You can download the episode from this page:
http://thatshowweroll.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=336154
http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/
You can filter just the posts about the Dresden Files RPG this way:
http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/tag/dresden+files+rpg
Recently, Fred gave us some previews of an art piece Jennifer Rodgers is working on for the RPG:
http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/354561.html
http://jenniferrodgers.livejournal.com/26637.html
http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/355699.html
http://jenniferrodgers.livejournal.com/26887.html
Over in Bleeding Alpha playtest land, Rick Neal's had a lot to say:
http://www.rickneal.ca/?tag=dresden
But he's not alone:
http://spazingames.blogspot.com/search/label/Dresden%20Files
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=387839
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=388884
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=387347
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=386779
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=387348
And did we mention that Small Favor is out, and dancing around the top of all sorts of bestseller lists?
http://www.amazon.com/Small-Favor-Dresden-Files-Book/dp/0451461894/iagonet
Or that the Dresden Files comic book will be coming out next week?
]]>Jeramy Ware posts about Dresdenified Austin Texas:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=378250
Rob Bohl of the Independent Insurgency has Dresdenized Newark New Jersey:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=377474
Come talk about this over on the Jim Butcher Forums
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In other playtesting news, the "bleeding alpha" group is tearing into the rules, making Dresdenified cities, and working through some core components of the system. We've still got many more weeks to keep swinging at it, but the initial response is pretty good.
Keep an eye around the blogosphere, you might even see a few of them talking about it!
]]>Fred Hicks, Chad Underkoffler, and Leonard Balsera got interviewed recently by RPG Virtual Tabletop. We say a few things about the Dresden Files RPG in the interview, so run on over and give it a read.
In playtesting news, we've gotten over 600 (not-spam!) applications since the we opened up the door for it in late 2007. Thanks very much to everyone who submitted an application -- and rest assured, even if we don't end up selecting you at some point in the process, we'll be doing what we can to show our appreciation for you taking the time & effort to fill out those applications as we get closer to publication.
Of those 600+ folks, we've narrowed the field down to less than 5% (about 30) applicants to get an opportunity to participate in our first phase: the "bleeding edge alpha". These folks are the ones who are going to get an experience most like seeing how sausage gets made, and honestly we don't envy them their jobs. The documents are still messy and occasionally disorganized, not to mention incomplete, and we're going to be relying heavy on these folks' familiarity with Spirit of the Century so we can shorthand some parts of the system for them ("like SOTC, only something nasty can eat your face as follows!")
This is just the first step of many we have planned. Eventually we'll get past the bleeding edge and on into an alpha-test proper. Once we get past the alpha stage, we'll start one (of possibly several) beta tests. How long will it take? We aren't Cassandra, people -- and besides you'd never believe us!
Still, if you put in an application and haven't heard from us, *don't despair*. We may yet have use for you in the months to come. And regardless, as I said, we will be saying *thank you* in some way once we're past all of this, whether you end up as a playtester or not!
]]>The Gates are never fully closed. It's through the tiniest of cracks that the darkest of things come into our world (like He Who Walks Behind). And when someone does pull power from there, forging a bond with a malevolent Outsider force, one of those cracks widens, just a touch. The human race is lucky that few have ever managed such an effort for long, thanks to the efforts of the White Council a particularly zealous enforcement of the Seventh Law.
The Gatekeeper's Job DescriptionAs much as the Gatekeeper watches over the flow of time and those who would meddle with it, such actions are really a side-project, related but separate from his main duties (as you might guess from his title). The Gatekeeper is our first line of defense against the Outsiders, performing perhaps the most important job in all of Creation. At the least, he maintains the alarm spells that shriek when the Gates budge, spends the lion's share of his time walking the Nevernever looking for signs and portents, and may even act as an "off the books" emissary for the White Council with the major realms of the Nevernever. The Merlin may lead the White Council, but to many supernatural creatures, it's the Gatekeeper who truly speaks on its behalf and commands the greatest respect.
If anyone knows how the Outer Gates came to be in the first place, they're not talking.
Actually drawing down power from beyond the Outer Gates, in full intention and knowledge about what that means, is a pretty villainous thing to do. Even if you aren't fully apprised of what you're doing, this is the kind of ink-black magic that will stain your soul right quick.
This doesn't mean that the Seventh Law can't be relevant for players. The biggest villains of the Dresden Files may well be tapped into some kind of Outsider mojo, so there is, at least, that; and while the Gatekeeper is our cosmic First Responder for matters involving the Outside, he has been known to tap others from inside and outside of the Council when things are particularly bad.
But players can also stumble across the Seventh Law, thanks to the particulars of its wording—namely, the prohibition against even researching the Outside. A GM looking to put a particularly nasty choice in front of her players could easily "hide" a piece of knowledge within a forbidden tome of Outsider lore. And if a life is on the line, isn't it worth the risk? (The Outsiders certainly hope so.)
Does Demon Summoning Break the Seventh Law?The answer is: usually not. Compared to the Outsiders, most demons a wizard might summon are comparative "locals", though they might have plenty of notions about how it would be a grand thing to hoof it on over to the Outer Gates and kick them open with a big welcoming party.
It's still risky. Many times, Outsiders have masqueraded as standard spirits and demons, so the White Council tends to frown on summoning them unless they are quite confident in your competence and judgment (and how often does that happen, really?). As a rule of thumb, the Council sees it as a privilege allowed its own members, but off-limits for the rest of the supernatural practitioners out there. So even though it isn't directly in violation of the Seventh Law (or any other), the Wardens get real antsy about amateurs messing around with summoning. Even non-Outsider demons are dangerous in their own right.
Think of this as licensing on explosive compounds. If you know what you're doing, have a legitimate reason for their use (construction, demolition, mining, etc)—and you know how to be cautious, you can get them, even if you aren't someone military, and you'll have official (if occasionally supervised) approval to use them. If, on the other hand, you're just some guy who likes storing a few kilos of plastique in his garage, the authorities are not at all amused to find out about you.
The BlackstaffThe Blackstaff is both the name of an artifact of great power and the nigh-secret office filled by an experienced member of the White Council (sometimes, but not always, a member of the Senior Council him or herself). Alone out of all others, the Blackstaff is given leave to break any and all Laws of Magic in order to take down the Council's most dangerous enemies. No higher position of trust is accorded anyone in the White Council, though the Gatekeeper may be considered a peer in that capacity. Unknown to many, the current Blackstaff is not uncoincidentally Harry Dresden's mentor and surrogate father-figure, Ebenezar McCoy.
But what does the actual Blackstaff—that dark length of gnarled, spellcrafted wood—do? Theories abound. Perhaps it acts as a "filter", somehow preventing the violation of the Laws from having the usual darkening effect upon the spellcaster. Or maybe the spellcaster faces those as anyone would—but the Blackstaff prevents his transgressions from affecting the natural order at large. More exotic theories can be proposed—anything from the Blackstaff being a semi-sentient familiar to a bound up Outsider itself—but in the end, its very existence is a guarded secret, and for anyone other than the Blackstaff, looking into its origins might be taken as a violation of the Seventh Law by itself...
So they're having me out there as a guest for the big shindig on the 27th!
Folks looking to jaw about Evil Hat's various projects, or maybe get their copies of Don't Rest Your Head or Spirit of the Century signed, are encouraged to come on down and join in the festivities. I'm eager to get a chance to meet the West Coast crowd— y'all don't make it over to this coast nearly enough (and vice-versa where I'm concerned).
We'll be doing an "official" book signing around noon on Saturday the 27th, but I'm planning on being at the store for almost the entire day, possibly running a few 15-minute "convention floor" style game demos, and maybe dragging in a few other game designers from the small press scene to join in on the fun.
Folks looking for me to talk about all sorts of Jim Butcher stuff, or to do a repeat of my "Fred Hicks Spends My Money" act as heard on the Game Master Show or a general tour of Endgame's selection of the Indie Press Revolution catalog won't be disappointed, either. I'm happy to talk about anything, really; so drop on by and join with your friends in a tactical assault against my vocal cords.
See you at the end of the month!
-- Fred
]]>http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/playtest-application.php
FYI, this will be a lengthy process, with us taking folks out of the applicant pool in "batches", so it could be a while before you hear from us. If you think your group has what it takes, let us know!
]]>Why do we bring Chad up, other than to let you know he's on the job? Well, much like Fred's Livejournal, Chad has one too, and has been posting updates and glimpses of what he's been working on for the Dresden Files RPG as well as other projects of his.
We thought you might be interested!
(And before you ask, we know we still owe y'all the final installment of the Laws of Magic series. That will be coming soon, never fear!)
]]>
But enough about us, here's...
So far in the Dresden Files, we've seen precious little of this Law in action, in great part because if someone is breaking it, he's doing so in a way that fits right into Harry Dresden's non-time-traveling story.]]> Still, it's clear that mucking about with time is another one of those "don't mess with the natural order" things. We just don't know what the consequences are likely to be, even though we can speculate. There are the classics, straight out of science fiction—paradoxes, traveling back in time to stop someone bad from coming into power, altering the course of human history for better or worse, questions about alternate universes, the "elasticity" of time, all of that—but due to the nature of this sort of magic, it's a difficult topic for finding concrete conclusions.
Similarly, we can reasonably anticipate what breaking this Law would do to the practitioner who broke it. We know what holding power over life and death can do to a necromancer; imagine the effect it would have on the personality of a chronomancer (for lack of a better term), who can skip right past death and go straight for the "cause something to wink out of existence" trump card.
It's bad news, and worse yet it's the kind of dark cloud that has an even darker lining. How do you catch someone in the act of time travel? How do you enforce the Sixth Law in a way that's meaningful? How do you prove the crime so you can prosecute the criminal? Are the Wardens even equipped to take on a threat of this kind? And how much of our present day is already formed by the meddlesome acts of a wizard who thought he knew what he was doing? We've already talked about how the body and the mind are too complex to alter successfully, without trauma—now take that up several orders of magnitude to contemplate the complexity of time itself, and what a single, blundering human agent might do if he had the power to change its flow? What sorts of cracks might form in the universe at such an unnatural strain?
When it comes down to it, only a very small number of White Council members truly have the authority to do something about the Sixth Law (quite a number more might have the power, but this is explicitly a case of authority). The Blackstaff, a quasi-secret role filled by a senior wizard of the Council, is empowered to break all seven of the Laws should he see fit, but when it comes right down to it he's essentially just a heavy brought in to fix the biggest of problems by any means necessary. The real guardian of time is the Gatekeeper, the senior member of the White Council entrusted with watching over the Outer Gates (we'll talk more about those in the Seventh Law). While as far as we know he doesn't have the blanket authority to break the Laws of Magic that the Blackstaff enjoys, he does peer deep into the flow of time, foreseeing events that are yet to come—or even receiving communications from his future self. Such communications are always very indirect and unspecific. The Gatekeeper can't pass much real, factual information back from the future, assumedly because doing so would introduce a paradox, or at least cause events to unfold that shouldn't. All he can really do is subtly nudge people who might be able to do something about those future circumstances in the right direction, and then let things unfold without his guiding hand upon them. In the end, we have to pray that's enough.
Do these sorts of actions by the Gatekeeper break the Sixth Law, or merely skirt it? Probably not since he's not "swimming against" the flow of time so much as observing it and warning about what he sees ahead. Regardless, it's clear he has the authority to do it, even if the rest of us might not.
Slowing Down, Speeding UpIf a wizard uses magic to speed time up or slow time down, is he swimming against the flow? Probably not. Most magic that works this way is achieved by messing around with perceptions rather than actually laying hold on time itself and pressing the fast forward or slow-mo button. Mages have gotten short bursts of speed in the past by speeding up their own perceptions and then channeling some extra juice into their body to get it to move and react faster than usual. While that isn't a violation of the Sixth Law, it's definitely tough of the spellcaster who tries it—there's plenty of risk of fried synapses or physical trauma from pushing the body and brain too hard, too fast.
Of course, the easiest decision is to avoid time travel capers entirely. And that's a pretty good one to make; a lot of games can get completely derailed by time travel if it's not a part of the core "mission" of the game. And the Sixth Law at least exists to encourage the players not to attempt it themselves, so you can still bring in a time-meddling wizard from the future (or the past!) as an antagonist. If this is your comfort zone, try to keep time antics pretty simple. Even one single incidence of it can be a big spider's web—difficult to get out of, and liable to cause everything to shake about once you start to twitch.
But for some games it might be fun to move the Sixth Law front and center. Maybe your game is all about a secret, elite team of Wardens answerable only to the Gatekeeper, acting as his time police, charged with the job of taking on the threats that no one else can—all while operating under a prohibition against breaking the Sixth Law themselves. How do you fight fire with fire when you don't even have a match?
If you're looking for a grey area to explore, here's one: the Sixth Law is a prohibition on swimming against the flow of time. What about swimming with it? It might be entirely kosher to jump forward in time (assuming you can figure out how to do it). But will your local Warden see it that way? And how badly will you want to head back once you get there? (Ultimately, Proven Guilty suggests that it's not a violation, but how you play it in your game is up to you.)
Whenever someone in your game wants to break this Law, they should do it with the group's consensus. Time travel has the power to wreck storylines more thoroughly than even a Third Law violation does, especially if you decide to bring in notions of alternate realities that need to be invented often on the fly and in the moment. If you're the one looking to break the Sixth Law, you should be ready to step up and shoulder some of the responsibility to make this work without wrecking anyone else's fun.
Reason #1: Takes a While for the Radiation to Calm Down
Back when we first got the license for the game, we had a completely different idea of where to take Fate 3.0, the system we're basing the Dresden Files RPG on. We put together a local campaign or two, ran our ideas through the paces, and took a look at what the result was.
It was garbage. Seriously -- this was not a game we were going to be proud of, and it wasn't going to produce the kind of fun we wanted it to produce at the table.
So we nuked it all from orbit and started over.
This was a hard decision -- hard on us because there was a lot of effort we had to toss, and hard on you, the fans, because it has pushed out the release of the game by, well, an awful lot. For this, we apologize, but we'd also like to ask for your trust here ... we're doing it to make a better game, the game we want, and hopefully, the game you will want.
As a part of this process, we also produced our game -- which has turned out to be quite a success, including an Ennies nomination for Best Rules -- called Spirit of the Century. This was the sort of fun we wanted at the table for the core system, Fate 3.0, and based on the feedback we've gotten from folks since that game was released nine months ago, we got it right. Since then we've been working on figuring out how to alter the Dresden Files RPG specific parts of the system to give us that feel of crazy danger permeating the novels.
It's quite a ride. It's quite a long ride, yes... but a good one, too.
Reason #2: We're Frickin' Cursed, Here!
Every time we've stated an actual release date for the game, we've missed it -- by a lot. This has made us pretty paranoid about talking about release dates at all over here at Evil Hat. We don't want the game to get hit by any more entropy curses than it already has. So we draw a circle of obscurity around the date! None shall pass!
Reason #3: You Can't Predict What Playtesting Will Do
We're hoping to start assembling "blind" playtest groups sometime (shortly?) after GenCon. Once that ball gets rolling, there's no telling how long it'll roll before we've gotten all we need to out of the process. And on top of that, there's some writing yet to be done that simply can't be done until the playtesting process is over. So in a very practical sense, there's no way for us to conduct an "honest" playtest to the extent we think we need to and be able to state an honest release date at the same time. Each would cause the other to suffer.
On that playtesting note, we'll be putting up an announcement here, on this blog hopefully within the next month outlining the playtest sign-up process. We're likely to do the playtest thing in batches, selecting 2 to 4 groups at a time based on certain criteria (in signing up, there will be a questionnaire to answer) -- things like play experience, familiarity with Spirit of the Century, group size, frequency of play, and so forth. We're likely to want folks from both ends of any particular spectrum, at some point in the process -- small groups and big groups, inexperienced and veteran, familiar and unfamiliar. Depending on the amount of response we get to the program (and based on the inquiries, I'm betting it won't be small) we probably won't be able to get everyone to playtest, but we do hope to make it a pretty sizeable endeavor.
But in the meantime, we've been running ragged over at Evil Hat to do the Summer Convention trifecta -- Origins, DexCon, and GenCon -- in support of our two current products, Spirit of the Century and Don't Rest Your Head. Evil Hat Productions is a part of the Forge Booth, so you can drop on by at most times during GenCon's four days, in the dealer's hall near the "quiet area", and look us up (when you get there just ask for the "Evil Hat guys" -- most folks will be able to point you our way). We'll also be attending the Ennies award ceremony Friday evening. As a fundraiser for the Ennies, they've put up a seat at our table for auction -- so if you're that particular kind of fanatic, and want to grill us about the Dresden Files RPG in person, consider placing a bid!
Hopefully this post has given folks a bit more of an insight into where we're at with the game's release date, and why the delays have been what they've been. We know it's been a long time, and it's going to be more time yet -- but we think in the end y'all will be happy with what the time investment has done for us.
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