It's like your own down-home police department, with magic

[viktor_haag]

The Wednesday Night Group has made the cut to become an Alpha II playtest group for the Dresden Files Roleplaying Game that's being developed by drivingblind, rob_donoghue, and others at the Evil Hat (including, presumably, the evilhat in question).

While I will be using a wiki to primarily work on the material for our testing sessions, I may make comments here from time to time, as may others in the group:
• james_nicoll
• briandorion
• doc_lemming
• and others without LJ presence...

I'll be using the dfrpg tag for all these posts (few or many as they may be).

For now, the setup:

The city we live in is a quickly growing, relatively crime-free locus of high-tech companies, universities and research facilities, entrenched old-world immigrant communities, and magic. Naturally, that last bit requires special treatment and handling by the local authorities. They work very hard to (a) keep things relatively quiet, and (b) keep a small group of people close at hand that they can depend upon to handle the cases that no-one else can be trusted to handle (or would be crazy enough to handle, maybe). And handle those cases in a discreet fashion.

Think Dresden Files (book) meets The Wire (tv) meets Powers (comix).

The players will be members of that small squad of police-officers appointed by the powers that be and on the hook for crimes that involve those special details that make the hair on the back of your neck creep up.

More as the group decides upon it.

Comments

[j-larson.livejournal.com]

How do they handle spells? Is there a spell-list, or a generic set of rules for constructing and pricing magic effects?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Don't really know in detail, yet. Haven't seen that part of the rules drafts. I assume it'll be something similar to the weird powers rules in Spirit of the Century.

[mylescorcoran]

Sounds like it'll be fun. I can't imagine any role-playing group of my experience keeping things discreet for long though.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I plan for it to be well seasoned with typical genre scenes like:

• Shift commander calls team leader onto the carpet for overt property damage and general screw-ups.

• Press briefings with lots of awkward questions asked.

• Criminals pompously demanding their rights (which in this country doesn't carry nearly as much mileage as it does in the country that has defined much of the genre).

• High-speed car chases through awkwardly over-populated areas.