With my semester over, I'm starting to write again and nothing gets my creative juices flowing better than writing fanfic. To that end, I've decided to write my first Dresden Files fanfic. I find half the fun is trying to capture the "voice" of the Dresden Files, from Harry's snarky internal monologue to the other characters and their quirks.

Elevator pitch: Harry Dresden Saves Christmas. Working title: Little Helper.

Beyond my own work, I'm wondering if anyone else here has written fanfic of the Dresden Files. If not, have you read any good ones? Inspiration would be nice.

This is a very simple one, but wanted to run it by you guys first. The PC has both Claws and Breath Weapon, but both are represented as fire blasts from her fists. So, here's a Stunt I wanted to let her take to help out:

Fists:
Wave Motion Fist: Requires: Breath Weapon. Your breath weapon is an extension of your hands. Instead of Weaponry, you use Fists when rolling for Breath Weapon.

The name is a direct translation of "Hadoken."

One of my players is playing a pure mortal. He has expressed interest in getting a weapon like a Warden Sword. He's a (distant) descendant of Martha Liberty and is related to the Warden living in Atlanta, GA, so it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility (if vanishingly unlikely). It would certainly tie in more to his background as the muggle of a wizard family and give him some nice new tricks.

How would you handle a mortal getting enchanted items? I'm less concerned with the potential implications of a mortal with such a rare weapon (those implications are just better story fodder) than I am with potential balance. Given that they're not really making the item, perhaps a stunt to give a mortal access to "slots" that they then spend on that single item?

Stunt proposal:

Lore
Well Equipped: You may or may not be supernatural, but either way you have access to magical gear. Who makes it for you? This gives you two enchanted item slots. You can swap these out any time you could change enchanted items, but justifying the change may be a bit harder if you don't have any magic yourself. The strength of these items is still set by your Lore.

If you're in a DFRPG game set in Asheville, please do not read this thread.





I posted a thread of this title earlier about whether or not introducing science fiction elements to the Dresden Files would work. I decided ultimately, as long as they are of a Lovecraftian "alien/unnatural magictec" type, it worked. So now, for Halloween, we're coming up on my next major plotline with the rise and fall of the Shonokin, and it's a real monster mash.

The Shonokin are an ancient race predating human habitation of North America. They were nearly wiped out by megafauna-riding invaders who nowadays we know as Native Americans (a term the Shonokin reflexively get angry about, they were here first dammit!). They are immortal unless killed, and now survive in small enclaves scattered around the country, pursuing their own ends and hoping to end all human life so they can rise again. Problem: Their numbers are so small they could barely fill the stands at a minor league baseball game, and they have no females. Solution: Create female Shonokin.

To this end, they have taken over a research lab in the local area that was built on the site of an asylum fire where a hundred women died. The lab is actually a real place locally, and the asylum fire is real history. I have a friend who works there and it's actually pretty boring, but calling the place Genova is just too ominous to pass up. Anyway, there they have been conducting all sorts of experiments on kidnapped homeless people, attempting to create more Shonokin. The results have been failure. Attempts to transform a human into a shonokin have created monsters. Attempts to implant human women with (female) shonokin fetuses have resulted in the death of both. Still, research continues, and their strange mix of science and sorcery is close to yielding results thanks to harnessing the angry spirits of the location.

The Shonokin fear death, eschewing anything risky and not even touching dead bodies, so to get their test subjects and dispose of failed experiments, they've contracted with a local mobster nicknamed The Old Man. He's a former associate of Marcone who Marcone lets live only as an insult. The Old Man is, as noted, quite old, in his late 70s-early 80s, and knows his own time is short. The Shonokin have promised him immortality once their research is complete, which he knows is bull but still wants to see where this goes. His right hand man (or woman, as it were) is a werecoyote named Will who one of my players has a history with. He honestly sees her as an apprentice of sorts, since he is more of a trickster and manipulator than a badass ala Marcone. He's somewhat secured his legacy through Will, but the promise of immortality is still tempting.

The two tricksters have set up the Shonokin, and are trying to kill two birds with one stone. The shonokin's latest experiment is their riskiest yet. They decided that if human females were too weak to survive, though implantation does occur, then they could turn to a near-human. Will and the Old Man have therefore gone after the local White Court, and kidnapped someone who they told the Shonokin was a nobody, just a minor unimportant and rebellious member of the White Court. Turns out though she's actually the daughter of the local head of the court, Pastor Will Buncombe (aka Guillarme Bellacroix), and when he finds out she's missing he's going to go through no expense to find the people responsible. He's a Wrath vampire, so he'll burn down the whole city if he has to to rescue his daughter.

The Old Man and Will's goal is to wipe out the two biggest supernatural players in the city, since there is no official Council rep, the paranet just had a crisis of leadership, and there is also no Red Court (yet). Hopefully this will leave a power vacuum they can step in, and if The Old Man gets immortality out of the deal, bonus!

They didn't count, however, on the Autumn Court. They are about dying and the ending of the seasons. The Reaper King no likey the Shonokin Resurrectionists. It's well past their time to die. So, he tells his troublesome Autumn Knight "All Shonokin within this city must be dead by the end of All Hallow's, or your life is forfeit." "What's a Shonokin?" "Did you think I would make it easy?" Again, two birds with one stone.

And now, if you squint, you can just barely make out Frankenstein vs. Wolfman vs. Dracula. Maybe the Reaper King could be called a mummy, but it's a stretch. What's funny is this was entirely unintentional, it just came about thanks to trying to tie everyone in.

I'm currently finishing up my first publishable short story, and I'm exploring options on how to get it out there. An obvious option is Amazon self-publishing, but each individual story is 99 cents. That's basically 47 words per cent with my current story. Looking at it as myself, I'd have to really like the author, otherwise I'd probably pass it by.

There's also the collection option. I could self-publish a novella-length collection of short stories. I certainly have enough of them, if not written yet then coming down the pipe. That might be an easier sell, but then I'd need to get 9-10 more stories out there. That's doable, but lacks instant gratification.

And then there's the old style, of submitting your story to genre fiction journals (including the slightly more modern online format), waiting for a response, then submitting it to another journal when you get rejected. It has its benefits in that they tend to pay very well for short fiction when you get accepted and they have a large reader base. Downside is the difficulty in actually breaking into the business, and the fact they'd probably frown on having it available in another form.

Any advice on which path I should take with selling my story?

Or, how to let them have their fun and still preserve the drama. The story I'm writing could be called "high fantasy," "My Little Pony played in the Exalted system," or  "Game of Thrones if it was published in Shonen Jump." Seriously. It works better than it sounds. Be prepared for weirdness ahead.

Anyway, my two main characters have nearly godlike power and a major theme I wish to explore is how sometimes their power can't solve every problem. In fact, aggressively using such power can make situations much worse. On the flip side, not using such power can make people resent you and think they could have done better. To this end I have one who tends towards inaction and letting situations handle themselves, while the other tends towards action. It's the latter one that is problematic.

So how do you handle extremely powerful characters, without it seeming like everything is made of kryptonite? I'll let you give me some ideas, then explain the specifics of the situation she's currently in.

I'm trying to make a killing curse to use if my villain decides to just take out the PCs, but I want it to be somewhat "Fair Play." That is, they have a good chance of escaping it even after it starts if they're clever enough, while also making for a nice and interesting scene as they try to escape its effects. Also, this is to exercise the thaumaturgy system so I can get a better handle on it, as hopefully I will never need to use this. I probably should have chosen something less difficult for my first custom spell, but I have to follow the muse.

I finally managed to get how Evocation and focus items work explained to my players. I think we're at last on the same page with that one.

So then, I was going to give examples on how to build a couple thaumaturgy rituals...
one thaumaturgy ritual...
okay, this is how you pull off one of the rituals in the book...
I need a freaking drink!

Now, with my neurons having received proper ethanol-based coolant, I now need to actually figure out how to do a spell. Any spell!

Okay, for simplicity's sake, I'm going to make a summoning/binding spell. My main villain has the chops to pull off some pretty dire summoning, but I need to know how it is actually done. The villain's main minions are pretty weak mookish Cherokee demons called Raven Mockers, and sometimes there's even large numbers of them.

stats for them can be found here, at the bottom: http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,33139.0.html

Not overly impressive except in ambush. How would you go about summoning and binding them? Can you walk me through a step by step on how someone would summon them?