Philly on Fire - A Dresden Files Adventure

We started a new Dresden Files adventure on Saturday. The characters are recurring from an adventure I ran maybe 2 years ago. The characters are:

• Alvin – A half-ogre Philly cop trying to balance his responsibilities to two worlds.

• James – A mortal who heads up a mercenary outfit called Charon. He’s new to all of this insanity regarding fairies and magic.

• Kara – A winter court changeling who is grudgingly accepted as a wizard of the white council. She operates an underground railroad for those supernatural in need.

• Maeve – Scion of the archangel Michael. She’s got a bad reputation with the law and is stubbornly independent.

• Mike – A were-panther hacker who used to work for the government. He’s incredibly paranoid and lives as far off the grid as possible for a hacker.

• Sean – A holy warrior chosen as God’s right hand. He’s related to Maeve, swings a mean sword, and is reviled by the church.

I started the adventure by running everyone through what I call a “short story”. Basically, I put each of the PCs in a bad situation. We go around the table and each player tells me how they got into the situation. We go around the table again and they tell me how things get worse. Every bad thing they tell me, they get a fate point. We go around the table again, and they tell me how things get even worse. More fate points. Finally, they tell me how they get out of the mess. Every unresolved hook garners them another fate point. There are no dice involved. It's all narration for short stories. Players can get as wacky or epic as they want.

At the end of the short stories (the player ended up threading them together so they all happened at the same time), we had the Comcast building lying in ruins, a Denarian running free, sorcerers plotting to take over Philadelphia (and potentially the world), a chemical plant explosion, a bounty hunter possessed by an Outsider, the collapse of the global economy due to a mysterious plot, and a member of Charon kidnapped. All in 1 night.

With as crazy as things were, I had to start the next adventure immediately afterwards, so we could resolve all of those great hooks! And so the adventure started…

Session Report #9

It’s been a while, mostly because it’s been a while since we’ve last gamed. We’ve all been busy with RealLife™. Anyway, when we last met our fateful heroes:

Pavel and Arkady, our two Russian soldiers, found themselves on a road headed to the mountains. After being told by General McLaughlin that they’d have no control in the past, would merely be observing, and would have all of the working knowledge of their hosts, they found this was definitely not the case. In fact, they had complete control over their hosts’ bodies, no clear knowledge of what their hosts were doing, and only vague and indistinct memories from their hosts. Additionally, they still looked like themselves, which begs the question, are they really in hosts?

They found some personal affects in their packs and were able to roughly hash out their new identities, in so far as Arkady appeared to be a priest named Phillip and Pavel a knight named Bovier.
Trusting their hosts were doing the right thing, they continued in the direction they appeared in, traveling several hours towards the mountains before arriving at the town of Chauvet. The bustling town seemed inviting and friendly to Arkady, but Pavel had a bad feeling about it. As they passed through town, Pavel found his fears concentrated mainly on the town square, the inn, and a random house.

Arkady, curious about Pavel’s strange déjà vu about this town, made some inquiries among the townsfolk. He found that while they professed to have no knowledge of a man named Rocard, they were clearly hiding something. The more questioned he asked, the more townsfolk began discretely watching him.

Pavel skirted the area and tried to learn more of the town’s layout while also identifying those places he professed an aversion to. When they met up again, they were approached by a knight named Felix who seemed to know Pavel. He inquired about Pavel’s family and life before noticing Pavel didn’t recognize him. He explained that he was sent by the church to meet with Boivier and Phillip to investigate missing caravans. Though it was rare for caravans to go missing, the church wanted to root out the source and lay to rest any apprehension merchants may have about the dangers of travelling to such a prosperous town.

It was a short session and we didn’t get much done. But we did get the intro and exposition completed.

I also started statting up monsters, giving them levels with level benefits like the player classes. That should make things more interesting when they start encountering higher level adversaries.