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!

As I understand it, the 1-Refinement limit was only for Sorcerers. Focused Practitioners can have as many Refinements as they want.

Rereading it, it looks like Focused Practicioners are only allowed to take Refinement for Item Slots, not for enhancing their own specializations. Although now that I look at, I think only Orpheus breaks that particular rule, and Orpheus obviously has a different set of permissions than just Focused Practitioner.

I think that you are very focused on attacks, and that isn't all one can do with magic.  Maneuvers, Blocks, and Counterspells are extremely useful things and are determined more by power than by control.  If you're going to make an analysis of the benefits of power over control and vice versa, then you need to include these as well.

I guess with non-attack stuff, it seems it is almost always the best option to go with balanced Control and Power. Where with attack, Control is way better. But there don't seem to be any applications where Power is the better choice.

Not quite. Spells have a base cost of 1 stress, so 4 stress only gets you up to power + 3.

Ahh, yeah, forgot that.

You should take aspect invocations and roll variance into account. Aspect invocations make high-power a bit better, since it makes it possible to control spells that are way above your maximum control.

I don't see it?  Like, comparing our power and control goons again, saying both of them are invoking +4 worth of Aspects.

5 Power, 5 Control - My base effect, invoking those aspects, is going to be 14. If I'm going out and take extra stress to get my Power to 8, that puts me at 17 instead.
3 Power, 7 Control - Base effect is going to be 14. If I push myself, I'll get to Power 6, for a 17 again.
7 Power, 3 Control - Base going in, with no extra stress, is going to be 14. Or I can take 4 stress for increased power, and a 3 stress to absorb backlash, and do a Power 10 attack...which gets me up to 17, for exactly the same effect as the other guys get, only I have to take more stress to do it.

Having more Power available is what'll be restricting the effective strength you can throw out Blocks and Maneuvers. If you see yourself using a lot of those, then you'll need to make sure your Power is up to snuff or you'll burn a lot of Mental to get them higher in combat.

Again though, it really is about making sure your Power is close to your Control...no real motive to go over your Control, is there?

Of course, other than an exorcism, affecting the ghost is going to be hard without also affecting the possessed body.

It seems that an exorcism would be relatively trivial with Thaumaturgy? Just summon the ghost on out of the body? Even if the ghost has 5 Conviction, that's like a 9 Complexity Thaumaturgy ritual.

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.

I had figured the bulk of any of the 'official' types running would be at Origins.  I am sad I won't be able to make it to that con for the launch - I am sure though the one year we choose to go to Origins instead of Gen Con will probably be the one year you decide to hit Gen Con instead of Origins, too.  Heh.  Of the many things Gen Con is, relaxing is not one of them though, so the decision to do Origins instead for you guys is pretty understandable.

I shall keep ears peeled for Scott Acker(or anyone else) who mentions intent to run something at Gen Con though.