The Dresden Files > DFRPG
Characters with Swift Transition
Wanderer:
Another power I might be interested in is Swift Transition. What it means to be able to shift in and out of the Nevernever at will? I tried looking at PP for some Nevernever reference, but the first part of that book is written in such a fashion it is largely useless to me as a setting source, I just use the second part with the crunchy bits.
Sanctaphrax:
It means you can go to a bizarre and dangerous fantasy-land whenever you feel like it. You may be able to use this to travel great distances very quickly, if you know the ways. You can pretty reliably get out of dangerous situations, although often doing so will put you in another dangerous situation.
The details of the Nevernever are never really nailed down in canon, so a lot of it is up the GM. Way I run it, the place is divided into more or less discrete domains that have basically normal internal geometry. The connections between domains, and between any given domain and the real world, are fairly arbitrary and don't respect the rules of three-dimensional space. Each domain has its own thematics, its own creatures, and to some extent its own laws of physics; normally, the beings in one domain stick to that domain. You can see some example domains on the wiki.
Wanderer:
Hmm, so the Nevernever is not really different from parallel magical dimensions in other urban fantasy games, as I guessed. If so, the price of Swift Transition is a real bargain, since you can use it for swift travel and escaping present dangers at will (by running into all kinds of dangerous supernatural predators and hapzard magical terrain, but everything has a price), and you cannot be imprisoned or warded outside of an environment short of elaborate magical preparations. I need to check the books about how wards deal with escapes into or intrusions from the Nevernever, but I seem to remember that wards do block transitions to the Nevernever as well.
Mr. Death:
Also as a note, what's on the Nevernever tends to mirror or at least be related to what's in the real world in the same place. Harry, for instance, has been warned against going into the Nevernever from anywhere on his private evil island lair. If you try to escape a villain's torture chamber, you might well be dropping yourself into someplace worse. You could try to use it as a quick escape and find out you just jumped into a domain filled with acid mists.
Or you could jump in, move a handful of yards, jump out again and find yourself half-way across the world with no reliable way back. Or jump in, stay five minutes, and find out a month has passed in the real world.
The Nevernever is filled with all kinds of fae and other creatures who would love to pounce on and consume an unwitting practitioner. The most prominent Nevernever traveler we've heard of in canon has the title "La Fay" at least partly because "Fay" means "crazy," as in, "You're exploring the Nevernever? You're freaking crazy."
So it can be handy, but know that you're really rolling the dice if you hop into the Nevernever blind.
Wards can more or less block whatever the practitioner creating them intends them to, given enough time, power and resources.
Wanderer:
--- Quote from: Mr. Death on May 17, 2017, 03:04:43 PM ---Also as a note, what's on the Nevernever tends to mirror or at least be related to what's in the real world in the same place. Harry, for instance, has been warned against going into the Nevernever from anywhere on his private evil island lair. If you try to escape a villain's torture chamber, you might well be dropping yourself into someplace worse. You could try to use it as a quick escape and find out you just jumped into a domain filled with acid mists.
Or you could jump in, move a handful of yards, jump out again and find yourself half-way across the world with no reliable way back. Or jump in, stay five minutes, and find out a month has passed in the real world.
The Nevernever is filled with all kinds of fae and other creatures who would love to pounce on and consume an unwitting practitioner. The most prominent Nevernever traveler we've heard of in canon has the title "La Fay" at least partly because "Fay" means "crazy," as in, "You're exploring the Nevernever? You're freaking crazy."
So it can be handy, but know that you're really rolling the dice if you hop into the Nevernever blind.
Wards can more or less block whatever the practitioner creating them intends them to, given enough time, power and resources.
--- End quote ---
Yes, all of this registers rather familiar to me from my experience with supernatural characters in other urban fantasy games (I refuse to treat them as horror games since the horror genre and its themes register as boring and incomprehensible to me, nor the people I played with cared to do any differently) with magical parallel dimensions, such as shapeshifters, mages, or faeries in the WoD (by the way, another major case of fine games in most aspects with overbearing and obnoxious morality systems I fiercely hated and essentially houseruled out of existence). The alternate dimensions with plenty of dangerous, predatory natives, the often bizarre and harmful dream-logic environments, the eerie mirror effect between the mundane and magical worlds, the Escher-like spatial and temporal distortions, oh the memories of interesting times (all too often in the Chinese sense).
Yea, as you point out, it is a travel, infiltration, or escape strategy that often has its serious drawbacks (although somewhat less so once the characters grow in power and become more capable to deal with other-dimensional critters and environmental hazards). Yet it has more than enough all-around usefulness that I surely deem it a rather useful power to have, if your concept would allow for it (including such cases as the rules for magic as powers in PP). All the more so since unlike those other games, DFRPG and the Dresdenverse seem to lack real alternative methods for magical quick travel.
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