Are you sure he does much carpentry? I was assuming it was effectivly a half-time job at most.
Regardless, the idea that we should have a regular job or degree is propably kinda there, due to Molly growing up in 20th century America, but it's honstly pretty nonsensical. We can make a lot of money without one and we will certainly take great responsibilities anyway. As for connections, we are making them all the time, from demon-hunting monks to the Blackstaff himself.
We don't have to life that kind of "normal" half-life, not as an Exalted, not as a ruler of at least one Hell (later propably more) and not as a supernatural creature of near-infinite lifespan.
1)To my recollection, yes.
He is a military veteran(short service, presumably, and got training as a medical corpsman) and does have some investments from early on that have done very well, allegedly, but yeah, you do the math, and that work does matter to his bottomline.
Remember, dude has 7 kids. Seven. In Chicago. Believe me, kids are
expensive.
And while the Carpenters arent living high on the hog, they dont have every kid wearin his elders castoffs and food security being an issue. The Church provides moral and logistic support but no funding I know of, and he pays for his own expenses and hosts his colleagues from out of town. They're solidly middle class. Big house. Even has a spare guestroom.
Money has to come from somewhere, even with the favor of the White God.
And to my recollection, Charity has been a fulltime mom ever since she finished community college.
2)Magic-side connections come with normal missions. The other type doesnt.
For Molly's sake, she has to make an active effort to cultivate the other types of connections with normal ass people and engage with human society.
Part of the point of playing a PC in an urban fantasy setting is engaging with modern society.
Else you might as well play a Harry Potter game where its not a factor.
That this is an RPG doesn't mean we can't change the world in more ways than stabbing evil in the face. Bringing forth other changes, like providing an impetus for a whole new revolutionary field of science and technology can also be on the table.
It kinda does mean that. Urban fantasy setting, not epic fantasy. And in modern society at that.
Just from a storytelling standpoint, trying to extrapolate the results and implications of even minor societal changes in modern society is a lot more work than you are realizing.
Just the act of, say, laundering an additional fifty to a hundred tons of gold each year into the world market via the Democratic Republic of Congo could set off a new war in Central Africa as neighbors and various interest groups attempt to muscle in.
Or, to use your example, if we were somehow successful in discovering and proving the existence and workings of motonic science. And then kicked off a new arms race, like happened with nuclear physics.
Only with potentially worse weapons, because motonic science allows for stuff like mind control.
And if you think I'm doomsaying, do remember that the last time the US officially got involved in magic in this quest's backstory, they tried to weaponize it and created such a mess the Knights had to do cleanup.
This is frankly more work than I would expect or want my QM to do.
Thats the sort of thing that kills quests.
DP has been willing to change that one before.
ASOIAF was also an RPG before we started claiming an kingdom, then an Empire.
You underestimate the work involved just in setup.
This is a quest where the two primary source materials for the setting, World of Darkness and the Dresden Files, are both urban fantasy, with a bias towards the West. Better than two thirds of the world and four fifths of it's population, including most of those where any new power player or dogooder would be drawn to, isnt fleshed out.
There's little to no guidance in WoD or DF for a GM trying to tell a story in Latin America or Africa or Asia, places with plenty of real life issues and where storytelling can have unexpected pitfalls. DF has barely any information on Europe, even.
And pop culture is not really all that much help in filling in the gaps.
A Man on Fire/Sicario/Sicario II marathon might be considered sufficient local color for writing a brief episode in Mexico, but if you're transitioning to empire building in a world thats basically ours, you need a lot more info and a lot more sensitivity.
I dont consider the juice to be worth the squeeze.
My opinion.
If we hang around wizards long enough they might even decide this is the answer to Molly's growth. She gets to eat a little bit of something from everyone she kills.
It's not exactly true, but it's shaping up such that we're probably going to kill at least one big gribblie per arc, and attributing all of our growth to a single kill would be an easy mistake to make in this context.
It'd also be somewhat comforting, she just alarming omnivorous on a spiritual level instead of being a complete mystery.
Still scary, but not in an wholly unknown way.
Yup.
Until she suddenly spawns a new Horizon Realm with tens of millions of mortal and non-mortal residents out of nowhere.
I AM looking forward to the IC reactions to that when it happens
