The Dresden Files RPG

Hey, everyone! Ryan here. As promised, we’ve got some updates on the progress of The Dresden Files RPG to share with you all.

For those who haven’t been a part of our alpha runs, you might not be familiar with one of the big design elements in DFRPG: mortal stunts & supernatural stunts. If you know Spirit of the Century, then you know stunts – those are pretty much what we think of as “mortal stunts” around these parts. And all those wicked awesome creature & wizard abilities are, of course, “supernatural stunts” (which we sometimes shorten to “powers”).

I mention that to say this: Lenny & I spent a couple weeks going over every single supernatural stunt, taking in alpha tester feedback and further observations, and tweaking the language to make it clearer and to consider some unexpected combinations of powers. Some of them were little things, but there were a couple that unexpectedly turned into multi-day conversations – the Toughness stunts started as a “eh, this’ll be quick, we’ll slam it out of the park” ideas that turned into a four-day conversation between Fred, Lenny & myself about how the various limiting factors (or “catches”) should work.

We’re pretty happy with the changes there, but it has eaten up more time than we expected. Along with that, Lenny & I have worked out applying Adam’s redlines on the Spellcraft chapter and working up text on “Sponsored Magic” – how the rules work when the magic you’re wielding comes from another power, like, say, the Summer or Winter Queen.

But, there’s a lot more to this project than just what Lenny & I have been working on!

Read more…

In the last month we’ve concluded our second major alpha playtesting effort (the “Burning Alpha” as we called it — a crucible for refining the revisions that came out of the earlier “Bleeding Alpha”).  We drew on a healthy number of groups for each of our two alpha testing rounds, but it was still tough pickings when we’re talking about a pool of playtesters numbering over 800.

Now we’re looking at moving into a period of internally-focused revisions and internal playtesting before we’ll consider doing any more external playtests.  We need to get text complete on several key remaining chapters, plus we’re doing our best to get the system chapters into their final revised form — the much-coveted “non-moving target” that will allow us to proceed with some secondary system implementation efforts (like completing the stat-blocking of all the creatures and features of the world).

At the conclusion of the Burning Alpha, we put out a call to both playtester groups to supply us with any links we might not have publicized yet so everyone can get a look at what’s been shared.  One key difference about the Burners over the Bleeders is that one of the Burners kicked off a Livejournal community that did much of the rounding up of links along the way, so beyond even this post, we highly recommend you check the community out, at http://community.livejournal.com/dresdenfilesrpg/ (we’ve even syndicated its posts in this site’s sidebar).

Here’s what we’ve got.
Read more…

Hey folks! We’ve had our heads down & nose to the grindstone for a while, trying to deal with the Dresden Files RPG Entropy Curse Effect (more on that in a later post) and watching the Burning Alpha play itself out.

That said, we wanted to call your attention to a series of podcasts over on Narrative Control. These guys were part of the Burning Alpha and give the game some good attention. (That said, a lot of our playtesters got caught up in city creation more than anticipated — something we’re working on in our current revisions — so you’ll be seeing a fair amount of that in this round, too.)

Here’s a guide to the Dresden Files Burning Alpha episodes on Narrative Control:

Title: Episode 3: City Creation – Part 1
Topics: Picking a City and Themes
Link: http://www.narrativecontrol.com/index.php?post_id=380416

Title: Episode 4: City Creation – Part 2
Topics: People and Places
Link: http://www.narrativecontrol.com/index.php?post_id=382891

Title: Episode 10: Actual Play Report
Topics: Compels and Fate Chip Economy
Link: http://www.narrativecontrol.com/index.php?post_id=400612

And here’s where they talk with Evil Hatter Fred Hicks:

Title: Episode 13: Interview with Fred Hicks
Topics: Points of Tension, System and Setting Integration, Advancement System, Stunts and Damage
Link: http://www.narrativecontrol.com/index.php?post_id=407242

Hi folks! Sorry about the lack of updates these last couple months — the Summer convention season has had us swamped. While we’re continuing to work on the RPG (despite a computer crash slowing down one of our writers), we’ve lacked that crucial extra chunk of time to update folks on this blog.

So what’s new? Well, we recently kicked off the Burning Alpha Playtest. This is the second alpha round, with another 20 or so playtesting groups selected out of our pool of over (yikes!) 750 applicants. Stacey Chancellor, one of our Burning Alpha playtesters, has started collecting links to the various places you can see the Burning Alpha underway, over on the Dresden Files RPG Livejournal Community:

http://community.livejournal.com/dresdenfilesrpg/10010.html

Evil Hat will be attending GenCon, as a part of the IPR / Forge Booth (#1939) — and by that we mean lead developer Lenny Balsera, setting guru Chad Underkoffler, and Evil Hat owners Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks will all be there, along with other members of our writing and editing staff. Come on by and pick our brains!

And while we’re on the topic of GenCon, the Ennie Awards voting is underway, and Evil Hat’s product Spirit of the Season is up for an award for Best Supplement. We’d love to get your support with just a couple minutes taken to vote (you don’t have to vote on everything, just the stuff you’re familiar with).

http://www.ennieawards.com/voting/index.phtml

If you’d like to familiarize yourself with Spirit of the Season before casting a vote, please do! We have a completely free 40-page version (trimmed down from the 72+ page version that’s for sale) available on DriveThruRPG:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=51248

Thanks, everyone!

Just a reminder, Fred is blogging pretty regularly about all things Evil Hat over on his LiveJournal:

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?

http://dabelbrothers.com/index.php?categoryid=37

Alpha playtester Rick Neal is blogging like a fiend. His playgroup’s just gotten their hands on the supernatural ability rules and have been baking up characters — some of them not strictly canonical, but at least they’re making a game their own!

Read about it at his site

Rick Neal has started a blog to talk about his experiences. This includes a few peeks at Magical Winnipeg — and some “strictly mortal” characters from a test of the no-supernatural character creation rules:

http://www.rickneal.ca/

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

One of our early-alpha playtesters has taken a crack at Dresdenifying the city of Newark. Check it out!

http://indie-insurgent.livejournal.com/7803.html

Hey folks, and welcome back from the holidays!

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!

Hi folks! Very briefly — I found myself writing up this response over on the Jim-Butcher.Com forums, and I figured folks who are watching the playtest application bit with interest might want to read it.