The Forge Archives

Allow me to delurk.

Firstly, a shout out to El Clintonian for Findplay and D. Vincent Baker for Dogs.


Since it rained, my regular gaming groups haven't met. Many of us now live in different states. Thanks to the misuse of the Forge's Connections forum and Clinton's much welcomed FindPlay, I managed to meet up with three other lurking Forgites in Austin, TX and we now have a game. Tonight marks the first time all four of us have gotten together to interact, but I'd met with them more-or-less individually to weed out prospective mutants. (Hey, we've all had bad games, right?)

Per a suggestion by the Clinton/Ron mind collective, we had each brought a large number of games to the table for potential play. The choices eventually boiled down to Dogs, the Mountain Witch, My Life with Master, and Under the Bed. Of those games, only I had played Dogs and MW; thus due to Dogs' nifty "make a character and get your feet wet via initiative and start playing now now now" setup, the consortium elected me to GM.

Now, I consider myself a reluctant GM. I worry, like many of us, whether or not the game I run will suck. I also have a hang-up about plot holes or painting myself into a corner, plotwise. ("But the butler couldn't have done it, because you said...") Thus I have developed a very off-the-cuff, character-centric style of running a game. Coupled with the fact that I haven't run anything in a while, I definitely felt a little uncertain in picking up a game and running it for lurking Forgite strangers after having only played it for a few (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=13881.0) sessions (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14242.0). Thankfully, the player who owns the manual had read it before, and more recently than I. We also had a comb-bound PDF printout to help spread around and check rules. I like having duplicate manuals more than I want to admit- always had extras for Cyberpunk, but rarely for anything else.


WHY I LOVE DitV RIGHT NOW:
Vincent's text has many interjections encouraging collaborative narration/framing/ideas between the play group. I found it extremely easy to get back onto the GM horse by asking other players for ideas during the initiation. Basically, this attitude helps take the pressure to act as the main creative force off my plate. I realize the GM still runs the train, but a lot of suggestions from the peanut gallery (and I don't mean kibitzing) really help to fuel my fire. I know my players will read this, so know they know my dirty little GMing secret! Of course, now I need to do some real prep work for the town.

All in all, Dogs reminds me (however tangentally) of the sidebar text in the Unknown Armies One Shots book. This comes from the Jailbreak scenario: "Bored? Do something."

Now, to the template proposed in the sticky, so I don't get moderated -5 Smackdown. :)

Premise

• Playing Dogs in the Vineyard.
• Playing it as a tapas and an icebreaker.
• Four players total in the play group, including me. All thirtysomething males. None of us knew each other before the game apart from a few koffeeklatches.
• Total game time: around 2.5 hours to make characters and run through initiation. Largely stayed on track once we got started.
• Based on previous Dogs play, I expect this to run about one and a half sessions per town. Let's say 3-5 sessions total, ideally as a weekly game.

The Game

• I think it went really well. Everyone stayed out of each other's character generation, though I mostly needed to refresh the rules more than stir trouble or prod for such interaction. I think I did a fair-to-good job of this, and in retrospect wish I would've read this all the way through once before play. Oh well. Once we got to the initiative conflicts, everyone had a little monologue introducing their character's history and illustrating the hopes. As a group, we helped refine these hopes and frame the scenes for play.
• I have a house rule for short-term fallout, adopted from the previous sessions. Basically, you keep the d4 trait not for your next conflict, but until you can to use it such that it makes sense. Maybe this lessens the impact a little, but I prefer the idea of the fallout trait living on the character sheet where the player sees it and keeps it fresh in their mind, rather than using it in a less than ideal way in the immediate next conflict. I ultimately think this has a more lasting effect on the player.
• We also wound up using this plain HTML character sheet (http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/dogsinthevineyard/charsheet.html) in a pinch. As the first hit in Google, I wanted to get playing faster. I'll likely find a better one and have players transfer if they like. Of course, now I see that the nice character sheet lives on Vincent's site listed as "first edition pullouts."
• I hadn't seen second edition Dogs before this; overall, it looks nice enough, though a bit weak in the binding. This won't stop me from buying my own copy, which will happen after this post. (Hi, Vincent! Here's to the sales figures!)
• Pro: I have a lot of dice, currently living in a half-gallon flour canister. Clinton can vouch for this. Dogs needs more dice than you think you'll need, so I enjoyed having a large communal pool for everyone to draw from as needed. I need more d4s.
• Pro: I found the mechanics easier to recall that I figured. I had a harder time remembering the mechanical details, which explains why half the character sheet has reference material on it. This basically functions to spread a bit of GM duty out to the players - "How much is this?" "What's the die type for that?" - and overall speeds up gameplay.
• Con: I didn't care for the new index, which looks more like a quick reference guide. While handy, this doesn't tell me what page the whole description of the significance of a Dog's coat lives on. What this means to you, the game publisher on the street: INDEXES ROCK. If your book has more than, say, 64 pages, index that bad boy.
• Con: I wanted to bring in more dice during the initiation scenes, but didn't think I could outside of demonic influence. Overall, though, this probably works out better for the PC.
• As a group, we all gelled rather quickly. I think this comes from out shared geek culture, a shared status of Forge lurking, and initial socializations outside of the game table as a litmus test.
• As a first session, I think I did all right. Compared to my previous Dogs session, it felt a little rockier. That doesn't suprise me, as the previous dynamic of Clinton-knows-indie-narrativism plus Me-Judson-Cat-known-each-other-for-years had a totally different vibe. We totally hit the ground running.
  

Wrap up

• Everyone in the group liked Dogs instantly, once we got our feet wet. Half the group turned towards playing Dogs in other realms (Arthurian, Mafia, post-apoc, etc) as soon as we finished. One player, who had initially expressed doubts about playing a Mormon western, seemed to really enjoy the possibilities and (to me) changed his tune and expressed enthusiasm for next session.
• One of us also noted that we, as players, rooted for the antagonists instead of the PCs. More on this below.

Obligatory party encapsulation

• Brother Jedidiah Fell: "I hope I exorcise my brother's demon."
Br. Jedidiah "I can quote but not read scripture 1d6" lost his brother to demonic possession. Since then, the demon had followed him, taunting him at the edge of his vision. We had a nice atmospheric exorcism, complete with blue flame to signify the presence of evil spirits, a black haze over a female Dog as it tried to possess her. In this, out first conflict, we had a good example of a "how the hell do I narrate this as a Take the Blow?" moment when we realized it meant that the demon resisted Jedidiah's attempt at the time and actually did possess the girl for a moment. After the fact, we also realized I could have escalated this to physical by having the demon attack Jedidiah. He eventually overcame the demon by symbolically protecting his fellow Dog with his coat. At this point, we all started to feel the rhythm of the game.


• Brother Josiah: "I hope I own my faith."
Br. Josiah "I know the Book of Life backwards and forwards 2d8" had an interesting initial conflict- not really initiation, but it sounded cool so we ran with it. As a young man of the Faith, he ran off Back East. A dream of his father causes him send word back home, whereupon he learns of his father's death. A Dog brings him back to the Temple, but before he goes, he wants to stand up as a man and own his faith. The player originally wanted this scene framed as between himself and his street urchin friends, but someone else piped up the idea that since Josiah "I've read a lot more than that, too 2d8" might go to a bookshop before he leaves for the Temple, picking up an almanac which he can't get out on the frontier. This bookshop owner became the opposition, suggesting that the young man read a small volume by a Mr. Charles Darwin. Overall, a very cool way the group as a whole helped a scene come together.


• Brother Ebsha Keely: "I hope I keep my virginity."
Br. Ebsha "New guy in town 1d6", kidnapped by Mountain People as a toddler, re-kidnapped by the Dogs as a boy, "I'm a Dog by obligation 2d4" has turned all the ladies' heads. His status as an outsider and his not-quite-right-ways keeps many girls a-blushin' and not minding their lessons. Including Mrs. Prudence Robinson, the Steward's first wife, who feels a mite neglected between her husband's attention to this second wife and to the Dog's Temple. On the last night of initiation, while everyone at the Temple enjoys the large outdoor services celebrating a new group of Dogs, Ebsha forgot his hat and had to run back to his room.. whereupon Mrs. Robinson (sorry, I couldn't help myself) proceeded to entice him with her womanly charms. She nearly got her way until Ebsha brought in a relationship with one of the Dogs who rescued him from the Mountain People- he had to Take the Blow, too. So Prudence has him in a passionate embrace when the door opens; Ebsha escalates it to fighting, pushes the Steward's wife away (where she falls onto his bed), and gets out just in time to have his name called by the Steward to receive his official recognition as a Dog.

Off to a good start, I think!

Can anyone suggest good background music for a session of Dogs? Off the top of my head, I might try the Riven and Ravenous soundtracks.

Also, any other advice/links for Town creation?

MDK

Quote from: Rossum on December 01, 2005, 08:46:06 AM
Can anyone suggest good background music for a session of Dogs? Off the top of my head, I might try the Riven and Ravenous soundtracks.

There's a whole thread about music:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17278.0
Lots of good ideas.  Definitely check out the Sacred harp/Shaped note singing stuff. 

Sounds like a good first session. Glad it clicked with everyone so effortlessly.

During initiation, there's no escalating on the GM side, so you did well there.  As for towns... there's a lot of towns out there.  Whether you're running a town of your own or someone else's, I suggest starting in the  lumpley games (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?board=44.0) forum.  There are usually two or three towns getting hammered out on the front page at any given time.  (Usually labeled [DitV Branch Name] or "help with my town".)  If you're doing your own town, the advice the other posters come up with is often insightful.

Vincent's DitV page (http://www.lumpley.com/dogsources.html) has a directory of fifteen or so towns, and  Christopher Weeks (http://www.weeksfamily.net/games/DitV/townlist.aspx) has a townlist and online proto-NPC generator.

Hope these prove useful to you.
--Scott

I'd recommend just sitting down and making a town, with the idea that you're just going to hit all the points in the rules and you maybe won't end up playing the town at all. Free yourself from the notion that the town has to be any good; spend five minutes MAX on each step, and throw the town away afterward if it sucks.

-Vincent
(who'll eat his hat if it sucks, though.)