If you're familiar with Fate Core (or other Fate products by Evil Hat), you'll know that they structure Game Creation in a specific way that focuses on collaboratively building the game world. It is, in my opinion, sublime and one of Fate's many strengths.
Dresden Files Accelerated has focused this process on a series of steps that will lead the Game Master and the players to having a single page or two of material that will form the core of their campaign. Those steps are: Gather and Discuss, Identify Factions, Identify Player Characters, Detail Factions, Determine the Inciting Incident, and Create the Player Characters (if not already completed earlier). This has streamlined the process of City Creation from The Dresden Files RPG, speeding up this initial stage of play in my experience (which is apt, given this is Dresden Files Accelerated).
Today, I will demonstrate the first step of this process – Gather and Discuss – and apply it to my next campaign, Relics, in the first of a series of posts on Game Creation in Dresden Files Accelerated.
Someone is about to get Taken Out here methinks. From Dresden Files Accelerated.
We've all been there. You're itching to run that cool idea you had after rereading The Dresden Files for the umpteenth time. You've gone through the often laborious task of rounding up some players and herding them like so many cats to your table (physical or digital). It is time to take your first steps into a much larger world.
With Dresden Files Accelerated, that means starting with a little brainstorming session. Talk about the premise, what ties the player characters together, what you all want from the campaign (or session, if it's a oneshot). Pretty standard so far, but Dresden Files Accelerated has a slight twist on this by calling for the creation of two lists: your tables Do's and their Don't's.
Do and Don't should be the big ideas. They should also be specific. Smaller ideas, like a specific plot twist or a big player in your campaign should be written down for later when you get to Identify Factions and Detail Factions. For example, if one of your players suggests a big faerie rumble as the crux of your campaign, then the Do for that might be 'the Summer and Winter Courts of Faerie'. If a second player then chimes in and says 'yea, and my faerie godmother is the one that got us into this mess' then the faerie godmother is an NPC to be explored more in Detail Factions.
To illustrate this step further, lets review the pre-game conversation I had with my players, Dennis and Mathew, for Relics. As this is a continuation of a larger campaign (The Adventures of Alex Blackheart and Kaden Nuru), we had our premise and a dozen previous sessions to plumb for ideas. With that out of the way, we jumped immediately into what we wanted and didn't want from the campaign.
Immediately, I suggested a new locale tied more closely to Mathew's character Kaden: Africa. Specifically, Nairobi, Kenya. It's large and well-developed, near plenty of interesting landmarks, and is a couple of countries (and a few hops through the NeverNever) to Kaden's homeland of the Congo. Dennis and Mathew both agreed that this was a good idea, with Dennis going as far as to point out that Alex had perhaps a bit too much of the spotlight up until now.
Nairobi, Kenya. A city of 3.3 million people and an unknown number of nasties going bump in the night.
Next up, we got into the nitty-gritty of the Do's. Dennis was interested in exploring the criminal underworld and some more mundane threats, to which I tacked on the idea of the underground antiquities trade. Mathew pitched local genus loci and ley-lines as a hook, as well as shapeshifting baddies – I expanded this to a focus on Africa's supernatural scene. For a little salt and pepper, I threw in a necromancer warlord (because nothing says The Dresden Files like an insane necromancer and shambling corpses).
The Don't's was a shorter, simpler list. We all agreed that the Denarians were sufficiently well-tread as antagonists (being the baddies for many of the earlier sessions). Mathew though brought up an interesting one though: light on the politics and keep out of current events. Bad Deal, the two-part wrap up from involving war-torn Damascus and rescuing a kidnapped faerie princess was a bit heavy on both, so I definitely agreed.
Using this format, you'll have a block of key information and potential plot hooks. You'll also have plenty of additional notes, details that will help you Identify Factions instrumental to your campaign. We'll take that step together in part 2, where we get to see what deadly horrors Africa has in store for our dynamic wizarding duo.
Going to have to read the Dresden file now. I've read Codex of Alera I and loved his writing style but just so many books in the series and a afraid to get drawn into them and 8 books in the story starts to drag and forcing myself to finish it.