Since Farla is summoned once again from her home dimension and is doing another DF book, I thought I would look at Dresden Files RPG. More informative posts (the game is huge compared to the ones I normally talk about, so there probably would be more than a single review) will be soon-ish, but for now I have some things to say about the introduction short story provided for the second volume of RPG by Butcher himself.
Here it is:

Hope you enjoy!

This page is followed by a few more completely empty ones. This is not a good sign.

OK, to be fair, it’s a joke. The game is presented as a first draft of homebrew system created by Harry’s friends with him as a consultant*.

*Yes, he does canonically play TRPGs. He’s That Guy complaining about rules being unrealistic, as I recall. You know That Guy, the one you hate.

And the joke is kinda funny in a self-derogatory way I didn’t expect from Butcher. He also did actually write some stuff for the game as well as consulting the devs about setting details and such, so I don’t really hold being stingy with a story against him. I don’t have the same problem with the first volume of the game, which simply doesn’t have a place for an introduction story.

I do, however, think that by making this rather elaborate joke, he missed the point of introduction fiction.

Introduction fiction is, well, an introduction to a game. A game can spend thousands of words describing the setting, power struggles between movers and shakers, inner conflicts tormenting the characters, etc., but sometimes it can be hard to see how it all is supposed to look in motion.

When done correctly, an introduction story shows me what I will get out of the game should I play or run it. I’m supposed to read it and say, “So, this it what I’m getting into. Something like that is going to happen on one of my sessions. And it’s awesome.”

Introduction fiction is a source of inspiration. It shows what the game is capable of, what I should strive towards, with the rest of the game being a guide of how to get there. I’m supposed to read the rules, read advices on game structure, themes, etc., and see all of it being reflected in the introduction story.

Crafting such a story is not an easy task, and a lot of introduction fiction falls short, at best being good stories set in the game world. Exalted comics, for example, are often just cute illustration to the book’s chapters or even specific aspects of said chapters. They are too brief and inconsequential to tell me much about the game. At best they set the mood and hint at things that are going to be revealed in text, but they don’t really do what introduction fiction is supposed to do.

(In general, I think using comics is that capacity is a bad idea unless you are willing to spend thirty pages on it. There just isn’t going to be enough meat otherwise. There are some exceptions, like superhero games where it’s expected and where the main theme is “good guys punch bad guys,” which is easy to demonstrate.)

Still, that is the main purpose of such stories: to show us what the game is all about. And that is the goal authors should keep in mind writing introduction fiction.

So, what does Butcher’s story tell me about the game? That he didn’t care enough about it to stick around, and neither should I. I should put the game on a shelf and forget about it.

It’s not actually true, as I said, he did actually participate in its creation and put some effort in it, but that’s what empty space whispers to me. And if you can’t trust whispering empty pages, what can you trust?

But perhaps I’m being uncharitable. Perhaps the empty space is meant to present a deeper meaning than a simple joke: you are the one creating a story now, and Butcher doesn’t have a say in it anymore. The sticker at the dead center of the page and Butcher’s name as an author say otherwise, and I would say a more appropriate place for something like that would be the first volume titled Your Story, but OK, maybe the meaning just got mangled.

It is not technically a bad sentiment, though I do think that expressing it via a missing story was a bad idea. I know it, and the game can tell it to newcomers when describing the Golden Rule of TRPGs or similar concept. When I’m reading introduction fiction, I do expect it to be about what the game should be, according to devs.

Still, it’s true that while most games are written with an expectation to be used in a certain way (Unknown Armies is for dark comedy and transcendental horror, Exalted is for epic tragedies, D&D is for fun romp through fantasyland, etc.), how you actually use these games is entirely up to you. D&D, being the most popular and well-known TRPG in existence, was used for pretty much everything over decades from classic dungeon crawl to a social drama about an undertaker trying to establish a stable business in a zombie-infested town (no, seriously, I’ve seen party logs).

The same applies to DF RPG. Whether you want to stick close to the tone and themes of the books, deconstruct them, do your own thing with the setting or scavenge parts of the game for some unrelated projects is entirely up to you. Butcher has created that world, but now it’s in your hands to do as you please.

And so I urge everyone who owns a copy of the book to do the responsible thing: open the book on these shamefully empty pages and write some Harry/Marcone slash. Make Butcher’s world just a little bit better.