the list of questions. The creation of locations and personalities gave rise to the answers to the last few questions organically, to the point where we were asking ourselves, “Why are we going over this again?” Again, it could be that we were just overzealous during the early parts of city creation, but the remaining questions just seemed redundant – they were the questions we were already asking ourselves as we created the locations.
One interesting thing to note is that we used index cards to create the city. Each location had it’s own card, so we were able to sort of map out the city physically as we worked, which gave us a visual aid to work with. Again, this could have contributed to the last questions seeming redundant. By giving ourselves a visual map, of sorts, we were able to see what the relationships between the locations, factions and faces of Portland were, which already put us in the mindset of creating conflicts and alliances and motivations. On the other hand, it could also have been the fact that three of the five players that were involved were also playing in a Burning Wheel game that we had just created the setting for, so we had an idea of what to expect.
Overall, the process worked well. One suggestion that we thought might help would be a step-by-step example of how city creation worked. Alternately, since the city is basically a character, itself, it might work to break it down into distinct Phases, similar to character creation. An example city sheet would be helpful as well.
Aside from that, though, everything seemed to turn out well. Despite the fact that we managed to answer several questions ahead of time, everybody at the table was stoked to create characters and get to exploring a Dresdenified Portland.
We plan on running through character creation in the coming week. All of us have read at least one or two of the novels by now, so we have a somewhat better idea of how the Dresdenverse works, and what characters should be occupying it.
 No Comments »
We finished up the city creation playtest last night, and it’s a friggin’ blast. The same player who wrote up the first chunk of material is working on a more detailed writeup, but I thought that I’d give y’all my initial thoughts.
The entire process of city creation for the Dresden Files RPG is fun, especially coming up with the locations. It really makes the players want to play in the city and explore all the cool stuff they’ve come up with. One of the best parts, as far as I’m concerned, is coming up with the characters that inhabit the locations. Since the players invent them, the players care about them, so any time a bad thing happens to them, the PC’s are going to jump to the rescue.
On the other hand, we found that, if you go overboard with the ideas at the beginning, you’ll bind yourself up at the end, when everybody starts tossing out story hooks and whatnot. This was the problem that we ran into - we created slightly more that twice the number of locations that were recommended - 9 locations between 4 players - which really made the last few steps of the city creation process redundant. You’ll see what I mean when we get the full writeup posted.
Still, overall, the city creation rules are solid enough to make me and all my players incredibly excited to play the DFRPG. It’ll be fun to see what comes out of Portland, OR in the Dresdenverse.
The rumor is that we should be seeing a chapter on conflicts next, but that probably won’t happen until after GenCon, since all of the Evil Hat guys are there and will be incredibly busy. In the meantime, though, my groups have a Shadowrun game to finish, a Burning Wheel game to start, and a Werewolf: The Forsaken game to create a character for. Also, we’ll be doing some collaborative stuff (and hanging out) with the folks from Good Omens again, which is always a blast. Not to mention the monthly one-shots that we play
So, despite the slow progress of the Dresden playtesting, there’s still an awful lot of awesome gaming to talk about, so stay tuned.
No Comments »
One of the members of our group was kind enough to take the mass of 3×5 index cards that we used to build our Dresdenverse Portland and post the bare bones of our creation session. There isn’t any flavor text added, but all of the Aspects, themes, locations, an personalities are there, or at least the seeds of them. As soon as we have some flavor to add - possibly tomorrow, since we’re finishing up the last couple of steps tonight. In any case, enjoy the rough sketch of Portland, OR.
If you’re interested, you can go and join in the conversation about our Dresden playtest on the This Modern Death forum.
Portland, OR
Aspects:
1. Hard to Drive, Easy to Walk
2. This is Really Two Cities
3. Two Big Rivers
Locations
1. Powell’s World of Books - Giant Bookstore
2. Portlandia - Bronze Statue
3. 40 Mile Loop - Giant Magical Circle
4. Olympus Mons Coffee Co. - Wizard Hangout
5. Rose Garden
6. Oregon State Zoo
7. The Woods - New Money Neighborhood
8. Industrial District - Vampire Territory
9. Oldtown - Downtown Portland
Location Details
1. Powell’s World of Books
Theme: Knowledge for Sale
Aspect: We got that somewhere…
Face: Worldly Archivist - Abernathy “Abby”, human cardfile, female, magical housecat.
Touch of Magic: The Magenta Room, hidden room with arcane knowledge
2. Portlandia
Theme: The Power of Icons
Aspect: The Spirit of Portland
Face: Nobody specific, but there is usually some kind of city employee or other nearby that feels the need to protect the statue from “vandals”.
Touch of Magic: The statue has no real magic itself, but it has power as the symbol of Faith in the city.
3. 40 Mile Loop
Theme: Protection Circle
Aspect: The Circle is Broken
Touch of Magic: It’s a Big Fucking Magic Circle
4. Olympus Mons Coffe Co.
Theme: Wizards’ Hangout & Haven
Aspect: It’s Hot Chocolate on a Cold Day
Face: Francesca “Frankie” Matinopalous, Tall Amazon looking woman, lots of tattoos, Suicide Girl, Master Roaster (all machines in the coffee shop are low tech, hand crafted affairs).
Touch of Magic: Incidentally arranged and equipped in a way to make it a haven for wizards. Somewhat New-Agey.
5. Rose Garden
Theme: True Romance/Date Spot
Aspect: Love and Lust
Face: Cantankerous Head Gardener, Arnold, Old Blood (family has been in Portland since the city was founded), powerful wizard, caretaker & protector (maintains the balance of energies in the Rose Garden), crafty
Touch of Magic: Attractive to the Fae (they want to take control of it). Site of Power from Life and Emotion.
6. Oregon State Zoo
Theme: False Sense of Security
Aspect: I Think This’ll Hold It
Face: Comically Exuberant Zoologist, Haresh Patil (NOT Harry!), biology grad student, uber-skeptic
Touch of Magic: Huge brass containment circle set in the center of a big fountain in the middle of the zoo.
7. The Woods
Theme: Rich New Money Neighborhood on the River
Aspect: Old Land, New Money
Face: Passive Aggressive Homeowners’ Association Chairperson, a total fucking bitch, but perky and “friendly” about it, knows who should and shouldn’t be in The Woods, has a dirty little secret
Touch of Magic: Magically Sterile
8. Industrial District
Theme: Seedy Underbelly
Aspect: Deadly After Dark
Face: Black Court Vampire Union Boss, Jeff “Benny” Benjamin (True Name - White Feather) Native American, predates the American Colonies, controls the Black Court in Portland.
Touch of Magic: Black Court Union
9. Oldtown
Theme: Heart of the City
Aspect: Livingroom of Portland
Face: Old Blues musician street performer, notices everything that goes on in his town, full of anectdotes, he gots the blues
Touch of Magic: Mostly mundane, has access to the Shanghai Tunnels
Who Cares?
Black Court Vampires
White Council, especially Arnold
The Fae, they want the Rose Garden
The Sasquatch, U’Bi’K, HATES White Feather
Coroporate America
The PC’s
Who Keeps the Peace?
The PC’s
The Cops
Sasquatch
The White Council
The Fae
How Do Mortals Cope?
An inneffective group of Wiccans
An underfunded Police precinct
1 Comment »
We started working on the city creation rules for the Dresden Files RPG last night. When it gets done, I’ll be sure to post it here, for everyone to see. Let me just say that the entire process is immensely fun, although somewhat time consuming. I have a feeling that, in practice, writing up a city will take pretty much an entire game session and character creation will likely take a whole nother session. On the other hand, withe the Fate system, creating both the city and the characters will most likely be like small games in and of themselves. I really enjoy the collaborative nature of the DFRPG city creation. As a consumately lazy GM, anything I don’t have to make up makes me happy.
During our playtesting session last night, we decided that we’d write up the Dresdenverse version of Portland, OR. So far, it’s a city of incidental magic - a perfect storm of history, custom, and intentional wizardry creating a fantastically interesting location.
Expect a full write-up soon, most likely cross-posted over at the This Modern Death Forums. I can assure you it will be fascinating. And the effect on player ownership of the setting will be awesome. I have some very high hopes for the Dresden RPG.
2 Comments »
|
