RPG MUSINGS Play The Game You Want To Play

As many of you know, I am a huge D&D fan. I have played for many years and I love the game. Since I recently started GMing a Dresden Files RPG game, I have been reflecting on the differences in running these two games. As such, I thought it may be appropriate to discuss some of my thoughts on the Dresden Files RPG. This is a review of sorts, but not a comprehensive one that describes, analyzes, and critiques mechanics. If you would like an in-depth overview of the system, there is already a great review here (on RPGGeek) that discusses the mechanics in more detail.

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Aspects

In order to understand the Dresden Files game, you have to understand aspects – aspects ARE the game. An aspect is a descriptive word or phrase that tells a player something about another PC, an NPC, or an object. Aspects can be positive, negative, or both, depending on context.

To help you understand, here is my favorite example of a basic aspect: I Can’t Drive 55

Why is this a good aspect? Because the players can use it to their advantage and the GM can also use it to his advantage. For example, imagine that you are driving away and being chased by the bad guys. They have almost caught up and you really need to get away but you roll poorly on your driving check – you can invoke your aspect I Can’t Drive 55 and either re-roll or get a +2 to your roll (your choice) which will result in you making a clean getaway. In this case the player used that aspect to the party’s advantage.

Now imagine another scene where you are in the car in a parking lot, waiting for a PC to come out of the store. You don’t want to be caught or questioned by the police and there is a police cruiser driving through the parking lot as the PC walks out of the store. The PC gets into the car and says “Let’s get out of here, and be careful, we don’t want to gain that cop’s attention” and so you start to drive away. At this point the GM can compel you to live up to your aspect I Can’t Drive 55, and cause you to peel out of the parking lot, getting the attention of the police. In this case, the aspect was used against the party. Same aspect, one positive use and one negative.

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Declaring things into existence

There are some other things going on in the game (lots of things actually) but aspects are the best part for me. The reason for this is that, along with aspects that can be discovered by players (i.e. players can assess a situation and discover aspects appropriate to a scene or NPC), there are also aspects that can be declared by players. This means that the players have a lot of say in what a situation looks like, literally and figuratively. In other words, because of aspects, players can make things come into existence in the game.

I have to say, this part of the DFRPG is BRILLIANT. Unfortunately it is also a big speedbump for me. I blame this on D&D. Don’t get me wrong, I still love D&D and I always will, but I have had to train myself out of running a D&D-like game in my DFRPG campaign. I’ve run lots of different systems and for some reason this is the thing that causes me angst.

Consider this:

In D&D the DM is responsible for defining everything in the world. If the DM doesn’t say that something exists, and doesn’t give you clues about what things might exist, then they simply don’t exist. If the DM doesn’t describe a pillar in the room, a player cannot just decide that there is a pillar in the room and say that they are going to use it to get cover. It just doesn’t happen. From the player’s point of view D&D is mostly reactive.

In DFRPG that sort of behavior is not only allowed, it is expected, encouraged, and rewarded. A player can declare that the alleyway has a large dumpster in it that they are going to hide behind, even though the GM didn’t tell the players that there was a dumpster there. From the player’s point of view DFRPG is mostly proactive.

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Thoughts

So I was thinking about this after running my last DFRPG session, in which I felt like I wasn’t running the game very efficiently. And I started to ask myself, “Why in the heck is this a speedbump for me?”

The answer is: 28 years of running D&D style games. Plain and simple, I am used to running a D&D game where I describe the scene for the players and they react to the scene. I consider myself a really open DM in terms of letting the players define things in the world in which their PCs are adventuring. Even so, D&D is limited in the ability of the players to add things to a scene as it is happening. For example, if it is not already in existence, there is no mechanism for a player to declare a spot of difficult terrain by simply rolling a perception or dungeoneering check and saying it exists because you succeeded in your check.

In DFRPG, this is exactly what the players are supposed to do. I am so used to describing a rich environment to the players that I forget that I can give them a bare bones description of what is going on and let them do the work. It is something that I am trying to get used to, but it is a speedbump because it is a different way to frame/structure scenes and think about planning and I, frankly, haven’t gotten the hang of it yet – but I get better every session!

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Summary

I haven’t talked about some of these, but here are some things that I have discovered after running about 6 sessions of DFRPG:

1. The GM has less prep work to do with respect to scenes and scenery. Since aspects allow the players to spend energy on the environment/world in which a scene is taking place, it frees up the GM to spend planning time on other things (e.g. NPC aspects and story).
2. Objects in the world can be manipulated and used by the player and by the GM in any given scene and these can be made up on the spot as long as they can be rationally added to the context of the scene.
3. PC aspects can be used to make characterizations deep and provide a very rich role-playing experience for all involved.
4. My classical RPG experience has been a wonderful experience, but there are things I can borrow and bring to my D&D game that will enrich those campaigns even though I love those systems already.
5. The DFRPG system is more crunchy than it seems at first glance. The thaumaturgy rules are complicated, the world is large and rich, and there is a lot to learn for a new GM (vol 1 is 416 pages packed with well written info).
6. This is the first FATE game that I have played, but it makes me want to look at some other games (Diaspora, I’m looking at you sitting on my shelf waiting to be loved)

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Have you played or run DFRPG? What are your thoughts about what I have written here? Am I off base? Am I on target? Give me your opinions!

And as always, until next time, I wish you good gaming.