I'd love to help, but more and more I feel I'm going to need to read up on a lot of this in order to be a passable player.
Which is a good question: For those unfamiliar with the system, or just plain newbies at this sort of thing, is the reading material online somewhere, or do we have to buy it?

 

And that certainly works for me! So, Stojil DMs with a playerlist of

Typhon
Jon
Riley
Sloth
Ashan

That sound acceptable, man? Obviously you're more than free to add or limit players as you'd like: this is your baby now, Stojil!

Edit: Sloth, you can find it.

 

It's "online" for sure. And it's actually fairly easy to get into once you understand the fudge dice and FATE system which are quick to pick up.

 

There are some cheat-sheets around the internet, and I guess they're good if you're strapped for time, but reading Your Story (which, like others have said, can be found easily) is strongly recommended. Our World is cool but not strictly necessary for a player.

@Typhon: I'd be comfortable with up to 6 players. As for the power level, I'm only personally familiar with the canon ones, but I believe Snorkelling wouldn't be too difficult to scale to.

@Aekiel: feel free to pipe in, if you have advice and such.

City Creation should be a collaborative process - it works much better that way, imo. As for the characters, you can make your own individually as long as you leave out your final three phases, which should be thought up as a group as well. We can go ahead and work on them immediately or wait for Sloth to get familiar with that chapter of the book, first (also for Riley to wrap up his game, if playing could be a problem until then).

By the way, Jon/Ashan, have you ever played the DFRPG or read a copy of Your Story?

 

Number one piece of advice, before you start. Our World powers and characters are not to be taken as either balance or accurate. A Few Seconds Ahead especially. Damn broken powers.

 

Fair enough! I'll let you handle all of that. As for snorkelling, it's whatever you think. I thought it would be an interesting thing, and open up some bigger supernatural threats, name players, etc. to appear, but you have the reins here, so however you want to do it. If it's a matter of a vote between us, then I suppose that's my vote, but I'll build a couple different level characters while I'm sorting through ideas.

 

You were always just a little too late, Jon. Next game I set up I'll reserve you a spot though.

 

Alright, so I had some time this evening and decided to to play with building a character (an Emissary of Hephaestus, to be exact) and I'm a little hung up with skills with regards to sponsored magic. Is the sponsored magic determined by the same skills as normal magic? In other words, do I need a high conviction to cast spells, or am I just channeling the power of Hephaestus? I know that I'm incurring debt to him if I use his power, but casting isn't really the focal point of this character. It's more of an "oh shit" button than anything else. Presumably I'd need a high discipline for control regardless, eh?

 

Sponsored magic works like normal magic (Evocation and Thaumaturgy powers) except with some more bonuses and limitations. The same skills apply, though. At the same time, some leeway could be allowed. For example, what little I know of Hephaestus makes me say you could sell me Craftsmanship as a casting skill, replacing... I don't know, Discipline, maybe. It all depends on how it works and what exactly you had in mind, though.

But maybe you're not really going for the complete magical palette of abilities and possibilities (Evocation and Thaumaturgy), like the "oh shit button" seems to imply. Maybe you were thinking more about a single or few effects that your character could call upon through Hephaestus? In that case, an item of power or even a few points of refresh spent on a small range of supernatural powers could be more appropriate. It really depends.

What did you have in mind, exactly?

Raincheck. It's 2 AM in Italy. I'll try to make an appearance tomorrow, alright? Night night.

 

Alright, got the file. Cheers.
...And it's over 400 pages long. I can skip most of it I suppose. Is there anything I should focus on specifically if we want to speed this along?

 

Honestly, its not a terrible read. I'd skim most of the first 250 or so. You'll definitely want to skim city creation and go all the way through character creation.

Edit: Stojil, I shifted the concept. I think I'm going to just take Vulcanomancy (-4), call it sponsored by Hephaestus, and essentially ignore the lava portion (except for perhaps some bigass tharmaturgy/ritual/last-ditch-evocation sponsored by the big man for debt if necessary), and focus heavily on metal manipulation, magnetism, and a smattering of earth magic governed by the normal stuff. That sound acceptable?

Also, does craftsmanship cover creating (melee) weapons? I can't see anything that alludes to it, and I kinda need a blacksmithing skill to do the concept properly, but I don't want to throw points in craftsmanship unless it does that. It's of tertiary use at best without the ability to craft weapons.

 

My advice is read all of chapter 2 for a general overview of the basics, then chapters 3, 4, and 7 for character and city creation purposes, finally chapter 5 to see what kind of template strikes your fancy. And we'll go from there. Feel free to ask, if you need help or clarifications.

Define "metal manipulation", first (it could bump it up to 5 refresh), but yeah, that's acceptable. Marked By Power (-1) is a likely power you'd have to purchase, too, depending on your character concept.

Yep, especially if your character concept/flavour covers it, Craftsmanship can be applied to weapons as well, following the rules under the Building trapping (page 320).

---------- Post automerged at 08:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:46 AM ----------

So, let's start simple... Ashan, Jon, Riley, Sloth, Typhon:

1) How familiar are you with the setting? Are you up to date as far as the series is concerned (Cold Days/Bombshells)?

2) How familiar are you with the RPG?

3) What would you like the game to be focusing on? Do you want it to be fairly balanced or would you like more emphasis to be put on combat/social conflict/mystery solving/whatever?

4) What would you like the general tone to be (dark/surreal/epic/whatever)?

5) What would you like the power level to be (page 53-54 of Your Story + this up to Snorkelling)?

 

1) I've read up to Cold Days, need to read Bombshells
2) Familiar enough to GM with a lot of set up time
3) Balance is king IMO. DFRPG is not a power quest to me
4) Everything
5) Snorkelling is fine, I'd even be ok with some Scuba Diving.

 

1) Fan of the series, read up to Cold Days. Bombshells and Back Up are stories I want to read, but simply don't have the time to.

2) If you mean this specific system, not at all. Reading Your story, pretty good so far.
If you mean RPG in general, I've only played one campaign online a few years ago, using the BDSM d20 system. I was a munchkin in that I devoured the rulebook and made a Glass Cannon character that squeezed and drained every loophole in the system.
Wanna avoid that this time around and be a good player instead. XD

3) Agree with Riley in the balance. Will we have an overarching story? Sure, so long as we can get just a fun sidequest now and again.

4) Everything twice. Including a demon that makes us sing and dance, ala Sweet from Buffy.

5) I think the player should start Chest Deep, tops, maybe even below that, work our way up. Villains can be significantly higher.

Question in turn: How would the mortality of our characters be addressed? Something that would be fun is if we Game of Thrones this in that anyone can die at any moment--the old campaign I mentioned got really boring in that NO ONE died, no matte what, so there was no excitement at one point.
I don't think we should be rolling new characters every half hour, but I'm cool with death being a very reachable consequence in our games.

 

I will be very clear in advance if a particular conflict could end up in PC death ("This guy’s playing for keeps. If he can kill you, he will. You can see it in his eyes." or the amusing "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." like Your Story itself suggests), but generally, I think the system of Consequences, Concessions and Taken-outs, while still maintaining high stakes, works perfectly to limit the risk of having to roll new characters in every battle. The setting somewhat helps, too: the series is choke-full of creatures/organizations that would rather you'd be alive but in their debt, rather than "simply" dead.

But if you guys want higher risks/stakes, I'm cool with that.

 

Sloth, I'd just point out that DFRPG isn't a system where you can reroll your character in half an hour. The character creation is designed to weave your characters together, link everyone closely. Having someone try to create a new character half way through would be hell on Earth for a GM to properly fit in.

 

Is there still room for one more? I'd love to get in on this.