DitV Questions on Demons and Bad Dogs

[DannyK]

I've had an evening to think about the book, and some questions are jumping around in my head.

First, I'm wondering why the rules emphasize so strongly that Demons are supposed to be sort of generic and anonymous.  I could see lots of ways to handle demons. You could have them be colorful named recurring adversaries, like the Serpent in Paka's play example.  I could see them as less individual, but conforming to certain stereotypes based on the sin they favor.  But I'm not sure what the advantage is of defining them as anonymous, almost more a game mechanic than a setting element, particularly since Dogs can take relationships to Demons as traits.  

Second, I'm wondering what happens to fallen Dogs.  I don't remember seeing anything in the book about it, but it stands to reason that when you have young men and women sent out into the world after two months of training with a gun on their hip and divine favor at their back, some are going to go bad.  Besides the obvious "Wolf" type dog-gone-bad, there's tons of room for doctrinal disagreements.  

What if the Dogs come across a town where another Dog is staying, and this other Dog is organizing the townfolk for a genocidal raid on the local Mountain People?  Sure, you could have the Steward leading the people in the same endeavor, but what if it's a Dog?  The conflict rules would be great for this kind of conflict, so I'm not worried about how to run it, but what does the Faith say about conflicts between Dogs?  If there is a conflict and it escalates and someone gets beaten or shot, what then?  
Both Dogs can't be right at the same time, and the whole system is built on the inerrancy of the Dogs' judgement.  

The third point is about race, but it got long enough I'm going to make it a separate thread.

[DannyK]

If I'd been cleverer, I'd call this thread "Who watches the watchdogs?"

Another example of a Dog-as-anagonist is the Dog who's falling, or has fallen.  I'm thinking of a potentially interesting situation: there's an NPC group of Dogs in the same region, two men and a woman.  Secretly, the two men share a bedroll when they're on the trail.  The female Dog doesn't approve, but she is fiercely loyal to her partners and won't take any action.  

In game terms, you could say these three Dogs are already following false doctrine and have a little mini-cult of their own operating.  As they go from town to town, their fallen nature is making them less and less effective in combating demons -- they may destroy the obvious problem, but lay the seeds of several subtler disasters in the process.  

The PC's could, over the course of some sessions, keep encountering the fallout of these other Dogs and become aware that something's not right about them, long before they twig to what's actually going on.

[lumpley]

Well, when Dogs go bad, I imagine that the Stewards at the Dogs' Temple do the obvious thing: send Dogs out after 'em.

The GM is fully and absolutely empowered, via the town creation rules, to judge any and all NPCs' souls, including NPC Dogs'. Yes, the Faith trusts the Dogs, and the Dogs are generally trustworthy. But that whole "truly infallible" thing is actually about the relationship between the GM and the players, not the relationship between God and the Dogs.

For detailing demons, check out my little note about the supernatural on page um 28. What Judd's group's done with the serpent is exactly how it should go.

-Vincent