Sure, easy peasy. But, do you have any questions on your mind at this point. I think you'll get more out of this if you ask questions and we answer, rather than just getting an info dump, which may or may not help.

You say you're familiar with D&D, etc. but have never played them. So, I don't think comparing DFRPG to those games will help you much. Do you have any particular questions that we can help clear up? Do you understand how you would punch a guy, to use a simple example?

If you understand that much, I'd suggest reading the "What's on your Character Sheet" section on Page 17 and seeing if that makes sense to you. If so, I'd move to the Creating your Character and City Creations Chapters and see if those bring up any questions.

A block has to be specific and clear about who it's intended to affect and what types of action it's trying to prevent. But it can prevent more than one of them--up to all of them--as context permits (YS210). The key is context. What is the fictional context of the block? What is the target attempting to do? If he's firing on you and you put up a wall of flame to prevent him from firing on you...well it would prevent him from attacking you, and from putting most maneuvers on you. But it wouldn't prevent him from moving away from you, or hiding from you, or picking up a gun.

In that particular situation, I rolled a +7 empathy roll.  The GM said, "you know what, you fail that role - here's a fate point -   I'm compelling your corrupt cop aspect.  You get that he's telling the truth, but he's insulted you're insinuating he's corrupt.  You just made an enemy on the force"

He could have just as easily played that compel without having you fail. “You win, and here’s a Fate point for making an enemy on the force while your at it!” Compelling success with consequences is often a better alternative than compelling failure. Less likely that they’ll try to buy it off.

That sounds like a good reason to not use social combat, and just use hidden rolls...  otherwise, its broadcasting their success and failure, unless.your group is really good about not using such metagame knowledge.

We use metagame knowledge like that all the time. We make sure it hurts. Otherwise, it’s a meaningless deception. In our “Two wizards on the run in Los Angeles” game we had a few things baked into City Generation. The players knew that our trusted mentor was betraying us to the Red Court and we knew that the local warden was going to be out to get us. The theme of the game is “Out in the Cold” after all, so no where is safe. So, we knew we were in the shit, but our characters had no clue. Imagine their sense of betrayal when they went over to their mentor's for a family dinner and she turns them over to the Red Court. Imagine their continued feeling of alienation when they sought refuge with the Wardens, only to be hooded, interrogated, accused of murder and mind controlled. That was a tough night. They had no idea it was coming.

That's your play style though. I've seen this done both ways, and seen it succeed and fail both ways. The GM and players should play in a way that makes it fun for them. He probably knows his group better than any of us do.

I'm with Will.

I think you worded it wrong, Ryan.  An Eruv is a boundary and can support a ward or threshold.  As pointed out above, I suspect that most Eruvs are formalities, and would therefore not support a threshold, though some very tight-knit communities might.  But even if it had no threshold, I would think that the boundary (which according to the article is often demarked by a wire enclosure complete with wire 'doorways') would be suitable for erecting a ward upon. 

That article is a bit of an oversimplification when it comes to virtual eruvs. The Talmudic laws on the Eruv (which I admit, I have studied only a wee little bit) are based on the idea that the entrance to a courtyard is symbolically similar to the opening of the First Temple, and also the Tabernacle and must follow certain height and width limitations. But, if there is a lintel at a certain height, you can use an opening of any width (as long as there are doorposts I think). Effectively, the wires are lintels. So, they're not walls. The whole virtual eruv is threshold.

Noclue, babel, etc: my problem is this. Venomous claws add an aspect and does continuous damage. Environmental effects the gm has in the story can do damage.

But, if, for example, I want to set a building or person on fire, all it does is add an aspect that if not compelled or invoked or tagged or whatever, does nothing.

Even then, it doesn't do damage; at best, only increasing the damage of some attack external to the  aspect itself.

And that, to me, is the problem. It creates an intellectual disconnect, especially when you have venomous and environmental on one side doing it one way, and aspects doing it a completely different way.

Does my complaint make sense now?

I understand the complaint. I just want to point out that the damage is basically just leading up to the creation of aspects as consequences. They just take time. A maneuver is creating an aspect now and skipping all the lead up.

Does the game favor ripping through people with poisoned claws rather than having them take stress from being in a burning building? Yup. The GM can make the fire relevant with environmental damage if they think damage from the fire is interesting. Players don't get to do that. Players get to create aspects and make attacks.

I have to say... I find some of this... well, woefully inadequate, to be honest. This is my first experience with Fate, and I have to say, while I think the Aspect system is quite fantastic overall, it doesn't seem to handle some of these situations like what I'm referring to above in any regards.

Either that, or they just didn't explain it well enough for me.

Look, FATE handles these situations just fine. We've all lit folks on fire or knocked them prone, without much problem. If you want to cause physical stress, hit the dude with a fire attack. If you do enough stress you'll force them to take a consequence, say "Nasty Burns." That's a taggable aspect, and freely taggable the first time.

If you want to create an aspect instead, say "On Fire," do a maneuver. Now you've got an aspect, freely taggable the first time, but generally no stress. Eventually, the dude is going to do something to put the fire out and the aspect will go away, or I'm gonna rule that the fire goes out by itself. At that point, if the aspect is still a valid aspect, it's still taggable, it's just going to change to something else that makes sense, like "Nasty Burns." Again, that's a taggable aspect, and freely taggable the first time.