[DitV] Death in Rose Valley

[Karl]

Hiya

My first post on the Forge, but I've been lurking for a year or so.

Me, droog, Vu and Michael. Pick-up game at the club droog's been posting play from. Michael just wanted to watch to see how the system worked.

We played for a couple of hours, a big part of which was exploring the system. We created characters and resolved a pull-out-all-stops doctrinal debate which surprisingly ended in Brother Malachi's defeat and death.

droog, if you're reading this, I got the rules wrong and Malachi shouldn't have died! But that's leaping ahead: it seemed almost appropriate at the time.

I'd forgotten my dice (DOH!) so at first we intended simply to make up characters, me included. But Michael brought out his dice in the process and things easily flowed into accomplishments and then into Rose Valley. Initially there was a small instance of blank page syndrome, but by the time we got to accomplishments I simply dropped my character from the process.

This was clearly not really Vu's kind of game. He enjoyed himself somewhat, but pretty much only because his dark, silent combat monster got to slice someone up with a sword.

So the other three of us sort of played around him in a friendly way.

I don't have Vu's character Wiley in front of me, but he chose Traits like 'expert in all forms of combat 3d10', Relationships including 'trained by a master' 3d8 and of course Belongings 'big-ass sword' and 'big-ass gun'.

His accomplishment, a little tangentially, was to control his horse during training. Not much to say there.

I'll post droog's Brother Malachi, because his conflict defined the evening.


Brother Malachi
Complicated Community

Stats
Acuity 3d6, Heart 6d6, Body 3d6, Will 3d6

Traits
I'm a Dog 2d8
Always a song on the lips 4d6
My brother beat me 2d6

Relationships
Hate my family 2d10
Like children 2d8
Old Brother William (mentor during training) 1d6

Available 4d4

Belongings
Coat ?
Horse 2d6
Gun 1d6 + 1d4
Book of Life 2d6
Sacred Earth 2d8


Malachi's accomplishment was to try to sing the 999 names of the King at Temple, in front of the whole congregation. This was the first conflict we played, and it was fun making suggestions about how Malachi could pull in 'Hate my family' and 'Likes children'.

Obviously he won easily.

After Vu's accomplishment it was clear everyone wanted to start playing, so we segued pretty quickly into the little town I'd prepped that day: Rose Valley.

Not far from Bridal Falls, a valley considered especially sacred by many because of the richness of everything that grew there.

I won't post the town because we're intending to keep on playing it.

I framed right into a scene intended to illuminate a key part of the town's problems. I didn't really know what to expect, but I didn't have to push real hard before we were deep into conflict. Go Dogs!

The two Dogs knew the branch was just over the next hill. They could hear gunshots and shouting, so of course they kept going. A group of the Faithful were in a shoot-out with some Mountain People, both sides mounted.

Unusually, the Faithful shooters included a woman. I pointed out that women were expected to stay at home and look after the kids while the men defended the town.

As the Dogs rode down, the fight broke up and the Mountain People rode off. I said there were a couple of Faithful down, and the Dogs immediately rode in to help the wounded. I decided that would be a distraction from the R-map and minimised their importance.

Two of the Faithful introduced themselves, Brother Jebediah and Sister Clementine. Brother Jebediah explained that the town had had to create a militia since the Mountain People had started attacking the town a year or so ago. Houses had been burned and some of the Faithful departed for Heaven. So the town had created a militia to defend itself and Brother Jebediah was the leader - and Sister Clementine was his wife.

As the whole group rode into town with the wounded, I referred again a time or two to how unusual it was for a woman to be playing this militant role. A bit of pushing on my part but it was clear to me, first time in the setting, hadn't read the book, the players needed some direction.

Soon enough Brother Malachi told Sister Clementine straight out she should stay at home, not be out with men. Sister Clementine disagreed, said her role was valuable, and she was an essential part of the militia.

Conflict! We agreed that Brother Malachi was trying to convince Sister Clementine to leave the militia.

I tried a couple of different ways to include Wiley in the debate, and for a moment he almost came in on the Sister's side, but he couldn't avoid playing to the silent-and-dangerous stereotype and refused to participate.

So it was just one-on-one. And because this debate cut to the core of the character's motivations I immediately knew I was going to pull out all the stops. I said to Vu something like "you can join in when the fighting starts" and droog was all "what do you mean when? IF the fighting starts".

We were quoting scripture at each other, defining gender roles, talking about families, Brother Malachi sung a hymn, Brother Jebediah's singing ability was referred to, the Sister's kids were mentioned. Michael was jumping in with suggestions and helping to plan the dice raising strategies. Vu was enjoying the extremities both sides were going to.

Eventually Brother Malachi, having pulled out all the dice he could, used his Sacred Earth to draw the Tree of Life on Sister Clementine's forehead. By this point he something like 10 dice of Fallout and she had none.

Probably this was a mistake and it wasn't possible to invoke Ceremony at all. First time around I guess.

We discussed briefly whether or not this amounted to Escalating to physical, and agreed it did.

Not much later and Brother Michael had been defeated in doctrinal debate by Sister Clementine, with a little pushing and shoving at the end as he grew exasperated.

So then we looked at the Fallout rules. Looking at them again now, we made a couple more mistakes: significant enough to change the outcome drastically.

Hmmm, 13 fallout dice. d6 because we'd escalated to physical. Oh wait, Ceremonial Fallout. D8s! So we rolled 13d8 for Fallout. Surprise, at least two 8s (and a single 1).

We should have rolled 10d4 and 3d6 :( Would have been 8-10, 1 long-term result.

But, 16. droog chose two items from long-term fallout, losing his Sacred Earth and I think changing a die type.

But he needed medical intervention. We decided his Faith had been so battered by the debate that it needed some serious attention or it would collapse altogether. I invited Vu to help out, but when we calculated the dice - 6d6 v 13d8+3d10 (Heresy) - Vu said that Wiley just patted Malachi on the shoulder and couldn't do anything for him.

Malachi had to die!

A somewhat unexpected outcome (and totally incorrect), but it did create a nicely dramatic story for the session.

droog framed a scene where Malachi, besotted by this amazing woman who could out-debate a Dog, crept up to her house in the middle of the night, tapped on her window and declared his love for her. She, at first thinking Mountain People and then that Malachi was possessed by a demon, shot him in the chest.

So of course Brother Wiley had followed Malachi to the house, and moved straight into vengeance mode. Starting with shooting and later escalating to fighting (big-ass sword) he was never much in danger of losing - and since it was late and I also figured Sister Clementine was a little shocked at a Dog being possessed by a demon, she pulled out most of the stops but not all of them.

She died on the sword, and we stopped for the night.

During the session there was quite a lot of kibitzing and a couple of re-tries to convince the other players. A very interesting and enjoyable time, and the town is hardly revealed. How will Brother Jebediah and the two boys respond to Sister Clementine's death? Come back next time...

The death did seem to fit, and droog and I were both tired, so we agreed to stop, but to return to Rose Valley. Maybe a new Dog will ride into town just at that moment, or maybe Wiley will take Malachi's body back to the Temple and meet a new Dog there.

We were a little clunky and extreme here and there, but there is definitely more DitV in my future.

Cheers
Karl M

[droog]

droog, if you're reading this, I got the rules wrong and Malachi shouldn't have died! But that's leaping ahead: it seemed almost appropriate at the time.

Goddammit! But, yeah, it was pretty cool the way it panned out. "Clementine, let me in! Ah need yore soft womanly warmth!" *BOOM* What a gal....

I really enjoyed the game (my first indie game as a player), and Vincent seems to have gained two potential customers from it. I just hope I didn't hog the limelight too much. It's been a while since I was on that side of the table.

Did you notice that Michael mentioned that he thought it was unusual for a narrative game to have so many dice involved? Michael, keep reading the Forge and all will be clear. Around here there's a notion that dice enhance narrativism, not work against it. In fact, the danger signals go off in my head now when people say "We don't use the system much, we just roleplay."