Our World page 144 on Fix's character sheet:
Swing for the Fences (Weapons): +2 to an attack made with the Weapons skill, but all his Defense or Block actions made with Weapons, Fists, or Athletics suffer a –2 penalty until his next turn.

I'm hoping that reducing the power level and having people read up a little will reduce the difficulty of introducing DFRPG on the fly that Haru pointed out.

That should do the trick, definitely. One or maybe two easier powers should be fine, more is going to get you in trouble. Maybe try to build the characters and the adventure in a way that every character can use all their powers at least once in the course of the session. That's going to leave a good impression on your players, I'd say.

Here are some questions I have:

1. I've been thinking about how to build PM characters that can be cool in a supernatural game. The main piece of advice given out on the forums in this regard seems to be hang on at about half of your refresh. Here are some ideas that might be cool or supernatural characters and threats might easily outshine them.
Here are stunt ideas:
1. Monster Hunter - +2 damage when satisfying Catches.
2. Blood in the Car - Guide My Hand but only for showing up in your car
3. It's all natural to me - use Scholarship for supernatural research but not spell casting.
4. Lawyer - allow Scholarship to complement Rapport and Intimation when arguing.

Monster Hunter seems weird like this. Though it could be along the lines of "doesn't only know what to use, but how to use it". Yeah, that works.
Blood in the Car sounds weird for a title, but it might be a reference I'm not getting. You could simply give the character "Guide my Hand" and start him on the path of being a true believer. Or maybe call it something like "I thought I might find you here".
The other two look fine to me.

2. How should I feel about pulling stunts from other versions of Fate? Spirit of the Century and Legends of Anglerre specifically. They both have arguably a higher power level than dfrpg.

Keep in mind that DFRPG doesn't allow for attack stunts with a +2 bonus, only +1. The rest of the limitations are in the beginning of the stunt chapter, I can't remember all of them. Generally, you can surely take inspiration from other Fate games and build DFRPG stunts from those ideas, rather than using them as they are, if you feel they are too powerful.

3. Does calm blue ocean apply to hunger rolls ?

Hunger is an emotion, I think. So yes.

4. One of my players wants to play a kitsune changeling. How would you stat up a kitsune ?

For this game, very carefully. Pick one aspect of the kitsune you want to explore in your game and build the character around that. Don't go for too much.

Going from the currently running "Teen Wolf" tv show, we could look at the electricity powers. We could represent that with "breath weapons", basically allowing her to throw lightning as an attack or control electricity in a number of ways by doing a maneuver.

Another way to go could be "supernatural senses", allowing the kitsune to feel, see, smell, etc. more than the people around her.

Or some other aspect I can't think of right now.

5. Are true faith characters under powered ?
They give up the PM +2 refresh for Guide my Hand which is great and Bless this House which is mediocre.

Bless this house is boring. You don't really have to stay within the confines of the templates, look at them more as suggestions rather than fixed. A true believer for a quick one-shot can probably work better with Guide my Hand + Righteousness. If you want to let your players go up against something that's vulnerable to holy things, you can also give them Holy Touch. Only give them things they can use at least once in a learning one-shot.


Other characters you could use are simple shapeshifters. There's an example of a weremouse in the book on page 370. It takes Beast Change, Echoes of the Beast and Diminutive Size, so it's well doable with 6 refresh. Other animals are available, of course.

A changeling with glamours could also work quite nicely.

A character with an item of power, handed down by their grandfather or something along those lines could also work. The exact nature of that item would be determined by what you need. It could even be the hook to get the adventure started, solving the mystery around this item.

Some minor talent with things like Ghost Speaker or Psychometry could also work. Psychometry could be quite interesting in conjunction with the item of power.

Yeah, I think that's where I'd stay in terms of powerlevel and abilities. Maybe add a mortal stunt or two and leave some of the characters entirely mortal.

Do you need help fleshing the characters out?

My players won't have read the books (DFRPG or DF), how much of a problem is that going to be ?

Depends. If they are well versed in urban fantasy and similar genres, they shouldn't have a problem. Dresden Files is basically a giant trope buffet to feast at. If not, I suggest starting slow and letting them discover stuff for themselves as their characters do. That can be a lot of fun and has the added benefit of not being overly complicated.

Any tips for teaching Fate through play?

Don't play Dresden Files.
Seriously though. As much as I absolutely love the Dresden Files, as far as Fate goes, this version is as close to a nightmare as you can get. It works, no doubt about it, but it's very complicated when compared to other variations of Fate. If Introducing your players to Fate is your primary goal and you want a Dresden-ish feel to it, the better alternative would probably to go with Nitrate City.

The idea behind that is that one day in 1948 the flicker set in and blended reality and fiction together in what was formerly known as Los Angeles. Now you've got people running around as movie-noir type characters and monsters, including the snarky PI but also a lot of other funky stuff. Sometimes the world even goes black and white like in the movies and strange things happen. It's got a lot less baggage you need to worry about, and you can just try out a very sneak, very light version of Fate to get comfortable with first. Nitrate City is one of the two settings I would definitely recommend to people to try out Fate, the other one being Masters of Umdaar. That's great fun as well, the world is sort of He-Man meets Thundercats meets John Carter from Mars and all of that.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/184325/Nitrate-City--A-World-of-Adventure-for-Fate-Core

If you want more info on that, give me a shout, otherwise I'll continue with your characters.

Or rather... not.

Sure, I could stat them all, that wouldn't be much of an issue, but for a one shot, you'll need to run a tight ship. The characters need to fit into the story, which means you'll need to have a story, and that's going to be a bit much for me to do.

Instead, let me introduce you to the casefiles:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/87671/Dresden-Files-RPG-Casefile-Neutral-Grounds
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/90998/Dresden-Files-RPG-Casefile-Night-Fears
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/94745/Dresden-Files-RPG-Casefile-Evil-Acts

They are ready made adventures that still give you a lot of room to work with. You've got partially created characters, so you can fill in some of the details later, as they develop in the game, that's pretty cool as well. The characters you get have a wide range, so everyone should find something to play. You can look through all of them and see which adventure you like most or maybe run all of them if your players enjoy it. After that, if you want to stick with it, you'll have a better understanding of the game, which will make it easier to help you set up for the long haul.

If you want to go through with your idea, we can do that as well, it just might take a while and it'll be a lot more work that might not be worth it.

Thought it might make sense to give this its own thread instead of hijacking the shapeshifters.

"Mass" produced IoP... that's actually a tad bit scary, if you ask me.

Luccio has been collecting her bottlecaps. Though that brings up another question, can anyone wield a warden sword or are they custom made to only work for the particular warden and are just a piece of metal in someone else's hands?

Especially of interest to me since my warden managed to lose his sword in the very first scene we played in a new campaign and the GM has been threatening to have people do bad stuff with it.

For "protecting the nevernever", I had a concept for a whole other world once that might work here.

The idea was this: There are "wanderers", ordinary humans who constantly feel the need to travel. What they and most others don't know is that they are linked to the magic of the world, the way they are drawn is such that it shifts the magic around on the planet, so that it is distributed best.

There could be similar people for the nevernever. They are linked to the walls but not consciously, they are simply drawn to where the walls are weak or leaking and they stay there until their presence fixes things.
But sometimes a wanderer might become aware, because the problem is so dire that it needs conscious actions to repair it.


When it comes to Gaia, you're eventually going to run into the Sidhe, because that's pretty much the niche they fill. Then again, Gaia might still be around, she's just lost a lot of her power and is now a genius loci that the character stumbled upon. She can't leave her land, but she can bestow some of her power onto an emissary.

I would say that such magic would encompass a mixture of seelie and unseelie magic, since I would say that's where it comes from in the first place. However, you wouldn't just have both, you'd need to go with the flow of nature. Not only the seasons, but also the problem at hand. You can't solve a problem of overgrowth with Summer and you can't solve a problem of stagnation with winter. So solving a problem of stagnation would be a lot easier in summer, for example.

or a mother who is trying to rescue her son from the White Court

Point of order, because I've fallen into that trap before. The love that's a catch to the White Court is the love between equals, not the love of a mother to her child.

The rest of the post, I completely agree with. Having metaphysically important ingredients makes a spell interesting.

I thought the dragonfly was toot.  But, then again, I was trying to place them in the novels so might not be.

I thought so at first, too, but he seems too tall and too human for Toot.

It's actually easier than it looks. First rule of Fae club: Never give a straight answer. Always leave some wriggle room. The more the better. Prepare some non-conforming sentences you can use. "Perhaps." "If you say so, wizard." "You make a solid argument." And so on. Things that sound like you are giving out clues but actually aren't.

You don't even have to have everything planned out for this. If things turn out wrong, you never said it was that way, you just didn't correct them. If it turns out to be right, you can demand a favor for the information you gave them. Sneaky sneaky.

And that's really one of the great things about Fate. You don't have to have everything figured out in advance. Especially in cases like this, it is near impossible. BUT you can make it look like you did. Everything that happened between the 2 times the players meet a specific Fae? Everything went according to her plan, no matter what. In fact, she had multiple plans, depending on what would happen, contingencies upon contingencies. You don't have to tell the players the details, just make them feel like the Fae are a step ahead of them, even if it's mostly retconned.

I wouldn't even consider that cheating. She's a Fae. She's always a few steps ahead. But you as a GM can't do that, you aren't Fae. So this is the way you model that. And it works pretty well, I think.