Author Archives: Rick Neal

Game On III: The Second Monday Game

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Characters

Second session started with me trying to rope Paul Roman into the action. His player wasn’t able to make the first session, so he was coming late to the party. I got to use another of my NPCs, sending Matthew Cross to talk to him. As the Voice of Anubis, Matthew knows a lot of the nasty things Paul has done over the years, and he came and told him that Anubis said that Paul should look into the cold and deaths as a means of balancing the scales while he can.

Paul didn’t like it, but he knows he’s in the hole as far as karma goes, so he trotted off to see Lucky Firth at the Public Safety Building. Lucky’s still having some difficulty buying into the whole mystical thing, so they spent a few minutes bashing their heads together, then Paul left his number with the detective and went off to find things out on his own.

He did this by talking to Crazy Tom, getting roughly the same information the others had got the day before. Then he went off to the Assiniboine Forest to summon the spirit of the forest for information, finding out a little more, and getting very, very cold in the process.

At this point, Christian’s character showed up, so we flashed back to the end of the fight the previous night, where Christian very carefully avoided giving any useful answers about his ghoulish nature. They also scouted around the area of the fight, looking for evidence of where the other group of fae had gone, but came up empty. Finally, they fled the cold back to their vehicles and home.

The next day, Lucky told Anne about Paul, and Christian went back to Crazy Tom to ask for an audience with the Bramble King. Tom reluctantly agreed to take the message to the Bramble King, but made no promises. Anne went to First Folio, looking for some research material, and ran into a gang of wyldfae trying to shake down Artemis Black for magic books to help them in their battles. She chased them off, and spent some time with Denizens of the Nearer Fields, by Salman al Rashid, learning about the vulnerabilities of the fae.

 The trio decided to go back to the forest in order to try and find better signs of the faeries in daylight. They met Paul leaving the forest at that point, and all retired to a Tim Horton’s for some coffee and to share information.

They went back into the forest near dusk and found the place where they’d fought the ogre the night before. Paul used the Sight to scan the area, and found the portal to the Nevernever that the fae had come through. While examining it, right at sunset, he felt a surge of power, and Anne heard the far-off call of hunting horns. Paul quickly conjured a barrier over the portal, and was rewarded with the impacts of several faeries on the far side before an ogre bashed his way through, followed by four Sidhe warriors.

The battle went in favour of our heroes again, with Lucky burning a whole stack of Fate Points on the final few gunshots, Anne laying iron filings across the portal to prevent reinforcements, Paul shutting down the portal’s magic, and Christian keeping the ogre occupied until everyone could focus on it.

And, once again, we leave our heroes in the dark and cold of the Assiniboine Forest after fighting for their lives.

Comments on this session:

  • Combats are getting easier for the players as they learn the ins and outs of the system. They’re expanding their tactics to try new things – for example, Anne drove off the wyldfae at the bookstore with a recording of church bells.
  • Someone with a lot of Fate Points during the climactic scene can really steal the show.
  • The patch rules for Evocation that were sent to the list recently work very nicely in play.
  • Players here in Winnipeg really understand what -50 C means. Just describing the cold to Paul’s player had him almost shivering when he knew he’d be out in Assiniboine Forest for hours working his ritual to summon the forest spirit.

All in all, things are working fairly well. Check back this weekend for the report on the next Friday Game.

Downtime and Kudos

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This blog was down for about half an hour this afternoon while I messed up the upgrade to WordPress 2.5. I’m telling you this less because I think that there were throngs of readers weeping as they repeatedly hit the refresh buttons on their browsers, and more because I want to talk about my webhosts.

I’m a bit of a computer guy, but I’m not a real computer guy. Since starting this blog, I’ve run into trouble a couple of times, and needed some help to get back on line. My first line of support is always my friend Michael, who is a master at using WordPress and managing websites.

When the problem isn’t something he has access to fixing, however, I have to turn to Dreamhost.

They rock.

I have never had to wait more than half an hour for a response to e-mail, and they always have me up and running with quick fixes, either on my end or theirs. These guys just get tech support and customer service. I cannot recommend them strongly enough.

So, in closing, Dreamhost good.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Game On II: The First Friday Game

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Characters

Friday’s story is set in the spring. It opens with Rowan getting a visit from the Warden Regional Commander for Western North America – one Carlos Rodriguez. Her parents are out of town, so she’s the White Council representative for the city. Warden Rodriguez has received a vague warning from the Gatekeeper that something bad is going to happen in Winnipeg. As it’s another of the Gatekeeper’s cryptic warnings from the future, Warden Rodriguez has no further information, and wants Rowan to monitor the situation and act as necessary. Rowan had sensed some disturbance in the magical flows and background of the city, but that’s not unusual during the changeover from Winter to Summer. She determines to investigate more closely, and to enlist Gerhardt’s help in doing so.

Gerhardt, meanwhile, is hip-deep in strange gang deaths. A number of gang members have been found savaged to death, seemingly by wild animals, always in gang houses. Most of the gangs have been hit, though the Mad Cowz have been hit slightly more often, and were hit first. The animalistic style of the attacks seems wrong to him, so he wants to talk to Rowan about possible supernatural aspects to the crimes.

Legion is feeling some tension. The demons he contains are getting stroppy; there’s something out there that resonates with them, some sort of hungry, predatory force. He does a little research to see what might be going on, and finds out about the gang murders. Looking for answers, he seeks out Gerhardt.

Elaine normally avoids her old neighbourhood, not wanting to get spotted by her family or former friends. She heads back there when she hears that the Mad Cowz have started moving in on the normally gang-free area, looking to recruit and claim the turf. This has prompted a response from the Manitoba Warriors, as the area is predominantly native and metis. Snooping around, she finds out that the gangs are looking to recruit because of the losses they’ve recently suffered, and are pushing into new territory because of the lack of safety in their old territory. She also finds out that Gerhardt is heading the investigation, so she goes to talk to him about what’s happening.

The group gets together and decides to go to the site of the most recent murder to investigate for clues and pick up some blood and bits so that Rowan can try a locator spell to track down the culprit. Rowan scans the scene with the Sight, and sees a rolling savannah with the slaughtered corpses of antelope and something malign moving through the tall grass towards her.

She warns the others and scribes a magic circle on the floor for protection, but can’t control the energy she pumps into it finely enough, so a lot of it bleeds off as very bright light. This causes Elaine to panic and flee, breaking the circle, and leaving everyone vulnerable to the shadowy hunting spirits that appear and attack.

The fight is panicked but very quick, as Gerhardt takes out most of the minor spirits with his shotgun, and Rowan, Legion, and Elaine tear apart the larger one. They then gather up some blood and some of the shadowy spirit essence, and retreat.

Gerhardt and Rowan start investigating in different directions, Gerhardt studying the crimes while Rowan summons an intellect spirit to question for information. They discover that the crimes seem to emanate out from an area in the middle of Mad Cowz territory where the gang members’ families live, and that several more of the creatures were summoned in the neighbourhood around Rowan’s home, resulting in the deaths of a number of pets.

Our intrepid team gets back together and decides to go to the untouched neighbourhood at the centre of the crimes to see what they can figure out. They are spotted cruising aimlessly through the district, and are confronted by two carloads of Mad Cowz armed with baseball bats and pistols. After some… strenuous negotiation, they get one of the gang members to admit that there’s sorcerer preying on gang members. He won’t say anything more, though, because if he does, he’s dead. He says that the only ones who can name the sorcerer are the dead.

So, our group decides to pay a visit to the Council of Ghosts to see if they can’t talk to a dead gangbanger. We’ll find out next Friday.

Comments about this session:

  • The magic system is tremendously flexible and powerful – probably a little too much so. This is currently a hot topic of discussion on the playtester list, and Evil Hat are looking at ways to correct it. They’ve already added a fix for Evocation that keeps it from being ridiculously overpowered, now they need to do something with Thaumaturgy. The problem there is not power, but range: Thaumaturgists have the potential to steal any scene they want, relegating the other players to almost NPC status, because of the range of choices it offers.
  • Using compels to force monsterous PCs to act like monsters works well, but came as a bit of a rude awakening for some.
  • The mystery structure of adventure seems easy and natural for adventures. I’m not sure if that’s a result of the source material, the constraints of the playtest structure, the assumptions of modern fantasy play, or my own views and predilections, but thinking about adventures for the system, I naturally fall into constructing mysteries.
  • I almost made Rowan’s character do a spit take with a jalapeno popper with the following conversation:

Rowan: Are there any of these shadow things within a kilometer of me?
Spirit of Intellect: There are six.
Rowan: How close is the closest one?
Spirit of Intellect: Five hundred meters.
Rowan: Five hundred meters?
Spirit of Intellect: Less, now.

Tonight, of course, is the Monday Night Game, episode two. We’ll catch up with our heroes in the aftermath of the faerie battle, and see how Christian explains his man-eating ghoulish nature to his companions.

I can hardly wait.

Game On: The First Monday Session

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Characters

Our story opens in February in Winnipeg, in the middle of a stretch of weather that’s abnormally cold, even for here, with night time temperatures dropping to -50 C with the wind chill, and day time temperatures never getting above -30 C. A couple of dead bodies have turned up at the Forks, a historical site/park/shopping centre where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet. Both bodies show signs of suffering from massive strokes and collapsing, freezing to death in the horrid cold.

Anne is drawn to this case because of her sister, who suffered a similar incident (minus the freezing to death) near the Forks. She wants to see if there’s a connection. Lucky is assigned to investigate the bodies, though it seems obvious to everyone that they are both accidental deaths. And Christian is asked by Madelein de la Neige to check into the possibility that the cold is a new assault on the Red Court by the White Council.

We ran into a bit of rough road getting the characters together, and had to use some hand-waving to justify some of it. This is because each of the three characters came from a different character creation session, and none of them shared a novel with any of the others. Also, there were some last minute changes of player and character, so I had to revamp some of the intro material on the fly. Still, once people got together and smoothed over the initial bumps, things went smoothly enough.

Christian’s examination of the bodies, Anne’s personal experience, and Lucky’s sighting of a tiny man with a bow and arrow in the trees led the three to conclude that the dead people had been elf-shot, inflicting stroke-like symptoms on them, and then had collapsed and died of exposure. They found tracks, some huge and some tiny, near the scene, and concluded that something was up with the faeries of the area.

So, they sought out Crazy Tom, Herald of the Assiniboine Ramble, finding him at the Lighthouse Mission on Main Street. He was fairly evasive, and somewhat crazy, but told them that the Bramble King had declared the incidents an internal matter under the Unseelie Accords and the Consecration of the Two Waters. He specifically warned Christian that interference by his mistress would be viewed as a violation of the Accords. The core pieces of data that they got were that the faeries of the Assiniboine Ramble were involved, and that the Bramble King had disallowed the use of elf-shot except under his direct orders.

Still not satisfied they had enough information to act on, they sought out one of the few independent faeries in the city: Amadan. Dealing with Amadan was a little more tricky, because he wanted something for his information, but the tacit promise of favours owed finally got him to cough up some information on where to find faeries who might be involved in this: Assiniboine Forest after dark. He also intimated that the Winter Court might be involved (the Assiniboine Ramble is a wyldfae freehold under the Bramble King), and that he’d be more than happy to discuss things further with Anne over dinner. She declined.

So, out into the cold, dark, windy night. Lucky brought his pistol, Anne brought a bag of fireworks fixings, along with some iron filings and holy water, and Christian brought three pair of stainless steel filleting gloves. Good thing, too.

After about an hour and a half (and several Endurance checks to avoid physical stress from cold), they wound up in the middle of a faerie battle. On one side were a bunch of fur-clad, beadwork-bedecked elves, brownies, and gnomes, and on the other were a flock of tiny ice sprites, ice hounds, and an ogre, all in the livery of the Winter Court. After a pitched battle, the characters managed to dispatch the Winter Forces; the other faeries took advantage of the interference to vanish.

And that’s where we left it.

Some overall comments:

  • The system is strong and flexible. I was never at a loss for more than a second or two to come up with a way to let the players try whatever they wanted, or to simulate what I needed, like the terrible cold.
  • Christian is strong. He went toe to toe with the ogre, and held his own. When the others got around to help him, the ogre didn’t stand much of a chance.
  • It was fun to be able to use the characters I had created in the sessions as NPCs. In fact, I would recommend to all GMs running this style of game to create characters along with the players, to give you a stock of NPCs that have specific ties to the PCs.
  • No magic use this session. Paul Roman is joining in the fun next Monday, so we’ll see what wrinkles a sorcerer adds to the mix.

Friday night is the other playtest group, with Rowan Aurelian, Legion, Gerhardt Rothman, and either Elaine de la Roche or Lyn McBride. That’s a much more mystically-potent group, so it’s going to be interesting to see how they handle things.

Rechan Strikes!

By | | Dresden Files Playtest
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If you’ve been reading the comments on this blog, you know the name Rechan. He’s been an avid follower of the DFRPG development, despite not being involved in the playtest at this stage.

He’s obviously really been paying attention, because he’s put up his own DFRPG character based on his reverse-engineering the characters that have been posted here and on other playtest sites.

And he’s pretty darned close to perfect with it.

You should go have a look.

When Did I Get Old and Wise?

By | | What's he playing?
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Weird thing happened to me a few minutes ago. I got some e-mail from a friend of mine, asking me if I thought he was ready to GM a D&D game for his friends, and asking me for any tips.

I remember when this kid was born. I remember his dad, who’s a friend of mine, bringing him into the bookstore where I was working at the time, a tiny little thing in a snuggly, his dad rocking back and forth in front of the Science Fiction section. I remember first being invited to game with his parents while he slept in a baby seat on the living room floor.

(Vampire: The Masquerade, if you care. Man, did that campaign ever not go where I thought it would.)

I gave him his first jean jacket, complete with Illuminati badges on it.

(Have I embarrassed you yet, Kieran?)

And now the guy’s fifteen years old, in my Dresden Files playtest, a regular at my boardgame nights (where he is nasty as a viper if you turn your back on him), and asking if I think he’s ready to GM.

His parents and I joke about making sure we get into the same retirement home so we can still game together. I’m thinking it’s getting to be less of a joke.

Anyway, seeing as I have now been cast in the role of elderly sage, I gave him what advice I had. I thought it was not too bad, so I’m reproducing it here, for those who are interested.

Yeah, you could do it. No problem. I was GMing regularly by the time I was your age.

But it takes practice to get good. Don’t be hard on yourself if the first few sessions don’t go as well as you would like.

As for tips, I’ve got a few:

  1. Prep. Get the adventure ready beforehand. Know how you want to describe things. Know what you’re going to need to know to run the encounters. For example, if you’re using a Purple Worm in an encounter, make sure you know how the improved grab and swallow whole rules work. If the adventure takes place in a volcano, read up on the rules for hot environments. Some people make notes, some put sticky notes on the pages of the rulebooks they need, some just need to refresh their memories before play. Do what you need to do so that you’re not fumbling around during play to figure something out.
  2. Start small. Don’t send everyone off on an epic quest to slay the gods and bring about Ragnarok. Make an adventure that can be finished in a session or two, and don’t get too fancy with it. Evil wizards or rampaging goblin hordes are fine. Rescue a princess or clean out a cave complex near a trade route. Simple objective. Once you get one or two of those under your belt, and you’ve got the confidence, then start stretching.
  3. Don’t let them push you around. Remember that you’re the GM, and that means you have the final say. Having said that, make sure you listen to them. If you’re wrong about something and they’re right, admit it, fix it, and move on. If they start arguing with you, say something like, “Look, that’s the way it’s going to work this time. After the game, we can talk and see if there’s a better way.”
  4. Say yes or roll the dice. Remember, the players aren’t the enemy. The big secret of being a GM is that it’s only fun if the players have fun. You’re not trying to beat them; you’re trying to help them beat you. If they come up with a neat idea, let it work if it’s feasible. If there’s a good chance that it’ll flop, roll the dice. Pick something to roll against: a skill, a save, an attack, an attribute, whatever. When all else fails, get them to roll a straight roll against a difficulty of 10 – that’s just like a coin toss. But if you’re going to roll the dice, make sure you’ve got an interesting thing to happen if they fail. If failure would be boring, don’t make it a possibility. Just let them succeed.
  5. Always play fair. You’ve got the ability, as GM, to annihilate the characters whenever you want. There’s no challenge to it, and there’s no fun in it. Play fair. Set up the situation, then let the dice and the players decide the fate of the characters. If they beat the crap out of your boss monster in a single round, remember it, congratulate them, and move on. Remember their tactics for next time, though.
  6. Relax and have fun. Some people will tell you that the GM’s job is to make sure everyone else has fun, but his first job is to have fun himself. If you’re not having fun, the game won’t be any fun for the players. Just make sure you’re not having fun at their expense.

Catching Up

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It’s been a while since my last post. That doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening with the playtest, though. Here’s what we’re looking at:

I’m starting two play tracks next week, each running for three sessions, the first on successive Mondays, and the second on successive Fridays. I’ve asked my playtesters to pick either Mondays or Fridays, and to tell me what characters they’re going to play. I’ve heard back from about half so far.

I’m creating two adventures, each set to run three sessions, and customizing them to the characters to make sure we can let them strut their stuff (and, incidentally, stress test the rules that apply to them). I should have those finished up this weekend.

After each session, I’ll post an account of what went on, what neat things we found we could do with the rules, and anything else that seems to merit conversation.

In the meantime, there are some other folks out there writing about the playtest, as well. You should check out these links: