The Dresden Files RPG

Hi, it’s Ryan again. It’s been a few weeks since the last update, so it’s time to give you the Dresden Files RPG skinny!

The last update was pretty lengthy, since I had all sorts of news to share. This one will be shorter, but not because we’re lying down on the job! Indeed, we’re hard at work going through the revision process on most of the chapters – particularly the basics, like Aspects & Skills. A lot of the text was inherited from Spirit of the Century, so we’ve been going through and fix any inaccuracies that came up in tweaking FATE for the Dresden Files. Combine that with our editors hard at work going through the drafts we give them, and there’s a lot of work going on but not a lot to blog about.

Still, I have a couple neat points. One is that going back through chapters like Aspects has given us a neat opportunity. Often, we’ll get on the FATE mailing list or on various forums about how aspects work, such as if you can, as a player, compel an NPC’s aspect (which, by the way, you effectively can – check out “To Catch a King (Tagging for Effect)” on p. 42 of Spirit of the Century). Given the last couple years of experience in answering these questions, we’re going through the text to see how we could better present these options to players, focusing in part on making sure the terminology makes sense in the face of three years of public “playtesting”.

Lenny’s looking forward to talk about such things on the site in the future, though probably not often – we want him working on the book first and blogging second!

The other is that I got a chance at Dreamation to sit down with Jennifer Rodgers. She shared with me some pieces that are still in progress, and I have to say I’m always stunned by her work. But rather than tell you, let me show you one:

Oh yeah, that’s The Archive all right.  I can’t tell you how forward I am to seeing the finished version. I hope you’re as eager as I am!

Meanwhile, Fred and Clark are digging in on turning setting guru Chad Underkoffler’s text and notes into DFRPG style “statblocks”.  February did get away from them a little, but Clark’s Baltimore chapter is fully statted (if not yet fully vetted), and our “Goes Bump” (as in, “monsters what go bump in the night”) chapter is practically done as well.  The biggest monster of all, though — the “Who’s Who of the Dresdenverse” chapter — lies ahead of them.  They’re working on the battle plan as we speak.  Soldier on, gentlemen.

Before I sign off, I’d like to give a quick shout-out to our crack editing team: Amanda Valentine, Adam Dray and Chad Underkoffler. I mentioned above that we’re hard at work – we’ll, they’re definitely hard at work with what Lenny & I throw them. In particular, Chad’s been great with keeping the voice & tone of the text consistent. Good editors are too often unsung heroes in the publishing world, so I wanted to take a moment to tell them, “Thank you.”

With that, I’m back to the grindstone. I’ll catch up with you all in a few weeks.

- Ryan

General art, jennifer rodgers, lenny, status, system