[DitV] The Township of Canton

[Simon Kamber]

Part of this may be character vision though. Can you see how useful incidental sees/raises might be for someone who's playing a Dog with traits like:

The King's lookin' out for me 2d6
I got the touch of angels 2d8
Damn I'm a lucky shit 2d6

I personally share Lance's notion that coincidental effects in sees shouldn't be used lightly. The same goes for traits above. A character being lucky is only going to have an effect on adressing premise in certain special situations. If he's just generally lucky, that's little more than the player wielding more power over the story with less contribution to addressing the premise.

Thus, if a see was nothing but "the sun gets in your eyes, you miss", it'd bother me. For me to accept a see, or even the use of a trait like "damn I'm a lucky shit", it'd have to have a connection to the premise of the game.

What I'm trying to say is that the use of coincidences in sees should be handled with care. A general rule of thumb I'd use is that the see must be connected to the character of the seeing player, for instance by the following raise of the seeing player being directly connected to the see he just used.

[Lance D. Allen]

See Tim, I think this is an example of our basic differences in view.

You see the possibility for new conflict because it looks like the dog just shot him dead when he didn't even fire a shot. (assuming of course the guy can't see and raise himself, obviously) I see a cold fish of a scene. What I see is that the Dog's "I'm a kickass shot" trait meaning nothing whatsoever, narratively.

On the other hand, if I had my "The King is looking out for me" trait involved, then suddenly it becomes a different story. I See with his gun not firing, and suddenly it's not dumb luck. It's the King of Life twisting fate to save my ass. Suddenly, it MEANS something that his weapon didn't fire. Likewise, if my gun doesn't fire, I don't want it to be dumb luck that the primer in that bullet was dead. I want it to mean, really mean, that the demons are taking a hand. As above, it really means something, it's not just happenstance.

Sure, any See or Raise that involves happenstance can be interpreted as demonic influence, or divine intervention. But I don't want to have to interpret it. I want it to be real, backed up by system, with representation by traits and dice.

[Tim Alexander]

Hey Guys,

I think we're pretty much now just talking squarely about preferences. You don't want a game with happenstance, and that's cool, assuming you work that out with the other folks in your game.

Thus, if a see was nothing but "the sun gets in your eyes, you miss", it'd bother me. For me to accept a see, or even the use of a trait like "damn I'm a lucky shit", it'd have to have a connection to the premise of the game.

Well, on this point we're in total agreement. I think happenstance has to be purposeful from the standpoint of a player, and not a cop out. It has to serve to somehow address/escalate/resolve the conflict. It's got to mean something, and I'd have no problem calling someone out for trying to use it as something else. The same is true with non-incidental stuff, it's all the same to me.

You see the possibility for new conflict because it looks like the dog just shot him dead when he didn't even fire a shot. (assuming of course the guy can't see and raise himself, obviously) I see a cold fish of a scene. What I see is that the Dog's "I'm a kickass shot" trait meaning nothing whatsoever, narratively

Just a note, I was using the kickass shot example seperate from the dummy round example. In the face off example no one was specifically using traits. That said, I think we can agree that we have different tastes on these things, and I can see the appeal of your angle.

-Tim

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Lance,

It may be interesting to you to run a search on any posts by "soru" in the HeroQuest forum, and to look for exchanges between him and Mike Holmes. Very relevant to your points in this thread.

Best,
Ron

[lumpley]

I have one loose end, but it seems to me that we see Lance's preference and hooray! His group can work it out.

My loose end is just about preaching to a congregation. Alexander, rather than making the congregation of 50+ a group NPC, just make the ringleader(s) an NPC. You can take "the congregation" as a Relationship, as a Trait, or both.

-Vincent

[zach20]

Zach here AKA(Raven)
Just chiming in.
The next town is in play and I hope that lance will hurry up and do the recap for the first session. So stay tuned.