The Walking Eye podcast just posted an interview of Lenny and Ryan. Get lots of good juicy behind the scenes detail on the making of the game.
You can find the episode here: http://www.thewalkingeye.com/?p=624
Want to interview someone from the team on your podcast? Let us know!
Evil Hat Productions Brings The World of Harry Dresden To Life With The Dresden Files Role Playing Game
Silver Spring, Maryland (January 26, 2010) - After 4 years in the making, Evil Hat Productions is not only pleased but proud to officially announce The Dresden Files Role Playing Game (RPG) will release at the Origins Game Fair, June 23, 2010. Fred Hicks, one of the founding partners of Evil Hat, said, “Stars and stones! This project has been a labor of love for a great many people for a few years now. The thought of sharing these books with people, getting them in their hands, and having people role playing in the Dresden-verse is making me all misty.”
The Dresden Files RPG is based upon the wildly popular series of books by New York Times best selling author Jim Butcher. With eleven books published in the series, and Changes, the 12th book set to release on April 6, 2010, the Evil Hat crew had a wealth of characters and plot to draw from. “When Jim came to us a few years back, and asked us if we wanted to work on a role playing game based on his books, it took us about a millisecond to say ‘yes!’ He has been one of our biggest supporters on the project, and is just wonderful to work with” said Hicks.
Hicks went on to say, “We based The Dresden Files RPG on the ’Fate’ game system we used on the award-winning Spirit of the Century. We took everything we learned from Spirit, and then updated, revised, play-tested, and fine-tuned it to produce an experience that closely matches the novels themselves. That experience is also defined by the wealth of background we were able to add to the game from Jim’s amazing stories, including a comprehensive look at all the characters and creatures from the first ten books. We are sure that along with being a phenomenal game, it will also be a fantastic resource for fans of the books.”
“Originally, we were planning to do this game in a single volume. As time went on and word count grew…so did the amount of flat-out awesome we knew we had on our hands. And so our game grew out of the confines of one book, into two gorgeous volumes,” Hicks added.
The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 1 – Your Story and The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 2 – Our World will make their first appearance at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio June 23, 2010.
“We wanted to release these books in a bit more of an intimate setting, so we chose to make our big ‘coming out’ at Origins. It’s a small enough show that we feel like we will be able to spend more time with the fans, and thank the community that has been so supportive as we have been working on this. All plans point to physical copies of the books being available for the release event. But if Fate (ahem) intervenes and they do not arrive for the show floor, we will offer an ‘instant content pre-order.’ This will allow folks to walk away with full PDFs of the books right there, and have the books shipped directly to them,” Hicks said.
Preorders may begin prior to Origins, depending on how the production timeline works out. Shortly after Origins, The Dresden Files RPG Volumes 1 & 2 will then go on sale both to Retailers and Consumers through the Evil Hat online store, as well as through Indie Press Revolution.
- The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 1 – Your Story ISBN 978-0-9771534-7-3. Price UPDATED (2/26) – $49.99. 400 pages, full color interior, hardcover.
- The Dresden Files RPG: Volume 2 – Our World ISBN 978-0-9771534-8-0. Price UPDATED (2/26) – $39.99, 270 pages, full color interior, hardcover.
- Retailers, for more information on how to order Evil Hat’s full line-up of titles, please visit http://www.evilhat.com/home/retailer-information/
- For more information on Evil Hat Productions, visit: http://www.evilhat.com
- For More information on The Dresden Files and Jim Butcher, visit: http://www.jim-butcher.com
- Follow The Dresden Files RPG on Twitter @Dresdenfiles
- Press contacts, please email feedback@evilhat.com
Howdy again, Dresdenketeers!
(Why, yes, I have been drinking a lot of coffee today, why do you ask?)
Those of you following us on Twitter or read some blog & forum posts on the internet might have heard that I’ve been running Dresden at little cons. Fred thought it would be neat to start this status update by talking about that…since we’ve gotten to a point where we’re actually doing some convention previews of the book! That’s a pretty good status, right?
The game I ran (once at a house con outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul, and once at an Endgame Oakland mini-con) featured a group inspired by the Alphas and all going to college together. There were three werewolves, one were-wolverine, one were-raven, and a changeling. The characters that I provided were half-finished, intended to make the party (and, really, the adventure) at the table. I pitched the six core ideas around, and when they were picked I handed them a piece of paper with half of the character figured out.
Setting is a little tricky at a con game. I didn’t want to set a game in Chicago, because that’s Harry’s stomping grounds and there’s so much from the books there. I wanted a place were people could explore a little more without feeling weird about this being Harry’s Chicago. (And yes, we talk about this in our own Chicago chapter, which is your Chicago, not Harry’s.) Of course, you never know what city people are familiar with, so I asked if everyone was at least passingly familiar with Sunnydale from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. So far, I’ve yet to meet someone I’ve asked that of who has said no. Bam, everyone has a basic idea of where this werepack goes to school.
Luckily, Dresden Files characters are pretty easy to pitch. Each one has a pair of aspects, a High Concept and a Trouble. (If you’re not familiar with Fate, aspects are descriptors that you can use to boost yourself and the GM can use to make your character’s life more interesting.) So, I just went around telling them these two descriptors and said “from there, it’s pretty much however you see a character with those two things.”
I pitched:
Each one had their stunts & powers figured out in advance, as well as the top few skills. But nearly every convention game of Fate I’ve run where some of the character creation happened at the table has been fantastic, so they came up with various antics and issues they’ve dealt with while at UC Sunnydale. That took around an hour of the four alloted, but there was a lot of fun at during that time, and not-so-secretly it’s how I figure out what’s actually interesting for the adventure.
See, as they’re coming up with different aspects and creating the backstory between them, I’m listening for interesting NPCs that could be either peril-bait or potential nemeses. I have a bit of an adventure skeleton, but it’s pretty malleable because I want the players to go after stuff they said their characters are interested in. I don’t want to go into great detail here, because I want to use this adventure structure in future con games, but the beginning of it:
With that sort of structure, I’m able to pull the players into peril! You’ll read more about how to build great set-ups in our Building Scenarios chapter, where we talk about tying aspects together to make games pop for characters.
But, enough about this con game. There’s something bigger to talk about!
By bigger, we mean the Dresden Files RPG books. Yes, books. We have so much content that we’re splitting the game into two books. We’ve talked about this a bit online, mainly through Fred’s Twitter, but for those who haven’t heard, here’s the deal: We wrote a lot. A LOT. We really wanted to support the Dresden Files as strongly as we could. It should be no surprise that a game we’ve spend this long making is going to be big. The thing is jam-packed with great rules for making your campaign & playing all sorts of different beasts and badasses from the Dresdenverse, supported by loads of advice for players & GMs as well as a lot of characters and creatures from the books statted out. (To give you an idea of what we mean by A LOT, Fred got to about the 75% mark on the first pass through layout and saw he already had 460 pages of material. The final combined page count of the two books together could break 600. Over 140 pages of that is our comprehensive tour of the characters of the first ten novels, complete with stats where they’re stattable.)
We’ll talk more about how we’re splitting the book and get into some detail next month. But no status update from me is complete without getting a little peek at what’s to come. Without further delay, I present to you one Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden — as of around the end of Storm Front.
Download Harry Dresden’s Character Sheet (PDF)
Seriously, seeing Fred’s work on this has made me want to play as Harry. So, who’s going to run this for me? 
- Ryan
The Vampire Courts are some of the most pervasive, widespread groups of monsters out there. Fortunately for the other supernatural factions, they’re riddled with infighting and discord, frequently feuding with each other, and they require rigid levels of protocol and diplomacy in order to function at all.
In practice, the Black Court is drastically understrength when compared to the White and Red Courts (this can be directly blamed on the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula). The potency of the Jade Court is unknown—a wild card in the deck.
The White and Red Courts hold a lot of power in the modern world. The White Court has infiltrated the media (in particular, pornography and fashion), while the Red Court has worked its fingers into politics and finance. The complicated rivalries dividing each Court means that a Red Court vampire who’s currently up against a White Court rival can often find another White Court vampire who’s prepared to make a temporary alliance against this mutual enemy—and vice versa, of course. In a way, this benefits the rest of the supernatural world, as the Vampire Courts tend to keep each other’s numbers down.
Black Court vampires have all the vulnerabilities that are described in Dracula: holy items, holy water, garlic, fire, running water, and so on. This has left Black Court vampires rather thin on the ground. The ones who have survived are the old, powerful ones, who have the intelligence and the capabilities to avoid public attention and to protect themselves from other supernaturals.
The infrastructure of Black Court vampires is unknown. It may be that, post-Dracula, they are too fragmented to have any hierarchy at all. Their relations with the other Courts are tenuous, as the other Courts have them at a disadvantage and know it. There’s also the problem that Black Court vampires use up the local mortal population when feeding far quicker than the Reds or Whites do; this causes frequent disputes over territory between the Courts.
The Black Court frequently uses “Renfields”: humans who have had their wills broken and been fortified by black magic to act as bodyguards, minions, and cannon-fodder.
The Black Court is not involved in the Vampire War as a cohesive whole, though the actions of individual Black Court vampires have certainly played a part in the conflict.
There are few details available about the vampires of the Jade Court. Even the other Vampire Courts don’t seem inclined to discuss it. It’s based in Asia, where it is well-entrenched and well-hidden. Either its members are more interested in staying out of the public eye than gaining influence, or they already have so much political and social influence that petty intrigues are no longer significant.
Shiro Yoshimo of the Knights of the Cross had some interactions with them, and it is possible that Ancient Mai of the White Council has some contacts in the Jade Court (or at least knows the protocols for dealing with them).
The Jade Court’s lack of participation (so far) in the Vampire War is a relief to the White Council.
Other Possibilities
The White, Red, and Black Courts are reasonably public in the supernatural world, at least. The Jade Court is more private, but is known to exist.
So what’s out there that isn’t known about? Could there be powerful vampires with different hungers and vulnerabilities who have managed to keep themselves so secret that nobody knows about them? Is there a Blue Court? A Green Court? A Purple Court?
Maybe. Nobody knows.
There are too many vampires to cover all at once.
Meet more of them in two weeks.
Fred talks about art direction for the Dresden Files RPG today, over on his blog:
http://www.deadlyfredly.com/2010/01/direction-and-detail/
You’ll find some links there (after some scrolling!) to one artist’s work-in-progress. Give it a look (and get yourself a peek into the Baltimore example-setting for the game)!
Spoilers ahead!
If you haven’t read up on the series, you’ll hear a few surprises below. If you have, it’s all old hat.
The Knights of the Cross were founded to counter the Fallen angels who make up the Order of the Blackened Denarius. They protect the freedom of the mortal soul. To that end, they aid any mortals under the oppression of dark forces and try to help that person to win freedom from the darkness.
When a Knight meets a Denarian, he is supposed to offer the Denarian a chance to surrender his coin and repent. If the Denarian hands over his coin and asks for mercy, the Knight has to accept this and let him go, giving him a chance at repentance. (To be fair, there have been cases where this has worked and the ex-Denarian has genuinely repented, in one case actually becoming a Knight of the Cross himself; see Sanya.) If the Denarian says no, it’s time for a bit of the old choppy-choppy, slashy-slashy.
While primarily founded to thwart the Denarians, the Knights are usually willing to tackle other evils, should it be God’s will (“winning free of the oppression of dark forces” covers a lot of ground). Knights of the Cross are often Christians of some stripe, but a virtuous and faithful heart is more important than conscious belief in a theistic faith. After all, God believes in them, whether or not they believe in him in any particular way.
There are three Knights of the Cross at most, and sometimes there are fewer. Their tokens and their burdens are their three Swords: Amoracchius (a broadsword), Fidelacchius (a katana), and Esperacchius (a saber), each incorporating one of the three nails that pierced Christ’s hands and feet on the cross.
At the moment, there is only one Knight; Sanya, wielder of Esperacchius. The most recent wielder of Fidelacchius, Shiro Yoshimo, died at the hands of Nicodemus, the leader of the Denarii, during Nicodemus’ plan to use the Shroud of Turin to unleash the Black Death in a worldwide plague. More recently, Michael Carpenter, wielder of Amoracchius, was critically injured in a (successful) attempt to recover the Archive and John Marcone from the clutches of the Denarians.
Both of their Swords are at present in the custody of the wizard Harry Dresden; neither has yet been passed to a new wielder.
The Knights are quite simply and purely Good Guys. They do the right thing, and they risk their lives to do it. Armed only with a holy sword, (divine?) serendipity, some mild support from the Catholic Church (and, arguably, the angelic hosts of Heaven), and God’s blessing, they face down the forces of Hell, dragons, ghosts, the Vampire Courts, and anyone else who requires it.
The Knights—especially Michael Carpenter—were drawn into the Vampire War due to the personal and professional ties they developed in recent years with the wizard Harry Dresden. (Some feel that this involvement may be related to the Knights’ overall mission as well.)
In two weeks, Vampires.
Aiding the White Council in the Vampire War are several allies: The Fellowship of St. Giles, the Venatori Umbrorum, and several individual temples and monasteries in the Far East. The White Council has also benefited in the Vampire War from the occasional assistance of the Knights of the Cross and the Summer Court of Faerie.
The Fellowship of St. Giles is a refuge for the desperate, for people who have some kind of darkness within them that has eaten parts of them away. All of them are trying to hold onto their humanity by turning that darkness back upon those who would harm mankind.
The Fellowship has developed magical tattoos to control their members’ hungers. These allow the half-vampiric members of the Fellowship to enjoy the advantages of their supernatural abilities while maintaining a modicum of control and choice. However, they aren’t perfect; extended use of supernatural abilities returns the member to the mercy of those monstrous hungers. For this reason, the Fellowship usually works in pairs or teams rather than singly.
The Fellowship is working with the White Council in the Vampire War, channeling information and helping out in combat situations. They have a particular hatred for the Red Court and will take any opportunity to strike back at them.
The Venatori Umbrorum are literally “hunters of the shadows.” Often characterized as “Masons with machine guns” or “Masons with flamethrowers,” they are an ancient secret brotherhood of people with extensive knowledge of academic (especially history and folklore), commercial, intelligence and counter-intelligence, financial, legal, and military issues. They possess an understanding of basic occult countermeasures. They are a larger organization than the Fellowship of St. Giles (possibly even larger than the White Council realizes). Unfortunately, they seem to lack powerful magical practitioners.
As allies of the White Council, they usually provide intel and analysis to the wizards. Since the start of the Vampire War, they have also participated in combat operations against the Red Court.
Not much is known about these allies of the White Council from the Far East. It seems that, while they have less overall mystic power than the (mostly Eurocentric) White Council, they do have a modicum of mojo, along with greater knowledge and familiarity with the supernatural threats in Asia (like rakasha and the Jade Court of Vampires).
The year ends, and we move on from the Council and its… friends.
The new year brings the Knights of the Cross. See you in two weeks.
The White Council is a signatory of the Unseelie Accords and serves as the “supernatural nation” for all mortal wizardkind. It is composed of wizards from all nations, and the Senior Council (its governing body) ensures that most wizards in the world respect the Laws of Magic and disposes of the ones who don’t (via its Wardens; see below).
It maintains alliances with other occult groups like the Venatori Umbrorum, the Fellowship of St. Giles, and a few monasteries in Tibet and India.
Most wizards worthy of the name have come up through the traditional system: being apprenticed to a White Council member and joining the Council themselves as full members when they pass the trials of wizardry.
A White Council member gets a vote in deliberations and agrees to abide by its rules (including the Laws of Magic). A member is obliged to represent the White Council if necessary.
The language used in White Council conclaves is Latin. All members attending a full meeting of the Council wear a robe with a stole that denotes their rank (no stole for apprentices, blue for junior wizards, red for senior ones, purple for Senior Council members).
The White Council is governed by the Senior Council: seven wizards of age, skill, power, and knowledge. The leader of the Senior Council (and thus the entire White Council) is called “the Merlin.” They set policy by majority vote (usually of the entire membership of the White Council, but a Senior Council member can restrict matters to a closed vote of just the Senior Council).
The Laws Of Magic
The Laws of Magic are not the quasi-physics of how magic works; they are the practical regulations on mortal spell-slingers imposed by the White Council.
Simply stated, the Seven Laws are:
- One: No killing mortals with magic.
- Two: No transforming others.
- Three: No mind-reading.
- Four: No mind-controlling.
- Five: No necromancy.
- Six: No time travel.
- Seven: No seeking knowledge and/or power from Outsiders.
The Blackstaff
There are rumors that there is a secret White Council agent (authorized by the Senior Council) who is licensed to break any of the Seven Laws of Magic in those cases where the Seven Laws prevent the White Council from acting in a critical situation.
These are surely just rumors.
HARRY: Don’t be snotty, Billy. You already know more than most mortals.
The Wardens are the guardians (and often executioners) of the White Council. They are responsible for policing both the White Council and the magical community outside it. A Warden is expected to protect mortals in his area, to be vigilant against supernatural threats in his region, to represent the Council in matters of diplomacy, to aid and assist other wizards who require aid and protection, and—when required—to strike out at the enemies of the Council. Think of them as “magic cops.”
All Wardens are battle-capable wizards of high skill and power. Warden security protocols are some of the best magical countermeasures in the world. They are trained in the use of wardhounds in this work, and they also have access to voluminous (if sometimes incomplete and out-of-date) dossiers on various supernatural players.
Their tokens of office are a plain grey cloak and a special sword—both serve as a sign of their authority, and the Warden’s sword is a puissant and useful enchanted weapon.
Subject to the Senior Council, they have their own Captain and are structured under regional Commanders. Regional commanders are in charge of security and operation for a large area (like, up to half a continent—though these current vast demesnes are certainly due to the current Vampire War; before this, four regional commanders normally handled North America alone).
So that’s the White Council. But what of their allies? In two weeks, find out.
Many supernatural “kinds”—wizards, vampires, faerie, etc.—are considered to belong to their own supernatural nation under the Unseelie Accords. (However, given the differences between the Vampire Courts, and the differences between the Summer and Winter Courts of Faerie, there are several separate ”nations” of vampires and faeries.)
Here’s a quick run-down of the major factions in play.
(For further details on the nature of each of these types of beings, see What Goes Bump in the Night. For discussions of specific individuals, see Who’s Who in the Dresdenverse.)
The Roman Catholic Church
While many priests believe in the Devil, only a handful have accurate information on the Prince of Darkness, much less the various Vampire Courts or the Faerie Courts. The general attitude of clued-in people in the Church is that anyone involved with the supernatural is either evil or sliding that way, with few exceptions.
A scattering of priests, monks, nuns, affiliated laymen and others know and stand sentinel against the darkness. Few of them have any real skill with magic, but some have particular areas of knowledge or individual alliances with supernatural factions. For example, the Knights of the Cross (though their calling comes from a higher source than any mortal religion) is strongly associated with a faction within the Church, which provides what support they can for the Knights.
Mortals aren’t a supernatural faction per se. But they are both prey and a threat (especially en masse) to many of the supernatural nations.
HARRY: We’re talking mobs of villagers with pitchforks and flaming torches here.
While more-or-less clueless to the supernatural shenanigans happening around them, hordes of mortals roused to action can be a danger to the supernatural nations. Before the beginning of the Vampire War, calling mortal authorities into an arcane fracas was akin to calling in an airstrike. After the Industrial Revolution, with the wide availability of steel weapons, guns, and ever more deadly technologies, the mortal threat upgraded to “nuclear” (literally!). For the past three hundred years, the supernatural folk have laid a bit lower than they had in the past.
Unfortunately, opinions on the dangers of mortalkind seem to be changing. Recent Red Court attacks in the Vampire War have killed thousands of unsuspecting mortals in the Third World with impunity. Furthermore, the rise of the entirely mortal John Marcone to the status of Freedholding Lord has had some sort of ramifications among the supernatural set regarding mortalkind—
HARRY: My take is that, all of a sudden, mortals are now an even larger threat than before.
—but what those are exactly is as yet unclear.
Other Mortals
Clued-in mortals , werewolves, scions, and hedge wizards (especially the members of the Ordo Lebes) all play fairly minor roles in the overall supernatural situation. Most often, they are simply prey, targets, or obstacles to the larger and more powerful factions.
Sorcerers are often catspaws and pawns for the darker supernatural nations and Freeholding Lords. They usually don’t have enough oomph to stir up “international” trouble on their own.
On the other hand, big-time necromancers (especially powerful ones, like the Disciples of Kemmler) are individually a sort of “banana republic” in the overall supernatural nations schema. Given their power and undead legions, they cannot simply be controlled as sorcerers are. They are loose (powerful) cannons, which must be jostled into position or squelched, depending upon the larger supernatural factions’ aims and goals.
In two more weeks, you’ll have the White Council to deal with.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
There Is No Spirit Of The LawThe Accords were set up by one of the most notorious manipulators in the supernatural world; furthermore, the legalistic bent of the faerie mind, along with their important concepts of favor and debt, has a strong influence on the letter of the law.
Much like the Code of Hammurabi, everything is spelled out extremely clearly. Vicious as it seems to us in retrospect to claim an eye for an eye or a life for a life, it prevents one supernatural tribe from murdering all of another tribe in response to a single death or other faux-pas.
However, nobody’s going to respect “the spirit of the law” of the Accords, because there isn’t one. See above regarding Mab’s legalistic thinking (in gamer terms, she’s the consummate “rules-lawyer”). The supernatural nations all abide by the Accords, because the possibility of all-out mystical warfare is so much worse—as the current Vampire War between the Red Court and the White Council demonstrates.
In the ad hoc supernatural courts that judge these things, plenty of precedent has been established that there is only the letter of the law to protect you under the Accords, and each letter has a razor’s edge. It doesn’t matter what your sentimental excuses were, how many innocents were going to die, or that your true love’s life was on the line. If you break the Accords, then you are neck-deep in trouble.
The best thing that you can hope for is that your side will try to find some loophole to get you out of it, or work a behind-the-scenes deal to persuade the other side to drop their reasons for offence. Unfortunately, by far the most likely thing is that you’ll be served up on a platter with a set of apologies tied around your neck. There will always be people on your own side who will consider their own continued peace and safety far more important than your skin. And after all, what is one man compared to the prospect of supernatural war? These people may regret the political necessities, but that won’t stop them from gift-wrapping Accords-breakers and delivering them to the aggrieved parties.
At times, the letter of the law can actually be helpful. There are cases where people use the legalisms to their advantage. It is a clear and definite fact that someone who reads the Accords and plans their actions before doing something precipitous (like burning down a houseful of bad guys) is the person who is most likely to get away with it.
HARRY: You know, under the Accords, naughty children found on bridges are still lawful prey for trolls.
Tune in two weeks from now as we begin to delve into Supernatural Factions.
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