We start by dipping our toes into the Dresden Files RPG. This episode is a quick rules discusion and a mock combat to test them out..
Knights of the Night
KOTN Actual Play Podcast 51: DFRPG 1_1 "Rules and Test Combat"
[music] Hello everyone and welcome to Night of the Night actual play podcast. This Justin Fowl story was run by our GM Tom. [music] This is our first episode using Dresden and there's a lot of discussion about rules and explanations on how to play. If this isn't something you enjoy, please feel free to skip this one and join us on our next episode. And now on to the adventure. [music] I'm Tom. We're doing the Dresden style dank and I am running a little bit of a canned adventure so that we can try it out. And the name of the adventure is neutral grounds. And on my left is Thomas, I'll be playing Martin Capouti. You're a retired psychic detective. I am GM playing Julia Lanzi. They help help the illusionists. I am John and I'm playing Zach Maem, a precious wizard. My name is Mike and I'm playing Sean Barnes, a bass player in several local metal bands and a werewolf. My name is Scott. I'm playing Nate Velakis and Nate is a white court virgin. You have older, you have your character with staff. You have a two page sheet of useful charts from the back of the book. In this game system, there aren't any attributes. You don't have a strength, you don't have a dexterity or intelligence. What defines your characters would be the skill set. Also, stunts and powers. When you take damage on your health, it is represented in the boxes on this left side over here that are stress, physical, mental and social. So there's three different ways of taking damage. There's three different types of combat you'll have. Physical combat, mental and social combat. Some are more rare than others. Social combat is not usually as common as physical combat. But probably more common than mental combat? Yeah, mental is you don't tend to take mental damage. You can. And wizards will take it when casting. So it's important to have to be for them. The standard is to have two stress in all of those. You get additional boxes by taking skills. Skills are done in a tree at this level which is up to your waist. We're playing. Which means the skill cap is great. None of your skills can be over the great level. You have 25 total points. And you have a base refresh of seven. We got one still filling in there. Yes, you do. You have seven different aspects. Aspects allow you to modify your role when you try to succeed. Normally when you try to succeed at something you either have a target you're trying to shoot at or you're doing against someone so the higher that you get the better because then they have to reach that to defend against it. And what you would do is you would take your skill level in something. For instance, if you wanted to attack someone physically you would use FIS. That's a skill. It's on this page over here on the right hand side of this column. It's a list of all the skills that are available. So in designing your character you have 25 points. And you design it up to the level of the rate. You can't at this level have a superb which is plus five. By great I mean plus four which is represented again on this chart in the latter. The latter is a representation of the different levels of ability. So if you're mediocre in something you're zero. If you're average you're one, if you're fair you're two, if you're good you're three. When you're buying skills you have to have support below any level equal to what you have. So if you're adding something at the level of grade four plus four you have to have a three, a two, a one below it. You're building up a pyramid you can't have something. Not a pyramid but you can build a tower but you have to have something below it. You can't have two grades which are four and one good which is three. If you have two at a higher level you have to have two and all the levels below it. So what is deceit plus and discipline on my character sheet underneath grade? Deceit is a skill and that's what I understand. It's listed over here. Cat and mouse, disguise, distraction. What's the plus sign after it? These don't have pluses on them. One of your stunts or powers is infected by the skill there. There's a second sheet for your character. Right. And a power on that sheet will affect your skill. So it's kind of like an asterisk saying that you have something that affects that skill. Got it. I mean I understand it but I don't really yet understand it. One of your skills has a modifier to your deceit. And what are the costs of minus one for stunts and powers? That's when you're building a character. Since you won't be building one now you don't need to know about it. But if you want to at the level we're at up to your waist you are granted seven base refresh. Your powers take away from that. You can't go below one or otherwise you become an NPC. The more low you are the less. The less free will you have to change what you want to do or you want to go in the game. Okay so what do we have to do? So some of the things you have to do you have to first pick up a number of skills that will equal 25. If you have questions on the skill you can ask and these guys who have played at least one or two sessions know a little bit more over what skills are useful. Under fair it says number of slots three. So they've already decided you're going to have two more abilities or three in your case. Yeah I've got three slots in fair and five slots average. But you don't necessarily have to. For instance fair here has three. You could have just two and that would then give you two more average slots. But average is only plus one. So the way something works if you want to attempt something you take your skill at it, you roll your fate dice. You add the fate dice to the skill and you get the result and that's you compared to something else. So let's say you can't have three greats though because you don't have enough points to have three greats. Right because if you had three greats you would have to have three goods, you would have to have three fair and you would have to have three ones. Which would add up more than 25. Alright let's start at the top. Alertness is combat initiative that determines who goes first in combat. Athletics climbing, dodging, falling, sprinting, other physical attraction. It's also the default defense versus a physical attack or a ranged attack. If you're being attacked by a fist then fist could be your defense as well. Forglary context and looking for something. Conviction is mental fortitude so that's saying that it changes how much mental stress you can take by adding to it. It wouldn't be less if you had anything above zero. Deceit is of course lying to people. Discipline is your mental defense. So if you're being attacked mentally that would be probably what you're using for defense. Which one is that? Discipline. Discipline. Empathy is social initiative and social defense. So if you're being attacked socially that one could be important. It's not the only social defense though. But it's not no it's not there's an additional one at least. And sometimes if you can justify it to me why you should be using a different skill for a defense, it's miserable. Endurance is physical fortitude so that changes your physical stress. If you have a higher endurance you can have more physical stress that you can take. This is your close combat defense. But it's also your close combat attack. So if you're attacking someone with claws you would be using that. That is your default attack for hand-to-hand. Guns would be a projectile range attack. Intimidation is a social attack. Investigation is... Self-explanatory. Self-explanatory but it's also what is used for you would think alertness might be if you noticed something. It's more investigation. Okay. If you notice something well and... Alertness is passive awareness. Right. If you're looking for someone. It's investigating. Right. Got it. Lore is, if you're a caster it has to do with how much you know, how many rote-svels you can have and your general knowledge of the occult would be lore. For non-caster types like Astrum who is incredibly high and lower but is just without power, magic of any sort. Right. It's knowledge of the supernatural beasts and their weaknesses would be under that. It could also be used as an investigation if you're doing it on a cult type creature. Might is your strength, your ability to break things. Wrestling. And wrestling. Performance. Present. Could also be a social defense. Uh-huh. But it's social fortitude so it affects your social stress. The rapport is a social defense. Actually not so much presence. What rapport is a social defense. Resources. Scholarship. You know what those are. Scholarship and investigation. There's some crossover there. Uh-huh. Stealth is ambush hiding. Shadow and Sculking. Survival is handling. And camouflage running. I'm reading right from here. But your other one is weapons. So if you're doing an attack close up but you're using something like a club or a sword or a knife. Rather than just hand hand or natural weapons like a claw, you would be using weapons. Sometimes both. When you're using fists, you could use fists as a defense. Because you're fighting someone with fists. If they're attacking you with a weapon and you have a weapon, you can also use weapons as a species. I'm assuming since my character has weapons and he's good at it and he needs to touch people. In order to affect things that he's using weapons for that. No, if he's a red court or white court. White court. So if he's white court and he wants to drain someone of whatever. You touch someone and attack them. Right. Then he has to touch them. And that wouldn't be weapon because you're not touching them with a weapon. That would be Fess. And last, the skill says otherwise. And doing it in such situations as you put it in another. So I probably want to get fists involved. White court is more subtle about the way they do things. So maybe it's more of a subtle weapon than something obvious. Like a big brute force gun. Right. I'm going to pick fists because I need to touch people, right? Eventually. I may need to touch them. Yeah. You can't take a skill twice, right? Alright. One example of what we're going to do is we're going to do a quick attack. Each turn is three seconds long. You can do one thing. Although there are free actions that you can take. Yeah. The option of attack, maneuver, block, sprint, or full defend in your turn. Well, I like because we are the two newbies. Okay. Each character gets one basic action per turn. But under certain circumstances, the character could take a supplemental action and for a free action. The light things are like emotion touch and taste it. Let's add a weapon. Yeah. I'm going to stab him. I'm sorry. You have to decide what kind of weapon it is. I've got a blade of some sort. Yeah. It's a blade. You're a wicked family heritage. Mm-hmm. So your blade is weapon one, we will say. And then I have weapon three. As a skill. Good. So do you have an alert? Yes, by the way. Um, yes. Which level? Kind of. And level three. Okay. He's faster than me than he gets to go first. I wasn't going to stab you early. If you have a alertness of good, you would go first. What would you choose to do? Your options are attack, maneuver, block, sprint, or full defend. Let's assume you're in the same zone. This system is similar to world of darkness in that. There's zones. If you're in a coffee house or someone's apartment, the apartment would have aspects. So it's clottered. Would you want them? Sure. And maybe low lighting because it's in the middle of the night. Okay. Uh, there's only. And then low lit apartment above a coffee house. Doesn't matter. I didn't think the rest of my skills yet. Not yet. Because we're just giving these app give you an idea of how the combat works. Okay. What would you choose to do? He's someone who's punching. I don't do anything. You go first. I can go first. Mm-hmm. He's being aggressive. So you think he's going to attack. So. I'm coming out of here a little too strong. Yeah. You almost touched it. I'm going to touch it. You can't stop me. So attack's obvious when attack hits, right? Uh-huh. So if you do maneuver, you're setting up an aspect on someone that you can use later. You can do it against a person, but they get to defend against you. Or you could do it against an object. Let's say someone's trying to climb up in a second story of a house. Uh-huh. You could say, "I spend my turn setting up a maneuver to make myself, uh, useful. I, you know, place my hands in, and give him a boost." So you're giving yourself a aspect of giving a boost. Then that person can freely tag your aspect that gives him +2 to his role. To climb. When you're spending a full turn to set up a maneuver, their tagging of that maneuver is free. But how do I throw a veil on myself so I disappear? And then try to come around when he's not looking at another angle. Okay. So you would roll for us? Uh-huh. You would add it to you. I can't do a block on that, can I? If you are a magic pastor, you could cancel the magic of the veil. If you saw it happen. I may be able to prevent the victim from taking other actions if you do this as a block instead of a maneuver. That's my motion touch. No, baby, don't go away. So she goes further. Right. But why does it say you can use it as a block? If she was attacking me, I could try to touch her. Why she was attacking me to block it? Okay. Go ahead. More dice. And you would add it to either your deceit or your discipline, which would be your skill that would control that. Your choice. What do you mean discipline? There are skills. One of them is discipline. One of them is deceit. You would pick your highest one. He's got deceit. Great. Plus four. I would use deceit. Yeah. Yeah. I got plus two. She used real four dice. That's it? Always four dice. Always, always, always, always. I got three pluses and a minus plus two. Right. So that's plus two that is added to the deceit and that is the level of her veil. Okay. So she had a veil of six. Six. That's pretty damn impressive. I feel like a fantastic veil. Yes, it is. But it is impressive. Point of a fantastic veil. So I know exactly where she's at. She disappeared. She could not move again. I can't attack her. It's okay if I can. I'm just wondering. I would do this two different ways. In this particular combat, Jim's character has gone behind a veil. If you were there and saw him suddenly disappear and her disappeared and you logically know she's still standing there, you could attack her. What if I just want to attack the space? I don't know if she's there or not. You could still attack her or the space. But she would have a free tag of an aspect of freaking invisible. I would be able to tag her. Plus two for free. Okay. So I attacked the darkness. All right. The next turn, it would be difficult. The next turn, he's got a reroll, a veil only lasts for one turn. If you maintain it though, it would really appear. Well, he would have to. Or do I know that? She would have to spend her turn every time. Can I hold an action until she comes back briefly or so she would be maintained? I mean, she blinked back into existence and then disappeared. No. She can maintain it if she gets a good roll off. That roll might be higher, it might be lower. She's pretty good at it. Right. Which means I'm not really ever going to get a chance because I'm always just attacked now. She can actually attempt to move the next turn. Right. And then you really are, if you don't spot that, you have no clue where she is. You can make a maneuver to make her visible, I would imagine, like taking a curtain and going, "Ha!" Wouldn't that be like a maneuver to make her visible? Despite... Yeah, I mean, you could say if this is a kitchen, you could say I grab a bag of flour and throw it in the air. That would be a maneuver and that would give you an indication of where she is. And on your next turn, you could have plus two because you could see... She goes again though, before me, potentially. So I knew where she was. No footprints. I'm not in a kitchen. You'll see the differences as powders in the air everywhere. You might see something. So, about in the air. Yes. And in this particular turn, he knows where you were. He saw you standing there and then you disappeared. He assumes she's still standing right there. I attack. So can I attack with something besides my weapons, like with deceit or discipline? You can... That sounds funny, but deceit is cat and mouse. Right. You can, but it has to make sense within the real world structure. Discipline is concentration. I knew where she was. I saw her disappear. I wanted to attack exactly where I saw her before. That would be a maneuver to focus on that. And that takes like a turn. It gives you a spot or even though. Yeah, you would tag the aspect up. I'm paying very close attention. I'm looking for any movement of a thing being brushed aside. So that takes the air. So you can't use a deceit or discipline as an attack. You might use it a lot of it. In social conflict, you definitely would. Here, maybe, for a maneuver. There's a way to combine two skills for an attack. No. Skills. But you just take the lesser of the two skills. So, same thing. Right. That's, that's dumb. Well, I mean, not dumb but just just dumb without me knowing the system. So, I just go with weapons. Okay. I've got a weapon. I've got a knife. So, I don't know why I want to attack her but I don't. Right. For the sake of this. Actually, enemies, you charge her and try to stab her with a knife. So, I get four dice. You always get four dice. You roll it and add it to your skill. But the darkness always threatens. Well, living a life of knowing that things can pop out of the darkness and attack. And she just went dark. And it's definitely laid apart all four dice. Never rolled more than four. Wow. Okay. So, you add plus two and then you add it to the four dice are randomness to the game. Right. So, you roll three pluses and a minus that equals plus two. You add plus two to your weapons. You use your skill. Plus three. Plus three. You roll plus two. That's total of five. Right. Now, if you wish to say. Darkness always. Darkness always. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I rolled plus two. Weapons is plus three, that's plus five. Which is superb. It's a superb attack with your knife. I only have good enough for this tricky bitch. Okay. So, you say the darkness always threatens. Threatens. Darkness always attacking it back. Threatens. So, you get rid of one of your faith points. You get to add two more. That's an attack of seven, which is really epic. That's epic. But shouldn't it be you have some minuses because she's like hidden? No. Or should you get pluses when she gets the best. So, you're now defending. So, does she have to tie it or beat it? Well, she wants to beat it. But if she ties it, she's only mostly dead. She still takes the weapon damage. No, you're dagger one. So, she would take one. Well, right now, you're at like seven. This is a really good attack. So, you, Jim, your character would want to avoid that. That would be athletics to get out of the way of this attack that's coming in. You are invisible, so you can freely tag that invisibility for a plus two to your roll automatically. Does he have to spend a faith point? Nope. Okay. When you do a maneuver, you're allowed to tag the aspect. It's kind of a little bit of a twist of the roll. She didn't do a maneuver. But we're counting that as an aspect of invisibility. Yeah, invisible. Right? Sure. So, you roll four dice. Always. Four dice. What you got? One. Five minuses. I want to kill her. If I sound like I was serious. Minus two. That's bad. Yeah. So, your athletics is what? Nothing. You don't have athletics? Nope. So, that's even worse. That's really bad. So, she's equal. Zero. Right now. Because she gets plus two for invisibility. Well, I'm terrible right now. Yeah, you're terrible. So, we need to spend some faith points. So, Jim, your girl, she's faith. No. We're going to be green. How many faith points do you have? Is that my refresh? Yeah, it's a refresh. Three. So, give three green to Jim for his character. Okay. So, Jim, you have three that you can spend in any way that you want. Now, in a normal situation, if you know someone's coming in there on the other side of the door, and you go under a glamour, they open the door, no clue where you are, I would not even allow you to attack because they simply don't know where you are. In this case, we're saying that you were standing right there and you blinked out and he reacted by attacking where you were, which unfortunately you were still at. He's attacking with seven. Right now, you're at blank. So, that means you're going to take seven damage plus the one for his weapon. Eight. How much does he have? That's like bad. Because how many physical do you have stress-wise? Two. Right. And take you out. Kill you. No. Take you out is what it's called. What? Oh. You, as the take her outer, the person who took her out, get to decide what that means. You hit her, which causes her to stumble backwards and she hits her head and is not unconscious, and now you can capture her. If you're truly an evil demon, you're probably going to eat her face and she's going to die. Right. Yes. I believe it is a less than a player character, isn't it? Can't you always dictate how you go out? If you concede, you get to dictate how you go out. But it still doesn't change the fact that if you say, you know, Jim says, oh, I, you know, I jump out of the way and accidentally fall out the window and fall three flakes down and get the land out. Yeah, the pillow truck, but I get knocked unconscious because she's taken out. She's taken out. She's done. And Scott is again a demon. He says, I jump out the window and eat her face. You know, I mean, if you concede. You are surrendering, but you get to say how you got taken out. Sure. But you're surrendering yourself. And you don't want to concede to a demon. No, you need to roll better. Yeah. So your options are to say, I want to use a fake point and figure out an aspect that would apply. No, you just reroll. And reroll. That's one of the options. Right. The other one is add two. Now, at minus two, chances are, you're probably going to do that. You're probably going to do at least level because that's the most average roll. That's plus two there. And if you actually roll pluses, then you're doing better than just adding two. I use the seek and add four to it. Not as a defense. Or no. When spending a fake point, you have to use an aspect. You're not using a skill. So he gets invisibility for free skill. Oh, I see, I see you're saying you want to use your deceit skill as a physical defense. Or the fact that it's distraction and misdirection, or I could try to make a step here. Or making a sound over here where I'm really over there. No, I don't think after the fact. No. Maybe before the fact, you could say, as a supplemental action, I used a seek. Before I attack. Right. To give stuff more detail. I do glamour. Right. And then as a supplemental action, I used a seek to try to confuse the person to where I am. That would be a good thing to use. And then that deceit role would be a totally different role, but at minus one, because you're using two actions in the same phase. The first action wouldn't be minus one? No, the second one. And when you're doing something like I attack and then move, even though the move occurs after the attack, it isn't the minus one. The attack is because movement, there's no dice roll. Can I take my trouble aspect? Can you, if you can justify to offset players. My trouble is, I don't trust me. You shouldn't either. He was trusting me to be in that safe. I once thought it was that, but I'm not. I'm in the notes. That's believable. Sure. So you spend a point and you get to roll the dice again, or you get to add two to that total roll. But in addition to the two from me being... Hey, Visible, yes. Visible? Yes. See? Didn't close. So the reroll would probably be your best bet. So you throw one of your three away. Right. So he throws one of three to reroll. Right. And he's tapping that aspect to reroll. And I got one plus. So that's plus one plus and two is three. So now your defense is three. Yeah. Two invisibility. One for the roll. You have zero physical because you're apparently not a physical person. So now you're three. You subtract that three from his seven. You're now you're only taking four damage. Which is still not to take me out. Yes, but no. There's a way to avoid that. And now we'll look at this because let's assume you might want to spend another pay point and spend another one to add two more. Let's do that. Yeah. That's it. I really don't want to get knocked out. Yeah. Let's say... Well, no. You still wouldn't get knocked out. But go ahead. Let's say you spend another one and you say... I don't know. Because you don't have all your aspects yet. But one of your aspects is... I'm a tricky thing. Yeah. Things are always what they see. Right. That's a good one. That's a very good one for your character. So you say that. You get to add two. So now you're all the way up to five. Right. And you're attacked with seven. Eight. Eight. You're attacked with eight. Seven plus weapons one. Right. That's different than eight. Yeah, it is different. So here's a seven. Seven. If he can totally seed that seven. Right. Then he's fine. The weapon doesn't count. Right. So but you're only at five. Right. So you're taking two. So you got a... So what you would do is... You got the re-roll... He tapped one of his aspects to re-roll. He spent another fate point to tap another aspect to add two. Right. Now what you would do to take two damages, you would cross off that second square. Uh-huh. Or a circle. That's the case of me. Right. I see what you're saying. So you wouldn't do one and two just two. Right. So I still got the one left. You still have one left. You will, let's say... Five defense. Sorry. Yes. There's a weapon one. Okay. Takes a three stress. Right. Unless you can't. That's right. It is because since he exceeded yours, he gets to then add the weapon and which brings it up to three. But if Jim was really desperate, he could tap another aspect to hit one. If he had for another plus like the ball for another plus two. And you would be seven to seven. Right. Which means you just take one point of damage for the weapon. So it's three. Which is going to take you out of the scene. So instead of doing that... Takes him out of... Oh, I'm sorry. If he spends all his fate points, doesn't take him out of the scene. You're talking about three damage. Yes. Not three. He doesn't spend that point. He actually takes three damage because... Because... Five? No. Five versus your seven is two. Now you add the weapon in. One. For three. Underneath your stress boxes is consequences. Since it's three and you only have two physical, you actually have to take a mild consequence. Which is two. Minus two. That leaves one remaining. So instead of crossing off the second box, in this case you cross off the first one. Because one plus that two is equal to the three, you need to soak off. So you cross off the one and then take... Now. Minus two for a mild. Right. And a mild consequence would mean something physical that lasts because it's mild. It lasts this scene until the end of the next scene. As an aspect that's on you, that's tapable by anybody that's confronting you. Or something jumping out of the way you twisted your ankle. So now you've got a little bit of a limb. Or... Or you cut my arm. And you've got a burning. You know, a stinging cut. How many is his fake points to tap that consequence to gain your bonuses when he's like trying to catch up to him or something? Yes. Absolutely. And since you're the one that gave her the neck, you are allowed one free tag of that aspect. So that's one free plus two. Because you gave it to her. Okay. But it has to be used within that scene. So she's sprained her ankle and then you can't like three months later say, "For one thing the consequence is going to be gone." Right. Yeah. So that's his turn. That's what he did. Your turn could be to do two aspects. One of them is... Oh, yeah. First of all, we didn't cover this, but you could sprint. Not a good choice for you because you're not an athlete. But you would roll four dice. So I rolled plus two. I add my athletic to it. And let's say I'm an athletic two. That's a total of four. I get to move four zones. With the exception of being if there is a threshold or a defensive between zones, for instance, a locked door, you're not going through that. Yeah. You're stopping. Or a fence where you're in a parking lot and you want to get to the street and there's a fence in the way. You can't sprint across that. If it's an open area, you're gone. Another option would be to move somewhere and maintain the veil. Now he has no idea where you are. He would actually have to exceed your veil to spot a glimmer somewhere and then still get to attack. And I would still give you the plus two because you're invisible and he's guessing it where you are. Or you can do any of your other actions. But that's how the combat system works. That's how the stress works. Since the combat is over, you immediately erase all your stress boxes. So if you can, you want to take those first. Because now the combat's over, you got a moment to catch your breath. That all gets restored. The consequence remain. In the case of a mild one, it remains to this current scene and to the end of next. Our all moderate is another up. It's like this. What does that minus two mean for a mild? You're soaking up that much stress. Yeah, but okay. So the consequence, is it minus two to every role that he makes? No, no. It's just something. It's a terrible aspect. It's a terrible aspect. Invocable aspect that she's going to carry around. That people can easily use to put the end of this approach. And it also might be something that could limit her via the GM's discretion. Let's say she said I twisted my ankle that I'm like, well then you can't sprint. Right. Or, you know, it might be a minus for your running. You have to give them a fake point for that. If you say they can't sprint because of that, you're offering them a fake point. Oh, yeah. That's exactly correct. Progress. Because you're evoking her. Yeah. If she's saying I'm going to run away, I'm like, but you have a sprained ankle. And I give her a fake point. And she's like, I don't care. I run through the pain. I get that back. And she pays me one more. Because she's ignoring that aspect. If you attack and basically improve your attack with the D.S.'s sprained ankle, you pay him one rather than a GM. And say, yeah, I put my sprained ankle. It lets me beat the crap out of you. And moderate, severe, and then if I invoke his aspect. His aspect? I have to give him. Yes. For plus two. If it's a hair like your ear attacking. But it doesn't sound like much of a disadvantage. It represents in the Harry Dresden stories. It represents him getting the shit kicked out of him. Right. And getting literary power by just getting beat down. And in the end, he's got all the anger in it. He's got a ton of fake points to spend to come back strong. You're getting beat down by your aspects. But that's giving you literary power later on to come back and change. Because, you know, you're rocky. You took all the punches throughout all the things and you come back strong in the end. Because I could be thinking, well, if I think I'll stop getting knocked out in the scene. And then later you'll step in the back. Because we never got to the boss yet and I'm going to need that big point later when you get to the boss. So again, the consequences are mild, moderate, severe, and then extreme. And they soak up two, four, six, and eight points. So extreme is just that. And in the fact that it is replacing permanently one of your aspects. Like the example they keep giving is Harry was dealing with a guy who was a flame thrower. He actually had a physical flame throw, he was trying to kill these kids. And he has the ability to channel flame. So he took it into himself and was sending it back out as fast as he could. And he just worked his arm. I mean, it was just a crispy stub. Right. That was extreme. I mean, his aspect was I have a stump for it right hand now. Right. So sorry for the spoiler if you ever intend to read that. That's right. But that's extreme. You know, that's the type of thing where you're taking eight damage. Somebody tried to power you through a wall. And you survived it, but at a cost. We're going to add a cost. Yeah, maybe you're in a wheelchair the rest of your life. That's pretty extreme. So to always do that instead of taking damage, you can always take consequences. But as I pointed out, these stress boxes at the end of the scene back instantly. So you want to burn those. Consequences take a long time. Yeah. But if you fill up the two stress boxes, you're out for the scene. So you're really going to take one of the two unless you're a tough start. Right. Yeah, three or four. So if you take these consequences. First of all, consequences are across the board. If you take a physical consequence, it's not a physical mile consequence. It's a mile consequence. You can't take a physical mild and a mental mild and a social mild. There's one mild. That's it. Mild last, this scene in the next, moderate last. It's like this night play session in the next. Severe last, this adventure in the next. And moderate, our extreme is forever and ever. Pretty much character changing. You can find a way to get around them and eventually repair them. Okay. But it should be campaigns long. I know enough to play now. Okay. At least this character. The other thing is, you know combat. You know skills. You know aspects to some degree. The other thing is the aspects you should have. They should be double sided. Or you should have one that's good and a balancing one that's bad. And by bad, I mean, it's a negative thing. The one thing I don't really love about Dresden is I don't love telling you guys how to play your character and saying things like, you know, you twisted your ankle. Here's a, you know, that's not bad. But some of the other ones is if you have a negative aspect and I'm forcing you that negative aspect, I could see if the story goes in such a way. And in some cases, let's say you're a wizard and you're using magic that can fry out electronics. So you're in a desperate situation and you run up and pick up the phone. You're going to call your friends. You can see going, here's a point because you just fried the phone. And then go, you know, the wizard going, no, really, it's important. I will pay the point not to fry and control myself. You know, control my emotions. Right. So I can see certain points of that. But if you guys have a negative aspect that is like, I'm always, you know, too drunk to fight or something like that, where it's, it's, you choose to do it. It's a very similar world of darkness because it's got a negative aspect on how well you're doing in the story. And it causes more trouble, which is always more interest to the story. Point it out to me and I'll give you a point for it. You know, if you come up with it yourself, I don't have a problem with that. Okay. So there are just other aspects of the other four. There's seven different aspects. And when you make up a character and we do it once a high concept, we do it real. One of them's a high concept. One of them's your trouble. One of them is your related to your background. Yeah. I think that's what they call it as background. This is when you're making true characters. Right. These are a little bit different. And then rising action, it's like what motivates your character into what role they take on. And after that, it's stories. Like I was in a major character in a story or an adventure. Right. This is what it was and it gave me this aspect. And then other players will be involved in those same stories. Like if you're the main character in a story, Thomas's character might have been a secondary character in your story. And John might have been a tertiary or another secondary one. But these, as I said, are a little different. And the way they try to help jumpstart is to have a series of questions. So everybody selected their characters. And then we have a few questions that will hopefully help you come up with aspects. Thanks for listening to the Knights of the Night actual play podcast. Visit kotnpodcast.com for more information on this and other adventures. Where you will find character stats, photos, storytelling props, and even a forum for comments and suggestions. Or you could email us directly at feedback@kotnpodcast.com or contact us via Twitter or leave a message on Facebook. All music for this podcast was created and performed by Zen Audio Smith. If you'd like custom professional music created for your podcast or business, please visit ZenAudioSmith.com and please join us next episode for more mystery and adventure. [Music]