October Status “Update”
Halloween is Harry Dresden’s birthday. It’s also the date for when we’re going to reveal some of our plans for 2010. Stay tuned.
Harry: That’s all you’re saying in your latest “update”? That’s weak sauce.
Billy: Do people really want to know the boring details about making a book?
Harry: YES!
Bob: YES!
Alright, alright! Truth is, we haven’t put out another project update in over two months because we’ve been hard back to work after GenCon. The whole team is nose-to-the-grindstone. But, it doesn’t seem all that exciting to talk about how a book actually gets done.
Take City Creation, for instead. People loved it during the two alphas (which I was in before I joined the team). But back then, it was written to be a late-in-the-book chapter. Playtesting showed us that it needed to be before Character Creation, so that meant we had to rewrite it–the old text assumed the reader had read the chapters before it, and that wasn’t going to fly if we moved it up!
Along with that, we had to integrate the feedback we got about the chapter (which is, well, the point of playtesting). Some of that feedback involved heavy rethinking of the text–reconsidering the heavy focus on library research, giving advice on what to do once you have figured out what you want in your city, things like that. Then we play around with that with out home groups and a few people we’ve got in a closed beta. After that, we get to send it back and forth with our editing staff to get the language hammered out.
We’re at that last part right now with City Creation. We’re also there with the Advancement chapter, and a dozen other pieces of the book we’ve been slaving over since we jumped back on the project post-GenCon.
On the other end of things, Fred’s pushed hard to get the statblocking for the novel characters done. He’s put out an amazing show of work in the last few weeks, and that’s a segue into our next leak: Victor Sells’ statblock!
High Concept: ThreeEye Cult Leader
Other Aspects: Obsessed; Abuser; Too Powerful For His Own Good; Unknown SponsorSkills
Athletics: Good
Conviction: Great
Deceit: Good
Discipline: Great
Empathy: Fair
Endurance: Good
Intimidation: Good
Lore: Fair
Presence: Good
Most other skills default to Fair or Mediocre.Powers
Evocation [-3]
Thaumaturgy [-3]
Refinement [-2]
The Sight [-1]
Lawbreaker (First) [-1]: Enough for a +2
Lawbreaker (Fourth) [-1]: Enough for a +1Specializations
Evocation: Elements (Fire, Earth, Spirit); Power (Fire +1)
Thaumaturgy: Complexity (Summoning +1; Disruption +1; Conjuration +1; Divination +1); Crafting (Frequency +1)Focus Items (1 slot)
Blasting Rod (Offensive Fire Control +1)Potions (6 slots)
Combined with Victor’s frequency bonus, this means he can create a dozen active doses of ThreeEye (a 2-shift effect that maneuvers an ‘Uncontrolled Sight’ effect onto the user). These doses go out into the wild and get consumed quickly, so we figure this is a good handwavey number to represent Victor’s supervillainous aspirations.Rotes
Killing Flame: A classic evocation: 7 shifts of fire cast with intent to kill (his Lawbreaker bonus is necessary for this rote, along with his blasting rod).Stress
Mental oooo Physical oooo Social ooooNotes
Victor is a good example of how dangerous a wacked-out garden variety Law-breaking sorcerer can be. A few rituals and a callous disregard for his fellow cultmembers made it easy for him to dish out consequences aplenty, which together with storm power fuelled his nasty heart-exploding magic. When time came for an actual face to face showdown with a wizard, though, he was at best an even match for a short time period—his willingness to cross the line gave him the upper hand at first, but it didn’t last. While Victor could toss fire around, and do it well, it wasn’t really his main game; he’s more about the thaumaturgy, especially with conjuring giant scorpions or summoning nasty demons.Total Refresh Cost: -11
So, there’s a little bit of sausage-making in this not-quite-update, but stay tuned!
- Ryan
As much as I liked the previous updates, this one has really comforted me. For a while I thought it might be forever until this game was released. But now that it’s down to polishing up the book’s bits and shifting them around, I feel like it won’t be unbearably long before it’s released.
“These doses go out into the wild and get consumed quickly, so we figure this is a good handwavey number to represent Victor’s supervillainous aspirations.”
Do you expect those kinds of development comments are going to be in the statblocks proper in the final draft? Or are they just for preview consumption?
And now to test how much we can learn about a game system just by looking at a charsheet. Fun, fun.
Can’t wait for Halloween now.
Question, what are the chances of us getting a preview of the City Creation? That’s the part of the game I’m most interested in seeing a finished product of.
@Justin: My money’s on them being developers’ notes. A secondary bet is that they will be replaced with in-story commentary. Perhaps from Harry his-own-self (“And that, apprentice, is why you NEVER conjure demons in front of opponents.”) Perhaps from the Wardens’ files by way of Morgan’s observations (“Physical security: none beyond negligible electrical-based alarm systems and physical isolation. Details in attachment tab “C”. Magical security: none beyond minimal containment wards. Details in attachment tab “D”. Warlock skill assessment:…” And so on.)
reminds me of the old advice: never summon anything bigger than your head.
will there be a rundown of “old world” wizards and foes? or will the setting be more american-bound? or at least a “monster creation kit” where you can assign abilities to a monster according to myths and legends and have some form of comparability with the players, like a threat rating so it is easy to see if the monster will be too strong for the group in which case they might get some help from NPCs or to weak in which case there will be some side-actions for my players to get to that monster.
@Justin D. Jacobson, the conceit of the game is that it’s the Alphas’ *unpublished* Dresden Files RPG. Those are developers’ notes — and they’re also meant to be seen in our finished product. Don’t other GMs write stuff like this in their GM’s notes? I know I sure do.
@John K, we’ll see. That one’s gone through a lot of revision and is currently having the everloving crap edited out of it by our crack editing squad.
@Wyrdrune, creating your own monsters or whatever should be a fairly straightforward exercise after you’ve gotten a chance to look at our 200 or so examples.
In GM’s notes, yes. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it in an actual statblock. It’s interesting.
I’m getting excited!