Worth picking up for the city building section alone. ( )

Game systems are going in two directions; highly-complex systems with very detailed combat; and 'story-telling' systems that emphasize role-playing over mechanics. FATE is clearly in the second camp. This is a well-written guide book for campaign and character generation, that could easily be modified to fit any world. Highly recommended. ( )

I'm only partway into the book, but I'm really impressed. I should mention that I'm not paying a ton of attention to the game mechanic; my main interest is as a fan of the series and as a world-building would-be GM.

As a fan, it's a great read. Aside from the mindbending meta-ness of reading an RPG guide where the original books' protagonist is commenting on the RPG's guide to character creation in which a hypothetical player (named after the series' author) is creating him, the protagonist, as a character in the game... yes, sorry, my sentence structure can't even make it clear, let alone do it justice. You'll just have to take my word that it's charmingly recursive.

Aside from that, as I said, it's a great read. The underlying conceit is that the character Billy is writing a role playing game based on Dresden's life and the supernatural aspects of their world, and has asked Dresden and Bob to look it over. Their marginalia are charming, and often illuminating or funny - a bit like Rowling's Harry Potter textbooks, but the technique is much more successful here. Butcher is credited as an author, and I'm sure he had a close eye on it.

The art is a bit of a mix - some from the comics, and I believe some is original. It's all good, though, particularly the original work.

I don't know the base game system they're using, so I don't know if this is typical, but I was very impressed by the emphasis on world-building and character development. I'm working up a 4th ed. setting right now, and I've found this book really, really useful in helping me figure out how my world, my plot, my themes, and my characters are going to work together and interact. It's making me add aspects to my game that will give it a real richness, at least in my mind.

My only problem is that a paper copy is $50.00 US. Ouch! Uh, Christmas is coming? ( )

I think the Fate system finally hits its stride with The Dresden Files RPG. The folks at Evil Hat took their time putting this one together, and it was well-spent. This is nicely polished, with an advancement system that looks like it should stand up well to campaign play, a magic system that can handle the split between adventurous spellslinging and occult ritual, and a flexible vocabulary for describing a broad variety of characters.

The books are written as if they come from within the world of the Dresden Files; in that universe, Dracula was secretly a manual for taking down Black Court vampires, and these gaming books are putatively a late draft of a roleplaying game created by Billy the Werewolf to serve a similar function for cluing in new entrants to the supernatural world. The book is thus full of marginalia conversations between Billy, Harry Dresden, and Bob the Skull, providing extra exposition, a good deal of humor, and a number of “get rid of this or at least change the names before publishing” notes to show that some of the details really are secret within that gaming world. (When Billy uses a writeup of Harry as an example, he describes him as being played by a guy named Jim. About whom Harry grouses a great deal.)

The rules and examples are set up to be able to describe everything within the storyline of the Dresden Files tales, up through Small Favor but not Changes. (What we know as novels and short stories are what Harry calls “case files”.) It includes a system for quickly writing up locations and faces around town for a campaign, making it possible for a group to collaboratively create a setting, and fleshes out Baltimore as an example. It doesn’t go anywhere it doesn’t have to, but it fulfills its goal of making Jim Butcher’s novels into a playable setting well enough that a gamemaster can use the rules as a basis for telling their own kind of story. (It would be easy to stat out cybernetic upgrades as comparable to supernatural powers, for instance, and use the system for Shadowrun.) The rules include guidelines for gaming at different power levels, ranging from Feet in the Water (when it comes to the occult) all the way up to Submerged.

Your Story is the first Fate book I would hand to any prospective player. ( )