More Thoughts on the Dresden Files RPG & What I’ve Been Thinking About Doing With It

Since Fred Hicks announced that the dead tree versions would be shipping on June 30, I’ve been chomping at the bit and reading over PDF’s.
I do have to admit that I have a bit of the gamer ADD. Something new and shiny comes out and it really fascinates me until the next cool thing catches my attention. But this is a game I’ve been waiting on for a long time. I’ve been a Dresden fan for years plus I just love the genre. For some reason, I really enjoy mixing the magical with the modern mundane. And for those reasons the Dresden Files RPG has been added to my “must run” list.
As I’ve read through the PDF’s, my little imagination got to working about the possibilities. First, of course, is just running it vanilla. But I am a hopeless tweaker and about half of the good old gaming group hasn’t read the books and wouldn’t know a Red Court vampire from a White Court. Throwing in a whole new set of meta-physical laws and species plus a new game system would probably throw a few folks for a little loop.
This leads to an easy second option, a Dresden-inspired world. This is one of the really neat aspects (no pun intended) of the game. The first part of character generation is creating the city.vA little player-GM collaboration to set up the place where all your adventures will happen. So I figured why not take this one step further. Have the players help create the world. This wouldn’t be as detailed as the city creation. Just sort of a checklist of things and generalities and inspirations from other sources. Enough to get some creativity going for city and character creation. A few email exchanges should take care of it.
Now, my third idea goes off the rails. Run it as a horror game. All the bits are there. A magic system with variable power levels, all sorts of beasties, a rather dangerous combat system, and a fear and insanity mechanic can be easily exported into Mental Stress. This is interesting and should work because FATE really emphasizes a narrative style of play. Compels reinforce the non-optimal (and non-gamer like) decisions that so many characters in horror stories make.
So that’s what’s been running through my little old brain the last few weeks. And when I get those nice hefty books more ideas will just start flowing.