State of Affairs

So... I've "officially" marked off next week on the calendar at work. I have plans to head down to Albuquerque Monday, stay the night, and return sometime Tuesday. It'll give me a chance to hit my main points of interest (Page One and Active Imagination at the top of the list), maybe catch a movie, and generally be away for somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty hours. I hope this will help to recharge me in some fashion.

I haven't planned anything for the rest of the week. I sort of hope to get in some time outdoors, perhaps hiking some local trails that I don't typically see, but if I feel most like sleeping in and hanging out at home at the time, that may be the outcome instead.

I may log a little more time on WoW during the week, too. If 4.0.1 does go live Tuesday, I'll want to get in some dungeon time to relearn how to play a paladin. I have some real hope we could down the Lich King tomorrow night, which I wouldn't have had if you'd asked me a week ago. Last Saturday's improvement was major enough to make me believe. And if we still fail, I'll be eager to take a whack at it with the patch changes in place, because that could be the tipping point. We'll see.


So we finally got back to our Dresden Files game. After... umm... months? It sure feels like it. I picked up my character sheet and opened up the PDF thinking "Oh, I vaguely remember this." The rules were not in any way fresh or clear in my mind.

We wound up the current story-in-progress almost accidentally. With no solid leads on who stole the magical cauldron we were after, but finally some real wizards in the group, we did a magical tracking using a feather from the original crime scene. This led us to some sort of oil refinery and down tunnels below it. We finally found a ritual of some sort in progress deep below. After being "invited" by a voice to step out from around the corner, and after seeing two of the five visible figures were obviously black court vampires, one character asked something like "Uh... anyone have a grenade?"

Now, in a lot of modern-era games, PCs would simply look longingly at their belts and bags. But one character in this groups is built around the concept of having a magical bag with access to a lot of stuff in a warehouse, and the resources to stock it. Another character regularly goes into the field with "unassigned" potion slots and enough fate points to spontaneously say "one of these is a potion of X." So the baddies ate a grenade and an incendiary explosive potion in a chamber with pipes pumping some grade of oil.

One could argue the PCs shouldn't have made it out alive, but they did, as the place went up in flames and crashed down. Lots of property damage. No civilian casualties because the bad guys had cleared the area for their ceremony. Supposedly a hostage killed, but the PCs never saw or had real reason to believe there was one in the first place. Major "end fight" avoided by use of superior firepower.

"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure," pretty much sums up that particular scene.

So there was no combat. There were lots of Lore rolls done by the newest PC, probably for more than should have been allowed. There were lots of hacking rolls done by the PC being NPC'd due to lack of player. And there were a few rolls for others. I suppose I'm glad I wasn't railroaded into a fight with "well, that doesn't work!" but it doesn't feel like much of a victory. Especially since we still have no idea who was really behind it or why. The cauldron will have to be dug out, and there are sort of plans for that such that it could happen between stories easily enough.

So... yeah. Overall fun evening, but probably more for the social aspects than the game ones. If you're reading this, you probably know when I analyze something, I focus on the negative. So often the less I have to say in review, the better I think something is. But I do try to rein that in some when friends are involved. I don't want to discourage a relatively new GM...

But when I'm thinking about how things when, my mind strays to scenes that seemed disjointed or pointless like a PC from the future appearing in violation of the Laws of Magic to warn about something vague that probably isn't going to happen anyway. I think about how we went through the whole story with no real idea what was going on at the heart of it. The macguffin was stolen by someone for some purpose - but even at the end we didn't get a revelation of who or why. And we've all been stumbling through the rules, which may be unavoidable at this stage, but takes away from enjoyment none the less.

And as for the rules, I'm finding DFRPG fits more in the "Indie" corner as I perceive it. The challenge difficulties, compels, aspects and especially the spontaneous casting rules really, really, really work best if you have an experienced and confident GM. I appreciate the flexibility of spontaneous, freeform casting systems, but they invariably require judgment calls - and that's exactly where the inexperienced/unconfident GM (or lacking GM, in some games) will flounder. A player says, "I want to do this," and the game grinds to a halt to figure out how, unless you have a frickin' expert on hand. And half the time I see, the desired effect is really difficult to categorize in the rules as printed anyway.

So... whee. A story that is the last phase of our background is done. We get an extra point of Refresh (level up!) that I don't really know what to do with for my character. And we get to form a new Aspect out of this story to fill out our list. I need to sit down and ponder what this story means to my character to pull that off.