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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Nakana007 on March 05, 2013, 09:28:12 PM
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Getting ready to run Dresden for the first time ever with city (Omaha, NE) and character creation on Saturday morning. Looking for any advice or words of wisdom some of the experienced GMs here can give a rookie. Thanks in advance!
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Best advice I can give: be prepared to throw your plot out the window. PCs are notorious for doing that, no matter the game.
If you don't want to throw the plot out the window, be prepared to hand out Fate Points and compel like there's no tomorrow. . .
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The stuff in this thread (http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,33522.0.html) is a good place to start.
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Thanks for the advice and the link!
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Getting ready to run Dresden for the first time ever with city (Omaha, NE) and character creation on Saturday morning. Looking for any advice or words of wisdom some of the experienced GMs here can give a rookie. Thanks in advance!
While beginning, don't try to remember all of the aspects in the game. Pick one or two from each PC and from the campaign to concentrate on. You can switch them for others next session and, eventually, you'll have them all down. Do ensure aspects get used! It's not the same if compels aren't around. It helps if you players start self compelling and mentioning each others' compels. Do make sure you and the players are interpreting aspects the same way.
I would recommend asking players not to abuse Declarations...and to house rule it if needed. The same applies to thaumaturgy (which is essentially a stack of declarations).
In many ways, FATE is a game played in third person. Don't let any initial discomfort stop you - it smooths out and feels natural once you're used to it. :)
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plan less play more
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Don't let the rules get in the way of you and your group having fun.
/Ulfgeir
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Don't let the rules get in the way of you and your group having fun.
/Ulfgeir
Fates pretty loose with the rules as is. I always go with "if you can narrate and make it make sense, then yeah"
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Fates pretty loose with the rules as is. I always go with "if you can narrate and make it make sense, then yeah"
Indeed it is loose with the rules compared to a lot of other games. But then, if you haven't been GM'ing before, even these loose rules may sometimes be a bit of a straightjacket. What I meant was that "the rule of having fun" trumps all other rules.
/Ulfgeir
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If the game gets in the way of my fun, I play a different game.
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My advice is to be generous with FATE points. The system tends to be considerably less interesting without a ready supply of them, because people are holding on o their last point or two to stave off disaster, rather than using them to do anything interesting.
The balance point to keep in mind is that having a high starting refresh should still be advantageous. So you should be thinking about giving out somewhere between refresh and half refresh in fate points out between when you call for a fate point pool refresh.
So, for example, if you are playing 10 refresh characters, and refresh FATE points at the start of every 4 hour game session, then you should be thinking about arranging everyone to get around 5-7 FATE points per session. To meet this ideal, you have to give out a FATE point every 10 or 15 minutes.
But how do I give out that many FATE points, you ask? Develop the art of creating the minor cost for an action.
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Be challenging, be evil, but don't be Evil or even (Evil). Be tough but fair. Remember that the villains don't have infinite Resources and Contacts and that even they have bad days or may get things wrong. When in doubt, roll and shout. Make sure your players are having as much fun as you are. If/when you make a mistake, shrug it off and learn from it.
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Be challenging, be evil, but don't be Evil or even (Evil). Be tough but fair. Remember that the villains don't have infinite Resources and Contacts and that even they have bad days or may get things wrong. When in doubt, roll and shout. Make sure your players are having as much fun as you are. If/when you make a mistake, shrug it off and learn from it.
Also,
Don't Waste too much time "planning"
I played in a Dresden game where the GM basically put us in the middle of some terrible book he was trying to write. So what ended up happening is we the PCs took a backseat to whatever the "Story" of his novel was. It was not fun. "I shoot him" "No you can't because he's in chapter 5" or "I shoot him" "you kill him, but then it turns out is was a Replica (ughhhhhh). Same GM would also spend waaaay too much time writing out NPCs who should really have like maybe AN aspect, not a full 7. A low level mook should not have an infinite supply of fate chips and on the flip side a Black Court Vampire SHOULD NOT HAVE AN INFINITE SUPPLY OF FATE POINTS
Also write down the Skill list and what it can be used for. Familiarize yourself with it
had a problem where the GM *Hey the same one* didnt know Contacts was a skill and we had two Player Characters who highest or next to highest skill was ....drumroll...contacts. So when they wanted to use Contacts for something he famously uttered "Is contacts a skill?"
Speaking of which
If a player takes DRIVE as their highest skill, reward them with some actual driving sometime. Your players are bad asses, and the star of the show, don't treat them like secondary characters
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The best way to plan a DF scenario isn't so much to have a plotline in mind so much as to flesh out your antagonists, their motivations, and their resources, and just work logically from there. That way, they can act and react to the PCs in a natural way.
Basically, play the antagonists like PCs--they have a goal, and you walk through their efforts to reach that goal.
Also, never, ever be afraid to modify your plot if your players come up with something good you didn't think of. They have a part in creating the story as much as you do, after all, and that includes occasionally modifying a villain's plan because the PC came to a logical conclusion. Players should always be rewarded for creativity, initiative, and figuring stuff out on their own.
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@Mr.Death
Sage advice for any role-playing experience!
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I would recommend asking players not to abuse Declarations...and to house rule it if needed. The same applies to thaumaturgy (which is essentially a stack of declarations).
For starting out with Fate, I strongly advise against this. People have a hard enough time to wrap their heads around the aspect situation, without having to keep a limit in the back of their heads. You have to address the issue, if it gets out of hand, I agree, but to start out, I would welcome every use of aspects that there is, which usually is very little, because people are just trying to grasp the concept.
A good way to get people to do that is by returning the question to the player. In other systems, the players often ask things like "Is there a box I could hide behind?", or "Do I have a rope with me?" or things like that, you get the point. In cases like that, don't give them a yes or no answer, instead ask them back: "I don't know, is there?" It might be, that they don't get it, and then you can still ask a skill roll of them, or tell them to describe how the fact they asked you about could be implemented into the story in a cool way.
I had pretty much this happen in a game, which was one of the points where the nature of aspects really kicked in with my players. I had a couple of sorcerers performing a ritual together, and one of the players wanted to throw a spell into their plans from far away, because they couldn't get close enough to simply kick them out of concentration. I had described the scene in detail, and the sorcerers as being "focused on their ritual". The player asked, if he could use the fact, that they are so focused on the spell, that they can't really do anything else, which should give him a bonus on his roll. I told him to roll empathy, and being a "typical" action character, the social skills were at an absolute minimum. However, he decided to get an edge by doing a lore roll (he was part of their cult once), so he knew a critical point in the ritual where he could push them over the edge.
Another thing that is not that easy to see at first: One enormous enemy can be a lot easier to kill than a few less capable ones, due to action economics. One monster has only one action, and can only do one thing at a time. A group can stack aspects for the last character in line to tag, which can lead to ridiculously high numbers very very fast. Five Characters in a row, if all maneuvers are successful, can lead to one attack at +8 by the fifth character. There are no combinations of stunts and powers that will really lead to that kind of overkill, really.
The best way to plan a DF scenario isn't so much to have a plotline in mind so much as to flesh out your antagonists, their motivations, and their resources, and just work logically from there. That way, they can act and react to the PCs in a natural way.
Basically, play the antagonists like PCs--they have a goal, and you walk through their efforts to reach that goal.
Also, never, ever be afraid to modify your plot if your players come up with something good you didn't think of. They have a part in creating the story as much as you do, after all, and that includes occasionally modifying a villain's plan because the PC came to a logical conclusion. Players should always be rewarded for creativity, initiative, and figuring stuff out on their own.
I will completely sign this. There is no "The players are killing the plot" in Fate. Whatever the players do IS the plot. If there is an easy way to kill the villain, fine. There is always a bigger fish. Or the easy way is cutting some corners that will bring in other factors, that were totally unplanned before. One of my players in my pbp game took an NPC that I had merely thought to be a little more than background noise and included her into his backstory on the fly, making it one of my favorite characters and giving her a regular appearance I had not anticipated.
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Haru, you appear to read more into my comment than is there. In my experience asking the table to regulate themselves is sufficient.
You really can't set "limits" as you put it simply because situations differ. Stacking declarations is expected in thaumaturgy...it's less common in melee. What works is finding the level the table is comfortable using and targeting it.
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No, I get what you are saying, but in my experience, declarations are rare enough as it is in the beginning, no matter which aspect (hah, get it? ::) ) of the game. I find it more important to acclimate to the use of aspects before you start to regulate yourself. Just feels like a more natural way to go.
And it can (and I think should) happen in combat as well as in thaumaturgy. I just had 2 players tag 4 aspects each, making sure their target was deader than the proverbial doornail. Granted, these were (mostly) maneuvers, but still.
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And it can (and I think should) happen in combat as well as in thaumaturgy. I just had 2 players tag 4 aspects each, making sure their target was deader than the proverbial doornail. Granted, these were (mostly) maneuvers, but still.
Then you're still not talking about the same thing. I'm not commenting on aspects in general as you are, I limited my point solely to declarations.
Per the rules a single character can walk in, make ten declarations, and slap someone invoking all for a +20. I seriously doubt most tables will allow it but discussing what the table sees as acceptable ahead of time actually helps create more aspects in play. If nothing else, it points out how powerful the mechanic can be. ;)
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Thanks for the advice everybody! Just did city and character creation today and am really looking forward to this game. The party is a were-bear, a cougar-were, a 9 year old Emmissary of Brighide, a pure mortal stage magician who doesn't believe in "magic" and a geomancer.