Misclleanous DitV questions.

[sirogit]

1. If character's are in a group conflict, can they choose not to Raise when its their turn, without giving?

Here's the situation I'm thinking of:

Dog A wants to shoot Zekial to stop him killing his daughter. Dog B doesn't want Dog A to shoot Zekial. Dog B makes a deal with Dog A that if Dog B can't talk down Zekial from killing his daughter, Dog A can shoot him with his blessings, but not before.

So the conflict is set as Stakes: Zekial's daughter's life, Dog A + Dog B vs. Zekial.

Dog B starts trying to talk down Zekial. They both Raise and See each other. Now it's Dog A's chance to act, he wants to not do anything until Dog B is done talking Zekial down. Can he choose not to Raise, and just let the other two duke it out for awhile?

2. About the Fallout option, "changing the d-size of a trait." That means it can go from a d4 to a d10 if a player so chooses, right?

3. Let's say my Dog had a Place, a prison, as a relationship. Let's say that the arena of the fight started up at a schoolhouse, but it later ended up my Dog dragging someone around town, and then kicking them into a jail cell. Would I add my relationship to the conflict as the arena is changed? How about if I went to the prison in a flashback?

4. Would blowing your own brains out be escalating to gun-fighting? Would it be best handled the same way Vincent suggested in the Hostage thread, by having death result if a person used suicide as a raise and a Dog chose to take the blow without getting in the way, with d4 fallout?

5. If an NPC healer is helped by the Dog, would the way to run it be with both the NPC's and the Dog's full stats, or with the Dog + 2d6 to stats and some traits?

[Simon Kamber]

1. If character's are in a group conflict, can they choose not to Raise when its their turn, without giving?

Here's the situation I'm thinking of:

Dog A wants to shoot Zekial to stop him killing his daughter. Dog B doesn't want Dog A to shoot Zekial. Dog B makes a deal with Dog A that if Dog B can't talk down Zekial from killing his daughter, Dog A can shoot him with his blessings, but not before.

So the conflict is set as Stakes: Zekial's daughter's life, Dog A + Dog B vs. Zekial.

Dog B starts trying to talk down Zekial. They both Raise and See each other. Now it's Dog A's chance to act, he wants to not do anything until Dog B is done talking Zekial down. Can he choose not to Raise, and just let the other two duke it out for awhile?

I wouldn't say so. If anything, he'll have to raise with something empty like "I do nothing, just a 'ho-hum'". Otherwise, he'll be able to enter the conflict with full dice when the other two have run each other dry.

Another thing though, why is A in the conflict if he has no interest in Zekial's daughter's life? Seems like this is B's conflict.

2. About the Fallout option, "changing the d-size of a trait." That means it can go from a d4 to a d10 if a player so chooses, right?

3. Let's say my Dog had a Place, a prison, as a relationship. Let's say that the arena of the fight started up at a schoolhouse, but it later ended up my Dog dragging someone around town, and then kicking them into a jail cell. Would I add my relationship to the conflict as the arena is changed? How about if I went to the prison in a flashback?

If you physically go to the place, the relationship enters (I think). If it's just a flashback, it's a bit less clear. Personally, I'd say that if the others run with your flash-back raise, then it's a go. The place has to become the scene of the conflict, not just part of a raise.

4. Would blowing your own brains out be escalating to gun-fighting? Would it be best handled the same way Vincent suggested in the Hostage thread, by having death result if a person used suicide as a raise and a Dog chose to take the blow without getting in the way, with d4 fallout?

That wouldn't be escalating to gunfighting (unless you're in a self-conflict, but that'd just be weird). As I understand it, gunfighting is when you fire at your opponent in the conflict with the intention to harm.

5. If an NPC healer is helped by the Dog, would the way to run it be with both the NPC's and the Dog's full stats, or with the Dog + 2d6 to stats and some traits?

I don't think you can have several characters as part of a healing conflict. What I'd do is to use the Dog as an improvised belonging.

[lumpley]

Good answers, Simon.

1. Under no circumstances can you pass when it's your turn to raise. You can raise or you can give. Also, you can't ever join or rejoin a conflict already underway.

If you don't have a raise when it's your turn, Simon's right, you oughtn't be in the conflict to begin with.

The thing to do with your example is split it up into a little knot of conflict and follow-up conflicts.

2. Yep.

3. Simon's right on.

4. Simon's right on. Yes, if I raise "I blow my own brains out" and you take the blow, my character's dead and you get d4s for fallout.

5. As GM, you should never roll dice against yourself. Thus, even though the Dog is helping the doctor, the Dog's player should roll dice and see and raise, with the usual help from the doctor's dice.

Am I saying that clearly enough? Even though the doctor's in charge of the Dog, he's a tool of the Dog's player.

-Vincent

[cdr]

sirogit asked:

2. About the Fallout option, "changing the d-size of a trait." That means it can go from a d4 to a d10 if a player so chooses, right?

lumpley answered:

2. Yep.

I thought "change the d-size" meant one step, from what the Introduction gives as examples on p3 under "All This and Platonic Too", so you could go from d4 to d6, and d6 to d4 or d8, and d8 to d6 or d10.  Can you really skip straight from 1d4 to 1d10 with one use of experience, not three? Wow.

--Carl Rigney

[lumpley]

Yep.

Y'know, it just occured to me to wonder - everybody gets that the fallout you take has to reasonably follow from the events of the conflict, right?

"I killed my own brother 6d4," under what circumstances do you really think you can change that to "I killed my own brother 6d10"?

-Vincent

[Eero Tuovinen]

Y'know, it just occured to me to wonder - everybody gets that the fallout you take has to reasonably follow from the events of the conflict, right?

"I killed my own brother 6d4," under what circumstances do you really think you can change that to "I killed my own brother 6d10"?

When I want to minmax my character development? Or when I'm impatient to get to apply my new trait in a positive fashion?

Seriously, this one looks somewhat abstract to me. I dig mechanics you have to interpret somewhat, but I'm not so sure that I can reliably discern between changing die sizes AND die numbers vis a vis the events of the game. OK, I have a flashback about the bro, he said something that makes me conclude that as he was before, he'd be disgusted himself at what he'd become. Question: should I increase the number of dice in the trait, or increase the die size, or lower one or both of them? What's the appropriate new size? Who knows.

Limiting die size increases to one peg at a time has the same benefit that giving out only one increase die at once has. It spares me the player the difficulty of picking how many die sizes / dice, exactly, this situation merits. Allowing me to pick any die size at all is too little constraint, IMO. Without it I'll just have to pick between changing the amount of dice or the die size, and whether I'm lowering or heightening the number. That's just four different options, with pretty clear dramatic effects. With free die size I suddenly have six options, of which at least two will differ only in quantity, not in quality. It's a rare trait where I can say for sure that it's definitely a d6, not a d8.

If die sizes had very specific meanings I wouldn't have any problems with this. Like the equipment dice, which have definitions that remove much of the interpretative problem. But I can't see any rhyme or reason in the different die sizes other than bigger=better for the Dog.

This as a way of explanation for why some people might not have concluded that any die size goes. I didn't, for instance.

[lumpley]

Yeah, but sometimes the events in the game will undeniably call for d4->d10 or d10->d4. It's crucial that the rules get those moments right.

Compared to that, the fiddling around that you're worried about just doesn't matter.

Anyway it's like what counts as a good see or raise - over the first couple of sessions your group will figure out what counts as good fallout. If that means that most of the time you only change by one die size, that's legit.

-Vincent

[Eric Provost]

It's crucial that the rules get those moments right.

I totally agree.  Problem is, this is one of those areas where you leave it up to your consumers to figure it out on their own.  You don't give any guidance in the text.  Well, no specific guidance.  And, if this is so crucial, then why do you leave it so ambiguous in the text?

-Eric

[lumpley]

Huh?

One of your choices when you get experience fallout is to change the die size of a trait. What's ambiguous?

-Vincent

[Brand_Robins]

Huh?

One of your choices when you get experience fallout is to change the die size of a trait. What's ambiguous?

-Vincent

Having made the same mistake everyone else did, then having gone back and reread the rule I can only conclude that it is ambiguous because I am fucked up from years of "XP to level up" play. It's that monkey part of my brain that is like "when you level up, you go up one level, not TEN!"

Which isn't your fault Vincent, clearly. However, it might be nice if in some future edition you dropped a note in so that us monkeys could see clearly that we are monkeys.

[Simon Kamber]

Also. The examples on page 3 give the impression that increasing the die size means increasing it one step.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Yeah, but sometimes the events in the game will undeniably call for d4->d10 or d10->d4. It's crucial that the rules get those moments right.

You know, that's completely true. It is crucial.

Hmm... that wouldn't, however, stop one from giving out some kind of guidelines for the die sizes. I love those cute "take d6 for normal item, 2d6 for a quality item, d8 for big item" guidelines. They're completely nonintuitive and simple, but work anyway in a magical way. Adorable. Something along those lines would be cool, if I could just analyze what the die sizes actually mean for traits and relationships... and when I'd have such a table, it'd be so much simpler to answer the question of where a given trait should go. Right now, I have no better idea than making it a matter of dramatic impact, like the Devil in DD, but I don't think that's correct.

To be clear, this is player-wondering right here. I'm not trying to look for GMing guidelines.

[sirogit]

I'm on the boat that changing d- sizes in Dogs is totally intuitive and non-problematic. The most recent example is talking to a fellow player about it, and him being like "Cool... me being scary didn't mess things up this time, they actually helped him, so I'm changing it from a d4 to a d8."

The reason I'm asking is because my gm was like "Eh? Y'sure that's legal?" and I figured it couldn't hurt to make sure.

About "die size" table: I'm not sure it would actually be helpfull, since in Dogs there's quite a few different ways that die sizes could be interpreted and its sort of relative to how many dice people are throwing and yada yada yada, but here's an attempt at a makeshift table:

1d Minor facet
2d Fairly important facet
3d Major facet
4d Crucial facet*

d4 Gets you in trouble.
d6 Doesn't get you in trouble
d8 Gets you out of trouble
d10 A shining beacon of light in the darkness of the world.

* You could interpret dice numbers of 5+ to be very important to the -setting- itself, that there's this guy that's so good at lassoing.

[Ul]

On the first question, the obvious thing for me would be do it the following way:

A conflict betwenn Dog B and Zakiel

"Can I stop him from killing his daughter?"

If dog B loses, launch a follow up conflict betwenn A and zakiel

"Do zakiel die?"

Of if the first conflict goes further than Dog B are willing to, he just gives (if he aint willing to escelate mostly, or that zakiel goes so far that Dog B no longer wants him to survive..)