My group met their first Denarian at our last session.

The plot I'm currently running involves the arrival of 3 Fallen Denarians arriving in Boston in search of an artifact of great power. The first one, a warrior, arrived at the end of the session. We were wrapping up and I wanted to give a nice dramatic cliffhanger, but most of the players wanted to see the fight through. I was rushing since the group all needed to make it to the last train/bus home, and didn't play the Denarian to his best. He was beaten and captured.

Granted, the Knight of the Cross battling him had the help of a werepuma, two people shooting the Denarian with pistols and a wizard using a water evocation to prevent his escape, but it was still very anticlimactic and I should have remembered the range of abilities and options for such a character besides a straight fight.

Taking into account the fact that my group and I are big fans of the "GM's Curtain," that nothing is true until revealed to the players, I'm considering a few options for how to proceed, since I had hoped to strike some fear regarding Denarians into the group.

1: When the group takes the Denarian back to the church they use as one of their bases of operation, he will escape, kill their priest friend and burn the church. This is my least favourite option since it's a real dick-move.

2: The Denarian allowed himself to be captured, either to get information about the group and their involvement with the artifact they're hunting or to steal Amoraccius from the Knight (he keeps it in a sports bag, so the Denarian wouldn't have to touch it).

3: The Denarian simply fights his way free en route to the church and flees.

Any or all of these options could include assistance from the other Denarians to even the odds.

I'm not sure which option to take, though I certainly want to boost this Denarian's skills. He's intended as a difficult challenge for the Knight, since I'm trying to work in a sub-plot about the Knight's uncertainty of his worthiness for his mission. Of course, I don't want to utterly squash him, either.

In the Dresdenverse, do ley lines run only in straight lines, or can they curve? Or is that one of those things that's up to the GM?

My Boston campaign's been going well, but I'm having some trouble adjudicating thaumaturgy complexity, specifically its use for "making the impossible possible."

For starters, are there any guidelines to follow for how much of a conenction there needs to be between the focus object of the ritual and the target? Say you're casting a tracking or locator spell, would a photograph be enough? I'm kind of thinking not, since all the cases I know of from the books and in the rules specify things like blood, hair, a True Name, or personal belongings. The more recent the target touched the item, and the deeper the emotional or metaphysical connection, the better the object is as a focus for the spell. I don't really think a simple photo would have a strong enough connection to attempt the spell, not unless it had some emotional significance like a picture of someone's wedding day.

Secondly, I know the rules say that the difficulty for such a spell should be based on how difficult it would be to track the target if it were possible to track them with the item used in the ritual. That's all well and good, but we don't get any guidelines on how to apply that reasoning. Should I be using a Stealth check for the target? This is really important because it's not just a case of deciding how difficult I want the attempt to be, but also of determining whether any extra time and work is needed to prepare the ritual.

I've been asked to run a second Dresden Files campaign, in addition to one I'm running set in Boston, for another group of players. I was considering the possibilities of using Las Vegas, and started wondering how this city would be different from my Boston setting, and from Harry's Chicago.

I'd like to make this a part of the same continuity as my Boston game.

The first thing that hit me was the mention in the rulebook that Vegas has poor barriers between our world and the Nevernever, probably because the city is considered to have less of a "soul" than other, more well-established cities. So there's probably a fair bit of activity from Nevernever predators. Summer Court is obvious as the ruling Fae Court.

Obviously, White Court vampires feeding on lust and especially despair would thrive in Vegas and probably have a major powerbase there. I also thought it might be a good place for the Reds to have a footing, controlling a number of companies and running financial scams.

Of course, this all raises the issue of the White Council. How would the Council feature in a city so heavily over-run by those who prey on mortals? The White Council they could probably leave alone for the sake of maintaining peace. But what about the Red Court? We don't have much information about the places in North America controlled by the Red Court. We'd have to assume that they were present in more places than just Chicago, but what's happened to them since the war started? Have they all fled? Or have some managed to hunker down and bury themselves too deep in densely inhabited areas for a safe yet effective attack?

I've got two questions about Fate Points I'm not entirely clear on from reading the rules.

1: When the GM spends his NPC's Fate Points to help them operate against the PCs, like getting a +2 bonus on an attack roll against them, does the Fate Point get discarded or go to the PC being attacked?

2: At the end of a full scenario (as opposed to just between sessions), if a PC has more Fate Points than their Refresh Level, do they keep them or does it re-set to the Refresh Level. It seems to me that having it re-set is good, because it means players can feel free to let loose with their Fate Points at the climax of a scenario.

I'm running our first game this weekend, set in Boston. We've agreed that Boston is pretty much a White Council stronghold with several wizards in permanent residence. The White Council are weak but a new leader is ambitious and eager to increase his power. The Faerie Courts are locked in a stalemate, each one making grand displays of power in their own time of year so as not to appear weak, but neither able to commit the resources to alter the balance of power (Winter nominally rules, having control for a longer period than Summer) and the Ladies like to make appearances at college parties.

There is a hidden scourge of Black Court vampires which has been slumbering for some time, and as of yet, the Red Court hasn't managed to make any inroads to Boston.

My main players are a Knight of the Cross, a White Council wizard specialising in lore and crafting, a True Believer civilian administrator for the Cathedral of the Holy Cross who is an agent of the Ordo Malleus (she and a priest working in the Cathedral act as assistants and researchers/investigaors for the Knights of the Cross when they come to Massachusetts), and an undecided Emissary of Power.

At the moment, my plans for my first scenario are that one of Boston's wizards (who, if found out, will claim he received information from a trusted source that there are traitors within the White Council, even the Senior Council) who has made deals with local mafia and several fae, to have a list of people killed. These people will include my Wizard PC's younger sibling, the Ordo Malleus' PC's supervising priest, and other wizards, including a young, teenaged apprentice.

I'm hoping this will play on my group's knowledge of the books and the Black Council, making them suspect that the villain might be teling the truth, but making them choose between loyalty to those they care about and the possibility of a traitor in the White Council. If some of the killings are successful, it'll help me further one of my Threat Aspects for Boston: The Coming Storm, since I want Boston to start off fairly safe and peaceful, but become more under threat as the campaign continues.

I'm just worried this is all a little too big for new PCs to handle, or at least, too major an even to start off a campaign.

Any opinions? Should I go ahead, or just do a simple "solve the murder, stop the ritual, defeat the bad guy" plot to start off?