A scenario/campaign idea, taken from the headlines and a favorite book:

Right now, the finances of most of the First World nations are something of a joke, and a bad joke at that.  It'll just take a little nudge to push them over, and there are all sorts of entities in the Dresdenverse who would do that for money, for sport, for a cause, or even just for the lolz. 

The basic idea comes from the Spider-man: Secrets of the Sinister Six trilogy: In this rather excellent but sadly hard to find trilogy, a villain named the Gentleman has a plan:
Thinking on it, this general concept could be adapted for a campaign arc or a scenario in the Dresdenverse very easily, depending on where you set the opposition's preparations and power level. 

For preparations, a thaumaturgical ritual would need links to every kind of ink used within the target area--including the very hard-to-acquire U.S. Mint ink (which could be a scenario in-and-of itself).  Additionally, a method of powering a city-wide hex-blast would need to be done.

For antagonists, everyone from the Denarians to the Reds to a warlock cult are options, although this feels more like something the Denarians would try and pull.

And if the PCs don't manage to stop (or manage to pull it off, depending on personal tastes) this?  Financial collapse.  NYC would be in city-wide anarchy.  The dollar would likely fail, and possibly pull down other economies with it. 

So.  There's the idea.  Feel free to use it, abuse it and detail it as you will; as I've already said, it's not original to me.

I have a fey NPC in my game that is currently at 0 refresh, but we're about to hit a major milestone, and she's been significantly involved, so giving her the point of refresh feels appropriate.  I'm not sure what to do with it, though: would she gain an element of free will if she hit positive refresh, or, being a fairie, is she contractually obligated to have negative refresh and would thus just spend the point on stunts or powers and grow that way?

Thoughts?

A thought, spawned from the making of a 9 year-old NPC:
Is it possible, workable, and/or even advisable to assign skills to the Poor and Terrible ranks? 

Expanding  on the thought:
Would it be a workable idea to assign a skill to a rank below Mediocre, and potentially get a rebate on skill points, to help depict a deficiency in the character as compared to an average adult person?  Or should those be compels against the character's aspects?

My current thought on limiting this to avoid abuse is that the pyramid still applies, just in reverse: you can't have more Poor skills than you have Average skills, and you can't have more Terrible skills than you have Poor skills. 

The thought came from working on a 9 year-old child NPC; she shouldn't have even Mediocre Endurance, and, as a child, having a +0 Might (with only needing a +3 on the dice to pick up and move a sofa!), or be able to, 1 time out of 81 tries, be able to afford something under $10,000 with a Mediocre Resources.

Thoughts?

I was recently introduced to the show Burn Notice by one of my players (I think the little narratorial exposition voiceovers are a good way to show what assessments and declarations are to players that don't "get it"), and then the other day, mentioned that, if I were to stat out the Burn Notice main cast, Michael would have negative refresh, due to his single-minded pursuit of "getting my life back" come hell or high water.  We ended up bouncing this around a bit; some of us were arguing "yeah, he's in the negatives" and others arguing "nah, he's positive--barely--but has alot of aspects to get compelled."  Figured I'd bring the discussion here, see what people think.

Oh, and if anyone has any other examples of a negative refresh vanilla mortal on the little screen, please, share.  

Just got my hands on Diaspora, going to be starting a short campaign tonight with some gamers from the club to give them a taste of GMing; we're going to rotate who is in the hot seat depending on which system we're in. 

Anyway, there were some ideas in there that I rather liked; for this thread, the idea I liked was Item Aspects.  First and foremost was the "Out Of Ammo" aspect that all slugthrowers got automatically; your enemy could compel it (you'd get the fate point) but you'd be, well, "out of ammo" if you didn't buy it off, at least until you reloaded.  I like this better than the book keeping approach of keeping track of how many bullets you've fired.  (Taking a "stunt" during the weapon creation called "High capacity magazine", which costs build points, removed that aspect)

Other aspects were ones like:

"Military Equipment" for guns, weapons, vehicles, armor, etc. You would need special training to use, maintain and transport correctly. (For a Dresdenverse game, that'd be an aspect I'd slap on anything not licensed for civilian use; you KNOW using it is going to cause fits at the police commissioner's office)

Cheap: crap weapons; makes the price cheaper by 1 shift to buy them.

And a personal favorite: "Transfer Aspect".  An aspect/special feature that the weapon has, but isn't covered in the given list, which is modeled by applying an aspect to the character so long as they have the weapon (one example given of a transfer aspect is a "net" of a sword and net set; build a sword and take the transfer aspect of "have a net").  For another versatility example, one of my fellow players and I designed a Goober Immobilization Gun for her gun-bunny character quite easily (we're debating what Color-Mods she has access to...)

So, I'm thinking about importing parts of this to my table; they won't have to keep track of how many rounds they've fired, but their enemies can compel that they've emptied their magazines and that sort of thing. 

Thoughts?

Got a character concept, a PI and forensic accountant, who specializes in being able to track money down through shell companies, tax shelters and more.  High Contacts, Scholarship and Burglary.  I'm debating whether or not Forensic Accounting is a new trapping or not, and, if it is, what skill the resulting Stunt for that new trapping would fall under.

Thoughts?

So, I've got that biomancer warlock that I mentioned a while back; he's working for a mob boss in my game, doing little things like designer drug crafting, goon augmentation... and, the point of this thread, magical plastic surgery.

So, here's the question: What can a skilled biomancer do in terms of cosmetic modification to someone? 

And what complexities would you assign for having that change last for "a mortal's lifetime"?
I was thinking things like:
New face
New fingerprints
New hair
Taller
Shorter
Fatter
Skinnier
Gender swap
etc and so forth.

Note that this is for a criminal organization, giving a select clientele a new lease on life, without pesky interventions by the FBI or Interpol...   So this is pretty lucrative for them.

And, as a general comment, I think all of these fall solidly in the gray area of the 2nd Law... and will, for my game's purposes. 

Been playing around with something for Genre-Savvy villains:

#5: The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

Has anybody come up with a character whose rare Catch or Item of Power is kept in a lockbox?   On a related note, now that I've posted this, will anyone come up with such a character or IoP that allows for such a character concept? 

One idea for an IoP that I've been fiddling with is the old classic "The Stone Heart", a chunk of rock that replaces your own, rendering you immortal unless your natural heart is found and damaged/killed (basically an IoP granting Physical Immunity with a +0 Catch).  The natural heart could and should be kept in a secure location... like a lockbox.    Strictly a theoretical exercise for my own amusement, at least at this stage.