GMing Aspects: Dresden Files RPG

DM Samuel wrote a great post looking at what he called his "speedbump" when trying to GM games of Dresden Files RPG (DFRPG) for his players. He attributes his problem to years of DMing D&D. I get exactly where he's coming from and feel much the same way. I thought I'd continue the discussion here.

The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game cover

Assessment vs Declaration
First I wanted to make a minor clarification regarding mechanics for any of those unfamiliar with the FATE system. DM Samuel uses the term Declaration as the act performed by the player to add story elements to the game. I want to expand the idea by adding the game term Assessment as an game element for further exploration.

Assessment is an application of a successful skill roll to discover an existing Aspect, whether the Aspect is on an NPC, scene or object. This differs from a Declaration in the fact the GM needs to identify specific Aspects before-hand. Declared Aspects need not be previously established by the GM, publicly or privately.

Skills vs Aspects
Building off this, it is important to note that skills are equally important to performing these two functions. a character good at Driving may be able to Assess any modifications performed on a vehicle or Declare a potential problem on the car that is chasing them. The fact that the character was "Born with a wrench in his hand" will certainly help make those rolls successful.

DM Samuel does a great job discussing the beauty of Aspects and their elegant nature, so no need to repeat what he said. I think they're the bee's knees of the FATE system, but they do require a shift in thinking when approaching play, especially if your experience has been heavily GM-centric (regardless of which side of the screen you were on).

Player Empowerment vs GM Preparation
The true art to using Aspects falls on both the player and the GM. DM Samuel was focusing on his role as GM, but some of the weight is squarely on player's shoulders.

The player needs to be aware of what their skills can do. Many skills grant players opportunities to make Assessments and Declarations. Players should be very familiar with all the Trappings of their skills. Knowing what the skills allow is just the beginning, they also need to watch for opportunities in play to use those skills to make Assessments and Declarations.

For the GM, the previous paragraph also applies; you have to know what the skills can do so you can support your players as they Assess and Declare. Even better is to create scenes that present players with opportunities to use those skills. DFRPG makes it easy to plan for in this respect given the skills "pyramid": a definite hierarchy of skills rated most skilled to least skilled. Plan for Assessments from the character's highest ranked skill, give them a chance to use those skills and build familiarity with this element of the game. I guarantee if they get a taste of it they will want more.

DM Samuel touched upon the idea that the GM has to prepare fewer details because the players can fill in the details that are important to them using Declarations. I think the preparation has to be focused in a different way. A certain amount of flexibility is required to GM DFRPG. Too rigid a setting or story will not allow players (and their characters) the freedom to explore and contribute.

As far as specific advice on how a GM can do this I have two "don'ts":

• Don't plan for every contingency. Feel free to establish scenes that have no clear resolution. If the players have to break into the villain's lair, loosely sketch possible opposition and let the players use their Skills to Declare some Aspects on the scene. 
• Don't be afraid to say "yes" to your player's declarations.

I'm sure I'm missing some points here; my experience running DFRPG almost matches DM Samuel's exactly. I look forward to learning more of the nuances in the game as time goes on and will plan to share what I learn here.

Follow your bliss,
JJ

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Switching Gears: Dresden Files RPG

After a long absence at the Back to Basics gaming table, our crew gathered to discuss what to do next. I laid out some possibilities: finish Keep on the Borderlands, play Mouse Guard or Dresden Files, or have someone else step up and run something. My oldest son said he would run Eberron (3.5) and I offered to pick up Dark Sun if my youngest wanted to explore running 4th edition D&D.

After kicking this around for a bit, most of the table was ambivalent while my two sons were strongly promoting Dresden Files. Both had played in an awesome pick-up game at Origins (referred to in our house as 'Night of the Chupacabra') run by That Internet Guy, Ryan Macklin. My youngest was giving a pitch worthy of any used car salesman. The rest of the group agreed and the Dresden Files RPG we would play.

Before sitting in on the game at Origins this year I had not read any DF material. I was familiar with the FATE system from Spirit of the Century. After Origins I picked up the DFRPG PDF and started reading through it, hopping around to skim the topics that interested me. The game seemed very closely tied to the fiction, so I decided to give the books a try.

I burned through Storm Front and passed it off to one of the members of the B2B crew. He burned through it too and loved it as much as I did. I passed it onto my oldest son and he fell in love with it too. We got our hands on the second book and were not disappointed. I now turned back to the DFRPG to read it from the beginning.

After our group settled on DFRPG, I went to my friend's computer (we game at his house) and printed off the city creation worksheets. I had read the city creation chapter before we gathered so I felt pretty comfortable walking through this as our first session.

I've played games where setting creation is part of the process of play (Mortal Coil primarily) so I went into it with an open mind. I threw out several suggestions for a city to base the game in, including New York, Las Vegas and our hometown of Perrysburg. I thought that placing the game between the urban center of Toledo and the rural city of Bowling Green could be interesting. I was worried that we were straying too far from the urban setting of the novels. Thankfully the others thought it would be interesting as well. I like that our home was an island of safety between the encroaching urban center of Toledo and the dark and mysterious Black Swamp of Bowling Green (this gets fleshed out below).

We began to bang out ideas. We first came up with a Theme of urbanization and over-development. We didn't have to look very far and were able to name many real-world examples. We placed the (fictional) mayor of Toledo as the Face of this Theme.

Next we hammered out two Threats: the area known as the Black Swamp is the source of powerful black magic and that an outlaw biker gang is upsetting the delicate balance of organized crime. The Faces of the Black Swamp Threat are the opposing leaders of the White and Black Lodges, Native American circles of shaman. For the biker gang we chose the leader (a sorcerer to bring in another supernatural element) and his lieutenant. This will definitely be the primary Threat of the initial story arc.

Next we tackled The Balance of Power. This was probably the most confusing aspect of the the setting creation for the players to grasp. After a couple of attempts at explaining the idea behind it they finally latched on and we were off and running. We created, IMHO, a nice scattering of groups (I hope to soon post a JPEG of our graph or some other such document).

Finally we started filling in the Locations that we wanted to use. The gang really go into this. Some of the more interesting ones include Ft. Meigs, a historic fort from the War of 1812 that will be Accorded Neutral Grounds, and the Fifth Third Field, home of the Toledo Mud Hens minor league baseball team under which is lair to the city's vampires. The most interesting face we put to these locations is the ghost of General 'Mad' Anthony Wayne who haunts Ft. Meigs and keeps the peace there.

The fun didn't end there. One of the players discovered a local ghost story about Anthony Wayne. Seems his remains were were exhumed and moved to a new burial place. Along the way, some of the bones went missing. Now the Mad General rises to look for his bones. You can bet that will come into play.

Everyone is excited to get to playing. Next time we meet we'll work on character creation. I'll post the results soon


Follow your bliss,
JJ

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Origins 2010 Recap

I'm going to ease back into writing by giving my recap of Origins 2010. I spent Sunday, the last day of the con, with my boys exploring the exhibition hall, chatting with various games designers and playing a game of Dresden Files RPG. The family pass was only $10 for all three of us to get into the exhibition hall; Origins knows how to treat families right.

First I had a chance to chat with some very friendly RPG game designers: Fred Hicks, Ryan Macklin, Rob Donoghue, Jason Morningstar, Paul Tevis, Luke Crane and Brennan Taylor. Most I had met before and I was please to meet for the first time Jason (who promptly recruited me for his One Cool Thing video I posted about last time) and was able to share my recent experience with his game Fiasco. Rob was kind enough to share with me his experience reading and working with gaming PDFs on his iPad (I'm a convert now and looking to get one ASAP). It was fun catching up and chatting with all these great folks, but my sons were soon bored with dad yacking away.

Thankfully the exhibition hall had distractions to occupy them while I was talking. Doubly lucky was the fact that Ryan was looking for players for a pick-up game of Dresden Files. I had found out about the pick-up game from his Tweet the evening before. As the time neared it turned out Ryan had 4 slots open but 5 players counting me. Since I wanted my sons to experience first-hand a con game I opted to sit back and provide support as needed.

First off let me say that Ryan is a great GM. I don't know where he found the energy to run a game at the end of a long con, but he did a fantastic job. As Lead Project Developer for Dresden Files RPG, Ryan really knew his stuff. He was able to pull together some very wild ideas (a were-goat, a myth-busting organization called PENGUIN) and make it work. Ryan would go on to say the session was very Saturday Morning Cartoon-ish, but it worked, which says a lot for his mad gaming skills and the versatile FATE system Dresden Files is based on.

Let me be clear before I go too much farther that this is not a review of Dresden Files. This session was an introduction to us, but I felt very comfortable playing because of past experience with Spirit of the Century, even though I've never read one of Jim Butcher's Dresden novels. I'm coming at this from our overall experience of the game. I'm indebted to Ryan for making this such a cool play session for my boys.

I was pleased to see that my boys picked up on the mechanics of play very quickly. Their primary gaming experience to date has been D&D (Basic, 3.5 and 4). They were really sailing with the ideas of Aspects and making a fun story. Both really got into the story and their characters. They were talking about the game the rest of the day (especially El Chupacabra). This was enough to prompt me to get the PDF of the game when I got home. I'm interested in digging into the details as soon as time permits.

Now, it's not a convention if you don't spend some money. We all purchased some Game Science Dice. I've been interested in them since I saw the YouTube interview. I was pleased to see the opaque dice with unpainted numbers which hit that Red-Box-nostalgia spot. I can't wait to add them to my Back to D&D Basics campaign.

Well, that was our Sunday at Origins 2010 in a nutshell. That will have to hold me over till 2011. Next year both of my boys will be old enough to join me at GenCon. W00t!

Follow Your Bliss,
JJ