The Dresden Files RPG

Belief is Power

Faith in itself is a form of power and a kind of magic. Strong faith in good (or evil) can act as a defense, an offense, a shield, or a guide, providing many effects which people would normally consider “magic.” This could include things like a glimmer of light from a crucifix in the darkness, burning a vampire’s hands as it grabs you, or a sudden burst of more-than-mortal strength.

The exact details of the faith can vary. Religious beliefs are the mainstay here: a staggering number of people have faith in God (or gods). Some people have strong faith in more philosophical beliefs—for example, the fundamental purity and goodness of magic, Tibetan mysticism, or even Communism.

The important thing is that if the person has faith in something—true, sincere, pure faith—then miracles can happen.

HARRY: Effective word here being “can”—while Michael, Charity, and Father Forthill have that kind of belief in the goodness of God and that everything will work out to some ineffable plan…I just can’t buy it. Not with what I’ve seen happen.

BOB: For my part, I know that faith has power. However, I am not allowed to understand anything further than that, by nature and by…other issues.

Magic is What You Are

You can’t make magic do something that goes against your fundamental nature. This works on both the deliberate and the emotional levels. An utterly kind, sincere person will not be able to muster malicious hate and bitterness of a level that would allow him to summon demons or blast with hellfire—or, at least, not without very significant provocation. Likewise, a vicious and corrupt thanatologist practicing human sacrifice isn’t going to have healing magic at her command—or, if she does, it may require blood and pain to make it work and will probably be more corrupting than simply leaving the open wound to fester.

At least, that’s the theory. Practice has, once again, shown things to be a lot fuzzier than the clear-cut examples above. Again, it all comes back to choice and to the complexity of the mortal mind and soul. Even a kindly old grandmother has the seeds of hatred within her, and even a cold-blooded gangster has moments of tenderness and kindness.

Magic is an expression of the person who brings it forth. It comes from their beliefs, their morality, their feelings, their emotional connections, their way of seeing the world: in a word, their soul.

BOB: See, boss, Billy gets it a lot more than you do.

HARRY: Shut up, Bob.

There’s a reason why the soulgaze is the ultimate proof of sincerity between many wizards. A soulgaze happens when two people (at least one of them a wizard) make eye contact long enough to look into each other’s souls and see what they truly are. In that moment, a wizard not only sees what a person is, but he also sees what their magic is—it’s one and the same. For instance, if you choose to practice black magic, you dredge up the corrupt parts of yourself and make them stronger. You are what you choose to become, what you make yourself into. (Luckily, if you’re mortal, you also always have the power to choose redemption after a slip.)

Whether it’s faith or magic, all power comes from the basic nature of the mortal or monster who is using it. Evil brings forth evil, and good brings forth good. We are what we do, and we do what we are.

Tune in two weeks from now as we start wrapping up Harry’s World with an answer to the question, What’s Out There?

General harry's world, maxims of the dresdenverse, setting

Science Fails

The comforting rules of science and technology, the certainty that a better computer or a bigger gun will settle the problem—sorry, they don’t work ’round here. Wizards and some other monsters cause nearby technology to malfunction simply by their presence.

HARRY: Billy, please change “some other monsters” to “some other supernatural entities”? We’re not all that bad.

Well, mostly.

Okay.

Just freaking change it, Billy.

Monsters aren’t reliably affected by the laws of physics. (They seem to treat them as “vague guidelines” more than laws.) They can fly, walk through walls, tear apart steel doors, and bounce bullets or ignore them entirely. All the carefully acquired handguns, sniper rifles, flamethrowers, computer security, and mobile phones in the world may ultimately be useless if pitted against the wrong sort of adversary.

Not only does technology not work around the wizardly-inclined, nobody can really explain why post-WWII technology doesn’t work. There aren’t any convenient rules. No wizard has yet attempted to catalogue his effects on technology.

HARRY: Butters is pretty close. He has some theories.

BOB: Last time Butters and I spoke, he was on about something about your electromagnetic field (I call it an aura) interfering with electron spin and/or phase jumps in transistors and other solid state electronics. (I think that’s what he said. Technology is just another flavor of faith to me.)

Furthermore, no monster is going to publish a list of ways that it can be hurt.

HARRY: Like this game. Heh.

By the by, there’s some circumstantial evidence that indicates Stoker was manipulated into writing Dracula by the White Court. So while no monster is gonna come up with a “Top Ten Ways to Whack Me” list, another monster might do so.

However, others can. The most recent example of such a tome, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, detailed most of the significant ways in which a Black Court vampire can be damaged or killed. The Black Court still hasn’t recovered.

This dovetails remarkably well with the note above about people choosing not to see what’s going on around them. Scientists who might be able to analyze data on monsters don’t want to know in the first place; then their instruments go nuts, so they dismiss the cases of spontaneous combustion or bouncing bullets as statistical anomalies. With regard to the supernatural, science can’t tell you what just happened, can’t explain why it happened, and can’t stop it from happening again.

Sure, Mr. or Ms. Sciencey-Science, your lab is spotless, filled with the tools and gear of analysis, and you have spent years filling your head with logic, knowledge, methods—but the specimen before you refuses to make sense according to everything you’ve been taught. Meanwhile, it’s very dark outside, something large is moving around in the gloom, and your electric light has started flickering. The monster is getting closer, and you can’t do thing one about it—or even understand what’s going on.

However, this doesn’t mean that technology can’t be useful, if properly applied (and kept away from wizards who can make it go pfft!). Different creatures have different vulnerabilities—a flamethrower or a water balloon filled with holy water might be just the thing to even the odds against a Black Court vampire. Even if a bullet in the brainpan fails to take a monster down, extreme applications of kinetic force (such as a car at ramming speed or a crashlanding satellite) tend to have some sort of effect. Other tools of technology can be used to pass information, archive data, set up perimeters, collect evidence, or may be functional in particular ways against particular types of monster.

Assuming that a wizard doesn’t accidentally fuse them, of course.

In two weeks, we wrap up this section of Harry’s World with the final Maxims of the Dresdenverse

General harry's world, maxims of the dresdenverse, setting

Maxims of the Dresdenverse

There are certain themes that hold true in this world which are noticeable enough that you should take them under consideration. They can be roughly summarized as follows.

Monsters have Nature, Mortals have Choice

Almost all beings that could be considered “monsters” are, one on one, far more powerful than the average mortal. They have great strength, implausible toughness, blinding speed, and unnatural powers. What they don’t have is choice.

A monster’s nature is oriented towards fulfilling its hungers. Vampires need emotion or blood or death, loup-garoux need the hunt and the kill, fae literally cannot step outside their natures or break oaths…These entities have power, but they don’t have the option of saying no. They are what they’re made to be—and some things are simply made cruel, or bloodthirsty, or just plain evil.

On the other hand, mortals have options: choice. That’s their great strength and their great responsibility. Only animals and monsters can truthfully say that they can’t do anything else, or that they can’t be other than what they are. Every human being can make a decision about what to do or not do, what to accept and what to refuse, whether to kill or not kill.

HARRY: Mortals—humans—also have the advantage of numbers. Up until very recently, calling mortal authorities into a supernatural situation was like radioing in an airstrike.

Unfortunately, in the course of the Vampire War, some of the supernatural “nations” seem to have gotten hold of the mystical equivalents of nukes.

That said, the situation is often grey and not clear-cut. There are those few who are part mortal and part monster: vampires who struggle to fight their hungers and do the right thing; werewolves who chose lycanthropy to get the strength to defend their community;

BILLY: Alphas, represent!

wizards who accept help from dark sources, but hope to restrain the urges that threaten to overwhelm them. Choice is the overwhelming theme of these individuals’ lives. Will they retain their humanity or will they become monsters? And is there any way that those who are now monsters can perhaps regain some degree of humanity, some capacity for choice?

HARRY: For Thomas’ sake, I hope so.

Things Fall Apart

The world is growing darker. Humans are choosing the worse over the better, and the monsters are cheering them on. There are trolls under the bridges, unseelie fae stealing the children, vampires running businesses behind the velvet curtains, and ghosts sucking the life from babies in maternity wards. Organized crime is strong and getting stronger, gunshots echo in the night, and policemen take payoffs. Drug use is spreading, alcohol is an answer rather than a stopgap, and people lose themselves in their searches for pleasure, power, or escape.

But there are those who stand against the rising tide of shadow. Whether they are ordinary humans, secretive wizards, individuals chosen by supernatural powers, or people empowered by some other means, they will not let the darkness win. Perhaps all the more obvious against the shabby dirtiness of the world around them, perhaps stained or marked by their own errors and problems, they nevertheless hold their ground and work to protect, to support, to rebuild. They choose to use their power for others as well as for themselves. These people exist, and they haven’t given in yet.

HARRY: Billy, have I ever mentioned that sometimes you speak like a freaking superhero in a comic book?

That’s not an insult, but I’m not sure it’s a compliment.

Tune in in two weeks for part two of Maxims of the Dresdenverse

General harry's world, maxims of the dresdenverse, setting