So my game now has a Veteran’s Workspace and a Wizard’s Sanctum. I tend to struggle with how to play these things in the first place, but with two, now I need to be more discerning.
Anyone have good advice, examples, or stories revolving around these really open-ended character features that might help me or others like me?
Early Dresden files uses Sanctum a lot—pretty much any time Harry heads back home to do some alchemy or ritual magic.
The Veteran’s Workspace can be a crime lab, weapons factory, operating room, or any number of other things. This is Bobby’s junkyard on Supernatural or Whistler’s armory in Blade.
The key is that both of these are very player driven, which means they are frequently going to be used when the players don’t know how to solve a problem. This means that if you’re the GM, you also have a lot more freedom to pose tough or seemingly insurmountable challenges. Since you cannot say no when they go into their space to do work, your only option is how difficult to make the task.
When you’re planning stuff, you should be looking at what they chose as the features of their Sanctum/workspace and asking “how can I work this in?” Use their feature choices as flags for stuff they want to see in the game. If they have weaponmaking tools, make sure there’s a lot of stuff that requires rare and specialized weapons to kill. If they have old tomes make sure there’s things that need to be researched.
When they go into the workspace to do something, ask yourself “how hard do I need to make this” and “how do I drag other characters into the process”? Look at who owes the character, who the character owes and who they don’t want to owe and see if you can logically involve any of them, or maybe a new character you want to introduce.
Jeff Johnston Awesome advice. We started with the Veteran and sort of established him to be a bit of Bobby Singer with all the religious and supernatural geegaws in addition to car stuff. I fear this overlaps a bit with the Wizard.
I actually never got into Dresden Files – have any good examples of things he does?
At different points in time Harry has had a dedicated summoning circle and a scale model of Chicago for tracking spells, as well as having the general lab setup to make potions, one shot magic items, and to do upgrades on his staff, rod, and bracelet.
It’s also where he does the long term ritual magic he doesn’t wnt disturbed.
And it’s where he keeps Bob most of the time.
Jared nailed it, but maybe I can add a bit- in several of the early Dresden books, Harry spends a chapter in his lab, creating potions or other one-shot magic items. Throughout the series, though, Bob is the important part of the lab. He’s Harry’s assistant/lore keeper. Jim Butcher put him in as a literal “talking head,” so Bob instructs Harry on the finer points of magical theory. Harry will often bring fact patterns to Bob, and they’ll bash out who the bad guy is together.
Harry also uses his lab for ritual magic, and for the occasional odd summoning.