Dresden Files: Recapping some thoughts on Jim Butcher's Modern Mage series

Summer Knights is book four in the Dresden Files series.

This time we get Harry dealing with the Fey in a larger more involved manner in which we've seen in the past. Like previous books, the reading is quick and easy. Harry himself remains a bit of a rough spot but is always trying his best to do what's right for people and this often puts him on edge against his fellow wizards.

In addition, as the series continues to go, the mythology of the series, and the events of previous books, continues to pile on. In this instance, Harry's work against the vampires in previous books has lead to war between the wizards and the vampires.

All of this is on the down low however and is somehow not caught by 'modern man' despite a plethora of growing technology and ability to spy on people at any point and any time.

One of the interesting twists here though, is that Harry's 'contract' if you will, to his 'Godmother', is bought out by another Fey who offers to let Harry out of his obligations but it's in exchange for three favors. Doing something like this in a role playing game allows you to switch up the pace a bit.

For example, in the Punisher comics, for a long time Frank was pretty much a solo act. But then he got Micro and had a line in to getting high tech weapons and other bits. It brought something different to the character for a while.

Changing things up isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Death Masks is book five in the Dresden Files. 

Jim Butcher hasn't been afraid to throw actual religious bits into the Dresden files in the past and that remains true in this volume as well. Where previous books have had a focus on the undead, werewolves, wizards, and the faeries, this volume kicks things up a notch by bringing in demons.

Turns out those 30 silver that Judas got back in the day were possessed! Each coin with its own specific demon and each demon able to bond with a user providing knowledge and power in exchange for enslavement and well, your soul.

The demons are also on a higher power level than many things then Harry has fought in the past and he's forced to rely on allies to get through the day again. In this case, it's the three users of the swords that are empowered by the Nails of Christ as they search for the Shroud of Turin.

One of the bits that is 'stealable' from this would be how Harry needs a 'second' in a duel with a vampire. This 'second' would normally be a friend of Harry whose gone to bat for him many times, but at that particular time isn't available.

But someone who respects that person, deeply, and trusts that person, deeply, comes out and says, "Well, if it's good enough for him..." And that's an important factor. Sometimes if a resource isn't available, there should be a secondary, but still viable way to do something. If your allies and friends respect the player characters enough to fight and die for them, it's possible that some of their allies would be like, "You know, if they need help, I will provide it." 

It was a nice touch.

Blood Rites moves us into book six of the Dresden files. It, like others in the series, continues to build on the Vampire versus Wizards roles. It also continues to showcase how odd it is when a 'professional' wizard is brought in to handle a 'curse' and yet Magic isn't really thought of to be real. Sigh. One of the things that I have a hard time dealing with but I understand that's my own personal take on it.

It's why I have a hard time with super hero comics that take place in a contemporary setting. There's too many ways to observe and track people for secret identities to be anything other than a nod to the genre itself.  Six hundred million people in the United States alone and how many of them probably have cameras? Monitoring devices of all sorts going up in major cities all the time, and Harry Dresden lives in one of the most monitored cities of all.

But again, that's part of the genre that Jim Butcher is creating here.

The 'twist' on this series, is that Harry's past, which has been teased at, and has been brought into play in bits and pieces, comes a little bit more to the front here. 

This volume also brings out a different aspect of the vampires with the 'White' branch. These are more like the emotional vampires in that they feed off of passion as opposed to blood. They're not as powerful as the Red Court or the Black Court but at the same time they can walk around in the daytime. Thankfully though, they do not sparkle.

Be creating three courts early on in the series, the author has allowed himself some leeway in how things can be taken in the series. It allows each court to have its own feel and presence in the series. By setting up those differences early on, it allows the path of each court to flow more organically then if it were just lumped out in one huge dole.

Dresden Files Dead Beat is volume seven in the series.

While the wagon has circled around a little bit here, as in this volume, we're again dealing with Wizards, it puts the focus on a different aspect of the wizards, that of necromancy!

The bits about me having a hard time taking the whole 'unseen world' aspect hit a little harder here. The stakes are bigger than they've been in the past with uber powered necromancers attempting to summon a host of spirits and undead in effort to eat them and become a demi-god in power.

Now that in and of itself is an adventure seed for a Mage game, a super hero game, or even a fantasy game.

Necromancers attempt a ritual with enough juice that if successful, they will become gods. Stop them!

The fun thing about Jim's writing, is that he continues to beat Harry at almost every opportunity. The poor guy can't catch any breaks. Even when he wins, it's basically a default win by not dying.

The volume is now in the thick of things and continues to build up on previous works.

At this point that includes the following:

Demons: Harry picked up one of the silver pieces and now has a demon presence in his head.

Warders: The warders are the 'fist' of the mages if you will. Harry's relation with them is not good to begin with, but at the same time, he's now been drafted into their ranks.

Fey: Harry on rare occasions, seeks out information from his faerie Godmother. In previous instances, he's been offered the role of one of the Knights of the fey and has turned it down. Those temptations are still being provided.

Vampires: The war with the vampires is continuing and the wizards are losing. Hints are that its due to inside traitors and that I'm sure is further built up on in future books.

We also get a little bit of a look at how Harry is perceived outside of himself. As these books are all told in first person, it's not that unusual for the focus of the story to be on the person doing the telling, and Harry's experiences with the Council aren't all that often and don't take place all that much but as he's called in help0 here, we get a little peak at that.

For one, Harry is considered powerful. Now mind you, that despite having his ass handed to him on several different occasions throughout this book alone. In some instances, merely surviving and moving onto the next thing are good enough.

For another, Harry is seen as a 'rogue' of sorts and isn't' the traditional type of mage that the the council is comfortable with. This makes him something of an icon or hero to the younger generation of wizards coming up in the ranks.

It's a nice change of pace outside of seeing Harry be broke, almost dead, or just considered more trouble than he's worth. It sets up the stage for future material I'm sure. 

The thing is though, Jim Butcher just didn't put this novel out first. There is a LOT of build up, heck, six previous volumes worth, to get Harry to this stage. When playing out such efforts in a role playing game, the temptation to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks can be high, but in a long term campaign, one that doesn't come out of a prewritten adventure or sourcebook, allowing the world to flow with the actions of the players will provide more opportunities to expand that game in ways that interact directly with the players and their actions.

As you can tell, I managed to knock out these books between my two posts on the Thousand Thrones campaign I'm in. Told in first person, the Dresden Files are quick reads that could be the basis of their own game. Heck, even now the role playing game is going through some play testing and is in prep for a new edition to head down the line.

For those who aren't using the Fate system, have you modeled a similar setting to the Dresden files using another game system? Or is everyone still using the original World of Darkness to handle all of the different bits out there?

For me, I'm done with the Dresden files until I hit a sale or something along those lines.

I enjoyed the reading. It was light and quick and each tale builds on the whole of the previous series.

But...

I have dozens of other books to read. Going to book sales in Chicago for years for example, as well as store closings, like Borders, has provided me with enough material to last for at least solid months of reading if ALL I did was reading.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to the series one day because I'd like to see where Jim takes the demon bit, where he takes the Fey bits, where he takes the war with the vampires. But until then...

Dresden Files: Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

Jim Butcher has apparently struck a cord among readers looking for something different than standard fantasy. Make no mistake, fantasy in many of its varieties makes a lot of appearances in Grave Peril, the third book in the Dresden Files series, but it's fantasy layered on top of a Harry Dresden living in the modern era.

Told in the first person narrative, Grave Peril builds on the previous volumes while continuing to expand the world and setting. For instance, Harry met vampires in the first novel, but here, they take a larger role. The name of the book, Gravel Peril, also plays off the other antagonist, a 'Nightmare' ghost that's able to push Dresden to near the breaking points.

Some of my complaints about earlier novels continue to shine through here. Magic is 'hidden' from the 'mundanes' and apparently it's only hidden because either, like the vampires, they have too much pull, or people are just so incredibly ignorant that they're willing to shrug it off. In a city like Chicago where there are literally millions of people, and most of them with cell phones that have cameras on them, not to mention all of the standard surveillance around the city, it remains almost laughable that things like Harry destroying part of a building with fire magic in two separate occasions aren't huge warning signs. This is especially true given hor paranoid America can be with things we don't know about.

Those things though, like secret ids in good old super hero comics, are part of the genre Jim's building though. Either it'll get better or it'll strain my credulity to the point where I stop reading. As I've already read the fourth volume, Summer Knight, I think it's got a while to go. Part of that is I don't take it too seriously. It's a quick read with a character that is often trying to do the best he can and getting his ass handed to him.

But mind you, it's that "Die Hard" ass beating he's suffering. Regardless of how often he's beaten down or how badly, it's rare to see him take any permanent damage. He hasn't like, lost a hand yet or anything. In addition, Jim paces the books so that they aren't flowing one against another and there are often months where Harry is essentially recovering and studying.

One of my friends did run a few games of the system but it didn't last too long. There's just too much competition in the gaming field for him to stick with any one particular game engine for that long when he's the one running it. Quite the opposite of say running a long term written campaign like the Thousand Thrones I'm playing in. One of the reasons I think that Wizards of the Coast better pick up a few more ques from Paizo and have more great adventurers out and you know, keep publishing them.

Anyway, one of the ways that the setting is built on here, include Harry's 'Godmother', an actual member of the fey courts who provided Harry with the power needed in his youth to survive his mentor's treachery. It seems to be setting up a point there as the introduction of the Godmother here leads into the next book that is heavily involved with the Fey and the Winter and Summer courts.

And as Jim builds the setting he also falls into another pattern of Harry using his enemy's abilities against him. In the previous volume, Harry used a wolf pelt to become a magical werewolf. In the volume before that, he used the villain's own monsters against him. Here he uses the whole 'ghostly disturbances' to essentially double his power and win.

These victories are interesting in that they really don't look like they are things that could be duplicated and they are often things that come with a heavy cost. When looking at your own games, try to put the players in situations that allow them to try different and even difficult things with victory over seemingly impossible odds as the rewards.

Another element of expanding the world is Harry has an ally, or I should say, another ally, whose if not on par with him due to the variety of things Harry can do, can at least hold his own against the supernatural. IN the previous volume, Harry encountered some werewolves who were 'good guys' and they continue to follow that path.

But here we are introduced to Michael Carpenter, a 'knight of the cross', a man who uses the sword Amoracchius, a sword that has on it one of the nails used to crucify Christ. In Harry's world, being a man of 'righteousness' a 'holy man', has real teeth when it comes to supernatural elements.  It's a nice way of expanding who Harry can travel with without bringing in more wizards and serves to expand the setting at the same time while raising questions that the author can handle in future volumes.

In a role playing game though, you'll need to have a lot of potential options open at the start of the campaign. It's one of the reasons why game books often have details on a setting that you'll never see, never need in the fiction or movie or television show of the same setting. A game's needs are far different than a reader's needs.

I'll try to have some random thoughts about Summer Knight up later on. I haven't started the fifth book yet and I only own six of them. However my buddy who ran the Dresden Files game? He has them all and has already assured me that I can borrow them whenever I want.

It's one of those things that when you're a fan of a series, you're glad to meet other fans of the series and to pass on the lore and discussions and ideas on what could and should have happened. It's part of having some shared references and those are, perhaps not vital to having a group that gels properly, but certainly don't hurt. If you're playing a game of Stormbringer or Elric, and everyone at the table but one guy has read the books, that guy is potentially missing out on a lot of undercurrents and references that could be made to the novels, if not the entirety of the campaign itself.

When you're gaming in a setting based on a novel, or inspired by one, do you point your players to the books and other media? For my upcoming Champions campaign, I've pointed out a few things to give the player's some reference points of what I'm tinkering with and it's allowed the players to throw some feedback my way with one player going all out on it and others being a little more conservative.

Anyway, the Dresden files continue to be a quick read and may not be to everyone's taste, but are certainly edible popcorn reading for a lazy afternoon.

Dresden Files: Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden's case files continue in Fool Moon, the second book of the Dresden Files series written by Jim Butcher. The idea is that Harry is a modern day wizard who is drawn into conflict because of his consulting job working for the police on matters that are 'supernatural' in nature.

Jim Butcher's prose flows easily and the use of first person narration makes the reading quick and easy. Those looking for depth and multiple layers of story might be a little disappointed, but in terms of popcorn fiction, I found it fast and easy to digest.

One of the things that Jim really knows how to do, is put the odds against Harry. +John Wick wrote a series of articles that was compiled into a book called Play Dirty. In it, one of the things John puts forward is that beating the hero to the point of death and allowing them to pull out all the stops to achieve victory, is what makes a good role playing game, or story worth becoming involved in. John' primary example in that is the good old movie Die Hard where our hero suffers beating upon beating but manages to claim victory at the end.

Fool Moon also continues to build the world of Dresden. The author lays out several seeds for future books with a casual mention here and a casual mention there. We get more information on the world in general and a lot of ideas on how werewolves work. There are several varieties of the creature presented here and the authors puts all the versions through the paces. In that aspect, it reminded me very much of a role playing game in which the end effect may be reached through several different means.

The fact that there are different versions, also helps explain why so many of the myths may appear to be wrong from one perspective. Those viking berserkers who have an animal spirit in them may be one type of animal soul, but the person whose invulnerable to everything but silver? That's an entirely different type of beast. Makes you want to think more about the different aspects of monster creation.

Mind you, as a Chicago native, I'm still not 'feeling' it so to speak. It may be that these are character focused novels with a relatively small cast, but I also don't get the modern feel of the city. With all of the speed cameras, camera lights, and other bits of surveilance and technology around, it's hard to believe how frequently Harry throws about 'big' magic without it becoming huge news. This problem continues in future volumes I see and its strains things a bit.

I'm also not 'getting' where Harry lives where he has a two story apartment but most of the people he deals with aren't people that would live in the type of area that Harry could afford. He's kind of semi-imposed against some generic city with no Mayor or named politicians. Still, can't blame Jim for that too much as having too many real world details can bog down the writing and Chicago, like many modern cities, is always in a state of transformation with one neighborhood becoming slum like and others rising to renovation and removal of 'undesirables'.

Like other works by Jim in the series, the book is available in a variety of formats and is a quick read for those wanting 'modern' magic.



For those who've played the Fate Game, are there any bits that you're stealing from the books or just going with information from the books themselves? I'm tempted a bit, but it's a two book series and even with the dreaded Amazon discount it's still over $40 bones. What's worse as I'm prepping some material for a Champions aka Hero 6th edition Sci-Fi campaign, I know that I'm not going to be using it for a long time.



Too many ideas, not enough time.

Dresden File: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

One of my friends is a big fan of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. He also enjoys the role playing game powered by the Fate Engine. Not that long ago, Amazon was doing one of their $1.99 sales for books in the series. Right now, +comiXology is doing a sale on the Dresden Files comics. A fairly popular character with several books in the series? And written in an easy to read and quickly moving first person narrative?

Sign me up.

Jim has an easy command of the flow here. He introduces a lot of things but does so in a fairly... generic method. While Dresden is located in Chicago in the 'modern' world, and this could just be due to how quickly technology and everything else moves, it seems like he's actually in the 80's in some near generic scene. The second book brings more of Chicago to life but really, the series doesn't scream Chicago to me as much as it screams detective noir with a twist, and that's where the book shines.

Harry's background and abilities and indeed, his whole world as feed to the readers on a near as you need to know it basis. This allows the author to continue to provide information about Harry's strange world and throw hooks into the setting for future volumes. This continues well into the second book at least. It's additional information and provides a richer, more fuller world, such as when we meet Harry's 'magic computer', an old spirit that's inhabited by a lustful entity, but one that's been around for so long that it has a huge amount of magical information which Harry uses to say, brew potions or to do research.

Mind you, it's a good use and a good tool and that's because Harry can't use a computer. In what I imagine is a nod to some 'balance' equation or something of that nature, technology tends to fail around wizards and magic in general. This prevents Harry from owning and enjoying most of the things that we take for granted in the modern life. It's almost painful to see someone in the 'modern' world without a smart phone or tablet for reference and ease of use!

The other 'problem' I can see I'm going to have with the series, although it's not too bad in this book, is much like White Wolf's World of Darkness, people are 'ignorant' of the supernatural. It reminds me of the Warhammer World where the rat people, the Skaven, are said not to exist. "So Harry, you just engaged in a supernatural duel where a house was destroyed and magical scorpions and all sorts of other weirdness was abounding but hey, no one was around AGAIN eh? You lucky bastard."

You can, in my opinion of course, only push that mundanes know nothing bit so far before everything becomes too coincidental. "Man, another narrow escape where people didn't learn about all the weird things going on! Awesome!"

And Harry's world is weird. There's a mix of things ranging from Italian Mafia (which to me is VERY un-Chicago, this isn't the 1920's), to Vampire Countesses that run prostitution rings.

Nonetheless, it was a quick read and enjoyable enough that I'm already reading Fool Moon, the second book in the series. I tend to enjoy first person narration and when the author has the smoothness that Jim Butcher brings to the telling, it makes it a lot easier to read.

For those who have the Fate game, how did you find it? Would you be better off using the old World of Darkness and it's various Mage settings to try and capture this sort of setting or would you just go with the Fate version?

For those who've read the Dresden Files and didn't like them, was there a particular bit that stuck out or made you drop it? There is a portion where Harry is under attack by a demon and his newspaper female acquaintance drinks a 'love' potion and it seemed a little creepy to me, almost like a date rape drug and the skull spirit Harry uses also seems to 'bring out' inhibitions of people but Jim kind of waves that all away with, "Well, they'd have done it anyway with a few drinks in them."

On the other hand, I love this blog post: http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/changes-the-apex-of-jim-butchers-racism-and-misogyny/ . It's from the blog Requires Only That You Hate and there are often some very interesting posts over there. If I have some feelings of "ick" this author smashes the crap out of the things she doesn't like about the series and the book Changes in particular.

Storm Front is available on Amazon for under $8.00 bones right now, but is also available for sale in comic format and in a few other formats, including a hardcover graphic novel on Amazon.