[DitV] Questions, questions...gimme your two cents

[Vagabond]

Hi all,

I just got DitV last week and was intching to try out the game mechanic since it was so different from anything I'd seen before. A few problems came up though, so I'd like to hear your two cents.

1 During character creation, I wrote "I hope my character will feel the love of the King of Life". We set the stage, my guy is in the church, there is a chorus singing. The priest comes over and asks what's wrong. What's at stake? Will he feel the love of KoL?
Ok, now what should we roll? How should this conflict be played out? I'll let you all know what we did later, but I'd like to hear your ideas first. The problem here is that the character is basically at odds with himself...

2 What do you do after your ass has been royally whupped in a gun fight and you just had your life spared. If it were a less severe result, you wuold be consulting the (forget the proper term) Fallout charts for severe results. But at the high levels of Fallaout, 16-20 (or so) you don't have any sever fallout specifically mentioned in the rule book. Or am I missing something?

Thanks all, let me know what you think?

[Eric Provost]

Hiya Vagabond.

Our little group has played three sessions of Dogs so far, and we're still a little shaky with narration, so I'll let the long-time experts help you with question 1.

However, there's a simple answer to question 2.  Check pages 49-50, which have a short-hand version of the Fallout rules.  Specifically, check the third paragraph on pg 50;

Did your two highest dice sum to 12 or more?  Your character's badly injured.  Choose two things from the long-term Fallout list.  Continue.

So, if you take fallout of 12 or more, you pick two long-term fallout items.  This is also covered earlier in the book, and on the character sheet, but this is the most clear presentation of the rule.

Hope that helps.

-Eric

[lumpley]

Hey Vagabond, welcome!

Your 1) is a tough one. Here's what I'd do:

Who are the two sides in the conflict? (There have to be at least two sides, or it isn't a conflict.) They're a) God's Love's desire to be felt, and b) the PC's fear of God's Love, right?

So you, the GM, Raise and See as God's Love's desire to be felt, embodied in the choir and the priest etc. The player Raises and Sees as the PC's fear. If the player wins, that means the PC's fear wins, and the PC doesn't feel God's Love.

How'd you do it?

-Vincent

[Vagabond]

We looked at the conflict as an internal one. So we used the Heart stat to represent what the character wanted to do and we rolled it against his Acuity, what the charactr "knew" or thought he knew. So since it was my character, I rolled Heart and added in the preacher's skill and my buddy rolled Acuity plus demonic influence (since we were just play testing we added it in).
So the conflict went something like this:

I Raise: The choir swells and the music pours over me. I can see tears in the eyes of some of the other parishoners.

Cam Sees: Just then a beam of light shines into the church from a nearby window. Then, ominously, a cloud passes in front, leaving the room dark.

Etc. etc. We only ended up rolling six dice each and since Cam ran out of dice and couldn't Raise, he had to Give.

The rules say that generally you should roll traits in pairs, but we didn't see how in this case. Also, the rules say that if there is no clear opponent, the GM should roll 4d6, but we felt that was inappropriate in this case.
We worked it out to our satisfaction, I just wanted to see how others would have handled this dicey situation. :)

[Eric Provost]

Vincent,

I was looking at your response, and I was thinking...  As the stake is "I hope my character will feel the love of the King of Life.", wouldn't it be more fitting if the player rolled for his desire to feel the love, and the GM rolled for the unnamed adversary?

Vagabond,

I guess I'm a little confused at how you chose to run that initiatory conflict.  Specifically the idea that you didn't seem to feel that the rules, as presented, could cover the conflict.  See now, by the rules, you chose to go non-physical, right?  So, the book would have you roll Heart + Acuity.  Then, your opposition would have been 4d6 + 4d10 (as all initiatory conflicts are).  It still could have remained all internal.  Acuity represents Perception, amongst other things, and could have represented the things about the Kings love you saw around you.  The opposition dice could have represented your self-doubt, memories of bad things you've seen, or even your self-loathing and subconsious desire to not be loved by the King.  All still internal.

If you guys dug how it turned out, then I'm certainly not saying it was an 'incorrect' way to play.  Far from it.  I do, however, feel that Dogs is a pretty darned solid game.  A game that works so wonderfully well as printed.

Anwho.  My 2 cents.

-Eric

[Vagabond]

Thanks for your two cents Technocrat 13 and lumpley,

Like I said, we looked at the conflict as internal so decided to use the character's stats for both sides to represent that. So we thought one side should roll acuity and the other heart. We felt that the love of the KoL is always there and the only thing stopping you from feeling it was yourself.
I did forget to include the 4d10 in the conflict so if I had remembered that, I wouldn't have split my character in half like that as there would have been no chance in succeeding.
I suppose I wouldn't do that again a second time around as it raised more problems too.

The opposition dice could have represented your self-doubt, memories of bad things you've seen, or even your self-loathing and subconsious desire to not be loved by the King. All still internal.

I agree with what you're saying and I see where you're coming from. There is no "right" answer here though. But thanks for your input, it's helped me get a better feel for the game. Cheers!