Dresden Files to BRP

[anka]

Hi from Argentina, this is for people that know about Dresden Files or FATE, or helping us, wants to read a lot about it. so, lets go..

i was lurking this forum since last year, when our party took RQ/BRP to handle our sessions. We were playing Dresden Files since maybe 2 years ago every 15 days. First starting with FATE rules that we never used before, so to us were really hard to handle when we started "playing". Character/city creation was amaing with FATE, but when we needed to play, we failed. Then we changed to MAGE the Ascencion, just for one session, because was horrible. That was we changed our GM from one of our friends to.., me (i was a player before).

At this point we took hand to our old RQ character sheets and start using RQ/BRP, that was familiar to us. At this point we lost a player, that was our only wizzard, so we were playing Dresden Files without wizard, almost pure humans.

Some days ago a new player joined us, as a wizzard so, some old questions come back from that place where we left them "to keep playing". An advice, we are not too much system oriented players, we are more Story oriented ones, so we were not having troubles saying: yes.., that could happened.., dont worry... But we find that we have trouble creating characters in pure RQ/BRP, comming from DFRPG.

i, or maybe, we, have some questions that i didnt found here answered, some people wrote about using aspects and their experience, etc.

Here starts the questions

1-In Dresden Files u starts your game choosing a Power Level, this is how many points u have to spent in your character that cant be below 1. The levels are "feet in the water (a)", "up to your waist (b)", "chest deep (c)",  "submerged (d)".

A ) Means you have 6 refresh points and 20 skill points

B ) Means you have 7 RP and 25 SP

C ) Means you have 8 RP and 30 SP

D ) Means you have 10 RP and 35 SP

That means, some "classes" are out of score if u cant pay for the powers that MUST have. How you can do this in RQ/BRP? giving some points to spent in skills? more in other levels? etc? How you pay for the first "powers"?

2-In FATE you have this stupid useless progression system:

*

* *

* * *

* * * *

ok, its not useless.., but gives a lot to the story part: "i want a new power, i can pay now for new one in superb slot so...". Yes, you plays the story how you lernt this new power, but its tottally diferent than RQ/BRP. You can check your abilities or spend hours studiying. In FATE its like in chapters, new chapter, you gain some RP or SP (GM goodness(?), then you can spent this points in new things.

How we can do this in RQ?, because in FATE its.., horrible. For a wizzard its not the same built a flame wall than throw his flameball that its maybe at 80%. We where thinking about, trow dices for fireball with a pentalty maybe at 50% for something totally new for this wizard, then after success you marks this new kind of spell and after some times (and less penalty) you can start trowing this spell.

totally diferent its when u wants to learn something tottally new. In FATE its just "i pay for this", how we can do this?. yes a quest to find someone that acts as master, then hours studying. Or maybe calling a demon that its a master?, or a quest to find a book, then marks with penalties?... dont know.

3-Was reading here in the forum how aspects broke the system because they act as powers, and someone wrote to use this as skills, how?

we reaally love aspects, i miss them, was good as something to make the players tell the story with the GM and not just the GM doing this. We are a nice group and all the people in the table could act as Storytellers in the game if they want because they are REALLY very literalte people.

 

After this questions, maybe they are more that i cant remember now, you could say: change to RD100.., yes, maybe, but not now, we changed 3 times in one year systems and we are tired of this (personally i needed to read FATE, MAGE, then BRP till i figured that was the same system i used in CoC 15 years ago). I read RD100 and its good, really, i like it, but we wants to keep using our nice RQ/BRP sheets.., for now.

We have a very nice setting in Buenos Aires about Dresden Files, and this its a LONG term play. If someone likes Dresden Files books contact me, and if you are using BRP for this, cool.

 

for now, thanks for take your time to read this long post.

[g33k]

... But I promise to come back and edit this post to a "real" reply as soon as I can ...

Quote

Hi from Argentina, this is for people that know about Dresden Files or FATE, or helping us, wants to read a lot about it. so, lets go..

i was lurking this forum since last year, when our party took RQ/BRP to handle our sessions. We were playing Dresden Files since maybe 2 years ago every 15 days. First starting with FATE rules that we never used before, so to us were really hard to handle when we started "playing". Character/city creation was amaing with FATE, but when we needed to play, we failed. Then we changed to MAGE the Ascencion, just for one session, because was horrible. That was we changed our GM from one of our friends to.., me (i was a player before).

At this point we took hand to our old RQ character sheets and start using RQ/BRP, that was familiar to us. At this point we lost a player, that was our only wizzard, so we were playing Dresden Files without wizard, almost pure humans.

Some days ago a new player joined us, as a wizzard so, some old questions come back from that place where we left them "to keep playing". An advice, we are not too much system oriented players, we are more Story oriented ones, so we were not having troubles saying: yes.., that could happened.., dont worry... But we find that we have trouble creating characters in pure RQ/BRP, comming from DFRPG.

i, or maybe, we, have some questions that i didnt found here answered, some people wrote about using aspects and their experience, etc.

Here starts the questions

1-In Dresden Files u starts your game choosing a Power Level, this is how many points u have to spent in your character that cant be below 1. The levels are "feet in the water (a)", "up to your waist (b)", "chest deep (c)",  "submerged (d)".

A ) Means you have 6 refresh points and 20 skill points

B ) Means you have 7 RP and 25 SP

C ) Means you have 8 RP and 30 SP

D ) Means you have 10 RP and 35 SP

That means, some "classes" are out of score if u cant pay for the powers that MUST have. How you can do this in RQ/BRP? giving some points to spent in skills? more in other levels? etc? How you pay for the first "powers"?

2-In FATE you have this stupid useless progression system:

*

* *

* * *

* * * *

ok, its not useless.., but gives a lot to the story part: "i want a new power, i can pay now for new one in superb slot so...". Yes, you plays the story how you lernt this new power, but its tottally diferent than RQ/BRP. You can check your abilities or spend hours studiying. In FATE its like in chapters, new chapter, you gain some RP or SP (GM goodness(?), then you can spent this points in new things.

How we can do this in RQ?, because in FATE its.., horrible. For a wizzard its not the same built a flame wall than throw his flameball that its maybe at 80%. We where thinking about, trow dices for fireball with a pentalty maybe at 50% for something totally new for this wizard, then after success you marks this new kind of spell and after some times (and less penalty) you can start trowing this spell.

totally diferent its when u wants to learn something tottally new. In FATE its just "i pay for this", how we can do this?. yes a quest to find someone that acts as master, then hours studying. Or maybe calling a demon that its a master?, or a quest to find a book, then marks with penalties?... dont know.

3-Was reading here in the forum how aspects broke the system because they act as powers, and someone wrote to use this as skills, how?

we reaally love aspects, i miss them, was good as something to make the players tell the story with the GM and not just the GM doing this. We are a nice group and all the people in the table could act as Storytellers in the game if they want because they are REALLY very literalte people.

After this questions, maybe they are more that i cant remember now, you could say: change to RD100.., yes, maybe, but not now, we changed 3 times in one year systems and we are tired of this (personally i needed to read FATE, MAGE, then BRP till i figured that was the same system i used in CoC 15 years ago). I read RD100 and its good, really, i like it, but we wants to keep using our nice RQ/BRP sheets.., for now.

We have a very nice setting in Buenos Aires about Dresden Files, and this its a LONG term play. If someone likes Dresden Files books contact me, and if you are using BRP for this, cool.

As @simonh says below, you appear to be spending a lot of effort on emulating the Fate mechanics, which isn't really an effective way for BRP to do a setting.

Mind you, Fate really is a mashup of 2 RPG's -- the Stunts/Aspects & "Fate Point Economy" sits on top of Fudge.  Fudge is its own separate RPG; and "Aspect Only Fate" (Google it) is a perfectly viable RPG, too... so if you like & want "Aspects" you could set them on top of BRP instead of being on top of Fudge.

But I wouldn't bother with the Fate-scaled power levels.  Sure many characters (Like Harry, Murphy, & the Alphas) scale upward in power as the stories progress.  But others notsomuch:  Thomas was a full-on senior WCV when we first met him, for example; and Michael Carpenter had already killed a dragon, which is evidently a big F'ing deal in the Dresdenverse (possibly on par with killing a True Dragon in Glorantha).  Just make sure each character has a Spotlight Competence, somewhere they can shine and be the Go-To problem-fixer; and no other character steps on that or eclipses their spotlight.

The thing where people say "Aspects break the system, just do it with skills" is frankly not a good approach.  Skills are the BRP bread-and-butter, but they have become the "hammer" of the BRP system:  when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.  BRP's Skills & task-resolution mechanics are an extremely robust and elegantly simple "simulation" engine, a way to model the in-game universe just as a computer models laminar flow of air over a wing.  They are, at their core, a mechanic derived from military-simulation wargames.

Aspects aren't about "simulating the world" at all, aspects are about the narrative and story-telling.  They explicitly abandon the wargame heritage in favor of narrative ideas (novels, plays, etc).  Of course they "break" a simulation-oriented rule-set!!!  They are supposed to do that (Fudge, after all, has its own perfectly serviceable skills-system):  if a skills system could do the "Aspects" function, they'd have done it with Fudge.

edit:  also, a great big +1 to grabbing Enlightened Magic to help with Dresden-style magic items & potions & such!  The same author, interestingly-enough, does a modern-urban-fantasy setting, After the Vampire Wars.  Originally for core BRP but a new edition (based on Mythras/RQ6) is due this month...

 

Edited February 7, 2018 by g33k
to keep a promise (also, it's a very interesting topic!)

[simonh]

It seems like you're trying to use BRP to simulate all the different aspects of the FATE system. So FATE 'rules' with RQ resolution mechanics. I can't see that working very well.

Personally, I'd forget about FATE and just play the game using BRP rules, adjusting them to suite the Dresden Files setting. You could use the BGB as a base, or one of the editions of Call of Cthulhu. According to John Snead, one of his references for the Enlightened Magic supplement for BRP was the Dresden Files novels, so the Sorcery system from that should work for you right out of the box.

I'm afraid I don't know Dresden Files itself at all, though I did watch the TV series. I though it was ok, but didn't give enough info to understand how magic is supposed to work.

Simon Hibbs

Edited February 7, 2018 by simonh

[anka]

thanks to both, @simonh and @g33k .

Needed to say that after the firsts questions we had in the table i grabbed the BRP corebook and spent some days reading. No, i didnt had the book before and its really hard to find rpg books here in argentina.

After reding the first pages i found the power level.., so first question was answared there: give some points (more or less depends on your power level) and its ok.

second question: we are using now the same training and reading system as before in rq, so, for now no changes. We have a skill named Occultism, for now its working really good. its how much you knows about the dresdenverse (whole) and we have some sort of specializations like faery things, vampires (black, red, white, etc), ghosts, magic, etc. In fact its working fine for magic you are some sort of adept till 40%, you can start learning another element as wizard if u have training with a wizard, etc, etc, then at 75% you knows all the other elements and you can start trainging that.

We have feeding dependency for vampires and its a meter for that, you wants some extra power?, spent some magic points, now you are closer to 0 for that feeding dependency meter and so on. You gain some extra points for stats for some time, a scene. Same for changellings, but more at long term and and the changing its more like for ever. Its like a humanity gauge, closer to 0, closer to be a npc.

Rituals are easyer, just took some from CoC, take out some sacrifices, and its working , we have few rituals but they are working.

about aspects.., indeed we were working with aspects per se, since the day 0, and as you were saying they are less simulation, they are working. For example our changelling player could say: "hey!, my mother was a faery general, mybe i can command some faeries now", "yes, you have 10% more now with this faeries now". Or our new wizard "i was trined by this wizard, maybe i know about this book". Both "faery general mother" and "wizard trrainee", were aspects.

I will see if i can get those books, thanks.

 

i will update this some day with more time like some sort of: how to play dresden files using BRP or die trying...

 

Really, thanks to help us

[g33k]

On 2/7/2018 at 9:57 AM, simonh said:

I'm afraid I don't know Dresden Files itself at all, though I did watch the TV series. I though it was ok, but didn't give enough info to understand how magic is supposed to work.

In the novels, mortal magic (such as cast by the title character, Harry Dresden) is based almost entirely upon the willpower and concentration of the character.  Intention and passion fuel the magic.

Everything else -- incantations, wizard staff, etc -- serves mainly as aids to concentration & to focus the will upon.  They are, in short, crutches.  But they are important "crutches" in that nobody is able work at or near their peak ability without either their familiar crutches or with many centuries of experience under their belts.

I note that magic-items are an exception here:  not that willpower/concentration/intention are unimportant, but other things come into play too.  Also, there are other magic's than mortals -- Faeries, multiple kinds of Vampire, multiple versions of lycanthrope-power, Divine servants, pacts with possessing Fallen Angels, etc etc etc.  None of this is really germane to the discussion at hand... but I'd feel remiss if I didn't give them their driveby!

 

I'll also speak up in favor of the DresdenFiles novels -- the first couple were notably weaker than the rest, and in some ways don't "mesh" with the later novels; but the series is really well worthwhile!    

The TV show was... mostly a disappointment to fans of the novels.        I thought it was OK-ish, but more "inspired by" than "true to" the novels.

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by g33k
typos

[simonh]

I liked the season finale, it reminded me a bit of some Saphire and Steel episodes.

Simon Hibbs

[anka]

tv show? pff.., Kerryn Murphy there its brunette and with dark eyes..

Now im thinking about the ectoplasmatic body of ghost or constructs, so how much magic points they need to cast to build an ectopasmatic body.

 

thanks again this its working fine!

 

oh, im looking for those books, still cant find the after vampire wars.

Edited February 10, 2018 by anka

[g33k]

14 hours ago, anka said:

oh, im looking for those books, still cant find the after vampire wars.

"After the Vampire Wars" modern urban fantasy setting (for Mythras/RQ6) -- just began shipping yesterday.  Distributors need to begin carryng it and then retailers need to orderr it...

 

 

[anka]

8 hours ago, g33k said:

"After the Vampire Wars" modern urban fantasy setting (for Mythras/RQ6) -- just began shipping yesterday.  Distributors need to begin carryng it and then retailers need to orderr it...

 

 

ohh, pdf will be, no way that book will be here physical, very small market.

 

thanks!!

Edited February 11, 2018 by anka

[g33k]

I suggest you grab the (free) Mythras Imperative PDF. from the publisher (TDM).

It's the intro/quickstart to their Mythras/RQ6 flavor of the BRP/d100 family of games, and likely to help you understand the bits of AtVW that differ from traditional/oldschool BRP..   As with most variants of BRP, this one is very compatible... you may find some bits of mechanic you want to steal for your own FrankenBRP game...  ;-)