The Dresden Files > DFRPG

After Action Review: Magical Spokane's First Session

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Lanodantheon:
Since the devs have been asking for reports of actual play, I'd thought I'd share my group's first session, which was also the debut(for us at least) of Magical Spokane, Washington.

The People:

The GM: Myself.  No experience in FATE.

The Players: 4 Veteran Role-players. No Experience in FATE

1 of us had not read the books, but got what they were about and why the were cool. He was playing because the system + setting sounded neat. 2 of us (myself and my brother) devour the books. 2 of us started reading the books recently and can't put them down (One of my players doesn't read, but he can't put down Dresden)

Dramatis Personae (In no particular order):

1. The Negotiator (complete with Big O and Samuel L. Jackson jokes): Pure Mortal Lawyer turned Metaphysical Stock Broker for the supernatural. He is a Freeholding Lord, Owner of The Blue Moon Tavern(Accorded Neutral Territory) and features the Aspect, Bargaining is a Science.

2. Edgar Poe, Pure Mortal Spokane Cop on the Gang Task Force. He had 2 aspects that ended up being licenses to print FATE points and for moments of dramatic convenience: Unbeliever and Right Place, Right Time.

3. The Dark Disciple of Lancelot: An abducted Semi-Demi-Hemi Son of Thor Zeus, he is an item wanted by the entire supernatural community. The Summer has tried to buy him by creating a Sidhe specifically to be his one true love. Their marriage makes for the much compelled and invoked, My Love is a Seelie.

4. Puck: Changling Trickster of the Summer Court. A paper thin, weak muscled physical combatant, this guys was also a Social Combat Abrams Tank. He had Glamours and featured the Aspects of Glamourous Life of the Partay, Native of Two Worlds and We Don't Need No Winter, Let The Motherf&#$!@ Burn!

The pre-game:


We had spent most of the previous night (About 3 hours total) making characters. The next day, we had to spend an hour double checking characters, and making a new one for someone who be there the day before. I flexed my INTJ brainstorming muscles and helped create The Negotiator Phase-by-Phase with nothing but his High-Concept to build on and the throwing of ideas out there.

Tip to our people also new to FATE: READ THE RULES. Many of us, including myself, did not read the rules well enough. I'll get to that in a minute.


The Game's Setting:

We used mostly what had been posted in the Spokane Game thread for our City Creation. We then went location by location of places we know we wanted to go and made up a few location cards.

Tip to other gamers: If you have a computer with internet access in easy reach and you are playing in a Real City, keep a Firefox tab open to Google Maps. Especially Street View. We should have done this(it even says so in the book) but we didn't.


The Game Itself:

WE are a group that normally Roll-plays collections of stats on character sheets and has fun between digressions into talking about WoW. Normal play time: 5-6 hours on average (only 75% of that time is Roll-playing)

The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game made us Roleplay our characters for 10 hours straight without digressing (except for food).

Ho....Ly.....S%$#!!!!!!!! That's never happened before.

1) Between the 4 of us, we've been exposed to over 30 RPG systems. Of all of them, FATE was by far one of the easiest and simplest to learn and get used to....but it still kicked our asses.

a) Because we idiots did not read the rules well enough, no one used assessments, invocations, tags or the placing of temporary aspects very well.

b) New players who want to play Supernatural Characters greatly underestimate and overlook Mortal Stunts. The Dark Disciple's many powers made him do freaky things but none of that compared to Sgt. Poe's Tough as Nails, which saved his ass more than all of those powers.

2) We did not realize how important Aspects are until I tried like hell to compel a few to keep the economy going.

a) The Dark Disciple had a few too many aspect that were impossible to relate to the adventure I was running as did Puck.

b) I got called out a lot for Weak Compels, but it ended up that the pure mortals ended up with more Fate Points than they could spend.

c) when a few of the players finally got a handle on aspects, it got cool.
example: Puck had found out about this...festival of tricksters taking place in the area on April 1st and that someone was setting traps for the Little Folk who normally win every time. He decided to negotiate with Skywalk Little Folk's Leader, The Sky King to help them out. Knowing that The Sky King wears Teddy Bears as Armor, Puck bought a new one to place an aspect, A Gift Fit For A King onto the scene. It was a Fate point for Dramatic convenience well spent. He made an assessment to find out if The Sky King had an aspect like, Can't Resist a Good Prank. I decided that was true and the duel of negotiation began. Social is just like physical combat; same rules, same use of aspects, same placing of temporary aspects, same assessments, same everything. The difference are the skills used and the stress track affected. It was epic.

d) When you make characters on the fly using a single aspect and then adding more as you go, you get throw-away characters with a lot of depth that become staples of the campaign very quickly. The Sky King was made off the cuff by 3 of us over the span of a few minutes. Now he's a staple of our world.

3) If you're going to keep track of Fate points, use Poker chips. It gets new players to understand their importance immediately, and if you have a full set, you can color code them to players.

4) The devs have written that combat sucks, that you should be terrified of it the way Harry is. I told my players this. They went in like it was 4th Ed. D&D, every man for himself tank & spank. Guess what happened?

a) My Big Bad Wolves showed that even Inhuman Strength and Speed is to be feared. In an apartment building, after taking out 1 with a cold iron bullet to the head, Sgt. Poe took cover and ambushed the second. Good call. He shot the BBW's buddy and nailed the serious consequence One-Eyed Wolf and forever labeled him Anubis when I described the shot as taking off the head of his Skin-Suit. Anubis took cover, his two buddies went into the laundry room next door. Next exchange: the BBWs teamed up their strength and threw a Washing Machine through the wall a Sgt. Poe. He took 2 mild consequences (thank you Tough as Nails). He got taken out after taking another mild and moderate after the next exchange when the BBWs rammed him with the Dryer and kicked him out the hole in the wall, onto his patrol car. It was epic...

Unfortunately, Real Life happens, I will edit this post or reply to the thread to continue my report of our experiences.

EDIT: Bolded a few things for easier reading. COrrected the Grandcester of the Dark Disciple.

SoulCatcher78:
"Tank and Spank"...consider that one yoinked!

Sounds like a great time.  I've got a couple of questions for you:

How much character tweaking do you see before your second session (now that they seem to have a better handle on how aspects will relate to the game)?

Was your lack of spell caster types (as in pyromancers, etc) done due to power level or because the magic system is different from what you're used to?

With everyone familiar  (at least to some extent) with the city did you run into any of the "but that's not there" issue?

Lanodantheon:

--- Quote from: SoulCatcher78 on April 17, 2010, 11:35:19 PM ---How much character tweaking do you see before your second session (now that they seem to have a better handle on how aspects will relate to the game)?

--- End quote ---

Every character needs a second pass.

The Dark Disciple of Lancelot needs every aspect reexamined. He also underestimated the power of Mortal Stunts until he saw "Tough As Nails" in Action.

Sgt. Poe is well off, but his skills need to be redone because he had a high Drive as opposed to high Athletics for what the player wanted his character to do. His High Concept of Joe Detective is going to change to Celebrity Detective though. Especially since he has a higher Investigation than Murphy...

Puck is being completely reworked because of how his player discovered the true nature of his character. Puck has a Counterpart in Winter, if they both made the choice to become Mortal, they'd be a perfect match, until then they love to hate each other. This was reflected in his Trouble, Opposites Attract. Now it will be reflected as, My Winter Counterpart Has a Nice Ass.

The Negotiator was the best character design-wise. The only downside to him was that A) his player hadn't read the books and B) is a min-maxer extraordinaire(truth, not a put-down, even he admits it) still stuck in D&D mode. If the NEgotiator had identified himself, Poe wouldn't have be kicked out the hole in the wall.


--- Quote from: SoulCatcher78 on April 17, 2010, 11:35:19 PM ---Was your lack of spell caster types (as in pyromancers, etc) done due to power level or because the magic system is different from what you're used to?

--- End quote ---

That came about because of 3 factors:

1) I mentioned that it would be a good idea for only people who have read the Dresden Files to play spellcasters. ALthough we still need to learn the Spellcasting rules, people who haven't read the books can't have those leaps of imagination needed to do everything that is possible with Evocation and/or Thaumaturgy. The refresh would go to waste with someone going, *Huff* "I can't do anything..." *Puff*

2)  Puck actually had Seelie Magic, but it didn't really fit the character. It didn't help that his player didn't read all the spellcasting rules or frequent this forum (despite being a Forum troll) to find out about Focus items, enchanted items, rotes and whether or not Seelie Magic granted them.

3) No one felt like giving Wizard, Sorceror or Focused Practitioner a try.

Next time we will though.



--- Quote from: SoulCatcher78 on April 17, 2010, 11:35:19 PM ---With everyone familiar  (at least to some extent) with the city did you run into any of the "but that's not there" issue?

--- End quote ---

Nope, everyone understood that issue right out of the gate. Everyone's lived in the Spokane Area for years, so during City Creation I found out about places I didn't know Spokane had.

Next time we are running with Google Maps Street View open in a tab during play.

Mal_Luck:

--- Quote from: Lanodantheon on April 19, 2010, 12:44:43 AM ---My Winter Counterpart Has a Nice Ass
--- End quote ---

Best. Aspect. Ever. Of all Time.

mastetwindu46q:

--- Quote from: Mal_Luck on April 19, 2010, 12:50:15 AM ---Best. Aspect. Ever. Of all Time.

--- End quote ---
I. Totally. Agree.

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