Designer’s Corner: Making the Setting Your Own
In this Designer’s Corner, lead system developer Leonard Balsera talks about the game’s approach to setting.
While one of our goals for the Dresden Files RPG was to provide a comprehensive guide to the life and times of Harry Dresden and his friends (and believe me, given the size of our NPC — Who’s Who — and monsters — What Goes Bump — chapters, I think we pulled it off), it wasn’t the most important one for me. One of my biggest points of focus for the project was making sure that gaming groups had the space to make the world of the Dresden Files their own, without having to slavishly adhere to constraints set up by the books.
The first idea which supports that is our central conceit for the game itself – that it’s being written by Billy Borden of the Alphas in an effort to create a Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the 21st century. The information presented in it is the best he could do with the resources he had, but at the end of the day, it’s still just Billy’s best educated guess on the universe he lives in. Nothing guarantees that he’s 100% right about everything, and if you and your group decide that you see some things differently than he does – well, it’s your game, and what you say goes.
Our city creation system also gives you a large sense of ownership and control over setting, allowing you to choose a city and “Dresden” it up, investing it with characters and locations of your group’s choosing. You get to decide what the supernatural community is like in Denver, Las Vegas, Paris, Tokyo… wherever you want. You get to decide what the points of interest are. You get to decide what the themes and mood of the stories you’re going to tell in that city are going to be like. Include or ignore as much real history as you want. Know a lot about your city? Bring that detail into the game. Don’t? Make it up. What matters is that by the end, what your group creates will be your definitive stamp on the Dresden Files universe, your own niche of it to shape and carve.
Don’t want to go through all that work? No problem – we’ve included a sample city, Baltimore, completed as if it had gone through the city creation process, all ready for your characters to move in and make it a home.
And then, of course, there’s Chicago, the default setting of the books themselves. On the one hand, it’d seem that this would be the hardest thing for a gaming group to “own” – after all, a lot of the setting decisions seem to have been made in the books already, right? What if your group’s not interested in that?
Fortunately for you, the powers of erudition possessed by Kenneth Hite are here to help. Going beyond just the books, his chapter on Chicago is a veritable treasure trove of historical, geographical, and thematic tidbits – it’s essentially the research done for you, plenty of information for your group to use the city creation techniques, narrow down what matters, and apply that in your game, tweaking the city’s aspects and locations to fit. The Second City is a vast place, with room enough for campaigns about werewolves struggling through college, cops looking into the weird, and wizards struggling to keep the darkest of forces from hurting humanity. Your Chicago and Dresden’s Chicago may not have a whole lot of overlap when it’s all said and done, but it’ll be yours.
Finally, we provide advice, scattered about the book, on how certain setting deviations might be interesting. Here’s one, from the Who’s Who chapter, talking about how life could have gone differently for everyone’s favorite wiseacre wizard (spoilers ahead!)…
There are a number of times where Harry Dresden could have made a different choice (or suffered a different fate), which would have changed the overall nature of the Dresdenverse. If you don’t like Harry Dresden as the hero portrayed in his case files, make him a villain — or at least an anti-hero.
Here are some suggestions for “alternate Harrys”:
- Pre-Storm Front: Harry (and Elaine) are Justin DuMorne’s thralls; Harry is DuMorne’s enforcer.
- Storm Front: Mr. Dresden, Supernatural Security Consultant to “Gentleman Johnnie” Marcone.
- Fool Moon: Harry the Hexenwolf (he keeps the belt he stole).
- Grave Peril: Count Harry of the Red Court (infected by Bianca or Susan).
- Summer Knight: Winter Knight Harry (he accepts Mab’s offer).
- Death Masks: Harry Denarian (he accepts Lasciel’s coin); there are two chances for this.
- Blood Rites: Harry Dresden-Raith, husband to Lara Raith (basically Lara’s sex-slave or thrall).
- Dead Beat: Harry Demigod (he consumes the Vortex rather than Cowl).
- Proven Guilty: Winter Knight Harry or Harry Denarian.
- White Night: Harry Dresden-Raith or Harry Denarian.
- Small Favor: Winter Knight Harry or Harry Denarian (though this latter one is very tenuous). Slightly more likely is Harry taking up Nicodemus’ offer of support, since they seem to have common enemies.
The three most likely options for an alternate Harrys are Winter Knight Harry, Harry Denarian, or “the thrall of Lara Raith”. Of those, “marrying” Lara is possibly the biggest stretch, and accepting Lasciel’s full power, the least.
Which says something about Harry, doesn’t it?
The group I game with and I have been discussing the idea of having a Dresden like character when we can finally play this game. So this gives some great insight on what we could end up doing. It also allows me to get an idea of how to allow of the the guys to do his Denarian character. However if they choose what they are are talking about they won’t like the scaries they come up against.
I’m so looking forward to writing a Supernatural Sydney session with my group.
Aboriginal shamans, Tasmanian were-tigers, and the real life BDSM community at the Hellfire Club, oh my!
And I am looking forward to have a setting based in Vienna, Austria covering the myths of Europe from Roman legionaire ghosts and the Lorelei to Celtic and Norse gods.
We have started last Saturday with dresden-fying Munich, Germany. It was a lot of fun and very productive. I am going to post the results on my blog in the near future (unfortunately in German).
@Mesar: Did you just imply were-thylacines?
ZOMG.
Now I’m torn between “Were-Thylacine” and “Mystical Luchadore” for my character concept.
You forget post-”Dead Beat” Harry where Mavra goes ahead and hurts Murphy somehow. Dresden takes up Queen Mab’s Knighthood, marries or allies with Lara Raith, accepts Lasciel’s coin, through which he learns necromancy, and proceeds to personally (or leads the army to) exterminate the Black Court. If this occurs near Halloween, we might even see “Winter Knight Harry Dresden-Raith the Denarian” consume the Black Court in a Vortex and become a Demigod. Our Heroes are either Black Court or somehow get in his way.
@BarGamer
Heck, if the players REALLY screw it up, Mavra gets kidnapped and dragged to Demonreach, and becomes the focus of a Necromancy/Thaumaturgy spell that drags all the Black Court there in time for a Vortex to consume them all, which propels Harry or Lasciel into Demigod-hood.
@BarGamer
Part 2: Winter Knight Harry Dresden-Raith the Denarian, God of Vengeance, takes on the Black Council. Players either are the Black Council or are hired by them.
Lemme know when I should stop.
And there’s the Bob angle. What if Harry used the darker aspects of Bob’s knowledge? Basically a good guy, fighting the good fight but being slowly corrupted by the dark powers he uses…
@Chad
Of course I meant were-thylacine’s!
In Sydney it’s even backed up by urban myth panther sightings that even the State Government is investigating. It has supernatural stamped all over it!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/nathan-rees-puts-big-foot-in-sydney-mystery/2008/09/19/1221331170878.html
You are missing my favorite potential evil/anti hero Harry. Harry Dresden, Wizard of the Black Council. A Harry who had just a bit to much beaten out of him and thinks the only way to fix the world is to literally destroy the current system collateral damage be damned. Probably Harry post Proven Guilty where he couldn’t save Molly and had the Merlin execute her as a purely political move.
There also the easiest alternate Harry: Harry “Killed by He Who Walks Behind” Dresden.
@Lanodantheon, that’s not an Alternate Harry — Alt Harry’s are still around and doing stuff. That’s a Dead Harry — which we did a separate sidebar for.
Or his old master kicks the bucket and he manages to get the position of blackstaff,hunts down those responsible for his death learns that the merlin could have stopped it but didn’t then harry decides the council leadership is too corrupt to be allowed to continue and kills the merlin causing a civil war within the white council.
I gotta say the most fun one seems to be the Storm Front option of a supernatural consultant for Marcone.
Though I would have to wonder if an adventure log would wander into a grey area approaching fan fiction.
I’m planning on setting my game in a modern-day version of Dashiell Hammett’s Poisonville, far away from the books’ setting, since my usual method is to just create enough distance between my campaign and the source material that I don’t have to worry about canon (which is why my Star Wars games are usually set two thousand years back in the time of the Old Republic). But now, I’m going to have to do some thinking about introducing some special guest stars from Chicago who’ve fallen to the dark side in interesting ways.
I’m still wondering about how I can make the Dresden-verse more European. Sure it is very centric on the US, and it may sound arrogant, but running an occult investigators campaign in some of the oldest cities in the world has to hold a certain appeal,
@Daniel, I’d start by making the faerie courts even more front and center. The vampire war is a big deal, but the Reds’ seat of power is South America if we’re reading the source material right. But, man, the faerie courts in our “real world” myth originated at least somewhat entangled with the idea of international politics between England and France, if I recall correctly. So I’d build on that a ton. I’d also expect Europe to be home to a lot of very, very old and very entrenched power. Colonization of the Americas is still a fairly new event from the perspective of the immortal…
@Fred: I may be wrong but I would put it as originating from Ireland. The Aos Si seem to be the biggest influence on Dresdenverse’s faries; Harry’s godmother takes her name from them.
@Ihadris, I’m talking about the whole origination of the Unseelie/Seelie Court myth that preceded the existence of the Dresden Files novels.
Granted that a lot of the best known faerie references today come from the Celtic nations (Ireland, Scotland & Wales), still, faerie lore is far from confined to those locations. Remember that the Celtic peoples migrated through Europe to the Isles, and left their influence on the cultures in their wake. Also, most of the Grim’s Faerie Tales originate from Germanic rather than Celtic culture. Toss in the Elves and Dwarfs from Scandinavia, and you’ve got a lot of European Faerie lore to work with.
Yep. Crazy variety and a very, very, very long history. Europe’s got to be fantastically dangerous, but also very calcified in a way. Ancient power does not like change.
I’m thinking how the fey courts of the Netherlands should work, considering that in immortal eyes a big part of it has only recently been stolen from the sea. And of course one of the oldest local cities has a whole dragon motive going (think gold encrusted fountains) as well as underground waterways running below the entire city.