I’m still waiting for June to start actually building a DFRPG campaign, but I’m starting to do some thinking about what sorts of decisions will need to be made. I want a lot of these decisions to be made jointly between me and the players, through discussion and consensus, which means I need to understand the ramifications of the different options available.
And that means I’m doing some thinking about things.
One of the first decisions that needs to be made in running a DFRPG campaign is the power level of the campaign. There are four different levels, each of which dictates the Refresh level, number of skill points available, and the highest level of skill you can take. There’s a good explanation of the different levels in the book, talking about what sorts of characters are available at that level, and what sort of abilities they’ll have.
This is a pretty far-reaching decision, with a sort of domino effect that cascades through the entire game. The power level will affect the types of characters created, which will influence the types of foes they face, which will shape the stories you tell and the themes you choose and even the nature of the setting.
So, what are we talking about, here? Here are my thoughts. Note that the conclusions I come up with are not the only ones supported by the game, but they show some of the ramifications of the power level decision.
Feet in the Water
6 refresh, 20 skill points, skill cap at Great.
At this level, you’re looking pretty much at playing mortals with (maybe) a supernatural trick or two. This means templates like Focused Practitioner, Red Court Infected, and True Believer. You can get a little more oomph by taking the basics of things like Champion of God or Changeling, but you’re not going to have much in the way of refresh to customize your character or buy extra stunts. At most, you’re going to have two skills at Great, which would leave you with only four other skills above Mediocre.
This is the game of the clued-in mortal, the small fish in the pond, and folks who are just starting out in their career of becoming big, bad monsters. Sample characters from the books are people like the Special Investigations Unit, the Carpenter family (excluding Molly and Michael, but including Charity), the Ordo Lebes, the Changeling kids from Summer Knight, and most of the members of ParaNet. The foes they’d be able to face on an equal footing (-6 refresh or thereabouts) are either mortal or very low-powered supernatural; things like the Chlorofiend, the chimp or baboon sized shen demons, some common fey like pixies and elves, spectres, and minor spirits.
This sort of power level really lends itself to horror stories, as opposed to action stories. In most cases, your characters are going to be significantly overmatched by the opposition, and they’re going to need to outrun and outthink them. Horror stories also tend to happen on a very personal scale – it’s you and a couple of friends up against the monster that’s going to eat you. You’re not necessarily trying to save the world. You’re just trying to save yourself.
The idea of personal scale and the limited array of foes also suggests that a game at this level would fit nicely into a limited-geography setting – maybe a college campus, or a small town, or a single precinct in a city. Of course, as the early seasons of Supernatural show so very well, it also works fairly well as a road-trip game.
Of course, you don’t have to go the horror route. If you truncate the power scale of the bad guys, eliminating most of the serious occult threats, you could run a strong action game, where the little bit of an edge that the characters have over mundane characters is enough to turn them into the last, best hope for keeping the evil under wraps. It changes the feel more to that of a Submerged level game, as noted below, because the range of power is narrowed so significantly.
Up to Your Waist
7 refresh, 25 skill points, skill cap at Great.
This is where the supernatural templates begin to be more viable as characters. Yeah, that one refresh point does make that much of a difference – it opens up things like the Sorcerer template, as well as giving you the buffer you need to customize and tweak the lower-level templates into something with a little more style. The skill points don’t give you an extra Great (or even Good) skill, but it does round out your range of skills with at least four more skills at Average or above.
Characters like Murphy, Hendricks, or Father Forthill are good examples of the kinds of characters that start being playable at this level, and more powerful foes (ghouls and sorcerers, for example, maybe even an actual vampire) start being viable to send up against the characters.
I can see going one of two ways at this power level: either ramp up from the Feet in the Water level, creeping from horror into more heroic horror, or else setting it as a starting point for action stories, with the characters being young, inexperienced, and just starting out. Think later-season Supernatural (where Sam and Dean have mastered fighting all the easy monsters) versus early-season Buffy (where Willow is just starting to dabble in magic, and Buffy’s only died once).
Setting can go either way, depending on whether you want your characters to be the big fish or the small fish. Keep it at the same small scale as in the previous level, and you’ve got some serious dedicated guardians in control of their little patch of ground. Ramp it up to full city size, and you’ve got some up-and-comers ready to be pawns for the other power blocs squabbling over territory.
You can even do both: consider the Alphas, who pretty much own their little section of the city, but are still very much a local phenomenon, and at risk from the bigger power players in the rest of Chicago. In fact, that would make a pretty cool campaign, but you’d have to adjust the Alphas’ listed powers from their stat blocks to get them playable at 7 refresh.
Chest Deep
8 refresh, 30 skill points, skill cap at Superb.
Here’s where we start approaching the default power level of the novels. You can play a Wizard at this point, though not a terribly experienced one, and even a White Court Vampire. In fact, at this point, all the character types are available. If you play a less-costly character type, you’ve had the opportunity to upgrade and customize it a fair bit. You can start out with two skills at Superb, and have eight other skills at Average and above. You are starting at a level that the rest of the occult world has to start noticing.
This is where you’d start if you wanted to play the Alphas as statted, or a band of Apprentice Wizards like Molly Carpenter, or a group of experienced Minor Practitioners like Mortimer Lindquist. The FBI Hexenwolves start becoming viable opposition, along with things like the gorilla-sized shen demon, Bucky the Murder Doll, hunter goblins and the lesser gruffs, Black Court Renfields, werewolves, and the like.
The stories are moving strongly toward the idea of action, now, though not necessarily as pulpy as things get next level. Characters have the options and power to go toe-to-toe with a broad range of antagonists in whatever sense they choose, and can be extremely competent in a narrow range of abilities. They can be trapped in that middle-management hell of having to look after those weaker than themselves (many), and still obey those more powerful than themselves (still many). And they’re tough enough now that those above them are much more inclined to notice them and give them orders or demand favours.
Scale-wise for the setting, the world is really starting to open up. At this point, things are ripe for globe-trotting troubleshooters working for Monoc Security, or Strike Force Summer Lightning, keeping the Nevernever safe for their ladyships. If they keep to a smaller geographic area, they start to be real movers and shakers in their city, or the undisputed top of the food chain within their own small town/neighbourhood/precinct/college campus/shopping mall.
Submerged
10 refresh, 35 skill points, skill cap at Superb.
The five extra skill points don’t add a whole lot, but the two extra refresh are huge. It doesn’t open up any new character types, but it gives you the flexibility to customize and combine different types. Here’s the quote from the book – I can’t say it any cooler than this:
[I]t becomes possible at this stage to be a Champion of God with a Sword of the Cross, or a Werewolf who can do earth evocations, or a Red Court Infected who becomes the Emissary of the Buddha as a way of taming his impulse control.
This is the default power level of the main characters at the start of Storm Front. With this, you could build Harry Dresden, or a very talented Karrin Murphy, or Michael Carpenter.
This is also the point at which all the antagonists really become viable as opposition, though there are still some that will crush characters of this level if you meet them head-on. But characters at this level have a broad range of different options to help them pick their battles and choose their weapons.
Action here can creep easily into the pulp ideal, and doing horror is really tough. Stories, which started to really expand scope at the last level, now deal with even larger issues than the personal stories of the earlier levels. Not to say that things don’t have a personal aspect – you need to make things personal enough for the characters to get involved, after all, and abstract concepts like saving the world just aren’t as immediate. I’m just saying that there will be world-saving going on.
If characters aren’t the biggest fish in their pond at this power level, then they are still pretty significant players, as opposed to pawns. If someone tries to push them around, even someone much more powerful, there will be repercussions. Political stories start being far more interesting at higher power levels, as the characters will be able to bring some leverage of their own to bear on the course of events set by the mighty.
Setting scale-wise, you pretty much have to open things up here to allow for enough opposition to generate interesting stories. If you’ve got four Wizards in a little farming town, for example, putting enough supernatural excitement in the town to keep the characters busy is really going to strain credulity. Expanding it to the five towns in the area and the wild spaces in between, though, and you’ve got yourself a ballgame. Or at least a roleplaying game.
So, there you have it. That’s the rundown on the four different power levels, and the way they can affect the game you build. It’s an important decision right at the start of the campaign, and I encourage groups to think about what the stories are going to be like with the different levels. Talk it over, and find what works for you.
At least, that’s what I’m planning.
One important thing is that advancement plays a part in this topic. You could play a game where the PCs never advance past their current power level. Or they could go fairly fast. It depends purely on “What you Want”.
[i]and abstract concepts like saving the world just aren’t as immediate. I’m just saying that there will be world-saving going on.[/i]
I think it’s worth noting that “World saving” as it seems to be can easily happen on a Very Local scale. In the novels, the Darkhollow of book 7 or the Faerie war of book 4 are the only instances of Harry truly “Saving the World” that I can think of, and both of those were [i]very[/i] related to Chicago.
But then again, depending on how it plays out, saving the world could happen earlier. Buffy for instance takes place on the Hellmouth, and she saevd teh World on a regular basis, even in the early days.
And of course “Saving the City” can be the same thing as “Saving the World”. If the City you operate is turned into a smoking crater, that’s pretty much the same as the World ending, because Everyone the PCs Care About are Dead. So “Saving the World” is just an extension of the PCs home turf.
I think it’s worth noting that “World saving†as it seems to be can easily happen on a Very Local scale. In the novels, the Darkhollow of book 7 or the Faerie war of book 4 are the only instances of Harry truly “Saving the World†that I can think of, and both of those were [i]very[/i] related to Chicago.
I’d say Nicodemus’s plan to unleash a pandemic in book 5 probably would also count. But, again, that hinged on O’Hare Airport being one of the best ways to get a vector into humans going everywhere. A plot like that would be easy to do in Chicago or LA or New York City, but harder to do if your characters are based in Lincoln, Nebraska. OTOH, if a Denarian had decided to specialize in plant diseases (impacting grains and soybeans), that would be a better plot for a Great Plains game than a game set in Boston.
There are some also global/national plots in the later books, that don’t quite get to world-saving danger. The business of a White Court faction targeting minor practitioners of magic while implicating the Wardens seemed like it could expand to a global/national plot, but it mostly was a long-term plot to fracture the magical community, rather than ‘destroy the humans’*. Or anything involving the war with the Red Court or the Black Council.
* Well, long term, if the Council is disrupted, the vampires win, and humans become the second-class cattle/servitors of vampires. But that’s pretty much summarizing the whole war situation, of which that was only a minor covert operation.
There’s a point at which the 5 skill points actually is pretty significant, depending on how narrow you’ve structured your skills, but I tend to look more at the overall shape I can get with a certain number of skill points rather than what an incremental +5 points will get me.
Breakpoint-wise, I tend to feel this is most strongly expressed at the 30 skill mark. 35 skill points is the cost of a “classic” skill pyramid ala Spirit of the Century. Lop the Superb off the top of that pyramid, and you get a ‘blunted’ two-Great-at-the-top setup at 30 points. With the columnar setup, you can also do a set of 12 skills that includes 3 greats (and 3 good, 3 fair, 3 average) for 30. Whenever you’ve got a Great that’s not supporting a superb, +5 skill points = +1 superb slot, bam, right at the top.
I am frustrated to hear that the power levels in the system do no really get up beyond the starting book in the series. Having nearly the whole of the game sketched out for ‘pre novel’ power levels, and just touch at the starting point means that it doesn’t have the real feel of the series if you want to, for example, run a warden team or characters with some real history.
But, I tend to expect this from game systems based on popular media… they generally fail to fit the full concept of the existing world and want the PCs to not be in the same rank as the ‘Stars’ rather than letting the PCs play alternative stars/stories elsewhere in the setting. It’s pretty much why I’ve never played things like the Buffy, Angel, Star Wars, Star Trek, or other licensed work games… they either fail to capture the shown capabilities of the characters/setting or they fail to let you in on the action.
“I am frustrated to hear that the power levels in the system do no really get up beyond the starting book in the series.”
Whoa. They do go up beyond that. They can scale up quite a bit.
I have been remiss in not making something painfully clear, and I apologize. This is an oversight on my part, one of the effects of glossing over a lot of information in a short time.
The power levels are the starting points for your game. It is assumed that you will grow beyond them, and gain significant power through play. The chapter on advancement – as Rechan mentions above – gives plenty of opportunity to grow and surpass the power level you start in. And there’s a great section in Harry’s write-up where it maps out what sort of power-ups he’s taken, book by book, to turn him from the starting character at the beginning of Storm Front to a very significant powerhouse by the end of Small Favor. So, yeah, your characters have the chance – and the expectation – to grow beyond the starting power level.
“…run a warden team or characters with some real history.”
Two things to say, here. First off, the Warden team is eminently doable starting from Chest Deep, especially if you set it later in the novels’ timeline, when most of the Wardens are young and inexperienced (compared to Harry).
Second, the character creation system focuses on producing real history for your characters, both individually and collectively. No matter what power level you’re starting at, your characters will having meaningful backstory and connections to each other, along with at least three very cool things that they’ve done.
As for licensed products, I certainly know what you mean about not wanting to play tangentially to the main story. That’s one of the reasons I like DFRPG’s idea of Dresdenifying your own city – it lets you set up an area where your characters are the main heroes, not hangers-on to someone else’s story.
And moreover, it’s ridiculously easy to ramp up the power levels even beyond what’s presented as the starting character creation power levels.
If you really have to have that game where everyone’s a member of the Senior Council and needs to be able to freely spend 20 or more refresh on powers, set the base power level of the game to refresh 25. Done. Instant epic craziness.
Rick and Lenny have covered the territory I would have, here. Be careful about jumping to conclusions so fast, Joseph — that’ll leave a mark.
I like the different power levels available. The thing that concerns me is mixing character types at the higher power levels. You’ve described Murphy as being in the same league as Harry skill wise, with that in mind, it seems that she would have an insane amount of fate points to burn in the beginning (I believe something like this was referenced during the playtests as one character saved up all his points for a flamboyant finish).
Do you run the risk of the more “vanilla” characters outshining the more magical (i.e. lower refresh) characters? If so, would it make sense to scale the vanilla characters back a rung or two on the power level? I guess what it comes down to is playable balance which I can see it being controlled by the GM hitting the fate point compels early and often for the mortals to whittle them down if need be (or building up the magical ones so that they are on par with the rest of the team).
Oh yeah, I almost forgot…is it April/May yet so I can haz my .pdf?
“Do you run the risk of the more ‘vanilla’ characters outshining the more magical (i.e. lower refresh) characters?”
Yes. You do. But it’s not a risk, and it’s not a bad thing. Far from it. The flexibility and power of the magical characters can really outshine the pure mortals if the mortals don’t have that little boost. In the playtest, I talked about how one character saved up a bunch of Fate Points and burned them all in the climactic scene, as you point out. You WANT that to happen. You want the mundane character, who hasn’t been able to walk through walls or summon spirits or turn into a wolf like all the other characters, you want him to be able to come through in the crunch and make a strong contribution to the climax. You want him to steal the spotlight for a few minutes, because he’s been hanging back for a lot of the game.
Now, that’s an extreme example. In most games I’ve run, the characters with high refresh are not hanging back; they’re pushing forward, using their Fate Points to share the level of cool with the characters with lower refresh. Extra Fate Points is their big power, in a way – it lets them do cool stuff even without magic.
And a note about compels – I strongly, strongly, strongly advise you not to use them to whittle away Fate Points from anyone. Compels are a way to give Fate Points to characters, not take them away. If you use compels just to “even out the Fate Points,” then you’re penalizing players for not spending more points on powers and stunts, and really elevating the power of those who did spend a lot.
Plus, it’s kind of a dick move.
Interesting, and very cool, thanks!
…Renfields as Chest Deep level foes? I thought they were just humans mind-controlled to the point of having no free will, didn’t know they got supernatural powers.
“…Renfields as Chest Deep level foes?”
It’s something of a judgment call, I’ll admit – they get a couple of supernatural powers (Inhuman Strength, Inhuman Recovery), which doesn’t push them up quite high enough, but they’re the kind of thing that I wouldn’t be using just one of. So, two Renfields = Chest Deep foe.
And given that the presence of Renfields implies the presence of the Black Court, well…
One of the coolest things I see so far is the opportunity to have more than one character creation session, even creating characters at different depths. If the players are amenable, in addition to making more than one group of player characters, this gives the GM a lot of characters he can use as support, guest stars etc, even when they are not being played. Instant rack of NPCs at varied power levels and each player gets a little kick out of having one of their alternate PCs step up as a guest star NPC.
I was thinking of introducing players to the game by giving them pregenerated pure mortal ‘feet in the water’ law enforcement characters – most of whom get taken out whilst on the trail of something weird – as a bit of a taster to the world.
Then I’ll do a character creation session for ‘chest deep’ characters with the proviso that one of the created characters must be related to one of the victims of the first game – thus hopefully producing characters with the ability and every motive to investigate with his or her most powerful allies. Then I’ll focus stories on each of the generated characters with their own ‘revealer’ stories with the other players generating ‘waist deep’ secondary characters as necessary.
This Ars Magica troupe style game, where not every session features every peak character, has worked pretty well for me in the past. With a bit of planning it is possible to get the feel of a good novel where the story leaps about between groups – inevitably bringing the pro and antags together with an almighty thump. Well… when it works. Then again, sometimes a good old fashioned bug hunt dungeon is good too ; p
Speaking of troupe-style play, there’s a “hidden feature” — in that we don’t talk about it at all, but it’s possible — in the system as it stands for supporting that: changing what the “base refresh level” is on a per-adventure basis.
“Tonight we’re going to have a base refresh of 6, so everyone break out their pure mortals and adjust your starting fate point totals appropriately.”
“Okay, time for a high powered one. You can bring your wizards along if you like, but if you’re sticking with your pure mortal from last time, they’ll have a few more fate points than before.”
Etc.
Good times.
As far as a “vanilla outshining” moment — man, I feel like every story where we get Murphy showing up, she has at least one or two of those. There’s a *reason* she rides shotgun for Harry all the time; he needs someone with that kind of fate point total backing him up!
What do you mean, Fred? Harry has plenty of fate points, even if his refresh is epically low. Look at Turn Coat. The instant Morgan shows up and he goes through the little internal debate (I see the GM waving a lot of fate points at him to run with it), he’s practically full! For truly, if fate points are your reward for hosing yourself, I would think Harry has to worry a lot more about spending enough points just to prepare for the next scene, where he’ll surely get more.
Oh, sure. Harry’s *hungry* for fate points. He takes a faceful of crap in order to get a nice handful of them going.
But sometimes it’s nice to have a friend who…
… shows up at the right moment with a pistol loaded with inherited silver to take a few shots at the loup garou that’s about to eat him
… rams into the faerie creature with a thing made out of iron right when you need them to
… faces down the Summer Court thug who’s shown up and makes him back down and walk out of the bar
… steers the motorcycle like an unwavering lance when you decide to go jousting with a pair of goons in a car armed only with a magic staff
… any number of other examples I could give, all of them Murphy, and all excellent moments of her using her fate points, from an RPG perspective.
I’m a very big Dresden fan and have been an RPG fan for 20 or so years (man, did I just write that?). I’ve mainly played in the D&D space and have dabbled a bit in other systems. I’ve always liked the theme of magic in the current world/future world though. I tried to mess around with Shadowrun, but to be honest the game mechanics were a bit beyond me and overwhelmed most of my gaming group so we didn’t go far with that. Over the past couple of days I’ve been reading through a lot of material online about the Dresden game and I have to say it has really, really caught my interest. I’m trying to get a basic grasp on the mechanics though and some of this conversation has lost me. Now mind you, I’m not a rules freak. I like to run a story heavy game and play fast and loose with the rules, but I do like to have a decent framework beneath me to fall back on. It could be that I’m so used to the whole d20 system, but reading through some of the material on this site and others has somewhat intimidated me. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, how complex overall is the rules system for this game? I have a group of signficantly varying skill levels when it comes to game mechanics and I don’t want to ruin them by trying to bring them into something that will just throw them all off completely. I know it sounds silly, but this would really be an investment for me. I mean the books themselves are not “that” expensive but pulling my group out of D&D for a while, having them learn this and then hopefully really getting into it is a decent time investment. Personally I just need something that isn’t D&D right now. I love the game, but I need to stretch a bit. I’m praying and hoping this is the game that does it. Sorry if I’ve rambled too much…
Welcome, Peter.
The FATE system that powers The Dresden Files RPG is fairly simple, especially compared to something like D&D. You can see a version of it if you click the Spirit of the Century SRD link in the sidebar of my main page. The whole thing is strongly narrative-based, allows for a great deal of freedom, both for the players and the GM. It doesn’t have the deep tactical complexity of D&D, which may or may not be a good thing in your eyes. As GM, you will need to make judgment calls a little more often than in D&D, but it also opens up a wider range of options for everyone involved.
That said, there’s a learning curve, especially if you’re heavily steeped in the D&D mindset. I know there really was for me. But it’s well worth the (fairly minimal) effort involved.
If you’re looking for a taste before DFRPG comes out, I’d recommend you grab a copy of Spirit of the Century and throw together a one-shot game. I think you’ll be pleased with the way things go.
Nice, I think I may give that a shot. I cannot tell you how excited I was to see a game was coming out having to do with this and based on what I’m reading I really enjoy the approach. A lot of times with licensed systems they spend an inordinate amount of time on the original characters from the books, movies, etc. I certainly think it’s important to give those characters some weight but it looks like this system really enables you to make it your own. As for making judgment calls, my group has trained me well as I often find myself in a position of dealing with that in any game I have ever played with them.
I just wish I had come across this a little bit closer to when the books are released. I don’t like to wait. 🙂
Peter: FATE is dead simple overall but the areas in which it are complicated are COMPLETELY different than the areas in which D&D is complicated and a lot of the simplifications can confuse people since it’s not really trying to be realistic (it’s basic much more on story logic and not at all on physics logic).
So while FATE is simple enough that once we learned how to play we almost never needed to look at the rules (something you can’t say about D&D) or have any kind of GM screen AT ALL, BUT it can be confusing since its based on assumptions that are fundamentally different form D&D, so a lot of the learning will be more unlearning D&D-inspired assumptions than learning FATE, but once you grok what FATE does and why it’s very easy.
TL:DR very simple mechanics, but a few might be hard to wrap your brain around.
Question
1-what power level would the changeling kids from Summer Knight be playable? From the description on the site it seems that you could start at waist or even feet.
I am working on a character idea. He would be a changeling or focused practitioner who was raised with a knowledge of the supernatural and trained in power but walked away from it to become a Cop. Why depends on the choice of Changeling or Practitioner. He is dragged back in when he is banished to the local SI unit where he is forced to confront the magical world and develop his powers. Imagine harry escaping Justin and in order to avoid the doom joins the cops or the army and swears off magic. Or Rudolph being forced to use forgotten power to save Murphy from Kravos or the MacFinn. He is intended for a waist deep game. does this sound workable?
You can start playing changelings from Feet in the Water, but they don’t really feel a lot like changelings until you start rounding out their powers, which means they really start coming into their own at Up to Your Waist. Most of the kids from Summer Knight are playable at Feet in the Water, but they have very little buffer for picking up extra powers.
As for your character idea, it would take some negotiation with the GM to make it happen the way you want it to if you make him a focused practitioner rather than a changeling. It’s workable, but the rules don’t explicitly codify it, so you’d have to work out with your GM what is and is not allowable. And keep in mind that, once you spend refresh to gain a power, the refresh is gone and the power remains. If you reach too high, too fast, the character will rapidly become an NPC as they incur a refresh debt. You’ll need to keep a careful eye on your Fate Point buffer.
That said, losing a character in this manner is one of the coolest ways to go down in flames – sacrificing his humanity to save a friend.
I’d be entirely comfortable rating the kids from Summer Knight as Feet in the Water at the time of that novel. They *didn’t* have much in the way of powers at the time, and the one of them who claimed power (before the end, at least, when Lily and Fix had their level-up moment) was Meryl, who did it in a “I’ll have all my powers right now, please, and it will be the end of my story” sort of way.
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