Exploring Dresden Files the Cooperative Card Game
When I enjoy fiction, I like to immerse myself in the setting that the author paints. I like to imagine living in that world and that I’m getting to know the characters as if they’re real. Dresden Files is a fantastic example of the kind of world building that I love to immerse myself in. Books, audiobooks, comics, a short lived TV show, Dresden Files is the type of setting that you can really immerse yourself in. The question I asked myself when I kickstartered this game was whether the game would add to the collective works or just be a cash grab? Honestly, perhaps a bit of both.
Dresden Files has you (and possibly some friends) take a set of characters (typically four) and face off against a preset collection of challenges (collectively called a book) in a resource management style game. You always have to have Dresden of course, but there is a large amount of popular other characters from the novels to include in your team. Characters such as Waldo Butters the polka loving Batman, his temple dog Mouse, or his brother Thomas Raith.
Each of the “books” reflect one of the Dresden Files books, me and my friends played through Stormfront, which was the first novel, first graphic novel, etc, as you can watch here.
The exact manner in which you beat the game can be viewed in the video, but what is important is whether this “feels” like it adds to Dresden Files? First of all, it is pretty awesome to have so much beautiful art about characters I have mostly only imagined in my head (I’ve read some of the comics, but not as many as I’d like), and that definitely can help add to your immersion in the Dresden Files Universe. Second, the books do remind me of important pieces from the novels, which actually excited me a little bit. I haven’t read some of these stories for years, but the moment we were playing through it all started coming back to me.
So the game definitely uses the IP well to make the players feel like they are immersed in Dresden Files characters and images, and the game itself is actually fun and challenging. Its also fairly innovative, concepts in “card” based games like shuffling or drawing are almost non-existent, which is actually pretty cool to make the game feel much more what it is meant to be, which is a resource management game.
In Dresden Files, Harry often gets beaten down, pushed right to the edge, right before overcoming. Like most pop culture media, it isn’t “WHETHER” Harry will win, its “how”. And the game feels good in that regard, pushing you to the edge with very few cards left and wondering how you’re going to overcome.
But there is something that itches at me when I play this game. The game is influenced by the Fate system, uses Fudge dice, and has lots of RPG-ish terminology. But then it..isn’t an RPG. There isn’t any building of your character, there is no growth, and the challenges are one-way, meaning that you are never at risk from any of the challenges, they’re all there waiting for you to choose whether you will overcome them or not. This game effectively gives you a pile of things to try and win with, and thats it, its a mental exercise whether you can win with what you were given or not.
The “books” which you play against may remind you if you have read the book, but probably do nothing for you if you haven’t. The characters themselves are great for fans of the fiction, but probably meaningless to people who aren’t huge Dresden Files fans.
The problem here is that when someone like myself gets super excited and wants to introduce this game to my friends, to them it is just a random game. It isn’t really a Dresden Files game, because the game itself doesn’t do anything to introduce people to Dresden Files or allow them to fall in love with the setting. This doesn’t make the game “bad”, it just makes it a little disappointing because it “seems” like it could have been more RPGish which might have been able to immerse new people in the Dresden Files universe.
Ultimately, I’ll continue having fun playing the game, but I worry that my friends won’t be particularly excited to play this game. This is a problem with modern pop culture IMO. When I was young, it was Star Wars, Star Trek, Tolkien, and maybe Marvel/DC. Now it seems like everyone I know likes different fandoms. Grimm, Dresden Files, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, etc, and the only fandoms we can reliably intersect on are the “old” fandoms, not the new ones.
I’d love to know what other people think about this game and more so about fandoms and whether my friends are just lame for not reading Dresden Files or do you experience similar issues.
