Can we assume that anything that has occured in the books is fair game for this ie factions, powers etc.
Yes and no, not every character made it in and I'm trying to avoid anything too predictable while still making it tend toward chracter/role/faction seeming to 'fit'. When I was making the list I generally went through and gave every character 6 possible roles, sometimes all 6 were unique and sometimes their were repetitions where 3 of the 6 were vanilla. The norm tends to be 1 each of vanilla, scum, and roled. Some characters might have 4 vanilla slots, one role, and 1 scum goon option, another might have 1 vanilla, 1 scum, and 4 slots for the same role, where those slots are identical or might be 2 one shot versions of the role and 1 normal version and one other role that also fits the character. Some are a little shoe-horned in, where I basically wanted to give a less common role a chance of being in play and I just assigned it to the first character it seemed a halfway decent match for, giving it a 1 in 600 chance for each player to be in the game, and sometimes that meant it fell to a minor character who would otherwise tend to scream vanilla, which I felt helped balance the tendency for major characters to be more likely to have a role power.
Now in terms of plot, let me give you a 12-person example from the prototype for this I made for Wheel of Time, here's what I got: (By the way OS is for one-shot)
Mat - Cop
Sheriam - Goon
Flinn - Doc
Alviaran - Vanilla
Valda - Vanilla
Egwene - Scum RBer
Taim - Scum OS NK
Lan - Bulletproof
Ingtar - Miller
Hurin - OS Tracker
Thom - OS Vig
Tuon - Vanilla
As you can see the roles and alignment aren't obvious but they all 'fit', eyeballing that we've got 3 scum who have a RB and a one-shot extra kill, but we've also gotten a decent number of roles for the town with only 3 vanilla and 3 light roles one of which is anti-town, conveniently though randomly balancing out the little bit of extra investigation Hurin provides. So it's pretty balanced, maybe a little tilted to the scum but I have templates I can apply to nudge things and I'd feel comfortable personally going into this game on either side. Now having reviewed it all the things that 'stand out' are in my head, Alviaran as town and Egwene as Scum being the big ones. First thing that comes to mind is that are scum are all channelers and that Tuon and Valda hate channelers, so my skeleton plot starts by saying Sheriam has convinced Egwene to ally the Rebel AS with Mazrim Taim and the Black Tower against the White Tower loyalists and the Seanchan and Children of the Light and pressure Rand, who can enter as a NPC, not to ally with either the Seanchan or the White Tower, represented in game by Alviaran. Never happens in the books but it fits well enough, and just run with that, flush it out, etc. The random generator works kinda like a Mad Lib so it's actually kinda fun to try to come up with something, whatever that sometihng is will be heavily influenced by the series but its mostly the characters and their role/faction assignments that will influence the plot. I suspect a lot of settings would be kinda tricky to do this with but a lot the series that are pretty long and include a lot of anti-heroes or people working at cross purposes would work pretty well, and Dresden Files fits that bill nicely.
I can't give a direct example for Dresden yet, but I can say that just as with our WoT example stuff that has happened in the series will tend to influence how I'd draw the connections and that would influence plot, for instance here I'd probably drop clues in the intro and daily flavor like amidst a paragraph of text "... but the uneasy peace, however temporary, is hardly complete. Tensions remain very high between the Seanchan and the unconquered lands, particularly with the Rebel AS and the Black Tower being so close to the Seanchan's borders." Whereas if the evil trio had been Egwene, Sheriam, and Demandred I might have just gone ahead and had Egwene been turned by a circle of 13 Myrdraal and channelers and hinted at by dropping a comment to Hurin in a Night or intro Message like "You can smell that Fades have been here recently, perhaps a dozen or more" and one to Flinn like "Goosebumps all over your arms tonight, channeling and lots of it" etc.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
- Albert Einstein
King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
- Albert Einstein
King of Cairhien 20-7-2
Chancellor of the Landsraad, Archduke of Is'Mod
Mafia Game 23: The Dresden Files (Registration Open)
18/07/2011 07:53:15 PM
- 1840 Views
I'm in!
18/07/2011 08:05:37 PM
- 719 Views
He totes is.
20/07/2011 01:05:33 AM
- 688 Views
Plus, it'll do a lot to handicap those who "know" the books vs. those who don't *NM*
20/07/2011 03:55:18 AM
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Awesommmmme. This will tide me over till the new book comes out in a week or two
19/07/2011 02:49:59 AM
- 632 Views
Hm. I need to think of something cool to put in my signature.
20/07/2011 02:07:13 PM
- 677 Views
Something about Polyphemus disguising himself as Helen of Troy? *NM*
20/07/2011 03:32:06 PM
- 325 Views
Quick question.
21/07/2011 01:40:08 PM
- 710 Views
That sort of depends, let me give an illustration
21/07/2011 04:57:08 PM
- 625 Views
I finally remembered why I kept thinking I needed reg to go through Saturday
21/07/2011 05:09:36 PM
- 629 Views
Interestingly I've just started reading Stormfront.
21/07/2011 08:25:03 PM
- 650 Views