Hey, I think some people might be interesting to take a look at Rob Donaghue's latest post on his blog, which is about some different approaches to aspects:

http://rdonoghue.blogspot.com/2010/10/hard-and-soft-tags.html

Basically, I think, were I to GM Fate (including DFRPG), I'd probably end up using the Half-Hard Tag idea.

So I was considering the other day a character concept that had sworn something by his power, but due to events, he did not do whatever it was or it turned out to not be true - so he lost a great measure of his power. Not all of it, not by a long shot, but now he's so terribly weakened that there's not a lot he can really do.

Looking over the powers, there doesn't seem to be anything that really captures that as a concept, so I thought about going for something new that would get the essence of what I wanted down. I could have gone, as many people will probably suggest, for a Focused Practitioner and have his element be whatever my Oathbroken Wizard focused in, but I find that a bit out of line with where I wanted to go. So I came up with the following general idea:

Oathbroken (+1 to +3)
This power is only available to those with Ritual, Channeling, Evocation or Thaumaturgy and may not add back more refresh than one less than the total amount spent on Spellcrafting powers. In the case of Evocation, it decreases the effective Conviction of the character for purposes of spellcasting by -2 for each level it is taken. In the case of Thaumaturgy, it increases the difficulty of any action by a factor of +2. Refinements other than for items may not be purchased until this power is removed from the character sheet.


What do people think of this way of going about creating my character concept? Basically, at the full level I would be taking it for the character (+3), he would be unable to make any reliable magic without either focus items or pumping a lot into his aspects - even at the Submerged level.

Hey, so over in PbP, a couple people (including myself) are starting a game where we merry-go-round GMs and all, using the Twin Cities in Minnesota as the base. We're poking through City Creation and some people are starting to throw out characters. Two people have thrown out using the Changeling template, and I wanted to make sure I'm interpreting a few things correctly.

1. As a Changeling, you only have access to powers that are included in your fae heritage. So no Unseelie Magic for Troll-born and no Inhuman Toughness for Half-Pixies.

2. Once you either have all the powers of your fae heritage or you are negative refresh, you become an NPC. So for the low, low price of five refresh as an Half-Elf, you become an NPC, but for an Ogre-born, you've got 12 to go before you hit the wall.

Is that Oll Korrect?

Now, this is the first character idea I've ever done, and I'll admit it's a bit rough. Also, when looking over the powers, keep in mind that he's not actually who the Fae Lady is making him like - it's just how she thinks who she made him to be is like. And I'd probably choose to rack up some more Fists stunts as soon as possible. The final two adventures are left open for when he finds a party, of course.

---

Charles Emerson
Feet in the Water (6 refresh, 20 skill points, skill cap at Great)

Final Refresh: 1

High Concept: Real, Live, Fae-Formed Saotome Ranma
Trouble: I never back down. I gotta win.

Physical Stress: OOOO(OO)
Social Stress: OOO
Mental Stress: OOO

Powers
Human Form [+1 Involuntary Change] - Charles Emerson either takes the form of a muscled, handsome male, albeit with thick, square glasses or that of a lithe, beautiful female, with the added bonus of sexy glasses - when he can find them. Any time he is splashed with cold water, he changes into his female form and any time he is splashed with hot water, he resumes his male form.

While in the male form, he has the following power:
Inhuman Strength [-2] - +3 Might when lifting or breaking inanimate things. +1 to Might when grappling. When Might modifies another skill, always add +1. +2 damage to muscular force hits.

While in the female form, his Might lowers by one, his Alertness raises by one, and he has the following power:
Inhuman Speed [-2] - +4 for Alertness for initiative. All Athletics at +1, +2 when sprinting. May move one zone without taking -1 for the supplemental action when moving as a part of another physical activity. -2 Difficulty from moving when rolling Stealth.

While in either form, he has the following powers:
Inhuman Recovery [-2] - Can recover from all physical consequences (except extreme) with only time. Recovers from physical consequences as if they were one lower. Endurance never restricts due to lack of rest and you make skip a night of sleep with no ill effects. Once per combat scene, you may clear away a mild physical consequence as a supplemental action.
Inhuman Toughness [-2] Armor:1 against all physical stress. Two additional boxes of physical stress.
- The Catch [+3]: Standard Fae catches, due to way in which he recieves the power.

Stunts
Tough Stuff: The stuff of blunt trauma — fists, sticks, and stones—pose little trouble for you. Against such things, you have a natural Armor:1 (which stacks with other forms of protection). This does not apply to things like blades, bullets, and burns, but it makes you a beast in a burly brawl.

Skills
Great (+4): Fists
Good (+3): Might, Athletics
Fair (+2): Alertness, Discipline, Endurance
Average (+1): Presence, Conviction, Lore, Scholarship

Background
Aspect: Just Another Otaku

There isn't really a lot to say about Charles Emerson when he was growing up. Boy grows up. Boy likes math, reading, and science. Boy becomes geek. Geek finds anime, manga, and the promised land - Japan! Geek becomes otaku. Sure, there was other stuff that happened, but do you really want to know about his mom's basement flooding?

What Shaped You?
Aspect: God-damned Wishes

And then there was that one time he ran after that beautiful woman - a woman so beautiful that Charles was absolutely convinced that she had escaped from one of his books, DVDs or illicitly downloaded MPEGs. He chased after her, at a distance, but she was always one step ahead. And then he was nowhere he knew and she was there and told him that she could fulfill one wish for him - and he wished to be one of his anime heroes ...

First Adventure: Wild-Fae Warrior
Aspect: Faerie Gifts come with Faerie Debts

The beautiful woman, who Charles has now figured out is a Sidhe of questionable morals and motivations, has arranged a task for him. A pig-demon warrior threatens her land and she offers a contestant in combat mortal. Will Charles be able to beat the scarily strong combatant or will he fall on the field of battle?

So, anyway, ever since I've had the PDFs, I've been looking into how I would do my hometown of Huntington, West Virginia as a Dresdenverse city. Partially because, hey, that's all kinds of material there that I just grew up with and partially because there's a lot of stuff that I've seen that could be useful somewhere - like the trapdoor underneath the old college library that leads down into darkness or the strangely shaped standing stone with a hole through it in the park where LARPers congregate every weekend. All kinds of great stuff.

While I've been doing this, I've been thinking a lot about appearances of stuff. I've already figured out one of the major themes after moving back here a while ago. Which is that you're always one step away from the bad part of town. It used to be there were good neighborhoods that were pretty good all the way through when I was a kid. Now? Huh. It seems like everywhere's less than a block away from a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

However, on the flip side, Huntington was once in the Guinness Book of Records for having the most churches of any city. I can't recall if it was by block or per capita or just geographically, but there are heck of a lot of churches. This, of course, has to be important to the makeup of the city in Dresdenverse somehow, but I wasn't sure where I would go with it. There's always a threshold nearby seems like a copout and the city just doesn't feel like a bastion of holiness anymore - if it ever did.

Now, one of the overarching concepts I had was a large portion of despair in the town. Everyone smokes to get through the day, everyone drinks to get to sleep at night, everyone is doing drugs to just feel. This sounds ripe for a large Skavis presence, which has more or less always been a part of how I saw the city going down in the Dresdenverse. Sure, there's a club which practically screams Raith to me (and will be if I ever write this up), but the city as a whole has a dark taint of the Skavis to me. Of that deep despair.

And then last night I had a thought. What if the churches weren't the bastion of holiness? At least not all of them? What if some of them had been beaten away and worn down into the very place the Skavis make their thronghold? Think about it. It's insidious and it's horrible, but it works oh so well.

Of course, there are beacons in the night, churches who haven't fallen to their influence - but they're all falling, one by one. Those folks at City Hall keep raising taxes and the bus routes have to work around different ways and, heck, since the trolley stopped running, nobody can get here anymore ... It's just the growth of the city, right?

Well, last night, I had the thought that the best thing these vamps in the church would feed on wouldn't be the despair - it would be the guilt. You know the kind of preaching that I'm talking about. The stuff that rakes your soul over the hot fires of hell and makes you feel like a lowly, misbegotten worm. A vampire who fed on guilt would revel in that sermon - and be perfectly poised to make it so much more effective.

So, do people think that guilt and despair are far enough apart to make a whole new house of the White Court? Or do they think that it's really just another application of the same thing?