The Dresden Files RPG

Lead system developer Lenny Balsera posted this over on the FateRPG Yahoo! Group just recently, and I thought it deserved a wider audience. This is in response to a thread discussing the ins and outs of creating an “alchemist”/item-factory type of character:

So, just to get this out there right off the bat: there is no perpetual mojo machine in the Dresden Files for mortals. Hence, there are no wizards who function as magical item factories.

Items take energy, like all magic does. Magical energy fades. Hence, most items require periodic “maintenance”, as in, the routine infusion of energy from some source. Items like the Swords of the Cross (and most other items of power) don’t count against this limitation, because their mojo is provided by the Almighty, who has, from a mortal perspective, basically unlimited mojo. Humans aren’t so lucky, at least not as individuals.

The limited slots thing is a direct result of not wanting to make that maintenance boring and mechanistic, by deciding instead that there’s only so much slots’ worth of stuff the wizard could be maintaining simultaneously.

(That means Luccio probably has a *lot* of Refinement going just to Item Slots, or the wizard character has assumed the cost another way by taking it as an item of power.)

However….

There is a way to make a specialist wizard who can provide items to his friends (aka the PC group) on a regular basis. Consider the following build:

• A wizard who devotes all his starting Item Slots from both Thaum and Evo into Enchanted Items will have eight (!) Enchanted Item Slots, because Focus Item Slots trade into them at a rate of 1:2.
• Every point of Refinement could potentially net you four more (!) Enchanted Item Slots.
• If you max out Lore at character creation (probably meaning Superb), every enchanted item you craft will automatically be able to bring an effect strength of 5 shifts. Five. Shifts.
• All it costs you is one point of item strength to make enchanted stuff for other people (p. 279). It still takes your slot, yes, but others can use it. So, your friends can use magic items with an automatic effect strength of four shifts. That’s enough for Great (+4) block or Armor:2 defensive items right out of the gate.
• I’m not even counting bonuses from Crafting thaumaturgy specialization.

You’ll probably note that this means the wizard has no focus items, so he’ll be doing his evocations routinely at skill level. That’s the price he pays for the awesome I just laid out above. On the other hand, he’s basically the localized magical equivalent of James Bond’s Q Branch and Batman, with the potential for sixteen (!) Enchanted Item Slots (Wizard stuff + 2 refresh sunk into Refinement) in a Submerged-level game.

Whuf.

General system

Kurt from Game Geeks reviews the preorder edition of The Dresden Files RPG:

Have you seen (or published) a text, audio, or video review of the game? Let us know!

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So, The Dresden Files RPG is based on an OGL (open game license) system called Fate, which in turn is based on an open system called Fudge.  The nature of the OGL is such that previously established chunks of content that are inherited must remain open, but it’s up to the publisher then to decide how much of the new material in the product is open.

With this game, we had something of a dilemma, there. While we made much — nearly all — of our previous Fate game Spirit of the Century open content, with the Dresden Files RPG we have a brand new boat of intellectual property issues we have to keep an eye on.  We can’t risk accidentally declaring some part of Jim’s world to be open content and fair game.  (His copyright on that would override it in all likelihood, but the tangled knot of legal issues proceeding from there is one we’d rather not get tied up in in the first place.)

And knowing that, we also had the issue that we’ve really thoroughly entangled Jim Butcher’s intellectual property with our own in this game.  It could not ever be as simple as “Oh, this chapter here, that’s fair game; that chapter there, it’s product identity.” As a result, and with some regret, that meant that in the case of the DFRPG we had to make this statement at the end of our OGL copyright block:

Any material found in this book which is not directly taken from the above named works is deemed to be product identity.

As expected, someone has already given us a raspberry over this choice, which is why this post.  Above, you see the roots of the decision.  Now, I’ll talk about related implications and future plans.

First off, that does not mean that the system content of the Dresden Files RPG will never be open.  It just won’t be open by or in this product.  Whatever we can take out, scrub clean, and make open in our planned upcoming Core Fate product will be.  So the sentence I quoted above from the license isn’t a period at the end of the Fate sentence. It’s more of a semicolon.

Secondly, it moves this product firmly into the territory “governed by any rules involving Jim Butcher’s intellectual property”.  This is actually a good thing, because that means that anything that people do with it can be handled more or less under a fan fiction policy. At first blush that might sound like a bad thing — if you aren’t current on the state of fanfic with Jim’s stuff, you probably only know that it’s been living under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” sort of thing that says keep it out of Jim’s sight so he doesn’t have to take legal action against you.

But that changed a few months back, in January of this year.  You can read all of the particulars of Jim’s new fanfic policy here (but you’ll probably need a forum account to do so) – http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,15307.msg0.html

I’ll quote the policy as it currently stands from the above thread here:

We are pleased to announce that Jim is altering his stance on fanfiction, much like Mercedes Lackey did last October.  Rather than upholding the awkward “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy towards fanfiction he used in the past, Jim is embracing the Creative Commons.  Now, fanfiction is to be licensed as derivative, noncommercial fiction under the Creative Commons umbrella.

What does this mean?

A)  You can’t make money from fanfic based on Jim’s work.
B)  Jim still isn’t going to read it.  (Wouldn’t you rather he spend that time writing the next book, anyway?)  Do not send Jim your stories or story ideas.
C)  You need to post a disclaimer on your fic, like this handy example: “The Dresden Files/Codex Alera is copyright Jim Butcher.  This story is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, noncommercial fiction.”  In doing so, you waive any rights to that work–you can’t sue Jim for compensation if he writes something similar.
D)  Fanfic can now be talked about in places that had previously been off-limits, like our forum.  We’ve created a separate “Fan Creations” section of the forum for for this purpose.

This is the goodness, then.  You can post about your games, share your ideas about how to hack the setting, the stories that result from your games, etc, under this policy. Jim’s intellectual property remains protected, and since our specific game largely falls under that umbrella, you’re pretty much in the clear from there.

It’s maybe not the best solution for the system-heads out there, but until we can get our Core Fate product out the door, it’s what we can give you for now.  But that’s just for now.  The next step awaits.

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As part of our celebration of the run-up to the release of Changes (Book #12 in the Dresden Files series), today we’re giving you a look at the list of powers we have in game.

You can download the powers list here!

And make sure to check out our new Downloads page as well, which includes printable blanks of the city and character creation sheets.

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Hi, it’s Ryan again. It’s been a few weeks since the last update, so it’s time to give you the Dresden Files RPG skinny!

The last update was pretty lengthy, since I had all sorts of news to share. This one will be shorter, but not because we’re lying down on the job! Indeed, we’re hard at work going through the revision process on most of the chapters – particularly the basics, like Aspects & Skills. A lot of the text was inherited from Spirit of the Century, so we’ve been going through and fix any inaccuracies that came up in tweaking FATE for the Dresden Files. Combine that with our editors hard at work going through the drafts we give them, and there’s a lot of work going on but not a lot to blog about.

Still, I have a couple neat points. One is that going back through chapters like Aspects has given us a neat opportunity. Often, we’ll get on the FATE mailing list or on various forums about how aspects work, such as if you can, as a player, compel an NPC’s aspect (which, by the way, you effectively can – check out “To Catch a King (Tagging for Effect)” on p. 42 of Spirit of the Century). Given the last couple years of experience in answering these questions, we’re going through the text to see how we could better present these options to players, focusing in part on making sure the terminology makes sense in the face of three years of public “playtesting”.

Lenny’s looking forward to talk about such things on the site in the future, though probably not often – we want him working on the book first and blogging second!

The other is that I got a chance at Dreamation to sit down with Jennifer Rodgers. She shared with me some pieces that are still in progress, and I have to say I’m always stunned by her work. But rather than tell you, let me show you one:

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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!

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[45min 38sec] While in Las Vegas for GTS, Fred sits down with Lenny to talk about all sorts of things. In this first part, they cover what it means to be a game designer, the mayor of Las Vegas, and some of the things Lenny’s been working on with the Dresden Files RPG.

You can download the episode from this page:
http://thatshowweroll.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=336154

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Rob and Fred talk about the difficulties in implementing a good Shield Bracelet on the Master Plan podcast:

http://masterplan.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=205740

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The Butcher Block – Episode Seven – “A Storm’s A-Comin’”

Download the podcast here

(43min 04sec) Fred (or is that Iago?) talks about visiting with Jim at StellarCon, dishes on the future of the Dresden Files and Codex Alera series, and with White Night about to hit stores, talks about Dresden #10. Plus, information about Jim’s signing tour and bookstore appearances, a deeper look at the foundations of the Dresden Files RPG, and a chat with one of our forum regulars about the last four episodes of the TV show.

To discuss this episode or to view the show notes come on over to the Jim-Butcher.Com Forums!

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So, I’m a nerd.

Not a huge shock, but I figure I’m going to lay that one right out there to frame the question of “why use Fate, and not some other system?” because it’s easy to assume that the decision to go with fate was based purely on the fact that we wrote it. In fact, while there’s some truth to that, it’s not necessarily for the obvious reasons.

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