So I'm trying to brainstorm ideas for a new epic arch for my campaign.
It's set in Birmingham, Alabama. (Our nearest big city.)

My current idea involves a story where children start disappearing all over the city and it possibly looks like the Red Court are behind it (as there's a heavy RC presence in Bham) but it's actually happening because of some ghost/specter kind of creature or maybe a fae. I'm not sure.

My idea so far is to have the disappearances have some pattern to them like... the child is led away from their family by something similar each time.. maybe the first investigation, the parents are able to describe something that happened and then it is echoed in the next investigation. I want to leave a clue that will throw the party onto the Red Court however and make them think that is where they need to go.

Meanwhile, the Red Court IS involved in some nasty business and is planning a coup on the local White Court presence which is going to get just... awful.. but have nothing to do with the disappearances. I thought about going so far as maybe having the pcs find a kidnapped child if they do go to the RC but it's not actually related, just coincidental (such as a child of one of the White Court house members, being held hostage).

I want to essentially throw the party for a loop. I want to really blindside them  with a spectacularly surprising plot. But without them being just confused.

A couple stories back, I ran one where the Vulcan (the giant iron statue) was being animated to attack the city... it was really epic, everyone loved it... but in the beginning everyone was totally lost because their wizard took a couple sessions off and they didn't have a clue what was going on or why any of my hooks or setups had anything to do with them. -_- I'm trying to avoid repeating this, wizard or not.

I'd love to really discuss/brainstorm this out... but unfortunately all my RP friends are in the game. -_-
If anyone would like to help, please give me any and all feedback and ideas. I really appreciate it.

Hi guys!

I started up a game around a year ago set in Birmingham, AL and had some fabulous help from this forum in working out the plot for my first big scenario. It went great in general, but I had one player of 4 who really wasn't into the game and he kinda drug it down in general. A little poor RPing on a few people's parts later and the game died before I even finished my awesome plot. I was very sad. It seems that half my players wanted me to go back to running a game I'd been running before the DFrpg and as such they really didn't give the game or system a chance.

So a couple weeks ago, I offered to run a DFrpg for a couple of other friends and ended up bringing back my SO's char from the first version and one other player who was in that version is rejoining with his character, but otherwise we have two new characters. I'm really loving where it's going so far. I figured I'd make this thread to discuss this game and maybe bother you guys for ideas here and there. I think I'll share some story as well because I hear you people enjoy hearing stories from the game.

So to start off I'll say that we're local to Central Alabama so we set our game in The Magic City, Birmingham, AL.

The city's main themes(Aspects) are: Haunted ( High Supernatural Presence), Holier Than Thou ( Racism and Bigotry), and The Magic City No More (Decayed & Deluded)

The Campaign is titled "Alabama Ghost Stories" Because if you don't know, Alabama is kinda famous for a lot of ghost stories and spooky folklore.
I based a ton of the locations and faces off real people in Bham, many that I even know personally and can roleplay really easily as such. The players really enjoyed City-genning and since one of them works in Bham, I got a ton of good locations down with a lot inside knowledge on how things really run out there in the big Metro.

The Supernatural Status Quo is: Heavily entrenched Red Court with White Court Rivalry. Lots of Rogue Necromaners and practioners are drawn to Bham by the strangely thin veil. Thin Veil explains excessive ghost sightings.

The Mundane Status Quo is:  Decay, Depression, Religion, Corruption, Repression, and Control.

Not going to list the whole movers and shakers block, but a few important ones include:

Drummond Company (One of the most major companies in the state, who run way too many things and everyone knows their name) is Red Court vamp presence. (Ironically, the company is actually secondarily based in Columbia so the story nearly writes itself.)

The White Court presence divides into a Raith family presence which runs the local prostitution scene as well as the underground bondage scene (which is pretty big here) and they have a nice brothel based out of the Winfrey Hotel at the Galleria (biggest mall in town).
The Skavis family owns the DEA. :/ Explains those horribly ineffectual "anti-drug" ads in the schools.

Alabama has a strong history of having lots of hitmen, and they're a little in the know, a little in the dark, some rocking the boat, some maintaining.
We actually have a decent Voodoo community, go figure.

We also have a huge pagan organization called Magick City Pagans which I've essentially copied wholesale into our game included many faces, and essentially, the lady who runs the group is actually a practitioner and uses the local pagan scene to attract any actual practitioners so she can help spread awareness and keep everyone off the Wardens' lists. So the local pagan scene is where you also find the REAL wizards. Not that there's many full-blown Wizards in central Alabama. So far, we're only aware of one or two. (one is a pc) But we have a lot of minor talents and practitioners.

The Botanical Gardens are accorded Fey grounds and a former PC lives there who was an Emmissary called 'The Botanical Guardian".

Now, it's important to note without listing all my locs, that a lot of places in town have "Extra Thin Veil" as an aspect. Things HAPPEN there. Its so real that even the local mundanes know it. No one goes to Sloss alone at night. (True to life). It's too damned eerie. Etc. So there's a strong sense of reality in our game where we all know how it feels to stand in that spot and look up at that one statue or hang out under that overpass at night... we can really get it into our characters to feel the shivers that should be there. I think we did well with our City-gen honestly.

So my cast of PCs :

Charles Christian: A Wizard Apothecary (Also a Warden as of the first version of the game)
Ashley (Ashes) Carrigan: A BCV who doesn't want to be a monster (Some house rules and special stuff going on here, but its what she wanted to play. She's awesome at it. Very well played.)
Rain Garribaldi : A 14 year old boy who is a Were-Coyote and runs around town with his best friend Jason, another Were-Coyote, getting into trouble like Broyotes do.  (Term was coined during Char gen. It is well-loved.)
Catherine "Kitty" Allain: A mulatto musician and DJ who doesn't know yet that she's a Changeling with Leanansidhe heritage (First time player, wanted to be a little surprised and learn about the world organically)


My main NPC is a White Court Princess named Tamara Raith whose HC is "Rebel Royalty" and her main trouble is "Caged Bird". Her family is forcing her to act a little more like a Raith should and have bullied her into opening a club of her own (therefore, a respectable business venture that introduces a social scene) and so she has... but she's doing it her way.

As Tamara is well tied in with all the PCs, her place is kinda a breeding pot for plot ideas. I threw in a minor hook on opening night as a RCV came in and tried to threaten/intimdate Tamara out of doing business int he area (and Ashes still regrets not hitting that RCV with a chair) which leaves open lots of possibilities for later.

I'm working out a bigger plot but right now I'm really focused on party unity and getting every really well tied together.  I have had issues with parties splitting over lack of property party cohesion in the past.

One thing I'm playing with is putting a denarian behind the overall "fallen from grace" and "decaying" status of the city. Bham used to be "The Magic City" now most of the magic has faded... even really well known venues are closing and the money is all leaving town. Failed projects are the order of the day. A new business is never expected to last a year.
A Denarian seems like a good potential idea for a big main villain.

I'd enjoy any feedback and ideas. I'll post more details later and offer some more story. Right now heading out the door to do another session as my group has requested a third night this week o_o which is just... so flattering as a GM. 


Arsh

It's been a while since I posted here. I really loved this forum last year when I was running my DFRPG game but that fell apart pretty quick due to lack of interest from one of my main players (he was really trying to get me to run one of my other games instead... sad because he's a huge Dresden Fan and he just didn't give the game a good try. Sigh.)

Anyway, what I've been doing lately with DFRPG is a little weird probably. My mate and I had a White Wolf Scion game running for years between the two of us and we loved it but it was such a bloody mess to run because... let's face it... White Wolf did a poor job of creating a storytelling system. Combat in that game got ridiculous fast. So finally we had the idea to move the characters and setting into a system that might run smoother. We got this idea briefly after my DFRPG fell apart. And guess which system I had fallen in love with for its ease of movement at that point...

So we started attempting to re-write each of our Scion characters (11 between us...) into DFRPG. You know what we found?

DFRPG housed those Scions and presented their concepts EASIER and BETTER than White Wolf's Scion system ever did.

We created all the same powers, re-worked the mechanics into Fudge, and found that we had more room to work with on each character as well as that we could balance them much better.

I am still floored at how well this worked out. Fudge is a fantastic system. Never underestimate it! But the DFRPG specifics are more flexible than you might imagine also and that's one of the points I meant to make here.

Anyway, I'll share some of those writeups later if anyone is interested.

Arsh

Do they leave demon-bat things laying around if you kill them?
Do they turn to ash?
What legends apply here...

And if they leave those bodies laying around, why haven't people found them and been like OMFG O_O?

Thoughts appreciated. Thank you.

Hello all! I am a Dresden Fan since the start, RPer since I was a kid! I love the Dresdenverse and having played with Fate before I'm glad to see Dresden RPG set on the Fate system.
So far, I have had a character gen session with my usual group of players and we have created a wonderful set of PCs. Because we were playing this game to give ourselves a break from our normal style of play, I'm glad the Fate system is SO different from our usual games (more storytelling than system I mean) and I think we're all going to enjoy it. I made a PC to play with the group because it's just our style. Don't worry about that part We almost always have a DMPC and we love it that way.

Anyway, my group decided they wanted to play in our own local Metropolis (lol well kinda): Birmingham, Alabama.
We know the city decently but we can all agree not to get stuck on reality and most importantly: B'ham has a lot of history.
Ever heard of Alabama Ghost Stories? Well let's just say my group has been into the Paranormal investigation sect since we were kids. There are plenty of haunted locations in B'ham and the surrounding areas. We all know that Sloss Furnaces is one of the coolest places for an area where the Veil is thin and spooky stuff could happen, and we even have a few great ideas for supernatural involvement. There's a really awesome magic/pagan community in B'ham so we used that for the actual meeting place and for some NPCs for the magical folk. The Botanical Gardens have become our idea of where the Summer Fey are trying to keep a foothold. Drummond Company is Red Court. Skavis controls the DEA and helps keep it from being too effective (there's a lot of drug activity in central Alabama). Raith has just moved into town in the past few years and set up a supernatural bordello in the Winfrey Hotel (at the Galleria. "The" shopping site in Bham). And more...
In other words, we have a lot of good ideas so far and the PCs really ran with the ideas for their own stories.
I have:
Charles Christian: Apothecary Wizard (Selling his wares at a local Metaphysical shop and trying to keep his young apprentice out of trouble)
Corey: (Forget his High Concept, but he's a Sorcerer that likes fire and he's apprenticed to Charles)
Ashely Currigan: Reluctant Monster (Black Court Vampire (We made up the template based upon the info in the book.))
Tamara Raith: Rebel Royalty (WCV, sewing her wild oats and trying to keep from being enslaved to her family more or less. She's my DMPC.)
Unnamed Character (It was one guy's Bday on chargen so we all left open our last phase slots so we can bring him in tight): The Botanical Guardian (Fey Knight, protector of the Botanical Gardens)


And this all brings me to my request.

I have a lot of great general ideas for "Plot Hooks" and "Story Seeds"... such as:
All over the City there have been strange areas of unnatural darkness appearing. At first, these floating "dark-spots" had seemed harmless and had only left a few people with feelings of dread or fear trying to make it from their car to their house or what have you, but last night's news reported the disappearance of a local girl about four days ago. She had been seen walking down the sidewalk near First National Bank when security cameras caught her stepping into an unusually dark area. She could not be seen exiting on the other side, and has not been seen since. Since the report, more and more disappearances have been ocurring and....

This is where I get lost.
I have a neat idea... a cool start.. but I have no idea "why" or "what'.
When my PCs start investigating... where will this lead them?
What is behind it all?

If I can't fill out these story ideas to that point... then I can't run the session because I don't know what answers to give them when they search and find... I don't know what to tell them they discover.

I have had this issue before in investigation oriented stories... I could be more straight forward but I love mystery in my games.
I'd like to finish out the story above because I think it's a neat start... but I could really use some help, some ideas and even some advice on how to finish out stories like that in general. That's just one example of a story seed I've come up with... But I want to make sure it is clever, continuant, and compelling.

Anyway, any advice, ideas, etc would be appreciated. Thank you!


Arsh