I'm sure this has been talked about before... But what kind of support does the system give for trying to accomplish two mechanical effects at once? Like, let's say you want to light someone on fire - everyone goes "Yeah, that's easy, that's a manuever to add an 'On Fire' Aspect to someone!"  But shouldn't that also inflict damage?

There's tons of examples like this, many for magic, but plenty for mundane actions too - I've had players want to throw someone off of something of slam them hard to the ground, and it is like "Well, do you want to add an 'On the Floor' Aspect to him, or do you want to do damage?" and there is confusion when it becomes difficult to accomplish both in one action. I'm sure there are plenty of other types of examples, but "do damage and something else" tend to be the most common.

How do other folks handle it?

For myself, I'm mostly tempted to basically let someone use spin/leftover shift off a Manuever to do damage. The conservative in me says this isn't normally allowed by the system, so I'll treat that spin as a totally separate attack (which basically lets the target defend against it twice, generally making these relatively ineffective attacks but at least allows the possibility of doing damage along with placing an Aspect, especially if you got big shifts).

So, I've been noticing a bit of a contrast in the general "how to run the game" stuff in DFRPG.

City Creation seems aimed towards setting up this big sandbox with all these pieces that bump off each other. Players get their biggest rewards (Major Milestones) for changing Threats and Themes. It all seems to aim towards a player-proactive sandbox campaign where players set goals, initiate change, and the NPCs add to the story by reacting to player action and snowballing things sort of like a classic Vampire: the Masquerade sandbox chronicle.

But the adventures seem exactly the opposite. The advice seems to presume that the people taking action and shaking things up are going to be the NPCs, that the players will generally be going along enjoying the status quo until they run across the evil plans of an NPC and start blowing things up to stop them. The advice on creating adventures seems to be aimed at creating a fairly reactive campaign.

To  be fair - the adventure creation feels very much in the spirit of the novels. The books almost never start off with Dresden trying to accomplish a goal and then facing opposition. Usually it is just Dresden trying to put his life back together and reach some sense of equilibrium, and then he stumbles across some antagonist who he just can't let go unopposed (or someone comes to him and says "hey, buttface, you owe me/have this obligation, go do a thing!"). Dresden is generally an incredibly reactive protagonist.

Anyway, anyone else notice this? It is almost as if the game sort of bundles together two very distinct playstyles, and doesn't realize how different they can be. I'm seeing the potential for confusion in my players - when I finish an adventure up, half of my players assume they go back into "Reactive waiting for adventure mode" and presume things are unremarkable until their lives get messed up again, whereas another half go into "Okay, what's the next goal we're accomplishing/antagonist we're going after?" sandbox mode where they aren't expecting there to be much of a time jump between adventures.

I was wondering if folks had good guidelines for where the line between a self-compel and "just roleplaying" is. I have a hard time adjudicating such and knowing when to hand out Fate points or not.

Like, let's say you've got a character with a stereotypical "Smartass" Aspect.

I think clearly if she mouths off at a potential ally and turns them into an enemy because of it, definitely self-compel and she gets a Fate point.

If she mouths off to an enemy who was already going to try and kill her and all that really changes is the enemy focuses fire a bit more on her...that just seems fairly clearly roleplaying, it doesn't really introduce a new problem or consequence. No Fate Point.

But how do you sort of draw the line on the places between? What's a big enough disadvantage to warrant it actually being a compel?

What I'm really having a hard time is articulating what counts as a compel or not to my players in a way that helps them feel confident about when is a good self-compel so they can get more Fate points, and what is just kind of weak("My Hot Temper caused me to take a slightly less than optimal action in combat!").

So, the players decided they wanted to take a road trip to Las Vegas to get away from some heat in their hometown. The group consists of a Wizard in a Midlife Crisis (he came to magic late in life and is sort of having a second youth), a Rabble Rousing Sorcerer, a "Good ole Boy" ex-cop Alchemist, a Nixie-Blooded Changeling, and a Ghost Speaker Musician.

This happened just after I read the Las Vegas preview chapter from Paranet Papers, so I was like "Sweet, I'll just use this stuff". We're set back before the Red Court War, so not only are Red Court vamps still around, they're not even at war with the White Council. So The Dragon is definitely still large and in charge in Las Vegas.

Anyway, they mess around in the casinos and such, and then one of them ran into a human trafficking situation. The group managed to, through some subterfuge, arrange a meet with the human traffickers to try and rescue a girl... Turns out the guys they met with were Red Court Vampires, and the group opened up on them. The Alchemist killed one RCV, and the second managed to flee the scene.

These guys are chest-deep, so two RCVs was a hard fight, so they all evac'd pretty quickly - calling the cops (who, incidentally, showed up to react with shock at the corpse of the one RCV in the middle of the street), getting medical attention, etc, and then crashing back at their hotel for the day.

So, the subterfuge they used to meet up with the human traffickers did involve the wizard giving his real name (or, like, a portion of it, not the whole thing) to the traffickers. And he'd also, upon first coming to the strip, antagonize Big Cory...and told Cory his name in a "You'd better remember me" kind of way. And he used the same name to check into the hotel. So presuming there is any flow of communication amongst the various vampires underneath the Dragon, it seems by the time evening comes again, there's a good chance the Dragon will know:
a) There's a Wizard in town named Don Black.
b) This people baited two RCVs into meeting him, and one of his associates killed a RCV.
c) They called the cops before doing anything to get rid of the RCV corpse.
d) They are staying at Circus Circus.

Now, from how the Dragon is described in the Paranet Papers, it seems he isn't going to care too much about someone just mucking stuff around...but you go killing a member of the Red Court, you freak out the cops... I dunno, it seems some action has to be taken.

It would seem the logical thing would be to have the PCs woken up by a knock at their door, and have some goons from the Dragon want to escort them into a meeting with either the Dragon or one of his subordinates. And then have the Dragon demand weregild or payment of some type... Presuming the PCs don't turn it into an "Escape from Las Vegas" scenario, which is fine, too.

But I have no clue what types of demands the Dragon might make, etc.

Anyway, so if you've got any ideas - on what the Dragon might demand or some other way the scenario could play out - I'd love to hear them. Brainstorm with me!

Can you just whip up some Thaumaturgy to cure possession? Either by Demons or by Ghosts?  Just summon the entity out of the body it is in?

I'd also love some clarification on the "ghosts need to acknowledge you to affect them" thing. Does it make them immune to everything, or just to you affecting their manifested forms? Again, mostly curious about how that affects possessed people.