Dresden Files RPG Review
Kevin, Jen, CJ, and Troll discuss their experiences with the Dresden Files RPG. All in all, we had a very positive time with this game. We discuss our reactions to Aspects, the Fudge Dice, City and Character Creation, and how faithful the game is to the Dresdenverse.
Relevant Links
- Evil Hat
- Dresden Files RPG
- Jim Butcher
- Letter Jacket
- Perry, IA
- FUDGE
- D&D 3.5
- Urban Dictionary
- 4DFate probabilities
- Lighting Lad
- Cosmic Boy
- Shadowrun
- Twilight
- Smallville & it’s RPG
- Silverado
- Weapons of the Gods
- Ptolus
- Mutants and Masterminds
- Arcana Evolved
- Burning Empires
- Yojimbo
- Fringe
- X-files
- Eureka
- Diaspora
- Starblazer Adventures
- Flash Gordon
- Traveller
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Dean Koontz
- In A Wicked Age
- Penny for My Thoughts
- H.P. Lovecraft
- White Wolf
- LARP Episode
- Mage: The Awakening
- RPG Geek Thanks for the Nomination!
Crunchy Bits!
- Intro music from “The Wizard” by of Idle Thumbs
- Outro Music “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf remixed by Fatboy Slim
Podcast: |
Tags: Arcana Evolved, Burning Empires, CJ, Cosmic Boy, D&D 3.5, Dean Koonts, Diaspora, Dresden Files RPG, Eureka, Evil Hat, FATE, Flash Gordon, Fringe, FUDGE, H.P. Lovecraft, In a Wicked Age, Jen, Jim Butcher, Kevin, Kurt Vonnegut, LARP, Letter Jacket, Lightning Lad, Mage The Awakening, Mutants and Masterminds, Penny fo My Thoughts, Perry Iowa, Ptolus, RPG Geek, Shadowrun, Silverado, Smallville, Smallville RPG, Starblazer Adventures, Traveller, Troll, Twilight, Urban Dictionary, Weapons of the Gods, White Wolf, X-Files, Yojimbo
Kevin, you’re right. You can’t make a Yojimbo type character. This is actually interesting as I’m unsure if you could make that type of character for any RPG. Sanjuro is a blank slate, to let the viewers put themselves in his place, I think. To me it seems to be making a statement (anti-war?) to Japanese people. To do that you need to put yourself into the character. He’s making judgements in your place of an overdramatic town. I could be wrong about that, but his lack of history is important to the movie.
Anyway, it might be a strength of movies and comics, to place the audience into the character. The character being driven by a player directly makes it hard to hit this area…. I think? Anyway.
Not sure why this is important to me… it’s interesting though.
This was a good review, I enjoyed listening to it. Of course, I have a few ranty points to make about it (which are all just my opinions, so you can ignore them).
– You guys really need to check out Smallville RPG. I’m pretty sure at least one of you is going to find it pretty awesome. There is a heavy indy influence on it, if you haven’t heard.
– You can’t play a guy with no connections to any of the other characters. And this is a bad thing, why? Do you complain about how you can’t play a DRYH character who isn’t a crazy insomniac? Or a DitV character thats a secret atheist prostitute?
– Your dice were borked in that last session. The odds for that many -4’s is so unlikely, I’m pretty sure that the dice were defective.
– And oh my goodness, the way the term ‘shifts’ get used in the book causes so much confusion in all the games I’ve been in.
Luminos,
I just wanted to chime in re: you can’t play someone with no connections to other PC’s. I’m not sure the examples you use are entirely applicable, unless there is a “secret atheist prostitute” trope I’m not aware of. 😛
I think it would be interesting to play someone new to town, it’s not something that gets explored much in the games that I play now. Immigrants, for example, seem like a really interesting possibility in a Dresden Files game, but it’s essentially cut off by the rule unless EVERYONE wants to connect their PC to that somehow, which I think is unreasonable. Just my two cents.
Smallville, is truly much better than the TV show. I’ve tried and failed to sit through an entire episode many times. But the game is fantastic. You guys should give it a try.
Enjoyed the review and the AP recordings! This game definitely is on my list of games to pick up, it’s just not super high right now as I’m not feeling the urban horror/fantasy thing right now. But when I do pick it up, I plan to use it not necessarily for Dresden-verse stuff, but maybe for WoD-verse stuff with more interesting and flexible rules.
BTW, are you doing an interview for this one?
BTW part 2, what’s the next game on the agenda for the podcast?
Brian,
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed them. Yeah, it’d be a fun experiment to convert a lot of WoD stuff to DFRPG. There’s sooo much good fluff in WoD it’d be a shame not to use it with a good system.
In theory we’re interviewing Fred Hicks and Jim Butcher. Jim agreed, but has been conspicuously silent on any emails to peg down a time for the interview. We’ll keep trying, though.
We’ve decided to change up our format a bit. We’re gonna do our full treatment on “bigger” games 3-5 sessions/review/interview as per normal, and then between each “big” game we’re gonna cover games that are designed for one-shots. Starting tomorrow night with Penny for My Thoughts. We’ll prolly do smaller interviews about those, with one or two of us talking to the designer via Skype, but not the full play/review/interview.
So, the basic schedule we’ve got worked out for the near future (subject to change, of course) is:
Penny For My Thoughts (1shot) > Apocalypse World > Fiasco(1shot) > ICONS > Kagematsu (1shot) > How We Came To Live Here > (some other one-shot, suggestions welcome) > [Do]
Sweeet. I’ve never played Penny for my Thoughts live, but I took part in a PbEM playtest and it was pretty interesting.
And I’ve been looking forward to hearing you guys do Apocalypse World. I’ve enjoying running that game more than any game I’ve played for a long time.
Hey Kevin,
Have you considered assaulting the designer and doing the review and interview together? Since you guys do that weird two to ten interviewers anyway?
Hey Guys,
Great review. If you’re interested in running a NWoD or OWoD game using the DFRPG, check out the Evil Hat forums. Someone there posted a set of suggestions and conversions for each of the major game lines.
I was lucky enough to get to help playtest this game and it was the most fun i have ever had gamings. It was cool to see so many ideas you had for future campaigns.